Screw the Rules, I Have Blog

Oh shi--

2011-01-25T09:04:00.001-08:00

Spotted in the headlines today:

"Putin vows revenge for suicide bombing"

Shit is going to get REAL. We're talking about one of the most manliest and badass humans to exist on this Earth vowing revenge against someone.

Anger...rising...

2011-01-23T16:07:00.001-08:00

WHO PROGRAMMED THIS PIECE OF CRAP?!

Priorities

2010-12-20T23:16:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the lack of posts, I've been really busy with schoolwork and other stuff (like trying to start a website and things like that).

So anyway, a few months back I heard that a show I watched, Axis Powers Hetalia had been licensed for release in the US, which I thought previously was absolutely impossible because it was weird and the episodes were five minutes long each. Oh, and the fact that all of the countries of the world are anthropomorphized and get into wacky hijinks and historical in-jokes. Hilarity Ensues.

A little bit after that, I heard that the English dub was on Hulu. Despite having thirty or so of the episodes in their original language (with English subtitles) on my computer, I wanted to check it out because I wanted to see 1.) if I recognized any of the voice actors and 2.) how many of the jokes they changed (the Japanese language having lots of linguistic concepts that tend to be translated differently from localization group to localization group).

When I went to see the first episode, I was greeted with this:

The fuck? Hetalia was somehow not suitable for minors? I mean, yeah, there are some overtones between Italy and Germany, but you'd have to be a regular anime fan to really catch anything and most of the jokes in the entire show would pretty much fly over the heads of anyone not well-versed in history (including the obscure stuff).

Now, keep in mind, the one show I've watched on Hulu happens to be Gurren Lagann, which is accessible to anyone on the site. Now, granted, I think that TVTropes's description of it as a Saturday Morning Cartoon Made by Gainax (the creators of Evangelion...yeeeeeahh) is pretty damn accurate, but on the other hand, the Japanese are apparently perfectly fine with their kids watching a show in which the main female lead basically wears a bikini and has bouncy boobs and the characters all mention tons of innuendo involving drills.

You know, for kids!

But I can see why Gurren Lagann wouldn't be censored. After all, "minor" covers everyone under 18, including teenagers, and teenagers would hardly be phased by that.

However, there is something that is seriously off.

While on my normal wandering of TVTropes, I came across the article for a rather bleak show called Now and Then, Here and There (which happened to air right after Gurren Lagann on TV).

The summary for the show starts with "Not for the faint of heart" and goes downhill from there. Influenced by the events of Rwanda during the genocide taking place there, it involves child soldiers and rape (which befalls one of the main characters at the beginning of the series), and is said by the article to belong right next to Grave of the Fireflies on your shelf. For the uninformed, Grave of the Fireflies is infamous for easily being one of the most depressing and heart-wrenching movies ever to be made in the history of mankind.

Now and Then, Here and There is on Hulu. Upon starting the first episode...

The screen preceding the show's opening credits.

That's right. There isn't a "not suitable for minors" disclaimer. Of all of the FUCKING shows to be on Hulu, this one is apparently fine for everyone. And if you think I'm kidding, here's the link to the video.

In other words, the people running Hulu seem to think that a comedy show about anthropomorphized countries is more harmful to minors than a show where one of the main characters gets repeatedly raped by soldiers.

...yeeeeeah. If you were wondering at any time why I can't stand Hulu, this is why.

Hydra

2010-09-30T22:07:00.001-07:00

You know Tyler Clementi, that kid who committed suicide after his jerkass of a roommate secretly recorded him smooching a guy?

If this article is any indication, there are lots and lots of problems involved with this. Considering that it's 11:30 at night right now, I don't know any other way to put this.

Is the suicide of a bright young student tragic? Yes, yes it is. However, what it should NOT be is a symbol for agendas the world over.

First off, look at the title of this article.

Suicide shows need for civility, privacy online

The internet as a whole had very little involvement in this - it's not like the Anonymous is Legion decided to troll this guy, it was one stupid prick who decided to rig his web camera so that he could remotely control it (which, BTW, is something that I don't even know how to do). Furthermore, "privacy online" doesn't work into this, either - it was the guy's roommate who did it, someone who was physically there to begin with to set it up. It's not like some hacker across the country decided to take control of his webcam for the lulz, nor was the victim's computer or account hacked to post the photos. Internet privacy settings or practices had utterly nothing to do with this incident, and it really fucking pisses me off when one person does something bad on the internet and the entire online society/entity gets blamed for it. That's like characterizing the entire United States of America based on the fact that someone got murdered in Chicago. It's ridiculous to title the article like this.

And "civility"? Like I said, Anonymous is Legion had nothing to do with this, it was one single jerk. They really paint the whole internet as a mass of unruly, unwashed, trollish masses with this one statement.

To clarify, yes, the internet was used AS A MEANS, but nothing more than that. This title makes it sound like vast legions of people were egging this guy on, which it wasn't. It was a prick who decided to remotely use his webcam to tweet something humiliating about someone. There wouldn't be nearly as much controversy (ok, maybe less internet scapegoating) if this guy took the photos with his webcam and posted them around campus as flyers, despite the fact that the effect would be the same: widespread humiliation across campus.

It gets better:

"How many suicides will it take?" asked Andrea Weckerle, a public relations consultant who founded CiviliNation, a group that promotes responsible Internet use. "Enough is enough."

Sounds a lot like the anti-gun lobbying groups, if you ask me. "How many murders will it take?" "Think of the CHILDREN." And "enough is enough" sounds ominous enough to raise my hackles. If this one guy becomes enough of a martyr that legislation to regulate behavior on something as vast and international as the internet comes to pass, I'm going to build a giant attack robot and go on a rampage.

People act like this is something new. It's not. The internet suddenly didn't make people mean bullies, they existed to begin with and simply found a shiny new tool to use to torment their victims. Acting like you can "educate" or "legislate" it out of people is fucking ridiculous and reeks of completely and utterly blind optimism that only exists in the minds of five-year-olds who haven't experienced the real world yet. Bullying and the physical/emotional harming of other members of our species is in the subconscious of all human beings, there is NOTHING you can do about it. As long as people can still write and physically speak, there will always be bullies spreading around unwanted information about people among their peers, internet or no.

Oh yeah, BTW, it gets better:

•Gay-rights advocates say Clementi was targeted for harassment because of his sexual orientation.

It would not surprise me if he was mocked for it, but...

"This student taped and mocked him," Goldstein said, referring to Ravi. "Does anyone think that would have happened if (Clementi) was with someone of the opposite sex?"

Yes, I do, actually. A girl could easily be labeled a "slut" or a "whore" using the same exact kinds of evidence - except that that kind of crap doesn't make national news. These people are hypocrites: they decry the bias that contributed to this student's death, and yet it is because of sexuality bias (and the Internet) that this article, with their statement, is even in the national news. People kill themselves all the time and it only makes the local obituary at most. But the instant someone kills themselves because of sexuality harassment, it's BIG FUCKING NEWS. It's sick that this guy and his organization are using the dead student as a martyr to pursue their own agenda, and it's sick that the media is doing the same.

Oh yeah, did I mention that IT GETS BETTER?

To Rutgers officials, Clementi's death put a spotlight on the need for what the university had officially kicked off on Wednesday: a program to promote civility among students.

"How could one roommate do this to another?" asked Rutgers spokesman Steve Manas.

They can do that by being an immature prick with computer skills.

And yet again, another example of trying to influence behavior among people who are supposedly adults. Going off on a tangent here, I'm getting really sick of all of the hand-holding I keep seeing everywhere - in the Dining Halls here, there are "stars" denoting how "healthy" something is, for instance. That just pisses me off because whoever came up with that thought that I was too stupid to know that it miiiight be a little unhealthy to have that swiss cheeseburger with bacon. I'm supposedly an adult, I should be able to take care of myself, even if it's with a little help from family and friends. So please, you condescending pencil-pushers, SHUT THE FUCK UP and let me live my life without your screeching!

Another session was scheduled Thursday for residence hall staff on how to make dorms "laboratories for civil behavior."

Gimme a break. This essentially means that they're likely going to restrict hall behaviors more and more - because forcibly keeping people quiet in their rooms always works so well.

In October, students will be invited to programs and talks that tackle bullying and the proper use of new technologies — including social media.

Because that has worked soooo well in the past. Eradicating natural human behavior DOES. NOT. WORK. Also, twenty bucks says that the students going to these programs know more about how to "properly" use social media more than the people running said programs.

To Internet safety advocates, Clementi was the latest casualty of the Web's ability to abet defamation and shame

See, martyr.

Jessica Logan, an 18-year-old Cincinnati woman, killed herself in 2008 after an ex-boyfriend forwarded her nude cellphone photos to high school classmates.

DON'T FUCKING SEND NAKED PHOTOS OF YOURSELF TO OTHER PEOPLE'S CELLS, ESPECIALLY IF IT'S YOUR HIGH SCHOOL BOYFRIEND! Common. Freaking. SENSE.

Megan Meier, a 13-year-old Missouri girl, hanged herself in 2006 after learning that an Internet romance on MySpace was a hoax.

Which is an indication of serious emotional issues to begin with.

Anthony Scala, an Oregon State University student, was convicted of invasion of privacy in 2001 for using his laptop webcam to broadcast on the Internet scenes of his roommate and his girlfriend having sex in a dorm room.

Proving. My. Point. EXACTLY. I don't remember this ever making national news or being cited repeatedly as an example of why the internet is evil. Media freaking BIAS.

Jim Steyer, founder of Common Sense Media, a group that educates families about Internet safety, said they shouldn't bother, and that no matter how many kids hurt themselves, the Internet is here to stay.

"The genie is out of the bottle. This is where kids live today, period. ... And as a parent you can't simply shut it out and protect yourself from the brave new world of social media.

...

He said that means schools and parents must teach kids to "self-reflect before you self-reveal;" to respect others' feelings and privacy online; to remember that what you do digitally never goes away; and that everything on the Internet isn't true or accurate.

HOLY CRAP, someone sane in this article, preaching COMMON SENSE!

The Internet continued to be a mixed blessing Thursday. Although more than 46,000 people clicked "like" on the newly established "In Honor of Tyler Clementi" page on Facebook, there also were predictions that the young man would go to hell, and claims that homosexuality is a sin.

They just HAD to put this dig on the internet in there, didn't they? *eyeroll* Never mind that we have people like the Westboro Baptist Church who spew their hate at funerals without the use of the internet...

Am I being a little harsh? Yeah, totally. It's late and reading this article put me in a bad mood. However, I don't think it's at all right to push agendas or demonize large groups of people because a single prick and his friends decided to bully someone using a web camera. Stuff like that just pisses me off.

Life Emulates Fiction

2010-09-29T16:53:00.000-07:00

So, apparently scientists have finally found a really Earth-like planet. It's a rocky planet (as opposed to the Jupiter-esque gas giants the vast majority of the exoplanets are) in the "habitable zone", where its orbit is not too close to the sun or not too far, and it apparently has enough gravity to retain an atmosphere.

What really grabbed me was this:

One side of the planet is always facing the star, much as one side of the moon constantly faces Earth. This means that the far side of the planet is constantly in darkness. The most habitable region of the planet would be the line between the light and dark regions.

One of my favorite video games is Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, an adventure game in the first person where you explore levels, finding power ups to better your weapons or proceed farther in the game, scanning enemies and other items of interest for awesome info*, solving puzzles, and shooting hostile life forms that are trying to kill you. One of the planets that you explore is called Bryyo, and one of the scannable log entries about it says:

Federation scouts discovered the planet Bryyo ten years ago. The planet's alignment makes most of its surface uninhabitable: 48% of the world is always exposed to the sun, with another 48% shrouded in permanent night. The remaining 4% lies in an equatorial ring of fertile jungle, where the bulk of Bryyo's bioforms dwell.

...so yeah, scientists have found the real-life Bryyo. Prime 3 came out in 2007 and was being developed for three years before that. Real life emulates fiction.

This quote in the article, though, made me roll my eyes:

"Our findings offer a very compelling case for a potentially habitable planet," said Steven Vogt, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz. "The fact that we were able to detect this planet so quickly and so nearby tells us that planets like this must be really common."

It's called dumb luck. Events in space are pretty much random occurrences, it doesn't mean anything if a system relatively close to ours just happened to catch or form a body in the right orbit. Besides, what about the previous exoplanets people have discovered? Nearly all 400 of them were massive gas giants. Just talking about probability using this sample (which, admittedly, could be biased towards the larger bodies due to detection methods), that means that the vast majority of the planets out there are gas giants. Finding a rocky planet is a stroke of luck, nothing more. Assuming that there are a lot of "planets like this" simply because this one happened to be relatively close to ours or that we "found it so quickly" is like assuming that our planet is the center of the universe and has far more influence on surrounding systems than it really does.

Anyway, yeah. Possible habitable planet. That makes the sci-fi fan in me squeal!

*I'm not kidding. I'm pretty sure players don't need to know that the statue they're passing is that of B-stl, Child Hero of Agon, who died in the first Dark Aether raids, like, 200 years ago, to beat the game, but the developers put it in as scan data anyway! Little touches like that really make the game's universe feel more real.

New Study Says That I Should be a Lesbian

2010-09-15T12:29:00.000-07:00

According to this study, clear signs of upcoming homosexuality in children include not giving a shit about gender roles. In other words, preferring to role-play as Sonic the Hedgehog and building robots and spaceships out of Legos when I was little was a clear indication that I would grow up to be lesbian. Oh, wait.

First thought...

2010-09-02T15:13:00.000-07:00

"Ok, there is NO freaking way this is a coincidence."

*hides tinfoil hat*

Kicking California out of the US, Part 2

2010-07-03T11:26:00.000-07:00

'In-N-Out' hometown bans new drive-through restaurants

BALDWIN PARK, Calif. (AP) — The birthplace of California's drive-through craze has had its fill of fast food restaurants.

Amid complaints of obesity and lines of idled cars stretching into neighborhood streets, this blue-collar town is banning new drive-throughs in hopes of shedding its reputation as a haven for convenient, fatty foods.

It's an ironic development for a community that proudly claims to have opened California's first drive-through restaurant more than 60 years ago — a little joint named, appropriately enough, In-N-Out.

"We here in Baldwin Park have taken strides to create a healthy community, and allowing one more drive-through in is not going to meet that goal," said Baldwin Park city planner Salvador Lopez, who helped craft the ordinance that takes effect Fourth of July weekend.

Lopez estimates the town's drive-throughs and liquor stores outnumber sit-down restaurants and grocery stores six to one.

And with 90,000 people crammed into 6.5 square miles, this suburb east of Los Angeles is concerned that its 17 drive-throughs are causing traffic jams stretching outside its parking lots.

Still, this being the semiofficial birthplace of the drive-through fast-food movement, not everyone is happy with the ordinance.

"They ought to put in more drive-throughs, not stop them," said Isaac Colin immediately after ordering burgers and fries for himself and his wife, Christine, at the Baldwin Park In-N-Out. "It's a waste of time getting out of your car, finding a parking spot, going in, ordering your food."

Maybe cities in other states should cut back on drive-throughs, he said, conceding they might cause traffic problems.

"But not here. This is California," he said.

The restaurant he stopped at is a shrine of sorts to drive-through aficionados, located literally a stone's throw from where the original In-N-Out, the one believed to be California's first such eating emporium, was erected in 1948.

"I used to eat at that one, it was right over there," said another customer, Trinidad Zuniga, as he pointed to Interstate 10, the mammoth freeway that runs from the California coastline to Jacksonville, Fla.

That modest first stand, which had no tables or chairs, was torn down some years ago to make way for the freeway.

And although there is no authoritative record-keeping outfit to say it really was California's first drive-through chow palace, In-N-Out says it was and that's good enough for pretty much everyone here.

"Definitely it was the original," said Mayor Manuel Lozano. "It's one of our icons."

Nevertheless, Lopez said, the city needed to cap the drive-through craze that In-N-Out started so many years ago.

The City Council, following the lead of several Canadian municipalities that in recent years have restricted drive-throughs, voted unanimously last month to put a nine-month moratorium on opening any more drive-through restaurants.

That same week, officials opened an outdoor fitness center they say will be dedicated to fighting childhood obesity.

The changes are being welcomed by some residents.

"To be honest, yeah, we have too many drive-throughs," said Fabian Olguin. He works at the barbershop across the street from the In-N-Out and says he's seen traffic back up from its drive-through onto neighboring residential streets.

"Sometimes I can't even get out on the street," he said, adding when that happens he'll walk over to get his fast-food fix from the restaurant's sit-down section.

The ordinance will take effect on a busy holiday weekend when people begin pulling into their local drive-throughs in huge numbers, loading up on things like burgers and fries to take to the beach, said Daniel Conway, a spokesman for the California Restaurant Association.

At this point Conway says his industry group isn't worried it will start a statewide trend.

Just about the same time Baldwin Park adopted its moratorium, the city of San Juan Capistrano, where In-N-Out has been looking to put a restaurant, moved to ease similar restrictions it put in place several years ago.

"I think," Conway said with a laugh, "that the drive-through is in Californians' DNA."

Yesterday, while we were at Cabela's and looking through the guns, I gravely offended one of my sisters by saying that California is a looney bin full of loonies. I still stand by my judgement of the Golden Hellhole State.

I mean, seriously, the punchlines write themselves. Being me, however, I'm going to totally preach to the choir and be overly redundant.

For instance:

"We here in Baldwin Park have taken strides to create a healthy community, and allowing one more drive-through in is not going to meet that goal," said Baldwin Park city planner Salvador Lopez, who helped craft the ordinance that takes effect Fourth of July weekend.

What the hell makes you think that the addition of "one more" fast food joint is going to curb obesity? Kids don't get fat by being in the mere presence of a drive-through, they get fat because their parents are spineless pussies who can't say "no" to their kids and buy it for them. Not to mention the lack of exercise. I dunno about you, but when I was a kid, I played with my friends outside during the day, and then played video games/watched TV at night (it totally helped that my parents were gone during the day and we weren't allowed, under any circumstances, to touch anything on the entertainment center while they weren't around). And besides, everything on TV sucks now anyway, so there's nothing good to watch to keep me occupied, even with the hundred or so channels I get in the dorm for free. I mean, who the hell can sit through franchisezombie!Spongebob or freaking Chowder without wanting to go on a killing spree? At least our children will have the mental endurance of gods.

But I majorly digress. The real kicker is this:

Amid complaints of obesity and lines of idled cars stretching into neighborhood streets, this blue-collar town is banning new drive-throughs in hopes of shedding its reputation as a haven for convenient, fatty foods.

...what?

When Clark County looked at the numbers of students attending their public schools in the southwest-most part of Las Vegas and realized that their schools were (and/or had the potential of becoming even more) overcrowded, they built a new fucking school.

I mean, I know that the loonies of California have little-to-no common sense, but their logic is so horribly faulty that it makes me want to Hulk out or something. What the hell makes them think that preventing people from opening more fast food places will make the lines of cars disappear?! Here I thought that if a place was overcrowded, it meant that you didn't have enough room or enough places, so you set up a new one to take the pressure off. I guess not.

Seriously, forget about Texas seceding, I want California to become a new state of Mexico so we other states never have to associate themselves with such stupidity!

Mind Screw

2010-06-22T20:00:00.000-07:00

Ever wondered what it would be like to cross Evangelion with Pokemon?

Nintendo did.

Keep in mind that I've actually watched the mindfuck that is Evangelion and I still found myself feeling lobotomized after watching this.

Made of crap.

2010-06-19T21:54:00.000-07:00

Silver is a Computer Science major. Silver is also a Space Studies minor. Silver wants to become a computer programmer specializing in robotics for NASA and eventually become an astronaut.

So why the HELL to I have to take all of these stupid Essential Studies classes?

This is bullshit. English for writing, and Intro to Public Speaking? Ok, I can see actual usage for that. But "Diversity in American Society"? What the hell can you possibly learn in that class that takes up an entire semester? I AM A FREAKING COMPUTER SCIENCE MAJOR. The only "diversity" I need to know about is how different C++ is compared to Java.

And the ENTIRE Essential Studies program at my school is like this - full of classes that scream "can never possibly be used in any kind of science-based career". Even worse is the fact that I can come up with a few classes off of the top of my head that could fulfill Essential Studies requirements and yet...don't. The class about WORLD WAR II can't fulfill your "Global Diversity" requirement; the same goes for the required class on International Space Programs for my minor. I'm pretty much required to take a foreign language...except that they don't have Japanese, the language I took in high school. And inexplicably, if I wanted to study Latin, I'd have to take TWO semesters of it to fulfill the Global Diversity requirement instead of one semester like everything else (except Spanish, in which you have to take THREE semesters).

In case you're wondering why I'm going off about this, it's because I got an e-mail saying that they just changed the Essential Studies requirements. Yes, that's right, they added MORE bullshit I have to take to graduate that has absolutely no bearing on my future career path whatsoever. Lemme break it down:

I have to take a minimum of twelve classes for my Special Emphasis Areas requirements. This is broken down into (now) four areas:

- United States Diversity. Classes that fulfill this requirement include every last class in the Indian Studies program, as well as classes such as "Geography of North America", "African-American History", and, yes, "Diversity in America". I'm totally cool with taking a history class, but in the name of "diversity"? What the hell? Let's sum up a little of my college experience over this past year:

1.) Made friends with Japanese foreign exchange students attending this college, partly by speaking Japanese with them.
2.) Became involved in the Space Studies program, which includes people from Russia and India.
3.) Moved from Las Vegas, Nevada to Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Yep, I obviously don't know shit about diversity.

Another thing that gets me about this requirement and the one I'm going to be mentioning next is that it's so naive to assume that someone would become more tolerant of different cultures if they took classes about it. Um...no. Sure, I became more interested in Japanese culture when I took my Japanese classes in high school, but I took those classes all four years because I wanted to. Because I was already interested to begin with (years of playing Sonic and Pokemon and watching copious amounts of Sailor Moon as a kid will do that). Trying to like a class that I'm being forced to take and can hardly connect to my major (or my aforementioned interest in Japanese culture), however, is far more difficult and will most likely result in me being apathetic about it at best. And I'm sure there are tons of people out that will handle it worse than I do and will simply hate it because it's yet another class they have to take alongside their major requirements. And I don't blame them.

- Global Diversity. Classes that fulfill this include classes such as nearly every language class, a bunch of Anthropology classes, and classes about eastern religions. In other words, actual classes, which is good for those who are Anthropology majors but bad for people like me who are far, far away from that department. At least they have a class on Buddhism, which I'm *gasp* actually interested in taking because of how prevalent it is in Japanese culture (and because there's a giant penis monster in one of its stories). It still doesn't change the fact, however, that it's yet another requirement that makes me take classes outside of my area of study and thus prolongs my time trying to get my degree.

- Advanced Communication. One of the freaking NEW ones they just HAD to add, and possibly a requirement I will have a serious problem trying to fulfill, because ALL of the classes are 300 or 400-level classes in departments I normally wouldn't need to touch; this would of course mean that I'd have to take an entire LINE of classes unrelated to my major to get to take ONE class that fulfills this requirement. The classes in their departments are that freaking specific. One of the classes is CHEMICAL ENGINEERING PLANT DESIGN I. Others include the Aviation Senior Capstone class (because they can't hinder their prized recruits too much!), the Senior Design I class for the Electrical Engineering department, the Mechanical Engineering Seminar, the senior capstone class for the Math department, and Professional Development II for the medical school. And of course, take a guess as to what two departments are entirely unrepresented in this list? Of course, none other than the Computer Science and Space Studies departments! This means that I'd probably have to take the Senior Thesis class for Honors, despite the fact that I have to be working on my Computer Science capstone at around that time; in other words, it would be like I was double-majoring ON TOP OF the fact that I also have to finish my Space Studies minor requirements. This is bullshit, and they better add classes pertaining to at least one of my departments before my final year of college.

- Quantitative Reasoning. The second new requirement they added. Far less rage about this because the classes aren't half-bad. Meteorology I happens to be included (a class I've been thinking about taking for the lulz because of my obsession with the weather), as is the Introductory Astronomy class that I aced this past semester, which means that I really won't have to worry about this requirement too much.

And then, of course, I have the rest of the requirements for my Essential Studies classes.

- Oral and Written Communication, which I won't worry too much about because I only need to take one more class for it (preferably Business and Technical Writing).

- Social Sciences is far more iffy, IMO. As I've previously stated, this is far away from my chosen area of study. And, of course, none of my Space Studies classes fulfill this requirement, despite space travel and research being an international effort in modern times; likewise, another required class, "Social Implications of Computer Technology", also doesn't count. Seriously, though, looking at this list, I can't find a single class that I think won't feel like pulling teeth to take, because nothing involves my area of study. Making this worse is the fact that I have to take at least NINE CREDITS in this, and they have to be in a minimum of two departments.

- Fine Arts and Humanities is a mixed bag. My band classes count as Fine Arts classes, so I should be fine, and I already took three credits of Humanities via my Inquiry in the Humanities honors class (existentialism is fun!), so that's about six credits-ish of the nine credits I need, and I'm taking Advanced Colloquium in the Humanities next semester (aka "Web 2.0"), so this should be knocked out of the way.

- Mathematics, Science, and Technology is an absolute breeze because this is where my major is. I've already knocked eight of the nine credits I need out simply taking classes required for my major and minor (Computer Science I and Introductory Astronomy) that happen to fulfill this requirement.

- Finally, the Capstone course. Since I'm a CompSci major, my class will be Formal Languages and Automata.

tl;dr, this is a bunch of crap that I shouldn't mostly have to take and only tacks on tons of classes to the other tons of classes I have to take for my degree. For Computer Science alone, I have to take two Electrical Engineering classes, my core CompSci classes, two CompSci electives (will hopefully be taking more than just two; looking into robotics and, for the lulz, 2D and 3D animation and physics engines), two Calculus classes...it totals around 15 classes minimum from my foggy memory of the course catalog. My Space Studies minor has a ton of them, too.

This kind of "jack of all trades, master of none" approach to college education is why more and more people are spending more than four years in college, not to mention why college is considered so prohibitively expensive. This kind of approach is also why I couldn't stand high school and was very eager to go to college.

What is the benefit of doing this? The knowledge needed for classes unrelated to my major is going to enter my head and then instantly leave it when I pass them, I waste more time and money, and I've already demonstrated that, on a mental health level, I don't do very well emotionally when I take a ton of classes at once, which means I have to spread them out more. If more and more requirements keep being added, I might have to go six years in college instead of the five that I've already projected.

This. Is. Crap.

Can we kick California out of the US? Please?

2010-06-18T12:31:00.000-07:00

San Francisco Approves Cell Phone Radiation Disclosure Law
Retailers will be required to post the amount of radiation emitted by a cell phone or face fines under regulation given preliminary approval by the City Board of Supervisors.

San Francisco is close to becoming the first city in the nation to require retailers to post next to cell phones the amount of radiation emitted by the devices.

The city's Board of Supervisors voted 10-1 Tuesday to give preliminary approval to the proposal. The board is expected to give final approval next week, and Mayor Gavin Newsom, an early proponent, is expected to sign the proposal into law.

Potential health risks from cell phone radiation has been debated for years. Despite numerous studies, there's no clear scientific evidence that mobile phones increase risks for cancer or any other illness. Last month, for example, a 10-year study released by the World Health Organization failed to turn up any conclusive evidence.

The San Francisco proposal would require retailers to post the "specific absorption rate" next to mobile phones. The Federal Communications Commission require cell phone makers to register the SAR, which is a measurement of the amount of radiation absorbed by the human body.

In addition, retailers would be required to post information on where consumers can get educational materials on cell phone radiation. If signed the proposal is signed by Newsom, it would take effect beginning in February 2011. Violators would face fines up to $300.

Proponents say the proposal would little more than provide consumers with additional information in making a decision on which mobile phone to buy. "While research continues, this is a simple, inexpensive, common-sense idea that will ensure that San Franciscans have the information they need to choose the right phone for themselves and their families," Renee Sharp, director of the California office of the Environmental Working Group, said in a statement. The EWG is a national nonprofit research and advocacy group.

However, opponents of the proposal, including many San Francisco businesses, argue that the notices would be misleading, because consumers would assume that less radiation means lower health risk. In fact, all cell phones sold in the U.S. meet federal requirements, and there's no clear evidence that radiation under those levels presents a health risk.

A similar proposal died in the California Legislature this year, following intense lobbying by the mobile phone industry. Lawmakers in Maine killed a similar bill this year, even after the proposal had been watered down in an attempt to attract industry support.

This. Is. Freaking. RIDICULOUS.

It's not even proven to cause problems, and you receive FAR more harmful radiation going to the beach than you do talking on your cell phone! It's all part of the same damn spectrum!

And why just cell phones? Nearly every device these days has a wireless signal - what, you think those aren't transmitted via the electromagnetic spectrum? Your car's antenna receives radio waves beamed all over the place by radio towers; and yes, that is electromagnetic radiation: radios merely "translate" it into sound waves that we hear (think this is insane? Radio waves are used to view certain objects in astronomy with gigantic radio telescopes). Your computer is using waves in the electromagnetic spectrum to connect wirelessly to the internet (and internet services are even provided by cell phone companies using your cell service!!!). Your iPod Touch that has wireless internet is also beaming and receiving such signals. TVs with satellite dishes or radio antennas are receiving radiation. And don't even get me started on the other far more important and omnipresent forms of electromagnetic radiation, such as "visible" light (yes, THAT IS FREAKING RADIATION), ultraviolet light (not only beamed by the Sun, but also by the fluorescent lights that are always present in classrooms), and the background microwave radiation in the universe (aka "the leftover heat/energy from the Big Bang") that is EVERYWHERE, including Earth. AND radiation from space (X-rays and gamma rays are blocked by the atmosphere, but all of the ones with bigger wavelengths totally get through and stop at certain points).

Unless our cell phones happen to be running on portable nuclear reactors (or we switched to using X-rays for communication), there's no way they can put out "harmful" radiation, otherwise we would've had mass cancer outbreaks many years ago from the invention and spread of the freaking radio, not to mention the sheer amount of electronics that we're constantly living around. And did I mention constant radiation from space?

The people in San Fransisco are so ungodly stupid if they think this is making them healthier or somehow stopping them from dropping like flies (not that they are to begin with). This is only going to add more meaningless numbers to the packaging and raise costs for manufacturers and those who sell cell phones in the area.

STUPID. STUPID. MORONS.

Nintendo's E3 Press Conference

2010-06-15T10:32:00.001-07:00

Holy crap! Nintendo's E3 conference was absolutely mindblowing. For those who didn't watch it:

1.) Gameplay and LIVE STAGE DEMONSTRATION of the new Zelda game on the Wii: Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Visuals are brighter and more colorful than Twilight Princess but still keep the basic art style. All motion control will utilize Wii Motion Plus, all items in the game will utilize motion control.

2.) Gameplay footage of Epic Mickey. Visuals look improved, the game will apparently have three distinct kinds of segments: Overworld, 2D sidescrolling platforming, and, apparently, RPG.

3.) Trailer with gameplay footage for a new Mario Sports title.

4.) Trailer with gameplay footage for Wii Party, as expected.

5.) KIRBY WII UNVEILED: Kirby Epic Yarn is a new 2D sidescroller with a very unique art style. Of course, it's ridiculously cute.

6.) RETRO STUDIOS (of Metroid Prime fame) has been working on Donkey Kong Country Returns; trailer shows nothing but gameplay footage!

7.) METROID OTHER M TRAILER SHOWING NOTHING BUT GAMEPLAY.

8.) Physical design and specs of 3DS revealed, as well as the return of KID ICARUS on the 3DS, developed by Project Sora of Super Smash Bros. Brawl fame.

9.) DEVELOPERS WORKING ON 3DS REVEALED, INCLUDING ATLUS. Considering that Shin Megami Tensei (IV): Strange Journey came out for the DS, it looks like it might be Shin Megami Tensei V. Or could be a new Etrian Odyssey. Game series announced for development on the 3DS include RESIDENT EVIL, METAL GEAR SOLID, ASSASSIN'S CREED, KINGDOM HEARTS.

10.) Live press demonstrations of the 3DS's 3D capabilities, as well as demo booths for Zelda Wii on the spot. Articles written by the press should come out shortly.

All in all, extremely memorable and well-balanced performance. Sony will have to work extremely hard to beat this.

You Know What Day It Is.

2010-05-20T04:41:00.000-07:00

There was a LOT of debate on how I should spell his name. I chose the one that immediately came to mind because I saw it everywhere, but my mom really disagreed with me.

Grasping for Straws

2010-05-04T10:23:00.000-07:00

This just SCREAMS it.

Neighbor: Times Square bomb suspect 'didn't like the sunlight'

(CNN) -- The suspect in the failed Times Square car bombing is a Pakistani who became a naturalized U.S. citizen in April 2009 and had not been on national security radar.

Faisal Shahzad, 30, of Bridgeport, Connecticut, was arrested Monday night at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York as his flight to Dubai was about to take off, law enforcement officials said.

Shahzad had traveled to Dubai before. He took a flight there in June 2009 and stayed out of the United States until his return on Feb. 3, officials said.

A woman who said she had lived next door to Shahzad in Shelton, Connecticut, told CNN on Tuesday that the man she knew didn't say much and claimed to work on Wall Street in New York.

"He was quiet. He would wear all black and jog at night. He said he didn't like the sunlight," Brenda Thurman said.

She said Shahzad, his wife and two children and his wife's two sisters lived next to her for about three years, moving out in July 2009. People whom she believes were plainclothes law enforcement officers appeared to be staking out the house Monday, Thurman told CNN affiliate WTNH-TV.

The neighbor said she often saw Shahzad leaving the home in the morning and returning in the evening. She also saw him in his yard with his children, a boy and a girl, and the family usually wore traditional Muslim attire, she told WTNH-TV.

She said she never suspected he might be involved in a possible terror attack.

"I didn't think he was capable of doing something like that. ... I'm very shocked," she said.

Thurman said her daughter often played with Shahzad's daughter, but she herself didn't have much contact with the family.

Shahzad's wife spoke English, but was apparently so insecure about her language ability that she told people she did not, Thurman said.

"I never knew she spoke English until it was time for her to move," Thurman said.

Shahzad's wife told Thurman in July 2009 that the family was moving to Missouri. A few weeks after they left their home, the lender foreclosed on the property and changed the locks, the neighbor said.

Shahzad had made international calls in recent weeks, but said he acted alone in the attempted bombing, investigators said.

Cell phone calls conducted for the purchase of the vehicle used in Saturday's bombing attempt helped lead police to the suspect, law enforcement sources said.

Sources said investigators got cell phone information from the daughter of the Nissan Pathfinder owner. She sold the vehicle to Shahzad on behalf of her father.

She had been talking on the phone to Shahzad in arranging the purchase of the SUV, which was advertised for sale on Craigslist.

The Nissan Pathfinder was parked in Times Square containing propane tanks, fertilizer and gasoline on Saturday night. After police retrieved the vehicle identification number of the Pathfinder, they located the registered owner of the vehicle.

The sources said the owner's daughter had met with Shahzad at a Stratford, Connecticut, grocery store, for the sale. Shahzad took the car for a test drive in the parking lot and bought the vehicle for $1,800 in cash.

Bridgeport, where Shahzad resides, is a working class city of 130,000 on Long Island Sound, 66 miles northeast of New York City. Per capita income there is 26 percent below the national average, and 27 percent of its residents are foreign-born, more than twice the national average, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

There are three major things wrong with this article.

1.) It's written by CNN.

2.) The headline clearly states that this is from a statement by his NEIGHBOR. How reliable is this, and how does this even make actual, good "news"? I mean, for all we know, his neighbor can be as trustworthy as a politician.

3.) OMFG HE DOESN'T LIKE THE SUNLIGHT HEADLINE HEADLINE HEADLINE BIG NEWS BREAK!! SERIOUSLY? I know it's hard to paint someone who tried to blow up Times Square even more evil than he would already seem, but "Neighbor: HE DIDN'T LIKE SUNLIGHT." just SCREAMS desperation and sensationalism. I don't like the sunlight, it burns my skin (good thing I live in North Dakota, where there is so little sun that the tanning salons are inexplicably still in business), and I'd rather stay inside on good days. THAT MUST MEAN I'M A TERRORIST THAT WANTS TO BLOW SHIT UP! Ladies and gentlemen, sensationalist stereotyping in full effect.

puts on tinfoil hat

2010-04-29T16:03:00.000-07:00

Is it just me, or isn't it suspicious that disasters seem to befalling the non-Green power industries as of late?

I mean, you had the coal mine BLOWING UP and collapsing...and now the oil rig BLOWING UP and sinking.

And this is conveniently happening as the guys in the White House are trying to emphasize climate bills...

It looks like...

2010-04-04T09:21:00.000-07:00

...NASA's graphic designers were having WAAAAAY too much fun. ;) Looks like I might fit in there.

Astronauts play stars in NASA mission 'movie' posters

Astronauts often aim for the stars, but it's rare that they get to play them.

However, for every space shuttle mission since STS-96 in 1999, which was the first time a U.S. shuttle docked with the International Space Station, the Kennedy Space Center's graphics department has been creating some pretty cool (and kitschy) mission posters.

While some of the first posters created for the Space Flight Awareness (SFA) program were a bit drab, the series has evolved into artworks that depict the mission crews in the sleek style of Hollywood movie posters.

With classic film references ranging from this Expedition 21 Star Trek poster to Battlestar Galactica, Indiana Jones, the Matrix, Ocean's 11, and other science fiction favorites, NASA is certainly getting creative with their shuttle promotions.

So yeah, courtesy of CNET. Of course, this being NASA, there's Star Trek. :D Click on the article title to see the photo gallery.

"Minding Your Business"

2010-03-26T06:58:00.001-07:00

Most appropriate CNN News segment title EVER.

I told you so.

2010-03-14T20:24:00.000-07:00

From a page on a certain kind of tournament I'm interested in:

Players compete in one of two age divisions based on their date of birth.

* Junior Division: Born in 1998 or later
* Senior Division: Born in 1997 or earlier

Grownups SO play Pokemon! *sticks tongue out*

Ah, memories...

2010-02-14T21:13:00.000-08:00

Courtesy of USAToday:

New safety rules for school lunches due by July

INDIAN WELLS, Calif. — By this summer, the U.S. Department of Agriculture will have launched its most sweeping safety reforms in a decade for the food it buys for school lunches.

But much work remains to ensure that food purchased for the National School Lunch Program — in particular, ground beef — is "as safe, wholesome and high quality" as the best commercial products, USDA official Craig Morris told program suppliers at a National Meat Association conference here last week.

The first step: enacting tougher safety standards for federally purchased beef. Those rules should be in effect by July, Morris said. New safety rules are likely tofollow for other commodities bought for the lunch program, such as poultry, eggs and produce. The program feeds 31 million students each school day.

Beef industry representatives here said they could adapt to the new standards but pressed the USDA to move fast so they know what changes will be required.

The new standards follow a USA TODAY investigation that revealed that beef bought by the USDA for school lunches is not tested as rigorously for bacteria and pathogens as beef bought by many fast-food chains. The newspaper also reported that some food producers have been allowed to continue supplying the school lunch program despite having poor safety records with their commercial products.

The USDA reforms, announced Feb. 4, focus largely on how beef and other foods bought for schools are tested for salmonella, E. coli O157:H7 and other contaminants. The department will commission research, including a study by the National Academy of Sciences, to ensure that its testing standards meet those of the most selective commercial buyers, Morris said. He serves as a deputy administrator of the Agricultural Marketing Service, the USDA branch that buys meat and poultry for the school program.

Not all details of the new testing rules are set, but Morris said beef for school lunches now will be sampled off production lines every 15 minutes — at least four times more often than current rules require. The government already rejects meat that tests positive for salmonella or E. coli O157:H7, but the USDA also will reduce the amount of other bacteria that are allowed, he said.

"We know (the new bacteria limits) will be something a lot lower," said Barry Carpenter, head of the meat association. He said he hopes the USDA will "look at what the industry is able to do now for the most discriminating, large-scale commercial buyers, and then set new standards consistent with that. If they do, I'm comfortable the industry will adjust and not miss a beat."

More testing could bring costs that prompt suppliers to raise prices, he said, "But it doesn't appear from anything I've seen yet that it will be significant."

The USDA reforms also will bar companies from supplying to the school lunch program if they have a poor safety record for commercial products.

The change could prove relevant to companies such as Fresno-based Beef Packers, which is owned by Cargill. The company has a history of salmonella problems, and ground beef it produced commercially last year was recalled after it sickened consumers. USA TODAY found, however, that 450,000 pounds of ground beef made at the plant during the recall period still was bought by the USDA and sent to schools.

Under the new rules, company recalls of products sold commercially could lead to a suspension from the lunch program.

Cargill spokesman Mark Klein said the company supports "efforts to improve safety, including the review of school lunch purchasing requirements." Beef Packers has taken steps to control contamination, such as spraying cattle carcasses to remove bacteria before processing, Klein said. And Beef Packers also will be part of a Cargill "pilot project to use third-party video audits of food-safety practices," he said.

The new beef standards are the first step in reassessing safety and quality standards for "the entire range of commodities purchased" by USDA for school lunches, Morris said. Those commodities — fruits and vegetables, fish and poultry, eggs and meat — amount to 15% to 20% of all food served in schools nationwide. Schools buy the rest themselves.

The review could determine whether the USDA will continue sending schools chicken from "spent hens" — old egg-laying birds. Commercial buyers, such as KFC and Campbell Soup, won't buy the meat because it doesn't meet their standards, but USA TODAY found that USDA has bought millions of pounds of spent-hen meat for schools.

Ultimately, Morris said, the USDA wants to have cutting-edge safety and quality standards for "the entire catalog" of food it buys for school lunches.

The title is because I have fond memories of the public school lunch. Memories like running to the bathroom, heaving, after pouring my fat-free milk in my cereal and finding that there were white chunks falling into my cereal with it. Like buying a salad that had eggs and greens going bad. Like fruit that my mother wouldn't dare buy off of supermarket shelves, no matter how cheap. Pizza that was overly greasy. Undercooked hamburgers that made me retch when I realized that the meat in the middle was still cold.

And people wondered why I always brought my own stuff after dealing with that shit.

It's sad that this kind of rules overhaul has to be put in to begin with - these are our kids were talking about here. I also know from experience that having your kids on a meal plan helps the single mother out in terms of paying for food - so people in hard times have little to no choice about feeding their kids this shit that passes for food in school lunches.

...of course, knowing what I know about the government, 20 bucks says that this won't do shit to change anything. That could just be me being cynical, though.

Oh yeah, the comments for the article by the users piss me off, too.

Schools should quit serving food. The parents can be responsible for their kids, its not the governments responsibility to feed them.
No more complaining about quality, cost can be saved by eliminating the kitchens.

I agrewe if the TAXPAYERS are paying for kids to eat free, it should be sandwiches. If their parents want them to eat better, the they should send them with thier own lunch from home paid for with some of the public aide money they get.......

We are in the midst of a "you need to take care of my kids because I don't want to" movement. The government needs to stop saying "yes". Thank you.

Normally, I'd agree with this if it applied to a normal program, except that this particular one is an extremely personal topic to me (which, I won't lie, makes me a huge hypocrite in terms of government welfare programs). My mother was single and was trying to raise three kids while working her ass off morning to night, she wasn't a lazy ass keeping us for welfare money (which I'm pretty sure we never got anyway, otherwise things would've been a bit better back then). As bad as the school lunch system was, it helped us out when we were younger.

It's Personal

2010-02-01T17:41:00.000-08:00

Oh yes, it certainly is personal now.

Obama budget would cut NASA moon plan

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - President Barack Obama is no longer shooting for the moon, with a budget plan that aborts a symbolic but expensive lunar program and spends $6 billion over five years to turn over space transportation to commercial companies.

Some members of Congress immediately promised a fight. One legislator called the plan a "death march' for human space flight. But NASA deployed astronauts and other experts to say the Constellation program, begun under former President George W. Bush to return humans to the moon, was too slow and wasteful.

The space agency's budget would grow to $19 billion in 2011 under the proposed budget released on Monday, with an emphasis on science and less spent on space exploration.

"What this does is open up (space) for more people to be going more places in a way that is not on the back of the taxpayers," NASA's deputy administrator, Lori Garver, told reporters in a conference call.

"The previous trajectory that NASA was on was simply not sustainable," added former astronaut Sally Ride, who served ion a panel that determined Constellation was behind schedule.

"The president's proposed NASA budget begins the death march for the future of U.S. human space flight," said Senator Richard Shelby, the senior Republican on the appropriations subcommittee handling NASA funding.

"Congress cannot and will not sit back and watch the reckless abandonment of sound principles, a proven track record, a steady path to success, and the destruction of our human space flight program," said Shelby of Alabama, whose state is home to NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.

Florida Senator Bill Nelson has also promised to fight efforts to cut back NASA operations.

MORE COMMERCIAL SPACE OPERATIONS

The new budget extends operations at the International Space Station past its planned retirement date of 2016, suggesting such additions as inflatable space habitats.

Obama's proposal hands over more space operations to the commercial sector, saying it will create thousands of new jobs and hold costs down.

NASA already has spent $9 billion on Constellation and likely would owe millions more to cancel existing contracts. Prime contractors on the Ares rocket program include ATK Launch Systems, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne and Boeing Co.

Lockheed Martin is the lead contractor on the Orion capsule.

NASA already has contracts with Space Exploration Technologies and Orbital Sciences Corp to deliver cargo to the station. SpaceX and other firms also are developing spaceships that can carry passengers to orbit and back.

The budget proposes a revamp of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where staff have feared major cutbacks, as part of making NASA more efficient.

"A major focus of this effort will be to create the 21st century launch facilities and infrastructure needed at Kennedy Space Center, transforming the facility to more effectively support future NASA, commercial, and other government launches," the budget reads.

WHAT THE HELL?! So we're basically going to be sitting around, running experiments on the ISS and praying that our rovers on Mars don't mysteriously die? How are we supposed to prepare for a Mars mission when we can't even get a Moon mission to test the stuff needed for it?! We're just going to sit around and let the other space programs take care of it?! And what the hell's going to happen to the grant our school got?!

Y'know, it really makes me wonder if I should work for NASA to begin with. I mean, *I* certainly wouldn't be happy if I worked on something for several years and it got scrapped.

Homecoming

2010-01-16T12:22:00.000-08:00

Not that homecoming. Or that one.

For the past few weeks, I've been in Texas, with my mother. In fact, I helped her move there, in a harrowing three-day journey that I will elaborate upon in Silver Sucks later. It's been snowy and icy, but overall nice.

But time marches on, and, alas, I'm a college student. So the time came when I had to inevitably make my way back to the frigid realm of Grand Forks.

On Saturday, the night of which we had to head to a town around Oklahoma City, I was supposed to pack. So, of course, I spent the entire time playing Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and packed at the last minute.

After eating dinner, laughing at four guys trying to play Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 (emphasis on trying - the quote at the top of the Sonic 2006 article is from what I was watching), getting the stuff in the car, and walking the dogs, Mom and I began the first leg of our journey: getting coffee at the local convenience store. Mom took advantage of this to get $15 in cash for my cab ride, despite my insistence that it's simply not going to be enough for the cab ride from Grand Forks International to my dorm, as the airport is a good five miles or so outside of the outskirts of the town.

After she got her coffee and my cash, our real journey began: that of driving to Shawnee, Oklahoma, late at night. We passed the time by talking about random things and mocking the MORON behind us who was blinding us with his headlights. This bozo was clearly overcompensating for something, because he had FOUR headlights on the front of his car. Combined, this made him easily as blinding as a truck with his brights on. We had to duck our heads so that his lights wouldn't blind us via our mirrors. Even worse was the fact that the guy couldn't decide whether to go faster or slower than us - he'd pass us, only for us to pass him again five minutes later. Needless to say, his blinding lights were becoming old hat, very fast. We were thankful when the guy exited somewhere before Oklahoma City.

I was very thankful when we reached Oklahoma City, because the numerous amount of lights...lighting up the road was comforting. Unfortunately, the last part of our journey involved leaving Oklahoma City and driving, yet again, in complete darkness. It was very eerie, and as we passed the occasional house, signified by a single glowing light, I wondered how the HELL anyone could live out in the boonies like that. Granted, you were maybe half an hour away from Oklahoma City, but still, out in the middle of nowhere. Creeeepy.

After we got to Shawnee, Mom and I put our stuff down and promptly collapsed for three hours, before the awesome Friend of the Family drove us to the Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City for me to catch my flight to Minneapolis.

After a tearful goodbye, I went through airport security, which is as entertaining as getting a root canal (not that I've ever gotten one, mind you). I had all of my video game consoles with me, and I had to take them all out, plus my laptop, so they could be examined. This was a massive, time-consuming pain in the ass.

This was nothing, though, compared to what happened after boarding. At the last minute, I had to have my carry-on checked in as planeside baggage. The freaking attendant informed me that my bag was too large to be a carry-on (bullshit, because I've never had any problems with it on the numerous flights I've had in the past), and gave me a pink ticket, saying "Don't do it again". Excuse me?! My carry-on was definitely within the limits of the container they had at the check-in counter - aka, the same one that Southwest and Allegiant Air uses. Furthermore, every carry-on seemed to be checked in as planeside baggage for this flight, no lie. The family of four with the rolling backpacks? Planeside. The businessman with a small suitcase? Planeside. I was pissed off because my carry-on had nothing but video game stuff in it, including my consoles. Luckily, my consoles were in the laptop case lovingly given to me by the librarians at the Spring Valley Library, so I brought that with me instead, but it still didn't change the fact that my games, memory cards, and controllers were inside a suitcase that would most likely be harshly handled by people (which is why it wasn't checked luggage in the first place).

Well, as it turned out, the luggage containers for the plane were tiny. The plane was definitely not a full-sized plane, though it wasn't a prop plane, either. What was awesome was that the plane, with all people aboard, still had empty seats galore, so despite having an assigned seat that was not next to a window, I got to move to a window seat. What was even more awesome was that we were flying out in ridiculously early morning, so it was still dark outside, and I LOVE seeing the lights of the city from the air. It looks so pretty!

After spending time staring out the window, I figured that I needed to save my DS's battery power for the flight after this, so I took out my laptop and watched episodes of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex until my laptop almost ran out of juice.

We arrived in Minneapolis early, which made me ecstatic because I always love having time before boarding for my flight and because it gave me more time to eat something using the $10 Friend of the Family gave me for food. It also helped that I've been to this airport before, several months back, for my freshman orientation.

After figuring out where my gate was (as they changed the gate for my flight to Grand Forks), I went to the nearest food court and checked out the restaurants. The only two restaurants cheap enough for my $10 was A&W and Quizno's. Since there was an A&W at the Old Main Marketplace at the Memorial Union back at the University, I opted to go to Quizno's, since I haven't eaten there in at least a year. While thinking about what sub to get, I came across who looked like a businessman who was also thinking about what sub to get. We both found the situation funny. Eventually, I chose the Chicken Carbonara and asked for a cup of water (since the price of a bottle of water was insanely high and would've put the price of my meal over $10). The businessman then also chose a Chicken Carbonara, because I did. It was funny. The sub was a regular size, which I assume is a footlong. I downed it in twenty minutes, then went to the bathroom, washed my hands, and made my way to the gate, where my carry-on would be checked as planeside baggage AGAIN (except I was actually expecting this, because it happened in June).

This flight, which was using a prop plane, was totally packed, because it was filled with UND students and faculty. I was actually seated next to an instructor in the music department, who recognized me as a musician because of my band jacket, and I recognized one of the students seated ahead of me from Honors. Unlike the last flight, where I was totally awake, I conked out as we were waiting for them to get the plane ready for take-off (de-icing, all of that stuff). I woke up while we were taking off, and I fell back asleep and woke up again when we were almost there. When we passed over the college, I could actually see my dorm, which was pretty awesome.

Because of excess fuel or something, we actually didn't land right away. This added another 15 minutes to our flight. After landing, I went to our ONE baggage carousel and got BOTH of my suitcases, while at the same time hoping that nothing was broken (turns out, something was - the BASTARDS broke off one of the zipper tags of my carry-on bag!). The girl I recognized from Honors, whose name slips my mind at the moment, got on the same taxi as me.

As we got on campus in the taxi, I noticed something horrible - there were walls of snow along the sidewalks and buildings! The snowmobiles cut paths for the sidewalks in what looked like three feet of snow. I asked the taxi driver, and apparently, they got 25 inches of snow alone in the same storm we had in Texas on Christmas Eve (and, for them, Christmas Day). Once I got to my dorm, my assertion that the $15 wouldn't be enough for the ride turned out to be correct - it was $17. Luckily, I still had change from getting that sub in Minneapolis, and was able to pay for it, sans tip (which I apologized for). Getting to the door with my two suitcases in tow was a pain because of all of the snow around me, preventing me from taking any shortcuts. I noticed that it was actually pretty nice outside (later, I found out that I missed the forty-below temperatures Grand Forks had during break), nothing like the absolutely bitter cold I was expecting.

After getting everything into my unlocked (WTF?) room, unpacking (during which my roommate, G.I. Jane, showed up, aunt in tow, with her stuff, before leaving to go out to eat), and showering, I promptly collapsed in my bed and took a power nap for three and a half hours. When I expressed my worries about getting up early tomorrow to G.I. Jane, she said that we didn't have class tomorrow - a fact that I remembered because they did that last semester. This was good, because I still needed time to recover.

After I got up, I made my way to the computer and got online, now having to use this program called SafeConnect instead of Cisco Clean Access Agent (which was buggy and I hated it with a passion). At the moment, I didn't know whether I found it worse or better.

The next day was just me vegging out and playing some more Zelda while G.I. Jane's boyfriend (as opposed to his normal "battle buddy and friend" status of last semester), Rivers, came over and watched me beat Arbiter's Grounds. Not much to really blog about.

The next day, I had actual classes. This I will elaborate upon in my next post, which should be in a few hours from the posting of this one (yeah, right, I wanted to post this one on Monday!).

Also, it would be nice if my posts didn't keep being bombarded with comments with Russian spam or Babelfish-translated sentences. Seriously. I have a hard enough time writing posts, let alone going through all of them and deleting bogus comments.

Music.

2010-01-07T10:51:00.000-08:00

Don't worry, Silver Sucks (and its numerous grammatical errors that I don't feel like editing out at the moment) will come back in a little bit, but I wanted to post an actual post for once.

When I was a kid, my dad made "mix" CDs, or CDs containing a bunch of random tracks from his favorite albums, on his computer that he would send to us and let us listen to. My mom still had these, and when she first started up her laptop, imported all of them to her computer by way of iTunes.

Unfortunately, because of how old the CDs were, they came with the magnificent and creative titles of Track [insert number here]. This made trying to figure out just what the songs were impossible without listening to them first.

A few hours after flying in, I opted to fix that little problem, particularly because I wanted some of the songs, and I hated it when the titles and artists weren't correct or were in a crappy format (for instance, the song GameBox_Frozen_Lavareef_[WIP] was renamed as Frozen Lavareef [WIP] with GameBox as the artist before I ever put it on the iPod). To get the proper title and artist (if I didn't figure both out right away), I would listen to the song until I got a full verse in, which I'd type into the search in Songlyrics.com and see what would come up.

Using this time-consuming method, I restored the titles, artists, and albums of about 40 songs over the period of a few hours. And then I got sick of it and stopped.

There was the more pressing issue of getting the songs I wanted (even if they were named Track [insert number here]) onto my computer. One of the many reasons on my "Why I hate Apple" list is that, for a pretentious company that seems to preach simplicity (to the point of stupidity in the case of the iMac) in their products, they sure make it FUCKING HARD to put songs from an iPod on your computer. In fact, you can't do it via iTunes. Which is bullshit. Apple says that this is to counter stealing, but I highly, highly doubt it. For one, the vast majority of music stealing is done via downloads on the internet. For two, this STUPID limitation punishes people like me who share music with their family members and pay actual money to get that music in the first place. My dad has what looks like a hundred hard-copy CDs, and he bought all of them.

And by the way, the only reason why I have (or, rather, had - it mysteriously disappeared a month ago. :/) an iPod was because iTunes has the biggest selection of music and, until recently, Apple "protected" music bought from iTunes so that you couldn't play it anywhere else (Windows Media Player and my dad's Xbox 360 both couldn't play songs I purchased off of iTunes), which meant that if you bought it off of iTunes, chances are you could only play it on an iPod. Plus, I didn't know about any other MP3 players (this was back when Apple had a monopoly in this industry).

Anyway, I really wanted some of those songs on my computer. And when there's a will, there's a Google search.

Luckily, I have Windows 7, and Microsoft made it ridiculously easy to allow the viewing of hidden folders this time around. According to an article I found via Google, all iPods have a hidden folder for stored music. In hindsight, this makes sense - that music has to go somewhere on the iPod or else it wouldn't be able to play anything, and I'm damn sure that the iPod has more than nothingness and blank space on it. The music folder, predictably, has all of your music on it, and it all works, at least after I copied and pasted them into my music folder on my computer.

Unfortunately, not only do the majority of the songs have "Track X" as a name (so that's all that shows up in the info the computer has), but the filenames for them on the iPod consist of four random letters. So I had to do the arduous task of listening to each one to figure out if it's one I wanted.

The entire process of listening to the tracks, then naming or putting them on my music folder on my computer was both satisfying (finding a handful of Metallica tunes, a Rammstein song I've never heard before, Smooth by Santana, Flight of Icarus by Iron Maiden) and...dissatisfying (why the hell is there so much Led Zeppelin? *gag*).

So now I have a bunch of songs that I need to restore the names and artists of. Yay. Ya know what, when I go back home, where I literally have internet ANYWHERE on campus, I might just do a few songs at a time or something.

Silver Sucks, Part 2

2010-01-03T12:26:00.000-08:00

Moar stuff. Broken down into another post for your reading (and my posting) pleasure.

Sunday, 11/29/09:
Today was my first day (of two) volunteering at the local mission. Y'see, the Honors program is like a cross between an AP class and National Honors Society - you have to get volunteer hours. Since volunteering at the mission and serving food to homeless people was our class project, that was the main way we could get hours. Luckily, I was one of the very, very few people on campus, so there was space for me this Sunday. I got a ride from John, a guy in the morning class who also happened to sign up for this weekend. Believe it or not, downtown (where the mission was) wasn't too far away from the campus.

It was rather interesting. First thing I did was cut the ends off of asparagus that was to be used later on in the day. Second thing was helping make the pancakes - I basically flipped them. And then third thing was keeping a vigilant guard over the little bowls of peaches, because you had better take one and ONLY one so that everyone gets one (and then the extras can be taken once seconds are called), otherwise my boss Liz will come and scold you. What was interesting was that, unlike in Las Vegas, these people were, for the most part, well-made, if you will. They looked like normal people, except that, in their eyes, you can see that they're a bit more weary than the average person. According to articles we read in class the next week, in order to stay as long as you want at the mission, you have to shower once a day and wash your clothes, and make a constant effort at finding a job and housing away from the mission (furthermore, at night, you have to pass a breathalyzer test, otherwise you'll be denied admittance). What was nice about the whole thing (a whole three hours!) was that I found the little fuzzy feeling that had been missing ever since I had to stop volunteering at the Spring Valley Library every Sunday.

After getting back home, I didn't feel like walking to Wilkerson, so I helped myself to the chocolate I bought the night before, before heading out to Jamie's place because I heard that Rachel got another application at the bookstore without knowing that I already got one (but I spilled water on mine, so I needed another one anyway). Shortly afterwards, I left to go to the store and turned in my application, then went straight home.

Monday, 11/30/09:
In Marching Band, we practiced for the concert that we'd perform at the night afterwards. Called "ExtravaBANDza", it featured performances from both the University Band and the Marching Band.

...unfortunately, I happened to be in both groups. No rest for me!

It was very straightforward and easy, and I got out a little bit earlier than usual, so I opted to head to Computer Lab early and work on our final lab of the semester.

This was totally foiled by the fact that, as my TA said, "a grad student messed up" and caused the servers to go down halfway through the class. Now, this has to be a completely STUPID move on part of whoever engineered the Linux (or, "Penguin") lab, because ALL of the data, INCLUDING THE OPERATING SYSTEMS THE COMPUTERS WERE RUNNING ON, was on the server. At first, I thought my programming was giving Python issues because of all of the functions (read: huge chunks of code that could be "called" repeatedly throughout the program as opposed to having said code put in repeatedly, thus making the program shorter line-wise), because I noticed a one-second pause between me hitting the F5 key to run my program and it actually showing up in Python. And then the entire thing froze when I tried to run it, and I thought that I broke the computer...until it turned out that I wasn't the only one with a frozen computer, and those whose computers had NOT frozen weren't frozen yet because they hadn't tried to run their programs at the moment. NOT HAPPY.

Some good came of it, though - the fact that I got out of lab early meant that I got back to the dorm early enough to check my mailbox, freak out because I finally got that package slip, and run to the dorm across the street to get my package, which happened to contain my one and only Christmas present: Evangelion 1.01 - You are (not) Alone. Aka the first movie in the Rebuild of Evangelion tetralogy, a remake of the Neon Genesis Evangelion series with less angst and a light at the end of the dark tunnel that is the depressing and disturbing end of the series. I didn't really have any time to watch it, though...

Tuesday, 12/1/09:
The weather gods decided that, since it was now December, that we should be getting our complementary snow now. The result was that it was far colder than usual and it was actually snowing outside. This is fairly strange, because everyone told me that there'd be snow on the ground by Halloween, and we hadn't gotten any (November was actually fairly pleasant). I found out the hard way that my normal setup of sweater-underneath-band-jacket wasn't enough to keep me warm.

At the same time this realization occurred, or a little bit before that, my iPod mysteriously disappeared. Now, here's the thing about that iPod - it is practically glued to my hip all day. I use it while I'm doing everything - packing up for class, walking or riding the bus somewhere, writing blog posts, coding, you name it. Unlike, say, my cell, I actually do use my iPod all of the time, everyday. So when it disappeared the instant I didn't have my headphones plugged into it (I was listening to something on the computer), I was both flabbergasted and not happy. After band rehearsal, I spent nearly my entire free time tearing apart the room looking for it. I still didn't find it. BTW, it is a blue second-generation iPod nano with a Hello Kitty sticker on it (courtesy of one of my friends from Japanese class last academic year) and is a little beat up. Why anyone would want it is beyond me, because the battery life is a little shot and the storage capacity sucks compared to the newer versions.

I was running out of time, so I had to get in my concert dress AND pack up my marching band uniform before Rachel was to pick me up. The biggest thing I was worried about in terms of the concert was the change between concert and marching band uniform. This required me to take off my dress, put on my marching pants, put on my marching shoes, and then put on the jacket over that. Here's the thing: that jacket is a pain in the ass to put on quickly. There is a crapload of buttons you have to...well, button, and all of this is on top of a temperamental zipper that likes to stop working when you're in a hurry. It would be my worst nightmare to miss the beginning of the marching band performance because I couldn't get into uniform fast enough.

The University Band part of the concert went well. The first song was American Fanfare by John Wasson, which was a piece originally composed for the Dallas Brass (BTW, we're playing with them next semester). Unfortunately, what would sound good being played by a quintet doesn't sound very good played by a full band; IMO, I found the arrangement a bit uninspired. In case you didn't notice, it's my least favorite of the songs we played.

The second song was my favorite, Tryptich II by Elliot Del Borgo, a completely creepy piece with a lot of percussion work and really difficult woodwind parts (lots of accidentals). To see what I mean, I have a recording here, the only professional recording I could find of it. For some reason, it's really, really hard to find it online.

The third was To Dream in Brushstrokes by Micheal Oare, a piece dedicated to two sisters who died in a house fire, one of which played the flute, the other playing mallets in the percussion section. Why it's called "To Dream in Brushstrokes" is beyond me - I would've thought it would be named "To Dream in Music" or something. Apparently, one of the percussion lines is totally ripped off of one found in another piece that those in the percussion recognized for some reason.

The fourth was Lone Star Celebration by James Curnow, which was conducted by a guest conductor who happened to be a student. A nice piece to play, but requiring a lot of endurance if you're a woodwind student, because you're playing all of the time with little to no breaks.

The last was In the Center Ring by Robert Sheldon, a piece that's about a circus, and is insane as a result. A fun, hectic piece to play (and listen to!). My second favorite.

After this, I had to practically bolt to the back of the stage and get my uniform on as quickly as possible. I got to my spot in the lobby with a few minutes to spare, thankfully. Our performance started with us coming from the front lobby to the stage through the audience isles, while high-marching, which is difficult.

We first played our first marching band show, the one featured at Texas Tech, which consisted of We're an American Band, I Don't Care, and The Pretender. That went well. And then there was Gimme Some Lovin', one of our trademark pep band pieces.

This started with one of our drum majors beginning the three whistles, only to be suddenly incapacitated by an "injury" that mysteriously affected both of them. And then someone was called up from the audience to "conduct" us (which didn't matter, since we knew the song so well that we could play it as a band with our eyes closed). It was pretty funny.

Then we played our second marching band show, which consisted of Caravan and I Just Wanna Celebrate, with Karn Evil 9 being added on. Everything went well...except for Karn Evil 9, at least, to me on a personal level. Here is a song that I've been playing memorized for months, that I played memorized perfectly at yesterday's rehearsal...only to blank out at the actual performance. Words could not describe how angry I was with myself.

And then the University Band joined us for the playing of the fight songs. Yay. Here's a fun fact about the fight songs: pretty much everyone has some sort of improvisation taking place in the fight songs. I thought I was the only one who looked at the actual music for the fight songs and found that, while what I was playing sounded and went well with the rest of the band, was completely different than the music. And then I found out that other people were doing it, too. It works because it sounds like part of the actual song, except it's not. But the audience doesn't care because it sounds good and they don't know what the original music looks like anyway. I think this spawned from the fact that we're expected to learn and memorize the fight songs really, really fast early on in the year, which results in people "filling in the blanks" with stuff that works, or memorizing it incorrectly but never finding out because it works with the rest of the piece and memorization means that you don't have music in front of you.

Afterwards, Rachel was nice enough to drive me back. It was her last concert of her college career, because she's graduating this academic year and University Band doesn't work with her schedule next semester.

Wednesday, 12/2/09:
In band, we came in solely to fill out our course evaluation. I bubbled in "strongly disagree" when prompted if the work we did was appropriate for the credit we received. NO, IT WASN'T, YOU BASTARDS. We get one measly credit for all of the work we do in Marching Band! ONE!

I got a mysterious text from Jamie asking if I was free Saturday. Turns out that she wanted me to come with her and her other friends (who are also my friends) to Space Aliens, a restaurant I've never been to, on Saturday. The time was thankfully before my hockey game, which I refused to take myself off of the list for because it's a Women's Hockey game and they needed all the help they can get. I texted back, saying that I could go.

More importantly, however, I got an e-mail from the Space Studies Department about a reception for Pablo De Leon, who netted a $742,000 grant from NASA for approval of his proposal, "Integrated Strategies for the Human Exploration of the Moon and Mars". The reception was taking place on the 9th...

Thursday, 12/3/09:
Since I didn't have University Band today, I actually had time to watch Evangelion 1.01: You are (not) Alone, the first of four movies (the second of which isn't out in the US yet, and the third and fourth aren't out in Japan yet) that retell the original show, Neon Genesis Evangelion; this one in particular covered the first six episodes. It was freaking AWESOME. As someone who watched the TV show fairly recently, it was interesting to see the little things that were changed (the Angels melt into blood when they die now), as well as an entire plot point later on, not to mention the improved animation (really, really obvious if you see some of the original scenes in the TV show right after you watch the movie - and the TV show was pretty good animation-wise) and condensing of the plot (the pacing of which was changed to fit the movie format), and call-forwards to things that show up at the very end of the series. Also, they managed to get the entire Japanese voice cast from the original show back on. Which was freaking AWESOME.

Right after I finished watching it, I was so pumped up that I was seriously considering to write the four essays I've been putting off for Honors on the spot. Except that I still had a place to go.

Tonight was the last International Night of the semester. I still needed a Cultural-Intellectual Event for Honors to write an essay about. This night happened to be about South Korea. What surprised me about the presentation was that people in South Korea actually want to reunite with North Korea, considering how many times North Korea has threatened to wipe South Korea off of the map. There were also many similarities with the Japanese culture I'm so familiar with (Seoul, for instance, looks a LOT like Tokyo, as there's a crapload of high-rise towers). Afterwards, they served food, which was very delicious.

This brings up the only issue I have with the Dining Centers here at UND - there isn't much variety. By "variety", I mean things pertaining to stuff like Japanese food. The only seafood they have is fish. I hate fish. They rarely, if ever, serve anything with shrimp in it, let alone other things like clams, scallops, or squid. Sushi is never served, etc.. You don't really notice this until you go home over the break or have some Japanese food or seafood.

Friday, 12/4/09:
Since I had time to kill, I opted to play and finish Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. The Gerudo stronghold is still a pain in the ass.

Saturday, 12/5/09:
Today was my scheduled meeting with Jamie to go to Space Aliens. I came in my band shirt and jeans, with my laptop case from the Clark County Library District with my jersey, music, and clarinet (in its case), and she picked me up in front of the dorm.

The place is very strange and cool. There are things pertaining to the old-school aliens everywhere. The food served is the American stuff, burgers and ribs and the like. We met up with our friends, who took up three entire tables. At the table I sat at, I was asked to put together my clarinet by some very curious friends whose names I can't remember because I'm bad at remembering names. I ordered the boneless ribs, but because of the fact that I had to leave for hockey (and the fact that everyone else was going to a free concert at the Alerus), I couldn't finish them. Luckily, it was freezing outside; I got the remaining ribs boxed and it was allowed to sit in Jamie's car during the concert, before being put in a (most likely warmer) fridge at her house. Jamie drove me to the Ralph and mentioned a Christmas Party she was holding a week from today.

The Women's Hockey game sucked. It was painful to watch. I can't remember who we were up against, but they beat us - granted, it was only by one goal (IIRC), but they beat us. This didn't make it painful to watch, though, it was how we played that made it painful to watch. It was like our Women's Hockey team had been replaced by members of the Men's Hockey team or something, because they found themselves incapable of passing to each other.

Silver Sucks

2010-01-03T12:25:00.000-08:00

Silver sucks. You poor guys have probably been checking my blog for the past several weeks, wondering when I was going to update, if I died, etc.. Here's my excuse: I was busy the days leading up to finals week, and the rest was sheer laziness. So here's some stuff I've been typing up.

Thanksgiving Week:
Sunday, 11/22/09:
Women's Hockey, us vs. Manitoba. We won 9-0. It was so bad that by the end of the game, we had people begging the refs to give them a point out of pity.

Monday, 11/23/09:
The only thing of note was that we had no Computer Lab. In fact, we had no lab assignments whatsoever (as they're usually posted online), so I didn't have anything to program!

Tuesday, 11/24/09:
Half of the University Band was missing. I guess some people decided to go home early. Slackers.

At the end of rehearsal, a friend of mine in the band, Rachel, a trumpet player, told me that some friends of hers were throwing a Thanksgiving party for the few people who will be on campus on Thursday. I agreed to meet them, so we drove to their house, which was on campus and five minutes away, walking, from my dorm because it was right next to the medical school.

There was a very good reason for this, because a good portion of the people who lived there were medical students (and Rachel herself was a medical student). The ringleader was Jamie, who was very, very nice. It also turned out that there were three or four Japanese girls there, one of which I actually greeted ("Konban wa!") and said goodbye to ("Oyasumi nasai!") in Japanese before leaving with Rachel. The entire time, I was saying that I was not good at it ("Tokui jyanai!").

Wednesday, 11/25/09:
I only had one class, and that class happened to be the earliest class on my list. So, despite the fact that I only had Computer Science, I still had to get up at 7 in the morning. There was only about ten people in a class of thirty or forty.

But more important was happened at noon. A few days before this, I got an e-mail talking about a luncheon in the Space Studies department, followed by some sort of lecture or something about "Investigating Relationships Between Sunspot Rotations and Energetic Events". The day before this, I got an e-mail saying that it was postponed to next semester, but they were serving pizza anyway. Since I wanted to build connections, I opted to go anyway.

The Space Studies department is on the fifth floor of Clifford Hall. Walking in, past the reception desk, at which the awesome Bev sits (she's the one that gave me the form to fill out for a Space Studies Minor and turned it in), there is a "lobby" room (later found out that this referred to as the "Reading Room"), if you will - there are two large bookshelves, filled with books and magazines on everything related to space, facing each other. In the middle of these is a long table with chairs, and hanging up on a wall facing this is a flatscreen TV set to NASA TV. While walking to this place, you will notice the variety of stuff hanging up on the walls - including, causing much internal squeeing, pictures from the prototype Mars suit project that led me to UND in the first place.

When I first got there, I was pretty much lost, because there was seemingly no one there. I thought there would be several people. Guess not. Then again, I did get there a bit early. One of the staff reassured me that I was in the right place, it was just that the food wasn't here yet. So, I opted to put my coat on a chair, grab a newspaper, and read it while waiting. Literally, about 30 seconds after I sat down, this professor by the name of Paul shows up with two guys in suits who look like government agents or something. Turns out that he was giving two guys from Commerce or something like that a tour of the department. I stood in the corner and smiled and listened the entire time, knowing that I was a huge n00b and better stay out of their way.

After this, I read the paper for a little bit before the pizza FINALLY arrived, which prompted the appearance of very important people and two grad students. This was a bit scary, since I was easily the youngest person there.

We talked about a lot of stuff - rockets (and why the Russian rockets failed so badly), whether vodka protects you from nuclear radiation (which eventually led to joking about a seminar on alcoholism in space), and classical music (the only Mozart Dr. Whalen likes is [spelled in English 'cause I can't spell it otherwise] The Magic Flute). Yeeeeaaaah.

Apparently, there's about twenty people in the Masters program in Space Studies, with around a hundred doing the same in the distance program. And it also turned out that I wasn't the only one who wanted to be an astronaut - one of the grad students, an anthropology major, said that he wants to apply to become a candidate, too.

All in all, I enjoyed it very much. After the two hours I spent at this very interesting luncheon, I took the bus to the book store so I could get an application and (hopefully) fill it out and turn it in. This was foiled by the fact that I forgot to type up my spring semester schedule and print it out, but even more by the fact that I had no idea when exactly Marching Band would meet; since there was no more football, there was no way we would have the three rehearsals a week we had scheduled. In the end, I decided to pack up my application and leave, and turn it in later. While I was filling out as much as I could on the application before I left, I saw my Honors teacher with a cup of coffee and what appeared to be a large stack of essays. Guess he was telling the truth when he said that he needed the essays as an excuse to not visit his in-laws.

Thursday, 11/26/09:
There was no school, and rightfully so, because the dorm and the campus were entirely DEAD. And my roommate, G.I. Jane, was at her relatives' place. And the dining centers were not open. I felt sorry for those that didn't have anywhere to go to for food.

It turned out that I wouldn't have to starve myself before the party, because one of the four people still in the dorm served a Thanksgiving lunch for us. While eating, the four of us talked about many things. The person who served it is in the band, but I'm really, really bad at names. Haley, who lives a few doors down from me, is a huge hockey enthusiast and often goes to our games - I remember her name because I already knew her before this event. And the final girl was someone I had never seen before (probably lived on the other, older side of the dorm, which has its own facilities, so we'd never cross paths), who hailed from Alaska and drove to Grand Forks through Canada after receiving her license a few days before. Talk about badass.

Finally, as night fell, I went to Jamie's place for the party. Now, when you think of "party on a college campus", I'd imagine that you'd think of orgies and drunk people. This was totally not it. There was no alcohol at all, and the people who came were very respectable. Again, I was the youngest person there - pretty much everyone was an upperclassmen or a grad student. We had a guy who was pursuing a Master's in Chemical Engineering, a Chinese couple pursuing Ph.Ds and their cute little kid, a couple of aviation students, a flight instructor, and several med and Japanese students. And I'm only covering the people I remembered - there was probably around thirty people there.

In terms of food, there was much of it, and it was very varied. There was turkey, cranberry sauce, and sweet potatoes (one dish of it had marshmallows on top), but there was also stuff like a slightly spicy dish with rice noodles, green bean casserole, and a salad with almonds on top (which meant that I wouldn't touch it - because picking out the almonds would've been too tedious). For dessert, there was pumpkin pie, ice cream, and some of the best homemade banana nut bread that I've ever tasted.

While people were socializing and eating, this one aviation student and I were playing "Chinese checkers" with the couple, and the little kid was kicking our sorry asses. Basically, it consisted of wooden tiles with what I knew as Kanji (Chinese characters that represent concepts or objects), and you had to match them, like Concentration, if you will. One of the characters I thought was earth (土) (and so did the flight instructor, who was in the process of learning Japanese), but turned out to be a different one because the top horizontal stroke was longer than the bottom one. It was the symbol for a guard or something along those lines instead.

Once everyone was done eating, we set our chairs in a circle and played a game called "Signs". Basically, everyone had a specific hand gesture (mine was the Vulcan "Live long and prosper"). Now, everyone was in a circle, with one person in the middle. One person would have the "sign" (think of it as an invisible ball). In order to pass the sign to another person, they would have to do that person's hand gesture, and the receiving person would have to do the "thrower's" gesture in response (the catch: once you signal a person, you have to signal that person and only that person, no changing, and you have to keep signaling them until they see you and "receive" it). The person in the middle has to figure out which person has the sign, so the game turns into one of trying to flash the hand signs behind the middle person's back as quickly as possible so they don't see you. Once the person in the middle figures out who it is, they sit in that person's spot, and the person who got caught was now the person in the middle. It's more fun than it sounds, and I haven't laughed so hard in ages.

And then we played a variation when someone was the "leader", who would do a hand gesture that everyone else would then do repeatedly, and the person in the middle would have to figure out who the leader was as they changed gestures. While I was the leader, my first gesture was a twirling of my hand in the air, followed by a straight downward "chopping" motion repeatedly. The flight instructor figured out that I was a huge hockey fan, because we do that after we score a goal in a hockey game (the twirling of the hand being the prep alongside a bass drum roll, followed by the downward motion directed at the opponent's goalie, while yelling "SIEVE!" with each motion).

I had a TON of fun, and I was surprised at how much I had, because I'm not that much of a people person. I called Mom up afterwards saying that, HOLY CRAP, I actually spent time with people outside of band or school.

Friday, 11/27/09:
I did basically nothing except stuff myself on leftovers. And watched a ton of Trigun (yes, I'm still trying to finish that boxed set).

Saturday, 11/28/09:
So here I was, watching Trigun on my computer, when I suddenly got a call from Jamie asking if I wanted to come with her and some friends to Target for some shopping. I obliged, because I did need to get some stuff - I ended up getting two packs of flossers, some long socks, and chocolate, because it was cheap. Jamie, Yoko, and Miriam were there for grocery and winter shopping.

Afterwards, we went to Old Navy, which in itself was an entirely new experience to me. My clothes hail from Wal-Mart (the vast majority of my clothing, which is Faded Glory), Ross Dress For Less (my $15 prom dress that was every bit as awesome as the $400 ones), and the local thrift store (all of my winter clothing). So being in an Old Navy was completely new. I found myself boggled at how expensive everything was over there - what wasn't on clearance (which was why we went there) was INSANELY expensive, such as designer pea coats for $120. You know what I could buy with $120? I could pre-order Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey AND Poke'mon SoulSilver AND get Muramasa: The Demon Blade and STILL have money left over. Granted, if I got that, I'd look like someone from Persona 3, but that is still ridiculous!

While Miriam was trying on pairs of jeans, I got a sudden idea while talking to Jamie and texted my drum major asking about the Marching Band rehearsals in spring, because my band director hadn't replied to my e-mail yet. Within a few minutes, I got a text back saying that they were generally only on Wednesdays when we DID have them.

After THAT, we headed to the Columbia Mall (across the street) so Yoko could exchange something, while I tried (and failed) to explain to Miriam what Trigun was. She DID know what Evangelion was though (after all, it's so famous in Japan that the Rebuild movies were released in theaters, while they're going straight to DVD here).

And then after THAT, they let me have dinner at their place. It was really yummy, despite the fact that it was leftovers.

Before I talk about Thanksgiving week...

2009-12-02T13:45:00.000-08:00

Our Space Studies department is AWESOME.

NASA funds UND next-generation lunar exploration system project
Grant is part of the North Dakota NASA EPSCoR program
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has approved funding for a University of North Dakota (UND) next-generation lunar exploration system project. The three year $741,109 grant comes through NASA’s Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).

The principal investigator for the project is Paul Hardersen, and the science principal investigator is Pablo de Leon, both of UND Space Studies.

“Successful competition with NSF and NASA indicates the highest levels of creativity and thought,” said UND President Robert Kelley. “This grant is recognition at the highest levels of UND’s ground-breaking work in this area. It signals that we're going to be leaders in the research that's going to take us back to the Moon.”

Phyllis Johnson, UND’s new vice president of research and economic development, agreed that the NASA grant indicates a clear understanding among federal officials involved in space exploration that UND has demonstrated expertise, unique facilities, and institutional commitment to the country’s space effort.

“Clearly, UND is at the forefront of work that will take us back to the Moon and, eventually, to Mars,” Johnson said.

The NASA grant will support the design and development of a three-part system: a lunar rover; inflatable modular habitat units; and a lunar exploration suit. All three will be part of a coordinated system that will share capabilities. The project will be housed in UND’s Space Suit Laboratory, part of the John D. Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences (UND Aerospace).

“This is excellent news and will certainly accelerate space systems research in North Dakota,” said Hardersen, a planetary geologist and associate professor in space studies. Hardersen also is director of the North Dakota NASA EPSCoR and of the North Dakota Space Grant Consortium.

“Our mission is to develop state-of-the-art space suit components and a fully integrated lunar exploration system,” said Pablo de Leon, NDX project director and research associate in the Department of Space Studies. De Leon, an aerospace engineer from Argentina, led the widely tracked NDX-1 Mars planetary exploration technology effort that was partly funded by NASA through the Consortium.

“This newly funded lunar exploration system project is the first major success in our targeted efforts to develop truly long-lasting and effective space research programs in North Dakota,” Hardersen said. “UND space studies will reap major benefits from this work by involving students directly in the lunar exploration suit/rover project and by developing a hardware capability in the department.”

The three-year funding also will allow UND Aerospace to continue to advance part of its mission of creating new knowledge, in this case pushing the space exploration boundaries in space suit technology, said Paul Lindseth, associate dean of UND Aerospace.

All of the systems described in the grant will be built at UND and NDSU with assistance from the North Dakota College of Science and Dickinson State University, de Leon said. Additionally, the project will include participation and contributions from the Boeing Company, Cirrus Aircraft, ILC Dover, Global Electric Motorcars (GEM), Packet Digital, and Paragon Space Development Corporation. Of these companies Cirrus, GEM, and Packet Digital are North Dakota-based hi-tech companies which will provide opportunity for regional economic development, de Leon said.

“Workforce development was a key part of our proposal, and I believe strongly in the hands-on teaching mission that this represents,” said de Leon, who has worked extensively with students in past and ongoing space technology programs, including the planetary exploration suits and UND’s unique space flight simulators.

The N.D. NASA EPSCoR program is supported with matching funds from the North Dakota legislature to build research infrastructure in the state.

From UND's website. Granted, this happened in August, but I just got an e-mail about it today. Or, specifically, the reception celebrating it a week from today. I'm so going. I have to make connections...and, of course, be really, really happy that SOME effort is going into going to the Moon and Mars.

Happy (belated) Thanksgiving

2009-11-29T19:07:00.000-08:00

So I've been pretty much out of the blogging mood for at least a week. Now I'm back. Yaaay!

So, happy belated Thanksgiving!

Things I'm thankful for:
1.) My family, who is just plain awesome.
2.) Going to UND, because I'm one step closer to my dream.
3.) Band.
4.) Living in a country that allows me to say bad things about its leader without having government agents kicking down my door.
5.) YouTube, because I got to see the Persona 3 Portable intro, despite the fact that it's not out in the US yet.

THE AWESOME IS MAKING MY EYES MELT!!!!

Nothing.

2009-11-19T12:04:00.001-08:00

I haven't had any new posts lately, because nothing post-worthy has been happening lately. Life's been pretty normal as of late.

So I'll just post news articles for now.

slow clapping

2009-11-14T20:14:00.000-08:00

Courtesy of USAToday:

White House: Ill. prison eyed for Gitmo inmates

CHICAGO (AP) — The Obama administration may buy a near-empty prison in rural Illinois to house detainees from Guantanamo Bay along with federal inmates, a White House official said Saturday.

The maximum-security Thomson Correctional Facility, about 150 miles west of Obama's adopted hometown of Chicago, was one of several evaluated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and emerged as a leading option to house the detainees, the official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because a decision has not been made.

President Obama wants detainees from the controversial military-run detention center in Cuba to be transferred to U.S. soil so they can be prosecuted for their suspected crimes.

Thomson was built by the state in 2001 with 1,600 cells, but budget problems prevented it from fully opening, and it now houses about 200 minimum-security inmates.

It is unclear how many Guantanamo detainees — alleged terrorism suspects, many held without charges since the beginning of the war in Afghanistan — might be transferred to Illinois or when. Obama initially planned to close the Guantanamo Bay prison by Jan. 22, but the administration is no longer expected to meet that deadline.

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn has been hinting at a possible new use for Thomson, and he issued a statement saying he would hold a news conference Sunday to outline those plans.

Quinn's spokeswoman Marlena Jentz did not return a phone message from the AP Saturday.

If the Federal Bureau of Prisons buys the facility, it would be run primarily as a federal prison, but a portion would be leased to the Defense Department to house a limited number of Guantanamo detainees, the White House official said. Perimeter security at the site would be increased to surpass that at the nation's only Supermax prison, in Florence, Colorado, the official said.

The plan has support from Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Senate's second-highest-ranking Democrat, and Thomson Village President Jerry Hebeler, who says the move would generate desperately needed revenue for the town of about 500 residents.

Some lawmakers opposed the idea of terrorism suspects being brought to Illinois. U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk, a Republican running for Obama's old Senate seat, circulated a letter among elected officials asking them to write to Obama opposing the plan.

Thomson is not the only U.S. town that had hoped to lure Guantanamo detainees. Officials in Colorado, Montana and elsewhere in Illinois have said they would welcome the jobs that would be generated.

Yes, let's move these extremely dangerous people onto U.S. soil. We might as well be holding a huge sign saying "PLEASE KILL US NOW". Not even Germany was stupid enough to go with that.

Who elected these bozos again?

Final Football Game of the Year

2009-11-11T14:14:00.000-08:00

On Saturday, we had our final football game of the academic year.

This wasn't the only reason why it was special, though.

I guess the last football game of the year is also Band Day. This is when high schools from all over northeastern North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota come to play with us. In other words, I got to play the role of "cool college kid" again!

I was feeling much better Saturday than I did on Thursday and Friday, days in which I missed school (and, in Friday's case, spending six hours working on a computer lab that was due the same day that was insanely complex). I got up early, took a shower (and my antibiotics, 500 Mg of Cephalexin), packed my stuff, checked my mental list twice, and head out. The first leg of my odyssey to the Hughes from my dorm (no buses run on the weekends) is straight down University Avenue. The second leg starts when I turn at the Chester Fritz Auditorium. As I already previously established, the President of the university's house is practically right across the street to the Fritz. I pass it every time I go to the Hughes.

I had the fortune to have the President and First Lady drive past me in their car as they left their house. They definitely recognized me as a member of the band, too. They waved at me.

I got acknowledged of my existence by the University President. So freaking cool.

After I dropped my stuff off in the band room, I headed to Wilkerson to get some breakfast...only to realize that, oh yeah, the dining center doesn't open till 11. That has to be one of the most ridiculous things ever. 11 is LATE. Even for later football games, I have to bolt down my food in the instant the place opens so that I'm not late for my call time. Since it was 10ish, I opted to get two jelly-filled donuts at the to-go cafe. At least I'll be hungry for lunch.

When I got back, I spent my sweet time repacking everything in my hat box and putting on my uniform. The buses came earlier than usual, causing us to leave at 11:15. The e-mail we got a day or so earlier said to be at the band room at 11:15. This resulted in a few people missing the bus, luckily not including me.

After getting to the Alerus, we discovered that we couldn't practice at the moment thanks to the Southern Oregon Raiders practicing on our field. Luckily, they were gone after we spent time putting all of our crap in the stands, so we got to practice our pregame and our "halftime" shows.

"Halftime" is in quotes because our normal halftime show would not be played at halftime. Instead, we were going to play it for four-hundred-or-so high school kids in the stands before the game, and play with them in one huge formation during halftime.

While I was feeling better than I did the few days before, I was still sick. My bronchitis reared its ugly head after our rehearsal of halftime, when I had a really bad coughing fit. Like, dry-heaving and stuff, it was that bad. I held off on using my rescue inhaler, though, in part because it would've made me shaky before causing me to crash, and in part because I stopped coughing by the time I made it to my seat in the stands with all of my stuff.

The kids started flooding in shortly after. We broke up into sections and got into circles so that the incoming kids would know where to go. I call them "kids" because they seemed so damn young! And I thought I was oh-so-mature in my senior year of high school!

We had about 40 people in our high woodwinds group, a good amount of them being flutes. Thankfully, we outnumbered the stupid trumpet section. The poor french horns had, like, seven people. And we had a TON of tubas.

And then the issue came of setting everyone to their spots and practicing the halftime show.

Here's the thing: we rehearsed the music for this on Monday's rehearsal and Friday's rehearsal. The previous post titled "Horrible" was posted on Monday, before the scheduled band rehearsal, which I ended up not going to due to a fever. There was no rehearsal Wednesday, and I missed school on Friday, when there was another rehearsal.

Which pretty much meant that I was winging this, while sick, on a new 3 1/2-sized reed (which is harder to play on than an already broken-in, 3-sized reed).

I still kicked ass.

Afterwards, they spent forever getting their butts in the stands (it did NOT help that they had to be in alphabetical order), and the line was long enough to be winding on the field, which we were setting up for our "halftime" show on.

And then we played it (Caravan, I Just Wanna Celebrate, a scatterdrill so we could get to our spots, and The Pretender). And, yet again, I kicked ass, in part because of the new reed; the bigger the number, the thicker it is. The thicker it is, the harder it is to play on, but the trade-off is that you can play much louder with far less squeakage. Which makes it very, very useful for marching band shows.

We had to really book it afterwards, though, because we had to play for our arriving team.

Lunch was weird. It took forever, for one, because all of the high-schoolers got to line up first. There were only two lines, and the food was nachos, so it took a while. I spent time by passing the line, getting a cup of water, and using it to take my antibiotics (three times a day!), then going back to the stands, grabbing my Nintendo DS, going to the back of the virtually non-existant line, and playing it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll get past all of the boring shit. Hold your horses.

Fast-forward past lunch and the performance for the tailgaters. Our pregame had to be performed earlier than usual, because there was some special stuff going on. This "special stuff" was for things I forgot to mention earlier on in this post. You see, while we the band thought of the game as Band Day, the football game was really special in that, one, it was senior day for the football players, and two, the game was in dedication to all military vets and service members (police officers, firefighters, etc.). So some things were happening differently.

For instance, while walking over to my side of the field pre-pregame, they were playing the music video for Citizen Soldier on both viewscreens.

During pregame itself, after we were awesome and made of win and sitting on the field in our UND formation, they took their sweet-ass time calling out the names of the football players. This kind of pissed me off, because my band director last game had to rush through the names of the seniors during halftime to make sure we wouldn't cause the other performers during halftime to be late.

After pregame, they had members of the Army ROTC rappelling from the ceiling, one of them doing it head first.

From up here.

...however, since I was on the sidelines in full uniform, I didn't have my camera with me, so I couldn't take pics of them doing it. It was really cool, though.

And then kickoff happened and we went back to the stands. The Band Day kids were in a portion of the stands next to us. Though they had their instruments (with the exception of the drumline), we were the only ones allowed to play.

The high-schoolers are the ones in white. They got free T-shirts.

Don't worry, the student section was actually relatively packed a little while after I took this picture.

The drums of the high-schoolers were too big to put in the stands all together (as they would only fit in the very first row), so they were left sitting behind the endzone.

Here's the thing about the Southern Oregon team: they're the Raiders. Texas Tech, which we were against during our first game of the academic year, are the Red Raiders. As a result, we took it upon ourselves to mock the Southern Oregon team by acting like our hands were pistols and shooting them in the air, just like the Texas Tech fans. Also, everything was in RAIDER VISION*.

*(what the viewscreen would say in Texas Tech before a replay of what just happened)

Here are some random football pics:

Getting ready to kill some brain cells.

The people on the other side, which basically consists of anyone who isn't a student.

...and brain cells have been killed. People were joking that they were watching hockey, because we actually had a few fights and dogpiles start up.

In the stands, I usually sit next to a clarinet player named Phil, who is a freshman. He also happens to be a stage actor, and performed in one of the latest shows on campus, "Godspell" (even the plays here are religious).

Well, during the second quarter, since things were different halftime-wise, we had no idea when to come down to the sideline. The drum major said that herself, that she would basically have to tell us to come down at a moment's notice in full uniform. The senior low woodwind section leader transcribed this to us, and the last thing he said was "Be prepared".

The first thing to pop up in my head was The Lion King. This also happened to be the first thing that Phil thought of, too, because he and a tenor player sitting behind literally started, word for word, acting out the dialogue in the middle of the song in The Lion King. It was absolutely hilarious!

Phil (on the left) also sang "Poor Unfortunate Souls" (and the dialogue in the middle of that) from The Little Mermaid during the football game before this one. It was also hilarious and awesome.

Long before we left the stands, the high-schoolers got on the sidelines, behind the endzone. Five game-minutes afterwards, we finally came down. At this point in the game, we were losing, 3 to 17.

But something awesome happened after that. I guess the combined awesomeness of the high-schoolers and us on the sidelines did something, because we got a touchdown and a field goal. And then, in thirty seconds we tied with them, 17 to 17. It was one of the most amazing things ever.

Halftime was interesting. Five hundred people on the field in arcs, playing three songs. Nothing noteworthy happened.

After halftime, I no longer had the stress of wondering when exactly I had to be in uniform, so I started taking lots and lots of pictures. There was also the fact that the game took an eternity.

Yet another dogpile.

Our players.

Us doing one of our cheers.

Bass drums!

It turned out that I wasn't the only one taking pictures.

One of the colorguard members. We both took a picture of the other with our cameras in our faces. She's apparently a photography major.

Speaking of colorguard, a good number of them have these band shirts that they like to wear. For the longest time, I've found them hilarious, but I now finally got a picture of one.

It says:
Colorguard Scoring Guide
on the field, if you hit...

Another Flag = 0 points
A Flute = 10 points
A Clarinet = 10 points
A Saxophone = 15 points
A Trumpet = 20 points
A Trombone = 25 points
A Baritone = 35 points
A Sousaphone = 50 points
A Drummer = 55 points
A Drum Major = 65 points
The band director...RUN!

In high school, we always joked about how we'd get more points in our scoring if a flag hit a judge on the field. Oh, and just so you know, "Sousaphone" is another name for "Tuba", specifically, the marching tubas. Pretty sure they're named after John Phillip Sousa, he of a hundred famous marches that sound exactly the same, but don't quote me on that one.

And speaking of cameras, we actually had a cameraman come up to us in the stands to film two of our drummers yelling "We are North Dakota!" to the camera.

I mentally responded shortly after he left that the two drummers had egos the size of North Dakota.

During one of the time-outs during one of the later quarters, this guy takes a random person from the audience and asks them three questions. For every question they get right, a T-shirt is flung to a designated section. The last one is always ridiculously easy to ensure that one shirt is always thrown.

For the lulz, we always collectively yell "False" to throw the guy off. During one of the hockey games, it actually worked! And yes, there is a "False" choice, I just managed to get a picture of the viewscreen after they showed the correct choice.

Some of the high-schoolers left directly after halftime, while some stayed longer, depending on what school they were from. The ones that stayed got to join us in playing a little bit. One of the songs was "Hey Baby", which, as Mom remembers, was a song we played a lot in high school. Hilariously enough, it is the exact same arrangement!

High schoolers in our ranks. I actually kinda "recruited" the girl on the right. She said that she'll be coming here in two years (she's a sophomore).

More high schoolers!

And now, a word on who conducts us.

The person who usually does this is the drum major. We have two of them, so they alternate between quarters. I couldn't get a decent pic of the one who does the first and third quarters, so here's the other one.

You can just see the mischievous glint in her eyes!

I guess one of the traditions of Band Day is to let the seniors conduct the band through one song. That was added to my list of "stuff I can't wait to do when I'm a senior".

He's technically an alumnus, but he got to conduct us anyway. He's pretty nice.

A tuba player. He sure looks happy to be on the ladder!

Corey, one of the many obnoxious trumpet players. The fact that he gets to play all of the solos in our halftime tunes (including The Pretender) doesn't help this. Even his conducting is overdramatic, though he did this for comedic effect.

The infamous tenor player who is always the ringleader behind the drumline's many shouted insults. I couldn't get a pic of him conducting, so here he is on the sideline.

The low woodwinds section leader. He's pretty nice, too. He abhors the idea of going here for graduate school (and being in band during graduate school) for some reason, and he's actually graduating this semester.

A colorguard member. She's the one who let me photograph the back of her shirt.

A french horn player. He's pretty cool.

You might've noticed that I didn't mention any of their names. This is because I'm extremely bad with names and I don't remember any of them.

After a fourth quarter that seemed to take FOREVER, we finally ended the game on a winning note. The score was something like 30 to 22, with us winning.

And now, finally, what you've all been waiting for!

I badgered the colorguard member with a camera to take a picture of me in full uniform.

...wait for it...

...wait more for it...

TADAAAA!

Ok, so my hat's crooked. Whatever.

In years past, they've actually had chains on the front of the uniform, with braiding on the shoulders, and a half-cape. This is rather plain in comparison.

And so ends this academic year's marching band season. It's been rather fun. I still have hockey games, and I was able to enroll in Marching Band for next semester, so I'll still be taking game pics.

Oh, did I ever tell you my classes for next semester?

Communications 110 - Fundamentals of Public Speaking (Honors)
Computer Science 161 - Computer Science II
Math 208 - Discrete Mathematics
Music 271 - University Band
Music 272 - Marching Band
Physics 110 - Introductory Astronomy
Space Studies 410 - Life Support Systems (online course)

It would be really nice if I knew what the hell Discrete Mathematics was.

Post about Saturday

2009-11-10T08:18:00.000-08:00

Will be coming up very, very soon. Now that those 20+ pictures are resized and I finally have some free time, I'm going to be finally writing that post.

...after I take a shower and get ready for class, of course.

The shit just keeps piling up.

2009-11-09T20:00:00.000-08:00

Things on my mind lately:

- My declining grades. Getting As and Bs in Honors classes in high school? Piece o' cake. Getting Bs in normal classes here? Really, really hard. It doesn't help that taking notes in normal Computer Science class does me no good, because everything I learn, I learn in Lab, by actually coding things and experimenting. This makes it extremely difficult for me when the normal tests come around, because I have a hard time explaining what goes on behind the scenes as I spend six hours on 134 lines of code. Space Studies is going great (teacher says you need to score above the mean on the tests, and I've been consistently doing that), but I have a C in Honors right now. Both band classes are guaranteed As, but I'm not sure if they can keep my GPA up to a 3.0 needed to renew a scholarship I got.

It's extremely frustrating going from always getting As and Bs every year to having Bs and Cs. EXTREMELY frustrating. Especially when one those classes is the basic class for your major and you wanted to get an A in it.

And I can't just study for hours upon hours like my roommate does. Just...can't. For Honors, what do I study? Really, what do I? We go over different things every week. We don't have a set textbook whatsoever. Our classes consist only of discussion and our homework consists only of reading. Computer Science? I can't. YOU try "studying" a textbook of computer code. It doesn't work for me. HTML/CSS I learned by myself, by looking at the source code of others and figuring how they did the things they did and what would happen if I tweaked it. The test today in Computer Science had things that I could remember BECAUSE I worked for six hours on a lab that greatly involved those "things". None of my classes are ones you can really outright "study" for.

It's putting an insane amount of pressure on me. INSANE. I'm afraid that I might break...

- Money. It just frustrates me that I can't get the things I want, but I can't get a job because of my schedule (well...actually, with no more football games and with hockey games being late at night, I might actually be able to get a job now - the bookstore that's a five-minute walk from here has a big "Now Hiring" sign up). Every now and then I find myself looking at my Amazon.com wishlist and becoming extremely depressed. Yeah, there's Christmas, but I'm not exactly going to be in a set point around that time, thanks to my next point...

- So a few hours after deciding it, I just got informed by my mom that she'll be moving to Texas. WELL THANKS A FREAKING LOT. All that planning I did? Gone. Those plane tickets that I spent hundreds of my leftover financial aid money on? Useless. She says she'll help work it out, but I seriously doubt it, she's not getting paid enough to accommodate a move AND buy at least $400 worth of plane tickets. And if we're moving, I can't even get anything for Christmas, since I don't have an address to send it to. Furthermore, this will also undo ALL of the address-changing I've been doing regarding my "home address", so I'll have to contact Tricare and a bazillion other people to change it yet AGAIN. I know it's selfish of me, but after all of the other times she said that she'll move or go here or there, having to change EVERYTHING for something that doesn't even have a set date adds a whole lot more stress to my already overstressed life.

Why me? Why the HELL does it have to be me? Everyone else has family close by. Practically everyone I know has a stable home with two parents, and a house, and they've STAYED IN THE SAME FREAKING PLACE all their lives. They go home during a weekend and see everyone. I can't. I can't freaking do that. I MIGHT have a chance to see my old high-school bandmates again ONE more time before I help mom move to Texas. And then after that, I can never see them again. Or the people at the allergist. Or my old dentist. Hell, one of the things I wanted to do when I come back to Las Vegas was to get a new set of retainers at my ol' orthodontist, since my old ones are wearing out. CAN'T DO THAT IF I HAVE TO LEAVE THE NEXT DAY, NOW CAN I? And my A key on my computer has been acting up again, I wanted to go to the store where I bought the laptop and use my shiny warranty so they can do some heavy-duty work on that goddamn key.

Everyone else has a freaking car because their relatives live around here. Me, I'm by myself. I'm a freaking adult and I still have to rely on others to get to places like I'm back in high school. I still have to beg and plead my bandmates to take me to the practice field every Marching Band practice. I'm all by myself here. And I'm sad. And lonely, because no one knows what the FUCK it is like to live outside of North Dakota. Everyone can go home over thanksgiving and hunt some deer with their families, while I'm stuck here by myself. I'm an agnostic in a highly Christian town. And you know what? Now Mom's leaving, going somewhere else, where I'll STILL be a complete and utter stranger to everyone, and faced with the EXACT SAME PROBLEMS I have here with people, when I expected to catch up with the familiar faces I've known for years and spend some time in a city that, while I completely HATE its GUTS, is at least FAMILIAR.

...it's late. I'm tired, strung-out, stressed-out. But I need SOME way to vent my feelings about everything, before I snap.

Thanks a lot.

2009-11-09T08:04:00.000-08:00

To the guy who saw me on the way to Wilkerson yesterday, thanks BUNCHES for NOT telling me about the Computer Science test we were going to have today. Thank you SO FREAKING MUCH.

You have me in TWO classes, one of which is Computer Science. I was absent from both of those classes on Friday. Did it EVER occur to you that I might not know what the hell we did on Friday? Instead, I got a very cold "hi" from you, and that was it.

You know, in high school, any time I saw someone who was absent for a class I had them in, I filled them in, and was happy to do so, even if they say "[insert student here] already told me, thanks".

But you didn't even bother to, not even when you sat down at another table five feet away from me and looked at me from the corner of your eye! Thank you so freaking much, my grade is going to go down more, and it's going to be harder to maintain that 3.0 GPA that I need to renew that scholarship. Thanks.

Good news and bad news

2009-11-05T15:23:00.000-08:00

Good News: I don't have the flu anymore.

Bad News: It's bronchitis.

Today, I woke up feeling a lot crappier than usual, and really, really congested. I was out of energy, too, and had trouble getting out of bed; this, I remedied by hooking my arms around my bent knee and flexing my thigh, pulling me up in the process (like getting up from a squat, except sideways. Or a really screwed-up sit-up).

Everything was extremely tender and painful; combing my half-dry hair after the shower caused some tears. I took a very hot shower, but the steam did little to help with my congestion. After a brief moment of thought, I decided to use my rescue inhaler, since I already have asthma and I didn't want to take chances; the bad thing about this is that it makes me extremely shaky, because it's albuterol. I hate that stuff. But it definitely helped with my congestion.

My "Horrible" post was on Monday. Tuesday and yesterday, I felt a lot better and actually went to my classes and Anime Society (yesterday). Today, I've gotten worse, AGAIN. I called Mom in the hopes of feeling a little better, and she insisted, very forcefully, that I should go to the clinic, since I've been sick for a week.

So I did so - after hanging up with Mom, I called the clinic (see, this is why I don't throw any of my previous appointment slips away, because I was able to find their number in a few seconds) and scheduled an appointment for half an hour from the present time. I usually schedule appointments with them every two weeks on Tuesday for my allergy shots, so they kind of know me over there. Furthermore, the lady thought I sounded really congested over the phone, so she happily offered an earlier time than I thought was available (because everyone is sick).

Shortly after coming in early, I was taken back and was asked basic questions by the very, very nice nurse. I apologized for my vagueness, as everything's kind of a blur when I'm sick and my symptoms varied from day to day. After she left, the doctor came in. He was really nice, too. He did the usual doctor-y things, checking my lungs and and all that jazz. He said that he suspected that I had the flu, but wanted to do some bloodwork (he first asked if I had insurance, of course). I was very surprised when he said that there'd only be a 15-minute wait to get the results.

Here's the thing - usually, when I get bloodwork done, the doctor sends the blood to an external lab, like Quest Diagnostics. As a result, I would always have to schedule a return appointment in at least a week to discuss the results. So the fact that I would only have to wait a little bit before discussing the results was a bit of surprise - granted, I bet that they weren't running the full elaborate battery of tests, but they were still looking at teeny-weeny microscopic little cells in a lab that was probably already looking at other people's teeny-weeny little cells because everyone is sick.

I was escorted to the lab, sat on a bizarre bench (it had swiveling armrests on both sides) specifically for getting my blood drawn, and was attended to by yet another very nice person. She was not only nice, but skilled - after checking both arms for my veins, she decided on my left and struck the vein on her first try. Within what had to be an absolute MAXIMUM of twenty seconds, she had the blood she needed, with minimum pain and external bleeding (she put a bandaid on after I held a cotton ball on it for a few seconds, but I honestly didn't need it, because I wasn't bleeding anymore). She put a drop on two slides, smeared them, and then asked me to go to the lobby and wait. Of course, I did what I was asked.

Now, while I was sitting in the lobby, there was a TV with CNN going. Why they do this is beyond me, as this place is more conservative than Las Vegas. Let me elaborate on this. On my way back home, I passed a car with a McCain bumper sticker, and I've seen practically no cars with Obama ones. In Las Vegas, you'll find a TON of cars with pro-Obama (or even old ones, like Kerry) on their cars. Here, you have people talking about the fact that they'll miss school because X day is the first day of deer hunting season. I've seen some army ROTC members in the parking lot with geese they've hunted (those suckers were HUGE, I didn't even know they got so big!!!). People I know in band have guns at home, and know how to use them. You know the drill. In Las Vegas, if you criticize Obama, you're racist, if you're anti-illegal immigration, you're racist. But people seem to have no problems with that here.

Back to CNN. How President Obama can blast Fox for "having a perspective" and not CNN is beyond me. Oh, wait, it's because they praise him every five seconds. When I first sat down, they were gushing about all of the black women Obama had in his Administration. That's all fine and dandy, but what about the other people in the Administration? Are they just not as important because they're white or male? They were just as qualified to be chosen. So why aren't they as special? I dunno, maybe I'm looking too much into this, or maybe it's because I'm still so bitter about the fact that it was extremely difficult for me to find scholarships that were open to whites (so many scholarships wanted "minority" races, despite the fact that there was no freaking way I, or thousands of other "whites", could ever pay for college with my own money).

And then they had a brief segment "linking" obesity with cancer, even though they explicitly stated that they couldn't justify why without using a bunch of quote-unquote "theories" that were incredibly vague (and barely scientific). One of these was that being fat apparently hinders the immune system. Bullshit. My mom was easily the healthier of the two of us, illness-wise, even before she lost weight. I got sick more often than she did, and she worked in a medical office, with sick people! And then after that, she massaged people from all over the world, who may or may not be sick at the time. I briefly mentioned that my mom was healthier than me under my breath while I was sitting there, and I girl sitting across from me smiled and agreed. And even if she secretly didn't agree with me, I would've gotten a dirty look or something if I was in Vegas.

I got called back, and the doctor went over my results. White blood cell count is established on a scale of 5 to 10. I was 12 (or, specifically, 11.5); he said that since I was younger, my body could put up more of a fight than, say, his (he was old enough that his hair was silvering), hence the past-10 number, something that someone his age wouldn't be able to pull off. However, something involving lymphs had barely risen, despite all of the other specifics being high, indicating that it wasn't a virus (and thus not the flu), but was instead bacterial. He said that, given my high congestion symptoms and the fact that it was bacterial, that it was most likely bronchitis, or something that could also be killed with antibiotics. He said that combined with the previous incidents of chills and fever, there's a chance that, earlier, I could've possibly had pneumonia instead of the flu.

He prescribed me some antibiotics (that I had to take three times a day for ten days) and cough medicine to help me sleep (as I had run out of my NyQuil) and help with my mid-sleep coughing fits that have apparently been waking up my roommate. And then I was escorted out and I thanked him and left.

I've never felt so nicely treated by people at a medical clinic before, with the exception of the people at my allergist, but they were specialized and thus were more able to get to know everyone. We're talking about the ONE student health clinic on campus that sees EVERYONE for EVERYTHING. They were very nice and extremely timely. I felt very satisfied by the care I had received.

On the way home, I opted to walk to the pharmacy, since I figured that I was outside anyway, and I needed to pick up two regular prescriptions I had called in online earlier today.

The people at this pharmacy, despite not being related to or even in the same building as the medical clinic, were also very nice. Even as they were having issues processing things with Tricare, they still filled my prescriptions and let me pay for them and take them home.

About this. Apparently, Tricare likes to change things sometimes. Unfortunately, this means that they get overwhelmed and their servers go down. I sat for about twenty minutes in the pharmacy as the poor ladies kept trying, over and over again, to make my shit go through to Tricare. Ladies and gentlemen, government-run health insurance. Now imagine if Tricare covered millions more and included a lot more people that got drugs the instant their kid complained of a headache or a cough (in comparison to me, who has regular prescriptions picked up once a month and only gets meds when I'm really, really sick). I can see why the pharmacists are not at all happy about this idea.

After I walked back with my meds, I immediately took my antibiotics and asked the RA to get me a sick tray. After eating THAT, while typing this up, I got really sleepy (in part, I think, because I'm crashing from the inhaler) and took a cough-filled nap. And then I woke up and finished typing this.

A Public Service Announcement...

2009-11-04T06:01:00.000-08:00

Hey, you guys up in the White House. Maybe the fact that the Republicans won a few elections will give you even the vaguest hint of an idea that some people *GASP* AREN'T happy with what you and your Democrat friends have been doing!

Horrible.

2009-11-02T15:06:00.001-08:00

That's how I feel. The illness decided to flip me the bird and undo any kind of recovery I've gone through over the past day or so, becoming a gazillion times worse. Fever, chills, stuffed nose, sore throat, oh my! *crawls back into bed and "dies"*

So...

2009-11-01T19:18:00.000-08:00

...here I was, watching the third episode of the anime Trigun that was in a boxed set lent to me by the same guy who lent me the Evangelion boxset.

And then something really, really awesome happened.

...imagine, a textbook example of why the populace should be armed, in an anime from a country with strict gun control laws.

(the episode itself involved a gunsmith, who turned out to be the guy with the beer bottle, who ten years prior to the episode gave all of the citizens guns he himself made to fend off reoccurring bandits. He stopped, also several years prior to the episode, when a bank robbery happened that led to his wife and kid being caught in the crossfire and dying; it was committed by a guy who was personally given one of his guns. Also, in case you didn't get it, the guy in the red coat is the real Vash, which is something that you should already know, even if you haven't seen it, because Trigun's easily one of the most famous 90s [or early 2000s, can't remember which] animes ever.)

LOL

2009-10-31T19:33:00.001-07:00

My roommate came across this video.

Today's football game

2009-10-31T18:55:00.000-07:00

Today, we had our second-to-last football game. I'm still sick, but since I felt so much better yesterday, combined with my obligation to go and not leave a hole in every single formation, I went anyway.

Baaaad idea.

Just walking in the cold to the Hughes to drop my stuff off before breakfast made things so much worse - and this was WITH the medicine.

I felt like shit. And our rehearsal didn't make things better - things that made me out of breath when I was healthy have me wheezing while I'm sick. I was so hot and sweaty after rehearsal that when we went outside to play for the team, I just wore a sweater instead of an actual jacket. When lunch rolled around, I had next-to-no-appetite.

Not to mention, I had another clarinet player comment about how pale I was.

I still played, though, thank you very much. Pre-game, halftime, the whole she-bang. Speaking of halftime, we finally got to play our new show.

We were up against Cal-Poly. They're from California. Apparently, they're 19th in the division.

Also, we kicked their asses. 31-17. Most of that was obtained in the third quarter.

Here are some random pics I got. Sorry if they're a little blurry, my hands were shaky.

Random football players on the field after a play. The green ones are UND's.

My marching band director. This is the first time he's actually taken the podium for playing in the stands all year; usually, one of the drum majors (depending on the quarter) conducts us while we're in the stands.

And again. Hey, I was bored. He's watching the players on the field so he knows when we can and can't perform. When the play's over, depending on the length of the break (which can be predicted by how it ends, like if a flag is called, etc), we perform. We usually have a "long" song (for time-outs and the like) and a "short" song (for between normal plays, far more commonly performed) queued up ahead of time; this is communicated when we finish songs via hand signals. For example, Frankenstein is up next when both arms are stiffly straight out.

CrapcrapcrapcrapCRAP

2009-10-29T07:49:00.000-07:00

I'm sick now.

The only indication I had yesterday was that I briefly "smelled smoke" for a few seconds at band.

Now I'm actually sick. Headache, aching joints, stuffy nose, sore throat, and a general feeling of "feeling like shit". To top it off, I didn't even sleep well last night, because no matter what I did, I was either too hot or too cold. My body's really sensitive, too - sitting in my wooden chair with pants on hurts, and the comb touching my scalp as I did my hair just now elicited some winces.

Gaaaaah. I have a football game on Saturday! WHY?!

Haha, this sounds very familiar.

2009-10-26T22:02:00.000-07:00

Why Dumb Toys Make Kids Smarter
by Po Bronson

This is a story about the science of kids’ brains. But before we get into things like how dopamine enhances neural signaling, let’s talk about Pokémon.

Early in our son’s life, my wife let it be known that she didn’t have many clear-cut rules about how we’d raise him. To her, the world of parenting was not to be artificially cleaved into what’s Good for Kids and what’s Bad for Kids. However, she felt the need to warn me of two exceptions: violent videogames and Pokémon cards.

“We are not going to let him do those,” she stated firmly.

The violent videogames I understood. Pokémon, I did not—I wasn’t really aware what Pokémon cards were. But while babysitting during graduate school, my wife had seen young kids become crazily obsessed with the cards, to the point where the preoccupation seemed to take over their young lives. “It eclipses their interest in other things,” she said. “And it’s the earliest form of status trap, too. Their sense of self-worth becomes tied up in what cards they possess. They get feelings of superiority merely by owning an Infernape card.”

Not knowing what an Infernape card was, I readily accepted my wife’s declaration. She made a child’s fixation on Pokémon cards sound like a heroin addiction.

But then, the summer my son was 5, we traveled to Seattle to visit his cousins. Several of these cousins, a little older than he was, were into Pokémon cards. My son wanted, more than anything, to merely belong. Sensing this, we decided not to object when his cousins gifted him a dozen low-level cards—a few Pikachus, and something cute that looked like a baby turtle.

At the end of the summer, the cards were stashed away. It wasn’t until the next summer vacation, again with his cousins, that Pokémon began to take over our son’s mind. His cousins fed him a supply of cards, and at first, he was again motivated principally by a desire to fit in. But then we noticed a few other things. He could go upstairs with his cousins to look over the cards and then pretend to be Pokémon characters for two solid hours—even though there was almost nothing else he could do, without distraction, for more than 20 minutes. Pokémon didn’t seem so much an addiction as good-natured absorption—genuine, intrinsically oriented self-direction. We also realized the cards were teaching him category systems and math.

That following school year, in his first-grade class, Pokémon became social currency. About half his class was entranced by the cards. At times it seemed ridiculous, but then I’d hear my son plop down two cards and talk out more complicated math problems than anything he saw at school: “160HP minus 110HP plus 30 resistance points minus 20 weakness points equals 60 points left,” he’d say, then plop down two more cards to solve.

I didn’t know then what I know now: Through this repetition, his brain was transforming. Heavily used neurons were learning to fire together, and these chains of neurons were becoming myelinated in thin sheaths of fat; by this process, “gray matter” is converted into “white matter.” The sheath surrounding the nerves acts as an electrical insulator, increasing neural speed by 100-fold. Active repetition also began tuning up the nerve capsules that connected his prefrontal cortex to his parietal cortex in the back of the brain. When these superhighways of nerve tissue come on board, the brain learns to delegate math to the back of the brain, making computation speed radically faster.

While we weren’t aware of the neuroscience, it was plainly obvious: Pokémon cards were making our son’s brain really fast at elementary-school math. I began to buy him cards. Lots of cards.

The second half of first grade, our son started reading the fine-print paragraphs on the cards. He got more reading time in through his love of Pokémon than he ever did at night, when we handed him books. He did read the books out loud to us, but it was a necessary chore. Pokémon was never a chore. And I noticed the paragraphs on the cards were syntactically far more complicated than anything he read in books. Soon, the same brain transformation that drove his math speed was reproduced with his reading speed.

Pokémon had taken over his brain. But in ways my wife never expected. Early in second grade, his math teacher told us he was as fast at math as the fifth graders. Not bad for a kid turned away by most of the local private schools prior to kindergarten.

Something else happened early in second grade. One afternoon, while watching the Phillies march to their World Series title, my wife taught our son how to read a box score—how math and symbols represented the game’s progress. Within a two-month span, our son lost every last drop of his interest in Pokémon, and he fell in love with sports. Hand him Harry Potter today, and it’ll take him an hour to read 10 pages. Hand him a youth-biography of David Beckham, and he’ll read all 120 pages in a single sitting. That’s just who he is.

Our son taught me an extremely valuable lesson. When it comes to kids, we often bring moralistic bias to their interests. There’s a pervasive tendency in our society to label things as either good for children or bad for children. Cultivating children’s natural intrinsic motivation requires abandoning all judgment of good and bad content. Society has a long list of subjects that we’ve determined they should learn. But learning itself is kick-started when enmeshed and inseparable from what a child inherently loves. How many parents are ignoring this, pushing flash cards and phonics cards onto their kids, attempting to trigger learning in an amotivational situation?

My previous book, What Should I Do With My Life?, was a portrait of a generation that had spent the first two decades of life ignoring their intrinsic motivations. They were bright and talented, but had spent so many years doing what was expected of them, and studying what society told them they should study, that they were no longer in touch with their natural desires. They’d been praised endlessly, told they were smart, and had no internal compass when it came to making career decisions. Learning to recognize their own passions was incredibly difficult and stunted. It had been drilled out of them as children.

It’s important to underscore that this isn’t a philosophical argument—it’s a neurological argument. Motivation is experienced in the brain as the release of dopamine. It’s not released like other neurotransmitters into the synapses; instead, it’s sort of spritzed into large areas of the brain, which enhances the signaling of neurons. The motivated brain, literally, operates better, signals faster. Kids learn better.

How exactly does this happen? According to Dr. Silvia Bunge, a neuroscientist at U.C. Berkeley, the presence of dopamine triggers a meaningful tweak in the tuning function of brain cells. Dopamine depolarizes neurons and improves their firing rate; their response to optimal stimuli becomes sharper, and the background buzz of relevant stimuli is quieted a little.

In other words, each neuron operates sort of like a motivated child: It becomes focused, less distractable, and when it does something right, it recognizes that in the moment—it hangs on to that information, ready to use it again.

In my son’s case, it was Pokémon that triggered the spritz of dopamine, which enabled him to learn so much from the cards. Now it’s sports that triggers the spritz. I suppose someday he will fall in love with other things, too, and because he’s loved passionately before, he’ll know what it feels like to love—he’ll recognize the feeling of passion: His brain is turned on, turbocharged.

My daughter, meanwhile —just 5— is into princesses and Supergirl. I’m no fool. I’m rolling with it.

Now if Disney would only start printing Princess trading cards.

Courtesy of The Daily Beast, a site I've never heard of.

MAN, I remember when I was a kid, when I first got into Poke'mon. Sometime while I was in 3rd grade or so, my cousin gave me just one of her cards - an utterly pathetic Rattata card. I was still so ecstatic, though - it's a CARD with a purple RAT on it! I also got into the show around that time, but I'm not sure which came first, the show or the card.

The beginning of my hobby also involved Christmas presents at Grandma's place. She got my cousin both Poke'mon Red and Blue (since she didn't know which to get). My cousin gave me the stickerbook/Poke'dex, maybe out of an act of pity over my lack of games (no handhelds for me at the time). I vaguely remember one of my presents being a Fossil series Poke'mon card deck, one of the very first TCG card sets to ever be released for the trading card game. It had a holographic Muk (a Poison-type Poke'mon that's a huge blob of malevolent toxic sludge) that, along with about twenty or so other holographic cards, got destroyed in the wash later on when I left them in my pocket.

And then my birthday came around. Pretty sure it was my ninth. I got a lot of birthday money, but didn't know what to spend it on. At the local CompUSA, I had a choice between a Walkman and a GameBoy Color. Sitting on a shelf behind a door of glass (or just clear plastic) was the game that beckoned me. Poke'mon Silver. It was sitting next to Poke'mon Gold, but I thought Silver version's Lugia (a dragon/birdish legendary Poke'mon that looks FREAKING AWESOME) looked cooler than Gold version's Ho-oh (a Chinese phoenix, which also looks awesome but not as awesome as Lugia). Being a kid, I naturally went with Silver version, and the GameBoy Color with it.

That pretty much changed my life.

Over the years, I've made friends because of Poke'mon. It was a real conversation starter when I was a kid. I've played the games for so many hours that I've maxed out the game clocks. I can recognize the Poke'mon by sight and by the sounds they make when you send them out. The series is a gift that keeps on giving - while learning Japanese in high school, I used the original Japanese names of Poke'mon to remember vocabulary - for instance, Tentacruel (a giant, poisonous jellyfish) is "Dokukurage" in Japanese, "Doku" meaning poison and "kurage" meaning jellyfish. Bellossom (an adorable little flower Poke'mon) is "kireihana", "kirei" meaning pretty or beautiful, and "hana" meaning flower. Pikachu translates literally to "sparkle mouse", Darkrai is a combination of both the English word "dark" and the Japanese word for dark, "kurai" (Darkrai is originally Daakurai in Japanese).

The games themselves really do make you think. You have to figure out your opponent's weaknesses and hit them for massive damage. You have to form strategies for tougher opponents, like the Gym Leaders (aka boss fights). This becomes really evident in the competitive battlefield, where you have to worry about additional factors, such as hidden stats, specific movesets, tiers, status effects, held items, abilities, the base stats of the species you're up against (is it naturally a "wall" or is it a "sweeper"?) and stat buffs/debuffs. The card game is just as, if not more, complicated, and that's even in normal play, let alone tournament play.

Oh yeah, I obviously haven't stopped collecting the cards. I reckon that with the cards I've gotten since the last time I counted them, I have over a thousand unique cards, with a few hundred duplicates. And Mom can testify to the fact that my DS was brought everywhere I went back when I lived in Las Vegas. That thing was my lifeline - have to wait two hours after eating Lunch/Dinner before band practice? Sitting in a long line at the movie theater? On a long road trip? Flying on a plane for a few hours? Waiting for your doctor to see you? Don't worry, my DS and Poke'mon has it covered. It's the antidote to complete and utter boredom. And I love it.

In the spring, the English versions of the Gold/Silver remakes, HeartGold and SoulSilver, will be coming out. I can't wait. Of course, you know which one I'm getting. ;)

For the record, Infernape is the final evolution in the Chimchar family, the fire starter of the 4th Generation (Diamond/Pearl/Platinum). Fire/Fighting, with high Attack, Special Attack, and Speed stats, I've had my ass handed to me by quite a few of them online. Damn fast monkey bastards.

I don't get it.

2009-10-26T19:54:00.000-07:00

I'll freely admit this, right now: I don't practice back at the dorm. It would probably piss off everybody that happened to be in the dorm at that moment. Plus, I practice far better when I have other people with other parts playing alongside me, instead of by myself, where it all seems entirely meaningless. Thus, any and all practice time I get is in class.

So why am I the only clarinet with my marching music memorized?

I get as much, if not less, practice time than the other players. The section leader at the end of rehearsal today mentioned how awesome I am, how, during the time where we were in the concert arc and the section leaders had to sit out, I was the only clarinet player they heard, and how every time they see me at the Hughes, I'm working on my music (in reality, I play the music from memory as a warm-up when I come early to University Band, because scales are really, really boring). I really hope this doesn't prompt everyone else in the high woodwinds to hate me.

I still don't get it.

Kind of relevant...

2009-10-26T09:15:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of USA Today:

Police watching for 'peephole' drivers as winter nears

As snow and temperatures start to fall, it's "peephole driving" season in the USA.

Many Americans have done it: gone outside to an ice-covered vehicle on a cold winter's morning, chipped just enough ice off the windshield to see through and driven away.

Peephole driving dramatically reduces a driver's field of vision, and it increases the likelihood that snow or ice can become dislodged and hit another vehicle or a pedestrian, according to police and safety advocates.

"Everybody is in such a hurry to get where they've got to go, they don't want to take the time to completely defrost their windows," says Sgt. Scott Kristiansen of the Buffalo Grove Police Department in suburban Chicago. "That puts everybody at risk.

"Reasonable people who would never think of leaving their driveway with worn tires or bad brakes will routinely drive their children to school after scraping just a small peephole with which to see out of the vehicle," says Kristiansen, a 26-year veteran in the village of about 42,000 northwest of Chicago.

In Illinois and some other states, police can cite drivers for obstruction of a window or obstructed vision. In Pennsylvania and New Jersey, drivers can be cited if their failure to remove snow or ice causes injury or property damage.

New Jersey strengthened its law last week. Gov. Jon Corzine, a Democrat, signed legislation requiring drivers to "make all reasonable efforts" to remove snow or ice from the roof, hood, trunk and windshield. For truckers, the law applies to the cab, the top of a trailer or semi-trailer and the top of a freight container. Drivers who fail to comply face a $25-$75 fine.

"There are many stories of innocent drivers who have died or been seriously injured because of ice or snow dislodged from a truck or car," says Republican state Assemblywoman Nancy Munoz, a sponsor of the law. "Finally, common-sense legislation that protects drivers by requiring the removal of potential flying debris is now law."

There are no reliable statistics on the number of people hurt or killed because of peephole driving, says David Weinstein, spokesman for AAA clubs of New Jersey. "Often the driver doesn't know what happened and drives away," he says. "Or they do know what happened and know they're culpable and drive away."

Technical Trooper Tim McCool of the Kansas Highway Patrol says he's seen peephole driving increase in his 27-year career as people grow more impatient. He estimates that peephole drivers have 2%-3% of the normal field of vision. As winter looms, the North Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles advises, "Peephole driving is an invitation to disaster."

Reason #126 to not get a car in North Dakota.

Foreboding.

2009-10-25T21:42:00.000-07:00

While I was in the bathroom, I overheard a girl mention that her throat has been scratchy. Which means the sickness has possibly hit our dorm now.

According to G.I. Jane, the deans of the school are discussing the possibility of shutting school down for a few days.

This would be very, very bad. More than one day would affect both band classes, both of which have very limited rehearsal time.

Say that school was cancelled on a Monday, Wednesday, or Friday.
We'd be set back a day in Computer Science. We'd be set back a day in Space Studies, a class in which we just got back on schedule for. Pre-calc, unless it's Wednesday, would be set back a day, in a class that looks to be as if we'll be going through new material up to the last class before finals; being set back a day would ensure us being unable to finish all of the material, which is very, very bad, considering that the Computer Science major requires both Calculus I and Calculus II. Honors would be set a day back, but that isn't too bad. If it's a Monday, Computer Science lab would be set a day back, but this also isn't too bad, since the assignments are put up online and we could just do them and submit them at home, which is only a bad thing in that I can't ask for help if I seriously get stuck (BTW, I got 100% on the latest lab test. Do I rock, or what?!).

The worst would be Marching Band. We've already lost a rehearsal last Friday. The next football game is on Saturday, and we're scheduled to do our new show, which is NOT even CLOSE to 100% yet. Furthermore, as the days get shorter, so do our rehearsals - we can't march on a field without any lights, and "our" practice field has no lights. We need our full rehearsals, because we'll also be playing our new show at Extravabandza in early December. Losing one rehearsal or more would ensure our director cutting the marching for the last portion of the show, and having us stand and play the last part of Karn-Evil 9. Which sucks. It's wussy and lame to do that. We can't get those rehearsals back, either, because football and hockey games are on the weekends, so we can't have Saturday and Sunday (a HUGE no-no here - even the Wal-Mart isn't open 24/7 on Sunday) rehearsals.

Say that school was cancelled on a Tuesday or Thursday.
Pre-calc has already been mentioned, but the damage will be even worse if the cancelled days were a Tuesday/Thursday AND a Monday/Friday - that's two 50-minute classes, gone, poof.

What would really be bad would be University Band. We only meet twice a week. If one rehearsal is gone, we go from, say, eight rehearsals before the next concert to seven. An hour and a half of fixing things and getting the balance right, gone. If we missed TWO rehearsals...I shudder to even think about it.

Now, about the possible solution to this - if they cut two days out of Thanksgiving, there will be no problems (though people will be pissed off about it), but if they change our winter break, I'm screwed. I already bought the plane tickets for my visit back home in Las Vegas during winter break at least a month ago, with very specific dates, and I'm pretty sure I won't be able to get refunded for them.

Bad, bad, bad, I hope it doesn't come to that. If I get sick, at least the band classes can continue and make progress - I already know all my music for Marching Band anyway, as well as the drill, and University Band is just fixing things with our performance, little of it affecting the 3rd clarinets.

Please don't ruin our schedules...

OH NOES

2009-10-24T13:38:00.000-07:00

Obama: Swine flu a national emergency

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama declared the swine flu outbreak a national emergency and empowered his health secretary to suspend federal guidelines at hospitals and speed up how infected people might receive treatment in a disaster.

The declaration that Obama signed late Friday allows Health and Human Services chief Kathleen Sebelius to bypass federal rules when opening alternative care sites, such as offsite hospital centers at schools or community centers, if needed.

Hospitals could modify patient rules — for example, requiring them to give less information during a hectic time — to quicken access to treatment, with government approval.

The declaration, which the White House announced Saturday, allows HHS in some cases to let hospitals relocate emergency rooms offsite to reduce flu-related burdens and to protect noninfected patients.

Administration officials said the declaration was a pre-emptive move designed to make decisions easier when they need to be made. Officials said this was not in response to any single development on an outbreak that has lasted months and has killed more than 1,000 people in the United States.

It was the second of two steps needed to give Sebelius extraordinary powers during a crisis. On April 26, the administration declared swine flu a public health emergency, allowing the shipment of roughly 12 million doses of flu-fighting medications from a federal stockpile to states in case they eventually needed them. At the time, there were 20 confirmed cases in the U.S. of people recovering easily. There was no vaccine against swine flu, but the CDC had taken the initial step necessary for producing one.

"As a nation, we have prepared at all levels of government, and as individuals and communities, taking unprecedented steps to counter the emerging pandemic," Obama wrote in the declaration.

He said the pandemic keeps evolving, the rates of illness are rising rapidly in many areas and there's a potential "to overburden health care resources."

Because of vaccine production delays, the government has backed off initial, optimistic estimates that as many as 120 million doses would be available by mid-October. As of Wednesday, only 11 million doses had been shipped to health departments, doctor's offices and other providers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The government now hopes to have about 50 million doses of swine flu vaccine out by mid-November and 150 million in December.

The flu virus has to be grown in chicken eggs, and the yield hasn't been as high as was initially hoped, officials explained.

Swine flu is more widespread now than it's ever been. Health authorities say almost 100 children have died from the flu, known as H1N1, and 46 states now have widespread flu activity.

Worldwide, more than 5,000 people have reportedly died from swine flu since it emerged this year and developed into a global epidemic, the World Health Organization said Friday. Since most countries have stopped counting individual swine flu cases, the figure is considered an underestimate.

(Courtesy of USA Today)

OMFG IT'S AN EPIDEMIC! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE AAAAAAHHH!

...seriously, it's almost like Obama and the media are trying to induce a panic.

Crisis Averted

2009-10-24T12:23:00.000-07:00

Looked up the nearest local computer place and took my laptop there via a friend. The A key was fixed for a total of *cue drumroll* $5.35, tax included. It works again! Yaaaay!

People like this piss me off.

2009-10-24T08:14:00.000-07:00

Conscience clauses not just about abortion anymore

WASHINGTON — Faced with a request to give an unmarried female patient a prescription for birth control pills, Dr. Michele Phillips looked to her conscience for the answer.

"I'm not going to give any kind of medication I see as harmful," said Phillips of San Antonio. The drugs would not protect her patient from "emotional trauma from multiple partners," Phillips reasoned, or sexually transmitted diseases. "I could not ethically give that type of medication to a single woman."

After the evangelical Christian refused to write the prescription, she resigned her position. She now does contract work at a faith-based practice that permits her to "prescribe according to my ethical values."

Medical technology has surged forward in recent years, leading to many life-saving and life-giving procedures. At the same time, legal and ethical remedies haven't kept pace, and officials at the state and federal level are still working out how to address the sometimes competing needs and values of doctors and patients.

For example, the Obama administration announced last February that it plans to rescind regulations enacted at the end of President Bush's term that permit health care workers to abstain from performing procedures they oppose for moral or religious reasons. Eight months later, the administration has still not announced new rules.

Often, experts say, the debate boils down to a question of convenience versus conscience, of personal choices affected by medical personnel.

" Do we really want co-workers deciding if our religious motivations and reasons are correct?" asked Joan Henriksen Hellyer, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

For example, at the annual meeting of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities here this month, a panel including Hellyer discussed the disparate dilemmas facing health care workers today, such as:

• A housekeeper who refuses to clean an embryonic stem cell lab.

• An ultrasound technologist who doesn't want to work on Saturday.

• A respiratory tech who refuses to turn off a ventilator.

Bioethicist Holly Fernandez Lynch said consistency is crucial to prevent patients from facing discrimination based on race, religion or sexual orientation.

"A consistent objection to a service, I think, is totally appropriate as long as there is someone available to provide that service at a reasonable distance," said Lynch, author of Conflicts of Conscience in Health Care: An Institutional Compromise.

But, she acknowledged, "the phrase 'reasonable distance' is really a difficult one to figure out."

While larger communities and hospitals have the luxury of a range of practitioners, conscience quandaries are trickier in smaller communities, said Leslie LeBlanc, managing editor of The Journal of Clinical Ethics.

"It's a very difficult question because you can't compel someone to do something they think is morally wrong and, by the same token, clinicians make a promise to help people in need," said LeBlanc, who attended the bioethicists' meeting.

State legislatures have passed a plethora of legislation on the issue, with most permitting health care providers to shun abortion services, the Washington-based Guttmacher Institute reports. Some states, including Louisiana, have passed broader laws that protect health care workers who object to procedures such as cloning, stem cell research, euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide.

Rob Vischer, associate professor of law at the University of St. Thomas School of Law, argues for letting the free market determine access to all health care services.

"I think people want to have a space to live what they believe," said Vischer, author of the forthcoming Conscience and the Common Good: Reclaiming the Space Between Person and State. "I think that's more consistent with the common good than everybody grabbing for the reins of state power."

Luke Vander Bleek, a Morrison, Ill., pharmacist is fighting in court against an Illinois regulation that requires him to dispense Plan B and other emergency contraception.

"I wanted to be able to practice pharmacy in this small town that I live in where I raised my family and I wanted to be able to do it with a good, clear conscience and sleep well at night," said Vander Bleek, a Roman Catholic.

He said other pharmacies within 12 miles could provide those services instead.

Elizabeth Nash, a public policy associate at the Guttmacher Institute, counters that patients should be able to access drugs if they are legal.

"Putting barriers in their way to access those medications only hurts public health," she said.

As the arguments continue, Dr. David Stevens, CEO of the Christian Medical Association, said physicians like Phillips are "a growing reality" and he worries that other physicians might quit permanently. In an April poll, his organization found that an overwhelming percentage of faith-based physicians preferred ending their medical practice to violating their conscience.

"This is the most urgent issue for our membership," he said. "Because they realize that if they lose this battle, they will no longer be practicing medicine."

(courtesy of USA Today)

About the first example, what right does the pharmacist have to assume things about her patient and then make choices like that? I'm on birth control, but I'm taking it to regulate my menstral cycle, which is seriously off without the medication, as I've learned from experience. Just because I'm on birth control doesn't mean I'm going to have sex at all (for the record, I'm a virgin), let alone with "multiple partners" like this moron said.

And, frankly, if you can't do your job because of "conscience" (ESPECIALLY if that is based on misguided assumptions of others), then you should be fired on the spot and replaced with someone who can. You knew what you were getting into during those years of medical school. If you can't stand the heat, stay of the kitchen; likewise, if you can't cook a dish you don't like, also stay out of the kitchen. You have an obligation to your patient. Instead of forcing your beliefs on others, serve your patient, or leave. This even shouldn't be an issue to begin with.

FUUUUUUU--

2009-10-23T23:20:00.000-07:00

What is this? What the HELL is this?

This just happened a few minutes ago, too. The sucker won't stay on when I type anymore. It appears that the metal clasps are still there...but when I put it back, it's stiffer than the other keys and pops off again after a few presses (and I type fast, too).

I'm seriously about to cry. The "A" key is very important. And I use my computer to take notes in my two most important non-band classes.

This just isn't fair. I NEED this computer. I'm registering for my classes online on the 3rd! My Python programs for Computer Science are on here! It's how I communicate with my mom! It's where I get my notes for Space Studies!! I also wanted to type up a paper about NASA's Constellation program, too!

What do I do, almighty computer people? I need this computer to work properly! *sniff*

Flu Attacks UND!

2009-10-22T20:27:00.000-07:00

For the past month or so, the students and faculty of UND have been attacked by the flu, of both the normal and H1N1 varieties. I never mentioned this in part because I didn't want to worry Mom, but also in part because it wasn't relevant.

It is now.

On Tuesday, we literally had a third of the University Band missing for rehearsal. Something along the lines of 25 people missing for a class of 70 people. My band director for U-Band said that he was afraid to check his e-mail, because every time he did, he'd have more messages from people calling in sick.

Yesterday, we had a sizable amount of people missing in the Marching Band. We had one alto sax on the field. There were holes everywhere - and let me tell you, it is really freaking hard to "dress" (read: adjust your position so that you fit perfectly in the formation) the formations if there are holes.

Today, we still had a decent amount of people missing in U-Band, but not as many as Tuesday ("Anything is better than last time!", my director said). But later on in the day, I got an e-mail saying that tomorrow's marching band rehearsal had been cancelled; while it wasn't the only factor, one of the factors was that a whole bunch of people were sick. And G.I. Jane got an e-mail tonight that said that P.T. was cancelled for tomorrow, which sucks because she had a physical assessment on Monday.

And during the entire week, I've overheard people talking about how their classes have been cancelled because too many people called in sick, or because the teacher called in sick.

I think I'm safe for now, because, unlike the other dorms, we only have around thirty people or so - a very small pool of individuals, unlike the other, massive dorms with hundreds. The Dining Centers have been putting up little papers everywhere on the tables about the sick lunches (including two sets specifically made for those with the flu, one that is fluid-based and one that is more solid-based).

On a slightly related note (related in that it's about school), I met with my adviser today to talk about Spring Semester; since I'm in Honors, I get to have early registration, so I get to sign up for my classes on the 3rd of November instead of around Thanksgiving. Right now, I'm looking at Computer Science II and minoring in Space Studies. Having a minor in Space Studies allows you to take kickass classes like "Life Support Systems". Plus, it just sounds really cool to say, at the beginning of next year during band camp, "Yeah, I'm majoring in Computer Science with a minor in Space Studies".

I also found out that, for some reason, my AP test scores never made it to UND, which really pisses me off. There's NO WAY IN HELL that I'm taking English again, not after spending half of my English classes on writing essays about "What meaning does Author X convey using Rhetorical Strategy Y in Work Z?". NO FREAKING WAY. ...luckily, Mom had the transcript that was mailed to me from the AP people in July, made a copy, and mailed it off to UND. Take THAT!

I also, also found out that I have two academic advisers. I have one for Honors, who I already knew about and made my fall schedule with, and one for Computer Science, who I've never met because he's not one of the advisers present during freshman orientation.

As for the briefly-mentioned Disney paid internship...there's some problems with that. First off, paying for the plane tickets. Then, medical things - where would I get my allergy shot every two weeks? Where would I get my medications? And then, the fact that I'm making money means that I would get less on my FAFSA for 2011. AND, the co-op credit you get for it only covers the elective requirement - so I'd essentially be missing an entire semester's worth of classes, which means that I'd have to graduate a semester later. Furthermore, my elective requirement is covered by stuff in Computer Science, fun stuff like classes focused on making A.I. and working with physics engines used in video games. FYI, Band covers Arts and Humanities, IIRC.

Geez, things are really starting to pick up. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that I won't get the flu - that's the LAST thing I need right now!

Hahaha...ha...wait, they're serious?

2009-10-22T18:29:00.000-07:00

One thing I kinda like about Gmail is the random "webclip" they have over my inbox. While it sometimes nets ads, it often has rather interesting news stories. But this one takes the cake.

World Not Ending in 2012, Says NASA

Oct. 22, 2009 -- Contrary to what you may read on the Internet, the world is not going to end in 2012. A rogue planet named Nibiru is not on a collision course with Earth. And a solar flare won't toast the planet.

It's all fiction, though the makers of the film "2012" may lead you to think otherwise.

"I don't have anything against the movie. It's the way it's been marketed and the way it exploits people's fears," NASA scientist David Morrison at the Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., told Discovery News.

Morrison has launched a counter-attack through his "Ask An Astrobiologist" online column, which he says has gotten more than 1,000 questions about the end of the world.

Scientific misinformation about 2012 has been ramping up for a few years, with more than 200 books and 1,000 Web sites purporting to explain various doomsday scenarios. Sony Pictures is behind a particularly viral campaign to build publicity for its upcoming apocalyptic movie "2012," which debuts on Nov. 13.

The company has set up an interlinked family of Web sites and Facebook pages to infuse a sense of reality to its fictional work.

The lead character in the film, played by actor John Cusack, for example, is the faux author of a faux book about a murder, conspiracy and disaster about the space shuttle Atlantis, which, coincidentally, is poised for launch on a space station construction mission the weekend the movie debuts.

The fictional fiction, named "Farewell, Atlantis," has a Web site, a Facebook page to follow "author appearances," fans and friends, a faux publisher with a faux Web site, a faux press release and endorsements from the very real son of the late Carl Sagan.

There's also a fake institute that presumably dispenses "real" science supporting the movie's claims, as well as a fake news website that distributes fake press releases about a fake aerospace company winning government contracts.

Warren Betts, owner of a California-based publicity firm that peddles real science stories tied to movies, says the type of marketing campaign Sony is executing for "2012" is nothing new.

"It's been done before," said Betts, citing the 1999 horror movie "The Blair Witch Project," a story about a group of amateur documentary film-makers who have a really bad couple of days in the woods.

"Some people went to that movie and they thought it was reality, that it was an actual documentary," Betts said.

Morrison says Sony has crossed a line with promoting "2012."

"I think people are really, really worried about the world coming to an end. Kids are contemplating suicide. Adults tell me they can't sleep and can't stop crying. There are people who are really, really scared," he said.

"People are very gullible," he added. "It's a sad testimonial that you need NASA to tell you the world's not going to end."

Courtesy of Discovery Channel.

That bolded statement summed it up before I could. It's like the Y2K bug...except that I was a kid when year 2000 started, so I don't remember any of it.

Faith in Humanity

2009-10-22T12:39:00.000-07:00

LEFTIST NEWS NETWORK wants to battle!

LEFTIST NEWS NETWORK sent out CNN!

CNN used LATINO IN AMERICA!

SILVER'S FAITH IN HUMANITY harshly fell!

Of Balloons and Boys

2009-10-21T21:07:00.000-07:00

But, my favorite is:

Because it truly illustrates how utterly ridiculous the average person's (and the media's) obsession with this was.

This has to be one of the fastest memes ever.

Three Things:

2009-10-21T13:26:00.000-07:00

1.) Even though I'm in an Honors class in a public college, I'm not a rabid liberal. So don't come in and promote your anti-global warming organization. Seriously. I'm all for new technologies and new, better ways for doing things, but not for such political and biased reasons, and definitely not by destroying the livelihoods of others and driving costs through the roof. Just stop it.

2.) I'm really, really tempted to look into the Disney full-time paid internship that goes on for a semester, but that means a semester without band (as I wouldn't be at my college during this, I'd be somewhere else), and I'm not so willing to give that up.

3.) There are two topics on the Twilight Sucks forums about shitty "anime" (only calling it that because they were based off of actual anime series) that was spawned from studios in early 1990s for U.S. audiences. Thankfully, they never, ever, ever got aired. EVER. They were that bad.

So, being the sadistic bitch I am, I'm going to post two delightful videos.

What I like to call "D00zy b0tz", is an aberration vaguely, and I mean vaguely, based off of the old-school Gundam series.

How they got a bunch of stereotyped kids comically fighting evil robots from a dark anime series about war (the director wasn't nicknamed "Kill 'em all" for nothing) that helped spawn the "real robot" subgenre of humongous mecha, I have no idea. Also, you felt your soul dying when they mentioned "comedy" in the first two seconds or so, am I right?

It gets worse.

This one is personal, because it raped my childhood. And Mom's younger adulthood.

...yeah. Apparently, there was a fight between Saban (who made this abomination) and DiC (who made the bad-in-hindsight English dub) about the rights to Sailor Moon (of which the Japanese anime existed before this piece of shit was made). Obviously, Saban's version was so utterly bad that the original company handed it over to DiC. I can't watch it or even type this about it without spontaneously bursting into fits of laughing and crying at the same time. I'm dead serious, by the time I finish typing this, I'm going to have a six-pack. Of abs.

...what?

2009-10-20T16:33:00.001-07:00

I was bored, and I wanted a more coherent layout.

Women's Hockey

2009-10-18T21:09:00.000-07:00

I played at my first women's hockey game today. While the sport itself is exactly the same, everything else around it is different.

First: There are, predictably, far fewer people. The grand attendance account for today's game was 311, not sure if it was including the band, which was only about 20 or so people, myself included. This was actually good thing - the fans consisted of sane people, not drunken fratboys, and the low numbers meant that we could not only hear each other, but any taunts or cheers we shouted could be heard.

Second: The fewer amount of people allowed for a far more laid-back feel in the band itself. We could actually joke around and such in a comfortable manner. I actually found the game more fun than the men's games because of this.

Third: What I found pretty cool was that in terms of cinematics, the women's game was the same. They had the same intro on the video screen as the men's team, except, obviously, with footage of the women's team kicking everyone's asses. I found that pretty cool.

Fourth: We the band got to play the national anthem.

Fifth: Because of the lack of people, our balance in our sound was way different. We had three clarinets (myself included), two flutes, three trumpets, two tubas, a bass drum, two snares, a few trombones, and a baritone or two. This meant that we didn't have the background support of the saxophones, and that us clarinets could actually be heard (SHOCKER!).

During the women's hockey games, there is a particular referee that older members of the band like, this guy named David Spivey, who according to band lore is the referee equivalent of Chuck Norris (his calls are instantly superior to that of the other refs, for instance), in part because he's the ref who escorts the players to the penalty box, but also in part because he's had actual conversations with band members during the game.

All in all, I enjoyed the game, and I was really happy that I signed up for all of them. Yes, ALL of them. Ok, except for the first two ones, 'cause I was in Minneapolis for Honors at the time.

Remember the hockey game I couldn't attend last night? It ended in a tie. Yes, you read that right, ENDED in a tie. In hockey, there is only one five-minute period of sudden-death overtime, and if no one scores, the game officially ends in a tie. This works because the hockey season consist of series: 2 points to the team who wins, one to both for a tie. Since we beat University of Minnesota on Friday, we still won the series against them, despite last night's game ending in a tie. Apparently, there was a LOT of drunk people there - I'm almost happy that I didn't go.

Also...a new Yu-Gi-Oh! movie was just announced for Japan. You thought a series about card games can't get any more cheesy? Think again. Even the voiced JAPANESE in this trailer is cheesy as hell, especially if you know the literal translation for some of what the guy's saying ("nakama" doesn't directly translate to "companions", it translates to something along the lines of a "family made of friends"; like a marching band, for instance).

First thought after watching this: LittleKuriboh MUST do an Abridged version of this once it gets English voices. Second thought: Are they running out of ideas or what?

Sports of Yesterday and Today

2009-10-17T23:53:00.000-07:00

...less dramatic than the title makes it seem.

Yesterday, we had the first long-awaited hockey match against University of Minnesota. These guys are absolutely vicious towards each other. This was evident even as I was making my way to the special band-and-VIP gate; three Minnesota fans were being escorted away from the UND fans by security before I was even inside the arena.

There were also numerous security guards inside the arena, too, a first, because I actually noticed how many there were. And upon coming into the arena proper an hour early, there were already people getting into their seats, rather unusual.

I also noticed that, for some bizarre reason, the display on our side of the arena had a strange anomaly.

See the pink part? WTF?

The rivalry stuff was going on before the game, too. Before any of the players were out, there were already people chanting and such.

The place was pretty damn packed.

Since I brought my heavy-duty camera with me, I figured that I might as well take some pics:

Our hockey players practicing before the game.

Their hockey players practicing before the game.

Both of the hockey teams practicing before the game.

My favorite hockey player, solely because of his awesome last name (which technically has no space between the two halves), which is very similar to mine. Second favorite? Hextall, because he's from Manhattan Beach, California. Nice to know that I'm not the only person here from the west coast area.

In terms of hockey playing, it was great, because we kicked their asses. Final score: 4-0. Wanna know how early it was in the game when we scored our first goal on them?

First period of the game, three minutes and twenty seconds in.

In terms of fans, noooot so much. First off, this group of morons just wouldn't sit down in front of us, obscuring the view for us band members, who were sitting down. Sorry, I'm not standing up the entire time. Second off, the roundabout in the second intermission had to have extra people for the sole purpose of pushing others out of the way. Apparently, one of the fans pushed aside decided to push back, and the clarinet player nearly decked him.

What had to have been the worst, though, were the chants. Or, rather, one specific chant: "FUCK THE GOPHERS". The Gophers were Minnesota's mascot, y'see. The Athletic Admistration doesn't like this chant one bit, so they asked us a few years back to chant over it (always just "LET'S GO SIOUX!" to the beat of a bass drum), and we've been doing it ever since. Some assholes this game decided to get smart about this after the fifth time or so and decided to start chanting "FUCK THE BAND!", which led to some very angry band members getting some security guards to haul them out. Ok, ok, I actually didn't see this myself (wrong side of the area), but I did see a very angry percussionist ask for a security guard to come and kick some drunken fratboy ASS. The assistant band director was NOT happy with the chant, in fact, she was very, very pissed off that they decided to insult us.

All in all, I was very, very tired after the game, so I took it upon myself to just get my stuff packed as quickly as possible, as usual, and leave. On the way back home, a pair of random guys was running in my direction on the sidewalk. One of them said, right before passing me, "Watch out for the cute girl!". Hey, I'm "cute"? Since when?

Today, we had a football game. Technically, we also had a hockey game, but I wasn't able to get signed up for it; all of the spots were full.

So I got up at 7:00, got ready, packed and all that crap, walked over the Hughes, dropped my stuff off, walked to Wilkerson, and got breakfast. Hey, it was a jelly-filled donut, but it's better than marching on an empty stomach, which really sucks.

Before the game, we practiced both pre-game and halftime. Because of the weather problems on Wednesday, we didn't have outdoor practice, so we were forced to do the Texas Tech show again. Which was a good thing, because we found out at the last minute that our halftime show will be televised in its entirety.

We played for the arrival of the team. Thankfully, my fingers weren't frozen stiff. Either it was a bit warmer outside, or I'm getting used to this weather. After that, we had lunch, which, strangely, consisted of baked potatoes and the things you put on them.

The one on the left had bacon, cheese, and chives. The one on the right had chili and chives. Side dish: broccoli. And yes, there's two cups of water there. The black stuff at the bottom of the picture? My leg(s), with the black marching pants on.

I myself have never had baked potatoes before, so this was interesting. Not that I had a choice. Since I knew that this lunch would have to tide me over 'till after the game, I got two potatoes. I got two cups of water because I figured that I should get both of them at once instead of inevitably drinking one dry and having to get up to get the other one.

After that, we played for the tailgaters. I have to say that I'm still not used to the fact that little kids love us. While we were marching and playing through the tailgaters (who were cheering like crazy), there were these two little kids following alongside us enthusiastically, one of them on roller skates. Still not used to it. I don't really consider myself a person to be idolized, y'know? I complain a lot, I cuss, I hate trying new things, my grades are (so far) average, my desk is a mess, and I don't even have a job. Not really a good role-model here. Go worship the band director.

Oh, speaking of which, after our meta-rehearsal, my band director had announcements. Which was odd, he usually leaves them for after the game. Turns out that he was extremely pissed off about the insults last night, too. He was happy about the fact that we didn't scream anything back, though. But, as a result, he told the Athletics department to shove off, because we're not playing over them anymore - he doesn't want the fans lashing out at us like they did last night, especially since the hockey band consists entirely of volunteers. Personally, I think that's a cop-out, but that could just be the patriotic military blood pumping through my veins - y'know, the stuff that says "HELL no we're not backing down!".

While we were sitting in the back, "waiting" for the time on the clock to get low enough to start pregame, President Kelley visited us (again!!!! He loves us!!!). ~~Because he's awesome.~~ He said he wanted to know, out of curiosity, where the heck we came from at the beginning of pregame, and what we did while we were waiting (several people were taking naps on the floor, but I slept sitting straight up while listening to music; the uniform jackets and pants have pockets). The man was wearing a pink shirt (for Breast Cancer Awareness month, they encouraged everyone to wear pink shirts) on top of all of his other clothes - apparently, while he was walking around the tailgate, a random guy told him that he wasn't dressed properly and put a pink shirt on him. Poor President said that he felt like some sort of Barbie doll. And then, with a smile, he left to go to the other side of the field to visit the other half of the band.

This must've been a big game, because there were cameramen on the field while we were getting on for pre-game. They filmed my line high-running on the field up-close and personal. Which means I'm on TV AGAIN.

Part of pre-game, obviously, is the singing (or playing) of the national anthem. I hate it when females try to sing it, because they always try to channel Celine Dion instead of actually singing the song like a normal person. Unfortunately, today's singer was female. Bleeeehhh. I wish I could sing it someday, my performance would be much more honest. And I can actually sing in tune, too (as demonstrated by University Band, in which we sing the tuning note before playing it; the singing is usually better than the playing, initially).

Remember that little mention about Breast Cancer Awareness?

They gave us free pink shirts!

We don't actually march like this, we get to take off our hats, jackets, and gloves in the stands.

Even the opposing team was in on it!

Halftime was...interesting. Because, as previously mentioned, we were being televised. Since I'm in the front during the first song, I had a freaking camera in my face for a little bit. I made it a special point to look at and only at the drum major and nothing else. Because good marching band members do that. "Rule 1: The Drum Major is always right. Rule 2: If the Drum Major is wrong, see Rule 1." Your eyes are either always on the drum major, or, for a second or so, on others around you so you can dress the formation. Oh, yeah, they got me on camera twice during the halftime show. That's a total of three times, assuming that they don't edit my copious appearances out.

The game itself sucked. We were up against Sioux Falls, and we got our asses kicked. The game wouldn't have been so bad if we lost gracefully, but noooo, it had to be missed passes, sucky defenses, and three freaking interceptions. WTF football team, WTF?

Here are some random pics with my super-duper-awesome camera:

They were in motion. Of course it's blurry.

And again.

What a penalty flag looks like up close. This caught my eye when I saw it bounce upon hitting the ground. A closer look reveals that it looks much like a badminton birdie.

Cheerleaders. They're actually pretty nice.

All in all, the game sucked, and it kinda reflected in our singing during one song of our endgame performance. Of course, there's also the fact that 99.9% of the band, myself included, hates the Beer Barrel Polka.

After getting back home, I futzed around on the computer a little bit before taking a shower and heading over to Wilkerson for dinner. Mom called me after I finished eating, and we talked on the way back. And then I turned to my long-forgotten love, Chao raising.

You might wonder where my username comes from.

Those cute little creatures at the bottom are Chao.

Chao are creatures in the Sonic Adventure (and to a lesser extent, Advance) series that you can raise as a result of getting animals and bringing them into the Chao Garden. In Sonic Adventure 1, they were an actual part of the plot, with the main "villain" of the game being a guardian of such creatures. In Sonic Adventure 2, the Alliance (as I like to call it) system was introduced, thus introducing Hero and Dark Chao.

Alliance depends on the character raising them: Chao raised by Hero characters become Hero Chao over time, Chao raised by Dark characters become Dark Chao over time, Chao raised equally by both become Neutral Chao.

Left to right: Standard Adult Hero, Neutral, and Dark Chao, respectively. Images courtesy of Chao Island, of course.

And then, you have variations on this based on the animals you give them. Certain animals will pertain to and boost certain stats - parrots raise the Flying stat, gorillas raise the Strength stat, otters raise the Swimming stat, etc..

Left to right: Hero Swimming Chao, Neutral Running Chao, Dark Flying Chao (my favorite out of all of them, hence the "evil" in my name)

Why did I get back into this? Well, I realized that there was just one thing I didn't do in Sonic Adventure 2. I got all 180 Emblems, sure. A-ranks on all missions. Beat all the Chao Races and Chao Karate levels. Made two Chao with Lv.99 in each stat. But I didn't do one thing.

I didn't get these guys!

So now I'm back to do that. Ought to be much fun - I was already gushing over how cuuuuuute my little baby Chao were a few hours ago.

I love band.

2009-10-15T22:24:00.000-07:00

I've already probably made a post with this title, but I'm going to do it again, just to spite you. Muahaha.

Today was pretty much just building up to the concert I have for University Band, a kind of "midterm", if you will.

Our rehearsal was in the Chester Fritz Auditorium, where we would have our concert. Before and after rehearsal, I managed to get some pictures.

This is what it looks like on stage!

What the audience section looks like. This place is freaking HUGE. Again, sorry about the blurriness.

This is a better picture, if a little slanted.

What the seats look like from the stage. The man in white is my band director for University Band, Dr. Popejoy, who is also the band director for the Wind Ensemble. He likes seeing those "I love band" smiles, and often has one on his face himself.

This auditorium is big enough to make 400 seated people look minuscule, as my band director was quick to point out, so we don't feel bad because "not that many" people came.

I walked home, stayed there for fifteen minutes or so, and then went to eat dinner, backpack with concert clothing in tow. After finishing the complete mind screw of a book known as "Atmospheric Disturbances" for my Honors class, I turned back to Monster Hunter International. I found what HAD to have been a Sluggy reference on page 361:

A man should always have access to emergency pants.

Pure gold, right there. I can just picture the comic strip in my head, too. LOL, evil clothes-eating moths of doom.

I got back to the auditorium really early, which was good because it gave me time to change into my concert attire and my BRAND SPANKING NEW KNEE-HIGH BOOTS. And then I took out my clarinet. Since I still had a ton of time, I was bored, so I decided to see what I could remember of the new show's music.

As it turned out, I remembered pretty much all of it.

Somehow.

Once the time had come, we all got on stage and started warming up. I was starting to finally feel nervous, because I just realized that if the recording equipment was really sensitive, it would pick up every mistake anyone would make - and I wanted this to sound good for Mom, so that she would actually enjoy the music on the audio DVD I plan on sending her.

We started off with the Chicago Tribune March by Chambers. This has to be least favorite song I played. First off, the entire thing is in 6/8. This generally renders all of the eighth notes as triplets. This would be fine if it weren't for the fact that, second off, the song is pretty damn fast. Now I have to play triplets fast. Oh joy.

After that, Journey of Exploration by Goto, which is a rather exotic one. It likes to change time a LOT, and at one point in the piece, it switches from 2/4 time to 6/8 time every measure. What's really cool about it is that the majority of it is in 3/4...ok, that's only part of it. The truth is that while the page says 3/4, in reality, those playing the melody are playing in 3/4 while those in the background are playing triplets in 6/8. AT THE SAME TIME. It's so utterly brilliant.

And then, another really cool one, Sinfonia XVI: Transcendentalist Vienna by Broege. This one is in four movements, all majorly varying in feel. The first one, "Star-gazing: Aldebaran", is rather dark and is in 4/2. Think about this for a moment - there are four beats in a measure, but the half note gets the beat, meaning that half notes are like quarters, quarters are like eighths, and eighths are like sixteenths (the 1st and 2nd clarinets were not happy, since they had eighth notes). That took a while getting used to, but it sounds so damn cool. The second one, "Incantation", is pretty weird, too. It's in 12/8, and the parts of the 2nd and 3rd clarinets overlap exactly, forming a harmony over a rather fast melody. The third was stuck in my head all day, "Waltz", which is Exactly What it Says on the Tin. It's a 3/4 waltz, and it got stuck in my head, dammit. For most of the song, we play beats two and three, but later on, we 3rds get the melody. Sweet! The last one, "Star-gazing: Sirius", varies in mood within itself, starting and ending with a rather bleak theme with a jazzish theme going on in the middle of the song. The starting theme is reminiscent of the last few measures of the first movement, and the ending theme has some pretty kickass dissonance in it. Overall, this entire piece is something different, and I really loved playing it. That and the Goto.

The next piece was a transcription (meaning it was originally written for something else, but got arranged and re-written for band) and compilation of one of my favorite pieces ever, a cut-down version of The Firebird Suite by Stravinsky. After playing Berceuse and Finale in high school with the wind orchestra, I fell in love with it. I love this piece so much that I actually started getting choked up while playing the end of it. Specifically, the parts after and including when the song goes into 7/4 from Finale, which I listened to repeatedly on my iPod while I was in high school. Let me tell you, trying not to cry in front of four hundred people while playing one of your favorite parts in musical history is very, very, VERY difficult.

We ended with Declaration, Ballade, and Finale by Huckeby, which is three movements pretty much stuck together. Declaration I don't like very much, mainly because we primarily have 32nd-note-runs. You thought sixteen notes were fast, try thirty-seconds. They suck. Ballade is really nice. We third clarinets have the background part, which is really nice and in 3/4. Finale is freaking AWESOME, though. We get the kick-ass melody part, along with the trumpets. Later on in the piece, it switches to 2/2, while keeping the same tempo in the 4/4 segments (so the director is pretty much conducting in cut-time, with the players pretty much playing in it, too).

I really, really enjoyed playing tonight. I love doing this. I don't know why I love doing this, and from a career sense, it makes little sense (I'm a Computer Science major and I don't plan on playing professionally), but I love playing music. Absolutely love it. It's my life.

We got to go in the seats to listen to the Wind Ensemble after us. The Wind Ensemble is audition-only, and very elite. Let me put it this way - the University Band takes anyone, and I am only a third clarinet. There's no way in hell I would've been able to get into the Wind Ensemble this year. Absolutely no way. Listening to them, their clarinet players are insane goddesses; their fingers move effortlessly over their keys (and, funny thing is, they move a lot while they're playing, too, just like me). They have a sense of musical balance that I can only DREAM of achieving. And the songs they play are very, very long - meaning that they have a lot of stamina.

This was slightly marred by the fact that some fucking ASSHOLE was whispering loudly to who I assume was his bitch of a girlfriend, who was TEXTING ON HER PHONE. I wanted to kick his ass, and so did some of the other band members, who joined me in sending some extra-strength death glares at them. This guy was in an entirely different section than me and I could hear him. I really wish Mom was here, she would've SO chewed him out, the bastard. Do you have any idea how hard it is to listen to Der Traum des Oenghus, Teil I, Op.37 while you hear someone's whispers over the beautiful clarinet and flute melodies?

I later found out that the President of the University (who also happens to play trombone) was, yet again, present at the concert, when my band director pointed him out at the end of the concert for applause. Seriously, how many times have I been in the same room as that man? He goes to all of the hockey games. He goes to all of the football games. He apparently comes to all of our concerts. He paid for the Texas Tech trip so we didn't have to (not to mention came himself and watched our halftime show in the VIP press box). His house is next to the Hughes Fine Arts Center and across the street from the Chester Fritz Auditorium. He must worship the band, and I greatly respect him for consistently coming to venues where we perform. It's nice having the support of someone so awesome.

Last several days: Tuesday and Wednesday

2009-10-15T20:56:00.000-07:00

Tuesday wasn't really strange, either. Since the Wind Ensemble was on tour, we had a sub for University Band; had we had more than two rehearsals a week, he would've canceled it. The sub was a real trooper, considering how complex the music is in terms of tempo and time.

Tuesday was NOT normal in one way: I got to go winter-clothes-shopping-lite. A girl who plays the Trumpet, eternally named Trumpet Chick from now on, offered to help me out, since she has a car and is made of awesome. After she dropped me off at my dorm with her number and a reassurance that she'll be available an hour from then, I went to dinner and ate, then came back, did my laundry, and got picked up. So we went to the nearest Payless, for the main reason that the upcoming band concert was in two days and I found out that I no longer had my awesome knee-high formal boots that saved me from having to wear that evil panty-hose. Since Payless was where I got such boots in the first place, we went there to get replacements. This particular store was in the Columbia Mall, a local mall (obviously), with a really nice, warm exterior. I'm used to malls having tons of skylights, but this one was just warm and nice - it reminded me of somewhere pleasant that I just couldn't put my finger on. No pics, though, sorry.

Luckily, within a few minutes, I found an awesome pair of black, knee-high formal boots with a heel that wasn't smaller than my thumb for once. Shopping here also had the bonus of stocking winter boots (in the men's section) that I could wear. The ones I got had the nifty features of being waterproof and protecting my footsies up to -22 degrees F.

And then we went to Wal-Mart. I got new regular shoes (since my old ones were really, really worn out after all of those hours of walking and marching), warm mittens that actually protected my hands, long underwear (four pairs!), undershirts (also four), and a Poke'mon card booster pack (of course).

Let's just say that I was really, really happy.

Yesterday, we were supposed to be outside for marching band. The persistent sleet prevented that, despite the fact that on Saturday, my band director said that we'd be outside, rain or shine. So we just practiced music. Judging by my "warm-up", I have all of the music for our show memorized. The problem with our music rehearsal was that it pretty much meant that we could kiss the idea of playing the new show next Saturday good-bye. We'll be playing the normal show on Saturday.

Anime club was awesome, as usual. We voted for the anime for next semester (they didn't vote for Full Metal Panic!, those bastards). Basically, the next two animes we'll be watching involve steampunk planes and making fun of space operas.

As I came outside to catch the night shuttle, I found that freaking snow, which had persisted throughout the day, was sticking. TWO WEEKS INTO OCTOBER AND WE HAVE STICKING SNOW, PEOPLE. It was equivalent to snow that Mom and I got in Las Vegas last December.

...and then I came home and crashed. Again.

Last several days: Sunday and Monday

2009-10-15T20:36:00.001-07:00

Sunday, I pretty much did nothing. I vegged out in front of the computer doing nothing.

Monday was pretty normal, except that I didn't have band. Computer lab was great, it involved taking our Turtle graphic coding, and, using a modified version of that, write commands into a text file. Then code a program that would read the lines of the text file to make graphics using the Turtle coding.

Less complicated than it sounds, really.

The last several days: Saturday

2009-10-15T20:34:00.000-07:00

Saturday was very eventful.

First off, G.I. Jane wasn't around because she was at her uncle's. Which left me alone.

Second, I WANTED to go eat breakfast, but there was a small problem:

My wallet was missing. And with it, my ID. Which I had to use to get my food at a dining center.

This sucked, because I was going to go march. Marching uses up a lot of energy in your body. Marching on an empty stomach sucks.

Because of this, I was noticeably lethargic and grumpier. The last place I remembered seeing my wallet was at the game the night before, which I obviously used to get some ice cream. This led to Gun Chick and the assistant director reassuring me that someone probably found it at the Ralph and turned it into the lost and found there. Because this is North Dakota, and people don't keep wallets when they find them.

To top it off, I didn't bring my backpack with me on the bus, which had my jackets in there. This apparently wasn't good, because we had to go outside and play for the team, and, later, the tailgaters. And it was cold outside.

I didn't have any problems aside from my hands, though (there's nothing you can do about that). Marching and playing, even if it's only in a parade formation, keeps me plenty warm underneath my marching jacket.

Pregame went well. This time, someone sang the national anthem, and was actually pretty good at it. For some reason, guy singers tend to refrain from imitating Celine Dion.

It was us against the Wolves from Stony Brook. We played half-time, again, our normal show. There were cameramen on the field, on the sidelines, at least. Remember that video with us in it? That was taken at that half-time. I'm in the very front during the beginning of the first song.

At the end of the game, I really had to scramble to get home, take a shower, and get into my hockey uniform. I left fifteen minutes late, but I only had to walk to the Ralph, so I was fine.

Something really funny and/or bizarre on the way there. On the way back from the game, it was snowing on-and-off. When I left, it wasn't snowing.

Halfway there, I noticed little flakes hitting me AGAIN. God, even my band director says the snow is early. Out of sheer blind luck, the iPod I was listening to, out of 115 or so other songs on the playlist, chose the Pretear opening thene. Which starts out as:

(translated into English)
I'll be reborn as a new me in this sky that spreads into the endless future
I'll show you the snow of happiness falling all over the world

C'mon, that has to be more than a coincidence.

(and as I'm typing about this, iTunes happens to choose this song out of the playlist and play it. This song is possessed or something.)

I went to the lost-and-found for the Ralph and found that my wallet was there, entirely intact. Thank goodness. I celebrated the occasion by getting more ice cream.

We were up against Merrimack again, but didn't do as well. We still won, though.

After that, I went home and crashed.

The last several days: Friday

2009-10-15T12:31:00.000-07:00

Friday was a strange day. I woke up with a piercing headache, but attributed that to lack of food (I ran out of cereal, but I can't work my extremely tight morning schedule to great breakfast at Memorial). I had a sudden burst of inspiration in Computer Science while taking notes, and coded the prototype version of a program that would allow me to choose a Poke'mon team at random (which was later altered and fixed thanks to TD of Unforgiving Minute - thanks bunches!). Space Studies was normal, I really, really wanted to go to lunch.

Ate a huge lunch, switched my stuff out at home, literally ran into Pre-Calc one minute before I was supposed to be there. More trigonometry. I started having problems, though. My mind was fuzzy, and I felt tired, but not "ate a lot of food" tired. I felt like I had the "sinuses are clogged" tired. It was coming to the point where I couldn't concentrate any more and decided right then and there that I'd rather go home than sit through Honors and try to keep up with discussion with my fuzzy head.

So I went home after finishing my quiz, got into a nightgown, and proceeded to take a four-hour nap (since we had rehearsal on Thursday, there wasn't any on Friday), which is pretty strange since I haven't taken any kind of naps since Band Camp in August.

I woke up at 4:30ish, feeling much better, but still not at 100% (more like 85%). Nevertheless, hockey band awaited me, and I couldn't sign myself off of the list at this point unless it was an emergency.

Before the game, I took an opportunity to get some ice cream at one of the TCBYs at the stadium. Miiint. I love it.

What's that about it being blurry? I was taking it with one hand, and it's a heavy camera! Sheesh!

We were up against Merrimack this time, whose asses we thoroughly kicked. It was something like 5-2. A great game.

By the way, I have pictures:

As you can see, it's 64 minutes and 54 seconds until the game starts. Hence why the bright lights aren't on yet. Also, the screen is showing the Minnesota Twins vs. New York Yankees baseball game. Since North Dakota doesn't have a team, and since the Minnesota sports teams tend to have UND alumni (one of them is in the Minnesota Vikings, and, no, it's not that asshole Favre), they worship the Twins and Vikings. Imagine their dismay when they found out in the middle of the hockey game that the Twins lost. People here, even in band, regularly talk about sports. The people here are really sports-crazy. Also, sorry about the blurryness, my hands aren't the steadiest.

This pic, thankfully, isn't blurry. See all those seats? Pretty much all of those will be full by the end of the first period, at the latest.

Aaaand this one is blurry, AGAIN. The person in the image is one of the saxophone players. He's cool.

This is the side opposite from us. The entrances nearest the ice are where the hockey players come out. The one nearest the center is where our team comes out.

More seats up above. The same sax player is in the pic, and to the right is GunChick, another clarinet player, moving out of the way quickly after realizing that I was trying to take a picture.

Banners with UND's many titles, specifically their WCHA titles.

The players out and practicing on the ice.

Columbus Day

2009-10-11T18:26:00.000-07:00

From the Wall Street Journal:

Is Columbus Day Sailing Off the Calendar?

Arrivederci, Columbus Day.

The tradition of honoring Christopher Columbus for sailing the ocean blue in 1492 is facing rougher seas than the Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria.

Philadelphia's annual Columbus Day parade has been canceled. Brown University this year renamed the holiday "Fall Weekend" following a campaign by a Native American student group opposed to celebrating an explorer who helped enslave some of the people he "discovered."

And while the Italian adventurer is generally thought to have arrived in the New World on Oct. 12, 517 years ago on Monday, his holiday is getting bounced all over the calendar. Tennessee routinely celebrates it the Friday after Thanksgiving to give people an extra-long weekend.

"You can celebrate the hell out of it if you get it the day after Thanksgiving -- it gives you four days off," says former Tennessee Gov. Ned McWherter.

In California, Columbus Day is one of two unpaid holidays getting blown away by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as part of a budget-cut proposal. In Washington, D.C., Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid canceled this year's weeklong Columbus Day recess so the senators can buckle down on health care. (They still get Monday off, though.)

Another obstacle: Columbus Day hasn't transcended its original purpose, as some other holidays have. Sure, Columbus Day celebrates one of the world's great explorers. But Memorial Day and Labor Day also do double duty as summer's official bookends, whereas Columbus Day is stuck in mid-October, halfway between summertime and Christmas. And many Americans apparently prefer more days off around Christmas.

So some employers have turned to "holiday swapping." In Calimesa, Calif., the city council recently voted to swap two holidays -- Columbus Day, and a day honoring labor organizer Cesar Chavez -- for one floating holiday and day off on New Year's Eve.

Mayor Jim Hyatt says the swap is partly a reward to give workers more flexible use of their time off. "Nothing against Columbus Day," he says.

In Wilmette, Ill., teachers and staff are working this Columbus Day, but they get a make-up day off on Dec. 23. Ray Lechner, superintendent of Wilmette District 39, says the reality is that Columbus Day is a low holiday priority. "We would not mess with religious holidays," he says.

Columbus Day itself was created during a holiday switcheroo. Back in 1968, Congress passed the Monday Holiday Law, which not only established Columbus Day on the second Monday of October, but also moved three other federal holidays -- Memorial Day, Veteran's Day and Washington's Birthday (a.k.a Presidents' Day) -- so that they always fell on Mondays, too. And the golden age of three-day weekends was born.

The fact that this year's holiday falls on the actual date that Columbus is believed to have landed is mere coincidence. It won't happen again until 2015, assuming the holiday exists.

A spokesman for the Knights of Columbus, the fraternal society founded in 1882 with the explorer's name, said: "So far as we're concerned, it's quite obviously an appropriate holiday."

Columbus Day used to be a big deal in Columbus, Ohio. But it has been 11 years since the city had an official parade for its namesake, in part because of the controversy swirling around Columbus. There were fireworks and a beauty contest.

"It was the biggest parade in town," says Joseph Contino, a local who flies tanker jets for the national guard and is trying to refuel the idea of celebrating the big day with a big parade.

The city isn't helping, Mr. Contino says. "Their reaction is as if it was the Ku Klux Klan."

A city official says that's not right. "The mayor thinks a parade is a great idea and thinks that the Italian community should take the lead on that," says Dan Williamson, a spokesman for Mayor Michael B. Coleman.

"It would be stupid to pretend there is no controversy around Christopher Columbus," he adds. But the mayor of Columbus isn't taking sides.

The holiday isn't under threat everywhere. New York City's longtime Columbus Day parade will still be marching up Fifth Avenue this year, as it has since 1929. The bond market takes the day off, too.

But 22 states don't give their employees the day off, according to the Council of State Governments. And in other places, Columbus Day is under attack. "We're going after state governments to drop this holiday for whatever reason they come up with," said Mike Graham, founder of United Native America, a group fighting for a federal holiday honoring Native Americans.

His group's agenda: Rename Columbus Day "Italian Heritage Day" and put it somewhere else on the calendar, then claim the second Monday in October as "Native American Day." South Dakota already calls it that.

Other organizations want to rename the day "Indigenous Peoples' Day," as several California cities, including Berkeley, have done.

Columbus's defenders aren't prepared to watch their hero's holiday sail off the edge of the earth. They say he should be celebrated for risking his life to explore the world and for forging modern ties between Europe and the Americas.

His supporters acknowledge Columbus took slaves back to Spain and opened the door to conquistadors who killed Native Americans. But much of the criticism is built on "judging a 16th century man by 21st century standards," says Dona De Sanctis of the Order Sons of Italy in America, a group of half a million Italian-Americans that tries to defend Columbus' legacy.

At Brown University, the rename-the-holiday activists "stressed this was against Columbus, but not Italian-Americans," says Reiko Koyama, a junior who led the effort to persuade the school to change the name to "Fall Weekend." Brown happens to be in Rhode Island, a state with the largest proportion of Italian-Americans in the U.S.

Ground zero of the Columbus battle has been Colorado, home to the nation's first official Columbus holiday about a century ago. Columbus Day parades in Denver have faced acrimonious protests for much of the past decade. Marchers have been on the receiving end of dismembered dolls and fake blood strewn across the parade route. Dozens of protesters have been arrested over the years.

This year, the attacks took a new twist: A prankster sent an email to local media -- purporting to be from parade organizers -- saying the event had been canceled.

"I consider it much more than a hoax. This is a personal attack on me," says Richard SaBell, president of the Denver Columbus Day Parade Committee. "As in years past, we are undeterred. The parade will not be stopped."

My opinion? Good riddance. Yeah, sure, he apparently discovered the Americas.
But this also helped bring about the wiping out of tens of cultures through disease, bigotry, and sheer greed. Even if that's not taken into account, however, the fact is that it's more of a world history subject than an American history subject, unlike all of the other non-religious holidays out there. I'm pretty sure we're the only country that celebrates the 4th of July as Independence Day, for instance.

A little news story featuring our band!

2009-10-11T08:08:00.000-07:00

Mr. Brooks is my awesome band director, not to mention the guy with the SPIKED MULLET in high school (remember that? Yeeesh).

Mark is not only a tuba player, but he's our tuba runner during pregame (a tradition that many, many college bands, including UNLV, have is to have at least one tuba player run around the field during pregame) AND he drives the band truck with all of our large equipment in it.

Also, just for the lulz, this is what happens when cameramen get too close to their quarry:

I've had cameramen on the field in high school during Half-Time Show Review, and they're freaking annoying.

...don't worry, an actual post will be coming up soon, probably in several hours or so.

I kick so much ass.

2009-10-09T15:06:00.000-07:00

While in Computer Science, alongside taking my notes and following the teacher on the computer, I coded a program that would randomly choose a team of six Poke'mon for me using Python's import.random and random.randint commands. And it WORKS.

...now I just need to figure out how to keep it from choosing the same number more than once. Any ideas, computer guys?

My code is this, required indents not included:

import random

for team in xrange(6):
chosen = random.randint(1, 15)
if chosen == 1:
print "Kala-Nemi"
elif chosen == 2:
print "Sentinel"
elif chosen == 3:
print "Aeon"
elif chosen == 4:
print "Leventhan"
elif chosen == 5:
print "Colossus"
elif chosen == 6:
print "Samus Aran"
elif chosen == 7:
print "Kagegami"
elif chosen == 8:
print "Grell"
elif chosen == 9:
print "Jack Frost"
elif chosen == 10:
print "EVA-01"
elif chosen == 11:
print "Kenshin"
elif chosen == 12:
print "Madame Red"
elif chosen == 13:
print "Takoyaki"
elif chosen == 14:
print "Ninetails"
elif chosen == 15:
print "Enigma"
else:
print chosen

Oh shit!

2009-10-09T06:08:00.000-07:00

Obama has somehow won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize
President Obama was awakened before 6 a.m. today with good news on the international front: He'd won the Nobel Peace Prize.

The surprise announcement came as Obama, whose achievements during his first nine months in the White House have been largely domestic, is wrestling with perhaps his biggest foreign policy challenge: Afghanistan.

Obama has yet to achieve any breakthroughs on the many international efforts he has undertaken: drawing down U.S. involvement in Iraq and beefing it up in Afghanistan, reaching peace in the Middle East, forcing Iran to forego its nuclear program, resetting relations with Russia, improving relations with the Muslim world or reducing the world's supply of nuclear arms.

Yet the Norwegian Nobel Committee picked the 48-year-old president from 205 nominees for his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples." The committee praised Obama's creation of "a new climate in international politics" and said he had returned multilateral diplomacy and institutions like the United Nations to the center of the world stage.

Obama becomes the fourth current or former U.S. president to win the prize, after Theodore Roosevelt in 1906, Woodrow Wilson in 1919 and Jimmy Carter in 2002, long after his presidency had ended. Obama got the news by phone from press secretary Robert Gibbs shortly before 6 a.m. and felt "humbled," the White House said.

Since taking office, Obama has juggled many things at once — from wars abroad to recession at home. Under his belt so far, Obama has won from Congress a bailout of the financial industry and a $787 billion economic stimulus package, undertaken in the winter to help the nation recover from the worst recession since the Great Depression.

Since then, much of his attention has been on other domestic policies, particularly health care, energy and education. But he has mixed in trips to Canada and Mexico, Europe, Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. He is due to travel to China, Japan, South Korea and Singapore next month.

His biggest setback on the international scene so far came last week, when Chicago lost the 2016 Summer Olympics to Rio de Janeiro — despite Obama's last-minute trip to Copenhagen to lobby for his home town.

Obama came to office pledging to substitute diplomacy for military might when possible. He was a critic of former President George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq, and he said he would refocus the Pentagon on the war in Afghanistan.

He appointed his chief rival for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Rodham Clinton, as secretary of state. The two of them in turn named special envoys to key hot spots around the world, notably the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Obama's most dramatic moment on the world scene came while he was still a candidate: a speech in Berlin which drew an estimated 200,000 people. His crowds overseas have been smaller as president, but he has impressed foreigners from Prague to Cairo with calls for nuclear disarmament and a new relationship with the Muslim world.

Perhaps the biggest change Obama brought to the White House after the Bush administration was a willingness to work through international organizations such as the U.N., International Monetary Fund and World Bank to solve world problems. Bush was disdained by many overseas, including the Nobel committee, for preferring to go it alone.

A Pew Research Poll released in July showed that the image of the U.S. "improved markedly in most parts of the world," largely because of confidence and trust abroad in Obama..

Most of Obama's work came after nominations for the Nobel prize were closed, however. To be considered, he had to be nominated by Feb. 1, less than two weeks after taking office.

The plaudit appeared to be a slap at Bush from a committee that harshly criticized him for resorting to largely unilateral military action in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

The committee chairman said after awarding the 2002 prize to former Democratic President Jimmy Carter, for his mediation in international conflicts, that it should be seen as a "kick in the leg" to the Bush administration's hard line in the buildup to the Iraq war.

Five years later, the committee honored Bush's adversary in the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore, for his campaign to raise awareness about global warming.

Rather than recognizing concrete achievement, the 2009 prize appeared intended to support initiatives that have yet to bear fruit: reducing the world stock of nuclear arms, easing American conflicts with Muslim nations and strengthening the U.S. role in combating climate change.

"Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future," Thorbjoern Jagland, chairman of the Nobel Committee said. "In the past year Obama has been a key person for important initiatives in the U.N. for nuclear disarmament and to set a completely new agenda for the Muslim world and East-West relations."

He added that the committee endorsed "Obama's appeal that 'Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.'"

The Nelson Mandela Foundation welcomed the award on behalf of its founder Nelson Mandela, who shared the 1993 Peace Prize with then-South African President F.W. DeKlerk for their efforts at ending years of apartheid and laying the groundwork for a democratic country.

"We trust that this award will strengthen his commitment, as the leader of the most powerful nation in the world, to continue promoting peace and the eradication of poverty," the foundation said.

In his 1895 will, Alfred Nobel stipulated that the peace prize should go "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses."

Unlike the other Nobel Prizes, which are awarded by Swedish institutions, he said the peace prize should be given out by a five-member committee elected by the Norwegian Parliament. Sweden and Norway were united under the same crown at the time of Nobel's death.

The committee has taken a wide interpretation of Nobel's guidelines, expanding the prize beyond peace mediation to include efforts to combat poverty, disease and climate change.

There are so many flaws in this that I don't even know where to begin.

I thought it couldn't get colder...

2009-10-08T20:40:00.000-07:00

I was wrong.

More on that later.

Today in Pre-Calc, I had a stunning revelation: I actually like trigonometry. Somehow. I totally despised it last year, yet I actually find myself enjoying it now.

I'm already starting to get famous at the Terrace Dining Center. The staff are starting to refer to me as the "Swiss Burger Girl" now; I guess I'm named as such because I order a cheeseburger with swiss every single day. I always have a salad with it, though! And a bowl of fruit, too! Honest! And their burgers aren't even really greasy, either - best damn burgers I've had in years.

University band was great, as always. Our concert is a week from today. Apparently, one of the patrons who comes to every last concert (and thus always gets free complimentary tickets), is looking forward to The Firebird. No pressure!

Because we were able to secure the Memorial Stadium (the outdoor football field that the games were played out until the Alerus Center opened in 2001), we had rehearsal today rather than tomorrow. This not only meant that I didn't have rehearsal tomorrow, but that I also had to go to dinner straight after University Band, right before going to Marching Band.

Luckily, this meant that I got to go to the special Native American dinner that was going on during the dinner hours.

Damn. Good. Food.

Plate on the top left has a breadish thing whose name I can't remember at the moment; also on the plate is a hot, yummy raspberry sauce with whole raspberries in it...I think. They looked like raspberries.

Plate on the top right had several things. Clockwise from top: A medley of rice, corn, and other grains, really yummy; baked acorn squash, also really good, not to mention filling; and ~~buffalo~~ bison stew, which was really good. Bison tastes like beef, but is thicker and chewier, in other words, denser; and real, homemade (like everything else here, it was made by local Native American tribes) mashed potatoes.

Plate on the bottom is a slice of the best damn pumpkin pie I've ever had.

And a glass of iced tea and a glass of water.

Great, great food.

While I was eating, I was reading Monster Hunter International and found what had to have been a Sluggy Freelance reference.

He had a stubby Russian Krinkov slung from his chest, and apparently his team's logo was a mini-lop bunny armed with a switchblade.

Epic win.

To prepare for marching band, I brought my normal gloves (for when we were NOT marching with our instruments) and my marching gloves (because I play the one instrument that has holes instead of keys, and the cloth from the gloves would jam up the keys around the holes), and wore two coats.

After a pain-in-the-ass portion where I ended up going to the wrong entrance of the stadium (because no one said ANYTHING about which entrance to go to, and I wasn't the only person arriving a little late because of it; I only found out because I texted a Drum Major, asking where everyone was), we learned the rest of our new show drill-wise.

Everything was nice and fine until we actually practiced with our instruments. I soon found that no matter what I did, I was essentially screwed when it came to playing in the cold, because when that sun sunk far enough, it got cold. It was the first time ever that my bare fingertips stuck to the metal keys of my instrument. I might as well have not worn gloves; by the time we did a run of Pregame and Halftime, my fingers were stiff and halfway numb, despite the fact that I was indeed wearing my marching gloves. This did not bode well for what we had to do after the rehearsal.

A while before our rehearsal started, an event was going on for Potato Bowl at a local park, the french-fry feed. After we finished rehearsing for an hour, everyone came from that french-fry feed to the Memorial Stadium for the annual Potato Bowl celebration.

People we had to play for. These guys are freaking dedicated to be willing to sit on metal bleachers in thirty fucking degrees to watch us play.

If you squint, you can see 150 people!

It was torture. There is nothing more frustrating to me than trying to will the fingers on my right hand to move, dammit! and finding that my pinky can't even stretch far enough to completely press the keys down. Sure, this happened yesterday, but we weren't performing in front of people. I played the best I could, but I could barely hit my high and low notes due to the nearly nonexistent response of my far colder right hand (on a clarinet, left hand plays the top half and lower left keys, right hand plays the bottom half and upper and lower right keys).

Oh yeah, did I mention that one of the sax players said that there's going to be an inch of snow before Saturday?

Afterwards, the football came on and said a few words, and then there was the surprisingly impressive fireworks show. Guess who paid for the fireworks? Rydell. The same people who lent us "our" marching band truck for free, the same people I played for a while back. They must sponsor all of the local events, it seems. One of the other clarinet players, Gun Chick, guesstimated that the cost of the fireworks was around $20k. No wonder people like them.

While the fireworks show was going, I was taking pictures. I got pretty good at it once I was able to compensate for the pause between me pressing the button and the camera actually taking the picture, and the pause between hearing the sound of the fireworks being launched in the air before blowing up.

I obviously took this one near the end of the show.

This one, too.

After that, I walked back to my dorm with Gun Chick so I could show her what little "winter" gear I had, because she offered to help me out and take me shopping on Sunday for winter gear, so she could know what I needed.

A side note: this clarinet player is named Gun Chick because she uses and knows how to fire guns. She has her own set of "earmuffs" (yeah, right, they look like oversized headphones) that she wears at the shooting range. She's also heard of Monster Hunter International. I was so damn shocked today to find out that she'd actually heard about it (because I SWEAR, even here, no one knows what the hell I talk about unless it's band or class).

Maaaan, it's only October. This is December weather, Las-Vegas-wise.

Now it's time for your obligatory random video.

In my opinion, however, the Persona 4 version (which has major game spoilers) is superior:

And now it begins...

2009-10-07T20:37:00.000-07:00

It was really freaking cold today. Unfortunately, I had to march in it. My hands were collective frozen icicles.

To make it worse, this means I have to get winter gear. Somehow. Without a car or anything. Wonderful.

I think I'll go to the nearby thrift store. Yay.

Also, the forecast for Saturday is so bad that every last band, including our own, has pulled out of the Potato Bowl parade. Apparently, highs in the low 30s and snow.

Yaaaay.

HAHAHA...oh wait, they're serious.

2009-10-06T19:29:00.000-07:00

One of the few times I'll ever post about things I see in the news.

Duncan, Holder in Chicago to discuss teen violence

CHICAGO (AP) — U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan says he believes Chicago is going to lead a national conversation on how to combat youth violence.

Duncan and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder met with Chicago Mayor Richard Daley on Wednesday to discuss the issue. Afterward, Duncan said he was encouraged by the talk.

The federal officials traveled to Chicago to meet with political and education leaders to discuss youth violence in the wake of the beating death of Derrion Albert, 16. Four teens have been charged in his death.

Duncan and Holder plan to meet privately with students and parents. They'll also hold a news conference with Ron Huberman, who replaced Duncan as chief executive officer of Chicago Public Schools.

Source: USAToday

Good luck with that.

HOLY CRAP!

2009-10-06T17:36:00.000-07:00

Mom has been teasing me the last several weeks by saying that she sent me a "surprise". It hasn't arrived until today.

It has arrived. [/redundancy for the sake of ~~hamminess~~ epicness]

YAAAAAAAAAAAY!

Wait, what's this?

HOLY SHIT!!!!!

Thanks a bunch, mom! :D

...honestly, that's the only thing of note that happened today.

Meh.

2009-10-06T07:20:00.000-07:00

So after two really eventful posts, you get to have a boring one! Because nothing really happened yesterday aside from the fact that I learned how to do something entirely new in computer lab and I'm now good at it (Turtle graphics - or, "drawing things via commands").

Seriously, the only notable thing that happened yesterday was the fact that the weather forecast changed so that we're only getting snow Friday.

Fruit.

2009-10-05T12:13:00.000-07:00

I has it.

...slightly marred by the fact that you can see the cheesecake I also got in the background.

HOCKEY!!!

2009-10-05T06:05:00.000-07:00

Last night was the first hockey game I ever played at.

The call time was 4:30. An hour before, I changed into my uniform so I wouldn't be scrambling around at the last minute.

This didn't matter, for reasons I'm about to explain. All hockey games take place at the Ralph Engelstad Arena. The place is only five or six minutes away from my dorm at most, allowing me to simply walk there as opposed to walking all the way to the Hughes and getting on a bus. The problem is that the place is HUGE and has multiple entrances. Since which entrance the band enters in was never mentioned, I found myself becoming increasingly late as I walked around trying to figure out where to go. I eventually asked an employee, who told me that it was at the opposite end of where I was, through the white gates (closing off a parking lot and what I later found out was a BUS entrance); apparently, I was extremely lucky, because according to band members later on, pretty much no one who works at the Ralph knows where the band comes in because they're mostly volunteers.

After finally getting there, I found out that I was NOT late, despite it being 4:37 or so, because the call time is when the buses leave the Hughes.

About the Ralph itself: first off, everyone calls the Ralph Engelstad Arena (really not sure if I'm spelling this right) "the Ralph" for short. Second off, it's essentially a huge ring, all lined with restaurants such as TCBY, Little Caesar's, and Subway. Third off, its FUCKING HUGE. I mean HUGE. The hockey arena can hold around 12,000 - that's as much as the Alerus. These guys have a hockey arena as big as their football stadium.

Hockey band and hockey in general is far different than football, I soon learned. I myself have never watched a hockey game in my life, so I had no idea what was going to go down.

About hockey:

1.) There is no "halftime". Upon asking fellow band members when halftime was, I promptly got laughed at. A clarinet player sitting in front of me said that my question was the "comment of the night". Hockey games are divided by three 20-minute periods separated by two 15-minute intermissions. Luckily, given the style of the game, the clock is going almost continuously. Hockey is a very fast-paced sport, and it's not divided into "plays" like football - they don't stop every ten seconds. This makes for a game that, in my opinion, is far more fun to watch. The rules are also simpler, too, basically consisting of "GET THAT PUCK IN THE NET!!!".

2.) Players can switch in and out with other waiting players at will. Fascinating.

3.) The hockey arena was oddly quiet, despite having an attendance of around 10,700. You could actually hear what other people say next to you, and even the hockey players themselves as they play.

4.) These people really, really care about their hockey.

After signing in, I followed other band members to our seats, which were really, really awesome ones. It was close, but not too close for comfort. We had a decent amount of free time before we had to play before the game, so I made a mental note to bring my DS next time.

Before the game, we basically played the fight song twice as the players came out for a little pre-game practice. And then we went back to waiting.

Remember #4 in that list above? They really do care about their hockey. The opening theatrics for the game are far more elaborate than that for the homecoming football game. Videos on the display about how awesome the team has been over the years. All players getting individually mentioned and called out, with PYROTECHNICS. It's really elaborate. By the way, I was rooting for the player with the last name of "VandeVelde", because he knows exactly what it's like to have a long last name like mine. One of the players, ironically one of the Defense ones, had a last name of "Blood".

What had to have been one of the most outright weirdest things ever was the fact that both the American AND CANADIAN national anthems were sung. Ok, ok, so there was a Canadian team there. But we aren't in freaking Canada, alright? That's like having games in Las Vegas start out with the Mexican anthem...which would not have surprised me, actually.

And then we played more fight song. And then the puck toss, done by a guy who I've heard of as "Danny" who has been doing it for 44 seasons. This guy looked seventy. Talk about dedication.

And then the game started. We were against Manitoba. And, frankly, we were getting our asses handed to us. The score was 0 - 1 by the end of the first ~~quarter~~ period. There were lots of missed shots on our end, something that other band members attributed to having a lot of freshman on the team this year.

We actually get to relax during intermissions, since stuff happens. The first intermission had two teams of little kids play a bit until one of them scored a goal. Like, seven-year-olds. I can't even ice skate and I'm 18! There was also a bit where a random person was chosen to answer three questions. He was practically right next to the band, so we were yelling answers. He didn't get the first one right, despite our screaming, but listened to us the second time and did. However, that was his undoing. For the third question, some members of the band intentionally yelled out the wrong answer to a really obvious question ("True or false: financial aid covers online classes")...he went with it and got it wrong. For every question he got right, he'd use a provided giant slingshot and fling a T-shirt to the audience.

And then there was music, commercials, the whole shebang. The second period started. We scored a goal, resulting in a tie, but in our minds, we were still losing.

If we're losing by the end of the second period, members of the band do something special during the second intermission.

Two members from each section go out of the arena proper and line up in two lines, parade formation, out in the commercial areas with all of the concessions. Remember how I mentioned that it was a ring? This is what they call a "fish bowl": in those two lines, they march once around the arena, playing three fight songs in succession until they're done. This greatly boosts morale, as demonstrated by the final period.

Because we totally kicked their asses.

When a goal is scored by UND, an air horn goes off, fireworks go off, and the entire arena goes crazy. We play the fight song, and the next song up is instantly the "beer song" as opposed to the tune we originally had ready.

Imagine this happening six times in the last period.

Manitoba wasn't happy. Two fights broke out near the end of the game between the teams, which, I found out, is one of the main reasons why people come to the games to begin with.

The final score was 7 - 1...too bad it was an exhibition game.

At the end of the game, we play the fight song AGAIN, then a beer-based tune, then "Get it on". Always. Unfortunately, this totally ruined my plans to go to one of the TCBYs at the end of the game and get a mint ice cream cone, because they were closed by the time we finished. Also, the President and his wife came. DAMN, they're dedicated! I see them all the time now, it seems.

After the game, I put away my clarinet, walked back to the dorm, changed my shirt, and walked to Wilkerson to get dinner. I came back with my food this time and ate in front of my computer, watching anime music videos and getting increasingly tired. After a while, I opted to brush my teeth and go to sleep.

Sorry about the lack of pictures, I forgot to bring both my cell AND my camera. I promise I'll bring them this Friday, though! Really!

Homecoming

2009-10-04T07:53:00.000-07:00

I was really tired when I came home, so I couldn't write or post this last night.

Yesterday was Homecoming. As a result, I was pretty much in my marching band uniform all day long.

It was a cloudy day, with the forecast predicting scattered showers. Of course, since this is North Dakota, this means that we WILL get rain. This became evident as we were leaving the Hughes Art Center (the band's headquarters, if you will) to get to the end of the road where we would start marching for the Homecoming Parade, which happened to start at 10:30. We were in uniform, with instruments, when it started raining outside.

While we were getting situated, this group of Air Force ROTC people marched by, singing cadences. As soon as they passed us to get to their designated spot, they started singing one about us! It went something like "Here is the marching band [echo], here is the marching band [echo], best band in all the land [echo], I want to play saxophone [echo]!" Pretty nice of them.

Once the parade actually started, we basically marched down University Avenue (the main road for the college) in a block of four people across, alternating between three fight songs, while it was raining. It was pretty cool marching through hordes of people cheering us on.

Our part of the parade was pretty short, and we were done at 11:00 at the latest. The buses at the Hughes to go to the Alerus for the Homecoming game were supposed to leave at 1:15, which gave us some time to do stuff. Myself, I got a ride back to the Hughes, completely changed out of uniform, and walked over to the nearby Wilkerson Hall to get a huge lunch (one bowl cereal will tide me over if I'm just sitting in classes, but if I'm marching, forget it). Two slices of pizza, a chocolate chip pancake (they were serving brunch food), scrambled eggs, two little sausages, a salad, three slices of banana-nut bread, three cups of water, one cup of iced tea. I was STARVING.

After getting back, I still had at least an hour left, so I took my sweet time getting into uniform. When 1:15 rolled around, we were back in full uniform and grabbed our stuff so we could get on the bus. I had to stand and hold onto a rail (the buses used were the same ones used for the shuttles all over campus), since there were so many people.

We had SEVERAL performances to do at the Alerus. First, we played for the arriving football team - we marched over to the tailgating area, playing fight songs as we went, to where the football team's bus eventually stopped. While waiting, we played a few stand tunes that were thankfully already memorized. When the team came walking through, we played the fight song. Then, we marched back to our normal gate.

We were served lunch (or, rather, they had a line for serving lunch) after we got back to the still-empty stands and took off our jackets (the main reason why we'd be frying in our uniforms), but I didn't eat anything because I was still full from my actual lunch. I did have a cup of water, though, and I went to the bathroom. Yes, were allowed to eat in uniform.

Afterwards, we put our jackets back on, grabbed our instruments, and went back out the same gate so we could play for the tailgaters, which was pretty much the same procedure as playing for the team.

Right after that, we went back for pregame. Here's what happens in pregame: we high-run onto the field in straight lines, in step, so we can get into our box formation. Then we play the opening fanfare, with accompanying movements. Then we march forward (meaning "to the left" if you're in the press box, since we're facing that way), eventually spelling out something along the lines of N and D (since we're only about 120 people and the field isn't large enough, we can't do a really large "UND"). Then we mark time till the end of the song. Then we march forward for a little bit, then we get into a formation spelling "SIOUX". We start the fanfare for the next fight song while marking time for eight counts, then take sixteen steps as we play it, then mark time as we finish it. After that, we turn around and make another formation (no clue what this one says) as we play yet ANOTHER fight song, in the middle of which we turn around from back field and then STAND (NO MARK TIME!!!) as we finish it. Then, we'd play the main fight song twice for the football players coming onto the field.

After that, we're SUPPOSED to play the National Anthem, but the stupid South Dakota band (that's who we were up against, the South Dakota Coyotes) decided to go into their long-ass fight song, resulting in my band director standing up on the podium for a while; the announcer DID say to stand up and remove your hats, but the band kept going anyway, with pretty much everyone in the stands staring at them like they were a bunch of morons. Once that was over, we finally got to play our anthem, then, shortly afterwards, played the fight song off of the field (meaning, part of the way through we turn back field, then part of the way through we turn left field, then march off as we finish it), followed by us jogging along the sidelines, high-fiving hands both large and small that were reaching down to us because we're so goddamn awesome. I had to jump to reach some of the smaller ones, haha. Too short.

We got to go in the stands after that. Since I was wearing a black Pride shirt, I got to take off my hat and jacket, which allowed my overheating body to cool down after a while. Our band is on the backfield side, right behind the opposing football team. Of course, our drumline was at the bottom, which could only mean one thing: insults. The same goateed tenor player that was the ringleader for the insults at the Texas Tech game was hurling them again, primarily at the coach, who had apparently never learned that you shouldn't be ON THE ACTUAL FIELD during the game; "GET OFF THE FIELD, COACH!" was one hurled often, as well as "QUIT WHINING, COACH!" when he'd start protesting something that happened.

This game was a flag-happy one; later on, in the third quarter, I commented to one of the saxophone players in the row behind me that the player got flagged for breathing at the wrong time. Every five plays or so, there was some sort of flag being thrown on the field; they were usually personal offenses, but it was still damn annoying.

Speaking of the row behind me, since it was homecoming, we had some alumni with us, who played with us at the stands and during halftime.

In the middle of one of the earlier quarters of the game, some high-accomplishing alumni were recognized on the field to be given the Sioux Award, including KAREN FREAKING NYBERG. Do you know who she is? DO YOU KNOW WHO SHE IS?! She's an ASTRONAUT at NASA WHO WAS ON THE SPACE SHUTTLE DISCOVERY. While in zero-G, she unfurled a UND banner; I think I've seen this picture twenty gazillion times now. I WAS IN THE SAME ROOM AS HER! OMFG!

At halftime, the South Dakota band got on the field to do their pregame show. Frankly...I don't think they were that good. Despite being as large or larger than us, they weren't that loud. Also, according to one of the colorguard members later on, their flag team's work wasn't as elaborate as ours. Also, they had a baton twirler. It seems that everyone except us has a baton twirler.

After that, we got on the field and promptly blew them away. We did the same show we did at Texas Tech, with a few differences. The first song, We're an American Band, went normally, but after that, we had the alumni join us to play "When I'm Sixty-Four" by The Beatles (hate hate HATE that song!!!) and the song that normally goes in that slot, I Don't Care (NOT the Apocalyptica song). Followed after that by The Pretender, in which we'd actually march. In the third quarter, my band director said that, at the time, he apparently was thinking along the lines of "Holy shit!" when he heard the first note for American Band.

The last half of the game was more eventful than the first; South Dakota has three yards from a touchdown with a first down, but they never got to score on us. Throughout the game, every punt of theirs was blocked by our team, our offense always ran for a bit longer than theirs, etc.. In the end, the score was 27 - 12, with us winning. The attendance for this game was the highest attendance for the opening game on record.

After the game officially ended, we went back on the field AGAIN and played, while standing in an arc, We're an American Band, When I'm Sixty Four, and I Don't Care, followed by Alma Mater, which we apparently play after every game. Afterwards, my band director did our normal endgame talk with us, from which I found out that we're supposed to have SNOW in a few days (which my forecast on Google confirms - Tuesday night, chance of snow, Wednesday, chance of light snow). It begins. GAAAAH.

After THAT, a handful of us had NO clue where to go to find the bus. We went back to our normal gate, but to no avail. Eventually, we figured out that we had to go to one of the gates in the front to catch our bus. I finally got to sit.

I got a ride home from one of the trumpet players. Since I got back at 8, I thought that I'd might head on over to Wilkerson to eat dinner, but after the shower, I decided to brush my teeth and go to bed. Needless to say, I was out like a light.

Here are some miscellaneous photos I got to take from my cell during the game (my normal pants were in my hat box, which was with me; my cell was in one of the pant pockets):

Look at all of those people!

There's people there, too!

Band members in the stands. My band director's in there, too.

I got to watch this game live for FREE!

Good luck finding videos of us on YouTube - I sure as hell couldn't. I e-mailed my band director about it, so maybe I might get to show you exactly what I do.

Speaking of YouTube, here's your random video. This is a glitch in the N64 game Goldeneye (yes, a James Bond game), widely considered to be THE game that made multiplayer in the First Person Shooter genre popular on home consoles. Halo can thank this game for laying down the groundwork to its success.

The N64 used cartridges inserted on the top of the console (a decision that led to its downfall in the face of the disc-based PS1); if Goldeneye was only partially inserted in the console, this results:

Two weeks after this was posted to the Japanese video hosting site Nico Nico Douga, a user named Chomimen re-edited the footage and set it to the J-pop song Promise, which then spawned the "get down" meme, prompting videos of animations and anime characters "getting down" the world over.

Minneapolis Day 2 and Some Major Catching Up

2009-10-01T20:03:00.000-07:00

So, second day in Minneapolis. Found that my DS's alarm went off, but I couldn't hear it because my sound was off. Luckily, I was waking up every thirty minutes, so I didn't oversleep. After taking a shower, eating breakfast, and packing up my stuff, I got on the bus with everyone else so we could go to two of the museums on campus.

Our bus stopped at the art museum, which looked like a really twisted metal building that defied the laws of architecture and physics. I didn't get a picture of it, sorry. Didn't think of it at the time.

Our other choice was the natural history museum, which I was far more interested in. Unfortunately, University of Minnesota's campus is HUGE. We got lost on the way to the Natural History Museum. While we were on our way there, this HUGE squirrel ran past us. I thought it was a cat at first, it was so big. Unfortunately, since my cameraphone has no zoom, I couldn't get close enough to take a decent picture of it before it ran off.

We found out that the Natural History Museum would open in another half an hour or so right after we got there. To top it off, it started drizzling a little bit - bad news for my DS and my purse. While we were sitting there, I got my Gallade, Kenshin, up a level or so.

When it finally opened, I went around reading and looking at everything. All of the taxidermies (is that what it is?) were obtained in the late 1800s to early 1900s, as pointed out in some of the text that stated that it doesn't happen in the wild as originally thought (two stuffed female bears together with their cubs, for instance). What especially stuck in mind was the golden eagle. I wonder why that's not America's mascot, it's really big and pretty.

There was also an exhibit going on about the national parks. Very fascinating, and it was very cool that I recognized the parks I've been to (Zion, Grand Canyon, Bryce, which is my favorite).

Since we had to get back in time to catch the bus, I left, luckily after I had seen everything. We didn't get lost this time, thankfully.

We headed home after that. I actually slept most of the way, and, after lunch, someone popped in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. And then I slept some more. On the last leg of our journey, I watched more Evangelion and made it to the end of episode 20 before we got back. And I totally died when I got home.

While I was gone, it seems that the weather gods decided that it was now fall and they decided to make everything a hell of a lot colder. The temperatures were way lower now - as a matter of fact, Monday's low was 33 degrees F. I found myself always wearing my jacket now.

Monday was only notable in that we started learning drill for our NEW show. Yes, we actually learn more than one show over the course of the season. This show in total has 31 pages. It was also very windy. We're talking twenty-to-thirty miles-per-hour winds here.

Oh, it was also notable because I had another computer lab...which I of course finished long before my time was up.

Tuesday, the usual. University Band was of course awesome. Since I had time, I wanted to check out another Studio Gainax (they made Evangelion) anime, a totally insane one called Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. GIANT ROBOTS WITH DRILLS AND POINTY MANLY SUNGLASSES. It's basically "insane" and "epic" turned up to 20. I got to watch the first episode on Youtube in Japanese, but the rest I can't watch due to crappy U.S. copyright laws. Once I have more money, I'll gladly go buy the first set. Crazy shit. And Kamina's drool-worthy anyway. Here's the opening to the first season:

Guy without a shirt? With the sword and cape? That's Kamina.

Wednesday was cold and windy. In band, we learned more drill, got all of it in for the first song. And then we had the awesomeness that was anime club. Since the person with Black Lagoon wasn't around yet, we watched the other anime first. Pretear is actually kinda nice to watch now, and Peacemaker had noticeably less southern "Kansai" accent in it (thank Samus). When we got to Black Lagoon...just, holy crap. There is a very good reason why this series has its own Crowning Moment of Awesome page on TVTropes (and an entry on the Badass page).

Let these two videos explain exactly why this series is awesome (English voices, we watched it in Japanese in club):

...yeah, Black Lagoon is freaking awesome. Oh yeah, and according to this video:

They like to say "fuck" a LOT in the English dub. Keep in mind that the main chick, Revy, is voiced by the same person who voices Dawn in Poke'mon.

Yesterday, which was Thursday, was really, really rainy. Unfortunately, I found that my jacket isn't very waterproof - something I learned as I walked back from the local pharmacy. University Band was awesome as always. We actually received our program for the concert today - and my name was in it. I took pictures, but I haven't had time to blur out my last name or the names of anyone else, so here's the front cover:

MY NAME'S INSIDE OF THIS!

Today, I actually had no Space Studies, which gave me about an extra 45 mins of free time. Band today was in the Alerus Center, our indoor football stadium:

Not even the University of Minnesota has an indoor stadium! Ours has a capacity of around 12,000.

The whole "lens flare" thing because of my inferior camera really makes the inside look cool. Well, cooler than it already is.

Surprisingly, their turf isn't squishy like at Sam Boyd Stadium in Vegas. It's soft enough to nullify the jolting effect of my heels hitting the ground, though. I also found out that pregame is going to totally exhaust me - we have to high-run onto the field, which is not good for someone who is an asthmatic. And then play right after that. Good luck with that one.

The alumni will be performing with us during part of halftime. Did I mention that tomorrow's game is Homecoming?

Speaking of band stuff, I got my hockey jersey today.

Don't ya just love corporate sponsorship?

This picture I took with my actual camera, since I found the USB cord for it earlier today. Still blurry, though. Damn unsteady hands.

Oh yeah, I also got an e-mail from my band director containing a link to pictures from Texas Tech.

Catch-up and Minneapolis, Day One!

2009-09-28T20:55:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the critical lack of updates. I've been extremely busy and hectic. The main problem is that I'm simply too tired at night to update, which sucks. But I have to update at night, or else other things can happen after I make my post, which would also suck. So it's kind of a catch-22.

Also, this was supposed to be posted yesterday.

Nothing of real note happened on Thursday, aside from the fact that I was yet again really, really happy that I was in University Band.

About that class: I'm finding myself playing things that I never thought I'd be able to play well before, despite purposefully leaving my music in one of the cubbies in the music room and not practicing it at home (which I'm not allowed to do anyway). One of the songs we're doing is this rather fast march in 6/8 time; because no director wants to conduct in six, they conduct in two instead, rendering the eighth notes as triplets (and the notes are bridged together in groups of three to help this). So it's a rather fast march with eighth notes that are rather fast triplets. And yet I didn't have any problems with it. Hell, I'm not having many problems at all with all of the music, despite the fact that I've only had a few weeks with them, tops.

I think this is partly due to the fact that, no offense Durango High concert band, I'm in a group with people better or as good as me, which kind of rubs off. Our rehearsals sound absolutely wonderful, even though it's practice and we may not be playing the song absolutely perfectly. I always feel extremely happy when I play with this group and I feel really uplifted after rehearsal.

On Friday, something bizarre happened. After getting back from the obligatory high woodwind sectional (there was no marching band that day), I came back home and got on the computer. Strangely, G.I. Jane wasn't around, and I hadn't seen her all day. She mentioned something about training somewhere over the weekend for ROTC, but she didn't mention anything about leaving on Friday - I was under the impression that she was leaving on Saturday, not Friday . This posed a problem when I exited my room to go to the bathroom and found myself locked out of my own room. The instant I closed the door, I found out what I did, because I caught a fleeting glimpse of my keys hanging around the inside door knob as I did so.
That really, really sucked. I sat outside of my door for a while, cursing my luck, because none of the RAs seemed to be around to let me in. Eventually, after about half an hour or so, two girls from a room three doors away from mine passed me on the way to the first floor and asked what was going on. After telling them what happened, they said something along the lines of "That sucks...wanna go to Wal-Mart with us?". Of course, I accepted, because I will seize the opportunity to go shopping for stuff I need if I have transportation to the store. At Wal-Mart, I was able to get a down jacket (for $15!!!), which I chose after I asked them if it was thick enough to be a viable winter coat and big enough to fit things under it. I also picked up some flossers and, of course, my obligatory Poke'mon booster pack. Legends Awakened series, got a holographic Kyogre and a Groudon (finally!). I opened the packaging before I thought about taking a picture, so you'll never to see it whole in my hands, haha.

Geez, I've been wanting to get this and Groudon for ages now! Also, sorry for the blurriness.

When we got back, though, none of the RAs were around. We tried to fix this by killing more time somewhere else. Every Friday and Saturday night, there is an event that goes on at the Memorial Union by the name of Nightlife, in which movies are shown (that's how Sam and I saw Up and Star Trek a few weeks ago), crafts are made, and general fun is to be had. Tonight, one of the things they were doing was painting flower pots and getting our own plant.

Recognize the art direction?

Inspired heavily by Okami. See, there's a Guardian Sapling right there, and the sun...

Here's the plant I chose. Reminds me of Vegas.

...of course, I realized yesterday that I have no idea what to do with it when I come to Las Vegas in the winter.

When we got back, the RAs were still not back yet. A good hour was spent trying to call anyone, but to no avail. The Residence Hall Director for this dorm had left her phone in her room - this I found out after trying to call it while I was standing outside of her door and I heard it ringing. And no one else was picking up on the other phones, despite me calling them at least seven times.
Which left me out of luck. I spent the next two and a half hours working on a five-hundred-piece jigsaw puzzle that the dorm was collectively working on in passing in the lounge. When one of the RAs was finally found, it was midnight. At that time, I was too damn tired to make a blog post like I originally planned, especially since I had to get up at six for the Honors trip, the first day of which happened yesterday. More on that now.

Yesterday, we started our trip in Honors. My day started with me getting up at six in the morning so I could get ready and pack. I wanted to leave at 7, but ended up leaving at 7:30. Oddly, my suitcase seemed as full as it was for the Texas Tech trip, despite the fact that we were only staying in a hotel for one night and the bus ride was only five hours one-way.
It was really foggy as we left, which was a sight to behold. There is no fog in Las Vegas, only crappy air quality caused by cars and the like and dust because of construction.

Remember that Neon Genesis Evangelion boxed set that my friend let me borrow? I finally put it to great use on the bus. Granted, I could only watch four or so episodes (23 or minutes long each) before my battery was close to death, but it was damn worth it. Sometimes things that are famous or popular are overrated, like Halo. But other times, it's easy to see why it is so. Case in point, Evangelion, which is unbelievably freaking awesome as of the ninth episode I've watched (out of 26 or so). One of things that stuns me about it is how great the animation is - especially since this was 1994 and they really didn't have ultra-advanced computer programs to animate for them. The animation is unbelievably fluid. I also like the characters - say what you will about Shinji, but I really don't see the "emo kid" stereotype that people always foist upon him in popular culture. JUST BECAUSE HE HAS MENTAL PROBLEMS DOESN'T MEAN HE'S EMO, OK? LEAVE SHINJI ALOOOONE!

...

Also, the Evas? Freaking awesome. Giant biomechanical monstrous humanoids...so damn cool.

I also started noticing some similarities between Evangelion and Persona 3, to the point where, instead of thinking that Persona 3 was one big seinen anime homage, it's one big Evangelion homage. Psychologically messed up protagonist? Check. Periodically spawning masked mega creatures that are the bane of humanity? Check. Protagonists are the only characters that can kill said creatures? Check. Said weapon to kill said creatures induces psychological trauma? Check. Psychological and religious motifs? Check. Protagonists have parent issues? Check. Main character's "weapon" goes berserk and tears apart the first enemy it faces? Check. See the pattern? That's why so many people like to post "Personagelion" videos on YouTube.

Speaking of Evangelion...

Amusingly enough, this is actually better than the anime, despite coming out after it. Furthermore, it's actually left-to-right.

One of the first things we did was go to this place called Uptown or something along those lines. I think it's an old-school shopping district.

Old-school.

You can vaguely see the McDonald's there.

Look at those fluffy clouds. Wait, what do you mean "what fluffy clouds?". THOSE RIGHT THERE, DUMMY.

There was this store called BookSmart, which was this small bookstore in Uptown with a manga section that had a lot of older and harder-to-find titles in it. Like Evangelion, which I luckily found while I was over there.

It was apparently established in 1992, which makes it only one year younger than me.

Look at how nice the interior is! It has a basement, too.

A reaaaally blurry picture of the English-translated mangas on a shelf. If you squint, you can see Neon Genesis Evangelion Volume 5. It's practically right in the middle.

There was also a bunch of manga in their original Japanese. Too bad that there was no Persona manga, though. Can you say "bragging rights"?

No, I can't read 99% of that. Too many kanji. Fifth from the left, though, spells "Kyararii Fiaku" in katakana (at least, if I'm reading it correctly from my crappy little picture), which means it's supposed to spell something that's not Japanese. Too bad I can't figure out what that something is.

After checking my bank balance online via my phone, I bought the damn manga (they didn't have #2, they only had #1, 5, and 6) and headed to the local GameStop. I've had my eye on Poke'mon Battle Revolution for the Wii for a while now, and as a souvenir, I wanted to finally get it. So I did, but not before agonizing over Muramasa: The Demon Blade. I want that game so badly - it's like Odin Sphere (which was one of my favorite games, and was made by the same developers as this one) on steroids with Metroid's exploration and Okami's art direction. Baaaah. But I really wanted Poke'mon Battle Revolution, too, because I wanted to kick the asses of random people online and test the skills of myself and my EV-trained Poke'mon - plus, it was cheaper.

After standing around for a little bit, we got back on the bus and headed to the hotel, which happened to be next to the University of Minnesota's (a huge hockey rival of ours) gigantic outdoor (nyeeeeeeh! *sticks tongue out*) football stadium. We only had twenty minutes, so I took the opportunity to switch out my bright red jacket with my more form-fitting black one and plug in my laptop so it could charge.
Oh, I've yet to tell you why we're going on this trip in the first place, right? Well, the main reason is because we're seeing The Importance of Being Earnest in an actual theater instead of simply reading it. Secondary reason being so we could go to what was currently our next destination, Chino Latino, which is a rather over-the-top restaurant.

Let me elaborate.

The interior of this place is impressive, for one.

The outside of the place, looking in.

Inside, looking at the downstairs.

Those are all candles.

We were all grouped together at large tables that were close together. Since there was about forty of us, special arrangements were made. Basically, in succession, they brought out an assortment of appetizers, dinners, and desserts for each table. Three appetizers, three dinners, two desserts.

While we were waiting for our food, the guys and I at the table (there were just guys at this table besides myself, heh) just talked about random stuff. It was funny, because anytime the conversation switched to anime, only me and one other person could actually have a conversation about it and follow it. Which resulted in a ban on it. Nevertheless, it was pretty cool getting to talk to people comfortably.
When the food arrived...

Appetizers! Wow, my mouth's watering just looking at this.

SEAFOOOOOOD!

...let's just say that it was very good.

Especially notable was the dessert. Specifically, the one where there was a flaming bowl that you would use to roast marshmallows on wooden stakes. Ok, ok, so we were supposed to make s'mores, but when you're someone who has NEVER had a roasted marshmallow before, none of the other stuff matters. The macademia nuts were yummy, though.

Yuuuuummmm. Boys being boys, they opted to burn the wooden sticks after we finished the food. For fun.

After we got the last of our food, we also got fortune cookies. Except these fortunes were the most mean-spirited little suckers ever. Someone literally got one that said "This was made in a country where child labor isn't illegal." I got...

Fuck you too, fortune!

...of course, I demanded a new fortune. There were two extra fortune cookies on the table and I got the last one. I opened it up and got...

WHAT THE FUCK?!

...onto a new subject. To see this play, we went to this huge and completely confusing theater (named the Guthrie Theater).

Here's the ticket.

Twice.

According to the program we got...

It's very...flowery.

...Lady Bracknell's actress guest starred in Star Trek at some point. She really does look familiar, I wonder where I've seen her.

Recognize her?

The acting was great, and the humor of the play makes a LOT more sense and is actually funny when actually played by actors. It was suitably overdramatic. The only thing that could've made it better would've been if Patrick Stewart played someone. Oh, it also helped that we had really, really good seats.

Keep in mind that my cameraphone does NOT have a zoom feature.

Other people in the theater.

I mean, REALLY good seats.

Afterwards, we went back to the hotel room, and we had all the free time we wanted, despite it being 9 PM or so at the time. I was too energized to sleep, but too tired to make a competent blog post. Not to mention that the internet there was really, really slow. REALLY slow. Dial-up slow. Also, I found out that the entire CITY OF MINNEAPOLIS has its own Wi-Fi network. There was literally a network called "city of Minneapolis". I couldn't connect to it, though. I think the distance was too great - I was on the 6th floor, after all.

Around midnight or so, I finally went to sleep. And that was the last event of that day.

Next post will have the second day!

...on a miscelleaneous note, Minneapolis has a lot of really nice bridges, and Las Vegas would go green with envy at how nice their downtown is.

Yeah, it's slanted, so sue me. I was on a BUS.

Just so ya know...

2009-09-27T20:11:00.000-07:00

...I'm working on the really, really long and elaborate post about the past few days. I'll probably post it tomorrow.

I have Windows 7!!!

2009-09-23T21:13:00.000-07:00

So today, I sat down with some of my anime club buddies at a table during lunch. Over time, I mentioned that I couldn't install Windows 7 on my computer without wiping my stuff. One of the guys, a total computer geek, told me that I could back everything up using my extra space on my hard drive, via making a new one, or a "partition". After showing me where I could manage my disks (my laptop was with me), I went home and looked up online how to do this.

It worked. All my stuff was backed up. Then I went to band, came back, took my laptop with me to anime club, and installed Windows 7. It took a while, but it went well. I copied back the stuff from the partition, and nothing seems to be lost except for a few pesky .dll files that didn't copy over, rendering some programs, such as Avast and iTune, useless. Since I can re-obtain those programs online, all is well.

...well, except for the fact that the computer ended up backing up my stuff in a new folder called windows.old. Why the HELL did I go to all that trouble to section off a part of my hard drive to back my stuff up when the computer backed them up anyway?!

Just now, I merged the partition (called the "S" drive, for Silver) into the C drive again, thereby wiping it clean. Meh. At least I have a backup folder on my computer (renamed windows.old to "backup").

As for the operating system itself, I like it. It's much easier to connect wirelessly to the internet, the new design is sleek and less cluttered, and I've already noticed that it runs faster. I'm not a fan of the "Documents = Document Library" thing, though. Other than that, I like it.

Oh yeah, in anime club, a friend of mine lended me his PLATINUM EDITION Neon Genesis Evangelion DVD boxed set. EVANGELION. I finally get to watch it!!!

...I also pwned the anime club president in a Poke'mon battle.

Bah.

2009-09-22T18:48:00.000-07:00

Ok, I'm part of the MSDN Academic Alliance, simply because I'm in Computer Science. This has allowed me to obtain Windows 7 Professional for free. The problem was that the file I obtained for it was a .iso - basically, something that had to be burned to a disc first. Another problem - said file was 3 gigs. There isn't a disc I possess that can hold that much.

So I went to Amazon.com, ordered a 3-pack of Maxell 4.7 gig DVD-RWs, and waited.

I got them today. I created a restore point on my computer (on BOTH of this thing's drives), then burned the .iso to the disc, everything was rosy.

And then I tried to install Windows 7. It wouldn't let me. Some sort of stupid thing about how I can't "upgrade" my Windows Vista Home Edition Premium to Windows 7 Professional, and instead, I'd have to wipe everything off of my computer and THEN install it. Ok, I said, I can back everything up.

WRONG.

I found out, while trying to copy my documents over to a 4.7 gig DVD-RW, that my video folder ALONE was 14 gigs. And, of course, I have nothing that can hold that much, nor do I have enough DVDs to spread them out and THEN back up the rest of the shit on my computer.

So now I can't install Windows 7, and I bought a few DVD-RWs for nothing. Thanks a lot, Microsoft.

Before I really get started...

2009-09-22T12:36:00.000-07:00

I HAVE THEM.

ARISATO'S HEADPHONES.

They can cure cancer, make Chuck Norris green with envy, send Jack Bauer running away screaming, and can be used to help defeat that pesky death god living in the moon.

...of course, it also helps the sound on these babies is freaking awesome.

Remember how my old "new" headphones broke? The cord snapped when it got caught on something?

Good luck breaking a braided cord, suckers!

Yeah, you can tell I'm really happy.

Now, onto the events of Sunday and Monday.

On Sunday, I performed at an optional band performance with about (sadly) twenty other people at this local car dealership called Rydel's. Why? Because they were the ones who pretty much gave us our truck. Technically, it's theirs, but we don't pay a dime on it. That truck brings all of our big and heavy instruments to our games and to rehearsals that are at "our" field, which is pretty much every marching band rehearsal until later October.

I was one of four clarinets, there were two trombones, a tuba, a tenor, two bass drums, a snare, two tenor saxes, and three or so trumpets, counting my band director. We wanted more people to come, but they didn't. Bah. On the other hand, it makes me look good.

On Monday, it was a normal school day, except for the fact that I had tests in Space Studies and Computer Lab. The Space Studies test was open-book and open-notes, and I had spent the night before getting the last of the notes typed up before importing all of the rest to a Word document and printing it out the following morning (a whopping 23 pages...though it's in outline format). The fact that typing up the last of the notes helped me memorize them helped me on the test, and I was one of the first people to finish. It consisted of "true/false, but justify if false"; unfortunately, all but two were true. That's fine by me, I loooove justifying my answers. The short answer was easy, too.

The computer science lab, surprisingly, was not. I can finish a lab in twenty minutes, tops, but I spent the entire two hours on this, partially because this was something I had never done before.

Basically, the program has to make a pyramid of asterisks show up after the user enters in a number for how many rows it has. The problem is that asterisks can only be "string", or normal text, variables, thus making them much harder to format in terms of spacing, than number variables, because math operations won't work behind the scenes for them. For instance, the pyramid adds two stars per row; if they were numbers, I could fiddle around with the variables behind the scenes and add a "+ 2" somewhere, but this won't work with a string variable.

I was able to get the input to work with the looping (piece of cake) and get the right number of stars to show up (it's the number the user inputted, squared), but I couldn't format it. Luckily, the fact that I was able to get those two things done meant that I at least passed with a C. I still don't know how other people did it, though. I want to find out, rargh!

And then I walked home and promptly went to sleep. Because my brain and eyes were fried.

More band.

2009-09-19T18:28:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, we played at East Grand Forks High School (in East Grand Forks, Minnesota!) for a football game that, ironically, didn't involve EGFHS at all. Instead, it was the Sacred Heart Eagles vs the [something] Blue Devils. We ended up rooting for the Eagles since their 20-something band was playing with us. Literally, "Fight on Sioux" became "Fight on Eagles", and the portion of our fight song when we usually go "S-I-O-U-X! Go Sioux!" became "E-A-G-L-E-S! Go Eagles!". The poor high schoolers next to me were so intimidated until I told them that I was a newbie, too. I was actually playing the part of the "cool college band student"! Wow!

Unfortunately, it seems that the color combination of purple and gold is cursed, because the poor Eagles, whose uniforms were aforementioned color combination, got their asses handed to them on a silver platter (30-to-0 was the score when we were leaving after halftime). According to the clarinet player next to me, this is usual! Talk about deja vu.

We played pep band tunes during the first and second quarters, then did halftime, which was awesome, thank you very much (my legs hurt so badly now, though). After halftime, we left, which I was happy about since I was already tired and hungry (unfortunately, extended dinner at the dining halls only goes Sunday to Thursday). There was enough time between getting the cases off of the truck so we could put away our instruments and getting on the bus that I was actually able to get my case and hat box, put my clarinet away, and get completely out of uniform before getting on one of the buses.

Speaking of the bus ride back, after a big rig pulled up next to us and our members on the bus urged him to honk his horn, someone got the idea to shout in unison out the window anytime we passed someone on the sidewalk. One of those people happened to be outside of my dorm at the time; apparently, Sam actually heard us in our room! It was pretty damn hilarious every time we did it, I was practically rolling around in my seat in hysterics.

Then one of the drum majors gave me a ride back to the dorm, I took a shower, and promptly collapsed into my bed.

For once, I slept like a baby.

Band.

2009-09-17T19:34:00.000-07:00

eu⋅pho⋅ri⋅a (n.) -
1.) a feeling of happiness, confidence, or well-being sometimes exaggerated in pathological states as mania.

2.) the feeling Silver gets after rehearsing in the University Band.

Normal, normal, normal.

2009-09-16T21:15:00.000-07:00

We learned pregame in Band today, which basically consists of us high-running onto the field, followed by us forming a whole bunch of letters on the field while playing three fight songs.

At the end of Anime Club, I basically talked to this one guy - rather, I rambled. It was pretty awesome meeting someone else who liked Ghost in the Shell!

Normal, everyday life.

2009-09-15T20:04:00.001-07:00

I've fallen into a routine now, and I'm happy about it.

Also, this morning I found that someone had printed out Lolcats images and taped them to the outside of the bathroom doors. It's pretty funny seeing "FOR THE THIRD TIME, CHEESEBURGER NO PICKLES!!!" on the way to taking a shower.

W00t!

2009-09-14T17:52:00.000-07:00

I finished my computer science lab in twenty minutes today. I think I know now what I like so much about coding: the satisfaction that I feel when I get the damn programming to do what I want it to do. Part of the whole thing is the problem-solving, figuring out exactly how to do it. I think my prior experience with HTML and CSS helped me out big time, because I have enough experience with the whole trial-and-error mindset necessary to come up with solutions to these problems.

And that's pretty much it. We were inside for Marching Band today, and we played a lot of music. My lung capacity and sound input were hindered by my still-hurting ribs, but at least I wasn't in complete agony like I thought I would be.

One more thing:

WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?!

Seriously, it was just a mosquito bite two days ago. I have to get my shot this week, I don't want to be held up because of this stupid thing.

Boring day.

2009-09-13T22:01:00.000-07:00

My ribs hurt a lot less, but I really didn't do much today. Washed the sheets, watched the mind screw of a movie I had to see for Honors...

Aaaand that's it. Pretty much. Nothing else.

Yesterday's stuff - TODAY!

2009-09-13T11:08:00.001-07:00

I can't seem to stay on track in terms of posting daily.

Yesterday, my ribs were hurting to the point that I really couldn't do much of anything. I basically sat around, playing Okami all day. Beat Blight and got the Catwalk power, BTW.

They were showing Star Trek at the Memorial Union for free, though. Since G.I. Jane had never seen it and I had been wanting to see it again, we went. It was aweeesome.

And that was it.

And now today's stuff! Today!

2009-09-11T21:38:00.000-07:00

Not much to report, really. Other than that my intercostals (muscles between your ribs) hurt a LOT. I think I overexerted myself in University Band yesterday - we played this piece that was slow and went for five minutes non-stop. Slow pieces are always really difficult because you have to control every aspect of your sound...hence the hurting muscles. Paaaaaaiiin. Itai itai itai!

In Okami, I progressed farther in the game and got to Sei-An City. Got the Seven Strike, and introduced Sam to one of my personal favorites, a character named Rao who is often referred to by Issun as "busty babe". For good reason.

And if you're wondering why I haven't mentioned anything about 9/11, it's because I can't eloquently say anything about it, unlike the guys in my blogroll.

Yesterday's stuff

2009-09-11T05:43:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was uneventful, as always. I only had two classes yet again.

I DID, however, have an assignment from Computer Science Lab...despite the fact that we didn't have any computer science lab this week. I conveniently found this out the day before it was due. Basically, I had to create a program in Python that could calculate someone's grade for five assignments when the grades and name of the person are inputted by the use. I really enjoyed coming up with how to code it and and debugging it.

After University Band, I did some heavy-duty taking care of business. The verification of my identity for my Pride card so I can use the left over financial aid money? Done - I went to the library and scanned both sides of the card, saved it on their computer, uploaded it to the company's website, e-mailed it to myself as an attachment, and promptly deleted it (as in, sending it to the Recycle Bin and THEN hitting "delete").

Being charged $40 for my immunotherapy visits at the on-campus clinic? Took care of that, too - I called Tricare, and they said that I shouldn't be being billed.

Co-pay on my meds increasing? According to the guys at Tricare, that's normal.

And except for the scanning, I did all of this while doing my laundry.

My wireless mouse came in today. It is freaking awesome! It's made by the same company that made the optical mouse I was using before I switched.

In Okami, I kicked Orochi's ass and got the Tsumugari. Yay for giant sword!

Well, shit.

2009-09-09T20:58:00.001-07:00

My new headphones broke today. I was on my way to the bus from Space Studies, when the cord caught on something and snapped. Wonderful.

In band, the president of the college and his wife came to thank us for our performance at Texas Tech. It was pretty cool!

And then we had hockey sign-ups. It made me late for my ACM (a student organization for programmers) meeting. I got there when they ended it, basically, but I got to hang out at their office for a while and talk to a few of the guys there. I'm pretty much the only girl in that club...

It was awesome being able to talk about video games and such and have people actually know what you're talking about! I had to leave at 7 to go to Anime Club, though, which was thankfully in the same building. As usual, it was fun as always - people were making hilarious snarky comments and such, too.

We watch three anime series, one of which is Pretear, which is a series in the magical girl genre created by the same person who came up with Sailor Moon. And it's just as, if not MORE, ridiculous than Sailor Moon. Actually, scratch that, it's more over-the-top ridiculous than Sailor Moon could ever hope to be. Lemme put it this way: hot guys (okay, four hot guys and three kids) who fuse their souls with that of the heroine to become outfits with magical powers. No lie. And it's just as suggestive as it sounds - the anime has all sorts of innuendo...in the English dub. IN THE ENGLISH DUB. THE DUB WHERE THINGS LIKE THAT USUALLY GET CUT OUT. Oddly, there was also cussing, too.

Of course, pretty much every anime is based on a manga, and Pretear is no exception. And it seems that this poor author, Jun'ichi Sato, is cursed or something when it comes to anime adapations of her series, because just like with Sailor Moon, the Pretear manga is totally different than the show.

The manga and the show differ even more than that between the Sailor Moon manga and its respective show. The only way the Sailor Moon anime could be as different as its source material as the Pretear anime is from its original manga is if the creators of the anime replaced a few of the Sailor Scouts with different characters. I'm not even kidding. This one really, horribly effeminate character, whose true gender I couldn't even identify until his voice popped out of his mouth, wasn't even in the manga to begin with; his design was entirely different, with an entirely different personality. Only his power was the same.

Let's see - in Pretear anime, a la Sailor Moon, the main character fights monsters to save the world. In the manga, not at all. Instead, the creatures who created monsters in the anime instead take advantage of people's dark feelings and possess them because of them in the manga. And the innuendo? Non-existant in the manga. The characters are deeper in the manga, the love interest is far less of a Mamoru Chiba (you might know him as Darien) clone in the manga, and-- ya know what, let me just shorten this. EVERYTHING ABOUT THE ANIME IS DIFFERENT FROM THE MANGA EXCEPT FOR THE CHARACTERS. Furthermore, the manga is superior in every way, shape, and form to the anime. The heroine in the manga is even more kickass, who, instead of being ditzy like Usagi (again, you might know her as Serena) in Sailor Moon, knows martial arts in her normal life. She literally punches her soon-to-be-love-interest in the face the first time they meet. That's the equivalent of Sailor Moon getting pissed off and kicking Tuxedo Mask across the room in the first chapter.

...oh yeah, in case you were wondering how the original Sailor Moon manga is different than the anime, I'll rattle it off for you:

- Tuxedo Mask has no powers (including rose-throwing), and actually helps Sailor Moon fight instead of being a Deus Ex Machina or completely and utterly useless (see: the Sailor Moon Super S movie, in which he gets his ass kicked in the first fifteen minutes and spends the rest of the movie lying a bed unconscious; by the way, this isn't even important to the plot).
- Princess Serenity (using the English dub names since that's what everyone's familiar with; her name in Japanese is Kaguya) kills herself in her past life because of Prince Darien's death...when he DIED PROTECTING HER IN THE FIRST PLACE. Lack of logic, much? Furthermore, her suicide inadvertently causes the fall of the Moon Kingdom, because her mother couldn't entirely focus the power of the Millennium Crystal due to her grief.
- At a later point in the manga, the cat Luna takes them all to the ruins of the Moon Kingdom on the moon, where there are remnants of their superpowerful technology left, including a hologram message left over from the Queen of the Moon Kingdom and a sword that Sailor Moon can use.
- The sub-villains of the first season were good guys in Serena's past life; they in fact were Prince Darien's underlings (?!?!?!!!).
- It turns out that the huge kingdom of Earth and the Moon Kingdom were at war with each other. Serenity was the princess of the Moon Kingdom, Darien of the Earth Kingdom.
- The past version of Beryl was not only in love with Prince Darien, but she killed him because she was jealous.
- The REAL villain is an entity that came from the SUN.
- Sailor Venus was a decoy Princess until Serena was able to become strong enough.
- All of the sub-villains get killed with one hit (including Jedite and Nephrite), always when the newly awakened Sailor Scout wields her powers for the first time. I'm not kidding, Nephrite dies because Sailor Jupiter struck him with a bolt of lightning, Jedite burns to death at the hands of a newly awakened Sailor Mars. Also, when they die, their bodies turn back into gems.
- Tuxedo Mask dies and is then re-animated by Queen Beryl as a bad guy. The latest point I got at in the manga is when Sailor Moon kills him by stabbing him in the chest with her sword. Since this is Sailor Moon, he's going to inevitably come back.
- Darien is in high school ("I'm a perfectly respectable high school student!", he says rather irritably after Serena asks him why the hell he's in a school uniform), not college.
- Tuxedo Mask's alliance is portrayed as extremely ambiguous, with Luna asking him repeatedly whose side he's on - the answer? He doesn't give a shit about anything except for the location of the Millennium Crystal so he can get his memories back - at least, initally.
- At several points, the baddies kill a whole bunch of ordinary people, but Sailor Moon is able to bring them back to life using the Millennium Crystal.
- Sailor Venus can communicate to Sailor Moon through her arcade game. This is also how Luna gives the Scouts their new gadgets: by rigging the game so that a certain score, obtainable only by a Sailor Scout playing it, gives them out as prizes. Also, Luna's secret high-tech base is under the arcade.
- Darien finds himself becoming Tuxedo Mask when he falls asleep, as if he was sleepwalking - also, his actions in this form are not going unnoticed by the local police.
- Queen Beryl was also reincarnated and re-awakened when her reborn human form, an archeologist, accidentally rediscovered the ruins of the Dark Kingdom (again, from the FUCKING SUN!!!!) in Antarctica.

Yeah, reading the original Sailor Moon manga that the first season was based off of was both fascinating and highly disturbing. What do you mean that silly Tuxedo Mask isn't useless or totally cheesy? WHADDYA MEAN MY CHILDHOOD HERO KILLED HERSELF IN HER PAST LIFE?! They might as well be different series, for crying out loud. From what I've read of the later manga, though, it appears that the later seasons of the anime (such as the Hotaru/Sailor Saturn arc) were much more faithful to their source material. [/tangent]

Ok, off to bed.

Screw the Rules, I Have Blog

Oh shi--

Anger...rising...

Priorities

Hydra

Life Emulates Fiction

New Study Says That I Should be a Lesbian

First thought...

Kicking California out of the US, Part 2

Mind Screw

Made of crap.

Can we kick California out of the US? Please?

Nintendo's E3 Press Conference

You Know What Day It Is.

Grasping for Straws

*puts on tinfoil hat*

It looks like...

"Minding Your Business"

I told you so.

Ah, memories...

It's Personal

Homecoming

Music.

Silver Sucks, Part 2

Silver Sucks

Before I talk about Thanksgiving week...

Happy (belated) Thanksgiving

Nothing.

*slow clapping*

Final Football Game of the Year

Post about Saturday

The shit just keeps piling up.

Thanks a lot.

Good news and bad news

A Public Service Announcement...

Horrible.

So...

LOL

Today's football game

CrapcrapcrapcrapCRAP

Haha, this sounds very familiar.

I don't get it.

Kind of relevant...

Foreboding.

OH NOES

Crisis Averted

People like this piss me off.

FUUUUUUU--

Flu Attacks UND!

Hahaha...ha...wait, they're serious?

Faith in Humanity

Of Balloons and Boys

Three Things:

...what?

Women's Hockey

Sports of Yesterday and Today

I love band.

Last several days: Tuesday and Wednesday

Last several days: Sunday and Monday

The last several days: Saturday

The last several days: Friday

Columbus Day

A little news story featuring our band!

I kick so much ass.

Oh shit!

I thought it couldn't get colder...

And now it begins...

HAHAHA...oh wait, they're serious.

HOLY CRAP!

Meh.

Fruit.

HOCKEY!!!

Homecoming

Minneapolis Day 2 and Some Major Catching Up

Catch-up and Minneapolis, Day One!

Just so ya know...

I have Windows 7!!!

Bah.

Before I really get started...

More band.

puts on tinfoil hat

slow clapping