Archive for August, 2003

Well, waddaya know? I actually have company this saturday night. Ok so maybe I don’t. But, my sister has company that interacts with me over at the moment. We watched movies tonight, she brought some for my sister and me to watch and I got a chances to sneak in “My Sassy Girl” (pictured). In case you haven’t read my last few posts, its a cool little romantic comedy. ghawh! I can hear you nagging me about it. What’s wrong? Can’t a guy like a romantic comedy! no? oh. Anyway, its a great movies about this girl who I think is so awesome! Not like she looks incredible or anything, I mean her. Her personality. It’s crazy! I love it! I want a girlfriend that gives me black eyes and upon disagreeing with her asks “wanna die?”. I let that tidbit of personal information slip and someone second asked “do you really want a girl that punches you?” I had to think about this for a minute. “yeah!” I can’t remember the exact words I used, and i dont feel like looking up the logs, but I thought it’d be worth it. A black eye and a punch here and there for a girl who casually a jokingly fights with me for ’superiority’ would add an incredibly fun dynamic eliment to a relationship with a woman ^_^ I don’t know why I liked the movie so much, I just do. But, I’m a little uneasy about one thing… my sister’s friend that was over and watched the movie is from Korea, and the movie was made in Korea, and I didn’t really think about it before, but I hope it didn’t make her feel akward or offended X_x I didn’t pick the movie because it was from korea! I just was thinking of the plot and realized later “oh crap, I hope I didn’t make that weird for her”. Oh well, I’m unsure if she really liked themovie, but I sure did. And I didn’t cry the 4′th time I saw it!!!

Like the picture? haha, I saw it by randomly googleing for the word “weird” and I couldn’t resist! Look at her expression! /dies/ Ok, it’s late, I’m tired, but I think that’s a [i]really[/i] funny picture. So, I’ll bet you’re on the edge of your seat. Simply dying to hear about how my last few days (first few days of college) have gone. Well, I’ll tell you. Not only that, I’ll break it up by class.
First off I start with music appreciation. Yuk! Thankfully, this class doesn’t seem like it will be at all difficult. Just some memorizing basic stuff and taking exams (from what I am to understand so far). The guy who teaches this class I’ll compare to the father on “The Wonder Years” in appearance, but he seems like a nice (educated) guy who knows his stuff and will be an easy teacher. I know one of the guys in this class too… from the… track… team?
Moving right along, I walk across the campus to english comp II. The teacher of this class is really weird, but I think he might be my favorite. He intriguies me the most. At any moment you think he might spear someone. He (with all resepect) looks like someone you might see on the sidewalk… sleeping. A homeless bum, jeans, tshirt, long thin grey hair, but to look ‘good’ he topps it off with a nice suit. It’s weird to look at. A suit over an old tshirt. He makes jokes about his mom dying and pokes fun at people with weird names. To avoid being walked on by this guy, I find myself paying extra close attention. Therefore, my guess, this is the class this semester I’ll learn the most from. Now, off to us gvmnt.
Ok, welcome (I feel like I’m leading a tour) to us gvmnt class. Small room, 3 rows of very long very short tables. It’s a nwe “smart room” where everythings computerized. The lights are even controlled by one of the two flat panel touch screens at the teachers desk. There’s a good 10′ screen a projecter uses to move images from the computer, overhead, vcr, dvd player, or anything like that. To keep all the equipment clean, its all placed in a giant black case that looks like a server case (tall, thin, opens, locks). They must have spent a fortune on these new smart rooms. It’s rediculous. But at the least, the teacher sounds sane. He assigns lots of homework via email and (today actually) didn’t even show up to class. Well, now it’s lunch time.
Lunch… wow… long break until my next class. So I’ll eat slowly…
…eating…
…ok, I finished lunch. I ate my chick filet sandwidth (there’s one in the cafeteria) as slow as I possibly cood. /looks at watch/. Hour and 1/2 left -_- wow, uhh, what to do. Watch the news? watch people? girl scope? wanter the halls? How about the later 3. Now just repeat this until you’ve walked about 4 miles, then the hour and 1/2 are up!
Math. I cannot believe I am in this class. I (stupidly) took my CPT (computer placement test) for math after an INCREDIBLY long time of doing NO math work and somehow (stupidly, again) expected to be able to remeber it all. Well, I didn’t. I’d forgotten… a… ton. When all was said in done, I had some major paperwork/administration glitches with the CPT (some lady gave me bad info about it locking me out of being able to take the CTP I was suppsoed to) and to make a long discusting story short, I have to take college algebra this semester -_- I get to learn how to graph equasions on grids. I go from calc II to graphing on a grid. And the lady who (for some reason) sits next to me (wherever I move to) each class (she’s mid 30s) and raises her hand “I don’t understand” to everything the professor says. At least the homework won’t be hard? uhhggg
Ok, after math, I have mytholigy, my last class. The teacher’s somewhat odd. I personally think he’s using this class to combat some past experiences he had. The reason I say this is because in this class he talks a lot about religions form all over the world along with ancient myths. He spends about 15% of his time making fun of ancient myths, about 15% of his time poking fun at current eastern and new age religions, but this guy spends about 70% of his time making fun of and blasting Christianity X_x It’s really stpid, the way he does it. He takes things from the Bible, takes them COMPLETELY out of context, even moves some of the things around to a point where, “well, yeah, of course that’s the dumbest thing I ever heard”. But to the students who don’t know this stuff – I can only imagine the image of Christianity they’re getting. They’re getting the image most people get I guess. Ehh, it’s just kinda weird, he has some beef aginst it, he obsesses about trying to make fun about it. I just kinda have to go with it and write his essays as I’m assigned, I need an A in this class. (Kinda like the time I had to write an in-class paper on why homosexual marrages should be legalized in all 50 states for english comp I, but I’m not going to go there now – at least I didn’t have to read it outloud)
So, from leaving at 7:30am to getting out of school at 5:30pm and getting out of the parking lot by 6:30 and home by 7, I’d say I have a pretty eventful day. I come home and I’m pretty tired. Like now, I’m about to pass out. In fact, thats exactly what I intend to do. So, if you will excuse me, I will retire. Goodnight all!

Actually, I’m both. That’s right, tomorrow morning I start my first full-load college semester. I’m taking fairly easy classes so I don’t think it’ll be a heavy load, but it’ll be new to me. So, yeah, I’ll have to write about my new teachers. My summer school ones were whack, well, one of them at least – the other wasn’t bad. I am taking all tuesday/thursday classes, so I can cut back on the driving, tolls, and gas. Between two of my classes I have a 2 hour break. I think I’m going to spend an hour of that time studying, 20 minutes of that time eating lunch, and 40 minutes poking around the internet-enabled pcs. It sounds like a good time to add to this blog, but I’ll have to take it all as it comes and see when the best times are. About the title of this entry, senior or freshman, I’m asked this a lot. And, yes, I’m both. I’m a senior in high school. I’m also a freshman in college. Confused? I’m with ya’.
Today I got a blog-administration system set up. At the moment it’s just for one main person to use, but I’ve started talking to a handful of people (girls, who can’t code to make their own) who want an ad-free banner-free popup-free weblog (blog) that’s free. I’m not sure if it’ll work out, but I’m assuming it’ll be ok, and I’ll do what I can to make it work best. What’s in it for me? Well, beside continuing that IT practice of keeping and managing a running server and databases, it provides a lot of extra traffic to my website, which serves no purpose other than making me feel good ^_^ Ok, well, I’m out.
Oh yeah! I almost forgot. Silly me. For people who want to trade links with me, I have some standard banners that work on most websites. If you want more traffic to your site and want to trade banners, let me know! You can click the link on the left menu on the links section for more information. I’ve procrastinated this, but I need to put my banner out to a bunch of different people and see what we can get going. Ok, I’m out, really, this time.

NO! I know what you’re thinking. The answer is no. That is NOT my picture. Thus, no, that is not my girlfriend. I can see you scrambeling to IM me about this picture. Stop it! Now! It’s not me!! Actually, I’m testing out some new code to impliment images into my news postings. Won’t that be delightful? The title of this post is appropriately named pickas, to celebrate the event.
Ok, so, what’s going on. Well today my sister had her 3′rd birthday party. (the first one since she was adopted). The company left a few hours ago. Mainly family. My grandmother came in my room and inquired about the posters on my walls. She kept asking more and more about the, seeming interested? We talked about them for at least two minutes. I’m not sure if she was making conversation, or genuinely interested. It’s funny though, my grandmother talked to me longer and knows more about anime than both of my parents combined ^_^;
Sunday night. Tuesday, school starts. First day of college. Well, not really, I took summer school (2 classes). I have 5 classes set up. I got an awesome schedule. I only go to college tuesdays and thursdays. Saves tons of driving time, gas, and tolls. I’m not that nervous because I’ve already been to this place a lot this summer, but I’m still a little anxious about getting the full load. It’ll be fine, no (or little sweat), but it’s those questions that gnaw at your mind you can’t stop thinking about… all those “what if?”s Actually, my biggest concern at this point is to go to my classes and find out I’m not enrolled in them. The college’s main database does not natively support dual enrolled students. The entries have to be modified by hand – and it keeps messing me up. I just checked the website. I’m ‘in’ at the moment. We’ll see what happens Tuesday ^_^ I’m taking stupid req’d classes. English Comp. II, music appreciation, mytholigy, us gvmnt, and math. Silly classes (math being the exception) for a comptuer engineering degree, but hey, if it’s required, you just gotta do it I guess =o
I have been working on my tv/divx player today. 350mhz AMD K6 processor and 192MB of ram come together to form a piece of crap – but it runs movies like a beauty with linux =o) To optimize the movie playback framerates and provide smoother antialiased fullscreen image resizing, I’m building a custom linux system using gentoo’s livecd. It’s not really a linux distro. It’s more a bootable cd of tools you use to connect to the net, download sources, and compile linux from the ground up. It’s currently installing mplayer and all it’s dependencies (gentoo has portage support). It’s been doing so for 9 hours – I think I’ll have to leave it overnight before it completes. However, when it’s done, it’s movie-ready. I now need to work on my file downloading server! I’ll do that… tomorrow. I’m off to bed.
— 5 minutes later —
Oh man I was in bed and realized I forgot to say what the picture was! How embarrassing ^_^; The girl is Melissa Kaplain, the (only) vocalist of my favorite American band, “Splashdown”.
— while I’m here —
I’d might as well say why I’m putting pictures in here anyway.
1.) it makes it look less empty
2.) it adds color to my site (contract, actually)
3.) it’s easy to tell when I add new postings
4.) it sparks interest and catches peoples’ attention
5.) it’ll be cool to look back at this site in 5 years (yes, I save my sites)
6.) it can be used for very funny pictures
7.) it can be used as a visual TOC
8.) it provides flash-recall when you see an old post
9.) it provides balance on my pages
10.) I could always embed secret messages into images

I feel like writing something. Not like words – more like code. School starts in 2 days, I have a strange desire to write a program (that does who knows what) before school. Not quite sure what it’d do, but I have a few ideas. And it’d be free of course. (small utils)

Interesting night this was. Before I lay out what happened, I’d might as well provide a brief background for those who’ve been in a COMA for the last 2 years.

I used to run at night. It helps me sleep better. My parents noticed my running. I was placed on a track team by my parents to ‘help me socially’. I did not want to be on a track team. I was in track for two years. Though I disliked almost every aspect about it (the 4 hours it took out of every weekday and the all day saturday meets, not to mention the running itself) I did it without resisting. Oh, I tried. However my parents found ways to eat at me from behind when I tried to pull away from it. I didn’t have much choice, I was locked in. I put up that face I talked about earlier. The one most dominant on “the third chapter of my life” (past post, a month or two ago). I realized that when people knew I didn’t want to be there they made a big deal out of it and always glanced at me and tried to do things to make me have fun. This, I hated. I can’t describe to you how frustrating it is to just want to sit and let time pass by and have someone (parent and/or parent-instructed child) try to sit down and talk to me about who knows what to “cheer me up”. The experience did “help me socially” because I started diving into the workings of my own mind. I remember the day while sitting in the grass that I realized that I can change the way I act to control people around me. (This ties in with the whole misia story, that you should read). Act happy, outgoing, throw out jokes, and people don’t mess with you =o) It’s such a hard thing to do when you’re somewhere you don’t want to be, but if you put a lot of thought into the way you phrase your sentences and the way you move your body to try to match the character you’re creating within yourself – you completely forget about where you are or what else you could be doing. These grasses were the birthplace of Misia, in my mind, for a few monts before she was released into the world. Anyhow, most of the “newer” track people had no clue that I even remotely disliked the whole thing. This worked out well, for I was treated like any other, and the akwardness of knowing people knew what you were thinking wore off. Yet again, control the face you show to other people, and you can control what they think – since the thoughts that flow through their minds are build on information they get from your outward appearance and the things you say. Luckily, they’re both easy to ’spoof’, if you will. And if you ’spoof’ it long enough – no one can tell the difference. Anyhow, moving on.

My parents have become close with some of the families on the track team. My family has become close with lots of the members of the track team. My sister is also on the track team, so in her name, they supported the track team by throwing multiple “track parties” at my house. I seemed to do well, ’spoofing’ a lot of my time in the field or wherever. But I had a really hard time mentally processing that these people would hang out in my room. As it was happening, it wasn’t so bad – but shortly thereafter it’d give me that “sick to your stomach” feeling. I still don’t know why it bothers me so much, but it’s one of those things I can’t seem to shrug off.

Anyway, track team came over tonight. The guys left a few hours ago, the girls are spending the night. (my door is closed, locked, and will remain that way thank you.) I got some very unique lines spoken to me tonight. Some from my family, some from the track team members, little things they probably don’t even remember saying, but are somehow echoing in my mind.

I was originally planning to write about what happened tonight and the things that were said to me that seemed to have affected me strangely, but I couldn’t think of a way to write it so it wouldn’t hurt someone if they read it. While I’m at it, I’d like to address those of you who may be affiliated with the track team in saying that I don’t hold anything bad aginst you or anything about the track team. It was all me, in my mind, that caused me to take the experiences the way I did. So, don’t feel bad, honestly, I have to say I’m glad it worked out that way. I’m glad to have the experiences I did, to have learned what I did about myself, glad to realize what I did about other people, and glad that I went through it all without any serious complications… Except Misia, whom I strongly believe was a byproduct of the whole track thing. I have to admit that at this point of my writing I’ve lost focous and would be best stopping. As I close countless other postings, “if you haven’t read about misia, you should”. Goodnight

I resisted! Today I became bored and thought about making a new layout. But NO*! You know what I did? I forced myself to add [i]content[/i] instead. And ya’ know what? I had fun! Check out what I made: