If I do say so myself, an entry this extensive is worthy of using the Applewood icon....
Well, it's been a while. This may be a long entry, with a pause in the middle when my fingernails get in the way of my typing too much, and I stop to trim them, but except for a brief mention of such in the text, there won't be anything for the reader. It will go largely unnoticed like the disappearance of the tan M&Ms. So, let's see what I can remember about things.
Firstly, I'd just like to say that there should be a word to describe things that there should be words for. I'm open to suggestions from anyone who knows what I'm talking about at least as much as I do.
Next, I just (less than half an hour ago) finished reading Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, by Douglas Adams. I'm a little confused about what happens in the ending, so I'm going to ruminate upon that for a while, but except for that, it is quite possibly the greatest book I've ever read. Even greater than the Guide, but that just may be because it has been so long since I've read it.
Another note about the English language, while I'm at it: there should be more words we can contract other than "will", "not", and the like. Anyone who's ever seen me use something like "I'd'ven't" to mean "I would/should/could have not" could see my love of contractions and how they tickle my laziness so. Any ideas for words I can contract more readily than the poetic usage of e'er and e'en are welcome.
Excuse the random nature of this entry, but it has indeed been a while since I've written--journal or otherwise--and I've got a lot of nonsense somewhere to dump on things. That, or ferrets, but I can't remember which.
Seriously, though, go read DGHDA and anything else DNA has ever written. You'll thank yourself and some random old man in the streets for it when you do. I'm still confused, though. I may have to reread some of it to find what I missed.
So for the moment I'm back in Morgantown because I have an orthodontics appointment tomorrow, which brings me to another point that I don't believe I've stated in this journal but anyone who still reads it probably is already well aware of, I now have braces. Mostly. I'm missing one on the tooth I broke biting Spears freshman year (maybe I'll post that story sometime? Someone remind me...) because it's not a real tooth so the cement didn't adhere to it as well, so they're probably going to need to band it. Right now, though, I have one bracket missing and the whole wire from the upper left side of my mouth gone due to reasons relevant to that bracket's monkeyshines.
At any rate, I came back to Morgantown with Mary and we've been enjoying ourselves. We went to the Boston Beanery for lunch/dinner (maybe breakfast for me... I do that sometimes) and then we went to Barnes and Noble because Mary had a couple gift cirtificates from Christmas to waste there. She got many items including a daily planner and an "Outhouses" calendar (purely for comedic value, I assure you) and I got the Bobobo-bo manga. Then we went to Giant Eagle for a few supplies for the evening and came back here and did things. Primarily I read while Mary marked journal entries as memories and then practiced a little mandolin.
Before today, other things have indubitably happened. I'll see what I can remember of what was noteworthy. New Year's Eve was spent at Tim's (crazy math graduate student) father's house where Tim was dog sitting anyway, so we watched the telly (found a Monty Python's Flying Circus marathon on, which we watched in addition to some old Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and some infomercials we made fun of), ate things, and generally had an amusing time. Mary and I went home a little after one, though, and missed some of the fun therefore, but she was tired and falling asleep as it was, so I didn't mind getting home before all the streets were filled with drunks (too much like any weekend evening in the school year at WVU).
Before that I was in Millwood with Mary, doing Millwoody things. We went to the mall in Parkersburg, where I got a new wallet (those of you who've ever had the misfortune of meeting my previous wallet will know why, and a couple times before that in the store it had managed to expectorate all my cards upon the floor), and I got a CD that was very improperly located in the "Bluegrass" section of a FYE, which consisted of Bela Fleck, some girl from China, and some guy from India, called Tabula Rasa. I'm very unclear of the details, but I laughed rather hard upon finding something so obscure and decided to purchase it as a result, (much in the way I ended up with a copy of Bee Keeping for Dummies and I'm still not sure whether I bought it for the comedic or for the musical value, or just the sum of both.)
On an interesting side note, I find I need to stop purchasing things with titles, because I'm getting tired of typing the HTML italics call. Not the solution most of you would choose, I understand, but, as I say, I do that. I'm certainly not giving up my grammar for something so silly. Also, something special for anyone who can tell me why italics are called italics and therein what leaning to the right has to do with Italy.
Also in Parkersburg, Mary bought The Sims 2: Nightlife expansion pack. Bah unto the italicized title. Also, we installed it but haven't had much opportunity to play it yet. Apparently, there are vampires. That'll amuse me when I get around to doing something with them, but then again there are still things I didn't get to do with The Sims 2 that I wanted to do but haven't done so far.
Before that, we did general stuff around Millwood. We played Myst III: Exile and are both stuck in it. Also, some Super Mario World was played, simply because it's such a good game. Moreover, I've been screwing up that good game with a level editor I found somewhere around here compliments of digg, and that's been amusing me thoroughly.
Hmmm... What else...
Before that I've been up to the usual lot, I guess. I've been doing random stuff about Wheeling, like drinking coffee and bothering people, with Mary but before that without. The usual break stuff, and tapirs. I don't know how I didn't notice the comical value of tapirs and capybaras before. Luckily, a particular episode of Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law called "The Devlin Made Me Do it" provided much amusment with Spuzmocker, and Age of Empires III has amused me with a cheat code that provides a cannon called the Mediocre Bombardment, I believe, which launches capybaras as its projectiles and as a result causes unprecedented destruction. Fun.
Before I was with Mary, she got some food poisoning. That made me sad, but save for the need to rebuild her stock of enzymes, microorganisms, and the like, which she happened to regurgitate during her bout with food poisoning, she's doing better now, so that, combined with her being with me now makes me rather happy.
Some other interesting stuff probably happened over the break, but I can't remember off the top of my head. I guess I'll reference some things and come back.
Orl korrect. Now that I've achieved notes on what I did, here's some more summary, I guess. I went to my grandparents the second night I was in Wheeling (the first night I was just generally getting back and resting and such), and Quincy, Jen, and I visited until after eleven. I never suspected we'd be sitting around talking for four hours or so, but there're a lot of things I don't suspect. That's why I've learned to stay on my toes. I like to take things as they come, and not plan ahead. This leaves a lot of room for whatever you want there to be room for. As I've probably stated I prefer fuzzier things--pixilated scuttles through life as opposed to concrete predestination--abstract instead of concrete.
Also, I have a new pocket knife now. That makes me happy. Not having to type the italics call to say that I bought it makes me happier.
Another event over the break involved me, Tom, Ben, Chris, and Spears making another sandwich to rule all sandwiches, and I'll have to say it was a damn good sandwich. The bacon was cheap and not entirely of satisfactory quality, but save that, 'twas good. Also, while eating the sandwich, we watched television and such left me with the following two quotes:
"It's like I got into a time machine and was whisked away
to New York." -A judge (or, at least the dub of one) on Iron Chef
"That's a bottle-nosed dolphin, a porpoise!" -Dr. Quest in the original series.
Why does one need a time machine to go to New York? And if you hear me jokingly refer to anything that's not a porpoise as a porpoise, you have Dr. Quest to thank for that.
Also, the Cheese's basement is not properly grounded, and I learned that the hard way through much electric shock. I can thank my computer adapter for the lessening of the voltage, resulting not so much in a pain as a great irritation, but much electric shock was had nonetheless. Eventually, though, we found an outlet I could use.
I also jammed with people who I haven't gotten to jam with for a while (and replaced my slide, which needed it desperately, being all beat up and thus making scratching noises as I pulled it across my strings), but I'm too out of practice so I need to play more dobro. Maybe even finish writing one of those songs I was working on while I'm at it.
I guess that's all I've got for the break thusfar, so now it's onto the stuff I said I was going to post about in my previous post.
First on the list, "Soda (good and bad)". Alright. Well, shortly after returning to Morgantown after Thanksgiving break, I discovered Kroger was having a sale on all Stewart's and Jones sodas. This delighted me, and I bought a couple things of soda and went home. However, the next day, I went back with Devon and decided not to pass up an opportunity like that, and together we bought twenty-some packs of various sodas. Then, we started discussing sodas, and I declared I wanted a gingerbeer, and we went searching for one. We never did find it, but we did find many other sodas from sparkling pink lemonade imported from France to Goose Island Root Beer (which were both rather good). By the end of the night we had so much soda we declared it Soda Day to be celebrated in the manner of such holidays as National Sandwich Day in years to come. Speaking of such holidays, we still have to burn Santa.
Before Thanksgiving break, however, Devon found and bought one of the Jones Soda holiday packs. It had five flavors of sodas, each part of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. They were Brussel Sprouts, Herb Stuffing, Turkey and Gravy, Pumpkin Pie, and Cranberry, and were vomit inducing, tolerable until it hit the back of your tongue, tolerable, tolerable but everyone else insisted it was vomit inducing, and really not that bad after what we went through to get to it, respectively. Luckily, no one vomited. It came close, though. I'd go so far as to say that Brussel Sprout soda was the foulest thing I've ever had the displeasure of letting come anywhere near my mouth. Echk.
The next thing on my list is "Why my group in CS sucked as much as the class". Almost as unpleasant as the Brussel Sprout soda. I say almost because I somehow miraculously ended up with a B- in the class. I'm still befuddled by that one. Maybe I did remarkably well on the final. I did get bold for the final question and mention the game Spore that Will Wright is currently developing and cited it as an example for whatever (yes, it was relevant), but I don't think that had too much to do with it. At any rate, it's a sad tune, but here's how it goes:
We started off with the four people who were still sitting there apathetic after everyone else had formed their groups. I had the thorough misfortune of being not in the lab with all my friends, so that was the explanation for my apathy. It thoroughly angers me that such was a relevant fact to me not being able to work with my friends, because the project grade was independent of the lab grade, and the lab was useless to begin with because we never did anything actually lab related in it. It was just an extension of the lecture. No programming or anything, just an occasional pop-quiz or two. At any rate, there were four of us, and probably the four people in the class that should not be allowed to form a group on their own due to a lack of motivation. Within a week or two, one guy dropped the class. (He was the one who, when my professor said, "You are what you eat" for no apparent reason, replied, "I wish! Ha! Mmmm... Turkey!"). We didn't really miss him as a person, but it made things harder to do the project with three people when most groups had four or five. Well, we continued, Ryan did a lot of the work for the prototypes, not because we made him, but because he wouldn't really tell either of the rest of us what was going on. In fact, we really didn't know we had prototypes until he showed up on the days we needed to present them. We tried communicating, but Ryan apparently sucked at it and never told us anything. This wasn't really too bad of a thing, though, until Thanksgiving break. The week before a big part of the project was due. We got it done, turned it in, and went home. However, only two of us apparently came back. Neither Mohammed (the other group member) nor I heard from Ryan after the break. Moreover, due to his initially poor communicating and his nevertheless need to dominate the work, we had none of the files we needed to do the project. Our final result was crappy and assembled by modifying and adding to what was handed back to us, therefore having page numbers gone awry and much more wrong with it, and we had not final prototype whatsoever to present. We tried e-mailing and calling Ryan, but he disappeared. He stopped going to class, lab, and didn't even show up for the final. I don't know what happened, but even the slightest word from him would have been nice to help us sort that mess out. We had two people to do the same work that was being done by four or even five in most cases. Also, the project this year was even harder than previous years when it comes to the work load (although not in complexity), and by the end of everything, despite our handicap, we had over a hundred pages of documents turned in. Somehow, though, despite a C on the midterm and on the project, and presumably not the best grades in lab, though, I got a B- in the class. I don't know how that happened. Whatever. It's done, and I never have to put up with that class again.
Alright. The next item on the menu is God of War. Right now, though, I don't have a lot to say on it. It was a really good game, albeit occasionally fustrating (especially the trials of the gods), but I don't think I have any stories to tell right now. None of the enemies deficated upon my character, at least. The special costumes you unlock, though, are very amusing.
"Nonsense." Ha. Yeah. That gets taken care of if I try to or not.
The next item on the list is something about MMORPGs I was writing, but that document is handwritten and sitting somewhere in Wheeling now, and also is incomplete. It's rather extensive, and therein if coherent is very thorough. It pretty much explains why MMORPGs suck, and why they shouldn't. Or, at least, it will when it's done. I have a lot of rants I need to finish and post, though, so look forward to at least one of those to appear in my free time in the beginning of the semester, I hope.
Until next time, boys and girls, it's been fun. Keep posting, keep reading, and keep hanging out with me so I can tell you stories about things you already experienced.
c. m. edge
Note to self: Icon ideas: Mario World, tapir, capybara.
Addendum: Holy crap. That entry covered five pages when copied into MS Word. Go read Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency instead.
Firstly, I'd just like to say that there should be a word to describe things that there should be words for. I'm open to suggestions from anyone who knows what I'm talking about at least as much as I do.
Next, I just (less than half an hour ago) finished reading Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, by Douglas Adams. I'm a little confused about what happens in the ending, so I'm going to ruminate upon that for a while, but except for that, it is quite possibly the greatest book I've ever read. Even greater than the Guide, but that just may be because it has been so long since I've read it.
Another note about the English language, while I'm at it: there should be more words we can contract other than "will", "not", and the like. Anyone who's ever seen me use something like "I'd'ven't" to mean "I would/should/could have not" could see my love of contractions and how they tickle my laziness so. Any ideas for words I can contract more readily than the poetic usage of e'er and e'en are welcome.
Excuse the random nature of this entry, but it has indeed been a while since I've written--journal or otherwise--and I've got a lot of nonsense somewhere to dump on things. That, or ferrets, but I can't remember which.
Seriously, though, go read DGHDA and anything else DNA has ever written. You'll thank yourself and some random old man in the streets for it when you do. I'm still confused, though. I may have to reread some of it to find what I missed.
So for the moment I'm back in Morgantown because I have an orthodontics appointment tomorrow, which brings me to another point that I don't believe I've stated in this journal but anyone who still reads it probably is already well aware of, I now have braces. Mostly. I'm missing one on the tooth I broke biting Spears freshman year (maybe I'll post that story sometime? Someone remind me...) because it's not a real tooth so the cement didn't adhere to it as well, so they're probably going to need to band it. Right now, though, I have one bracket missing and the whole wire from the upper left side of my mouth gone due to reasons relevant to that bracket's monkeyshines.
At any rate, I came back to Morgantown with Mary and we've been enjoying ourselves. We went to the Boston Beanery for lunch/dinner (maybe breakfast for me... I do that sometimes) and then we went to Barnes and Noble because Mary had a couple gift cirtificates from Christmas to waste there. She got many items including a daily planner and an "Outhouses" calendar (purely for comedic value, I assure you) and I got the Bobobo-bo manga. Then we went to Giant Eagle for a few supplies for the evening and came back here and did things. Primarily I read while Mary marked journal entries as memories and then practiced a little mandolin.
Before today, other things have indubitably happened. I'll see what I can remember of what was noteworthy. New Year's Eve was spent at Tim's (crazy math graduate student) father's house where Tim was dog sitting anyway, so we watched the telly (found a Monty Python's Flying Circus marathon on, which we watched in addition to some old Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and some infomercials we made fun of), ate things, and generally had an amusing time. Mary and I went home a little after one, though, and missed some of the fun therefore, but she was tired and falling asleep as it was, so I didn't mind getting home before all the streets were filled with drunks (too much like any weekend evening in the school year at WVU).
Before that I was in Millwood with Mary, doing Millwoody things. We went to the mall in Parkersburg, where I got a new wallet (those of you who've ever had the misfortune of meeting my previous wallet will know why, and a couple times before that in the store it had managed to expectorate all my cards upon the floor), and I got a CD that was very improperly located in the "Bluegrass" section of a FYE, which consisted of Bela Fleck, some girl from China, and some guy from India, called Tabula Rasa. I'm very unclear of the details, but I laughed rather hard upon finding something so obscure and decided to purchase it as a result, (much in the way I ended up with a copy of Bee Keeping for Dummies and I'm still not sure whether I bought it for the comedic or for the musical value, or just the sum of both.)
On an interesting side note, I find I need to stop purchasing things with titles, because I'm getting tired of typing the HTML italics call. Not the solution most of you would choose, I understand, but, as I say, I do that. I'm certainly not giving up my grammar for something so silly. Also, something special for anyone who can tell me why italics are called italics and therein what leaning to the right has to do with Italy.
Also in Parkersburg, Mary bought The Sims 2: Nightlife expansion pack. Bah unto the italicized title. Also, we installed it but haven't had much opportunity to play it yet. Apparently, there are vampires. That'll amuse me when I get around to doing something with them, but then again there are still things I didn't get to do with The Sims 2 that I wanted to do but haven't done so far.
Before that, we did general stuff around Millwood. We played Myst III: Exile and are both stuck in it. Also, some Super Mario World was played, simply because it's such a good game. Moreover, I've been screwing up that good game with a level editor I found somewhere around here compliments of digg, and that's been amusing me thoroughly.
Hmmm... What else...
Before that I've been up to the usual lot, I guess. I've been doing random stuff about Wheeling, like drinking coffee and bothering people, with Mary but before that without. The usual break stuff, and tapirs. I don't know how I didn't notice the comical value of tapirs and capybaras before. Luckily, a particular episode of Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law called "The Devlin Made Me Do it" provided much amusment with Spuzmocker, and Age of Empires III has amused me with a cheat code that provides a cannon called the Mediocre Bombardment, I believe, which launches capybaras as its projectiles and as a result causes unprecedented destruction. Fun.
Before I was with Mary, she got some food poisoning. That made me sad, but save for the need to rebuild her stock of enzymes, microorganisms, and the like, which she happened to regurgitate during her bout with food poisoning, she's doing better now, so that, combined with her being with me now makes me rather happy.
Some other interesting stuff probably happened over the break, but I can't remember off the top of my head. I guess I'll reference some things and come back.
Orl korrect. Now that I've achieved notes on what I did, here's some more summary, I guess. I went to my grandparents the second night I was in Wheeling (the first night I was just generally getting back and resting and such), and Quincy, Jen, and I visited until after eleven. I never suspected we'd be sitting around talking for four hours or so, but there're a lot of things I don't suspect. That's why I've learned to stay on my toes. I like to take things as they come, and not plan ahead. This leaves a lot of room for whatever you want there to be room for. As I've probably stated I prefer fuzzier things--pixilated scuttles through life as opposed to concrete predestination--abstract instead of concrete.
Also, I have a new pocket knife now. That makes me happy. Not having to type the italics call to say that I bought it makes me happier.
Another event over the break involved me, Tom, Ben, Chris, and Spears making another sandwich to rule all sandwiches, and I'll have to say it was a damn good sandwich. The bacon was cheap and not entirely of satisfactory quality, but save that, 'twas good. Also, while eating the sandwich, we watched television and such left me with the following two quotes:
"It's like I got into a time machine and was whisked away
to New York." -A judge (or, at least the dub of one) on Iron Chef
"That's a bottle-nosed dolphin, a porpoise!" -Dr. Quest in the original series.
Why does one need a time machine to go to New York? And if you hear me jokingly refer to anything that's not a porpoise as a porpoise, you have Dr. Quest to thank for that.
Also, the Cheese's basement is not properly grounded, and I learned that the hard way through much electric shock. I can thank my computer adapter for the lessening of the voltage, resulting not so much in a pain as a great irritation, but much electric shock was had nonetheless. Eventually, though, we found an outlet I could use.
I also jammed with people who I haven't gotten to jam with for a while (and replaced my slide, which needed it desperately, being all beat up and thus making scratching noises as I pulled it across my strings), but I'm too out of practice so I need to play more dobro. Maybe even finish writing one of those songs I was working on while I'm at it.
I guess that's all I've got for the break thusfar, so now it's onto the stuff I said I was going to post about in my previous post.
First on the list, "Soda (good and bad)". Alright. Well, shortly after returning to Morgantown after Thanksgiving break, I discovered Kroger was having a sale on all Stewart's and Jones sodas. This delighted me, and I bought a couple things of soda and went home. However, the next day, I went back with Devon and decided not to pass up an opportunity like that, and together we bought twenty-some packs of various sodas. Then, we started discussing sodas, and I declared I wanted a gingerbeer, and we went searching for one. We never did find it, but we did find many other sodas from sparkling pink lemonade imported from France to Goose Island Root Beer (which were both rather good). By the end of the night we had so much soda we declared it Soda Day to be celebrated in the manner of such holidays as National Sandwich Day in years to come. Speaking of such holidays, we still have to burn Santa.
Before Thanksgiving break, however, Devon found and bought one of the Jones Soda holiday packs. It had five flavors of sodas, each part of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. They were Brussel Sprouts, Herb Stuffing, Turkey and Gravy, Pumpkin Pie, and Cranberry, and were vomit inducing, tolerable until it hit the back of your tongue, tolerable, tolerable but everyone else insisted it was vomit inducing, and really not that bad after what we went through to get to it, respectively. Luckily, no one vomited. It came close, though. I'd go so far as to say that Brussel Sprout soda was the foulest thing I've ever had the displeasure of letting come anywhere near my mouth. Echk.
The next thing on my list is "Why my group in CS sucked as much as the class". Almost as unpleasant as the Brussel Sprout soda. I say almost because I somehow miraculously ended up with a B- in the class. I'm still befuddled by that one. Maybe I did remarkably well on the final. I did get bold for the final question and mention the game Spore that Will Wright is currently developing and cited it as an example for whatever (yes, it was relevant), but I don't think that had too much to do with it. At any rate, it's a sad tune, but here's how it goes:
We started off with the four people who were still sitting there apathetic after everyone else had formed their groups. I had the thorough misfortune of being not in the lab with all my friends, so that was the explanation for my apathy. It thoroughly angers me that such was a relevant fact to me not being able to work with my friends, because the project grade was independent of the lab grade, and the lab was useless to begin with because we never did anything actually lab related in it. It was just an extension of the lecture. No programming or anything, just an occasional pop-quiz or two. At any rate, there were four of us, and probably the four people in the class that should not be allowed to form a group on their own due to a lack of motivation. Within a week or two, one guy dropped the class. (He was the one who, when my professor said, "You are what you eat" for no apparent reason, replied, "I wish! Ha! Mmmm... Turkey!"). We didn't really miss him as a person, but it made things harder to do the project with three people when most groups had four or five. Well, we continued, Ryan did a lot of the work for the prototypes, not because we made him, but because he wouldn't really tell either of the rest of us what was going on. In fact, we really didn't know we had prototypes until he showed up on the days we needed to present them. We tried communicating, but Ryan apparently sucked at it and never told us anything. This wasn't really too bad of a thing, though, until Thanksgiving break. The week before a big part of the project was due. We got it done, turned it in, and went home. However, only two of us apparently came back. Neither Mohammed (the other group member) nor I heard from Ryan after the break. Moreover, due to his initially poor communicating and his nevertheless need to dominate the work, we had none of the files we needed to do the project. Our final result was crappy and assembled by modifying and adding to what was handed back to us, therefore having page numbers gone awry and much more wrong with it, and we had not final prototype whatsoever to present. We tried e-mailing and calling Ryan, but he disappeared. He stopped going to class, lab, and didn't even show up for the final. I don't know what happened, but even the slightest word from him would have been nice to help us sort that mess out. We had two people to do the same work that was being done by four or even five in most cases. Also, the project this year was even harder than previous years when it comes to the work load (although not in complexity), and by the end of everything, despite our handicap, we had over a hundred pages of documents turned in. Somehow, though, despite a C on the midterm and on the project, and presumably not the best grades in lab, though, I got a B- in the class. I don't know how that happened. Whatever. It's done, and I never have to put up with that class again.
Alright. The next item on the menu is God of War. Right now, though, I don't have a lot to say on it. It was a really good game, albeit occasionally fustrating (especially the trials of the gods), but I don't think I have any stories to tell right now. None of the enemies deficated upon my character, at least. The special costumes you unlock, though, are very amusing.
"Nonsense." Ha. Yeah. That gets taken care of if I try to or not.
The next item on the list is something about MMORPGs I was writing, but that document is handwritten and sitting somewhere in Wheeling now, and also is incomplete. It's rather extensive, and therein if coherent is very thorough. It pretty much explains why MMORPGs suck, and why they shouldn't. Or, at least, it will when it's done. I have a lot of rants I need to finish and post, though, so look forward to at least one of those to appear in my free time in the beginning of the semester, I hope.
Until next time, boys and girls, it's been fun. Keep posting, keep reading, and keep hanging out with me so I can tell you stories about things you already experienced.
c. m. edge
Note to self: Icon ideas: Mario World, tapir, capybara.
Addendum: Holy crap. That entry covered five pages when copied into MS Word. Go read Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency instead.