Caught In The Whirlwind
Archive for November, 2007
End of Semester Crush: An Update
01633 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
As I mentioned previously, there's 2 weeks left in this semester and as such, I'm currently buried in schoolwork. Most pressing on my mind at this point is my Software Engineering project which is going to be a tremendous amount of work to do in the two weeks I have left. Yesterday though, the professor told us the due date which is the day after the final (December 12th) which was about a week later than I thought the due date was going to be. I'm a bit more relaxed about that project now.
Moving into World Religions, I have an essay test due next week on Judaism/Christianity/Islam all combined because she ran out of time to talk about them. I think it's the two classes we spent on the introduction and the 2 we used on indigenous/native american religion. Whatever the case is, I need to write 4 essays, although the topics are fairly easy this time out. For example…name the 10 commandments and describe them. My theory is since we only had 4 exams and we were supposed to have 6, she wants another grade before the end of the semester.
And after that, the week after my 8 page paper on the various creation stories is due. Fun fun fun!
QotD: Vox Potluck
01634 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
If your Vox Neighborhood had a potluck dinner tonight, what dish, drink or dessert would you bring?
I'm bringing drinks. Nobody really wants to eat my cooking. All right…it's decent, but I'm not comfortable enough to make anything for anybody else.
I might be able to pull off cookies, but that's about it as far as my cooking skills go.
As far as drinks go, I'd probably bring a bottle of White Zinfandel wine of some sort since I know at least two of my neighbors enjoy it. If It's an all ages occasion, probably a jug of soda or something.
QotD: Today's Musical Horoscope
01635 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
What's your musical horoscope? (Put your player on shuffle and write down the first 10 songs that come up.)
Fairly busy this morning, but while this query is running I have a few minutes to answer this question. So here goes:
- Barenaked Ladies – Rule The World With Love
- Say Anything – Yellow Cat/Red Cat
- Rush – We Hold On
- Live – Where Fishes Go
- Symphony X – Seven
- Star One – High Moon (non live version)
- Blue Man Group – I Feel Love (Featuring Venus Hum)
- Porcupine Tree – She's Moved On
- Liquid Tension Experiment – State of Grace
- The Beatles – Polythene Pam
UPDATE: After looking at other people's results, I think I may possibly be the only person in the universe that lists songs with the band name first and the song title second. Weird.
Tired
01636 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
I'm exhausted this morning even though I went to bed early last night. I thought I had slept well too.
It's amazing how quickly one's mood can change. Last week I was reasonably happy, and suddenly this week I'm back to feeling crushed. End of the semester and all, lots of work to do. But I don't really feel like doing any of it. I still will of course, I'm just really tired of dealing with, well…everything.
Tonight I need to visit with my partner after class so we can work on our Software Engineering project, and I need to write a couple essays for World Religions somewhere in here. I really hate the end of the semester.
Soulsucking After Vacation Monday
01637 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
Mondays after a 4 day weekend are horrible. Which is why I refuse to answer today's Vox Hunt question. Because there's nothing good about Monday.
It started when I got up this morning. You see, my landlords are switching to a pellet stove for heat generation and they switched their side of the house yesterday and were going to do mine today. So, it got a bit chilly in there by the time I woke up. Nothing major, it was only down to 68 or so, which I'm fine with. But the fact that they're going to be coming into my place to do some work means I needed to clean up a little bit which is exactly what I want to do first thing in the morning.
I finished doing that and getting ready for work. I then made my lunch since I'm trying to not go home for lunch quite so much since my car doesn't get 30MPG anymore and gas prices shot up pretty quick there. Even though I live about 10 minutes from work, that travel adds up, so I'm trying to be better about staying in. Of course…I forgot my lunch on the counter as I'm walking out the door. Grrr…
And at the moment, I'm at work fighting with stuff that doesn't seem to want to work at all. And tonight I was supposed to go over to my partner's place to work on the Software Engineering project that's coming due in a couple weeks but he ended up having to work tonight.
Man, I miss that 4 day weekend.
Watch Out For Snakes!
01638 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
Friday and Saturday I was gone over to my friends place for another "gaming sleepover" thingy. This time around it was more like half games half movies as far as activities go. There was some MST3k (Eegah from which the title of this post was derived), Interview With The Vampire and The Crow, along with heaping helpings of Guitar Hero 3, some Super Mario Galaxy and replacing Resident Evil as the creepy game of the event, Silent Hill.
Silent Gill was…freaky. I usually don't play these types of games because I'm a wuss, but I'm usually unaffected watching them. Silent Hill was something else though. There's some kind of science to scaring the crap out of people and the developers of this game have that down perfectly. I can't wait to see what the heck is going on. The guy you control isn't the brightest guy in the world. He's standing in an elementary school turned into HELL, the floor becoming a metal grate, a giant bottomless pit in the middle of the room with bloody cages hanging above it, and the only thing the guy notices is strange is "Huh, why is there a wheel chair in an elementary school?"
Another fun moment in Silent Hill was a piano puzzle which ended up being a logic puzzle. There was a poem with all of the clues in it and a small section of the piano to work with. We had the clues written out, the keyboard diagrammed and spent like 15 minutes working up solutions which didn't work. Eventually, we went to a walk through which made us realize that we missed the biggest freaking clue in the whole puzzle which was in the title of the poem. Arrrgh! We made a good effort though.
We ordered out for pizza and wings for dinner and then went to IHOP in the morning for breakfast. I didn't last quite as long as I did the last time so we ended things around 12:30am. I must be getting old. Or I was just tired. I was falling asleep at the end of Interview With The Vampire though. I don't really remember the last 15-20 minutes of it, so I'll need to watch it again.
It was fun though, which is going to contrast with the contents of this next 2-3 weeks where I'm going to be doing a ton of homework because it's the end of the semester. Sigh. I can't wait until I'm done with this college crap.
I'm Thankful For Exploding Pies
01640 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
Well, another fun thanksgiving this year. As always, we like to keep things fairly small and just have a nice dinner with the immediate family.
Before the activities officially started, I was watching the Today show on NBC and it quickly became apparent they had run out of stories to cover. They were doing a story about a kid (couldn't have been more than 7-8 years old) who choked on a cheez-it at school and his best friend saved him by performing the Heimlich maneuver. The bad part about this story was the fact they had both the kid and his friend on to interview them. It was…painful. Both kids were camera shy and had a hard time saying anything. I had to turn the channel for a bit since I couldn't watch the trainwreck any longer.
The day officially started out around 9-10am when the traditional assembling/decorating of the Christmas tree while watching the Macy's Thanksgiving day parade took place. As always, my dad supplied the "It's too early!" comments as we were putting up the tree and my mom continued to want to put the lights on as we went which is totally against the tradition. Dunno how much longer that tree is going to last though. Getting kinda ragged and the base is a bit tippy this year. We also watched a little of the National Dog Show (long enough to see the dog that looked a lot like a mop) before switching over to football for the rest of the afternoon.
I ended up falling asleep during the Green Bay/Detroit game because it was kinda boring. Apparently, I slept through the interesting part of the game where Detroit tried to mount a comeback. I woke up a few minutes into the Dallas/Jets game to find that my sister and her husband had arrived. We hung out around my parents house for a bit and then we headed over to my place (minus my dad who was watching the jets get creamed) for some Wii bowling.
We headed out to Buffalo Head, the traditional Thanksgiving dinner location when we eat out (which we did this year, as opposed to my mom cooking last year). The roads were a little icy as my dad found out several times We thankfully arrived in one piece, but it was scary there in a few spots. True to past thanksgivings, nobody had the turkey special. I ended up with some stuffed shells that were pretty good. Somebody else in the restaurant had ordered a slice of lemon meringue pie for desert which got me wanting some pie. Apparently my mom wanted some too since she said she'd make one when we got home.
I hung out at my place for an hour or so before heading back to my parents for pie and to watch Grey's Anatomy. The pie was a little more eventful than expected. A couple bites into his, my dad doubled over and made something of a surprised noise. I can't remember exactly what he said, but when he straightened up again it had looked like his pie exploded all over his shirt. We're not entirely sure what happened, but it was very entertaining. Well, for us anyway. It's not like he shoved the pie towards him when he was taking a bite. Straight down fork movement. The best theory we could come up with is some kind of sabotage.
Vox Hunt: Thanksgiving Traditions
01641 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
Show us one of your Thanksgiving traditions.
Every thanksgiving I go over to my parents house and watch the parade on TV while we assemble the (artificial) Christmas tree. My dad sits in his recliner reading the ads for the doorbuster sales on Black Friday while injecting comments such as "It's too early!" We've been doing this for a few years. Here's a picture of the tree we put up this morning:
QotD: On Genres
01642 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
Do you tend to like music in particular genres, or are your tastes all over the place? What are your most and least favorite musical genres?
If you haven't gathered yet (if you know me or if you just stumbled upon this posting from somewhere) my musical tastes veer into the strange. I primarily enjoy what is usually termed Progressive Rock, with a little bit of Heavy Metal thrown in. I should probably define which sub-genres of Metal I enjoy as well. I'm more into the classic 80s metal sound, like Iron Maiden or early Metallica. I don't particularly enjoy most death metal, power metal or black metal. Anything with screaming vocalists is out. Growling vocals are OK as long as they're done tastefully.
I also enjoy some Alternative and Pop stuff, but that's not quite as widespread as my Prog obsession. I usually have to be in the right mood and the source material needs to be the right material.
Aside from hip-hop, rap and country (and the exceptions noted above), I'm generally pretty open.
QotD: My Game of the Year
01644 days
by Jason
in Uncategorized
What video game is your personal Game of the Year?
Submitted by SimpleNate.
Portal has got to be my favorite game of the year at this point. It's very short (about 3-5 hours to go through the main story) but what's there is the highest quality gaming experience I've ever had the pleasure of experiencing. Excellent puzzles, great gameplay mechanics, awesome story and voice acting, an engaging plot twist… Portal has it all.
And that's not even counting the end credits. Portal is included in the Orange Box for around $50, and I'd probably pay $50 just for portal alone. It's that good. If you haven't played it…GO! PLAY!
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