An update too long for Twitter or Facebook.

I discovered today that I'm getting a D in two of my classes. Normally, this is a very bad thing in college, because it means you have too little will to do what you think you want in life in order to actually get anywhere, except that the classes in which I'm performing remedially are about medieval England and oil wells – two subjects which, if I had to be told I could never ever learn about for the rest of my life, I wouldn't particularly miss. The unfortunate business is that these will drive down my GPA and can potentially force me out of my major. And suddenly the irony of liberal arts education becomes blaringly clear.

Anyway, maybe it's not too late to declare pass/fail.

What I'm working out to these days

This playlist is called "Nerdrenaline" because it's derived (with the exception of Samson and Delilah) completely from video games. Despite that, it's all very pumped stuff and has a pretty solid lifting tempo.

3 Cans Later - Chris Geehan - Iji
Welcome To the Party, Pal
For Stronger Bones
Seven Four
Tor
Face to Face - Tom Mauritzon - Iji
Hero (Wretched8 Remix) - Captain Goodnight - Iji
Further (Lifeforce cover) - VNV Nation - Iji
Mega Man 3: Magnet Man and Top Man - Entertainment System
Escape From The City - Jun Senoue - Sonic Adventure 2
Samson and Delilah - Shirley Manson - Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Jackknife - Solar Winds - Mirror's Edge
Ropeburn
Pirandello Kruger
Boat
Fighting For Freedom - Takehiru Ishimoto - The World Ends With You
Shibuya
Kinetic Harvest- Sidhe - Shatter
Aurora
Granular Extractor
Krypton Garden
Amethyst Caverns
Neon Mines
Xenon Home World
Boss Music

Enjoy.

Conundrum

Why is it that we stop caring what time it is only after it's already gotten ridiculously late? I wanted to get to bed forty minutes ago but I didn't, and now I don't want to go to bed even though I really should.

I'm renaming my internal clock Keyser Soze.

Hey life... ya done yet?

Cute. What are you looking for?

Mostly friends, but play's alright every once in a while. I'm open-minded in that area. How about you?

I don't "play," and I avoid those who do. It's not my thing.

Well, those who play tend to avoid me, but ... so does anyone I wish would just date me. So I guess that's that?

I don't hook-up, and I keep clear of those who do. It says a lot about one's character -- or lack thereof.

Yep, there's that final bullet to my self-esteem. Time to listen to Death Cab and concede that 2006 was, in fact, the last year I'd ever have a boyfriend.

I do think you're cute.

Cute but poisonous.

Ok, well take care and good luck finding whatever/whomever you're looking for. So long!

You know what I'm honestly looking for? I want to find a guy who's stuck in the years when Pete and Pete and Are You Afraid of the Dark were still on Nickelodeon. I'm looking for a guy who still has anxiety before he gets onto the big rollercoasters at the theme parks. I'm looking for a guy who remembers what the Super Nintendo was and who will still fight to say it was better than the Sega Genesis even though they both died off 14 years ago. I want somebody who hasn't quite grown up and isn't even sure he wants to.

 

And to be completely honest, I only mentioned play fleetingly because I had no idea what you might be looking to find on ******. I guess it was just my turn to get caught in a sting.

next time, be honest. you never know who's on the other end. don't tell someone what you "think" he wants to hear because in the end, it might not be what he wants to hear after all.

g'nite.

You'll have to forgive me if I'm not completely gracious toward your pious lesson. I'm honest as often as I can be and it hasn't won me any gratitude, sympathy, or love. And as high on your pedestal as you are, I'm sure it's tough for you to see me crying myself to sleep more nights than most people should.

Douche bag.

Sent from my iPhone

You call me a douche bag when you don't even know my name? I've spent the first year and a half of college shattered over the first guy in my life who's ever been fully compassionate toward me leaving, and I spent the next year and a half trying to recollect myself AGAIN after finally meeting somebody else that I clicked with. I have been spit upon and ignored my entire life by the people who were supposed to be my friends, and by the people who call themselves my family. So yes, sometimes I cave in and go for the opportunity to have a little closeness in my life.

 

Fine, maybe that makes me damaged, but I am not, nor will you ever have the right to call me, a douche bag.

Author's note: fuck...

Dear Madam Gaga

In order for something to be an innuendo, it must first be a real thing.  This is in reference to the term "Disco Stick."  There is no such thing as a disco stick.  There has never been a prevalence of sticks in disco culture.  I formally declare that your lyrics are stupid.

Sincerely,
The Undersigned.

Sending out an S.O.S.

I got off of Skype with a friend and started hearing a squeaking in my earbuds. I didn't know what might be the cause, so I didn't know what I should do. Then I started hearing a pattern to the squeaks. They're pulses. They come in clusters separated by about five seconds of silence and groups separated by about one second of silence. I've read about codes like this before in one of my math classes, but it doesn't make any sense to me.

3-2-2
2-2-3
3-3-2
3-2-2
2-2-2-1
1-2
2-1
1-1-1
1-1-4-1
1-1-1-1-1
This cluster is singled out because it doesn't follow the rule of the numbers adding up to 7, 8, or 9.
5-2-1
3-2-2
2-2-2-1
4-2-2
2-2-2-1
2-2-2-1
2-2-2-1
2-2-2-1
2-3-1-1
3-1-2-1
2-1-2-2
2-2-2-1
3-2-1-1
3-3-2
3-3-2
4-3-1
3-4-1
3-3-2
2-3-3
5-3
3-3-2
2-2-2-1
3-2-2
2-2-2-1
3-2-2
5-3
6-3
2-2-2-1
2-2-2-1
2-2-2-1
2-3-2
3-3-2
3-2-2
3-3-2
3-2-1-1

I lost track of them after this point, but they kept going. A friend of mine suggested I restart to see if it was a hardware glitch. So I did, and they stopped, but only after I completed the login sequence.

If anyone knows what sort of code this was, or what sort of code it resembles, can you give me a shout?

Random thought of the night

I've never been skinny dipping.  I wonder how it feels.  I was always afraid to take the risk, but what's the risk, really?  Can someone tell me?

Blue morning, blue morning, wrapped in strands of fist and bone

I made a new friend recently.  We haven't talked very often, but we've generally talked about things that are a little deeper than surface.  

Tonight, I shared a post from this blog with him, and he asked me if I still feel the way I did when I wrote it.  I said I do, and then told him that I use the stars as a frame of reference for times like these.  See, the stars are fixed in the sky, so compared to them, it's hard to say we're really moving at all.  He suggested that I should probably change my reference point if that's not how I wanted to feel.  He said that it was important that I be who I feel I am on the inside, no matter what others' opinion of my doing so is.

And the whole thing reminded me a lot of Counting Crows...

"Curiosity, kitten,
Doesn't have to mean youre on your own
You can look outside your window
He doesn't have to know
We can talk awhile, baby
We can take it nice and slow"

And a little later,

"There's a bird that nests inside you
Sleeping underneath your skin
When you open up your wings to speak
I wish you'd let me in"

Of course, I'd always heard "bird that nests" as "perfectness," but either image leads to the wings, and to not having to wander in solitude.  If I don't want to live my life closed off from everyone, I shouldn't have to.  And if I want to feel like I'm going somewhere, all I have to do is go somewhere.

My new reference point... I think it should be how much I've learned about life.

Whoops

I meant to write last night but I ended up not. I'll make up for it today.

I think that there are definite signs to be heeded in our daily lives. They can be little things that we don't even realize we're supposed to notice, they can be big things so big that we lose the message of them in the shock of the event happening. Usually they're hidden in the details, and can take a small amount of imagination to uncover. Some people will argue that they don't exist then, but I think that those people choose not to see signs because it's easier to live life without turning your head and looking around. (to their credit, they're right; it is easier to live that way)

It happens often, though, if you're receptive to it. The present structure of the signs tells me that whatever I'm hoping for this summer, it won't happen now. If I try to force the point, it'll just crash in on me.

I want to believe that these signs promise something will develop with the guy that apologized... but that's a very long way out and I shouldn't let my heart beat for a moment that might not ever come.

Tech 'n Talk

I'm waiting for a lot of things. I'm waiting for summer to be over, I'm waiting for love to find me, I'm waiting for my sister to get out of the shower, and I'm waiting for my real life to begin.

Well, in no more than an estimated 12 hours, I can cross one of the things I've been waiting for off my list. It's been about a year since the last major update to the iPhone OS, and soon Apple will be releasing their next big update: iPhone OS 3.0.

This is really exciting for anybody with an iPhone or iPod Touch because it adds a ton of functionality to the device. The majority of the upgrades are technical features, but they allow for pretty exciting stuff. Push notifications, for instance, allow applications to send updates to your device when there's new content available without the need for that application to be running.

Another huge feature is the ability to cut, copy, and paste text not only within individual apps, but across every app on your device. Got a link in Safari you want to share in Twitter? Done. Got an address you need to send to your dumb friend Gina because she lost the directions to the party? Done. Got a... thing that... needs pasting into... something else? ._.

In other news, my mom called a family discussion about cars and such and the topic arose that the car I used to have was supposed to be my graduation present, given to me a bit earlier than normal. I asked about if my parents had put any thought into what my sister's college graduation present would be, and then made the point that my high school graduation present was a lot smaller than my sister's, so I just wanted to know what hers would be like. My mom contested that my high school graduation present was a laptop and not a $300 MP3 player. I corrected her on this point and made it clear that my graduation present was some $800 than my sister's. After dinner she hugged me, apologized (apologies abound these past ten days), and then said she knew what I meant on the walk last night.

Two humanized people in ten days. Maybe this summer is turning out differently than the last two. Even if just in small amounts, it makes me hopeful for the rest.

What I did today.

I woke up at noon and then hung out downtown with a friend from high school. We had Panera Bread around 4:30 because I was starving. I had the chipotlé chicken sandwich with no tomato or cheddar. I also had the iced green tea and made a point to ask the girl if there was any dairy in this green tea. Stupid question, I know, but sometimes people put milk in green tea. She said there was no dairy in the green tea, so I was golden. The sandwich was delicious, but shortly after eating it I discovered that there was indeed milk in the chipotlé sauce. I don't regret anything.

I got home around 6:30, and logged on to my computer, was bored to tears until about 12:00, when I started watching a web series called Dorm Life. It's interesting; sort of like The Office if it were set in a college dorm and hopped up on guarana.

Now I'm heading to bed, woot. Goodnight.

EDIT: oh, speaking of woot, I bought a 4GB flash drive off of woot.com today. It was $10 after shipping.

I feel really attuned to this image

It all started when I got an email from Blizzard...

They were informing me of a successful character transfer. It was an interesting email to have received, because I haven't played WoW in over a year.

Concerned about whether or not this might reflect on my bank statement, I attempted to log on to worldofwarcraft.com. Indeed, I was unable to log in, so I reset my password by answering my security question, and changed my default email address. And then I looked at my payment summary: Somebody purchased a month, on May 28th. I looked, then, to the subscription plans, which were indeed set to a monthly basis. The good news is that the month was not purchased on my plastic.

Still, mildly concerned about this character transfer business, I called Blizzard support. They told me that my account was hacked. And that there's nothing they can do over the phone about the character transfer.

But...

They did say that I should check my computer for viruses and keyloggers and trojans.

So I did check my Mac for those things...

And found none of those things.

Then, curious to see what else my hacker might have done, I decided to download WoW back on to my computer. The initial download promised to be 6.5 GB. I come back to my computer a little while later, to find that the 11 GB of free space I had left it with... Were all gone. I cleared off my hard drive, and redownloaded. Then I successfully had version 3.0.1. Then the downloader came up. And then the updater came up. And the download/update dance repeated, nine times, until finally, I was able to click "Play" on the launcher.

So I did.

And I signed in.

And was prompted to update, three more times.

But when finally granted the go-ahead to log in and run the actual game, it appeared that it was all for naught.

You see, on the very first installer screen, some eight hours ago, I chose Wrath of the Lich King. Thinking that installing that would let me play my basic account, since they all contain the same data anyway. Apparently... I was wrong. I installed the wrong kind of 15 gigabytes. You know how it takes up that much space? They never optimize their code. Their patches are installed next to one another. Never overwriting the precious base code of the other patches.

You would think, that with all of Blizzard's money and vast nebulous brainsize hive mind knowledge of making the most incredibly immersive video game experiences known to all of mankind, nay, all of Creation, that they would know how to make a unified installer. I was told that my account information was wrong. Back to the website to enter in the same account information. Which was proven on the website to be right.

So now I sit, downloading the right kind of 15 gigabytes. With luck, I'll wake up tomorrow and update three more times before finding out what my hacker had done.

In the meantime, I find it necessary to ask: if WoW were a standalone OS, would Microsoft finally look efficient?

Grammar lesson

Kos of frustration.

(assuming the embedded video doesn't show up on Facebook, the link to the video is here)

It should be noted that of the 30 seconds in the ad, the dog is shown for two. It should also be noted that Obama's platform was almost entirely founded on the idea of cutting government spending. Finally, and most important, Obama cut a mere $100,000,000 of spending out of the expected $1,400,000,000,000 deficit as of April 24th.

Case in point: the media should spend less time focusing on a two-second clip of a dog and more on the other $1,399,900,000,000.

Last night

I know it's basically becoming a motif of my blog to write about dreams I've had, but this one was a little more interesting than others of late.

What happened? I cried. I cried unlike I had ever cried before. I cried into my mom's shirt, about everything. Everything that's been happening for so long. About the heartbreak, about the isolation, about the feelings of futility and uselessness. Absolutely anything that has weighed on my mind in the last three years, poured out in saline.

I woke up in the middle of this dream. I expected there to be moisture on my face: streams, rivers, something. But there wasn't. There was no indication I'd cried at all in the middle of the night. In fact, when I woke up, I didn't even want to cry at all. I felt... nothing.

Not nothing, I guess. I don't know what I feel. It feels like there's a coolness in the back of my head. Like when you feel like you're about to crack up laughing, only I don't feel like laughing at all.

Movies on my iTunes Rental list

Boldfaced means I have not seen the movie...
12 Angry Men
2001 A Space Odyssey
All Dogs Go To Heaven
American Teen
An American Carol
Army of Darkness
Ben Hur
Blade Runner (Final Cut)
Boys Don't Cry
Capote
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Color Me Kubrick
Double Take
Dr. Strangelove
Dragonheart
Everything is Illuminated
Expelled (No Intelligence Allowed)
Fern Gully
Fools Rush In
Goodnight and Good Luck
Hard Candy
Hearts In Atlantis
Hotel Rwanda
Idiocracy
Joe Somebody
K-PAX
Little Miss Sunshine
October Sky
Pleasantville
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
Saved!
Shattered Glass
Suddenly, Last Summer
The Crucible
The Fox and the Hound
The Great Gatsby
The Importance of Being Earnest
The Iron Giant
The Pelican Brief
Tommy Boy
Twilight Zone
Wakko's Wish

Random thoughts for the day

10:25: Right. Let's just get through today, then wake up and get through tomorrow. Then Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, in that order.

10:28 That was funny. Why do I always make those quips?

10:33 I need more oatmeal squares. Juice would be good, too.

10:35 I think I'll write all of these down. Oh, I also need to do laundry.

10:38 Grocery shopping an acceptable way to spend the morning? Why not?

10:39 Blue playlist. Yay, melancholy.

10:43 I should clear out my Yahoo list. I know all the lyrics to "Hallelujah."

10:46 A firetruck just drove by. There must be something serious going down, there was also a cop car in the Village lot.

10:53 I sing "My Sundown" too often or the lyrics to be true anymore when I say "I'm gonna be so much more than they."

10:57 I kept him on my list. What's that saying? Sometimes the hardest thing and the right thing are the same. Funny... He was the one to tell me that. Alright... Bye, TJ.

11:02 Is there really nobody here like me? Who just wants a place to rest his head?

11:03 Right. Groceries.

11:11 I wish that he DOESN'T talk to me today.

11:14 Moderate downpour, not good for groceries.

11:33 I haven't ended a year on a high note since junior year of high school.

12:07 Hanging out with friends brings out this strange, post-sadness laughing. About just ridiculous things.

12:20 There's that sickness in my stomach. I should get moving.

12:41 Still in my friends' room. I should go now though.

12:44 Bad rain today. It smells like a lake now.

12:53 I keep using Omegle as if it's ever fulfilling. I keep doing a lot of things as if they're fulfilling...

12:56 I can't cry. Why not?
I should move again

12:59 I'm reminded of when I asked for a video game after my sister got back from New Mexico.

1:02 I really should go to a counselor.

1:06 I could write a short story.

1:13 My wallet always feels unnaturally thin.

1:16 I still need to do laundry and go shopping.

1:20 Just experienced my first city curb splash. It felt appropriate.

1:22 Maybe I should consider grad school in NYC

1:33 Got a weird look from two people in class as I sat down.

1:39 I can't remember what it was like when facebook was social.

1:40 God, I've only been here seven minutes.

1:49 What do I do about this other than just wait for it to go away?

1:49 I'd try my yellow list, but... I just don't feel ready for that yet.

1:54 I just want to lay down on a couch that isn't mine.

2:02 Damn.

2:12 A friend: "What are you doing? Are you still wandering?" Me: "Basically."

2:21 Found a couch. This will be a very unproductive time.

6:06 I ended up hanging out with friends for the past three and a half hours, but now that I'm back in my room... I feel just as down as before.

6:39 Yeah. I'm way down.

My afternoon...

I walked all that blue line. It was a rather interesting journey, involving myself getting soaked halfway through and then dried again after the rain stopped. I also gave a homeless guy the one penny I had in my wallet (I'm not joking, I had a single penny and no other cash), I walked through a two-block commercial area and discovered a couple of interesting cafés there, and I stopped at an Arby's on the highway and got lunch (I didn't say I didn't have a debit card).

The one thing I can say with any definite conviction is that you really see the world differently at three miles an hour than you do at thirty.

Meiner Tag

Hallo, Blog. Mein Tag beginnt mit mich früh wachen. Ich habe so-lala
diesen Tagen geschlafen, aber ich kann nicht warum sagen. Ich kann
nicht so viel auch essen. Vielleicht bin ich krank? Ich weiß nicht.

Ich habe nach Literaturklass gegangen. Wir sind das Buch ,,Fun Home"
lesen. Es ist sehr gut! Aber es ist bisschen düster, und ich
befürchte, dass meine Familie ist zu ähnlich die Familie in dem
Buch. Ich fühle mich, dass das Buch kann über mein Leben sein, und
was das sagt für meine Bindungen mit meine Familie... Es ist traurig.

Nach Literatur, hättet ich nur 30 Minuten zu essen. Ich habe einen
Burrito gegessen, weil es kocht sehr schnell und ist sehr lecker.
Dann habe ich meines Praktikum für Geologie. Das ist so langweilig!
Aber dieses war das letzte Prakrikum für der ganze Jahr. Deswegen war
ich sehr sehr glücklich.

Habe ich seit 4.30 mein Freund Adrian für Kaffee angetroffen. Wir
haben an viele Dingen gesprochen, und es hat mich gefreuen. Wir
spazieren nach Walgreens, und haben Anteile für eine Grillparty
gekauft.

Die Grillparty war die lezte Versammlung für QSA. Wir alle haben
Hotdogs gegessen, und es war eine gute Ende zu dem Tag.

Meine Tagen sind auf spät kleine sporadisch, aber wenn ich an der Gut
denke, habe ich sehr besser Zeit.