Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Ah summer days





There are two pictures above. The first is the infamous picture I made for the Snowball Wars tour of Summer 2009 "because it's winter in South Africa." That was a good Keir quote. Anyway, if you're confused about it, and I hope you aren't, the second picture is a flowchart of what can and does happen on any given day for me recently. I decided it was complicated enough that I would make a flowchart since I really like flowcharts and it was easier to do that than try to explain it in my blog. I apologize, I forgot to include Dungeons and Dragons, but that doesn't happen all too often and I won't forget to touch on it in this post so fear not. I won't be doing day by day posts since it's been over two weeks since my last "real" post, so I'll go by topics. Enjoy.

Frisbee/injuries:
I roll these together because frisbee is my source of getting hurt. My knee still hurts, but not as bad as it did in the last post. Besides, now it is drowned out by my ankle pain. The ankle pain came about at the last frisbee game when I stepped in an unmarked sprinkler hole. Usually, when I roll my ankle, I hear a crack or maybe a c-crack. When I did this one, I heard a c-c-c-crack. I was effectively done running for the rest of the day, which sucked because we needed all the help we could get since we played a man down (I'll get to that). So now if I leave my computer to move around, I put it in my old ankle brace that I got when I hurt my ankle the summer after 8th grade. I am thankful that I hurt my ankle after my mega 8inches in a school year growth spurt because it meant my ankle brace still fits me. I can't wait until I get to stop wearing it because in this heat, the brace really digs into my skin and it hurts like crazy. Also, I don't really want a messed up looking tanline. So anyway, we had some good games, but the lack of dedication to the team really frustrates me sometimes. Last Tuesday (one week ago today), we played a team that got really foul happy. I swear play was stopped twice a point at least when I was in and the other team was really dicky, but Andrew was putting it back at them, so nobody was really in a good mood. We lost, but we should have won that. Speaking of games we should have won, back to the ankle hurting game. It was against the only other no win team in the league and we were excited to win. The only problem was that nobody decided to show up. We had Ashley, Eric, Orion, Steven, and I (the five that show up to every game) and Ali, who is really nice to play with because she listens and contributes and generally knows how to play. So we had 6 people against 7 with subs. I can't fault the other team for not playing a man down because I know what its like to have no wins and I would have done the same thing were I on that team. We actually managed to score 3 points on them, but in the end it was hot, we got tired easy, and if some damn people had shown up, we could have won the game. I'm still pretty mad at the rest of the team for that. Orion said he decided he will definitely not do this again next year and instead he will do a hat league and I'm thinking more and more that if I play frisbee next year, that sounds good because I'd really rather play with a team that's going to be there. That being said, the game was still really fun because it was playing with people I like playing with the most and the other team was really nice about the whole thing.

Dungeons and Dragons:
Davis was gone for a while as well as Orion, so not much DnD happened. Of course Sai could have been gone too since nobody really hears from him anymore except for DnD, but I doubt he was gone. Anyway, we recently got to start playing again and unfortunately, due to my stupidity, my character died in an ant hole. It would have been after I made my 4-page biography for him of course, just my luck. Anyway, I was 99.9% mad at myself for crawling in a hole and getting killed and I was .1% mad at Sai for accidentally throwing my body in a huge hole and mangling it so it couldn't be resurrected. I liked the character, well some aspects at least. He was a little to simple, but I liked how overpowered he was. Now I made a new character and while he's not rediculously overpowered like my last guy (I had godly ability scores), he is still a badass from what I can tell. Basically, I made him a ninja and I can't wait to play with him because I not only made him a 4-page bio (I have no life, I swear), but I also drew a [not] pretty picture of him. Dungeons and Dragons is a nice gaming break once in a while and a good excuse to see the fab five.

Console Gaming:
I beat Mercenaries 2 and I loved it. I wish it could have gone on longer. I recently started Turning Point: Fall of Liberty. I love WW2 and WW2 era games, so this was right up my alley. It's an FPS and it takes place in New York City and London revolving around if the Nazis took over England and invaded the US. The look sensitivity selection is absolutely terrible, but you have to get used to it or be killed. The environments are also pretty dark, so it's hard to see your enemies unless they are wearing goggles, then you see the orange lights on their faces to shoot at. All in all, I like it and I'm burnig right through it. I expect to have it done by my next post.

Grandpa's House:
So my aunt is completely moved out of her house, which means we have 2 full houses of stuff squeezed into one house. I now have to go and do a huge chain of events to have the house fully cleaned. I have to first clear out my aunt's pod so she can get rid of it and move what she wants inside. Then I know how much stuff to make room for in the shed. Then I can start cleaning the rest of the shed. After that, I can know how much room I have left in the shed and I can move stuff from the backyard into the shed. After all that is done, I can start working on the backyard. Kathryn helped me clear the pod the other day because my ankle was hurt and I needed help lifting since I had one good foot to plant when I was lifting stuff (I worked the day after I got it hurt, don't worry, I have high constitution, I'll be fine, my regen's really high, right guys? righT?). So anyway, soon I shall finish organizing grandpa's house. He moves into his new place now on his birthday, September 19th, rather than August 1st, which we had previously though. I still might need help doing stuff, but I think it will be harder to find people. You would be getting paid though. I'll keep y'all posted.

Starcraft:
She is a harsh mistress. Now that we are getting more serious, Steven expects Keir and I to get better. He also hates playing 3v3s and make sure we play 1v1s at a 1:1 ratio for every 3v3 we play. Unfortunately, I wind up putting in almost all of our 1v1s and Keir joins us for the 3v3s. I was really on my game recently when I actually legitimately beat Steven. I beat him once before, but it was because I zergling rushed him and he thought I was terran. This recent win felt really good though. Keir and I were getting evenly matched for a while, but he seems to have widened the gap again, though that may be just because we had 3 TvP's in a row and I'm not good at TvPs. My apm is slowly getting higher, not that it matters because it's so low anyway. Recently, Steven and Keir started playing ICCup without me since you can only do 1v1s or 2v2s. I like playing ICCup, but I never get to because 2 seasons ago before I knew anything about how to play 2v2s, Steven and I lost 2 games and he refuses to play with me on ICCup. I try to do 1v1s, but I'm not good enough and I just don't feel much like playing with a random 2v2 partner, though I may have to if I want to stick it to Steven and Keir. Until then, I will continue to train until I can beat Keir regularly, not just occasionally to never as I do now.

Well sorry about the long post. Soon things will start to disappear from my to-do list. My summer classes end soon, grandpa's house will have a big break once I finish the remaining things to do on it and then I will have a lot more free time for Starcraft. I'm going to be gone August 8-9 to take my grandpa to some wedding anniversary for one of his friends in Richland. Also I'll be gone from August 15-22, which sucks because I think Keir goes back to school shortly after I get that, so either someone should help him get Starcraft on a Mac or he will miss a lot of playing. Ok well that's all for now, peace out.

Monday, July 20, 2009

Keir's Rap

Hey check out Keir's Starcraft Rap. It's really cool and hopefully my linking to him will give him an honor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyHtO9jCtPo
Ok it's not much, but the Vegas pictures are up. They are of course in backwards order for you (not that there was any particularly important order since each thing was just some random thing that happened). Anyway, back to some sc.

This was cool to see on the Luxor. At night, the eyes lit up.
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The creepy baby and me.
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Fixing the cameras.
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The dealer at the feature table and the screen showing what he was doing.
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The ESPN feature table. Unfortunately, no big names were at it when I was there.
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Not a good picture I know, but Phil Hellmuth was being uncooperative.
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I got invited to party with the playmates over there.
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Climbing around.
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Dad couldn't fit so I climbed through. It was pretty hard since there was no good footing. Luckily I was able to use my arms.
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Awww, is it smiling?
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I came to Shoreline A&B, but nobody was practicing so I left.
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Heh, Big D.
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Kurt Busch's racing suit!
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Not going very fast because I was confused by the training video.
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Marketing ideas that backfired.
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Cool paint job on a freestyle.
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Since when does rice grass pass by?
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Scratching rock with my bare hand.
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I thought this looked a bit like an eagle's head or something but it wasn't anything special, just a rock. No name or anything.
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Thanks Kathryn.
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Being awesome and climbing around on rocks.
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Elephant rock. Named so because it looks vaguely like an elephant. It was played up as this huge thing that you couldn't miss, but in reality, it was very small and we drove by it a couple times before I noticed it.
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The boat ramp that ain't getting much use these days.
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After doing a lot of climbing. My socks had turned orange as well.
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