No Cussing Week in LA

But we don't live in LA, so they can all go to hell I guess. Well congratulations, partially to me as well, because this last week was far more eventful than the previous one. Before I start though, I want to get a couple of things out of the way.

PAX: http://www.pennyarcadeexpo.com/index.php
Don't feel obligated to go to the site. I just put it there for quick reference if you felt like it. So this year, PAX is not the last weekend in August, but instead is the first weekend in September. It will be the usual Friday-Sunday thing (September 4 - September 6). Last year we had 10 people, but it was disorganized. This year, we should definitely have 10 people going that we are in regular contact with. I think that group rate still applies, but we need to act faster this year because PAX is limiting the number of badges this year. So if we can get that group discount thing, that would be good. Davis wants us to order before he leaves for Greece for spring break, so Sai, I will personally ask you to spread the word to the UW kids and I will try to do it as well and I'll get going on facebook and all that.

Contest: http://www.blizzard.com/us/inblizz/contests/themepark/
So Steven sent some of us an email the other day about a blizzard contest with a potentially great reward (a SC2 Beta key). Since I had nothing to draw at the time, I decided I would work on that. The going is good. Right now I have a lot of ideas for things to put in it. When I'm done, I'm definitely putting it up on the blog. Hopefully I can win this because that would be pretty cool if I did.

Ok now to the week.

Monday:
Nothing much happened because I was only in school for Jazz Band. That night, that annoying girl from band showed up and I got worried, but then saw she had a trumpet case. About 2 minutes later she left. I think it means she was coming from another band practice to tell our director she was quitting the band. Many silent huzzahs ensued from the horn section.

Tuesday:
Tuesday was a down day for me. My classes were easy. In Math, we were just preparing for the midterm all week, so it was pretty boring. After school, I played some SC with Steven. After he had to leave, I played a lot of Rome: Total War.

Wednesday:
When I got to my math class, I found out it had been cancelled. I decided that I didn't want to go to the library and the class was empty and warm, so I went in and did my homework in peace and quiet for once. This was of course after downloading the terran theme onto my phone so I could play it during my homework doing there. After school, I started working on the contest and then played some Starcraft with Steven. After he left, I played Rome: Total War.

Thursday:
Math was cancelled once again, so I did the same thing as the day before. I overheard the class next door taking a test that I can only hope was for ESL, otherwise there are some stupid kids in college. After school, Steven and I discovered a great game called Pickle Bound. I later found the awesome song they loop in the background and Steven did some cutting and recording to replecate the loop they have in the game, hence the song on his blog. When I emailed Steven the song I found, I accidentally sent it to Orion. There Davis, now all your questions are answered.

Friday:
I got home and played a lot of Pickle Bound with Steven and then we moved on to other UMS games. We spent an hour and a half on one game, but we finally beat it and in the end, it was a pretty cool waste of time.

Saturday:
Dad and I went to meet my grandpa at Costco (origin of quotes below). Grandpa had a list prepared of stuff he needed for a birthday party he was going to the next day. Among the list was "Crap 16oz. Phillips." Dad and I chuckled when we saw this. Apparently, he had meant to spell crab. We saw Erik while we were there, so I talked to him for a bit. After that, we dropped Grandpa off at his house and I fixed it up a bit while dad went to the bathroom. He says he has a lot of projects for me, so I guess during spring break and summer break, I'm going to be over there building crap (and I don't mean crab). After that, I came home and started downloading System Shock 2 before going to play it with Steven and Orion for 2 hours. It's meant to be a scary game I can see, but since the three of us play together, it's more funny than anything else.

Sunday:
I did some homework really quick, then I practiced tennis with Kathryn in the rain because her tennis tryouts are right now actually. After that, I went over to Shoreline Center, but I didn't see Eric there, so I balled out because it was raining. After I got home, I played SC with Steven, then Sai, then just Sai for a while before going to bed.

Today:
I had my math midterm which had been postponed to today. It went pretty well. I was in a block for the first half, but then I pulled my head out of my ass and realized I knew how to do the problems. Now I'm posting. Later I have band. Until then, I'm going to work on the contest and research for my 8 page essay about how videogames don't get the bad rap they deserve. Ok peace out until next time.

*Traffic encountered while trying to merge. A guy lets me in his lane*
Dad: Well people let you in their lane out of the goodness of their heart.
Grandpa: They have more good in their heart than me.
Dad: you're supposed to have some good though.
Grandpa: No I don't. I'm old.
Dad: What about santa? He's old and he's a nice guy.
Grandpa: No I'm more like that other guy, Stooge.
Me: Scrooge?
Grandpa: Yeah.
Dad: Dad, you just need to think WWJD.
Grandpa: What?
Dad: What Would Jesus Do.
Grandpa: Well, I think he'd sit down and take it easy.

Things I Hate: 9

Hello and welcome to my ninth installment of Things I Hate. Before I get started, I must let you know that my post below this one (the one with quotes) has been labeled with "Quotes." I will be posting quotes that I come across separately now with no titles and just the label "quotes" at the bottom. It is part of my special way of obsessively organizing my blog. Anyhow, let us get into the ninth installment of Things I hate. Today on Things I Hate: Annoying Laughs.

Chances are that by this time in your life, you have experienced someone with an annoying laugh. After encountering enough, I finally decided to screw people's feelings so I could bitch about them a bit.

Chipmunk Laugh: "That joke was so funny, I feel the need to applaud it as though I were a small, furry, woodland creature."
This laugh is the one where the laugher begins a rapid hahahahaah in a high pitch that sounds like Alvin or any other of his lame chipmunk friends. Since this laugh requires little air to use (and the people who use it are often airheads), this laugh can go on for a long time, making it all the more annoying.

The outdoing laugh: "No, you don't understand. I got that joke on such a greater level than you. That joke was so much funnier to me, so I need to laugh harder."
This is a very douchey laugh because the person doing it thinks that they are above other people they are with. The person laughing this way is basically saying "I know you got the joke, but I got it more!" That's not really possible at points, but some morons still feel the need to assert their lack of intelligence by making sure everyone else knows if they get a joke. Another possible cause for this laugh is if a person has no idea what the joke meant and they didn't want to stick out by not laughing. The problem is, the joke is rarely as funny as they are laughing for, so this person sticks out more and deserves full humiliation for their ignorance. The final reason this laugh can occur is when the person laughing just is obsessed with their own voice. The best cure for someone doing the laugh for that reason is to punch them in the throat so that they won't be able to hear their precious, precious voice for a while.

Chicks with deep laughs: "Nothing funny to say, that's just fucked up."
The last time I encountered a chick with a really deep laugh was a couple of years ago in Hawaii. In my experience with chicks with deep laughs, they have always been very awkward. Take for example, my experience in Hawaii:
"The waitress there was mildly attractive. Something odd that she did was place the napkin I had on my lap for me. Like her hand was less than one inch away from touching my balls. I was also the only person in my family to which she extended this service. Also, when I said something mildly funny, she let out a very deep rapidfire laugh. Not very ladylike. Very awkwardlike." (August 18th, 2007)
Chicks with deep laughs are very awkward especially for me because like any normal person, my voice is higher when I'm laughing. It's not very sexy when a lady has a deeper voice than me. Perhaps if I had kicked her in her woman-testicles, her voice would have gone up a couple octaves to where it should be. The reason this laugh is annoying is because it is really awkward to be around and in some cases, it can make it hard to tell if the person is a dude or a chick.

If you laugh in any of these ways, I sincerely suggest that you get a vocal chord transplant or whatever is necessary to prevent you from annoying me by expressing your pleasure at something this way. Until next time, peace out.

Quote unload

Well since I don't use AIM anymore, I guess this is the new place I can dump good quotes from the past. Here they are:

Sai: My bro wants me to ask you if you're still a virgin.
Sai: I'll tell him not that you know of, right?

*hot girl pulls up in car next to us*
Amanuel: Hey, now we can say wierd things to her and she can't understand what we're saying.
Me: I wanna grab your boobs!
Sai: I want to hold your hand...................and give you a flower.

Doug to our Bari Sax player:
Good God, man. You read like Stevie Wonder.

Maddy: The rain can be blamed for everything today.
Me: Even the fire drill?
Maddy: Oh is that what that was?
Maddy: I came back from a field trip and everyone was on the field.
Maddy: So really, everyone ELSE was on a FIELD trip

Orion: Vagina
Orion: Get it?
Orion: No, of course you don't!

Keir: Is this China? Because there seems to be an open door policy.

Keir: Yellow, I have some advice for you
Keir: Never play Starcraft again

Me:i just remember her saying "now i gave you all break to read this short little book"
Orion:lulz kkk

Orion: I hear there's this new transvestite band; it's called Girlz II Men

Jack: actually, my bday's on easter
Jack: me and jesus, we got a connection

Keir on "maybe the lurkers wont splash the tanks."
Keir: That's a big-ass maybe

Keir: Your blog is nice
Keir: no wonder it attracts all the homosexuals on the west coast

Keir: Green Bay, more like green gay!!!!
Keir: wait, green day!
Keir: which is inherently gay!

Me: now i will know how to know if it is pooping
Me: then we can do some 2 girls 1 cup shit
Oliver: yeah except it'd be 2 guys 1 bowl
Oliver: cause we're hardcore like that

Orion: Yi, what sound does a sheep make?
Yi: Moo, no wait, baaaah.

Me: well in your honor, i made the letter very dickly
Me:basically saying bitch i deserve this shit cuz im better than u
Me: but with proper grammar
Orion: lol
Orion: Bitch, I deserve this shit due to the irrefutable fact that I, David Altena, am better than you.
Me: exactly

Me: You can still have a verb before a noun.
Davis: Run, flower!

Orion: You know she said something profound, which was odd because most of the things coming out of Taylor's mouth-
Me: Are dicks!

*Davis and I see a painter staring inquisitively at a partly finished wall*
Davis: And then he realized....they were paying him by the hour

Ahmad: I only recognize something as a sport if EA has made it into a sports game

Steven: If I wanted my comeback I would have wiped it off your face

David: That is so going into my blog
Keir: Oh good, that means nobody will ever read about it

MASS EFFECT 2 TEASER OUT *boner*

Ask me for the link if you really want it. I'm not posting it because I know nobody will want it because none of you have 360s or seemed interested in the first Mass Effect. I'm excited though. Anyway, this past week was fairly busy, including three nights of little sleep. I think it may actually remain short, so here it goes.

Monday:
After my last post, I played more Metroid Prime, believe it or not.

Tuesday:
I didn't have a trumpet lesson because the guy had a gig to go to, but we had sectionals and those are always fun because instead of Doug yelling at our section, our section gets to go to a room so we can say "Shit, shit, we need to get this down fast." After school, I played some more Metroid Prime.

Wednesday:
I spent a lot of the day trying to catch up on reading for my Asian Literature class. It was quite boring, I must say.

Thursday:
Homework and Metroid Prime.

Friday:
We got a new song in Jazz Band that wants us to play at 190bpm. I'm sure when we have it down, it won't be a problem, but we all learned why we shouldn't sight read music at tempo. It was disastrous, but in a funny, not getting yelled at sort of way. After school, I got some good SC in with Steven for a while and then I pwned Ashley a bit.

Saturday-Today:
On Friday night, I stayed up until 11:00 and then had to get up around 4:45am the next morning to make our flight to Anaheim. It went well. We got to Disneyland at about 10:00 and we spent the whole day there riding rides and such. Kathryn and I got a good combo of that's what she saids at one point (though not nearly as epic as the Hendrix combos from theory (Davis know's what I'm talking about)). We met up with Kathryn's friend that lives down there now on Saturday and hung out with them for most of the day. Unfortunately, I did not make the Astro Blaster high score reel this time. Next time, perhaps I shall though.

See, there you go. A short post. You're welcome. If you like long posts, then I'm sorry. Come visit sometime or have me visit you or something so I will have something to post about. Until next time, peace out.

These three day weekends throw me off.

Well I might not have posted today if not for the fact that I seem to operate on a strict schedule week by week, so if I forget to do something, I will find myself sitting around until I finally remember. Such was the case just now. I was sitting, thinking to myself, there's something I'm always doing right now and I finally realized that it was time to make a new post. By the way, I'm pretty sure you will be reading this Orion, so I was going to let you know that one week from Tuesday will mark 2 months since an update from you. I hope you can get back into the regular posting that you hoped to achieve. (It's the last paragraph of the post). There, now I have linked to Orion's blog. What sort of backwards world have we stumbled upon now? Ok well anyway, I do believe it's time to go into the week for what hopefully shall remain a fairly short post.

Monday:
I messed up my solos in Band, but it was no big deal because we have some time left before the concert and it was just some fine tuning things that I missed that will help me sound better. Annoying girl was yet again not there. Much happiness ensued.

Tuesday:
I had a lesson on trumpet and I got to some higher notes, which was pretty cool. After that, I learned that the recording software I had gotten for free put an audiostamp or whatever it's called onto saved recordings, so that one was useless. I later found out that I had not downloaded Audacity, so I went to go download it.

Wednesday:
We had a really bad rehearsal as a group in Jazz Band, so Doug took away two of our harder parts, which sucked because they were cool songs, but I have a feeling we will see them again and for now, the workload is tolerable again. I was having trouble learning 4 new songs for that class and all the ones for regular band.

Thursday:
I guess taking away the two songs worked because we had a really great Jazz Band rehearsal. Unfortunately, one of our trumpet guys had a gig so we did not play after school for a while. I used the time to go home and play some Metroid Prime. The controls still anger me, but I am getting used to them.

Friday:
I stuck around after Jazz Band to play with the two guys in the trumpet section and our lead alto player came and played with us on his Soprano, so that was pretty cool. I had to leave early because of Sai's party. I met him and Steven at Red Robin (I know, we always seem to wind up there...). Later we caught up with Albert, Tom, Oliver, and Jennifer. Then Amanuel showed up around the same time Ben and Allen showed up. We all ate some dinner and Sai paid for it, which was really cool. After that, we went bowling and Steven and I still need to have an epic battle to decide who is better. On a side note: I noticed that Wii Bowling kind of does help me at bowling. My scores were much better than they were during my lifetime sports days. After bowling, Steven and Ashley quickly balled out for reasons unknown (but the next day WAS Valentine's day after all). We all split up from there. I took Amanuel to Abaneezer's house and Sai to his own house, then I went home myself.

Saturday:
I spent St. Valentine's day alone for the 18th consecutive time. I decided that I will try to make this my last St. Valentine's day ever, so that I can stop calling it St. Valentine's day in a vein attempt to make it seem like a religous holiday instead of what it technically really is. Pending my trip in March, this may be an attainable goal. If the trip winds up not happening, then perhaps I shall have to try harder later in the year.

Sunday:
I helped Kathryn get less n00b at tennis and then we went down to SPU to pick up my cousin (the one that is my third cousin once removed(the hot one)) on our way to Kent for a belated birthday celebration for my cousin (first cousin).

Ok pause here, I have to get something out of the way.

Dad's job:
So dad helped start that bank in Bellevue right? Well long story short, the economy really made it suffer. It wasn't that the bank was making stupid choices, it was actually set to do well. The people in the bank just became afraid and the bank was making less money, so they had to cut back. Dad and the CEO decided that dad's job could be deligated to 4 other people for less money, so dad, along with some other lady, got laid off. That was back in November. In December, he signed on with Union Bank of California which is this bank from California that's expanding north up to Seattle. In a paper in San Francisco, I guess UBOC was described as a bank that didn't take the stupid pill. Basically, it's referring to how UBOC is doing well despite the bad economy. Since this is a big bank, (like US Bank, but regionalized) dad has to go on business trips again, but unlike US bank, he now goes fun places! Most of his trips are to SoCal and Las Vegas. He actually has a trip to Vegas while I'm hoping to be in Sacramento. He also has a trip to Anaheim (home of Disneyland) this weekend. Anyway, another long story short, it worked out that our family could go to Disneyland this weekend for the price of just airfare, which we found for quite cheap, so we jumped on that opportunity, so from Saturday-Monday morning, I will be in Disneyland. I get back just in time to go to Jazz Band on Monday morning. So anyway back to the story...

Somehow the topic of Disneyland comes up and my cousin for who we were celebrating the birthday said she was looking at going soon, so we invited her along, so my cousin is now coming with us. Also, I guess one of Kathryn's friends lives down there now, so we're going to meet up with her family, so it will be a big group, but dad and I will still make sure we get the most rides in because dad and I have uber micro at Disneyland (the only place my micro is uber).

Today:
I helped Kathryn get a little less n00b at tennis again. After that, I played some more Metroid Prime. I'm about 50% on the progress that it tells you at the start. It's been about 10 hours and I'm still in the high 40's. I think it may last at least 24 hours, which is a pretty good time for an FPS/Adventure game like this.

Ok well other than that, not much has been going on. Hopefully I can get this song recorded soon so I can get back into Starcraft. I haven't done a lot of PC gaming recently. It's odd. Ah well, peace out for now.

Special Spontaneous Update

It's on baseball this time. I know that last year I said I was going to get into baseball since we got an HDTV and sports became 27% more interesting, thereby bumping up NASCAR and baseball to interesting enough levels. I know I said I would follow them last year and I wound up following neither because NASCAR is something that you honestly can't spend too much time watching and the Mariners had one of their worst seasons ever.

I found out today though that Ken Griffey Jr. is being considered for Seattle to sign. If the Mariners sign Griffey (who by the way has been my favorite player since I was 4 and learned who he was and that he was also left handed), then I promise to the Mariners that I will follow their season and become a fan again.

Ball's in your court, Mariners, don't let me down.

LET ME SHOW YOU MY POKEMANZZZZ!!!

The title refers to a lolcat photo that has something to do with a minor story later in the post in case you were wondering. Also, I realize that I have not posted pictures. I forgot, so I'll get them up this week. Because the days have started flying by and blurring together, I will do this week's post in the other format because frankly, most of the days would otherwise consist of "I went to school and came home and did something until going to sleep."

School:
School has been going well. Math is not too challenging. Asian Literature has not been boring. Jazz band has been getting better since I am getting slowly better at trumpet again. Concert band has been doing well too because the stupid annoying girl has not been there in 2 weeks and I got all her solos in the song she had them on last week. I did well on most of them, but on the last one I forgot to play an Ab and I hit an A and it sounded really messed up, but this week (today) I will do much better on them. Aside from that, the quartet I play with on Thursdays (4 trumpet quartet) is going to start meeting again now that all of us are here again and our lead guy is writing a version of electric avenue (youtube it) for us to play and he says I should play lead on it, which will be cool.

Videogame stuff:
So I've been beating some games, I just finished up Destroy All Humans 3 and it was pretty good. On Sunday, Davis, Sai, and I went to go to Toys R Us to get Shaymin and that was pretty cool. I now have 2 pokemans in Pearl! I feel so accomplished. After that, Davis suggested I borrow his Gamecube for a while since he isn't using it and he gave me 5 games for it, so I have some new games to play through. Also, he let me borrow fire emblem, so that will be cool too. I still have to finish Justice for All before I start that though. I thought about it though and I realized I haven't played much videogames recently. Between last monday and last friday, I played 2 hours of Starcraft with Steven and that was it. I haven't really been doing anything big to keep me away from it either. I just haven't played that much.

What I've been doing:
Masturbating!

Well I've actually been writing out a bass tab and learning the piano part for The Fragrance of Dark Coffee (Godot's Theme song from Phoenix Wright 3). Learning the bass part has taken a lot of time since I suck, but I'm close to recording, though the quality will be crappy since my mics are not the best for recording instruments. I did get Audacity though so it helps give it a slightly better sound. It's like photoshop for music. Hopefully I'll have that all done soon so I can get back to training at Starcraft.


Ok that's it for the post. I'll see you all sometime soon hopefully for whatever reason. I just need to hang out with people. Perhaps Steven and I should go to the UW someday or something. Ok well Peace out until next time.

Things I Hate: 8

Hello and welcome to the first installment of things I hate where the title rhymes. A stupid anniversary, I know, but I was lacking in an intro today so I thought I would bring it up. I was about to delay this post, when I realized that there was something I needed to hate on this week just today. I shall now introduce you to the subject of my 8th things I hate: Pushy salespeople

I saw someone doing something along these lines today on campus at SCC. Now when I say salespeople, I am also talking about activists who basically just try to pushily sell their ideas to you. After seeing this lady, I remembered the people at Mexico and had to post about this.

Vendors in Mexico:
So there are ropes about halfway up the beach in front of hotels to keep the vendors that walk by out of hotel property. There are hundreds if not more vendors that go up and down the beach all day selling their wares because it is their livelihood. Unfortunately, between all those vendors, there are only 5 different products they sell and you have to say no to each person as they pass. After a while, you really want to flip out and deck one of these bastards. I caught myself almost yelling at one, saying "GOD DAMNIT, NO MEANS NO IN ENGLISH AND SPANISH NOW GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE YOU DAMN GRINGO." I had to restrain myself though because there were young children around. The stupid vendors just wait though at the ropes and pester you until you actually look at them and say no. It gets really annoying when two vendors selling the same thing pass you right in front of one another. When that happened, I would just say "Did you not hear what I just said to the last person?" It's like if this is their livelihood, you think they would understand how it works sometimes. Don't stand near people selling the same thing.

Another tactic they use is where poor, old women have their children go out and peddle their crap. Most often, the kids are trying to sell these stupid ass whistles. To demonstrate them as they walk by, they just play two notes (for example an A and a B) and they just alternate those notes over and over. I wont even consider buying one of those things unless you show me you can play a song on it. Since the thing's in your mouth all day, I assume you would know if you could, so I'm not interested. Shit, I can annoy my friends and family by doing that FOR FREE. It's called whistling.

I do like it when kids try to sell to me though because they only came up to my waist (the perfect age, Sai!) so it was easy just to look down at them and they would get scared and walk away because let's face it, I could easily be a serial killer for all they know. I had to laugh at how much their plan backfired there. That's why child labor is illegal in this country, because we know that kids don't have the educational background to sell things effectively.


Pushy Activists:
So this lady was at SCC today with a booth set up in the middle of the campus that said "Reject the stimulus package, jail the wall street scumbags." I don't know too much about the problem, but I thought that the stimulus package went mostly to the people whereas BAILOUTS went to the "scumbags." All inaccuracies aside though, it was really annoying to have someone in the way of a major traffic flow area to push their stupid opinion. Whether or not I agree with it, I don't care. It was throwing off my schedule having all the people clogging up my path. She even yelled over to me to get me to come "join the cause" so I just gave her a quick "There is no way" look and walked past. When will people realize that the busiest place on a college campus is not an open forum for ideas? That's the Student Union Building. Do anything you want in there, I only go in once a quarter to buy books.



I know, I'm sorry it was short, but this idea happened upon me today and these are really the only kinds of pushy salespeople I have encountered. I have yet to encounter the pushy car salesman, but you can bet I'll be ready to deal with him because if I yell at him, he will know what I'm saying because he speaks english.

Ok well that's it for now. I think I'll post pictures tomorrow. Orion, regrettably as I was looking through the pictures it turned out I had none of Paris. I thought mom had a picture of her playing volleyball with us, but it turns out just her arm was in it. If you were wondering though, I would say she was between a 618 and 718, but closer to the 718. I know, I just struggle with the lack of decimal places I am allowed to have in that rating system.

There aren't enough G's in the world to make an acronym for how good of a game that was.

Well I was really happy with the Superbowl. I really liked that it was such a good game I wanted to skip the commercials to get back to the game. Of course the Steelers won, but now we have a second incident to prove that referees prefer the Steelers. I hope the Arizona fans will finally understand how not crazy we Seattle fans are. So I'm also happy that I beat my record in the playoffs last year. This year, I went 8 for 11. Hopefully next year I'll get a perfect record.

Some thoughts about next year:
I'm thinking of doing fantasy football. I don't really know much about it now, but if it's free, which I think it is, then I'm down with doing it. I also think there are pods or something involved in it because my second cousin was doing his draft at the start of the season with a bunch of guys over the internet. I'll have to look into it.

Team to watch next year: The Houston Texans. You guy's think I'm crazy, but just watch these guys. Something big is going to happen. I really hope they even get to the Superbowl. They will have to have a good season to get into the playoffs though because they come from a strong division, containing the Colts and the Titans. That being said, watch out for these guys, they're going places (and I'm not saying that (completely) because I like them).

So I was informed by Comcast that this photo has been going around the internet and Miley Cyrus (I guess she's the middle one) was caught here making fun of asians. Now the article said that she was in trouble for that, but does anyone else think that she should maybe be getting in trouble for being at a boozer? Has this really been overlooked? WTF is going on here?

Un vacacion muy super

I'm pretty sure that that is not actually the spanish word for vacation, but I really don't care if it's wrong. Orion, if it's bothering you, feel free to tell me though. I will not edit in any accents over the letters though. So yeah how's it going everyone? It feels like more than a week has passed even though I was only gone for a few days. I missed a ton of stuff, but still managed to get a lot of cool, different stuff done. I think the reason for it feeling that I've been gone a long time is due to the fact that I spent the first three days of last week just grinding out a week's worth of homework (2 4-page essays, 5 1-page peer critiques, 5 sections of math ("learned" independently), and a couple other random assignments). I'll try to fly through Monday and Tuesday because they aren't terribly exciting and I'm sure you would rather read about the mexico trip because it is actually interesting. Get ready for a lengthy post. Try to read it all because there are some good stories hidden amongst it. I'll be making other posts during the week too, so this post will soon be pushed out of the way.

Monday:
Well in band, that stupid girl did not show up, which was nice. I don't know if she's still in the band and I hope she quit, but I have a sinking feeling that if I let my guard down. she will show up randomly and I will be disappointed, so I am expecting her to show up, but being happy when she doesn't. Anyway, we have this phantom of the opera medley which she basically jacked all the solos for in it because "she played it in high school and she loves it so much and could play it really well." Well first of all, we all agreed she played it terribly. The lead horn player was talking to me last week and since the girl wasn't there, she wanted me to take over a couple solos, so I asked which ones she wanted, then she said, "Oh, just go with all of them. I have solos on other songs, you can get this one since I like your playing." That made me pretty happy.

**Also, I found out that I can get out of high school, but I can't get out of Victoria. I guess this band goes to Victoria every year and plays at the lawn or something, but doesn't march. We would take the clipper up on saturday morning and come back on sunday night. Not a bad deal, though considering that it would be cheaper per person and we would have 2 PEOPLE PER ROOM. I turned to the guy next to me to verify that once it had been said and he gave me this look like I was spoiled, so I clarified that I was used to four people a room, so he laughed at that. Unfortunately, attendance is mandatory, so I will be there sans my friends this time, but I guess it's not too much time there, so I can hang out with the girls while I'm there (note: "the girls" are the two girls in jazz band with me).**

Tuesday:
I did a ton of homework (yes Orion, literally 2,000 pounds worth of homework). I did the majority of it this day due to the band meeting, then 24 the previous day. I had a lesson and I was able to reach new high notes despite my illness, so I was happy to see progress. I also had my midterm that afternoon because I was going to be missing it that Friday. It went very well. I sat in the hallway and took it and I believe I did well, possibly even 100%. There was a lot of stuff that was not covered on the test, namely the 2 things I had actually studied, but oh well. I took only 45 minutes to complete all three pages, so a pretty respectable time, we shall soon see how the score went. After I came home and did the homework, I packed for the trip.

Wednesday:
I had to get up before 7 :O. Well actually, I didn't because I was lazy and didn't feel like taking as long to eat breakfast, so I got up exactly at 7. We then hit the road around 8:00 for the airport and got to the gate plenty early. The plane ride was nice. It was less than 1/3rd full. Some lady behind me wanted to change seats to sit closer to her husband (a reasonable request), but the flight attendant claimed that that would throw off the balance in the plane and proceeded to describe the "actual physics" of air travel to the lady as mom and I looked at each other desperately trying not to laugh at the amount of bs flying out of her mouth. It should have been pretty obvious that the lady could have switched and she shouldn't have asked. Here are the flight attendants points and the problems located therein.
1. An equal number of people need to be on each side. About 1/3 of the people were on the right side, so it was really unbalanced. She wasn't switching anyone else around. They wanted EVERYONE to stay in their assigned seat. Also, the balance from left to right is as important as the front to back balance, which was also way off. Furthermore, they don't ask for your weight when you sign up for your ticket, so how do they really know this is how it should be?
Well that was it for her arguments, but it was funny how little she knew about air travel. I switched my seat to the right hand side of the plane stealthily because it had more room and nobody noticed and we didn't die, so no big deal I guess.

So we got into Cabo and were promptly swarmed by stupid timeshare people on the way out of the airport. If you go, just go past them and say "We have someone picking us up." Go to the people outside for rides. We got to the hotel near downtown and it took a while to get there surprisingly. You'd think that they would have made the airport in one of the one billion possible places closer to the city, but whatever. 45 minutes is like something I'd expect from a place like NYC or Seattle or LA and such, but not Mexico. When we got to the hotel, we saw our family and hung out with them for a while. The family that was there were my family, my grandma, my uncle (mom's oldest of 3 brothers), his son (the other left handed guy in the family) and his fiancee, his younger sister and her fiancee, and then their sister, the middle child and her soon to be husband, but we did not see the two of them much because they were at their own hotel. As we stayed in Mexico longer, I got more and more used to speaking in spanish occasionally. At times though down there it's kind of kitchy to speak in spanish, but there are some places like if you go off the beaten path where it's handy to know spanish.

Drunk person of the day: Grandma

My grandma used to come down every February with my grandpa. They had done this for the last 25 years, so it was understandable that she let this happen, but she was quite drunk. Luckily my uncle and I were there to make sure she did not get injured whilst walking about. It was actually quite a hassle. We had a nice dinner, then everyone went to sleep because it had been a long day.

Thursday:
We got up and went to the deli on the hotel property and I wore a sweatshirt because it was still in the low 60's at 8am. By 8:30 am, it was in the 70s and I regretted wearing the sweatshirt. We toured around a bit before going with some of the family to rent jetskis. My cousins rode with their fiancees and dad rode with Kathryn, so I rode with my uncle. We were the fat guy jetski of awesomeness. It was funny when we switched halfway, he ducked under me (as best he could) and I climed over him (as best I could). The action was perfectly described by my cousin when she said "It looked like my dad had a heart attack or something and David was climbing over him to drive them back to shore." We need to work on our leapfrog skills someday.

Later in the day, my left handed cousin, dad, and I went to play shuffleboard. The girl at the desk was pretty cute and her name was Paris. Talking to her, kicked off the Paris Saga, which I shall go into as the post continues.

So we rented the shuffleboard stuff and I learned some new rules from my cousin and taught him the max score, which I learned from Seabrook. He was actually really good, but I gave him a run for his money and it was a close game. Paris came by to tell us she had to close, but we convinced her to let us have the stuff for 5 minutes to finish a game. She liked us, so she let us. After leaving, we decided that it was our goal to figure out where Paris got her accent because it was one we had all never heard before. It was a really cute accent too (from a pretty cute girl I might add). It was the accent where my name comes out as "Dayhveed." Also, my cousin seemed determined for me to pick her up as a date to the wedding (more on that later). Anyway, we finished up, then went to dinner with the rest of the family. It was a rehearsal dinner at this place I can't remember the name of.

Drunk person of the day: my uncle

My uncle was understandably drunk. He had 3 margaritas at lunch, then apparently he did shots with the groom during the wedding rehearsal. The groom is a cool guy. He's a san franciscan fire fighter and he really likes to do shots and party. For the wedding, he actually got a big bottle of tequila for each table. Anyway, my uncle did shots with him at the wedding, then had beer at dinner, so he probably didn't remember much of that night, but I bet in his drunk world, he really enjoyed the mariachi guy playing for us because he did a lot of strange dancing.

After the dinner, we went bar hopping and it was quite interesting seeing so many drunk people and lap dances and it taught me that the bar scene is not something I need to get into.

Friday:
Not much happened in the morning. Around 11:00, we ran into Paris playing volleyball. She saw us from quite far away (I didn't think she would even remember us up close) and she called us over to play, so we did for a while and that was pretty fun. After she left, we all put in our guesses for her accent. Dad said Mexico (lame guess), my cousin said French Canadian (we wtfed at that one), I said Spain (people liked that one), and my cousin's fiancee said Portugal (another good guess). So anyway, my cousin and his fiancee and I went into town to have lunch and to look around. I remembered third wheeling with Stashley once, so I made absolutely sure that they didn't care if I was there. We had lunch at this bar owned by Sammy Hagar. He's not a really huge name if you don't really listen to classic rock, so I won't be offended if you didn't know who he is. Anyway, we did not see him....there (more on that later). After that, the three of us wandered the town a bit and saw some shops before heading back to the hotel for a while to get ready before the wedding.

I caught up with my parents who had made friends with Paris while I was gone and asked her her accent, thereby cockblocking me. Turns out it was Guadalaharan (damnit, Dad was right after all). Anyway, we saw her when we went to return the towels, so I said hi again, then mom told her about how we were going to a wedding. I would have invited her to go, but I was forcefully told no by mom, who said that it was not our place to invite. She was right, but regardless, it would have been cool and I'm sure she would have been interested in going (I'm sure I'm sure).

So we all got ready and went to the wedding. It wasn't a religous ceremony, so it was fairly quick. The pastor was Juan (everyone was Juan, I swear) and he did a pretty good job. They had an insane camera lady named Helga (or Hellga as I called her) which was appropriate due to her intensity. She took a ton, and this time I actually mean 2,000 pounds worth of pictures. They were gone for a very long time and it was awkward at the after dinner for a while. Eventually they showed up and the party kicked off.

Drunk person of the day: Pretty much every non-family member at the party. Not me though!

So during the party, I figured I would have as much to drink as I wanted because it was an open bar and I was sitting at a table anyway. There were three courses of dinner amongst my drinks. At the end of the day, I had had 4 beers, a shot of tequila, and a cup of liquer as a "closer" drink that dad recommended. It was like a spiked starbucks double shot, so it was pretty good. A lot of people had much less to drink than me, but they still got drunk. I guess the fact that I did not is partly due to the fact that I am both Dutch and Irish and that I am 6'1" and 200 pounds. That or maybe I just didn't have that much to drink, I really don't know what a lot would be since I never really do that kind of thing regularly, or at all :/. Anyway, I did earn a cool badge of honor. My grandma likes to do shots of tequila and that works out well for the groom, since that's basically his favorite thing ever. He likes to take shots with her at family gatherings. This time, my grandma convinced me to take a shot with her, so I can now say I took shots with my grandma. It's an odd badge of honor to have, but it's cool nonetheless. As the party was winding down, our table (table 3 ftw (not too important, but not unimportant guests)) ditched, but it turned out that we had done so right before the mass jumping into the pool except by those that were wearing nice dresses. Also, we missed a couple that was dancing with their kid fall over since they were drunk. Sounds like we balled out at a good time.

Saturday:
Ahh, it was nice to be up and not drunk like I'm sure so many people were. Most of us just hung around for a while before going into town for shopping and lunch. Apparently, on the way to lunch, Sammy Hagar passed by our group. I saw him, but I didn't recognize him at all because he looks really different from pictures I have seen. As the groom put it, "he was rode hard and put away wet." We had lunch for an hour and watched some boxing match from 1985 which was on ESPN2 for no good reason I assume. After lunch, I took a shot of tequila with the groom and my cousin's fiancee, who likes to do that too, though he is usually pretty quiet otherwise. After that, people decided they wanted to do this strange party pirate ship for the sunset, so we set up plans for that. Then, all of us went back to the hotel and had about 2 hours of down time. I decided to use my time to see if Paris was over at the stand. She was, so I talked to her for a bit, then she asked if I could come to see her at this dinner thing that they do nightly at the hotel there because she was serving. I told her about the pirate thing and told her that if I got time, I would definitely try to make it. It went until 10, so I figured I had some time.

The pirate cruise was cool. We went out of the bay in a pirate ship and watched the sunset and some whales before heading back into port. The last half hour was stupid because they put on a boring show and then just stay in place for 20 minutes before going the rest of the way into port. Since I had somewhere to be, it was more annoying. When we got off the boat, everyone wanted to eat at this place downtown, despite my telling them multiple times that I needed to get back to the hotel to see Paris. We got to the restaurant and I could feel time slipping away as I went through a clock in my head and thought about how much time we would piss away on this. Luckily and unfortunately, my uncle was feeling sick, so I got a taxi with him back to the hotel. I went over to the dinner, but it was pretty empty. I guess the dinner part ends at 7 and it was around 8:00. Then I found out that she had just left because there were getting to be more servers than customers. So in the end, I got TOTALLY screwed over by the pirates so now I have taken a side. Whenever someone asks Ninjas or Pirates, I will definitely not side with the Pirates after this happened. I decided I would track her down tomorrow to apologize since I knew generally where she would be.

Sunday:
Alas, Paris was not working this day, so I did not get to see her. I guess this gives me a reason to go back, eh? Either that or maybe I'll just count on being able to go to Sacramento during spring break. I must remedy this girlfriend drought soon. Not much happened other than packing that day. I got on the plane at about 1:00 and we had a layover in San Francisco for an hour and a half right at the start of the Super Bowl. I was recording it, so I did my best to avoid it and it was successful. Apparently, during the San Fran to Seattle flight, the fourth quarter score was announced and I totally missed it while everyone else on the plane heard it, so I got a stroke of luck there. The football gods were really on my side this time. So at Sea-Tac, I kept my head down and Kathryn warned me when we passed a sports bar, so I added my "LALALALALA" to tune out any noise announcing the game successfully. Then we had to get into the shuttle to the car, which was the hardest part because they always have the radio on in the shuttles. Luckily, the guy in front of me asked for no talk of the game and we got lucky because the guy driving the shuttle was really cool with that and he decided he would test his quick comedy routine on us. It was actually really funny.

Somehow, I managed to get all the way home from Mexico through all those public areas and past all those tv sets to avoid finding out about the super bowl. It was a really great game. By the 4th quarter, dad and I were skipping the commercials because we just wanted to watch the game. We did watch the GoDaddy commercials though because... well, you know. It was nice not having a personal stake in the game also. Last year, I really wanted the Giants because the Patriots are my most hated team. The year before that, it was the Colts because they are my favorite team behind the Seahawks, and the year before that, I was rooting for the Seahawks. This time, I was able to just enjoy the game, and what a game it was. I'll make a post on that tomorrow. I had to stay up late (until 12:30) because of the game, but it was ok. There are few things that are okay to stay up late for and they are football, late night building projects with Orion, studying for physics, and girls. If it seems like I've done all of those things and that girls would then be out of place because I haven't, well you're right. I just leave girls up there because I assume that I would stay up late if the need arises.

Today:
I should have just skipped math and gotten the hour of sleep I missed because the midterm had been delayed to today and I spent the time in the math learning center getting ahead on homework. After that, I had some classes and came back to Jazz band and played better than I did on Tuesday because I'm not too sick anymore. Anyway, this post took a very long time to write and I can only wonder how long it will be. Sorry about that in advance.

So yeah I'll be posting about football tomorrow, then hopefully a things I hate on wednesday unless something goes wrong and nothing annoys me between now and then. I'll post the pictures of the trip (there aren't too many) on Thursday I guess unless I really feel like doing it on Tuesday. Ok well Peace out.

Superbowl 2009: A repeat of Superbowl XL

Yes, as my title suggests, this superbowl will be much like the one in 2005 when the Seahawks went. It will feature the Pittsburgh Steelers against an NFC west team that came out of nowhere to suddenly wind up in the Superbowl. That team will then proceed to lose, but hopefully this loss will be a more legitimate one than ours. Anyway, it looks like I did well in the championship games. I got both right. That means that if I get the superbowl right, I will go 8 for 11, thereby beating my previous record of 7 for 11. To cement what I assume will be my victory over last year, I shall now tell you my prediction.

Steelers vs. Cardinals: Steelers by 10-15 points
It's going to hopefully be a legitimate win in the superbowl this time. The Steelers just have an unstoppable defense and even the great Warner to Fitzgerald plan will not be 100% successful and the Cardinals will give it a valiant effort, but will regrettably come up short in the end.

That being said, I will still root for the Cardinals because I like them better than the Steelers (though I do like the Steelers some). Anyway, have fun watching the game and for those of you that are lame and don't watch it for the game; watching your precious advertisements.

I've done a lot in a week, I guess.

So as usual, I was reading my last post to see what happened and when I left off so that my posts don't overlap and I realized that my last post ended with me beating Morrowind. I thought that had been much longer ago. It's only been a week? Wow, time really slows down when one doesn't waste one's time away with Morrowind. Anyway, yeah I beat Morrowind pretty thoroughly and I am now back in the real world and I have spent the past week catching up on homework I neglected and generally getting a lot done. I've also been working on playing Godot's theme from Phoenix Wright 3 and it's going pretty good except the bass part is hard to figure out and I'm still trying to find a way to get a good quality recording of my playing of the piano part. I'll hopefully find a way eventually. So anyhow, let's get into the week shall we?

Monday:
I finished the day by doing nothing much at all. It was MLK Jr. day, so we had no school anyway and I had already done my homework.

Tuesday:
I debated skipping math to hear Obama's speech, but it was only 20 minutes, so I got lucky and was able to listen to it in the car on the way to school. I had another trumpet lesson and it was cool to see that I am actually starting to improve my range on trumpet even in just one week. My range on trumpet is bad for a trumpet player and is a lot shorter than my range on french horn, which is pretty good. On horn, I can play from the Eb below the bass clef up to the C above the treble staff comfortably, so that's a range of just less than 4 octaves. On trumpet, I can play from the first F below treble clef up to the A above the treble staff comfortably. That's a much smaller range and its high end is very low for a trumpet player, but hopefully with more lessons, I shall be able to become a screecher! That would actually be pretty cool/annoying. After school, I finally got Xbox live hooked up again and decided to get some achievements in Call of Duty 5 that were online because they were pretty quick. After playing for a bit, I realized there were a lot of n00bs online, so I decided to keep playing and I wound up schooling noobs for about 4 hours.

Wednesday:
It was more of the same. I went to school, did a lot of nothing, then came home. I think I played some Starcraft with Steven though. As usual, I got my ass handed to me.

Thursday:
Actually, I might have played Starcraft with Steven this day. I forget because all I really did all week was draw, do homework, play starcraft, or get on xbox live.

Friday:
It was Steven's birthday, so I went to tell him happy birthday in person. After school, I gave him a present in Guild Wars and wished him happy birthday in the videogame world. After he left to go to a movie with Ashley, I went to wish him happy birthday via facebook, thereby creating a trifecta of happy birthday wishes. After that, I went to see Slumdog Millionare which was really really good and I hope it wins the oscar for best picture. It's nice to see original ideas nowadays. After that, I tried to watch Next with Nicholas Cage, but it was too damn boring and the whole movie was like that scene in Pure Pwnage where he keeps thinking Tagi is going to kill him, so I fell asleep.

Saturday:
I took the day off because I needed it even though I knew that I would have to start work on two essays and complete one the next day. I spent the whole day playing Destroy All Humans: Path of the Furon. I don't think Xbox magazine was right to call it a franchise suicide. What's the matter xbox magazine? Did Destroy All Humans not take out enough ads in your magazine? It's nice to see that that magazine is selling out and that I'm not going crazy. I would cancel my subscription, but I still like it because it also announces new games, so I just read that instead of the ratings.

Sunday:
I got a whole 4 page essay completed and did half of another essay. It was a very boring day.

Today:
Well it was a pretty plain school day. I am sick, so it wasn't really a good one, but hopefully I will get better by Wednesday. I don't want to go to band today because that stupid girl is going to be in our section again, but it will be nice knowing that no matter how much she annoys me, at least the whole section doesn't hate me.

So yeah I'm going to be gone from Wednesday to Sunday, but I'll talk to everyone later. There will not be a things I hate this week, but on the bright side, that means I will definitely have to post one next week. I'll do my football post tomorrow. Ok well peace out.

Things I Hate: 7

Hello and welcome to the seventh installment of things I hate. I'm back, baby! This one will be dedicated to Davis, not because the topic really reminds me of him, but because he reminded me that I used to do this segment. I had originally said I would pick it back up when the quarter started, but then Morrowind happened. Now that I am back in the real world again, I will try to get back into doing this. Since it's a long term thing I'm hoping and there are only so many things on which I can hate, I might not make this every week, but I will definately try not to leave more than a one week gap between segments. I for sure will not post next week because I will be in Mexico for my cousin's wedding. I'm leaving on Wednesday and we have the wedding rehearsal on Thursday, the wedding on Friday, and some party on Saturday. I get back on Sunday. Unfortunately, this means I will not see the Superbowl live, so If you ruin it for me, I will probably have to cut your balls off, but I will probably have watched the whole thing before I use the internet anyway since I don't want to have the game ruined for me. I'll do the picks later. I figured I have a lot of time before the game comes. Ok well anyhow, I think that I should get back to hating on shit before I get on too much longer of a tangent.

This week on Things I hate: Stupid commercials

Like ways to respond to an internet feud, there are several different types of commercials. The three major types are: Sentimental, Funny, and Cool. I shall now go into detail about those three types.

Sentimental:
These ones start with very little interestingness and slowly deteriorate in interestingness until they are discontinued. Sentimental commercials often have soft music playing in the background while some lady or very emotionally insecure guy has a close up on the camera and they tell you all about their pathetic story of their lives and how their kid died and they need you to buy this product so it doesn't happen to your kid. You can only buy so many home HIV testing kits before you start to realize that this isn't really something anyone needs ever. Things to watch out for in these types of commercials are soft fabrics, bright colors, pink, flowers, and tears.

Funny:
These commercials can start out with a level of interestingness relative to how funny the joke was in the commercial. The unfortunate part is that once you have heard the punchline, the joke fails to be funny anymore. There are some outliers to that of course (see: Urlacher commercial). Let's face it though, there are many jokes out there that may be hilarous the first time you see it, but then once you hear it again, you just blurt out the punchline in an attempt to get the joke over with faster and then right after you say the punchline and the guy says "Yeah," you dickishly utter "Yeah I've heard that one." to let that person know that if you ever get told that joke again, they're going to get their balls cut off. The worst part about funny commercials is that the people in charge of advertising for companies don't tend to understand that the hilarity of a joke has a very short shelf life, so they will constantly play these commercials over and over and over (see: Wendy's 3conomics (don't really, they are extremely annoying)). Those commercials seem to always come up multiple times during commercial breaks and I'm truly amazed anyone bothers to eat at Wendy's anymore after being repeatedly fed that shit day in and day out while trying to innocently watch football.

Cool:
These commercials are often the most successful because while sentimental is never interesting and funny is insteresting the first time; cool is always cool. If you see a guy jump a car through a nuclear explosion, you're going to say, ok that's pretty damn cool. If you see it again, are you going to now say "Well that sucked."? No, you won't because that is still pretty damn cool. Unfortunately, some people don't understand what cool is, so we wind up with the Dodge Ram commercials where you get a bunch of stupid "manly men" (aka assorted douchebags) to test your truck in harsh conditions. I don't care if my truck can jump through a burning building. I can honestly say that I will never do that. I would rather have a man step than the ability to jump through fire in my car. I might actually use the man step.

Now the way the commercials come at you can be very annoying as well.

Short and many:
Some stations like to break up their broadcasts more often but to use less commercials. That's a clever way to make sure I get less out of the storyline and more commercials are thrust upon me to watch.

Commercial free:
If you have ever seen a commercial free program before, then you know how annoying it can be. Sure, you don't have to watch commercials, but you trade that in for "Remember, this is a commercial free broadcast today brought to you by the good people at Subway." every 30 seconds. It's just as bad as watching commercials.


In commercials, you tend to see some little fine print at the bottom and you occasionally wonder what they mean by it. Well wonder no more.

Not paid actors: Well actually, they are actors, we just aren't paying them because we're cheap.

Actual customer: They bought the product, then we reimbursed them so they would tell us it's a great product.

Real people: See, look at them. They are not mannequins!

These two did not know each other before the commercial: But they knew the script.

Professional Driver on a closed course: Your car will never perform this well unless you are that guy on that road.

Do not try this at home: Do it where you can injure the most people.


As for commercials that show skinny women and make little girls think they are supposed to be anorexic, shame on you! Stop giving girls a need to be that abnormally skinny. As for the Dove commercials showing real women, shame on you too! Stop telling women that it's okay to stop caring about their looks.

And last, but not least:

Billy Mays:
HEY BILLY WHAT'S GOING ON? YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY I'M TYPING IN CAPS LOCK? WELL IT'S BECAUSE YOU YELL ALL THE TIME SO I THOUGHT I WOULD JUST LET YOU KNOW HOW IT FEELS TO BE YELLED AT. I ALWAYS THOUGHT THAT IF SOMEONE NEEDS TO YELL TO GET MY ATTENTION, THEY MUST BE REALLY TELLING ME SOMETHING I DON'T NEED TO HEAR. AND WHAT IS THIS MAYS PROMOTIONS SHIT YOU HAVE GOING? LAST TIME I CHECKED, SHOUTING AT PEOPLE WASN'T CALLED ADVERTISING, IT WAS CALLED BEING A DICK. I PROPOSE THAT YOU GET OUT OF THE ADVERTISING BUSINESS PERMANENTLY SO I DON'T HAVE TO HEAR YOUR SHRILL, LOUD VOICE AGAIN. HOW MANY YEARS WOULD YOU EXPECT TO BE OUT OF THE BUSINESS? I BET YOU'RE THINKING 50 RIGHT? WELL THINK AGAIN, IF YOU QUIT NOW, I WILL PERSONALLY MAKE SURE YOU ONLY HAVE TO BE OUT OF THE BUSINESS FOR 20 YEARS. You would be dead after those 20 years. It's my personal guarantee.


Well that's that for commercials. In the end, just buy a Tivo or DVR and send a huge screw you to the commercial makers of America and teach them that they should use their bailout money on something that will actually move their products.

I guess today is Monday

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Football picks did not do as well.

Well yeah I didn't do so well this week. I only got half of the games right. There were a couple surprises though and I felt very smart after the Cardinals game. I missed the Titans game, but I recorded it while I was gone and I saw the 2nd half and was barely able to watch it without crying. I really wanted them to win in the Super Bowl. Also, I was let down by the Giants, but not as let down as they were. They were so terrible. Orion was right, they have been getting worse. So I came in late to the Cardinals game and when I came in at halftime, it was 33-13. I had picked the Cardinals to win, but apparently all 5 guys at Fox (even Frank Calliendo!) had picked the Panthers to win. I later found out that all the guys at CBS had picked the Panthers to win. I would have felt smart even if the Cardinals had won by a little bit, but they went and COMPLETELY DOMINATED. I was very happy and I wish I could rub it in the faces of the football guys. At the end of the day, the Steelers won, but that wasn't a surprise. The Chargers (who are my 3rd favorite team) had a good start, but the Steelers are just good. So there are only 2 games this weekend and here they are.

Cardinals vs. Eagles: Cardinals by less than 7 points:
The Cardinals are my favorite team still in the running currently, but the Eagles are performing quite well. However, when you compare the two teams the Eagles have played, it's not saying that much. The Vikings were pretty weak and let's face it, the Giants missed 2 field goals. The Eagles may have a great defense, but Arizona has shown me that they have a really good offense and I think they will put that to use and I hope they get into the Super Bowl with it. They're due for a trip to one.

Ravens at Steelers: Steelers by less than 10 points:
It's a case of the two best defenses around. Both teams have shown me that they can stop the other team from scoring. For this reason, I have to go with the Steelers because not only does their defense stop scores, but they also make scores. I really hope the Cardinals win their game because that would mean that no matter which team wins this game, the Super Bowl would be a great offense vs. a great defense, which would make for a pretty good game.

Well have fun this weekend watching more football. I hope I get both right. As it stands, my record this season is 5 for 8. My record last year was 7 for 11. If I get the next three right, I could beat my record. If I lose one more, then I will have tied it and I will be somewhat sad because I want these two teams to be in the Super Bowl.

My knees still hurt from the weekend, but I'm glad I did all that I did.

So yeah I had quite a busy weekend. I was pretty much walking or driving, so my ankles were a bit sore after a while, especially because of the long drive. Anyway, I think I'll just go through my classes, then get into the weekend, then the football post tomorrow. Aaaaand break.

Math 111: 9:30-10:20:
Math 099 and Math 111 together are very similar to a year of Math Analysis so it's probably good that I wound up like this because I had a year of no math to forget all I had learned. I'm really happy I got the same prof. for math that I had last quarter because she is really laid back and really nice. I'm going to be gone for my cousin's wedding over the midterm, but she's letting me make it up when it works for me. I decided before I left because the information would be fresher in my mind and because it wouldn't be fair to get a few extra days to study. That class was really full at the start. We had 37 desks with tabletops on them and 39 people showed up on the first day. Since then, the number has dwindled to a mere 17 today. Many people just don't get the math and it moves to fast for them so they leave. It's funny because we've only done review sofar. Anyway, I like how the class is going and I think I will pass it just like 099.

Great Works of Asian Literature: 10:30-11:20:
I like telling people I'm in this class because it makes me seem cultured. I actually took the class because my english professor from last quarter who I really liked was teaching this. After I signed up, I found out that this guy I hung out with in english last quarter was taking it as well, so that's cool. A girl that sat near us in the class is also in this class, so the three of us plus one of the guy's friends sit in our little corner. The class has a lot of gamers in it not surprisingly. One funny moment was when this tall guy with really gothy clothes, chains hanging off them, tattoos on his hands, a slicked back mohawk, and a goatee showed up in class late one day. It turns out that he is actually a really cool guy and he always strives to make at least one person laugh each day, which I think is really cool because I try to do that as well. The class is really cool though and it's nice to have a professor I get along with.

Jazz Band: 11:30-10:20:
It's the same as last quarter. We got a new saxophone player and our alto 2 moved to bari and we have a full time trombone now, so things are getting better. It's still fun and I've started hanging out after class sometimes with the trumpets to just play since I don't have a class anymore afterwards. On Tuesdays now, I'm getting private lessons, which will really help me with my range, so I'm excited for that.

English 102: Online:
The professor for this seems cool, but I doubt I'll ever really meet him. He said at the start that we only really need to check 3 times a week, which works for me because english isn't that hard. I like that I now don't have to sit in a classroom pretending to learn the same thing I've been learning for the past several years. It's going to take more motivation to get work done than in other classes, but I doubt I will have a problem as I can be very motivated when I want to be.

Band: 7:00-9:30 Mondays:
Well before, we had 8 French Horns, which was ridiculous. Anyway, I was liking being the youngest in the section by 25 years or more. I was still somehow fitting in and all the people in the section were a lot like me, very laid back. Last week, this girl who's a shared student from the UW comes in with a Mellophone because her horn was gone for whatever reason. She immediately is thought highly of because she can play the mellophone. I was just sitting there like That's not impressive at all. Playing horn in high school means you have to play mellophone as well. All french horn players can play at least two instruments because they have to play the mellophone for marching. Anyway, she is really type A and has a bit of a prissy attitude and when we stuck her on third for her first day, she seemed a little pissy about it. She needs to learn that not all people play first part on all songs. We switch around in this band. Also, I don't even know why she's here. She complains about the conducting, which isn't great, but none of us care. I wanted to tell her that if she hates it, she can go back to the UW. I don't know why she felt the need to come here. My current thought is that she maybe didn't get accepted into the school of music. If that's the case, then that would be hilarious to me since I did get in. Anyway, maybe she'll just go away after the quarter or sooner and things can get back to normal.

TEH WEEKENDZORCKS:
Friday:
So when I came in on Monday, Dan (my new best friend (the joke behind it is a long story)) said he heard from Nikki (one of the Stanwood girls) that Orion and I were planning on coming down to see them this week. I told him we didn't say this week, but we would come down with him on Friday since he said he was going to go there as well.

FAST forward (for you, Orion) to Friday after school. Before I leave, Dan tells me he won't be there until 8:00 since he lives in lake stevens. Orion and I went down early anyway, but decided to stop in Seattle first to see if we could find Orion some football shoes for frisbee. We parked about 8 blocks north of where we caught the bus coming back from PAX an walked to NikeTown. After spending 2 minutes in there, it was apparent that their selection was severely lacking in pretty much every department. We decided to get the full use of our two hours we paid for, so we walked around Seattle. First, we went to the fountain you can walk through where the carousel is in the wintertime. On the way there, we came across a lot of punk rockers. They were congregating near the fountain. Orion said "I wonder why they're all here." I was wondering as well. Just as we passed the group, we heard "Hey David!" and looked around to see Adam from frisbee coming at us wearing a fuzzy jacket. It was nice to catch up with him slightly even if he was smoking and a girl came and borrowed his cigarette at one point. It turned out they were all going to a rave. After quickly finding an excuse to leave, Orion and I did. We walked through that fountain which I had not done in a while. It was cool. From there, we went to see the hammering man. We did that and then we went to see some cool steps that were actually lame. We also passed a guy wearing a long coat and hat coming out of a burlesque house. We also went down through pike place market, then back up to the convention center before heading back out to the truck.

After that 1.5 hour walking adventure, we headed off to the UW. After wandering for a bit, I found a parking spot that gave you the option of buying 1, 2, 3, or 10 hours of parking. If we had gotten there 2 hours later, it would have been cheaper, but we had to pay for the 10 hours, which we surprisingly used 8 of. From there, we walked over about 2 blocks to the UW. Going off a memory of a map I had quickly glanced at about 2 hours before, I led us around the UW thinking I was going the right way. I actually was right up until the end, then I led us astray. If I had not turned when I was supposed to go straight, we would have made it to the dorm Nikki was in after only 10 minutes. Instead, we proceeded to get way lost and spent an hour looking for the dorm she was in. It was epic fail. We did see Terence though, which was cool. Finally, we were able to meet up with her, then we called Lucy for some reason and found out she was in her room with Erika, Allison, and Kayla. We decided to go see them since Orion wanted to. I didn't really need to see Erika and I didn't particularly want to ditch Nikki, but she had a friend there, so we went. I didn't realize how much I never talked to them until we got there. All four of them were in bed together and they all climbed down so say hi.......to Orion. Being quickly forced out of the circle, I stood in the background with Lucy's roomate, who seemed pretty cool because she was unboxing a box so that it would take up less space in the recycle bin, which is something only cool people do. Kayla actually did say hello to me, but awkwardly as she passed me on her way out the door. I was glad we were only there for about 3 minutes because it was really awkward for me. After that, we walked Lucy up to the campus so she could meet up with her religion buddies for some bible thumping. On the way, we saw the asians crossing the street, so Lucy yelled "HEY ASIANS." It was funny because they all turned around, looking confused, then actually saw who it was and waved at us. After we parted ways from Lucy, Orion and I went back to Nikki's dorm and saw Chung on the way.

After that, we met up with Drew and some of his friends for dinner where Alex and Willie happened upon us. They wanted to hang out, but since we were there to see the Stanwood kids, we had to tell them we couldn't. I felt like a dick after seeing Alex's face, but we will come down to see the Shorewood kids this week. After meeting Drew's roomates and other friends, we went back up to his dorm to check it out. After that, the rest of the Stanwood girls showed up and we all went shopping for some reason. We did find some cool stuff, but cool in the sense that it was something funny written on a shirt or whatnot. After that, it turned out Dan was going to be late, so we hung out in a living room area in a dorm for a while. When Dan and his friend got there at 9:00, we all went to go bowling, but the lanes were all being used, so we played pool and ping pong. It was pretty cool. Orion and I left sometime between 11:00 and midnight.

Saturday:
I got up on time, but did not linger around because I had to leave at 10:00 because Steven, Orion, and I were going to Ellensburg to see Davis. We got through the pass with no trouble. When we got there, it was quickly apparent to us how much there was not to do. We hung out with Davis for a while and got the full tour of campus including their really nice music building and their really cool music library. We saw a statue of a pencil (apparently), the mobile fortress (psych building), the strange radar dishes, and the zombie defense palace. We also got to meet the many cool characters that live on his floor. We hung out with John a bit and he was a really cool guy. He took us to see the junk shop, which had some cool junk in it. I should have bought some of those $1 seahawk unwashed practice pants. Who knows who's herpes I could get? It was a pretty cool time while we were there, but we had to leave after a while due to a lack of things to do. Luckily, we did not leave later than that because we got stuck in some bad snow over the pass. I almost ran out of gas because we were forced to use the brakes a lot and almost all of the exits were closed for 50 miles. We finally pulled into a gas station about 7 miles ahead of North Bend at 0 miles to empty (which is actually 5 or 6 miles (it warns you early, which is actually a good way of doing it)) That was the only problem. As we passed accidents and as I could barely see out the window, all I cared about until that point was whether we would run out of gas. After that, the snow quickly turned to rain as we went down the mountain and it no longer was a problem. After that, I came home and watched football, then Orion came over to watch the Titans game. It was only the second half due to a technical error by the machine I had recording it.

Sunday:
I watched football all day. It was nice to not have to use my feet and I got a lot done on Morrowind. I'm getting close to being the highest rank in all the houses and I'm now almost level 60.

Well that's it for now. I would probably post about today, but I just did that whole weekend post, so I guess I'll spare you. Have a good day until tomorrow, or a good rest of the week if you aren't reading until next week.

Somehow, this didn't get put in the last picture post

This was how my whole weekend looked. Games going on the bottom and football up top. I happened to get it during an army commercial. I think that the army now owes me money for advertising for them.

The 2nd week of Football picks.

Sorry about the delay. I almost forgot to post today. The days blur together when you play too much Morrowind. Anyway, it looks like I did well last week. I didn't do as well as my first week last year when I went 4 for 4, but I think I can do better than my 7 out of 11 record of the last playoff season. I was quite surprised that the Colts lost, but after how they played in overtime, they deserved to lose. When you foul yourself to a loss, it's hard to feel sorry for you. I was also surprised on the two Sunday games at how close I was to being right. I was about 2 points off in both games. I'm hoping to improve on my record of 3 for 4 by getting all 4 right this weekend. Here it goes.

Titans vs. Ravens: Titans win by 14
What happens when you pit a team with the best record in football against a team with a defense that has a knack for getting the ball out of the offense's hands? You get a really good game. I wish this one wasn't on first because it's going to be a really good game, but in the end, the Titans are going to continue and they will show us why they have the best record in football this season.

Panthers vs. Cardinals: Cardinals win by 6-10
This is going to be a game like the Eagles vs. the Vikings. It's going to be pretty boring. Neither of these teams really stands out and neither one is going to make it to the super bowl unless something happens to the Giants. That being said, the Cardinals will take their good experience from this past weekend and they will apply it well in this game and they will either win by a couple field goals or a touchdown.

Giants vs. Eagles: Giants win by 14
The Eagles had a nice win over the Vikings last week, but the reigning super bowl champions are not going to let up on them and the Eagles will be stopped in their tracks. When the Giants get into the lead, they will hold it for the remainder of the game.

Steelers vs. Chargers: Steelers by at least 10
The Chargers may be my 3rd favorite team (only behind the Seahawks, then the Colts), but I know when a team I like is outmatched, so I have to get behind the Steelers here. The Steelers are scary and I must say, I am changing my opinion of them. They didn't cheat in the super bowl vs. us. The referees did. If the Steelers pull out a good win and still make the game fun to watch, I think I can learn to like them next season.

Ok well have fun watching football this weekend. I'll talk to y'all later.

Kathryn and I figured if vanilla snow ice cream worked out, why shouldn't mint? It did not work out. It tasted as bad as it looks.

Then I put some candy in there to make it look more like puke.

My neighbor parked in the middle of the culdesac, preventing everyone from getting out. Totall d-bag move.

This was my page of notes for the accounting final. You might say it was quite an "asset" on the test.

Just the week for now

Before I get into this post, I will acknowledge that I am aware of how I did in football this weekend and I know school has started, but this post will be just about the last week of break. I want to keep the football stuff in its own post since I went back to last year and it was really unorganized. I will post tomorrow or maybe much later today (most likely tomorrow) on that. As far as classes, I really want to post about how I like them so far, but I feel like I should have been in them for at least a week first. Also, we had a late start today due to snow, so I haven't even had my math class yet. Due to all that, this post will be only about the last week of break.

So on the 27th, we actually got some DnD going, which was cool because we spent most of the day doing it since Davis didn't have to do anything after all. Because we spent 12 hours playing DnD on Saturday, we didn't on Sunday, so I just played Call of Duty: World at War. It's pretty fun. It's got the good engine of CoD4 with the coolness of WW2 games. I don't know why people hate them so much. There were so many good battles. I'd rather run through bombed out Germany than bombed out desert city.

On the 29th, we got some more DnD in, taking slightly longer than Orion wanted because we had to finish the dungeon we were in (sadly, no dragons were involved). After that, Orion left and Sai lent me Morrowind.

On the 30th and 31st, not much went on. Orion was gone and I didn't hang out with anyone. I did go see Valkyrie with mom and dad which was a pretty good movie.

Orion got back on the 1st and we went to see the Stanwood kids that day, which was pretty cool. We didn't hang out very long, but Orion and I are planning on visiting the UW to see them sometime soon. After that, Orion and I went to Lucy's house for a facebook/yearbook party. It was much straighter than it sounds, trust me.

On the 2nd, Sai came over to help me realize I had installed Morrowind correctly and to help me set up Photoshop. I haven't used it too much yet, but I like what it can do that I've seen so far. While waiting, we continued to pwn throught Halo on legendary. We got through Truth and Reconciliation as well as The Silent Cartographer. For the record, Sai and I are very manly because we kill hunters on legendary by only hitting them. The one time we actually shot a hunter was when I had to because Sai had gotten killed right before they showed up and it was 2v1, but I only needed to shoot it once because I had hit it a lot already.

After Sai left, I went to see 7 pounds with my family, which was pretty good, but also pretty depressing.

On the 3rd and 4th, I didn't leave the house at all. I set up my PC so that when I looked up, the TV and the PC looked like a Nintendo DS setup. I marathon gamed (Morrowind) while watching football. It was very enjoyable.

Well that's it for the week. Next week's post will include my classes. Tomorrow, I'll post about football. Later today, I have band, but after that, I'll try to remember to put up some pictures I've been meaning to get up.

Football picks round 1

Well football season is winding down again, so I'm going to pick the first round winners just in case any of you now 18 year olds feel like gambling on the games.

Cardinals vs. Falcons: Cardinals by 3 or less points
This game is going to be close. The Cardinals aced their division, but that's like opening a can with a stinger missile. It's not very hard. The Falcons have done well also, so that will keep them in the running. The Cardinals haven't been in the playoffs in a while, so it's going to be a little unfamilliar at first, but once they get their groove going, things will start to work out. The game will be very close though. It will either be decided by the Cardinals making a field goal or the Falcons missing one.

Colts vs. Chargers: Colts by less than 10 points
It's going to be close. The Chargers have been doing pretty well all season and they've put up some great numbers, but the Colts are doing really well recently and I don't think that even the Chargers will stop them, but it's going to be a close game.

Dolphins vs. Ravens: Ravens by 14 points
Two names that last year I never would have expected to write down now, but here I stand, doing just that. The Dolphins have been doing well all season, but when they win, it's often somewhat close. From what I've seen out of the Ravens (which admittedly isn't a lot), they are going to come out strong and walk over the Dolphins early, then hold a lead with a solid defense.

Vikings vs. Eagles: Eagles by 7-14 points
The Vikings can try all they want, but the Eagles will walk all over them and will possibly even beat them by a couple touchdowns. If not that, the Eagles will probably win by at least 10 points. I have little faith in the Vikings.

It did not slip my mind

I know, I know. I haven't posted in over a week. I figured I would get away with it because I was busy (hanging out with 90% of the people that read this blog). Anyway, I got busy with some DnD, but that is a story that comes later. I must get the first boring week of break out of the way.

For the first week of break, Sai and Orion were both gone and the weather was rather annoying, so I didn't leave the house much. I got some good gaming in on the NES until I stopped getting it to work and gave up. I also got some achievements that I had not yet gotten on old console games. I've been playing Guitar Hero 2 with Kathryn and she's getting better, so she's helping me get some achievements. She's actually as good on a controller as I am and she prefers to play that because she finds that the guitar can be somewhat confusing.

The streak of boringness was broken on Saturday when Davis called me up about whether I wanted to go to Maddy's white elephant party with him. I must admit, I had originally thought I wouldn't go(sorry Maddy if you're reading this), but Davis told me it wasn't going to be a boozer, so I agreed to go. Davis came over early and we watched Dungeons & Dragons, the movie, which was really stupid, but good since we came into it with very low expectations. The ending was a major wtf. After that, we went up the hill to Maddy's house and when we got there, Maddy, Andrew, Jack, and Erin were there already. Shortly after we got there, Sam and Jared showed up. The white elephant was successful. I got a bionicle book, a book called seven habits of highly successful teenagers, a half completed sudoku book (how efficient!), and a DINOSAUR BOOK!!!! It had a funny picture of what looked like Dino-oral. I'll have to show you guys sometime or post the picture.

We hung around for about half an hour after everyone left because of the 4-6 inches of snow that had fallen. On our way back to my house, Davis and I considered streaking which would have been cool, but it would have meant that we were naked and in close proximity, which is highly unacceptable. We watched Scarface when we got back to my house, then we had breakfast together if you catch my drift (I meant it literally).

On Sunday, Davis and I decided to walk all the way to Steven's house since there was no way we were going to be able to drive anywhere. We made it to Davis' house in 45 minutes, then spent over an hour there, which was unplanned. After that, we took 30 minutes to get to Steven's house. When we got there, we made him a DnD character and then waited for Orion, then hung out with Orion before going to his house to mooch some dinner off of his mom. After that, we hung out back at Steven's house until Charlie picked us up and drove me back to the top of Syre hill, which I walked down.

On Monday, I decided it was a good enough day to drive, so I did. We got some good DnD going that day. We played until about 6, when we went to Orion's house to mooch dinner again, then we came back and played until about 1am. I got almost home, then encountered a police scene and had to take the long way around, so I got home at 2am.
A good quote from the day: Sai: Oh, so getting up is a standard action? I guess I won't do that then

On Tuesday, I went to Steven's house around 2:00 and hung out with him, Sai, and Ashley. Ashley joined our party that day in DnD and it was kind of good because Davis decided to put us up against 48 enemies. The battle took 4 hours partly because of some training we had to do, but it was pretty fun.

On Wednesday, I drove mom to the grocery store to get some groceries that had yet to be gotten. After that, I spent the rest of the day cleaning up the downstairs. I found a lot of cool stuff and really got it clean.

On Christmas Day, I woke up to discover that I was awake before Kathryn and after Dad. Usually, Kathryn wakes me up, then we wake up the parents, but the order didn't really do anything this year. I got some good loot for Christmas, including Mercenaries 2 (Josh would be proud), and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed along with a couple older games, Forza 2 and the latest Destroy all Humans. I also got a charger for my batteries that plugs into the 360 and a new battery from my cousin. It was nice because he keeps saying I should get one and now he just gave me one. Also, I lost a battery pack, so it's nice to have another.

Right now, I'm finishing up an old game so I can move onto my new ones. Hopefully we can get some DnD going soon. Peace out until then.