What to do, what to do...
My free time at work just started to accumulate, so why not
create a page for daily observations and ponderings on life so I can occupy said
free time! What a great a idea, I think I just will...
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this column are those of the writer and the writer only, and do not necessarily reflect those of HSU. If something offends you then read the rules of this site. Regardless, just sit and enjoy these ramblings and realize that the writer is only digging himself deeper and deeper into a hole...
February 28, 2002- "In
most instances, all an argument proves is that two people are present"
Well, the debate is still on whether or not I should post
those "interesting yet memorable" moments on this site and risk embarrassing
others. So while I ponder on that you can enjoy this *brief *synopsis of today's
events:
Woke up, missed breakfast, froze butt off, drew picture at
work, worked on same picture in class/missed class lecture, had bizarre
encounter at lunch, ate, wished I hadn't eaten, procrastinated, learned C++,
realized I should have done homework instead of procrastinating, went back to
work, stayed late working on same picture,
finished picture, ate, remembered lunch fiasco, deja vu with food, played 2
hour pool game, finally won game, stalked secret crush, freaked out
Dennis by having his mom call him after reading the Feb 18 entry and quoting to
him his laughable predicament, updated this page,
uploaded Ultimate questionnaire, heard
someone from across the dorm squawk like a pterodactyl while I updated this
page, deducted a card game was being played, thought of
better/funnier things to say on this page after updating it, too lazy to update
it again, going/went to bed.
In other surprising news, tomorrow begins the weekend, a
weekend in which much-is-planned yet little-will-happen. That's the
problem with going to a suitcase college , whenever a weekend comes around all
the people I actually want to spend time with depart towards those weird places
called "home" to see those enigmatic groups labeled as "families". While I
no doubt do the same (mainly due to lack of other things to do or me needing
more "free" supplies), I don't see what is so desirable about doing such a
thing. Sure it's nice to see the family and catch up/fight, but do you need to
do it every weekend? Expect a rant on this topic sometime over the weekend
when/if I have the luxury of free time...
Until next time, just go to class.
-J wishes he could have HBO so he could learn
from Dennis Miller's rants
February 27, 2002- "Halfway there"
As of right now the week is officially halfway over, and my
body is already preparing for the switch into weekend mode. But before I
can fully convert I must complete a few projects my friendly professors have
required of me. Oh yes, nothing makes a week slow down more than having to
overload yourself with work the few days before you are set free. But
rather than bore you with the incessant tripe that is my homework I will humor
you with my escapades of last night.
After tolerating Caddo's dinner, I proceeded to dash towards
the dorm rather than take my usual leisurely walk. This change of pace was
of course caused by 15 degree weather that was freezing me inside out. But
it turns out my haste was for naught, because when I reached the door to the
dorm my key would not open it. Nothing is funnier than seeing someone
locked outside the dorm in 15 degree weather while everyone is inside all cozy
and warm. Unless of course that person is me. Luckily someone was able to
let me in, and it turns out it wasn't my key that was the problem but the actual
door. Add this to the list of problems in the Honors dorm: the side door
won't open now unless brutally kicked, and that only works in one direction.
Four out of five times the keys don't unlock the door and the resident is left
outside in the bitter cold contemplating if it is worth it to walk all the way
down to the next door. My question is this "Why didn't it do this when it was at
least tolerable outside?"
After thawing out in the lobby I played a quick game of pool
and then changed for the Arête parte', which was more enjoyable than I thought
it would be. Unfortunately I didn't receive any awards at the parte' (nor
did I expect to), but I was privileged to a few jokes about Henry VIII by our
own Dr. Thompson. Not only that, but I finally saw a girl who I had talked
to quite a few times through Mascot but never knew what she looked like.
Too bad she had to stay at the parte' late and I had to leave early due to
"pool" arrangements. Oh well, I am sure I will hear from KM135754 sooner
or later...
The next few hours were accompanied by the blur of colorful
solid and stripped spheres soaring (sometimes literally) into geometrically
placed black gutters. Of course in the end I stood victor in the majority
of the matches, mainly by my cunning use of treaties which help me team up
against all the good players until only us crappy players remain on the table
(yes these are 3-5 player games). Then there
were the few ERS games I played afterwards which consisted my slapping my hand
too hard against the linoleum floor (and paying for it with much pain later) and
listening to the squawks of a fellow player every time she missed a slap. I have
deducted that card games bring out the animals in people, literally, as many of
the residents in my dorm make animal noises while they play. Sometimes
you'll hear people squawk like pterodactyls while other times its an annoying
(and laughably accurate) chicken clucking. Ah, but what can I say, life wouldn't
be as fun without such idiosyncrasies to poke fun at (oh darn, a preposition at
the end of a sentence).
As for the rest of the night... well I am currently in debate
with myself on how to write my journal entries with regards to other persons.
In normal circumstances in which no one would read the but me, I wouldn't
hesitate describing every event in great detail regardless how "right" or
"wrong" it was. But since the is now a public column I don't know how talk
about certain people or events. I have no problem with digging myself into
a hole with my colorful commentary based on past events, but I don't want to
place others in the hole with me. Nor do I want to embarrass people
who do not want their idiosyncrasies publicly known. So do I avoid talking
about those "interesting events" just to spare others the embarrassment (or
trouble) that would be brought about by them? Or do I "tell all" and go with the
punches (even the physical ones)? Of course I would change the names, but
still people who know me and my friends would probably figure out who I am
talking about which may cause some problems. It's either that or
just write daily about my not-as-interesting-escapades and maybe end up boring
the reader even more as I, being a creature of habit, have the uncanny
ability to do the same activities multiple days in a row.
Well, as I contemplate my options I will bid the farewell.
If anyone has an opinion please E-mail me
and I will take them into consideration. So until tomorrow, try to get
some sleep.
-J., a lover of irony, is still trying to figure out what an
appositive is.
February 26, 2002- Gee, I sure love Spring.
I love how the the grass is a bright green and how the air is crisp and cool.
Days like that almost force you to go outside to do work. That is exactly how
this weekend was and I enjoyed every minute of it. And that was exactly
how today was too, except it was 15 degrees Fahrenheit (wind chill) and windy
beyond belief. After having such a great weekend who would have expected
such a frigid day?
Well beyond the pain it has been to walk from building to
building, today has gone over fairly well. The student art show opened up
and quite a few of my friends won prizes in it. I have an Arête
parte' happening tonight which gives me a valid reason not to show up for my
Contemporary Art History class. Plus I had a great "game night" last night
where I pretty much won every card/pool game I played in a 3 hour period.
Beyond that, I have just worked on my animations for this site, and listened to
my new piano mp3s. Oh yea, it's 5:00 now so I won't be saying much else,
at least for now. Maybe later I'll update with a little juicer column since some
pretty interesting events have occurred, many of which would take too long for
me to write about now...
February 25, 2002- "Does your power work?"
Wow, what a roller coaster of a week it has been. The best
way to describe the past couple of days would be as a "teaser weekend".
I was shown many gifts over the weekend, only to have them taken away from me
and placed beyond my reach, thus I call it teasing me. First of all, on
Friday I finally hooked my computer up where I could update this page from my
dorm room. If you read Friday's post you know I had many plans to update this
page, and with the ability to update at my leisure I went frenzy. I was
ecstatic, I had major plans I was going to work on, but alas everything went
sour at the last minute:
Plan - work on my animations on my
computer to post here over the weekend.
Problem - My 100 layer Photoshop files literally killed my
computer. After opening the file I heard my computer scream it's death throes
and then shut down on me.
Plan - work on my snow portfolio.
Problem - First of all, the pictures were in a
format which my computer couldn't read. After downloading 4 different programs I
finally found one which read the picture format and save it on my computer.
Then I imported all of the pictures I had taken and started looking through them
until I noticed I didn't have any of my snow pictures on my dorm computer...
Plan - create more art via Bryce 5
Problem - my copy of Bryce 5 couldn't be read by my DVD/CD-RW/CD-ROM
hybrid.
Plan - describe my experiences in
paragraph form on this page.
Problem - "This file cannot be saved, it is already in
use". I guess I forgot to close down my other connection to this page on my work
computer which was locked away in Evans.
Plan - Download new piano music which
I have been waiting patiently for since September.
Problem - First of all I couldn't find any place that
had the mp3s, but after 2 hours of work I finally found an FTP site which
contained them. Things were looking good.... Oh no! The school's proxy
refuses to let me connect to THAT FTP!!!! I can connect to any other one, but
the FTP I was wanting would not accept my connection.
Plan - Go to parents house, connect to
forbidden ftp, copy mp3s, send them to dorm computer.
Problem - This one actually worked, accept for some reason
couldn't connect to my computer from my house. How very odd...
Plan - Go back to dorm,
listen to new mp3s, work on webpage, watch TV/movies, play video games, calm
self down, repeat all day Saturday and Sunday.
Problem - This one would have worked except for the fact
that our dorm's power went out. Only a single lamp worked in my room,
nothing else. I had no lights, no TV, no computer, not a single entertaining
item. Not only that, but all my dorm friend left due to their power going
out so I didn't even have anyone to talk to. To add salt to my wounds, I
had just placed a gallon of milk in my fridge and lord only knows what it has
turned into after being left in a warm fridge all weekend. This whole "no
electricity" thing pretty much screwed me over for the rest of the weekend.
Plan - End it all by jumping out of window.
Problem - With no lights in my room, I couldn't even
find the window, I ended up jumping into a concrete wall. Okay, so I never
planned on jumping out of the window, but after all that went wrong this weekend
what else could I have done?
And that was my weekend. Wow, after a weekend like that what more could happen to me? Well only time will tell...
February 22, 2002- "When it rains it pours" or
"When it's sunny you get burned"
Actually I couldn't find a positive quote that has the same meaning
as that, but portrays my day well. Earlier today I had a full list I was
ready to type into my journal today, because quite frankly a lot has happened in
the past 24 hours. I planned on putting two hours of work into this entry,
instead I only have 15 minutes... It's not a bad thing though, because
what hindered my from writing today was my sense of productiveness! I
recently came across my old animation folder which I passed over when putting my
artwork pieces on this site. After
uploading them to the artwork page I
was motivated enough to start working on some more. For the past two hours I
have been working frame by frame on editing a
certain animation (this is the
rough draft). Add that to my desire to fix my snow pictures, and you will
see that today I actually have more projects I desire to work on than I have
time to work with them! Hopefully my memory will be with my all weekend so
I can describe today's events on Monday's post (can't post over the weekend, I
have to be at my faculty computer to edit this site). But before I go I
have to give one last shout of joy.. Yea!! I got paid today!!!! Woohoo!!!!
Until Monday, have a safe weekend.
February 21, 2002- "Ever have one of those days
where you just don't want to do anything?"
Someone asked me that questions last night and I just smiled my answer
back to them. Last night I had plans to finish a screen-printing, work on
a book for Digital page, and help someone get their computer back to
working order. Instead I was involved in many pool games, slaughtered the
competition in both a SSX Tricky tournament and a Tekken Tag tournament (the
latter being my first time to play said game which further proves the
effectiveness of button mashing), and searched the internet for mp3s which would
never be found. Oh yea, I also found out I can do a standing long jump of
87 inches and can effectively place my entire back against the dorm ceiling just
by suspending myself between two walls and crawling up. How that ever came up, I
have no idea, it's just an example of the crazy stuff that happens in our dorm.
I planned on doing work yesterday, but again those plans fell through due to
pointless entertainment. The good news is the major project I failed to do
last night was not asked to be turned today. It seems my absent-minded professor
totally forgot that he stated last class period to turn them in today, an event
which seems to happen quite frequently among the art teachers. Oh well, no skin
off my back. At least now I have more time to procrastinate and fail to work on
it when planned.
On the other hand, today has been semi-productive. I started
working on my snow portfolio for this site. Basically it is a collection of
pictures taken during our "big" snow storm 2 weeks ago. My progress on it
is hindered though, since many of my shots required a flash which ended up
reflecting off of the indeterminable amount of snow flakes falling to the
ground. The result is 20-30 beautiful snow pictures covered in an annoying
series of randomly placed white specks. Hopefully after a little work in
Photoshop those pictures will be fixed and posted on this site. Until then I
will be looking at the pictures pixel by pixel replacing every white spot/pixel
with a more subtle color, much like I did with my
old fire picture.
Uh oh, looks like I will have to work on those snow pictures
tomorrow, for my time today has ended and I have many other projects I planned
on procrastinating tonight. Until, tomorrow... think of a good parting
line for me.
February 20, 2002 (AKA 0220-2002 )- Once again we are half way
through the week and I have nothing to show for it. I did however have an
interesting bit of irony happen at work earlier though. For starters, I
"accidentally" failed to show up to my sociology class due restraints put on to
me by my evil pillow. Of course this is a victimless crime (unless of
course you call me a victim), and it's a crime that the consequences are fairly
easy to avoid... that is unless I see my teacher. I usually make it a
habit not to see my teachers on the days I skip their classes (of course I
rarely partake in either action anyways), but sometimes it is unavoidable. Like
today. I show up to work and the first task I am given is to install
FrontPage 2002 on a faculty's computer. Not exactly a hard job, except this time
it turned out to be my sociology professor. To make things worse (or
better I guess) this teacher actually knows me and recognizes me, a feat quite
rare for a professor who teaches a class of 150. Needless to say the
following 5 minutes in his office are quite awkward because I know he is well
aware that I skipped his class. Luckily, this teacher is actually quite
nice about the whole thing and gives me a review sheet of important stuff I
missed and never even asked about my absence. This whole event has taught
me three things: if you are going to skip class, skip work too; never
trust what the pillow tells you; and always ignore your first rule because the
pillow is the one who told you to write it.
Another funny note: for some odd reason the dorm's hot water
has been turned off. This was especially surprising to me when I (eventually)
got up and jumped in the bathroom for a nice, relaxing, hot shower.
Needless to say, the event that occurred after I turned on the "hot water"
is probably something that you would see in a comedy/sitcom. Oh yea, considering
my attire, make that an X rated comedy/sitcom.
Double Trouble: today is the date of the Final Fantasy
Concert, the first official concert in over 10 years. The last one, released on
the CD FF: Symphonic Suite, contained music from FF1-3 while this one should
bring us up to date through FFX. The sad fact is I am stuck in Arkansas while
the concert in Tokyo (or some unpronounceable city name)... sigh. Another
bonus is today is the release day for FFX: Piano Collections. After
listening to FFIX: PC about 300 billion times I am ready to move on and see what
this new one has in store for me. Not only that, but it initiates my
search for the elusive piano collections score book so I try to recreate the
music on my own piano. Normally, I would be rejoicing from the two
ventures in Final Fantasy symphonic music that were released today , in fact I
have been counting down to today since late January, but it wasn't until this
morning that I realized "Hey just because they came out today doesn't mean I
will get to listen to them." Nope, the tragedy endures, as I now know I
have no way of listening to these masterpieces until I find a way to pay for
them, or some illegal way of acquiring them...
Can't....decide......which...to....do...
February 19, 2002- Have I mentioned I detest, loathe, hate Tuesdays? Well just for this semester that is. Most people don't like Mondays because it means they have to go back to work, but that doesn't bother me. So what is it that causes me to detest Tuesdays? Because of wonderful my scheduling ability, I have to wake up at 7 AM and I do not get to come back to my room until 9 PM. I have my daily work/class 8-5 routine I do, which is becoming quite natural now, but just when I think my day is done BAM! I have another 6-9 class which could put an insomniac to sleep. The class, contemporary art history, really isn't that bad of a class, but after a whole day of learning/procrastinating I am ready to move on and relax by the time class rolls around. Tonight in the class, for the first 90 minutes I was struggling to prop my head up so I could stay awake. The next half I was literally counting down the seconds until I was free again. To make matters worse, I keep forgetting to actually PAY ATTENTION in class and still know no more about Contemporary Art History than I did at the beginning of the semester. Beyond that nothing much of interest happened to me today. Right now I am so low on "thought fuel" that I am about to fall out of my chair and sleep on...my... nice.....hard....tile......floommmmmmmmm
February 18, 2002- I finally created a page that I can update daily with my nonsensical wishes and whims. At least now I will have something more productive to do other than looking at the same webpages over and over waiting desperately for a new update. So what shall I discuss today, the first of hopefully many entries? Should I recap an otherwise meaningless day and possibly bore any potential readers (but accurately document a regular day in my college life for historical purposes), or should I Hollywood-ize my weekend and entertain my viewers with elaborate (and often exaggerated) tales of my adventures over said weekend? Considering my free time is suddenly dwindling as my escape time of 5:00 draws very near, I will just recap my weekend in News-story style fashion. Just think of it as "the 11 minute J-cap at 4:49":
Little Rock - On Friday the 15th, a group of HSU college students attended a local "Techno/dance" social gathering commonly referred to as a "Rave". Described as an eye-opening experience by most of the attendees, the party consisted of numerous participants between the ages of 15-25. One of the attendees, who asked to remain anonymous and will be referred to only as "J", described the night as "Exhilarating, everyone just danced the night away to great techno music and awesome visuals. The coolest thing was no one judged another person there: we were all their (sic) to have fun and everyone was friends with the person next to them." As later reported, some examples of the music played were remixes of the popular "All your base are belong to us" and "Ode to Joy", while the visuals consisted of continuous animation loops of characters from "Alice and Wonderland", "He-man", "Invader Zim", and "Princess Mononoke". "Most of the night we just danced and enjoyed the loud music" recalls J "There were times where we got tired, but they had free arcades there so you could sit and rest and entertain yourself". J then recalled an event of the night that stuck out "This cute long-haired brunette came up and asked me something. Unfortunately due to the loud music I couldn't tell what she said, so I just said no and she hugged me. Now that I think I about it, I sure wish I knew what question I answered..." While the trip was meant to be pure entertainment for the college troupe it actually was educational for many "What did I learn from this trip?" asked J, "The only thing that sticks out in my mind is 'Damn, I need to learn how to dance' ". J's comment was later confirmed by everyone else in the group. On the ride home, the side effects of the nights outing soon became apparent, as each participant had a loud ringing in his ear, and many kept nodding their heads or shaking their bodies in beat even though no music was being played.
Arkadelphia -On Saturday February 16th, a first floor resident of Oaks Hall dormitory was mildly annoyed when his upstairs neighbor played his music so loud that it vibrated the residents room. The upstairs neighbor, who had awakened earlier than anticipated, played his music louder than normal due to his temporary inability to hear quiet noises. His infliction, caused by the previous night's events, was also accompanied by an intense desire to learn how to dance which led to his loud playing of music. After numerous hours of music playing and failed dancing moves, the upstairs resident resorted to entertaining himself through colorful video games much to the joy of his distraught downstairs neighbor.
Arkadelphia - An area college student was unfairly yet humorously denied participation due to a technicality in one of many billiard played on the evening of Saturday, February 16th. The player, Dennis, was apart of a group of 4 students playing a pool game called Cutthroat. Cutthroat is usually played with 3 people who each claim 5 balls on the table and proceed to hit the other players' balls in until his balls are the only one left on the table. In this 4 person game, each person chose 3 balls on the table (only after they hit a single ball in) and after 4 sets were chosen the last unused set (there are normally 15 balls) was considered dead and promptly removed from the table. An important rule in the game is if a player scratches on his shot, each of the other players places one of their removed balls back on the table, but only if they have chosen a set. This rule inadvertently caused a technicality in the game, as 3 of the 4 members had already chosen their set and proceeded to remove the balls on the table before Dennis could choose his set. When the 2 remaining sets were removed from the table, it was realized that Dennis would be unable to play because he could not choose his set since was not allowed to shoot. Without being able to choose a set of balls, none of his balls would be placed on the table in the event of a scratch and he was the left out of the remaining of the match while his friends laughed at him.
