chaz720.net - journal

February 01, 2000

Okay I admit, I almost wrote January 32, 2000, so I'm a retard. Hans, it seems, is more of one because he now has the FBI after him due to a copyright infringement. But he resolved the problem so they shouldn't be concerned any more.

So much for this being a day which would be spent making up homework... ...I started out with the great idea that I would make a cartoon (I still will, expect it probably by friday if I don't get really lazy) And that has taken up quite a bit of my time. And then Marci and Katie came over and we watched Austin Powers 2 (Which you can never see too many times.) and then went to dinner at Baker's square. This took up the other good chunk of my time today, and now it is 20 to 12 and I have to help my dad clean the garage. School sucks anyhow so I'm not really pressed to care, but I do have another test in english tomorrow and I'd really rather not do quite as bad as I did one the last one.

Congradulations to Hans on his raise, I am actually due up for mine right about now and I'll see what I can do tomorrow.

Don't you just love those conversations that have no direction that tend to spring up when your friends talk to your parents. Maybe it was just me, but Katie and Marci really looked kinda bored when my dad started making small talk. Well, speaking of my dad, he is yelling at me to come downstairs. Peace.

February 02, 2000

Well I lucked out once again by not having to take any quiz in english today because, as usual, I hadn't read the book to the point we were supposed to be at.

Today at work went by pretty fast. But, there was a guy whose hearing was really messed up, aparrently he could hear things that didn't exsist but not hear things that did. He came in complaining his computer's fan was making a noise. We turn it on and the CPU fan is rattling like an el camino, so we tell him that's it and we sell him a new one. 30 minutes later... ...God Damn it, my computer is making the same noise. So we fire it up... ...no noise. we then replace his old CPU fan and we put in a new power supply. Then the CPU fan starts rattling like a tin can in a drier, and the guy is like, okay that's better. Adam and I just exchange glances and say, okay! so we typed in the notes that he listened to it and said it sounded fine.

I made a completely twisted Cartoon This is not the cartoon I was working on yesterday, I will probably finish that one tomorrow... ...probably. I don't know why I made this one, I was just listening to the song and I had this wierd vision, oh well.

So Katie wants to set me up with a girl for turnabout, I have never met her but apparently she is, 'very sweet, shy, but very friendly when you get to know her' So I will meet her this weekend and see how it goes. Even though I was advised against it by a party who shall remain nameless, I guess I'll give it a shot.

I have been promising myself that I would catch up on the reading I have been supposed to be doing, so I guess I will go do that now.

February 03, 2000

I think I must be destined to never get any of my homework done... ever. Today was one of my days off work and I say to myself, "self, you are going to do your homework today." Well, when I walk in the door my mom tells me a package came from AMD for you. My mouth dropped. I got my 650 MHz Athlon today, alright! Well, I have to reinstall unreal as soon as I get the CD because I don't think it is taking too kindly to my new mobo.

So after I get my computer up and running and oh, about an hour or so of quake 3 later, I go to Hans' house and watch smackdown with Hans, Marci, and Katie. And now I am home at about a quarter to eleven and I haven't even opened my bag. Damn. Which also means I didn't get a chance to work on my cartoon, eh, to hell with the viewers, you can wait.

Now I have to flash my friends TI-89 cause it is busted and all it does is ask for you to install the software. Which means without a graphlink, it is a paperweight.

My 'new' computer has a distinctly lower pitched fan-drolling noise than my other one which I know is going to bug the hell out of me for a few days. I guess that's the price I pay. Unfortunately, my DVD-ROM still doesn't seem to work but I have an idea to get it wokring which, sadly, I am way too tired to implement.

We have decided that we are going to be spending a lot more lunch hours at Hans' house because It is A) Cheaper and B) fast food is really starting to get to us. Everyday has turned into, 'ungh, I really wish I hadn't eatten that.' And everyday it becomes more and more difficult for us do come up with a place that hasn't made at least one of us sick. I just sat after that last sentence staring at the blinking cursor for ten minutes, that isn't a good thing.

February 04, 2000

I have a phrase that I just love, 'And to make matters worse...' Nothing good can come from anyone using that phrase.

I was in the tech shop and I was downloading some NWA music and I try to play it through winamp and I am getting no sound. So I check all the volumes and they are all fine and I go to make sure the speaker is plugged in and completely forgot to turn the volumes to a reasonable volume. So all of the sudden, the computer just blairs, "Bitch betta have my money!" And Dave and Joe just start cracking up really loud and I'm like oh shit it's a good thing there weren't any customers/managers within earshot.

So there's this woman (not that we should hold that against her, but...) she calls us, and first of all, she thought we were "CompaqUSA". But that I won't even get into. Anyway she complains that her sound doesn't work and that she spent 10 hours on the phone with compaq and the computer has been into our shop several times and it still doesn't work. So she comes in and I looked at it and her volume was turned down.... Whack! so I turn it back up and she asks why Compaq couldn't have told her to do that. And I said that Her guess was as good as mine. And she tells me that I am the only competent person that she has dealt with about it. (unfortunately I couldn't return the complement, 'if (volume > 0) then {sound}' shouldn't be too hard to comprehend) and I just said that I guess I take that as a complement.

Well, to make matters worse, I am sitting here all alone, on a Friday night, with nothing to do, completely friendless, feeling abandoned by all my friends who decided to go off on their own and do seperete things (sniff) the only person I don't think I can blame is joel because I think he is at work. But I guess I don't want to be a burden, and Hans did give me warning of what he was doing, so I can't complain anymore, tomorrow is another day.

Well, I determined that my computer now works best if I just lie to it. Under the BIOS set-up I have to tell it that I do not have a PnP (Plug and Play) Operating System installed. Although that's not entirely a lie because Win98 is hardly 'Plug and Play' It's displaying a tendency to be 'Plug and Crash' lately so I just let my mobo take care of assigning resources and just have windows do what it is told. Not that windows is good at doing what it is told, but that's better than having it try to make decisions on it's own.

I know on 12-10-99 I mentioned that Bill and Joel are dorks because of their answering machine message they left me. Well here are the infamous messages for your listening displeasure. Keep in mind these were recorded over a phone line and out a speaker into my computer's microphone, so excuse the poor quality, but I still think that they are audible (spits on joel's criticism) and if you can't hear what they are saying, then go to joel and bill and ask what they were saying at the time.

I ditched the background all together due to numerous complaints and bitchings so I hope you like it better now. I am getting carpal tunnel syndrome now, so you all get to stop reading, a most likely much welcome break.

February 05, 2000

I have given up all hope of ever getting an IDE DVD player in my computer to work, it is time to get a pioneer SCSI dvd drive which will be faster anyway, if that doesn't work, I don't know what I'll do.

Today I woke up at the crack of noon and found out that I will in fact be going to the upcoming korn concert, very cool.

I didn't get to go shooting today because my dad wasn't feeling well, and he didn't think that standing outside with a windchill of -2 would help it any. It kinda gets me that Medinah's gun club is only open during the winter when it isn't exactly optimal conditions for shooting. So what if there is a golf course right near by. I say, if you can't play golf when people are discharging firearms 100 yards away, you can't play golf.

So I sat around and got a whole-lot-o nothing done. My parents and I went to dinner at Marlows because Milrose was all booked up. Afterwords, I went to work and bought my parents a portable phone and said hi to Hans. Then I brought Katie her Krispy Kreme Doughnuts at work and sat around and chated with her co-workers and had a piece of pie. We all ended up at Jason's house and watched 8mm (very f-ed up movie if you ask me) and sort of watched, sort of completely tore apart Urban Legand with Joel (a very dumb, half-assed, predictable movie if you ask me) After most everyone else left we sat around, quoted movies, and carried on discussions that really didn't go anywhere. Until the conversation stumbled into something about not getting enough sleep and then it dawned on us that it was 3 in the morning. It's 3:30 now and I don't think I have been getting enough sleep lately. My first clue is that I can barely keep my eyes open to read what it is I am typing.

Oh right, I almost forgot. It turns out that my friends aren't nearly as inconsiderate as I am incompetent. Katie left me a message that said they were all going bowling and that I could join them. But hey, there are about 30000 days in my life, and I don't think that one going bad is going to kill me, but if for some reason it does I guess I can only blame myself, cry me a river.

February 06, 2000

I love tomatoes!

I have a long day behind me and I have a long night ahead of me. So I will write this now. I only got about 4 hours of sleep last night because I had to get up early this morning and go to a meeting so that some idiot from intel could read me a powerpoint presentation on the pentium 3 and tell me that I should thank intel for all the advertising they have done 'for us'. I odn't know about you but I think they have other motives.

They fiinally started up the TAP games again, maybe because everyone was essetially striking from selling TAP because they weren't. I did make some money but not a huge sum. A women came up and asked me if we sold any programs that would teach her to use various applications. So I grabbed the nearest training product which happened to be an online training class with 24-7 phone suppor. It actually turned out to be exactly what she wanted so that was cool and made up the vast majority of my spifs today.

I was just watching who wants to be a millionaire and then it dawned on me. There is only a small group of people in the world who have no desire to be millionaires. They are called billionaires. I mean really, that is a really dumb name for a show when you think about it. But people are buying the home game like it is going out of style so what can I say, it must have some appeal to the average person.

I actually have to do laundry today, argh. I have so much clothing I was hoping I could just never wash anything and still always have something clean to wear. But alas my plans are foiled, I am almost out of clothes. I also have a bunch of stat homework, 60 pages to read in english, and a take home test to do for government over a chapter which I have yet to finish reading. So I don't think I am going to get a whole ton-o-sleep tonight either. Especially since I actually have to start school at the usual 7:30 in the morning as opposed to 9:20 which I was getting quite used to last week.

This is all a damn shame because my back, feet, and neck are killing me from carrying, talking, and standing all day. I could really use a message right now, but I wouldn't even have time for it anyway, so I will stop complaining.

February 07, 2000

I never really considered this page to be a forum of disscusion, in fact I think time and again I have mentioned how it simply expresses my point of view. And I think that it can be interesting without disclosing details that people just assume keep secert. Only a fool (yes I have been foolish in the past, however have learned from it) writes in their journal things that will result in someone getting hurt. I think I have been getting a lot better about drawing the fine line through my days and not saying things that, quite frankly, shouldn't be said publicly.

I think the world would be a better place if there were no secrets, and I don't think I am alone here. But I also doubt I am the only one who feels that a 'secretless' society is impractical given human nature. So if for some reason you feel that the 'good' or 'interesting' parts are being left out in favor of some meaningless drivil about my job that I happen to think is somewhat interesting, then you can surmount your physical self, become a god, and observe it all for yourself. Just don't complain about it on a website.

I am having a conversation with Bill right now and I have noticed, not by any means for the first time, how much we associate violence with sex. Maybe we are associating insults in general with violent tendencies, and most of our insults are somehow related to sex (cocksucker, mutherfucker, dickhead, pussy.) Or maybe just most of what we say are insults and somehow the sexual ones are simply the most painful (or so the insultor would hope.) Either way, I find it very strange that a lot of people associate these colorful phrases with hurting someone, very interesting.

Xoom has been a pain in the ass the last few days because they are supposedly doing some work on their servers. So if you are by some chance reading this and then later check back and it says my site isn't there, don't think I took it down or anything like that.

Here's something funny, I just got an e-mail advertisment for a product claiming to 'stop junk mail before it starts'. I don't suppose that the people who wrote the message recognized the irony in that. If they did, and they still sent it to me anyway, 'fuck' them.

I got a raise today, i guess the usually six months 50 cents thing. oh well, not going to turn it down. Today went by really quick and I managed to clean up after Mike Lee's sloppy ass at the upgrade counter so Mike G was happy. He did complain about me not selling enough warrenties, so that's why i didn't get a bigger raise. (I would have believed him easier if he had said it was because CompUSA was poor)

I have to do community service for vikes in government, and I originally wanted to do work at alexing bros medical center but I think i changed my mind. I think i will work at Marian Jordan elementary school, I was told I am pretty good with children, and I would like to pretend if only for a while that the homework I help the kids with is my own. Boy wouldn't it be nice to have to write a complete sentence about a topic instead of an entire essay? Those were the days. I will be sure to remind all the kids there that. Live it up while you still can, you have a long drag called high school coming up ahead of you. (no I won't really say, that would be depressing.) but would you rather know the truth, or pretend that your whole life will mimic your third grade years and be happy about it?

Uh oh, now I'm treading on Joel's ground, time to say goodnight so I can wake up tomorrow moring and write a paper for government.

February 08, 2000

I tell ya, I can't get any work done on my day off. But I am not going to allow myself to go to sleep until I at least catch up on my english book.

Well, I have officially signed up to work at ye old elementary school to be a day care assistant after school while the kids wait for their parents. This is going to be both fun and easy. All I have to do is make up games and play with kids, I think I can pull that much off. We played hangman which was kinda interesting. I thought it was kinda cute how every puzzle they came up with basically just said Ryan and Katie are in love. Apparently this happens every time katie brings a friend there, so it shows you where the minds of our youths stand.

Anyway, going back to Marion Jordan brings back the memories. I remember everything about that school, all the teachers that have stayed look exactly the same. The halls, however, seem so tiny compared to how I saw them as such a small kid. It makes me think of how the students that are there now might come back and say, I remeber when I was here, and there were kids my age now that came in this school, and are thinking the same thing I am now. Kinda wierd huh?

I ended up typing up my government paper during my extra lunch hour. But I think I did a pretty good job considering the relatively closed-ended question I choose for whatever reason. It basically said, tell about our current government's separation of powers, be sure to note how they have changed over the years. Jason Tang's current essay he gets to work on is, and I shit you not, pick a color and tell how it makes you feel and why. How the hell did I let myself pick the classes I am in. I don't know why I do it.

Like I said, I need to catch up on my reading for english and I'm about 60 pages from where I need to be (as it always seems) so I bid you adieu.

February 09, 2000

Today was pretty cool, the test I had in english was real easy and I only missed one because it was a dumb question.

I picked up Katie's birthday present and am about to wrap it. I do have a test in stat tomorrow, but all that really means is that I have to make up the homework, the material is easy.

Tomorrow i get to go to a field trip for my electronics class that I have been to before, we take a tour of a house and go yay! it has electricity! and then go back to school.

Today at work was not nearly as bad as I thought. We weren't too busy, I was able to clean out my entire area so that no one has any way to blame me if the big head hancho of CPU comes and tears the store apart tomorrow. I even redid the security tags for the two way radios so that all the wires were all neat and orginized, that is really below me, I don't know how I managed to bring myslef to do it.

I think we are making a habit of going to Hans' house for lunch during school, but it may or may not be a good thing, because one of these days we are going to all fall asleep and wake up at 4 in the afternoon and we'll all be screwed. I tell ya, it is only a matter of time.

I now know why Hans gets really close to being in trouble with tickets all the time. He drives like a friggin maniac wherever he goes, I was following him to the mall as he wove through traffic and just acted like one of those people you just want to give the finger to. You know the type.

So Hans finally gets his computer grant to build a system of his very own. Congradulations.

Read the following article on The Sims it is really funny, they rip on the AI and show some of the stupid things that will happen to your characters if you act like a jag-off while you are playing the game. Just don't stop half way through, it keeps getting better.

Oh, by the way, I just want all of you to know that under no circumstances would I throw out a Krispy Kreme donut, I mean honestly... ...who could do such a thing?

February 10, 2000

Finally a day it which I was able to catch up on something. Given it was sleep and not homework or anything like that but at least it's a start.

Happy 18th Katie, try not to have too much fun :)

The Stat test was pretty easy but I still haven't done the homework, since now I am not the least bit tired I think I will attempt to get that done.

I ordered my new DVD drive today so that should get here in a few days, (crosses fingers) maybe this one will actually work.

I have fallen way to far into 'debt' in my reading for english, so unless I get real bored on saturday I don't think I will be able to catch up. I don't particularly like having books assigned for me to read just in general, but I always give the book a chance regardless of what I have been told about it. I have ended up liking several books school has 'forced' me to read but this isn't on the list. The plot is hidious, anytime someone dies they just out of the blue die and not much time is spent on it. I'm at the part of the book where everyone is getting killed off and an entirely new plot is starting up with a few of the main characters left over. This book reminds me more than is pleasent of 'A Tale of Two Cities' which is another novel I suggest you avoid.

Most orginized religions are like microwaves; many people use them, few know how they work, and those who try to explain them get to thinking they shouldn't eat what's coming out of them. But that that's just my opinion, take it for what it's worth.

Probably the most repulsive thing I have ever laughed at has got to be Newground's FDA Site Just don't visit the taint page unless you are highly tolerant. But that is the general flavor of newgrounds humor so I can't say that I am surprised.

All of you out there with your picture on my friends page, send me your senior pics, or some other picture (don't get any bad ideas chris) that I can put on my web site so I can get rid of those lovely mugs that are there now. try to keep them around 200x150 so that they don't look too huge.

if you don't have the song already get 'LA Style - James Brown is Dead', not becaue I think it is a really good song, not because it's a bad song, but because it is stuck in my head and misery loves company.

February 11, 2000

Fuck, Fuckity, Fuck, Fuck, Fuck. You know what, sometimes people just fucking amaze me, not any one person alone, but people as a society. There was a kid who graduated from my school last year who committed suicide yesterday... ...by covering himself with gasoline and lighting himself on fire. First of all, what could possibly have been going on in his life that made him feel that he had no other choices, and secondly, what did he feel he did that made himself think he needed to suffer the pain of burning to death. I have to agree with Milzey, I don't think there is much of anything that would cause me to consider suicide. I guess that's just me but I obviously have never been incredibly depressed. It kinda makes the problems we run into on a day to day basis seem kinda insignifigant.

Today we went to a concert to see Katie's cousin's band play. But we didn't actually stay to see the band play, we stayed long enough to see two other pretty good bands play and one other really shitty rip off of RATM that called themselves a band play.

In the midst of the evening there was a bit of conflict between two members of the group and it resulted in pretty thick tension the rest of the night. I guess I am one of the few members of the group who is willing to talk to and/or listen to anyone else in the group regardless of what they have done, or what they have said. I suppose that might be because I really never get mad at anyone. Not that I just don't express it or anything, I ernestly don't give enough of a rats ass about the signifigance or lack there of my high school years on the rest of my life, to put forth the effort of being mad at someone right now. I mean honestly, life is too short. I'm not by any means condoning what happened tonight, in fact I think touching a woman in anger under any circumstances is wrong, but I think that most of the group is handling this in the wrong way. Getting pissy and laying down ultimatums is not the right way to handle it, but being stubborn and not accepting the other party's arguement is also the wrong way to handle it. Guys and gals, we are 18 years old, we have a life ahead of us, we need to be able to talk past these situations. How many times have I wrote in here that if anyone has a problem with what someone else says or does they need to speak up, maybe come up with a solution and work it out. Trying to make someone feel like crap about what they did will in the end only make them resent you. It sucks that tonight had to be all screwed up by a number of things but if you want, I could take the blame if it would make you all happy. I seem to be good at that.

Oh, not that you probably care but I got the website for the Magic Weasel Foundation up and running, there is not much to see there because there isn't much to the foundation yet, but I'll keep you informed of any posts.

Oh and I apoligize for any of you who clicked on the FDA links in my last entry, but hey, I tried to warn you.

February 12, 2000

Well what started out as going to see a movie with one person turned into sitting around in my room with four people. I actually don't care now because it appears as though everyone is friends again and we have put yesterday behind us. I was hoping it wouldn't last a day, and it didn't. I guess we are friends after all because we were able to get through this.

Tonight Joel played Zelda 64 all the way to the forest temple in one sitting. Meanwhile Katie and Jason renamed things on my computer and IMed Marc about what a fag I was for having various pictures of cars/planes on my walls. I realize that it was funny and that we all had a good laugh, but I don't appriciate people carring on a conversation about how they feel that my possesions make me gay (jokingly or not) with my friends online. I'm not gay so I shouldn't really care, but for some reason I took offense to it. I didn't disconnect the modem line as a joke.

Well, I think I am learning flash 4 pretty well because now I have made an actual functioning page out of a flash 4 movie. The Magic Weasel Foundation Homepage so you might want to stop in there and give it a browse. There is actually content (albeit a small volume) now to give meaning to the small space on the web that it takes up (less then 50k total which is actually about a third the size of just this html file) I think I may in the future, possibly next weekend, change the title bar on my page so that it uses a flash 4 movie instead, that way i can do some cool things with it and it won't just sit there.

I'm actually kinda glad that Katie and Jason tore apart my belongings (figuratively speaking) because it made me realize how much worthless crap I have lying around my room. Think to yourself, you may feel that you have a lot of stuff, but a good personality test is this; If you were moving away to college, what would you bring with you. My answer would mainly be my computer, clothing, TV, and N64. That's all I really ever use in my room (besides the bed, duh) so rest assured that all that crap on my walls held value only in the third grade, back in the day when I put it up, maybe I will take it all down, It'll make my room look a lot bigger, but also emptier, I suppose there is a always a tradeoff, even for even the simplest of decisions.

February 13, 2000

So all you people out there, what is on your minds? I don't have much of anything on my mind right now, except my hair (boo hiss).

Today just kinda went by and splashed me with a puddle of freezing cold water. I didn't sell jack today, mainly because nobody bought jack today. Fih on management! all I have to show from today is a whole hell of a lot of cuts and scrapes on my hand from moving and carrying shit all over the store. In conjunction with having to clean off the salty snow off my car before I could put it in the garage, My hands look like they've been through a war or two. I am so out of it tonight that on driving Hans home I ran two stop signs (completely no one around) and I dind't do it on purpose either, I can't explain where my mind was because I don't really know.

I think I have become the offical "info box" I made the shithead mistake of giving one lousy customer my e-mail address. Why did I bring this on myself. Now there are fifteen of this guys friends asking me questions about computers like it is some kinda service I am providing. Why I answered them I don't know, but most of it was just stuff I get asked about at work. Next time they get told to come into the store so I can explain things while I am actaully getting paid to do it.

I best as hell not be getting sick again, I just had to blow my nose, that would be just friggin great, all I need right now is a cold, that would cheer me up a whole lot. Thanks world.

So a guy comes and walks by the counter and looks at our display case at a product called "bus toaster" long story short it was a SCSI card. He says, 'oh cool, a bug toaster, does that mean that you just plug it into your computer and it gets rid of all the bugs in your system?' So Hans and I exchange glances and after the guy walks away we just burst out laughing and we agreed that that definately had to make it's way up on this page.

I have to wake up early tomorrow to get to school early to do something so so long, try not to get sick and die as I very well may with my luck, and try to show a little love to your friends for the occasion tomorrow.

February 14, 2000

Happy Valentine's Day to everyone out there, I hope you all are having a wonderful day, I know mine has gone rather well.

For one thing that I will mention right off the bat is I did get another keyboard, this one is the internet keyboard pro, which means it also has a whole bunch of controls for winamp/my dvd player, very cool feature, It still needs to be broken in cause I can feel that the keys are different than my last one which was essentially the same keyboard, but it should only take a few days the way I use this computer. This one also has a USB hub built into so I can just go ahead and never use that, well, who knows, I may in the future.

I will also be getting a new Sony 17" Flatscreen monitor and give my old monitor to my parents computer, which consists of the parts I have replaced to get the system I have now (everything but a floppy drive and a sound card. so other than that I have a complete system for them.

Well, I woke up early this morning (6:15) and took one look in the mirror and decided that I was sick, so I took some dayquill and layed down for half an hour which made me feel quite a bit better, Then I got ready to go to school and I just gave Katie her roses in person, eh, it was more fun that way anyway 'cause the card I had made that I was going to leave there if I had dropped them off was really weak.

At work today there was a woman that came in and needed an AC adapter for her laptop, we don't carry them in the store but you can order them from our online store. She wouldn't leave me alone until i proved that it would work with her computer, so I go to Rob's desk in the tech shop (I knew he had one) and I go to open the drawer (his is locked, but it is so beat up that you can usually just open it) and the whole drawer, casing and all, fell out of the bottom of the desk and landed on my foot (the thing ways about 25 pounds so it didn't feel too great). So his shit goes flying all over the tech room floor and yell out, "FUCK!" really loud. So I picked up the adapter and limped back out to the counter, showed the woman the adapter (it worked), and ran back to the back room. I picked up all his shit and put it back in the drawer (it's probably more orginized now than it was before) and as I was putting the thing back together Debbie walks in and asked, "what the hell did you do?" and I just replied, "I fucked up Rob's drawer, but don't worry about it I'm fixing it." she just laughed and left me alone. So I used one of the chairs as a jack to hold the drawer in place and re-attached it to the bottom of the desk (once again, probably better than it was when I broke it), and left him a note with the whole story, so I will find out what he says on Wednesday.

I seem to be on the road to a B in two of my classes but at this point I could really care less. I don't think, no wait, I know it isn't gonna make a shit of difference in the long run so I'm not really worried about it, that is not to say that I am just going to let my classes go to hell just cause it is my last few months in high school, but the stress level is going to be signifigantly lower that it has been the last seven semesters of my life.

Well, now my keyboard seems to be broken in pretty well, :) so I will let you all get back to the one's you love and for god sakes away from your computers for a few minutes if you've been sitting at them for any extended period of time (I realize that as soon as anyone reads this they have to get away from their computer for a while because they are simply floored by it)

February 15, 2000

So the plot turns to shit, Flashcom has officially given me the finger and said my order was canceled per Ameritech. So the world kicks my ass every day and that is what inspired the opener on my main page today.

Today I, yet again, got my bolts tightened and I was told that most likely the appointment after the next the bottom ones will come off and I will be metal free, yeah! That will be April 11. I don't really mind the bottom ones so much, they aren't really a hassle.

I was over at Hans's house and I was going to tackle him cause he said something stupid, and I grabbed his leg and went to pull it over his head so that he would fall over, well he picked a real inopportune place to fall over and (to make a long story short) now I have a lump on the corner of my forehead from one of Hans' really annoying metal framed couches that should be made illigal.

It appears as though I am not the only person in my English class who hasn't been reading the book very well, all but four people did really shitty on the last few classes and Mr Wyman is getting pretty worried about us as a whole, I suppose that I feel a little less guilty knowing that the whole class is doing the same thing, I guess there is a feeling of security when you are not the only person that something bad is happening to. This is somewhere between the ideas of misery loves company, and strength in numbers. Where in between, who knows, who cares.

I was watching the show Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire? This is one of the most degrading shows I have seen since Tiffany Does Texas. They get a whole bunch of women together and basically determine which one is the better prostitute and can get the poor hapless idiot with the million dollars to fork over some so that he can say that he has a wife now. In the words of Hans, 'Why doesn't he just buy a porsche and drive up to a night club ike everyone else?' Well put.

So Maximum PC gave one of their coveted '10's to a system from Dell in theis month's issue, The only thing I found was cool about the system (other than raw horse power) which anyone can accomplish if you pay enough) is their creation of a 64MB DDR GeForce 256 card, the only one of it's kind, and not available on the retail market, but I do suppose it is only a matter of time before someone glues 128 to it and claims it to be even better, as with everything, only time will tell.

I am really looking forward to friday, cause it will mark the begining of a much welcomed 4 day weekend, and despite the few tests that I have on friday, I think that I will be willing to take the tests for the sake of having some nice days off.

February 16, 2000

I got my DVD player today, and I got my hardware decoder card to not mess up my sound now too so I can actually watch movies on my TV or (gasp) copy them with my vcr. Although, let me tell you, once you have watched a movie on a computer monitor you won't want to go back to the fuzzy world of TV. I like this drive, it looks cool and it's slot loading so now the tray won't interfere with the cd-r drive right below it.

Today work went by rather uneventfully, except for some stupid reason (not that it's a bad thing or anything) they set up a sony vaio laptop with a digital handycam and an i-Link cable on the counter so naturally Hans and I were playing with that the whole time and therefore not getting a whole lot of actual work done.

I found out that Rob was pretty pissed about my braking his drawer, he wasn't really all that pissed at me as much as he was just generally pissed at everyone who has ever touched his stuff and made it come to that. But the drawer is fine and he'll get over it.

Tomorrow I start my first official day volunteering at Marion Jordan, I hope that will be fun. it's two hours a week and all I really have to do is play with kids, if I have to do anything for this vikes program, I think it is supposed to be something that you might do anyway. Although I would be lying if I said I would do much of anything (I am pretty lazy when you get right down to it) without someone to make me, I think I might actually enjoy this. Today I was commisioned to make a web site for my Physics teacher, I am not even gonna post a link because it isn't that close to being done, as soon as I get some more useful content on it, I will put up a link, expect it by this weekend.

I think my mom is making way too big a point of my dual lunch situation. I'll give her credit, Mr. Mertz (our across the street neighbor and the principal's husband) does notice a lot of things that happen around the neighborhood, but the fact that on some days I come home from 11:10 - 12:00 and other days from 12:00 - 12:50 is not going to cause a huge controversy. My mom is like, if he tells his wife you could get in a lot of trouble and it could affect your college plans. I assured my mom that I am too good of friends with Mr. Mertz for him to screw me over like that, every time he comes over it is to make jokes about how I could get in trouble for things. Like when Hans and I were installing my stereo in my car and we were testing it out (c'mon you have to test it out when were talking about that kinda wattage) he came over with this real serious attitude and said that he called the police and came over to make sure that we didn't try to run away. And Hans got all freaked but I knew better. That is just Mr. Mertz's style of humor, but my mom can't take a joke so I guess (at least for a while) I have to watch when I come home for lunch. But seriously, she makes it sound as though he is on a stakeout across the street trying to spring a trap for me or something. geez.

February 17, 2000

Remind me to never eat Orlando's Pizza ever again, I don't feel up to typing very much cause right now I'm on the verge of vomiting.

Today was my first official day at vikes and it was a lot of fun, I did some card tricks and played football the whole time. Tonight it supposed to snow a whole ton and everyone is getting all worried and crazy about everything, 'oh no, we'll all be snowed in!' what a shame that would be, I would just hate (love) to have a four day weekend. I would have to miss out (avoid) all the fun (time consuming) schoolwork (damn tests) that I would otherwise be pleased (disgusted) to take (fail).

Don't you just love it when you are on AIM trying to do something and you get an instant message from an unknown screen name and you assume that it is someone you know that you just don't have on your buddy list and no, It's some random person you have never met before who, god knows how, got your screen name and now wants to carry on a conversation with you. I really just don't see the net as a place to meet people, I think that altough it takes away some reservations not being face to face with someone, it is a custom of society to be face to face with someone before you can set up a meaningful friendship. (no I never had a penpal, but I don't really care)

I think I need to go be sick over that pizza now, so I guess I will spare my keyboard.

February 18, 2000

Well I've broken down and done it. In case you are blind and you don't know your ass from a hole in the ground, I have split my journal up by month. Although you may experience more convienience because of this, let me assure you it was done for my sole benifit, without any of you in mind (I guess I'm just an asshole like that) So don't get too happy :)

Anyway, not at all surprisingly, we had school today, which means I was fully able to take a test just about every period today. And right around third period, I started displaying symtoms of a fever, I couldn't focus on anything, and when I tried, everything around it started getting all screwy looking. I started hallucinating things and got really freaked out, so that made my physics final real fun to take. I felt better after I had some water and I was fine until 6th period, that's when it hit me, picture the feeling of getting hit in the head with a malet and then draw that sensation out over the course of a few hours. That is about what I felt like today, I took two aleve which provided little help, and laid down for a while, I got home and went to sleep for about 3 or 4 hours which made me feel much much better.

Tonight has really sucked, my parents are being over-protective again, and aren't letting me drive anywhere. So Jason is at Katie's watching a movie, Marci and Hans are going out somewhere, and Joe and Joel are at Joel's house, and no one wants to come here so that leaves me here... ...at nine o'clock on a friday night... ...sitting before my computer, alone. (sniff) Oh well, there isn't much any of you can do about it so I won't try to make you feel bad, tomorrow is another day, like I said before, I got about 30,000 of them to burn.

I seem to really have a hard time with Mr. Wyman's tests. I am no good at remembering exact details about quotes. Sure, I know who said the quotes, but who exactly it was directed to, what the 'it' was refering to in the quote was and things like that just seem to give me a really hard time. I don't know why that is. I guess I will have to make up my grade when we start to write our essays next week. That I am very good at, theme questions, character development, you get the idea. But I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess that many people fall into the same boat.

Oh, and how do you like the new link I put at the bottom of this page, I saw that and almost fell out of my chair. It's a very good representaion of the kind of humor on that site.

February 20, 2000

So I have found that a lot of the people in this world suck. Yesterday I didn't write in my journal because i was busy trying to assist Katie back into feeling like she was worth more than dirt. I don't think that at any point, anyone disserves to be called a 'failure as a friend', no actually, I know no one disserves that. I think that some people are more fragile than others, and in order to make 'better' people of ourselves we need to learn when to draw the fine line before we cause someone a lot of grief. It is okay to critize people, this is not a ticket to go ahead and say whatever you want about someone to their face. I think there is an art to keeping opinions constructive.

So anyway, today I was driving katie over to Hans's house and we get behind this guy through some wierd twist of bad luck, that ends up going 35 in a 50, and he had a sign on the back of his car that said, 'do not follow, slow moving' so I said, well at least he warned us. So he turns right at the next light which is where I have to turn, so i go around him on the right because there is about 500 feet of the road that is two lanes. And he gets all indignant on me. He flashes his brights, revs his engine, and blares his horn. What the hell? he has a sign that says not to follow him, but he doesn't want me to pass him, hmm. Oh, I get it, this is his road. I see, I see, so when he is on it he gets it all to himself. Well unfortunately he needs to realize that when you travel at 15 under the speed limit, people are going to fucking pass you, It doesn't matter what that sign on the back of your car says.

We all went to ed debevics for dinner tonight, which was a lot of fun. I love the city skyline, it's so beautiful at night. Then we went to north pier but nothing was open, so we went to navy pier and walked around the place for a while. Everything was closed but Hans, Marci, Gim, Joel, and four people we have never met before 'broke' into the ferris wheel and started playing in the cars. That lasted all of five minutes before a security gaurd came and we all fled. We then sat at Hans's house, and talked about topics that didn't really accomplish much...

Until I got a phonecall from my mom, both to ask where I was and to tell me kind of a disturbing event. Apparently there was a deer in our yard that was attacked by a few dogs. The dogs didn't kill it but my dad had to have a barrington cop come out to put it down 'cause it was so badly hurt. I don't think that they were coyotes because they usually hunt alone, and for things like rabbits or squirrils. And if they were dogs that it is kind of a bad thing that people let their dogs run around free, especially when they are capable of doing that to a deer. Just imagine if that was a kid out playing or something.

We had the dollar game thing again today only this was a more sucky version of it, I only got around 50 bucks from it even though I had a good day, I guess I shouldn't sneeze at it, oh well, Today I am going to buy another hard drive for my computer, why? because I can. It's a 40GB 7200 rpm hard drive, and it on sale below cost, so I am going to go for it, I'm a sucker for a sale :).

February 22, 2000

I finally threw out a half a dozen cds from my car that were just taking up space and burned about two that will sufficiently replace and slightly add to the music that I actually listen to on a regular basis that said cds were providing me with. I now have a 'depressing radiohead cd' and a 'hans cd' (Easy-E, Juvenile, 2 live crew, etc)

Today I didn't really start building the radar gun, I just kinda recieved it long enough to see that it is gonna be a pain in the ass to build. There are like fifteen ICs and the board is pretty small, but eh, maybe it'll keep me occupied.

Joel is, very much unsuccessfully as of yet, trying to get gabe from Penny Arcade to draw a weasel holding a gun for the Magic Weasel Foundation Homepage. But Gabe doesn't want to because he is too busy. To which Joel started grubbling to the extent which I will be sick, and... ...whoa, that was wierd. Com Ed sucks, cause I just had a massive brown out. The lights in my room went to about half their normal brightness. Thank the lord for Uninteruptible Power Supplies.

So Hans got his memory today which, of course, turned out to be bad. Tisk tisk, yet another delay in the completion of his small supercopmuter. I got some new drivers for my videocard that are supposed to be 'more compatible' with a K7 but rest assured, they are just as incompatible as the last set of drivers I used, cause UT still ain't on the list of functioning programs yet. It makes me sad, it is the only thing on my computer that doesn't work right now, every other game is fine but no, GT interactive thinks that UT is in some way too special for me to play, *sniff*. Well, Fih on them.

We started building a hot air balloon for my Physics class. Oh, buy the way, that is the page I was making for my teacher, it is taking shape so now you may know about it. This balloon is going to be really cool., it is about 90 inches tall and about 120 inches around. We have to do tests to see how much weight it can hold up when the appropriate amount of heat is applied. Gee, I can't wait. Why do I get this strange feeling this is going to involve a trip outside while the fire department exstinguishes a none-too-successful project. One can only hope right?

I watched the princess bride again today, that is such a funny movie, If you haven't seen it... ...out, leave, away form this site until you are no longer deprived. So anyway, my favorite line has got to be, 'oh, you mean this gate key.' if you have seen it you are laughing if you haven't, I think I remember telling you to leave and go see it.

I really, really need a haircut. I haven't decided how much of my hair I want to get cut off, but probably most of it, I hate having more than like an inch or so of hair because all my hair does when it is long is turn into a mess. I was considering getting my head shaved but Katie doesn't want me to so that's pretty much out. I think it would be nice to not have any hair to worry about, sometime in the future I'll have to do that. Like I always say, It's only a matter of time.

February 23, 2000

Today I was 'doing something else', that pretty much summed up my whole day. In every class I was esentially doing work for some other class. After school I was supposed to do some things for my dad but I was busy building a hot air balloon out of tissue paper and elmer's glue. Then at work, I was trying to fix our little display systems that are running NFS4 one on a p.o.s., the other on a Voodoo3, to compare 3d-accelerated with non-3d-accelerated video, it is actually a quite effective display, it does sell a lot of video cards, and I went through the trouble of making the Voodoo3 look as good as possible, as well as make the other one look like it was trying the hardest. Which basically meant just turning the detail settings up as high as they would go on both cards, so it really wasn't skewing the results too badly.

So our hot air balloon is actually turning out to be really cool, and it has absolutely no style to it whatsoever. Like I said, I can't wait until one of the balloons goes up in flames, that will be fun, although sort lived.

I got unreal tournament running using openGL, hopefully I will be able to use D3D soon because some of the textures in some of the levels are a little wierd looking, blocky, or non-exsistant. Not really a gameplay issue, but still rather distracting. I do get really high frame rates, so I guess if it worked for 3dfx I would be perfectly happy. If I worked for 3dfx, I would probably have a voodoo 5 though, and really wouldn't care, but you can't always get what you want.

Right now I am living a lie, my computer crashed yesterday in the middle of the journal entry cause I was mucking with UT and I lost most of it so I am back updating, which I'm afraid doesn't work all that well. So I'm gonna give up and go on to the next entry.

February 24, 2000

This will be brief cause I have some reading that I am actually going to do for English tomorrow.

Once again, CARE went pretty well as it does every thursday. We played a bunch of little board games and generally had fun. I love kids, they are so open and also energetic, but the drawback being is that they are very nosey and presumptious, but I won't get into that.

So I got one of the 40 GB hard drives today, so I guess that the day guy can have his soul back, even though I still don't care for the fact that he lied. And we got the monitors in and supposedly Hans put one aside for me at business sales so I should, in theory, be able to get to that sometime this weekend, maybe saturday morning. So now my computer has 67.2 GB of hard drive space, which I admit right now is overkill, but who knows what the future will hold, if the current trend continues, around half way through college, games will have full installs of 4 gigs. Oh well.

Katie is drawing the graphic logo for our magic weasel foundation which is really great, expect to see that on the site pretty soon. And speaking of Unreal Tournament, Hans talked to the AMD representative at work today and procured a patch for unreal tournament that allows me to play it in D3D again, yea! So no more misrepresented textures or wierd glitches when switching color modes or resolutions, and oh yeah, a whole bunch of the cool lighting effects are now back and better than ever.

And a piece of advice to go away with for all of you out there; whenever you get something sent to you that you read and think is bad news, read it again, you may find that you have misread it and momentarily wanted to kill yourself for no reason at all. And that would be a shame, cause I garuentee you, that there are people who would gain greater grief from you killing yourself, than you experienced in order to go about that course of action. That would just make you an asshole, and what's worse... ...A dead asshole. laterz.

February 25, 2000

And so the free weekend begins, no work, no signifigant school work. Alright.

So We were all going to go see the whole nine yards but about four of the group beat us to it and the next show didn't start until right around when the first one ended. So we sat around and talked about how much the school administraion sucks because they suspended Gim. The official reason they suspended Gim is that he used yearbook photos and the Fremd Logo on his website without permission. the real reason is that his name was mentioned while they were interogating Ken for trying to set up a preteen porn site on the school's web server. Joel's Opinion of this is about in line with mine, except I express a little more disgust with the whole idea of preteen pornography. So right now Gim is suspended while they try to figure out how to justify themselves for suspending him. And you know what, I have a bunch of pictures on my website, they may look like yearbook pictures, when in actuallity, they are the class photos that each of them had purchased and let me scan in with a black and white scanner which was the only thing that I had access to at the time. And if you want to try and proove otherwise, you can do so in court.

Another good point that Joel brought up was that the Fremd Vikings are not a private orginization and are thus not copyrighted, and thus the logo is under no protection from being copied by anyone who doesn't just fell like doing it. And if Gim's lawyer is half a lawyer, Gim should come out of this with no less than a full pardon, a letter of apology, and an ass kissing. So after this discussion was over we all exchanged stories about how the administration had at one time or another screwed up and/or pissed us off. And mid-conversation, a comment from Joel made me think of this really funny Idea for a website. Which I promise will be up no later than wednesday of next week. Right now I don't have the time to make it, but trust me it'll be funny. Funny, however, only to people who were there or I explain it to, which will probably be most of you, but like I always say, all in good time.

Now that UT is working on my computer again I actually downloaded all the maps from the MWF site. Most of them are cool but there are a couple *caugh*civil*caugh* that really suck and may just get taken off the site. No, actually I will simply display a warning of how much the map sucks if you go to download it. All of you out there who are on the MWF but aren't mentioned on the page yet, don't get you undies in a bind, I will update that as soon as I get the logo that is being drawn for us, I don't feel like sitting down to flash 4 to do a whole bunch of work more often than I have to. It will be all set soon, don't worry.

Tonight we actually spent the night together as a group again with the exception of Hans and Marci. I think that is healthy once and a while, rather than establishing factions against one another within the group, to have, as we did in the past, a real group so that I don't have to say the word factions again, it sounds so dumb. We did a lot of sitting around, talking, and listning to Joe play Unreal, ah, the good ol' days are back.

Tonight I am going to end up going to turnabout stag because the whole thing with going with lindsay, the friend of Katie's that I didn't know, fell through. So I guess technically my date is Joel, ho hum. Not to make Joel feel bad or anything, but I think we would have both much prefered to have a woman to bring to the dance. But I guess it's just not in the cards right now. I almost actually got away with not paying anything to go to the dance but Shannon tracked me down and took my money. Oh well, can't win them all.

On the bright side I think it will be fun tomorrow, regardless. As I close I would like to say: damn you Hans... ...Oh, you want a reason, that's fair enough, I suppose. I think I have that cold from you and Marci hacking up a lung every time you guys are in my car. I hate being sick and I think I have already had my fair share this season, and I am getting more than I should now, so again, damn you.

February 26, 2000

So, Turnabout was fun. I did go stag, but despite my previous beliefs, there are still things to do, provided you have a bunch of cool friends to hang out with. Katie's little sister brought a guy that she said she liked but that he was stalking her since she asked him out. So every time the dj played a slow song she came over and danced with me. I found out later on that he wasn't really being a stalker and Kim just didn't like him for some other reason. I think Kim owes that guy an apology. I also kinda feel like the bad guy because I will probably be henceforth refered to as, 'that asshole who ruined my date' by that poor guy.

Oh well, so after the dance we all went swimming (I realize only now as I sit with sore eyes how long it's been since I have gone swimming) over at Annie's house. That was a lot of fun, we played water basketball, and fought over a toy whale most of the time.

I have my new monitor, yea! So now I am that much closer to leaving the hell hole. This monitor is really sweet, but, I have to admit that it did take a while to configure some things again so that they aren't deformed looking. You see, this monitor is flat, where as most moitors are slightly rounded. They round monitors to keep the distance from any point on the monitor to the tip of the electron gun as consistant as possible. With a flat screen, it gives you more true to life images, because you aren't looking at the picture through a lens, however this is only after you profusely adjust the monitor so that it doesn't distort things due to the distance variation in the corners. Okay, now that I have sufficiently proved myself a complete dork, I will move on.

Tonight did have a pretty sucky side to it. Joel got a ticket. He was going to pass Hans, cause Hans was being an idiot, but Joel was just at the wrong place at the wrong time; in a no passing zone, with a cop watching. The funny part: when Jason and Katie got out of the car when I stopped behind them, Jason locked his keys in the car with the car running, doh! so Hans had to bring him to his house to get his other set. That isn't at all funny by itself, but it reminded me of a funny story. Mr. Harris my Comp Sci teacher sophomore and junior year once said; 'you know it's gonna be one of those days when the intercom clicks on and says, Mr. Harris, your car has it's lights on, and the car is running, and your keys are locked in it.' He just said, that's when you jsut need to go home and get back in bed before you hurt yourself.

Tomorrow Hans, Katie, and I are going to Krispe Kreme to get doughnuts... ...mmm... ...KK doughnuts. I can't wait, ta ta, I'm tired, I get home to late to not be when I write these, oh well, not like I am going to do anything about that anyway.

February 27, 2000

Note to self: next time sarcasam is used, lay it on thicker. I didn't actually think that Joel was my date to turnabout, neither of us are gay, neither of us probably ever will be. Just so things are cleared up, okay.

I now realize why it is that Hans would venture so often out to the middle of nowhere to get doughnuts. These are the best god damn doughnuts in exsistence. I was always skeptical about the whole idea of driving so far to buy something so inexpensive, but I guess that was just because I hadn't had more than just a taste of one before. Now, I fear I may be hooked.

Not much else happened today, I remebered why I don't play my super nintendo or genesis anymore. After watching Katie play Alladin for about half an hour, I realized that all of those games were exactly the same thing with different shitty graphics, but the same shitty game play. I guess UT and various other computer games have me spoiled. Oh, and we can't discount the new benchmark of Zelda 64 that will take it's toll on adventure games to come.

Oh, Oh, Oh, I almost forgot; I, hopefully, will be able to kiss my modem goodbye pretty soon. 'Why Ryan?' you may ask, well I just visited AT&T's @home site, and it would appear as though they are now offering cable modems in my area, or so they would have me believe. But ususally I have to admit that companies are pretty reserved about telling you that the serice is available in your area. You should have seen what I had to do to get Flashcom to admit that DSL was even remotely feaseable in my area. Obviously, it turned out that I was wrong, but it was the principle of the whole situation. And besides, it did work for those two day quite nicely. But I have to admit that a cable modem would be faster and cheaper, and not to mention, much more functional I hope. So maybe I am not destined to be without broadband until college, maybe I will get out of this dial-up hell hole, maybe I shouldn't count my chickens before they've hatched.

February 28, 2000

Welcome to the 'Things to do after you have given your two weeks' edition of Ryan's journal.
1) Call your boss by there full name, or if the usually use a nickname, use their real name.
2) Obey every command the managers give you, but interprete them like a jack ass, example: when asked to tag something, put up more tags and signs than they can count.
3) Buy everything you want on your discount, if you don't want anything, take orders from friends.
4) Any time a customer asks to speak to a manager, assure them that the manager is a moron, and piss them off before the manager gets there.
5) After the manager leaves, apologize to the customer loudly that the manager is just in a bad mood because their homosexual partner just threw them out of the house.
6) Carry on a conversation with a customer while you know the manager is listning about how bad you think the store's polocies are.
7) Refer people to Best Buy for everything (they are right accross the street from us)
8) answer all the customer's questions yes or no.
9) Randomly fire people whether you have the authority to or not, be as convincing as possable.
10) Put the trashcan on the desk, and label it 'depository for corporate ideas'.
11) Every now and then, ask your manager what sex they are.
12) Recomend the most absolutely unreliable items, and generally wrong products to everyone so that people will come back and yell at the managers.
13) Call in sick.
14) Call in dead.
15) Call in tired.
16) Do the previous three within 5 minutes of each other.
17) Bring a Rubix cube or a yo-yo to work and play with it all day.
18) Great every customer with, 'yeah', if they complain, repeat thing #18, then go to thing #7.
19) Page the manager to pick up a call on 8027 (the PA channel), keep doing it even though they never pick up.
20) At nine o'clock, make up your own closing anouncments, be creative.
21) instead of facing, deface everything, this is much more entertaining.
22) Play with the new camera at the upgrade counter and zoom in on customers asses, record and playback a short loop.
23) Capture a still of one of the managers and deface it, display it on the computer that the monitors are all hooked up to.
24) Take a quick look at the inside of someone's computer to test a theory of yours, forcefully wedge the screwdriver into the mainboard, yell, 'ah, fuck' as loud as you can and then escape out the back door of the tech shop.
25) And last but not least, brake all the drawers in the tech department, one by one.

February 29, 2000

As our feburary draws to a close, absolutely nothing comes of our friends, the chicken littles of the world making yet another attempt to scare us that the computers will not be able to handle today properly, however you reading this ought to be proof enough that they are all completely full of shit, and just want attention and money (The story of most people's lives.)

So I am having an article published in the school newspaper, I wrote it back in December and I accidentally left it in the Louge office one day when I was showing it to a friend of mine. So now the paper is in desperate need of articles so they dug it up dusted it off, and told me they were going to publish it. The article outlines how students need to not complain about school not being worthwhile, and how much I think teachers are hurt by the constant bitching found in a lot of the articles that I have seen in previous editions of the Louge. The really funny part, the Louge always publishes two 'student opinion' articles in every louge. Mine is the second one, and the one located right above it is one of the very articles that I shoot down in my article. I was told this was done on purpose, but I think this was really only done cause it was the only two articles they had and by some twist of coincidence, it ended up looking clever.

One thing I will warn all of you about, is this, always visit the louge office a couple days prior to press time when you have an article going in the paper, the editors have a tendency to change some of the wordings to make it fit the lines better, but there were a couple of changes that had been made to my article which resulted in me saying sometihng I didn't mean to say, or something that was gramatically incorrect. But I fixed it and gave it a title that wasn't what I had originally wanted to call it but it is still clever. The article right above mine is called, 'Who can change a flat tire?' and Marty suggested I call mine, "I can change a flat tire", but I didn't want it to come across as a personal attack on anyone in particular.

I think working in group for my physics projects are acting as a type of on-task rehab for me, because now I am getting put back into the habit of actually copmletgin assignments, because they actaully affect other people's grades as well as my own, so I do actaully feel motivated to try my best, particually when I am in charge of handing in the final result.

I watched a couple of games that Rosie (Rozallos) played against a guy from the Online Gamers League and just barely lost in the second round, only to lose hope in the third round, good try Rosie, you did copletely kick his ass in the first round, he can't take that away.

Meanwhile, back in Illinois, Joel was busy getting his ass kicked by someone who I can only presume plays the game even more than Joe would if he had Joel's setup, as hard as that may sound to accomplish. I didn't get to see the match, but from what I heard, the guy is very good at what he does. I can't wait to play in a Magic Weasel game. But if it does involve making a sacrifice of just about anything I was going to do otherwise it can wait.

Speaking of the MWF, I did a bit of work on the MWF Website, basically, I drew an image to serve as a title screen, I cranked up the sound quality a bit, and then added a loading sequence to help it work better for those of us that are currently bandwidth-chalenged.

Although I have been awaking to sunlight lately and it has made it a lot less painful to get up in the morning, this does make the assumption that I do get some sleep, so goodnight.

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