chaz720.net - journal

December 01, 2001

If you change your mind, I'm the first in line. Honey I'm still free. Take a chance on me. If you need me, let me know, gonna be around. If you've got no place to go, if you're feeling down. If you're all alone when the pretty birds have flown, Honey I'm still free. Take a chance on me. Gonna do my very best and it ain't no lie. If you put me to the test, if you let me try. Take a chance on me. (That's all I ask of you honey) Take a chance on me. We can go dancing, we can go walking, as long as we're together. Listen to some music, maybe just talking, get to know you better. 'Cos you know I've got, So much that I wanna do, when I dream I'm alone with you. It's magic. You want me to leave it there, afraid of a love affair. But I think you know, That I can't let go. If you change your mind, I'm the first in line. Honey I'm still free. Take a chance on me. If you need me, let me know, gonna be around. If you've got no place to go, if you're feeling down. If you're all alone when the pretty birds have flown. Honey I'm still free. Take a chance on me. Gonna do my very best and it ain't no lie. If you put me to the test, if you let me try. Take a chance on me. (Come on, give me a break will you?) Take a chance on me. Oh you can take your time baby, I'm in no hurry, know I'm gonna get you. You don't wanna hurt me, baby don't worry, I ain't gonna let you. Let me tell you now, My love is strong enough to last when things are rough. It's magic. You say that I waste my time but I can't get you off my mind, No I can't let go. 'Cos I love you so. If you change your mind, I'm the first in line. Honey I'm still free, Take a chance on me. If you need me, let me know, gonna be around. If you've got no place to go, if you're feeling down. If you're all alone when the pretty birds have flown, Honey I'm still free. Take a chance on me. Gonna do my very best, baby can't you see. Gotta put me to the test, take a chance on me. Ba ba ba ba baa, ba ba ba ba baa. Honey I'm still free. Take a chance on me. Gonna do my very best, baby can't you see. Gotta put me to the test, take a chance on me.

December, yay

My week has been great, I got my paper for philosophy done and you all got to read it yesterday, I aced my physics test on Wednesday so hoorah that was good, and I have little to do now besides studying for finals. To all of you back at home I may be making my way home pretty early as I only have finals on Monday and Tuesday and then I'm done. I have Linear Algebra monday afternoon and physics that night, then I have CS tuesday morning, and that night philosophy. It's going to be a pretty hellish two days but in the end I'm going to like having taken them like that anyway. The only thing bad there is that it reminds me a bit too much of high school having your day packed like that, and I think you all know how I felt about most of high school.

Yesterday was insane and involved stealing back a stuff from an estranged ex-girlfriend of a friend of mine, coming home and finding a party at our place, finally meeting our next door neighbors who turned out to be really cool, dodging furnature that was being thrown off the 8th floor of our apartment complex, and trying to relocate a drunk person who decided it would be a great idea to pass out in my bed when no one at the party had any idea who he was. The only thing that would have been nice was I was going to go to the great Guinness toast at Murphy's last night, unfortunately I fell asleep yesterday afternoon and didn't wake up til around 11:30 at night.

Tonight there is a basketball game at assembly hall against Texas A&M so we are most likely going to that pretty soon, just gotta go round up the troops, later.

December 06, 2001

I might be wrong. I might be wrong. I could have sworn i saw a light coming home. I used to think... I used to think, there was no future left at all. open up. begin again. lets go down the waterfall. think about the good time and never look back never look back. what would I do? what would I do, if I did not have you? open up and let me in. lets go down the waterfall. have ourselves a good time. its nothing at all. nothing at all. nothing at all.

This morning when my alarm went off I reached over (as I always do) to hit the snooze button. And about half way there my alarm turned off. Now as you know from reading, I have these weird thoughts in my head during the wee hours of the morning as my alarm is trying to wake me up. And I thought just maybe for a minute that I had finally won the eternal battle and that I had destroyed it with my mind. Unfortunately, somewhere in all the excitement I made the mistake of waking up. So now I was awake, and around the time that this started to settle in, I also noticed my computer, monitor, and ceiling fan were off. Just then I hear a somewhat hurried pounding at the door and I make my way over there and it's some contractor that was working out in the courtyard with an arc welder plugged into the outlet on our patio. Apparently it's on the same circuit as my bedroom and they got a little greedy with the power, ahem. So I flip it back on for them, make a little joke, "you know I'll be billing you guys for the power, and maintainance fees", exchange a chuckle, close the door, wish them dead, and poured myself a bowl of cereal. I went and made sure all the shit in my room was off until they finished, and just remained happy I was using win2k and not *nix because who knows whether or not my computer would have booted back up after the little black out. As I was eating my cereal I heard the breaker trip again and I beat them to the front door, yelled, "got it", closed the door, wished them dead again and flipped the breaker back. Later he told me they were done so I turned all my stuff back on, and while I was waiting for my computer to boot so I could read the news I went out and inspected their work. It appears as though they were installing a hardpoint on one of the beams out in the courtyard so that one of the afore mentioned cameras could be installed to increase security in the main area. Which at this point I don't mind so much because there are so many broken floor tiles out there from people throwing shit off the top floor that does not take very kindly to being thrown at all, much less off a 5 story belcony. It's to the point where even if we were allowed to play basketball out there we couldn't because we'd be risking a broken ankle at every drive. So maybe this will stop the breakage, maybe it won't, but hey worst case scerario we'll have security cameras that we can write little chalk messages on the ground for.

All I have to do between now and finals is study for them. And here are my plans for that. For Linear algebra I have a list of concepts and theorms that will be on the test so I can just work a few peolems of each type to make sure I have them down. Physics I can take a practice test made up of previous final questions asked. CS I will do nothing whatsoever. And Philosophy I might read over my lecture notes unless my TA tells me some revolutionary information tomorrow in our discussion section. Other than that I actually feel like I learned enough during the semester tha I don't need to sit and cram it all in at once like some classes (notably psych, econ, etc...) And I'll be done by tuesday so that's cool. I think Wednesday I'm installing a car stereo for Kevin or something like that, so I might come back Wednesday afternoon if not too late or Thursday morning to avoid traffic if it gets too late. I'll see how I feel. Yay for winter break, 5 more days...

December 09, 2001

Old man lying by the side of the road, with the lorries rolling by. Blue moon's sinkin from the weight of the load, and the buildings scrape the sky. Cold running up and down the side of your door, and the morning paper flies. Dead man lying by the side of the road, with the daylight in his eyes. Don�t let it bring you down, it�s only castles burning. Find someone who's turning, and you will come around. Blind man running through the light of the night, with an insight in his hands. Come on down to the river of sight, and you can really understand. Red lights flashing through the window of your room, can you hear the sirens moan? White kid lying in the gutter in the lane, and you're walking home alone. Don't let it bring you down, it�s only castles burning. Find someone who's turning, and you will come around. Old man lying by the side of the road, with the lorries rolling by. Blue moon's sinkin from the weight of the load, and the buildings scrape the sky. Cold running up and down the side of your door, and the morning paper flies. dead man lying by the side of the road, with the daylight in his eyes. Dont let it bring you down, it�s only castles burning. Find someone who's turning, and you will come around.

I love this song, but far less for what it is as the movie it came from. American Beauty is one of around 5 movies that yours truely, stoic extrordinaire, cried during. And this song was the one playing towards the end when Annette Bening and Kevin Spacey meet up alone for the first time. I wonder if there are certain stories that just warrent that kind of emotional response or if it's just certain stories get to certain people. The former would make sense if certain people just had a threshold where if the director pushed the little "tear jerker" slider up far enough they'd let it out. But that's probably not very likely, the more I think about it. No, although there is no doubt some people are easier than others, there are some movies that would get to a big tough guy, and that person that was balling their eyes out during free willy would just look at them funny.

It seems as though it's simply a matter of how closely we can relate to the film in question. But what decides how this happens? Depending on the life we've lived the director might have to press a particular set of buttons to get us to click with the characters in such a way that things happening to the characters seem to happen to us. And then suddenly something will happen in the film that brings out some linear combination of the following things: Pity or Joy for the characters having felt how they feel at the moment, some image of yourself sharing the same fate in the future, or hope that the character will overcome it because you've come to like them.

I suppose the above is most prominant in films, but surely songs and books can do the same thing. I guess the more forms of media the better for those of us too lazy to use our imagination in many instances as I am.

December 18, 2001

please could you stop the noise, i'm trying to get some rest. from all the unborn chicken voices in my head. what's that? (I may be paranoid, but not an android) what's that? when i am king, you will be first against the wall. with your opinion which is of no consequence at all. what's that? (I may be paranoid, but no android) what's that? ambition makes you look pretty ugly. kicking, squealing, gucci little piggy. you don't remember. you don't remember. why don't you remember my name? off with his head man. off with his head man. why won't he remember my name? I guess he does. rain down, rain down. come on rain down on me. from a great height. from a great height, height. that's it sir, you're leaving, the crackle of pig skin, the dust and the screaming, the yuppies networking, the panic, the vomit, the panic, the vomit, God loves his children, God loves his children, yeah!

Quite possibly my favorite song of all time... Crazy ol' Marvin...

I've been back at home for a few days now and it's been an interesting few days. I went to the Bears game on Sunday and got to see the Bears stomp Tampa Bay 27-3. It's been a while since I've actually gone to a football game now that I think about it, it's just so much easier to watch it on TV :P

I have a computer here now all to myself which is very sufficiant. It's essentially the core of what used to be the Ohio State Kellhounds server with a new videocard, sound card, and monitor. Final stats are an Athlon 650, 256 mb, 15 gb, ATI radeon, sb live! 5.1, 17" flat screen Samsung monitor. All in all not a bad piece of hardware to come home to for work and play. I guess the theory of having my laptop as my machine for home only worked as long as I didn't care about playing games on it, unfortunately that may be slightly too much to ask of me for a month's time. In setting up this machine I came to love microsoft's windows update system. if you have an older copy of windows 2000, you have to restart like 8 thousand times for all the individual upgrades you have to preform to get all the latest versions of everything... Mildly annoying.

So I plan to spend the remainder of the vacation doing not much of anything productive. I have a strange feeling that next semester I will be paying for the ease in which the previous semester was completed with good marks. So I will try to get as much playing of Luigi's "Overrun By Dust" Mansion and the like out of my system as possible. Gamecube here I come

oh, and my backpack's got jets too...

December 19, 2001

Oh yes, I almost forgot the first day back here I installed my sister Lauren's new Alpine system in her car so now she must no longer endure the wrath of the stock Saturn stereo, hoorah. You know... I install enough of these damn things in various cars I could start thinking about putting it down on my resume...

I also got my cellphone activated and set up. It's already been very useful and I've only had it for around 5 days. It comes with bitchin syncronization software for my computer so it keeps me from having to program all the damn names and numbers in by hand. I also really like the way it orginizes all the numbers allowing you to group multiple numbers under one entry to search through them faster. If you don't have my number and you want it for some reason IM or e-mail me or something and let me know.

Today Hans got NHL 2K2 for the Xbox and I was kinda curious as to why seeing as I already had NHL Hitz for the Gamecube that we could all use in the apartment. I guess he doesn't like the gamecube game for some reason, who knows. I think they are both good games and all, but lord knows I will never get Hans to play NHL Hitz again now that he has a hockey game on his system. He has done nothing but scorn the Gamecube's existance since I bought it. I bet he finds something wrong with Smash Brothers Melee...

There are too many 2000'-01' Misubishi Eclipses on the road.

In my house we are not on city water but rather we have a well. And since it is a decent sized house, the second floor doesn't get the greatest of water-pressure. So I've given up on the shower in my room in favor of the one located in our basement, effectively using the plumbing system as a water tower. And I must say it worked pretty well. I would go so far as to say you even get better water pressure down there than I do at school in our apartment. And since the shower is part of a steam room I figured when I was done I'd relax and have myself a steam. I will say this, if I can afford myself any luxuries when I get my first house, I believe a steam room will have to make it's way near the top of list cause it is one of the most refreshing things I've done in a long time. I got out of there after about a half an hour, and I felt like I had just got done sleeping for the last four days, I could breathe out of my nose, and my headache was gone. Not much more you could ask seeing as all it really does is boil water :P

Nothing spells fun like revising Shareholder Agreements for a properties company. And that is what I'm doing to kill time during the day, that is, during the day when I'm not playing Yuri's Revenge or Gamecube. At least I'm learning the basic outline for a well written contract :) see, there is a bright side to every car wreck.

December 28, 2001

I know we're just like old friends. we just can't pretend that lovers make amends. we are reasons so unreal, we can't help but feel that something has been lost. but please you know you're just like me. next time I promise we'll be perfect. perfect. perfect strangers down the line, lovers out of time. memories unwind. so far I still know who you are. but now I wonder who I was... angel, you know it's not the end. we'll always be good friends. the letters have been sent on. so please, you always were so free. you'll see, I promise we'll be perfect. perfect strangers when we meet, strangers on the street, lovers while we sleep. perfect, you know this has to be. we always were so free. we promised that we'd be perfect.

I hope everyone had a Christmas and what not, I got some fun stuff and hope everyone else did as well.

Unfortunately the cold and my abhorant sleeping habits seem to be getting the better of me. I've kinda been running at about 50% for the past week and a half cause I've been somewhat sick. No matter, I feel okay most of the time, and I did get quite a bit of sleep yesterday afternoon so I feel better. Still chugging away at legal documents, still waking up at 9 am for random reasons, still looking forward to getting back to school. The more things don't change, the more they stay the same. A couple more weeks to spend here shouldn't be too bad though.

I'm planning what should be a fun contest for the month of february, more details later as that approaches, it's still got some more work to go before it's ready but rest assured, it'll be interesting to see how it goes if nothing else.

I saw A Beautiful Mind the other day and enjoyed it quite a bit, good movie however a bit long. Though it seems like all movies are long these days. Anyway this one had some fun plot twists to it so it'll keep you just as confused as the characters in the movie.

Got my hands on Smash Bros Melee and Return to Castle Wolfenstein altough haven't gotten to play them all that much because of all the formentioned sleeping and what not, soon though, soon.

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