Helping those in need

I stopped in at the library this morning, before starting work for the day. I borrowed Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time and H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds for some reading, after I've finished Bram Stoker's Dracula of course. The latter should be finished tonight.

My sole purpose of entering the library was to pay my late fees. My school is in transition from one institution to another and I am worried that if I do not pay my fees ($10) that even so small a fine will hurt me later on. For all I know, the fine could prevent myself obtaining my graduation. I was prepared to pay the fine, and had in fact placed my money on the counter (it's about time, as the fee has been growing over the last 3 years), when the librarian informed me they are promoting "food for fines". This means, they will accept one food item per late fee to clear the fines. 5 food items, in the form of pasta/canned/etc seems a good deal to me, in helping the local food bank.

-Feedy the Needy

Mothers

It's Mothers day, soon. I have not forgotten. I've got a card for my Mom right here, waiting for me to write something nice in it, address it and post it. I love you, Mom.

Back to Work

Tomorrow, the first official day of my summer occupation. Back to the moth research after only a couple days off.

-Summer Fun

I'm blogging this!

Times like today when you wish you had a shirt with those words written across it. My girlfriend's Dad, tonight, wanted to treat us to dinner. He'd bought a cake for dessert; had expected to pay $6.99 for it but was charged $25.99 at the till. He shrugged and went home.

My girlfriend and I had picked up dinner and appies from a meat deli her Sister works at and drove to her parent's place. We had the appies and dinner, followed by the cake for dessert. Heh, more dessert than we bargained for. While eating my slice I thought I'd noticed a funny taste around the place where a banana slice was placed. I ate the banana and DAMN it was gross. I'd warned the others not go to there. I'd eaten my entire piece of cake; my girlfriend couldn't finish hers. She'd eaten a quarter, from the bottom.

So I proceeded to finish hers off. Got to the banana slice on her piece, tasted different again. Decided that it must be the different coloured whipped cream used on that part. Yeah, different coloured. Reddish, with little green spots. Wait a minute, the spots are fuzzy. Moldy cake. Her Dad had eaten two pieces, her Mom had one. Her little brother one, and I'd almost eaten two.

That thing was no doubt meant to be priced at $6.99, and should have been pulled the day before, for sure. The cake was returned, money was refunded. The shirt "I'm blogging this" would have come in handy during the refund. To warn the public, it was bought at The Real Canadian Super Store also affiliated with Extra Foods. So buyer beware.

-Fear Factor

Study Study

Updated my profile, added some items to my wishlist. Posted a picture, he's everyones favorite criminal. Replied to a new random question, something about the taste of pennies in your mouth. Misread as the taste of penis in your mouth.

Still studying here. Systems Analysis and Design along with Linear Algebra. Haven't touched SAD today, going with LinAlg. SAD later, maybe tomorrow. Just taking a break here, covered determinants, will now review eigen-vectors/values.

Reading Dracula by Abraham (Bram) Stoker. Excellent book, opened my eyes to the world of shorthand (as written in this blog). New style, may be a bit annoying to read, but easy to write. Back to studying for me.

Oh yeah: ChairDancing O numa numa song

-Girlfriend still got a sore side

Home Time

My girlfriend has been home since Tuesday afternoon. It's good to have her back.

I've written two exams so far, still have Systems Analysis and Design left, as well as Linear Algebra. I've written Discrete Structures and Machine Architecture. It feels good to have those classes over with. And to never have that professor again, as he's taking a long vacation.

-Study, buddy

Blogging from the Hospital, sort of

I gathered up my bravery today and ate the hospital food. My girlfriend was never going to touch the "FF Cream of Broccoli Soup" and I was feeling curious. It was almost like they'd poured cream and broccoli into a blender and mixed it up. She told me not to be silly, that it probably comes from a box and I was giving them too much credit. She's probably right. And what does "FF" mean anyway? We guessed "Full Flavoured" as opposed to half/half.

I'll be posting this when I get home, seeing how there's no wireless connection to be found anywhere in this hospital.

-They need to be tech'd

Trackmania

Great game for racing. Very much so unrealistic, but that's the kind of game that appeals to me. Unrealistic in the sense that I can escape the real world and occupy myself for a brief moment in another. Think F-Zero but with modern cars. Jumps, track editing, skin/paint editing, video save/replay. I haven't tried multiplayer, but the single player part of the demo I've seen shines very nice. The full game was just released April 8, so maybe I'll have my hands on it soon.

-vroom vroom

Master of Doom

Way back in the day, my Grandpa bought Final Doom (yeah, when you could still find Final Doom on store shelves ~ ie it was just released). I'd been exposed to Doom long before that, in the form of Doom 1. I've been playing around with Doom II lately. Maybe I'm a little slow on the uptake, as people have been playing the source ports for quite some time. I've tried out zDoom and jDoom (Doomsday).

zDoom is quite nice, for playability. The graphics are nicely updated for higher resolution, much like jDoom. But jDoom lacks in the gameplay department. Sure, jDoom shares jumping with zDoom and higher resolution textures, but jDoom just doesn't have the keyboard customizability that zDoom does. I like having my mouse wheel swap through weapons. You know, I think if jDoom had just that one little feature, I might play through Doom II with it, rather than zDoom. But in the mean time, it's zDoom all the way.

-Yeah, I've read the book Masters of Doom cover to cover

Just to let you know, I'm calling security!

Escorted out of the hospital last night for sitting beside my girlfriend after visiting hours.

-Not as exciting as TV makes it out to be. Bo-ring!

More Hospitality

That's a good word, isn't it? Hospitality, being hospitable. Welcoming and catering to another and their needs. We've had a good run of nice nurses and volunteers at the hospital, which helps to make the stay more pleasant. At least tonight nobody was pressing me to get out of there before I was ready, I left when my girlfriend was ready to fall asleep for the night. I'll be back there early tomorrow morning, just as I was this morning.

-I watched her sleep for almost an hour

Transitioning... Conglomerating... Consuming

The school I attend is being consumed by a larger, better known school. I figure it's just as well, seeing how I'm paying big-school prices, I may as well get the big-school degree. To help ease students into the transition of one school consuming another, the new institution has printed up brochures to help inform the new and transitioning students. It just happens that I'm 'featured', as one friend called it. Here's the quote:

rak ~ (8) take the skin and peel it back... doesn't it make you feel better? (8):
hey, dude... you're featured prominently in that [big all absorbing conglomerate] transition booklet they were handing out.

I haven't had a chance to look at the page in detail, but from what I've glanced at, it's me striking a pose (because I was posed) talking to some girl. That's how those brochures are thrown together. They aren't reallystudents doing real student stuff, it's a photographer gathering a bunch of ... well, ok, students ... and posing them doing student stuff. I'm also smattered around the website of the new (and as of yet still non-existing, but soon to be new and existing) school. I'll give you a hint, I'm in the middle wearing the grey sweater bearing the school initials. 'rakslice' is the guy doing the 'hey ho, kool-aide' in the white shirt behind me.

-Sleep time, gotta visit and take care of my girl some more tomorrow

Hospitals and their ilk

I've spent the majority of the last 29 hours at the hospital; my girlfriend went under emergency surgery. So I spent the night at the hospital last night (seeing how she was out of surgery at 12:30 midnight) and skipped school and work today to be with her. I made up an hour and a half of work today, seeing how I'm on salary for researching. I ate hospital food... that I paid for. $4 for 2 sausages, 2 eggs (scrambled), 1 english muffin (crumpet?) and 2 scoops of shaved hashbrowns (because nobody likes hairy hashbrowns).

I'm going to sleep now, though. Now that I'm back home, and I'm going to work and school tomorrow.

-Checking up on her early in the morning and after school

Guru of sorts

I've been playing with mazes as of late. Attempting to solve the secrets to creating one, actually. And there's a method to my madness, it's for level generation in my game. So, I'm learning to program mazes.

Anything I'm learning, I'm learning from this site, Think Labyrinth which truly is a great source for anything maze related. This guy really knows what he's talking about, and was even blurbed about on Ripley's Believe It or Not section of a newspaper .

I'm trying to code my own 'Hunt and Kill' agorithm, which basically, when no more rooms can be carved in a certain segment, scans the array of rooms and searches for the first available room that is not too crowded, which means there's room to start another segment of room creation.

Start at one location and carve a room. Next, choose an adjacent room at random. Test to see if that room is not too crowded. If it's not too crowded, place the room and choose another adjacent room at random. Test and repeat. If a room is too crowded, 'Hunt and Kill' to find the next available uncrowded room and continue from there.

A room is concidered too crowded if there are two rooms adjacent to that room. What you want to ensure is that every room you add is a continuation of only the preceding room. This ensures that there are no loops in the maze, which guarantees there is only one path to the exit. This is called a 'perfect' maze.

Admittedly, I've been having trouble with my program. But only because I did not understand these simple concepts. It took me the last two hours laying in bed for my brain to really dumb it down to something I could understand. And here I have crawled out of bed to make a note of it so I don't forget my brilliance in the morning.

-Because that's something I would do

The home stretch

I've finally put the finishing touches on my research poster... you know, how exciting is it to read about another persons life? I can't see that it's really all too exciting. I don't expect people to be even slightly entertained in reading my blog. It's here for me, as a record of events in my life. Maybe one day my grandchildren will read my blog and write up a family history of it or something. I don't know.

But I know I've got nothing to offer the random passerby. Go on, find another blog. There's nothing of interest here, at least not yet.

-Heh, that was fun

The Day after the First Day of Spring
Yeah, today is the first day after the first day of spring, so that makes it the second day of spring, right? So why is it snowing outside? I haven't seen it really snow since January. It tried to snow this past Friday morning, but weakly.

So this is what it's like when posters collide
I've a presentation to make in just over a month, at the University of Calgary. I exagerate on that, seeing how all I'm really doing is standing in front of my poster, answering peoples questions about the sort of work I do.

...And blog sucked for a moment. I'd gone on to describe the work I'm doing but it decided to fart and lose it all.

-Put an end to it

As luck should have it
My girlfriend's best friend has been seeing a certain guy for a little while now. Turns out, I went to highschool with this guy. I saw him tonight for the first time in 4 years, and he's doing really well. The title, 'as luck should have it' relates to him. Not so much in the sense of me meeting him again, but his luck in landing a good career job.

After graduation, he started seeing a girl. Her Mother worked at some place that involved aptitude tests, and he ended up taking one. His results landed him with a job at a fairly new software developement agency close to where we attended highschool. He started in tech support (and this is a lot like the sims, so it seems). The bottom rung of the ladder, tech support, making a fairly decent wage for someone fresh out of highschool.

Now, 4 years later, he works in sales and marketing. He makes twice as much as I do at his job, and he gets to travel the continent. Twice this month he has been flown to California. What luck! He admits, the software development department is where the real money is at, they make over twice as much as he makes in his department, and that's five times as much as I make in a University level student research position. Not bad for a small, local developement agency.

-Good for him

Game Developers Conference

Year after year the GDC occurs and year after year I wish I could attend. Some time soon I'll be sent to the GDC by my employer to promote our latest game... but I've got to graduate university and get hired first.

The big news, originating from the GDC, is of Will Wright's evolution game, "Spore". I'm really looking forward to this game! To think you start as an indiscriminate round blob and you evolve yourself to fit in with the changing world. And single player that uses a global database to populate the world with other players creations. GamingSteve has some screenshots and a recording of his views of this game.

-I can't wait to play GOD again

The games

I found Lucas Arts Armed and Dangerous for $5 at my local Electronics Boutique. For a $5 game, it's really not all that bad, but for the game itself I can see why it's only $5 after a year from it's release. I thought I'd have more to say about it than that, but I don't. Hrm, go figure.

My spring break has come and gone, and I stayed in my town for the duration of it. In fact, I worked through the whole thing. Well, not without entertaining myself, of course. I had 16 hours of monitoring a computer lab on campus during the break. 16 hours of The Simpsons: Hit and Run as well as my homegrown game being developed in my spare time. I squashed a few bugs in my game, got some AI going as well, so that's a start. I also played around some more with my moth simulation. I needed to output some information to record the center of mass of my cloud of moths as they progressed through my simulated orchard.

Back to school tomorrow. Some day soon I'll find out how terrible I did on one or two of my midterms and hopefully how I rocked another. I don't pick the classes I'm good at, they seem to pick me.

-Though the classes I suck at do a good job of picking me, too

So, what's the right thing to do?

What to do when your girlfriend is mad at you, and making it quite obvious? Theoretically, of course. What to do when this happens to you? What's the right choice of action? This is all a theoretical basis, of course, as if your girlfriend is mad at you for any reason.

Say she's playing the "You don't even care" card. What do you do? And why is she saying that in the first place? I see two things that you can do. One, you can keep your calm and try to reason the situation out. This, how I see it, is where she's getting the "You don't care" attitude. Second, you could yell right back at her. Maybe she could see this as a caring attitude? It boggles me, I'll tell you that. Personally, I'm more of a 'keep calm and reason with her' kind of guy. I've no enthusiasm for yelling at my girlfriend when she's clearly distraught. I know it's not her fault she's acting that way, she's a girl.

And you just know she's going to try to get you to yell at her if you don't. So what can you do in a situation like that? I'll tell you what I do... I fall into her trap. She knows exactly what to say or do to strike that nerve, and I fall into her trap almost every time. But I keep hopeful, I know that's what she wants. She wants me to take the bait and snap back at her, to show her I care, right? Not that I'm asking you if I'm right, I'm sure that's what she wants. So I retort and she gets angrier. But that's what she wants, she expects it. But what else could you do, if you don't take the bait and yell at her? She'll take it that you just don't care and she'll keep using that against you. And you know that all you want is for her to give in and give you a hug but we don't live in that universe. If you don't lose your temper, she'll get angrier and more distant and that'll just fsck with your mind.

Remember, this is all theoretical. Nobody is mad at you or me; this is all a 'what to do' discussion. I really don't understand why they don't stop when they get what they want. Forgive and forget, right?

-Forgive and forget

Homegrown Concerts

Glory Nights, let me tell you, they are up and coming. Vocals like Dashboard Confessional and music to match. I just got back from a CD Release show for The Bleeding Alarm, with guests Red Light Roulette and Glory Nights.

-Awesome show

The lyrics, the lyrics

Dashboard Confessional - "Hands Down"

Breathe in for luck,
breathe in so deep,
this air is blessed,
you share with me.
This night is wild,
so calm and dull,
these hearts they race,
from self control.
Your legs are smooth,
as they graze mine,
we're doing fine,
we're doing nothing at all.

My hopes are so high,
that your kiss might kill me.
So won't you kill me,
so I die happy.
My heart is yours to fill or burst,
to break or bury,
or wear as jewelery,
which ever you prefer.

The words are hushed lets not get busted;
just lay entwined here, undiscovered.
Safe in here from all the stupid questions.
"hey did you get some?"
Man, that is so dumb.
Stay quiet, stay near, stay close they can't hear...
so we can get some.

My hopes are so high that your kiss might kill me.
So won't you kill me, so I die happy.
My heart is yours to fill or burst,
to break or bury, or wear as jewelery,
which ever you prefer.

Hands down this is the best day I can ever remember,
I'll always remember the sound of the stereo,
the dim of the soft lights,
the scent of your hair that you twirled in your fingers
and the time on the clock when we realized it's so late
and this walk that we shared together.
The streets were wet
and the gate was locked so I jumped it,
and I let you in.
And you stood at your door with your hands on my waist
and you kissed me like you meant it.
And I knew that you meant it,
that you meant it,
that you meant it,
and I knew,
that you meant it,
that you meant it.

As Always, thanks to AZLyrics.com for always having the lyrics.
I'm here at school, programming my game and this song starts playing in my Winamp. It starts me thinking of my girlfriend, so I'm thinking of her, feeling good.

-Yeah, uh. Guess I just wanted you to know

Bookworm

Since Christmas, I've read 4 books (and counting). My girlfriend got me "The Looking Glass Wars" which follows Alice through a variation of the charmed Wonderland. I've also read J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series from "The Philosopher's Stone", to "The Chamber of Secrets" and "The Prisoner of Azkaban". Not to mention I've watched all of the coresponding movies after I'd read the book. Also, I'm 1/3 done the fourth book in the Harry Potter series, "The Goblet of Fire". And I've got "The Order of the Phoenix" on order at the library. I plan to have all the books read by the middle or end of February. At this rate, providing I get the book promptly from the library, I'll be done in the next couple weeks. Sadly, after this series, I don't really have anything else planned for reading. Which is just as well, seeing how midterms are starting next week.

-Keener... no, but I try

Concerts abound!

I saw Sum 41 in concert just this last Friday! Great show! Black Maria from Toronto opened for Sum 41, but the lead singer had larynghitis [sp] and only lasted 20 minutes. The were pretty good. After their set No Warning rawked the dome. No Warning was awesome, high energy, good music. And then came Sum 41 themselves. They were introduced via a video projected onto the backdrop of the stage. StevO ends up murduring Cone during a basketball match (literally) and drags Cone back to his apartment where StevO chops him up and serves him as dinner to Deryck and Dave. Boing :funny pose:

The backdrop falls and StevO opens the show standing on his elevated platform next to his drums, wearing a bloody butchers apron and wielding a chain saw. Deryck makes several references to GWBush and pays homage to the King and his Throne (you know which Elvis and which toilet I'm referring to) as well as their Anna Nicole Smith homage. Comedic show, they played their stuff from all 4 albums and are even better live than recorded.

-Super happy fun time

Crisp Mountain Air

I spent the day on a mountain. I'd start at the base of a hill and would travel up that hill. I'd then slide down that hill, only to get up and travel back up the hill. I went tubing, as it's called, at one of the local ski resorts. I did it with a group, which consisted of my girlfriend, her brother, a friend of ours she works with and her boss and boss' son. It's good to take advantage of what nature has to offer, once in a while. My only complaint: today was particularly warm, which caused the snow to turn very much into slush. The first pull UP the hill (on a pulley) soaked my
back to the point of no return. It just got worse from there on. But the sliding down the hill was still fun.

-But wait, there's more.


About Games

Half-Life
I'd have to say that the original Half-Life has the best story/script of any game I've ever played. I've played through the original game (Half-Life) and the add-ons (OpFor, BlueShift) many times, it's that good. And the mods available for it are killer. Especially the official DeathMatch: Classic. But more on that later.
Still on the subject of Half-Life, HL2 is awesome as well. Not so much for the story, as it's not groundbreaking there (imo). HL2 is rawx0r for the engine. Source is where it's at. Picking things up and throwing them around is shweet. Counter-Strike: Source wins big kudos as well, especially for the bots recently made available. No need to play online with lamers any more. Not when there are bots to play with/against. I just wish the mod community would get around to releasing some quality. I want my Half-Life 2 to be put to some good use.

Quake (DeathMatch: Classic in Half-Life)
Tenebrae. You should really check that out. Doom 3 lighting algorithms in the original Quake engine. It makes playing through the original Quake another time worth it. Advanced texturing and lighting and wow. Smoke coming out of the ground and light from a stained glass window refracting through it. Wow. I can't really say what I want to say. There's no words. Try it, you'll like it. Definate eye candy.

I've been playing the original Quake, I'm currently in the lobby standing outside the entrance to episode 4. Episodes 1 through 3 standing completed, exhausted by the total rape of which I had just performed. Maybe those are too strong of words, regardless, I brutalized them. GL Quake is what I'm playing, as even my laptop lacks sufficient power to play Quake Tenebrae. Yeah, I'm too lazy to link anything tonight. Maybe you're not too lazy to Google what I'm referencing. Are you picking up what I'm putting down?

Codename UGOD
My own little concoction I've had in the works for over a year now. It always makes progress but never sees the light of day. Maybe some day I'll get to polishing it to something I think is worthy of the public eye. My latest accomplishment was overcoming a hurdle that was something of a shortcoming. We all know that when you are using an array to store some information (I may lose some readers here, as this is programmer talk) that you can't have two objects in the same cell of an array at the same time. Doing so causes one object to overwrite the other. You can clearly see how this limits using a 2 dimensional array in your game. You can't have two objects (two players for that matter) occupying the same cell of an array. So how are you supposed to have your players interact with each other? Sure, you could loop and
check every cell around the player (that would be 8 tests to see if another player is in an adjacent cell). But that is a severe limitation. So you think, ok, maybe I'll make a 3 dimensional array. No, that won't work either, it's too inefficient. If I make a 3 dimensional array with a height of 10 but only two players are in the game then that's a waste of 8 2 dimensional arrays. So! why not program a room and create a 2 dimensional array of rooms? The trick is, every room has a list to store one or more players! You've just turned your 2 dimensional array into a static 2d array with a dynamic 3rd dimension! Of course you can play around with variables, you don't have to limit yourself to a static 2d array. This is programming and anything is possible.

Moth Work
The above example was worked out in part to the limitation in my moth simulation. The simulation, written using the SWARM library (.org) is limited to a 2 dimensional array. I've been seriously considering rewriting the whole simulation in a standalone programming language using my own tools and libraries, thus circumventing a static array. Moths fly, .: (therefore) they exist in a 3 dimensional space. It's not fair to them if you prevent them from occupying the same x y coordinates in an array.

Doom 3
I shouldn't rule this guy out. Doom 3. I'd have to say it is extremely unfair to ATI and it's family of video cards. My laptop should be able to run this beast with all the eye candy turned off, but unfortunately it's brutally choppy. This means I have to wait until a PC upgrade comes my way before I can enjoy this one. From what I've seen so far it scores points. I just wish I could enjoy it now.

-My neighbor insists on sharing the bass-line of her country music with me 24/7

Delayed Posting

I get around to this a little slower than I would other times. I had one of those dreams a couple nights ago that leaves you feeling quite happy when you wake up. For one, it involved my girlfriend. And another, it included sexy vampire and zombie girls hungry for my flesh.

Now that I remember it, I was in Europe and there was some freaky doctor guy who was at the middle of the whole diabolical scheme. Some werewolf kept bothering me, and there was some sort of experimental and primitive rail gun involved as well. The doctor impaled himself on his rail gun. With the doctor dead, the institution became swarmed with headcrab zombies from Half Life.

-And I still woke up with a huge smile

Research of Moths

So it's been a long time since I last programmed anything for the codling moth project. You know what? That really sucks. I was hired as a programmer and all I've done over the last 4 months is mathematical analysis. I don't know math, I know my program. My professor told me she wasn't hiring me for mathematical skills, which is good because I still don't have them. I just want to get back to programming.

I've got Redhat Enterprise, as supplied by my professor. So I can now take my research home with me (well, when I install Redhat and get it dual booting with my existing WinXP). I'm looking forward to that, getting Redhat working.

-Half-Life 2 a second time around is just as fun!

Wired

This is fun, I just have to share my thoughts. I'm at work now, it's 8:24am. This was the only lab monitoring shift that would fit into my schedule (that I was hired for). Funny, I applied for 5 shifts and the two that I originally got assigned to conflicted with classes. So I cancelled those and applied for an early morning shift. Hey, I need some cash flow.

Now I'm sitting here at 8:25am and waiting for some downloads to finish. I figured I'd give Half-Life 2 DeathMatch a try. Why not, what can it hurt. It'll take up some hard drive space and I'll rarely play it. For that matter, I'm re-downloading Codename: Gordon. I'll try to finish it this time.

-Rawking out to Billy Talent

First day back

I've finished my first day of semester 2, year 3 at University. Today was the first day I had a notebook computer to write my notes in at school, as well. It was fun. I played Half-Life 2 during my breaks (Awesome game, I finished it last night and am playing it again on HARD difficulty). The notebook is definately a nice toy to have. I also picked up Redhat Enterprise from my professor, so I can get that going on my computer and take my research home with me. Now I think I'm going to join my girlfriend and lay down for a nap. It was a long day.

-Technophile

I have had a day to play

From my girlfriend I got an awesome shirt, green, long sleeve with the text World's Laziest Ninja and a picture of a fat ninja with akimbo sword. She also got me a flashlight, always handy to have around. 2 more stickers to add to my laptop (I'll get to this in a bit). A 100 piece Spiderman 2 movie puzzle which we've already pieced together. Oooh, I can't forget this one... she's getting my tongue pierced. I'll be doing that in a couple days, so it is mostly healed when school starts again. And who doesn't need a calendar before the new year? She got me this kickass Sea Monkey calendar. 12 months of sea monkey memorabilia. Her parents and brother got me a box of Pot of Gold (chocolates) and a bunch of Spiderman swag. A towel, toothbrush, comic book, binder. Gotta love that. I got a Dirt Devil vacuum from my Dad and his girlfriend. Money from my Mom and Stepdad. And a Lord of the Rings action figure of Eomer and his Horse. A few more figures and I can create a scene on my desktop.

I also got American McGee's Alice and "The Looking Glass Wars" from my Girlfriend. Isn't she the best? ^_^

Now, as for the laptop. Yeah, I'm writing on it right now. P4 2.8GHz... you've read it before. This thing is sweeet. I downloaded the HalfLife 2 demo and played through the two chapters, the game was butter. I can run it at max everything, looks good, run's not so good. It's still playable, though. So turning it down to the defaults (still great visuals) and the game runs awesome. No slowdown or choppiness. I love it. And when I get to school with it, I'll be able to access the wireless network around the school. And I'll get RedHat running on here so I can bring my research home with me as well. I'm just waiting a week or two so I can run it hardcore, break it in, etc then I can rip the existing HP stickers off here and put my own on.

I've got a sticker of the Mudflap girl with a flame fill instead of black, and a woman holding a large lolipop while wearing lingerie. Last years stickers were the dog licking himself and text saying "Because I can", the other was a topless redhead (mmm redhead!) sitting on a cherry with text saying "Everything to lose". So I'll stick at least 3 of those on the lid of my laptop. I'm thinking of putting another inside my laptop, to the left of the touchpad.

Oh! Last night when our friends got home, we visited them and exchanged gifts. I got a tamagotchi from one. And from the other friend I got a sushi set. Chopsticks, dried seaweed, mochi rice (sticky rice), pickled ginger and a tube of wasabi. She's going to teach me how to make sushi, I can't wait.

-Good things in life? Fun things in life

It is now

4:42am and I'm filling myself with the fuel needed to keep warm the next hour outside FutureShop, waiting in line with the other faithfuls. This is it, this morning decides which notebook computer is going to be by my side at least until the end of my University career. I've got water heating for hot chocolate and Maple and Brown sugar porridge steaming in front of me. 15 minutes and I'd have planned to be standing outside.

-But I still need to brush the snow off my car

Tomorrow's Activities

I stopped by Future Shop to see what time they open early tomorrow morning and there were already 5 people camped outside drinking mini-shot bottles of Jack Daniels and playing Magic: TG hudling together for warmth. They were camped out with lawn chairs and a small camping table, one of them had been there since 3pm Christmas afternoon.

I'll be there tomorrow to make a purchase. I'm buying that P4 2.8GHz system. They've dropped the price another hundred dollars (from $1599) to $1399 and upped the video card capacity from 64 MB ATI Radeon 9000 mobile to a 128 MB ATI Radeon 9000 mobile. I had bought it online today, actually, but thought better of waiting the 3 weeks for it to come in by mail; I cancelled the order just after I got a confirmation. So I'm going to try my luck at buying it in store at 6am tomorrow morning so I can get home and format it (who wants a computer registered with the name "Future" anyway?) . My machines have manly names like "Goober" and "Baggy" (not really, but they rhyme with it).

I'll be up at 4:30am tomorrow, about 4 hours before my girlfriend wakes up to go to work.

-Dropping large wads of cash

Portable Computation

How does this nice little lappy grab ya? It'd come out to just over $1.5k, of course I don't have the money, and would be sweeeet. I've never done the Pentium thing, I've always stuck with AMD (and my Duron 750). So Pentium IV 2.8GHz, 512 DDR, 60GB HDD, 128MB ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 GPU ooooooooh. I almost walked out of the store with it yesterday.

Christmas Partying

Tonight is the Eve before Christmas and the same as every year before is a family Christmas party. Yet another excuse for friends and family to get together and drink themselves stupid (and drive home afterward :P dumbasses) but to eat and visit as well.

I've a couple more presents to wrap in preparation for tomorrow; I've got to dig out the stockings and lay them across the couch with care. And make a (hopefully) quick stop by the post office to pick up my parcel which came in JIT (just in time, like the Java compiler).

-I'll keep ya posted with Christmas goodies

School's out and it is proven

I'm at the University right now, monitoring the Library information commons area. Usually on a Monday at this time, I'd have had enough with the students requesting my help. Not so much that I don't like helping, it's the repetitiveness. However, I digress; Today it is eerily quiet. There 6 students sitting down at any of the 40 computers in this area of the Library, meanwhile the other part of the commons area is closed. It's so quiet in here, I'm almost falling asleep.

-Deitel Java Swing

Programming Knowledge

I've written all my exams so they are out of my hands. Only 6 days to Christmas, wow. That's getting close. My birthday coming up here fairly soon, too. So now that the semester is over and the holidays are here I've found time to relax and do my own thing.

I've been playing with SuSE on my home computer. I've played through the original Half-Life and am now 3/4 the way through the addon, OpForce and will be playing through Blue Shift as well.

I'm also coding a toolkit for the game I'd been programming off and on since last year. I'd recently rewritten it with my knowledge of data structures and a new resolve. I read about serialization a couple days ago, combined the two and viola I can create my own database. I have tools that allow me to graphically create objects in my game.

-Knowledge is power

Wandering around in my head

3 hours and counting down until my third exam. I'm feeling alright about the test, really, I'm not feeling alright knowing that no matter how much I've studied the professor is still going to give me a bare pass. Like the post recently on Slashdot this professor has high expectations. The class is titled "Data Structures" but I call it, and appropriately so, "Introduction to Mark Allen Weiss". The prof doesn't grade fairly on knowledge and concept, no. He grades on how accurate your code is to the author of the book. Wrote some code that works as well or better than the example in the book? Well, if it were in the lab and it works, congratulations you've just earned yourself a grade of 2/2; however if it was on the exam and the prof actually has to look at your code and analyze it... I'm sorry, you've earned 0 out of 0.5 and there's nothing you can do to argue the grade.

-Reasons tenure is crap

Exams

Oh what fun, I've written two exams. I've two more left. One tomorrow and another the day after. Data Structures and Statistics to go, Digital Logic/PC Hardware and Principles of Computer Science/Scheme are finished. I wrote that last one today, and was it ever tough. The first question was worth 43% of the exam grade, I did my best.

I've installed SuSE 9.1 pro on my computer. So now I can dual boot WinXP/SuSE 9.1 ! w00t. I've yet to configure my 'net in SuSE but that's just a few moments time.

Now, Half-Life 2. I want it. I really want it. However, to play HL2 I need a computer that can run HL2. The closest I'm going to get to a computer that can run HL2 is the laptop I'm about to buy. I'm waiting for Christmas and my birthday to come and go so I can put as much money into it as I can. Hopefully that includes a video card and wireless g card as well. Mmmm,

-technology

When Small becomes Medium

Some guys could only hope this happens to them, if you know what I mean. But this isn't a tale of growth in size, though it is about inflation. Tim Hortons, over the past year and a half, has undergone a total transformation. It started with their donuts; they stopped making them fresh in store and started bringing them in frozen. I stopped ordering their apple fritters when they started that. Next was their tea. It used to be that you could order any sized tea for $1, which made sense as you are paying for the tea bag, getting the hot water (any size) gratis. Since then, you are now charged per size; they claim they 'steep' their tea. Crap. And I've since stopped ordering their tea. Tonight, however, has struck me as the last straw. I walked into Tim Hortons craving timbits (donut holes). I ordered a 20 pack, a small pack of timbits. When asked to pay for the order, I gave the cashier $2. However the cashier informed me that it was not enough money. I look at the sign and it says 10 pack: $1.50, 20 pack $2.50 sooo WTF!?! When does a small pack become a medium? I'm sorry Tim Hortons, you'll only be seeing me in passing.

-Kreamy, Krispy Kreamy

OKLUG

Linux Users Group meeting tonight, I'm going to try to learn something. Last month, a retired professor from Waterloo attended. He'd been using Linux for a month at that point. He and a few other of the attendees got into a conversation of slide rules, and how the slide rule was his preferred method of calculation at the University (you see, he is a retired Mathematics professor). The meeting will be split into two sessions, one for new users and another that focuses on a specific area. This months 'specific area' is network security, which leads into hacking, etc. Last month I learned how to use the wget command, a very nice command to know.

Meetings
*I'd really like to attend a 2600 chapter meeting. As far as I know, there are none in the area. According to the 2600 site, the closest one is about 4 hours from where I live and I can't drive that just for a 2 hour meeting.
*I'd like to start a MUD meeting. I could call it the MMM for MUD Monthly Meeting. Or maybe Medievia Monthly Meeting. I dunno, but it'd be nice if there were people I knew who played the game.

-indeed

It's Christmas Time, again

I'm not being cynical, people wouldn't like that. I like the holidays. I love the holidays. My family throws a huge Christmas party every year, I go for the food and company. There are staff Christmas parties to attend; I have no idea if I actually have a staff party, but my girlfriend has one. And hers is going to rawk. Everything is paid for, there's no fee for bringing a guest (me) along. 2 drinks are paid for and a free taxi ride home, not to mention the buffet and 2 hours free use of pool tables.

I added a Tamagotchi to my Christmas list. I'd never had one before, so I thought it might be fun to try it out. They've got infrared technology now, so one "giga-pet" can talk to another and exchange gifts. Or if they are really compatible, they may have an egg together.

And books, I'm a fan of books. I've requested "The Looking Glass Wars" which is a look at the twisted world of Alice in Wonderland.

Speaking of Alice, I'd completed the story last week. I can remember how the first book ended, but I can't remember how the second, "Through the Looking Glass" ends.

-snow flakes cold

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland phase I

I've finished AA and have moved on to "Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There". I had no idea how 'together' the two books were. I had long known of Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee, but did you know they don't make an appearance until book 2? And how about the Walrus and the Carpenter? Book 2 again!

I'm quite intrigued to play American McGee's Alice now. I can pick it up for under $10 at Future Shop in town, or at Electronic Boutique in the mall. I may have to do that. And the live-action movie of Alice remade in the late 90s as well, I've got to make time to watch that. I've had it for months but never looked at it.

-a classic

Chilling at work

Lab monitoring in the school's library Information Commons area, trying to find something useful to do. People speaking to me from across the desk, they are standing at the printer, I'm on the other side at my computer. The printer is acting up, forgetting print-jobs, etc. I'm trying to entertain myself, I've got 'The Annotated Alice' hardcover beside me. I'm half done that, I could finish the other half before I get out of here at 5. No, I've got two midterms this week. One tomorrow, another the day after.

The students are looking at the printer with an inquisitive kink in their neck. Like a bird trying to look straight up, it has to turn it's head 90* to the left or right so its eye is pointed in the right direction. A printer is out of paper, I get up to refill the tray. Something to do, I got my excercise.

-Someone complains they've printed twice and there's nothing happening... yet

Knowledge

Knowledge is power. I realized this yesterday morning, that knowledge -- to know -- is a better quality to possess than general intelligence. I don't have facts or figures to back this up, it just hit me that in order to be successfull in studies you must in the end possess the knowledge you are attempting to learn. Maybe intelligence and knowledge are the same thing, I don't know as I haven't though of it.

I was just browsing the bit bucket at dev/null and found an interesting read on liberty and freedom of knowledge, aka hackerism. They quote a founding father of America:

"The spirit of resistance to government," Jefferson wrote, "is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive."

-That makes sense to me

Just noticed

MSN Hotmail has increased storage capacity. They now allow 250MB of storage per user for a base account, and their plus offers 2GB of storage. Meh, I've already got gMail so I've no use for MSN plus.

On a side note, my girlfriend is driving a sexy Toyota Echo Hatchback with a spoiler et al.

-Schmoove

Circus Freak

Balancing act. Get it? Clowns in a circus sometimes balance things, like plates, on big sticks. Balancing act... circus... clowns.

So I feel like a jackass. My girlfriend has been great to me only deserving of praise, and behold! she reads a blog from September 21 that had me venting my frustration about the two of us. I'd since forgotten about it; I'm sure anyone reading this and familiar with blogs can understand how it feels to write something down and get the frustration off your chest. It was history to me, just a record of what happened and now in the past. She was hurt by it, and rightfully so. I had written some pretty harsh stuff.
But the thing is, it means nothing to me now. I'm feeling good, she was feeling good. Now I'm feeling pretty bad because what I had written really hurt her. So for that, hun, I'm sorry. I'll be careful with what I write and I'll come to you if I have any serious problems, rather than turning to my blog and broadcasting it to the world.

-Don't go looking for it, I've removed the post

What's going on?

My girlfriend has an appointment (or something to do) tomorrow at 10:15am and when I asked, curiously, what it was she said she couldn't tell me. Weird. I try to ask her again, she says she'll tell me later. Odd behaviour. She got mad, thought I had snooped around in her papers and stuff trying to find out what is going on tomorrow. I've got no idea; after getting slightly irritated I decided that 'what the hell', if she doesn't want to tell me then she has her reason. Maybe it's something that will benefit me in a pleasurable way?

I'd been reminded, through this situation, that things aren't always what they seem. You see, I'd received my 'Zen Flesh Zen Bones' book and thought of one of the quips I'd read today. It was of a painter who charged an exhorbitant fee for his paintings. A geisha had hired him to paint something and said she'd pay any price. The man charged her the most he'd ever, which she did actually pay to the man. She commented to her friend that the man cared only for money and asked for another painting. Again, the man asked for a large sum, which he was paid. Unbeknowest to everyone that the man used the money to stock-pile grain for the village he was from. The village was frequently struck with plague and famine for which the man freely gave away the grain. As well, the man's master never saw the realization of his dream of a temple completed. The painter used the rest of the money to construct the temple. After doing so, the man never touched a paint brush again.

-Puts things in perspective

Wonder of books

I love books. If I had an easily replenishable source of currency I'd be buying books. I'd ordered a text book online, for school, at the beginning of September. I got the book the day before the class started; the book came in mint condition and I bought it used! I had such a great experience (it was my first time every buying something online) that I bought another book through the same retailer. I got my "Schematics of Computation" book in record time, so I ordered "Zen Flesh Zen Bones -- 1968 edition" soon after. The description was "like new" so we'll see when it gets here. I paid $1.44 for it plus shipping and handling which brought the book to just over $10 and the import fee I'll have to undoubtedly pay as it's coming from Michigan.

It's addicting, I really want to buy more online. I was thinking a RubicsCube from Ebay or something... but I need to know when to stop. I could buy a RubicsCube at Toys'r'us only 5 minutes from here, and that comes with a Rubics study guide to help solve the cube.

Work starts tomorrow. I'd finished my summer research project and took a couple weeks to relax before school. Now in addition to continuing my research, I'm working as a lab monitor around campus as well. My first shift is a three hour shift tomorrow that ends at 5pm. You know I'm just going to be sitting in front of a computer playing Medievia (Arrecobn of Crimson Rose, Town 2) trying to get someone to walk me through the catacombs so I can get my 38 comb eggs and level to 28. I've been ready to level for almost a week now.

I cooked an awesome dinner tonight. Philly Cheese Steak Sandwiches. My girlfriend was very pleased, and I was pleased to see that she was pleased. Godamn I need to get that Zen book and fast. "Expect Nothing" is the motto I'm trying to grind into myself. Oh, road trip this Thursday. I'm skipping Thursday to Monday to drive 10 hours to a wedding for my girlfriend. She's the maid of honor, she's got to be there. So I'm going to try to make the best of it.

-Another time I should be in bed but I can't bring myself to lay there right now

School Ties

It's the day after Labor Day and you know what that means: Back to school today, except I don't really have to go. My first class (and only class) starts at 2:30, ending at 3:50 but today is 'orientation day' meaning if you're not a first year student then don't show up because you already know what the hell you are doing. I've got to go to campus today to fill out some paperwork so they can start paying me for my services to the school, ie, lab monitoring. I've got two shifts a week (Monday and Tuesday) for a total of 5 hours. On top of that I can put in a maximum 15 hours a week working on my moth project for my calculus prof.

-Meet you at the quad

Fsck the System

I had borrowed 4 library books from the regional library a few weeks ago. Yesterday they were due back, so I renewed them all. All except one, it had a hold on it. Fair enough, I thought. It's late, I'll bring it in and pay the late fee. Well, I drop it off, returning it. I then wander the library trying to find something that might interest me. Know what I found on the shelf? The same book that I couldn't renew because it had a hold on it. The book was returned late and I was being fined meanwhile the book they wanted was already in store and on their shelf. Know what else? When I asked "Could you remove that late charge, please?" with an explanation they gave me a venerable "fsck you and have a good day".

-Some people's children with mullets

Working Late

I slacked a bit today at work, but never fear because I am working late. I've just finished my rough presentation for the UBC seminar this Wednesday. I've got to polish it up some tomorrow in front of my fellow students and professor.

*Sidenote* Hehehe, one of my cats was just sneaking along the heater that runs along the floor on the wall. The cat was sneaking around behind the entertainment centre, which I didn't like. I stuck my head down there trying to get her out but she wasn't budging. So I blew at her, which she didn't like, I guess. It scared the piss out of her and she booked it out the other side. I think she may be staying away from there from now on.

So my girlfriend just started a new job, congratulations to her. The downside to that, I leave tomorrow at 4pm and she doesn't get off work until 5pm. The job she works at restricts her from seeing me, so I won't get to see her again until I get home Wednesday (or Thursday) evening. G'night to you all.

-Wish me luck

Sleeplessness (forced)

It's 12:40 am and I'm out of bed. I spent the last 40 minutes reading D.B. Weiss' novel Lucky Wander Boy. I'm tired, and I should be in bed. I've got another day of work ahead of me tomorrow.

As per usual, I tell you when I've started playing Medievia again. I ditched my mage, Cimn, choosing to start over as a cleric, Arrecobn. I play it at work, and it does prove to be a distraction at times. Which leads me to my next topic.

Work; I'm tired of it now. I'm stressed by it. I've got 3 days of actual work left before I'm finished for the summer. The other two days are reserved for my seminar at UBC and the drive home the day after. I'm stressed because I've got so much work to do and no time to do it. My professor hired me for my programming skills and at different times along the way she took it upon herself to add activities and responsibilities to my workload. Now I'm expected to write a report (approx. 5-8 pages) on my findings thus far, as well as the short speech to give at UBC.

However, this is not the most stressful part of my job. No, I've also got to use the program I've created to cultivate data. On top of that, I'm also the one who analyzes the data. I think this should be left in the hands of my professor as she's the mathematician. She knows Matlab, the program used to analyze the data; I, however, do not.

Today (Thursday) I was supposed to run the program 100 times with 500 moths each time and 5 traps, using a different seed every session. To do that would have taken 8 hours 20 minutes alone. A bash script was written to run the 100 sessions automatically/consecutively so I could play Medievia. My work day is 7 hours long, so I didn't get any work done today. Now I'm stressing that I'm going to get in shit for that when I get in to work and she sees what was done. Maybe I won't tell her about the script.

-And I should sleep or I'm going to be mean tomorrow

The hating game

God must hate me, it's as simple as that. My girlfriend has been looking at rings for some time, and I think she's expecting one from me. We'd agreed on a ring that was obviously better than the rest, a nice gold one with 8 diamonds on the outside and a larger one in the middle.

The store had declined both her and I in-store credit cards, so why did I get one in the mail, a week later, with a huge (over $1000) credit limit? Without her knowing, I left work early one day to make my purchase. The store did have a "we pay the taxes" sale a couple days previous, I was only slightly disappointed when the sale was over. The difference would have only been ~$34 anyway.

I'd bought the ring July 9. The idea was that I was going to leave the ring in the store in the repair drawer so when I was ready to present the ring, I'd just have to pick it up. Also, my girlfriend wouldn't find any evidence of it at home, except maybe a receipt for jewelry repair (which she didn't).

However, and this is where the god-hating-me part comes in, she and I were at the mall again yesterday and we visited the store. Of course she notices the ring was missing, but she'd noticed two weeks before and I'd already planted the idea that I was disappointed and would find another ring for her, or maybe they'd order another ring like it. Well, we were there yesterday and they were having a fscking %30 off sale. ARG. And the person that sold me the ring, the sales person my girlfriend wanted us to buy the ring from, was working. He played it cool, not mentioning the ring. I, however, mentioned the sale in as much an inconspicuous WTF manner as possible. The salesperson laughed and said, "Oh, you missed the %50 off sale!"

Bastard better have been joking about that. If I didn't have my girlfriend there, I'd have asked him for the difference on the spot, saving me the trouble of having to bring the ring back with its 30 day money-back return policy. Getting all the cash back and then buying it again at discounted price. My girlfriend is worth every penny that I paid, but her birthday is coming up here and that extra cash could have bought her 1/3 a bed set, or almost two diamond stud ear-rings.

I'd picked up the ring over a week ago to give to my girl, but it's going back today. I hope they save me the trouble of having to return it and buy it again. And don't even get me started about not having given it to her yet. I know, I've had two weeks. Well, there hasn't been a perfect time yet. Last night would have been perfect but... well, don't even get me started on that. Let's just say the dinner I had planned got fscked when her Dad told us to babysit her brother all night.

-Don't be a hater

I'd like a plate of work please, with a side of work. Thanks

Summer Reading:
. Dungeons and Dreamers: From Geek to Chic: The Rise of Computer Gaming Culture
. Dragonlance "Dragon's Of" Chronicles
. The More Than Complete Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
. Java 2 Game Programming
. Lucky Wander Boy
. The Art of War

Dungeons and Dreamers was a great read. It took about 5 days to read, reading whenever you have a chance. If you're interested in the history of video games and the direction it is headed (or are a fan of Richard Garriott of Ultima Fame -- aka Lord British) then give it a read.

Dragonlance - "Dragons Of" series. I'd read this series way back in elementary school. There were three books to it back then, I think there are 4 to it now. I admit, I started reading it again, but couldn't get much further than 3/4 the way through the first novel. It went back to the library and I never borrowed it again.

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy was a good read. I'm not terribly satisfied with my experience, however. The author, Douglas Adams (RIP), leaves so many loose ends I can't remember many details of any major events afterward. And when I can remember details, I think, what was the point of that? It did nothing for the plot! But I digress, it was an entertaining read. I just wish it satisfied more.

Java 2 Game Programming is my project this summer. It's what I'm doing, besides work, to keep my brain fresh for when I start school. I'm about 1/4 through the book and it's really opening my eyes.

Lucky Wander Boy is yellow. The book, that is. It's the story of a man who, as a youth, played games. Lots of games. This is his story of how he's reliving his past through the reclaimation of one of the games that 'rocked his world' so many years ago: Lucky Wander Boy. At least that's more or less the excerpt. I bought the book for it's gaming and eBay references. I hope it's good.

The Art of War is the last book on my list. Well, not really a book. I'm going to read it off the interweb, but it does come in book form.

-If I didn't have to work, I'd be finished the list and it'd be longer

In my head

Bleach: I'm wearing a Spider-man shirt that used to have red highlights around the collar and sleeves. Used to be red.

Root-beer: Good stuff.

Rain: Nice when it's been hot out.

Linux: The most ecstatic feeling of success... when the friggen thing actually works.

I've been trying to get SWARM working on the work laptop because of two presentations I have to make on Tuesday. One is a meeting with Agri-Foods Canada, the other is with UBC executives touring our campus.

The best thing about UBC executives touring the campus -> They hold their meetings in the building I work in. Their meetings are catered. Therefor when no one is looking, I get lunch.

-Free food

A little late

Happy Belated Birthday, Canada.

-fireworks

G-Mail pwns

I love G-Mail. The "Label" feature is great. And highlighting mail with stars and the 1000MB of storage. It's awesome.

EDIT: Whoa, type "google" without the .com or .ca in the link bar

-wooooo

McDonald's

"If you believe in magic,
and I hope you do!
You'll always have a friend
wearing big red shoes!
If you believe in magic."

Remember that song? It holds a much more magical place in my heart than the newer 'hipper' "Baduh buh buh buh... I'm loving it" crap they've got going now. And where is Ronald, Grimace, Birdy, Hamburgler, Fry-Guys, the Pirate Dude, etc ? You probably don't even remember the Pirate guy. Yeah, they offed him years ago, and it's only in recent years that the rest of the gang have been ousted a job.

-I just thought I'd bring that to your attention

Election Day

I don't usually name names but I live in a country and you know which country that is. Therefore you would already know who's running for Prime Minister. I can't say I was too excited about voting, but my girlfriend made a big deal about it. Funny thing was, I think she just wanted to vote for the sake of voting. Before we'd looked into the parties and decided who we should best vote for, it seemed like she was ready to pick her poison and check a box.

After some thought, I decided I didn't really like the direction Canada has turned in the last 10 years. You know, that's half my life right there. That direction is the effect of Liberal control. It's the Liberals who'd lifted the tuition freeze on my University and caused me to pay 100s of % more $$$ than people years before me. I heard people used to be able to attend school at $300 a semester. Myself, taking 5 courses with respective labs, I pay $1400+.

Back to politics. Liberals are going to get what they deserve. The Conservative group, well, the guy looks like he's wearing a plastic mask and too much mascara. That and he wants to turn our country into a war-manger like our constituents to the south. They want to fight our wars, that's great, let them. We've got them to fight our wars for us.

NDP. Good old NDP, they raised minimum wage by almost $1 back when I first started working. That was great, I like you NDP. Now please, do something about my tuition and you've got my vote.

-New Canada

What is there to say?

Not much motivation today, it's been a sleepy time lately. I've finished writing my program, at least most of it, mostly. I've still got a couple things to do with it, like.... wait a minute. I probably haven't really explained all of what the program does.

Here's the poop:

I was 'contracted' by a professor of mine to program a simulation for her. She, herself, was hired by Agri-Foods Canada (a goverment agency) to come up with a mathematical model of codling moths and their behavior with and without traps. I haven't actually seen or heard anything of her research but I trust she's been doing her job. Insofar, I've been doing mine.

Back on topic, my professor hired me to write a model of the moths and their behavior in the presence and non-presence of pheromone traps. Starting around the second week of May, I've now nearly completed the program.

The moths I've created in the program respond to pheromone plumes created by the traps I've created. The traps are placed in a networked fashion across a grid of specified length and width. You can choose to place the traps every 100 'meters' or '50' or any other number you may come up with, providing it is a whole number.

The traps dispense pheromone, which reacts accordingly with the weather about it. If the wind is blowing from the east to the west, the pheromone is stretched to the left, the trap placement is no longer centered in the pheromone; the pheromone is now placed farther to the left of the trap. The area remains the same regardless the shape of the pheromone.

Moths, when in a pheromone plume, sniff out areas of higher concentration. If they are interested, the moth then moves itself to occupy a space of higher concentration. The test continues until the moth has either found the trap or 'escaped' the pheromone plume.

If a moth maneuvers its way to a trap it then runs the test to see if it becomes trapped or not. To be as accurate to life as possible, the program still needs to be tweaked so only about %5 of the moths actually get trapped. Then we as researchers can tweak the strength of the trap and experiment with that.

-I've lost my train of thought

I'm a freaking clown

Chock up another one for the clutz life. My girlfriend just had me file her feet, and like a good boyfriend I agreed to do it. So I'm filing away, periodically knocking the collected dust off the file. I figure this is how I'm supposed to be doing it, and I was right, she does the same. However, the file has never snapped in half when she's ever used it. Yeah, the file was waiting for me to handle it before it called the penalty and snapped in half with a tell-tale 'snap' (literative, aren't I).

I laughed and joked about it. She got mad, then started laughing herself. Composure regained, though, she told me she didn't want to laugh. Now she's pissed (not really, but she has to act some way and it won't be in my favor). It's not going to be a good night tonight.

Maybe it would have gone better if I hadn't...

-broken a plate while washing dishes this afternoon

G-Mail

I just activated my G-Mail account. It's pretty nifty (Google is going to get their advertising worth out of me). 'baaad seplling werd' typed in and click "check spelling" red underlines all the mispelled words. When you click a word, a list pops up with suggestions as to the correct spelling. That is a very nifty feature, rather than going through one word at a time.

So my blog e-mail address is now changed to my G-Mail

-More as the mail comes in

I'm a clutz

You'd think my feet were skis and I had a tire around my belly and my hands were made of unfeeling metal.

-Just thought you'd like to know

Late night mind-not-sleeping-ness

I'm laying in bed and my mind is just not shutting off. Now is as good a time as any to share my thoughts. First of all, I'd really like to thank my Dad for always supporting me and taking an interest in what I'm interested in. You listened to me rave about my scuba classes. You helped me out with my first (and subsequently only) guitar and amp and gig-bag. You're the reason I graduated in the top 10 percent of my highschool class. And now, thank you for supporting me with my programming. You bought me a book and saved me money, and now I can bring myself to the next level. This is early, but happy father's day.

Next off, I was laying in bed thinking about my long-term gaming project. I did tell you it was a game I've been working on, I believe. Forget about the moths, I've been doing the game longer. School, and now work, have taken away the time I'd use toward it, but I learn more every day. I learn more through work and through theory, and I make my game a little more in my head each day. The book my Dad has bought me will greatly boost me.

Second, how about that Interplay thing? Crazy, really. I've been reading IGDA's Quality of Life White Paper and BAM here's a prime example of what you really need to watch for. I hope Interplay makes a comeback, but what the hell is this not paying employees for a month business. The rent is past due, employees don't have health insurance and you still owe Bioware over $150k for Baldurs Gate. Good on you for thinking positively, though. Come back and maybe you can hire me.

-This life or the next. You know, whenever you come around to it

Creator of Worlds!

I did it! The last few days at work here I'd been trying to have my trap objects and moth objects coincide with each other on the same plane of existence. I'd become very frustrated when my program either didn't run or everything did what it was supposed to do but with blobbing. Blobbing being the moths leaving a trail behind them. They should be just a dot on the grid flying around, however they felt the need to leave a line behind them everywhere they flew.

I have, however, managed to have my traps and moths coexist together happily. They'd done it before, but the traps were simply values on a lower-layer grid. The moths read the values on the lower layer grid, while flying about. Any grid position with a value 0 was seen as the ground. Any value of 1 was seen as a trap, and the moth promptly committed suicide. The Observer layer drew any spot of value 1 as a yellow square, for human viewing purposes. Now there are no more values. We have trap objects.

The benefit of trap objects: They can count the number of moths that have become 'trapped' inside them. Trap objects can relay their position on the grid and any other piece of relevant information that may later be thought of. This makes me quite happy, and less frustrations now.

I lied a little, though. At the moment, the trap objects only work as a thing that's in the way. They don't trap moths yet, the moths just don't run into the same square as a trap. But I am a creator of worlds and I can have them do what I want.

-Destroyer of worlds, too

Musical Musicness

I hadn't used my MP3 player for the last 12 months because it was presumed dead. It'd play, but it kept monotonically telling me its door was open (MP3 CD Player). Staring down at it, door closed, you could understand the confusion. I gave up on it when it stubbornly decided to stop playing my tunes.

A year later I get the bright idea to poke around and find out what its problem is. It turns out, having it sit in my car on those hot summer days made a few parts extremely warm. One part in particular is the spring that holds the door open while you are replacing CDs. It had melted the plastic mount it was sitting in, which incidentally shifted to lid, preventing the player from realizing it was, in all accounts of reality, closed. Screw the spring, he's been evicted. And my player works fine again.

-MP3 goodness

I present to you

An unnamed poem (EDIT: I'd like to name the poem "Keep Digging" -WiLD2)
-By WiLD2

Once upon a long time ago
there lived a Man who owned a hole.
He dug and dug and dug each day
until the time He could finally say,
"Why was that hole I dug so deep?
I'm way down low and I've got to keep
my head on straight and my shoes on tight
as I settle down for tonight, tonight."
And He went to sleep when the very next day
He awoke again with a yawn to say,
"I'll scratch my belly and then my bum
as it appears the dawn has early come.
The question is why I've done this so
to dig myself my very own hole?
I'll lay down now, close my eyes and rave.
It appears I've dug my very own grave."

-Thank you

While at work
I've finally shown off some of my cunning lingualism. I know it'd shown a long absence. I'm at work right now, programming and such, but I had to take a break and get my mind off track. You know, for some creativity. I hope you enjoyed the poem, I found it rather witty.

-Nutty like a log after christmas

Bird Flu

When is it going to stop? There was a huge outbreak of the bird flu in the Vancouver area just over a month ago. Hundreds of Thousands of chickens were slaughtered. I think even the price of chicken dropped where I live, which is great because chicken is a necessity. And now there's chance that the new strain of bird flu found in the same area is capable of spreading to and killing humans. Here's the thought that came to mind:

Zombies.

Let me explain

In Resident Evil, Umbrella Corporation manufactured a medical mishap they called the 't-virus'. This thing, when ingested or inhaled by living flesh, turned its host into a shambling mass of murder. In George Romeros zombie films it is a virus as well. Sure, flu is a bacteria (isn't it?) but it has the means of spreading from one person to the next. All that needs to be done now is beta test the mushball strain which simply turns people catatonic. Then upgrade the mushball strain with features such as 'consume thy own flesh' and 'hunt anything with two legs and a heart-beat' and we've got the zombie strain.

-Not bad for a days work

Oh!

E3 starts tomorrow. The Electronic Entertainment Exposition in Los Angeles. Oh, how I wish I could be there.

I spent part of this morning reading about E3 and people's experiences there. To be a consumer and there it sounds like fun. To be an exhibitionist and there sounds like fun.

-to be there

On the job

I've begun work as a research assistant for the summer. It's great, I'm a 'software engineer' as my position. I'm writing a simulation in SWARM involving codling moths, and their actions based on the presence or non-presence of pheromone traps.

So I'm at work right now, on a Linux machine. I'd never used Linux before a week ago, I kind of like it. I should dual-boot my system at home with a Linux partition. You know, for Linux software and stuff. Have fun getting SWARM to work on a Windows machine, they dropped support for that years ago.

-A good guy

I should clarify

Our kitten, contrary to what I posted weeks ago, is male. We were under the impression she was a he, but Nefret is now a Loki. We kept him, rather than an exchange for a female.

-And he scratches the hell out of everything

How to do

I guess I have no idea how to clip a cat's claws. I was under the impression that as I was doing this, my purpose was to stop him from pulling threads out of our pants and to stop him from leaving nasty scratches on our arms and feet. So I cut about 1/3 of his whole claw off (roughly 1/2 of the dead-skin claw). I steared clear of the flesh under his claw, and three times I cut his nails without so much as a sound of discontent from him. Then my girlfriend offered her help, I clipped a fourth claw. He let out a disgruntled meow which freaked her out. She's upset at me now, and I've got a kitten running around playing as he normally would, which is exactly what he should be doing.

I guess I'm wrong, I wasn't supposed to cut off enough claw so he'd never break our skin or rip our clothes. I was supposed to blunt the claw, take off a fraction of a millimeter from his claw. In doing so, he'd still be able to climb, still be able to 'play with his toys' but he wouldn't be able to scratch us.

-I was wrong

I almost forgot

I went hiking up Enderby Cliffs last sunday. Follow this link for the pics.

-sunburned

Summer working

I started summer work today. It wasn't programming or anything, and I didn't even see my employer. She stayed at home because she was out until 12:30 last night setting up a display. Which leads me to tell you what I did today. The University was having an open house research expo and I was manning the Math/Stat department's display. Hey, I thought it was volunteer work but an email tells me that I'm getting paid for it. Rawxer.

I borrowed a book from the public library the other day. I had to return another, though. I was returning the Annotated Dragon Lance Chronicles, which I read before back in grades 5 to 7. I couldn't renew it any more, I suppose twice is all you can. Funny, though, when they check it back into the computer I can sign it out and start renewing it again for another total of 63 days.

Right, back to the book I borrowed. Dungeons and Dreamers: The rise of computer game culture from Geek to Chic. Great book, I highly recommend it if you're remotely into games and/or game-design. On top of that, while I was at the University library today I borrowed a couple more books. Deitel & Deitel's Java 2 text and Programming Pearls which may give me some nice reading material.

Zombies ate my fingers - I've finally watched my Night of the Living Dead DVD I got for Easter. I have to say, it's as bad as I remember, but good at the same time. The freakiest part of the movie is seeing the corpse of the house's owner upstairs in the house everyone boards themselves up in. The corpse doesn't move and you only see it twice for a second each time but it sets the atmosphere and emotion.

Speaking of zombies, I had the opportunity to watch the remake of Dawn of the Dead. I'll try not to spoil it too much. It was awesome. It holds true to zombie mythology in the way the disease is spread and shines light in new areas. Let me just say one word 'pregnancy'. It's nice to see a world going up in flames (cinemagraphically) the way the world went to hell in this movie. The car crash scene just after the woman escapes her suburban neighborhood rawked. I wish I could rewind it and watch it again (because it just shows how the world is going to hell). I could go on and on.

And have you noticed how fast zombies move these days? I think the only recent zombie movie that holds true to real zombie speed is Resident Evil. The latest movie to introduce speedy-zombies was 28 Days Later which was alright because to me those weren't bread and butter zombies. Those were rage-infused humans. The new Dawn movie had speedy zombies.
Let's look back to the original Dead series. Night was the first, and their zombies were slow-ass. Slow ass. Grandma with her walker running full force was the top speed of even the healthiest zombie in that movie. Dawn's zombies were slow, too. The remake, however, strapped roller-blades on them and let them loose on top of a hill (figuratively). No longer can Grandma with her walker outrun these beasts, until she's been bitten and comes back. The ultimate cure for back-pain, Grandma's ready for a marathon.

-another 2 cents

I have a dream!

There was snow on the ground, and I was at the home I lived at before I moved away to finish school elsewhere. Zombies is what my dream focused on. There were zombies everywhere and the scene was right out of 90's Night of the Living Dead (remake).

The zombies were being commanded by a larger minion who was searching for a ring that was being kept in the house. Violence ensued and I witnessed my Dad and neighbor dropping many-a-zombie with shotgun blasts. Have you ever seen a zombie from 5 feet away through a sliding glass door? I have, and it's awesome.

World Peace and Unity - It's just my idea that what we need to bring the world to peace is a goal all countries can work towards. So we need a zombie outbreak; then all countries can agree to set aside their differences and together annhilate the population of zombies spreading across the globe.

Good grades
I've passed 3 of my 4 classes, and that RAWKS. No more chemistry for me!!! I finally passed Math 122 and Java Programming is done like dinner. I'm still waiting for my results of Physics, but that's in the bag.

-In the bag of doom! (but that's a good thing)

Got to love those exams

I've written three of my four exams, and have confirmed that I've passed at least one of them. I'm crossing my fingers for the rest. At the moment, I'm studying for physics, which will be written at 9:30am tomorrow. An exam on a Saturday.

My girlfriend bought me Will Rock for Easter, along with the classic Night of the Living Dead (black and white. 1968) DVD!!! I've almost completed the game, I just kicked Medusa's ass. Since when can Medusa fly? And since when can you look at her in the eye? She also shoots homing fireballs at you.

-Zues Almighty

A baby

I've got one, only two days ago; Friday night. It's a feline. A kitten, and she's beautiful. Nefret is her name, which means 'The most beautiful', as in the name "Nefertari" or "Nefertiti", the egyptian queens of old.

School is finished for the year, now I just have to deal with exams. My first exam is this coming Tuesday. Java which should go over well. I just need to study. So, I'm going to study now. Yeah, I'm kinda lifeless right now but I should study anyway.

-Nefret, the black and white kitty cat

Resourcefulness

I hope I spelled that right. I know, there's spell checker and all but what's the fun in that if you can't spell words correctly yourself? And it's fun when people make fun of other people's bad spelling.

I just found a nifty article on GameDev.net about programming your own MUD (Multi-User Dungeon). Not that I'm planning on doing that any time soon, but what the hell for a read, eh?

-Hehe, I said "eh".

More language

This judges the success of skills. Based on this, however, you have a slight chance of success even if you aren't practiced in the art of that skill. However, because it's turn based (that's the idea, anyway), you don't really want to go wasting your turn just to fail an attack. This is if the highest skill level is 15, but that can be adjusted. Here goes:

int sLevel = CurrentSkillLevel;
success = ((int)(Math.random()*17);
if (success <= sLevel || success == 16) {
the skill is successful;
}
else (skill fails);

You might be wondering what the 16 is for. Well, like I said earlier, that is the small chance of success if you haven't practiced the skill at all. You get a 1 in 16 chance of success. Likewise, the greater skill level, the more chance of success.

This may also be used as a damage modifier. Up to your skill level, it multiplies the damage of that attack by:

double half = 0.5
damage (sLevel*half)+((int)(Math.random()*attack);

These are just some ideas, anyway. I think of them and want to write them down for my later reference.

Here's what I'm doing today. I'm driving to my Dad's house so he can check out my car. It's about time it has a tune-up anyway. I've been driving it for 3 years and it only get's progressively less cooperative. I'd been jump-starting my car this winter on the coldest of days because the battery wouldn't sustain itself. My MP3 player melted in the summer time and keeps telling me the cover isn't closed even though it is closed. And the tire popped on it. As well as the car doing a funny 3 steps forward 1 step back dance while driving up hill. It chugs, it really does.

-Explosive

A flat

Got a flat tire on the drive home tonight, didn't help that it was 11:30pm and had no way to see in my back trunk while looking for the necessary tools: Tire iron, spare tire (ok, that was easy to find), jack, twisty piece for jack. 20 minutes later (and an impressed girlfriend, too) it was done. Now I'm home and going to sleep.

-Bed time and well deserved

The language

Java is the language. I'm still programming away, whenever I find time. That time is usually on Tuesday and Thursday mornings between 8am and 11:15am. I get to school early on those days to program in the library, and my Programming class starts at 11:30.

Not much to talk about, I guess. I'm just up at 11:28pm because I had a stroke of genius that got me excited and I couldn't sleep. I was thinking that in a game that determines the difficulty of play based on the level that you are at would be something like this:

int level = yourCurrentLevel;
difficulty = (level-3)+((int)(Math.random()*6));


This basically says, "Ok, you're level 8? Alright. Your opponent will be any level from 3 below you (level 5) to 2 above you (level 10)." Assuming anything below 3 levels lower would be too easy and any levels greater than 2 above your current level would be too hard.
You could throw a switch or a few if statements in there to determine what happens when a random level of difficulty is selected. Like which opponent at the suitable level to face.

-Bed time now

And for the cream filling

I was virtually transperant from the online world during my first semester of school this year. As you can see from my single post in late September and my absence until this very day. I'd been busy with school, and Medievia. However, I've again stopped playing dear Medievia. It was great and all for the first couple months, but like any game you reach a point where you feel you've progressed as far as you can and thus, feeling a)victorious or b)burned out, stop playing. You move on to bigger and better things. My bigger and better things were Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR).

GTA:VC is a great game. You have to love jacking cars and shooting guns, as well as money. That game was great fun. Was. I lost interest in the game (are you seeing a trend here?) right around the end of the game. So I moved on to KOTOR. Badass is what I have to say. I've never really had any great urge to watch any of the Star Wars movies but after playing this game I want to watch the original three movies right now. But like the other games I've played, KOTOR fell through to something else, I admit.

I've been working on a project at home since mid-December. I'm programming something in Java that should bring great enjoyment to many people. I spent an hour in the office of my Java professor yesterday afternoon going over my code and how I can improve it. Slated for an April release; I'm learning more tricks to use in the program with every class I attend.

Christmas was great. My girlfriend and I got a digital camera from her father for Christmas. It doesn't see extensive use, but we do have 100+ pictures taken since we got it. And since my birthday was just days after Christmas... hehe. My Mom and Brother bought me a 256MB Flash-Rom USB Hard-drive. I'm listening to Billy Talent here at school with WinAmp running off my hard-drive as I type this. It rawks. Thanks Mom and Brother.
On the topic of other cool stuff, my girlfriend bought me a sweet case for my computer. Follow the link and fill your shorts with envy. Thanks, hun.

-Always looking for my next entertainement fix

To read minds

I figure that if I was able to read minds, I wouldn't study as hard for test. And you know what? That would be all right. Why? Because, if I had the ability to read minds, I'd be able to know what people wanted and/or were looking for all the time. I'd know what my professor was expecting me to study; or better yet I'd know what to expect on the next quiz/test/midterm/exam. I would study only the questions on the exam, and I would ace it. And that would be fine.

After graduating with honors, I'd make it into the real world. I'd be prepared for anything in the work place. With my power to read minds, I'd have the combined knowledge of all my co-workers. I'd be a prodigy, that's what I'd be. And if I were to go on a game show, anything to do with knowledge, I'd be able to use my powers and come out on top.

You may think this is cheating; cheating == evil, but I'd have to disagree. If I have those powers, why not use them. If everyone had those powers then it wouldn't be such a big deal. Knowledge would be passed down from one person to the next, and everyone would be just as intelligent as the next. From here, society could go two ways. We either degenerate into a reliant conglomerate of false-knowledge or

-we feed on knowledge and increase our intelligence even more.

Made to feel real small

Hey, world. How are you doing? Me, I'm fine. I've returned to college, still doing my Bachelor of Science majoring in Computer Science. I'm taking Chemistry for the second time, so I'll pass it this year. Physics is fun, fairly easy to follow. The Lab for physics, though, hasn't taken much of a liking to me. At least not with one particular lab partner.

Calculus... I'm not a math person, though I try to tell myself I am to trick myself. I follow along, but find I just can't keep up. That's a class I'd actually consider dropping, but it's too late. And Java... I really like that class. That's what I'm all about, that's why I'm in school. To learn programming, and I'm having fun in there.

I live with my girlfriend, the same one from the last year. Our anniversary was in August, and I got her a golden heart locket, embedded with three diamonds. Though I haven't put pictures in it because she showers with her jewelery on and won't take it off, thus the pictures would be ruined the first day. She goes to school 6 1/2 hours a day. My days generally run 7 1/2 hours, but with more breaks. Things are good, she finally redeemed her birthday present. I got her a tattoo, which she used to extend the one on her back.

I'm at home right now by myself, she's out for coffee with one of her girlfriends. I'm kinda lost as to what to do, I don't want to be here. I want to be out with her because I haven't seen her much today. She's been sick the last few days, and today especially. But she wanted to go alone.

-That's my update

So I'm playing Medievia again

I'm hunting for a dragon, and I got what I asked for. But then he started hunting me...

<191hp 456m 454mv 74br>
A large black dragon has arrived.

<191hp 456m 454mv 80br> w

A large black dragon begins chanting arcane words of magic and points a finger at you.

A large black dragon eviscerates you!
You reel in shock from the sudden blood loss!
A large black dragon chants the magical phrase, 'Por Flam'
You are enveloped in flames from a large black dragon's fireball.
You burn to death in the maelstrom of magical flame.
You have been KILLED!!

[CLAN] Cimn has BEEN KILLED!
You're dead now. You can't move or speak. The world becomes black and your
head turns inside out with pain. Unable to scream or move, your senses are
overwhelmed with agony and terror. Finally, an escape! You feel released,
lighter than air, nothing but pure consciousness hovering over the hellish
pain of your corpse.


<0hp 456m 454mv 92br>
-Lie still; you are DEAD.

Good Super Fun Happy Summer Fun Time
Summer is just about over, which means... Good stuff to come. I've secured an apartment to move into September first, with my girlfriend of one year. We're both going back to school, which will be great. It's her first year of college, and I take a small part in getting her there. I've been working in a small grocery store since April, and today I gave them my 2 weeks notice. Hooray for holiday pay and good references.
-Boom Boom

Check one two
ok
-Keeping this thing alive

Another Bomb Dropped

Things'll work out soon.

-The end of the beginning

Happy Easter

My girlfriend and her family had an excellent easter day. She made it special for me, and I hope I made it just as special for her.

My grades are all completed, I passed everything. I've got 69% in English, 56% in Japanese II and 54% in Calculus.

-Yay, me

Results

I got the results for my calculus exam yesterday. 33% on the final. 51% overall. Not too proud of mysef there, but at least I passed and can move on to Calculus 2.

-Happy guy, really I am

Good Times

What a great show; I mean, who doesn't like the Fonz? Yeah, you're right, I'm talking out of my ass. Oops, I mean, people actually like Fonzie. And, no, this is not what I'm here to write about.

I have my first exam of my last semester of my first year of college tomorrow. Calculus I. Starts at 1pm, and I'm ready. My girlfriend cooked up a little 'good luck'/appreciation package to send home with me, complete with a playboy bunny sticker sealing the bag. I'm ready for Calculus. Oh yes, I'm ready.

-She wishes me luck

Everything has significance

Janice, a girl across the hall from me in the dorms, just asked if I was going home this weekend. I told her "no", and she asked if my girlfriend was coming out here instead. "I don't know. She was supposed to, but I'm not sure now". Janice says, "Oh, undeclared. Well, just give her time, you've got a whole afternoon to work things out".

It's almost like she's a prophet, someone who can tell the future. I hope she's right.

First Timer

WTFFFFFFFFFARGFWTFGDF

School sucks. You (school) take my time and attention, you stress me out over tests. Finals are coming up, and I've got homework due... and I freak out at my girlfriend because of you. She's the most important thing to me right now, I'm getting shit organized with her. School can be done at any time in my life, my girl only comes around once in a lifetime. I don't want to fuck it up with her, I want it to work.

Defeated

I really like my girlfriend

She's the greatest, and I feel as though I haven't been doing my part to make her feel like she's the greatest. So if you're reading this, sweetie, you are special.

Like two Tetris-L's

Book Store

While walking by the campus book store on my way to the cafeteria, I stopped to look at a display of books. I was there for only a minute, but in that time an old man, probably 60+ years of age, stopped by as well. He glanced over the books and said to me, "What, no porno?" and he walked off.

eww

I had it in my head

But I've forgotten what I was going to write about :-/

Maybe another day

She said it

Tonight as we got off the phone, she said "buh-bye" :D :D :D

hehe

Like a Virus

Morrowind has caught on to third floor simmy like a Virus. There's 7 people altogether playing Elder Scrolls 3 on this floor, all in different stages of completion. I've almost finished the main quest. I'm close to being at the top of the Imperial Guard. I'm almost the leader of the Fighter's Guild, and I've just started doing quests for the Mages Guild. I've gone crazy with enchantments, and have gone so far as to own Azura's Star, so I can use the gem all I want. Level 30 Bosmer Acrobat, that's me. 109 strength with my +24 constant effect fortified strength. And 261 intelligence with my two Fortify Intelligence 100 for 15 seconds rings. Wheee.

I miss Neverwinter Nights :( My friend still hasn't returned it, and it's been 7 months. NwN, oh how I miss you.

Come back