First day back

Well, the first day of class was a bit boring but it was mostly review so in a way that's actually a good thing. I'm surprised at how much free time I have. I got a lot done today-got my book situation covered, notified football that I was done with their nonsense, went to class, took care of my meal plan, and then came back to the room and sorted a bunch of music and read a whole lot for English. I also got my exercises in today. Now Paul and I are watching 20 straight episodes of Robot Chicken. Good day, kinda busy at points. I'll probably write some better posts for you all soon

Back to Tech

Well, here I am laying on my nice full size bed-it's soo big! :) Paul and I just got in a little while ago and we're just relaxing for a bit. I might have a job working night security on campus-I'm going to go ask about it tonight. It's the perfect job for a college student cause I basically just have to sit there and watch a building, so I could do homework or study or watch movies or whatever.

The house we're staying is crazy-it's super big but a whole bunch of people seem to be living here, so far I've only seen one.

Well, it's very nice to be back at school-during this part of the summer I need to find a job, notify football that I'm done with them, do the stuff I have for english, and take care of my class. It's the first day and I think I've already taken care of one of those, so it's looking good.

I do miss people already mostly I miss Ma and Jenn, then Skippy and Spud, and finally Max-Max is last cause he's loadest and I haven't been gone too long-I don't miss Hiccup.

Well I'm going to continue laying around for a while-I will keep you all posted.

Tired

I've spent almost all day at belivoir in the commissary and bx and such and I'm tired and I don't want to do anything. I have some interesting stuffs to write about later, but right now I just don't really feel like it. I don't know if i want to watch tv or just listen to some music for a bit...

Well till later

Bluetooth

Thanks to Best Buy putting one on sale, I now have a bluetooth headset for my phone. It is pretty awesome-the sound quality is great and it makes it much easier to talk on the phone.

It's pretty nice because while it's active it plays all the sound through the ear piece instead of the phone so I'm he only one that hears should I be playing music on the phone or if the ringer sounds or something. I am well pleased by such.

I also got a bluetooth adapter (again thanks to Best Buy) this way I can transfer files and such to my phone without worrying about making wires fit and all.

Overall this bluetooth business is working pretty good for me. Now I have to get my music in order so as to be able to load some nice music on my phone for the listening.

Fun night

Well, I have to say, I know sometimes I say I am bored at night, but tonight was definitely not one of those type nights. Jenn got to come over after she got off work. Also a friend of Skip's was able to be here for dinner.

Rewinding a bit-it was nice today to have a more relaxing type of day-Max and Skip were out most of the day so Spud and I got to complete our shelving project (completing projects is always very good). Also, as much as I must admit that I like Max, it's more relaxing when he's not around.

But later in the afternoon Skip, Max and Skip's friend came back to the house and we were all hanging out. Jenn arrived a little while afterwards and it was crazy for a bit cause we where getting dinner ready and the Lt called and all, but it was nice because it really seemed like a complete and bustling family-everybody there seemed to fit.

After dinner we relaxed some more (I did tell you it was a relaxing day). Then we had some delicious peach and french vanilla ice cream that Ma and I stumbled across.

Eventually Skip, her friend, Jenn and I got to play Canasta, which was very very fun. Jenn and I were on a team and we won, but Skip didn't do bad-her partner allegedly was just learning and made a couple decent mistakes that gave me some good points and made Skip not so happy. In the end I think everybody had a good time though.

After that I got to relax with Jenn and watch a movie/talk for a bit, which is always super super nice as I happen to like her very very much. Sadly though she had to leave at around midnight cause she was falling asleep and lives kinda far away. It'll be nice when we're both back at Tech and she'll live much closer.

Anyway as for me, learning Russian is going well so far, I'm up to lesson 5, which looks like a longer one so I'm not sure when I'll be able to fit it in. I haven't started that push-up routine that I talked about and I probably won't until I get more settled at school-although I am doing a little of this, a little of that while I can. And now, as it is getting late and Jenn is already asleep at her home, I leave you all for some sleep.

Learning Russian

Hi ever body, I just spent some time going through the first couple lessons of the learning Russian program Ma got for me. I have to stay I like it and I feel as though I'm already starting to pick somethings up. It's a pretty good feeling. Now I just need to get to point where I can speak a bit and have Ma get to the same point so we can talk in Russian, thus improving the both of our skills more quickly. I just feel as though the sound set for that language is one that I can more easily acquire than that of the romance languages.

As I just got back from Dake's birthday cookout-it was nice to and hang out with those guys. It also made me realize how much I missed by playing football and that I can just kinda be myself and hang out.

I'm well pleased today, there is even a small chance that I will get to see Jen later on.

Oh also in an effort to stay fit I've been looking into bodyweight exercises and such that way I don't really have to go to the gym to workout and from what I've seen it all kinda starts with building a good core and the ability to do many good push-ups. Thus I'm starting off with a program that is supposed to have me doing 100 push-ups in 10 weeks that I found on the free body weight exercises website that I found to advance this purpose.

It's dinner time so I will have to post later

50th

Well, today we went to the zoo today. It was rather fun-there were kind of 100 billion screaming kids running around today, but I was kinda happy to see that the kids got to go to the zoo. Everybody loves the zoo.

I'm pretty tired and tomorrow we go to Cousin Mary's wedding, which should be fun. But I wanted to post because I don't remember if I did yesterday and plus this here is my 50th ever post. So Woo.

I don't really have anything to crazy for today, just kinda wanted to say hullo.

A Switch

Well, I've decided to jump into the world of FLAC. FLAC is a super high quality audio format that is completely open source and thus well loved by the Linux community and somewhat hated by large corporations like Microsoft and Apple.

That's right everybody's favorite liberal popular computer builders are just as much a big evil corporation as Microsoft, in many ways much more so. In fact it seems to mean that a big evil corporation is, in fact, a very liberal idea-what with the centralized power. Now, I'm not saying that I hate big evil corporations and we need to take down the man at all. I just want people to wake up and realize what's really going on.

As far as my own view on big evil corporations, I add the evil only a somewhat satirical nod to public perception. We need large corporations, certainly. They have the resources to accomplish things that could otherwise never be achieved. Please remember that things like mass production lower cost. However, I think that large corporations, like the government, just has no business (Har Har Har) in certain aspects of my life.

There are a number of restrictions that are inherent to large organizations that are simply unnecessary, most of which I will probably talk about some other time. But for now back to FLAC. If I feel like FLAC is the best format for me-there is no reason that my music should no be in such a format. I should get to pick this sort of detail and what's more I should be able to easily covert my music into said format.

Now this is where the twist comes in-The shoulds from the last paragraph are exactly how it is.
The world operates in the correct fashion on this one-I feel like using this format and I can and it doesn't cost me anything but time to convert the music I have legally to this format. -Side Note-I've been converting for almost seven hours now. Not everyone supports this format but again that's how it should be. Everybody shouldn't be forced to use this format just because some people like it.

Now some of you folk out that might be craving upheaval may be asking, well what about the popular players that force you to use formats like AAC or Mp3 or WMA and for that matter what about those formats not being open source so that anybody can use them. Well as far as them not being open source for the average person that doesn't matter at all because there are plenty of safe, free, and easy to use programs out there to convert to such formats. And if a popular player forces you to use a format you don't like, get a different player.

This is a great point that many people (especially Democrats) don't seem to understand. Just because everybody else does something, doesn't mean I have to or that it has to work for me. You can never ever make a system that will work for everybody, rather everybody simply needs a common interface that allows them to work together, the implementation of how things are accomplished must be left up to individuals. I'll leave this one there.

But in all, Apple need to stop pretending to be an underdog corporation fighting against Microsoft's evil controlling ways. People need to realize that Microsoft did a lot of good for the world and allowed people to use computers-your average user could never figure out Linux and Mac Os simply does not interface broadly enough to be practical. Apple is just as evil and controlling (probably more so) what with it's whole computer as a single piece you can upgrade anything by yourself outlook. I direct you to the Lt.'s blog on this one.

FLAC is awesome, but I have a lot of converting to do, it takes up more disk space, and I will need a new portable player (I'm looking at the Cowon D2) if I wish to take FLAC along. But I can still convert FLAC to the more widely used Mp3 so that's not an immediate requirement. However, along those lines, if anyone would like to buy a 30GB white zune....

Well, I leave you all for now, I shall most like blog again soon about something or other.

Ah fun

Well, today was one of those day's that I woke up worked a lot and now I'm tired.

I got to see Jenn last night after she finally got released from work and that was good.

I dunno what to say, I spent most of today building shelves and such and now I'm tired and I don't really know what I want to do with myself. Eh, well, I will post later when I have something more to say.

:P

Well, I got a new phone. It's actually a pretty nifty new phone and it seems like it was right about time to get a new one anyway. The only real problem is I don't really have everybody's number that I would normally have.

I still have to call Newsome and let him know that I'm done with his nonsense, but I can't really do that until I have his number...

Anyway, back to my new phone-it's fairly basic-I went with the cheapest one be all the phones they had had all the features I would realistically use, because for any of the really crazy features you have a ton extra per month, which bites. but this phone has some cool stuff on it and it seems very very functional which in all honesty is exactly what I'm looking for in a phone.

I like the calender deal that this one has, but in using it I have the somewhat depressing realization that I don't have any up coming events really.

I should have figured out a way to go the event that was being held tonight, but I couldn't do so in time so...

Ah well, I'll be back at school soon and have lots of things going on then.

I guess I've posted enough for one day-till later.

OK OK

Ok, so upon reviewing the photo hosting sites on the web, most of them bite or cost money thus I will be going with the plan of creating a photo blog so there are no worries about whether or not you all have to sign in or register or something to see the pictures I post. Just bear with me as getting all the photos up will likely take a while.

New Look

In trying to figure out a good way to share all my pictures with all you guys I noticed a nice new look that I like. I like green so I updated the look and after all I am the blog master.

For now I'm thinking the easiest and quickest solution to sharing my pictures is to use a service like Photobucket or something of that nature, just because putting all of them up on a Blog will be a hairy organizal problem all around.

Look for more updates later.

Bored At Night

So we got back from PA earlier today and earlier I posted to tell you about the Utz factory and such and since then it's been mostly laying about for me.

Yeah I sorted a bit of my massive music collection but I didn't really get that much done otherwise, just kinda laid about a lot. It's these sort of days that make me feel bored.

I've been thinking though and instead of including some pictures within various posts of this here blog, I've decided to make use of some online picture hosting website where I can put all of my pictures for you to see. Now this doesn't mean that I will never again include pictures in my posts but rather that I shall more likely simply refer to the picture site. Perhaps the thing to do is once again steal a page from the Lt.'s book and simply create a whole different picture blog for your entertainment.


Naturally all this means I shall have to sort through my pictures to make this a reality but I should probably do that anyway.

Man, I just really want to study engineering right now. I was going through my old emails, sorting out the ones I don't need, directly before writing this and I was noticing on all the stuff I missed out on. It makes me want to go study my books and learn more. I understand how extremely nerdy this is but that's how I am-nerdy. I just want to learn.

Eh well time to go deal with the dog.

Home Again

Well, I am home again, as you can probably tell from the fact that I'm actually posting again. This morning before leaving Pennsylvania we went to the Utz factory and saw them making chips there and even got a free sample, but possibly the best part of the trip to that was the factory store where we went afterwards. I got a snack tin of greatness. We got a ton of snacks altogether though. Three huge bags of pretzels and a 3lb bag of chips are among the highlights.

I am well pleased. Visiting PA was fun but it's nice to be home in my proper state and county-I like it here.

Well I just wanted to give you all a quick little update, I shall probably post again sometime this afternoon and I'll figure a good way to post the Gettysburg pictures for your enjoyment.

Gettysburg 2

Day 2 Remote Posting

I'm rather tired today-long day in the sun and such. Although I am well pleased because I feel as though I better understand the goings on that happen at the Gettysburg.

Today we woke up and headed straight out to the battle field to explore and basically see what we would see.

-Side Note- Yesterday we went to dinner at a German style place. It was pretty fair outside of Gettysburg and I had concerns that it really wouldn't be worth the trip out but it turned out to be the best German food that I have ever at in the States so it was worth it all around.

At first we went up to Oak ridge, North of Gettysburg and saw some of the sites there. It was pretty neat indeed, but a little hard to figure out just how it fit into the rest of every as we were working off just the map to an audio tour. The audio part of the tour that went with that map came only on cd so we didn't buy that bit as our car only has cassette.

Anyway, after Oak ridge we were heading back into to tour as we saw Robert E. Lee's headquarters so we stopped to look in there, just a tiny little museum nothing too crazy. However the gift shop had, among other things an audio tour on cassette so we picked that up and followed it for the rest of the day.

-Side Note- The gift shop also had the flag for Lee's headquarters which is pretty cool. I got one. I'm thinking it would be pretty cool to have the flags from all the countries I've been to and other such things of note that I've actually see a part of.

The audio tour was very very good. It basically walked through the entire battle field and told you who occupied that spot and what happen there and what the generals were thinking and such. It really helped me understand how the battle happen and seeing the actual places made it much more real than a theoretical discussion would.

When I get a chance to post the pictures I will do so, so that you too can see the terrain and get a sense for how it happen and all.

But my gripe with the Civil war has always been that I have never really felt that I was able to get it straight in my mind how the battles and war really happen. I mean I've always known that Gettysburg was the high water mark of the rebellion and that sort of thing but exactly how that all happen I never really got a sense of before. It's like I knew all the details without really have a good overall idea of how it really fit together and that I feel like I really acquired for Gettysburg today.

Anyway after we got back from the battle field tour-it took like 4 hours because the tape was about 2 hours long and at various spots we all got out of the car so that max could run around and we could see some of the more interesting sites (Be sure to look for pictures of such events)-we came back to the room for just long enough for me to label all the pictures so that I wouldn't forget what they are of then we set out on the town.

We stopped at a shop that had some nifty T-Shirts, I got a cool one of a bayonet charge for me and one of Picket's charge for Jen (Perhaps I'll post pictures of them later on). Max got his second mini cannon for the trip. Then we went to a place called the Gingerbread man where I had the Philly cheese steak. It was good but not as good as the German food from last night so in comparison it was simply ok-I enjoyed it though.

After food we walked around the a bit more of the town, saw some shops, I got a book of maps that explains the various points of interest and what was around during the time, exactly the sort of thing that I like in regards to understanding wars.

We then walked to the center of town, where there is a traffic circle and a statue of Lincoln talking to a flabbergasted modern man holding a copy of the hand written version of the Gettysburg address, the statue is entitled "Return Visit"-No pictures of that one, by this time I've used up the batteries on both my and mom's cameras chiefly because Max likes to flip switches and my battery never really charged.

After all this walking we returned to the room but not before getting ice cream. I got chocolate peanut butter-very tasty indeed.

I'm rather happy on today because I feel as though I really understand how the battle of Gettysburg happen, which was my personal goal for the trip.

Oh my phone screen broke today, which bites super hard, because while I did kinda have the feeling that a few things about my phone aren't how they should be, I kinda needed that phone, but I guess these things happen, I guess. But that means that I don't have any body's numbers and I realize I could use facebook's creepy phonebook dealie to look up some numbers but if I don't call any of you for a bit you know why-also I can't spend or receive text messages so if I don't respond see above.

Anyway at this point I've most likely bored you all enough with my writing and everybody else is asleep so I shall close for today.

Gettysburg 1

Day 1 Remote posting

Hullo all, I did indeed bring my computer to Gettysburg, but it seems I have forgotten to bring along the internets. Thus I will be writing my posts up using one my favorite windows programs, Notepad (nice and simple).

Well last night as many of you blog fans probably know I did not get to sleep until 5 in the am thus I have been tired today but it hasn't really too bad. I was able to get all my stuff together and in the car before anybody else got dressed, but to be fair I must note that I have neither a 2-year-old nor arthritis like my travel buddies ma and skip.

The drive wasn't bad, it was mostly Route 15 and had much good green screenary and not very many slow driving nimrods. Max was very good throughout the ride despite a few high pitched squeals, but it was lucky considering the potential horror of a two-year-old and a two hour car trip.

When we got in the hotel room wasn't quite ready yet so we went to a farnsworth inn to have some lunch. I was rather hungry as I didn't really have any breakfast. I had meatloaf and a bottle of cider as well as a black walnut apple cake with a glass of chocolate milk. Overall it was good. Our waitress was a fairly ditsy girl that couldn't seem to believe that I wanted the entire bottle of cider.

Upon arriving at the hotel room I unloaded the car while ma got an extra bed while max proceeded to take over the entire room and overall be a little boy. As soon as we got everything in the room we left again. for the new and improved visitor's center.

The new center is pretty darn nifty. Has a bunch of stuff to see, plus it's all new and expansive.

In the gift shop me and ma found Max simply by following the screams of Max, who was holding a toy gun yelling boom at anyone that he saw.

My only problem with the whole thing is that it seems likes it's all about slavery and civil rights and such. I don't disagree that that stuff is important and connected to the Civil War, but the point of the whole thing was State's vs. Federal Rights.

The northerners opposed slavery because they felt that it would prevent small farmers, expanding westward, from competing with larger slave owning farmers-Paraphrased from the visitor center.

Also I'd like to point out the Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves from the South and didn't really say much about any slaves that might be in the North.

Anyway going back to the main story, after the visitor center we all went down to the civil war cemetery and walked through that. I have discovered/remembered that are an incredibly huge number of unknown soldiers buried there.

As we were leaving the cemetery a large rain was approaching so we came back to the hotel and I turned on the computer in hopes of posting, but it looks as I have to write the post now and actually post it later.

Well I think that that is as much post writing that I can do-Max is getting into everything and we are beginning to talk of food once again. I shall write again tomorrow.

Ok that was easy

Well hi again, I know it's quick since my last post buy that's ok. I figured out a better way to keep track of all your all blogs and fun content and such. It is called google reader and it basically tracks websites and tell you when they get updated. But the best part is it brings all the content to you in one easy to handle space. Like the guy in the intro video explains it is an inbox for the internet. I suggest you all look at it when you get the chance to.

Now that I have an organized way to keep better track of all the input I can start to produce a little output.

I'm not sure if all of you all know, but I have decided that I shall no longer be playing football at Tech. It's just not the best thing for me to do and without it I will be able to explore a lot of other interesting hobbies.

To keep you all informed about such hobbies and what not I shall be using this here bloggie deal.

Oh-side note-I have stolen this format of little paragraphs of mostly contained thought from the Lt.'s nerdy blog. I think it makes it easy to read and it certainly makes it a lot easier to write so this is the format your going to have to deal with out of me.

I believe you all know of my large interest in music. I an amassing a cd collection and a vinyl collection to go with and enhance my impressive mp3 collection. I already have databases to the first two published on these here interwebs and I shall be publishing a database of my mp3 collection as soon as I get the chance to figure out MySQL. (Links to databases can be found on there names)

-Side note- I am a big fan of google and all the fun stuff they let me play with for free.

I am publishing these databases so you'all can know what I have should you need to borrow something or find yourself in a savager hunt for a person that has such and such. As I get my movies organized and settled I shall produce and publish a data of those too.

As far as music goes my tastes are very broad and getting broader. Right now I'm exploring the realm of jazz a bit and I am finding that so far I like bebop the best. Although I always like anything progressive-Porcupine Tree looks especially interesting.

I also have a Last.fm page, so ya'all, or at least those of you with a last.fm profile, can track what I listen to on the BlueBox (my media box that runs ubuntu 8.04)-just increase you want to do that sort of thing.

-Side note- I'd like to point out that I include these links and such not best cause you couldn't find the content on your own, but because I want to make it more convenient for you, because I truly care about you the consumer. Plus that way it helps to balance out when I can't spell stuff.

I am also learn the bass (guitar not fish), which is sometimes slow but overall going very well and certainly very fun.

I am attempting to learn Russian, so far that is going very very slow, but it's ok, because I have much time to do that one.

That's all of that I can think of for now. Tomorrow me, the mom, and skip are going to Gettysburg for three days (coming home on Thursday). -Tempted to take my bass- But I shall indeed be taking my computer, which certainly does have use beyond folding proteins (which if you should get into go here and be sure to use group number 100921) . I shall also certainly be taking my camera and I hope to have pictures for you folk later this week.

In other news things are going well with Jen, I happen to like her and lucky she feels the same of me, even though both of us are incredibly busy this summer.

But I think that is enough for now, I shall post again for you all soon.

Under Construction

Well folks, I'm trying to figure out a bunch of the cool stuff I can bring you guys with this here bloggie business, but I have a lot of ideas and such and not so many good sources of information on how to get it done. My first project is to try to get thunderbird (my RSS ) handler to manage the feeds from all your all bloggs so as it is easier to check them all. but eh- it does not always go well
Also i'm switching to shorter and probably crazier posts-bye for now