November 2003 Archives

For some odd reason Comedy Central is showing the Soth Park movie uncut and uncensored. This is very odd, I mean regular cable having such profanity! In one show! Its very refreshing after being home all weekend. The only downside is that the commericals are racking up more TV time than the actual movie.

Today we actually had Turkey. See, because Mom has been out of town today was our Thanksgiving meal. My father, as always, make a great meal. Now my Mom on the other hand had to give me crap all day about my personal life. Go figure. There are just some things a mother should never ask. Seriously.

So talking to various women, I have come up with a theory: Nothing says 'I love you' like the gift of an iBook. Its true. I'd feel loved. Way to go Zach. I only wish I could be half the boyfriend that you are to Stef. To a girl I'm with, that is. Not Stef. Man, I can't even spell her last name right half the time.

I played some Starcraft online with Zach tonight. It was fun to kick people's butts online. Seriously, Zach and I so kicked butt. They were so ticked at us. Sigh... I'll have to do more of that this summer. Gang up on people. We're so evil.

I'll be leaving for schoola round 9 or 9:30 tomorrow morning. which means I should be back at school around noonish. Whihc is good, because I have a LOT of homework to do. I mean, we're talking about a LOT of work here. I need to crack down and get going. No more video games for me. Le sigh.....

Lets see, today was rather interesting. In many respects. First off I got my car fixed. New wipers, oil change, coolent flush. Dad and I went out for breakfast. I finally got my coat zipper fixed. No more saftey pin for this coat! We than went to Koles to find me a new shirt, and ended up getting me a leather coat. A very nice one, very very much so on sale. I was stunned, all I wanted was a new dress shirt.

We went and saw Elf this afternoon. It was funny, I felt very very old in the theater. So many children. It was overall quite funny. Not four stars, but a good three stars. What is really getting me lately are the anti-piracy ads that run before movies. "Hello I'm Joe Smith and I paint sets. IF you copy movies I lose money, and you hurt me." This is so dumb. All these guys that they show get paid no matter how well a movie does. Quiet frankly if the industry spent less money on big name stars and more money on a script that didn't suck, maybe people would go see the movie?

Ok, so tonight I did two really weird things. First off I BOUGHT software. Thats right, software. Starcraft to be exact. I know, I should have done so a long time ago, but I did not. Now I have a real serial code to play online, with the roomies. Seocnd my old buddy Michael Danelson and I went to a lot of bars. 4 actually, and had a drink at each one. We had some good talks, about college, life, and women. Its nice to know someone else is having difficulties with the better gender besides me. Note to self: Bloody Mary thats extra spicy is too expensive and too spicy for me to drink. I was able to try various beers, of which I've not really tried much of anything.

Argggg.... I have so much homework to do. Someone kill me, or at least hurt me enough as to delay this madness that is my finals work. KAHN!!!!!!

Make Less Bald Tell So. Those are the words from my Mike's Hard Lemonade caps. I think it means something, something big.

So I got up at about 2:30 today. Nothing makes me feel better than sleeping in, all day long. Though I'm no where nearly as bad as John sometimes gets. He's been known to sleep until 6 or 7 at night, on the weekends. Not that its a problem, its just nice for John to see sunlight ever once in a while.

So Thanksgiveing with my family was good. It was just Dad, my sister, and I. Mom is in Iowa City visiting family. I do enjoy my father's cooking though, its so damn good. I can only hope to be as good of a cook as he is some day. Seriously. We had a long talk at Hy-Vee the other day about wine, and he's now going to give me his own personal wine book! Now all I need is a wine rack in my room. Wait wait... my room it too SMALL for anything else.

The three of us went to the movie 'The Missing' tonight. It was actually quite good, Ron Haward makes a good movie. We rented and watched 'The Bourn Idenity,' which I've seen before. Its a rather fun film, with a great car case in the middle. Now we also rented 'The Core.' I enjoyed it, but mostly for its MST3K qualities. It was really rather funny at times, but than again I find most movies to be rather funny at times. Even the super serious ones. My King-foo is strong!

Thats all I did today, that and talk on AIM. On this damn 233 iMac! Even web browsing is slow on this thing, and the worst part is that when you have more than one AIM window open, everything stop when a new message shows up. Which sucks even more when you're talking to 4 people. Arg!!! I can't wait for my parents to buy my tower so I have something good to come home to. Well.... if I have a Powerbook, I won't need to use the tower! Muh ha ha ha ha!

So my hit counter told be that I've now had 666 people visit my site. How insanely evil of it. I know, its really sad when your weblog has more visits than you've gotten phone calls in college. Or, dare I say, visits from people! At least some people are posting these days, mostly at my dislike for South Dakota.

I bought the X-Men 2 DVD today. Which kicks ass. Seriously, I so love it, and I've been waiting a long time to buy it. Boo yeah! My DVD collection has not been growing lately, and I really should save my money for a kick ass Powerbook! Sigh....

So, by popular request here is a list of this I'm thankful for. Or at least the ones I can think of at this time. First off is my family (including my cat), and my dear dear friends who love me for who I am. I'm very thankful for being at GAC and living in America (actually, only part of the time. Canada, please, come save me from the RIAA and the MPAA). My Macintosh with auto spellcheck and the ability to block the f&@!*&# pop-ups (which my parents computer keeps running into). Lets see... I'm thankful for gravity, and the sun, and most of the laws of physics. Breakfast foods, birds, pens, blank cds, fine wine, Zach being very tickleish, worms, flaws in Windows that make national headlines, and as always, socks. Cuz socks make my feet feel so good. There. Thats the rundown of what I'm thankful for this year.

For Christmas I only have one gift that I want. Its the car from the TV show Knight Rider. An indestructable car that talks and drives for you. I mean, who wouldn't want that. Plus the car was super funny and had good taste in fine wine. though how a car knows about wine is somethign I don't know. The only downside to that car is that it probably is a bit out of date, and would not be able to run OS 10.3. Also, it would only have a 28.8 modem on it. Which would make the internet very slow, but the car very very fast. I bet I could hook up my iPod to it though, which would be handy, seeing as how its probably running off about 50 MB of HD space and 4 MB of RAM. I so do love the 80s.

So I've got my father pumped with the idea that if I take a laptop over seas, along with my iSight we could video chat. He likes the idea way too much actually, but if it gets him to help me buy a Powerbook than he can be excited as he wants to be. I've so got to figure out whats going to happen next year, because before long it'll be Spring and I'll have to have all the forms in.

My father thinks my blog postings are too long. Does anyone else think thats so? He only skims my postings once a week, an to think of all the pain I went through to set this up for him! So theres the prompt for your comments! Are my posts too long, too short, or just right?

With any luck I'll see Samantha and her boyfriend while I'm home. Which would be cool because I really want to meet this guy she's so mad about. See if he's as good as she says he is. Because if he isn't, well, theres nto really much I can do about it. I'm kinda flabby and weak (except for my hidden mutant power that makes people's heads explode!).

I'd put some fun links in, if I knew html or wasn't so damn lazy that I won't look up how I encoded it in my other posts (I do miss my computer, and do dislike being forced to post off the web interface of Moveable Type). I'll be back at school soon enough.

So I'm in South Dakota right now. PLease, don't be too excited for me. Its not too exciting here. I'm on my parents original iMac, the one we got right before I started high school. Nothing like a 233 mhz G3 processor to make you miss your G4! At least we have a cable modem at home, so we're at least somewhat techie. I do miss OS X. Auto spell check always helps, and it would probably help now.

I went out to dinner with my Dad tonight. Dinner is always fun when someone else is paying. Mmmmmm steak. He did offer to take my current computer (867 G4, 1.5 GIG RAM, Radeon 9000) off my hands and help me out with getting a laptop for next year. Wooo hoo! Hello 15in Powerbook! My only wish is for Apple to come out with a G5 Powerbook by than, which probably won't happen till the middle of the summer, screwing me over once again.

Oh, the men of 202 found out that Whalstrum isn't on next years houseing form. Which means a new dorm is being built. Hmmm... I guess it wouldn't be so bad giving up Whalstrum if a newer, better dorm was built. We really do love our single rooms, I mean, come one, my roomies are great guys, but we all need our space now and than. My only concern is if the school can get it built in time, which I don't think they can. I'd hate to be left high and dry without a dorm room next year. That is, if I'm even around for the first part of next year. I should really look into that.

I should really go to bed. I've got a bug day of spending other people's money tomorrow. I'm going to try and get my father to buy me some new shirts and possibily pay for a haircut! Oh, and yes, my father does have an ear ring. Its so weird.

So after I took Sarah to her car down at MSU, i couldn't find a parking space back in the Whalstrum parking lot. As usual. So, as I always do, I parked in the music parking lot. Little did I know that I had parked my car in a snow drift, of which I couldn't get back out of later that night. When katie and I tried to go rent some movies, it took about twenty minutes to shovel my car out of the snow, and than me pushing a lot. It wasn't fun. But luckily I have a shovel in my car. Thanks mom and dad!

So Nate and I watched two movies last night, two really crazy movies. We first watched Jackie Brown, the last Quentin Terantino film we hadn't seen. It was quite good, but rather long. Quite long. But it was funny to us, in a very dry sort of way. Now that movie that really messed us up was Natural Born Killers. Man, I mean, was that a freaky movie to the core. I mean, it looked like a bad nightmare come to the movie screen. It was good, but not for the weak of heart.

So I'm leaving for South Dakota here in about 15 minutes. Thanksgiving with me Dad, and eventually my Mom when she gets back from Iowa City. This'll be a nice break before I have to go into a mad dash to do my 15 page paper for 19th Century Europe. Oooo the fun! Also, the snow around here is melting fast. I didn't think it would stay long, but it was sure cute while it lasted. Hopefully I'll find some time to post while at home, but come on now, it is South Dakota. Nothing exciting ever really happens there.

So part of my problem with my blog is that I sometimes post at 2 or 3 a.m. and it messes with everyone's perception of how often I blog. Seriously, i'll post one day, and it'll look like I skipped a day, but in reality, I posted at 2 a.m. the next morning for the day before the day I am on. Confused yet? I hope so.

So Saturday I got up and than drove up to the cities to meet Sarah Laflin, who was visiting some friends. This would be quite simple, except the state of Minnesota has turned into a Winter Wonderland; complete with snow, ice, and sleet. This does not make for a fun drive, due to the fact that the cars move at 60 m.p.h., instead of the usual 90. I eventually get there, and than we have to navigate downtown to where we're staying, which is also really bad because the fact that neither of us are familiar with downtown, and its still snowing quite hard. Oh, and did I happen to say that my car wipers suck? Cuz they do, and I need to get them replaced, because the usually make my visibility worse. Anyhow, we make it fine, and we eventually make out way to Orchestra Hall, which is a few blocks away. This would also be quite simple, if not for the fact that Sarah has on some fashionable shoes that cause her to walk unusually slow.

The Minnesota Orchestra concert was simply great. Amazing, to say the least. If I had a larger vocabulary, I would say more, but sadly, I was schooled in Iowa. The orchestra started out with Mozart's Overture to Impresario, and then played the John Adam's Violin Concerto. The violin concerto was impressive, but I really couldn't get into it at all. Really. It was nice, but it was not my cup of tea. What really got me was the Symphonie fantastique which was the second half. Now that rocked. Rocked so much I put it in bold. Its been way too long sense I've been to a good orchestra concert, of which I should go more. I got some student rush tickets, which meant I only paid about $6 a ticket, and we got 8th row center. How wicked is that.

The weather was quite bad driving back the next day, it's still probably snowing now out, but the company was good. We did see a pack of wild turkey, and it made me hungry. Anyhow, I was quite happy to be able to spend time with Sarah this weekend. We walked around downtown Sunday morning, which was quite deserted because of the weather. We went into this really cool old bookstore and rummaged though stacks of old, first edition books. All of which were way too expensive for me. I managed to hang on to Sarah for another night due to the weather, I guess driving back to Oklahoma wouldn't be the best of ideas in a snowstorm. She wasn't too turned off by staying in 202, but according to her, it beat staying with her buddies at MSU. A group of us went out for Chinese, and I really had to feed my Chinese fix (which apparently has put me at about 195 lbs. I need to lose weight), because I've only gone to Yu's now twice this semester. No money, and too much belly.

I fixed up the extra room in the section for Sarah, who thought our Mario Kart fixation was humorous. She fit right in with the whole group, knowing way too well how to make fun of me. Too bad she has to go back home tomorrow. Oh well. In other weirdness, Zach asked for me to make him a carmel apple schnapps sprite. So weird. I never thought this would happen, Zach drinking. I'm running out of Schnapps.

I'll try and take a few photos of the winter landscape before I go home for Thanksgiving. I'm kind of kicking myself for not taking a few picture of snowy downtown this morning. Arg! Must go to sleep!

So got around to buying the special edition of The Two Towers tonight, which includes 5 dvds and a smeagol figurine. Yes, we did watch it, and man did it take forever to watch, but man was it ever so cool. Forty-two minutes of extra footage put back into the film, good footage that added depth and meaning to the film. Lots of extra treats for fans, who like me, have actually read the books. Buying the special edition without the figurine is only $25-30 at most store, but I sadly do not wish to spend the money right now. My only hope is for my parents to buy me it, and several other DVDs, for my Christmas.

Speaking of holidays, Thanksgiving is coming up. I don't know when I'm going to leave for home. See, two of my three classes have been canceled on Wednesday, and I still have a personal day to use for orchestra so I don't really need to go on Tuesday night. So at the earliest I could go home Monday night. Hmmm.... what to do what to do.

Looks like we're going to get a bunch of snow Saturday and Sunday. I was actually liking our unusually warm weather, but alas, it cannot last forever. If it was lasting forever I would probably be in Mexico drinking a Long island Ice Tea, and also be on the beach. Hmm... I'm hatching a new plan. Move Gustavus to Mexico. there we go, I'm sure the college would approve that plan.

Before I go to bed here I once again would like to stress my dislike for the new Mario Kart game. Seriously, the game isn't really that much fun to play, no different than the regular Mario Kart, except with better graphics. I'm going to get very annoyed with the fact that certain roomies of mine will be spending all their time trying to get insane new track records every day. I mean, the music is so annoying to listen to, especially when someone is playing the same track every 2 minutes. Arg!

Ok, so I took a day or two off from writing to my blog. I've been buys... kind of. Or moreover I've been really really lazy. Damn allergy season, or I should say the return of the allergy season. See, its November, but not like you'd notice it, because the grass on campus has turned green again. There is even one tree that has some buds on it. I don't know whats going on around here, but its keeping me in t-shirts. Which is a very good thing, seeing how all of my Long-sleeved t-shirts were shrunk a a week or so ago. Damn laundry shirking bastards!

Lets see, whats going on in my life... well, I watched American History X last night with Nate and Lisa. I'd not seen it before, but man was it good. Quite disturbing, but very very good. Speaking of movies, as it always appears to happen in the library I run into very interesting people. This week it was someone on the CAB movie committee, the people who pick the movies that play on campus. Long story short I impressed him with my random movie knowledge, and now I'm a member. I also found out what movies will be showing the next few weeks on campus. Lets see, Lost in Translation is showing, Underworld, and Whale Rider. All good movies (ok, underworld is stretching it a bit. I mean, it is a movie about vampires, but dude, where was the daylight? The movie took place over several days, but there was never daylight.) Anyhow, I'm very impressed with this years picks for movies, and ever so happy that Lost In Translation is showing, because I never got to see it in the theaters.

I registered for classes, and got into everything I wanted except golf. Oh well, I didn't expect to get in. Golf is very very popular, along with ever other gym type class. Stupid gym requirement. I so need to get that worked out soon enough. Maybe yoga would be cool. Or maybe Walk, or Golf. Walk would be fun.

So Ben bought Mario Kart: Double Dash!! yesterday, and has been playing it non-stop. Go figure. Which means I won't be able to use the TV for the next week or so because every time I come back someone will be playing that damn game. It'll probably get worse, you can buy a network connection thingy so they can play against each other on the network. The pain will never end. NEVER! Must kill Gamecube.....

I went to a discussion about US/ Iraq relations today in the DIVE. Finally, a group of students that come together to discuss current events. I've been waiting for this sort of thing on campus for two years now. The discussion was nice, and as expected consisted of about 5 people doing all the talking about about 25 people watching. Next time this group comes together I'll have to do some research and write out some interesting points.

So have I mentioned how much I enjoy talking to Samantha Engh? Cuz I do. A lot. I had a really nice conversation in the caf this afternoon with her, and it has thus been the high point of my day. I need to bottle Sam up and sell her off to people who lack good conversations. I would make a fortune!

My favorite show of all time is probably coming back! Family Guy may be back on Fox due to extremely high DVD sales! I sure do hope it comes back, that or my parents buy me the next DVD set. Hmmm... its so good.

Lastly Jared has been on my case about my webcounter, the thing in the corner that counts how many people visit my page. Before I was tracking page loads, which may or may not have inflated my number. So, because of Jared's complaining, and because I love the man, I switched to a different setting, where it only tracks unique visits to the page. Long story short, I still have more people visiting my page than Jared. Sadly, no one ever posts comments on my page. Its enough to make me cry. A lot. Come on now, someone must have some fun comment to post. Anyone?

This week is Homeless Awareness week at GAC. That means Professor Richard Leitch and his FTS are sleeping outside as usual. Which also means we had class outside today. It wasn't a bad day out, so to speak, but it wasn't nice either. It probably didn't help that he was sick, which is a major letdown, because he is the most enthusiastic and fun professor I've ever had. Erin Betendorf and I went and bought him some soup and hot coco, because the last thing we is for him to be sick and class no to be fun! I mean, who would keep me entertained between 12:30-1:20 every MTWF!

I picked my classes out for next semester. Please don't laugh. Latin America & the US. History Seminar. Latin American Politics. Parties and Elections. Orchestra. Viola Lessons. Golf. Yes, Golf. Everyone in 202 is trying to get in on it. Which means I'll have to get my clubs from home, and figure out how to play again. Which also mean... i'll probably have to play with my father, the God of Golf! Save me someone!

Lastly I want to let you all know about the book I'm reading for 19th Century Europe, Death in Venice. Its not that its a great book, or even an entertaining book. Its just that I can only take so much of one man's lusting, after a 14 year old boy. I really can't wait until he dies. It will be the high point in my reading for the week.

I often think that this is what would happen, if my parents actually read my blog on a daily biases. Its rather sad but true. But we all know that they'll never actually read it. Sigh....

So on Saturday I didn't do much of anything exciting. I got up and went to our dress rehearsal, during which Warren went all HULK on us due to quite a few people being late. I can't say I've ever seen him get so angry at anyone before. After the rehearsal I went to the library to do some eres work. I can't walk down the streets of Saint peter these days without some professor giving me yet ANOTHER document to scan in for eres! arg! Oh well, at least I'm getting some good cash for it, and hopefully it can buy me a laptop eventually.

That evening Sam, Jen, and I all hung out in Sohre and had a few drinks. They're really fun girls, and I keep trying to get Jared to come meet some of them. That boy really needs to start meeting some girls, besides the ones that live in our section. I wouldn't even call it 'living' as much as 'squatting' on our land. Now I know how it feels to be a large landholder in Brazil (random reference to Comparative Politics class). Anyhow, those girls are great, and the make me laugh. What a great Saturday.

Now Sunday was interesting. We had our fall orchestra concert. It was awesome, to say the least. We played all of Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 4 (a major show stopper). I made sure to actually get some shots of me in my tux this time. I never have any photos of me. This may be due to the fact that I'm the one who is always taking the shots. Man, someone else needs to buy a digital camera!

Lastly Zach gave Stef a major gift. An iBook. Wow, was she surprised by it. I mean, who wouldn't be. At least now he can't complain about her using his powerbook all the time. Sigh.... I've been his friend for over two years and he's yet to even get me a card on my birthday. Maybe if I'm nice he'll buy me an iBook too. I'd better save up my own cash anyhow, new Powerbook if I go over seas.... or a used Powerbook if I'm staying around here. mmmmm.... Powerbook..... Start drooling... now!

On a much lighter note, Zach did try all of my many flavors of Schnapps Sunday night. I was very very surprised! Is this a new trend for Zach? A bit of sprite and Schnapps on the weekends? My goodness, what has my world come to! has hell frozen over? Or is this an evil Zach clone that has come to kill us all? Only time will tell. (Oooo a Schnapps powered evil robot maybe!)

So I wake up and look at my alarm clock, and see that it says 11:30. I yelled 'shit' and wrote a quick letter to a professor of mine proclaiming that I had overslept, and that i was ever so sorry to have missed her class. As I quickly ran to the bathroom I noticed that the clocks in the section all said 9:30, which is when I usually wake up. So I went back into my room and checked my computer clock, which also said 9:30. My alarm clock was two hours off, I had set it wrong the night before. So I sent another letter off to my professor telling her to disregard the first one. Needless to say my professor thought it was rather funny.

I met with Joyce form IT today and had a very long lunch discussing many different Macintosh things. According to her we may have 10.3 on the eMacs on campus after J-term. She also told me how she liked the whole iSight thing, and I so ever do hope that they pen the ports so i can audio and video chat to outside of campus. Maybe than my parents would get a new computer with an iSight so I can videochat with them.

If you ever wanted to rate your professor in an anonymous forum, I found the sight for you. Rate My Professors does exactly that! I found that most of Gustavus' professors can be seen on the site, or easily added. I should go through and have fun, maybe add a witty comment or two.

So a while back I saw an awesome movie trailer for Robota, a cool sci-fi fantasy movie about robots taking over the world. Ok, so I finally realized that its not a movie, but a 160 page illustrated novel, which is so damn cool. I'm thinking of buying it later this weekend. The picture you see above is from the book, and the other pictures I have seen will blow your mind away! I'm also thing of buying the new Apocalyptica CD from Europe. They just released a special edition of it complete with a second CD and a DVD. The only problem is, I don't know if the version thats on Amazon.com is the special edition version or not. I sooo want it. Apocalyptica's webpage has some cool stuff also, like backgrounds and band information. Nothing like a group of cellos playing heavy metal.

So what did I do tonight? Well Sara Given and I watched Run Lola Run and drank the bottle of wine I got for her. Hmmm.... sweet strawberry wine. Such Pure Ambrosia. The movie was good and the company was better. Its been quite some time sense Sara spent some quality time with me. Sure beats the hell out of going to Gaming Night again. Blah to the max!

I should get some sleep, I do have a 12:00 orchestra rehearsal tomorrow.

So Zach ended up winning Concerto Aria competition the other day. He will play in the spring concert with the orchestra. Wow, imagine his ego now. It must be the size of Cleveland, Ohio. Speaking of concerts the orchestra concerts, we have one on Sunday. I'm looking forward to it because my parents will be visiting! My parents, who never actually view my blog, even though I spent HOURS setting it up! Hours, days even! The insanity!

I made a nice Advanced Mail Features guide on the GACMug page. I detail the fun stuff about Mail , such as Threads, SPAM Filters, and customizing the toolbar! Ooooo... check it out.

Speaking of Macs, I'm meeting with the director of IT tomorrow to talk about Macs! Hopefully the Macs on campus have a long and bright future! If not that, I get a free lunch. Which is never bad. Hopefully my pirating of software does not come into question. Apparently they liked the MUG setup I made. Wow, all my hard work is actually paying off. In a free lunch.

The weather has turned warm again. There was snow and now its gone. WHY WON'T IT MAKE UP ITS MIND! Arg! Plus my zipper on my winter coat is still broken. I've been using a safety pin to pull my zipper up for a good nine months or so. Darn, anyone know a zipper repair-man?

I now have some Contact information up. As if those of you reading this don't already know all of this info anyhow. Sigh... such a dull day for me. At least i can look forward to the weekend.

So I really hate winter. It was raining ice today, that turned into wet snow, which is now a really warm day. I wish winter would make up its mind. I may have to go crazy. I wish it was either warm, or just damn cold. I also wish I had some shirts that fit me. I've had to resort to my emergency sweatshirts for warmth. I so need some long-sleeved shirts that fit. On a positive note, Zach now has a bunch of shirts that fit him.

So I actually put up a Friends part to my blog. You can click and go look, but its mainly my roomies at this point. They found my little jokes funny, I think. They're all true, and quite funny.

So Zach played a great performance Monday night, doing a cool violin solo. He was preparing for tonight, when he plays for the big Concerto Aria Competition! The winners of this competition go on to play their solo with the Gustavus Orchestra later this year. Oooo the craziness! Who will win? Will someone meet an 'unfortunate' accident before they play? All this drama tomorrow, on Section 202.

I've been getting a lot of flack for my spelling problems, from about everyone who who views my blogs and I would like to say a few words in my defense. First off, notice when I post my blogs. About 4-5 a.m. Yeah, thats right, I'm up late, and sometimes I don't even remember posting anything. Second, I do have auto spellcheck on my computer, but I often fail to use it. Three, I was educated in Iowa and can't spell. Damn you Minnesota people and your superior spelling ability!

Speaking of blogs, John has a friend who wants to get an account on our webserver. If anyone else wants one, and is willing to part with some money to do so, contact me. I'm sure we can work something out. I must support my addiction to Schnapps.

I forgot to post this on Friday, but I was once again mentioned in the Gustavian Weekly Calendar page. The Calendar page is just a free range insult page, and in theory, is funny. Anyhow, here is my mention. "Email Soup to Nuts. I kid you not, that is what it says. It is a workshop on managing email. That is a great title though, I haven't heard anything more obtuse since Joshua Zimmermzn opened his mouth." I love my college. But not Liz, even though she always thinks I'm hitting on her. Sadly she can not make the distinction between pity small talk, and hitting on. I hope this isn't how she picked her current boyfriend.

Today was kinda dull, as usual. I worked at the library, did some homework, worked on someone's Powerbook (for free). The usual stuff. Sigh... I so need some sleep. I'm a bit disturbed though, Jared and John are once again lost in Olin doing physics. Always with the physics. Its so sad. They should get some sleep.

OS 10.3.1 came out, fixing a strange issue where the install of Panther would erase your external firewire 800 HD. Now thats what I call a feature! Take that Bill Gates!

Oh, I'm very very happy. People are actually viewing my blog. Keep watching the counter, as I strive to outdo Jared in total Blog viewing. I'm also told my blogs are more fun than his, and wittier. Only you can judge.

So Sara Given actually came through on her promise she made almost two years ago, to sit down and watch Citizen Kane with me. After watching it I can see why the American Film Institute called it the best film of all times. The movie just clearly rocked, really. Too bad no one else in my section knows who 'Rosebud' is. I guess I'm just the film expert around here. (Orson Wells is my golden god!)

What did I do this weekend... hmmm... overall it was quite mundane. Friday night I decided to not go to Gaming Night and come back to the section to work on my webpage. Instead of doing any webpage work, I found myself watching chick flicks with Vickie and Emily (who were watching movies in the section when i got back). So I sat down and watched How To Lose A Guy In Ten Days, and than watched Chocolat. I simply loved Chocolat, it was a super cute film. But than again I am a sucker for candy and Europe.

Saturday I went up to the Apple store with John, because his mac is still having CD drive issues. We had a fun time talking and hanging out. I also lusted over some 15in Powerbooks, again. Later that night Nate Haleen and I went over to our friend Kate's place and had a few drinks. We watched the movie Ringu, which is the original Japanese film, which later became the American movie The Ring. The Japanese version was very creepy, and I now want to see the other two films in the original Trilogy. Oooooo.

Sunday I mostly hung out and tried to do some work. Jared brought home a prospie with him, of which the rest of us had to entertain because Jared and John spent all day in Olin doing homework. Spence is a cool guy, even though he is from Missouri. Though he may be too cool to come here. Anyhow, because he is not a crazy physics guy I'm taking him to all of my classes tomorrow. Which should be fun, I think, as long as he doesn't mind the crazy Japanese history! Boo yeah!

Lastly, I want to write an open letter to those person who was 'kind' enough to put some of my laundry into the dryer. Thanks for the help, but next time, leave my stuff alone. That or don't put it in the dryer on 'super shrink mode' because I like my shirts to fit me after a wash. Yes, thats right, you rat fink! My clothing does not fit now. My poor (and new) shirts are now too short to put on in public. A curse on your household. A pox on your first born!

This week should be interesting. I've got a lot of work to get done in several classes. I also have an orchestra concert next Saturday night. On a side not, I did put a counter on my webpage now, so I can track the number of hits on my page. Its only for my ego. I'm hoping to get a large number of people to visit, and than start marketing t-shirts and bumper sticker. I've got to start somewhere.

I did what many conceder the impossible today. Many better men than I have tried before me, and all have failed. They are left but a lifeless husk of a man, doomed to walk the college campus forever! Wha ha ha ha ha. Yeah, you know it. I cleaned the section microwave! It was so gross, I'm not even going to go into details, but it took me the better part of the movie Donnie Darko. Man, there was even junk on the celling of it. Caked on grime and dirt! I think i should start cracking down and make people wipe the sucker out when they're done using it, or else I'll get mid-evil on their ass.

Seeing how I'm going overseas next semester, and I may be gone all summer, I've come to the difficult decision of what to do with my Macintosh. My precious... precious Macintosh.... Even with my love for it, it's never going to be able to travel with me abroad. So I guess this means I'm going to have to sell it for a laptop! I know, i swore I'd never buy a laptop as my main computer, but with being overseas and my ever-growing lust for Zach's 12in Powerbook I'm just going to have to do it. Looking at the various models, and knowing that I'll be using this for probably two or three years, I'd love to buy the new 15in Powerbook. Sure, I could buy a 12in, but it lacks some features and some the power to keep me going for two years. That and having a 15in LCD screen will be handy, seeing how it'll be my only monitor for the next nine months. (if you don't know, I'm addicted to having two monitors hooked up to my G4) So if anyone has some extra change send it my way. I'm soooo going to need it.

The answer to that question is, well, crap. We went to see Matrix Revolutions tonight at the Saint Peter Theater, and I was kinda let down. It was good and all, but I was expecting more. I think most people expected a lot, because we were all so thrilled by the first film. But now, 4 years later, all the cool things done in the first film have all been rehashed in every movie sense. Sigh... Oh well. It was worth seeing, and at times it was funny. Oh well, now I've just got to bide my time will the last Lord of the Rings movie comes out. What to do what to do.

The library on campus had a used book sale. I managed to buy a bunch of short Science Fiction story collections for John and I. I do love short stories. It'll give me something to do besides homework. Like I need another distraction.

Oh, I made even more documentation today. Its my current obsession. It's looking quite good, and I hope someone gets some usage out of it.

Today, I did homework. Thats about it. Jared put a Counter on his webpage, I must do the same now, or kill him. Or both. Yeah, both.

I made a nice 'How To' guide for the Apple Mail program tonight. Yeah! Its super cool, and the first of many. My buddy Grant was impressed, and he may tell his techies at school to look at my guides. Ooooo. Luckily I made a bunch fo Guides last year for the GAC IT depo on all of Apple's media apps (like iPhoto, iMovie, and iDVD). I still have all the files, and should turn them into webpages later this week.

I've also been working on upgrading people's computers to 10.3 on campus. I had two laptops in our section tonight getting upgraded. The fun! Justin Delegard doesn't like 10.3, but I think he's a just a big pussy. Yeah, thats right, a pussy.

Lastly, Nik Georgacarakos still has not made up his mind about moving in with us. This makes me angry, and you won't like me when I'm angry.... Argggggg!!!!

The weekend at Madison was the most interesting week I've had in a long time. There so much to tell, but yet so little time. So I shall try and give you all the rundown.

I drove to La Cross, WI from Saint Peter Friday afternoon and met up with Dale Emmons. Dale gave me some good directions, but I still managed to end up in some small town in the middle of nowhere. Thank goodness I had my handy Minnesota map! I eventually made it to Dale's house where his parents, who are extremely nice, and showed me all their cool animals (including the full tour of the price winning rabbits his mother raised). We than drove to Madison! Woo hoo! Sadly in Dale's rush to get to Madison he attracted the attention of a State Patrol car. I have to say, Dale's ability to handle a cop is amazing. The first words out of his mouth were "I swear I'm not drunk officer." (of which he was not). Lets just say the officer was really nice and let us off with a nice warning.

We stayed with some of Dale's old UW frat buddies. The KHK is an electrical engineering frat. Which means not only do they study, and build cool stuff, but they also know how to get down and party! They were extremely nice guys, and not what I expected at all. Unfortunately there was a group of their frat brothers from MSO who were staying with them also, and those guys were extremely crass. I mean, the guys from Animal House looked more civil than they did most of the time. Yeah, the KHK guys were a bit annoyed having them around, and luckily, they kept to themselves.

Dale loves Madison. He gave me several big tours of the city, explaining the history and the significance of most every building we came across (maybe he should have been a history major). Madison has some really beautiful buildings dating back to 1920. Now for those of you who do not know Madison, State Street is the place to be. It has all the cool stores and eateries. On Friday night, about 1 a.m. we worked out way to State Street where it was flooded with college students all dressed up in what has to be the largest costume party I'll ever go to. If you can think of a costume, someone probably had it on. We saw a guy with a Cow Bell and Jared, just for you, I yelled, "More cowbell!" Anyhow, it was quite cool. I even found Waldo, and Jesus (who apparently had been turning way too much water into wine).

Now Saturday night was the big party night. The KHK guys throw a wild party at their place, and it was packed. One big crowd of wildly dressed-up and partying people. This being my first frat party it took me a while to get into the spirit of things. Ok, not really THAT long. But I did amaze myself with my uncanny ability to dance really badly, of which, I did a lot. Dale on the other hand amazed me with his flashy leisure suit, and his ability to attract women. Who would have thought. To answer those nagging questions you probably have. Yes I did drink a lot, and no I was not drunk. According to Dale, "Josh, when you drink, you don't really change at all. You just get more nice and proper." Good thing to know for the next time. Note to self: Break loose.

I met up some Mankato people, and because I knew my way around town, I offered to guide them down to State Street to their friend's place. Now at this point at Saturday night it was cold, and it was raining. And after walking five blocks, and not being able to find the place, some of us were a bit annoyed. State street still had people running around in costumes, in the rain, but a lot of people were heading home. So, we all decided to walk back to the KHK house and call a cab so they could get back to their house. So we started walking back, and managed to walk into a rioting crowd. At the time, it only looked like a crowd of people, until we got into the middle of the crowd. Yeah, it looked bad. We managed to get to the other side, and about five minutes later the crowd started throwing stuff at a building. A couple of people in our group refused to leave, and we tried to drag them with us for about twenty minutes or so, until the riot police started marching in. At that point we decided to walk back, that and a couple of people were turning blue. Luckily I had some extra clothing and a towel back at the house. One girl was extremely out of it, and probably suffering from the first stages of hypothermia. Boy Scout Manual to the rescue, or at least what I remembered. Anyways, I called a cab, and all was well.

I want to talk about the riot a bit, because theres a few things you should know. First off the people being nasty, were not UW people, they were mostly out of town drunks. Second, there was a great police presence both Friday and Saturday night. They kept things in order and did a very nice job. Sadly the crowd of people, a crowd of people that kept growing, were there to watch these drunks be stupid. Its rather sad, because there were a large number of students who were trying to stop it from happening, and who were extremely disgusted by it all.

So overall it was a very fun weekend. I bought a couple of shirts, had some fun time dancing, had a few drinks, and got a taste of Madison. Thanks Dale, you ladies man you! I'll try and stick up a photo album later. I've got quite a bit of work to get done tonight, so I doubt I'll have time.

So it snowed a BUNCH last night. Everything looks so crisp and cool and wintery. Yeah, I can't wait for summer.

I'll write about my interesting while I'm working at the library this afternoon. It'll probably take me some time.

Update: Yeah, wet snow, and a kind of snow/rain is falling all over campus. This means that tomorrow we won't be able to walk anywhere because everything will be covered in a nice thick layer of ice. It should be fun for those of us who are not falling down. At least, not falling at that exact moment. I may take a photo or two of the snow on my way to work.

Just to let everyone know, I did not get drunk last night, but I had some wonderful fun. Madison is one happening place, and these engenering frat guys are rather cool. State Street was PACKED with people dressed up as... well.. everything. Dale took some photos, and I'll be sure to post them when I get back. Zach should have come along, seriously. He should have. Oh well. The big party is tonight, and I've got to come up with a Software Pirate outfit somehow. It should be interesting.