Rinsefirst

I really should stop with the war metaphors. I don’t think they are making for very unique titles. Then again, the way I see it: With over 150 entries now, sooner or later I am going to run out of word combinations. Let’s think about this, there are like 32,000 words you and of course mix and match them to no end, but lets put some constraints. Remove all words longer than 7 letters. Remove all words dealing with virus’s, complex science terms, or anything else that might be really complex. Factor in title length to be no longer than 8 words. Doing the math… thats still way to many possible title combinations for me to work with… For this reason, I revoke my previous statement that I will be running out of word combinations.

As reported in my title. I am in a little bit of a shell shocked kinda mood. I think I am mentally exhausted by the shear amounts of code I pumped out over the weekend. This is making it very difficult to find motivation to actually edit a paper due tommorow and read a book for tommorow. Instead, I seemed to be spending my time watching TV or playing that Animal Crossing game. This seems to provide an ample distraction and requires little thought, so it’s good.

This is the point in my writing where I state some opinions. Let’s start with TV. Monday’s agenda for my TV schedule is now 7th Heaven then Everwood. 7th Heaven has been a long time favorite for various weird reasons. The idea behind some of the complex events that happen in their lives is sometimes just amazing. I know it isn’t real, but it still pertains to many peoples lives. For example, today’s epsiode involved a girl giving up a child. A very hard thing to do, especially for a teenage girl. Very complex.

Ironically, one of my new favorite TV shows also dealth with the same issue but in a different light. Everwood, for those of you who don’t know, is the “new hit tv series” on the WB. It seems very well written, very down to earth, and just plain… good. The narrator always at the beginning is very cool and provides kinda a third person perspective on the story and scene. What really has me going is the on screen chemistry between the girl and the guy. For some reason, I relate well with this guy. He seems to have a mind of his own, hidden talents, and the ability to have alterior motives without anyone knowing it. Ironically, he uses this for evil when he lies about telling his dad about the girl’s boyfriend’s problems. I am sure that the tv show will play this to it’s fullest advantage, but still… I already want them to work out.

Speaking of things working out. I am starting to develope a grudge against this real time clock thing Animal crossing has. There are two reasons for it. It allows the game to know when I should be sleeping. At this point, all the characters start yelling at me and tell me to go to bed. Although this is the healthy thing for the game to be doing, it’s not what I WANT it to be doing. To the same token, it knows what day it is. For this reason, the last day of the month is a raffel day in game. The shop clothes to hold the raffel and leaves me with no way to sell my items. The raffel lasts about 30 seconds, and despite the fact I got a nintendo out of it, really isn’t all that exciting. In other words: I wish I still had a way to sell my goods on a day on today. Either way, the game has been able to captivate my attention in much the same way Chrono Trigger, Ultima Online, and Mario has… They have always created huge worlds for me to explore, work, and find things in. This is why I am a Nintendo gamer. I am not out to shoot everything. I am out to learn in a fun way.

Last notes for tonight: I have noticed that I have developed some sort of self constraint when it comes to controlling my actions from my motives. For example: People used to tell me I can’t buy my friends. I know this, and I never believed I have. I always just enjoyed helping them out and making them smile. For the most part, this is OK and I am down with that. People have issue with it when I spend exhorbent amounts of cash. This is normally the sign of other motives at work. For example, buying leather pants for someone may have been one step over the top. Maybe not completely in that case… It was christmas. But, I don’t think I can honestly admit I didn’t have alterior motives. Either way, it was worth the purchase and I am not saying it was the wrong thing to do. What I am saying, is that I don’t need to do that kind of thing, and that it will not end up causing me to get my alterior motives. This is a good thing to know, and it has helped prevent me from costing myself much dinero today. Thank you oh lessons learned.

Because that last paragraph came off a little confusing, I believe this would be a good point to stop. I figure I have done my rambling for today and that life as it seems with continue, despite wether or not you read my writings. Shout out to all of those people who cause me to get hits from nation’s outside the US on my hit counter. This includes you Kim!

So… Anyone have a clue what a total of 18 hours+ hard coding in a weekend will do to a person? You’d think it would like permentally damage them or something. Truth is, short of the slight 15 minute period of brain lock after I was done, I feel pretty good. I feel like I got a lot of work done. I feel like this might have been worth while. All the teachers can now easily have websites for themselves with little to no skill what so-ever.

However, I am very tired. I think I am very hungry to…

To talk about something other than this little war I’ve been up to: Jeff Gordan won today. That puts him back in the 4th spot for the Winston cup series with only 7 races left to go. To the same token, my other driver Jimmy Johnson has also managed to move into 1st place in the Winston Cup. That one is really ironic considering he is a rookie and all…

One last note: sunday school is interesting. Catholic VS. Lutheran today and I think because the lutheran’s stayed silent the whole time that we technically lost. I may be wrong on this :-). Either way, we all got something out of the conversation, even if it was just a little bit of knowledge about teenagers or adults. To the same token *yes that seems to be some messed up expression for me today*, Nikki never ceases to amaze me. She is such an amazing person that I don’t think I could get bored of her (that just sounds wrong), despite what she may think. Go Nik! Now we all just sit here and wait until she gets ungrounded. Then maybe I won’t spend so much time coding at MSA!!! Ok, enough with the complaining. Life is good!

Those computers think they can win… Not today suckers! I was able to successfully victimize a linux webserver today. It was forced to run MySQL, PHP, and Apache, and it was going to like doing it! After shoving those wonderful applications down its throat, it was then introduced to massive amounts of php coding. This code was hand written, on the fly, line by line, for the sole purpose of um… hmm… mind blank… Yeah either way… That is all I did today. It really is a lot more than it sounds. And, for your knowledge, it will probably be what I do tommorow.

In other new: The Onus has finally declared a victor in my battle with the evil AOL computer systems. This victory comes as a surprise after some of the past episodes implied that I was about to get blasted. Captain Bluelight Special, however saves the day. If you have read that comic sequence, head right over to The Onus right now and do so! I said DO SO!

RING RING! The phone rings, and Justin wakes up yet again 2 hours before he wanted to. He quickly slaps the cancel button, sending the person to voicemail and himself back into the wonderful state of simplicity. 2 Hours later he awakes with one thing on the mind. One thing that will more than likely find some way to destroy him for the next 3 days… Work…

He goes through his morning routine, thinking he is all hyped to start the long process of tinkering with computers. He focuses on how much he will be getting done. He focuses on how much less he will have to do once he is done. He focuses on the upside of what later turns into round one of a huge war.

As a warm up, he decided to go repair the bakery’s computers. This turned out to be a good prepartion for the battles that would soon be insuing. It also supplied him with some much needed rations. He reminds himself to take up the art of baking one day. He remember’s a past quote from some wise guy in some far off land, “Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, feed him for life.”

After the bakery, he then heads for the battle ground. There he finds everyone’s weapon’s of war failing on them. Peoples emails magically vanishing, Programs returning can’t fire messages, and a bunch of broken windows whose glass was near impossible to put back together. It was so bad, he didn’t even get to the battle field he was hoping to arrive at. However, a good lady named Mavis started to work, and so did her friend’s the PageMaker and the ArcIMS man. Now people could view maps of the building without issue, and thus find their way to where they should be.

The young soldier was then very fed up with the machines and decided it would be best to go practice some other skills and maybe relax a little. So he went and danced at the local movie theatre. There he met some smokin’ punks, who seemed friendly but were not to be trusted with his wallet. He showed him how his mad dancing skills could make the machine move, even with Sim trying to hold down the fort.

However much fun our three hero’s (Sim, John, and JJ) were having at Carmike, it was not enough to stop there. Instead, Sim was to be trained in the art of Animal Crossing, and John in the art of old school Punchout. Soon two more allies joined up, Jerimiah and Brian, and we decided it was time for a training video.

Happy Gilmore was popped into the VCR and the games began. We were all taught how golf is to be played, how golf really is a contact sport, and how golf, despite its sissy appearence, still gets you the girls in white (or black). Needless to say, this video allowed or all to have a good time with little to no management at all.

Still, thoughts crossed our young soldiers mind. Where was the most regular member of the friday night movie brigade? Ah, as the forces may have it, Nikki, was still a prisoner of war. Beth and Rob were also not to be found, but we assume that they were continuing training of the mystic art of dancing in some secret and somewhat remote location. Seeing as our hero didn’t leave MSA until 9:30, it was almost unfeasible to do anything anywhere but at his own house.

But still, even Amber and Maria were missed. It seems that the army of the summary has been mortally wounded. Perhaps it is the attitude of our hero. Perhaps, it is the casualities of intensive training schools. Maybe it is just the wrath of stress coming down on us all. Whatever the case, it’s change.

Well our hero is tired now. It approaches the wee morning, and round two of this war must be started tommorow. Hopefully, with images in hand, a clear motive, and little to no interuption… All shalt be completed.

I hope you enjoyed this entry as much as I did writing it.

Another week has gone by and I thought I would mention a few things to just summerize it. It was paper filled. The most common question asked of me was, “So why is Nikki grounded.” I played well over 20 hours of Animal Crossing. I wore all my new outfits. I only played DDR once. JAG and Friend’s season premiers rocked. I think that was it for this week.

Now for the weekend. I think I might start my lock-in tommorow. This depends solely on what people want to do and when they want to do it. Perhaps I will be sure to make time for people this weekend despite the number of hours I need to work at MSA. I hope Papa Johns stays in biz this weekend :-).

I need to clean my room. Yes, this should be done as well. Maybe if I get to it. People are starting to want to play football as well. I suppose I should start to want that as well. It is fun. Sim might have me pegged this time. I might be in the lull’s. Could be, but I feel pretty good if I am there. I am feeling almost so good that I could re-re-open the SMRC again. Perhaps not… Well either way, it’s early here so I am going to go to bed before I have to be at a bakery tommorow morning. Later all.

It’s raining. For this reason alone, I was forced to take an alternate route to try to get to school on time. The problem with this alternate route is that I don’t know where it goes, only where it is supposed to end. The first half of this 20 mile journey went well. I had no problems finding my way to the heart of minneapolis. The second half hit some hitchs however when I could not find University Ave. I tried and tried but to no avail. So instead, I just took an alternate road that headed in the general direction of the U. Sooner or later it just happened to cross University Ave and about a dozen other streets I had already passed at some point today. Either way, I made it to where my class was 30 minutes late so I decided instead of getting a half lecture that would put me more asleep then I already am, I would stand here and type an entry about my bad run-ins with the US Highway System.

It is nice to know that even though I missed this class I will not have missed anything of very much importance. The class is Economics and the professor puts all his notes online. To add to it, he teaches right out of the book. So basically, if I read both his notes and the book for today, I will be fine.

I think I posted last night saying I finished all my homework. That makes me feel pretty dang good considering the amount of homework I had last night and the amount of time wasted on Animal Crossing.

One last minor note before I go study for my next class. I think I need a new system for alarm clocks. Somehow, I managed to shut both of mine off today and still end up asleep in bed. I think the solution to this problem is to put the alarm clock on the other side of the room, that way if I do shut it off and fall asleep again, I will be uncomfortable in the middle of my room.

Just to explain my mood a little. I seem to be a morning person after the first 30 minutes of my morning. To add to it, I had one of those really cool singing experiences in my car on the way here… You know the kind… The kind where you just start singing and not caring about anything going on around you. You don’t? Oh… To bad…

Later