I have not died yet

And if you use Live Bookmarks come check the site once in awhile sometimes they die too. Ironically their replacements are deader!

That said, this past week was well so-so even though it really should have been pretty nice cause classes weren't tough and no real major homework was due!

This week however life kicks into overdrive, flips on the afterburners, and attempts to circumvent E=MC^2 by sheer will of business! The good news is: the books I ordered and the rest of X should both come this week plus Dani borrowed me the next 70 odd episodes of Naruto. Now X I can play through even if I doing stuff but Naruto I will have to hold off til finals week or post finals week cause it's all subtitled and half the fight between Naruto & Gaara I quasi-missed cause I listened. My Japanese is veeeeeery shabby (some like to say non-existent like my reader base) so didn't catch much. Not good to keep up on plot. Oh, Saturday we get to re-hash Mario Kart night. And Thursday hopefully BW3s!

Ok, so what's the bad stuff? Goulet, Goulet, Goulet, Carter, and Gribble. Or more simply put classes with lots of work to do and it's that time of year when it's tough work or lots of work or both. It'll be crazy early on but really there is lots to do and I need to focus. Lotsa stuff Wed/Thurs morning. Then a little breather but in the meantime I have a ton of 332 to sort out and a user manual that has my name on it. Whee. But enough yapping, I'd better get to it.

So I just noticed my good paragraph outlengths the bad, maybe things aren't as bad as they seem. Sometimes you just need to see it I guess!

Exalted Rnd. 11

"Is there a window there?"
... "There is now."

"Oh, I'm supposed to fall. Ahhhhh." -the ability to walk on air can be useful at times

"Don't mess with me kitty."

So, if there was ever a session I was really winging it on it was this one. The start however was a pickup from last time. We left off with the Zenith taking on hordes o' demons. He is more or less ok once he clears the sky of fliers but that doesn't solve the horde on the ground. Luckily the Dawn gets thrown by a Spirit charm across Creation from one battle with demons to another. He appears in the middle of the demons and proceeds to cut most of them down in an efficient fashion.

Post demon clean which happened much faster then I expected the Zenith and Dawn go and find the somewhat beat up Night and they proceed to find out what's behind the gaurded door. It's the 2nd Circle demon that attacked them early. The Dawn starts talking to the demon when the Zenith rushes in, on fire, and attacks him. Demon loses init and dies in two hits from the Dawn. Big boss bad guy is now dead, with no dialogue spoken so plot is somewhat stopped. The Zenith destroys a Broken Winged Crane (without knowing what it was) and then joins the Dawn and Night in exploring. The Night finds some stuff from the Circle's original (insane) Zenith and steals the obvious item that would identify her presence. She also finds a journal written in Old Realm, which she can't read, and gives that to the Zenith who torches it before she can even hand it to him. Now she's stealing the tarnished oricalchulm that identifies the old Zenith and the new Zenith torches the journal without even thinking (I really shoulda forced a temperance roll but the player is almost absolutely opposed to me make any such rolls to control his actions even though I honestly think noone spontaneously burns something, more on that later). Finally the Zenith notices the presence of the tarnished/tainted orichalcum on the Night and essentially attacks her and she somewhat fights back to make her hand it over. She does and the Dawn correctly identifies it as something the old Zenith had a long ways back (game time that was a decade ago!). The Zenith manages to figure out that this corrupted Zenith will probably show up in the city again so the Circle elects to wait.

After this our Zenith player had to leave so the Dawn and Night opted to wait it out in the city. I had a quasi-dream sequence where the Night got to attempt to take on a 2nd Circle demon but didn't do so well. Rather then have her die I sort of on the fly converted it to a dream sequence. I felt kinda bad about that, it was a cheap maneuver but at this point the plot wasn't really going to be advanced. Instead I played around and let the two players stunt and kill some demons and accidentally demolish the palace/castle at the center of town as a result.

The players proved to be really adept at killing things so I got caught rather flat-footed pretty quick in this scenario. I feel like I kinda let them down. I am also dissapointed because I've realized I run a lot of combat and less actual roleplaying then I had intended. On the flip side I've noticed that the players sometimes do some things that a very rash and usually actually make it harder for me to roleplay events. I've been tempted to force rolls of temperance and conviction and valor but I don't want to bring it to that. It's essentially rail-roading. I dunno. Anyhow, two weeks and we have the finale and I have a couple ideas. Plus some scheming :D

Blah, will I ever learn?

Also...I can kill you with my mind

Yea, Firefly has to be one of the most quotable shows ever.

Yup, that's it for today.

"You had the alliance on you, criminals and savages, half the people on the ship have been shot or wounded, including yourself, and you're harboring known fugitives."
"We're still flying."
"That's not much."
"That's enough."

I think this is kind of my outlook on Chi Alpha, we're kind of struggling right now for whatever reason but we're a community and we're still flying, we haven't given up and that's what matters when we crawl under the covers each night. No one ever said it'd be easy. (Another quote comes to mind: "You knew the job was dangerous when you took it." Sound clip.)

I should really get cracking on that homework now. On a random odd note I've been plugging away at the geography of Faerun in the Forgotten Realms corebook. I've always read it kind of piecemeal so a week or so back I decided to just start reading at the beginning of the section and keep going til I got through it all. A couple of days I actually looked to see how long the whole thing was and it's about 100 pages! That's a lot of places!

Off to write that Emergency Management Plan-In case of fire put it out, next crisis!

Interesting Times

Well helped out at the Pirate Murder Mystery Dinner last night and that was very interesting. Ended up doing a lot more work then I expected and I have a newfound respect for chef's or anyone who spends their days working in a kitchen! It was a lot of fun watching them play the whole thing out as well and I generally enjoyed myself. I was really bushed after that tho and was asleep by 11 last night (that's gotta be the earliest all year). Had some really strange dreams last night too. Think that's just cause I went to bed so early, I seem to remember my dreams when I go to bed at a time other then my regular sleep time.

Ran into an old acquaintance from high school today after finishing up work in the UC. It was rather strange, I haven't seen him prolly since the summer of freshman year. Couldn't even remember his name off the top of my head (rather embaressed about that) but still an interesting twist to the day. He was in town for the Mark Green for Gov campaign.

Well I need to get stuff cleaned up so my place is quasi-presentable for my parents tomorrow. Have a good weekend all.

Surfactant

Noun 1. surfactant - a substance capable of reducing the surface tension of a liquid in which it is dissolved (from Free Dictionary)

Surfactants are wetting agents that lower the surface tension of a liquid, allowing easier spreading, and lower the interfacial tension between two liquids. (from Wikipedia)

Hi Aprill :)

Yes, I'm strange, get over it and go read about surfactants. I just did a whole post on them so by golly you'd better get something out of this!

God's in His Heaven...All's Right with the World

So this week really looked like it would suck but someone things seemed to have sorted themselves out although I was pretty miserable Tuesday night. Kind of funny how God can prop you up when you're down. At this rate though I may actually make it but think I might dissapear Friday night for a bit just to recover. We'll see. Don't really feel like bowling tho.

Got a letter from an old friend asking if I'd help support her on a Campus Crusade Summer Mission. I'm kind of stuck whether I should support her or not. A lot of it has to do with the fact that I haven't chatted much with her recently or seen her in awhile. I'd like to know what God is doing in her life beyond just what a form letter says. If I am going support someone I want to take it fairly seriously!

Random useless news: Twism and I started a new franchise for Madden. The old one was still a good team, we made it to the super bowl again although got clobbered there do to a very ineffectual offense. The off season was gonna kill us due to that stupid salary cap. I rather hate that part of madden where you have to keep track of money, to me it distracts from putting together the ultimate super team even though it obviously adds realism. So we put together a new franchise and the offensive proceeded to throw 8 interception and have several fumbles. I am theoretically getting better, we hope.

I wish I had more useful content to put in but at the moment my mind is blank so that'll be all for now!

Today, Today

Today was pretty interesting. Managed to be productive and still have a fairly relaxing day. Got my WDMD done and got the stuff for Goulet done (for Tuesday at least). Will study for history test before bed tonight so just with that I feel pretty darn good! Got out for a walk today with Abby and that was lots of fun, it's been awhile since I've gotten out on a walk, and even longer since I've gotten out with anyone with me! We ate at Debot afterwards which was really interesting since I haven't been there since they changed the layout. It's very different looking but the food has stayed exactly the same. Oh yeah, I got to register today too. Yay.

I am really plugging away through Naruto at the moment, it got really interesting with the Sand & Sound villages surprise attacking the Hidden Leaf village. Also I realized a very nasty technique I might employ for use later with some RPG I am running, the whole idea of having the bad guy raise from the dead really good deceased heros to fight against the good guys is just twistedly evil. Sounds like something an Abyssal would do. Exalted folks didn't read that :D

Well that's all for now.

:D

It's been a pretty good day. Hope everyone had a good Easter and appreciates why the holiday is there.


Also hope everyone said "Happy Birthday" to my one and only roommate.

Now time for homework that I didn't do earlier this weekend :/

Exalted...just kidding

Yea, no Exalted last night. Instead Dani and Isaac came over, we hung out watched Naruto (like 15 episodes of it), made fun of Sandy, er Gaara (*feels impending thrown implents of Dani approaching and begs much forgiveness for much teasing from last night), and generally had a good time.

Today had to call security to open up the UC lab because noone decided to open the UC up until 11. At least one person came to work on time there today! Actually got some work done there. Proceeded to do laundry and dishes at home between helping to get the All-Madden Dolphins to the Superbowl although the Defense (yup, capital D) did a big job there, and am now kicking back and being lazy. Really should work on WDMD tho...

Anyhow, Happy Easter to all tomorrow!

The 0400 fire alarm.

So while it should not come as any surprise to anyone that fire alarms going off at 0400 absolutely disrupt sleep patterns it still means I'm extra tired this morning. I can't even go home and nap after Carter's class and that makes me sad. I am glad I decided to not stay out real late last night so I actually got to bed before 2. That woulda been even more painful.

Saw "My Neigbor Totoro" last night (before playing Beer Pong, yea it was a strange night). It's certainly a kid's movie but I still really enjoyed it. The soundtrack was very well done, the voice acting was superb, and the animation was pretty sharp. Plus I really liked the creatures: Totoro and kin and the cat bus. Rowr! :D

Seeing as I don't feel very productive now (no matter how much energy I had say 6 hours ago) I hope I can crack down and get work done this weekend. In the meantime everyone go congratulate Tyler on turning older on the 16th. Yea, it's a couple days away but lots of folk will be gone Sunday for Easter so figured I'd be pre-emptive!

Realization

Gosh, this summer could be really interesting. Things are a little more up in the air then last year since I won't be tied down to a specific job all summer. That's not to say I won't be busy. Hopefully CIS 480 will happen and I will have a very busy mid-June through mid-August. But I've also got two switch apartments and that could be on a very short time schedule creating all sorts of mayhem. Plus I'll have to go through setting up cable/internet. Probably not all that hard really but who knows.

It looks like I will be prolly be going with the girls to visit Lars towards the end of summer. It should be interesting if a long drive. I really want to do a long haul road trip though (I still harbor dreams of driving all of Hwy 14 someday) and this would really be my last chance.

I guess I am apprehensive about the future which is funny because I should really be apprehensive about the Carter assignment but I can't work on that in this lab. Ah well, maybe this weekend I can get some work done while everyone is home for Easter and feel a little better.

Well maybe I should update a bit

Or some such thing. Honestly I don't have much to say for once aside from my usual random opinion which are just that, opinions. I don't have much new to talk about. Got to see Katy this weekend, she's back in town for trivia/to visit home. That was fun, it's nice to chat in person even if I do tease her about politics alot. I really gotta work on not teasing people/ranting about stuff like that. It's not very nice.

Anyhow, like I said not much to talk about and don't feel very talkative. The latter may change, every day can be different so who knows. It's most likely the fact that I feel quasi swamped with homework even though it's about normal and mostly it's cause I didn't do any this weekend.

Well speaking of homework better get on that Goulet!

:/

Not sure I am gonna get a thing done this weekend. Oh dear.

Mini blitz

Ever had one of those moments where suddenly had a huge amount of stuff to do and very little time to do it (generally because of some short notice event)? Got slammed with one of those and just sort of slipped into overdrive. It's a rather strange feeling because when I get in it I'm aware of it but couldn't notch myself down for the world. Everything seems to be moving a mile a minute and I am mentally incrementing everything out. Invariably I get the stuff done sometimes way ahead of time (like today for instance) but right up til whatever I need to do is done I am running on a full head of steam at flank speed. Then again, it's been one of those days too. Crazy.

Exalted Rnd. 11

"Pssst, hey demon."

This was a shorter session as we were down 2 circle members (one is indeed out permanently so if anyone is interested in being the new Twilight caste let me know, we meet every other Friday evening at my place). Anyhow the Twilight proceeds to get himself locked in the bathroom for a very long time. Since sorcerers can sorcerously generate food he'll be fine for a long time. The Dawn is forced to lead the collected Solar army plus the Vermillion Legion West to meet the demon led forces of the Realm coming from the Blessed Isle. With them missing it leaves the Zenith, Night, and Eclipse castes to head south and investigate what's up in Chaya.

Luckily the Eclipse is an accomplished airship pilot so they get there in record time after evading a few demon wasp patrols. They approach the capitol one foot and catch it in mid-riot season. As a result sneaking in is relatively easy. They just join the rioting and work their way through town. Eventually they reach the center most area which is gaurded by demons. After the Zenith manages to kill the two demon gaurds (nearly getting himself massively ganked in the process) the Circle proceeds into a zone which the demons were gaurding and all the rioters avoid. Here, in the center of the city, they find the central palace swarming with demons.

At this point they opt to come up with a way for the Night caste to sneak in. So the Zenith and Eclipse split up. The Eclipse starts setting huge fires and draws off about 20 of the demons. The Zenith plays with the demons a bit. He has a hearthstone that he can talk through so he baited a demon over and killed him. None of the other demons noticed however. So he selected option number two. Shoot every demon he can see. Solars have some nasty nasty charms. Thirty shot demons later (three of which are very very dead) the rest of the crowd are drawn off.

The Night caste proceeds to enter through an upper window and takes down two demon apes in one on one combat. However she is hurting a lot. In the meantime the twenty going after the Eclipse caused her to retreat back to the crowd barely making it. Using the crowd as cover she loops around to attempt to get to the Zenith's position. A fair amount of the crowd gets beat up in this pursuit but the demons are thrown off be a well set slow burn fire. So now the Eclipse is converging on the Zenith and the Night is attempting to sort out what to do inside the palace.

Should be interesting next week although not quite sure how to get the Dawn down south.

Blink

Just realized I still haven't posted the old Exalted post. I'll do it tomorrow I swear. In between classes, that'll be a good way to kill 30 minutes. In the meantime I am pretty excited. I got my carrier all pimped out (read: I can't add anything more onto it) and it's finally kicking butt. Ion cannons btw, annihilate all! I picked up two and took down a couple big ships. I added 3 more and now I mow down just about everything. At this point I can't even really target small craft intentionally. One burst (turrets/guns are sadly fire-linked) and Vipers vaporize. Now granted my kill count has gone way up. It's rather fun. Just wish I could capture a few of those Pirate Carriers to sell for a little excess cash.

Ok, since none of you cared even slightly about that go read the post below. It's got stuff other then just EV: Nova I promise.

In Approx. 6.5 hours this will suck

So I can't sleep. And like the title says that will suck a whole. lot. more. around 0830. In the meantime I will attempt to burn some energy posting. I really, really, really, want to play EV: Nova but if I do that I will be up til 0500 and die sometime around 1800. Upgrading a carrier takes time and more then a few explosions (my poor, poor ship). Yes I'm posting in military time live with it!

So Jenny's in Maui now. How nice is that? Not sure I'd really want to work there, think it'd be too warm/humid for me but def. wish I could visit. Ah well.

So I just realized I started the previous two paragraphs with the word so. Now I could actually have started this one without it but thought it'd be amusing.

Right...down to business.

Ever searched for yourself on the Internet? I actually mostly mean Google searched but as it is any web search will do. Or even within the dread realms of myspace or facebook (er actually they do a pretty good job of keeping track of you for yourself I guess). Isn't it amazing what the web knows about you? It's sometimes easy to forget that any employer/recruiter/whatever can simply plug your name into a search engine and get a lot about you whether you want them too or not. I sometimes wonder if they can find me. I don't think so owing to another guy with my name's rather more tragic ending. However, I'll never knock a resourceful HR rep who might dig around and find this blog. I guess I'd be curious to see what someone would think of me who simply read my blog and had never met me in any other form. My guess would be they'd think I was A) Manic/depressive or just depressed B) Geek (computer, anime, & rpgs) C) Don't have a C, oops. The problem with this is that it only shoot a glimse of me (as do all forms of blogs). More like extra features or director's commentary on a DVD then the actual movie. It might give some insight but it's not worth nearly as much without having seen the movie. In the meantime have to be careful I guess and watch what I say that might hurt my career chances shrink.

That whole last is oddly paranoid but more then a few tech people have lost jobs or not gotten jobs due to blogs. Noone better go and quit blogging on me cause of this! :P

Well now hopefully I've wound down enough I can pass out. Lots of reading to do so far this week but I have a bad feeling more homework is coming later today...

OMG Ponies!!!!!!1!11111one11!

Well April Fool's came and passed. Some of the gags were pretty funny so that was amusing. I generally wish I could come up with good gags but I usually don't have that kind of imagination. I guess I will split my time between World of Starcraft and My Little Ponies RPG while waiting for Google Romance to hook me up with a compatible date :D


Got glasses this week. A bit strange. I won't use them much but they do actually make a difference. Guess I really am going blind.

Feel like I should write more but am not motivated. Will later in the week. That includes how Exalted went too.