Living the Middle Life

In soviet Russia, the middle life is living.

Sunday, October 28, 2007

The Dell Vostro Notebook


I'm looking into getting a computer. Thinking laptop. They're portable, but they can't play games. If this is going to be the computer I use at college, I don't want to be playing computer games, I want to be studying. That's a double win for the laptop.

Nathan pointed out the Vostro Notebook. I compaired it to notebooks from the Best Buy and Wal-Mart websites. It looks like a pretty good computer for it's price. Add to that the fact I can get it with XP instead of Vista and it's on sale. If I get the second column, the first upgrade (Fall Super Sale, Smart Value Package), It's $165 off, plus free shipping.

The biggest problem I can think of is that it's only got 80G of hard drive space. But I can get an external hard drive for that.

Does anyone have any comments? Critisizm? (besides the fact that it's a Dell )

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Screeeeeee


From the last episode of Heroes, "I've never been in an Irish pub before. Do you have Haggis?" Bwahahaha! So funny. :'-)

Something cool, the last manager of the meat department at our store was named Greg, the new manager is named Matt. (I'm pretty sure the guy two managers before Greg was named Rick, but that was a long time ago.)

I had the ACT today. "OOoooo... spooky." Not really. It seemed more spooky in anticipation than in play. Totally. I forced myself to not stress over it. It wasn't too hard if I just forgot about how important this test is. Not bad. It was just whenever I asked myself why I trying to keep calm that I thought of it, and in doing so, ruined my plan.

The reading test wasn't as bad as the practice tests made it seem. All the practice tests were like, "What does this mean," or, "What does the author intended to say." But the real test were only questions about what was actually stated, and what was actually not.

The hardest part of the test wasn't until it was over. They made us copy out a sentence that swore I was who I said I was (and not some smart guy Paul hired to score well for him) and that I wouldn't disclose any of the questions on the test. It doesn't seem that daunting, but nooo, it is, because they had us write it out in cursive. I don't use cursive; I'm waaaay out of practice. I had to have held up the whole thing for a minute after everyone else was done.

I was so slow that the guy observing the test asked me afterwards about why it took me so long. It wasn't like he chased me down after I left the testing room or anything. He was just putzing around the room after everyone else had left, and I was the last of "everyone else" to leave. The very last. That's not a metaphor; it's literal. Not only am I slow at writing cursive, I'm also slow at leaving the room.

It's same way in my writing class up at Gateway. I'm usually the last to leave the room, and when we did the in-class essay, I was the very last to finish writing. (I actually just barely went over the end of class) In Driver's Ed we had no time limit on the tests, so, naturally, I was the last to finish. (I almost failed my driving test because I was too cautious. I only didn't fail because the tester couldn't fail me for that reason.) At work I've been reminded a few times that I don't go quite as fast as I should (nobody ever has, I honestly think their standards are ridicules), I haven't been fired because I'm just so darn good at EVERYTHING ELSE.

And back to the ACT, I never finished the tests, time always ran out first. I got between 4/5 on Math to 1/2 on Science. If it wasn't for the five minute warning I wouldn't have been able to quickly fill in all the answers I didn't get to (ensuring me about a 1/4 point for everyone I missed.) But the ones I did answer I'm pretty confident about. There are only a few questions that I said to myself, "I'm not too sure about this one, but I think it's D..."

I often think it would be fun to sew costumes. Cool costumes. But then I think to myself, "There's no point in even trying if I'm not going to do a good job."

I guess that's just the kind of guy I am. I prefer "quality over quantity." "Haste makes waste," and "Slow and steady wins the race."

Can be a pain sometimes.

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Jelly Belly Bele-Garth

I mentioned earlier about how there are people in Burlington who do a pseudo Belegarth thing. I mentioned how they seemed lax on the rules. After some thought I think I figured out why. It's not that they're irresponsible; it's that they don't go all out when the fight.

They took really light hits. So light, that I would hear people calling out across the field that they killed some guy. This guy didn't lie down because he really couldn't feel it. (well, I think that was why)

I got scolded for hitting one guy twice in a row really fast. The first time was enough. I got used to hitting people twice previously when I needed to make sure people took their hits.

When people aren't doing risky things, there isn't any need to take preventative action.


(Though the fact that they allow the blocking of arrows with swords isn't explained away by this fact.)

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

High School Musical



It's an awesome movie. Seriously. Ethan would like it; one of the lines in there is, "Shut up Zeke."

I had a cool birthday even though I was sick.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

unfortunatly, Pirate cars wouldn't work, fortunately, The Merchant of Venice was awesome

I was going to point out how sails on cars wouldn't actually work, but Nat already did that. It would only work when the wind is going FASTER than your car (which are pretty darn high winds), and when the wind is at least somewhat coming from behind you.

This means that most people wouldn't use their sails more than two times a year, the cost of installation would quickly dwarf that.


Now, about The Merchant of Venice. It was an awesome play.

One of the people in the talk-back asked some question about the play being anti-semitic. I hadn't noticed this. Sure the Jews didn't look too good, but neither did the Christians. They both hated each other and wanted nothing more than each others complete and total eradication. At the end when Portia decides to spare Shylock's life, Antonio and Bassanio's friends are displeased with this, they want him dead.

Everybody is ruthless.

Another person asked if Portia's demand that Shylock become a Christian was mercy or revenge. The general consensus among the actors was that it was revenge.

After some thought I noted it was about Baptism. Because we have been saved from death by Christ's death on the cross, we are Christians. Because Shylock was saved from death, he is a Christian.

...and the Law and the Gospel, how many times did Shylock say, "It is what The Law demands!" The Law demands death.

It was an awesome play.

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Pirate cars

That light at the corner near where I work tried to kill me again. It had been nice to me for some time now, why did it have to back stab me so?

It's a windy day. As I was driving up to class I could feel my car pulled by the wind. It got me thinking about aerodynamics in cars. What if we put giant sails on our cars? That would give us better mileage while driving with the wind. It would also look awesome.

Thursday, October 04, 2007

oooo... title.

I really need to blog more often.

I think I'll start all my posts this way, and, to keep it all true, I'll not post often enough. I wouldn't want to lie to y'all. That would be horrible and stuff.

I'm actually writing this at gateway right now. I never seem to get enough time at home to do these things.

I'm having horrible attention problems right now. I was going to write about doing this LARP thing in Burlington last Sunday, but I don't think I can.

I can give it a shot.

I wanna write about Merchant of Venice. That was a great play.

So this one guy at class found out I did Belegarth. He invited me to come to a group he had over in Burlington. It sounded cool, but I was a little reserved about it. I decided to go, alone, just to check it out. It wasn't bad. They mostly followed Belegarth rules, but had a few discrepancies.

I'm still a little leery of the whole thing. They seemed a little too lax on safety rules for my comfort. I might drop in every now and then, just because it's closer than Madison. A round trip to burlington is the same time as just getting to the UWM stock Pavilion.

This place is huge. This school is huge. The few high schools I've been in are all huge too. How do politicians keep pushing through massive school budgets? Do we really need them? I just don't get it.