2003, A Year in Review.

Everyone is doing a year end review of current events, so I figured I would do one too.

But I thought, "Hey, they're all talking about Bush's lies and the war with Iraq, the Governator winning the gubernatorial race in California, the space shuttle disintegrating in the upper atmosphere, the absolute flattening of Iran by a massive earthquake, etc. I should cover good things about the past year!"

So here's the list.

• Final Fantasy XI was released in the United States, to wonderful sucess.
• I discovered the joys of web comics.
• Galaxies was released.
• LotR: The Return of the King was released
• Harry Potter book 5 was released (And what a fiasco THAT was... Plus the book was only mediocre.)
• Adult Swim began airing Family Guy.
• All 14 of the Love Hina Mangas where released.
• Shonen Jump began it's run.
• The NQIG forums came into existance (and blew away all our previous bandwidth consumption by an order of magnitude.)
• My DVD collection almost quadrupled
• I was accepted to, and finished with good grades, my first semester of university.
• Vice City was released for PC
• The Matrix movies (#2 anf #3) where released

Oh, and for my new years resolution: "Continue as is and if the situation changes, adapt to continue playing video games, working, and going to school."

Happy New Years!

Mood: Sadistic (Ya, I know it doesn't show in my post... But it's there...)

People of the world of Sylph rejoyce!
Ding dong the trees are dead, the trees are dead, the trees are dead.

Ok, so maybe it's a little bit overdone, seeing as I havn't even bothered to talk with the teleport NPCs to see how the heck they work, but it's a step in the right direction. If you aren't aware, FFXI has an event running where a bunch of very nasty trees have spawned, and if all of the trees are killed, you'll get a teleportation service of some sort. Yesterday, our server whacked off the rest of the trees, and according to a friend, the teleport NPCs showed up. Now, I was living in the Palborough Mines all of yesterday, so I have no idea where these people are, or how to use them. Guess I'll have to do that later.

This afternoon is going to be seriously messed up, as we have my grandpa's birthday tonight. But we'll see what happens.

Cheese Ball!

Mood: Contented

Took me 2 hours, but I did it; I made my own comment program. I really didn't feel comfortable using someone else's comment system, so I spent some time with PHP and created my own solid program. Well, it's pretty solid anyway. :p You can't enter any HTML into it (not because I couldn't let you, it's that I don't want you too.) So now you don't have to worry about your comments disappearing (and as it turned out, the only comment lost was my own, go fig.) And I can make it availible to other people who like it if they E-Mail me.

Oh! And we killed the sparkling tree thingy in South Gustaberg. It was really cool. Rumor has it though that if our server wipes out all the trees by the end of the christmas event, we'll get a teleport service between all the outposts on our server. It would be WAY cool. So we'll see.

\/\/007!!!!!

Mood: Giddy

Well, I took the advice of Imp on the Social Stigma forums, and added a comment tool. I'm not sure if it works (I'll be commenting on this post when I finish,) but if it does, you should be able to make direct responses to my blog. I'm using BlogSpeak to provide this service, but I don't think I'll keep it there forever (At which time all comments will be lost X-|,) because I don't want to be a drain on their servers. But that means I'd have to write my own PHP app and keep the DB on my server, but it's not really beyond my skill to do. We'll see...

Christmas had an interesting twist. By trading and exchanging the different gift cards I got with my parents and my bro, and actually got what I wanted on my Christmas list. When all of the smoke cleared, I got #3 of the Chobits DVD's, books 6,7, and 8 of the Chobits mangas, the Bruce Almighty DVD (A great movie I might add, two thumbs up!), Call of Duty, Neverwinter Nights Gold edition (I have NWN original, but it's the ORIGINAL, the installer is actually broken and crashes on every XP system I've tried it on), a 256 Meg USB Flash drive, a weight set (Yes, a fat lazy bum like me presses weights), some CDRs, new headphones, and $50 to the college book store. A pretty good haul.

As for the rest of my life, I've had trouble substantiating the pattern for gardening in FFXI. My last test crop, a 5 plant test, driven with grain seeds and earth crystals (Always examined at the same time, feed the crystals at the same time, harvested at the same time) yielded TaruTaru Rice and Lightning crystals. I think I need to reexamine my patterns. Also, I think I might take Spoony's advice and play in the Freetrader campaign with a multimillionaire char who owns his own freighter, or maybe a criminal with a stolen ship, or an entrepreneur with a business loan. We'll see.

And that's how the cookie crumbles.

Mood: Excited

Well, It's Christmas, that wonderful time of year when enough wrapping paper and unwanted presents are thrown away to fill several landfill. And what is my atheist butt thinking about? Why Christmas, and Jesus of Nazareth's birth have to be completely unrelated.
It actually draws from a simple, yet obvious point: Why would the Romans, a practical people, collect taxes in the middle of winter? It may seem like a dumb point, but supposedly (Here's the Bible sourced info), Jesus was born during the time of tax collection, which was the whole reason that Mary was in Bethlehem in the first place. Now, based on doctrine, the holiday of Christmas falls on an absolutely dreary day in late December. Italy this time of year, and Rome more specifically, has an average high of 57.0F and a low of 41.2F. This doesn't sound like much, but when you don't have central heating, and cars with heaters, being out in that kind of weather is unpleasant. Also, December is one of the wettest months in the Roman year. Now, the tax collectors have to come to Rome from all over to deliver the tax money. Why would a practical people like the Romans have them do this in a time when it will be cold and wet for the next few months? Why not collect in early spring for distribution in the mid summer?
That is why I feel it is HIGHLY unlikely that Jesus was born on what we call Christmas Day. (Oh, and all of this is unrelated to my atheism... That stems from a concept called Instantaneous Consciousness that I'll discuss at length somewhere, sometime...)

Merry Christmas!

Mood: Sleepy

Well, as promised, I tried sushi yesterday. Decided after about .1 seconds of deliberation, that I still very much detest the flavor of fish. Oh well...

I compared my signiture on the Social Stigma forums with that of everyone else, and it seemed a bit overdone... So, I changed mine to a simple, text only sig. Looks Nice too...

Oh, on the gardening front, I've substantiated that there is at least SOME relationship that drives what you get from your plants. I planted 4 plants with the same seed at as close to the same time as possible, and checked them at the same times, and fed them the same crystals, and, although I got different amounts, I got all the same item (tarutaru rice in this example). So, I will be keeping a database of all the times I plant and all possible info, in hopes of determining the secret of the corn... Metaphorically speaking of course.

W007! Who 'da man? Ya I be 'da man!!!

I got A's on all of my classes except for my physics lab, where I got a B (I completely missed a prelab and a postlab...) That means that I did OK on that final (Or the teacher really didn't care what we scored, he just wrote A for everyone who had majority attendance. Doesn't matter to me :)

As for the Table(13) var, I now know that it is related to water quality capture volume (Think parking lot with a pond connected to it...) And my boss is having me completely rework how it is used in the new software.

In FFXI I leveled twice in one day ("*gasp*, he still levels?", ya, it amazed me too...) And I am basically broke from purchasing the really cool spell Regen.

Today is my first day off, and christmas is on the way (WOO!!!) Dispite my distain for fish, I've vowed to try some Sushi today. The reason I would do something that seems so obviously like a bad idea is that I decided "I don't like fish" some 10 years ago, and have actually managed to not eat ANY fish since then. Well I vowed to never eat supreme pizza ever again too, and when I tried some a while back, it was actually really yummy, so I figure it would be stupid to keep myself from a delacasy (or so everyone says) just because I didn't have a taste for fish a decade ago. So we'll see what happens (And I have a backup plan too, so I still get to eat if this goes foul... :)

Well, I'm off to play some FF till Vap gets up.

Have Fun!

お早う!

So continues my adventures in gardening. So far I have no evidence that there is any relationship at all between what you start with and what you end with. However, some basic differences between the different types of plants are clearly visible. Grain seeds tend to yield simple stuff like crystals and food, whereas vegitable plant, although they take longer to grow, tend to yield more valueable items. If anyone knows where (besides auction) I can find other kinds of seeds (What drop them, etc) I'd appriciate their help.

As for work... I have this one variable in the code that I'm translating that is called table(13) (Don't ask, bad coding practice is not the topic of discussion, well, not directly any way) and I'm trying to figure out what it is. Of all the elements in the table array (Which is part of a simulation and is comprized of several different variables squished into an array) 13 is the only one I can't figure out so I can make a named variable for it... Annoying...

Well.. I've finally begun playing in OniAkki's GURPS campaign. It's actually really fun. I've always had to play DM, so I've never really gotten an oppertunity to participate as a player. I should do this more often.

I've also come to love my phone's mobile AIM. My phone's AIM client sucks as compared to others, but it's still a great way to kill time. And I've figured out how to extend the battery life while using it, so I'm really happy about that (Seems the backlight costs a HUGE amount of power.)

Christmas is coming up (Along with a 9 day vacation starting friday night and running till sunday next week) and I think, for the first time ever, I may actually manage to get to stay home and enjoy my christmas vacation, rather than dealing with all the stupid inter family activities that normally are mandated by the "jolly" season.

My grades will be availible on the 22nd and I'm dying to find out how I did. I'm certain that I aced 4 of the 6 classes I took, and of the remaining two I have a good bet I have an A and a B, but I want to know for sure.

Till next time!

WOHOO!!!

I've figured out what it was that I hated about all of the Jim drawing besides the Grr_Baby drawing (Which I see as the master image of Jim that all images of Jim strive to attain.) His hair and his torso. Look at the original image. You'll notice that he has a triangle shaped torso and square legs. In all the versions of his body I don't like, he has a double cone shape (With the point about at the belt.) Jim is fit and trim, so he needs to be kinda squareish, thus why he looks funny. And in the lazy Jim drawing, his hair sweeps in. This is what made him look funny. If next time I draw Jim I put a little bit of extra work into him an make his hair and body just right, I think I can make a Jim I can be proud of...

Click to listen

I've been watching a bunch of audio prints while I'm at work (When you can't figure a routine out, the hypnotic pattern produced by my audioprint AVS plugin can clear your mind easily) and ran across this one when playing Clubbed to Death. You can litterally see the harmonic tones shifting. Schwea!

More lovely CSS...

I've patched the CSS so it's more standards complient, and even added a seperate sheet for printing my site (If you have a good browser, the right one will be automatically selected.) However, this means that there's a good chance that the pages look terrible! If the CSS isn't accounted for, the output will have a LARGE number of anomolies... But hey, such is progress. IE4 and Netscape 4 should be able to handle my CSS just fine. IE 3 won't load my background image, but who has IE 3? If you do and you're reading this, it's time to upgrade. Lynx does well with the site too. I was impressed.

Oh! And the change caused the stupid bug in IE to go away!!! Now ehrn you refresh the main textbox doesn't slide into the navibar... W007!

Well, I've come to a startling realization: Almost all the comics/anime I really like have kitty people in them. Ok, for those that know me that's not startling... Ok so it should have been obvious... But it was startling to me. From the list of things I watch/like, here's the ones with kitty people: RPGWorld, Tsunami Channel, El Goonish Shive, Pilot Canidate, Nadesico (The Ruri scene), Totally Spies (Wild Style episode), and Samuri Jack. Disturbing...

And I've changed job classes in FFXI, I was RDM/WHM now I'm GDR/RDM/WHM... After reching my goal of attaining level 20, I had nothing better I could think of to do, so I decided to take up gardening... So now I log on for 5 minutes twice a day to harvest my plants. I've grown a healthy list of cool stuff too. Light crystals, gyshal greens, etc. I've been thinking about trying to repeat some things by keeping really good track of lunar cycles and day of the week, but I havn't started that yet. If I do, I'll make sure to post my findings on my web site.

Took apart my old cell phone hoping to salvage it's old LCD... But sadly It was not to be. The LCD was connected to the cellphone's main board by means of a multi layer cable, but it was soldered to the board. I'm no good at unsoldering, so even though I succeded at not destroying the Electro Luminecent backlight, I still messed up the LCD. It was really cool though, the controller was literally molded into the cable. And I did manage to get the EL working (At significant personal risk mind you. Kids, don't play with the power direct from the outlets without professional training.) It glowed a pretty green/blue.

And I've resolved that I WILL make an LCD driver for my paralell port one day. Probably based on the Hitachi HD44780 controller just because it's really easy to work with.

Went to that art test yesterday... Uh... Ya... Bombed it. Got all but one thing on the slides though *gasp*. The hope is that my 80 on my first test and the 100 on my paper will make up for the 75% that I estimate I will score on this test. Stupid modernisim... Oh well.

Found out something with Mario Party 5: The goofy games are almost entirely based on button mashing. I wore out my index finger (and whole right arm for that matter) pushing the A button an estimated 2000 times during a 20 turn party mode game... Whew...

Got around to reading the comments on Hobbits new drawings (Finally got around to scanning them, the bum... :) In any case the comments are short, but the drawings are great. I dream of that kind of aptitude... Oh well.

Been meaning to draw a comic using Jim, but I don't have any ideas... The few things that I think are funny are a bit too esoteric for a widely viewed web comic (Or heck, even to be viewed by my own group...) so I think it may take some time for me to get started.



FFXI? What is the FFXI you speak of?

Well, I was rummaging around, looking for interesting information, and ran across a rant written by Cortney Love about the RIAA and piracy. Really interesting. She brings up some interesting points. I've also learned (from my favorite, non comic website: How Stuff Works that, as I suspected, the performing artists are not due any royalties from traditional distribution methods (CD, TV, Radio). And as a brief filler, here's all the players in getting a song out:

• Songwriter
• Publisher
• Recording Artist
• Record Company

Of those, in the typical arrangement, the Songwriter (Who does own the rights to a piece of music and the lyrics) sells the copyright to the publisher, who aggrees to split the royalties 50/50. The publisher promotes the song and issues licenses to a Record Company, who then hires a recording artist, who, helps them produce a recording (as a work for hire). The record company now owns the copyright to the recording, which they then use to manufacture CDs and issue to stations for performance, etc... Now notice, the artist (the person we most associate with the song) was used as work for hire. This means that they have no right on any level to any royalties. Most artists are promised a fraction of sales, but the record company steals this money back by means of Recouperation. They charge the artist for actually printing the CDs, packaging them, promoting them, etc... So effectively the artist (who isn't required to be paid) is being charged to earn the record company money... Serious BS.

Not that I have any talent mind you, but if I where an artist, I would use the same rule I use as a contract programmer: The record company pays me a flat fee for my labor. Basically, I will sell you my time for $500,000 to record 15 songs, which you will then make $11 million on. No recouperation, no nothing, just state and fedral taxes for self employment. My employer doesn't charge me for staples and envelopes to send out copies of my work with their name on it, neither should the record company.

But like I said, I don't have any talent... So really I guess that's more advice for up and coming artists.

As for my life, more Mario Party 5, and the Art test that I havn't studied for. If I'm lucky, they'll ask be about a bunch of art terms that come from latin. I did the C final, peice of cake... El Gooney Shive is still cool, creapy, and pleasently strange while Megatokyo is confusing me. Fred, if you read this (never, ever, ever do I expect that...) hurry up and finish this camera sequence so we can figure out what the heck's going on!!! And what's up with Ping?! Why sad? Anc What is this malfunction?! PLEASE finish your plots so I can follow along... Oh, and keep up the good work. ;)

Finals Week: Short classes in a glass.

I love finals. I can finish them in half the time alotted (except for math ones, which take me the whole time plus a bit), so I get to leave early. Yesterday I could leave so early that I actually had to get a ride home unless I wanted to wait for 2 and a half hours for my carpool. Today I finished my 10 minute final in my "Intro to Electrical Engineering" class. Later I have a final in C. I suspect it will be just like all the other tests we've had in that class so far. But what that means is that I'm running on my own schedule tonight! Woo... I'm worried about my art final because it's based entirely on a book which I havn't read (and, although I've tried, I can't bring myself to read it either.) So I'll be BSing my way through that one. Good news is that it's multiple choice. BUt the first part of teh test I've ot big problems upcoming. It's a slide matching segment and I just don't know most of them. Unlike the first test, he hasn't run the slides every day for the last 7 weeks, so I don't have most of them memorized. *Sigh* so we'll see.

I've also found a new comic (Yea!) that I like called "El Goonish Shive", but I can't decide if it's shonen, shojo, or hentai. There is action, romance, and gratuitious use of a transformation ray. It's wierd enough that just calling it hentai probably works best., but only because of it's preversion of the character's form. Interestingly, this comic has the most solid plot of all of my faves, Megatokyo wanders like a 2 year old's attention, Nekobox gave up on a continuing storyline months ago, Help Desk loves plot holes, 8-Bit Theater is okay, but seems to ebb and flow about the topic, and RPGWorld and Adventurers will give you schizophrenia from all the multiple topic jump arounds (RPGWorld has no less than 4 standing parties). Although it sometimes jumps around, El Goonish Shive has been progressing nicely along on the plot, leaving no tiny point forgotten.

It rocks.

On the FFXI front, not much is happening. Why? Well, some of the games I've been waiting to be availible for rent from Blockbuster finally have been in. In the last 3 days I've done nothing but play on my Game Cube. I beat Tony Hawk's Underground in 2 days on Normal mode (There's 4 modes, really easy, easy, normal, and hard.) Considering how much I actually suck at one player games, that's impressive. And yesterday I played Mario Party 5 with Cyan and Vap for most of the evening. So Kilara has been level 20 now for almost a week. And isn't at all close to level 21. Oh well. At least I've been checking on my plants. :)

Well, that's about it. See ya in my next post.

Ohh... Glad my parents didn't know about this when I did the experiment...

A while back I was doing a demonstration on electrolisys for a friend. With the intent of turning water into oxygen gas and hydrogen gas. But that particular night I decided to improve the current flow by adding some simple table salt. Knowing a bit about chemistry, when the thing started emitting a visible vapor, I shut down the experiment and immediately disposed of my experiment. Good thing I did! I was doing some research on the manufacture of bleach and discovered something: I was in the process of manufacturing not 1, not 2, but 3 very hazardous chemicals (2 of which I know how to handle.) Apparently, salt water, when exposed to a significant electric current, produces three chemicals: NaOH^-, H₂, and Cl₂. For those of you who don't know what those are, I'll explain them to you. NaOH^- is Sodium Hydroxide, which has the common name of Lye. This is a VERY strong base and direct skin contact (with some water) can cause severe chemical burns. Nasty stuff (but a very useful base in diluted solution). H₂ is Hydrogen Gas. This was an intended result of my experiment. Hydrogen gas is highly flammable and will explode if mixed with Oxygen gas (O₂) and given a spark. (The best explosions come form an environment with a 2:1 Hydrogen:Oxygen ratio.) The final result Cl₂ is Chlorine gas. This gas is highly toxic and will kill you in any reasonable concentration. Interestingly, it is found at swimming pools that use Chlorine bleach (a special compound made by mixing a NaOH^- solution with chlorine gas, manufactured by companies like Clorox,) as their disinfectant. Chlorine gas give swimming pools their distinctive "pool" smell.

There's only one thing I couldn't figure out: the vapor I was getting was orange/red not green like Chlorine gas. I have two theories about this. The first one comes from the electrodes that I used to energize the water. I was using alligator clips, so there was a chance that one of the products could have reacted with the clips (made of either aluminum, steel, or zinc, I can't remember) and caused the altered result. The second was the fact that it was iodized salt. This means that the salt contained trace quantities of iodine. This could have reacted (probably with the Hydrogen or the Sodium Hydroxide) and caused the additional colored byproduct.

In any of the above cases, I won't be doing that exact experiment again for a while (Unless I have an on the spot need for Sodium Hydroxide solution, and can do the process outside where the amount of Chlorine gas released is trivial).

Well, I was reading a rant written by Dom (From Megatokyo), and he started talking about a person running for a government position in California who wants to pass a law that places violent video games with sexual content for the purpose of sale (i.e. illegal to sell to minors.) Now how stupid is that?! ESRB has a volentary rating system that has been in effect for some time now that tells parents what kind of video game their kids are playing. The parents have a responsibility to protect their children's minds from damaging topics. If kids who arn't supposed to be playing violent video games are, it's the parent's fault for shirking on their responsibility. Not the retailer who sold it to them, or the game manufacturer. Adding a law does nothing more than encourage parents to not pay attention. And the kids will get their games anyway, either by playing it at a friends house or coercing their college age cousin to buy it for them. I mean geez...

Well... Today I decided to dealve deep into the palborough mines. And I got really far. I could easily take on two of the quadevs there at once without breaking a sweat. So deeper and deeper I went. Till eventually I came to the threashold of a large room. IN this room there where 2 or so quadevs, but no biggy really... But then something unexpected happened... About 7 of the buggers showed up. I did my best but died in about 30 seconds... You can see my pain in this picture:

Right about this time, someone else decided to show up. Aparently thinking they wouldn't aggro on him he pushed right by. This also had an unexpected, and rather unpleasent side effect...

Next time I'll have to go there with Tander so I can wipe them all out at once.

Well... I took Emode's little IQ test thingy...

Let's be honsest with ourselves... The IQ isn't a measure of intellegence. The IQ measures the ability to recognize patterns and retain information. For those who don't know, the IQ score (Which is constantly being adjusted...) is calibrated such that 100 is the mean and every 15 points in either direction marks a standard deviation boundry. So people between 85-115 are within 1 standard deviation from the mean. 68% of all people fall in this zone. People with IQ's between 70-85 and 115-130 are in the second standard deviation and 27% of all people fall in this zone, etc. Because of this relationship, the fact that most people have an IQ between 70 and 130 isn't suprising, because 80-120 includes 95% of the people. This means that in the US, people with IQs > 130 or < 70 is only about 14 million people. That's roughly the same number of people who suffer from chronic bronchitis in the US.

Oh, and if you absolutely must know the result of the test... I pulled a 138... You'd think I'd be extra happy about this, but as it turns out, I'm one of the dumber people in the group I hang out with :p. Most of the people I group with seem to score in the 140-160 range, It's kinda sad really... But then again, when one of the people you hung out with scored a 1600 on the SAT and a 35 on the ACT (and was LIVID that he couldn't get that 36,) it's kind of hard to compete... (and I though my 31 was awesome... I wanted a 25 so I could get into a good college...)

Hurray Hurrah! The new site format is up.

Oh, little word of warning. If you have any bookmarks to the old .html files, you really should update those. Everything ends in .php now. If you used a directory link, like http://www.nqig.net/jtc, then your link will still work.

And if anyone notices a broken link or malfunctioning section, please e-mail me.

Ok...
Now, normally I don't like to hit on topics for my blog that are actually important to the flow of the universe, but this one struck me as needing to be posed.

AIDS

AIDS has grown to epidemic levels in Africa. But not just in the places where people live in mud huts and raise cows for a living, but in places like South Africa, where the quality of life matches us here in the United States, where people have cars and computers and televisions.

This is where I have problems. In the US, aids is an issue, with 890,000 (about 0.6%) adults afflicted in 2001. In that same year, South Africa had 4,700,000 (about 20.1%) adults with HIV/AIDS (Data from http://hivinsite.ucsf.edu/). Now, this is in a country that has all the amenities that the US does, so all the sources of information are present, but they have 33 times more people per capita that are infected. How? Why?

I have no idea. I think that it's truely scary that a country that has information everywhere is capable of such a high contamination rate. Now I know that here in the US we're all germophobes, so we tend to obsess, but this disease is transmitted by only one of 2 ways: Sexual Contact and Blood-Blood contact. The flu here spreads like wildfire, but that spreads aierally, you can be infected by just being in a place where an infected person has been. But with AIDS, it is perfectly safe to be roommates with the person. Now that's not wholly true, because their weakened immune system can allow their body to be used as a breeding farm for some diseases that are usually squashed by normal immune systems and thus are only availible in small amounts, but in large quantities can overwealm a healthy immune system. But AIDS itself is REALLY hard to spread. Sleeping around and sharing needles are basically the only ways to spread the disease to more than one person (Your spouse is at EXTREAM risk, and a woman with AIDS has a 50% chance of infecting her newborn child...) And technically, people who sleep around using a condom with an antimicrobial reduce their chances of infection by 99% or so (Don't quote me on that).

So, why is it that South Africa is so messed up? The people there have access to what I do information wise...

It's disturbing really.

Oh... And I have an appointment to see my advisor so I can get registered... Yea!

Back to work... :(
It was a good vacation, so I'm not really all that unhappy. But less time at work is always better for my psychy. However, that's not my real issue. The big issues is: I havn't registered yet 8-0! I got my invitation to register on Nov 20 and it's now Dec 1... I can't even register if I wanted too because I havn't talked with my advisor. I don't even have an advisor appointment... So I'll be rushing to get one setup and get registered ASAP...

Ya, I'm a very bad person. I have absolutely no drive to accomplish anything. Even my FFXI character suffers because of my poor drive. It's like all I want to do is nothing. Absolutely nothing. But that's why I'm going to school. Because some day I'll make enough money to retire, and with that money I will stay at home and do nothing. Once every couple of months I might wash dishes and clean the appartment, but otherwise it will be TV and video games for me. The only thing I might do is eat.

Thinking of which, eating and using the restroom are really the only drives I have at all. Everything else is just something to do because I'm bored. I play games because I'm bored. I work because I play games. I go to school so I can work. I want to do nothing because I go to school and work. Simple as that. So it's all a nasty cycle so that I can stay at home and do nothing because that all I really want to do. I don't want to help humanity, I don't want to better myself as a person. alls I want to do is stay at home and be a consumer whore.

And when I succeed, It will be a very good, do nothing life. Omega Bum's life would be dos primo! Sans some of his less desireable hobbies, I would dream of living his life. Do simple work, earn trivial income. Have all my base needs provided for. It would be awesome. But since I have no parents willing to let me do that, I'm going to school to get a degree in a job that I'm good at, so I can earn a lot of money over 10 years, retire, and do seasonal work around christmas to give myself a system upgrade every year. The problem? I need about $30,000 a year for basic survival. Which means that I would have to have 2.1 million dollars, invested in accounts that have an actual yield (accounting for inflation) of 0%. That's some tough accounting to earn 2.1 Million over 10 years... So what I need is more planning... A scheme that is full proof to keep my in the black for 70 years to come. And the secret? I think the way I'll make this work is through investment. Saving a million over 10 years as an electrical engineer is difficault, but not impossible. If I can yield $100,000 a year (unlikely, but possible) then I can make a million in only 15 years. Not the 10 year goal, but close... Then by using inventment techniques that have a greater than 0% yield, I can grow my million and drain it simultaneously. For example. If I find an account with a 3% REAL yield (roughly 6% if you have 3% inflation). I can get my 30,000 a year that I need to survive by skimming the interest off the top of the account. Higer yields = higer yearly income. The only secret would be that first million. And if I supplement my accounts with a consulting business, I could actually grow my money.

Big plans for the whole objective of accomplishing nothing. But these plans will lead me there in approximately 17 years (including remaining school) and with proper investment, could be accomplished sooner...

Evil shal rule... MUHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Today I feel pretty good. And my temp is only 100.1F. Tells you where it's been for the last 3 days, doesn't it? :)
I've been running a temp between 101F and 102.7F for the last couple of days, and considering my baseline is 97.4F, you can get a feel for how bad that is... Twice I had to log off of FFXI because I was TOO SICK TO PLAY VIDEO GAMES! If I hadn't seen it once (and ONLY once) before, I wouldn't have believed it to be possible. I mean, what does it take to play video games? I even use a controller instead of the mouse/keyboard to play FFXI, just because it takes less effort. But I just couldn't push myself to play anymore. It was kinda scary.

Also I found out that a person of my dainty mass of 134 KG, can take up to 5363 mg of ibprofin a day without ODing. Or so says my mom the nurse. It turns out that my fever wasn't being controlled because I was taking 200mg every 4 hours, (The minimum and recommended OTC dose,) when a person of my size should be taking 400mg and another 200mg if symptoms don't respond. Go figure.

*NOTE: This is not formal medical advice!!! DO NOT take more than the recommended dosage unless instructed to by your doctor. The recommended dosages are fine tuned to work without harming you. Follow the directions on the container.

There, I said it. Now none of you losers can blame me for waxing yourself with Advil or Motrin.

Anyway, I've got my sub class (Yea!) and hope to level my white mage class to 10 as soon as possible. Currently I'm a RDM 18.2 / WHM 7.8. Having a sub class is cool. I can cast poisona (My favorite white mage spell), and it buffed my mana from 116 to 140. That's a whole extra Cure II. 66 HP for some lucky sob. :)

Well, I'm going back to FFXI (Now that I can remain conscious for the duration.) Have Fun!

Well, I'm sick... It sucks.
But in good news, I've got tommorow, Thursday, and Friday off. Always cool.
Finals are coming up, so I've trying to be prepared for that one, (My art class is going to seriously mess me up unless I can get more practice with the slides. Oh well.

OMFG... LOL...
I know this is my third post today, but, LOL...
You have to read this post.
I mean, he summarizes the total truth of the extended family. And with thanksgiving coming up, I can SOO sympathize with this guy. Our family does the same thing (sans the 40 people), and you can see it.

LOL...

I got the pagination on my gallery working with teh Help of OniAkki! Yea... And I got a copy of my AP transcripts, so I would assume that the school has gotten them as well.. That means that I can setup an appointment with my counsler to get my schedule approved. Woo!

Jim is pissing me off though, mostly because I can't seem to get anything even remotely consistant regarding his face, and the last one I even had a reference drawing... I think that the only way he'll become more consistant is if I actually parameterize his face (Generate ratios for eye distance, noze size, forehead dimensions, etc.) Either that or I've hit the defining boundry of my artistic talent (Which really wouldn't suprize me considering that only a year ago I though that my artistic talent wasn't adaquate for rendering stick figures.)

I like Poodle Hat.

And Hobbit: YOU FORGOT TO SCAN YOUR STUFF AGAIN!!!

Anyways, I turned in my art paper last Thursday, and I'm worried that the teacher might notice that I wrote about 3 full double spaced pages of garbage related to a conspiracy theory that probably doesn't matter to anyone be me. "The flag was chosen to join the nation after the 9/11 incident because Bush wanted to make some good war, but no one would let him if they wouldn't take it as an attack against America," Total gibberish I came up with because I was thinking about it at the time. Although it's not really gibberish, I mean I really do wonder, but not enough to make a 3 page paper about it.

Mood: Sleepy

LAN parties are fun, but I always stay up too late. We played FFXI from 1:00 PM to 1:00 AM (Which is way too short). But anyways when you have to get up at 6:00 AM, you find that life doesn't necessarily work quite right. Luckily, I have most of this week off, (Thank you thanksgiving,) but I have to goto my aunt's place for thanksgiving itself, so part of what would be a perfect vacation is messed up, but that's the way life goes.

And I screwed up and forgot Jim's Glasses, maybe I'll remember them today and draw jim again. And I forgot to do my C homework, so I have to do that first... :)

I'm thinking I may abandon the Front Page themes thing I'm using and go back to doing it the old fashioned way... With pure PHP... MUHAHAHAHA... Anyway, what that will let me do is emulate the behaviour I got with themes, without having to figure out how to make it cooperate with my gallery applications and my blog (Which, as you can tell, doesn't work with themes either.) So I think I'll use a universal PHP template to generate my page and navigation structures. Plus it will let me bring back the really cool formatting that my old site had. I really liked that format...

OW!!!

I woke up this morning with my back hurting, and it still hurts. I think one of the muscles on th middle left side of my back is cramped... Bummer...

Anywho... I got some more colorized drawings up in my gallery. And I've decided that Jim should have glasses (Like the ones I used in my self drawing) as Hobbit suggested. So from now on he'll have big spiral glasses. I'm not exactly sure how they're going to stay on his face, seeing as his ears are above his eyes, instead of along side them, but I'll work something out (This problem has already presented itself in the headphones question...)

I've also worked out a complete SQL query statement for selecting the images in my gallery:

SELECT url, thumburl, comment FROM jtc_gallery WHERE gallery = '$gallery' ORDER BY DESC createddate, createdtime LIMIT $start, 11;

I'll then check the result set and see if there are 11 or less images in it. I'll display only the first 10, and if an 11th result exists, I'll display the Next button. This way I'm not going to cache the whole table in memory just to decide if there are more records. $gallery is a string reference to the name of the gallery, and $start should be a number that marks the first desired record. Both will be derived from the $_GET structure.

Well, I've come up with the world's most un-user friendly PHP application ever for running a gallery, but it does actually work. So now the question, how the heck do I integrate it with my site?! I use front page themes for everything (Server side) and really would like to keep it that way, but the problem is that I have no idea how to force front page to parse a file not made in Front Page, let alone actually have it post process a PHP file... If anyone has any idea how to do this, send me an email and help me out.

Oh, and in further news, I tried out that blue line thing I wanted to do and it works... Yea!

Well, I was looking at my galleries last night, and it is becoming quite clear that they are getting seriously out of control. The size of the pages is starting to push a quarter of a meg, which on dialup connections is horrific. So I need to chop them up a bit. The current method was a chop of an older method with everything on one page. What I really want to do is develop some method for dynamically building the gallery pages from a database. That way adding images is really easy. Otherwise I would have to redo ALL of the pages every time I add a drawing, or add new drawing to the end. But I would really like to have my new work at the beginning so that people who are regulars can quickly check the new stuff and move on. The problem with all of this is that I don't know much at all about using PHP to communicate with a MySQL database. Ok, so I only know how to make it say my name, but the point remains the same, I'm going to have to do some serious studying if I want to get it to work. I think what I'm going to do is install the Windows version of Apache on my laptop and PHP on my laptop and work on it during my C class rather than sleeping or drawing kitty people. :)

I called the people at AP and had them rush send my physics I transcripts, so I should be able to register for classes in 2 weeks or so.

Yea!

Had an old friend send me an e-mail (through good ol' Spoony) and am I estatic to hear from him (When you only have like seven friends in high school, three visit your house every friday, two live lives that are flat out incompatible with yours, one who has moved on and followed a different path, and one you know you'd like to hear from) and the one you haven't talked with send you an e-mail, you rejoyce in it.

[plug type="shameless"]
Don't forget to visit his web site http://www.socialstigma.net.
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Mood: Giddy like a school girl

Well, I did a gallery publish and a basic website update. It's not much, but it's something. :)

In other new, I got my Megatokyo poster back up in my room (It tore of fthe wall, I was pissed.) And I got pictures of the lunar eclipse that happened last sunday.

Mostly eclipsed...	Still mostly eclipsed...	Eclipsed (cool huh?)

It's all about the link shells... I like link shells, it's like guild chat. It keeps us NQIGers together nicely.

But for more important matters, registration for classes has started for me at school and I can't register for any of the ones I want ('cept for Calculus III). Why? Because I am a lazy slob and havn't gotten around to transfering an AP Physics I class I took back in high school. But, since I'm in an engineering field, physics is basically the foundation of everything, and as a resault, is a prerequsite to everything. The circuits I class I want corequisites physics II which prerequsites physics I and calc II. Lucky for me I already transfered all my calc credits so that's fine, but since I want my schedule to be Circuits I, physics II, and Calc III, not having the physics I class basically kills the whole thing Not that the schedule that I built is actually a good one, mind you. It has me in school from 10:00 AM till 6:30 PM on mondays and wednsdays and going to school after work on tuesdays and thursdays till 6:45 PM, which sucks, but would let me work 20 hours a week, thus letting me earn enough money to not have to worry about affording the DSL for the server, the IPs for the server, my cell phone, my FFXI account, school, computer upgrade, etc.

Well, I finally understand why a lot of the people in the anime sound the same, it turns out that the same person who does Naru in Love Hina and Kaoru in Rurouni Kenshin (Dorothy Melendrez) does the voices for 2 more of my favorites (Meryl in Trigun and 003 in Cyborg 009) as well as a whole plethera of other things. She even did Kiyone for the Tenchi movies! I was a bit amazed when I found out all the different things she'd worked on.

Oh, BTW, I found where to buy world passes (about 1200 gil) in the port area of Bastok. It's up high in one of the little shacks, not in the buildings, which is where I had been looking for them and thus why I couldn't find them.

Well, FFXI is out, so my Galaxies account has bit the dust. On the 27th of this month, my galaxies account goes off. But I think it's worth it.

Kilara, my 10th level Mithran Red Mage has been ridding the land of Vana'Diel of foul beasts. All those evil sone eaters, vultures, and quadavs have a new fear... Ok, so maybe not, I'm not even good enough to get my chocobo license yet, but I have slain a very large number of them... :)

Turns out the game has all of the components of SWG except for dabbling. In FFXI you can dabble in the crafts, but dabbling in combat skills/jobs is much more difficault since your skills in them don't stack. Much like Everquest, you gain levels, and get better items, and, *GASP*, buy things from NPC vendors. However, playing on the same server as a friend is quite a bit harder. You have to buy a "World Pass" in game which gives you a 10 digit code that you enter to play on the same server. I have yet to find one, so I'm kind of disheartened...

Anyway, FFXI has proven to be a wonderful game, and looks to hold my attention for a good month or 3. We'll see. ;)

Well, I took this online quizzy thingy to pick which Soul Calibur character I am, and well... This is how it came out:

You are Astaroth - Your combination of being both silly and scary is what makes you appealing. It just cracks people up when they see you goof around at one time, and stare people down at another time. Your unpredictability may confuse some, annoy some, and amuse others, but whatever happens, you're too caught up with your own thing to conform to other people's standards. Besides that, the id seems to be the dominant force in your mind (the part of the mind which demands immediate gratification) Which Soul Calibur character are you? this quiz was made by david park

It's fruty and shoots for an esoteric appeal, but it's actually really cool. The story is about 2 jedi who duke it out in saber combat. There's a moment when the light side guy uses a tecnique that doesn't work (Plant the saber in the ground and then move, then pick it up again) because of the Laser Sword design (It cuts the ground just as well as it cuts steal, thus it's weight would drive it clean into the earth in a hurry,) But otherwise it looks wonderful.
TFN FanFilms | F/X Projects | Art of the Saber

I'm going to have to develop a pure color glow replacer program. I think making the saber glow would be easy to do. Just draw a filled and alpha blended circle of a known radius at every pure color point. The colors would stack and create the fade effect as well as a bright glow at the center.

"But where are to good ol' fashion values, on which we used to rely..."

Hobbit bought the two seasons of Family Guy, and we've seen all but the last disc... Dude it is AWESOME!!! It is a must watch.

There is this great product called 3d Mark that I've been meaning to get Futuremark - Download. But I'll have to wait till I get home...

Well, beacuse it's so much easier to update this than my normal method, I think I might post here more often... Anyway...
I've been having trouble deciding what to do with SWG... Should I continue Todoo? Or work on my Test Center character. I mean, the TC crowd is nice, and as a software developer, I can tolerate a VERY large number of bugs. but Todoo is getting so far... I don't know...

Well, I found out about this blog thing (Apparently, the common name for an online diary like the one I have been running is a blog, go fig...) in any case, I figured I'd use it to accent the stuff on my website, maybe even replace it.