I do not consider myself an Apple zealot, but I'll have to admit that they make very nice hardware. I'm completely loving my Mac Book Pro. It's doubley more awesome that my Mac mini in almost every respect. Clock speed, RAM, hard drive space, video, you name it this thing is better. And it's portable. And it gets blazing hot when it's doing heavy processing, hotter than the surface of the sun I'd say.
Yesterday I picked up my books and softwares, those being Final Cut Studio 2 and Adobe Creative Suite 3 (adds up to a grand total of $3000+). I loaded up CS3 immediately and had fun doing stupid Photoshop jobs all day.
Gallery: Photoshop Fun
I tried screwing around with FCS2 last night but didn't really get anywhere. Final Cut Pro itself seems fairly straight forward so far but I couldn't figure out Color (color grading app) which is a bummer because one thing that my videos need are to be color graded.
School doesn't start until Tuesday and I'm beginning to get a little bored. E and I have been playing Halo 2 and we watched all the Back to te Future movies, but I'm ready for school. I do have my copy of Eternal Sonata now so maybe that'll ease the pai of waiting even if just by a little bit. I could always draw, I suppose. But I don't know if I'll be able to top this:
Before I delve into the juicy, gory details I will warn anybody who's unfortunate enough to be on dial-up: there's going to be pictures. Lots of them. Be patient.
I guess I'll start with the beginning. I was born around 10ish on June 8th, 1986. Life was pretty good until they cut my umbilical cord. You see I... Okay, too far back.
Last Monday, Sept. 17th, was a crazy, hectic day because I really hadn't packed much up to that point. About the only things I had packed were my books and DVDs. That left this:
(be sure to follow the link. I've got region thingies set up on the flickr page)
As you can see it was quite a hellish nightmare. But, I got everything packed and by that evening it looked more like this:
Evening came and morning followed the first day.
The next day, Tuesday, began the first leg of our near thirteen hundred mile trip. After I said goodbye to my family we started off. Then we promptly returned because I'd forgotten some things (that's not to say I got everything I'd forgotten, though). That day we drove about seven hundred some odd miles, well over half the trip, passing through five states (Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama). We stayed in a little town past Birmingham called Oxford. Evening came and morning followed the second day.
There's really not a whole lot to say about the second day of driving. We passed through Atlanta (uneventfully I might add) and drove from there on down to Florida. One thing I will say about Atlanta, though, is that there's an assload of cars on the road. Twelve lanes and all of them packed. Once in Winter Park it took about an hour and a half to find our lodging for the night. Luckily we did find it and it was an easy drive to the apartments. We ate at Boston Market that night. It was pretty good (though the service was... weird). I'll forgo the Genesis reference this time.
So, it was finally the big day (or at least one of them). We made our way over to the apartments and got there without any trouble. However, we did circle the whole complex nearly three times before we found the leasing office which was tucked away discreetly behind some trees. It was there that I met up with my roommate and signed my life away to the dark cabal that controls everything. However, we did get a sweet apartment in return:
Gallery: Apartment Interior
As you can see in that last picture we have a sweet TV setup (or I do. It's all my stuff). The gibberish on the screen is our (at the time) messed up cable. Dragging everything up and in wasn't to big of a deal and really didn't take too long. Getting setup, that was another story all together. My room isn't completely unpacked yet though it's functioning at one hundred percent capacity.
That evening we went and bought some furniture.
Gallery: The Furniture
The next day we didn't do much aside from pull in some of the more minor items we needed. I spent a good chunk of the day working on the mess that was my room. I think I did anyways... By this time it was Saturday and I had to see my Dad off as he prepared to redrive the roads we had just been on. We (my roommate and I) didn't do much over the weekend. Bought some stuff, played some games, watched some TV, drew some pictures. Just kept low. Then came yesterday (Monday).
We were both getting kind of tired of not having much to do so we packed up and went to the beach. Daytona Beach, that is. Up to that point the closest I had ever been to the beach was watching LOST so it was something completely new for me. It was a hell of a lot of fun.
We tossed a Nerf football around, we rode some waves, we walked up the beach (probably a mile or more not including the trip back). Being the off season there weren't too many people there and at that most of them were seniors. With the exception of the little kids we were the youngest people there. While it was fun and all there was a price to be paid. I had purchased some sunscreen before we'd gotten there, but was unable to get my back. My roommate, who I will refer to as E, didn't put any on at all. So by the time we got home he was completely red and my back felt like it was on fire. That evening we laid low and watched all the new offerings on NBC and headlines on Jay.
Tonight we're going to be going to a little meeting thing at the school and tomorrow is registration and the getting of our Mac Book Pros. It'll be sweet to be sure. I'll be back a full update including pics. Until then, stay cool.
It is currently September 16th, 5:30AM CDT. Temperature is in the mid-sixties with some cloud cover. I'm sitting here asking myself what the hell am I doing up at five in the morning? There's a myriad of ways I could answer that question but the one that seems to fit the bill the most is anxiety... and heartburn (one too many sausage calizones) . Today marks only two days left until I set out on my cross-country trip to begin my new life.
I've only been waiting for this moment for twenty-one years but when the time is actually upon you it feels different. Everybody and everything I've ever known will all be left behind; thirteen hundred miles behind. I've known this for some time but it didn't really hit me until it was brought up that I'll never live in this house again. Never again will I call it my home. From here on out I'll be fending for myself. Alone.
Another thing on my mind is the actual trip itself. The longest car trip I've ever taken is up to Morrison, Missouri a six hour trip that was generally broken down into two days on familiar roads. This trip to Florida, however, is more than three times the length over the same amount of time on roads completely unfamiliar. Luckily there's Google Maps to help with that, but twenty hours is still a long time to be cooped up in a car.
Tomorrow I'm going finish packing all my stuff, taking apart all my furniture, and trying to mentally prepare myself for the day after when I have to say goodbye to my family. How do you say goodbye to those that you've been around all your life? To the siblings that you grew up with and are your best pals? I'm really bad at goodbyes and I can tell you now that Tuesday morning is going to suck.
My thoughts: This guy is way too nerdy. That doesn't look too good on his part considering that I am a self-professed geek. But he didn't stop there, he also addressed the school board dressed in Jedi robes. But, just because a guy is nerdy doesn't necessarily reflect upon his ability to perform the duties and obligations that come part and parcel with the position he is trying to fill. Oh, but wait... he's got a strike against him in that department as well:
"I'm *extremely* happy with how good I did :-)"
This was posted by Christopher Knight as a postmortem to the embedded video above. Anybody who wants to work in any kind of school environment should at least be able to use proper grammar (for those who didn't get it that should be "how well [he] did"). And that smiley face just isn't doing it for me.
Today marks the beginning of the new bowling season. Even though I'll only be able to bowl twice I'm still excited. I've been bowling twice in the last couple of weeks and did really well, all games over average and two over two hundred. I could even have some beers if I wanted. T'will be an awesome time to be sure.
Today also marks the two week mark until I leave for Florida. I'm not sure if I've said it before, but I'm currently bored out of my skull. I got most of my packing done last week so that's done. I really don't have much to pack, really. What packing is left to do is of the stuff I use regularly... wait. I have said this before :-/. Granted, I haven't packed the kitchen stuffs yet so there is something left to do. I also need to get my haircut at some point.
That isn't to say I've been completely idle. I did do that little YPN thingy. I've been playing some games that I never finished *ahem* Thousand Year Door *ahem*. I was going to make another short movie, but lack of wardrobe kind of puts a damper on that. You'd think it'd be a simple matter finding a white wig, but no. Not in Bartlesville.
Whilst I was out on one of these wig finding missions I ran across something at a local craft store. It was a cheap glue gun (packaged and distributed in my good state of Oklahoma). It looks fairly standard to the casual observer but reading the fine print reveals, well see for yourself:
Needless to say I'm sending it in to Jay and hopefully it'll make headlines some night. If it does I'll be sure to have a YouTube clip up here the next day.
Sounds like the title of one of the many things I see copied and pasted onto a MySpace bulletin. Before anybody cries foul, I don't hate myself. I'm a very content person and more or less happy with who I am. And beside, I'm going to a kick ass school (one month from yesterday) so life is pretty sweet.
However, the last few days I took a trip to the past and came face to face with my younger, stupider, teenage self. What started out as a kind of fun little programming project quickly brought home that, yes, I was a complete douche bag. It was just a small project to keep me occupied (which it did), but...
I restored the old YPN message board. It was kind of fun to read some of the old stuff from before I came on, but the minute I started getting to my posts the pain came on. It was obvious that I was... different. I was trying to fit in a crowd of very different people but I thought I was cool like them. If I saw something that pissed me off (and it didn't have to be much) I'd make some idiot remark instead of just shutting up and moving on. When I came to power it was obvious it went straight to my head. Most of that is more apparent in the days after the old phpBB forum (which I have not gone through), but it all begins right there.
For your enjoyment I have provided a list of all the groan moments:
Visual Basic - In which I become kage-chan's bitch/lackey
Comp Specs - Reopening a locked thread, and check out my triple post at the bottom. That eraser trick was pretty sweet, though. Too bad mechanical mice are non-existant anymore.
