http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/drum.php

Gotta love 60fps Flash anims. Broadband + good speakers required.

Reading: finished Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them, and promptly made a donation to the Democratic National Convention. This book was the kick in the pants every propaganda-spewing ultra-conservative needed to receive, and it was the perfect bit of guidance for the easily-misled masses out there. If the other blogs haven't convinced you to go read this book yet, do it now. It made a world of difference when watching the State of the Union.

I got the new Clancy book Tooth of the Tiger for Christmas, but I don't know when I'll find the time to start on it. I'm hoping it was as fun to read as R6 was.

Class reviews, after one week:

World Lit, pt 2 - going to be impossible, just like last semester. Let's hear it for the struggle for a B! But the good of it is I'll come out able to handle any bitchy research class, and I'll be done with English!
Jazz Appreciation - liking it. Might be challenging for the kind of work involved (two mandatory concert reviews, stuff like that) but it'll be worth it just to be one of those cool guys who knows his jazz.
History 315K - according to everyone I've talked to about it, this class has blow-off written all over it. The reading seems easy, and I plan on doing it for safety's sake, but... yeah.
Spanish 312L - Jesus Christ, this class is stupid easy. I would test out of it but the test isn't offered again until April, so I'll just tough it out and get some oral practice. (heh heh, he said oral practice)
Plan II Math - I ***love*** this class, even if it's obvious that most P2ers hate math with a passion. Patrick, my World Lit buddy, is scared of the class and I'm happy to be able to help him for a change.

Just pretend I have something witty to close this mostly informational post. It's 3AM and I must be... tired.

You ever been told that college is where you find yourself? I felt philosophically uneasy coming into freshman year. It wasn't a day-to-day stress kind of thing, but after being settled down so long in my satisfaction with my identity (to myself and to the outside world) it was a shock to suddenly have to feel the need to make sure I was in the right standing.

I found that I really wasn't far off the mark the first time around. Tonight, instead of going to the P2 party, or Joe's party, I went to my brother's apartment. There probably needs to be some background story with him. When we were both younger, we spent all the imaginable time we had together playing games. In the times between, when Kris was still a teenager, he just found addictions to games and played them obsessively until he felt he mastered them. He topped the best national score in Nintendo Power score for the Game Boy version of Tetris. He 100%'d the Zelda games, Pilotwings, and so on. By the N64 era, he really started to drop off, on account of attending college and so forth. He's managed to remain a Nintendo fanboy though, and every time there's a new Zelda or F-Zero game he picks it up and keeps up his habit. While I was playing every PC and N64 game under the sun in junior high and early high school, Kris focused entirely on F-Zero X and tried to beat all of the hidden Nintendo staff ghosts, the best recorded runs by the development staff on each course. He beat more than half.

For Christmas this year, I surprised him with F-Zero GC. I played it with him tonight and got addicted too. After less than an hour of playing, there we were, two little 20-something nerds, making charts of how to best completely beat the game with its new part customization feature. After what seemed like decades on hiatus from playing games hardcore with him, we were right back into the thick of it, kissing our GPAs goodbye, after an hour. Suddenly I felt like I had never lost myself to begin with; maybe I really just am a gamer through and through.

At 1:30 in the morning, Kris and I called it a night and I started to drive home, where I found another piece that felt missing: driving. As I drove home through southern Austin, on dark roads, Incubus blaring, downshifting into the curves to compensate for the rain, I just said to myself declaratively: I love driving. I love cars. The whole idea of getting a cheap Miata popped into my mind once more.

Throw all that fun together with a few moments to myself late at night (which I always appreciate) and I came home a damn happy camper. Probably a lot happier than had I gone to the parties.

Ah, the wonders that racing games can work.

So the Scion tC looks pretty damn sexy. Take a coupe that looks like the new Accord (but sexier), put it on Toyota's European small-sedan platform, and throw in the 160hp Camry 4-cylinder. Then add a sunroof, 17" rims, power everything, and a complete Pioneer system (that supports MP3 playback, RMS 115 watts) and price it for $17k. Bolt on a TRD supercharger (takes peak hp to 200) and you're talking $20k, plus a couple thousand more for suspension/shifting mods. So for $22-23k, you've got a friggin' nice sportscar that's entirely under warranty. My only complaint? No navigation system. But I'm good spatially so I'd live.

Pretty damn cool idea, I say. Alex and I talked about it at length as to what cars it could outrun. We decided that it could most likely outdo a 325, a 330 would be close (20-30 extra hp but some 300-400 extra pounds) and he and I are at odds as to how it would take a Sentra SE-R.

Even still, if my automotive future weren't already decided, I'd probably spring for one of these.

And Mom, if you happen to read this like many parents do onto their children, this does NOT mean I'll take it over the 325. We already had that convo.

But still. Cool car.

So, yes.. it's 1:30AM and I'm very tired and I really don't feel eloquent at the moment. But I am back here, and wasting tons of time, and thoroughly enjoying it before class starts. Here's the spring schedule rundown:

-World Lit (second semester)
-History 315K (1st semester American, I took them in reverse order)
-Spanish 312L (4th semester)
-Math 310 (Plan II math, non-major advanced topics)
-Music 307, Jazz Appreciation

Here's what I've been studying in preparation for this:
-Family Guy
-Family Guy
-Family Guy
-Halo
-Family Guy
-Family Guy

It's definitely good to be back; I spent the last few days re-uniting with various friends and it's been a very happy experience. Taking care of defensive driving, however, has *not* been a very happy experience.

rrr.

www.1and1.com is offering free hosting for 3 years.

I done signed up. Once I get the stats I'll update this post with what you get.

Stats: 500MB space, 5GB/month transfer. Loads of database compatibility available, as well as some freebie e-commerce crap. Sounds like a damn nice deal to me. Maybe it's time to open a store.

Psychologically, I think I'm ready to head back to Austin. I've started to miss hanging around them in the last week or so, and the food, and the complete freedom of schedule I have there, and my cozy little dorm room. I'm about as close as I'm going to get to caught up on sleep, and I've spent the last several days doing close to nothing - watching anime and playing guitar and Mario Kart. It's bringing me ever closer to that wonderful geek holy grail that most of the world calls carpal tunnel syndrome.

Oh, and praise be to whoever decided to make it not cold anymore. I'm headed to the West End tonight and I did not to be wandering around those streets in the sub-freezing cold. So instead, it's 75 outside. Thanks, weather gods, I appreciate. I could really stand to take a spin but I'm driving my car in a couple hours anyway and the BMW's unavailable since mommy's at work.

Eh, I'm bored enough, I'm going cruising anyway.

</crappyboringblogthatjusttellswhatimdoingandshowsnotraceofdeeperthought>

owning a capo.

ca - po (n): Clamp that goes on guitar so as to transpose all six strings at once.

In the span of an hour I've already learned to play Not Myself and Howie Day's "Sorry So Sorry."

I am very happy.

So the tabloid the New York Post put up a giant rant on videogame violence and how the president of Take Two (a publishing empire - they own Rockstar, which published the Grand Theft Auto games among others) is such a shmuck. Then along comes a giant charity effort designed to bolster the image of gamers everywhere and no media coverage happens. Read the report from Penny Arcade.

After about three hours of painful labor, all the posts from my little self-run snagger.org have been moved over to Blogger, with their dates kept true to their original entries. Times were ignored [that'd be way too much work], but posts from the same day are still in chronological order. The new posts expand from 02/2002 to 12/2002, which covers the last half of my junior year in high school, the first half of my senior year, and the summer between. So, archive crawlers, enjoy that stuff, some of it's pretty interesting.

Oh, and since it's the new year, I'd like to take this opportunity to say:

Thanks!

to you, the wonderful reader. I know who most of you are, some of you are people I know and love and still read without my knowledge, but all of you (except the odd bored surfer) are near and dear to my heart. But it really does make me warm and fuzzy to hear occasional things brought up about what you kids see on this here place. Here's to two and a half more years on the blog.

It's the first post of 2004, and I'm twirling around this virtual noisemaker exactly once in celebration.

There, wasn't that fun? Oklahoma was a grand time. Got to see the brother and Karol (I'm starting to really love Karol's cooking), and eventually Kelly (the NY Times writer cousin) and her mom Karol (another one), and the old grandfather. While waiting on pizza, the three of us youngins snuck peeks through the family photo albums, which were a riot. After pizza and the Holiday Bowl travesty, Kris taught us to play poker so I can finally play a game sometime back in Austin.

Also got my first ticket on the way up. State troopers are Nazis between Decatur and Wichita Falls and they nabbed me for 10 over. Sigh. Bring on the defensive driving, yippee.

After a pleasant night at Kris's, I packed my stuff and headed home and prepared for the killer New Year's Eve party. Killer it was, and I spent the day following just kind of waiting for the chance to go to sleep. Over at Alex's, I stopped by and started the anime Spriggan with him and Aroon. The visuals and sound were nothing short of amazing, but the action was so friggin' cheesy I couldn't stay awake any longer and came home at 9:00. I went straight to bed and managed to get 13 hours of sleep before my allergies woke me up. And so I sit here, feeling great for the first time in a while.

It's a great day to feel good, too. It's just gorgeous outside. This is one of those days when I need to beg/borrow/steal the BMW and go for a drive and just relax. I could stand to do that, too. But for now, I'm busy amusing myself by reading my archives. At the very end of 2001 (that's two years ago), I had this girl named Abby stuck on my mind, as well as another girl who called herself Abby just for kicks. Right as the drama gets interesting, the whole thing gets cut off when the archives jump straight into February 2002, since I just never bothered to post what ended up happening (I still remember: the real Abby blew me off and the so-called Abby decided I was a jackass). Then the rest of 2002 gets cut off when I moved to my own system. That gives me a project for the day: move the posts from my database over to Blogger so I can have a complete website here.

I have a lot else to be happy about, too. Here's what I'm playing and spinning at the moment:

Music: I've rediscovered Hooverphonic, and their latest album Jackie Cane is a real work. It's got a different, more lively style, but their ability to take disparate ambient sounds and make good songs out of them is classic Hooverphonic. I'm on a Ben Folds kick lately; whenever a song comes up in random play I tend to really like it.
DVD: Michelle's totally my hero for getting me a copy of John Mayer's Any Given Tuesday. That, with Dress to Kill, has got me totally DVD-happy. Yay DVD.
Games: I'm strangely addicted to Need for Speed Underground. It's basically an arcade racer that would be a perfect videogame translation of The Fast and the Furious. The game's really fun for two reasons: the many many game modes and car customization. Pure racing also gets thrown in with drag and drift racing, both of which are crazy fun. Car customization is sweet because the mechanical, performance tweaks are greatly simplified (your car just levels up in categories like Intake/Exhaust, Turbo, ECU, etc.) and the exterior customization has tons of options. Almost all the customizations are insanely rice but it's still possible to make a nice-looking ricemobile that truly is fast. My ridiculously-fast Miata has a bunch of sweet Unique touches to it that make it look crazy cool.

OK, on to converting those old entries. I'll post when it's done.