Well, as the year draws to a close, and having just read Becky-senpai's blog, I believe this year turned out pretty well for most all of us. "Us" being people I know. Despite a few things, like our troops still being in Iraq even though we should have been the hell out a long time ago, and if you ask me never there in the first place. But politics aside, there were a lot of good things that happened this year. For example, my best friend made it through. I know a few people who might have actually worried about my wellbeing because of him, even if they should have been worrying about him. I'm glad he made it through. And, I'm glad he took the time out to read this. At least he read the last one, so I'm thinkin' it wasn't so boring (although I do believe he said that it was) that he won't come back. But alas, blogs are not meant to be exciting.

Anyway, this is a harder blog to write. I'm deeply moved that I actually got a mention in Becky-senpai's blog, whether she knows it or not, she does now. It's like... I'm not entirely sure how to word it. It's like getting a signiture from your hero. It might not be worth much to other people, but to me, it's the world. I want to thank you. Arigato. Hah, and as you said about Kiwamu, and you being his "English teacher" you're my Japanese teacher. 99% of the Japanese I know is because of you. Arigato.

I'd like to say thanks to all the people I just met this year, for reasons abound. For just being someone to talk to, to being someone to play games with, I thank you. A bunch of the people I met don't read this, and probably never will (Algo for example), but that's fine. You can't have your cake and eat it to as the saying goes. But I'd like to thank them nevertheless.

As the time for this year slowly ebbs away, I don't think I'll ever realize how crucial this year was for me. So much has changed over the year, and I think I've changed a lot. Hopefully for the better. And not just the plain and unimportant things, like how RO is boring now, while this time last year I was addicted.

Just a complete sidenote, I was just daydreaming there, wondering what it must have been like to be the first beta-tester for RO. Did they immidiately turn their back on it? Or did they embrace it... I won't know what that person did, but I think if it was me, I would have embraced it. At least for the time it took for another person to find it. And I can't imagine how much different my life would be if I wasn't that way. I know I've blogged about this before, but I think now is a good time to repeat it. I owe a lot of thanks to techno_da_peace. Even if he never finds me--and I don't know any way he would be able to--he is the sole reason I am where I am. That kid showed me a lot of things about myself; indirectly I learned who I am. To myself and in front of others. In the end, he's the reason I ever met my best friend today, and my best friend is the only reason I ever met the person I love. Thanks, Jordan. For everything.

---
I figured why post twice, I have news to say, not about what the rest of this was about. Not even "news" per se. Just, a sort of recap of what's happened since my last blog. Yesterday (30th) I went over to a LAN party at Matt B's house. I had a lot of fun, met some new people, played a few new games. Realized how crappy my computer is. It's almost funny that even though my computer is the best in the house, it's by no means able to play half of the new games that are coming out at any respectable level. I'm thinking about getting a job so I can upgrade it, but I doubt I will in the end. I should though. All the things I could do when I get a job... Oh well. I got a call from Truman State University two days ago that I returned yesterday, and I learned that the NSA was hiring computer science majors in college. It seems tempting, although kind of odd. I don't know if I'll take it (try to at least), mostly because of that. I'm friends with a communist, a nazi, and a bunch of other people who don't really fit well with society. And cool as they are, I don't think I'd want to ditch them. Not that taking a government job would be ditching them, but I know I'd lose quite a bit of respect. But a job is a job, no? And the pay is pretty good for an intern job, at 25-34k annually. Eh, too early to say. I'm still not even sure if Computer Science is the right major for me. Ah whatever. I don't feel like writing anymore right now... Just sleeping. Which I can't do, even though I was up for the past 36 hours with only 3 hours of sleep inbetween it all. Maybe another can of soda will keep me awake. Or some more .hack//SIGN that I just finished downloading ^^. Maybe with a job I could actually afford to buy the series... And Hellsing. They deserve money too. Even donate to lokitorrents.com ... Alright. Happy New Years to all of you. May the new year be as good as this one ended.

Adion is currently listening to: Armin van Buuren - A State of Trance 138XXL-4 (3/4/04) [56:00]

Well, a lot of stuff happened. For starters, Christmas & Christmas Eve. Those two were really good to me this year for a change. I actually got things that were cool and I'll be playing around with for a long time. A total of $65, a nice stereo, some college stuff (two foldup hampers & detergent), four GCN games (I Ninja, 007:Agent Under Fire [which I have yet to play], LOTR: The Two Towers, and [best for last] Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker), a handy little MP3 player with 128 mb (but you can put a 512 expansion card in it), a few new penguin plushies, a set of pajama's, and a long sleeved shirt that I probably won't wear because I don't wear long sleeved shirts. So yeah, Christmas was great this year. I've been playing Wind Waker pretty much all day every day since I got it, except for yesterday, which I will now go into.

Yesterday was a complex and fun day. The original plan was to go to Mark's house and play Risk with a bunch of people and make a huge event out of it. Only, three people dropped out, and then I was invited to go to a LAN party... So I went to Mark's, where we did indeed play risk with three people (including me), but I did my best to juggle the two events and ended up leaving early on in the day to head over to the LAN party. Turns out the LAN party was mostly not worth going to, we did very little in the way of LAN'ing, and everybody was being a douche. Matt (the host) was prime example, for calling AO a bad game when he has yet to play it. Ugh. I can understand some people's distaste in that the combat is indeed a tad slow, but that is also because he didn't pick a fast paced profession. You can't expect an engineer to be a fast paced class, it's more of a class that is stuck in the background supporting. We did play some LAN games though, for example about a half hour of CounterStrike followed by an hour of Unreal Tournament 2003. But by and large we did nothing. In the end, I come home with a slightly screwed up monitor (because mine really really hates being moved around by car) and only a few hours of solid gaming under my belt for the day. I'm trying to enjoy my holiday break here ><. Uhm, Yeah thats pretty much whats happened. I'd like to think I'm close to finished with Wind Waker, with all the hours I've put into it, but I don't believe I'm more than halfway there, if even that. I've only had to look at a guide once, when I was supposed to figure out a password to get into a pirate ship but couldn't figure it out. Turns out I wasn't supposed to be able to figure it out, I was supposed to go somewhere else on the island and overhear a conversation where they mentioned it. But I had no idea >.<

Anyway, another LAN party is coming up on the 30th, and is supposed to come on through to the 31st, which should call for some pretty intense gaming. I'm looking forward to it, I should probably practice playing FPS's for a while, as that is what most LAN parties end up playing. Although, I know we won't be playing CounterStrike because at least two people there have a grudge against it.

Uhm, so my dad went to BestBuy yesterday, and in completly unlike him fashion, bought a 120GB harddrive for me. I'm paying him back, of course, but it's a nice one for only $50. Totally worth it. So right now I'm moving all my music over to my new drive, and I already moved all my Naruto over. More to go though, need it all off for some extra space on my first drive, lots of games going on that thing in two day's I think. Alright, enough boring you peoples.

Adion is currently listening to: Nobuo Uematsu - Cid's Theme [3:11]

Ok, there isn't much that's happened recently... But it's been a few days so I figured I might as well write something down. *sigh* Whatever happened to my each day a new post? Guess I got too lazy. >.>

Okie, so yesterday was the last day of finals, and it was a very easy test. It was for physics, and came in at 136 multiple choice questions. However, it was supposed to take ninety minutes, I was on question fourty within 10 minutes. It's almost embarrassing to note how many spelling errors were on that test also, and questions that asked for the force of something, when only one answer was given in Newtons (The unit for force). So, I'm pretty confident I got an A on that final. Overall, the finals this year weren't that bad, even in my sleep deprived state from playing way too much AO (50 hours in the past 4 days). So, I'm now officially on Winter break. Feels good to be able to get up at 11 AM on a weekday. I can't wait for tommorrow, I hope I'm getting stuff thats cool this year. Although I suspect a large portion of my gifts will be things I'll need for college (i.e. clothes basket). Oh well, I know I'm getting money, and thats what I really need. My computer's getting close to that point where it's in dire need of upgrade. It's been about ten months since I built this thing, and while yes, it is still holding up to many of today's games, it is at the very least running out of space on the harddrive. I believe that will be the first thing I buy, followed by a video card that doesn't suck. After that, I'll probably save for a new motherboard & CPU. I really really hate this motherboard. But it works, so I can't complain too much. Never again am I buying an Asus.

Ok, enough of that... I went to Mark's house yesterday for what was originally planned as SWRPG, but ended up just being Mark & I, so we played a lot of Mario Kart: Double Dash. We beat the third cup at 150 cc's and opened up two new characters. So that was cool. Tried like 30 times for the special cup on 150 cc's, but never managed to pull it off. Oh well, that was a lot of fun. At about 6 we went out to Skumaci's and got us some italian food before swinging by my house to eat it. After eating the rather large sandwiches (and good too ^_^), we went up to my room and I showed him Roller Coaster Tycoon 3, and almost showed him AO before we decided we were done here and it was time to go back to his house. I picked up F-Zero GX on my way out and we played a bit of that until we decided the multiplayer on F-Zero is severely lacking in comparison to the multiplayer on MK:DD and switched back. Anyway, had a lot of fun with that, and I've just been told I have until one o'clock to take a shower & be ready to go to D&D today. It's been a long time since I played D&D last, we'll see how it works out. I'll post more later, probably tommorrow late so I can include what I got from family.

Adion is currently listening to: Dream Theater - A Change of Seasons (live) [25:17]

Well, It came to me last Friday talking to Lorrie after physics: this year sucks. School year I mean. It's supposed to be one of the happiest years of your life: you graduate from high school and can move on to higher and better things, but they forget to tell you that you probably won't ever see 80% of the people you knew from school ever again after this year. Sure you might see them at an airport on your flight to someplace for some "important" job twenty years from now, but who's to say you'll remember them, or they'll remember you? I'm glad it isn't like that with at least a few of my friends: the ones I met online. It isn't like they're going to just dissappear from my life. Well, at least I hope not. It almost happened once and that experience was enough to keep me depressed for a month or more. Ah fuck, new topic. My eyes are going bad...

So I played about 24 hours of AO this weekend, over the course of about three days. I got invited to a really awesome guild on Friday I think, might have been Saturday: when I was only level 8. The maximum level in AO is 220. So here I think I'm special with my extremely bad looking armor and so forth (it's hard as hell to find a whole set of the same type, so for example right now I'm wearing a purple helmet with a yellow lightningbolt on it, red chest plate, green pants and gloves, and grey sleeves (which don't cover all of my arms, which are blue). It's kinda an odd sight to see from the front I'm sure, but I spend most of my time in third person locked view behind myself so it doesn't look half as bad), when it turns out that they're really just on a recruiting binge. Anyway, the whole guild is really cool, and I've already made pretty good friends with at least three of them. I can't wait till more of my friends get on! The team missions are so cool. They'res a few different types of missions: find somebody somewhere, find an item and bring it back, kill off some specific dude, go somewhere and fix something (it's an interesting mission type. You go to a building, find a specific piece of machinery, and then use an item they gave you at the start of the mission on it, then you're done. Sometimes more complicated than that, because you have to find it first, and some mission zones have more than one floor.), and a few others I can't think of. They all give some type of item reward, in addition to lots of money (for the level) and usually junk experience. But if you keep the difficulty slider at the medium difficulty mark, you get really nice experience from killing the things in the mission zone, usually about 3/4th a level worth. Sometimes chests are locked, or theres a bomb on the map, so you can use a lockpick or a bomb defuser and gain some extra experience on the side too. Lockpicking is really good experience too, usually around 300 (I think on my level I need 8000 to level up, it slowly increases by the level, but so does the experience gained from killing monsters. It's RO style, not FFXI style, where weaker monsters give nothing, on AO they give next to nothing instead of nothing. But monsters that are more difficult give more experience like on RO. So if you're killing hard things, you don't notice the difference in leveling time. At least, not yet.). Anyway, I think that's enough stupidly complex sentences with parenthesis' where they probably don't belong for you peoples to try and decode. For now at least. On to some Naruto & then lots more AO! ^^

Adion is currently listening to: The Pillows - Hybrid Rainbow [4:00]

It's a sad day in the world. SuprNova has closed its doors and will no longer host torrent files for the world to pirate. I bid thee farewell, SuprNova. May you come back to us with all your worldly good soon. *sigh* Shouldn't have deleted Deus Ex afterall... I never thought that SuprNova would go down. And now my unfounded fears have been founded into a world of DOOM and no torrent files! THERE MUST BE NO GOD!

Ok I just went out of hand there. Bad me, no more lack of sleep for you! Well. Actually there will be a lot of sleep lacking over the year, because AO is free for that long. Mm.... Free AO for a year... *Cough* REGISTER NOW!

Ok, I have no new news besides SuprNova dying... Come back SuprNova! COME BAAAAAAAACKKKKKKKKkkkkkkkkkkk...

Adion is currently listening to: Airbase - Session 5 (5/26/04) [118:22]

Well, I just got back from a really awesome Halo 2 party at Dan G.'s house. There were at least 20 people there, and we all just had a good time playing Halo 2 & DDR. I'm too much of a sissy to try DDR though, so I stayed away from that. I'd probably do OK, but I don't really want to risk it. Plus, it was cold as all hell, because we were in his garage, with the door open partway so people could come in. At about 10 we decided to head over to White Castle, where a few people bought food, but mostly we just chilled. It was a great time. And then on the way home, because West is suicidal, he fishtailed on the corner into my subdivision and almost killed us on a lightpole. One day, he's going to forget the "almost" part... So, that was a lot of fun.

I've been playing a lot of Anarchy Online recently, and I've modified little bits here and there to my liking. It's a heck of a lot of fun, and I'm thinking about hosting a little mini-lan party or something tommorrow to show it off to people who are interested. Dunno, I haven't even asked my parents. And since they're both asleep I'll have to wait till tommorrow, which means I probably won't be able to. Oh well. Maybe on Thursday, after finals. Maybe Wednesday at like 3 PM to Thursday 12 PM? I'm just throwing things out. Either way, one is overdue. Matt B. is hosting one on the 30th/31st, which will be cool. Anyways, that's about all I can think of going on right now. Besides the finals for school, but eh. I ran 30 minutes in the pool hall today, it sucked. Up and down stairs, around a balcony and along the actual hall, for thirty minutes... Laps took me about 50 seconds each usually, I ended up with 33 laps. Twas a doozy, my legs still hurt 12 hours later.

Adion is currently listening to: Yves De Ruyter - A State of Trance 142XXL (4/1/04) [48:47]

Oh my... Oh man. I don't know how to explain this in words. I'm just too excited. I barely got through finishing the blog from Monday, I don't know how I'll be able to write this one now that it's pertaining to the topic I'm so excited about. Seriously, I made so many mistakes that last sentence (and this one) that it's just crazy. Man. Ok heres the news: Anarchy Online is letting people have a free trial for one whole YEAR. Not the standard 15 days (which I was initally confused about, you can ask Becky-senpai. It's true.). They sent me an email (I gave them my email when I tried to sign up for an account a while back) mentioning how that AO was going to be free. At first I thought this meant forever, and I had only read about 3 paragraphs before I checked my buddy list so I could let it all out ("OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG" etc., etc.) and saw that Becky-senpai was on. She'd been on for a total of one minute at the time, so I lucked out I guess, she probably totally jumped at my spontanious excitement. Dunno. Thats my guess at least. Either that or the, "o.o?" reply meant she was just totally like, not as excited as she should have been. I mean. I'm excited. She should be excited... And she should read my mind... To know I'm excited... Maybe... Ok no that's just nuts. And it wouldn't work out. Mind reading just doesn't work out. I mean, sure it's cool, but you're probably not thinking of what that can do to a person. You're talking to somebody, and it's like, you know what they're really thinking about you, in the back of their mind. For all you know you thought you were best friends and then you learn they totally hate you or something. It just wouldn't work out. Or you totally lose respect. ANYWAY! I'm too excited to carry on an intelligent conversation like that with myself (since only three people read this (if that), and I hardly say anything worth commenting about anyway). Ugh where was I. Oh ok. Uhm, yeah so I totally did an "exclam exclam exclam" thing and then I did a partial explination ("let me forward you this email"...) and then I finished reading the main body and got to the break in the middle of the email. Where I promptly noticed that it said (offer expires 1/1 2006) in little parenthesis and everything. Now, being too excited or just stupid, I'm not sure which, perhaps just thinking it was a typo in the back of my mind, I immidiately was like, "damn". I misread/whatever and thought it ended on the first of next year. Which would just be a stanard trial thing. Anyway, I was like, "Wow they're really sneaky in how they wrote that email. Maybe I read something wrong..." so I went back and reread the email, only this time, the 1/1/2006 thing clicked as 2006 and not 2005. And then I was back to being way to excited for my own good. Anyway, I told about three-ish other people about it already, (not including Jordan, he refuses to stop playing RO for no particular reason... Friends, BAH! I gave up RO for FFXI, ditching all my friends... Not that I had many, but eh.) and two of them are already signed up. One I know is downloading... Oh my god. Ahh too excited again. It just finished ^_^ About 817 MB off of Bit Torrent in just about 54 minutes. God I love cable modems. Anyway, I'm too excited now, and I must install this. And write my english rough draft thats due tommorrow. Curses my finding this so early, now I'll never be able to write this... Oh well.

Wee, playing now in a window (it's just that cool!), and I made my character... Opifex Agent (they say agent is hard to start as, but they look so cool, I couldn't do a nanomage. I should do a nanomage, though. So stereotypical of me to take the mage class. But I think this is going to be just awesome. Anyway, all my common names are taken (Adion, Tyrion, Kaelos, Twitch), so I don't know what to take. They disallow names with things like -'s or ~' or other stupid stuff. I'm sure some get by under the radar, but I'd rather not risk it. The name generator is pretty nice, it's got some interesting choices, but they're just not me. I'll keep clicking. Any of you have any ideas, let me know. IM me, I won't check the blog anytime soon >.>

Adion is currently listening to: Dead Ale Wives - Dungeon & Dragons - Part 2 [6:47]

Ok I drafted this three days ago (Sunday) but I only now have the time (or do I...) to finish this post. Here goes.

I only have four things written down, I was in kind of a rush (I think I drafted this at about 1:30 A.M.). As I'm having trouble as to what all happened that day besides what I wrote down, I'll just elaborate on my short, quick sentences and hope it doesn't turn out too bad. Here goes:

Challenge Ed was hilarious. After a quick 5 minute run up and down the main hall, we circle up on the mats inside the Blue Gym (my school has 4, a large gym and somewhat ceremonial the Eagle, a medium sized gym for basketball games the Gold, a gymnastics gym which houses our climbing wall the Blue, and the newest (and sucky-est) the East gym. The East gym is the largest, but they were so stupid when they made it (along with the rest of the East building) that you can't even whisper without it echoing like mad. Just bouncing a basketball echoes at least three times. Anyway, we circled up on the mats in the Blue gym and during stretches, my friend Pat asks for unexplainable reasons how to spell tommorrow. I don't know at all why he asked, because I know he can spell the word, I talk to him on the internet all the time. Either way, it's hilarious how many people misspelled it. Common spellings were "tammorow", "tamorrow", "tammorrow", other varitions with an 'a', and also "tomorrow". Seriously, the class is composed of only juniors and seniors, and we're having trouble with the word? It was so bad that I was beginning to question if I was spelling it right.

Ok I gotta write this fast so I can make another post for today that relates to what happened today.... Omg I'm so excited.

There should be a Lan Party coming up soon here, within the time constraints of next Wednesday (the day of the last final for school) and Saturday (CHRISTMAS!! It's coming so fast...). In other words, we're so going to have one on Wednesday through Thursday. If not, we should. It's the perfect timing.

As this was written on Sunday night, I had to still do seven notecards for English. In the end, I managed to do 5 and called it a night. Got the last two done in class and it all worked out OK. I was really fretting about that though, they're not entirely easy to find if you don't know what you're looking for exactly. Although, yesterday I did an outline for this essay we're writing (due on Monday, the day of the final), and I was able to find another 5 or so notecards in a flash. Not to mention today at school (as in Wednesday) I got a lot of help finding even MORE notecards. I'm good to go in that section, I only needed 20, and now I have about 25. Plenty of information.

Thats all I had for this update, I didn't realize as I was writing my introductory paragraph that my last topic was not actually a topic, but what I was listening to. My bad.

Adion was listening to: DJ Choose - November 2004 ETS-Global Mix [60:04]

Well, this is a little thing from Rae's LJ, the idea being to listen to the first 10-15 songs you hear after hitting shuffle on winamp and then writing down the lyrics you like best in the song that comes up. Here goes --

First song is an instrumental, "In Flames - Whoracle [2:40]", the only lyrics being a sort of chant using only the word "ahh".

Next up, a two hour long session of Airbase from the eleventh of October. I'm not really interested in listening to the full two hours right now to find the best lyrics, so I'll skip this one.

Wow, a series here. Instrumental from Great Teacher Onizuka's OST, "Teacher Forever [1:45]". Good song, no lyrics. Next!

Agh, this song is from the Initial D soundtrack, and is mostly in Japanese... Bring it back and Rock and Roll! *toonnnsss of Japanese* Yeah, the only English is in the chorus. Next song, thats a total of 4 skipped. "Gamble you got a chance to make a membo(?), Gamble you've gotta dive into the scramble!"

Ugh. Outkast - So Fresh and So Clean [4:10]. I'm almost ashamed to have this on my playlist. No good lyrics here...

"Weird" Al Yankovic's - Since You've Been Gone [1:22]. Weird Al is definately not known for his lyrical prowess...

1) Opeth - April Ethereal [8:41] - Good stuff, here goes ^_^
"I will endure, hide away.
I would outrun the sky, glaring with failure.
It is a mere destiny I thought, a threshold I had crossed before.
The rain was waving goodbye, and when the night came
the forest folded its branches around me.
Something passed by, and I went into a dream.
She laughing and weeping at once: take me away.
I don't know how or why, I'll never know WHEN."

2) The Postal Service - Recycled Air [4:29] - New band I got some of, I like them.
"I watch the patchwork farms' slow fade into the ocean's arms
And from here they can't see me stare
The stale taste of recycled air
I watch the patchwork farms' slow fade into the ocean's arms
Calm down, release your cares
The stale taste of recycled air"

3) Opeth - Advent [13:45] - More Opeth, hm. If I get too much of these guy's then somethings up, I only have 21 songs by them.
"Time grows short
As the piper plays his time
We are almost there
You are beyond all help
Dancing into the void
We are almost there"

4) Lacuna Coil - Purify [4:36] - Lacuna Coil roxxors.
"Celebrate!
I'm alive again!
It's time to turn the page and start
And then
Don't you think that it's time
To convince yourself it's over?
Celebrate!
I'm alive again!"

5) After skipping another 2 Weird Al's, a Lacuna Coil, and an hour long trance set... Blink 182 - Dysentary Gary [2:45]. Good song.
"Fuck this place, I lost the war
I hate you all, your mom's a whore!
Where's my dog?
'Cause girls are such a drag"

6) Ah, it pains me to have to skip a Hellsing OST song, but alas. Then, over Van Halen's Eruption (instrumental awesomeness), and on to .hack//SIGN - Edge, which is entirely in Japanese. Argh, next. Another Hellsing OST. I think shuffle is rigged. Finally! In Flames - December Flower [4:10]
"Green is the colour of my death
As in winter-guise I swoop to the ground
Green is the landscape of my sorrowfilled passing"

7) Cake - Going the Distance [3:00] appeared next.
"The sun has gone down and the moon has come up,
And long ago somebody left with the cup.
But he's striving and driving and hugging the turns,
And thinking of someone for whom he still burns."

8) In Flames - Cloud Connected [3:42] - Great song. I'm getting a lot of the songs that I listen to most though, I think by shuffle it means - play the songs with the most amount of listens.
"I've come to realize:
With every little glimpse you fade;
I was told that I could fly
When least expected - Cloud connected!"

9) In Flames - Touch of Red [4:12] - might have to put down a lot more than 10 at this rate...
"Fear - there's a way out
Touch of red
Break away
Nothing has it all
Bury the place I've been
I fear there's a way out" --seems the chorus is usually the best lines...

10) Puddle of Mud - Take it All Away [5:04]
"So make up your own ending
and let me know just how you feel
'Cause I am lost without you --
I cannot live at all.
My whole world surrounds you;
I stumble and I crawl"

11) Red Hot Chili Peppers - Can't Stop [4:35]
"Kick start the golden generator
Sweet talk but don't intimidate her
Can't stop the gods from engineering
Feel no need for any interfering"

Alright, I just spent the last like two hours helping Jordan out on RO, giving him some Priestly support, so I'm going to sleep. Maybe today I'll post some more...

Adion is currently listening to a LOT of songs >.>

Short post today, going to bed. I was thinking as I was downstairs for a bit ago, how fast time goes. Its that riddle, with the "it goes to fast when you want it, and when you have it you don't want it" or something to that effect. Kinda amazing how much has changed in the past year. If you look at it day by day, nothing seems to happen, but over the course of the whole year a LOT of stuff happened. Jordan came back for real, I got unaddicted to RO and now don't like it that much at all, I got my computer, I stopped going to D&D sessions, I got my computer, I'm a senior now, I've made a lot of new friends with people I didn't know last year, I'm going to college next year, I watched a whole lot of anime (found my precious Hellsing, got addicted to Naruto, saw all of Love Hina and 90% of Cowboy Bebop, many more I'm not thinking about... Like I saw an episode of Ghost in the Shell), got accepted to two colleges (waiting for a reply from the third), learned a lot of Java (woot! worthless languages!), and tons of other stuff. It's pretty nuts when you think of how much stuff changes over the course of 365.25 days. Alright. Sorry to confuse anybody with that long and quite obviously run on sentence.

Adion is currently listening to: Pink Floyd - Time [7:05]

Well, I went on a field trip today to downtown. We hung out at the Daley plaza for Christkindlemarkt (sp) which is a kinda large German event. Theres about 30 booths total, with about 20 of them selling the same food. Kinda lame, but it's a blast if you go with a bunch of people you know, which I did. Anyway, we had a good time, and on the bus ride there my friend played some guitar. He's not too good, not too bad. Of course, he's only been playing for like a year, so that is to be expected. He's better than I am/would be after a year I think. Ryan's been pushing me to try to pick up the bass guitar, and I would if I had the money and the patience to learn. I also don't know how to read music. That would be somewhat of a task. I have absolutely no music history behind me at all. To me, I lucked out. I moved between fourth and fifth grade up to here from Lafayette, Indiana (West Lafayette, on the other side of the city, away from the Perdue campus), which let me evade learning the recorder that I was supposed to learn 5th grade down there. When I got up here I learned that they had learned the recorder in fourth grade, which was like a total bonus to moving. I was really resistant to moving, I had heard nothing good about Chicago (I still don't like it, as with most cities... Something about cities that I just don't like, can't quite put my finger on it.) and I wasn't up for leaving my friends. Not to mention my best friend was my neighbor, which was totally cool 'cause we could like, go to each others house each day and stuff. It was fun. Now I'm not even sure if I'd recognize him, or he I. My mom still goes back down there every now and then to talk to old friends, while I have mostly detached. I wasn't really good friends with most people there anyway, just aquantances (sp!) mostly. We let some douchebag's move into our house too, so every time mom goes down there she swings by the old house to see what they've done to it, and within like a year they had totally destroyed everything that was cool about it. They cut down one tree, repainted the outside to some stupid color, took out like half the bushes... It was depressing. Our house rocked too. We had like an acre lot, with a bunch of really really tall trees in the backyard (not climbable ;_;). Whatever, I don't want to think about it. I remember the first day my parents told us we were going to move. It took us more than three years to sell the house, so for a long time I thought maybe we weren't going to move. But then some people eventually decided they liked it and they made an offer. Apparently it was enough to make my parents decide they had had enough waiting around for three years, and we moved out and they moved in. I guess now, looking back on it, I'm kinda glad we did, but it does make me wonder what happened to those kids I used to know. Uh, I don't remember where I was originally going with this so I think I'mma call it done and get back to my homework...

Adion is currently listening to: Lacuna Coil - Senzafine [3:54]

Well, some weird stuff's been up. First off I noticed that on my last blog, comments seem to have been disabled somehow. I'm not sure how that is, perhaps it's because it was about 2 pages in size 10 not double spaced. Anyway, that was weird. Yesterday, my left pointer finger started to hurt for some reason or another, I think it was from climbing. Not sure... I don't even know what I did in climbing to make it happen. Uhm. Said something stupid yesterday night to Rae... She knows what I mean >.> All I can say is this: stupid clipboard. Not much else has happened recently. I have a lot of homework to do, but I'm not really interested in it... I think two days ago I was in the mood to write for my Xanga but decided I didn't have time (it was 12:30) to accomplish anything. Yeah. I think thats never going to be finished, heh. I was kinda looking forward to finishing it way back when too. Now I'm just sorta, "meh" and stuff. Shame really, I think it might have been really cool if I ever went somewhere with it... Thats all I think.

Adion is currently listening to: Armin van Buuren - A State of Trance 172-2 (10/28/04) [51:25]
(it's split to two parts, the first being about 52 minutes)

Well, I just organized myself a little outline for todays update, looks pretty big today (word of warning: HUGE). I suppose this makes up for all the time lost when I don't update... I'm kinda liking this updating every other day, this way I feel like I'm actually updating something. We'll start off with what's going down at home... By the way, the title is in honor of Ryan's new blog update today.

So, my parents both left to go to Michigan this Sunday to watch my brother get inducted into the Order of Engineers, which my father was inducted into, and I will not be I don't think (Computer Science is in the ENG dept., but I don't think it really counts...). So, I had the whole house to myself for the next hour or so, and for most of yesterday. It was nice being able to just sorta sit here and not have people bother me. And I had food when I was hungry, not when dad got home, so forth. So that was probably the best part about the weekend. As illustrated in the last update, I've been looking around the internet for some new webcomics to read. The following (same that I posted before) are what I've found, and they are all well drawn and well done in general.

- Mondo Mecha seems to be the most promising of them all, mostly because I've been really itching to read a good science fiction something recently, and I've been to lazy to read the two newly purchased Battletech books, bought about a month ago now. I read the start of one book, and it seems to be well written, but recently I've just kinda stopped reading books. Don't know. Anyway, Mondo Mecha hasn't gotten to the purpose of the title yet, but it's really cool. Set in I believe 2300's Mars, it watches two people struggle through poverty and trying to find a job. It's still developing, even after 86 well drawn pages, but highly worth the read. Go start up!

- Game Under is an entertaining work. It's basically about video games (doh!) and isn't really funny, but isn't boring or stupid, so it's a win. Well drawn, and good dialog end out for a solid B webcomic.

- Star Cross'd is a extremely well drawn comic, I did a pretty good explination on the last update I believe... here.

Thats all I've found so far, although I admit, I have not really looked that long or hard. I'm sure there are hundreds of amazing webcomics, but therein lies the problem: there's just too many! Even if I didn't go to school, it would take me forever to read all of them up to date. Not to mention keep track of a plotline along them all. But, I enjoy them, they're fun. Next topic...

GAMES! Oh boy. So, as many of you noticed my away messages recently, I've found a few new games. Upon getting extremely bored of the few MMO's I have, I decided to take some time and search more out. (My time has been mostly spent searching it seems...) I came up with a few: Maple Story, Project Entropia, and Anarchy Online. However, these few are rather large in their own rights. Anarchy Online seems to be the best of the lot, however it is also the only one charging. At an alarming $14.95/mo also. That offsets the amazingness and throws it down the stack into the rest of the common RPGs. Sadly. The trial even requires a credit card to sign up for. Depressing to say the least. I spent a good portion of four hours downloading miscellianious content from the webpage also (not to mention the client before I realized I need a credit card). They do have an exceedingly well crafted webpage, clearly defined and easily navigated. They even went so far as to craft 5 TV length episodes of a story, I'm not sure if it is a basis to the actual game or not (I don't think most of it relates), but it does seem to use many of the same ideas (like "clans") as the game does. The most depressing part is that if it were to just charge, say, 12.95 or even 9.95 (*drool*) I'd snatch it up in a heartbeat. Alas, I'm not made of money, and nor does my harddrive have space for games that charge way too much. Next on the list (woot for reverse order): Project Entropia. This game is well done, and seems to play a tad slow (I think it's due to my video card, not the game) because of the distances the game draws. It will literally draw the map out a few minutes running distance ahead of you, and this severely lags my computer. A problem of this game, is that while you do not need to pay to play, it is a good idea to do so. The game takes out of game USD and converts it into in game PED (Project Entropia Dollars) at the exchange rate of 1 USD = 10 PED. It doesn't seem to be a bad exchange rate, and in fact, if I had money it would be a fantastic exchange rate. Most things you start out with don't cost much, and just by putting in about three dollars I could easily get going and probably not need more money for a long time. However, since I'm frugal and don't have money anyway, I'm forced to drop to "sweating": a task involving much death and running around. Sweating involves getting really close to a monster, left clicking it, and hoping it doesn't aggro the hell out of you. If you luck out (has yet to happen to me), then after about 10 seconds you can left click again and drain sweat from the monster, which is used as a component for some magic something or other later on. Anyway, since no NPC buy's sweat, a player is forced to sell this to other PCs, often at less than a few PEC's (Project Entropia Cents) each. I saw somebody selling 400 of them for 2.80 PED ;_; I have six. Slow process... Just 794 to go and I can buy a weapon and perhaps some ammunition... Lastly but not leastly (as it is the most entertaining for a no-income person such as myself) is Maple Story. Maple Story is a side scrolling RPG with surprisingly well done English (no way in hell they're actually from here or any other native English speaking country, probably another Korean group, not sure.). The game is simple, with only about 4 buttons needed to be pressed for any length of time (movement, jump, attack, pick up stuff). The game has a nice leveling system, and so far a pretty good class system also. It's a nice thing to do to fill in time while I'm otherwise extremely bored. And, now on to the next topic: school stuff.

Starting from the beginning and moving on, skipping the boring things, we arrive at third period Technical Drawing and Computer Assissted Design and Drafting. It is here were I discover that I'm over a drawing ahead of out schedual, even with all of the extra credit drawings I did. Which is cool, that means I can sleep or something for a day or two. Probably won't, but if I do by accident I've got nothing to worry about. This leads to lunch fifth period, where I discover in greater detail the wonders of acRO. Apparently, a friend of mine's male aco was mistaken for a female aco. This compounds with a lesbian mage on acRO who asked him if he was into girls. Naturally, he said yes. They ended up leveling for a long time together, and other funny stuff happened, and I don't think she knows yet that he's actually playing a male sprite and is male also. Quite obviously a n00b. Either way, it's funny. Matt's a girl. Ahahaha. The best part is, he was at Ryan's house when this all happened, and Ryan told Matt's girlfriend what was going on, and she responded with, "eh, whatever floats his boat". Priceless. Now, to seventh hour, with my favorite class of the day, Computer Science. Mostly, it's my favorite because after we finish working on our projects, we can do whatever we want on the internet. Anyways, we had a test today, which wasn't that bad, I think I got a 'B' or an 'A'. Since there is only one class of Computer Science, we sort of take it over seventh hour. Before our class, since our room is a computer lab, is keyboarding. On the board is the words, "Found in the girls bathroom AGAIN" with a little arrow pointing to the marker tray where presumably something was last period. This arrow, however, points directly to the center of the desk where Mr. C is sitting. He's sitting there in his slightly sleepy, slightly grumpy state, staring out to the end of the classroom, when somebody notices the sign and points it out. Cleverly deduced, Mr. C was found in the girls bathroom yet again, and is unhappy about it. LOL! He promptly laughed and then proceeded to erase it, telling us a story about when he was in college, he attended a lecture where the prof's screensaver was a caveman bashing a computer. Now, he's a physics major, but I think he mentioned this was a programming class, and so while he was being taught programming, on the screen above the prof is an animated screen saver of a caveman bashing computers. Priceless.

Sadly, my parents just came home, and I am out of topics to write about. Thanks for reading this far though, twas a long one... Till next time...

Adion is currently listening to: Ernesto Vs Bastian - ETS Global Mix (11/04)

Well, I only now noticed that I had a link under comics put down twice, so I took the duplicate down... I voted for Walking Is Still Honest and noticed that the two comics above it rock. Already read them up to current, there's not that many episodes to read yet... Star Cross'd is amazingly drawn, I wish I could draw half as good as she can... Game Under is still drawn well, but Star Cross'd puts just about any artist I've seen to shame. It's just spectacular. The plot is a tad lacking though, and it reminds me of a fanstory rip off of X-Men, but the art is more than enough to make up for it. Either way, they're both worth a few minutes to read.... Wow. So many good comics out there. Just found another that looks interesting... Looks like my navigation bar is going to need to get updated soon. Which reminds me. I looked into putting a second navbar on the right, and it's going to take more effort than I thought. I'll have to edit a picture probably, and then the actual part where all my text goes is going to be shrunk a lot if I follow through, otherwise I have a bar that goes completely out from underneath my little green gem banner like thing at the top. Not sure if I'd like that. Doesn't look cool... So we'll see. Maybe someday I'll get around to it, until then it's just another thing on my to do list. Alright. I'm out to read this comic, looks fun. ^_^

Adion is currently listening to: Future Mind - Welcome to the Club Live (10/5/03)

Well, I spent the good side of an hour editing HTML files that are saved with aim so I could upload them to my webpage. Which turned out pretty OK, I'm still pissed that I can't switch back and forth between backgrounds... The last two under Jordan are the ones I just put up. Anyway, it should have me in black background and him in white, but I guess HTML is stubborn and won't let me. Stupid HTML. Oh well.

Anyway, to continue along the lines of funny things, I also came across a few good jokes:

1) A junior high student somewhere (I think not far) told his P.E. teacher to get a real job, so the teacher dragged the kid to the P.E. office and started asking for the student's phone number. After a few repeated attempts with an answer ranging from, "I'm sorry I didn't mean it," to, "I'm not giving you my phone number," the kid eventually broke and said, "Fine, my number is 911-9437". So, the teacher dials that number and the second he hears the other end pickup, he starts yelling, "YOUR SON HAS BEEN TOTALLY DISRESPECTFUL," or something along those lines. Of course, the P.E. teacher was too dumb to realize that he had just called 911. The operator on the other end replied with something like, "I'm sorry sir, we don't take those kinds of calls. Is there an emergency?" In the long run, that teacher got fined for calling 911 without an emergency, and the kid got suspended for insubordination. But, that teacher is always going to feel really really stupid on the inside, and thats what it's all about... (This story actually really did happen)

2) Argh. I can't remember the second. I'll substitute an old one... Whats the difference between a large pizza and a jazz musician?

The large pizza can feed a family of four. That one comes from a bartender from a PBS show I once saw probably about a year ago now. Good stuff.

Adion is currently listening to Freezel - Elevations Episode 40 (10/26/04) [143:40/362:20]

Woah. You know it's been a long time since your last post when you start typing in "adion.blogspot" and it doesn't finish the link for you. So, I will write this post, which I'm writing... Mmm... Redudancy...

Anyway, all too much and all too little has happened. Since... When is my last post, the 26th... Ok, since last Friday, I went to Jeff's LAN party which actually came through. Only, it wasn't much of a local area network per se. We spent most of the day playing Escape Velocity Nova, which is a single player game. Addicting as all hell too. And it's old, so my computer can actually handle this game! *grumble* Stupid Deus Ex *grumble*. I spent most of my free time playing that game, the reason why I haven't been on AIM that much recently.

Anyway, besides playing EV Nova all day (beat one of the 6 campaigns >.< they're so massive...), I've been doing little. For challenge ed, we went on a super schweet awesomely ueber fieldtrip today to Vertical Endeavors which is attatched to a Lifetime Fitness about 40 minutes from here. They've got a really nice facility, the staff is cool, and they're awesome too. One guy climbed up about 20 feet, and then went underneath a little bridge to the other side. That's wicked hardcore. Some of the walls in there are really really hard, some are easy. They even have auto belay (climb by yourself) walls all over the place too. Very cool. Anyways, I'm off to play some more EV Nova I think.

Adion is currently listening to In Flames - Dismiss the Cynic [3:40]