Well, I doubt many of the people who read this noticed this, so I figured I'd link away. CNN reported some disturbing things about High School kids' knowledge of the First Amendment...

On unrelated events, I went over to Walgreens again today, because I was told to, and finished their application. I'm not sure why exactly they made me come in store to finish it, but either way I had to. So I finish that, and apparently I'm to come back tommorrow before 5:30 for an interview. I'm at that point where I can't wait, and I don't want to go. One hand, I get tons of money, on the other, I lose a lot of time. *sigh*

Adion is currently listening to: The Pillows - Carnival [3:49]

Well, I spent the weekend going between different stores trying to find a place that'll hire me. It totally ruined my weekend. And today I'm reminded that I'm taking the ACT (for no particular reason now that I've been accepted into U of I) again next Saturday. The worst part is how many cool places that I wouldn't mind working at require you to be 18 or older. I don't have 3 months to wait >.< I need money now! ;_;

Yeah so today I went over to Walmart to apply, and the parking lot is packed all the way out to the end of the parking lot, which is like a 2 minute walk 'cause it's huge. So dad drops me off at the door and tries to find a parking space while I'm doing their electronic in store thing or whatever. I finish after about 40 minutes (67 questions to determine if I'm mentally stable or something I guess.) And I walk back to the front of the store where I assume he would be. I don't see him, so I figure maybe he's outside waiting in the car nearby because he managed to find a good parking space where he'd be able to see the entrance. I walk around outside up and down the parking lot for a solid 15 minutes before giving up and walking over to the Office Max and glancing through their parking lot on my way inside to pick up an application there. Don't see it, so I pick up an application and walk back over to Walmart, making sure to take my time and look up and down as many of the isles as possible. Don't see his car, so I figure I'll go inside, and use a payphone to call his cellphone to ask where the hell he is. I walk inside, can't find one in the front, walk around the store once, don't see one anywhere, and walk back to the exit for another parking lot run. I see him standing by the exit, thank god, and we walk to the car. He tells me that he's been waiting there ever since he got the car parked and walked inside. This leads to the epic conclusion: I'm convinced that Walmart's are run in instances. There is no way in hell that I could have walked past him without noticing him, and there's no way in hell I walked by him without he noticing me. Therefore, I walked out of one instance, past him in the other instance, and neither of us noticed. I think I changed instances when I walked into the OfficeMax and back out, back onto the one that he was in. At that point, I found him, and it all makes sense. Stupid Walmart being so big.

So, now I need to do some math homework *groan* that I should have been doing over the past... four and a half months. That's why I'm doing so bad I think. And I need to write a sonnet for my Shakespeare class. I started it yesterday at about 3:50 AM, and it is extremely crappy. But, at the very worst, the lines I have written down are all 10 syllables and have the proper rhyme scheme. Need to finish that... Due tommorrow ;_;

I'm sure dinner will be here soon, so I'm going to stop this and begin playing CounterStrike to pass the time while I wait...

Adion is currently listening to: Juno Reactor - Pistolero [6:13]

Well, I just thought I'd do a quick little "wahhh!" rant, 'cause right now I'm pretty screwed in math. This is mostly because I've got a bad case of "senoritus", which involves me doing as little work as possible. This allows me to skip doing most of the homework assignments he gives, which later on ends up shafting me. But for the time being when I don't do it it's nice... Gives me more time to play WoW and so forth. But then a test rolls around and I blank... I'm doing really bad right now. We have a test tommorrow, I hope I can ace it... Doubt it, but I think I'm starting to catch up. Still haven't done a lot of the homework we're missing, and I still feel pretty confused in some areas (like partial fraction integration >.>). But overall I think I can at least get a 80%, which is, sadly, better than I've been doing. It's somewhat embarrassing to admit that too >.> I've never gotten a C in any class before. Ever. And, right now I'm getting a... 56.4% We only have 39 points right now... And this test is worth a lot more... And we're only like two weeks in, but I'm not liking how this is turning out right now. I'm worried... We'll leave it there.

Today I had to recite Shakespeare's Sonnet XXXVII in front of the class >.< Forgot my lines (had to memorize) twice, but he asked afterwards why I never joined the cast of a play here. He only said that to one other person, so... That felt good. And she was good too >.> Didn't mess up her lines at all, and had good hand movements/facial expressions. Almost makes me sad to realize I should have done something, and it's too late now, but then I realize how much time out of my schedual doing the play would be, and how stressful it is for me to get in front of people... I had enough trouble remembering 14 lines in front of 30 people, I can't imagine how hard it would be to remember an entire person's line in front of a full audience of 300. Even with the light tricks so you can't see the audience, I'd still know in the back of my head that we've got a lot of people all staring at me... I'd be feeling like a thousand small sharp pins going into my sides >.< Would not be plesant. I don't know how some people do it. I guess if you get enough practices in, it's hard to forget your lines... But that takes a lot of time... And yeah... I'm not interested.

I'm starting to not play as much WoW anymore >.< I don't know what it is with some games, but for some reason, I'm just losing interest in MMO's I think now. I beat games that I know have definate endings before, and I'll even sit down and play them for a solid 8 hours at a time so I can beat them fast, but for some reason an MMO never really seems to catch me that way. RO did for a while, but then again so did FFXI & WoW. I wish I could hit level fourty though, that's when I get to finally ride a mount. That'll be nice. No more walking everwhere for me. I also wish that a lot more dungeons were instanced, and that they changed the levels of the monsters like on AO to meet you're level. That way you're constantly getting good exp. But oh well, it make's more sense like this I guess. I also wish I had a better computer. The other day I partied with like, four other people and my computer couldn't handle it. Eek. Good thing is, though, I know my parents'll spend some money at least to upgrade my computer before I head to college. Reason being is that they bought my sister & brother both new computers when they left, and my mother has brought it up before when I bought new parts (my harddrive was the last time). What I really want is a new video card, and a new monitor. Preferably a nice 18" LCD flatscreen. Thin too, so I'm not lugging around a heavy old monitor between dorm & home...

Speaking of dorms, I'm still shafted! Need to find scholarships soon... Like now... And I should really look for a job. Somewhere. Maybe that Blockbuster is hiring still...

Annnnnd speaking of jobs: transportation! My permit expired on the 23rd, so I don't know what I have to do to get my license now. I hope it doesn't involve getting another permit. Hopefully, I can just wait til I'm 18 and then take the written test and get my licence. And I turn 18 in late April, so that's not really too far off, only 4 months tommorrow. Anyway... That's about all I have to post as of now.

Adion is currently listening to: Full Metal Panic - OST 2 - Sad Little Bird [2:03]
Got both the OST's for FMP the other day, such a great OST. ^^ Except for "Take Me Out Marina Trench", whose vocals sounded so much better in the show for some reason. Maybe it was because other people were talking over them, and it was done as a karaoke... Which has no lyrics available on Google >.> Sowy.

Well... I've been thinking about posting a new blog for a while, but every time I'd think about it, I'd be like, "hmm... WoW hasn't been run in a few minutes..." Ehehe. AO sent me an email a few days ago saying they're giving another two weeks to all those people who got the free year, which is pretty wicked. Only... I play WoW and not AO. And it's not because AO is a bad game, it's because I paid for WoW, and, I like to get my money's worth. Especially since I'm a poor lazy ass kid who doesn't have a job. (And who probably should have gotten one long ago) Still haven't gotten snail mail confirmation of U of I... Kinda worries me. And speaking of colleges: I need to get scholarships or I'm boned. My parent's are going to pay for about $10k of it, but I have to come up with 14k somewhere else or I can't afford it. If I wasn't such a complete lazy idiot I would have had a bunch in the mail or something by now. So right now I'm pretty much screwed, because most of the scholarships that I'll be able to use for this year are either already given out, or the application time is over. I guess, though, worst comes to worst, I wait a year... But that would suck because then I will have forgotten a LOT more, and I won't have enough money saved up unless I had a job full time. I wish I had like $50k in the stock market *sigh* I only have like, $3k. I'd take the 14 I need out and keep the rest in there for interest (about 6% right now for me I think, which is pretty nice), and then start applying to all the scholarships for next year so I don't have to take more out... Stupid realism.

So anyway, I've been playing a lot of World of Warcraft, and I'm 1/3 of the way to level cap, but levels are slowing down a bit, because many of the quests I have I need a party to get through, or at the very worst be a class that can solo without too much trouble (aka not a mage). It's still a lot of fun, and I can't wait to hit level 40 so I can use a mount... It'll be pretty nice then...

Well, I didn't mention this in my last update... We had a LAN party at Soto's house last Friday through Saturday night at 10 PM. It was a lot of fun, and his parents weren't home, and didn't know he was hosting, so there was some thrill in that. We didn't really do much gaming though, which I suppose should have been obvious from the last one... We played about 4 hours out of about 24 of CounterStrike, and maybe an hour on other LAN games. Overall, I'd say a lot of the time was spent playing the Battletech board game (which is actually a lot of fun, although difficult at first to understand). After a few rounds of that, it was on to stealing Anime's from each others' computers. I took Full Metal Panic's second season from Jeff (I was mostly finished with the first on BitTorrent), and everybody else pretty much stole everything I had. They grabbed .hack//SIGN from me, which is a very good series... Hah, Soto even stayed up late that night to watch it, and finished it the next day. 27 (2 bonus) episodes in two days is pretty hardcore.

Anywayyy, the whole real reason why I even hit the Blog This button was to say that Full Metal Panic totally rocks. It has become my new favorite anime, over Hellsing. This is because I love mechs, and FMP has them. Also, FMP has good characters with individual personalities (they even made 5 new characters in one episode, only to kill them off by the end of the next. They had a complete backstory for one >.<), comic relief when necessary (AKA main character gets his fair share of punches in the face from the main female character... Like in Love Hina...), the art is superb, and I love the songs. I wish I had the OST, but I guess I'll find that later. In summary, FMP rawkz0rs.

Adion is currently listening to: Anarchy Online - OST 2 - Lord of the Void [6:27]

I have two words: w00t w00t. I got into University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign's Engineering Department ^_^. I'm still waiting for snail mail confirmation, but their webpage declares that I have been accepted. And to think, all that fuss for how long it was taking me to apply for nothing. So, I'm going there I think... There's pretty much a 95% chance I'll go there over anywhere else, just because it's a good school. Plus, I know people who are actually going there, unlike Truman, which is just a little college off in the middle of Noname Town, Missouri. (Kirksville) Now all I need to do is write back saying I'm going, and deciding what dorm to stay in and who to room with. Exciting times... But I know for sure the worst thing is going to be the laundry. If my roommate doesn't suck that is... I hope I get a decent roommate... Oh well.

Adion is currently listening to: The Sounds of CounterStrike (Playing CS >.> )

I'm hopelessly addicted. Everybody I know I know has seen me log on AIM and then throw up my WoW message for about 4 hours before dinner. Of course, right after dinner it's right back to the WoW. Yeah. Probably not healthy, but either way its addicting... The worst part is that it's $14.99/mo. I mean it's an awesome game, but 15 bucks a month? What about us poor folks... Oh well, back to the free 30 days while I still can... I should check up on how long I can not pay and still keep my characters...

Adion is currently listening to: In Flames - The Quiet Place [3:45]

Well, today started the beginning of semester two. I went to my counselor's office early this morning before school to get a quick schedual change, third hour lunch just wasn't going to fly. For all of you (which is... everybody) who don't go to my school, third hour is approximately 10:49-11:37 AM. Which seems like a good period, if you wait to eat lunch til the end of it. But, I never do that. If it's right there in front of me, why not use it? And it just so happens, the only way to "use" food is to eat it. Also, because I just noticed again, my watch broke. I think it happened when I was getting my schedual changed, because I think I remember stepping on a piece of rubber, and I believe it was small and squarish... Anyway, it wasn't anything major, just the little part of the band that keeps the excess band from jutting out of my wrist broke off. I'm not sure how it did either, seeing as it looked to be pretty sturdy plastic, but either way it's not there now. Er, back to school... I switched my P.E. period to three instead, and my english was moved to 6th (lunch periods are only 3, 4, & 5) in exchange. In the end, I don't like third hour P.E., I think I've got a bunch of jackasses in my class which will totally suck. It's the kind of people that are all sporty and good at stuff. Oh well, I'm tempted to get my fourth hour and third hour changed (4th is physics) because a bunch of my friends have fourth hour P.E., so I'll be in a cool class... But the problem is, I know a lot of cool people in the fourth hour I'm already in... Maybe I can get them to switch to third with me... Dunno. Oh well... It turns out that my switch to sixth hour English was a good choice though, I think. It might be a kinda odd class, doing stuff I'm not to fond of or great at, but I know a bunch of cool people in it. And the teacher's laid back. It's Shakespeare, and there's a lot of acting (50% of the class he said), which will probably suck. He did mention that he won't grade based on acting skill, of which I have none. Might turn out alright afterall. Egh.

So during lunch today, a friend of my friend, Pat, gave back FLCL to Pat (*whew* not too confusing? ;_;), who didn't have a place to store them, and I was sitting next to him. So, he turns his head slowly over to me, gets a slightly evil grin on his face and says, "Alex! You have a bag right? HA! I see it! You can't say no now!" and summarily shoves FLCL into my backpack. Which is perfectly awesome with me. This whole time I'm chewing on my turkey sandwich, and only sorta nod in his direction as he's plowing FLCL into the empty space that is my first-day-back-backpack. That was probably the highlight of the day, if you don't count actually watching FLCL. It's a great show. I still don't understand how they managed to fit so much story into just 6 episodes. I mean, it's great. If you haven't seen it, go out in buy/rent it. At the very least, download it. It's definately worth that. I might have to do that, since I'm going to give it back to him next time we hold D&D...

Uhm, so I got home today, and pretty much turned my computer on and started the defragger, 'cause I know it's been a long time since I did. Not to mention, it probably was pretty messed up when I copied an entire partition to another partition when I got my new hard drive... So I watched FLCL while it sat up here churring and whurring away at the HDD's... At about 7 o'clock, I went with my sister and her boyfriend to Best Buy, where I proceeded straight to the computer game section to try and discern the location of a highly reccommended (and throughly shoved in my face) game, World of Warcraft. It looks cool. But then again, I said the same thing about FFXI, and to tell the truth (ooh, deep secret!) I got bored of it in about a month and a half. I mean, it was nice having a linkshell and people to talk to, but Jordan was never around, and he and I were totally different levels all the time... Not to mention he was super stubbern about using a different job so we could party together. I can't wait til they make a game that isn't entirely EXP related, and you can share EXP with anybody you want no matter the level difference. I mean, who plays on the same schedual these days? MMOs are meant to not only help people find new friends (which isn't difficult if you let it happen) but to bind old friends stronger. And that's pretty hard to do if you're 2,161.41 miles apart. The time zone difference enough throws us off, not to mention the fact that he's not always in front of his computer (like me...). Eh whatever, FFXI is done and over with. I still haven't uninstalled it, because... well, now that I think about it, there really isn't a reason. I wish FFXI was better, but it just isn't. All those people who talk about playing the other FF's and leveling all their characters to 99 before they switch off the first disk and so forth, FFXI is for you. But I get so bored of just a level chain... Not to mention, the exp doesn't even get better as you kill harder stuff. No way. What it does is stay the same, and you kill impossible stuff, rest forever, and then you die. You lose 50% of the exp you got in the past five hours of playing, and then you say fuck it. Turn off the computer and go sleep and wish FFXI wasn't such a bastard when it came to leveling. I like some things about it, sure. I mean, the graphics were spectacular. The moogle house? Ingenious! But, my friends never get to see that I have a picture hanging on the wall behind a badass 4 post bed with a dresser and a nice plant. It's a wonder to behold only by me and my moogle. Not to mention, the world is driven entirely by gil. And the worst part? You don't really get that much. There aren't any quests for super insane money, and in fact, most of the loot sells for next to nothing. The only way to really get a lot of money, is to either do a bunch of the smaller quests over and over again, or get lucky and have some other player (who is most likely leaving) give theirs to you.

Agh, enough of my FFXI rant. It really isn't that bad of a game. But once I get started, I can't stop complaining...

Uh, I realized that I didn't link Rush on Seven Episodes last post, so here you go. I played it a bit two days ago after the post, and it really is just RO with a three-D engine, terrible spelling (you'd think they'd learn from RO, sheesh), and apparently, vehicles. It seems like it might have a nifty system for them too, like you can upgrade components and everything. But, nothing really changed besides that. It's still a leveling mess... And right now, the beta just isn't far enough along for me to even find partial interest in it. I think that'll go off my computer with FFXI when I need to. It's nifty, but not worth it. At least yet.

Alright, running low on thoughts here (eh heh, just kidding... I'm always thinking about new and more depressing things...), so I thought I'd throw in something I was thinking about on the way home from school today while I was ignoring Marty (who drives). As I mentioned earlier, my sixth hour is full of people I'm good friends with. Unfortunately, I haven't talked to a good portion of them for... Probably close to two years now. Not because I don't like them, but because I don't see them. I admit, this is largely in part to me sitting at home (they're active in multiple clubs they mention...). So, when one naturally asks the typically refresher course questions (I.E. "How are you?", and "What have you been up to?"...), it is with a depressed sigh I answer back, "Oh, nothing much..." and proceed to sorta circle my eyes to a sideways direction. I think that's enough clues for them to typically figure out, that I'm just a boring geek who sits at home and does nothing all day. I'm nice enough of course, to ask them the same questions (if you can call it being nice...), but the fact remains. I sit here and do nothing all day. Maybe I should proverbially "grow up" and "get a life", but to all you people who think so, bite me. My computer is my life, and damn society for not making that socially acceptable. Just because computers came around about thirty years ago doesn't mean they can't be cool! What sucks to me is that I don't think movies were this bad. I mean, when movies first came out, didn't bunches of people go to them, even though there was no sound? I mean, thats about as low as it goes. That's like one of them old Apple's or IBMs that doesn't even have DOS on it. People didn't flock to those, though... And now, all the people who are with computers don't know much about them. Not to say that they should, I mean. I'm not trying to say, if you watch movies, you should know their history and so forth. Not at all. But I don't like it when a bunch of people judge those of us who use computers frequently and for long periods of time poorly, just because we're computer nerds. I don't make fun of you because you watch 8 hours of TV/movies a day do I? And that's totally acceptable by society too. When asked why I'm up so late at night, sometimes, to make it easy, I'll respond with, "Eh, watching TV and that sorta thing." And they'll shrug it off. I just know that if I was to say, "Eh, talking to people on the internet, playing computer games, that sorta thing" that I'd just get a cold stare for a few seconds before they change the subject. WHY DAMMIT! It's not that different! I'd say it's better for you. At least you move a little while you're on the computer... What with the keyboard and mouse and such. Not to mention, you get better entertainment, and news that actually has facts in it... If you want information, it's easily accessable. If you want entertainment, you can find that for 20 bucks at any game store and you can take it home and play it for hours upon end. And if you have a fast connection, you can play some games like RO on private servers, or CounterStrike, or America's Army: Operations. You could, if you wanted to, download ROMs for older consoles and play those too. I mean, the possibilities are endless. Yet most people don't do that. They sit on their couch in front of their TV and call us people who sit on a chair in front of a monitor nerds and make fun of us. I, for one, don't appreciate it.

And, a quick note, I'm not saying that all people who watch TV for 8 hours a day are bad people, and that everybody calls computer peoples nerds (even though most of us are... you can at least change your tone dammit!). So yeah. I'm not pointing fingers at the whole world here, just a select few who really make it stand out.

Adion is currently listening to: .hack//SIGN - OST - Valley of Mist [3:36]

Well, nothing that I write really deserves the blog title of "Ah HA!" but it was all I could think of, so...

So yesterday I downloaded a "perfect" collection of all the .hack// OST's, and later spent approximately an hour and a half renaming all the files. And the M3U's... That was probably the most boring and monotonous thing I've ever done. But in the end I think it was worth it. They're good songs... Wish the collection was truely "perfect"; only one of the OSTs is 320 kbps. But I can't really complain, I now have all of them when before I had about 6 songs from random ones...

So today & yesterday I went over to Pat's house to play D20 Future, which is essentially D&D in the, you guessed it, future. We spent pretty much all of yesterday making characters, and then a new person came today, so we waited for him to make a character today, which ended up taking most of the allotted time between 1 to 5:30 (partly because nobody showed up till about 2:30...). But it's cool. Everybody but me is a mutant (I'm a robot), and we're all space pirates. During the last hour of the session or so I killed probably 10ish people by making them disintegrate. We're in the process of stealing a cargo ship (yarr!) and/or it's cargo. We did a pretty good job (if I do say so myself) of making them lower their shields so we could teleport two of us onboard. It's a lot of fun, I hope tommorrow's session turns out just as good, if not better. On other news...

I recently learned that Rush On Seven Episodes is finally out in English, although still in beta. Which is fine, it'll be free during beta. I haven't really looked much into it yet, but it looks pretty decent... Don't quite know if it'll be able to compete with AO though. AO is pretty cool. And I managed to get a bunch of people on it ^_^ So that'll be nice. Anyways, I'm off to AO where a few friends of mine are waiting...

Adion is currently listening to: .hack//SIGN - OST2 - End of the World [3:13] (Track 18)