Hey all. I'm going to shut this blgo down for awhile. I'll leve it up with the URL still active. but some stuff has come up in my personal life that stems from stuff here this and stuff i've been ranting about on facebook over the semester.
Essentially, i just need to clear my head. I need to stop using this blog-space and the internet as my diary and until i can hit that point, i wont be posting here.
see you around.
--Zack
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Monday, November 8, 2010
foreshadowing my return
Hey all who follow this, i know i've been very absent from blogging for almost a month. I just simply havent had the time to take a chunk out of my mornings to enter something on here. I'm only enterign seomthign now cause i', skimming the Aeneid as i cant get into it and we're too rushed in going through it. anyway, thats a rant for another time. Here;s the point: if there is an update this week, it'll most likely be on friday, but dont expect one. more than likely, i'll put something up the friday before break starts, the 19th, as i wont be doing work that AM, nor will i be doing any that afternoon befroe i get the shuttle to dayton. so yea. I'll try and update regularly over break.
But after break things are gonna get a bit insane again. in that 2 week period i'm ognna have my senior presentation and a small presnetation for history of psych, as well as final papers and stuff to do. Oh and Dance Alloy stuff. so don;t expect much from me from the 28th- December 13th or so. but after all that finals stuff, i'm on break, so yea!
just wanted update you all.
--Zacl
But after break things are gonna get a bit insane again. in that 2 week period i'm ognna have my senior presentation and a small presnetation for history of psych, as well as final papers and stuff to do. Oh and Dance Alloy stuff. so don;t expect much from me from the 28th- December 13th or so. but after all that finals stuff, i'm on break, so yea!
just wanted update you all.
--Zacl
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Saturday, October 16, 2010
another mini-hiatus
Hey anyone who follows me here. i need to take anothe blogging hiatus until novmber 1st at the earliest. I'll see you all then
--Zack
--Zack
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
weekly update 10-13-10
hey guys. i'm back for a weekly update. so w/o further ado, lets get to it.
Wednesday: last wedensday was fairly uneventful so not much to say here.
Thursday: the only thing of note outside of the usal work and such is that i built my first Magic the Gathering deck on thursday evening. The deck has beens changed a bit cuased it sucked at first, but its pretty good now. building another one this mid-sem and that one should rock
Friday: an uneventful day off from work. had the morning free from classes so my freind betsy and i went to meijer to get a replacement air mattress ( my old one had someohwo gotten a hole in it) then i had class in the afternoon and yea. free afternoon and yea. Umm that evenign i did a magic the gathering draft, and built a pretty good deck from it, buffed it up to 60 cards after, and yeah. I'm still winless but yea.
Saturday: work filled and i honestly dont remember any fun shenanigans that happened. not that i partied or antyhing, i was just dead tired. It was my frined Kalila's birthday today so she and i hung out alot.
Sunday: more work and chillin and yea. not mcuh to say this day.
Monday: easy dya of work, just doing wokr on senior psych project and yea.
Tuesday: more work and yea nothign too exciting. i download a couple games. King's Bounty: The Legend and a Magic the Gathering video game. both are off steam and were only $35 so yeah and both are pretty fun.
and i wont cover today because i'll cover today and the rest of mid-sem break next week! so yeah. sorry for the sparseness of sutff in this update, but not at lot of note happened. I have gotten back to the gym. which makes me happy.
as always, comment below if you can and yeah.
--Zack
Wednesday: last wedensday was fairly uneventful so not much to say here.
Thursday: the only thing of note outside of the usal work and such is that i built my first Magic the Gathering deck on thursday evening. The deck has beens changed a bit cuased it sucked at first, but its pretty good now. building another one this mid-sem and that one should rock
Friday: an uneventful day off from work. had the morning free from classes so my freind betsy and i went to meijer to get a replacement air mattress ( my old one had someohwo gotten a hole in it) then i had class in the afternoon and yea. free afternoon and yea. Umm that evenign i did a magic the gathering draft, and built a pretty good deck from it, buffed it up to 60 cards after, and yeah. I'm still winless but yea.
Saturday: work filled and i honestly dont remember any fun shenanigans that happened. not that i partied or antyhing, i was just dead tired. It was my frined Kalila's birthday today so she and i hung out alot.
Sunday: more work and chillin and yea. not mcuh to say this day.
Monday: easy dya of work, just doing wokr on senior psych project and yea.
Tuesday: more work and yea nothign too exciting. i download a couple games. King's Bounty: The Legend and a Magic the Gathering video game. both are off steam and were only $35 so yeah and both are pretty fun.
and i wont cover today because i'll cover today and the rest of mid-sem break next week! so yeah. sorry for the sparseness of sutff in this update, but not at lot of note happened. I have gotten back to the gym. which makes me happy.
as always, comment below if you can and yeah.
--Zack
Sunday, October 10, 2010
A Reflection of sorts.
It seems this year, since about Mid-June (at least for me) has been a hell of a year. So much shit has happened that either i didnt see coming or just was just plain bad for either me or people i know. I'm starting to hope that 2011 is easier for everyone. A large part of this reflection stems from my good friend Kenneth's father dying the day of this post. I didn't know Kenneth's dad at all, but losing a father figure is very tragic and I've known Kenneth for the past 3 years, so hearing that this happened to him is very sad and its had a very profound effect on me.
so now lets rewind thorugh what else has happened this year to make this the year set on Expert difficulty with everyone struggling to keep playing the Game of Life. Earlier this semester my dad went under the operating knife and had part of his intestines removed. I was worried intensely about him the entire time and was still worried when he was convalescing in the hospital after. The enitre summer he had been having health issues after he got bit by a wild rat in june on vacation. we're talking hot flashes general sickness. i think that got cleared up, btu prior to that he had thyroid issues and such. I think thats fixed btu i cant remember. Then, just priro to my dad's health issues in June, i was taken in by law enfroecemtn on the island we were vacationing on because i resembled someone who some lady had seen take her beachbag the day before. yeah, thats a story, i'll tell people in person.
then fast forward to a week ago and that Freshman, Alec Henriksen committed suicide here on campus.
It's been a rough fuckin year since June. A lesson in staying strong if you will.
--Zack
so now lets rewind thorugh what else has happened this year to make this the year set on Expert difficulty with everyone struggling to keep playing the Game of Life. Earlier this semester my dad went under the operating knife and had part of his intestines removed. I was worried intensely about him the entire time and was still worried when he was convalescing in the hospital after. The enitre summer he had been having health issues after he got bit by a wild rat in june on vacation. we're talking hot flashes general sickness. i think that got cleared up, btu prior to that he had thyroid issues and such. I think thats fixed btu i cant remember. Then, just priro to my dad's health issues in June, i was taken in by law enfroecemtn on the island we were vacationing on because i resembled someone who some lady had seen take her beachbag the day before. yeah, thats a story, i'll tell people in person.
then fast forward to a week ago and that Freshman, Alec Henriksen committed suicide here on campus.
It's been a rough fuckin year since June. A lesson in staying strong if you will.
--Zack
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
I"M BACK!
whe, it feels good to be back and blogging again. its been what, 2 weeks, somehting like that at least. actually looking at the main page in another tab, its been since the 21st, so yea, 2 weeks and 1 day. since the last post relevant to the point of this blog.
so yea in those two weeks, i had 1 test for a very hard psych prof, a few essays (one of which was 10-12 pages and kinda hard to write) and probably some other stuff i can't remember now, so yeah, thats why i was gone from this blog.
But yea. not much happened in those two weeks outside of work sadly, ntohign epicly awesome to report. just my usal life here: work, classes, collecting figures and being a generally socially awkward nerd. I've gained weight back since being back here, minaly form that 2 week high-stress period where i didnt do much exercise at all. so i think i'm up to 190lbs again. i'm doing trying to lose weight here cause every time i apply myself to do so, i always over eat or just outright fail for whatever reason. Maybe its my lack of self-control manifesting in that part of my life now as opposed to in my transformers collecting. My goal for now with my weight is to maintain my wieght where i can. Then during the summer, if i can drop down to where i should be, (170-175lbs) i can attempt to maintain that during my gap year. so yeah, i originally wanted to be around 170 by May, but idk if i can push myslef that here at college, when part of my issue is getting full on cafeteria food and gettin meals that may be too big when i eat in the coffeeshop.
wow, that was a longer tangent about weight than i was expecting. umm so lets see, i guess the only other thing is that i'm finally realizing i'm shit at telling stories to people. examples: lats friday i was at a friends birthday party and i had been drinking and i was reminded of a time on my Berlin may term (shout out to my firend Kaitlin who reads this blog) when i had drank very heavily at a movie and had somewhow ended up at my host family's place safe and sound. I was telling the story, which in my defense is a respectably funny story about me drinking at that time, and right after, one of my firends playfully jabbed at me and said, "yeah that story sucked." granted it coulda been worse because i was pretty inebriated, but yea. the other example is actuallly from last ngiht when i was watching a freind play Red Dead Redemption (google it) and at one point he, instead of hitting the command to talk to someone on the side of the road, he accidentally hit the "draw your gun" button to interatc with said person and everyone laughed hysterically at the in game NPC runnin away screaming. Now, whenever soemoen else came into the room and i tried to explain what had happened in the game, i always butchered the story of what happened and drew it out too much. I think thats my problem with telling stories, is that i'll drag them out too much. I'm gonna work on that. there's a motto we're goign by wiht our senior psych projects (expect a full write up on that here around mid-december) that goes soemthing like "Keep It Simple Stupid" or K.I.S.S and i think thats what i need to do with my stories. I need to save my verbosity for my academic essays, as long as i can back it up.
in other news, i;m more 50/50 on if i prefer my glasses or my contacts. i like the look both give me. additionally, i'm thinking i may grow my hair out again. idk i like having it short, mainly cause tis a pain when its long. hell it doenst even get long in the sens wher ti grows down to, and beyond, ponytail length. it just grow out and gets layered so i look like i have very moppy, shaggy hair. I grew my hair otu sophmore year of high school and while it was nice, i really hated walking to school with it because it was like insulation on my head that winter. I am nautrally warm, so yea.
still in other news, the baseball 2010 postseason is set. it starts today actually. we;ve got the Yankees facing the twins, the Rangers facing the Rays in the american league. we've got the braves facing the Giants and the Reds facing the Phillies in the National league. below are my biases and such.
Biases: hate the Yankees, Hate the Phillies. theyre the perennial powerhouses who have overpaid superstars. They always bring in the big named pitchers every offseason too, because apparently both teams still need pitching to this day. I know each seaosn is different, but i thought the Phillies rotation they had back in 2008 was just fine, they had no need to expand on that and get better. They won the world series with that rotation, which now has seen half of its members be traded or let go. Pitchers are some of the hardest workign players in the game and something about the Phillies and Yankees just tossing "youngish" arms out for proven seasoned veterans who they'll dump a truckload of money onto over 7-9 years just rubs me the wrong way.
I'm a big causal fan of the Rays. They play in Tampa bay, which is right next door to St. Peterburg in florida. If i hadnt decided to apply early decision to Earlham after falling in love wiht it as much, i would gone early action to here as well as Eckerd College in St. Pete. in fact they Rays were the underdog team back in the world series in the fall of 2007, when i was a freshman I can only imagine how electric the atmosphere in St.Pete and Tampa musta been after having the rays pretty much suck since their franchis was born in the mid 1990s. I really like what the owners of the Rays did with their organization.
It seems this years underdog team is the Reds, everyone expected them to suck this year, but they broke out of their shells and there's a lot of well-oiled parts meshing together for them this season. Their offense got better and their pitching improved from respectable, to pretty damn good if you ask me. Thier GM really knows what he's doing. I'm happy to see that franchise turn around now after it was wrecked by Jim Bowden after the days of the "Big Red Machine" in the early to mid 1990s.
oh and briefly, i really want the braves to at least go to the the NLCS if nto all the way this postseason. It's their manager, Bobby Cox, last season and he's such a great manager.
ok so my picks for each series (this is based off my mediocre knowledge of each team): Twins over Yankees in 5 games, Rangers over Rays in a neck-to-neck series that coems down to the wire in the 5th and final game. Braves over Giants in 5. and Reds over Phillies in 5 (reds will lose when phillies start Roy Halladay and Roy Oswalt, btu will rock house the other 3 games).
so that gives us an NLCS of Braves v. Reds and a ALCS of Twins v. Rangers. In the AL, i give the rangers the slgiht edge against the twins, mainly because a big part of the Twins' offense(Justin Morneau) is out this postseason and i dont thinkg they can handle not having him beyond the YAnkees series. The Rangers do have young ptihing after Cliff Lee, so that could hurt them. This series will go at least 5 games. Rangers win the series
for the Reds-Braves series, its hard to project out. both teams have solid pitching, and the offenses are btohe great, The Braves seem to have slightly better defense, so i'll give them the edge here. Braves win the series.
So that gives us a Braves v. Rangers world series, which probably wont happen (i'm shit at predictions). If it comes to this though, i think that while the Ranger's bats will give them plenty of offense, their pitching will pale in comparison to the Braves. But due to the offense prowess of both sides, expect at least 5 games. In Bobby Cox's last season, the Braves win the World Series. i'm not predicting in how many games.
so yea, thats my update. see you all next week. Comment below.
--Zack
so yea in those two weeks, i had 1 test for a very hard psych prof, a few essays (one of which was 10-12 pages and kinda hard to write) and probably some other stuff i can't remember now, so yeah, thats why i was gone from this blog.
But yea. not much happened in those two weeks outside of work sadly, ntohign epicly awesome to report. just my usal life here: work, classes, collecting figures and being a generally socially awkward nerd. I've gained weight back since being back here, minaly form that 2 week high-stress period where i didnt do much exercise at all. so i think i'm up to 190lbs again. i'm doing trying to lose weight here cause every time i apply myself to do so, i always over eat or just outright fail for whatever reason. Maybe its my lack of self-control manifesting in that part of my life now as opposed to in my transformers collecting. My goal for now with my weight is to maintain my wieght where i can. Then during the summer, if i can drop down to where i should be, (170-175lbs) i can attempt to maintain that during my gap year. so yeah, i originally wanted to be around 170 by May, but idk if i can push myslef that here at college, when part of my issue is getting full on cafeteria food and gettin meals that may be too big when i eat in the coffeeshop.
wow, that was a longer tangent about weight than i was expecting. umm so lets see, i guess the only other thing is that i'm finally realizing i'm shit at telling stories to people. examples: lats friday i was at a friends birthday party and i had been drinking and i was reminded of a time on my Berlin may term (shout out to my firend Kaitlin who reads this blog) when i had drank very heavily at a movie and had somewhow ended up at my host family's place safe and sound. I was telling the story, which in my defense is a respectably funny story about me drinking at that time, and right after, one of my firends playfully jabbed at me and said, "yeah that story sucked." granted it coulda been worse because i was pretty inebriated, but yea. the other example is actuallly from last ngiht when i was watching a freind play Red Dead Redemption (google it) and at one point he, instead of hitting the command to talk to someone on the side of the road, he accidentally hit the "draw your gun" button to interatc with said person and everyone laughed hysterically at the in game NPC runnin away screaming. Now, whenever soemoen else came into the room and i tried to explain what had happened in the game, i always butchered the story of what happened and drew it out too much. I think thats my problem with telling stories, is that i'll drag them out too much. I'm gonna work on that. there's a motto we're goign by wiht our senior psych projects (expect a full write up on that here around mid-december) that goes soemthing like "Keep It Simple Stupid" or K.I.S.S and i think thats what i need to do with my stories. I need to save my verbosity for my academic essays, as long as i can back it up.
in other news, i;m more 50/50 on if i prefer my glasses or my contacts. i like the look both give me. additionally, i'm thinking i may grow my hair out again. idk i like having it short, mainly cause tis a pain when its long. hell it doenst even get long in the sens wher ti grows down to, and beyond, ponytail length. it just grow out and gets layered so i look like i have very moppy, shaggy hair. I grew my hair otu sophmore year of high school and while it was nice, i really hated walking to school with it because it was like insulation on my head that winter. I am nautrally warm, so yea.
still in other news, the baseball 2010 postseason is set. it starts today actually. we;ve got the Yankees facing the twins, the Rangers facing the Rays in the american league. we've got the braves facing the Giants and the Reds facing the Phillies in the National league. below are my biases and such.
Biases: hate the Yankees, Hate the Phillies. theyre the perennial powerhouses who have overpaid superstars. They always bring in the big named pitchers every offseason too, because apparently both teams still need pitching to this day. I know each seaosn is different, but i thought the Phillies rotation they had back in 2008 was just fine, they had no need to expand on that and get better. They won the world series with that rotation, which now has seen half of its members be traded or let go. Pitchers are some of the hardest workign players in the game and something about the Phillies and Yankees just tossing "youngish" arms out for proven seasoned veterans who they'll dump a truckload of money onto over 7-9 years just rubs me the wrong way.
I'm a big causal fan of the Rays. They play in Tampa bay, which is right next door to St. Peterburg in florida. If i hadnt decided to apply early decision to Earlham after falling in love wiht it as much, i would gone early action to here as well as Eckerd College in St. Pete. in fact they Rays were the underdog team back in the world series in the fall of 2007, when i was a freshman I can only imagine how electric the atmosphere in St.Pete and Tampa musta been after having the rays pretty much suck since their franchis was born in the mid 1990s. I really like what the owners of the Rays did with their organization.
It seems this years underdog team is the Reds, everyone expected them to suck this year, but they broke out of their shells and there's a lot of well-oiled parts meshing together for them this season. Their offense got better and their pitching improved from respectable, to pretty damn good if you ask me. Thier GM really knows what he's doing. I'm happy to see that franchise turn around now after it was wrecked by Jim Bowden after the days of the "Big Red Machine" in the early to mid 1990s.
oh and briefly, i really want the braves to at least go to the the NLCS if nto all the way this postseason. It's their manager, Bobby Cox, last season and he's such a great manager.
ok so my picks for each series (this is based off my mediocre knowledge of each team): Twins over Yankees in 5 games, Rangers over Rays in a neck-to-neck series that coems down to the wire in the 5th and final game. Braves over Giants in 5. and Reds over Phillies in 5 (reds will lose when phillies start Roy Halladay and Roy Oswalt, btu will rock house the other 3 games).
so that gives us an NLCS of Braves v. Reds and a ALCS of Twins v. Rangers. In the AL, i give the rangers the slgiht edge against the twins, mainly because a big part of the Twins' offense(Justin Morneau) is out this postseason and i dont thinkg they can handle not having him beyond the YAnkees series. The Rangers do have young ptihing after Cliff Lee, so that could hurt them. This series will go at least 5 games. Rangers win the series
for the Reds-Braves series, its hard to project out. both teams have solid pitching, and the offenses are btohe great, The Braves seem to have slightly better defense, so i'll give them the edge here. Braves win the series.
So that gives us a Braves v. Rangers world series, which probably wont happen (i'm shit at predictions). If it comes to this though, i think that while the Ranger's bats will give them plenty of offense, their pitching will pale in comparison to the Braves. But due to the offense prowess of both sides, expect at least 5 games. In Bobby Cox's last season, the Braves win the World Series. i'm not predicting in how many games.
so yea, thats my update. see you all next week. Comment below.
--Zack
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
a quick thought
Nancy Harvey wrote back in 1998 that parents and children were laughing at responsibility's face and ignoring self-discipline. The children that went through this will be 12 this year. Did this mentality in the late 90s lead to today's "i've got to get what I want right now, and my parents will let me get it" metality? is this the mentality that led to the whiny, pessismistic brat demographic that is so prevalent today? Discuss.
For those interested in the basis of this topic, look up a bref article she wrote called "the imitation of mr. starbuck" link below.
http://www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft9808/opinion/harvey.html
comment with your thoughts.
--Zack
For those interested in the basis of this topic, look up a bref article she wrote called "the imitation of mr. starbuck" link below.
http://www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft9808/opinion/harvey.html
comment with your thoughts.
--Zack
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
activate mini-hiatus!
yea, thats right andy regular readers fo this. i'm taking a mini hiatus from posting here starting today and enidng around october 1st. got a lot of work between now and then.
see you all then
--Zack
see you all then
--Zack
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
weekly update 9-14-10: ramblings and another mini-hiatus?
hey all, back for this week's update.
lets get crackin, shall we?
ok so as youve noticed, this post is going up early. Thats because i'm donating blood tomorrow during my usual blog time so yea.
Thursday last week was pretty mundane outside of work and such. i had schedules to do laps, btu i believe work got in the way, or i got lazy. well, yea work gets precednce over exercise for me. cause i like to just sit down and work, even with distraction. i also dont like working too late into the night.
Friday: Mundane mornign, as i finished up sense and senibility (finally) and then went to lunch and my last class for the day. after that i planned otu my weekend and then hung out with one of my freinds over smoothies and here in my room. we hadnt caught up in a while so it was really nice to do so. That night was the SAB money giveaway thing. i just socialized with friends. i didnt win any $. oh well.
Saturday was very much work filled as the assingment i had thought would be short was anything but. it was easy but very time consuming. so yay for wokring 10-5:30 witha brunch break on the weekend. and no i'm nto complaining. saturday night i simply walked around and hung out.
Sunday was light on work, but still spent sveeral hours working on my senior psych intro outline round 2. round three is dues friday. so yeah. i need to stop being distracted when i get done wiht class for the day and i'm starting work at like 2:45 or so in the afternoon.
Monday, yesterday was fine, i managed to beats out half of a paper in an hour and a half which made me happy.
Tuesday (today): finished that paper otday on top of some reading fro that same class (i'm fining myslef not caring about the poetry and narrative stuff we read unless i have to write somethign for the class on it. is this mild senioritis? i dont know.
ok, so remeber that bloggin hiatus i took last fall? well as a minor heads up, i may have to take one again. stuff gonna get mad busy starting this weekend and going until around october 1st. so if i dont post here after today, you know why.
and now for something completly different!!!!
a heartwarming story: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2011740342_electronboy30m.html
ok so, i love this story. It makes me so happy that all these people came together to make the dream of a kid living with Liver Cancer come true. especially those two guys from Deadliest Catch. That's so wondeful that people have their hearts in the right place. that's my thoughts onthis in a nutshell.
And thats it for this week guys. Wow a short one, eh?
Thansk for reading, comment below if you wish. Now, follow me on twitter: twitter.com/phoenix88tf
lets get crackin, shall we?
ok so as youve noticed, this post is going up early. Thats because i'm donating blood tomorrow during my usual blog time so yea.
Thursday last week was pretty mundane outside of work and such. i had schedules to do laps, btu i believe work got in the way, or i got lazy. well, yea work gets precednce over exercise for me. cause i like to just sit down and work, even with distraction. i also dont like working too late into the night.
Friday: Mundane mornign, as i finished up sense and senibility (finally) and then went to lunch and my last class for the day. after that i planned otu my weekend and then hung out with one of my freinds over smoothies and here in my room. we hadnt caught up in a while so it was really nice to do so. That night was the SAB money giveaway thing. i just socialized with friends. i didnt win any $. oh well.
Saturday was very much work filled as the assingment i had thought would be short was anything but. it was easy but very time consuming. so yay for wokring 10-5:30 witha brunch break on the weekend. and no i'm nto complaining. saturday night i simply walked around and hung out.
Sunday was light on work, but still spent sveeral hours working on my senior psych intro outline round 2. round three is dues friday. so yeah. i need to stop being distracted when i get done wiht class for the day and i'm starting work at like 2:45 or so in the afternoon.
Monday, yesterday was fine, i managed to beats out half of a paper in an hour and a half which made me happy.
Tuesday (today): finished that paper otday on top of some reading fro that same class (i'm fining myslef not caring about the poetry and narrative stuff we read unless i have to write somethign for the class on it. is this mild senioritis? i dont know.
ok, so remeber that bloggin hiatus i took last fall? well as a minor heads up, i may have to take one again. stuff gonna get mad busy starting this weekend and going until around october 1st. so if i dont post here after today, you know why.
and now for something completly different!!!!
a heartwarming story: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2011740342_electronboy30m.html
ok so, i love this story. It makes me so happy that all these people came together to make the dream of a kid living with Liver Cancer come true. especially those two guys from Deadliest Catch. That's so wondeful that people have their hearts in the right place. that's my thoughts onthis in a nutshell.
And thats it for this week guys. Wow a short one, eh?
Thansk for reading, comment below if you wish. Now, follow me on twitter: twitter.com/phoenix88tf
quckie update 9-14-10
Hey guys. just to update any reder. this weeks life in brief post will probably go up either tonight (tuesday) or tomorrow night (wednessay 9/15/10). I'm donating blood during my usual blogging time wedensday AM and i will be mired in work wendesday afternoon.
--Zack
--Zack
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
weekly update 9-8-10: blog paradox!!!
Yea so i wanted to put a funny title there for once. Anyway, before i get rolling, you may or may nto have notice i deleted last weeks post. basically i did that to cover my tracks. in retrospect, i said some things in that post that i shouldnt have, and one of my freinds ntoified me that people were talking and i should watch myself. now i've ratcheted some stuff back, cause she said the people were talking bad things abotu me. now i know people will always talk, but i covered my tracks a bit and well yea. I didnt think i was doing thigns too abnormal though. whatever. So thats why lats week's post was deleted and not pared down
Soo, lets get too it.
So classes are underway and have been for about 2 weeks. Feels like tis been longer, btu its going to be a fun, busy semester. theres a great dynamic among the students and prof in both Words and Works of Ancietn rome and in romanticism. Though, i'm nto feeling the first book for romaticism and yea. anyway. senior psych research is going well i have a very firm idea fo what i'm gonna reaserch. History of Psych is fun, lot of information, and everyone seems to not be talking much cause of other prioroties, btu its still fun. moral education has some very interesting discusssion poitns and such and i like the structure of the class. I love the prof, and the different topics we'll cover in the class will be intriguing.
Yay classes recap in brief. Anyway, onto the day by day recap.
Thursday and firdya were pretty much routine, just workin and hangin wiht people (yea i had to work on firday (sadface)). i had a project proposal for senior research due on tuesday so i wanted to get that done sunday, and to do so, i needed to work on one assingment and get it done. Saturday was work filled on things for words and works, and romanticism and i think one of my other classes. after that, i socialized ab bunch and hten wnet ot SAB bingo night. after a long stretch of wanting the prizes and not winning, i finally got bingo and dthe prizes was a 3 piece set of a coffeemaker, iron and skillet. I've made food on the skillet and have so used the coffeemake hardcore. My reaction after i won was absurd. I had bee whispering the numbers i needed to myself, and they both got called. I yelled bingo in my normal voice and then Ninja'd my way very fast and awkwardly around this sophmore Sean that i kind of know and then i pointed to the places on my board and i won. I think at some point i said "That's me" in a very high pitched voice. ugh i have messed up vocal chords.
Sunday was filled wiht wokring on senior psych and i managed to skype wiht my folks which made me very happy. It was great to finally see my dad after his surgery (if you follow me on facebook you know what this is about, if not, just ask). Monday was a normal monday 2 classes and work stuffs. oy. same for yesterday but yesterday was long. For soem reason Moral Education doesnt go by fast, at least not yet.
That brings us to today. Romanticism was fun, ad i need to think of an essay topic to outline over the weeknd or on monday.
Lastly, over the past week, Disturbed released their new album. I'm not too blown away by it, i may get it at some point, but the first single came across as a bit preachy for the band for me and while the title track is very solid and has a great music video, i feel like parts of the song are drawn out and not really well put together. The thing that grabbed me about the new Disturbed album, is that they did a secret hidden track after the last track of the album. the secret track, being secret had a minute 30 of filler, which is really annoying the filler is just dead air and i really dont like when bands do that. Just stick the track at the end and keep it off the tracklisting. anyway, the track thats secret is a cover of "I still havent found what I'm looking for" by U2. IT's a surprisingly awesome rendition of it, the guitar solo seems a bti too sped up and out of place, but other than that, i have no qualms. link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9jXHkHRubk
the thing i'm most happy about wiht music is thatALter Bridge leaked their first Single "Isolation" off thier comign Album, ABIII, via Roadrunner records UK. Its also on youtube, so i'll put a link after this, but yea. wow. i love this song. its hard hittign the lyrics are great and there's an awesome feel to it cause the lead vocalist, Myles Kennedy solos on the track and his guiatr work has greatly inproved with each Alter Bridge album. hopefully the rest of the album is like this and yea. it's due out mid-october here in the US i believe, so yea. its pretty much a day 1 purchase for me. in fact, i'm gonna go look at alter bridge posters. link to the song:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9S9D5RRwQ8g
see you guys next week.
--Zack
Soo, lets get too it.
So classes are underway and have been for about 2 weeks. Feels like tis been longer, btu its going to be a fun, busy semester. theres a great dynamic among the students and prof in both Words and Works of Ancietn rome and in romanticism. Though, i'm nto feeling the first book for romaticism and yea. anyway. senior psych research is going well i have a very firm idea fo what i'm gonna reaserch. History of Psych is fun, lot of information, and everyone seems to not be talking much cause of other prioroties, btu its still fun. moral education has some very interesting discusssion poitns and such and i like the structure of the class. I love the prof, and the different topics we'll cover in the class will be intriguing.
Yay classes recap in brief. Anyway, onto the day by day recap.
Thursday and firdya were pretty much routine, just workin and hangin wiht people (yea i had to work on firday (sadface)). i had a project proposal for senior research due on tuesday so i wanted to get that done sunday, and to do so, i needed to work on one assingment and get it done. Saturday was work filled on things for words and works, and romanticism and i think one of my other classes. after that, i socialized ab bunch and hten wnet ot SAB bingo night. after a long stretch of wanting the prizes and not winning, i finally got bingo and dthe prizes was a 3 piece set of a coffeemaker, iron and skillet. I've made food on the skillet and have so used the coffeemake hardcore. My reaction after i won was absurd. I had bee whispering the numbers i needed to myself, and they both got called. I yelled bingo in my normal voice and then Ninja'd my way very fast and awkwardly around this sophmore Sean that i kind of know and then i pointed to the places on my board and i won. I think at some point i said "That's me" in a very high pitched voice. ugh i have messed up vocal chords.
Sunday was filled wiht wokring on senior psych and i managed to skype wiht my folks which made me very happy. It was great to finally see my dad after his surgery (if you follow me on facebook you know what this is about, if not, just ask). Monday was a normal monday 2 classes and work stuffs. oy. same for yesterday but yesterday was long. For soem reason Moral Education doesnt go by fast, at least not yet.
That brings us to today. Romanticism was fun, ad i need to think of an essay topic to outline over the weeknd or on monday.
Lastly, over the past week, Disturbed released their new album. I'm not too blown away by it, i may get it at some point, but the first single came across as a bit preachy for the band for me and while the title track is very solid and has a great music video, i feel like parts of the song are drawn out and not really well put together. The thing that grabbed me about the new Disturbed album, is that they did a secret hidden track after the last track of the album. the secret track, being secret had a minute 30 of filler, which is really annoying the filler is just dead air and i really dont like when bands do that. Just stick the track at the end and keep it off the tracklisting. anyway, the track thats secret is a cover of "I still havent found what I'm looking for" by U2. IT's a surprisingly awesome rendition of it, the guitar solo seems a bti too sped up and out of place, but other than that, i have no qualms. link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9jXHkHRubk
the thing i'm most happy about wiht music is thatALter Bridge leaked their first Single "Isolation" off thier comign Album, ABIII, via Roadrunner records UK. Its also on youtube, so i'll put a link after this, but yea. wow. i love this song. its hard hittign the lyrics are great and there's an awesome feel to it cause the lead vocalist, Myles Kennedy solos on the track and his guiatr work has greatly inproved with each Alter Bridge album. hopefully the rest of the album is like this and yea. it's due out mid-october here in the US i believe, so yea. its pretty much a day 1 purchase for me. in fact, i'm gonna go look at alter bridge posters. link to the song:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9S9D5RRwQ8g
see you guys next week.
--Zack
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
weekly update 8/25/10: Flying by the seat of my pants
hey guys. glad you could join me for this post. i totally dont have anything written down for this post, so we're just gonna fly by the seat of our pants through this post, and we're gonna enjoy it. so here we go.
So last post was in the middle fo NSO staff days. Not much happened the rest of that day, wednesday. Thursday i had a lunch meeting wiht the faculty here. The lunch itself was fine, the food was good and i talked to the faculty member i was advisor aiding for. The bad part of the lunch was that they kept the students and such there for the full thing, thourgh all the announcements and talking about new stuff on the college's server that really only impacted the faculty (i.e. a math assessment test that we "guinea pigged" this year in order to assess where freshman who were pursuing the hard sciences) in short, if the freshmen get below a certain score on the assessment of Algebra, and stuff then they are strongly reccomended to take a new math course called "math for liberal arts" or somthign. Which is fine and dandy, but lets be honest, those of us on NSO (new student orientation) staff did not need to be there for the faculty discussion of the software and how it will wokr with advisoring and such. We could have left after the welcome talk and talkign wiht our advisor aides. There was also a few mroe other faculyt exclusive matters i had to sit through, which was mildly annoying and boring.
Thursday afternoon i went for a walk into town for exercise, which was fun and nice. that night i had a NSO staffe meeting in Wlkinson, which was essentially announcements about the next day and hten a run trhough of the committee skits. After that meeting i hung out here in my room and played Elderscrolls oblivion.
then, friday the freshman arrived finally and i was runnign around doing all sorts of things and stuff. I spent the monring from 9-11 helpign freshmen check into bundy and takign photos of them doing so for the theme committee. after that i went over to LBC to help direct people, i then got roped in to helpign with registration and throwing candy at the freshmen's cars as they drove up the main drive. all activities were fun and marked my morning. i met one of the freshmen at lunch and tlaked/ cuaght up wiht my old roommate, Eric. I then retunred to the candy throwing for a bit and then reutnred to my room. At 2 i went to eh NSO welcome talk, just because they needed the staff to stand up at the beginning, which we did. THen i directed freshmen and thier parents or advisory meetings from 4-5. I then was a door holder for a few people in saga, and then ate, met some more freshmen and then headed bakc here to bundy. I went on the slackline for a bit and hten came up here and hung out.
Saturday, the alst day wihtout my non-freshmen freinds here, was pretty chill. all i really had to do was proctor that math assessment thign for the fhreshmen at two different times. The nervewrackign thign about it (well thats not the right word), was that at the seocnd session (7:30-8:30 pm) i had to redirect like 20 freshmen to the proper labs. It seems that this year mroe then ever the freshies didnt knwo where thigns were on campus, or just didnt remember. I'm of the viewpoitn now that after the NSO welcome, there should be a mandatory tour of campus after the NSO welcome. The redirecting wasnt that bad, it was just somehwta annoyign to have to repeat directions after ebign completly flummoxxed by 30 freshmen bumrushing the lower lvel lab in lilly library (alliteration ftw) where there were only maybe 15 pc's available (the softwar is apparently PC only). but i managed, as did they and it went fine. Anyway, in the afternoon i moved stuff to my kitchen cabinet and then hung out a bunch. the "heart warming" dance party thing was that ngiht and i worked that and danced around for funs. spent the majority of the time dancing with/around two freshmen named Meg and Emma,both of whom are pretty cool. after that, i ame back here and hung out and schmoozed with a couple people on the hall and online.
Sunday was also low key, i worked on the NSO DVD wiht the production guy for a bit and then i helped a couple non-freshmen friends move stuff out of storage, which was fun, because i got to see them again we we got to guage how many boxes my car can carry. After that i proctored one final math Session, during whcih i had to re-direct a bunch of people again, but i had learned from the night prior and got everyone's names first. After the protoring, i meandered around campus, got foods and such and hung out. i showed up for the root beer and rockband NSO event later and that was fun, evn if it has a weakish turnout and i failed ast vocal 2 times on beatles rockband. there, i met again a freshmen named Maggie and i hung out with her and the aformentioned Emma girl at various points. From there, i came bakc to my room and hung out and invited Maggie over to hang out. We got to talking and bonding and then gave each toher back massages. It was a pretty awesome hangout, which didnt end til 3:15, and if i can maintain chilling wiht Maggie, she and i are gonna be close friends, which is awesome.
Thankfully i didnt have much gogin on monday, so i could sleep in from being up absurdly late. I did laudry, went to the convocation talk which was th =e author of the book the freshmen had to read. the talk was surpsingly good, considering i found the book agonizing dry for a 541 page war story. after the convo i hung otu wiht poeple who were moving in and had some general geekery. around 6:30 i met the faculty member i was advisor aiding and her advisees and we drove to her hosue for the advisory dinner. the prof lived 30 mins away, which was tiring. a few of us played billiards before dinner, and then we all had awesome burgers and such. after dinner we had a tlak about registration and eveyrhting. it was just a veyr funn evening that diddnt end until around 10:20 when i got back here. Then, i hung otu with people and my friend Betsy and i walked around campus tlakign about things.
YEsterday, Tuesday was fine. I got up early enought forenrollment confimration which had an absurdly long line for peopel wiht the last name a-h. i survived that and then got my books and coffee. i then hung out, went to lunch, bumped into my friend Amrit, talked wiht her for the longest time and then got binders and stuff for classses. Betsy, Maggie and i hung out last ngiht and i hung otu wiht SHelley after the Mentalist, which was surpsingly good. the dude finally switched some things around in his act after doing the same schtick 3 years in a row ( i dont remeber why i saw him sophmroe year, but last year i had to go cause i was ushering for fun committee for last year's NSO.
And now we're at today! wedensday, the first day of classes, which i'll recap in a bonus post once i've had all classes once.
comment below.
--Zack
So last post was in the middle fo NSO staff days. Not much happened the rest of that day, wednesday. Thursday i had a lunch meeting wiht the faculty here. The lunch itself was fine, the food was good and i talked to the faculty member i was advisor aiding for. The bad part of the lunch was that they kept the students and such there for the full thing, thourgh all the announcements and talking about new stuff on the college's server that really only impacted the faculty (i.e. a math assessment test that we "guinea pigged" this year in order to assess where freshman who were pursuing the hard sciences) in short, if the freshmen get below a certain score on the assessment of Algebra, and stuff then they are strongly reccomended to take a new math course called "math for liberal arts" or somthign. Which is fine and dandy, but lets be honest, those of us on NSO (new student orientation) staff did not need to be there for the faculty discussion of the software and how it will wokr with advisoring and such. We could have left after the welcome talk and talkign wiht our advisor aides. There was also a few mroe other faculyt exclusive matters i had to sit through, which was mildly annoying and boring.
Thursday afternoon i went for a walk into town for exercise, which was fun and nice. that night i had a NSO staffe meeting in Wlkinson, which was essentially announcements about the next day and hten a run trhough of the committee skits. After that meeting i hung out here in my room and played Elderscrolls oblivion.
then, friday the freshman arrived finally and i was runnign around doing all sorts of things and stuff. I spent the monring from 9-11 helpign freshmen check into bundy and takign photos of them doing so for the theme committee. after that i went over to LBC to help direct people, i then got roped in to helpign with registration and throwing candy at the freshmen's cars as they drove up the main drive. all activities were fun and marked my morning. i met one of the freshmen at lunch and tlaked/ cuaght up wiht my old roommate, Eric. I then retunred to the candy throwing for a bit and then reutnred to my room. At 2 i went to eh NSO welcome talk, just because they needed the staff to stand up at the beginning, which we did. THen i directed freshmen and thier parents or advisory meetings from 4-5. I then was a door holder for a few people in saga, and then ate, met some more freshmen and then headed bakc here to bundy. I went on the slackline for a bit and hten came up here and hung out.
Saturday, the alst day wihtout my non-freshmen freinds here, was pretty chill. all i really had to do was proctor that math assessment thign for the fhreshmen at two different times. The nervewrackign thign about it (well thats not the right word), was that at the seocnd session (7:30-8:30 pm) i had to redirect like 20 freshmen to the proper labs. It seems that this year mroe then ever the freshies didnt knwo where thigns were on campus, or just didnt remember. I'm of the viewpoitn now that after the NSO welcome, there should be a mandatory tour of campus after the NSO welcome. The redirecting wasnt that bad, it was just somehwta annoyign to have to repeat directions after ebign completly flummoxxed by 30 freshmen bumrushing the lower lvel lab in lilly library (alliteration ftw) where there were only maybe 15 pc's available (the softwar is apparently PC only). but i managed, as did they and it went fine. Anyway, in the afternoon i moved stuff to my kitchen cabinet and then hung out a bunch. the "heart warming" dance party thing was that ngiht and i worked that and danced around for funs. spent the majority of the time dancing with/around two freshmen named Meg and Emma,both of whom are pretty cool. after that, i ame back here and hung out and schmoozed with a couple people on the hall and online.
Sunday was also low key, i worked on the NSO DVD wiht the production guy for a bit and then i helped a couple non-freshmen friends move stuff out of storage, which was fun, because i got to see them again we we got to guage how many boxes my car can carry. After that i proctored one final math Session, during whcih i had to re-direct a bunch of people again, but i had learned from the night prior and got everyone's names first. After the protoring, i meandered around campus, got foods and such and hung out. i showed up for the root beer and rockband NSO event later and that was fun, evn if it has a weakish turnout and i failed ast vocal 2 times on beatles rockband. there, i met again a freshmen named Maggie and i hung out with her and the aformentioned Emma girl at various points. From there, i came bakc to my room and hung out and invited Maggie over to hang out. We got to talking and bonding and then gave each toher back massages. It was a pretty awesome hangout, which didnt end til 3:15, and if i can maintain chilling wiht Maggie, she and i are gonna be close friends, which is awesome.
Thankfully i didnt have much gogin on monday, so i could sleep in from being up absurdly late. I did laudry, went to the convocation talk which was th =e author of the book the freshmen had to read. the talk was surpsingly good, considering i found the book agonizing dry for a 541 page war story. after the convo i hung otu wiht poeple who were moving in and had some general geekery. around 6:30 i met the faculty member i was advisor aiding and her advisees and we drove to her hosue for the advisory dinner. the prof lived 30 mins away, which was tiring. a few of us played billiards before dinner, and then we all had awesome burgers and such. after dinner we had a tlak about registration and eveyrhting. it was just a veyr funn evening that diddnt end until around 10:20 when i got back here. Then, i hung otu with people and my friend Betsy and i walked around campus tlakign about things.
YEsterday, Tuesday was fine. I got up early enought forenrollment confimration which had an absurdly long line for peopel wiht the last name a-h. i survived that and then got my books and coffee. i then hung out, went to lunch, bumped into my friend Amrit, talked wiht her for the longest time and then got binders and stuff for classses. Betsy, Maggie and i hung out last ngiht and i hung otu wiht SHelley after the Mentalist, which was surpsingly good. the dude finally switched some things around in his act after doing the same schtick 3 years in a row ( i dont remeber why i saw him sophmroe year, but last year i had to go cause i was ushering for fun committee for last year's NSO.
And now we're at today! wedensday, the first day of classes, which i'll recap in a bonus post once i've had all classes once.
comment below.
--Zack
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
weekly update 4/18/10
Yea so last week's post went up early. so thats whay the days on then are 8 apart. anyway, Welcome to this week's update, theres actually a fair amount to cover for once, so lets get onto it. so last wednesday was mainly filled wiht finalizing my packing and such and then doing some doctors appointments an getting my haircut. From there, i drove seom and otherwise jsut hung out wiht my parents and my dog.
Thursday and friday were what i had been looking forward too all summer. A road trip with my Dad out here to School. We had gone into wiht the goals of my getting some good rain driving practice and some practice on checking my blind spot before merging. THe latter i did when i was driving and now its like second nature for me to do its. Funnily enough on the rain drivign note, its would on drizzle on occasion when i drove that first day, and it poured when my dad was driving when we were in the mountains of maryland heading to west virginia. We stopped in Morgantown, WV for the night at a holiday inn not too far from the highway. Driving that day had been lots o fun and i was surpised at how natural highway driving was for me once i got on the DC beltway and all my future stints on the drive. we drove abotu 4 hours that day to morgantown, and two of the times we switched to the other person to drive we turned off at the most random places. We turned off one time at a country club type place that had many people playing golf. once we switched my dad found a strya golfball in the parking lot and i grabbed it and still have it. the other place we switched that sticks with me was when we exited the highway, pulled onto a side road and puled into some gravel pit by some hick house. it was kind of amusing. And then we kept drivign.
The second day of the roadtrip was fun. My dad started off and drove us to Washington PA, where we stopped and switched drivers. I then dorve to new cord ohio where we got lunch and switched drivers. parkign was aminor issue there, but it was fine. apparetnly theres a university right there named Muskingum university. he funny name. So then after eating we drove through ohio and my dad most of the flat part initially. Then i drove and it got hilly whcihc was hilarious. after my dad's next drive, we made a slight detour to Dayton Airport, just so i could get a feel for driving back to school from there. That was fun, and i was kinda surprised by how long the drive to the state line was. I then drove us into the hotel and yea. we then relaxed and got dinner eventually.
The next day, we woke up, got bob evans for breakfast and then spent the day practicing driving routes and saw The Expendables. The driving was fun, as was the movie. The back way i take in town to the movie seems to take a bit long though. Sunday we moved me in after getting food and dirving out to the uhaul place and getting the truck. it was fun to move in and dissassemble the extra bed in my room. We got my room squared away shortly after the NSO meeting that night and then retunred the Uhaul truck at 8 and then got a very late dinner. I've then been on my own on campus since that ngith and its fun. my room feels homey, though i feel tempted to get a rug.
my room has a view of the front area in front of bundy and the walk leading up to the HEart on campus. its nice.
On a music not, the new album from Filter dropped yesterday and to be breif, it straight up rocks. One of my favorite albums of the year for sure.
Thats it for me. comment below.
--Zack
Thursday and friday were what i had been looking forward too all summer. A road trip with my Dad out here to School. We had gone into wiht the goals of my getting some good rain driving practice and some practice on checking my blind spot before merging. THe latter i did when i was driving and now its like second nature for me to do its. Funnily enough on the rain drivign note, its would on drizzle on occasion when i drove that first day, and it poured when my dad was driving when we were in the mountains of maryland heading to west virginia. We stopped in Morgantown, WV for the night at a holiday inn not too far from the highway. Driving that day had been lots o fun and i was surpised at how natural highway driving was for me once i got on the DC beltway and all my future stints on the drive. we drove abotu 4 hours that day to morgantown, and two of the times we switched to the other person to drive we turned off at the most random places. We turned off one time at a country club type place that had many people playing golf. once we switched my dad found a strya golfball in the parking lot and i grabbed it and still have it. the other place we switched that sticks with me was when we exited the highway, pulled onto a side road and puled into some gravel pit by some hick house. it was kind of amusing. And then we kept drivign.
The second day of the roadtrip was fun. My dad started off and drove us to Washington PA, where we stopped and switched drivers. I then dorve to new cord ohio where we got lunch and switched drivers. parkign was aminor issue there, but it was fine. apparetnly theres a university right there named Muskingum university. he funny name. So then after eating we drove through ohio and my dad most of the flat part initially. Then i drove and it got hilly whcihc was hilarious. after my dad's next drive, we made a slight detour to Dayton Airport, just so i could get a feel for driving back to school from there. That was fun, and i was kinda surprised by how long the drive to the state line was. I then drove us into the hotel and yea. we then relaxed and got dinner eventually.
The next day, we woke up, got bob evans for breakfast and then spent the day practicing driving routes and saw The Expendables. The driving was fun, as was the movie. The back way i take in town to the movie seems to take a bit long though. Sunday we moved me in after getting food and dirving out to the uhaul place and getting the truck. it was fun to move in and dissassemble the extra bed in my room. We got my room squared away shortly after the NSO meeting that night and then retunred the Uhaul truck at 8 and then got a very late dinner. I've then been on my own on campus since that ngith and its fun. my room feels homey, though i feel tempted to get a rug.
my room has a view of the front area in front of bundy and the walk leading up to the HEart on campus. its nice.
On a music not, the new album from Filter dropped yesterday and to be breif, it straight up rocks. One of my favorite albums of the year for sure.
Thats it for me. comment below.
--Zack
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
weekly update 8/10/10
ok so here comes this weeks post. Early, but who cares.
We're gonna start off wiht music this week. Cause we have some news. One of my favorite bands, Alter Bridge, has released concrete info on their new album, which theyre saying is gonna be released someitme in the first 2 weeks of october, which means we're gonna get a single by the end of this month, maybe. anyway, we have an album title and a tracklisting. HEre's the info:
name: AB III‘.
Track list:
1. “Slip To The Void”
2. “Isolation”
3. “Ghost Of Days Gone By”
4. “All Hope Is Gone”
5. “Still Remains”"
6. “Make It Right”
7. “Wonderful Life”
8. “I Know It Hurts”
9. “Show Me A Sign”
10. “Fallout”
11. “Breathe Again”
12. “Coeur D’Alene”
13. "Life Must Go On"
14. "Words Darker Than Their Wings"
Thanks for the info tunelab.com and. If theres tracks i'm worried about based off only the titles, its "Make it right", "Wonderful life", and "I know it hurts", so almost the middle three, btu the latter could go sociopathically dark, which would be interesting. Myles Kennedy (the lead singer and rhythmn guitarist) has said Isolation is pretty heavy for a song. so we'll see. I'm digging SLip to the void, GHosts of Days gone by, all hope is gone, still remains, and fallout though. I know Coeur D'alene is Heart of something cause the first word is heart in french. I'm really looking forward to this album. Cant wait for the single...
so i've been losing wieght this week and i'm down to 182.5 lbs. lost 15 lbs this summer. YAY! Outside fo that, work ended friday and i'll miss the kids cause they were fun and work was fun. I'll miss the teacher i was working with. she was cooland very nice. this weekend was uneventful, just walking and planning out this week. I've had doctors appointments, packing, cleaning and errands this week to do acause i'm leaving thursday on a road trip out to earlham to have my car on campus and dthen get used to driving the richmond corridors before staff stuff for new student orientation begins. Should be a fun road trip. look for a full recap of it in next week's post on the 18th, whichll be still during Staff stuff. The week after that is the 25th, when classes start.
thaats all for me.
--Zack
We're gonna start off wiht music this week. Cause we have some news. One of my favorite bands, Alter Bridge, has released concrete info on their new album, which theyre saying is gonna be released someitme in the first 2 weeks of october, which means we're gonna get a single by the end of this month, maybe. anyway, we have an album title and a tracklisting. HEre's the info:
name: AB III‘.
Track list:
1. “Slip To The Void”
2. “Isolation”
3. “Ghost Of Days Gone By”
4. “All Hope Is Gone”
5. “Still Remains”"
6. “Make It Right”
7. “Wonderful Life”
8. “I Know It Hurts”
9. “Show Me A Sign”
10. “Fallout”
11. “Breathe Again”
12. “Coeur D’Alene”
13. "Life Must Go On"
14. "Words Darker Than Their Wings"
Thanks for the info tunelab.com and. If theres tracks i'm worried about based off only the titles, its "Make it right", "Wonderful life", and "I know it hurts", so almost the middle three, btu the latter could go sociopathically dark, which would be interesting. Myles Kennedy (the lead singer and rhythmn guitarist) has said Isolation is pretty heavy for a song. so we'll see. I'm digging SLip to the void, GHosts of Days gone by, all hope is gone, still remains, and fallout though. I know Coeur D'alene is Heart of something cause the first word is heart in french. I'm really looking forward to this album. Cant wait for the single...
so i've been losing wieght this week and i'm down to 182.5 lbs. lost 15 lbs this summer. YAY! Outside fo that, work ended friday and i'll miss the kids cause they were fun and work was fun. I'll miss the teacher i was working with. she was cooland very nice. this weekend was uneventful, just walking and planning out this week. I've had doctors appointments, packing, cleaning and errands this week to do acause i'm leaving thursday on a road trip out to earlham to have my car on campus and dthen get used to driving the richmond corridors before staff stuff for new student orientation begins. Should be a fun road trip. look for a full recap of it in next week's post on the 18th, whichll be still during Staff stuff. The week after that is the 25th, when classes start.
thaats all for me.
--Zack
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
weekly update 8/4/10
Theres some lyrics by M. Shadows of Avenged Sevenfold on his collaborative track wiht Slash of GNR fame on the latter's solo record that go somehting like this: "and still we march further away, singing out songs of yesterday, voices with nothing to say."
I feel somehow that applies to me this week as once again, i feel i have not much to say to you all this week. anywyay, onwards.
Last week fo work this week. ITs been very fun. The kids have been a handful at times but theyre fun. though one of them has categorically not payed attention when we've had to reprimand him. It surprises me how much energy these kids ahve sometimes as well as the personality types theyre already displaying. There's one kid who'll be the stereotypical Arrogant jock type (who knows if he'll do sports) because he ego is mildly inflated. there's the quiet kid who has lots of good ideas, but can be really shy in class work. There's the kid who will clearly be a scientist, or some sort of "ologist" person, because he loves knowledge and learnign about things. Then, there's the kid who always laughs and is reallly good at math and that sort of reasoning. we'll see how he ends up. Hopefully all of them stay in school.
so this past weekend i went up to NYC with my folks to see my sister. i got deathly sick the day we were heading up there, saturday, so yeah most of our plns for saturday got scrapped, except for getting awesome paninis from a place by my sister's apartment and hanging out. Also, i figured out that if i end up in NYC, 1) i wont have a car and 2) i really wan try and live in Astoria, Queens. Its a up and coming neighborhood wiht lots of cool stuff coming in. Saturday night my sister felt sick, so we all scrapped going to the NY Mets game as i was stil sick. Sunday i felt loads better but was fatigued from the cold meds. I really like NYC even if the Cabbies are a bit nuts.
So, i'm heading back to campus the day after next weeks post. if all goes well i'm driving out, and i'm leaving a day soner than normal so i can get the routes i'd use to get around in richmond, (groceries, movies, walmart, etc) down before stuff for NSO (new student orientation) staff starts. I'm an advisor aide this year for NSO which is awesome, but now i have to finish the book the freshman have to read. 368 pages in 10 days. whooo boy. but i'm an aide for a prof i like and who it'll help to get to know more, so thats awesome.
Two new TF pruchases with a Target giftcard, as a reward to myself for surviving work. PowerCore Combiner Huffer and Generations thrust. Awesome figures. More will come on my TF blog and on my youtube channel.
I'll end on a unrelated but very happy note, Prop 8 was ruled unconstitutional! yay!
Thats all this week, see told you i have not much to say.
--Zack
I feel somehow that applies to me this week as once again, i feel i have not much to say to you all this week. anywyay, onwards.
Last week fo work this week. ITs been very fun. The kids have been a handful at times but theyre fun. though one of them has categorically not payed attention when we've had to reprimand him. It surprises me how much energy these kids ahve sometimes as well as the personality types theyre already displaying. There's one kid who'll be the stereotypical Arrogant jock type (who knows if he'll do sports) because he ego is mildly inflated. there's the quiet kid who has lots of good ideas, but can be really shy in class work. There's the kid who will clearly be a scientist, or some sort of "ologist" person, because he loves knowledge and learnign about things. Then, there's the kid who always laughs and is reallly good at math and that sort of reasoning. we'll see how he ends up. Hopefully all of them stay in school.
so this past weekend i went up to NYC with my folks to see my sister. i got deathly sick the day we were heading up there, saturday, so yeah most of our plns for saturday got scrapped, except for getting awesome paninis from a place by my sister's apartment and hanging out. Also, i figured out that if i end up in NYC, 1) i wont have a car and 2) i really wan try and live in Astoria, Queens. Its a up and coming neighborhood wiht lots of cool stuff coming in. Saturday night my sister felt sick, so we all scrapped going to the NY Mets game as i was stil sick. Sunday i felt loads better but was fatigued from the cold meds. I really like NYC even if the Cabbies are a bit nuts.
So, i'm heading back to campus the day after next weeks post. if all goes well i'm driving out, and i'm leaving a day soner than normal so i can get the routes i'd use to get around in richmond, (groceries, movies, walmart, etc) down before stuff for NSO (new student orientation) staff starts. I'm an advisor aide this year for NSO which is awesome, but now i have to finish the book the freshman have to read. 368 pages in 10 days. whooo boy. but i'm an aide for a prof i like and who it'll help to get to know more, so thats awesome.
Two new TF pruchases with a Target giftcard, as a reward to myself for surviving work. PowerCore Combiner Huffer and Generations thrust. Awesome figures. More will come on my TF blog and on my youtube channel.
I'll end on a unrelated but very happy note, Prop 8 was ruled unconstitutional! yay!
Thats all this week, see told you i have not much to say.
--Zack
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
weekly update 7/28/10
stopped doing titles.
few things on the docket this week, but it should still be a short post.
Work is going strong, this is my second to last week and its been very fun. every firday the school takes the kids, i think mainly the lower school, on a field trip during this summer program. the field trips the past 2 weeks have been rough though. First was the DC Aquarium, which isn't bad, but its nothing compared to the baltimore one an hour away. the DC one is just small and its in the basement of a federal building. Then this past friday was to the kennedy center where we just got a tour. It was cool and all but the kids clearly wanted to see a show, so maybe somehting small coulda been organized. That and the Guide seemed to not know what to expect wiht the kids, as they all have learning disabilities of some sort. I get thta the school is cutting back cause of finances, btu still, the fieldtrips have been kind of lackluster.
I head back to EC about 2 weeks from tomorrow (thursday). Kinda weird. Assuming my dad and i drive out, we'll drive out on thursday and friday and then have all day saturday to do whatever and then drive the routes i'd take to go grocery shoopping, to the movies/ Walmart, etc. SHould be a fun road trip. So weird i'm going back so soon! looking forward to running NSO though.
In other news, my youtube channel is gonna proverbially explode with video amountage (technical term) in August. I've got Skystalker and Brawn from the second movie toyline coming at various points in the month. I've got the new Rodimus and Red alert figures pre-ordered, and they might be waiting for me at Earlham. Also, theres one more review in there, i cant remeber, but yea. its gonna be insane.
Reccomendation time:
Music first. Check out a band named Taddy Porter. Theyre kind of bluesy-rock/ southernish rock. Theyre very good. I really like their sound. Look into them on itunes. They remind me of a more grungy, less fine-tuned version of The Black Keys, not that the latter band is over produced or any of that. but yea.
Games: If you have Steam look into PEggle extreme and Geometry wars. The former is a causal strategy game type thing similar to snood. The second is a old school shooter where you have to shoot geometric shapes before they hit you. the first is free and very fun, as the sound effects are very funny at times. the second one requires some strategy, but not much. Both are great Pick-up and Play type games.
Look at that, a quick post! IF you want more on anything, let me know.
--Zack
few things on the docket this week, but it should still be a short post.
Work is going strong, this is my second to last week and its been very fun. every firday the school takes the kids, i think mainly the lower school, on a field trip during this summer program. the field trips the past 2 weeks have been rough though. First was the DC Aquarium, which isn't bad, but its nothing compared to the baltimore one an hour away. the DC one is just small and its in the basement of a federal building. Then this past friday was to the kennedy center where we just got a tour. It was cool and all but the kids clearly wanted to see a show, so maybe somehting small coulda been organized. That and the Guide seemed to not know what to expect wiht the kids, as they all have learning disabilities of some sort. I get thta the school is cutting back cause of finances, btu still, the fieldtrips have been kind of lackluster.
I head back to EC about 2 weeks from tomorrow (thursday). Kinda weird. Assuming my dad and i drive out, we'll drive out on thursday and friday and then have all day saturday to do whatever and then drive the routes i'd take to go grocery shoopping, to the movies/ Walmart, etc. SHould be a fun road trip. So weird i'm going back so soon! looking forward to running NSO though.
In other news, my youtube channel is gonna proverbially explode with video amountage (technical term) in August. I've got Skystalker and Brawn from the second movie toyline coming at various points in the month. I've got the new Rodimus and Red alert figures pre-ordered, and they might be waiting for me at Earlham. Also, theres one more review in there, i cant remeber, but yea. its gonna be insane.
Reccomendation time:
Music first. Check out a band named Taddy Porter. Theyre kind of bluesy-rock/ southernish rock. Theyre very good. I really like their sound. Look into them on itunes. They remind me of a more grungy, less fine-tuned version of The Black Keys, not that the latter band is over produced or any of that. but yea.
Games: If you have Steam look into PEggle extreme and Geometry wars. The former is a causal strategy game type thing similar to snood. The second is a old school shooter where you have to shoot geometric shapes before they hit you. the first is free and very fun, as the sound effects are very funny at times. the second one requires some strategy, but not much. Both are great Pick-up and Play type games.
Look at that, a quick post! IF you want more on anything, let me know.
--Zack
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Weekly update 7-21-10: Another Quick Hit
Boy am i running out of things to say in these weekly updates. Honeslty, as fun as fats as this summer has been, not a whole lot has happened that i can write about on this blog where all is anonymous. So anyway, here goes this week's bloggage.
Work, my internship at a school earby for kids wiht learning issues, has been very fun. The cool thing today was because the mian teacher i'm wokring wiht was out for the morning i got to teach 8 and 9 year olds basic math. Its something we take for granted until we actually ahve to teach it to a kid who doesnt get it. ITs a great feeling when they do get it, and its why i'm an Education minor and why i wanna do somethin with kids and learning disabilities as my career.
Secondly, i think last week i blogged about something that happened to my car. Now, tit was suggested that i not blog about it, but i feel its enough in the past that i can, with still some degree of anonymity. Basically, the long and short is i was out getting som drving practice wiht my dad on a saturday, we were heading home finally, and i got into an accident. All parties involved were ok, including the other driver and my dad. a few days later, my car was labelled as totalled because i had spun into a fire hydrant and not stomped on the brakes after the collision. Anyway, based on the insurance stuff my family has, we were covered up to a certain point on a replacement. The replacement is a pre-owned, silver 2007 VW JEtta. I love the thing. Runs fairly smoothly, handels great, the color is awesome and yea.
third, got two new transformers in the past week. Drift from the Generations line and Seaspray from the Hunt for the Decpeticons line (the latter is a slight continuation fo the toyline based off the movie from 2010). Seaspray does not feel like a movie-line figure to me. If you want my full nerdy thoughts on the figure, check out the link here: http://zackec2011.blogspot.com/2010/07/extended-impressions-text-revie-02.html
While you're at it, if your head hasnt exploded from the nerdiness, check out the mian page of my transformers blog:zackec2011.blogspot.com
Now As most of you knwo i'm trying to lose wieght again this summer. If i'm lucky i'll be down to 180lbs by august. I still would like to be aroudn 170 by graduation in may though, so thats 8 months for 10 pounds (not inclduign holiday weight and assuming i'm at 180 in august). THe only issue with that is once thigns ramp up wiht senior year psych stuff and dacne alloy, i dont know how often i'll be able to hit the gym and do really intense cardio. We'll see.
Lastly, I'm gonna post a game review right now to end this update. The review is also up on facebook.
Game: Alien Swarm
Price: Free on Steam
Thoughts:
Ok so this is essentially a DMOD or GMOD (whatever those mean) game that the folks at Valve issued via Steam. It seems to be laregely a 4 player co-op online multiplayer, but it has a single player offline mode. So i was doing this earlier, and there's a handy tutorial as you go through the first mission. but the prompts only op up every so often.
Beinng the casual gamer i am, i was expecting a tutorial type mini level where i'd be told most of the controls. i.e. healing squad mates and reloading and such. but this was not the case. you have to go to the pause menu and look at the contorls. This is fine, juts unexpected for me as i'm nto much fo a shooter guy and this is a shooter/action/strategy. Anyway, other than that, my next complaint is the persepctive. You have a 3rd person perspective, but its not right behidn the character you're playing as. Rather, its up in the air a considerable amount. This distracts from the immersion slightly in my experience.
only 2 other complaints is that with my wireless mouse, the looking control seems to be way more sensitive than it should be. On my first play through of mission 1, i accidentally shot one of my squadmates alot because there was a alien swarming him. He died later in the mission. on my second playthrough of mission one (which i still havent completed), i was better wiht not shooting people, but i still ran into an issue, fairly early into the mission. There's one member on yoru team that apparently can never die, otherwise you fail the mission (at least at that stage in the mission) . Apparnetly he is the only guy for a while that can weld dthe doors shut to prevent alien swarms. There is no indication from the game that you need to weld certain doors to prevent alien swarms until he dies. Then, the game tells you. I suppose this should be understood, but for the average joe who goes into the game cold, it is rather annoying to be jarred into "mission failure" like that.
To the Pro points. THough, welding the doors is easy to do and such and it adds an element of strategy to the game. The other pro for this game is that the controls. While the W-S-A-D (to move up (north), down (south) left (west), right (east) respectively) are a bit wonky as they as mainly just strafing controls. THey respond very well, as does the "turn the head" control that the mouse has. they worked best in tandem. But still, the controls can be a bit sensitive if you get caught in a swarm.
The other pluses is that the graphics are visual stunning for a free game. The Aliens acan be a bit suprising as a lot of mission one has murkyness to it. The biggest thing for me wiht a game like this is if its fun and seems infintely playable as a standalone singleplayer. I feel it is, even if i apparently fail right out the gate at getting though the first mission. I had a lot of fun playing it and despite the perspective issue it feels like i can stay to it for hours. The only other game wiht similar strutcutre that i have from Steam is Plain Sight, and that seems more pick up and play. And the Multiplayer on that is kind fo weak.
The long and short: Most of the flaws i point out will be because i'm not one who often plays action/shooters/ stragety games when they blend together that often. sTill, this game was very enjoyable for me. and i will continue to plsy ti when i feel like it. I can see it being up there with Torchlight as a game i play most often on steam.
Plus, its free, as in $0.00 so you really cant go wrong.
Thats probably a one-off thing. I'm considering an unpaid movie reviewer intern position at a site thats an offshoot of tomopop.com where one of my friends posts, but i dont think i can financially afford to see a movie every weekend or whatever.
Thats all for me this week. see you all on the 28th.
--ZAck
Work, my internship at a school earby for kids wiht learning issues, has been very fun. The cool thing today was because the mian teacher i'm wokring wiht was out for the morning i got to teach 8 and 9 year olds basic math. Its something we take for granted until we actually ahve to teach it to a kid who doesnt get it. ITs a great feeling when they do get it, and its why i'm an Education minor and why i wanna do somethin with kids and learning disabilities as my career.
Secondly, i think last week i blogged about something that happened to my car. Now, tit was suggested that i not blog about it, but i feel its enough in the past that i can, with still some degree of anonymity. Basically, the long and short is i was out getting som drving practice wiht my dad on a saturday, we were heading home finally, and i got into an accident. All parties involved were ok, including the other driver and my dad. a few days later, my car was labelled as totalled because i had spun into a fire hydrant and not stomped on the brakes after the collision. Anyway, based on the insurance stuff my family has, we were covered up to a certain point on a replacement. The replacement is a pre-owned, silver 2007 VW JEtta. I love the thing. Runs fairly smoothly, handels great, the color is awesome and yea.
third, got two new transformers in the past week. Drift from the Generations line and Seaspray from the Hunt for the Decpeticons line (the latter is a slight continuation fo the toyline based off the movie from 2010). Seaspray does not feel like a movie-line figure to me. If you want my full nerdy thoughts on the figure, check out the link here: http://zackec2011.blogspot.com/2010/07/extended-impressions-text-revie-02.html
While you're at it, if your head hasnt exploded from the nerdiness, check out the mian page of my transformers blog:zackec2011.blogspot.com
Now As most of you knwo i'm trying to lose wieght again this summer. If i'm lucky i'll be down to 180lbs by august. I still would like to be aroudn 170 by graduation in may though, so thats 8 months for 10 pounds (not inclduign holiday weight and assuming i'm at 180 in august). THe only issue with that is once thigns ramp up wiht senior year psych stuff and dacne alloy, i dont know how often i'll be able to hit the gym and do really intense cardio. We'll see.
Lastly, I'm gonna post a game review right now to end this update. The review is also up on facebook.
Game: Alien Swarm
Price: Free on Steam
Thoughts:
Ok so this is essentially a DMOD or GMOD (whatever those mean) game that the folks at Valve issued via Steam. It seems to be laregely a 4 player co-op online multiplayer, but it has a single player offline mode. So i was doing this earlier, and there's a handy tutorial as you go through the first mission. but the prompts only op up every so often.
Beinng the casual gamer i am, i was expecting a tutorial type mini level where i'd be told most of the controls. i.e. healing squad mates and reloading and such. but this was not the case. you have to go to the pause menu and look at the contorls. This is fine, juts unexpected for me as i'm nto much fo a shooter guy and this is a shooter/action/strategy. Anyway, other than that, my next complaint is the persepctive. You have a 3rd person perspective, but its not right behidn the character you're playing as. Rather, its up in the air a considerable amount. This distracts from the immersion slightly in my experience.
only 2 other complaints is that with my wireless mouse, the looking control seems to be way more sensitive than it should be. On my first play through of mission 1, i accidentally shot one of my squadmates alot because there was a alien swarming him. He died later in the mission. on my second playthrough of mission one (which i still havent completed), i was better wiht not shooting people, but i still ran into an issue, fairly early into the mission. There's one member on yoru team that apparently can never die, otherwise you fail the mission (at least at that stage in the mission) . Apparnetly he is the only guy for a while that can weld dthe doors shut to prevent alien swarms. There is no indication from the game that you need to weld certain doors to prevent alien swarms until he dies. Then, the game tells you. I suppose this should be understood, but for the average joe who goes into the game cold, it is rather annoying to be jarred into "mission failure" like that.
To the Pro points. THough, welding the doors is easy to do and such and it adds an element of strategy to the game. The other pro for this game is that the controls. While the W-S-A-D (to move up (north), down (south) left (west), right (east) respectively) are a bit wonky as they as mainly just strafing controls. THey respond very well, as does the "turn the head" control that the mouse has. they worked best in tandem. But still, the controls can be a bit sensitive if you get caught in a swarm.
The other pluses is that the graphics are visual stunning for a free game. The Aliens acan be a bit suprising as a lot of mission one has murkyness to it. The biggest thing for me wiht a game like this is if its fun and seems infintely playable as a standalone singleplayer. I feel it is, even if i apparently fail right out the gate at getting though the first mission. I had a lot of fun playing it and despite the perspective issue it feels like i can stay to it for hours. The only other game wiht similar strutcutre that i have from Steam is Plain Sight, and that seems more pick up and play. And the Multiplayer on that is kind fo weak.
The long and short: Most of the flaws i point out will be because i'm not one who often plays action/shooters/ stragety games when they blend together that often. sTill, this game was very enjoyable for me. and i will continue to plsy ti when i feel like it. I can see it being up there with Torchlight as a game i play most often on steam.
Plus, its free, as in $0.00 so you really cant go wrong.
Thats probably a one-off thing. I'm considering an unpaid movie reviewer intern position at a site thats an offshoot of tomopop.com where one of my friends posts, but i dont think i can financially afford to see a movie every weekend or whatever.
Thats all for me this week. see you all on the 28th.
--ZAck
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Weekly update: 7/14/10
No more titles, can never think of witty ones.
Anyway, hey everyone, hope you didnt miss this blog too much during the week. You can totally tell its summer because there has really been nothign major going on. There is something that happened over the course of the weekend that i'm nto gonna blog about. but ask if you wanna know.
speaking of whcih, i have a seque. You all remember how after Kal Penn's Charater in House M.D. committed suicide, everyone, including House, was off their game and such. that's how i felt these past few days. I had no punchyness/swagger/smarkyness or whatever you wanna call it. And it sucked. But i got it back today and it felt awesome.
Work this weekn has been going slow, which is funny, because thats how it was last year. the first week went by fast lats year, and then the middle two weeks went slow and the last 2 went by pretty fast. This afternoon went by fast, but the rest of the week has gone by slowly . the one thing i'm not looking forward to abotu thursdays where i work is the kids i work with have a double block (90 minutes) of language arts, which is reading and writing for the. and it feels slow as molasses to me, every time it appears (both last year and the one this year). I can't imagine how slowly it must go for the kids.
speaking of reading (look at me wiht the segue's this week), If i wanna be an advisor aide during NSO (new student orientation (which i'm already doing) for the freshman, i need to read the book theyre required to read. Called, Half of a Yellow sun, the book is 540 some pages and is by Chimamanda Adiche. Its really not grabbing me. it seems to be a charcater driven drama about a certain section in southwest Nigeria wanting independance fomr the government of the mian country. thats all fine and dandy, but the plot is very broken up as the book follows five charcaters: 1)a guy who is supposedly a revolutionary socialist in the state at the time, who has made a name for himself somehow. 2) his hosueboy 3) #1's mistress who we dont find out is his mistress until the chapter after her own family is introduced (her parents are remotely relevant so far) 4) an angsty, emo, british writer guy who doesnt seem to fit in with the culture or with the crowd that 5) the woman he has come to love ( who is the "twin" sister of the revlutionary socialist's mistress) hang out with. Now coming along to why i'm not liking this book, which may cause me to not be an advisor aide. It's dry, the only interesting dynamic is between the numbers 1-3 above, and the writing is very not captivating. That and the last few chapter have been stopped before they could end because Chimamanda feels compelled to put in something about the process of the actual writing of the book the british dude is researching. I am not being grabbed by this book at all, and its very slow to get going and to get me to actually care about the characters. Maybe if i knew some more about Nigeria and what it was like in the 1960's i would actually care about the atmosphere of the time and how that is a good context for the book.
Looking at the above paragraph, i can definlty say that last sentence is my real issue. The book assumes right out of the gate that its readers know something about Nigeria in the 1960's and how it's southwest region, Biafra, wanted to eb independant. I prefer to books that dont do this, and give some background wihtouth being dry.
one more slightly negative commentary piece. there was something that kind of annoyed from one of the people i watch on youtube. he did a serious video clips of his day, and in one of them he and his family stopped for lunch, and one of his daughters couldnt go in, why i dont know. but this guy had the audacity to turn on the camera and say they were at the restauarant and then turn the camera on his wailing/crying daughter and say " and she's crying because she cant go in" in a mockingly "i feel pity for her" tone ( from what i gathered). This astounds me, no dad should film his daughter against her wiil, let alone make fun of her crying daughter because she cant go into a restaurant. You shoudl go someplace and get drive-thru where she can eat. IT's not that hard. And seriously dodnt film your own offspring crying in a video you let masses see, thats disturbing!
Yea i fell like i dont make my point clearly in those mini-rants.
anyway, to end on somehting more positive. below is a link to remix/mashup i've had stuck in my head since i ripped it from youtube. It's by DJ Earworm and its a mashup of the top 25 billboard hits from 2009. Its pretty good, and apparently he does it every year. idk if the 2010 one is out yet. here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNzrwh2Z2hQ
That is all.
--Zack
On a more positive n
Anyway, hey everyone, hope you didnt miss this blog too much during the week. You can totally tell its summer because there has really been nothign major going on. There is something that happened over the course of the weekend that i'm nto gonna blog about. but ask if you wanna know.
speaking of whcih, i have a seque. You all remember how after Kal Penn's Charater in House M.D. committed suicide, everyone, including House, was off their game and such. that's how i felt these past few days. I had no punchyness/swagger/smarkyness or whatever you wanna call it. And it sucked. But i got it back today and it felt awesome.
Work this weekn has been going slow, which is funny, because thats how it was last year. the first week went by fast lats year, and then the middle two weeks went slow and the last 2 went by pretty fast. This afternoon went by fast, but the rest of the week has gone by slowly . the one thing i'm not looking forward to abotu thursdays where i work is the kids i work with have a double block (90 minutes) of language arts, which is reading and writing for the. and it feels slow as molasses to me, every time it appears (both last year and the one this year). I can't imagine how slowly it must go for the kids.
speaking of reading (look at me wiht the segue's this week), If i wanna be an advisor aide during NSO (new student orientation (which i'm already doing) for the freshman, i need to read the book theyre required to read. Called, Half of a Yellow sun, the book is 540 some pages and is by Chimamanda Adiche. Its really not grabbing me. it seems to be a charcater driven drama about a certain section in southwest Nigeria wanting independance fomr the government of the mian country. thats all fine and dandy, but the plot is very broken up as the book follows five charcaters: 1)a guy who is supposedly a revolutionary socialist in the state at the time, who has made a name for himself somehow. 2) his hosueboy 3) #1's mistress who we dont find out is his mistress until the chapter after her own family is introduced (her parents are remotely relevant so far) 4) an angsty, emo, british writer guy who doesnt seem to fit in with the culture or with the crowd that 5) the woman he has come to love ( who is the "twin" sister of the revlutionary socialist's mistress) hang out with. Now coming along to why i'm not liking this book, which may cause me to not be an advisor aide. It's dry, the only interesting dynamic is between the numbers 1-3 above, and the writing is very not captivating. That and the last few chapter have been stopped before they could end because Chimamanda feels compelled to put in something about the process of the actual writing of the book the british dude is researching. I am not being grabbed by this book at all, and its very slow to get going and to get me to actually care about the characters. Maybe if i knew some more about Nigeria and what it was like in the 1960's i would actually care about the atmosphere of the time and how that is a good context for the book.
Looking at the above paragraph, i can definlty say that last sentence is my real issue. The book assumes right out of the gate that its readers know something about Nigeria in the 1960's and how it's southwest region, Biafra, wanted to eb independant. I prefer to books that dont do this, and give some background wihtouth being dry.
one more slightly negative commentary piece. there was something that kind of annoyed from one of the people i watch on youtube. he did a serious video clips of his day, and in one of them he and his family stopped for lunch, and one of his daughters couldnt go in, why i dont know. but this guy had the audacity to turn on the camera and say they were at the restauarant and then turn the camera on his wailing/crying daughter and say " and she's crying because she cant go in" in a mockingly "i feel pity for her" tone ( from what i gathered). This astounds me, no dad should film his daughter against her wiil, let alone make fun of her crying daughter because she cant go into a restaurant. You shoudl go someplace and get drive-thru where she can eat. IT's not that hard. And seriously dodnt film your own offspring crying in a video you let masses see, thats disturbing!
Yea i fell like i dont make my point clearly in those mini-rants.
anyway, to end on somehting more positive. below is a link to remix/mashup i've had stuck in my head since i ripped it from youtube. It's by DJ Earworm and its a mashup of the top 25 billboard hits from 2009. Its pretty good, and apparently he does it every year. idk if the 2010 one is out yet. here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNzrwh2Z2hQ
That is all.
--Zack
On a more positive n
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Music review: Freestate's debut Album "Surrender"
**Disclaimer*: if anyone from the band Freestate, related to its members or affiliated with the band sees this, what follows is my opinion and i do not mean to harm or offend anyone in the band. **end of disclaimer**
Ok, so this is an attempt at a music review of a band called Freestate and their debut album, which came out last year, entitled Surrender. its available on itunes, but i took part in the promotion they did through tunelab.com where the band would email you 2 track from the album every other week. This was fine and dandy but 1) the tracks werent; sent in order and 2) there were massive delays in emailing the tracks to me and after getting about 6 of the songs initially the emails completly stopped. Thats what i call a succesful promotion *sarcasm* Ok rant done.
So i was hoping i could get the rest of the album at some point, maybe off itunes, but then abotu a week or so ago. The band did another promotion through tunelab.com offering the entire album for free, Which made me happy. so i just downloaded it then and there, overwriting the files i had. now back from what i had prior, there were 2 tracks that really grrabbed and the rest were solid or meh. now i have the full album, so i'll attempt to do a review of it. This is mianly because theyre gonna be recording thier sophmore effort stateside in september (so probably an April/May 2011 release). The sophmore album will make or break the band on my radar and below is why.
HEre's the track brakedown and my thoughts:
1) "SOS": A very solid opener, one of the ones that grabbed me right away, the musicianship is great, especially the drumworks, andd the lyrics are well crafted and nto cliche.
2)"Necessary": I beleieve this was the first single. I liked it initially and the musicianship is still solid, and the lyrics on the verses isnt bad. But the hook and chorus is what kills the song for me and makes it seem otu fo place for a band who went wiht a hard rock sound to open the album. The lyrics on the chorus are initially along the lines of "we'll find nothing's necessary to keep our love alive" or something. Gag me please, but i believe these words should never be paired with hard rock riffsm because they always come out emo-y.
3) "Lately": The first song wiht more of a Rap-rock/ feel and it totally doesn't mesh wiht the album's sound from the past two tracks. The opening sounds so promising too, like a good hard-rock song. But then the drums get somewhat tribal and it sounds like they're ripping off a B-side from 10 years' debut album, which means it essentially sounds like a more artfully prog sounding Tool. This sound only works for Tool and Maynard James Keenan. 10 YEars have sinced changed things up and i really want to look into them, cause i like their sound now. but that another post. This song also has a bti of Serj Tankian on the verses, but more melodic. but this is a typical. "I should listen more to me because i hate you and what you did to me" song. and i feel there's supposed to be some bite to this song, btu it falls flat in my opinion. The Chorus is too rap-like and the word feel is repeated at the end of both the first lines in it. And half the lyrics in the second line are said so fast theyre nearly mumbled.
4) "The Man who COuldn't Lie": I dont mine this song, but i kinda wish i had the full lyrics to the chorus. the opening sounds too much like old Theory of a Deadman, and the chorus, as far as i can tell is "I'm runnign away til i find, preistesses standing before you, sad lies. Cause i'm the man who can't lie, see the truth's here without you, said lies" or something. but the vocalist croons too much on the chorus, make the parts i believe to be "sad lies" and "said lies" impossible to understand. IT's a decent song though.
5)TWice Alive: Again not bad, but this song just plain doesnt do it for me, and dthe ending is polluted wiht too much vocalness and its overall a bit too repetitive for me
6) "Surrender" : Dont like how the track opens, Can't get into a song that opens with "once in a while a person comes along and makes you smile" Especially when the guitars and rums have so much OOmph after the acapella opening that you expect somethign different.
7) "Heart of Stone": It's nto bad, and i liek the atmospheric/ alt rock guitar riffs, but nthign grabs me here.
8)"Again". Filler song about how whoever wrote the song should've done what someobody said and not procrastinated. Bad topic, reptitive song that the hipster masses would eat up. I dodnt like this song at all. "If only i did what you said i'd listen to you" are some of the lyrics.
9) "Naked": It tooks us this long to get to another excellently crafted (both in musicianship and lyrics) song about tossing everything away and becoming anonymous to an extent. Really like the feel of this song and i love the solo.
10) "Fire fly": love the opening riff. verse lyrics are a bit weak. cliche topic of going all out, giving everythign and charging in for something you have passion for. but the chorus isnt half bad, and the vocal dont pollute the instrumentals, like on most of the rest of the album. The bridge is a bit cliche and drawn out, but i dont mind it. I feel like there coulda been a solo after it though. There's a very solid solo at the end after more of some bridge lyrics after the chorus repeats. I dont like the fadeout on the solo though. just extend the song so its ends after the solo. All in all, this isnt half bad of a song.
11) "Clarify": Interesting opening part. feels like a good driving song. not the best in terms of lyrics, but nto bad, they get better as the verses go. Chorus feel very forced, especially in terms of vocal range. The chorus seems a bit basic in its lyrics. smal guiatr solo after the second shorus and bridge, nothing special, then we get into "gang vocals" where the backing members (so the bassist and drummer for this band probs) do the vocals to get the crowd going live essentially. i dont like "gang vocals" and theyre hard to explain.
12) "Phoenix": more a world music opening. non-lead isnger vocals on the verse and then paired wiht his on the chorus. not bad chorus. but who is the other vocals, a guest guy or the bassist? nthign about a Phoenix in this song. bridge lyrics overlap, and are thus mixed poorly. obsession wiht the words "feel, real" and the word "scream is thrown in for filler over what coulda been a nice solo. seems this carries over to the chorus. How does this song pertain to a phoenix, or phoenix characteristics? Not bad, but nothign grabs me about it especially when it seems the churs is "fell real, scream to feel inside".
13) Mystery man: too punkish of an opener for me. the verses are quick, bland and forgettable. the chorus is weak as its just a lot of "ay" words like day,way and such rhymed together. dont like the vocal effect on the verses.
I think "Space and time" and "Phoenix (acoustic) were bonuses wiht the free download, so yea. not reviwewing them
In short, Download "SOS" and "NAked" those are your strongest tracks. Then maybe look at "fire fly" and "phoenix". but dont get the full album unless you're curious based on my descriptions.
--Zack
Ok, so this is an attempt at a music review of a band called Freestate and their debut album, which came out last year, entitled Surrender. its available on itunes, but i took part in the promotion they did through tunelab.com where the band would email you 2 track from the album every other week. This was fine and dandy but 1) the tracks werent; sent in order and 2) there were massive delays in emailing the tracks to me and after getting about 6 of the songs initially the emails completly stopped. Thats what i call a succesful promotion *sarcasm* Ok rant done.
So i was hoping i could get the rest of the album at some point, maybe off itunes, but then abotu a week or so ago. The band did another promotion through tunelab.com offering the entire album for free, Which made me happy. so i just downloaded it then and there, overwriting the files i had. now back from what i had prior, there were 2 tracks that really grrabbed and the rest were solid or meh. now i have the full album, so i'll attempt to do a review of it. This is mianly because theyre gonna be recording thier sophmore effort stateside in september (so probably an April/May 2011 release). The sophmore album will make or break the band on my radar and below is why.
HEre's the track brakedown and my thoughts:
1) "SOS": A very solid opener, one of the ones that grabbed me right away, the musicianship is great, especially the drumworks, andd the lyrics are well crafted and nto cliche.
2)"Necessary": I beleieve this was the first single. I liked it initially and the musicianship is still solid, and the lyrics on the verses isnt bad. But the hook and chorus is what kills the song for me and makes it seem otu fo place for a band who went wiht a hard rock sound to open the album. The lyrics on the chorus are initially along the lines of "we'll find nothing's necessary to keep our love alive" or something. Gag me please, but i believe these words should never be paired with hard rock riffsm because they always come out emo-y.
3) "Lately": The first song wiht more of a Rap-rock/ feel and it totally doesn't mesh wiht the album's sound from the past two tracks. The opening sounds so promising too, like a good hard-rock song. But then the drums get somewhat tribal and it sounds like they're ripping off a B-side from 10 years' debut album, which means it essentially sounds like a more artfully prog sounding Tool. This sound only works for Tool and Maynard James Keenan. 10 YEars have sinced changed things up and i really want to look into them, cause i like their sound now. but that another post. This song also has a bti of Serj Tankian on the verses, but more melodic. but this is a typical. "I should listen more to me because i hate you and what you did to me" song. and i feel there's supposed to be some bite to this song, btu it falls flat in my opinion. The Chorus is too rap-like and the word feel is repeated at the end of both the first lines in it. And half the lyrics in the second line are said so fast theyre nearly mumbled.
4) "The Man who COuldn't Lie": I dont mine this song, but i kinda wish i had the full lyrics to the chorus. the opening sounds too much like old Theory of a Deadman, and the chorus, as far as i can tell is "I'm runnign away til i find, preistesses standing before you, sad lies. Cause i'm the man who can't lie, see the truth's here without you, said lies" or something. but the vocalist croons too much on the chorus, make the parts i believe to be "sad lies" and "said lies" impossible to understand. IT's a decent song though.
5)TWice Alive: Again not bad, but this song just plain doesnt do it for me, and dthe ending is polluted wiht too much vocalness and its overall a bit too repetitive for me
6) "Surrender" : Dont like how the track opens, Can't get into a song that opens with "once in a while a person comes along and makes you smile" Especially when the guitars and rums have so much OOmph after the acapella opening that you expect somethign different.
7) "Heart of Stone": It's nto bad, and i liek the atmospheric/ alt rock guitar riffs, but nthign grabs me here.
8)"Again". Filler song about how whoever wrote the song should've done what someobody said and not procrastinated. Bad topic, reptitive song that the hipster masses would eat up. I dodnt like this song at all. "If only i did what you said i'd listen to you" are some of the lyrics.
9) "Naked": It tooks us this long to get to another excellently crafted (both in musicianship and lyrics) song about tossing everything away and becoming anonymous to an extent. Really like the feel of this song and i love the solo.
10) "Fire fly": love the opening riff. verse lyrics are a bit weak. cliche topic of going all out, giving everythign and charging in for something you have passion for. but the chorus isnt half bad, and the vocal dont pollute the instrumentals, like on most of the rest of the album. The bridge is a bit cliche and drawn out, but i dont mind it. I feel like there coulda been a solo after it though. There's a very solid solo at the end after more of some bridge lyrics after the chorus repeats. I dont like the fadeout on the solo though. just extend the song so its ends after the solo. All in all, this isnt half bad of a song.
11) "Clarify": Interesting opening part. feels like a good driving song. not the best in terms of lyrics, but nto bad, they get better as the verses go. Chorus feel very forced, especially in terms of vocal range. The chorus seems a bit basic in its lyrics. smal guiatr solo after the second shorus and bridge, nothing special, then we get into "gang vocals" where the backing members (so the bassist and drummer for this band probs) do the vocals to get the crowd going live essentially. i dont like "gang vocals" and theyre hard to explain.
12) "Phoenix": more a world music opening. non-lead isnger vocals on the verse and then paired wiht his on the chorus. not bad chorus. but who is the other vocals, a guest guy or the bassist? nthign about a Phoenix in this song. bridge lyrics overlap, and are thus mixed poorly. obsession wiht the words "feel, real" and the word "scream is thrown in for filler over what coulda been a nice solo. seems this carries over to the chorus. How does this song pertain to a phoenix, or phoenix characteristics? Not bad, but nothign grabs me about it especially when it seems the churs is "fell real, scream to feel inside".
13) Mystery man: too punkish of an opener for me. the verses are quick, bland and forgettable. the chorus is weak as its just a lot of "ay" words like day,way and such rhymed together. dont like the vocal effect on the verses.
I think "Space and time" and "Phoenix (acoustic) were bonuses wiht the free download, so yea. not reviwewing them
In short, Download "SOS" and "NAked" those are your strongest tracks. Then maybe look at "fire fly" and "phoenix". but dont get the full album unless you're curious based on my descriptions.
--Zack
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Weekly update 7/7/10:Not a lot to say,
Ok, I'm gonna be honest. i really dont have much to put in this week's post, so here goes nothin.
I'm home. and have been since saturday night. vacation was fun, my dad's still a bti under the weather with a fever and everything after getting better for a breif bit, he;s going in to see his doctor tomorrow, but is on a prescription powerful antibiotic, so hopefully taht clears that up. The last few days of vacation were very uneventful (except for one harrowign experience that i'm not gonna post about on here on the internet cause i dont want it in a public forum like my blog (if you wanna hear about it, ask)). the main food highlight from the end portion of the trip for me was this awesome Penne pasta i had with a creamy-ish tomato sauce and fresh crab meat. OMG, so wonderful and decadent and the flavors worked so well! I really wish Crab meat was going to be more available in the fall. I hope Jungle Jim's has it.
So i've started work for the summer. For the purpose of anonymity, i cannot say much, but i am currently and unpaid intern at a school for kids wiht learning issues. Its my second year wokrign there for their summer program and it s a veyr fun and rewarding job, even if its tiring. though the past 2 days have been fairly low key. I only started on tuesday cause of monday being a federal holiday. Maybe yesterday and today were low key because i'm an assistant teacher/ intern in a room that already has 2 teachers and we've only had 3 kids both days this week for whatever reason. we're supposed to have 7 or 8. Today was more organized than the first day, which made me happy, and i know 1 of thhe kdis i have this summer from last year. The program is 5 weeks, and we're ending mid-week, i think on august 10th. So yea, and then i ehad back on the 13th of August, which i just found out is a friday (whooo boy). and i'm driving back out to school to help wiht NSO so that should be fun (if i'm left wiht any extra $ i may hit up Wally world that first night, or when i have a lull in NSO stuff). So yea, for the remainder of my summer, i'll be wokrign, which will be fun and rewarding. I'll give more thoughts on work as the weeks progress, after all, i do hahve 4 more posts while i'm working there i think.
Two minor things i wanna touch on to wrap up this post (see i wasnt jokign when i said i had little to post about).
1) Music: Slaves to Gravity, one of my favorite new rock bands who are making waves now (more so here in the USA than with thier debut i feel), have posted a video on youtube and an mp3 on the website for free dowload (the mp3, not the video) for their 2nd album's new single: "Good Advice". The vidoe is a bit weird, but i really am diggin the more hard hittign sound with driving beats the song has. Their first record was very nice, but it was mroe along the loines of your breaking Benjamin type bands in that it was mor alt-rock minus the Emo and angst but it also wasnt ad radio ready as some of BB's stuff. Anyway, if this first single is any indication of the album, its that hopefully the upcomign sophmore effort (underwaterouterspace is the name) will be more hard rock with hints of metal, which makes me happy.
2) With regard to my youtube channel (zizzlerizzle8707), i'm slowing crepign towards 200 subscirbers (which is mental) and i'm starrting to consider applying for youtube partnership, mainly so i can not be restrained by the 11 minute time limit i have as a non partner. but i have several questiona btou the whole thing, that maybe someone could elucidate for me in the comments below, or the corresponding Status messgae on facebook. heres my questions:
I'm considering looking into youtube partnership in the fall. Looking at my videos list and there views, i ahve three videos with over 1000 views and several more wiht over 300. I have no idea if this enough, hence the questions below i would like you guys's opinion on.
I'd mainly be Applying for partnership to get rid of the 11-minute time limit non-partners have on youtube.
So here's my questions:
1) what are some of the other perks outside what i mentioned a few line up?
2) whats the rejection rate?
3) do you have to have, for example, around 10 videos that are aroudn 1000 views total, or do you have to constantly get views in the tri[ple digits?
4) If i want to make partner, i fear i may have to re-do a helluva lto fo reviews, basucally all of mine from about February 2010 onwards, as one of the stipulations is you have permission to make money off of the music you use, or its your own music (none of my old garageband stuff is good enough for intro music and its all on an older comp which runs vista). Now the money thing i coudl care less about, but I really dont want to be using the music i've been using so far from "outerzone blues" by Dead End Lake (whcih i already use freely with permission from one of my collector friends, as something seems very "Wrong" or not fair to me about that. This si more of a comment, so i guess respond.
5) Is partnership acceptance dependant on number of subcribers?
Just some thoughts, dont expect much of a response on that from this blog's audience.
Thats it for me this week guys. See you on the 14th of July.
--Zack ZB
I'm home. and have been since saturday night. vacation was fun, my dad's still a bti under the weather with a fever and everything after getting better for a breif bit, he;s going in to see his doctor tomorrow, but is on a prescription powerful antibiotic, so hopefully taht clears that up. The last few days of vacation were very uneventful (except for one harrowign experience that i'm not gonna post about on here on the internet cause i dont want it in a public forum like my blog (if you wanna hear about it, ask)). the main food highlight from the end portion of the trip for me was this awesome Penne pasta i had with a creamy-ish tomato sauce and fresh crab meat. OMG, so wonderful and decadent and the flavors worked so well! I really wish Crab meat was going to be more available in the fall. I hope Jungle Jim's has it.
So i've started work for the summer. For the purpose of anonymity, i cannot say much, but i am currently and unpaid intern at a school for kids wiht learning issues. Its my second year wokrign there for their summer program and it s a veyr fun and rewarding job, even if its tiring. though the past 2 days have been fairly low key. I only started on tuesday cause of monday being a federal holiday. Maybe yesterday and today were low key because i'm an assistant teacher/ intern in a room that already has 2 teachers and we've only had 3 kids both days this week for whatever reason. we're supposed to have 7 or 8. Today was more organized than the first day, which made me happy, and i know 1 of thhe kdis i have this summer from last year. The program is 5 weeks, and we're ending mid-week, i think on august 10th. So yea, and then i ehad back on the 13th of August, which i just found out is a friday (whooo boy). and i'm driving back out to school to help wiht NSO so that should be fun (if i'm left wiht any extra $ i may hit up Wally world that first night, or when i have a lull in NSO stuff). So yea, for the remainder of my summer, i'll be wokrign, which will be fun and rewarding. I'll give more thoughts on work as the weeks progress, after all, i do hahve 4 more posts while i'm working there i think.
Two minor things i wanna touch on to wrap up this post (see i wasnt jokign when i said i had little to post about).
1) Music: Slaves to Gravity, one of my favorite new rock bands who are making waves now (more so here in the USA than with thier debut i feel), have posted a video on youtube and an mp3 on the website for free dowload (the mp3, not the video) for their 2nd album's new single: "Good Advice". The vidoe is a bit weird, but i really am diggin the more hard hittign sound with driving beats the song has. Their first record was very nice, but it was mroe along the loines of your breaking Benjamin type bands in that it was mor alt-rock minus the Emo and angst but it also wasnt ad radio ready as some of BB's stuff. Anyway, if this first single is any indication of the album, its that hopefully the upcomign sophmore effort (underwaterouterspace is the name) will be more hard rock with hints of metal, which makes me happy.
2) With regard to my youtube channel (zizzlerizzle8707), i'm slowing crepign towards 200 subscirbers (which is mental) and i'm starrting to consider applying for youtube partnership, mainly so i can not be restrained by the 11 minute time limit i have as a non partner. but i have several questiona btou the whole thing, that maybe someone could elucidate for me in the comments below, or the corresponding Status messgae on facebook. heres my questions:
I'm considering looking into youtube partnership in the fall. Looking at my videos list and there views, i ahve three videos with over 1000 views and several more wiht over 300. I have no idea if this enough, hence the questions below i would like you guys's opinion on.
I'd mainly be Applying for partnership to get rid of the 11-minute time limit non-partners have on youtube.
So here's my questions:
1) what are some of the other perks outside what i mentioned a few line up?
2) whats the rejection rate?
3) do you have to have, for example, around 10 videos that are aroudn 1000 views total, or do you have to constantly get views in the tri[ple digits?
4) If i want to make partner, i fear i may have to re-do a helluva lto fo reviews, basucally all of mine from about February 2010 onwards, as one of the stipulations is you have permission to make money off of the music you use, or its your own music (none of my old garageband stuff is good enough for intro music and its all on an older comp which runs vista). Now the money thing i coudl care less about, but I really dont want to be using the music i've been using so far from "outerzone blues" by Dead End Lake (whcih i already use freely with permission from one of my collector friends, as something seems very "Wrong" or not fair to me about that. This si more of a comment, so i guess respond.
5) Is partnership acceptance dependant on number of subcribers?
Just some thoughts, dont expect much of a response on that from this blog's audience.
Thats it for me this week guys. See you on the 14th of July.
--Zack ZB
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Weekly update 6/30/2010: A Grab bag of a post
Prepare yourselves Mortals, for you are about to enter the realm of the Verbose Geek. Brace yourself for his musings.
Let's do this.
Ok, so i'm just gonna warn peropl at the outset of this post, it's gonna be a very all over the place one, and there's going to be more music stuff than there has been both in the past and recently. So, f you dont read my music sections, you may want to skip this week.
Also, I may stop linking to my posts in notes on facebook, but i may not we'll see i am inivisible over there so yea. anyway, onwards!!
Firs tup on the docket this week is a bit of shameless pluggage. So for anyone who follows this, i have another blog now, well its an older blgo that was orignally gonna be this one, but i stopped really using it after i set it up. That, and it was always in the docket here on blospot when it showed my the blogs i have linked to my e-mail. So, over on facebook,'ve been positng notes and such about transformers a bti recently, and i got tired of doing that as much as i was, so i took the onld blog, cleaned it out, changed the layout and repurposed it as a Transformers editorial blog, it was very busy this past weekend with botcon (the main transformers convention) and the news releases this past weekend, so its got a good base number of posts. If you feel inclined to read abotu how much of a geek with that fandom i am, go ahead and head over there, the link is right after this sentence.
Link: www.zackec2011.blogspot.com <---please follow it if you have the time, i'll be posting there fairly often and news stuff comes out i want to comment on
So, as i'm writing this i'm still in the carrribean and its been a very fun vacation. I always love comign down here cause its always so calm and relaxing. We leave saturday afternoon to go home, and then ifinally start my summer job on Tuesday. So with that, wednesday's post will be up probably in the afternoon my time (remember, always ignore the timestamps on here, they're wonky and i dont know how to change them). anyhow, i'm looking forward to work this summer. I'm returning to the same place i worked at last summer, a school for kids with learnign issues. The kids are a handful, but theyre fun and the job is very fun. So i'm looking forward to that.
Ok,now to the music stuff, so if you wanna skip this, go ahead. I will say here though, that what follows is my opinion, albeit maybe a bit harsh, so if you read it are angry, leave feedback or soemthing.
first up for the music section is breaking benjamin. one of my favorite bands i've been into for the past 5 years or so, there's been rumors from the band's managment and the label that the band is breaking up for the past two days. As such, the music forums site i frequent (tunelab.com) essentially exploded. I was sad to see hte band go, and was getting really fed up with all the mixed opinion commetns on the post. from there, there was reports of a break-up, a hiatus, or just nothing. Now, late yestersday, we get a statement from the lead singer saying the band is still together, but they're takign a hiatus this summer while he does 2 acoustic shows and then deals with helth issues that have come back over the past year or so. Now, people are coming out of the woodwork and saying things like "well its only the lead singer saying that and he doesnt mention the other guys, so are they just "hired musicians" like he said or is the band over with those people, making him "breaking benjamin". there's also people being thrown off by the fact that on the official statemtn from the lead singer, he signed essentially his full name, which apparnetly he's never used when talking to the fans. and people are calling shenanigans on that? come on people, if theryre over its sad, but deal. if there's gonna be a brief hiatus let it happen. If theyre not dead and takign a quick break so the lead guy can fix his health than so be it. and he probably used his full name to sound more professional, regardless of if he typed the statement or he told the management to. Also with that, it was a statement on the band's official site, which i'll take wiht more weight than allegedly confirmed source infor posts on an esteemed music forum site like Tunelab. I'm just saying. So, calm down people, give it time, and we'll find out whats happened wiht the band
last thing in the music. Serj Tankian, the lead vocalist of system of a down is slated to finally release his second solo album this fall. Now, his solo debut i liked initially, but i grew very tired of it, very fast, because on the physical record, the post production attempted to harmonize his voice with a pre-recorded version, lower octave version of his voice. And it failed, the mixing was bad and it really dragged down the album. That and there's this style he writes in that annoys me. It's essentially hammering out a few phrases that seem to have poltical ro thought provoking weight and slapping them into a verse and chorus and then repeating that strutre and words for the enitre song. Those two things made me not really care for his first album, whcih came out in 2007, and he milked ti for 2 years at least and then released a version of it he did with the Auckland new Zealnad ORchestra, which was fine and dandy, but the writing issues still plagued it.
recently, he's released two singles. 1: "The charade" This song isnt bad, but its spastic as it starts of calm and then all the vocals speed up for the line with "you are strong at preching violence" or whatever it is before they slow down on the counter point. this structure is repeated and then they go to the chorus, which is "If love is the answer, when are we gonna stop this charade?" what's the charade, the violence versus the the silence (the counter point?)? if thats it, elucidate it better. and i dont ven know if this is a randomly released b-side, or if its gonna be on his next album "imperfect harmonies", but i dont see how it can be cause its more of along the line of his first album. IT's been siad the upcoming one is more orchestral and working with that sound. the seocnd single is one actually off the album called "borders are". there's less of the aformentioned writing issue on this for sure, and the backing music is vwery nice, but still, i get the vibe that with Serj's solo stuff, he writes half of a song, and then repeats various other phrases to get his point out. ANd thats not the most effective way to be a voice abotu the issues in the world you dont like.
Now Serj is the lead guy from System of a down (SOAD) as well, and they've been on hiatus since 2006. the other members are either producing stuff or are in a band wiht the main guitarist from SOAD, whose name slips my mind right now, called Scars on broadway. their first album was good, but appraently there was a lack of passion in the band, and now theyre just comign back off their own hiatus. SO i want to hear more.
I'll stand by where i've been since year 3 of SOAD's hiatus, they need to come back. They could have so much fuel for commentary on recent politics, and recent popular emo/hipster music. and given the medium prominence of that music, there needs to be a strong, controverisla band like SOAD back in music. Speaking of this, there's been a hint dropped by SOAD's bassist that is posted on the wikipedia that was posted on his offical site i believe, which hints at something big next year maybe. it's eessentialy about a piece of graphic art he relased, that was tied to the band, as he's odne alot of their artwork. he says at the end "see you next year..." or somethign similar, which may subtly hint a reunion in 2011. or not, it is wikipedia. all credit to the page though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_of_a_Down.
Ok music session is done.
And i dont really know what else to post here so yea. thats it ofr this week.
--Zack
Let's do this.
Ok, so i'm just gonna warn peropl at the outset of this post, it's gonna be a very all over the place one, and there's going to be more music stuff than there has been both in the past and recently. So, f you dont read my music sections, you may want to skip this week.
Also, I may stop linking to my posts in notes on facebook, but i may not we'll see i am inivisible over there so yea. anyway, onwards!!
Firs tup on the docket this week is a bit of shameless pluggage. So for anyone who follows this, i have another blog now, well its an older blgo that was orignally gonna be this one, but i stopped really using it after i set it up. That, and it was always in the docket here on blospot when it showed my the blogs i have linked to my e-mail. So, over on facebook,'ve been positng notes and such about transformers a bti recently, and i got tired of doing that as much as i was, so i took the onld blog, cleaned it out, changed the layout and repurposed it as a Transformers editorial blog, it was very busy this past weekend with botcon (the main transformers convention) and the news releases this past weekend, so its got a good base number of posts. If you feel inclined to read abotu how much of a geek with that fandom i am, go ahead and head over there, the link is right after this sentence.
Link: www.zackec2011.blogspot.com <---please follow it if you have the time, i'll be posting there fairly often and news stuff comes out i want to comment on
So, as i'm writing this i'm still in the carrribean and its been a very fun vacation. I always love comign down here cause its always so calm and relaxing. We leave saturday afternoon to go home, and then ifinally start my summer job on Tuesday. So with that, wednesday's post will be up probably in the afternoon my time (remember, always ignore the timestamps on here, they're wonky and i dont know how to change them). anyhow, i'm looking forward to work this summer. I'm returning to the same place i worked at last summer, a school for kids with learnign issues. The kids are a handful, but theyre fun and the job is very fun. So i'm looking forward to that.
Ok,now to the music stuff, so if you wanna skip this, go ahead. I will say here though, that what follows is my opinion, albeit maybe a bit harsh, so if you read it are angry, leave feedback or soemthing.
first up for the music section is breaking benjamin. one of my favorite bands i've been into for the past 5 years or so, there's been rumors from the band's managment and the label that the band is breaking up for the past two days. As such, the music forums site i frequent (tunelab.com) essentially exploded. I was sad to see hte band go, and was getting really fed up with all the mixed opinion commetns on the post. from there, there was reports of a break-up, a hiatus, or just nothing. Now, late yestersday, we get a statement from the lead singer saying the band is still together, but they're takign a hiatus this summer while he does 2 acoustic shows and then deals with helth issues that have come back over the past year or so. Now, people are coming out of the woodwork and saying things like "well its only the lead singer saying that and he doesnt mention the other guys, so are they just "hired musicians" like he said or is the band over with those people, making him "breaking benjamin". there's also people being thrown off by the fact that on the official statemtn from the lead singer, he signed essentially his full name, which apparnetly he's never used when talking to the fans. and people are calling shenanigans on that? come on people, if theryre over its sad, but deal. if there's gonna be a brief hiatus let it happen. If theyre not dead and takign a quick break so the lead guy can fix his health than so be it. and he probably used his full name to sound more professional, regardless of if he typed the statement or he told the management to. Also with that, it was a statement on the band's official site, which i'll take wiht more weight than allegedly confirmed source infor posts on an esteemed music forum site like Tunelab. I'm just saying. So, calm down people, give it time, and we'll find out whats happened wiht the band
last thing in the music. Serj Tankian, the lead vocalist of system of a down is slated to finally release his second solo album this fall. Now, his solo debut i liked initially, but i grew very tired of it, very fast, because on the physical record, the post production attempted to harmonize his voice with a pre-recorded version, lower octave version of his voice. And it failed, the mixing was bad and it really dragged down the album. That and there's this style he writes in that annoys me. It's essentially hammering out a few phrases that seem to have poltical ro thought provoking weight and slapping them into a verse and chorus and then repeating that strutre and words for the enitre song. Those two things made me not really care for his first album, whcih came out in 2007, and he milked ti for 2 years at least and then released a version of it he did with the Auckland new Zealnad ORchestra, which was fine and dandy, but the writing issues still plagued it.
recently, he's released two singles. 1: "The charade" This song isnt bad, but its spastic as it starts of calm and then all the vocals speed up for the line with "you are strong at preching violence" or whatever it is before they slow down on the counter point. this structure is repeated and then they go to the chorus, which is "If love is the answer, when are we gonna stop this charade?" what's the charade, the violence versus the the silence (the counter point?)? if thats it, elucidate it better. and i dont ven know if this is a randomly released b-side, or if its gonna be on his next album "imperfect harmonies", but i dont see how it can be cause its more of along the line of his first album. IT's been siad the upcoming one is more orchestral and working with that sound. the seocnd single is one actually off the album called "borders are". there's less of the aformentioned writing issue on this for sure, and the backing music is vwery nice, but still, i get the vibe that with Serj's solo stuff, he writes half of a song, and then repeats various other phrases to get his point out. ANd thats not the most effective way to be a voice abotu the issues in the world you dont like.
Now Serj is the lead guy from System of a down (SOAD) as well, and they've been on hiatus since 2006. the other members are either producing stuff or are in a band wiht the main guitarist from SOAD, whose name slips my mind right now, called Scars on broadway. their first album was good, but appraently there was a lack of passion in the band, and now theyre just comign back off their own hiatus. SO i want to hear more.
I'll stand by where i've been since year 3 of SOAD's hiatus, they need to come back. They could have so much fuel for commentary on recent politics, and recent popular emo/hipster music. and given the medium prominence of that music, there needs to be a strong, controverisla band like SOAD back in music. Speaking of this, there's been a hint dropped by SOAD's bassist that is posted on the wikipedia that was posted on his offical site i believe, which hints at something big next year maybe. it's eessentialy about a piece of graphic art he relased, that was tied to the band, as he's odne alot of their artwork. he says at the end "see you next year..." or somethign similar, which may subtly hint a reunion in 2011. or not, it is wikipedia. all credit to the page though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_of_a_Down.
Ok music session is done.
And i dont really know what else to post here so yea. thats it ofr this week.
--Zack
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Weekly update 6/23/2010: I Really dont have a title this time around
Prepare yourselves Mortals, for you are about to enter the realm of the Verbose Geek. Brace yourself for his musings.
Let's do this.
So, lets see whats new in the past week? thursday and friday not much happened i got my haircut again on firday any my car was finally fixed, which made me happy. I'm gonna make it a point to avoid accidents if i can, cause while i'm still covered by my parents car insurance, car repairs are darned expensive. and yea, i'm keeping this blog clean. So after that, i can home finished packing and then saturday mornign my folks and i came down here to the carribbean for Vacation from vacation.
I love this island, it's a little island across the water from St. MArtin (goin with the americanization cause St. Martin is half dutch half french) named Anguilla, and since we've been coming here, Anguilla has pretty much been the antithesis (ooo loook at me dropping a big word on here! what now?) of St. MArtin. Anguilla is a quiet island with great beaches, good food, and laid back people who still get stuff done. The place where my folks and i have been staying recently is great too, walking distance to the beach and there's a pool right by the guest bedrooms. saturday ngiht and sunday ngiht were par for the course for us. the three of us kind of had a heated tiff on both nights, but what family doesnt have those? and YEs, I am keeping all names other than mine out of this and not goign into family stuff in detail.
Monday ngiht was my folks wedding anniversary, so then went out and i had the dog, i used the couple hours free to do some tv watching as i ate and i swam around in the pool a bit.
quick sidebar on the TV thing, i saw a couple of eopisodes of Eureka on Syfy. That's a pretty good show, i may have to look into it when the new season starts up on friday. i do need a new show now that 24 has ended. You'd think i'd join the bandwagon for the NEw DR. Who, which i probably should after seeing the premiere episode of the Season after David Tennant was on (beats me what number it is). but apparently that season is ending soon, and i dont wanna jump into that when i'm nto sure how to watch it online. That and i cant afford the prior seasons on DVD. A show called True Blood was also reccomended by several people on the greece program, and i've heard good things about it, but it might be too late to join in on that one. Too late in the sense i would get a feeling for most of the characters. Maybe i'll just stick wiht Eureka. There's also a show called Haven that premieres after the Eureka Season premiere that looks cool. We'll see. Syfy rewind has 5 episodes of Eureka, 2 i saw the other day, so the other 3 may be enough to get a feel for the show.
yesterday, tuesday was normal and fine. i've been walking alot. The restuarant we went to the first night here, which had a chef who has been down here forever mayve closed cause that chef, who we've known since comign here, has decided its too much fo a hassle to work here and up in the hamptons where he works in the summer. Maybe the place down here will find another chef. We'll see. I have a few ideas of some pasta dishes i wanna make this year when i cook.
pretty sure thats it for now.
--ZB
Let's do this.
So, lets see whats new in the past week? thursday and friday not much happened i got my haircut again on firday any my car was finally fixed, which made me happy. I'm gonna make it a point to avoid accidents if i can, cause while i'm still covered by my parents car insurance, car repairs are darned expensive. and yea, i'm keeping this blog clean. So after that, i can home finished packing and then saturday mornign my folks and i came down here to the carribbean for Vacation from vacation.
I love this island, it's a little island across the water from St. MArtin (goin with the americanization cause St. Martin is half dutch half french) named Anguilla, and since we've been coming here, Anguilla has pretty much been the antithesis (ooo loook at me dropping a big word on here! what now?) of St. MArtin. Anguilla is a quiet island with great beaches, good food, and laid back people who still get stuff done. The place where my folks and i have been staying recently is great too, walking distance to the beach and there's a pool right by the guest bedrooms. saturday ngiht and sunday ngiht were par for the course for us. the three of us kind of had a heated tiff on both nights, but what family doesnt have those? and YEs, I am keeping all names other than mine out of this and not goign into family stuff in detail.
Monday ngiht was my folks wedding anniversary, so then went out and i had the dog, i used the couple hours free to do some tv watching as i ate and i swam around in the pool a bit.
quick sidebar on the TV thing, i saw a couple of eopisodes of Eureka on Syfy. That's a pretty good show, i may have to look into it when the new season starts up on friday. i do need a new show now that 24 has ended. You'd think i'd join the bandwagon for the NEw DR. Who, which i probably should after seeing the premiere episode of the Season after David Tennant was on (beats me what number it is). but apparently that season is ending soon, and i dont wanna jump into that when i'm nto sure how to watch it online. That and i cant afford the prior seasons on DVD. A show called True Blood was also reccomended by several people on the greece program, and i've heard good things about it, but it might be too late to join in on that one. Too late in the sense i would get a feeling for most of the characters. Maybe i'll just stick wiht Eureka. There's also a show called Haven that premieres after the Eureka Season premiere that looks cool. We'll see. Syfy rewind has 5 episodes of Eureka, 2 i saw the other day, so the other 3 may be enough to get a feel for the show.
yesterday, tuesday was normal and fine. i've been walking alot. The restuarant we went to the first night here, which had a chef who has been down here forever mayve closed cause that chef, who we've known since comign here, has decided its too much fo a hassle to work here and up in the hamptons where he works in the summer. Maybe the place down here will find another chef. We'll see. I have a few ideas of some pasta dishes i wanna make this year when i cook.
pretty sure thats it for now.
--ZB
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
weekly Update 6/16/10 part 2: May be a two Parter: Greece, E3 and more general musings
Prepare yourselves Mortals, for you are about to enter the realm of the Verbose Geek. Brace yourself for his musings.
Let's do this.
All right onto part 2. GLad you;re stillreading if you are. onto some nerdy stuff. I'm a casual gamer, i'll admit it. ever since i've been runnign windows 7 i've been on steam (PC gaming hub thing) fairly often and i have 3 or 4 indie games on my computer as well. ANyway, Video games just had theri biggest 2 days for the year,at the E3 convention in LA. Now i missed most of the coverage of it i'm nto gonna lie but i'm enthused by seom stuff i saw. First off, i like the look of the 3ds that Nintendo seems to be ready to push out later this year or early next. I really like how the 3d effect is controllable via slider and how theyve incoprorated analog stick movements into the handheld. Seems the first big title for it is a Kid Icaurs game. Now i've never played that franchise, but whoo boy does that game look nice.
I'm more enthused though for what was called for the majority of a year Golden Sun DS. Thats right RPG fans fromt he early 2000's after 7 or so years of waiting, They're releasing a 3rd game in the Golden sun franchise. IT's got a name and a release point now, which made me squeal. Oh and it has a new trailer (Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1Ge8MYNQgE) The Trialer looks awesome. The name is Godlen Sun Dark Dawn and the release point is this holiday season. this is gonna be right at the top of my wish list this x-mas. I am a huge fan of the franchise and I'm loving the direction of this new installment. The graphics are weak sure, but its for the DS, what do you expect? The only thing i'm worried about so far is the use of the bottom screen on the DS in the game. Is it gonna be a heavy touch-screen based game, or will you be able to use the D-pad for movement and have to use the stylus mainly for out of battle magic usage and such? I has questions that i want answered. On a related ntoe, the Water elemental summons shown in the trailer look epic and full of win.
The other main thing i'm excited about in terms of gaming because it hits a major youth nerve with me is the new Twisted MEtal game thats coming out next year. the graphiocs are beautiful. cant wait to play it on ps3. I am worried a bit by how massive the maps are the fact that it seems the only way you can fully re-heal in the midst of a huge area battle is by finding this health-resotring tow truck, and pulling a Spyhunter and driving up on it. I am loving the look of the open map mayhem and destruction though based on the E3 footage, but at the same time i want it to stay true to the orignal ones, where you drove around the maps finding the powerups and using them that way. Maybe have that and one like innate weapon for each character and vehicle combo. But we'll see. honestly, we dont know much about the single player on the new Twisted MEtal. The Multiplayer modes look sick. I'll just let the Youtube vids do the talking. Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4szKj0cljxg Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6JQzmsdBmM Link:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkiokqW09Pk
In short though. I liked what i saw from these two games. and i'm also excited for Portal 2 and MArvel Vs. Capcom 3. both due out in 2011 as well. search youtube for footage from E3 2010 on those last two.
I'm gonna cut part 2 here, i've been bloggin long enough this afternoon.
See you readers in the next post.
--ZB
Let's do this.
All right onto part 2. GLad you;re stillreading if you are. onto some nerdy stuff. I'm a casual gamer, i'll admit it. ever since i've been runnign windows 7 i've been on steam (PC gaming hub thing) fairly often and i have 3 or 4 indie games on my computer as well. ANyway, Video games just had theri biggest 2 days for the year,at the E3 convention in LA. Now i missed most of the coverage of it i'm nto gonna lie but i'm enthused by seom stuff i saw. First off, i like the look of the 3ds that Nintendo seems to be ready to push out later this year or early next. I really like how the 3d effect is controllable via slider and how theyve incoprorated analog stick movements into the handheld. Seems the first big title for it is a Kid Icaurs game. Now i've never played that franchise, but whoo boy does that game look nice.
I'm more enthused though for what was called for the majority of a year Golden Sun DS. Thats right RPG fans fromt he early 2000's after 7 or so years of waiting, They're releasing a 3rd game in the Golden sun franchise. IT's got a name and a release point now, which made me squeal. Oh and it has a new trailer (Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1Ge8MYNQgE) The Trialer looks awesome. The name is Godlen Sun Dark Dawn and the release point is this holiday season. this is gonna be right at the top of my wish list this x-mas. I am a huge fan of the franchise and I'm loving the direction of this new installment. The graphics are weak sure, but its for the DS, what do you expect? The only thing i'm worried about so far is the use of the bottom screen on the DS in the game. Is it gonna be a heavy touch-screen based game, or will you be able to use the D-pad for movement and have to use the stylus mainly for out of battle magic usage and such? I has questions that i want answered. On a related ntoe, the Water elemental summons shown in the trailer look epic and full of win.
The other main thing i'm excited about in terms of gaming because it hits a major youth nerve with me is the new Twisted MEtal game thats coming out next year. the graphiocs are beautiful. cant wait to play it on ps3. I am worried a bit by how massive the maps are the fact that it seems the only way you can fully re-heal in the midst of a huge area battle is by finding this health-resotring tow truck, and pulling a Spyhunter and driving up on it. I am loving the look of the open map mayhem and destruction though based on the E3 footage, but at the same time i want it to stay true to the orignal ones, where you drove around the maps finding the powerups and using them that way. Maybe have that and one like innate weapon for each character and vehicle combo. But we'll see. honestly, we dont know much about the single player on the new Twisted MEtal. The Multiplayer modes look sick. I'll just let the Youtube vids do the talking. Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4szKj0cljxg Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6JQzmsdBmM Link:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkiokqW09Pk
In short though. I liked what i saw from these two games. and i'm also excited for Portal 2 and MArvel Vs. Capcom 3. both due out in 2011 as well. search youtube for footage from E3 2010 on those last two.
I'm gonna cut part 2 here, i've been bloggin long enough this afternoon.
See you readers in the next post.
--ZB
weekly update 6/16/10: May Be a two parter: Greece, E3 reveals and more musings
Prepare yourselves Mortals, for you are about to enter the realm of the Verbose Geek. Brace yourself for his musings.
LEt's do this.
Allright, so about 12 days over my 7 month checkpoint on this blog, and i needed a new into, my old section headings were getting old i felt. Anyway, without furhter ado, lets press on.
There's not gonna be much, if anything, on music in this post, so those of you who dont read those sections can be happy. onto the main part of this post, and what will probably make it a 2 parter.
Greece:
Unless you've been living under a rock you probably know i did my College's Greece May term not too long ago In fact, i've only been back about 5 days, which is kind of mind-blowing. anyway. i suppose i should recap the trip a bit. If you wanna see photos, theyre on facebook. now where's my copy of the trip itinerary? ah there it is. ok lets do this.
So after a long ass day of travelling (which had been tweaked twice because of a birtish airways issue and dthen that freaking Ash cloud from that icelandic volcano no one can pronounce the name of), I landed in Athens with abotu 2 hours of sleep under my belt. I got my bag and everything and moved to where i was scheduled to meet up with one of the trip faculty leaders. about 45 minutes of slight paranoia later (I'm a nervous traveler), I found the facukty leader and he led me me over to where the other student was. from there, we waited another hour or so for the last 2 students and moved to metro system and evetually got to the hotel which was nice. i had just enough time to change, de-grossify myself slightly and head back to the lobby before we had the welcome dinner. The guy i was supposed to room wiht ended up not being able to make the trip for personal reasons, so i had a single the first 3 nights. This was fine, but i would kinda preferred to have it later in the trip, why? i'm nto sure. Anyway our first full day in athens was marked by a walking tour led by some miltant lady who worked at the company who had organized our trip. She was literally marchign us past all the big sections of town, where she suggested we come back, which we did end up doing in our later stints in athens, but seemed annoyed by the fact we were taking photos ever 20 or so feeet. We're tourists, what do you expect? Anyway, we ened up at the place that was governing out trip, The Athens Centre, a bit late, but that was fine. after a somewhat boring talk by the educational institution's foudner about the history of Greece, we got a good talk from the lady who runs the place about the capabilites of the place and what they had on site. This was a ncie talk, but i dont see how much good it did our group because we didnt end up using much of the Centre's services. supposedly they have a few classrooms in thier main building and then they own the building next door and have classrooms and a internet room there, and they own some apartments near by.
My main problem with the place was that getting there was a pain. the walk wasn't bad, but the last 5 minutes of it was up 3 steep uphills, which sucked. That and i dont feel like there much of an emphasis by them on their services being open to us when we were in Athens. IF there was, our group was fine with the few computers people brought. The trvelling part of the trip was fine, and i loved the may term, but i almost just wanna just go back there and do a semester of classes through the Athens Centre, to get the full sense of their facilities. Again, if anyone from the Athens Centre reads this after i post the link to this on facebook, i think the institution is great, i just feel like the history talk was a bit much for 17 jetlagged college students their first day in athens, and that we didnt get a real sense for all the Centre had to offer.
Anway, i digress. after that, we found out the acropolis museum was closed cause of a gneral strike that week, so we shifted out trip plans for thenext day. We hit up the Athenian Agora in the AM, which was pretty cool. it was ncie to see ruins and remains of what was a bustling city center in ancient times. That afternoon we spent alot of time on the bus, i kid youj not. we drove about 2 hours to some random minign town with some little know mysterious ancient theater remains and we trapsed around there for a while. We then spent another hour or so travelling to the town of Sounion, which aint far from Athens. But we got there at like 4 and were given maybe 2 horus max on the beach. the beach was fine, the water was a bit cold, but it was fun just to relax there. The food at the taverna on the beach was pretty surprisingly inexpesnive and good. the last day of out first stint in Athens we went to the Acropolis and the theater or dionysys. The acropolis was epic and awesome. No amount of words can really do it justice.
The follwoign day, we transferred onto thebus and travelled to ancient eleusis where we learned about the cult of Eleusis and the Eleusian mysteries (google it) and then to ancient corinth where we saw the acneit site, got late lunches and saw and archaelogical site and most of us got rained on. Then, finally we transferred to the wonderful cityh of naplion, found our rooms, finished the essay assingments we had gotten and explored the city for dinner. NAplion is an amazing coastal town that's kind of like subrubia but isnt really it's hard to explain but i got the vibe from it that it was a heavily exanded southern coutnry town on the Greel coast. It was awesome. and had amazing Gelato too. We went there every night. I miss that city and the gelato. The first day in NAplion we visited ancietn Mycenae and Tiryns. Ancient Mycenae was more memorable because of the lions head gate, awesome views, and cistern side-quest we did. Awesome stuff.
The next day we went to ancient Epidaurus and saw the stuff there and learned abotu a minor god named Asklepios (again, google). We then stormed the epidaurus theater, tesetd its acoustics and returned to naplion where we explored the amazing palamidi fortress. Some of the best and most romantic views i've ever seen came from this fortess. From there the next day, we commuted to sparta. Stopping at the ancient site of King Menelaus' palce first, we tested our lungs hiking up the hill to the palace, which was pretty nice for ruins. we did some mass speculation, talked about the oddyseey and then move on to sparta. Nicest hotel in the world for that one night, but literally, there was nothing to do in sparta outside of a few pretty cool restaurants and the unimpressive Sparta acropolis. While exploriung the acropolis a bunch of us got rained on. We then reutrned, dried off and got a nice dinner with most of the group, which was higlighted by many a joke and general hilarity. After that, a few of us explored the town and nothign really eventful happened. We watched some stuff one one person's conputer that night and then peaced out to bed.
the next day we transferred to Pylos by way of ancient Mistras, which was is essentially a byzantine Era landmark. Mistras was pretty cool, but i was a bit undwerwhelmed by what we saw there. Pylos was a small bayside town of awesomeness. we were there for 2 full days, three nights, and it was pretty cool. The hotel was right on the water and had great views. the second day in pylos, we went to see the very well preseved palace of nestor and MEthoni fortress, both of whihc were very cool. Then we had lots of free time on the beach by the fortress before heading back to Pylos. The following day we traveled about 4 hours to the temple of apollo at bassai, which was nice, but is under a long resotration plan that has been somewhat halted cause of the economic downturn over in Greece. From there we drove another 3 horus to olympia.
I'm gonna be honest. Olympia is a tourist trap of a town wiht an awesome Souvlaki restaurant and thats it. every other palce was nice but a bit overpriced and the vast majority of the town was residnetial.. the town pretty much was only there cause of the ancient ruins of tempels and the first olympics ever. Which is fine. The second night we were there i watched a european songf comeptiton that is laods better that AMerican Idol called Eurovision with a couple people and in the middle of it, there was an earthquake. It was very minor where we were, but apparently it was a 4.4 on the richter scale. it was jsut weird cause the room literally shifted form right to left 3 times fairly quickly and then stopped. The people i was wathcing Eurovisoon with all thought it was someone else initially.
After Olympia we took a bus to one of the ports and then took a 2.5 hour ferry ride to the island of keffallonia where we transferred about an hour to a town on the peninsula that starrting to be accepted as Anceint Ithaca from the Oddyseey. For more on this checkout odysseus-unbound.org. Now on Kefallonia, instead of doing a full day walk of the island we got a full day tour of sites relevant to the aformentioned argument and a few other really touristy things. In my opinion the tour sould have ended after Lunch and we shoulda just been given time on the beach we were at as after lunch everyone was crashing energy wise. Plus, the enxt day, which was a day off, was chilly and overcast and windy, so our excursion to the same becah, and awesomely beautiful white pebble beach, got cancelled. Needless to say that night and for a few days afterwards alot of us were very bitter.
From there, we got up super early, caught the ferry back to mainland and drove back to Athens, where we spent a few days seeing byzantine churches and the acropolis museum.
With regard to how we left kefallonia though, we had been told abotu the early wake-up, but then right before breakfast, thins got changed so right as half of us were eating, we were literally yelled at to get our butts on the bus so we could get the ferry. half of the group still hadnt eaten at this point. When we got to the port and onto the ferry, we sat in dock for another 30 mintues, so there was no need for us to evacuate the hotel in KEfallonia like we were gonna get bombed.
After the few days back in Athens, we transferred onto anothe rFerry to the island of Aigina, which was nice. We saw a minor goddesses cult temple and a local potter's place there. but the way we got to thos places made it looked like we wereleaving the main town and not retuning, which we eneded up doing. The hotel in Aigina was ncie but it was about a 10 minute walk downhill and around 2 blind corners into town. On a positive note our only real day there was an off day and the cats and kittens there were awesome. Thats where i also sawy frist episode of the New Dr. Who, the first episode of Season 5. I'm not gonna lie, i really liked it, but i really cant afford another fandom right now. Maybe later once i'm established in the workforce. Dr. Who is really well written Sci-Fi and it British, so i'm happy.
After Aigina, we transferred back to Athens for the last 4 days of the trip. We saw the karameikos site, the national museum and then did student presentations over the course of those 4 days. Then we all flew back home to the states or to wher we were meeting our families over the course of the day on the 11th of june.
So that's greece in a nutshell, pretty awesome trip and the group rocked. I'd do it again right now with the same group. I'm gonna make this a 2 parter to finish covering everything else up there in the title, so see you all in part 2.
--ZB
LEt's do this.
Allright, so about 12 days over my 7 month checkpoint on this blog, and i needed a new into, my old section headings were getting old i felt. Anyway, without furhter ado, lets press on.
There's not gonna be much, if anything, on music in this post, so those of you who dont read those sections can be happy. onto the main part of this post, and what will probably make it a 2 parter.
Greece:
Unless you've been living under a rock you probably know i did my College's Greece May term not too long ago In fact, i've only been back about 5 days, which is kind of mind-blowing. anyway. i suppose i should recap the trip a bit. If you wanna see photos, theyre on facebook. now where's my copy of the trip itinerary? ah there it is. ok lets do this.
So after a long ass day of travelling (which had been tweaked twice because of a birtish airways issue and dthen that freaking Ash cloud from that icelandic volcano no one can pronounce the name of), I landed in Athens with abotu 2 hours of sleep under my belt. I got my bag and everything and moved to where i was scheduled to meet up with one of the trip faculty leaders. about 45 minutes of slight paranoia later (I'm a nervous traveler), I found the facukty leader and he led me me over to where the other student was. from there, we waited another hour or so for the last 2 students and moved to metro system and evetually got to the hotel which was nice. i had just enough time to change, de-grossify myself slightly and head back to the lobby before we had the welcome dinner. The guy i was supposed to room wiht ended up not being able to make the trip for personal reasons, so i had a single the first 3 nights. This was fine, but i would kinda preferred to have it later in the trip, why? i'm nto sure. Anyway our first full day in athens was marked by a walking tour led by some miltant lady who worked at the company who had organized our trip. She was literally marchign us past all the big sections of town, where she suggested we come back, which we did end up doing in our later stints in athens, but seemed annoyed by the fact we were taking photos ever 20 or so feeet. We're tourists, what do you expect? Anyway, we ened up at the place that was governing out trip, The Athens Centre, a bit late, but that was fine. after a somewhat boring talk by the educational institution's foudner about the history of Greece, we got a good talk from the lady who runs the place about the capabilites of the place and what they had on site. This was a ncie talk, but i dont see how much good it did our group because we didnt end up using much of the Centre's services. supposedly they have a few classrooms in thier main building and then they own the building next door and have classrooms and a internet room there, and they own some apartments near by.
My main problem with the place was that getting there was a pain. the walk wasn't bad, but the last 5 minutes of it was up 3 steep uphills, which sucked. That and i dont feel like there much of an emphasis by them on their services being open to us when we were in Athens. IF there was, our group was fine with the few computers people brought. The trvelling part of the trip was fine, and i loved the may term, but i almost just wanna just go back there and do a semester of classes through the Athens Centre, to get the full sense of their facilities. Again, if anyone from the Athens Centre reads this after i post the link to this on facebook, i think the institution is great, i just feel like the history talk was a bit much for 17 jetlagged college students their first day in athens, and that we didnt get a real sense for all the Centre had to offer.
Anway, i digress. after that, we found out the acropolis museum was closed cause of a gneral strike that week, so we shifted out trip plans for thenext day. We hit up the Athenian Agora in the AM, which was pretty cool. it was ncie to see ruins and remains of what was a bustling city center in ancient times. That afternoon we spent alot of time on the bus, i kid youj not. we drove about 2 hours to some random minign town with some little know mysterious ancient theater remains and we trapsed around there for a while. We then spent another hour or so travelling to the town of Sounion, which aint far from Athens. But we got there at like 4 and were given maybe 2 horus max on the beach. the beach was fine, the water was a bit cold, but it was fun just to relax there. The food at the taverna on the beach was pretty surprisingly inexpesnive and good. the last day of out first stint in Athens we went to the Acropolis and the theater or dionysys. The acropolis was epic and awesome. No amount of words can really do it justice.
The follwoign day, we transferred onto thebus and travelled to ancient eleusis where we learned about the cult of Eleusis and the Eleusian mysteries (google it) and then to ancient corinth where we saw the acneit site, got late lunches and saw and archaelogical site and most of us got rained on. Then, finally we transferred to the wonderful cityh of naplion, found our rooms, finished the essay assingments we had gotten and explored the city for dinner. NAplion is an amazing coastal town that's kind of like subrubia but isnt really it's hard to explain but i got the vibe from it that it was a heavily exanded southern coutnry town on the Greel coast. It was awesome. and had amazing Gelato too. We went there every night. I miss that city and the gelato. The first day in NAplion we visited ancietn Mycenae and Tiryns. Ancient Mycenae was more memorable because of the lions head gate, awesome views, and cistern side-quest we did. Awesome stuff.
The next day we went to ancient Epidaurus and saw the stuff there and learned abotu a minor god named Asklepios (again, google). We then stormed the epidaurus theater, tesetd its acoustics and returned to naplion where we explored the amazing palamidi fortress. Some of the best and most romantic views i've ever seen came from this fortess. From there the next day, we commuted to sparta. Stopping at the ancient site of King Menelaus' palce first, we tested our lungs hiking up the hill to the palace, which was pretty nice for ruins. we did some mass speculation, talked about the oddyseey and then move on to sparta. Nicest hotel in the world for that one night, but literally, there was nothing to do in sparta outside of a few pretty cool restaurants and the unimpressive Sparta acropolis. While exploriung the acropolis a bunch of us got rained on. We then reutrned, dried off and got a nice dinner with most of the group, which was higlighted by many a joke and general hilarity. After that, a few of us explored the town and nothign really eventful happened. We watched some stuff one one person's conputer that night and then peaced out to bed.
the next day we transferred to Pylos by way of ancient Mistras, which was is essentially a byzantine Era landmark. Mistras was pretty cool, but i was a bit undwerwhelmed by what we saw there. Pylos was a small bayside town of awesomeness. we were there for 2 full days, three nights, and it was pretty cool. The hotel was right on the water and had great views. the second day in pylos, we went to see the very well preseved palace of nestor and MEthoni fortress, both of whihc were very cool. Then we had lots of free time on the beach by the fortress before heading back to Pylos. The following day we traveled about 4 hours to the temple of apollo at bassai, which was nice, but is under a long resotration plan that has been somewhat halted cause of the economic downturn over in Greece. From there we drove another 3 horus to olympia.
I'm gonna be honest. Olympia is a tourist trap of a town wiht an awesome Souvlaki restaurant and thats it. every other palce was nice but a bit overpriced and the vast majority of the town was residnetial.. the town pretty much was only there cause of the ancient ruins of tempels and the first olympics ever. Which is fine. The second night we were there i watched a european songf comeptiton that is laods better that AMerican Idol called Eurovision with a couple people and in the middle of it, there was an earthquake. It was very minor where we were, but apparently it was a 4.4 on the richter scale. it was jsut weird cause the room literally shifted form right to left 3 times fairly quickly and then stopped. The people i was wathcing Eurovisoon with all thought it was someone else initially.
After Olympia we took a bus to one of the ports and then took a 2.5 hour ferry ride to the island of keffallonia where we transferred about an hour to a town on the peninsula that starrting to be accepted as Anceint Ithaca from the Oddyseey. For more on this checkout odysseus-unbound.org. Now on Kefallonia, instead of doing a full day walk of the island we got a full day tour of sites relevant to the aformentioned argument and a few other really touristy things. In my opinion the tour sould have ended after Lunch and we shoulda just been given time on the beach we were at as after lunch everyone was crashing energy wise. Plus, the enxt day, which was a day off, was chilly and overcast and windy, so our excursion to the same becah, and awesomely beautiful white pebble beach, got cancelled. Needless to say that night and for a few days afterwards alot of us were very bitter.
From there, we got up super early, caught the ferry back to mainland and drove back to Athens, where we spent a few days seeing byzantine churches and the acropolis museum.
With regard to how we left kefallonia though, we had been told abotu the early wake-up, but then right before breakfast, thins got changed so right as half of us were eating, we were literally yelled at to get our butts on the bus so we could get the ferry. half of the group still hadnt eaten at this point. When we got to the port and onto the ferry, we sat in dock for another 30 mintues, so there was no need for us to evacuate the hotel in KEfallonia like we were gonna get bombed.
After the few days back in Athens, we transferred onto anothe rFerry to the island of Aigina, which was nice. We saw a minor goddesses cult temple and a local potter's place there. but the way we got to thos places made it looked like we wereleaving the main town and not retuning, which we eneded up doing. The hotel in Aigina was ncie but it was about a 10 minute walk downhill and around 2 blind corners into town. On a positive note our only real day there was an off day and the cats and kittens there were awesome. Thats where i also sawy frist episode of the New Dr. Who, the first episode of Season 5. I'm not gonna lie, i really liked it, but i really cant afford another fandom right now. Maybe later once i'm established in the workforce. Dr. Who is really well written Sci-Fi and it British, so i'm happy.
After Aigina, we transferred back to Athens for the last 4 days of the trip. We saw the karameikos site, the national museum and then did student presentations over the course of those 4 days. Then we all flew back home to the states or to wher we were meeting our families over the course of the day on the 11th of june.
So that's greece in a nutshell, pretty awesome trip and the group rocked. I'd do it again right now with the same group. I'm gonna make this a 2 parter to finish covering everything else up there in the title, so see you all in part 2.
--ZB
Friday, June 11, 2010
back
back from greece. exect a debreifing post sometime this week and a return to the regular posting schedule.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Weekly update 5/10/10: I'm not Dead Yet!
YEah i know i was gone frome blogging. btu i have an excuse. 1) i forgot about wednesdays post and 2) i had finals at school. Anyway, i'm bakc now and this may or may not be myh last post here before i go to Greece for an Earlhma May Term on the 17th.
That actually seques us into the intro section, so here we go.
The "Intro" Section
Ok, so as youj probably know i'm studying abroad in Greece for 3ish weeks through earlham We'll be traveling all around and given the irregulairty of potential connectivity to the internet and the fact that my laptop is nto exactly light means i wont be taking it. So yea, i'll be handwriting the essays and quizes. fun! ugh. Anyway, thats not to say i wont be on this blog. In fact, this page may get more traffic as this;ll be the main way i update everyone whenever i cna get to and internet cafe. so yea. if i dont get to post agian before i leave on the 17th, then look for the "Greece Trip 2010 update" posts beginning shortly thereafter. i'll update as often as i can with the trip schedule, work and such.
now on the heart of the post:
the "Meat and Potatoes" section
So its been a while since i've posted, and i'll be mroe rgular with these soon. anyway, i'm home for the summer now, so you're probably wondering what the last few days of class went and such. Well, they were fun, anticlimactic. studied my butt off for the last human dev test and yea. Friday the 3oth was fun and chill after my last class and Saturdya and sunday i some preliminary studying while working on hte take home part of my lit final Monday and tuesday i did the greece orientation class final and then studied my butt off for lit.
Wednesday was the lit final. Everywhere on the final exam site and on the syllabus it had said 2:30 for the exam, so thats when i showed up. but apparently the prof had said 2pm in the last class, which i has missed, so i showed up 30 minutes late. can you say awkward??? So i go up to prof, i apologize and he breifs me. I go down to the room, and get crackin on the exam. we essentially had 2 hours to write 2 theory papers taking one of a list fo theories he gave us and one fo the texts we didint do our big theory paper on. My big thoery paper had been on frankensteind so i had to wrtie on Death of a Salesman and White Tiger.
Qucik point: Why is it that every novel that has to do with India (i've read 2: life of pi and White Tiger) is so widely praised??? I didnt like life of pi, and White tiger was interesting, but not revolutionary or such other things claimed by the praise.
so my death of a salesman paper ended up being on a feminist literary theory critique of it. It was pretty good for a rushed paper, IMO. My White Tiger paper was bad though, i knew the theory i was just blanking on all the ways it applied to the novel. I'm lucky i did well on that paper.
So after that final i was done with my main classes for junior year. The past 2 years when spring semester has ended, its always been reallly bittersweet for me. I've been happy i'm done with the academic year, but i've also felt very "ok, now what?"
Wednesday evening was pretty low key and chill lots of videogaming and such. Thursday i threw out stuff i didnt need and cleaned out my room's closet and just generaly schmoozed wiht people. Friday my dad came and from 10-3:45 we boxed up my sutff and moved me out of Bundy 222 for good. It's sad to leave that room for good, i've got a lot of happy memories in that room. I've got less happy ones to, but i've definitly grown as a person in the 2 years i lived there. Onto bundy 319 in the fall.
My dad and i were done putting stuff into storage aroudn 5, so we went to his hotel, relaxed and i changed into my outfit for a dance thign that ngiht. We went to our usual mexican place up the road from Earlham for dinner and then headed over to the dance thing. it was a thign called soul to sole. its essentially just Gospel Revs and a few dacne alloy dances kciking off the commencement weekend.
YEah i know i dance, Its fun, and to be honest, i dont een realize how awkward i am wiht it until i see the footage on playback. Makes me think that my vision of myself is clouded slightly. though i do accept the fact i am awkward.
Saturday was fairly low key just getting up, eating at bob evans by the hotel for brekfast, shipping a box, going to Wallmart for a couple minor things and then heading over to commencement. I had to leave commencement at like 3:30 because Air tran moved my return flight home up a half hour, which is lame.
So to my now graduated friends who are reading this, i'm sorry i couldnt stay to see you get your diploma, but i am so very proud of all of you. Keep in touch!
the flight home was fast (thank you tailwind) and uneventful. got home saturday night, unpacked, watched house. Sunday was mothers day and my sister had to go back up to new york.
And that night i saw iron man 2. I'll post something here once my youtube video about it is up. Very good movie though, go see it.
Think thats it everyone. so until the next post, be it a bonus one or a "Greece update", rock on!
--ZB
That actually seques us into the intro section, so here we go.
The "Intro" Section
Ok, so as youj probably know i'm studying abroad in Greece for 3ish weeks through earlham We'll be traveling all around and given the irregulairty of potential connectivity to the internet and the fact that my laptop is nto exactly light means i wont be taking it. So yea, i'll be handwriting the essays and quizes. fun! ugh. Anyway, thats not to say i wont be on this blog. In fact, this page may get more traffic as this;ll be the main way i update everyone whenever i cna get to and internet cafe. so yea. if i dont get to post agian before i leave on the 17th, then look for the "Greece Trip 2010 update" posts beginning shortly thereafter. i'll update as often as i can with the trip schedule, work and such.
now on the heart of the post:
the "Meat and Potatoes" section
So its been a while since i've posted, and i'll be mroe rgular with these soon. anyway, i'm home for the summer now, so you're probably wondering what the last few days of class went and such. Well, they were fun, anticlimactic. studied my butt off for the last human dev test and yea. Friday the 3oth was fun and chill after my last class and Saturdya and sunday i some preliminary studying while working on hte take home part of my lit final Monday and tuesday i did the greece orientation class final and then studied my butt off for lit.
Wednesday was the lit final. Everywhere on the final exam site and on the syllabus it had said 2:30 for the exam, so thats when i showed up. but apparently the prof had said 2pm in the last class, which i has missed, so i showed up 30 minutes late. can you say awkward??? So i go up to prof, i apologize and he breifs me. I go down to the room, and get crackin on the exam. we essentially had 2 hours to write 2 theory papers taking one of a list fo theories he gave us and one fo the texts we didint do our big theory paper on. My big thoery paper had been on frankensteind so i had to wrtie on Death of a Salesman and White Tiger.
Qucik point: Why is it that every novel that has to do with India (i've read 2: life of pi and White Tiger) is so widely praised??? I didnt like life of pi, and White tiger was interesting, but not revolutionary or such other things claimed by the praise.
so my death of a salesman paper ended up being on a feminist literary theory critique of it. It was pretty good for a rushed paper, IMO. My White Tiger paper was bad though, i knew the theory i was just blanking on all the ways it applied to the novel. I'm lucky i did well on that paper.
So after that final i was done with my main classes for junior year. The past 2 years when spring semester has ended, its always been reallly bittersweet for me. I've been happy i'm done with the academic year, but i've also felt very "ok, now what?"
Wednesday evening was pretty low key and chill lots of videogaming and such. Thursday i threw out stuff i didnt need and cleaned out my room's closet and just generaly schmoozed wiht people. Friday my dad came and from 10-3:45 we boxed up my sutff and moved me out of Bundy 222 for good. It's sad to leave that room for good, i've got a lot of happy memories in that room. I've got less happy ones to, but i've definitly grown as a person in the 2 years i lived there. Onto bundy 319 in the fall.
My dad and i were done putting stuff into storage aroudn 5, so we went to his hotel, relaxed and i changed into my outfit for a dance thign that ngiht. We went to our usual mexican place up the road from Earlham for dinner and then headed over to the dance thing. it was a thign called soul to sole. its essentially just Gospel Revs and a few dacne alloy dances kciking off the commencement weekend.
YEah i know i dance, Its fun, and to be honest, i dont een realize how awkward i am wiht it until i see the footage on playback. Makes me think that my vision of myself is clouded slightly. though i do accept the fact i am awkward.
Saturday was fairly low key just getting up, eating at bob evans by the hotel for brekfast, shipping a box, going to Wallmart for a couple minor things and then heading over to commencement. I had to leave commencement at like 3:30 because Air tran moved my return flight home up a half hour, which is lame.
So to my now graduated friends who are reading this, i'm sorry i couldnt stay to see you get your diploma, but i am so very proud of all of you. Keep in touch!
the flight home was fast (thank you tailwind) and uneventful. got home saturday night, unpacked, watched house. Sunday was mothers day and my sister had to go back up to new york.
And that night i saw iron man 2. I'll post something here once my youtube video about it is up. Very good movie though, go see it.
Think thats it everyone. so until the next post, be it a bonus one or a "Greece update", rock on!
--ZB
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Weekly update 4-28-10: Another Lengthy one?
ok so here we go wiht this weeks update. it could be lenghty. it's gonna be posted tonight (tuesday).
The "intro"
first up, allergies. They suck. Last week i had the worst allergies ive had in awhile. we're talking head cold, massive congestion, red eyes, looking tired, itchy eyes and yea. and my meds for ti werent helping in the slightest. so happy thats over.
onwards!
the "meat and potatoes" section
Next on the docket is a couple school related things.
first up on that is this spring festival thing Ealrham does called springfest. theres a moonbounce, a bouncy playground thing a slip n slide, go karts thigns and other fun stuff. so yeah. This year it was inside cause of rain. well the slip n slide was stiill outside and was nice but wasnt nearly as fun as it woulda been had it been outside. At springfest and dinner, there was a guy named Norman Ng goign around and doign magic. HE was really good and a i really enjoyed his magic and comedy show later that night. he had great energy. the one thing that did bug me is there was a mind-reading trick where he had us believe that he went around spring fest and had us write random words on pieces of paper. i never saw him at springfest or when i was walkin around campus, so i think those words slips were pre-written. I still cant explain how he made a bowling ball appear from between sheets on a big posterboard thing.
a rant on a class now. foundations of EDU is fun but highlyh flawed as i have said before. the prof is a great guy, but the class is done at t abreakneck pace and is not good for an intro to the minor course because i dont think any of the topics covered in the class are mentioned i ;later courses for the minor, or are actively ebign taught in schoools. plus how many of us in that class are gonna be teachers, none unless we are goin thru the M.A.Teaching 5 year program, which idk if anyone in that class is. rant continuing: when were in our rushed unit on sustainability, not only was the text obnoxious and calling for a halt to everything that harmed the environment while onlyu makin 1-2 good points and not even mentioning schools, but also the discusssions were all centered around "wow this dude is right, we need to change ASAP" more or less. The entire time i couldnt help but think "Holy spin zone Batman!" Whatever happened to hoenst cynicism?
one last negative thing in this post i promise. So last friday, the 23rd, i get information on my 1 in class final, the heavily essay based one for intro to lit. yes it has a 4-5 page take home theory paper for the weeekend and then 2 theory papers to write in the 2 hour exam period, rhe 2 in class papers are each on a theory with a book we didnt present on. (i did psychological theory and frankenstein so i have to write essays on death of a salesman and a book called white tiger). ANyhowm the point of this paragraph is to say that people need to suck ti up and stop whihing once they figure out how hard a final is gonna be. i overheard some freshmen in the class whining about how the exam is literrally 3 essays all wokrin with a text and a theory. this greatly annoyed me. now i understand if you're whining because you'll have 3 other finals before that one and little time to study for the in class papers or do the take home paper, but if thats the only final you have period, or if its the only final you have that day after one of monday, you shouldnt whine or complain. Whatever happened to sucking it up, realizing its go time, and being resilient?
Rants done.
last thing i wanna cover this week: music. two bands you all should check out.
Civil Twilight: theyre and alt-rock outfit from i believe New Zealand. Theyre newish i think and they have a very U2 feel to them but with a splash of Springsteen and the Fray. I like them alot. Just think very good, slightly atmospheric alt-rock with impassioned lyrics and vocals
Secondly, if you like rock music, check out Slash's solo album. Yea, thats Slash from GNR and Velvet Revolver fame. Its a pretty ecletic and good solo album, lots of good guest vocals. the only issue i really have with it is that whoever mixed the album did a poor job on the tracks "Back from Cali" and "Starlight" which feature Myles Kennedy on vocals. The songs are nice, btu you can blantantly hear any secodn vocal track Miles recorded or any backup singers Slash recruited. This is kind of annoying in my mind cause its like 2 different vocal patterns of the same person singing together and not mxed well.
This same mixing issue is what made me not highly praise Serj Tankian's solo album from 2 years ago. Ugh, i want his main band System of a Down to come back!
see you next week.
--ZB
The "intro"
first up, allergies. They suck. Last week i had the worst allergies ive had in awhile. we're talking head cold, massive congestion, red eyes, looking tired, itchy eyes and yea. and my meds for ti werent helping in the slightest. so happy thats over.
onwards!
the "meat and potatoes" section
Next on the docket is a couple school related things.
first up on that is this spring festival thing Ealrham does called springfest. theres a moonbounce, a bouncy playground thing a slip n slide, go karts thigns and other fun stuff. so yeah. This year it was inside cause of rain. well the slip n slide was stiill outside and was nice but wasnt nearly as fun as it woulda been had it been outside. At springfest and dinner, there was a guy named Norman Ng goign around and doign magic. HE was really good and a i really enjoyed his magic and comedy show later that night. he had great energy. the one thing that did bug me is there was a mind-reading trick where he had us believe that he went around spring fest and had us write random words on pieces of paper. i never saw him at springfest or when i was walkin around campus, so i think those words slips were pre-written. I still cant explain how he made a bowling ball appear from between sheets on a big posterboard thing.
a rant on a class now. foundations of EDU is fun but highlyh flawed as i have said before. the prof is a great guy, but the class is done at t abreakneck pace and is not good for an intro to the minor course because i dont think any of the topics covered in the class are mentioned i ;later courses for the minor, or are actively ebign taught in schoools. plus how many of us in that class are gonna be teachers, none unless we are goin thru the M.A.Teaching 5 year program, which idk if anyone in that class is. rant continuing: when were in our rushed unit on sustainability, not only was the text obnoxious and calling for a halt to everything that harmed the environment while onlyu makin 1-2 good points and not even mentioning schools, but also the discusssions were all centered around "wow this dude is right, we need to change ASAP" more or less. The entire time i couldnt help but think "Holy spin zone Batman!" Whatever happened to hoenst cynicism?
one last negative thing in this post i promise. So last friday, the 23rd, i get information on my 1 in class final, the heavily essay based one for intro to lit. yes it has a 4-5 page take home theory paper for the weeekend and then 2 theory papers to write in the 2 hour exam period, rhe 2 in class papers are each on a theory with a book we didnt present on. (i did psychological theory and frankenstein so i have to write essays on death of a salesman and a book called white tiger). ANyhowm the point of this paragraph is to say that people need to suck ti up and stop whihing once they figure out how hard a final is gonna be. i overheard some freshmen in the class whining about how the exam is literrally 3 essays all wokrin with a text and a theory. this greatly annoyed me. now i understand if you're whining because you'll have 3 other finals before that one and little time to study for the in class papers or do the take home paper, but if thats the only final you have period, or if its the only final you have that day after one of monday, you shouldnt whine or complain. Whatever happened to sucking it up, realizing its go time, and being resilient?
Rants done.
last thing i wanna cover this week: music. two bands you all should check out.
Civil Twilight: theyre and alt-rock outfit from i believe New Zealand. Theyre newish i think and they have a very U2 feel to them but with a splash of Springsteen and the Fray. I like them alot. Just think very good, slightly atmospheric alt-rock with impassioned lyrics and vocals
Secondly, if you like rock music, check out Slash's solo album. Yea, thats Slash from GNR and Velvet Revolver fame. Its a pretty ecletic and good solo album, lots of good guest vocals. the only issue i really have with it is that whoever mixed the album did a poor job on the tracks "Back from Cali" and "Starlight" which feature Myles Kennedy on vocals. The songs are nice, btu you can blantantly hear any secodn vocal track Miles recorded or any backup singers Slash recruited. This is kind of annoying in my mind cause its like 2 different vocal patterns of the same person singing together and not mxed well.
This same mixing issue is what made me not highly praise Serj Tankian's solo album from 2 years ago. Ugh, i want his main band System of a Down to come back!
see you next week.
--ZB
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