34 inches of snow later, I’m still here. It’s been crazy around here. It started snowing in denver around 7pm on monday. a little later here. last night around midnight, our electricity went out. Too much snow on the lines and stuff. By that point, we had around 1 1/2 – 2 feet of snow on the ground. We lit some candles here at the house, and played cards for a while. Around 2am, we started talking about hooking up a board to rick’s truck and dragging him around the streets. After a search of the house yeilded no rope, we decided to go down to the park where everyone takes sleds and such to go down a big, but not too steep hill, before anyone else would be there. Sure enough, around 2:45, we got there before anyone else. We got out Rick’s snowboard, and I can now officially say that I have been snowboarding in colorado. As long as no one asks what slope I went down, I can sound all cool and stuff. I even got up enough momentum on my last run that I flipped head over feet when I crashed.

We took the truck and played in some parking lots, and then came back here and knocked snow off our trees so the branches wouldn’t break (probably a smart move considering our neighbor’s tree is just devastated, including one branch that landed on their minivan). I did a belly-flop into the snow, and then came inside, having accomplished exactly what I set out to do: become cold, wet, and miserable.

It was actually very fun. I have very little doubt that when anyone asks me what my favorite part of boulder I will remember last night, 2 feet of snow, a snowboard, and my roommates. It reminded me a lot of the 7″ snow we had at State. umm… minus one cousin, two garbage bags, and one laundry basket with some unknown girl in it.

lol… re-reading that last sentence just sounds odd if you didn’t know what I was talking about. yeah, I’ll leave it like that.

well, my camera battery was dead, so I didn’t get any good pictures of all the snow. And let me also say that shoveling snow sucks… Shoveling 3 feet of snow really, exceptionally sucks.

my computer has been acting very strangely, so I haven’t even tried to post lately… besides, not much interesting has happened. I was insulted by a 6th degree blackbelt the other day. He said I wasn’t a martial artist, but rather one who dabbles in the martial arts… he wouldn’t let me get a word in edgewise to defend myself, either… really pissed me off. but oh well…

role playing is going ok… pissed a couple of people off last night, but it wasn’t my fault. I’m also starting to gather ideas for a game this summer. If you’re interested, let me know. I’ll probably be in memphis, since I can’t seem to get any kind of real job for the summer.

speaking of which, if you know of any good summer jobs that pay well, let me know… I am really REALLY going to need money this summer.

I have a “feature” in my language that has caught the attention of linguist researchers at Stanford… can anyone guess what it is? (I don’t know right now, but as soon as they tell me, I’ll let you know)

I finished my second midterm today almost an hour early. I’m ready for spring break…

ok, I gotta go eat before my meeting this afternoon.

no more jury duty… albeit, not for the reasons I expected. The commissioner called this morning to tell me she couldn’t disqualify me… I’d have to show up and leave that to the lawyers. I realized, though, that the day I needed to report was during spring break. So I asked to be rescheduled… she said it was no problem and I would be rescheduled for mid-september… when I told her I was leaving the state in early May, she decided I wasn’t worth the trouble, and so… I won’t be doing jury duty anytime soon.

oh yeah… remember that test I was so worried about and knew I was going to fail? I studied and studied and studied… I spent 6 hours in the prof’s office asking for help. I stayed up til 1:30am studying and then laid in bed until after 3 worrying about it. I started waking up at 7:15, every 10 minutes thinking I was late or had slept through the class. I finally woke up, went to class early. Got to class 10 minutes early and the prof was already there waiting to hand out the exam… I knew I was screwed… if we needed the extra time, I didn’t have a chance… 20 minutes later, I had finished the test. Assuming I had done something wrong, I spent the next 40 minutes going back over everything. Sure ‘nuf, I was done. Just got the test back… 100. I aced it.

I liked the prof’s explination of why the test was so easy, “In a couple of years, this test would have been impossible”. It was questions off of comp. tests, where it would have been a few semesters since we had seen it. However, right now, when the stuff was fresh in our mind and the equations were written on a sheet of paper beside us, it was really dad gum easy.

all that worrying for nothing… or for very little… can’t say it was for nothing. I at least understand a little better now.

I guess since I am in class I should stop typing and pay attention.

I got a Jury Duty summons today… Jury Duty… How did I get jury duty? I’m not registered to vote. I refuse to decide the fate of other people.

I’m submitting a request for disqualification based on religious beliefs. I refuse to play God.

I wrote a long entry earlier tell you, the viewing audience, how worthless I have been lately. How I have done nothing but eat, sleep, watch movies and maybe teach a lab here and there. How Tommy Vercetti made me skip class this morning. How the most interesting thing to happen to me in the past three days was my conversation on bondage earlier. And then my computer died. Thought at first it was the video card because it wouldn’t reboot or even turn on. Turns out, the fan on the processor went out and cooked one of my processors…. Luckily, I have two. But it still pisses me off. Luckily, also, it’s under warranty. But it still pisses me off. tried to use my laptop only to find out it’s broken again… the power connector has come unsoldered again… and yes… that pisses me off, too. Why do I have such luck? Why won’t things work the way they’re supposed to for me? Why is it my lot in life to have my food served on very dirty dishes when I eat at Chili’s? Now, granted, sometimes, it can be a mixed blessing… for example, I didn’t want to go to Chili’s because it was expensive, but got talked into it by Rick and Richard. Having my meal served on a plate that had a line on it where it had been sitting in dirty dish water got me a free meal… But it still pisses me off. Are we noticing a trend here?

Anyway, I have to go before my computer overheats and dies again. ::sigh::

0 degrees… zero degrees. It was zero degrees outside yesterday when I got done role playing. During the walk to my car, I managed to grow large ice crystals in my mustache. saying it’s really cold is an understatement.

I have a test wednesday that I’m going to fail. sucks, but oh well… I just don’t understand the course. It’s out of my normal field of expertise, and the prof is teaching it like we’re all at her level, but the sad thing is, most everyone in there is at her level. just not me… I’m an aero engineer, not an atmospheric scientist.

also, I managed to single handedly shut down the DVD promotion compusa was running… it ends on friday instead of in two months now… my roommates finally got very interested in the program and decided to join me. rick has one more trip to make tomorrow, so I can’t give you a grand total yet… how many do you think I have? look for the answer by the end of the week.

I updated my DVD list. the list now includes my 30 new movies (29… Powerpuff girls doesn’t go on the list, because it’s Deedee’s). Now playing: antz, spy game, behind enemy lines, santa clause, silverado, my big fat greek wedding, reign of fire, brotherhood of the wolf, 15 minutes, brave heart, windtalkers count of monte cristo, fight club, bad company, bourne identity, office space, saving private ryan, ice age, resident evil, tombstone, k-19, and 7 007 movies: dr. no, goldfinger, man with the golden gun, spy who loved me, licence to kill, goldeneye, tomorrow never dies.

that’s a bunch.

it’s good to know, though, that if things ever turned financially sour, I could sell my DVD collection for lots and lots of money on ebay.

I’ve also discovered that I need a new DVD shelf. sad, no?

fixed richard’s computer. After he made up his mind to pay $100 to have best buy fix it, I said, well, let me take a crack at it. Sho’nuf, I made it work. was tough, but it works… yeah, richard owes me one…

now I need food because I’m hungry. I also have to go to the store… suckage….

yeah, I’ve been meaning to post here for a while. I’ve actually had things I’ve wanted to put on here. Like I wanted to post “karma” and nothing but that, but I felt itwas a waste of time to blog only one word. there have been several small things like that I’ve had to say, but I’ve forgotten most of them. I had homework this week. I finished one homework set, one lab report, one abstract, and one 6 page paper. Which really doesn’t help my motivation problems. I procrastinated on that paper until I only had 3 hours to research and write the whole thing. And I finished with an hour to spare, which I then spent playing 007 with Rick. If I had been panicked, I might have considered doing it earlier next time. I also bought GTA: Vice City, which also doesn’t help motivation problems… well, that’s not true… I have been fairly motivated to find more of the unique jumps on there.

I finally get to start playing a character I rolled up over 3 month ago. We’re starting our D20 modern game tomorrow. joy.

ok, time for a survey… you thought you were just going to get to read my blog mindlessly, didn’t you? ha! you were wrong! Now you are obligated to answer the following question: “When does enough become too much?” is that open ended enough for you? Well, here, let me give you some context. As I have noted before in my blog, I am in the process of (very legally) exploiting a very large loophole in a compusa-aol deal. I get a free DVD. and it’s just that simple… there are no tricks, no rebates, no trades… just a free DVD. Now… I have gotten exactly 30 DVDs from compusa as of today, and I have paid exactly $0.99, which was only for the first DVD. all the others were free. I have become a “legend” in the local compusa, or so I’m told by the 3-4 guys I ran into today while getting more DVDs. The main guy I’m working with is pretty cool, and I found out that signing me up for so many aol deals put him over the top and he got to walk away with a $700 palm pilot for free. How’s that for a bonus? I even had a chat with the general manager of the store, who encouraged me to come back soon… so when do you stop? or when do I stop? I’ve got 30 free DVDs. Do I go back for more? when is enough too much? you stop eating free food when you’re full/sick, but what about when you’re kinda obsessive about your DVD collection, and you’re 4 away from having 200 DVDs?! ok, I think that’s enough context… now you can comment.

hallaujah! I wanted to type halla ()*&)(*&)%#(*&)@#(*$&)@!#*&$ ujah, but I thought it might be over kill. I got my computer to work like it’s supposed to. For those of you I don’t get to talk to on a daily basis, my computer has been crap for about two weeks now. I couldn’t get networking to work, I caught my first virus ever, I bought a new DVD player and cd-burner and a 200 Gig HD. Right now… or actually about 30 minutes ago, I got them all to work at the same time for the first time. I had to put the DVD player on the raid controller so it wouldn’t be detected as a removable disk drive. I had to turn off buffer underrun protection in Nero. I had to buy a router. I had to rejumper my harddrives. I had to flash the bios, which caused me to have to edit the boot.ini files manually. I had to put in over 40 hours of work. and most of all, I had to give up windows XP and go back to windows 2000.

the result? the beast got a facelift. It now has a working 16X DVD, 48×12x50 CD-RW, a 200 Gig harddrive (for a total of 285 Gigs), and Richard and I can transfer files back and forth with absolutely no problems. Today’s upgrade brought to you (me) by Mother. Mother, the wonderful provider of birthday presents when you can’t afford to buy yourself anything.

Now… for the news… Celine came and visited me. Well, she really went to a flute audition, and just crashed at the house, but it was the first company I have had since I moved up here. It was great. We got to exchange happenings since graduation. I got to hear about the scandles I missed, such as the one between the trombone player named Michael and a certain high school spanish teacher we all know and love. (or at least know). and I got to tell her the complete story of how I proposed to Deedee. The only bad thing about her stay was that she left a day earlier than I thought she was going to, so we didn’t get to really do anything. I was busy the whole time she was here. ::sigh:: I miss high school and the friends I had back then. Celine and I weren’t exactly as close as say, me and brian during high school, but God knows what I would do for a friend like that up here.

and then there’s the other side of nostalgia… Catching up with one person you’ve been away from for six years really makes you realize how many people you’ve forgotten along the way. That’s always been one of my biggest problems with myself. I tend to let people slip into the past. I mean, really… how many people did I know in high school? how many of them do I know now? how many of them could I still know if I actually took the time and effort to keep in touch with people? Instead, I let them slowly drown into the past. How many hours did I spend talking to Robbie? Why is it I hadn’t even thought of him until someone mentioned that he was there when I broke my arm? Why has Heather been on my buddy list for 4 years if I never even take the time to say hi when she’s on? and now, is it just too late to try? am I now also forgotten?

Part of me has always wondered if I haven’t been doing this on purpose on some subconscious level? I’ve known for a very long time that I wouldn’t end up back in Memphis. It’s the path I’ve chosen. I’ve known this path leads away from everything I’ve known before. While I don’t dwell on the thought, it’s always there in the back of my mind that I’m just going to have to start over again when I get where I’m going. Do I forget on purpose? I feel so bad when people say to me “do you remember when…” and it’s some great story and I was part of it, and yet I can’t remember it. For every story I can tell you about high school and college, I’m sure there’s ten better ones that I’ve forgotten. and that really bothers me.

ok, I’m gonna stop now. I’m depressing myself. I’m sure it’s some combination of the fact that it’s 5am, or that I just finished with a two day trip into the past, I’m all nostalgic, or that I’m completely mentally and emotionally drained from trying to get the computer to work right, and probably a little bit of all of the above, but either way, I need to stop typing and get some sleep.

there’s fresh snow on the ground…

I wasn’t spazzing, I was excited… wouldn’t you be? maybe I should explain, eh? well… over the past 3 days, I have gotten 18 DVDs (17 if you count the one that is technically Krys’), and do you know what I have paid for these 18 dvds? grand total: $1.06. Yup, that’s right. 99 cents plus tax. I don’t think you can beat that deal with a stick. I would list my new titles, but I’m tired and it’s late. I’ll list them later.

If anyone else is interested in free dvd’s… you need to email me. I’ll fill you in on the details… it’s legal and it really works.. not too often you find that combo, eh?