Old Blog: The Archive
These are entries from my old site, and this page is no longer updated. View the new blog to see more recent entries.
| Shameless Plug | 11/25/2003 10:26 PM PST |
My friend needs some publicity for his site... well, that and the site is actually somewhat useful. It's the StumbleUpon Toolbar website. It's a toolbar for Mozilla/Firebird/Netscape/IE that helps you stumble upon new websites you haven't found. Pretty interesting... go try it.
| Look, it's an update. | 11/21/2003 9:24 PM PST |
Okay, I'm updating this because my sister said so. That and the fact that stuff actually happened today (aside from the usual). But instead of going straight to that, I'll go through what I did today.
Let's see... 0 period was boring as usual. First period was the history test, I did okay. Second period was P.E., where we had a singles king of the hill tournament for badmitten. I ended the period waiting in line on the top court, along with the other 6 people there. The gym was not built for singles. Doubles works better; everybody gets to play at the same time. Anyway... in 3rd period was a Latin vocab test, did pretty well on that too. Then we played Latin Pictionary, to the delight of my classmates. In fourth period Mr. Holmes gave us a math project that's due in a couple weeks. IB requires that 3 projects be done per year, so this is practice for them. He gave us graph paper to do it on, but I'm just going to use a spreadsheet to do everything for me. For the rest of the peiod I did pretty much nothing. Then came lunch, where I went to the jazz choir room, where our sectional should have been taking place, but of course didn't, because the SBCC choir people were coming that day, and it was Friday anyway, so people weren't really on top of things that day, assuming they were actually all there at the same time (which they weren't). So... I said I'd schedule a sectional for Wednesday during the break instead. I need to decide on a time. Probably 1pm or something. Anyway, then 5th period started and we listened to the CC people sing their songs (they have a concert on December 6, btw) and then we sang one of our songs (we have a concert on December 12/13, btw, so buy tickets)... we only had time for one song because the bell rang. There started the nine day weekend.
I would be more excited about the week off if I didn't have to do so much schoolwork. Let's see...I have to write my bio term paper, do a couple labs for bio, read about 830 pages for English, write a essay for English, do a bunch of history reading and terms, and do the math project. Now doesn't that sound like a lot of fun... (if it does I could hook you up with some of the work...) aside from the homework, we're going to Lancaster for Thanksgiving. Thursday through Sunday, I think. So it'll be a busy week off, but I'll get some time for fun stuff too. Maybe I'll have time to work on my SQL news/blog system.
| State of the <insert topic here> Address | 10/20/2003 9:17 PM PDT |
You know... these rants never come out right. By the time I start writing them, I've forgotten have the stuff that I was thinking about. And of the part that I do remember, a lot of that I wouldn't want to put on here because it's too boring or something. Oh well, back to the interesting parts. Sort of. Maybe I should write everything down and work off of that.
Topic one: SWG. Apparently it's more of a disappointment than a fun use of time for my online friends in the guild, because they seem to be playing less and less, and are cancelling their subscriptions. I find the game to be a lot of fun, but that's because I can play it with my friends. So when the friends go away, the fun starts to go away. Then I start to notice all of the things that have bugged them, along with everybody who complains on the official forums... you know, like half the content either doesn't work or doesn't exists, and nerfs are running rampant. And while the "publishes," aka the major patches, get released, you get some interesting content at the expense of losing some stuff. Like in the next publish, where we'll get player cities and mounts, but the test center people are complaining about DBs and even incaps making all of your belongings deteriorate. Oh, and a lot of people are mad because they found out the way to open the force-sensitive slot is to master the two random professions that were assigned to you when you created your character, and aren't influenced by your current profession at all, even though they said you could play any profession and become force-sensitive (which I suppose is true, albeit in a very distorted way)... and even then, you can only find out what those to professions are if you have a holocron, which can only be found on highly camped NPCs. Yah. So, back to the guild. I don't know what exactly they're going to do next. Some are still playing SWG, some have cancelled their accounts or are going to soon. And I just wait here on the fence to see what happens, because I go where my friends go for the most part. I doubt they'll keep playing SWG very much, though they say they'll come back to it, which I suppose would work. But in the mean time, what am I supposed to do? If they go on to play a different game for a while, I either have to find new friends or have to buy the game that they play. And once they (and I) get into that game, I don't even know if they would go back to SWG, which kind of makes my purchase of it seem a little too expensive for the time I played it. Speaking of other games, I was looking at some reviews for the new AO expansion, and it looks neat... except for the problems of no time, money, or friends who still play it, so I'd have to find more people to play with (which I suppose isn't entirely a bad thing... meet new people, etc.). So... games need more content, and I need more money and free time. Wow, what's new...
Wow, that was a long paragraph. On to topic two: school. Yah... so, in English we've pretty much done nothing so far. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if we got more done in the three weeks with the substitute than when our teacher was actually here, which is still not very much. In first period history, yes I suppose I've learned stuff, but what good does it do me? A software engineer's more interested in learning C++ than learning names, dates and events. PE? Eh, it's PE, it's just sort of there. Latin? Sure, we learn stuff, but I don't know how much good it will be once I'm out of school. At least the teacher's nice. Let's see... math? Math is important for software engineers... except for that fact that pretty much all we've done so far this year is review of what we did last year. I suppose some people haven't learned it yet, but I have, and frankly, it seems to be a waste of my time. Hopefully we'll get to newer stuff soon. Jazz choir? I count that as a good class... how will it help me? I'm not really sure... but I enjoy it, and maybe having fun keeps me sane... balances out all the boring stuff in school like English and history. Or something. And lastly, bio. That class takes up a lot of time. It's like having a normal schedule of six classes like last year, then adding one more on top of it that takes up a good portion of my time. The only reason I'm taking it is because a life science is required... good thing it ends in December, because I don't know if I could last an entire year with this load. Considering how last year I was sick of school around March, and this year I was sick of it around the fourth day of September. And it's only October. Yes, there are still eight months left in this year. Ugh.
Well, I guess this rant is long enough for now. I was going to write another section but I pretty much covered it already... sort of... not really... but I'm kind of tired of writing so I'll save it for later or something.
| Yay. | 10/06/2003 7:08 PM PDT |
Life seems a bit easier after the English essay is turned in and the bio exam is over... a bit...
| School = Boring. Life = School. Life = Boring. | 10/04/2003 3:06 PM PDT |
Guess what? School hasn't gotten any better since I last talked bout it. Let's see... pretty much every night for history we have to read the textbook and then fill out the chapter terms sheet. Wow, that doesn't sound dull and tedious at all, does it? And in English we've been analyzing Puritan poetry. That sounds like a whole lot of fun, too... except it doesn't. Oh, and I have a bio exam on Monday. Meaning I have to finish the labs and then find the answers to the exam questions. So I can memorize and regurgitate them. Lots of homework to do. None of it interesting. Sadly, this pattern pretty much repeats itself until next summer. Which is eight months away. Another eight months of torture, fun...
Oh, and when I did get some free time, I went into SWG and there was about one other person on in my guild. The others got tired of SWG and went back to playing AC2 for a while. Which I don't have, can't afford, and don't have time to play anyway. So Av and I just went to the Emperor's Retreat and started the themepark, which is just a bunch of missions chained together. Then the server crashed, and when it came back up Av was gone, so I went to sleep.
I don't know why I rant about the dull and tedious pains of life. I'm just repeating what I've already said and what you already know. Oh well.
I want my life back.
| Bleh | 9/13/2003 3:59 PM PDT |
Ugh... it's been, what, a week since school started. And I'm already sick of it. And homework. I miss the virtually endless hours of fun in summer... I miss the time to talk to my friends online, and the time in which I played SWG for hours upon end. Now... I play SWG for a few hours, and only on the weekend. And I never got to finish what I wanted to do during the summer... learn to code better. Oh well, c'est la vie. And endless cycle of school interspersed with fun, in the form of a couple hours of weekend time, and the vacations we get from school. I've been in this cycle for 11 years. I want to end it. Too bad I have to wait another 2 more years... and after that, I get a slightly different, yet similar, cycle by the name of college. Do I really need to know how to write an essay about someone or something to be a software engineer? Last time I checked, that involved writing code, not essays. It required knowledge of functions and arguments, not history. Sure, I suppose my math class could be useful in some way, but the humanities? All they do is make me "well-rounded" and stuff like that. Sure, if I wanted to be a politician or something, I can see how history would be helpful. You know, don't make the same mistake as people in history have. But I'm not going to be a politician. I'm going to be a programmer. Last time I checked they didn't program before recent years. Oh well, at least I'm not in world history this year... that was the most useless class... wow, I can learn who ruled India in the 12th century. Just what I needed to know... at least US history is about the country I live in, though still useless for me in most aspects. Oh, did I mention bio is useless too? I can learn about ecosystems, yet another thing that can fall under the "useless trivia" catergory. At least there's a section on cosmology. That's probably the one interesting part of the class. At least jazz choir is fun. It's one of the few things that makes school worth going to, it sometimes seems.
| Stuff is good... and not so good... | 8/29/2003 3:39 PM PDT |
Good news: I got my new computer. As I said earlier, I got it from ibuypower, and it works very well. There were some initial problems – the subwoofer and keyboard didn't work correctly, and they had put in the wrong amount of RAM – but this was fixed easilt by calling tech support. They just sent use new stuff, and we sent the old stuff back. After that, everything's running pretty smoothly. There are a few software quirks, but we can't blame that on the computer... anyway, I can run SWG in 1280x960 now with all of the graphics settings turned up pretty high, and I still have have decent enough framerate (for a MMORPG, at least), even in cities. On my old comp I ran with everything turned off in the lowest resolution, and more often than not got 1 fps in the cities. Oh, and I went to a LAN party a few days ago, which was fun. Oh, did I mention my new comp has a case window and a blue cathode light? Hehe...
Now for the bad news...school starts on September 2nd. And I already have homework. Meh. And I didn't exactly get my first choice of classes, either. Well, I'll put my new schedule in the About section so I don't have to get depressed writing it twice. Short version: 7 periods, starting at 7 a.m.
That's it for now, I guess... I need to go update my other pages. Oh, there might be a site redesign some time soon. I'm going for the simple apporach this time. So it will be... uh... simpler. And with lighter colors. I think. In fact, don't be surpised if this news post gets appended to...
Edit: Oh look, it's a new layout. And the news post has been updated. Wow, my predictions came true. And yes, this is valid XHTML and CSS, if you were wondering.
| Back from Europe | 7/15/2003 1:28 PM PDT |
Greetings again. The jazz choir just got back from our two-week Europe tour yesterday. So I decided to write about it, and some other stuff too maybe.
We (the jazz choir plus the chaperones, including my parents) left early on June 30 for LAX... our flight was at 4 pm or something. Then it was a long flight across 9 time zones to Amsterdam, where we got off and switched planes to go to Vienna, Austria. After touring and doing a couple performances there, we went to Salzburg (still in Austria). That's where Mozart was born, btw... we had a tour of his house. After Salzburg we went to Lichtenstein, a tiny country between Austria and Switzerland. Though it's kinda like a province of Switzerland. After that we went to Montreux, Switzerland, where the Montreux Jazz Festival is. It was nice there... we stayed in a four star hotel. With air conditioning. Most places we went didn't have that. After staying in Montreux for a few days we went on to Vienne, France (near Lyon). There I saw a concert in a 2nd century Roman amphitheater. Wee. Anyways... after doing stuff there we flew back to Amsterdam, to go to Delft (where our hotel was) and The Hague (where the North Sea Jazz Festival was) in The Netherlands (where half the land is reclaimed from being underwater). We stayed quite a few days there. The jazz festival's building was pretty smoky. Then again, many places in Europe are. Think Las Vegas casinos, but worse and all over the place. Anyways... after that we went back to Amsterdam on July 14 for our flight back to the US. It was only 2 and a half hours long (plus 9 hours for time zone difference). So... we arrived back at LAX, then got our bus back to DP. And that is the extremely short summary of the jazz choir's Europe trip.
In other news... I'm getting SWG some time very soon. My friends have been playing it for a few weeks now, so they can help me start out hopefully. I just need to decide what profession I want now. I was thinking field medic, or some artisan of some type... or something. I dunno. I can always change around later when I know more what they are like. I wonder what will happen with my EnB account... probably won't use it much. But you never know.
Let's see... I talked about summer in my last post so I don't need to do that again. Still trying to figure out when I'm gunna get my new computer. Some time before September, probably, which gives me a month and a half to get it. Most likely going to get it from ibuypower because they have cheap prices and good reviews.
That's all for now, I guess. Cya later. Oh, and sign my guestbook.
| Hello Again | 6/01/2003 12:13 AM PDT |
Hello... I updated all the other pages on this site so I thought I should update this one too. That and Nathaniel had been complaining about the antiquity of my last update. So... yah. Here's an update.
Wow, it's been a long time. A lot has happened. My life has basically been school with a couple games here and there. In school, aside from the 5 (relatively) boring classes, jazz choir has been great fun. We've had a lot of performaces (see the choir site), including one just... well, yesterday and last month now I guess. Heh. It was our benefit concert, so Vocal Point also performed along with the jazz choir. They're are great group.
Anyways... the school year's end is drawin near, yay. This year I have three finals: two in English (vocab and reading comprehension), and one in math. I have an A in both Latin and chem so I don't have to take finals for those. I think. And history doesn't have a final because it's an AP class. That reminds me, I have the SAT II tests next Saturday. Better write that down or something.
As for gaming... my current obsession, erm, the game that I'm curently playing is Earth and Beyond (EnB). I managed to get someone to pay for the monthly subscription for me, and my old T2 clan / AO guild friends are playing it. It has an interesting story. There could be improvements to make the game more exiting... because repetitive and dull tasks are, well, dull. But as long as a guildmate is online, I'm having fun. Speaking of guilds... the EnB part of Total Eclipse merged with another guild to create Genesis last weekend. Just incase anybody was wondering. Heh, just read my last news post, and it said SWG and SC4 were coming out at the same time. That's incredibly wrong. SWG has been delayed multiple times, so it's still in beta 3 (the last one)... and I can't get into it because I'm under 18 and therefore can't legally sign NDAs. Meh.
Aside from school and gaming, uh, what else is left? Let's see, I've been designing a page for a local business, but that has been going slowly because I've been busy. But it's getting there. I just jave to make the graphics more interesting, and upload the pictures that I took. After they're edited, a lot. Because I'm not a very good photographer, I found out.
Well, that pretty much sums up my life for the past 8 months. I'm looking forward to summer... no school, my birthday, and the jazz choir is going to Europe. And after Europe maybe I can get my driver's license and get some vocal lessons. Oh, and I'll have more time to play games... hopefully SWG will be out by then. Oh, and I'm getting a new computer, so my sister can take this one to college with her and so I am actually above the system requirements for SWG. Heh. Anyways, I'll give you more details as these things approach (if I actually feel like updating this site, that is). So... see you later. I wonder if anybody else actually reads this page... well, I suppose people call sites like these blogs now, so, yah, my blog...
| Even More Stuff | 9/27/2002 11:01 PM PDT |
Hi. I was bored so I decided to update my website. Well... that, and I haven't updated this page in a while. I guess a lot of stuff has changed in the past one and a half months. For example, school started. You can see the classes I'm taking on my about page.
And now for my gaming news... I'm not really playing many games right now. The main reason is that school and homework take up a lot of time, along with the chatting and browsing I do... also, no new games that I'm interested in have come out. And my computer wouldn't be able to run them anyways. Speak of computers, I found an interesting site that might replace Dell for my computer needs... it's called ibuypower.com, and was cheaper and more customizable compared to Dell when I looked at it. So that might be the place I get my new comp at the end of the year...
I got to play the AOM alpha multiplayer test. It was interesting, but it would've been better with random maps and computer AI. But it's not very long until I get those... heheh. And as for SimCity 4... bad news: it's release date has been moved back to January 2003. I was looking forward to its November 2002 release. Oh well. C'est la vie. And SWG still has its Dec '02 to Feb '03 releade date... doh, SWG and SC4 are coming out at the same time! But I don't have much free time! Aargh.
Well, that's pretty much it for my rants today. Oh, I added a little bit of code to my about page today, look at the Games/Fansite table. Maybe I'll use that code somewhere else, too...
| More Stuff | 8/13/2002 2:16 AM PDT |
As I have nothing beter to do and and this page hasn't been updated recently, I have decided to post something. Wow. That never happens.
You know, I saw a good design for a website. It was good because it scaled well to many resolutions, and it looked good. It used a lot of graphics though, which I'm not very good with... but I was thinking of makin my site scale a bit better. I try to make my pages fit well for 800x600 for the poor people with bad eyes and low-resolution monitors... I use 1280x1024 resolution myseld, but only 1024 of the width is used for web page viewing. Anyways, I was thinking about redesigning my site (again).
It's still summer, by the way... I'm just relaxing and having a good time. You know, stayin up late, sleeping 'til two, playing games... speaking of games, my Age of Mythology alpha should arrive soon. Some people already recieved theirs, I hope my will be here soon too... I wanna play AoM!
Games I've played recently... well, I've played Starcraft, Continuum, Jazz Jackrabbit 2, and a myriad of multiplayer SNES games that I've played on Snes9x with a friend... emulators are fun. Oh, and I'm still playing NwN a bit with my guild. Other than that... just waiting for AoM, I guess. Too bad SWG might get pushed back to Jan/Feb release instead of December, I just hope the beta tests go well so it can be here soon. My guild is looking forward to that game a lot...
Summer's quickly drawing to an end... I'm trying to make August last as long as possible, though it's almost half-way done. Soon I'll have to go back to school again... classing I plan on taking are: Latin 3/4, Algebra/Trig 10G, English 10G, AP World History, P.E., and Jazz Choir. I should be getting into all of them, considering the letter of my name is one of the first to sign up for classes. That's good. Even though I fear I'll come to hate some of those classes (i.e. English and history). My Latin, math, and choir classes will have the same teachers as last year... maybe P.E. also. So I could possibly only have two new teachers next year.
Okay, that's enough for now, I guess. Wow, I rambled on for a long time. Now let's see if anything else needs to be updated on this site. Maybe the about page. Well, I guess that's the only page that could need updating... there are none others than contacts. Maybe I should fix that some time.
P.S. If you know of a good AoM clan, email me.
| Stuff | 5/23/2002 8:45 PM PDT |
I should put up a poll asking if my friends are strange...
Anyways, recent stuff. I stopped playing AO a while ago because I lost interest in doing the same stuff over and over and over again. I went out and bought Dungeon Siege, but I don't play that very much because it's a bit repetitive, being a hack 'n slash game. So I am now back to playing... Starcraft, Tribes 2, and SimCity 3000! Kinda strange how we go through cycles of games.
A lot of new previews have come out recently because of E3... I like to know about new and upcoming games. It shows me what there is to be interested in and look forward to for future times. There are previews of games like Age of Mythology, SimCity 4, and Star Wars Galaxies, just to name a few. You know, in some ways, all of these previews are bad. Becuase you want to play the games, but you can't because they haven't been released yet. And the anticipation makes all the games you already have seem somewhat dull, and you become bored. And then you start to play old games like SC, T2, and SC3K... there's nothing wrong with that of course, it's just the boredom of anticipation that bothers me.
There are exactly three weeks of school left in my school year.... they will be very busy weeks, writing essays and studying for finals, but they are still the last three weeks. Also, my birthday is is exactly one month... birthdays are nice, becuase you get presents. Like money to buy new things, like video cards, one of which I should probably buy when the next big GPU-intensive game comes out.
Oh, and jazz choir. I almost forgot to write about it. I went to the Monterey Jazz Festival, and soon after that, the Reno Jazz Festival. We got 2nd place at Reno... we would've gotten first if it weren't for the new judge. Oh well, 2nd is still good. Besides those, we've done quite a few smaller performances in town. And we have more three more performances, I think... one of them being our benefit concert, where not only the jazz choir will sing, but Vocal Point (a local jazz group), Konrad Kono (a local pianist), and members of Big Bad Voodoo Daddy will perform. It will be a big concert, we think the show will be sold out. That means more money being raised... more money for the Europe in summer 2003. :D
Well, that's my life in a nutshell from my last update, whenever that was... I'll update more later.
| Current Trends | 4/10/2002 10:04 PM PDT |
Well, I've slowed down on AO a bit... I've started playing Tribes 2 again, interestingly enough. That, and Starcraft, which I play with WMCoolmon and another local friend... and other random people on Bnet... I like the big maps with lots of minerals and gas. Hehe...
I found out about a mod for Tribes 2 called Construction, where you (suprisingly enough) build stuff. Not your normal game of T2, but it's fun. At least I think it is. I still play some normal games too, so if you want to join me in a game just ask.
| AO | 2/12/2002 3:58 PM PST |
It's not like I don't have any fun in life. I have plenty of time to play Anarchy Online, which has been slowly gaining popularity since its terrible launch. I'll probably get to play a lot today, because I don't have much homework.
AO is fun... I mostly go hunt mobs these days, either solo or with a couple friends. I like the flexibility of MMOGs, and being able to do whatever I like.
Oh, and if you have AO, look me up... my character's name is Arcturio. He's an omni solitus engineer, currently around level 75. I also have a NT around 15 now...
| School | 2/12/2002 3:42 PM PST |
School. What do you think of when you see that word? Lots of work... dull classes... stuff like that. Is it really worth it? Sometimes I wonder why I am required to take classes like history. If you plan to go into computer programming, how will stuff that happened centuries ago help you? Also, what's the point of having loads of homework? I think it's just to make your life miserable. But hey, school is part of my life and I'll just have to deal with it.
It's not like there aren't any good classes... I'll probably take a programming class later, and I'm having a great time in jazz choir. And I suppose math could be helpful with my programming. But you don't exactly use English or Latin for programming. I wish they would accept C++ as the required foreign language.
