Here is where you can find all of the old news from the site. Every once in a while I will add more to the archives from the front page. I can keep it clean and the loading time to a minimum that way.

So I get home from a long hard day of school and work and what do I see, a MSN message griping about how I needed an update. Now I won't point any fingers but I will give names. It was Spellsage! I think there was also something in there about how he prefers to be called Willy Bob or something like that. It wasn't real clear, and I could be making it all up, but I'd call him that just incase.

While I am at it I might as well talk about something. *pauses to think* Ah ha! I'll talk about World of Warcraft (like ya didn't see that coming). Anyhoo I have decided that my human warrior is going to be the coolest warrior ever. He might not be the best in terms of skills but I think he will definitly be unique.

First of all I wanna use a two-handed sword as my primary weapon.. I'm sure this will be common but I think two-handed swords are cool so screw everyone else. For a secondary weapon I wanna use a gun. Not just any gun though, it has to have a scope. The main reason I want one is because it looks cool but I'm sure it'll come in handy at times. Like when I need to pull a monster off of Spellsage or something. Or better yet shoot at small animals while the monster kicks Spellsage's ass. Either way something dies so I'd be happy.

Another thing I wanna do with my warrior is train in herbalism. Basically I'll have a skill to find rare 'herbs' and 'grasses'. Heh heh. I even have a good slogan for my herbalism business. 'If it doesn't knock you on your ass then it's not our grass.' That'll sell some for sure! I also wanna train in alchemy so that I can make potions from the herbs I find. That should be useful for the group and myself.

The best part of my warrior is going to be his point mage hat! This is one of the few times in a fantasy game that I won't be playing a mage so it is only natural that my warrior wears a pointy mage hat. You know, to keep tradition going and stuff. I mean Vivi wears a hat and no one can deny that he is a bad ass. Yzradxs already said that he will get me a pointy mage has as soon as he can, since he is going to be a mage and all, so I have things covered. j00 ph34r t3h |\|0rg3!

As for my mount I have decided that horses are too boring. I mean practically every frickin human is going to have a horse. That and it has been done in every other game. I however, am not going to ride a horse. I am going to ride a war goat! Ok, technically it is a dwarven battle ram but war goat is so much more fun to say. What could be cooler than a big human warrior adorned in full plate armor, wearing a pointy mage hat, coming down the street on the back of a small ram that was bred for a dwarf to ride? That is how you pick up the ladies my friends. heh heh. Oh and since it is gonna be my pet and all I am going to name it after my favorite Diablo II mercinary Waheed. That way if something goes wrong I can say, 'Damnit Waheed!' just like I always do. The plan is genius I tell you!

Of course as I type this I can just picture Willy Bob cringing at the thought of having to group with my rediculous character. He'll be known as the guy in the party with the crazy pointy mage hat, goat riding guy. Mwahahahaha! The fault is all his own though since he told me to do this update. Of course I was planning on doing all that stuff with my warrior anyhoo but I'm still pretty sure it is his fault.

I did something yesterday that I've never really done before. I went to an art museum. It turns out that there was a lot of really neat stuff there. There were tons of paintings and pictures done with all sorts of different styles that were just crazy good. It amazes me how people are able to produce such things. They are truly gifted individuals indeed.

The sculptures were just as good as the pictures. There was this one big head carved out of one huge chunk of wood. It must have taken a ton of time to complete. Another swanky one they had was this huge glass sculpture handing from the ceiling. The glass was curved and bent in all sorts of different directions but they all came together in a big mass of color. I've seen this one guy make the glass sculptures on TV before but I can't remember his name. It is some guy with an eye patch that blows all of the glass by hand. I don't know if they one at the museum was made by him but it looked like the ones I've seen on TV.

The coolest thing was probably the huge barrel though. It was 9 feet in diameter and hung from the ceiling with a rope spanning accross the room underneath it. You could probably fit my entire bedroom inside the thing. It is kind of hard to describe but it was mega cool.

The original reason I went to the museum was because of a Sociology project that is due next week. We're supposed to experience another culture or cultures so the art museum worked out nicely. I could probably write a good length paper just talking about the Buddhist art exhibit they had going. Tons of cultural stuff there. I should get a good paper out of the deal plus I gotta see a bunch of cool art so it all worked out pretty good.

Because IC Games. Just thought I'd mention IC Games while I was thinking of it. Tis a pretty darn good games website run by a guy I semi sorta know on the internet called Coaster. Well I know him because Aranyic knows him but it's all good. Anyhoo there are a lot of game reviews up as well as some previews and other goodies.

A new feature to the site is the IC Games Forums. Coaster is still working on getting some things running so they are a little buggy but it is still a good place to go and talk about games. The best part is that I can get to the Staff Forum. This is kinda weird since I'm the only non-moderator person that can see the staff forum but I'm not complaining.

I did do my part to kinda earn my staff spot though. About a week ago, I did a review of Battlefield Vietnam which was posted on the front page and stuff. It was kinda cool to have something I wrote on the front page of a website. Granted it is not an overly good article but for my first shot at a game review I suppose it isn't too horrible.

Well it is time for me to stop rambling and go study for a networking test I have tomorrow. That is assuming I can manage to resist the urge to play my new Gameboy SP (quite possibly the coolest thing ever!). I mean I can hear Zelda calling my name. It is like the crack cocain of Gameboy games I tell you!

Holy crap! I just finished watching the Spiderman 2 trailer and it looks frickin awesome. I mean the first Spiderman movie was awesome and all but the new one looks like it is gonna be even better. Words can't really do it justice so here is the link to the trailer.

From day one my computer has had a history of overheating. As a matter of fact the first time my computer was started up it overheated. With a new window fan and a few exhaust changes I eventually got it working. It is pretty stable most of the time but the basement gets pretty warm during the summer. This past weekend was no exception.

I guess when one of my roomates got home Sunday my computer was downstairs blairing the high pitched, motherboard beep that indicated that it had overheated. For all we know it could have started Friday night and been doing it all weekend. We're not for sure. I opened it up and cleaned out all of the dust (there was a ton of it) along with turning off folding@home. By doing that I went from 55C to 45C. A 10C drop but mainly because I wasn't runnning folding. At that point I decided something needed to be done about the problem.

Last night I did something I've been wanting to do for a few years now. To start with I decided to order a new case. It is out of stock right now but once it comes in I'm going to buy it. Tis black, of course, with two rear exhaust fans, 2 front intake fans, and a window intake fan. I think it should cool my computer off nicely. But that isn't what I've been wanting to do. It was more of a necessity. What I did next was the fun part.

Since I am going to get a new case I decided that I needed to do it right. I went to www.svc.com and started looking at lights. After it was all said and done I was $30 down but came away with a crap load of awesome stuff for my new case. To begin with I got a blue and red LED fan for the case window. Along with my kick ass high voltage symbol grill cover it'll look sweet. To accompany that fan I bought 3 more bright blue LED fans. They will become the two rear exhaust fans and one of the front intake fans. Aranyic is also letting me have his blue LED Northbridge fan since he is moving all of his computer parts into a mini case. There's gonna be a lot of shiney lights in this case!

After the fans were taken care of I turned to my cables. A quick look inside my case will show that I'm not exactly good at organizing my wires. They are strewn all about in various directions as though a bird built a nest using my power supply and ribbon cables. With my new LED fans I can't have a messy case now can I? I found some kick ass IDE cables to use for my hard drive and CD-ROMS. Instead of being flat like a typical ribbon cable they are the round kind to save space and to look prettier. They are see through red so that you can see all of the individual wires on the ends and the sliver braid encasing them down the rest of the tube. The best part is that they are UV reactive. I bought a 12 inch black light to go inside my case that will cause my cables to glow bright red. It's gonna be so frickin cool!

Needless to say I am darn excited about my new case upgrade. Adding all of the shiney lights and such into my case is something I've wanted to do for a while. Anything shiney or flashy amazes me as much as a little kid so I couldn't help myself. Put a big red button in front of me and I'll have to push it. Tis the law of nature. I think the Red and Blue color scheme will be pretty swanky as well. All of the fans will be blue (aside from the heatsink fan and the one I am going to put behind the hard drive) with bright red cables running through it. I'll be sure to take pictures and post them when I am done. With any luck I'll have it ready by Easter so I can bring it home with me to show off to the family. heh heh.

Well it has been a while since my last update so guess what? I'm going to ramble on for a while about not getting into the World of Warcraft beta. It'll accomplish nothing but it's fun to complain about.

First of all, I should probably explain my attachment to the game. You see for over the past month I have been eat, sleep, breathe World of Warcraft. Ever since they held beta sign ups I have been scrounging every bit of information I can about it. I can ramble on and on about the game for an indefinite amount of time or until someone slaps me in the back of the head and I snap back to reality. I havn't been this excited about a game since I learned about Diablo II. My clan members can vouch for how crazy I was about that game back in the day.

Of course wouldn't you know it that after a month of waiting they send out the beta e-mails and I don't get in. As a matter of fact NOBODY I know got in! I can't even set up camp behind a friends computer and look over their shoulder as they play the darned thing.

You know who did get in don't you? Every single moronic smacktard on battle.net. I mean has anyone read some of the posts in the official forums? The questions and suggestions these people are making are just idiotic. Their dumbassedness offends me greatly. Some of the people who got in hardly know a thing about the game. Others are just smacktards who think that their ideas should win them a frickin nobel prize despite the fact that everyone else tells them it is complete horse crap. It just pains me to read this garbage. Granted there are some good testers in the batch but they could stand a few more.

I know I sound whiney and all but it just bugs the crap out of me when people like that get in and I don't. You could ask me pretty much anything about the game that has been released to the public and I'd be able to give you an answer. I'd submit bug reports, load test, go to designated areas, jump through flaming hoops while juggling chainsaws, and more if they let me in. You know darn well a large portion of those in the beta will never submit a bug report, never participate in tests, and are just there to play the game. It's just anooying.

Well that is all for my rant about not getting into beta. I'm sure if some World of Warcraft fans comes across this site and reads this they'll prolly think I'm just an idiot but I really don't care. I want my beta key and I want it now dangit! heh heh. Oh well, maybe phase 3.

Yeah I'm thinking that I want to start learning php. I've been thinking about what I wanna do for a job and stuff and web design is something that would be fun. With that in mind I have decided to learn php. I really don't know if I'll be taught any php in school so I'll prolly have to learn it on my own though. That is basically how I learned HTML so it should work out fine.

Aranyic has been doing some cool stuff with php on the websites he's made so I think php would be good for this site. Basically the front end won't change at all but the back end will. I want to make it so that I can submit all news and stuff using a form. It would be pretty swanky and make updates a lot easier. I probably won't be doing this any time soon but I hope to learn it eventually. Just thought I'd ramble on about it for a little bit. There are also a few other things I wanna talk about, like my Megatokyo book, but that can wait till later. I don't feel like typing any more right now.

I just finished watching the end of the HBO series Band of Brothers. If you've never heard of it Band of Brothers is a movie series depicting the events of Easy Company during World War II. I must say that it is probably the best series I have ever seen. The creators did an excelent job with the way they tell the story, the overall atmosphere, and feeling that they leave you with. The series is not for the faint of heart as it is very realistic. As a matter of fact the realism is staggering. I can't speak from experience, thank heavens, but I imagine that they hit it right on the nose. I highly suggest this series to anyone and everyone aside from that though. It will give you a deeper sense of respect for our war veterans than you already have.

Guess what I saw yesterday!? That's right a robin! That means spring is coming! w00t! It's finally getting close to time to get back outside and doing stuff again. I mean sure, I love sitting on a computer and all but it gets old after a while. I need to get outside and do stuff! See, I'm not your total stereotypical computer nerd after all. Hopefully once the weather gets nice I can round enough money up to go paintballing or something. I'd use my income tax return but the whorebags who stole my spoiler already spent that for me now that I gotta get my trunk fixed. I guess I'll settle for something cheaper in the mean time like a park or something.

You know what else is cool? I'm done with my English class a week early. We had our in class final easay today so we don't have to go during finals week. I still have to go for my CIS and Business classes but it won't be bad. I even think I'm gonna get a pretty good grade in English. It'll prolly be better than my CIS class even (yeah it doesn't make much sense to me either). English usually isn't my strong point but I've done good on all my essays so far. I've gotten something like 93%, 94%, 96%, and a 98% on the four essays I have gotten grades for. The bulk of our grade is based on those 4 essays and the final which I took today so I should be sittin' pretty.

Let's see... is there anything else I want to say? Well seeing as how everything I have said is pretty boring and useless I guess not. That is what happens when ya get tired and the caffiene hasn't kicked in yet. I'm gonna go play some WarCraft III or something now. That or click the send/receive button in outlook express a million times until I get my World of Warcraft invitation.

My morning definitly didn't go the way I had planned it to yesterday. I got up and stumbled into the bathroom to get ready for class like I usually do. When I came out and started down the stairs Aranyic was getting ready to leave for class himself and informed me that the spoiler had been ripped off of my car. Still groggy from just getting up I put on my coat and went outside to investigate. Sure enough, the spoiler was off the back of my car and all that was left was the broken plastic mountings and the electrical wire that ran to the tail light.

Of course my first reaction was to check out the rest of the car. Surprisingly enough everything was fine. There was no sign of an attempted break in. Just my missing spoiler. I suppose I was pretty lucky in that way seeing as how I forgot to take my CD player face plate in that night. The cuplrits were obvoiusly just after the spoiler. They must have wanted it to sell because I couldn't find it anywhere around the apartment building.

My next thoughts were to call the police and let my insurance company know. I called my dad first though to see what he thought I should do. He told me to do just what I was thinking and told me other information to get from the police. I was also advised to tell the apartment front office as well which turned out to be a good idea since they took down a report as well.

I called the police and the dispatcher was just as amazed about the theft as I was. She thought it was absurd that someone would just rip the spoiler right off the back of a car. None the less she told me that an officer would be out to take down a report. They were busy with a domestic violence dispute that morning so I missed my first class and waiting an hour and a half for an officer to show up. He too marveled at how odd the crime was and was more than happy to make a report for me. The officer was really helpful and gave me all of the information I needed and also asked me if I had any questions. It also turns out he is one of the officers who patrols DeVry parking lots on occasion.

Anyhoo while I was waiting for the police I called the insurance company. I have full coverage on the car but my deductable is $500. That wouldn't be bad for a big accident but it basically means I'm going to have to pay for all repairs myself on this one. I told them that I doubted it would come to over $500 so they didn't even both making an actual claim. They did inform me that if it did come to over $500 I could let them know and they'd cover the rest though. I just hope it doesn't come to that much. My guess is that my income tax refund is already spent. *grumble grumble*

All in all it was a pretty crappy morning. What I don't get is why they picked my car. There are plenty of other cars in this complex decked out with fancy rims and spoilers much nicer than mine. I would think that they could get more money for that stuff. Of course my dad pointed out the fact that parts are hard to come by for older Civics nowadays and they are still popular cars so that could be a reason. Who knows though? That doesn't excuse the fact that it was downright stealing and it is wrong. I'll don't think I'll ever understand some people. I was impressed with how I handled myself though. In the past I would be been absolutely furious and flipping out about the whole thing. Suprisingly enough I was able to keep pretty calm and even joke about it a little. Maybe I am finally accepting the fact that shit happens and you just have to deal with it sometimes. It could be a lot worse.

Anyhoo that was my little adventure for yesterday. Hopefully I'll be lucky and that will be the worst thing that happens to me while I'm here. When ya get right down to it the whole thing was pretty minor. The car is just a material thing that can be replaced. I should just be glad that I have my health and other such good things. I'm really pretty lucky. That still doesn't mean I'm not bitter about the whole thing but I'll deal with it.

I found something rather awesome in the paintball thread I was reading yesterday. It seems there is a huge two day paintball event in Michigan where 1000s of players get to go at it in a war like scenario. It sounds like a blast and I'm considering trying to work my way up there in July when it happens. For more information I suggest checking out this page.

Oh guess what, guess what! I finally got my handheld to sync with my PC again! w00t! For some reason it just kinda stopped syncing a few months ago and fixing it got put on my to do list. The handheld has been working fine it just hasn't been able to sync with the computer. I wasn't without it the entire time but it is nice to have the feature back.

Speaking of my handheld I don't know if I've ever talked about it. How that happened I don't know, since it is one of the coolest things I own, but I'll talk about it now. I've had the thing since about June since I used graduation money to buy it. It is a Dell Axim X5 with a 300mhz processor and 32 MB built in RAM. It doesn't sound like much but considering the fact that it is faster than our first PC it isn't bad. I've also bought some nifty upgrade for it including a spare battery, which I never use since the main has never dropper below 40%, a docking base for recharging and syncing, a 64 MB SD (secure digital) card, and a leather carrying case.

The coolest upgrade by far though is the folding keyboard that attaches to the bottom of the Axim. I swear they pulled it straight out of a James Bond movie or something. It is so frickin cool. In its folded form it is barely larger than the Axim itself and just as slim. When you open it up and pull on the sides the middle part pops up to form a lap top sized keyboard. I spent 10 minutes opening and closing it when I first got it. Heck, that is still what I use it for the most. So cool...

Anyhoo after I got the Active Sync software working I decided that it was time for a new theme. Sure my Final Fantasy VII Cloud Strife background was awesome and all but it wasn't a true theme so I still had half of the Dell logo in the start menu. bleh! I found a website with a ton of themes on it for Windows Pocket PC. I got quite a few good ones including Homer Simpson passed out on the couch and a swanky Diablo II theme. Right now I am using a Mega Tokyo theme but the pissed off looking penguin is looking pretty tempting. I mean how can you not get a laugh from that guy? I suppose I'll just switch back and forth for a while.

Whew! That was some pretty good talkin. I suppose I could talk about how I finished reading RPG World but I could do an entire rant about that. Maybe another time.

So I went to www.battle.net for a quick browse and saw something awesome. It turns out that Blizzard has a few job openings right now and are hiring. The one that caught my eye was Quest Designer. The job would be for Blizzards upcoming MMORPG World of Warcraft. From the sounds of it you would be one of the people designing quest to be implemented into the game during the beta and final phases of development. I've read that they already have 1,400+ quests in the game so they must want to up that number a lot.

I am pretty darn sure that being a quest designer for Blizzard would be the coolest fricking job in the world. I mean think about it. They would be paying me to sit there and come up with all these quests that I would need to develope some sorta of back story for. I already think that coming up with the back stories for stuff is half of the fun of trying to come up with a game. I've spent way more time coming up with that kind of stuff than I have game play ideas. Not only that but I would be working for Blizzard!

Incase you've been living under a rock, completely shielded from the gaming world, then you know that Blizzard is one of the best gaming companies out there. They don't have a single game on their roster that hasn't been a huge success and they are still making more. Working for Blizzard would be above or right beside working for Square Enix on my list of ultra cool jobs I wish I had. Even if I entered as a story person I am sure that I could do coding too once they realized I had the skills.

Of course that brings me to the next thing. Even though the posistion is open and I want it really, really bad, I know that there is no way in the world that I could get it. I meet most of the requirements listed but I don't think they would accept my English skills. The page says to have skills in character dialog and short stories. I have no problem with dialog at all. I think it is pretty easy. It is the whole short story thing that I think they would catch me on. It isn't that I can't come up with the ideas but I am not very good at getting them down on paper. That and I would kinda have to live in Irvine, California. I don't think I could really do that right now.

Well even though I can't get a Blizzard job now maybe I can once I graduate. By then I'll have a lot more skills and they might actually consider me. It is worth a shot after all. Why sit back and not take a shot at my dream job?

It's been several months since I first said that I was going to change the look of the site but I am finally done. I really could have had it done a lot sooner but the whole slacker factor kinda slowed down the process. All of the old news and items have been carried over from the old version aside from the doodle page. No one really used it so I went on ahead and got rid of it. Come to think of it I got rid of the programs page and chat room too... Ok so maybe I did ditch a few things but I think it was all for the better.

In the way of new things there are several. The first change you'll prolly notice is the new color scheme. I liked the old one and all but it was time for a change so with the new design came new colors. I think I came up with something that is easier on the eyes than previous versions. Another thing you might see is the Random Stuff section off to the right. The name pretty much says it all and you can just skip over and read more about it there. The navigation system for the site has also changed a lot. I did away with frames completely and went with an attached navigation bar. It works just the same as the old nav bar only it is at the top of each page instead of the side. I kinda liked the style so I went with it. There are also a lot of minor changes and tweaks that I've made but there is no need to go into detail about them.

Well there you have it. An all new site design for you to view and enjoy (hopefully). As much as I'd like to be a perfect coder I'm not so if you see any flaws, misspellings, or broken links please let me know and I'll get it fixed.

There is also a new song on the jukebox page. I've added the Nickelback song 'Do This Anymore' along with its lyrics. It is from their latest CD and one of my favorites. Tis one that they played at a concert I went to a few years ago. Of course back then they weren't sure if they were going to use it or not but I'm glad that they did. Anyhoo it is there for you to listen to.

Just thought I'd post a quick link to an awesome yoyo video that was posted on the Short-Media forums. It is definitly worth a watch. Those Japanese have the 1337 y0y0 skillz.

Yes, yes, the to do list. Ain't it great? Anyone who has been around me for long enough has probably heard me make mention of this wonderful little device. Basically it boils down to anything that I don't feel like doing at the moment and most likely won't ever get done. A good example of this would be the contact list I have been wanting to add to my PDA since May of 2003. I see it every time I check the notes on my handheld but it never gets done. That would require work.

You remember the site redesign right? Well I think it has sorta made it's way onto the to do list. Now before you give me a lot of flak, which I probably deserve, hear me out. Not only did I get Sim City 4 and Halo for Christmas but I also made it 99.9% through Final Fantasy X. I didn't exactly beat it all the way but I got to the insanely hard end boss who I couldn't beat, got ticked off, and downloaded the ending cinematics. Sure they were in Japanese but the body language kinda explained most of it. I'll beat it eventually once I level up some just so that I can say I've done it but for now I am content. It's on my to do list (see a perfect example!). Anyhoo I seem to have wavered off topic.

Seeing as how I beat Final Fantasy X, (practically) and had a wad of cash from Christmas, I thought it was only fitting to go out and buy Final Fantasy X-2. Sure it kinda has some girliness to it (with the garment grids, dress spheres, and all) but I couldn't resist the urge to see how the FFX story continued on after the end of the game.

I can't help it but I am a Final Fantasy nut. Some play for the battles, mini games, and challenge of beating the bosses but I play for the story. The main reason my characters are too weak to beat FFX is because I did as little fighting as possible so that I could just skip to the storyline aspects of the game. You really need to play a Final Fantasy game all the way through to truly understand why I feel the way I do about these games but they are just awesome. Final Fantasy X is no exception with its stunningly beautiful artwork, intuitive battle system, and a story line that takes you in hook, line, and sinker. It would be my ultimate dream to some day work for Square Enix and be the first American to direct a Final Fantasy game. At least to my knowledge I'd be the first American.

Back to Final Fantasy X-2. Despite all of the girly stuff it is a really good game so far. Once you get past the fact that you choose clothes (dress speheres) from template known as a garment grid the battles are really fun. Yuna gets an awesome skill called Trigger Happy that lets you shoot as many bullets as you can by pressing R1 during a certain amount of time. By adopting Final Fantasy VII's Active Battle system style it adds new flavor to the FFX system. The game is also really open ended since you get an ariship from the bigging and can go anywhere in Spira. There are certain places you can go to progess the story but aside from that you are free to do as you wish.

I suppose what I am getting at here is that the new website design is going to be put off for a little while. With all of my new games, namely FFX-2, I am going to find it hard to get motivated enough to code. I still want to get it done fairly soon since I am just plain ready for a change but for now, it's on my to do list.

Wow this is a really long post. Oh and if it looks wierd I apologise. I've been doing some essays in English and it seems that I need to work on dividing my thoughts into paragraphs better than I have been. My English teacher wasn't too happy with the three huge paragraphs that I turned in for my midterm. He thought they could have been broken into about five or six. Since I wanna get better at my writing I figured this is as good a place as ever to practice. Who knows, maybe someday you might even be able to understand what I am talking about?

Hey I was checking some site stats and I just realized that the website is three years old now. On December 23, three years ago, I started this website. It was from that point that I started to teach myself HTML and fell in love with programming. Here's to 3 years of pointless ramblings and coding experiments!

Yeah that's right. ARRRRRRRRRRRR!!! It's what pirates say! Anyhoo I just got done watching Pirates of the Caribbean. Man that is one heck of a good movie. When it was out in theaters I heard people say it was really good but I never got a chance to go and see it. The people I talked to weren't lying. It wasn't what I thought it would be though. I figured it would be all serious with a bunch of action. Well it has plenty of action but it was pretty humerous more so than serious. Plus it was about pirates! I mean really, does it get any cooler than pirates? Yeah it does! There are zombie pirates too! Zombie Pirates! Comedy, action, and lots of zombie pirates. What more can ya ask for?

I am still working on the new site design for those of you still wondering. The thing is that I am kinda lazy and havn't worked on it in a while. Since I am overly picky about how I want things it is going to take longer than I thought. I was originally going to copy and paste a template that I made for the about page for the rest of the pages and be done with it after a few quick edits. Well after I got to looking at it I figured out that it just wouldn't look right. Thus I am going to do every page individually so it will prolly take a while. Of course it'll only take me one night of motivation to get it done but there is no telling when that will happen. I did come up with a lot of new ideas in school and at work today that I want to try in the future though. Just ignore the fact that I was thinking of web design ideas all day instead of paying attention to real life and it's all good.

On that same note I also came up with some ideas for 'The Adventures of D'. You know, the game Yzradxs is working on over at Demonoligy. I'll be sending those ideas later. Not right now. I'm tired now and want to go to bed.

Sadly enough it is a little after 9:30 am and I've already been to class and back. On the upside the day has gone pretty good so far. The English quiz wasn't too hard and he gave us a writing assignment afterwards. The assignment wasn't for a grade but surprisingly enough I still spent 30 minutes on it and made it a page long with 12 pt font. A Columbus Dispatch (newspaper in these parts) journalist sent an e-mail to DeVry asking for ideas involving imaginary technology. Well I doubt dearly my English professor wanted a paper as long as mine but he left himself wide open giving me a topic like that. Of course if you know me you probably already know what my paper was. Yes, that's right, a full page of pure nonsense! I came up with a hat that instantly teleports you anywhere. It cost $5059.95 (or 253 payments of $19.99) and has all sorts of cool flashy lights and stuff. The best part is that it has a built in waffle iron! w00t! So in the end I doubt my professor wanted a paper that long, in the form of a TV commercial, which is the wrong form, but at least he might get a laugh out of it.

Like I said before, I went to see the Matrix Revolutions last night at an IMAX theater. I'll be the first to tell you that seeing the Matrix at an IMAX is awesome. They have 12,000 Watts of power going through the speakers and it kicks ass! That and the screen is 5 stories tall and it feels like the screen is wrapping itself around you. Really swanky if you ask me.

The movie was kick ass as well. I won't go into much detail incase some people havn't seen it yet but I will say a few things. First of all you need to go see it. It is great. There will be quite a few surprises that you might not see coming but you'll get over it, maybe. Of course there is plenty of good action and those huge mech robots get to shoot the crap outta stuff. I want one so bad! I mean they get so many style points for their awesomeness it ain't funny. I guess there isn't a whole lot more I can say without giving things away so I'll stop now. You really need to see it for yourself.

Lastly I'd like to let ya know what's going on with making my new site design. Don't be expecting it at any certain time because I've decided I am just going to take my time with it until I get things how I like it. So far I am making good progress figuring out how to apply my style sheet to the tables. I probably could have had the site finished this weekend but Friday at work I came up with a new idea I am going to try. I want to be able to run my navigation table from the style sheet so that I can update the links on all of the pages at once. Using the method I was going to use each new link would have had to be added individually and it would have been a royal pain. I really don't know how to do the whole style sheet table thing but I'll figure it out eventually. Until then I'll be working on my testpages trying to get it finished.

Well I just got back from Matrix Revolutions and it was a pretty dang good movie. The ending was not what I had expected but it was still good. I'm pretty tired now so I'll talk a little more about it tomorrow.

Holy geeze it's been a while since I've posted anything. Eh that's what happens when you are a slacker and finals are taking place. Oh yeah finals were last week! I don't think I did too bad either. Psychology was pretty easy since it just covered the last chapter we did. Even then it was easier cause it was actually mental disorders and stuff so it was actually interesting and not as bland as the rest. Math was well, math. Can't say a whole heck of a lot aside from that. I took the test and I'm crossing my fingers that I did good. I studied some so it should be aight. There was no need for me to take my CIS final since the lowest test score drops. Even if I had got 100% on my final it wouldn't have helped my grade nor will it hurt me since I didn't take it. Basically I end with an A in the class so it's all good. Lastly was my stupid Critical Thinking class. Of all the pointless, no good... Oh! Back to the exam. It really wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I say I at least managed to get a B on it. It is worth 25% of the grade in that class so I should be sittin pretty high on the hog. With all of my exams out of the way my first trimester of college is over. College isn't as bad as people make it out to be. Takes a little hard work but nothing it ain't so bad. I'm sure it will get plenty harder but I'm not gonna worry bout it now.

Of course I suppose you are saying to yourself, "Well Norge, we really don't care about your boring ass life so where the heck is that new site design?" You see, the thing about that is, SHUT UP! I'm really not doing too bad with the new site design. Actually the new design is finished. I have it 85% applied to the main page which is obviously the hardest page to apply it to so all I need to do is fix the rest of the pages up before I go live with it. I'm picky about making sure things are perfect with my coding and stuff so nothing will go up until I am sure it will work. Sometime after I get the new design going I want to get into photoshop and create a nice title image and some headers. That way the entire thing won't be just plain text. So that's what is going on with the new site design. I'll prolly work on it a little tonight also since I'm in the programming mood.

So I guess that is enough talk for now. Talk is cheap so I'm gonna start working on stuff now.

Yeah it might be a wise idea to stay off the roads today. My little sister finally got her drivers liscense. She just called a few minutes ago from the DMV to tell me that she passed. She was really nervous about the manuverability portion of the test but she aced it. She only lost 5 points on the road driving for making too wide of a turn. Despite having always joking about her driving I guess I'm proud of her. Spooky that both of us have a liscense now though.

Yeah I am tired of trying to come up with colors for the new website design. I've worked on it for hours and have gotten no where so far. Since I really want to get the new design up and running I think I am just going to go with the current colors until I can pick out some better ones. Who knows when that will be but at least the new design will be active.

Well I have a decent design going for the website. You can see it on testpage4 if you wanna see my progress. Right now I am trying to figure out what colors I want to use. It isn't as easy as it sounds either since I can't decide. When I am done the colors will prolly still suck but oh well. I am not sure when I will be able to finish the new design and actually go live with it. Chance are it might not be until this weekend. The internet is going to be on and off for us during the next few days here at the apartment. I can't work on the site unless the internet is up obviously so that is going to delay things. that's all the yammering I want to do for now. The new design will get done eventually.

Well I sat down and starting making a sketch of how I want the site to look. I think I have a pretty good idea of what I want. It is just a matter of figuring out how to do it and actually doing it. Right now it is a pretty good design. Well maybe it isn't so great but it is one I am happy with. I am barrowing features I've seen from other sites and kind of combining them. Once it is finished I think you will like it. It will be fairly easy to navigate, look good, and still maintain a simple design. Don't look for me to be finished any time soon but if you want to see how I am doing you can always check the test pages.

Iono about you but I am thinking that it is time for a change in the website's design. It's been about 9 months since I've did a total redesign so I guess it is about time. It's not that I am not happy with this design but I'd like something with a little more flavor. I just want some images or at least borders and things to make it look better. Right now it is a little too rigid since you can tell it is done with all html and no images aside from good ol Vivi up top.

As of now I only have a few very basic ideas with what I want to do next. For the most part I am not even sure how to do the things I want to try. I'm at the step now where I am doing rough sketches on paper to try and figure out a good user interface. The design I am going for needs to be simple, functional, and of course look good. It might be some time before I decide on the new design let alone implement it. I guess for now I'll go back to my sketches and try and figure something out.

As you might have noticed I have neglected to update the site over the past week. I'd like to give you a good excuse as to why I didn't do anything but the truth is I just don't have one. I've been pretty darn addicted to Planetside lately so most of my free time has been going towards that. I can't help it. First person shooters are starting to grow on me. I want to get to the point that people send me hate tells whenever I kill them. You see to them they think they are pissing me off. I'd take it as a compliment if I got hate tells for killing an enemy. It just tells me that I'm doing my job right. I get hate tells now but that is from when I kill friendlies. I don't exactly plan on killing them most of the time but some times they just deserve it for being morons.

I guess something else that kept me from updating this week is that I was scouting out parts for my dad's new computer. His current computer is getting really slow and there are all sorts of things wrong with it so he told me to build him a new one. I finally finished finding all of the parts the other night and let me tell you that thing is going to be a beast. It is better than the computer I built for myself plus it is going to cost about $100 less. Tis going to be a sad day when I have to give it up to my dad. I forgot how much fun picking out parts for a computer is. Makes me wish I actually had some money to build myself a new one. I mean I wouldn't go crazy but I think I'd like to have another just to fiddle around with over clocking and that kinda stuff. Oh well.

You know what? Staind's new CD is pretty damn good. This is the first time I've actually sat down and listened to it. On top of having the songs I already liked on it there are a few others that I am kinda fond of. I suggest it to anyone looking for a new CD. Definitly gets my seal of approval.

Let's see, I guess that is enough randomness for now. Maybe I can head on over to Demonoligy and come up with some new suggestions for Yzradxs's game. I'm sure I can come up with something.

Yeah I really don't feel like making the update tonight so I am putting it off until tomorrow. If you are wondering the song I am going to use is 'Do This Anymore' off Nickelback's new CD 'The Long Road'. Hopefully I'll have time to work on the site so you can listen to it.

I prolly won't be able to get the new song up until tonight or maybe tomorrow night. I was going to do it this morning but I studied for about and hour and ran into problems when I went to copy the songs off my CD to my computer. I had forgotten that I uninstalled Musicmatch Jukebox and switched over to Winamp. Well I use Musicmatch to get songs off of CDs so I had to reinstall it. After that it started being a pain and I am just now getting the songs on my computer. I have to leave for work in about 20 minutes so I don't have time to update the site now. I'll try to get it done tonight or tomorrow.

I just got back from Best Buy where I bought Nickelback's new CD and Staind's latest CD. It is a given that I am listening to the Nickelback CD right now though. I've only listened to one song and half of another but I can already tell it is kick ass. I'm pretty happy that they put 'Figured You Out' on the CD too. I heard it a year or two ago at one of their concerts. Back then it was just something they were playing around with but it was still good. They musta realized how much the fans liked it. I also just realized they have another song from the concert. It is called 'Do This Anymore'. It really kicks ass that they put this one on the CD. There have been times since the concert where I've just had parts of it stuck in my head but never really knew the lyrics. I could never figure out what song it was either when looking on the websites and no one else remembered from the concert.

I plan on picking one of the songs from the CD for the jukebox page tomorrow. Don't worry it will be something aside from 'Someday'. Not that 'Someday' is a bad song but I've already had it up. I will replace the current version of 'Someday' with the CD version. The quality will be much better. Anyhoo I am tired of typing and wanna focus more on the lyrics... errr I mean finish studying (like we don't know what I'm really gonna do). Well 'Someday' just came on. I was right, the quality is so much better. I'll get it up for your tomorrow hopefully.

It's true isn't it? I mean why do something when you can just be a slacker and either A. Do it really half assed, or B. Don't do it at all. They both work pretty well. Tonight I kinda did a little from column A and a little from column B. You see I was four sections behind on my math homework so I figured I should do some. It seemed like a good idea at the time until ³/₄ of the way through the first assignment. At that point I decided that I really didn't feel like doing math any more but a trudged on. After that I only made it through the second assignment. Math is just so boring. So now I'm only two sections behind! Woo hoo! ph34r m3 1337 m4+h $ki||z! Gotta love being a slacker. It's so much more fun that not being a slacker.

Ok so I am going to completely go against myself but I can't help it. I have decided to try and become fluent in 1337 (leet). For those of you who don't know 1337 is a computer language used by gamers using letters, numbers, and symbols. Up until now I have always hated the language but it is starting to grow on me. Thus I am going to try and become fluent in it so I can be a 1337 |>00|> (leet dude).

Oh and I'm sorry Spellsage. I know you're gonna hate me for it but I'll try not to use it around you too much. You could always come over to the darkside along with me though. We could coordinate our pking in World of Warcraft by speaking nothing but 1337. No one will be able to understand us unless they are also as 1337 as we are. Mwahahahaha! Of course I don't see that happening so I might as well just say I am sorry and hope ya don't drive clear up here to Ohio and kick my ass. Heh heh. j00 ph34r |>@ |\|0r93!

Ok so I've been out surfing the net looking at web comics tonight and it has me wanting to make some of my own again. As you already know my big limitation is my utter lack of art skillz. Of course I did have fun doodling in my critical thinking class the other day. I had Bob the stick man and the gun he used to kill all the stupid story people in the exercise (trust me if you had to do the exercise you would agree with how crazy stupid the people are). Then I drew Bob a car so he could drive to the Pizza Hut that I drew for him at the top of the page. After Pizza Hut Bob needed a place to live so I drew him a house. Then I drew FedEx so he had a place to work along with one of the evil FedEx trucks.

But anyhoo back to the point! I was wondering if anyone knows of a website that teaches how to make game sprites. I don't mean anything fancy. More like the original Gameboy graphics. If you've ever looked really close at a Gameboy screen all images are really just dot matrix. You know, the little bitty dots that when put together make a nice picture. I think I could actually pull something like that off. Now I don't mean the big fancy pointalism stuff. That's too hard and requires patience. Gameboy dot matrix should be easier. I mean look at Link from Zelda: Link Awakening. The top of his head is like 5 dots across and he is about 10 dots tall. His sword is composed to two rows of about 4 dots spaced 1 dot apart with a dot at the top to form the swords point. I could come up with characters that only require a minimal amount of dots like that! I just kinda need a way to learn. If nothing else I'll get out my old GameBoy (yeah I have the original and it r0xx0rz!) and study it. If you know of any good sites like that let me know.

New song on the Jukebox page! Woo hoo! After being up for about a month or so I finally took down Nickelback's 'Someday'. It can still be downloaded from the music page but will no longer be on the jukebox page. I do think you will enjoy the new song though. It is called 'So Far Away' by Staind. It is an all around good song so I felt it was worthy of the featured jukebox position. I know I sure like it a lot. I'm even thinking about buying the CD. Anyhoo the new song is up for you to listen to and enjoy. It can be downloaded from the music page and the lyrics are right where you'd expect them.

Well I just got back from dropping my car off at the dealership. They are going to put a spoiler on it, fix my tail pipe, and service it for me. They are paying for it all too since it is stuff they should have done ahead of time. The tail pipe is my biggest concern since it vibrates and annoys the crap out of me. I just hope they take good care of my baby. Anyhoo back to the point. Ok so I havn't had a point up until this point so I guess I'll make one. I have a new song picked out for the jukebox page so I think I'll be putting it up this weekend. 'Someday' has had a good run on the jukebox page and I've been getting 4-10 hits a day for people looking for it. I'll still keep it on the downloads page but I really want to put a new song up. Just thought I'd let ya know what I'm planning.

Today is the 8th eh? I didn't really know what day it was till I went to put in the date for this post. Well anyhoo not much has been going on. I did as little as possible this weekend and it was great. I stayed in Columbus for the first weekend since I moved up here. Didn't really do a whole lot aside from finding a park and walking around in it. There was the biggest bee I've ever seen there though! I swear that thing was 2 inches long and about as big a round as a quarter. It was huge I tell ya! I be it could have punctured a car tire if it stung it. I was afraid for my life!

The other thing I did over the weekend was play Planetside. I'm not talking about for an hour or so either. I mean I played it from 6:00 pm Saturday night until 3:00 am Sunday morning. The funniest part is that I didn't even level once. Aranyic and I just goofed off the entire time. We decided to be total jerks and start taking out power to enemy bases. The Terrans owned every base on a continent and had already left it so we started blowing up power generators. By doing that they would still own the bases but they wouldn't be able to spawn at them. Heh heh. Being a total pain in the neck is fun at times. The funniest thing is that despite being the only two people on the continent we still managed to die on a regular basis. We kept running over land mines with the ATVs we just trained in.

Speaking of the Planetside ATVs we came up with the best idea ever last night! We were goofing off last night and decided to race our ATVs around the New Conglomerate Sanctuary. Well I got my ass kicked since I ran into too many trees and my ATV exploded but it was tons of fun! After that we set up waypoints on one of the fairly round continents and had a race. Now if you've ever played Planetside then you know that continents are huge. I bet it took us close to 10 minutes to make a single lap around the continent. Also take into account that ATVs are the fastest land vehicles in the game. Twas a ton of fun though! We decided that we are going to try and organize some races with other people. Start off with 9 people races and work our way up. I think people will really like it. After it catches on we might even be able to get the other two empires to stop shooting at us and join in the races as well. A good time will be had by all. Of course we already know the key to winning. You have to train in engineering to be any good. That way if your ATV takes too much damage from big jumps or running into trees you can repair it. We will rule the Planetside Racing circuit!

Oh and I also did a Windows XP repair today. I think it might help out a little bit. I didn't really want to reformat my entire computer so a repair seemed like a safe bet. All I had to do was reinstall all of my device drivers. I think it might even help my video too. There are a ton of new options in my video settings that were not there before. I am thinking that those problems might be what are causing my computer to restart on random intervals and kick me out of games. I guess I'll have to play some Planetside to figure it out.

Well that was a lot of typing and if you are reading this now I applaud you for sticking with my pointless rambling for so long. I just felt like typing some stuff and what better place to do it than the website! Ok maybe I could have just typed it in note pad and saved you all a big headache but what fun would that be? You're the one to blame if you actually read this far. Mwahahahaha! Ok I'm done rambling now... sorta kinda... yeah... wololo!

Oh yeah! And since I yammered on about Planetside for so long here are my stats if you want to look at them.

Yeah I've been wanting to make some sort of update all weekend but got side tracked somewhere around my 8th hour of Planetside Saturday night. Then today I was just lazy and had to do some psychology homework. Anyhoo I'll hopefully get around to it tomorrow.

It has been a while since I've updated the jukebox page but I have a pretty good reason. It seems as though there are a lot of people out there looking for the new Nickelback song 'Someday'. I've been getting a lot of hits from various search engines that bring people to this site. Anyhoo since I kind of like seeing new people visit my site I am going to leave 'Someday' up on the jukebox page for a while longer. I might even leave it up there until Nickelback's new CD comes out on September 23. After that people will have better access to the song and there will be no real need for me to keep the song up. Just wanted to let ya all know what is going on.

If you saw the scrolly thingy above you know that I have a new car. Woo hoo! I've been talking about getting a new car for a few weeks now, since no one is sure how much longer my truck will last me, but I never expected to get it so soon. My dad and I went to Bellefountaine since they have a good used Honda lot just to look. I wasn't really planning on buying a new car at that moment but it kinda happened. The first car I was going to test drive was being sold already so I went to the next oldest car they had. It just so happened to be a 1996 Honda Civic. Well I took it for a test drive and loved it. It accelerates fast, has a sun roof, power mirrors, power windows, cruise control, AC, and all sorts of swanky stuff. Anyhoo it is now my car. I don't have it yet since I had to get insurance details worked out but my dad is going to pick it up for me today. I should be able to get it this weekend or possibly Wednesday. Oh and the best part is that it is red! It just looks fast. Tis so pretty. Anyhoo I guess I am done rambling about it now. Maybe I'll take a picture of it to put up when I get it.

There are two big test coming up and they both happen to be tomorrow. I have both Psychology and CIS exams which I need to study for. That is what I am getting ready to do. As a matter of fact this yammering is basically a way to putting studying off. So far it seems to be working pretty good. I mean I'm typing, you'll be reading this eventually (as pointless as it may be), and studying is being pushed ever farther back. The plan is working perfectly! Mwahahahaha! Well... I guess I've stalled long enough. Better go study now.

wololo! Yeah that's right... wololo! And don't you forget it.

Hey typing that took another 30 seconds or so. Damn I'm good.

Hey people how's it going? Ummm... I'm working on a new song. Well there is not much to work on really aside from putting it up. I know what song I am going to use and everything cause my old friend Yzradxs asked for one in particular. The reason I have not done it yet is because I am tired. Not only that but today is my 19^th bithday and I wanted to relax tonight. And... I'm tired. So that's why there won't be an update tonight. Maybe tomorrow night if I get motivated. I'm going to bed now.

We were driving back to the apartment from FedEx the other day and something caught my ear. I could barely hear it due to driving down the interstate with the windows down but I heard a song. I thought to myself, 'What the hell? Is that Nickelback?' I didn't figure it was since it has been so long since their last single. Well on the way home from Columbus for the weekend I heard the song again. Sure enough it was Nickelback. They have released a new single entitled 'Someday' and it is a kick ass song. It is from their new CD 'The Long Road' which should be in stores September 22, 2003. You know damn well I'll have it that very day too!

Anyhoo there is a reason I rambled on about Nickelback's new song. Ok maybe a few reasons but I have my reasons damnit! The first reason being that they are a kick ass group and I am excited that they are finally releasing a new single and CD. The second reason is that if it were not for Nickelback I would still be spelling the word 'nickel' wrong (nickle). Lastly I have placed their new single 'Someday', along with its lyrics, on the jukebox page for your streaming enjoyment. The song is also on the music page if ya wanna download it. The downside right now is that it isn't the best quality. I mean it sounds good and all but it is taken off of the radio so the beggining and end are not quite right. I also had to do the lyrics by myself since I couldn't find them anywhere else. They might not be exactly right but they are pretty close. Anyhoo stop reading this and go listen to it now!

Oh yeah and if you try to find some of the other songs that have been announced from 'The Long Road' you might have problems getting them. There are many people on Kazaa who have them but when you play the song it is really just the song 'Too Bad'. I was actually lucky to find 'Someday'. Just thought I'd let ya know.

My first college exam was yesterday and it was in psychology. Needless to say I was rather worried about it and all since psychology isn't exactly an easy subject. A lot of my day Sunday was spent studying for the exam and it payed off. I got all psi chi on that exam's ass! I got the highest grade in the class with a 98%. I was pretty surprised to score so high but I'm not gonna argue. The question I missed was even one I could have gottten if I had read it more carefully. Hopefully I can do that well on my next exam Thursday. It is for my CIS 211 class and might be pretty difficult. I'll just have to make sure that I study for it instead of playing games or something.

This update is for Kat Norris-Lombardo. A few days ago she left a post in the guestbook requesting a song that was her and her husbands in the 70s. Unfortunatly her husband passed away a month ago and she has had problems finding the lyrics for the Harry Nilsson song 'Without You'.

I'd like to say that I am sorry for your loss Kat and even though I can't really make you feel better I was able to find the lyrics you requested. Along with that I have also made 'Without You' the current song on the jukebox page. Lyrics for the song can be found there and the actual lyrics page. If you would like to download the song you can do so from the music page. Once again I am very sorry to haer about you loss and hope that you enjoy the lyrics and music.

Ok remember how I was ranting and raving about the changes to Bravenet earlier? Well it turns out they were not as bad as I thought. Sure the counter service still isn't as nice as it was but the rest of the improvements have been pretty good for the most part. The improved forums are pretty nice if I say so myself and I like the new navigation systems. As you might be able to tell the 'Back to Website' buttons on the services are still on the fritz. For some reason it won't let me update my Bravenet services so I can't fix the problem. I am currently trying to get help on that and will get it fixed ASAP. In conclusion I jumped to conclusions when Bravenet made their updates. They really were not as bad as I made them out to be. Oh and I might bring the bravenet counter back. Sure it might not look as pretty but I miss the nice tracking features built in.

I just moved into my apartment in Columbus. The computer is set up as you can see and things are going fairly well. School starts tomorrow so I am not really sure how things will work yet but I hope they will go ok. I'll work on the site whenever I get the chance and try to finish getting rid of all of those bravenet problems.

Oh and for those of you who have been using my teamspeak server I no longer have access to that. The computer I was running it on is at home so I can't get to it. I am going to try and see if I can run both teamspeak and the games on this computer at the same time. I hope that it will work since I have a good amount of RAM and all. Right now I am running 1 GB or RAM since I think I have singled out my bad stick. If I were to get bakc up to 1.5 GB of RAM I see no reason why teamspeak couldn't be ran with games. well that is all for now. Thought I'd let ya know what was going on.

It will be a little while before the site is fully working again. Bravenet has totally fucked me over on this one. Not only did they mess up the counter but their service editor is totally screwed up. I am trying to go through and fix the linking problems but it only saves my changes half of the time. Sometimes the changes work and sometimes they don't. Right now I can't really do much to fix the site until Bravenet gets their damn act together. Today is the last day I'll have a chance to work on the site for a while too since I am moving to Columbus Saturday and school starts on Monday. I'll try to get it fixed when I get the chance.

Can ya tell this is pissing me off just a little bit?

I did some searching and I was able to find a good hit counter to use. The design is pretty nice and it is compact. I got the counter from bCentral and have seen it on a lot of other websites. Hopefully it will prove to be reliable.

Well you might have noticed that not everything on the website is working. The forum is down, the cartoon of the day has changed, and the counter is now a piece of crap with built in ads. What is the cause of all this? Bravenet has finally became like most all other webmaster sites and are only providing decent services for those who pay per month. Now users who have depended on them for free web tools and have displayed their ads on their sites are given the shaft. The forum should stay the same as well as the cartoon of the day and chat room but the counter is going to have to change. I am no longer able to have anything but that crappy text counter with the ads that you see below. If I wanted to use images I would have to pay a fee. It really dissapoints me because over the years I have suggested Bravenet to many people. Now they have made all of these changes and are shunning those long time members who simply wanted a few tools for their personal sites. I can see where they would want to charge for their services but not everyone can pay just for personal sites and clan web sites. The worst part is that they never gave me any notice nor do I know anyone else who recieved notice of these changes. I guess I will just have to try and find another service to provide my counter. I will continue to use Bravenet for their forums and guestbooks but the counters are now worthless.

Well it only took me about two months but I think I finally found the problem I've been having with my 3D games. The problem seems to be with my RAM. I've been running one stick of 512 for about a week and it seems to be doing fine. There have only been a few minor freezes but I think that is because of the games and not my system. All games freeze every now and then anyhoo. I need to test my other two sticks of 512 MB RAM so that I can find which one is bad though.

Aside from getting my 3D games working right I also got Teamspeak up and running. For those of you who don't know, Teamspeak is a voice chat service designed primarily for video games. It uses low amounts of bandwidth and allows players to talk to each other while playing games. I finally looked into it and now have my own Teamspeak server running. Well it really isn't a server. It's just my old computer but by running nothing but Teamspeak it does a pretty good job at handling the voice chat. Since a lot of my friends have Battlefield 1942 now we are gonna be able to kick some major ass using Teamspeak. Talking in real time using headsets instead of interrupting gameplay to type will really help out.

I know I prolly won't have much time for it but I think I am going to add a new page to the site. Anyone who has talked to me recently knows that I am currently addicted to the game Battlefield 1942 despite the fact that it crashed almost every 30 minutes. Anyhoo I think I want to add a page about the game. Nothing really fancy. Just something to have fun with. The main features will be 'Things I've hit with a jeep', 'Smacktard of the Week/Month', 'Battle stories', 'Norge's battlefield lingo', and of course various screenshots of funny stuff I run into during play. Hmmmm... This is actually the most thought I've given to the new page so far. I think I can have some fun with this idea. Maybe get some fancy backgrounds, images, and use some of those old HTML tricks I learned in school but never use. Expect this page to come anywhere from within the next few days to a few weeks. When I get in a creative mood it is hard telling how long it will last or what will come of it. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Graduation is over and I'm finally starting to get a little bit of time to sit down to the computer. I have some things to do still but I plan on adding my reminder program to the site pretty soon. When I get around to doing it I will add it to the programs page and prolly boot that old volume program that is on there now. Anyhoo I just thought I'd give ya a little update so ya know what's up.

Today is graduation. It is the day we have been looking forward to for years yet never thought would actually come. Today marks the start of a new life for everyone in the class of 2003. After today we start our lives as adults and venture into the real world. Everyone is a little scared but there is really nothing to fear. Each person has their own strengths and abilties. Our futures are unpredictable yet we all have the potential to make them whatever our hearts desire. It has been a long trip to get here. Many days spent in school willingly or unwillingly gaining the education we need to be successful. All that aside there have been many good times, many memories, and many treasured moments. I'm glad to say that my trip through school has been a fairly good one. Sure I was never the most popular kid nor the most social but that really doesn't matter. A lot of times I find myself thinking about how things could have been had I done them differently. I think about how, if I wanted to, I could have been more popular. I could have been more active in school. I could have had more fun. Of course I then realize that there really isn't anything wrong with how I've led my life. I have a supporting family who has never lost faith in me and a group of friends I wouldn't trade for anything in the world. I have many good memories and have had many good times so there is not much more I can ask for. I just wish the best of luck to all my friends and classmates as we each start our new lives. May your future be bright and your heart ever focused on your dreams.

Well I hope you didn't mind my little speech about graduation. I know it really isn't like me to talk in such a way but it was something that I wanted to say. I just hope that I can keep in touch with all my friends after we all go our separate ways. I think we should try and pick a forum to visit on a regular basis to talk and share some conversations. I'll gladly use my forum as a gathering place for us all if everyone wants to. If you rather not use my forum I can always create another for the soul purpose of talking to each other. I just thought that since most my friends have my site address and a few visit on a regular basis we could use my forum. You know, as a place to leave each other messages and stuff. I also have that chat room too if we ever want to get a real time conversation going. Just thought I'd throw those ideas out to ya.

As requested I have added some songs to the website. First of all, the song 'Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)' by Green Day has been added to both the jukebox page (complete with lyrics) and the music page. This song was requested on the forum and on top of that it is our class song. Thus I felt it should have the honor of being displayed on the jukebox page. The other two songs that have been added to the site are 'Headstrong' by Trapt and 'Tomorrow' by SR-71. 'Headstrong' was also requested on the forum and it is a kick ass song so it is up for all to enjoy. I put 'Tomorrow' up just because I wanted to. If you listen to the lyrics it is a really good song and kinda goes along with the whole graduation thing. You know, with talking about not fearing tomorrow and all. Well there are plenty of new songs up for you to listen to. Hopefully you will enjoy them and if there are any broken links let me know. Tis the first time in a while I've done an update so I might be a little rusty.

Well things are finally starting to wind down. After thirteen years of school there are only three days left. I guess I am finally starting to accept the fact that it is almost over. Tonight was the senior awards night and things went really well. To start with I recieved my plaque for having high honors for all four years of high school. It was also announced to everyone that I had won the Rotary Club Scholarship of $1000. While I am at it I would like to give a big thanks to the Rotary Club for presenting me with such an honor. Sure the odds are that none of them will ever read this site but I still want to acknowledge them and show my appreciation. Aside from the scholarship I also recieved my honor cords along with my top ten medallion. I finished in a five way tie for ninth in my class with a final cumulative GPA of 4.0. It was kinda cool since they had a power point presentation with all of the top ten students on it. Each one had a baby picture, elementary picture, and a senior picture. Of course my mom and sister picked two of my more embarrassing pictures but it's all good. All in all it was a very good night. Despite all of the complaining I do about school I think I am kinda going to miss it. Of course college starts in July so I get a fresh start and plenty of good things are yet to come!

As you might have noticed I havn't updated the site in a while. I've decided that I am going to take a break from updating the website on a regular basis. Things have been pretty busy lately and I havn't really been in the mood to work on the website. I'll prolly have an update every now and then but don't expect updates as often as I used to make them. Maybe once things calm down and I get back into the web programming mood I'll start making more frequent updates. Until then there probably won't be a lot.

Tonight was the last choir concert for our high school seniors. While I can't say I am talented enough to be in the choir, I was there anyhoo. A friend of mine, Adam Hawk who's page you might reconize from the links sesction, gave me the honor of presenting for him at the concert. Things went rather well I thought, and despite there being a ton of people there, I didn't mess up. I must also say that it was an excellent performance by all who sang. The solos were great and the groups did a tremendous job. I now understand why they took first in all of their competitions in Chicago this year. Anyhoo hats off to everyone in the choir.

I went to see The Matrix Reloaded last night and it is one awesome movie. Sure you had to pay attention so that you didn't get lost but it was really good. There were some very cool fight scenes and I give it a lot of style points. Anyhoo if you havn't seen it yet I highly suggest it.

Just a quick update real fast to let ya all know that I'm still around. I went to prom over the weekend and had a great time. On Sunday I spent a little time recovering from being out so late Saturday. Yesterday... well yesterday I was just really tired and then something came up. Anyhoo I am really unmotivated right now and don't feel like doing much of anything. If I feel like doing something I'll prolly find another song to put up on the jukebox page.

The final stick of RAM for my computer finally came today. The old stick was bad so I had to send it back about two weeks ago. Anyhoo I got a new stick of 512 MB DDR RAM and shoved it in my computer. I now have 1.5 GB of RAM total and the computer is recognizing it all. I'm cookin with gas now!

Come back sanity! I didn't mean what I said! Ok... So maybe I did! Screw you sanity! Bwahahahahaha! Ummm... Riiight... Anyhoo as you can tell I'm starting to lose it. My computers are officially driving me off the deep end (my boat has a hole in it too! damn boat!). What is wrong you ask? I think it would be easier to ask what isn't wrong. For starters my 700 mhz computer back in my room hasn't been the same since the whole networking fiasco. It lags for long periods of time until I use alt+ctrl+del to shut down whatever program I was using and then it is fine for a while. It does it at completely random intervals and I have no clue how to fix it. Sounds pretty bad huh? Well I guess that isn't what really irks me. I suppose the real problem could lie in my new $1600 computer that I can't even play 3D games on! Yeah that's right. My 3D games arn't working right. For some reason the monitor decides to go blank shortly after starting Neverwinter Nights. Not to mention Battlefield 1942 kinda does the same thing randomly after I've been playing it a while. You know what was the best though? I spent $63 in a long distance phone call to Canada trying to get the problem fixed. Sure it worked after I hung up the phone and completed the first step. I played games the rest of the night even. It wasn't until after school today when I completed the second step of installing new AGP drivers to my motherboard chipset that the problem started again. Oh yeah and it is ever worse than it originally was.

So you see I am not all too happy right now. I mean, it is just really discouraging for someone who is going into the computer field and can't even manage his own computers. It's not like I don't have other things to worry about either. Like oh... I don't know, college, finding an apartment, tests, final exams, essays, scholarships, getting a job, would you like me to go on? *sigh* Of course I guess things are not that bad. My problems really arn't that important and I shouldn't complain I suppose. Just needed to vent I guess. It'll all be ok though. You know why!? wololo!

Well I got the new Trapt CD over break and it's pretty darn good. I've listened to it a few times so I figured I'd use one of the songs. So far my favorite song aside from "Headstrong" is the song "Made of Glass". "Made of Glass" is now up on the jukebox page along with its lyrics. I suggest you go ahead and listen to it since it is pretty good. I doubt you'll be disapointed.

My computer is racking up the style points now! I added the final touch to my computer's window by putting on a swanky new fan cover. It is an upside down triangle with a lightning bolt in it. You know, the symbol that lets you know if you are going to get shocked if you touch something. Not only is it shiney and cool lookin but it doesn't even overheat my computer! The air flow is just as good as it was before. Thanks a lot to Nikki for getting me the cover ;-) My computer is finally finished except for the stick of RAM that is still being shipped. No one is going to see that anyhoo so my computer is now officially finished!

The old song on the jukebox page had been there almost a week so I thought that it was time for a new one. This time the song is 'Fine Again' by Seether. No special reason for choosing this one. It is one of the latest songs I've downloaded and it's pretty good so I guess that's why. As always you can download the song of the music page and the lyrics for the old song have been moved. Maybe since I have all my programming software now I can start making some programs to put up on the site. We'll have to see if I get that motivated.

Yeah that's right. In your face space coyote! Walk on! After two straight days of non-stop networking (minus the time spent golfing Sunday) I think I am finally making some headway on fixing my computers. As most prolly know one of my computer experiments went haywire Sunday morning when I tried to use the Windows XP Networking Wizard on my Windows ME computer in order to achieve file sharing. That was a big mistake since it wiped out the internet on all three computers on our home network. Luckily I was able to get one computer back onto the internet to get some help of the icrontic forums. Anyhoo yesterday I finally said screw it and bought a router. For those of you who don't know, a router is a magical little tool that you hook up to your computers and it does all the hard networking stuff for you so that your computers can all share the same broadband internet connection. Well I spent four hours last night trying to get the router to work with no luck. It was about midnight when I stopped working so I said screw it and went to bed. The funny thing is that when I woke up this morning and turned on the computers, to start what I thought would be another day of networking, all three computers had internet! I guess I wasn't leaving the modem and router unplugged long enough like the instructions asked for. Either way I ain't touching a thing! Gonna take my frustrations out on some smacktards on Battlefield 1942!

As most prolly know Linkin Parks new CD Meteora came out a few weeks ago. I bought it last week so I decided to put a song up from the CD. The song that I put up is 'Breaking The Habit'. Most websites probably have 'Somewhere I Belong' up ,and that is probably what most people expect, so I decided to be different and use another song. It is pretty good and might be one you've never heard before if you don't have the CD.

Yeah that's right I'm at home typing this with my new computer. I decided to bring it home for the weekend so I could play with it and install some things. My fans came today too and I have already installed one of those. So far everything is running all right. I still have the side of the case off to help with air flow until I get the last fan installed but it is still running smooth. Anyhoo I have lots to play with. Just wanted to make a post to let ya know that I finally got my computer home.

After four days of construction my computer is finally up and running. Sure there were lots and lots of problems throughout those days but it was well worth it. I have Windows XP Pro installed on it now so the only thing left to do is install Visual Studio.NET and possibly a few other things. After that I can bring it home! Sure I wanna add a few more fans when they come in since it has been over heating when we put the side panel on but it's running at least! It is crazy fast too. When I was installing the drivers most of the instal bars only flashed before they were finished. Sure driver files are not very big but that's still fast. I am even missing 512 MB of RAM right now since I need a new stick. Anyhoo I'm pretty dang happy about my new computer.

Computer Specs:
Soyo KT400 Dragon Ultra (Black Edition)
AMD Athlon XP 2800+ Processor
1.5 GB DDR RAM
Maxtor 200 GB 7200 RPM Hard Drive
Sapphire Atlantis RADEON 9500 128MB Video Card
48X LiteOn DVD-ROM (16x DVD)
52x24x52 LiteOn CD-RW
Proview 15" Flat Panel Monitor

After about three days of work my computer is finally running. It only took a new set of BIOS and a call to the motherboard tech support people but it finally works. The whole problem was the result of the fan on top of the heat sink shutting the computer off. After the fan shut off was disabled in the BIOS, the computer ran fine. The best part is that it even runs at 2800 like it is supposed to. Tomorrow I get to install some software and I can finally bring it home!

Today I finally finished putting my computer together. All of the parts were in the case, the cables were hooked up, and everything was ready to go. Then I hit the power button. The fans started running, the lights flashed, then BEEEEEP, everything shut off. It turns out that the processor was over heating so the computer was automatically shutting itself off. The first problem was that we had too much thermal grease between the processor and heat sink. After getting that fixed it still didn't work. The processor was still overheating. Then someone changed the processor to run slower than it is supposed to. It worked fine that time but it was running way slow. Anyhoo to sum it all up I need to download new BIOS to make the computer work. Hopefully we can get that taken care of tomorrow and I can start installing software. With any luck I'll have my computer by the weekend!

If you read the update I made last night I was thinking about getting the new Linkin Park CD and putting a song on the jukebox page from that. Well I've decided to put that off and have another song instead. The song is 'Headstrong' by Trapt... What!? You gotta problem with that? Yeah that's what I thought! Walk on!

Yeah that's right. There hasn't been a new music update for a few weeks now. One reason is because well... I'm lazy and a really big slacker. The other reason is that I semi have an idea for a new song I can use. Ignore the fact that I have no clue what the song is and you might be able to find an idea in my rambling! Uhhh... yeah. Anyhoo it really does make sense. You see the new Linkin Park CD came out today. I am sure I could find a song off of there to put on the website. Now for the snag. I don't quite have the CD nor do I know if I'll be getting it soon or not. I'm still trying to figure that one out. On one hand I have a lot of expenses coming up so I prolly shouldn't spend the money. On the other hand I worry entirely too much and should just buy the stupid thing! I just havn't decided what to do yet. On the upside though I might have a new song up on the jukebox page for you in the next few days or so! If not I'll come up with something decent to shove on the site.

The bulk of my computer parts came in the mail today. Luckily my mom was home to sign for them so I only have a few more things to wait for. It was like a Christmas morning opening up everything though. My new computer is going to be really nice once I am finished. I know I've yammered on for weeks about this computer, and I'm sorry for those who have had to listen to me, but this is a big thing for me. Not many things come along that change a person’s life but computers have been one of them for me. When we got our first computer about six years ago I had to ask how to turn it on. My mom spent about $2000 of her income tax money on that computer. I realize now just how lucky I really was to get it. Little did I know how much it would change things for me. That computer was a beast in its day. A 266 mhz Pentium II processor with 32 MB of RAM and a 4 GB hard drive. Even though it is slow by today’s standards it was the computer that taught me all of the basics. Sure there are many things messed up on it now from my countless trial and error learning experiences but it still holds up. Then there is this computer that I am using now. The first computer I could call my own. I swore my dad was insane when he suggested buying it but I am sure glad he did. Sure our first computer was fun and taught me the basics but this computer is what made me decide to work in the computer field. With this computer and its speed advantage over our first I was able to learn so many things that I would have never been able to on the old computer. It wasn't until I got this computer that I started to heavily work on this website. Of course there were other things that made me do that, namely my girlfriend and friends, but starting this site is what made me give serious thought into being a computer programmer. That brings me to my new computer. The AMD Athlon XP 2800+, 1.5 GB RAM, 200 GB hard drive monster that I have been ranting about for so long. From my past computers I am expecting great things to come from this new computer. It is more than four times as fast as this one and is totally customized for me and me alone. I can only guess what this new computer is going to bring for me. I guess that is why I have been talking about it so much lately. Anyhoo I realize this is a long post but it's been a while since I've had one of my Friday night rants. I just kinda felt like typing so I thought I'd get some thoughts down. Might as well use this website for something.

Yeah my brain is kinda fried. Believe it or not I actually spent about an hour and fifteen minutes studying for my calc test. It might not sound like a lot to some people but for me it is. I think I pretty much understand what he is going to be wanting on the test at least. I figured out the problems he gave us for review after a while and worked them out. Hopefully I can remember everything for tomorrow. For now my brain is toasted extra crispy and I'm going to spend the night trying to think as little as possible.

I think I am kinda in trouble. We have a calculus test tomorrow and I really don't understand much of it. For the past week or so we've been doing integrals and it just isn't making much sense. I can do the basic ones easy enough but I have been having a ton of trouble with the homework. At least today I started understanding things a little better as I followed along with what the teacher was doing on the board. I just hope that I'm not starting to catch on too late. I guess I'll figure that out tomorrow.

I've been wanting to make an archives page for a while now and I finally got around to it. If you havn't already noticed the news section is a little bit smaller today. When you scroll down to the bottom of the news section you will see a link to the archives page. The new page has all of the old news from the website going back to when I switched over to the new color scheme. It isn't overly large now but it'll get bigger over time. I don't really know why anyone would want to look at the old news but I like to keep it around since it is interesting for me to go back and look at what I was doing at the time. It's also a good way to keep this page clean and make sure that it doesn't take forever to load a bunch of text.

The BPA State competition went pretty dang good if I do say so myself. The Software Engineering Team competed with around 10 or so other teams and we took third place in the state. Sure only the top two teams go to nationals but we had a good time anyhoo. Not only that but we got a big ass trophy. The program was pretty hard but I thought we had a really good team setup. We had two people programming while the other two made sure there was proper documentation. I made sure that I documented why we used that setup and hope that was something that helped put us in the top three. Of course the competition only lasted 90 minutes. We were there two days so the rest of the time was just a bunch of fun. It would be nice if we could go to nationals but we did our best. If one of the other teams can't go we get to though. At least the Network Design Team got second place in their competition so our school has one team going.

Well tomorrow is the big BPA state competition in Columbus. The bus is gonna leave tomorrow at 8:30 am and we won't be back till around 5:00 pm or so Friday. There are two teams going and one person for an individual competition. One team is the Software Engineering Team which I am on and the other is the Networking Team. As far as I know we compete some time in the early afternoon. We'll have 90 minutes to create whatever program they throw at us to the best of our ability. We've already chosen to use Visual Basic since it will look better than C++. I think my main job is going to be doing the documentation. Hopefully everything will go ok. On the up side I actually know how to do some programming this time around so if I need to program I can to some extent. Anyhoo I guess we'll figure out how good we are and if we get to go to nationals Thursday. Wish us luck!

I actually got a request on the forum for a song this week so I decided to go with it and put it up. The song is Simple and Clean by Hikaru Utada. It is a pretty good song and I've had it up before. Hopefully the person who requested it will be happy.

Well I didn't get around to updating the website last night. I do plan on adding a new song on the jukebox page but it might not be until tomorrow. I'd do it today but I doubt I'll have the time since I am not going to be home most of the night. Anyhoo I know I'm a big slacker but I'll get something up eventually.

As you can see I still havn't updated the jukebox page from last week. It slipped my mind over the weekend and I never got around to it. Tonight I am not so sure if I will get around to doing it either. I need to type a first draft of a story for english class tonight and am not sure how long that will take. I doubt it will take me very long but I might get lazy and play games after I am done. I have a tendancy to do that sometimes. If I get around to it I'll update the jukebox page though.

This is not a real update but I thought I'd jot some things down. As you know I recently converted the entire site over to style sheets and completely changed the color scheme. It took me a few days (weeks if you count the time it took me to figure it out) but I finished and the site isn't looking too shabby for a novice programmer like myself. After I finished the update I kind of realized something though. Working on this site gets sorta boring if I don't have anything major to change or work on. Sure I try to keep up to date with the jukebox page but all I really do for that is upload a song and *cough* borrow *cough* a few lyrics off of the internet. I suppose my first step would to make myself a decent banner to go at the top of my page. The plain old letters are just that; plain. Of course for that matter I suppose the whole site is. Thus I am left with the same old problem of coming up with something creative and interesting to do with this site. I am really at a loss of ideas here. Pretty much any site that people visit on a regular basis offer something. The great idea of a web comic came to mind the other night while I was browsing some websites but then I hit a snag. I kind of remembered that I can't draw so that kinda scratches that idea. Using some flash would spice things up but I don't have the software. Other sites have information about games or things like that but then it would turn into yet another fan site for something. The only semi decent idea I can muster up is making and offering simple programs for people. Even that isn't such a good idea though since who really searches the internet for small programs like that? Anyhoo I thought I'd throw that out there for ya all to know. That way you kinda know why I am not doing a whole heck of a lot with the site right now. Once I think of something good to do I'll make some changes but for now I guess I'll keep working with things the way they are.

It's been about a week or so since I've added a new song to the jukebox page so I thought I'd go ahead and make a change. The old song 'Coconut' has had its lyrics moved to the lyrics page and it still available for download from the music page. The jukebox page's new song is 'Mistake' by Nickelback. I picked this song cause I know Nikki likes it and she isn't feeling very well so I thought it might cheer her up some. I think that the verison I found is the one from the 'Nickelback Live at Home' DVD but I am not sure. The song can also be downloaded from the music page if anyone wants it. Hope ya like it.

I actually got semi sorta motivated after school today and there is a new song up on the jukebox page. The lyrics for last week's song have been moved to the lyrics page as usual. This time the song is 'Coconut' by Harry Nilsson. There is no real reason that I picked this one besides the fact that it is a fun song and I like to roam around the house singing it when I get tired. Just listen to it and tell me that it isn't catchy. Ya put the lime in da coconut...

Today was the BPA awards ceremony in Springfield. Sure I didn't even place for the individual competition but the team I was on won first prize and a trip to the state competition in March. Our four person team, Tangents R Us, beat six other teams in the Software Engineering Competition in designing a program for an imaginary bank. For the state competition in Columbus we'll get to stay in a hotel for two days and get out of school. We'll take a lap top for each person to work on and the equipment to network them together. Then we will do another competition for a chance to go to the nation competition in Dallas, Texas. Oh and I almost forgot the best part! Another teacher accused our team of hiring a professional Software Consultant to help us with our project since it looked so good. Our project was so well organized and documented that the teacher didn't believe that we were able to do it on our own. Of couse we just took it as a compliment since we did everything ourselves so it was pretty funny. Now we just need to get to work on practicing for the next competition. Since the first one me and Tony already understand a lot more about Visual Basic than we did before so we should be able to help with more programming this time. Our job last time was to document the project with a report, flow charts, etc. and to create the cosmetic aspect of the forms. We will prolly still do the same thing for state only we will be able to add more code in as we go to speed the process up. I just hope we can do as well at state as we did regionals.

I was thinking and I realized that I havn't done much with my game page here lately. I shoved up some ideas a few weeks ago and I havn't done much else since. It isn't like I havn't been coming up with something to put on it though. The next thing I was thinking about adding to the page is character descriptions. Well I've been thinking about what to put down and you know what? Writing character descriptions is really hard. Sure I have all the ideas in my head but putting it down in writing ain't that easy. I'm the only one who knows about the characters, their backgrounds, and stuff so I gotta think of a way to describe em to someone who doesn't have a clue about the game. Maybe I should put down some other things first, such as the basic story line and the setting. I have quite a few of my actual game play ideas down but not much of the plot or characters. Hopefully I can come up with something soon though.

Ok I am starting to get ticked off here. The stupid weather people said that we were supposed to get 3-5 inches of snow starting in the afternoon. Here it is 7:00 already and no snow. I looked at the radar and it looks like most of it is going to miss us. It really stinks since I've been putting off my homework till I saw how much snow we were going to get. That means I actually have to do my homework tonight and not put it off another day. Tis a rip off I tells ya! They already canceled the BPA awards that I was going to get out of school for so no good food and no getting out of work for the day. I told everyone there wouldn't be any snow since so many people were expecting it. Now if no one was expecting any snow we would get 2 feet but nobody believes me. Lousy snow!

It seems that I am gonna keep busy in computer class this semester. I was talkin with my techer about how I wasn't sure about programming and what not so I am going to be trying out programming a lot more here soon. First of all he already told me I can build a computer for my senior project. That won't take long though so I am prolly going to work on another project too. Bridgeview needs an attendance program for their library so I might try to make one for them using Visual Basic. The program needs to be able to take in the students number, when the number is put in it records the time that the student came in, then when the student leaves a button can be pressed to record the time that they left. It also needs to record this information so that it can be printed out at the end of the day. Sure I don't know enough to do it now but I already have an idea in my head about how it will work. I just don't know the coding behind it. We are going over Visual Basic as a class now so I should catch onto things quicker. The other thing I am going to do is another competition. This one is for the Tech Prep Showcase. I don't know much about it yet but basically I think a group of four of us are going to design a website for Amos Press that they can use to get info from people who visit the site. Basically it is taking HTML and combining it with some database skills. I know some HTML but the database stuff will be interesting to learn. By doing all of this I hope that I can figure out if I want to be a programmer or not.

There is a new song up on the jukebox page for this week, or however long it takes me to add a new one again. I just heard it for the first time over the weekend and actually sat down and paid attention to the lyrics about and hour ago. The song is 'Why Don't You and I' by Santana and Chad Kroeger. Well Chad Kroeger wrote and sings the song but Santana plays the music in the background so why Santana gets his name first is beyond me. Anyhoo it is a good song no matter who gets credit for it. Definitly worth a listen if you have some time. The song will be on the music page for download as well. I am going to start doing that with all the jukebox songs now.

It took me about a week I suppose but the update to the site is finally finished. Hopefully now things are a little easier to read and navigate. I think it looks a lot better without the scroll bar beside the navigation bar. Makes it blend together all fancy and what not. Anyhoo I might update the music page a little later and I hope ya enjoy the new look.

Welp, my BPA competition in Visual Basic was today. I've been working on VB for the past 3 or 4 weeks, have done 6 1/2 chapters on my own, and I figured out that it still wasn't enough. First of all the questions were pretty hard. There were 25 multiple choice but I didn't even know a lot of what it was asking. I just plain don't remember ever seeing some of them in the book. Then there was the program. I had to make a form with 3 radio buttons, 5 input boxes, a big box at the bottom to display info, and two buttons. I then had to display the contents of the input boxes (info input by the user) into the big box at the bottom in the desired BPA format. Sounds pretty easy right? Well that part kind of was. Once I figured out the right command (took me 10 minutes but I got it dangit!) it was a snap. I also got the exit button working properly. Of course exit buttons are my specialty. Type the word 'End' in the code for the button and it works every time. No one can do an exit button like me! Anyhoo the kicker was the error messages that I had to display. First of all I should mention that the program is supposed to take in information for a checking account and display the information in the big box at the bottom. Well the first error message I had to do was really hard. If the withdrawal radio button was selected only the words 'ATM' and 'Cash' could be displayed in the 'Checking Number' input box. If any numbers were inputed I was supposed to make a pop up box appear that said "Please enter either 'ATM' or 'Cash' for a withdrawal then have an ok button to exit it. It doesn't sound like much but that is darn hard. I worked for over an hour just on that and never got it. I moved on to something else since I was spending so much time on it. The other error box occured if any of the input boxes were left blank. I had it working if the first box was emty but that is all the farther I got because I ran out of time. To tell the truth I kind of got the short end of the stick. The C++ people had some really simple program to do that I could have done in my sleep and I havn't been studying C++ for the past 2 weeks like they have. I apologised to my teacher for not doing well (he always has people place in BPA competitions) but he wasn't mad at all. He said that he thought I did very well for taking the hard way, instead of C++ like everyone else, and was impressed that I stuck with the VB Exam for as long as I did despite not really knowing how to do it. He told me that most people would have given up with as much problems as I was having. Of course I need to put all that behind me and focus on tomorrow. Tomorrow is our 4 person, group BPA competition in which we will need to make a database with VB where you can look up people's names and information without the built in VB database tool. Two of my teamates are going to work on the actual code while the other person and myself work on the forms. I am not one of the stronger VB programmers in the group so basically my job is to make the program look pretty and make sure we have a detailed report of how we wrote it (a requirement of the BPA). Whew! That was a lot of writing but I figured I'd tell about it since my programming is kind of why this site even exist.

So what do you think? I know it isn't finished yet but I am getting there. There are still a few more pages to work on and the nav bar is still blue but I think I am making progress. Didn't I tell ya the color scheme was a bit odd? At least you can't say it isn't a change of pace from your run of the mill site. Anyhoo I'll keep on working on getting everything to the new colors. I hope everyone likes it.