Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Hanging in there.

I think this conversation does a lot to indicate my feelings about the last two months. It took place between roughly 1:20 AM and 1:40 AM.


PieceOfPandora:
Hey Alex.
Scrinnameless: Yeah?
PieceOfPandora: I'm sort of in a meloncholy mood right now.
Scrinnameless: That sucks.
PieceOfPandora: My financial situation really sucks.
PieceOfPandora: And both my sister and I have somewhat less-than-true reputations floating around about us at school. I don't go anymore, so it's less of an issue, but...
PieceOfPandora: A good friend of mine apparently thinks I'm doing nothing with my life.
Scrinnameless: ...
PieceOfPandora: Which might be based in truth.
Scrinnameless: See, that's what gets me. If you're content with your life, then I'd say you're not wasting it.
PieceOfPandora: I didn't say wasting.
PieceOfPandora: It's just...
PieceOfPandora: I care what people think.
PieceOfPandora: And the popular opinion these days is that I ran away from everything.
PieceOfPandora: And it's not entirely untrue.
PieceOfPandora: I was sick of high school and my parents.
PieceOfPandora: so I just moved out and switched to e-school.
PieceOfPandora: I feel like I have a defensible position - I had a sanity-draining home life, and high school and I never got along.
PieceOfPandora: I've got a steady girlfriend and while the subway thing didn't work out,
PieceOfPandora: I'm getting a new job tomorrow. Period.
PieceOfPandora: But I'd be lying if I said that I haven't been a little lax in the responsibility department. Partially due to my inability to immediately pay my bills, a friend of mine overdrafted and stayed that way for a few days.
PieceOfPandora: ...I tried to go to bed early but it's not really working.
PieceOfPandora: Need to go to a dentist appointment at 8.
Scrinnameless: ::nod::
Scrinnameless: Again, this is getting on the territory where I'm wondering what people expect you to do.
PieceOfPandora: I don't know.
Scrinnameless: Stay home and argue with your mom until she becomes a rational person?
PieceOfPandora: Meh.
Scrinnameless: Exactly.
PieceOfPandora: I've been much happier here.
PieceOfPandora: But money pressures are getting me stressed recently, as you can tell.
PieceOfPandora: Once I get my new job and my next check comes,
PieceOfPandora: I should be fine.
Scrinnameless: ::nod::
PieceOfPandora: And right now that's what I'm concentrating on.
PieceOfPandora: But there's a lot of stuff I need.
PieceOfPandora: I don't have a car. I don't have a license, or insurance.
PieceOfPandora: I need a computer.
PieceOfPandora: And I do, I do need one.
PieceOfPandora: I can't keep using Rita's.
PieceOfPandora: ...it's low on the list, though
PieceOfPandora: Stuff.
PieceOfPandora: My response to overwhelming stuff, is to ignore it and focus on one thing at a time.
PieceOfPandora: Which I guess is better than ignoring it all.
Scrinnameless: ::nod::
PieceOfPandora: I guess the thing is...
PieceOfPandora: I'm surrounded by people telling me I'm doing it wrong.
Scrinnameless: And that gets you down?
PieceOfPandora: Yeah.
Scrinnameless: All right. I gotta go.
PieceOfPandora: Ha.
PieceOfPandora: Alright man.
PieceOfPandora: Have a good night.
Scrinnameless: For what it's worth, I think as long as you're hanging in there, you're doing all right.

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

I'm typing with my mouth full.

We have done the impossible. We have breached the barrier of childhood and adulthood. We are no longer as dependent as we used to be.

We have created burgers.

Yes, that's right, at 9:30 AM this morning, Marz Meyer and Michael Donaldson successfully created two (2) hamburgers, from scratch.

The process that led up to this is a long and arduous one. Rather than tell it all, I shall summarize it quickly for you; Marz and I were hungry. We hadn't had real food in a while - I since the last time I was at Megan's, and him since his father took him for dinner. In fact, the only food I had on sunday was one-and-a-half pancakes, and a peanut-butter sandwich. Not even jelly. Needless to say, we had been up all night and decided enough was enough - we went to kroger, picked up some ground beef (among other foodstuffs) and returned home to create what is currently now in my stomach - real, cooked burger.

Win.

Spontaneous Nerditude

Everyone already knows that Fox News is absolutely retarded, but this time a corporation actually had the balls to tell Fox News themselves to go shove it.




In Chronological Order, courtesy of Kotaku.com, The Rebuttal.

EA Politely Tells Fox News to Go Fuck Itself

Fox News completely blows off EA; EA not surprised.

Wait for it....

Jack Thompson DEFENDS MASS EFFECT.

Fox News' "Expert" recants her opinion on Mass Effect; Admits she was wrong.

It's about damn time somebody did something about those idiots at Fox News. I don't understand why it's called news - it's blathering falsehoods that conservative families watch, believe, and get worried about.

Seriously. Jack Thompson. I can't even think of someone less likely to defend video games, and he's STILL on Video Games' side.

Family, Friends, and Girl

In a shocking upset, I actually beat Marz at Scrabble yesterday/early this morning. I most certainly did not see it coming, and yet it came. Rematch pending.

Megan's still amazing. Nothing new.

Turns out my mother got herself into another accident. This is not usually notable, but it happened the day after I mentioned to my friends that my mom gets into accidents all the time. Funny how life reinforces my statements, eh? Sister bruised her knee; I told her to tell people she got the bruise in the War.




Seriously. Jack Thompson. Why are you so stupid, Fox News?

Sunday, January 27, 2008

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood for felons.

So I've been enjoying the wonderfulness that is StumbleUpon, a neat little addon for Firefox that basically acts as a boredom vaccine. Basically, you specify the sort of thing that you like to hear about, and then you click the little "Stumble!" button. At their whim, you're instantly transported to an interesting, quirky, or fun little page. It could be anything from a funny video, picture gallery, or list of really silly facts.

Well, catch this - StumbleUpon found me a neat little site called Felon Spy, which has a little handy search feature that tells you exactly who in your neighborhood is a felon. That's right - you can finally figure out if that guy who lives next to you is a rapist. Uh, well, a convicted rapist, because according to my neighborhood the guy who lives next to me is the local rapist-at-large, and the police just don't have enough evidence to convict him.

But that's just hearsay. Didn't hear it from me.

Spontaneous Nerditude

So I've been playing a game called Supreme Commander, which is a "Next-Gen RTS". For those of you who don't speak gamer, that's 'Real-Time Strategy', and was popularized by games like Age of Empires, Warcraft (and, by association, Starcraft, South Korea's National Sport), and Command and Conquer. One of those popular old-school RTS games was called Total Annihilation, and the same folks that made that game decided that the genre really needed a perk-up.

Enter Supreme Commander, which in my opinion, has done the deed quite well. It's got something of a learning curve, but it's not too vicious.

If you like RTS games, you owe it to yourself to check it out [on top if that, I'll lend it to you :P]

The House on Somber Way

The soda intake in this house has become catastrophic. We are seriously going through two 12-packs every two days.

If you're curious, that's roughly $120 a month this house is spending on soda. Which is more than my internet and cable bill combined.

I got fired from subway for sleeping through work on Friday. Lolz.

Family, Friends, and Girl

Megan stopped by and met Marz, and subsequently taught us a new way to play one of our favorite card games, Egyptian Rat Screw, and Marz and I will have a hard time going back. Basically, instead of whoever slaps it first getting the pile, it's whoever can get the cards first, regardless of who actually touched them first. This leads to all sorts of physical violence [and other forms of coercion, in the case of Megan and I's personal games >.> ]

My hand hurts. And my thoughts are drifting to a certain girl in Prospect all too often these days.

It's early. I'm going to bed.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

De el mundo, con amor.

Today at subway, I actually had to step in and speak spanish to a customer who didn't understand my supervisor, whose strategy was apparently to repeat what she had said in sequentially slower english, as if somehow he was going to understand what she meant as long as she said it at snail speeds.

For a little bit, I actually felt bilingual, and that's an odd feeling. It's a nice one.

Spontaneous Nerditude

Let's take a look at that spiffy picture to my left.





















I found that on my friend Kriss' collection of cool
modern/futuristic art. This particular piece of art was located in the "Somebody Badass" folder, implying they had not yet been assigned a character. I took this opportunity to call official dibs on the character, and am planning on making my next d20 Modern/Future/Planeshift character her.

Nerd Videos:

Drugs: My Anti-WoW

Be glad you don't have this much time.

The House on Somber W
ay

We here at the House on Somber Way would like to take this time to announce that we had no idea how much stuff was in ou
r parent's respective kitchens until we'd like to use it, assume we have it, and consequentially fail when we don't. We don't have Black Pepper. We don't have a Spatula, a Strainer, or any cooking knives, much less steak ones. As we have begun the process of actually preparing our own food, this is becoming more and more of a problem.

We do, however, have Bay Leaves.

And Mr. Meyer does indeed make scrumptious white chili. Mmm.

Religion

As a long-standing advocate of not using religion to justify completely irrational hatreds, I present to you a funny list: Why Can't I Own a Canadian?

Lev 18:22 states
"Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.", which is one of the big bible phrases used to debunk homosexuality. On her radio show, Dr. Laura Schlessinger mentioned the phrase, and the above link is an open letter sent to her by one of her listeners. It's a satirical, sarcastic letter asking for "advice" on how to deal with other violations of Levitican law, such as:

"Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?"

The best part about the whole section of Leviticus is that it really is undefendable. People are taking this small part of the bible and saying, "Look here, the bible says so!" but half of them don't even know that the same part of the bible outlines rules for selling your daughter, buying slaves from Mexico, forbidding intergender contact between women on their period, and how if anybody works on sunday they are to be put to death. I'm not taking things out of context here, or interpreting anything. It is very clear on these parts.

The very worst part about this sort of thing is that people have somehow inherited the notion that any attempt to disprove something they've learned in their religious education is clearly a lack of faith and can be overcome by showing the nonbeliever the strength of their own conviction by ignoring any evidence placed in front of them. I myself am not an Athiest - I fully believe in the existence of God, and this does not permit me in any way to ignore reasoning.

Look up Deism for more information.

Family, Friends and Girl

I am officially an uncle, by means of my Half-Sister Alyssa's new baby girl. Venus Mira DeRonne was born on January 22nd at 12:58 AM. She weighed 8 pounds and 15 ounces at birth, and is just over 21 inches long.

Who wants to come play with Uncle Mikey? :D

Sunday, January 20, 2008

Been Busy.

Photobucket

You want more updating!? Huh? THIS IS WHAT YOU GEEEET!

Friends, Family, and Girl

So Megan came over to my house today after finaling in her Speech Competition, meeting Rita and getting to see the place. She noticed the shocker poster. No sweat. We got to chill for a while, she managed to teach Rita and I how to fold up a Futon, and then Rita left and her and I...watched Finding Nemo. Finding Nemo was on. We watched it. >.> It's true.

Ah, well, I might have just been listening.

Then her mom came to pick her up. Insert trickery here.

Placing myself in front of her mom [who is short], I widened my shoulders and threw my hand behind my back, flashing the shocker vigorously at Rita, who thank god picked up on what I was indicating. Calmly, she stood up, and went back to the poster, moving it into the kitchen without drawing attention to herself. Megan didn't even notice.

+1 Metal Point, Rita.

Spontaneous Nerditude

I made a Grappler Wizard. It can grapple a Kraken at level 6, easily.

I really want to see Cloverfield, but I can't really afford it right now. The only hint of what the damn thing is supposed to be is Leroy just mentioned the words "Zerg Rush."

You must spawn more Overlords.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Retraction: I saw it today.

Job News

Breaking News - That which was thought impossible has seen the light of day. Metaphorically. Actually, literally, as well. Today (after going to bed at, eh, like 7:30 AM) I was woken up by a call from the owner of the local Subway chain. Turns out they're looking for a guy like me. [i.e., available to work days :P]

I went to talk to the guy for an interview, and it turns out that he absolutely adores the last two food places I worked at. Two favorite foods ever. Needless to say, I got the job, and now I'm looking at a cool 30 hours a week - 10-4 on weekdays. Bring on the money!

Nerditude

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This is what my friends are going to ask when I die.

Speaking of MMOs, City of Villains has been slowly taking over my evening hours. For all of you [and there certainly are a lot of you] who are addicted to WoW, I'm pretty sure I owe it to CoV to urge you guys to check out NCSoft's baby. Having played both, I'll assert that CoV is not only prettier, more fun, quicker paced, and less absolutely jam-packed with tards, but in addition to all of this you get to play a game that doesn't feel like work. The character creation system allows you to create a badass, unique villain whose appearance isn't based off of the ph4t loot you payed some scary korean to farm for you.

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Does your WoW character look that cool? No. No he doesn't.

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That's what I thought.

Family, Friends, and Girl

Right now I'm typing this blog from my old bedroom in my father's house. I must admit that I most certainly had missed my dad's cooking more than I thought. Right now Mischief, my sister's cat, is curled up next to me on the bed, softly sleeping, and there's a tinge of nostalgia in me. I even got to get into a silly arguement with my dad over responsibility, like always. Apparently getting a day job is a "terrible mistake" and I should be focusing on school. I chose to bite my tongue and not tell him I usually stay up until 8 AM. I seriously doubt a 10-4 job is going to interfere with my internet time.

Megan's got a speech competition on saturday at Assumption, a Catholic Girl's School really close to my house. This means that she's going to get to see my house - and my friends.

That Shocker poster is coming down, Marz!

It's one AM. I'm going to bed [Six Hours Early.]

Sunday, January 13, 2008

One of these days I'll see the noonday sun.

Ever since I moved into this house, my sleep scheduled missed the turn for the worse, and took the turn for the oh-my-god-where-the-hell-am-I?

This has sort of bred a weird topsy-turvy relationship with me and the sun. I've gotten in the habit of waking up around 3-4, when the sun is starting its descent, and only getting to sleep as the sun comes up. That's right folks - go to sleep at sunup, and wake up at sundown. Will be attempting to fix if necessary - I'm in the process of job applications.

That leads me to the other big problem in my life - finding money for things. Currently, whatever money I get is channeled directly into my "Get Michael to Prospect, or Close" fund. It comes with dating a girl that lives just out of TARCing distance.

We at the House on Somber Way think we may have found a solution. Aptera Motors has come out with a new Electric and Hybrid vehicle known as the Aptera (Original, huh?). Among other things, the Aptera boasts a meager average of
300 MPG, ASSUMING you're driving about 200 miles. If you're driving, eh, around 40-60 miles in a trip, you're getting roughly ONE THOUSAND MILES PER GALLON.

Imagine, for a second, what the MPG must look like for that 5 mile drive to work. Either way, filling up that 15 gallon tank and driving nonstop in 200 mile intervals will net you 4500 miles per pickup.

Regular city use will net you 15,000 miles. That's roughly 5 oil changes per fillup.

Oh - and it's only $30,000 new. Anyone want to buy me one? I'll drive you anywhere - but you'll have to cough up a nickel for gas.

Because I thought I ought to.

Right now I'm sitting in front of a glowing screen, at 5 A.M. in the morning, patiently typing out the very first post in what will probably be an intricate collection of classic, babbling nonsense. But sources tell me that if you look close enough, you might yet find a jewel of humor or information in the masses.

Not enough information? Well, here, perhaps this nice little organized, bulleted chart might help!

WHAT TO EXPECT HERE AT PoP!

  • Lots of Spontaneous Nerditude. My girlfriend has informed me that there is a difference between "geek", "nerd", and "dork." She's told me like two or three times and I can't for the life of me remember which one's which, except that apparently she's a geek. Either way, if it's got the scent of nerd about it, it will probably show up here sooner or later.
  • Random Tidbits About Me. I am incredibly obsessed with myself, and the only thing that keeps me from being an intolerable, egocentric bastard, is that my vanity has somehow formed a symbiotic relationship with my altruism. Therefore, whenever I'm not thinking about me, I'm ignoring me for someone else's sake. Yeah, it's weird for me too.
  • Happenings in the House on Somber Way. I no longer live with my parents, and now live with three friends of mine - Marz, Rita, and Melanie. You'll hear about them and me and our house.
  • A Girl. Currently, I'm in a relationship with an amazing girl named Megan, and I might accidentally babble nonsensically in my own infatuation about how awesome she is. Deal with it.
In any event, I promise above all to keep you entertained. If I have failed in this endeavour, leave me all sorts of scathing, nasty comments, and I'll hop right back into shape.

Promise.