September 2002 Archives

Thanks to Erluti for actually posting something useful, unlike most ops.

My Week(end)
Highlights from the week include my parents being in Aspen all week, buying new running shoes tuesday, and that's actually about all that's interesting.

Friday, I go to Wok n' Stix again with Paul, Joanna, Devin, Marc, and Diya. Eat a whole bunch of food, which was really bad because I was supposed to be doing something with Caitlin that night. So I'm all feeling bloated and everything, wondering what I was going to do, but she called saying she was ready to pass out from lack of sleep and while she was really sorry, just had to go to bed. So we decided we'd do something Saturday instead. Saddened, yet relieved, I decide to go running at six to run off the chinese food. Three miles later and more weights than I'd lifted yet this year, I was feeling a lot better and then farted around till about eight when I went and picked up Joanna from church (there was an AMAZING sunset on the way). We went to Starbucks with Marc and Paul and just hung out till about ten something when Joanna's mom gets mad at her and we all go home. I think I was in bed by eleven.

Saturday I go to work till two (I finished the project I was hired for) then call Caitlin, and we decide to go to the mall and then play things by ear, but first I went running and then picked her up at about 4:45 or so. We go to the mall and I buy new running shoes ("but soft!" you say, "I thought you already bought running shoes" ... well I did, but I bought a second pair to just wear as sneakers with clothes ... the others are SOLELY for running). We walk around the Disney store for a few minutes, then we leave at 6:15 to head to my house and don't make it home till 7:15. ("but soft" you say again "how did it take an hour to get home?" ... well, traffic was stopped on 71 for a whole hour). Back at my house, I show her my photography because I'd been longing to do so, and then my dad enlists me to take Jimmy to his friend Seth's house for a while and crazy party. So after dropping him off, we decide to get some Sushi at this place called Tokyo.

Afterwards, we walk to Blockbuster, and decide to watch 13 ghosts which I'd already rented from netflix.com at my house, granted I could find it. But soft, I couldn't find it. So we watch the following instead. That ends around 11:45, and we watch TV for about an hour, and then I take her home. Saturday was definitely a great time, and the highlight of my weekend.

Sunday (yesterday) I get up to go running, but decide to call Rachel and see if she wants to join me. She wouldn't be ready till two, so I don't actually remember what I did till then... oh right, I washed the car. Then I go running with Rachel at two, then when I get back I take some letters to the post office for my mom. Then I stop off at best buy and buy a dvd, and then it's somehow already something like six, and I go home and eat dinner and then work on homework while messing around online till about midnight and go ot bed. I got all my red day homework done, even though the next school day is white. It's now 9:40 and I haven't finished white day, and don't realy feel like remedying that. Today, we had no school, and I did my creative writing homework and ran and messed around. That's about it.

Spork.

First of all, all of those "great games from our past", weren't really that great. Goldeneye was the only one that got any acclaim, and it wasn't that great, it was just the first to get the console FPS anywhere close to right. Perfect Dark had to be the pinnacle of the companies existance, so frankly, i could careless who owns them.

Secondly, I post today to save as many as i can from the great travesty of a movie known as "Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever." The newspaper gave it a "bomb," or no stars, as some like to call it. But it was because the the plot was dumb and they blew everything up. I said to myself, explosions are cool, and action movies don't REALLY need a plot, do they? Well, i think this was the first time in my life i was bored in an action movie. Things were exploding left and right and people where shooting everything in sight, yet somehow, it completely sucked. And since the plot blows goats, this movie should've gotten negative stars. I've never left a movie before it ended, but i was SOOO close this time... (I can't belive i missed the first part of ALIAS to see that crap...) On the plus side, Ray Park is in the movie! (Known to most as Darth Maul, or Toad to you X-Men fans!) And he smashes his record of only 3 lines in a movie! There was one part of the movie where i was about to say "hey this is pretty cool" where lucy liu (Sever) and Ross (ray park, with a new kind of role as a villian's lackey) fight hand to hand. (why they dropped their assault rifles and side arms to do it, i really don't know. Personally i would have shot him and got the movie over with.) But half way threw this total sweet ninja-style fight, the step back to have an anime style "pose-off." Sever spins this chain around then poses. So Ross snatches the chain and spins it around and ends in a pose. So Sever flips up onto a cat walk, does some karate moves then poses. So Ross wraps the chain around the rialing, and walks up to the cat walk giving Sever the evil eye. So Sever snatches the chain of the rail and flips it around and ends in another pose. Then they fight again. But overall, it is definately the best part of the whole movie.

So with your day off this friday, do somethign fun. Maybe see a movie? But at all costs, don't let that movie be "Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever"

In XBox news, Microsoft has just acquired Rare Ltd. They're the people who made GoldenEye 007, Banjo-Kazooie, Donkey Kong Country, and Perfect Dark. All great games from our past, so that's pretty cool.

I also wanted to mention that the Halo 2 trailer has been up for some time on xbox.com, and I definitely read a great article on Halo 2. Coolest thing is LESS polygon counts with better graphics! "How?" you say? Well, they use bump mapping built into the xbox itself. There's a realy kickass lighting engine which includes self-shading, which is very cool even though you'll never notice it probably. But the fact that it's there makes it just that much more real.

Lastly, HaloFest2 needs to happen soon, just not sure when ... college apps are crap, as is school and work and everything else going on.

Cortana (aka Spork)

Well, I sadly did forget to mention that. I visited CJ at Best Buy to pick up my Amelie DVD. If you have not yet seen that movie, you must.

Anyway, I posted four scans from the infrared roll I recently shot, I plan on doing more prints soon. Visit the photo2 directory.

ok ASS, just neglect to mention visiting me at BBY, i hate u. :/

Well, here goes round four on the whole updates about me thingy.

Friday - After school, Paul, Diya, Joanna, Jimmy (my little bro) and I all go to Joanna's Dad's restaurant, Wok n' Stix, in the galleria. We're thinking we'll pay, so I go to the Bank 1 or someone like that and pay the two dollar service charge to take out twenty dollars from my bank account (and then I'll pay Fifth Third another 2 dollars for THEIR service charge ... I wish there were a jeanie machine). But then Joanna's Dad is just like "come around the corner and server yourselves" (except in chinese). So Joanna puts in fresh egg rolls, and we serve ourselves chinese food on some delicious fried rice, and then we get free fountain drinks as well, and then her dad makes these mini sweet roll things and I have a full plate of food along with five or six of these rolls. Paul kept commenting on how much Jimmy was eating though. Very fun, we go back to manual to drop off diya.

Then we go back to my house to pick up the new Badly Drawn Boy CD, and turns out the album blows. Then we drop off paul, and because it's rush hour and raining joanna takes me down a wrong turn in the opposite direction of the highlands and I trust her and so I decide not to say anything until we're now twice the distance away from the highlands than we were when we started (middletown). So we get on 265 and go even further out of our way, wrap around to 71 allllll the way to zorn, then go grinstead to travilian and get LOST for like half an hour and have to call mark popham's mom. We show up at this NAHS pool party 2 hours and 45 minutes late, and there's only another 15 minutes left total. So I sit down and have some more fried rice (isn't there a problem with that picture?) and what seemed like two minutes later is now fifteen and I have to be dragged away from my art friends to go take Joanna to church.

Take her to church, emma calls, drive around a while, I call emma ... emma calls back, turns out I'm two minutes from where everyone is meeting on bardstown road for dinner ... Thai Siam. So I show up fifteen minutes before everyone and sit in the parking lot listening to Badly Drawn Boy's new album which still wasn't any better. Then dinner, Joanna calls early and paul and I leave after just getting our drinks (both waters thankfully) and placing our orders (neither of us were eating either). Paul and I have a long conversation in the car, and then we get joanna and go back and emma and vinita had shown up in a group that was originally just stephanie french, marc, niki, two gsp st. x kids, shantha, tyler, myself, and paul ... is now plus joanna and vinita and emma. Then graeters (sp?) then I get sleepy and go home.

Saturday - Work 8:30 - 2 or so and then I go get Joanna in Anchorage to take pictures. Infrared film, exciting stuff, pictures of a memorial to a burnt church (sadly, the burnt church is no longer there). Then pictures of a barn, and pictures of train tracks. Then Joanna figures out that she had her film set to ISO 200 and that was bad, but we found out today was ok, and she gets depressed not knowing it would be ok and I take her home then call caitlin. She and I decide I'd come over right then, and we walk a really long time down bardstown road till we make it to cave hill, which ended up being closed since 4:45 and it was now like 6:15 or 6:30. We go to the reject cemetary next door and take pictures there, (I got some cool shots I'll scan once I perfect them) and then walk back to her general vacinity, have coffee (chai charger and italian soda, not really coffee) at Heini Brothers and then back to her house where we watch the end of Collateral Damage with her mom when she asks us to go get her McDonalds, so we do, and then watch a little of this vampire movie when caitlin pulls out her biology to work on, so I decide to go (heh).

Sunday - work, listen to the new badly drawn boy which has yet to get any better (something's just not right) and then go home, run with rachel, take pictures at Thurman-Hutchins again, then dinner with the fam, and then homework, then napped in and out from 9:20 - 10 then just go to bed at ten.

Today, develop film at school, looks good, I didn't get depressed, so that's a plus.

Spork.

i updated my site CLICK!

I'm going to do my hardest to make a post about my past week. I actually logged in twice and wrote a half of a post both times, but got distracted and left. (This is a few days ago). Hopefully I can finish this time.

I'll mention that I took a two hour nap wednesday, thursday, friday, and saturday last week. Quite exciting. I also have successfully kept up my 5 days a week running now since the first week of school, haven't broken it yet (I don't think, but if I have it was 4 days instaed of 5). Oh, and lifting weights afterwards as well. Anyway, Friday I chose to be one of my two off days for the week (it varies) and did not run. In fact, I think I had done like 5 days in a row and was feeling great and fit and decided to eat some good food on friday. Well, I didn't do that, instead I just ate food. I ate my lunch FIRST PERIOD in Davis's room. I then, at lunch, am hungry of course and have no food to eat, so I go to buy a school lunch and it's chicken fingers and dirty raunchy fries. Knowing all I'd eat is the chicken fingers, order two lunches.

So I eat the two orders of chicken fingers, one of my two rolls, two milks and I think there may have been a fruitworks in there too. This is not healthy (at least I didn't eat the fries, or at least, ALL of them). Go home, I'm sure I snacked, then I take Jimmy out to the football game and we stop and get McDonald's (Double Quarter Pounder with Chees, Large Fries, Large Dr. Pepper with no ice). This is not healthy. I'll skip ahead in the night, but I finish with a strawberry steak and shake shake as well as a couple fries from there and the rest of a brownie sundae. What a way to celebrate feeling so healthy and fit!

Anyway, after dropping off Jimbo at the game, I go to Iain's house (because I was thinking we need to get him out, and he'd be near where I was headed anyway, and I also had an hour to blow before paul and joanna would be ready, which was plenty of time to pick up the brit and take him with us that night). So we chill at his house, talking to Christine, and then we go to my house to pick up the XBox. Then we go to Steak and Shake where we sit in the parking lot maxin' out to some Frou Frou - Details. Anyway, steak and shake, and then Marc's house for some XBox. Iain did the best, then Marc. Although they were pretty close.

Saturday, I work till two, doing nothing yet again, just watching bars go from 0 percent to 100 and then starting the next one. I got a lot of programming done between reformats. Then, let's see. I went home, napped for two hours, then programmed till like 8 or 9 when Marc's like "let's go to starbucks wtih emma." So we do, and we sit in the vault and chill with some Fraps and listen to Emma's stories from the dance on Friday, like her ventures with some weirdo.

THEN! The higlight of the evening ... we go to Steak and Shake (yes, again) and on the way run into Aaron Canary (no, that was not the higlight ... sorry urn if you're reading). At steak and shake, all we do is watch people. We tried to figure out their stories, what school they went to, etc. And we definitely watched a guy and a girl slowly as the night went on hold hands. If I weren't already dragging on, I'd write about it. It was funny, romantic, nostalgic, etc. The guy was really timid, and he was sitting like straight up, with his hand on his lamp, CLENCHED in a fist, while his other hand (away from the girl) was doing the eating, and he kept looking down (and so did she) and Emma Marc and I together watched the actual coming together of the hand ... it was so amazing, so ... like "yay! finally, how awesome" that we actually CLAPPED (but they didn't hear us, sadly).

So that is enough for now, my weekend.

Spork.

My past weekend ...

Saturday (since I updated about friday on saturday ...) was spent in the morning, at work. I started by going around all the little computers, logging in as domain admin, and setting everybody's account to local admin (no domain acess above user). About, 30 computers into it, I realized I needed to install adobe acrobat on any of the computers under a 1.5G ... luckily, there'd only been 3 or 4 that needed acrobat but for all thirty, I had not set the screen saver to use a password like I was supposed to. So I go around and finish the floor, doing all the steps, and then go back and do the 30 I'd forgotten. However, after this is done, I connect my computer at home and look at an email containing stuff to do. I'd forgotten to set the timezone back to -5:00 with DST and on top of that forgot to run Visual Audit Pro. So I went around and redid all the computers on the floor with those steps. Finished this around 2:00, and did some random tasks till three.

Saturday night, went to see The Good Girl. Extremely good flick, I really enjoyed it. They did a great job of portraying the characters to be believable and normal, yet each with their own extreme characteristics that made them all different. Like the girl who abused the P.A. system very easily could have been in a comedy movie and she'd have been one of the funny characters. Same thing with the extremely religious security guard. However the same characters in the setting and environment of The Good Girl were different from your average comedic relief character. They were normal, stereotypes maybe, but believable. I'm sure there's someone out there that when told "happy halloween" will say "oh, I'm not a pagan, but thanks all the same." And as for the husband and painter friend, they too seemed like normal characters. They were potheads, which was funny, however they weren't slap happy funny. They were just mellow, yet you felt sorry for them. Finally, Jennifer Aniston did a great job playing the southern girl who makes the wrong choices and Bubbleboy did a great job playing a misanthropist holden caulfield unstable lover character. It was pretty great.

Afterwards, we met Ben. He seemed cool enough, although, he should have spoken more. Many people are frightened by Marc's genius and misled by my stupidity into thinking it's genius. He should have spoken up more, I'm sure he'd have much more interesting stuff to say than myself, if not, he'd certainly have better fresh and new conversation than the same thing marc jo and I talk about once a weekend. But yeah, then I get like 8 new cd's to copy from jo (more like 6 or 7) and I go home. Oh, that night, Rachel and I on the phone set up to run in the morning on Sunday and so ....

Sunday, I get up at 6:38, and make it to Thurman-Hutchins at about 6:46 (I told Rachel I'd meet her at 6:45) so she calls me at 6:46 and asks where I am, as I'm like 30 seconds from her car. But I could understand why she calls. So we do three laps, it was nice to have someone to run with ... however my body was off and I had some pains in my chest, then at the end we sprint and she beats me. Heh, proves I'm a wuss. Anyway, then I go and lift weights, make it home by 7:50, leave for Delta Dental by 8:10, and start the reformat of a couple computers, and then sleep ... I wake up at 99%, it was beautiful, hit some buttons, plug up two more computers ... and ... sleep ... except these were faster machines so I woke up after they were done, but I don't think they were done for more than a few minutes. I swear...... Yeah, so I get 13 machines done, finished sir gawain, and programmed on my website and then left at 3:00 (I read and programmed between formats).

Then I napped at home, went to blue grass brewing company for dinner, came home, maybe did some homework, don't really rememeber, late sleep time. Oh, my computer has been moved into my room so I can take full advantage of the remote control for my speakers, the remote control for my sound card, the remote wireless mouse, and the remote wireless keyboard I have ... I lay in bed, and just stare at a blue blur from across the room wondering what the hell is on my computer screen. there's really no point to a wireless keyboard/mouse except no wires ... it's no like long range in any way ... you can get range, yes, but it's pointless, you can't read the type. I got about five or six feet away, and still had to bump my res down from 1600x1200 to 1028x768 to make out anything, and 800x600 was just repulsively insulting to my eyesite. So I still sit in a chair, next to the screen ... however I can set up my winamp to play all day and all night, and my keyboard I just hit b for next track, x for play, etc ... that IS nice.

Spork.

Well, It's finally time for one of those blog posts.

Highlights From My Week

Well, last weekend was a lot of fun. Friday night I go over to Caitlin's house to help her set up her brand new laptop. I'm incredibly jealous. Then we go to a party, and that gets crazy so I'm home around 1:00. Go into work around 8:30 Saturday morning, leave at 1:00 and then go out to shoot pictures with Joanna around 3:00. First stop, Thurman-Hutchins park, where we found these amazingly interesting little girls to shoot pictures of. I don't consider it pedophilia in anyway, one, Joanna was with me, two, I'm not a pedderass. Yeah, then we go downtown, shoot some pictures of a train and some rust. This was our first color roll, and the highlights (or, more, the pictures that I wanted to see blown up) I scanned. The two rolls are found by clicking the picture script at the left of thespork.com and browing to the photo2 directory. If you want a highlight of the rest of my saturday night, simply visit Jo's site.

Sunday, I decided not to go to work just cause I wanted sleep, and then Caitlin and I went to a concert at twice told to see Garret Fitzgerald (sp?) and Cody (sp?) play. They had good musical elements, but the vocals I dont' think were even turned on, so I can't comment. It was fun though. That night, around 10:00, Paul Stoddard calls me up and ten mintues later I'm at the starbucks on shelbyville and hurstborne and we chill till 10:45. I don't feel like going home, so I drive to Indiana and shoot pictures of the Widow's Walk and the UFO I saw land on the skyline bridge. I get some other cool shots, found in the roll 2 dir, go check it out. Monday, I don't really remember what I did monday. Homework I think.

Tuesday morning, Little Brown Girl (also known as Diya) and I are sitting in Irish Carbomb's (also known as Marc)'s car and he's like "it's 7:25, I'm going in." So we move to my car, listen to badly drawn boy, and soon it's 7:37 (like it always is when we go in) yet this time diya has to go to her car to get books and I shoot pictures of the sunrise. We venture into the building and halfway up the three flights of steps to the third floor, the bell rings. So we tell mr. davis "oh, we had to talk to mr. stevenson about mock trial stuff" but he still makes us go and get a note. Bull. If we had known we'd be late, we'd have gone to breakfast instead of class.

Thursday was cool, cause we started showing off our slidefilm, but I'm going last, so I won't present till monday. Finally, I'll end with yesterday, we went to Dairy Queen after school Friday. Party Animal/Jayhill (Jon Hilliard), Little Claypot (this one is also Diya's name), Irish Carbomb (Marc) and P. Bass (Paul) ... oh my brother. Jimmy (my brother) wins a 16 oz blizzard cheating at the drop the coin in a bucket for the homeless kids game. Then, sitting at the table, just like the last time I was at DQ with J-Hill, he gets obsessed with spinning a nickle and trying to slam a salt or pepper shaker down on it, forcing the nickle up and through the plastic, into the shaker. We didn't believe him, but he swore it could happen. I gave it a try with no luck, so we asked Jimmy to do it. Jim gives it a try, and hits the table really hard, and we dont' see the nickle. "Did it work?" Jimmy lifts up the shaker and pepper starts pouring out. He quickly places the shaker back down, and we throw a cheeseburger wrapper over it, and we all leave a little bit later. That's some funny shit.

So yeah, I'm at work right now, bored, posting about my weekend. I programmed on the NHS website all last night, it felt good. When I get a really awesome kickass prototype I'll post a link.

Spork.

Spork kindly put up all 7 of my senior yearbook portrait pictures... they're hidden in the image script to the left, I'm sure you can find them, Email me and let me know which number (1 through 7) you like best. They're all the same to me.

--Fiend

So, for those of you who never look to the right side of TheSpork.com or those of you who bookmark TheSpork.NET now instead of .com, I've added a new poll to the dot com. I have had a pretty awesome fun filled action packed weekend, and I've never had any sort of livediary or blog or journal or anything of that nature to post what I did over the weekend like Jo or Fiend use their website for. I've always sort of been against posting my personal life on the internet, yet, I think by now I've let so much out on the site that it doesn't really matter. Should I start now? If I decided in favor of it, I'd probably start posting about my weekend as "Spork" and posting new additions to the site as Administrator and things like that.

Spork.