Blog
Welcome to my blog. This is where you get to learn about me and what I feel like ranting about at the moment. If you know me, you know I have a lot to say about stuff. This is my chance to just spit it out and, just maybe, get some feedback about it. Take a minute and read what I have to say. If you want to respond, well, that is what comments are for.
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Way back in 1980, my dad started working as the Sports Information Director at Illinois State University (yes, that's the same one I am attending). Today was his final day in that position. After almost 26 years, he finally decided it was time to take up fishing and bothering his kids more. Actually, he doesn't really like to fish. But anyway, now that retirement time is here, he is going to kick back, relax, teach some, and chat it up on the radio about sports and such.
I just wanted to give a shout out to my Dad and tell him that I am really, freakishly impressed with him and all the work he has put into his job while still having time to deal with a problem child such as myself.
Anyone else who wants to say something nice about my dad (if you know him) (or even if you don't), just drop a comment and I will be sure to pass it along.
On a side note, the Pantagraph wrote a really nice article about my dad. You can check it out here.
Media Center Extenders rule. Actually, I am going to back that up and say, Xbox 360's rule. I bought my 360 a while back and I think it is just about the coolest gaming system ever. I love to play games on it just to play them. The graphics are jaw-dropping, and if you haven't played a 360 on an HDTV, go buy one right now. Tell them Pete sent you. Then when they ask who Pete is, tell them to read my blog. Because I need a larger reader base.
I have played World of Warcraft off and on since it launched in November of 2004. It is a highly addictive game that is a good way to pass the time. What I have noticed about World of Warcraft (WoW, for short) is that it has grown in ways that I don't think anyone expected. WoW has more than 6 million subscribers, and I must say, some of them are people you would never expect.
So as you probably know, I am a fan of World of Warcraft. It is a fun game, and most people aren't jerks. I must admit that I am known to be a wise-ass, but I don't do things such as gank people, or spam the chat. Anyway, I was running around questing last night when I received a notice from a GM (WoW cop) informing me that I had been found in violation of their harassment policy and that I had received a warning. Since I rarely talk to anyone I don't know in WoW, I wondered how I had harassed anyone. Apparently this is what happened:
I discovered that i need to stop "speaking too soon." I am currently watching the Cubs vs. Cardinals game and Shawn Marshall is pitching his first game in the majors. I happened to mention to Emilie that he was doing a fantastic job for a first-time major leaguer. And about 10 seconds later, Edmonds smacks a base hit. I then proceeded to talk about what a great job Derek Lee is doing, and he grounds into a double play. I finally figured out I need to keep my mouth shut as the Cubs get a second man on base, and, sure enough, Jacque Jones smacks a 3-run homer.
Creepy, huh?
I am going to the circus this weekend. You should go too, it will be fun. (In case you didn't know) I have done circus for a couple years and it is a kick-butt show. Things are going much better now that MLB, Kate, and the IRS are all paying me the money they owe me. :-)
Kate says I am a communist for my last rant. I don't think I am, I just think that the government should be in the business of making money for the government, not for individuals who are in the government. You know, the whole "of the people, by the people, for the people". But maybe that is just me.
On the flip side, mother nature was tossing some interesting weather at us yesterday. Lots of wind, rain, hail, etc. The clouds started to pass right about the time the sun was setting, which made for a really spiffy effect with my grandpa's apartment building (which is to the east of my apartment). Here are a couple of cool (and completely unaltered) pictures of my grandpa's apartment building as seen from my balcony:
Picture 1
Picture 2
Circus is this weekend. You should go. It is good for you.
I got back from San Francisco on Sunday. That was a lot of fun. We went to Fisherman's Wharf and did the whole tourist thing. I didn't get a chance to go see any schools because of time constraints and just the way things ended up working out. I will go out there again if I get accepted anywhere.
In other news, I baught an ipod at the Apple Store in San Francisco. It is super-cool. It is a 30GB 5th-generation model (a video ipod). Overall, San Fracisco was super-expensive and I am super-poor right now. But it was worth it.
I will try and post pictures from my trip here in my blog this evening, so if the only reason you are here is because I said to go look at my website for pictures from SF and there are no pictures yet. Well, too bad. Come back leter. For now, check out my videos section. It is funny.
So here is the deal. I get to sign up for classes early 'cause I am cool like that. However, this always seems to lead to a million problems and a lot of running around. This year was no different, except for the fact I couldn't actually run around because I am in St. Louis. So I had to do everything over the phone and email. So last week I decided to get on this early and e-mail the ISU Physics dept. about taking Physics 205. I wanted to take PHY 205 because it sounded fun and easy and wasn't Chemistry. Unfortunately, PHY 205 requires PHY 102, and you can't get credit for PHY 102 if you have credit for PHY 108. And I have PHY 108 credit. So I asked the Physics peeps if I could still sign up for 205. Of course I got no response. So when I went to sign up for my classes this morning, no luck with Physics. So I called the Physics Dept. and they told me I should call my own advisor. I called him and he was busy. I called again later and he was out. I called a third time and he was in and not busy but might become busy in the near future so I couldn't actually talk to him. Douglas Adams would eat this stuff up. Anyway, right before I got a chance to email my advisor about all this, I got an email from the Physics Dept. in response to my email from a week ago informing me that they had issued an override.
Anyway, so that was really all for naught. I could have just sat around and waited for the Physics people to solve my problem for me.
I've also decided that the Church of Scientology is super-evil, but at the same time, super-funny.
Visitors from the CoS: Please don't hurt me!
Alrighty folks, I am back! I realize I haven't posted a blog entry in, well about 4 months, but that is because my life has been pretty busy and I have been trying to work on a new site during that time (notice the snazzy new look?). Anyway, I am still working on the look and things might change. The code running the site is pretty much the same, the template is just new. Also, in case you are interested to know, I am running on a new server, a Virtual Private Linux server on tektonic.net, it is pretty sweet, my brother got me 6 months of access for Christmas. It is running SuSE 9.2 and I have compiled Apache 2.2 and PHP 5.1 for it.
Anyway, enough tech-talk. I am now working for Edward Jones Investments in St. Louis, MO for the time being. I will be working for them until this fall, at which point I will be going back to finish school. They gave me a kick-ass apartment for the duration. I am having a great time so far, It is almost half over and that makes me sad :-(.
I am going to San Francisco with Kate next week. That will be full of awesome. Anyway, I will try to add some cool stuff to my site when I can.
A couple weeks ago, messages started showing up around campus asking "do you agree?" I thought to myself, probably not. This Monday, a URL started showing up along with the messages: www.iagreewithkyle.com. I thought to myself, "hmmm, sounds interesting." So I went to the site and it was a site for Campus Crusade for Christ. Kyle was giving his testimonial about his faith. I am not much of a religious person, but I love a good debate, so I took the initiative to register www.idontagreewithkyle.com. I didn’t even need to chalk the quad, people started showing up within hours. So I put down my own beliefs on the subject and added a little comment system.
I had planned on updating my blog when I got my laptop. That was a week ago. I never really got around to updating my blog because I was having too much fun playing with my laptop. Seriously, this thing is awesome. I discovered that, not only does it play World of Warcraft, it plays it pretty darn well. I can get it to run (with minimal effects) at 1400x1050 and it runs beautifully at about 20-30 frames per second. I have been playing in the evenings and at lunch time and whenever I can get time during the day. It is nice to be able to play wherever there is wireless internet. I have played in a classroom, in a dining center, at Kate's house, pretty much everywhere. It is nice to have time to play. By the way, in case anyone is interested, my character's name is Kati (take a guess on where I got that) and I play on Perenolde.
There are 4 steps in Dell's manufacturing process before shipping, they are: Kitting, Build, Testing, and Boxing. Now, you might ask, why boxing? Shouldn't boxing be one of those steps such as "putting the case on" that fits under some other heading? Kitting is getting all the pieces, Build is, well, building it, testing is running a series of tests to see if it works right, and then boxing is putting it in a box?
Just in case the fact there is a boxing step isn't crazy enough, my computer has been stuck in the "boxing" stage for 3 days. It took less than 12 hours for them to kit, build, and test it, and now it takes 3 days to "box" it? I decided this needed some looking into. So I went to the Dell website and searched around and found the following:
"There seem to be a lot of you who are concerned because you think that your notebook computer is just sitting there waiting to be boxed for days. It's actually in transit from the Dell manufacturing facility in Malaysia, where it was built and tested, to the Dell Nashville facility, form where it will ship. This process usually takes about 3 business days, with one additional day for packaging and shipment from Nashville. There is no need for concern as this is completely normal."
Hmm... So by "boxing" they mean shipping it halfway around the world... in a box... (the spelling errors above are Dell's, not mine :-)
I bought a new laptop yesterday :-). I am pretty excited about it. They are finished building it and all they have left to do is package it and send it. It should be here in the next week or so. I will spare everyone the specifications. If you are interested, check out my computers page. I got a hell of a deal on it thanks to fatwallet and slickdeals. My friend Janelle's dad is planning on buying my old laptop (it is not final, but he seems real interested). I ended up being in a crunch over the laptop because I hadn't sold my old laptop yet, but one of the coupons I was using (for $750 off) was going to expire today and there was no indication there would be another one to replace it. My dad let me use some money out of my college account to cover the extra cost until my laptop sells.
Today is move-in day! Basically we have a massive influx of students into ISU. Needless to say, I rode my bike to work rather than try and deal with the inevitable traffic problems associated with this joyous occasion.
I sat down last night and worked on the Illinois State University entry in wikipedia. I added an infobox with a bunch of facts I found on the website or knew off the top of my head. I also added a little bit about the circus. I may make more changes later and add a page for the circus and whatnot.
I haven't been feeling 100% lately, Kate wants me to go see the doctor next week if I am still not feeling good.
School starts next week. It will be nice to see my friends, but it means going back to working 20 bours a week, going to class 12 hours a week, and doing homework for all the rest of the time. Oh joy. I have a cool idea for the comment system, you can see the beginnings of it if you view the main blog page. I haven't done anything for the "single view". I think it is a pretty cool idea. For those nerds out there, it makes use of an IFRAME to get the data without reloading the page, despite how much I love AJAX.