random surveys, hurray!

You Are a Liberal Republican

When you tell people that you're Republican, they rarely believe you. That's because you're socially liberal - likely pro-choice and pro-gay rights. You're also not so afraid of big goverment, as long as it benefits people and not politicians. You are the most likely of any Republican type to swing over to the Democrat side Sometimes.

What political persuasion are you?

You Are 50% Weird

Normal enough to know that you're weird...But too damn weird to do anything about it!

How Weird Are You?

Thank you Adam for these random surveys. I found them on your site and I borrowed them without permission. Have fun in SoCal. You rock my socks off!

life for granted

It has come to my attention that I am...well...a slacker. I take life for granted. I don't know if that qualifies me as a slacker, but perhaps a better term will pop into my head while I'm writing this. That right there might be the perfect example of how I take life for granted. Pretty much my whole life has been relatively easy for me. There has never been anything that I've ever really had to try hard at doing. If I ever had to try pretty hard at something, then it wasn't worth my time and I would disregard it and move on. I didn't know how to tie my shoe until half way through the 4th grade, I couldn't do multiplication until about 5th grade, and I still hate Philosophy, History, and Religion courses. However, I can now tie my shoe, as you are all probably thrilled and shocked to hear, and I actually enjoy math (on some levels) and am quite good at multiplying. But these are not really the point. The point is that I taught myself to read before I ever started school, so my mom started me in the second grade. The point is that I became one of the top math students in my class and I actually had an A+ in Algebra 2 in highschool. The point is that I used to go ahead in my math book in 8th grade and do a whole month's worth of assignments so I could play math games on the computer. The point is that I used to take the code for QBasic games (like Snake or that game with the two gorillas on top of the buildings that threw explosive bananas at one another) and rewrite it so that it would become a "new" game that I had created. The point is that I find computers very easy to understand and use. The point is that I'm rambling and that's something I'm prone to do when talking about my great and glorious (haha) accomplishments.

I think I've gone far enough into the whole math/nerd side of myself. But, there's so many other things. I was Chemistry Student of the Year (in highschool) and I never ever studied. I got a 1250 on my SAT and you better believe I didn't study for that. Or was it my ACT? No. I think it was SAT. The point really is that so many things in life come so easily to me that I don't realize what I have and I don't know how to actually try for things. The point is that my girlfriend doesn't understand me at all and I don't understand her at all because I don't try to make it that way. Life to me has always been no worries and easy come easy go. A real recent example is my History class. I could have sworn I was failing and I thought that when I saw my grade report right before break that I had a C- in the class (which I assumed would have dropped to like a D+ with my extremely poor attendance record). The whole thing with the grade reports was that if we liked our grade we didn't have to take the final. I chose not to take the final because I didn't want to. I could live with a D+ (even though it would be my first in college ever...again, not the point). The point of this story is that when I got home and later checked my grades, I had a C+ in the class. I didn't go to class. I didn't do a LOT of the homework. I hardly ever read anything from the book. When I did go to class I just sat near the back and did Sudokus the whole time. How nerdy and lazy and uncaring is that? Absolutely NO effort and I get a C+. Not a C to tell me that my effort and knowledge in that subject was mediocre or average, but a C+ to tell me that I'm slightly above average without even trying.

I had an epiphany tonight while I was taking a shower. I can't say that I've had many epiphanies while showering, but this one hit me like a ton of bricks. Earlier I had been on the phone with my girlfriend and we were discussing whether or not I would be able to see her tomorrow before she left and if so, where and when and how would I get there, etc. Anyways, the conversation ended with her getting upset at me (like she does, because I'm a moron) and asking me if I really wanted to see her tomorrow. I said, "Of course I do. Why did ask me that?" And her reply was, "It doesn't really seem like you do. You never really try." In the heat of the moment I was slightly offended. I've managed to surprise her by planning at least one thing in the past, but, in retrospect, it was as simple and natural for me as mutliplication tables now are. It was spur of the moment. Random. Easy. Me.

The big picture, the main point of all that I am saying is this: I want to start trying to be a better friend, trying to get good grades and a job (oh yeah, forgot to mention that one), trying to be a better boyfriend. I'm not really sure how, so...if anyone reading this has really good advice on how to start trying, please, PLEASE let me know. I guess I just have to try...right? It seems so simple. Just try. But I've spent my whole life not trying at all and getting along just fine. Just fine. Not excellently, not superbly, not greatly; just fine.

To my girlfriend, and my dear friend, Adam: Since I know you both occasionally read my blog and just in case you made it down this far in this entry (it's a long one, eh? Epiphanies are rough stuff), I'm sorry I haven't been to either of you all that I could be. I'm sorry I take so many things for granted and I'm such a slacker and so undependable.

Adam, I'm sorry I haven't always been there for you or fully cared what you had to say or been attentive or helpful when you ask me about things that are important to you. Thank you so much for valuing my opinion. I don't know why you do. I'm sorry I haven't always been the best drummer. And I'm really sorry that I haven't always been very supportive of your ideas, plans, and goals and I've been kind of a dream killer. You are an amazing person. You will go far in life. I love you man.

Girlfriend, I'm sorry that I am incabable of having a "conversation" over the phone. I'm sorry that even when in person I can't stay focused and attentive for much more than 5 minutes. I'm sorry that whenever I get a random thought in my head I cut you off of whatever you are saying and blurt out the insignificant thought on my mind. I'm sorry I don't try very hard. For whatever reason, this is a new concept to me. I'm sorry that we don't quite understand eachother and tend to have some confusing and disappointing conversations. I like you. I can say it all I want but until I show it, there's no real way for you to know. This is me doing something that I always swore I'd never do: appologizing for being myself. I'm not a real cool person. I'm kind of a soul sucker, a dream killer, and, in some ways, a hassle. Please be patient with me. I know, I know, 7 months is patient. But lifetimes are long, and it's been a lifetime up to this point, 7 months isn't all it's going to take to cure me. You are my angel, my flower, my sunshine, my joy, my pride, my girlfriend. I like you.

~fin~

the day before Christmas

So, it's Saturday. I'm just kind of chilling at home. Listening to some Beethoven right now, good stuff. My girlfriend is in town and we got to hang out all day yesterday, so that was nice. I still miss her though. She's so darling. Not much going on here.

I didn't go to church today and now I'm almost kind of sad that I didn't. My parents brought the visiting pastor home for lunch and he's just chalk-full of stories. Bizarre stories. Like, he was once married to a woman who had multiple personalities; seven of them. How could you NOT know before hand that you were about to marry somebody who was 7 people. One of which was a child and one was an animal. Really? He claimed he'd wake up in the middle of the night and she'd be gone (her animal personality was a deer) so he'd go to her outdoor hiding place and slowly creep in (cause you don't want to startle a deer) and slowly lay down with her for a bit, then pick her up and carry her back in the house and put her to bed and she'd wake up the next morning never knowning a thing about it. Weird? Yeah! He was also full of other stories such as climbing various mountains, being a direct descendant of the first missionaries to China, spelunking in all the caves around Mt. Saint Helens and nearly dying a few times doing it, eating with Chinese people downtown with his father who was a real good friend of one of the elderly Chinese people and having a signal worked out for when certain foods came around that had meat in them and passing on some sort of ravioli type looking thing and finding out later that it was dog meat that was inside. Just bizarre stuff. I don't know how much of it I believe. He wouldn't stop talking.

So, that was lunch entertainment. Lunch itself was a full baked potato bar. It was delicious. Chili, cheese, sour cream, baco-bits, butter, salt, you know... good stuff. Could have used some tomatoes and broccoli I suppose. Oh well. Oh, side note, I found out yesterday when I was out with girlfriend et. al. getting Gelato that the correct Italian spelling of Macaroni is something like Maccheroni or something like that. Crazy, eh? Probably not as crazy as being a legal polygamist married to one woman with seven personalities. But, whatever. Such is life, I suppose.

Merry Christmas

intro to video: part I

My final project in my Intro to Video class was a little bit slap-dash, if you know what I mean. I simply took a bunch of "stock" footage from a road trip that my girlfriend, my roommate, and I went on and edited it together to a song that sounded right. We took off on a Tuesday afternoon and headed to Portland to see Hot Hot Heat, Weezer, and Foo Fighters in concert that night. It was an awesome show and I believe there is a post in here about it if you really want to know all the details. Anyways, most of the footage from this video is the result of my own curiosity and experimentation with white balancing the camera. The quality isn't that great because to upload to Google you kind of have to tone down the quality quite a bit. Anywho, without further ado, here it is:

"Run" by Air

For whatever crapy reason, sometimes it works, sometimes it just has no idea where that video is. I can't figure it out.

how annoying

So, I'm a little upset right now. I downloaded this really cool (well, promised-to-be-cool) widget the other day that was called like BlogDash or DashBlog...something like that. Anyways, the whole idea behind it was that you could set up your blogger account on this widget, which I did successfully, and then make a new post and then post it to your blogger account. So, I ranted and raved and hooted and hollered about how cool it was that I was sending a post from my desktop. Then I gave a tremendous update about what was going on in my life and how I was about to fail several classes. Anyway, to make a long story short, I finished it all, did the smart thing by copying everything I wrote, and then hit "submit post". I waited...the green bar of success flashed on the screen and with anticipation I quickly logged in to my blogger account. But it wasn't there yet. So I waited a bit, then I reindexed...still nothing. Unfortunately for all of my cautiousness with copying the text and for all the great and wonderful things I had to say, I had to go to my next class so I closed the laptop and trucked off to class. To my dismay, when I opened her back up, I couldn't paste what I had copied before. So...it was all for naught.

Oh well; c'est le vie!

But, on the upside, I have this really cool image of my first vector 3-d colorful graphical button to display. Woot!