Saturday, March 27, 2004

Even more vacation

sigh

Today was pretty boring. My mom had her philosophy conference, which is the real reason we are in CA. Well, MY main reason to be here is to support teh extended family, whom I very rarely get to see. But she came because KSU covers the cost. So today Tim and I were at the mercy of what my grandma wanted to do. We went to go see the movie "Ladykillers" which started off very good, but i didn't like the way it ended. Played cards with her for a few hours afterwards, until dinner. My grandma is really the only person I will play cards with. Then teh mom came back with some of her friends and promptly started to tell embarrassing stories about us... Yeah so just sat there politely until they left. If i'm lucky I'll never see them again, so it's okay.

Never got around to warwalking last night, I was too tired. Fell asleep listening to the ipod. I guess it was playing relaxing music , but all of a sudden it started playing something where someone was screaming. Of course, I thought it was real and woke up yelling in a cold sweat wondering what the fuck was going on. Damn subliminal messages. Today was a nice day, I guess. As the expression goes here "The mountains were out today". What it means is that the air was clear enough to see the mountains. I highly recommend seeing the movie "Seabiscuit", which was filmed in Arcadia. You'll see the mountains I'm talking about.

So tomorrow is Knott's Berry Farm Day. I want to go on some roller coasters, but more than anything, I need to get some DDR in. I hope it's a DDR Extreme machine so I can play Speed over Beethoven. Such an awesome song. I also have to interview my grandma about WW2 and vietnam for history class. I'm already reading this horrible book about the civil rights movement. Now I'm all about freedom and equal rights, but the book is so boring that it's put me out cold in sleep 3 times already. I can't be expected to write a paper about it. Oh well, another semester, another miracle to get through it.

The problem with warwalking in California is that I'm still sleeping according to eastern time. When it's 10pm here, I feel like it's 1am. And If I wait for everyone in the neighborhood to sleep around midnight, I have to leave when it feels like 3am to me. And then I spend about 2 hours online, so now I feel like it is 5am. This is the last time I will be online before coming back to Ohio. The plane leaves Cali around 6:30am local time, so I will have to get some sleep. Or I could read that damn book.

See you real soon kids!

Friday, March 26, 2004

More vacation

if you call it that

Last night, as you might have guessed, I was able to get out of the house and come online around 2:30am Eastern time. I will be trying to do the same tonight. If you are reading this, chances are I was successful. I found a nice house that was dark, with a standard netgear wireless B router. Unfortunately, there is so much light around Arcadia that it's not a good idea to go into people's yards to hide. So I was sitting on the street curb behind a parked car to avoid any curious people. Not a lot of wireless signals around, not as much as Jo expected. I kinda knew what I was into. At least tonight I won't have to do a lot of hunting like last night.

Anyways, today started off with a trip to the Santa Anita mall, in my hopes of finding a dance dance machine. This stupid, boring mall only had one place to find CD's yet had 5 places to buy sunglasses. You'd think with CA being much closer to Japan you could find more DDR machines. I doubt I'll have another chance to find one in town, but Saturday we are going to Knott's Berry Farm, which probably has an arcade. After the mall, we went to San Pedro to visit one of my mom's old high school friends. I said yesterday that Arcadia would be a nice place to live, but San Pedro is not. There are a lot of gangs, crime, etc that apparently weren't there ~10 years ago. San Pedro is about 45 min southeast of Arcadia, right along the Pacific Coast. So we went to the ocean so teh mom could talk and stuff and just kinda wasted time alone. Still way too cold to swim, not that I really like to swim. My grandma has a cold or something now, so I hope she gets better for tomorrow, our day of movies. She goes to the movies and watches TV a lot. I guess that's what old people do.

I hope I can stay online longer tonight, but it's not terrifically fast or even safe. Actually, I think I'm falling asleep, so this post might not even make it online in time.

Thursday, March 25, 2004

Arcadia!

its nice

So it's 9:37pm here in Arcadia which means it's 12:37am Eastern Time. I expected my Grandma to give me the guest room to myself. If they had, I could use the computer a lot more. My Grandma doesn't like computers too much and therefore it would be rude of me to be on mine all the time. I expect to do a quick warwalk around the "old-folks" community here. I dont know what to expect. There could be nothing if everyone feels the same about technology as my grandma, or maybe there is someone who loves to buy technology such as wireless and doesnt know how to set it up. Arcadia is a beautiful city. For some reason, I think the palm trees here are the coolest things ever. From the palm trees right in front of me to the mountains in the background, I swear this is one of the best cities in America. Even the state has a cool name: California. Anyways, I honestly love it way more than Ohio. It doesn't really get that cold. This is where my mom's family grew up. Maybe I feel this is where I belong. I don't know if that's why I feel good when I'm here, or if I just feel better when I am far away from Ohio. Yet, after the untimely death of my uncle, everything here has a somber attitude surrouning it. It makes it pretty hard on everyone. It's amazing to see the amount of cards and support my grandma has recieved for him. She's had a harder time because he lived close and always visited/took care of her. Well, we went to the Santa Anita horse races today (Wednesday), where my mom gave me and tim $20 for the day to bet on horses. Right away, I said "I should just keep this $20, because I'm obviously not going to win." Oh how right I am. I kept making bets because I didn't want my mom or grandma to feel bad. The horse races were cool and everything, I just don't enjoy gambling. Now I have $7. bah. Oh well, they are happy and that's why I am here. I hope the fog lifts tomorrow and we can see the mountains better. I have no idea what I'm supposed to do tomorrow with teh family. I think it's just taking grandma to the movies. That's all good. Even if there aren't any movies I want to see, it will make her happy. I'm getting some schoolwork done that I probably wouldn't have finshed anyways, so it works out. I wish there was just some random wireless signal here, because there really isn't anywhere to sit down around here and use someone's wifi. There was a place in the Denver airport that advertised wireless using centrino(c)(tm)(omgiloveIntel). I tried to get on it, but couldn't. I was pissed. The mac obviously detected the wireless signal, but couldn't get on. I think they're using some sort of mac address binding, like only centrino(c)(tm)(omgilI) NICs are worthy. God bless capitalism.

Tuesday, March 23, 2004

Hi-Ho Hi-ho

It’s off to CA I go

I’ll try to keep my murderous rage to myself.  At least I get to fly.  They’ll probably disassemble my powerbook at the security booth to make sure its not a bomb.  :(  Back middle of day Sunday, but by then I’ll just have to pack and move into the dorm.  I need more sleep..

Sunday, March 21, 2004

I don’t like picking titles

meh

Like, I am soo tired right now. I should sleep. But i never do what's good for me. Hokay, so Monday I was going to skip physics but i decided to go, and I walk in and OMG! We're having a test! Usually we go like 6 weeks between tests. It had only been two. Since I can't learm anything in class, I usually cram the day before the test. The strategy has worked well - getting high B's usually. But now I'm looking at this test and I can't answer a single question. Not ONE. know how that feels? I do know. I couldn't answer one question for sure. So I guessed. Yep, 40% was long answer, 50% multiple choice, and 10% true/false made up the test. Got it back Friday - I got a 56% - with the curve it turned into a high D. Whoa. God I hate physics. I hate all my classes. I dont know why i keep trying anymore. It isnt helping.

Had a "Music as a world phenominon" midterm the other day. Got a 76%, one of the highest grades in the class. Highest was 84% average was 51% 51% You know its not the students fault when the average is that low. Why do I always get these classes? Everyone else in the damn university can get drunk every fucking night and still have a GPA over 3.0. A friend John down the hall in Allyn got robbed over the weekend. Took his computer, some other expensive things...People suck.

So now its spring break. Dan and Tim and Brian came over Friday night and Saturday to play UT2K4 and develop a strategy to use for Jeloh. Got lots of free pizza from Quinn - you rule dude, thanks! UT2k4 is pretty sweet. I need to sit down and actually play some of the new modes of play. Need to practice and get real good for the tourney so i am unstoppable. Our team will be invincible. Just upgraded the powerbook to OS X 10.3.3 - yay nothing new...lame

I'll be gone to California Tuesday through sunday. I will try to get online by warwalking late at night, dont know how successful i will be. I have a lot of crap to read this break, I'm going to do that there. And my ipod/laptop combo will be my best friend while i am there. I really don't want to go, but i feel i have to.

maybe i will sleep now