I'm taking a brief blogging hiatus to enjoy the rest of my br8(-t+k) and because I'm working on other projects. I'll keep you posted! Or rather, I'll keep the blog posted! Or rather, I won't keep it posted for a few days!

E-mail is on of the greatest technological applications in this past century. What a remarkable tool! Who would have figured that you could send characters and letters, symbols and pictures thousands and thousands of miles away. Simply amazing, though I never think about it. The single force that has instigated the changing of our whole nation is the availability of information, through television, newspapers, and in the past twenty years, the internet. Just, wow, amazing...

But also mind blowing is the postal service! That's something I especially never think about, but what a great organization. Pretty much no matter what they charge, it's worth the amount of the stamp to send a letter, because you can't get things across the country so easily by yourself.

Agh!!!! I need to finish and send my college apps! *begins a panic attack* I'm out!

^

cruddy post

Lie La Lie

Happy Boxing Day to everyone in the Great White North, eh? And also the UK, and the other European countries (even the Commonwealth ones). My Christmas was great, and I am very tired from it all. By the time I went to sleep on Christmas, I had been up for 24 hours! I just couldn't sleep the night before, something related to the hugantious headache I had. The next night, I had a good three hours of sleep to back me up. I've got to find a way to let my mind be at ease...

Well, as it's a holiday (in another country) I will not write so much. So, take off, all you hosers celebrating a retail day in Quebec...or Nova Scotia, the coolest name of all the provinces. So, just take off, eh?

Kris Kringle: Father Christmas, or Slave Overseer?

Radical Biscuit: tonight's the night!
SantaClaus: Hey. You're back! You DO have that Christmas spirit! Well, I'm on my way! Don't forget your Free Christmas tree SuperBuddy Icon! Also, did you register for the $10,000 Shopping Spree?
Radical Biscuit: how do you type from way up there?
SantaClaus: Elves.
Radical Biscuit: no kiddin? SLAVE LABOR!
SantaClaus: Why did you say that?
Radical Biscuit: The elves are your slaves!
SantaClaus: What about elves?
Radical Biscuit: Join S. P. E. W. and stop elf slave labor!
SantaClaus: I've got all I can handle.

What the heck do they mean, marry Christmas?

Regurgitated material from last year:



Have a "Merry" Christmas!

Christmas (Eve)^2

Whenever I read Tom Clancy books, I begin making more and more "logical conclusions" the longer I read. I pay more attention to detail and make full (and many-times-correct) conclusions on anything ranging from which cat scratched the floor to how someone will react to a surprise b-day party. I can't help it; every one of the characters in Clancy's books do it, even the stupid ones (yeah, the ones who mentally stupid). So, naturally, I pick up the habit, too.

Naturally, I've adopted this conclusive logic in the guessing of my Christmas presents.

I really only have three presents under the tree right now. Two from my brother Kyle, and one from my sister. Kyle works at Staples, and therefore most anything that he got everybody, though not everything to be sure (I know he got a game for my other sister at Wal-Mart or somewhere), was purchased at Staples. Surely, all the really cool stuff, anyhow. My first present from him is hard to describe (in shape). I really haven't come to a conclusion on it, except that it's probably a piece of electronics (due to its small size and packaging structure). Hey, I can deal with that. The other present [the big one! (well, bigger than the others)] is probably the one that I'll be looking forward to, I guess. It's in a cardboard box, whatever it is, a rectangular prism. It's not all that heavy, but it is a little dense. Here's my favorite part: when you shake it, nothing happens. No sound comes from within the depths of my waiting gift. This tells me what? If somethings a little dense and doesn't make a sound when you shake it, it is secured very well. If it is secured so very well, it's probably in its original manufacturer's packaging (straight from a store, not a Goodwill present. This seems possible as Kyle is about the only one who can afford something other than a Goodwill present). The last fact added with its dense nature almost tells me right out that it's something electric too. Oh boy!

The gift my sister gave me is a VHS tape. I'm not even sure how to use one of those anymore

not

yay, Christmas!

:-( :-( :-(

On the way home from Grandma and Grandpa's house just down the road a few minutes ago, I spotted a dark mass on the side of the road. I told Bryan to turn around real quick. My fears were realized: poor Milk Dud got clipped. Milk Dud was a cat amongst the most stupid specimen, but I'll miss her just the same. She was a hard one to crack. She was used to the rough, wild life of a homeless feline, and we took her in. Poor thing. She couldn't help that we were the ones who claimed her. However, she claimed us too by bringing her newborn kittens to live here. First, Cinderblock, now Milk Dud. She was quite cold and stiff, though all intact, on the side of the road.

I sort of feel bad because I was the last one to put her out yesterday. I had put her out because she was being stubborn and rude to her kittens. I guess she was going somewhere else when she was sideswiped. Ugh... Her eyes were still open, so that tells me that she didn't freeze to death, because such a case would require becoming unconscious first (and the eyes would be shut). Besides, cats are made to be outside. Plus, she was in walking position, just on her side. The kids don't even know yet.

Poor, poor Milk Dud. Now we've got her orphans, Snickers and Licorice, here. We kept them inside last night. I kept checking the door several times before I went to bed waiting to see if Milk Dud wanted back in. She never came. :-( Oh well, these things happen, and life goes on! What a dumb cat, heh. She was mean.

"If promises were crackers, my daughter would be fat!"

it's my little sister Kelsey's berfday

I Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet

The piano beckons for me to play some Ray Charles-y type stuff, but I look sadly at it, and tell it, "I fear I am unable to at the current time. Give me a few decades."

^

< * >

/\

/; { ;\

/ ;*o o *\

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

/ *:+\ * o~\

/*~ o+"~~ * \

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

/ ;5: _* ~~~)! \

/*% o * ~{} _:; \

/ +-{ :* ><* ; o_! \

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

!____!

!____!

Another ASCII creation! Yeah, it's a little cheap, but it's better than the tree we have in our living room: we don't have a tree in our living room yet (!). merry Christmas!

inTroSpectaCular

yeah, it does record! More forthcoming! What I recorded was basically a collection of first takes, as it's blatantly obvious. Here's what I did to test it out:

Go Here

The Greight Restoration

My friends all across the fruited plane, and for those in other hopeful countries, I have some amazing news. I have just witnessed one of the greatest computer system restorations of all time. Actually, I've probably seen systems revived from nothingness before, but this one is quite a case. Remember when I complained about Windows 98 installation, and Mark and the computer geek elite cried out "Linux!" once again? Well, this is that same system that I couldn't get W98 to install properly on. Somehow, I did it today. W98 still wouldn't put all the files on, but I got it to put enough so that I could get on the net with the system and download the rest of the drivers, .dll files, etc. there. And here we are: a perfectly good system. Now, I shall test it's recording capabilities. If it's anything like its counterpart (we have another system like this here), it won't be bad.

The Effects of English Class on the Mind

Ambition has given way to desperation

My intention's become not to lose what I've won

I confess I'm scared and lonely and tired
They seem to think I'm made of clay
not cut out for this

Well sometimes I punch myself as hard as I can
Yelling nobody cares hoping someone will tell me how
Wrong I am

Grrrr....I wish I could spend more time with anyone other than myself.

Heave!

Everyone is in full-fledged Christmas spirit, bearing gifts to their friends in good cheer. Parents are buying toys and stuffed animals, friends buy remote controls to replace the ones they lost at Phil's football party, employers give bonuses or discount coupons, Mrs. Goldwasser gives exams and reading assignments, and I give about three seconds for me to run out of things to write about.

1...2...

In this holiday season, we at the Colat Homestead wish you a safe and sober trip to return all the gifts you really didn't want. Shirt too big? Service Counter! Shirt too small? WHAT? No, you say, you're not getting too big to wear that shirt. But for all the cruddy music given from hopeful parents to weirded-out children, Service Counter. Wanted the money instead? Serv. Cou. Didn't need a recliner? SC. Need to make a phone call? Counter de Service. Do yourself a favor while you're at the store returning goods you don't like (bads) and discreetly take a "Wet Floor" sign. It looks like that little guy is break dancing.

Who Hash

Friends, another great post idea was lost today to my own dismal memory. Mark, you'd better bet I'm gonna start carrying around a small notebook. I've got too many ideas (not just including blog posts) to keep up with. I could even have a suitcase full of (semi-) great ideas. Maybe.

As much as I dislike it, I shall have to revert to talking about my daily life now. I'm in the home stretch to the end of the first semester. Tomorrow is the last regular day, and then I have exams on Thursday and Friday. Stress is going to take me over, probably, or probably not. I'll be stressed, but I won't show it until afterwards. The way stress seems to work on me is by taking over slowly, and when it's all relieved, I become tons more slack. It's possible that this is an unconscious reaction intended to prevent me from taking more responsibility which will give me more untraced doses of stress. For example, after the huge (and more obvious) amount of stress I had at the end of this summer, I find myself the most nonchalant and unaffected by unresponsibility that I have ever been. It's not senioritis, but it is this reaction by myself. If I don't pull myself together, I might as well quit right here and right now.

What's more, another book to read over the break (and one I have to buy with my own withering funds), and what's more, one that I'm pretty sure I won't like to read. We do love our English teacher, truly, but I was kind of hoping to do some mega-reading on my own books that have been in queue for months, and, in some cases, years. I've barely been getting all the work done that we've had during regular school time, if I finish it at all, that is.

And I'm bumming out on calculus. I love the class, the material, and the work, but I'm not performing up to my usual standards in math classes, AP or not. In retrospect to the first semester, I'm disappointed with myself.

Crud, this is depressing. heh I'm out!

It's funny how you can tell a high school coach no matter where you go. When I went to take the ACT at Mt. Tabor High School, there was a coach as the administrator. How do I know he was a coach? When he looked at my ID, he called me "Mr. Gentry." I used to think that the coaches around here did that because they can never remember which member of the Gentry family I am, but on Saturday I realized that it's just something that's sort of universal.

All in all, the ACT wasn't bad. Especially at first, where I was still focused. However, there were many stupid things. Before the test, I went to sharpen my pencils, but there was only a really old mechanical pencil sharpener on the wall. Every time I tried to sharpen the pencil, the lead would break. I eventually settled for something really dull and sharpened them to a finer point by running the tips across a sheet of paper at a very low angle. It helped somewhat.

Then, there was this guy sitting beside of me who was one of those people who probably brags about liking to take tests and claims that math is his girlfriend. When we started the mathematics section, he got really animated and started punching numbers into his calculator, really fast and really loud. It sort of annoyed me, because in my head, he was doing it on purpose for intimidation (which doesn't get you anything on the ACT or any other written test). So, I started acting just like I thought he was (although I know he wasn't, it still annoyed me) and punched random digits into the calculator really fast and loud, just to see if I could intimidate him back down. I won the intimidation game, as he calmed down, turned his pages more quietly, and stopped going so fast. hahahhaha

I also started to get songs stuck in my head, and then chest pains towards the end. I pretty much didn't care much at that point. Also, they call the last section a "science" section? Yeah right! More like, "just biology graphs and charts" section. The test as a whole is much much easier than the SAT, though I didn't finish any single section (because I'm so slow). The administration, at least on this side of the country, was much more slack, too. I mean, they let a coach administer the test; come on! heh. Much less nerves involved with taking this test, as well.

I wanna throw a penny into an active volcano.

water

Phamplet

My posting idea that was connected with The Hunt for Red October is slowly taking shape again. I know the element of the idea, now if I can just rediscover the implications and details. I've always been like this, by the way, forgetting my own ideas. I'm awful for it. On a good day, I can write a 40-min essay in an hour and a half. This is because as I write the paper, I forget where I'm heading, if I'm moving in a direction at all, and why. Especially on my most sleep-deprived days, such as this.

Advice of the day: Don't mess with a Windows 98 installation these days unless you're a real old-time computer mechanic. It's the hardest thing to figure out for me...

Random person I don't know of the day:



Aunt Jemima! Though, I'd like to know her, I guess...

Eddie Murphy!

To those of you who have not experienced the fun and ferocity of a game of Catch-Phrase, you should probably go to the doctor; something is missing from your life!

Catch Phrase is the game that unites us all, even if you don't want to be united with the partner the table tyrant assigned you (*coughJAYcough*) The object is to get your partner to say the word or phrase shown on the handy-dandy Catch Phrase wheel, without saying the word, saying what letter the word begins with, telling what rhymes with the word, or telling them the word. There is a time limit, adding the element of "Hot Potato" to the game. Don't get stuck with the device. Quickly get your partner to say the word and move on. Sounds simple?!!!! Well, it is. However, much more fun comes from playing it than, er, not playing it.

One of my favorite answers to a Catch Phrase came about like this:

Jay: (spazzing)Okay, okay, er, agh, eef!, no, not that one (changes words), okay, okay, okay, if you live in New York and you don't have a car, you
take...

Me: Someone's watch!

Yes, I play it at lunch. I keep telling my band director, Mrs. Morrison, that I'll come up so she can hear my scales for All-District, but I'm too addicted to this thing during lunch.

one o' my all time faves is air hockey, though

Jettison the Cargo Hold!

Another missed day of posting. What's wrong with me? I'm burnt out, that's what. No, not burnt out of blogging, but school and work in general. I still haven't finished my Jane Eyre test, which I started yesterday. I'm sick of the school not having the "Slowest Test-Taker Award," cause then I'd have something to put on a college application. Though, it might be best to leave that off most times...

I still haven't remembered my Hunt For Red October-connected idea, but I have concluded that I would love to be a sonar man. This job would require sitting around with a SONAR dish and making conclusions based on sound. This might sound awfully dull (hahah, sound), but it could be so dang cool if you got really good at it. I mean, good enough, and retaining enough acoustical memory, to be able to identify individual boats and ships from their acoustical signature. Then, there's course-plotting (on a submarine). As a sonar man, you would have a lot of say in major ship decisions, and you keep the boat from ramming into anything, all based on sound.

It would be a pleasure for my job to be listening. I already like listening to noises anyhow, and then I'd finally be able to have some of those quality expensive headphones on my head that I was talking about.

I'm oblivious, can't you tell? It didn't even occur to me that I didn't post yesterday. I meant to, but I didn't. I guess in my mind, I thought I had. Hmm... I had a really good posting idea having something to do with a submarine, an idea I got while I was reading The Hunt for Red October, but I don't remember it at all now. Crud muffins.

Let's see... sonar buoys, no; radiation detectors, no; ladders, mutinies, Cray-2, undergraduates, no. I don't think it's coming back to me right now. I'ma go try and think of something else to post about.

I've never had a good set of headphones. All the ones I've ever even had on my head are pretty cheap. I've never had the right headphone experience. Why does it not bother me? aofinew;oiujfaiowe

That's a crappy post idea. I just give up for right now

A Fine Day for a Parade

So, I took the SAT for the second (and probably last) time today. I still won't have done anything spectacular, but I was kickin butt on the math sections. I imagine I'll improve my score in reading too, because this time I didn't fully read each passage (only as much as each question required), so I was able to answer more. As of this morning, I was ready to take the test except for lack of sleep and zero preparation. Kind of like how I do every school day. It turned out okay.

When my ride to go home finally got there, it cut off, right in front of a barred gate. When Dad attempted to re-crank the van, it didn't. We sat for a long time. The cell phone didn't pick up there. Adding to the misfortune, the barred gates we were stuck in front of was holding back nothing other than the Dobson, NC Christmas Parade!!! It was rather tedious! Would we still be in the way when it was time for the parade to start. Would all Dobson be disappointed if we stopped the parade? Were we the modern Grinch?!

No, we weren't. We pushed the van out of the way and got up with Mom to come get us. She came and Dad went with her to go get a new battery (we had one very dead battery). I stayed with the van, all disgruntled and cranky. The parade went past me, but I slept a bit and played a game on the graphing calculator. Mom and Dad finally got back, and I finally went home.

There were a ton of fire trucks in that parade.

Your Mom's a typing tutor

Many years ago, aboard the ancient Tandy 1000, I was learning how to type. The skill becomes handy. One of the things that I would type often was prince.exe, in order to play The Prince of Persia. This was a great game that I never beat until about three years ago when I discovered there were cheats built-in to the game. Anyhow, I was learning to type.

My brother Bryan liked to use template sentences to type with, so that when he typed in computer class at school, the computer teacher would think he was an excellent typist, while he could only type one sentence at such a fast rate. Bryan's funny that way. As a younger kid, he was always trying to do things to make people think he was a mega-geek, while he wasn't. He found out that some geeky people listen to classical music. Thus, he found the local NPR station and read something in a book, and started telling everyone he listened to and liked Bach, or "Batch" as he pronounced it. That crax me up!

This sentence he used was "The boy went to the market." I guess it's okay. It's fun to type! It truly is! For no good reason except to make a list, I will now type the above sentence five times as fast as I can, with no edits. I'm not a great typer, so don't laugh.

1. The boy went to the market
2. The boy went to the market.
3. the boy went to the market
4. they boywetn to atjt makerija
5. wethe bosy went to ath emaekrye

Okay, something went wrong. I think I got nervous. Although I've always --and I mean always-- been around computers, I'm not that good at typing. Why? Some of it has to do with my nonexistent system for typing. I don't use home row because I thought I was too good for that in elementary school. I don't use my own system becase I don't have one. Some people do get cocky at their typing skills, and totally diss home row, but I don't have a system, so what am I to say? I was never one to spend my day with Mavis Beacon, or Major Bacon, whichever it was. I got past Jim Grow, the middle school computer instructor, so it doesn't matter. I'm gonna quit now, because I'm tired of typing.

Time for a Mark Comment...

Mark, take a look at the source and tell me how I can limit these snowflakes to a certain heigth, so they won't go down the whole page. thx

No Suppa For You

I'm trying to start my posts with something other than a pronoun, but it's not working.

A picture really can say a lot about a person. Take this one for example. This is from the Thanksgiving trip. Ahhh, that's me, without a care in the world, sitting on a natural gas tank playing the g-TaR, barefoot in the chill of deep autumn in northern Florida. I miss it already! Yeah, this pic basically sums up my entire character, I think. Tells a lot about me, if you know how to infer.