Shouzer

The new version of WordPress just came out a couple days ago, so I figured I’d update. Everything went surprisingly smoothly. It’s not so much that I expected problems as that I just didn’t think it would really be as easy as it was.

I haven’t been doing anything overly exciting lately–mainly just going to work and then lazing around at home. I really don’t have any complaints about that. To me, it’s a good time. We played some Halo last night, which was pretty fun. Scott and Nick were both there and that was the first time I’d seen them over break, which was nice.

Damn, I really don’t have much to say..

I usually do not remember my dreams very well, but I had one last night that I don’t think I’ll forget anytime soon. One of my roommates had somehow managed to hook up with Lacey Chabert. For some reason, they came in really late (from break, I didn’t know they were dating), and I happened to be going to the bathroom or something because I ran into them. I didn’t really notice what was going on at the time. At this point, I should probably throw in a picture:

It’s also important to point out that this particular roommate is pretty nerdy looking. He’s a really nice guy though. He also has a tendency to pick out girls who are, well, less than spectacular looking.

I woke up the next morning and found my other two roommates watching TV in the living room. I went in and started talking to them about the previous night’s events:
“I could have sworn I saw [roommate] come in with Lacey Chabert last night.” [me]
“Who’s Lacey Chabert?”
“She’s an actress. She was the girl in Not Another Teen Movie who gives the nerdy kid a hand job for the note.”
“What? And she’s here w/ [roommate]?” (The other roommate and the girl walk in behind me.)
“Yeah, I know. She’s really freaking hot. I don’t really know how he pulled it off. I think I was imagining things.” [me].

So I managed to make a fool of myself even in my own dream. Wow. Actually though, it didn’t turn out to be as awkward as I thought it would be. They were both pretty cool about it. And it turns out Lacey Chabert is really nice. I always thought she would be stuck up. She says that she liked [roommate] because he treated her so well. So there’s a moral to this story. Be nice, and good things will happen to you.

I omitted the roommate’s name because I didn’t think it would be nice to talk about him in such a public forum.

I’m working at the office this week and next, but I’m home for lunch right now. I forgot how much I hated getting up at 7:30 every morning to head into work. And, maybe even more, I forgot how much I hated going to bed at a decent time. I’m going to have to make my first billion quick so I don’t have to do this stuff much longer. When I get home I’ll post an update of the last few days.

We were about to head over to my Grandma’s house this afternoon when we got a call from the Sheriff’s Office to inform us that some of our cows got out. So my dad, grandpa, uncle, and I headed over there to check it out. It turned out that someone had accidentally left the gate open, and a few of them had wandered out.

I thought it was going to be a major ordeal trying to get them back in the fence, but it turned out to be fairly easy. They made a hole in the fence. Then my grandpa carried the bucket that he uses to feed them through the hole. The cows followed him straight through hoping to get some food. Then we just repaired the hole. I was scared that it was going to be much harder than that. I thought we were going to try to have to herd them to a gate, and then get them to go back through it by scaring them. I wouldn’t have thought of using the feed bucket or the hole in the fence. I guess that’s why I’m not a farmer.

The French are talking about legalizing music and movie downloading. I can’t believe it. The French are actually doing something right for once. It’s unbelievable.

I went to see King Kong last night, and I was pleasantly surprised. First of all, the CG was just amazing. When they did close up shots of Kong, I couldn’t tell whether they used a real ape or not. I was thinking they might have just gotten a smaller one and then changed the size of everything else. It would have been hard for them to train and ape to do make those facial expressions.

The movie was pretty entertaining too. The whole thing had this great sense of adventure to it. I couldn’t figure out how they were going to fill 3 hours, but most of it was full of exciting scenes in the jungle. I won’t spoil those for you.

The movie drew a lot of conspicuous comparisons to Heart of Darkness. I really didn’t get the reference until about 5 minutes ago. In the book, a guy travels down this jungle river and found “civilized” men living amongst savages. (At least, I think that’s how to goes. It’s been a few years since I read that book). The parallel comes in the form of Kong traveling to live in New York. The movie then is asking, who is the real savage? I’m a little embarrassed that I didn’t figure that out until today. I’ll blame it on the fact that I didn’t really remember the Heart of Darkness story very well.

Well, last Thursday I managed to put in an order for an Xbox 360 at circuitcity.com during the hour window or so while there were some in stock. That in itself was pretty cool, but I actually got the unit on Monday. I’ve got to say that so far I’ve been pretty damn impressed with it. The graphics are great, the controllers, remote, etc are great.

The biggest thing I like about it right off the bat, though, is the Live integration into everything. The dashboard is great this time around, and Live only makes it better. The other night I watched a movie on it, and during it a little notice popped up in the corner to tell me one of my friends got online. That was pretty cool. It’ll be great when there’s a few more games out for it, too.

School’s Out! FINALLY!!!! The nightmare can end. Which for me, this nightmare has been 12 long, grueling months of school without any significant break. I took my last final yesterday…it was by far my easiest. Criminal Law and Procedure. It was an 80 question multiple choice exam. It began at noon and I was finished at 12:30. My hardest final though, was molecular biology and biochemistry…it was Monday. I studied pretty damn hard for it, and when I was finished I thought I’d failed it. Thankfully, God was with me because I must have passed it because I passed the course. Granted, it’s not the grade I wanted, but I’m not gonna complain. I passed, that’s all that matters…LOL. My other two finals, Theology and Immunology were easy and slightly difficult, respectively. I did well on both of them though, so that’s good.

I’m up in Chicago right now….brrrr…it’s very cold. Well, to be precise, I’m in the burbs…but I’m prolly gonna venture into the city later today and do some christmas shopping on Michigan Ave. I just have to remember how to get to the L-train from where I am right now….well, it’ll make for an interesting day that’s for sure. I’m gonna be up here until Thursday night or Friday. Then I have to go back to STL and work Christmas eve on Saturday….which totally blows, but it was either that or Christmas day, and then I’m coming home.

I wanna see all you guys over break, because I just got to thinking how long it’s been since I’ve seen any of you….and it’s been way too long. I miss you all, and hope that your semesters weren’t too trying and that you’re all enjoying the break.

Merry Christmas!!! See you guys soon!

Well, I finished my finals thursday night, so this is admittedly a little belated. All in all, I would describe my finals as “ok”. It turns out I dominated my CS 411 (Database Systems) final, but I wasn’t particularly worried about that class anyway, so it’s a bit of a moot point. I don’t have the grades for any of my other classes yet, but those should start trickling in throughout this week.

I got back Friday afternoon, probably sometime around 4pm. It felt nice to get home and just take a break from school. I know that when I go back I don’t have projects due the next day or anything like that. It’s just a good feeling, I’d say.

I’ve more or less just been hanging around the house not doing too much. The Broncos were on yesterday, and while they started off a little slow, they ended up dominating the game, so I’m fine with that. In the Good News department, the Colts lost today to the Chargers. That was money. The way I see it, if anybody is going to go undefeated, it had better been the Broncos. It also puts a bit of a chink in the Colts’ armor. This is good news since there’s a chance the Broncos will see them in the playoffs.

Expect posts everyday now that I’ve had a little time to relax.

Yes, it’s true.

You can find it here.

This one is pretty funny too.

Edit: While you are at it, look at this one too.

Well, I obviously haven’t been posting too much lately. It’s in large part due to the fact that the semester is coming to a close, and I’ve been pretty busy lately. It seems that a large portion of my professors don’t plan out their courseloads very well, and we end up getting swamped with work right at the end. For me, it’ll all be over at 10pm on Thursday, when my last final ends. Then I’ll have a good month to decompress before it starts all over again.

In much better news, the Broncos again have a two game lead in the AFC West. It came as a result of them winning their game and the Chiefs and Chargers both losing theirs. Haha, it was pretty sweet. So they’ll definitely be in the playoffs, but now it’s just a matter of whether or not they’ll be playing in the first round and things like that.

I haven’t really been commenting lately either, so I wanted to use this space to say congrats to Scott for his job, his toy, and his becoming project manager for ChallengeX. It sounds like things are going pretty well. Also, that excerpt from the Rose Thorn was pretty funny. Good job, Scottie.

I haven’t written a meaningful post in some time now. Sorry for that. The problem is a dreadful combination of business and no news to report. I’ve given updates on all of the major events in my life, but I haven’t had time to sit around and editorialize anything or ramble on about nothing in particular.

I have to say, I really prefer that my life be like this. I have a lot going on, this week especially, and that makes life a little more interesting. All these little meetings and activities keep me from boredom.

I guess the one thing I did fail to mention is that I’m a project manager of ChallengeX now. I got the news the same day that I heard about my job offer, so that really overshadowed it. I’m in charge of the controls team now. It’s a lot of extra responsibility, hence the business I spoke of earlier, but I’m enjoying it. It feels pretty cool to know that I am in charge now. I guess the profs still make most of the decisions on the team, but the project managers do have a fair bit of control. It should be great work experience too.

One of the most beautiful girls I’ve ever laid eyes on walked up to me. She kneeled down next to me and looked me into the eye to say, “I think it’s time we see other people.”

“But we aren’t even dating,” I said in a manner that exhibited my confusion.

“I saw you checking me out at lunch the other day, and it makes me feel awkward,” she informed me and then walked out of my life forever. I sat there stunned.

I called back to her, “ROOOOOOSE GOGGLES!” But it was too late; she was out of earshot. Then it started to rain. This was going to be a rough quarter.

Phillip Becker and John Dullard in the Dec 2, 2005 issue of the Rose Thorn.

A friend of mine scored some free advanced screening tickets to see The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe last night, so we went and saw it.

I thought it was pretty amazing. Being a big fan of the books and all, it was pretty exciting…plus I got to see it for free and before it actually comes out so that made it all the more exciting.

I definitely recommend it, and I’ll prolly go to see it again.

I was looking for the old “Centers: Don’t Walk” commercial from SportsCenter back in the day, and i found an ESPN hosted page with a bunch of their “This is SportsCenter” commercials. Check it out. SportsCenter commercials have consistently been some of the funniest on tv for years now.

Bee Tee Dub: This is my first full day with a computer for over a week. Some things you just can’t live without.