Shouzer

Right now there’s about 4 or 5 albums in the rotation on my mp3 player. Sure, I’ve got room for thousands of songs on there, but I typically only listen to a few bands at a time. It’s still worth it, though, as I like not having to swap shit out all the time.

A few weeks ago, Stephanie gave me the Bayside Acoustic album, and I’m a pretty big fan of that. They’re supposedly a screaming band on all their other albums–something I’m not a fan of–but the Acoustic album is not at all. Winter is a great song, and the rest of the cd is pretty good too.

Next up is Teddy Geiger’s Underage Thinking. Megan hooked me up with the cd a couple weeks ago. I like the whole cd, but there’s a few songs that stick out to me. I really like Night Air, which is by far my favorite song on the cd.

After that comes School House Rock! Rocks. It’s basically a compilation cd of a bunch of bands covering School House Rock! songs. I don’t like every song on the cd, but I like Blind Melon’s version of Three Is A Magic Number. It’s pretty catchy. I’ve got Jordy to thank for that one.

The other day Al was watching the newest episode of Scrubs and I happened to notice I liked one of the songs that was playing. This really didn’t come as a surprise as I really do love the Scrubs soundtracks. I think the show probably has the best soundtrack of any show on tv. The fact that J.D., the main character, loves Journey doesn’t hurt either.

Anyhow, it turned out the song was called How To Save A Life from The Fray’s album of the same name. I’ve listened to it a couple times through and I really like it. The song She Is is also a great song. So that’s certainly on the recommend list, as well.

Yesterday I also picked up Blind Melon’s first album, which is self-titled. I haven’t honestly listened to any songs other than No Rain, which was the reason I downloaded it. I like the song quite a bit, but had forgotten about it until I heard Jordy play it last weekend. Hopefully the rest of the album is on par with that, too.

Lastly, I found out yesterday that Harvey Danger (of Flagpole Sitta fame) released their latest album on the internet for free download. I haven’t listened to it yet, but I’d say everybody should go pick it up. Who can complain about free music? If you like it, they have a system where you can donate a couple bucks to the band, which I’ll probably do. I just appreciate them not treating fans like pieces of shit.

Oh, and before I forget, I love the “Panic! At The Disco” album “A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out”. They were discovered by Pete Wentz (Fall Out Boy’s bassist), and they’re great. It took me a couple times through the cd to really start liking them, but I definitely do now. They’ve got a nice sound. That’s another one for which the credit should go to Megan.

Lastly on the rotation is The Strokes new album First Impression Of Earth. I’ve had all their albums other albums for a while, but had never really listened to them much. Corinne and Jordy went to one of their shows a couple weeks back, so I figured I should give them a bit more of a listen. It turns out I like them quite a bit, too.

So that’s the general rotation on my mp3 player right now. Chances are it’ll last quite a while since it’s a pretty hefty list. I’d certainly recommend any of those albums to anybody reading this though. Top on the recommendation list would probably be Panic!. It’s just a fun cd.

[Edit:] Yeah so it turns out I get a lot of my music from other people’s recommendations.  I’m perfectly fine with that, though.  It saves me a lot of the work, haha.

I woke up this morning feeling pretty exhausted, and I have a whole lot of stuff to accomplish today.  So after my first class, I decided to walk over to the gas station just off campus and buy an energy drink.  They have this great deal where you can buy a 32oz fountain drink for $0.59, and they have a decent no-name energy drink in this fountain.  However, on my way there, I was stopped by some people in one of those little red bull trucks, and the gave me a free Red Bull.  It was really lucky too because the fountain ended up being out of the energy drink.  It really brightened my day to get a free Red Bull though, and now I’m in a pretty good mood.  I’m not sure if it was the pleasant surprise or the large quantities of caffeine that is now coursing through my veins, but either way, it’s good to be happy.

It’s the end of April and weather.com says that it’s 40 degrees and feels lik 31. Seriously, what’s up with that? School’s almost over and it cold outside.

There’s a (fairly) new concept out in the automotive industry called active suspension. Basically, there’s a control system that tells the dampers on your wheels how much force to exert based on the road conditions. Right now, there are 2 types of active suspension systems. One is based on magentorheological fluids, which I happen to be writing a paper on at the moment. Basically, a fluid stiffens and softens based on the magnetic field that is passing through it allowing a change in stiffness in the damper. The second type utilizes electric motors to varying the damping. Bose has made one such suspension system, and the results are stunning.

Earlier this week, we had a bit of a problem with ants in our house.  They were coming in the around the door and making their way over to the trash can to gather food.  I’m talking like a major line of ants all over the floor and the wall.  Unfortunately, we did not have any bug killer.  Therefore, I started looking around the house to find something that would take care of the problem.  I stumbled across a bottle of gin from back when one of my roommates used to drink.  It hadn’t been touched in over a year so we decided to use it as bug killer.  I dumped some on the line of ants going up the wall and tried to cover the line on the floor.  It killed them on the spot.  I went back half and hour later, and there were only about 5 ants still moving.  The next day, there were no ants what-so-ever.  I expected the stuff to work on the spot, but I certainly didn’t expect it to permanently handle the problem.  Last time I dealt with ants, it was a lengthy battle.  So it turns out that gin is better at killing ants than ant killer.  It makes me glad that I don’t drink.

Now, here’s some morons.. It looks like Philips doesn’t want you to be able to stop watching a commercial. If you’re watching a live show, you can’t change the channel. If you’re watching a recorded show, you can’t fast forward. Who the fuck do they think they are?

Next up is people who can’t drive and talk at the same time. I wouldn’t be stupid enough to say that I’m as good of driver when I’m on the phone, but at the same time I’m not drunk either. Hell, put that shit on speakerphone and and set it on the seat next to you. Problem solved. Don’t look at your phone when you’re dialing–push the voice button and say a name. Another problem solved. It’s ridiculous when you get down to it.

I got this email from “Brian Jones”.  He was wondering if my “girl is unsatisfied with [my] potency”.  Brian just wanted to let me know that if she is unsatisfied, I shouldn’t just sit around and wait until she finds another man.  Instead I should choose from a variety of “LICENSED love tabs”.  They’ve got the “best prises” after all.

I really might have to look into gettin’ me some love tabs.  Thanks Brian!

It always seems to me that you can sort of tell when school is starting to wind down. My guess is that it’s due primarily to the fact that classes like to really start cramming tons of material in. I have an exam in one of my classes next Wednesday and then the final the week after that. A schedule like that really doesn’t make much sense to me. Oh well, not too much I can do about it.

Another thing the end of school means is that I get lazier. It’d just be wrong of me to deny that. I’ve never been a big fan of school, and so when I know it’s almost over it’s tough to stay focused. I usually get it done, though. I really don’t have much choice.

That pretty much sums up my day yesterday.  Well, there was some homework I did in there too, but who cares about homework?  That’s what I want to know.

I pretty much hadn’t played tennis since the middle of the summer, so I was pretty rusty when Jordy and I went out early yesterday.  Plus, we had played football on Tuesday and I was still sore from that–yes, I am that out of shape.  The heat was also cooking me a live, and we all know how much I don’t care for that.

Afterwords I went over to Alex’s for a little drinking, pizza, and videogames.  You really can’t go wrong with that combo.  We played some Madden, Halo, and Counter-Strike.  The problem was that Madden was last year’s version, and the buttons are totally fucked compared to this years.  So he beat me there.  I’m not saying playing this year’s version would have turned the tides, but it would have helped.  I can’t hate on his skills just because I’m used to something else.  Halo, needless to say, I dominated everybody at.  There shouldn’t have really been any question there.  CS we played on the same team, so he couldn’t really beat me, but he’s certainly better than me.  He plays it a lot more, though, so it makes sense.

After that Al, Jason, Jordy, Corinne, and I went out for some more tennis.  Yeah, that’s five so we just rotated.  After that we tried to play some frisbee but it was around 11pm, so it was hard to really see what was going on.  It was still pretty fun, though.

I came away from the day very tired.  I can’t believe I used to do sports on a daily basis in high school.  The simple thought of that just wears me out.

i thought i would point everybody over to this site: Video Downloader 2.0. Basically, it’s just a nice little script that lets you download to your harddrive videos from all sorts of media outlets such as GoogleVideo and Youtube. I downloaded a few from Youtube and just renamed the files. VLC Media player plays the strange file type, too. Quite useful, in my opinion.

I’ve got two interviews tomorrow with Google. It should be a good experience, but I’m definitely starting to get nervous about them. I’ve never actually had a real interview. On top of that, from what I’ve read, Google’s interviews are pretty tough. Oh well, it’s cool they’re even letting me interview with them.

I had to post this comic when I saw it. Aside from the Oblivion stuff, I think it’s straight out of a couple conversations Al and I have had. Haha, I always wanna go to IHOP.

So my desktop started freaking out this morning. I really don’t know why. Every time I boot Windows it gives me a bunch of shit about how it failed to write to drive D. Why is it even trying to write to D right when it starts up? That’s what I want to know. Also, the free space on my C drive (which I have partitioned for Windows by itself) just dropped to 28 megs. Before I rebooted this morning, I had about a gig free. That makes no sense.

I got a new motherboad yesterday, my 4th.  The video was going bad, and i was getting some weird sound-feedback issues.  Yeah, I hate my laptop.

In other news, I’ve got a break starting this weekend.  I have all next week off.  Hooray for no school.

We’re starting to get a lot of comment spam here at Shouzer.   You guys wouldn’t notice it, because WordPress automatically filters it out.  It’s starting to piss me off, though, because it clutters up my admin interface.  At least it means a little more traffic, haha.