Thrown back into the chaos.

After a pretty calm break, I am now back in Ellensburg. I had a lot more time to myself at home, and I found myself daydreaming a lot. I would just zone about, thinking of nothing in particular. I'd imagine myself with a girlfriend, or playing a gig, or something in general about my life just being better. I'm almost certain that I am a romantic, and that totally blows when one is terrible and maintaining relationships. My problem is that I long for romantic attention frequently, but that isn't the right approach to have regarding relationships, they should just happen.

Anyways, I have a week left of class, then it's finals week. Starting Saturday, Dead Week starts. This is when the dorms are on 24 hour quiet hours, and the RAs become a lot more strict. It's going to be weird not being able to hang out at all, even if it is a break from studying. I may go home that weekend, not sure yet. I have two finals, and a thesis paper due next week, along with a proposal due Tuesday. Needless to say, I will be pretty busy, and quite stressed out. My sleep schedule will become even more fucked up, staying up late and being stressed out quite a bit. I want to just power through all of this and get it done, so that I can look forward to being home for a few weeks. Hopefully I'll be entertained a lot at home, because I love the excitement that comes with living on a college campus.

I sold my Xbox 360 today, and I'm going to put the $250 I got towards a PS3. I'm tired of how expensive online play is for the 360, and there are PS3 exclusives that I want to play. It will essentially pay for itself in a little while, because of the lack of subscription costs. I went Black Friday shopping with a couple friends, and picked up Final Fantasy 13 for $17. On my way home for winter break, I'm going to buy the PS3, and it will come with God of War 3, and I hope to get Black Ops.

Here's to hoping I can sleep at least 4 hours tonight, have some awesome post-metal by Callisto, and a picture of my cat and I.

How the Internet affects people's lifestyles, or something.

While browsing on CNN the other night, I saw a section devoted to a blog. Usually I don't give a damn, but I felt inclined to learn about this one. It's called The Public Isolation Project. It involves a woman in her early 20's living openly on a city block. It was a store that was going to become an art gallery. She is constantly on display, besides when in the bathroom. While in there, she may only interact with people via things such as her cell phone, Skype, Facebook, etc. Only electronic. She is also not allowed to leave the gallery, so it's almost as if she's throwing herself into the life of a complete shut-in. The project is to last 30 days, with the end date being the first of December. She has experienced many different emotions, and has brought up some very interesting points about how social networking sites and indirect socializing is approached by different generations. I'm so interested in the project that I plan on contacting her soon. It's based in downtown Portland, which I go to at least once a year, and the street she is on I've walked up and down many a time.

It seems that with each newer generation, there is a larger presence of communication via technology, less face-to-face socializing. Being an 18 year old college student, Facebook is really pre-dominant. If I were a few years older, I would have more interest in keeping a blog, and the people around me would actually have them (it seems that almost no-one does but I). Facebook and other socializing sites just seemed like a good way to share different things from the Internet with friends and broadcast certain topics with them. Now that I've moved away to college, I can actually see how it keeps people feeling somewhat attached still (case in point: Johnny and I). But to all of the high-schoolers back in Zillah, what's the point? You're more than likely to run into someone you know every time you get gas or go to the grocery store, and nearly everyone lives within a 5 minute drive of each other. For my peers, it seems like the Internet doesn't have much of a presence in their life besides Facebook. It would be almost like that for me if I didn't frequent that guitar forum, particularly the music forums governing the metal and hardcore genres.

Texting goes along with the networking hand-in-hand. I remember when I was around 15 or 16 it would be weird to not be constantly texting someone, and now I only text people to organize things we're going to actually do with each other. I'm not sure if it was me maturing, or just learning that I can get more enjoyment out of actual interaction versus a displayed message.

It seems that the people who get the most involved in Internet socializing around around my age, or in their late 30's or 40's. It seems that the older people were really hesitant to put out that much information, possibly from a lesser understanding of how to control it and what to throw out into the ether. But sometimes this caution gets breached by curiosity, which can be seen through my dad. He used to not use the computer besides checking his e-mail, but about a year ago he joined Facebook. He is on it quite a bit, and when he's away he continues to manage it on his Blackberry. Maybe it just takes the older generations a small period of understanding before they become more open to new technological hobbies.

Thanksgiving break started for me yesterday at around 1:45, and I wasn't supposed to be home until the afternoon today. There were only a handful of people left in my dorm, including me, it was as if someone we all knew had died. Thankfully, three of my friends spontaneously decided to drive up to Ellensburg from Zillah and picked me up. It's always great to once again see the people that I hung out with throughout high school. I surprised most of my family with my presence, who thought I would not be home until Wednesday afternoon. I didn't actually get home until about midnight, when everyone was going to bed or already in bed. I enjoyed the calmness and played with my cat and dog. Then I read all 22 logs of that blog I previously mentioned, did random Internet surfing, and posted this!

Yesterday, my friends and I conducted about a 5 hour project outside, it which we made:

a roughly 6 foot tall snow igloo/fort. It's glorious. It was light out when we started, and obviously pitch black when it was finished. I didn't do much other than that and sleep. I was up until about 4am watching the whole Korea situation, which was making me paranoid for a while. I wasn't so much scared of nukes as I was of the slight chance of a draft being issued. Seems like everything is dying down for the most part, though.

Music, music, music. I feel like sharing my last.fm profile, so here it is. Last.fm is an online site that keeps track of all your music listening and makes charts of it, and directs you towards similar artists and when they are touring near you. They also set up streaming radio stations, which can be compared to Pandora, but don't suck like Pandora's. They get way more in-depth than Pandora's, and don't bitch at you for skipping a couple of songs in an hour. I had a small stint of nostalgia when the first song I ever learned to play on guitar came up on it earlier tonight, Audioslave's I Am The Highway.

Personality Flaws, and snow!

It snowed about a week ago, but now we have a decent amount. It's supposed to snow for at least the next two days, and there's almost an inch on the ground right now. To all of the people from the western side of Washington, this is an insane amount of snow, it's pretty funny. I'm used to getting a couple of snow storms, but not this early. It makes for a lot of fun, throwing snowballs at windows and such. (And getting yelled at from someone on the third floor of Kamola.) It sucks for some people though, they might not be able to go over the pass for Thanksgiving break, we only have classes this week through Tuesday.

So, tonight, one of my close friends here (my second-in-command, if you will) had his uncle die. He had seemed a little down the last couple of days, which makes me think that his uncle was hospitalized, and that he had just passed away. My friends and I were having a snowball fight, and we saw the other friend walking. We were gonna go attack him, but we noticed that he seemed to be crying, so we backed off. After a little bit more of playing in the snow, we went inside and hung out in one of our friend's rooms who has a pretty big one. The friend who had the uncle die became the topic after an hour or so, and people were saying that someone should go talk to him, and they were dropping hints I should. This is completely out of my norm, I'm almost never someone's comforter when something like that happens, and it doesn't seem like my character to actually seek them out and see what's wrong. Thy asked me if I was going to go talk to him, and I said that I'd let it die down a day or two and then asked him. I ended up going to his room, but only because another friend said that he was gonna go check up on him. We knocked on his door, and his roommate answered, saying that he wasn't there and explained what happened. He also said that he went out on a walk, so we went to hang out in the other room. When I left that room (they were gonna watch Coach Carter, and I'm not a fan of basketball), I saw the friend outside my room. He apologized for blowing us off earlier during the snowball fight, but I said it was cool and that I heard what had happened and such. Then I just went into my room.

That doesn't seem like it was enough, but I don't know how to approach him, I didn't even realize that I was his main friend here. I'm used to being ridiculously introverted, but I am thrown into social situations since I live in the dorms. Gonna see how this plays out.

My roommate was gone for the weekend until Sunday afternoon, which was really nice. I get along with him pretty well, but I was able to have more free time, and watched some anime, which I hadn't done since I moved out. I'm almost positive he's moving out of this room next semester, and there's a chance someone might take his spot, or I'll just have to keep the furniture on that side of the room. I'd prefer to be alone, but I'm not sure that if I have to have someone move in, I'd rather want some unknown person to move in or possibly someone I already know from this dorm. Time will tell. Now I'm just excited for Thanksgiving break, getting done with finals, and seeing some of my best friends during winter break, like Johnny, who now goes to college in Montana.

Also, if any of you like RTS games, Age of Empires 3 is on sale in the Microsoft store for a whopping 10 cents, I'm downloading it right now.

I feel like I should be posting a music link, here goes. I've recently been recommended this really kick ass hardcore band called Terror, check out Stick Tight.

And probably a picture, I fucking love Corgis, I can't wait to have one.

Getting dumped, old friends, having my mattress stolen, and more!

I've gotten so busy since I got here at college, not necessarily with course work, but with socializing, and, for a while, a girlfriend. I finally now have time (at 1am, no less) to update this!

Catching up, my ass got dumped after a whopping 8 days of dating that chick. We were seeing each other for almost a month, but she didn't want to call it dating until I properly asked her to be my girlfriend. (Which I did by singing the first few lines of the Ramones' "I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend", after watching Death Proof.) She made me pancakes and afterwards talked to me, saying that she realizes that she can't develop serious feelings for someone, and that it wasn't fair to me, etc. I was pretty pissed for a couple of days, and got over it quickly. I miss being with her a little, and I can tell it's bothering her a lot. She sometimes IM's me on Facebook to check in, and said she wanted me to go play the new Call of Duty with her at her apartment. Yeah, not happening. I don't have anything against her, I just don't have her on my mind any more, it's been around two weeks since she dumped me. That very next week I was already flirting with a girl that sits next to me in my math class who plans on running for the college's track team.

The week I got dumped was absolutely shitty. I was so stressed out from college that I had a fever for two days, and had insomnia the whole week. I then got dumped, failed a programming exam, and had to withdraw from that class. I went home that Friday for the first time since I've moved out. That night while eating a giant bag of popcorn, I broke out in an insane amount of hives, and almost had to go to the hospital.

I wasn't homesick; I've yet to feel that. I wanted to go to the Washington State XC meet and see my friends that are still in high school race, along with my coaches and some people who graduated with and before me. The night before I left, I found out that one of my oldest and closest friends, Johnny, was coming down as well. I hadn't seen Johnny since early September, when he moved to Rocky Mountain College in Montana. Naturally, we got everyone together Saturday night, played cards, cooked carne asada, and swapped stories of things that we've all missed out on. Johnny has been a friend since 1st grade, possibly kindergarten. We was my teammate for 6 years, and was on my state placing relay my senior year. We hung out a ton that summer, and I began to miss him in October, I still miss the guy. Home is incredibly tranquil and quiet compared to a college dorm, partially because the town I am from has only ~2000 people in it.

I was really quiet when I got back to college for about a week, and now I am back to normal (thankfully). Recently I've been doing all my schoolwork and playing copious amounts of videogames here with my best college friends, Steven and Lucas. A prank war has recently sprung out as well. It started with me stealing all of Lucas' toilet paper and other essentials (he has his own bathroom between his room and the one next to his). He then took my mattress and put it on the second floor in the study lounge, making it look like I was going to sleep there for the night, which would get me in trouble with the RA's. It took me about two hours to get it back, and lots of people amused saying things like, "that was your mattress??". The on duty RA, Neil, found it in the lounge and confiscated it and put it in the RA office downstairs. I've yet to get Lucas back, and the next day (two days ago), I find my bike in a tree. I "acquired" that bike about a week after I got here, but the lock I was borrowing was recently needed back, so I was lockless for about two weeks. Needless to say, I now have a lock for that bike. The day after that, yesterday, I was playing Black Ops with Steven in his room, and a different friend, Zach, unleashed a stink bomb in his room. Since then, I've showed my spread bare ass to Spencer (Zach's roommate) and Zach, and Steven has rubbed his ass/genitals all over Zach's chair. Lucas also put Vaseline on the communal toilet by our cluster of rooms, and my roommate saw some dude storming out of there, pissed as fuck. I've yet to come up with any big, good pranks, so right now I'm doing spontaneous ones, such as stealing people's deodorant. Steven now plans on taking a crap and hiding it in Zach's room.

I get to (hopefully) register for winter quarter classes tomorrow, and I want to only take 12 credits, one of them being table tennis. My roommate might also move in with someone else in a different dorm starting that quarter, which would be rad. We only decently get along, and I would like to actually have some space in my dorm room. It's at the point where we took the ladders away from our loft beds because they made it so we couldn't move around in our chairs. I would also be able to get rid of the loft bed and not risk hitting my head on the ceiling every time I crawl in bed. We have some disputes, such as him bitching whenever I listen to anything remotely -core influenced, when he has the narrowest spectrum of taste I've ever seen. He called it "emo, screamo shit where they just shout die into the microphone", he also thinks everything I listen to is that. He misses all the electronic, post-rock, alt stuff, hip-hop, and indie music, while he exclusively listens to mainstream like rap. He doesn't really seem to try to avoid being blunt when he expresses distaste for anything I do, whether it be the shoes I wear, or my music.

I am pretty sure that is all that has happened between my last post and this one, so have a picture!

and some music I've been digging, ala Billy Clyro

I have four hours of class left this week, one of them starting in about 7 hours, so I'm going to sleep immediately after finishing this. Next week I have two easy days of class, then Thanksgiving break, which I am very stoked for. Get to see all the friends who are still in Zillah (the town I'm from), eat some delicious food, and unwind.