2011 Recap

With just over 6 hours left of 2011, I thought I'd go back and look at the year we have just finished. A year comprised of many ups and downs, both globally and locally, but one in which we've hopefully ended up better than we started.

Internationally, 2011 was a year of great change, possibly the greatest since the early 90s and the fall of the USSR. The "Arab Spring" as people called it, started in Tunisia and spread across north Africa and the middle east, rocking entrenched dictatorships. Along with Tunisia, Egypt and Libya were successful in overthrowing their dictators. With mostly peaceful protests in Egypt, and 6 months of full on civil war in Libya. And the fighting is still going on in other places, like Syria and Yemen. Will the new order be more friendly to the US? Only time will tell. I can only hope that the pro-democracy movements don't get hijacked by the Islamism sharia law supporters.

On the other side of the world, the pacific and eastern Asia saw extreme natural disasters. Flooding in Thailand, earthquakes in Japan. The death toll was large, and the secondary effects (such as rising prices for tech produced in Asia) still hasn't fully fallen out.

Closer to home, politics began heating up. In response to the tea party movement (the far right), a new movement has arisen. The Occupy movement. Occupy Wallstreet is where is started, but the protests spread across the country, targeting wealthy corporations. Granted, the movement doesn't seem to have much in the way of demands other than, we're unhappy that you have so much money and we don't.

Additionally, Washington politics grew more strained as the year went on. In the 2010 midterm elections, the GOP took control of the House and nearly the Senate. Since then we seem to have jumped from crisis to crisis, including several near government shut downs, and each party tries to blame it on the other in preparation for the larger 2012 presidential election. Overall the Democrats have won though, with Obama's ratings going up significantly, at least in the second half of the year.

The GOP primary race also got kicked off, with a string of widely followed televised debates. Mitt Romney, the assumed forerunner, maintained a steady support in the mid 20s, while others rose and fell. Pawlenty and Bachmann in early summer, Rick Perry in August, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, and now there are even a few stirrings for Rick Santorum. Throughout, Gary Johnson was left out of nearly all debates and polls, and finally gave up and switched over to the Libertarian Party. Ron Paul of course was around the entire time, support steadily growing, but still too small to matter.

In a much less depressing area, tech progressed hugely in 2011. The iPad 2 was released early in the year, and the first Android tablets as well. Near summer Android finally had a decent on in the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, but with no marketing and a string of legal attacks by Apple, it never took off. Amazon went a different route, with a more inexpensive tablet, the Kindle Fire. It didn't seek to compete with the iPad, and has done quite well. Finally more recently, things like the Asus Transformer Prime bring the best of tablets and laptops together. Terribly expensive though, I doubt the price will let it be a huge hit.

Smart phones saw little significant change over the year. Lots of refinement, of course. Faster processors, more memory, better screens. Android 4.0 and iOS 5 can out, bringing improvements to the software side as well. No major breakthroughs though. Even the new iPhone was just an incremental upgrade. Windows Phone 7 did get some nifty improvements, and while nearly everyone who uses it enjoys it, it's got so little market share that expanding in the face of iOS and Android will be almost impossible. Nokia near the end of 2011 finally began releasing WP7 phones though, so 2012 will be the last chance Microsoft's platform has.

Down then to the personal level. Both Spring and Fall semesters were good for me academically. No grades under a B, in fact. I also replaced the F and D+ I'd gotten during the terrible fall of '10 with and A and A, pushing the overall GPA up quite a bit. Non-academically I had a good pretty decent year, though it certainly was better during summer and fall. I stayed at Purdue over the summer, working for ITaP, and teaching myself several web design languages on the side. I'm also dating someone at the moment, which is quite unusual for me, so wish me luck.

This post has gotten quite a bit longer than I originally was anticipating, so I think I'll wrap it up. I hope you all had a good year, and I'm looking forward to 2012. Happy new years!
 

Addiction

Feed your addiction.



Via Reddit
 

That Poor Jet ...

As I posted a while back, when I'm really bored, I have fun messing with the people that have destroyed Omegle and Chatroulette (ie the people who use it for cybersex). Well a friend sent me this picture a few days ago, and every time I see it, I crack up all over again.


 

SOPA

I've been reading about the internet domain host GoDaddy over the past few days. They offocially came in out support of SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), and then over the past week, have lost over 70,000 domains, as customers boycotted them. This isn't surprising to me, because SOPA is one of the dumbest pieces of legislation that I've seen in a long time.

Now lest you misunderstand me, I'm not refering to the idea of stopping online piracy. The goal is laudable. What I have a problem with is how they are going about it. It's like hitting a fly with an atomic bomb. To put it in terms everyone can understand: If SOPA passes, then Youtube and Facebook both get shut down the next day, their owners go to prison for hosting copyright infringing material.

Reason being, SOPA basically makes two changes. First, it increases the scope of copyright infringement (meaning if you sing a cover of your favorite song and post it on youtube, that's copyright infringement), and second, it makes site owners responsible for everything on their site. Meaning along with Justin Beiber, the owners of Google (which owns youtube), get put in federal prison because of his covers.

Think how many videos on are Youtube. The site already has automatic scanning of the sound in videos, which matches it against songs. If you upload a copyrighted song, it can tell and will silence it automatically. But if you are singing the song yourself, no software can tell. Every video will have to be looked at, and every single video on youtube already will have to be checked. It's almost impossible, and certainly would be impractical for a completely free site.

There will be so much colateral damage that most people are going to assume that this is all exageration. Which it's not. The worst part is that it's pointless. Putting full songs and music videos on youtube is already being killed off by the automatic scans. The big thing this will stop are things like the above, covers and over uses that somehow violate copyright. But how do those hurt the companies?

The real piracy issue that is hurting the music and movie industy is the actual downloading of songs and movies. The sad part is that 90+% of it is being done in one of three ways, and could be stopped with almost no colatoral damange.

Torrents, Filehosts, and Private Networks. Those are the three ways which combined costitute almost all online piracy. The Limewire network used to be among them, but was quite successfully shut down. Now it's those three. Private networks are hard to get at, and not worth the trouble. Torrents most people know about, it's a peer to peer technology that lets people share directly with other people. Filehosts (Rapidshare, Fileserve, Megaupload) are sites that exist solely to host movies, TV shows, porn, etc.

Torrents and Filehosts could be taken down, and with that, suddenly you've killed the majority of all online piracy. There's no collatoral damange, because both torrents and Filehosts exist only for piracy, unlike youtube which has a legitimate function. However, there are a lot of forces working behind the scenes that don't want to stop piracy. By pushing legislators into doing something this extreme, they make the anti-piracy side seem extremist and pro-censorship, and turn the public against them. And congress has fallen for it.
 

Change.org

On my primary Hotmail account, I am signed up for very few subscription lists. Dominos's coupon list, because I do love Dominos pizza. Gary Johnson's news list, because I'm following his campaign. And finally, Change.org's mailing list.

Change.org is a website where people can start petitions, for or against something they've noticed. The idea being that most problems are local ones that the greater community doesn't know about. It's a way to spread the message.

Now, I rarely end up signing them. There are a lot of wishy washy liberal petitions, as well as the occasional theocratic ban evolution sort of thing. But I do find ones that I think are worth signing, such as a petition against stores opening at midnight on Black Friday. Granted, my reasons for signing that one didn't have anything to do with the reasons of the man who started it. He was an employee of Target who didn't want to have to go into work at midnight. And that's understandable, but not something which really impacted me. My reason for signing was that by opening at midnight, more people would be out shopping, which means longer lines. To get something I'd have to give up my entire Thanksgiving, instead of just getting up super early the next day.

Well today I got another one that I decided was worth signing. It reminded me of an episode Law and Order, in which a child was put in a tight bag and then pushed around and beaten, to simulate childbirth. They ended up killing the child and got charged with murder. The defense said that it was a normal therapeutic procedure. Everyone else said, you put the kid in a bag and kicked him to death .. you're going to jail. Seemed to me to be a silly episode because of how black and white it was, who would really do that? Well I owe the show an apology, because I guess it's not that unrealistic.

Basically in Kentucky a mom found out that her 9 year old autistic son has been put in a tight bag and left in a hallway alone as punishment, for talking in class and the like. Hasn't been kicked and beaten the way it was in the Law and Order episode, but being placed in a tight bag and left alone is still pretty terrible. See the full story at the link below.

Change.org Petition
 

Merry Christmas

I haven't been active on here since coming home for break, and while I'd like to say that's because I was just too busy, that wouldn't be true at all. In fact I've been doing a whole lot of nothing, and it's been glorious. Relaxation is a beautiful thing coming off a hard fought end to the semester.

Today (obviously) is Christmas, it's my first Christmas as an atheist, and it felt quite strange. I ended up going to church with my family out of sentiment, but felt like an outsider. Which makes sense I guess. It certainly wasn't the relaxing experience it used to be. But that's life I guess.

In better news, gifts were successful on both sides. I got several really cool things, including a brother pig t-shirt that my epic graphic designer friend made for me using the iron on shirt stickers.

I also got the limited edition of The Art of Building Worlds, number 400 something. AWESOME book, hardcover with real signed prints as well.

I did have a screwup in my own gifts to people. Two of my friends are now dating, and so I got them a pair of shirts. For her, a shirt that said, I Beat My Boyfriend at Video Games, and then for him, I Let My Girlfriend Beat Me At Video Games. Funny right? They thought so. But then we looked at the sizes. Turns out I flipped them. The XL was a S, and the S was an XL. Oops.

The extended family came in wonderfully as well, I got just over a hundred bucks in cash from the extended family, grandmas and aunts and the like, which went right back out to pay for my $140 extra charge on the cell phone bill for extra texts ....

Here's hoping your own Christmas was as fun. Merry Christmas, and to all a good night.
 

The Final Week - Finals

Well hell week is done. Thermo, DiffyQ, Soils, Pavement ... all finals and all unpleasant. But all finally finished.

I woke up early Monday to take the 8am Thermo exam, and did well. I got a 74%, which when added up gives me an A in the class. Pretty excited about that. Then I had a couple days off, and on Wednesday night, I took DiffyQ. I holed up in the Math Library for a good 7 hours leading up to the exam, and I'm feeling pretty good about it.

Then back home and right to bed, because I had the soils exam early Thursday morning. That one I'm also feeling pretty good about. I actually finished it, which is saying a lot for that class. It's not terrible material, it's just that the professor doesn't understand the concept of time, and her exams are always too long. But maybe she took our feedback into account, since I was able to finish the final.

I had the rest of Thursday to study for pavement. It was an open-book open-note test, and I went all out, I printed out every single packet of notes we'd had for the entire semester. And it's a good thing I did. Most pavement design problems require tables and charts. In other classes, those would be provided. But when he said open-book, open-note, he meant that he wasn't providing anything. So, good thing I the notes and tables myself. With it all, I'm pretty sure I got an A or B. Without, it would have been something like a 10%.
 

You Know You're in College When ...

Back before Facebook overhauled the groups function, I found one called You Know You're In College When.... I was quite amused by the list, so I joined the group. I was going through and cleaning up my groups recently, and saw that said group was about to be archived and removed. So I figured I should grab the list before is disappears, and share it with you all.

1. High school started before 8am, but now anything before noon is considered “early."

2. You have more beer than food in your fridge.

3. Weekends start on Thursday. No... Wednesday.

4. 6am is when you go to sleep, not when you wake up.

5. You know many different ways to cook ramen noodles or macaroni and cheese.

6. The health center gives out free condoms, and people take them… just in case.

7. Instead of falling asleep in class, you stay in bed.

8. You know how late McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Qdoba, etc. are open.

9. You think it’s the weekend on a Wednesday and you don’t know what month it is.

10. You can't remember the last time you washed your car.

11. Your underwear/sock supply dictates your laundry schedule.

12. You check Facebook/Myspace more than once a day.

13. You get drunk dialed on any night of the week.

14. You wash dishes in the bathroom sink.

15. You’ve fallen off a loft bed.

16. You talk about beer pong like it’s a sport.

17. Finding random people in your house is perfectly normal, and you even sympathize with them... sometimes when you wake up you have no idea where you are.

18. Your primary news sources are the Daily Show and the Colbert Report.

19. You open a beer at 10 am and your roommate asks you if there’s more.

20. The standard of meals per day falls to two, sometimes just one.

21. Your trash is overflowing and your bank account isn’t.

22. You go to Target or WalMart more than 3 times a week.

23. You wear the same jeans for 13 days without washing them.

24. Your breakfast consists of a coke or cereal bar on the way to class... anything with caffeine will do.

25. Quarters are like gold.

26. Your idea of feeding the poor is buying yourself some ramen noodles.

27. You live in a house with three couches, none of which match.

28. You try to study but seem to procrastinate by eating, going to study breaks, talking to people, etc...

29. You talk to your roommate on instant messenger when you’re both home.

30. You ask people what YOU did last night.

31. Certain things are now deemed "facebook worthy." When friends take pictures of you, you wonder how long it will take them to post them.

32. You’ve seen a hit and run involving a bicyclist/pedestrian.

33. You see people you know you’ve met but can never remember their names or how you know them.

34. You sleep more in class than in your room

35. Your idea of a square meal is a box of Pop-Tarts.

36. You've traveled with bags of dirty clothes.

37. You go home to do your laundry because you're too poor to pay the $2... or too lazy to go to a change machine.

38. You pay $100 for a book you don't read once, return it four months later, and get $7.

39. More than 20% of your household furnishings are made from milk crates.

40. You recognize the meat in the dorm soup as yesterday's meatloaf, and thus decide to eat a nice bowl of cereal - a safe bet for any meal.

41. You use words like "thus" (see #40).

42. You throw out bowls and plates because you don't feel like washing them.

43. Your beer pong table is nicer than all your other tables.

44. It takes preparation... and 3 people... to take out your garbage.

45. Going to the library is a social event.

46. You wear flip flops in the shower your freshman year... you know why.

47. You start joining clubs because of the free food.

48. Visits home depend on how much money you have for gas.

49. You skip one class to write a paper for another.

50. You have no idea where your tuition money is going... technology fees? I think not.

51. Bicycles don't seem as lame as they did in high school.

52. You stay up late to finish homework then sleep through the class in which it was due.

53. Girls: You've balanced your foot on a shampoo bottle to shave.

54. Your backpack is giving you scoliosis.

55. You've written a check for 45 cents or stopped to get $2.00 of gas.

56. Your bill in the bookstore will be comparable to tuition.

57. Going to the mailbox becomes an ego booster/breaker.

58. Most of your T.A.s are foreign...what's the deal?

59. You never realized so many people are smarter than you.

60. You never realized so many people are more dumb (aka "dumber") than you.

61. Western Europe could be wiped out by a terrible plague and you'd never know, but you can recite the last episode of your favorite show verbatim.

62. Care packages rank right up there with birthdays.

63. You craft ways to make any game into a drinking/stripping game.

64. You meet the type of people you thought only existed in movies.

65. Printers break down only when you desperately need them.

66. Anything can be cooked in a microwave.

67. Two words: bike cops.

68. You have Safe Ride programmed into your phone.

69. Old school Nintendo... and guitar hero... are pretty much the best things ever.

70. Going to the grocery at midnight is completely normal.

71. You call restaurants that deliver more than you call your own family.

72. You've paid bills over $5... in coins.

73. You can't imagine life without your computer/cell phone/ ipod.

74. Hoodies and sweatpants become the norm - jeans are considered "dressy" at certain occasions... like school.

75. A canceled class is almost as exciting as Christmas.

76. Taking a nap in the library is perfectly acceptable.

77. Your professors speak English... as a second language.

78. Your teachers swear in class and no one cares.

79. Candles in your dorm room are considered contraband, but cigarettes are ok.

80. You take condiment packets and napkins from fast food restaurants - hey, they're free.

81. Betta fish are like your family.

82. You bring back socks from the laundry room that may or may not be yours.

83. You know what people carrying suspiciously heavy backpacks after dark are doing...

84. The elevators take forever but you'll wait 10 minutes just so you don't have to climb stairs.

85. Your roommate asks you to check the weather on your computer when they're standing 5 feet away from the door.

86. Showers become more of an issue.

87. You press the automatic door opener instead of simply grabbing the handle when you approach a door.

88. Christmas lights seem to be acceptable all year round.

89. Class size doubles on exam days.

90. You donate plasma even though you know it's pretty sketchy.

91. You are no longer thankful that fire alarms are here to protect you.

92. You've bought Christmas presents from the book store and charged it to your student account so your parents pay for the gifts because you're too broke.

93. You begin to include ketchup on your list of acceptable vegetables.

94. You stay on campus for hours in between classes when it's too cold to walk home.

95. People have to help you kick the vending machine just so you can get your 50 cent bag of chips.

96. There's always a "question kid" in at least one of your classes, and you really wish someone would just tell him/her to shut the hell up.

97. You steal dishes from the cafeteria so you don't have to wash your own.

98. Laundry is an all-day event.

99. You no longer find it uncool to take naps. In fact, you quite enjoy them.

100. It's illegal to drink in the dorms yet they sell an assortment of shot glasses, beer mugs, tankards, etc. in the bookstore.

101. You find your list of acceptable napping places expanding daily to increasingly uncomfortable locations.

102. You fill out credit card applications for the free food.

103. You've eaten cereal out of a cup... with a fork.

104. Dressing up for Halloween becomes cool again.

105. You know at least one person who has dropped his/her cell phone into a toilet.

106. You hang multiple shirts on the same hanger to save space/money.

107. You become increasingly annoyed with the "old" people in class - props to them for going back to college but they generally ask really, really annoying questions.

108. You admire people's alcohol bottle shrines.

109. You set your clock 5-10 minutes ahead so you can potentially make it to class on time.

110. You eventually realize that setting your clock ahead makes no difference to you and you're still late.

111. You check ratemyprofessor.com (or something of the like) before choosing your class schedule.

112. You text faster than you type.

113. You only find out a class is cancelled after you get there and sit for about ten minutes.

114. You actually start using coupons, especially those school coupon books.

115. You open canned food and eat it... out of the can.

116. You run out of black ink and, instead of buying a new ink cartridge, decide blue is a nice substitute... adds a little flair.

117. You have numbers in your phone with labels like “Sketchy Steve” and “Alcohol Guy.”

118. The food in your fridge may or may not be older than your little brother.

119. The words "google" and "wikipedia" have become verbs. And you use them... quite often.

120. The names Morgan, Jim, Jack, and Jose could aptly describe either who you were with last night or what you had to drink.

121. You fill your empty two-liter bottles with pop from the school cafeteria.

122. You have a drinking buddy who can hold the most intellectual, deep conversations when drunk. Unfortunately, neither he/she nor you can remember most of it later.

123. Your floor has been dirty to the point that you've had to brush your feet off before putting on socks or getting into bed.

124. You're all for the free samples at grocery stores.

125. Energy drinks become your new best friends.

126. You realize that taking summer classes pretty much negates the fun connotation of "summer."

127. You know exactly how much food will fit into a mini-fridge.

128. You realize that said mini-fridge does NOT freeze ice cream.

129. You've made a sandwich on or eaten food off of your $1500 laptop.

130. Your scar stories involve alcohol and/or hearing what happened to you from your more sober friends.

131. It is completely acceptable... and encouraged... to party on weeknights. What would life be without Wasted Wednesdays or Thirsty Thursdays?

132. Most of your textbooks remain unopened (possibly still shrink-wrapped) the entire semester.

133. Waking up in the morning and driving somewhere to get a friend's (or your) car becomes a norm.

134. The local supermarket sells ping pong balls... right next to solo red cups. Coincidence?

135. You go home for winter/summer break and suddenly your life back at college seems so exciting...

136. You smell the clear liquid in your water bottle before you drink it... just to make sure it's actually water.

137. You discover new bruises on your body and wonder where the hell they came from.

138. You find alternate routes to class in order to avoid annoying organization booths and/or the preacher on campus.

139. Two (more) words: Power Hour.

140. Lunchables are cool again.

141. People make snow penises instead of snowmen.

142. You know at least five people who've burned popcorn.

143. You wonder why dorms stop serving breakfast at 11am. What gives?

144. You attend insanely boring seminars because your professor offers extra credit. Hmm, maybe there will even be cookies or something...

145. You can't sit in the front row because of all the 'non-traditional' students.

146. You finish reading this and wonder how you can procrastinate next.
 

Gingrich-Huntsman Lincoln-Style Debate

Last night Newt Gingrich and Jon Huntsman had a Lincoln style debate, meaning a two person debate in which much more time is given for each answer. Gingrich is an outspoken fan of this style of debating and this is his second of the campaign (first being with Herman Cain). The talk was mostly about economics and foreign policy, and was actually quite interesting. Both candidates are very knowledgeable about foreign policy, so just for an update on the world situation it's worth watching. But since Gingrich is a front runner in the GOP primaries, it's worth watching also just to gain insight on a man who may be our next president.


 

New Data Files Table

For those of you who have been following this blog for a long time, you might remember that over the summer I mentioned several times that I'm building a new website. I didn't want to share it until it was entirely done, but I'm just too excited about one new page to keep it entirely under wraps. A few of you have seen it already, (and given good advice), and it's now finished, visually and code wise.

The page I'm speaking of is a data table. Very similar code wise to the one I did over the summer, I've added some things that I'd learned since then as well as improved the efficiency of the javascript coding. The main difference though is the visual style. That part is what took me a good 2 months to settle down with, because I'm NOT an artist.

Inspired by the new Hotmail actually, I'm going for a white and light blue theme. One thing I was worried about initially was having that gradient go the full length of the options panel, but I really like it now that it's there. It distinguishes itself from the table itself while still maintaining visual continuity.

Now you might notice there aren't many files yes, and that's true. Only about a third of thing things that'll be there are there, and all the options in the options panel will be represented. It's just a matter of inserting the data into the SQL database though, I haven't gotten around to it. Besides adding more data, the table is finished.

Let me be clear, the site it self is not done, just this single page. You can feel free to look around the rest of it, but it's only about 60% complete. Next page on the list is the class schedule page. I want to stay with the white and light blue theme that I've got going on in the class files page, instead of just the block colors I have right now. So without further adieu, check it out.

Data Table

Any thoughts? Hate it, love it? Leave me a comment.
 

Thailand Government Kidnaps US Citizen

I read an article last night about an American citizen who visited Thailand, and got arrested because he had earlier posted on this blog a book that had been banned in Thailand. He posted it when he was in the US, and he was a US citizen. Yet he was arrested an convicted under anti-defamation laws. And the US doesn't seem to be doing anything about it.

This is clearly a violation of free speech. Other counties might not protect that freedom, but the US does. The person in question is a US citizen, and the action in question happened while in the US. Where are the threats from our Government to Thailand? Where are the seal teams? By the very definition of the word, a US citizen has been kidnapped and is being held hostage by another nation, and we aren't doing a thing about it.

I say kidnap rather than arrested because to be arrested, you must be a legitimate police force stopping violations of laws. There is no US law protecting Thailand's king from US citizens saying bad things about him. And Thailand's laws don't apply when they violate the US constitution, at least when it comes to a US citizen. So says me anyway. Obviously Obama doesn't feel the same. He'd rather no offend Thailand than protect the Constitutional rights of US citizens.

I guess kidnapping US citizens isn't in the same category as bombing a building.
 

Mozilla Asks Users For Help

If you’ve been paying attention to my writing, you know that I’m a Firefox fan. I have been for years. While that loyalty was strained over the long, long time it took for Firefox 4 to finally be released, since then I feel that I’ve been handsomely rewarded for staying with my browser.

Over the past summer and fall, we’ve seen 4 new releases, moving the version number up to 8. While I personally think that more appropriate numbers would have been 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, and 4.4, the name doesn’t change the fact that Firefox has been quickly and steadily improving for the past year, and it shows. It might be too little too late though.

Read my full article at TekGoblin.com.
 

Food Finders, Drunken Bowling, and a Hospital

All of this happened yesterday, but I'm going to write it as if writing as it happened.

Saturday Morning, 4:30 am:

I'm quite tired, but it's okay, I get to sleep in tomorrow until mid afternoon. At 4 I've got people arriving for a reunion of sorts. My best friend, his g/f, couple other friends from high school, plus some friends we had made at Purdue in earlier years who'd moved away, and then friends here who were still here. We're all going to meet up and go bowling (for the under 21ers), then head over to Harry's Chocolate Shop.

I'll get a good 10 hours sleep, be up by 2, have a couple hours to get ready. Just gotta check Facebook and such (and this blog post) before bed, and .... well crap. Been a minute or so since I started that sentence. I did check Facebook, and it's a good thing I did, because I forgot I have other plans tomorrow as well, before the reunion. I told some other friends I'd go volunteering with them at Food Finders from 1-4, and they want to meet up for lunch first at 11:45am. I then totally forgot about it, until I read a reminder message on Facebook. That'll give me maybe 5 or 6 hours sleep .... I can do this. Bed!

Saturday Afternoon, 12:05 pm:

Well getting up wasn't fun, but eh, I'm a college student, I have to get up early every day, so I'm used to it. (Early being before 2pm). This is the first time I've eaten at Earhart dining court in a long while. I'd forgotten that popcorn chicken is one of the buffet salad toppings ... oh yes.

Saturday Afternoon, 5:00 pm:

With the right group of people, volunteering can be awesome. We go done a lot more then they expected, because we got organized and just got shit done. We packaged 700 boxes with a meal each for a family, then made laundry detergent bottles until the time ended. Throw in a sexual innuendo every few sentences for 3 hours, and a fun time was had by all.

We then went over to Target and I got some IBC root beer as well as new margarine and milk. Mac n Cheese is going to happen tomorrow. I just called my other friends to see when we're meeting up, and we'll be meeting up at the bowling alley in an hour at 6pm. They're already pregaming ...

Saturday Evening, 6:20 pm:

I just got to the bowling alley (gotta love these smartphones to send updates), and we're bowling now. Most of them are a little drunk already, and so we're having a pretty amazing time, all doing cool throws. After this one game, we're going to head over to Harry's. The guy who was supposed to bowl with us who was under 21 didn't even show up.

Saturday Evening, 8:00 pm:

Well what a fun night this has turned out to be. Let me recap since the last update. We went to Harry's, and then the under 21er called and said he had finished stuff, meet him at the alley? We said okay, and so drank really fast so we could go back. That is when things sort of turned. My one friend I'll call John. He decide to have 8 drinks in the 20 minutes we were there. And this was after pregaming with vodka. In the 5 minutes it took us to walk from Harry's to the bowling alley, he went from tipsy to flailing around and being nonsensical.

We realized that he couldn't bowl, he'd get us all thrown out instantly. I dragged him with the help of another sober guy into a locker room across the hall from the bowling alley, and we just sorta sat on him for 20 minutes. He wasn't calming down, but was getting worse, so his g/f picked him up and threw him over her shoulders (he weighs around 100lbs, straight up) and we carried him to the car, drove to McDonalds. We got him some food which he wouldn't eat, and some gatorate which he drank a little of. He then tried to make out with me in the parking lot until they pulled him off. We were a little worried about someone calling the cops on a public intox charge, so we drove to a different parking lot, much more secluded. He then proceeded to puke his guts out. He's getting worse though, less responsive. He can't feel his legs.

Saturday Evening, 9:30 pm:

We're at the hospital now. He was getting worse. Maybe just needed to sleep it off, but you see all those signs around talking about alcohol poisoning ... so we're in the hospital waiting room.

Saturday Evening, 12:30 pm:

Been 3 hours, but we're finally leaving. The first calmed him down, then gave him fluids through an iv as well as making him throw up more. He's still drunk now, but he's awake and here, mentally, so that's good. Only a few of us still here, but we're all headed home now.

Sunday Afternoon 3:00 pm: (Finally caught up)

I woke up about an hour ago, I just kept sleeping, and it felt nice. Pretty interesting day yesterday. I think today I'll bust out the homework and try to get a head start on the week. I've 3 three things to do, then I'm done with homework for the semester. Dead week here we come.
 

What A Week

Well it's been an interesting week so far. I spent the first few days getting used to the idea of having my evenings free again, a state of affairs which I haven't seen for over 2 years. It's quite enjoyable, though my bank account is going to start protesting it soon.

The world around us had an interesting week as well. Youtube finally got it's updated theme rolled out to everyone. I had written an article about it last month when I logged in and saw it. Seems I accidentally accessed it early though, or Google decided to revert everyone. 2 and a half weeks later though, it's back and permanent.

In politics, Newt Gingrich has replaced Hermain Cain as the alternative to Romney. I predicted this after watching him in the first few debates this fall, and actually was a bit confused that he wasn't a front runner to begin with. (I hadn't been following last Spring and Summer, when he decided to go on a cruise to Greece and destroy his campaign.) Every time he opened his mouth he seemed like an elder statesman, never attacking people, never getting tripped up. And finally it's paying off, because he's now up in contention with Romney. He's still got quite a mountain to climb though. His organization is still in tatters, he's got very little money, and he hadn't really experienced the full glare of being a front runner. We'll see how he holds up.

In shear intelligence, I personally think that Gingrich is the best on the field. (He writes science fiction books part time). But do I think he should be president, I don't know. He had an affair with his second wife, but he did admit it. And personally I can separate personal and political aspects of a person's character. A person can be an asshole, yet be extremely competent. Granted, that's just looking at him from a conservative perspective.

I'd never vote for him because of his stance on marriage. Earlier this fall he said "I believe that marriage is between a man and woman. It has been for all of recorded history and I think this [gay marriage] is a temporary aberration that will dissipate". Source Granted, Mitt Romney has come out against gay marriage as well, as have nearly all other GOP candidates ... it's just what they do.

Only Huntsman and Johnson are what I consider rational on the subject. And look where they are. Last place, and below last place.