Karaoke OK

Oh man Karaoke is my life. Here are all the songs I sang (to the best of my recollection):

Led Zeppelin - Stairway to Heaven (I did a really good job)
Gorillaz - Clint Eastwood (by far the most fun, rapping karaoke is AWESOME)
Smash Mouth - I'm A Believer
Britney Spears - Oops, I did it again
Van Morissen - Brown Eyed Girl
George Thurgood - Bad to the Bone
Steppenwolf - Born to be Wild
The Police - Every Breath you Take
Incubus - Drive

I think those are all the ones I sang...there might have been another one or two. Karaoke is friggen fun. I might round up some people and go to the karaoke bar some time. The karaoke tonight was ok, but after a while, some people just intruded on other people's songs, and there was no order of songs, so some people didn't really have a chance to do what the want, because some jackasses just felt like stumbling through some random song instead of actually singing a song they know the general meoldy of.

Listening to... Trigun - Hash Hash
Link of the moment... Karaoke software -- definitely whipping this out sometime during a party

Cabin fever ad infinitum

I've been pretty antsy in my room the last two nights. Of course, for the last two nights I've been wracking my brain trying to get ANYWHERE on my combinatorics assignment. I've only done the easier half of the questions, and I've done about five full pages of work for on question, but STILL can't get anywhere close to the answer.

Sadly, that's most of what's new in the last three days. I've played more FFT (got my ass handed to me by Velius a few times), ate some generic meals, and slept. I can't decide if sleeping is better than doing stuff. I figure that if I go to bed at a decent hour and get a good night's sleep, I'm still very tired and unattentive in class the next day, so I might as well stay up late and do stuff and be even more tired and unattentive the next day. Naps are awesome though...I have one every Tuesday and Thursday between lunch and stats. An hour and a half is never enough though.

This weekend should be action packed. I'm likely going to rent a movie or game on Friday since I have a $2 off coupon at Blockbuster. From 2-4 PM Saturday I'll be looking at UWP and CLV to see if they meet my housing accomodations. Saturday night holds karaoke in store for our stalwart hero. Of course White Wedding by Billy Idol is on the list, but since there's only gonna be a handful of us there, I should have more songs in mind. On Sunday, Unky Vern's hockey team (Windsor Lancers) are playing the Warriors in the afternoon, so I intend to catch a game to get out and about. Action packed, eh?

For the time being...I don't know. Oh shit, I have to finish my M239 assignment, and that could take me anywhere form an hour to 18 weeks. I should be reading notes and trying to understand stuff (for all my courses), cause I really have no idea what's going on in any of my classes. I'm hoping my natural ability to cram and pull stuff out of my ass will get me through the next three months.

Well, time for supper and then possibly another nap.

Listening to... Thrice - The Beltsville Crucible
Link of the moment... Ernest is the fuckin MAN, knowhutimean?

Time for the usual 3-5 day update

You won't believe me when I tell you what I'm listening to. The other day I was watching Ernest Goes the Camp, and in the middle of the movie, Ernest started breaking into song. Oh man, it's a sad song. I wound up dowloading it from some obscure website with the sole intention of making a punk-emo cover out of it. It has very emo lyrics and decent chord progression.

Gee I'm glad it's raining
There's always something to be thankful for.
I'm awfully glad it's raining
Cause no one sees your tear drops when it pours.

And no one knows the thunder
Is your heartbreak in disguise,
They think the rainy nights
What put that sad look in your eyes.

Sure am glad it's raining.
The gentle rythmn soothes the pain inside.
I'm glad the sun's not shining.
A wounded warrior needs a place to hide.

I thought I had found someone
I could count on til the end.
What they wanted was a hero,
All I needed was a friend

Gee I'm glad it's raining.
I hope the morning sun won't come up soon.
As long as it keeps raining,
No one knows my heart broke right in two.

I thought I had found someone
I could count on til the end.
What they wanted was a hero,
All I needed was a friend

Sure am glad it's raining.
I'm awfully glad it's raining


I won Disgaea on ebay! Yay! That's one more game to put on the gaming backlog. I'm a little stuck at the Velius battle in FFT, but I could stand to level up a bit. Once I beat it this time, I want to try doing another game with non-generic characters. Hurrah for more gamesharking.

Last night I went to see House of the Flying Daggers. I guess it was ok, but if I'm gonna watch an import film, I'd rather see more action than love. There were still some good fight scenes, and the story was pretty good. I wish these other goddam movies would download already. I've had about five or six sitting on my download queue, but nothing wants to connect.

I think my best option for accomodations next year is Columbia Lake Village (formerly known as CL Townhouses, which was often referred to as the CLT.."Man, I hope I don't have any trouble finding the CLT"). It's the best priced of all my options, plus it's in a student community, once again giving me a gleam of false hope for making friends next year. Since there shouldn't be any first year students, I'm hoping I don't get paired up with people who think University is all about going out and gettig shitfaced. Of course, there are more than enough upper years undergrads who still think that.

On Friday I went to Mississauga to visit 'the family' (consisting of my sister, John, Maria and Gennie). Gennie's rabbit didn't shit on me this time, and Maria's cat didn't wake me up in the middle of the night (it's a friggin' zoo there). We watched The Forgotten, and I hope someone erases it from my memory. I had some Cajun Chicken Alfredo that was lacking good cajun flavor, and good alfredo sauce. Still better than anything I'll find on the menu here, so I'm bloody thankful for it.

Driving back the next day was nerve-wracking. The roads were snowed over, and a few times I could feel my anti-lock brakes kick in. However I arrived alive, so yay.

Well I've gotta get this stats assignment out of the way, so I can play FFT.

Listening to... Iron Maiden - Blood on the World's Hands
Link of the moment... omg!!1! Pictures of the CLT online! HAWT!

Kevin waking up voluntarily?

I set my alarm for 7:30 this morning (well, rather it was ste to 7:30 for other days and I turned it on last night) even though I don't have class until 12:30 today. I've got a lot of video game playing accomplished this morning...much more fun than sleeping. Just now I was on a hot streak in counterstrike. In two rounds I got a total of seven kills...god bless the autoshotgun and distracting backup. I could go on about FFT too, but only Adam would care.

Last night I was working for about four hours straight. That's the thing about me, I don't know how to work in moderation. Anyways, I think I've got almost all of my work done for the next week. I still have to go to the lab today and type up my code, but if I have it all right on paper, then the hard part is over. CS 251's assignment was a joke, and M239 wasn't too difficult minus a few questions.

I've been gaining a lot of weight lately. If the scale downstairs is accurate, then I'm 160 lbs now, and my laundry is 25 lbs (hehe). I know I should *do* something about it, but the payoff for looking sexy and being fit is just too high. I don't feel like investing time and effort into working out.

Victoria was online yesterday, but that's all I should say about that. I gotta stop posting about her in here. It's just hard when you have no one to talk to. Usually I'd talk to her, but the dilemma is obvious.

Right now I have two bids going on a game called "Disgaea". I know, you've never heard of it. It's a SRPG like FFT. It's already pretty rare (no major retailers carry it), so I want to secure a copy before it gets rare to the point where it's beyond retail price.

I also realized that I have a working PSX emulator on my computer, so I backed up some games on my hard drive, and downloaded Legend of Mana. Legend of Mana! I wasn't sure if I'd ever play that game again. I'm still not sure, since my gamelist is so backlogged.

About once a month, there's a few full tables of DVDs, CDs, and some VHSs for sale in the Student Life Centre. They list prices including tax, and you can find some really good deals there. I bought Simpsons Season 4 for $40, tax inclusive, whereas Future Shop sells it for $58 retail (plus tax), and HMV sometimes has it on sale in a 2 for $80 sale (plus tax). So I bought it for cheaper than I would have even if it were on sale. I wish I'd price matched some of the boxsets sooner...I could have saved some money.

Aparently I'm going to see Thornley in Cambridge. Sivji is always bothering me to go, and I don't really have an excuse this time. I haven't seen any concerts wince I got here last year. I'm still a little disappointed that I missed Hopesfall, and it's a shame the WPP didn't tour Southern Ontario. I hope some good bands come around, and I hope I can find someone to go with (I guess Sivji owes me).

John's visiting this Friday. That means: I get to eat good food at a restaurant, I get to lose at ping pong, and I have something to do this Friday. Hurrah. I'll try to round up some of the residence crew to se a movie with us too, whether it be at the theatre or in one of the lounges. Movies are good.

On that note, I'm going to wait patiently for 11:30 so I can get some lunch, then it's off to class, class, tutorial, and lab.

Listening to... Green Day - Welcome to Paradise
Link of the moment... Disgaea

"I'm wearing boots of escape!"

Please let me regale you with tales of my happenings.

I'm getting pretty sick of pizza. I had some Friday, while we were watching the Manchurian Candidate (which, by the way, I was not too thrilled by due to the fact that I'm usually too lazy to actually try to keep up with plot twists in psychological thrillers), I ordered a medium pepperoni for myself last night (to avoid the nauseating chicken korma that was being served in the cafeteria), and today for lunch they had -- yes, you guessed it -- pizza. I think I've had enough to last me for a while.

I got ahead in most of my classes, and that prompted me to stop working -- I simply had no work to do. So, I started playing FFT. I'm at the end of chapter 2, trying to fight the first Zodiac boss. I put in codes to give them twice as much health, and it shows. Bosses should be long endurance battles, I think. Anyways, I haven't done much work in the last four or five days, so I'm trying to get a lot accomplished today. I'm halfway through my Math 239 assignment, and that's not even due until Friday.

Perhaps I'll make my weekend nice and free so I can look at apartments...gotta find a place to live next year after all. Of course, I gotta find people to live with as well, and that's gonna be harder than finding a place. It'll be nice to have a computer desk that's made for a computer, a full fridge filled with hearty, healthy meals at my very whim, a screen hopefully larger than 20" for which to watch movies and play games, a washroom that is cleaned regularly and houses one person at a time, a closet with ample room for storing clothes...ah, it'll be nice.

I was playing counterstrike the other day and found myself playing with a Samurai Pizza Cats clan, completely by chance. Man, there's a counterstrike clan for everything. For some reason, my computer gets a loooooot of laaaag whenever there's a map change, so I had to keep leaving the servers and joining another.

I love RPGs. I really wish I could make one, but time and time again I'm reminded that there are companies that hire hundreds of employees with expertise in specialized fields of computing and game design that make games that I consider inferior. There may be a slight chance that I could mimic the gameply of Final Fantasy Tactics (and improve upon any aspects I feel need improvement), but there's no way I would be able to recreate the amazing graphics -- the spell effects, the sprites, the map design...no, I don't even know how to do decent GUIs in java.

You can skip this paragraph if you don't care about my crazy game design ideas. I think if I were to make a SRPG like FFT (which I hope to one day), I would make the battlegrounds hexagonal rather than...squarical. It would make movement a little more realistic and versatile, and it would allow for superior blocking and strategy. It would be harder to code and would need a lot more sprites, but it would be so much cooler...I think D&D and other 'pen n paper' RPGs use hexagons for movement, but I might just be making that up.

You can skip this paragraph too for that matter, it's just that multiple paragraphs are a good habit to keep. I've been thinking about writing a bit lately too, like a storyline, character bios...just sorta make my own atmosphere and really relish in it, and sort of roleplay all the characters at once. Now if I could draw and colour, I'd be set. It might be fun to do some pen and paper rpgs with my friends, some would go for it. I've been debating gameplay versus graphics for a while, and they're both very important in their own regards. I'm not sure if my imagination is good enough to compensate for sprites and sword swipes.

In non-nerd related news, by wiper blades are fucked. They got iced over, and I thought I chipped all the ice away, but one of the blades got stuck and somehow the opposite blade lost its rubber and metal rods. I tried wiping, and it was like someone running their nails down a chalkboard. That's another trip to Canadian Tire and about $50.

One of my favourite bands of all time, Snapcase, is playing their last show in Buffalo on the 21st. After fourteen years, the band is calling it quits. Now one of the only two bands that I like that tour through Thunder Bay aren't gonna be touring there anymore.... I remember the first time I saw them was the greatest concert I've ever been at. The lead singer actually put the microphone up to my mouth cause I was screaming the lyrics along with him! Oh man, what a show...

Listening to... Snapcase - Killing Yourself to Live
Link of the moment... Some really, really cool wallpapers (1024*768)

Soaking wet

I have no one to complain to since John's gone, so I'll complain to all of you instead.

I'm pretty sure the guy I sat next to today in stats was eating dog kibble, cause that's all I could smell. If you've ever fed a dog dry food, you have the smell embedded in your head somewhere. I think I'd even rather sit next to Mr. BO that I sat next to last time...man that class stinks (pun intended).

Right now it's eleven degrees outside, with not much wind. It was beautiful two hours ago, except that everything was mud from the rain this morning. It's raining again now, and my pants are wet.

I think I'll go to Fairview again...I've still gotta return this watch band, and I've gotta pick some things up. Snacks, some school gear, and perhaps a fluorescent lamp. I like the light that comes off of those things, it's not as harsh as a big incandescenet light bulb screaming at your face.

I've got all my codes working for FFT! Yay! I just have to load them in chunks, so I gotta play for a while at a time since it takes about five minutes to get everything working. Tonight I plan on snacking and playing that, perhaps after I get through another UNIX chapter.

I saw One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest the other day...it was a really good movie. I really have to see more of the 'classics', even if only to understand more Simpsons references.

I got a fortune cookie the other day with five fortunes in it. That is definitely a personal record.

I'm talking with Turner, and right now there's a 46 degree difference between our cities (including windchill). I'm honestly having trouble remembering that it's January right now. I'm used to having -36 as well.

What else to say...nothing I can think of.

I miss having a life. I miss having friends. I know, I know..."Go make friends! Hang out in the math lounge! Join clubs!". It's just not me. As much as I would like to meet people that will eventually be me close friends, I'm not dumb...I know statistics, and I know that I never want to be 'that obnoxious guy' who wants to hang out with you cause he has no friends.

Listening to... Boysetsfire - Blame
Link of the moment... I think I'll go see this at the Princess (Cinema), pending I find someone to go with.

Ugly faces

Now, for your viewing pleasure, a colleciton of ugly faces and babes from over the break.


Everyone's favourite hunk


Adam


Sir Philip Da Costa


Grant

BABES!

Martine


Alexa


Also, I found these pictures that I'm *sure* must be the pictures that have my hair the longest it was ever captured on photo before it was cut. This is a digital picture of a normal photo, so they're justifiably crappy.



Listening to... Blindside - Across Waters Again
Link of the moment... Canadian equivalent of Netflix, online video rentals

cd kevin/thoughts/

UNIX scares me. I think I've got the basics down, but I'd really like to be as adept with it as the CS nerds on the newsgroup that post in some sort of jargon that I couldn't even begin to comprehend. Damn them.

No girlfriend yet, but I'll keep looking.

Yesterday afternoon, James Corey and I went to the Princess Cinema to see "Findng Neverland". I'm not afraid to admit that it was very emotional and I got quite choked up towards the end. Wait, yes I am afraid to say that. I took it like a man and LAUGHED when one of the main characters died.

I think at one point, I had ~800 codes for FFT. I've since condensed them and did a line count to find out that I now have 500 codes. Sad, ne?

I've been having some messed up dreams. Again, I think last night was due to McDonald's ice cream. I swear they put drugs in the stuff. Last night's dreams included: waltzing with Kara Polson in the mall, playing poker using coins and cd cases in place of cards, attempting to sleep in the living room while my sister was having a party, and playing a party game where you dress like ninjas and tag people, and when you tag them they must wear a correspondingly coloured baseball cap.

A few nights ago, I had a dream that I was back together with Agnes, but it's just a dream so there's no need to elaborate. In other news, I need psychiatry or a new girlfriend.

I've been waking up at noon lately, which isn't all too good. Similarly, I've been staying up until 2 AM. That's what Christmas break does to a person I guess. Luckily, I get to sleep in tomorrow though...man I love this new schedule. Monday and Friday just sort of ease me in and out of the weekend.

It's official; I've booked my flights to go home for reading 'week'. And damned cheap too, compared to regular fares I've seen. I should be home between Feb 23rd and 28th. I don't know what I plan to accomplish in that time, but there's no need to worry about that now.

I sold all five of my books at the used book store. I guess I'll be getting a cheque for $250-$295 in early February. Yay for me.

I guess I'll have a shower now. I hate showers. They're such a burden out of the regular flow of the day. You're cold when you step in, and you're freezing when you step out. If only there were a way to avoid showers without people getting suspicious...

Listening to... Kittie - Get Off (You Can Eat a Dick)
Link of the moment... Go ahead, learn UNIX. I dare you.

Back to school, back to semi-regular posts

I feel tired. I've been sitting in front of the computer too much I guess.

I had my first day of classes today. Let's elaborate:
CS 251 - pretty lousy prof, seems like a rather difficult course.
CS 241 - awesome prof, seems like a rather difficult course.
STAT 231 - mediocre prof, seems like a rather boring course. I need to find two people as lab partners.

When I got on the plane the other day, it was -32. When I got off in Toronto, it was about 0. What a difference. It's been very tame compared to Thunder Bay weather lately, but I'll be slapping on the neck warmer soon enough.

I've been reworking Final Fantasy Tactics quite heavily, putting in a lot of customized codes. So far I've done the following:
Made monster enemies much harder, and more customized
Given Crossbows a much longer range
Made magic abilities much better.
Gave all generic humans Gained EXP-UP and Gained JP-up

I've still gotta find a way to make Long Bows much longer ranged, and I also want to rework all the statistical growth and multipliers of generic jobs. It would also be really nice to get rid of the Archer's hideous Charge ability. It's only good for maybe three abilities, and I have no qualms about replacing those. I just wish I had some good abilities to give him, but all the ones left over don't make sense on an archer. I might just wind up giving him monster skills, but like I said, lots of those just don't make sense on an archer.

I love talking about things no one else cares about.

I honestly forget how to make friends. Back in the day, you'd have assigned seating plans, and things in class where you learn about other people...nowadays I've got nothing. Maybe I should just walk up to people and say "hey, wanna be my friend?". They'd be on a probationary period at first, of course.

Listening to... AFI - Dream of Waking
Link of the moment... Final Fantasy Tactics Battle Mechanics Guide

Happy fucking new year

And thus ends what may be the worst year of my life. I wonder what misery awaits me in the coming year?

Fuck. I just feel like saying fuck. What the fuck is with some people? You could think you're best friends with someone, but then they cut off all communications with you, and make no attempt whatsoever to see you in what little time you may be in town. Maybe it's for the best. If she doesn't give a fuck about me, then maybe it's about time to hate life again and give up all hope. Once again I have nothing and no one to live for. I'm not saying I'm willing to take my own life, but if someone said that I would die tomorrow, I would be ready. There's nothing left in this world to cling on to...I've already been at the top and fallen, and I've ruined enough lives already.

Maybe something will cheer me up soon, maybe I'll find something worth living for again.

Listening to... Snapcase - Twentieth Nervous Breakdown