Wellll, since I haven't updated this site in a LONG time, here's what's happened recently.  Christmas was great, I got a couple nifty gadgets and a subscription to my favorite computer magazine.  On New Year's Eve, me and my brothers and a couple friends stayed up all night playing my favorite game (Tremulous, I wrote an entry on it a while back) over a network so we were all in the same game.  It was FUN! 

 

Aaand now we're back doing good ol' (well, I dunno about the "good" part, heh) schoolwork.  Physics, Bible history and reading, a few other things, and yeah...my old nemesis, Calculus.  At least I switched curriculums, so this new one isn't quite as heavy on the assignments (which is good cos the other one had WAY TOO MANY FRIKKIN PROBLEMS!).  I'm still learning, though! 

 

Last but definitely not least, I'm now a regular poster over at ReliantClay.com.  In case you're one of the few HSB-ers who hasn't learned this yet, Chris (he of HSB fame) started a new blog and now has guest writers as well.  Me included!  I post once a week (on Thursdays) about cool music and stuff.  Check it out, you won't be sorry.  Also this means that if you get a comment from me, it's most likely me returning the comment from RC instead of here--although I'm just overall lousy about returning comments.  However, if I don't really have anything to say about your blog, I probably won't say it.  It doesn't help when your blog is just about your life (which ironically is mostly what mine's about >_< ).  Ah well.  At least over at RC we have something (sorta) meaningful to say every time.

 

One last thing--if my spelling is a tad shaky on this entry, it's cos I'm not using Firefox.  I'm on a different computer on which Firefox doesn't seem to work, so I'm stuck with Internet Explorer--or "Internet Exploder" as I like to call it.  WWW.GETFIREFOX.COM

Hi everyone, just a quick little entry to tell you that A, I'm not sick anymore (YAY!), and B, my band has a new song out.  Here's a link:  Bird Sings Blues - You're Such A....

Enjoy!

Today I took a "What's My Blog Rated?" quiz, and it turned out that this was the result:


(note, you can't click on the picture.  I just linked the picture, not the code.)

Huh?  I mean, maybe so, but here's why they rated it as such...the word "Missionary" that appears once in a tag.  The word "missionary" makes for a PG rated film (which is what this ratings system is supposedly based on)?!?

Hearkening back to a post made by SugarCone a while back, I thought I'd discuss computers, and stuff.

Here's what she said: 
Today my topic is the possibility of a second Dark Ages. I firmly believe that in another few hundred years, maybe even sooner, humankind might go through a "dark" period of time where technological progress and learning basically come to a halt. Why do I believe this? Two reasons.

A. This is most important. Our information is stored in computers. Not on scrolls or carved in stone, in hard drives that will soon become obsolete technology. An archeologist of the future will have a difficult time figuring out the archaic devices of today's computers; it will make retrieving information nearly impossible. Now, that fact does not guarantee a dark ages. Perhaps our technology will continue developing at a steady pace and future historians will know exactly how to deal with the outdated curiosity known as a "computer." But honestly, in the event of a nuclear war or some such, our information might be lost, dependent as it is upon computer technology.

B. This one really applies more to America. Look at our progress as a society. Sure, our moral depravity has not nearly reached the depths of ancient Greece and Rome, but slowly and surely it's getting there. As we have seen, every great civilization experiences rises and falls...I think America's fall is coming sooner rather than later. And what with Russia returning to the ways of Stalin and unrest in the Middle East magnifying in strength, well, I'm not sure there will be a Western society capable of standing up to these threats. (And I doubt the Eastern ones will do anything, especially what with China such a socialist nation...)


My take on this--because of the massive beast that is the Internet, we now have all essential computer software stored on millions upon millions of computer hard drives all over the world.  There will be hackers until the end of the world, and by a hacker I mean someone who can code his way out of a paper bag (or something like that...).  Computers are such an integral part of our world now that the necessary skills for using a computer will be around even if there is a gigantic world catastrophe.  Barring the return of Christ, I think it's safe to say computers will be around forever.  I hope that came out right....

And oh, about the whole "fall of America" thing--I think its fall will be when the Tribulation starts to happen, personally. 


Changing the subject now, I lost my wallet on the way to piano lessons yesterday.  I rode my bike there since I had to go to work directly afterwards, and I think it fell out of my pocket as I was riding.  'Least, I haven't found it around here yet.  Hopefully someone is honest enough to return it to me, since I DID have a card in there with my name-address-phone-number.  I only had ten bucks in it, so that's not much of a loss, but I also had my employee benefit card for the place I work--it lets me get $X.XX worth of stuff there every month for free.  Plus it's kinda like my employee-ID card too.  And then there's the wallet itself, which was a nice handmade one with a stitched American eagle on the front.  Oh well....

More about my job, I'm finally out of training!  So within the next couple of weeks I'll be getting tips along with my regular paycheck--whee!


So yeah, that's another update on The Life and Times of Me.

Alright, so here's the second part of my "This Summer" series:

In this one I'm supposed to talk about one particular thing during the summer that I did, so I think I'll talk about our church's VBS that I helped in.

This year's VBS, being in the year “007,” naturally had to have a spy theme. In the skit that goes along with every year's VBS, the good guys—SonForce--were trying to stop the bad guys—C.H.A.O.S.—from taking over the world and generally making, well, chaos.

The bad guys' schemes ranged from destroying all the world's electronics to creating massive amounts of static to leave everyone stranded in their tracks.

Eventually the good guys won and most of the bad guys were sent to some sort of rehab.

So, to go along with that theme, the kids' lessons had “messages from the guidebook” (the Bible), and things like that.

I helped out by taping every skit and running the soundboard for secondary lessons. Which is one of my favorite things to do, of course.

So yeah, that was VBS007 at my church.

Sorry if that was kind of lame, I was quite preoccupied when I wrote it.


OK, so this year for school curriculum (ooh-rah....), I'm doing:
Bible - Balancing the Sword curriculum.
History - Currently watching the "Drive-Thru History (with Dave Stotts)" videos
Math - Calculus, right now I'm currently watching a video overview course thingy about it.
Physics - Basically the same as above, 'cept with physics.
Possibly a literature course coming up soon.
I'm finishing up chemistry and advanced mathematics (pre-calc), as well.

So yeah, that's what's keeping me so busy lately, along with my job and working out three times a week.

I'm also going to be hosting a major podcast sometime within the next month, so stay tuned for that.


Wow, wasn't that exciting!

Hey all. For part one my beginning-of-the-year writing assignment, I was told to write about my summer in general. I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone and make this a blog entry as well. Now, I'm supposed to write two more reports as well and these will show up in the blog too this week.

Anyways, at the start of the summer was our church's VBS (Vacation Bible School). I helped out in the sound area, running the camera during the main session and running sound for the secondary session. This was in early June. Then at the end of the week, I went away to summer camp!

Honestly, I have mixed feelings about summer camp. On the one hand, it's GREAT to be able to take a few days to just focus on God. It's also great to be able to meet people and generally chill out. However, as with many highschool camps, the games were messy-gross-unsanitary-and-generally-not-that-great. Games included ones where you had to get all the peanut butter off a sheet of plexiglass without using your hands. Or where you had a sundae built on top of your head and people ate the sundae off of you. Yuck. Anyways, I didn't care for summer camp in that regard. However, the teaching and discipleship times were definitely worth going for.

I can't really recall anything special happening in July, except for the usual hanging out with friends, playing video games, making music...the usual stuff.

August was a pretty full month, I'd say. I had a couple of LAN parties—this is where a bunch of people get together with their computers and play games over a network. We played games like Age of Empires and Half-Life. Much fun!

Then towards the end of August, of course, was vacation. On vacation we went to family camp in Colorado run by Little Bear Wheeler—and that's where I met Chris. He's the reason you're even reading this right now, in fact! At camp, we played lots of basketball and Wallyball (volleyball in a racquetball court). That was most definitely my favorite part of vacation.

After camp, we headed up to Estes Park, CO, and visited Rocky Mountain National Park (you can see a slideshow of images in a previous post) and generally just chilled for a few days. Which was very nice. While we were up there we visited some great friends who'd moved out of Phoenix a couple years ago. Definitely great seeing them again.

After Estes Park we headed to Denver to visit cousins and the aquarium. We stayed in a neat little rental house in the heart of Denver. The boys stayed in the basement, which smelled like a garden—you know, manure fertilizer? Actually wasn't that bad, to be honest.

After a few days in Denver we headed home in a 16 hour drive from Denver to Phoenix. And that pretty much brings us to here!

So, that was my summer.

Thought I'd make a post today about one of my favorite games--Tremulous!  It's an online first-person shooter that's open source and free.  That means you don't have to pay a thing for it.  I don't know who all enjoys these kinds of games, but I certainly do. 

Here's a couple of screenshots from the Tremulous website (www.tremulous.net) in all their glorious low-res detail:





Hopefully that wasn't too hard on th' dial-uppers.

Anyways, it's free to download and there's a thriving clan base.  My clan is Dretches'R'Us (a dretch is the lowest level alien class) and my name on Tremulous is [DRU]Vortexx.  You can check our website here.  It's about a 100 megabyte download for the game, so probably not for the dial-up crowd.  Sorry.  Also, it does have a very slight amount of blood in it--I don't know what everyone's criteria for game playability are.  It's also fairly heavy on the system resources, but as long as you have a computer built within the last two or three years you should be fine.


Now I'll give a couple links to good songs.  Again, these songs don't really have lyrics so there shouldn't be anything offensive in them.

Dfault - Simple Things (Takashi Fujimori Remix)
Silexz - Entropy
Freak I.V. - D&B Life

These songs are in the Drum'N'Bass genre, which can get quite wild at times.  "Entropy" and "D&B Life" are examples of this.  However, D'n'B can also be quite relaxing and/or emotional as demonstrated by Takashi's take on Dfault's "Simple Things."  Anyways, hope you like these.

Next time if I can remember I'll post some hands-up style dance music.


Adios.

Well, I said I'd upload some pictures of Rocky Mountain National Park, so here's a slideshow.

Shouldn't be TOO hard on the dial-up, since it's pretty low-resolution. 

Anyways I don't really have much else to talk about tonight, so here ya go.

I just got TAGGED!  Uh, thanks Chris, I think....here goes.

What is your favorite color?  Black

What did you eat for breakfast? Haven't eaten it yet.  Pretty sure it's going to be pancakes.

What is your middle name? Starts with an H, it's the name of a famous missionary to China.  See if you can guess it....

What instrument do you play? Piano, drums, and does the computer count?

What’s your favorite sport? Basketball, racquetball.

When is your birthday?  February ze 7th

What is your favorite transportation?  Probably muh recumbent bike.  Actually it's my dad's, but I use it a lot more than he does.

What is your favorite board game? I don't usually care for board games that much, but I do enjoy a good round of Parcheesi now and then.

What is your favorite website?  AftershockPromotions.com, HSB, ACIDplanet.com, KVRaudio.com, UserFriendly.org

Last person you talked to on the phone? Uhh...haven't talked on the phone for at least a week now.  So I don't remember.

Where do you like to shop?  Online--Newegg.com and Zzounds.com and MusiciansFriend.com.  Although browsing around in Guitar Center or Fry's Electronics is fun too.

What did you eat for dinner?  Soup.

What is your favorite car?  Sprinter van, Mini Cooper, PT Cruiser.

Where do you live?  Arizona, near the PHX area.

What is your favorite vegetable?  Jicama is good.   So are carrots.  And cabbage.

What is your least favorite school subject?  Spanish.

What did you eat for lunch?  Turkey.

What is your favorite ice cream flavor?  Probably either mint chip or something with coffee in it.  I like strawberry too.

What is your fav. kind of pet?  I really like cats.

What is your favorite kind of wild animal?  Probably the wolf.

I haven't really met that many people yet, so I think I'm gonna tag SugarCone (random choice).


Now that that's out of the way, I'm going to link you all to a few songs worth listening to.  I'll warn you that these are not Christian songs, but they don't have lyrics or anything.  Lots of dance music is that way.

Sauvage and GM Wizard - Rouge Winter
Inny Binny - Scintillate
Sonic Ether - Kinetic

Hope y'all enjoy these.  One more thing I'll mention, is that at AftershockPromotions.com we've recently released a free download-able album featuring several artists from the Aftershock crew and some ACIDplanet artists.  I've even got a song on there too.  Again, the album is definitely NOT Christian and you might consider asking your parents to listen to the album with you if you think that's a good idea, but there are some good tracks on there.  Some tracks do include vocals, but several tracks don't have vocals so there's plenty good to listen to.  It's in a DJ mix style, where the tracks blend into each other.  Really neat.  I think you may have to sign up for the site in order to download the album, but all they ask for is your email and they never send out spam or anything at all.  Just maybe one announcement every 6 months or so.  If that.

Note:  I am really trying to return all my comments, especially since I'm on vacation and actually do have time to do it.

Well now I gotta get going since we're heading down to Denver from Estes Park this morning.  Be back later!