Life and Times of Paul

lol last post was a year ago almost

2012-01-15T00:42:00.001-06:00

I’m doing more programming. this time it’s at RIM in waterloo. They make blackberry phones. It’s pretty cool and i’m living here by myself with a bunch of pretty cool guys (not necessarily males) who don’t afraid of anything

I’ve taken up new hobbies too, in addition to running and starcraft, which i play instead of warcraft now. I play ukulele, Knit as well as throw rocks at things

Throwing rocks at things is a good hobby, It’s easy and fun. and it’s real cathartic

Still Alive

2011-11-03T00:19:00.002-05:00

That's me!

I've been rather busy with school this semester. Next semester, instead of classes, I'm starting Co-op, which means that I get to be employed gainfully by a real-life company! I get to move to Waterloo, ON to work for RIM; they make Blackberries (like the phones, not the food). I'm stupendously excited!

School's been busy busy busy. I'm only taking 3 courses this semester, but it still manages to eat up all of my time because I'm tutoring people at the same time, so I have to keep on top of what stuff they're learning too.

As far as video games go, it's a lot of Starcraft 2, and new last week, Battlefield 3. It is fun to fly in the jet. Speaking of video games. I played a cool one this weekend last; it is called Amnesia: the Dark Descent. It is TERRIFYING. It's hard to give definite examples of why it's scary, but basically you need to know it does atmosphere, like REALLY WELL. Also, it makes a point of keeping you unarmed, so you can't hide behind a gun or sword or even a sharp stick from the monsters. You can only scream and run away.

Amnesia leads me to a funny story. One of the things it asks you to do before you start is to make sure it's dark around you. So I waited till sundown, then i turned out all the lights and played in the dark. Then I got real scared, and tired. So at like 2 in the morning I ran upstairs screaming and went to bed. Now, at this point, because it was Saturday, my brother was still awake downstairs. So I went to bed and hid under the covers and tried not to think about the lumbering monsters that were going to chase me and probably murder me. Sometime after that, I fell asleep. But then I woke up, hearing

THUMP

SO I woke up and tried not to freak out, because there was this silhouette looming in my room. As it stood there, I hid under the blankets there and slowly went insane. As you probably guessed, it was just my brother. BUT IT WAS SCARY. I was severely sleep deprived and freaked out from playing scary video games all night! This continued Sunday, and also Monday night as well.

And that is the story of how I became afraid of the dark. Again.

I’m not dead i swear!

2011-08-05T09:59:00.001-05:00

I’ve just been real busy. In the aeons that have passed since I last posted, I’ve been hard at work, making an Android App. It’s good work, not boring, but not impossibly hard at the same time. Now the summer is almost over and I’m almost done here. Currently, I’m at home alone, because my family went on a road trip without me, I would have gone, but I have an exam for my summer course this Saturday. I’m hoping it goes well, but I’m confident I know my stuff.

Other things I’ve been doing include video games, lots of video games. I’ve been playing Spiral Knights on Steam, which is fun because it’s free and a good way to kill some time. I’ve also been playing Minecraft, as always. I’ll have to post some pictures of my creations here soon. And there’s the always addictive World of Warcraft. Also I’ve been running a lot more this summer. I’m proud to say that I stayed on my training for the entire summer (more or less.)

EXAMS OMG

2011-04-19T22:07:00.001-05:00

I didn’t post in a month and a half because i’ve been stupidly busy with the end of school. Between frantically finishing my assignments and frantically study for exams i haven’t really had a minute to get a post in edgewise :S

I’ve also been playing a lot of video games. Mainly the –crafts (Mine and war) but Portal 2 came out today! I don’t have it yet, but i am definitely going to get it. I’m super pumped to play it. I’ve also been playing Magicka, which is a silly game.

I’ve written one of my exams already and i have another in a week. Then i start my summer job, and hopefully i get to go on a vacation to Vancouver for a bit! *IF* i do get time off, I’d probably go around May long weekend.

Barbra Streisand

2011-03-09T16:18:00.001-06:00

It’s been a busy week(2 weeks? I don’t even know) since i’ve posted. I went to CS games in Montreal on the weekend, it was great! i did all sorts of fun stuff and there were nerds everywhere! There was also all kinds of employers there, none of which i talked to :/

On a more random note, my cat just stood up on his hind legs and sniffed my elbow… second time today a cat has stood up next to me like that, it’s weird.

Luckily exams are over now, and all the winter sports are starting to wind down, so it’s going to be a little less hectic for a bit. at least until more exams come :P

To get back to the title, which i put there so i wouldn’t forget about it, it’s from the song “Barbra Streisand” by Duck sauce. We sang it a lot at CS games because the cs games president’s name is sandy woo.

ZOMG WAT

2011-02-24T21:28:00.001-06:00

THAT’S RIGHT. NEW POST.

You all probably thought i fell off a bridge into lava and was promptly set upon by the lava piranha eels or something. WELL THAT ONLY HAPPENED ONCE. AND I’M MUCH BETTER AND WISER NOW.

It’s reading week, which means i have slightly less time to myself than i normally do. (That’s a lie. I have time to myself all day erryday. I just don’t use it prudently.) Lots of super exciting and fun stuff has happened since i last posted, which is to be expected in a month and a half :P. First, as i already mentioned, it’s reading week! The only bad part is i got a shiny new assignment in all of my classes which i promptly threw into the corner while i played video games for 2 3 days. During that time, there was a grand fishing tourney in WoW. We caught like a zillion fish, and i ALMOST WON. but i had to leave right at the end to get a certain brother of mine from work, so i got second :/

Another fun thing that is happening is the CS Games, it’s this big competition based around computer science, it’s in Montreal this year. When i say “big” I actually mean “HUGENORMUNGANTIC”. There’s going to be people from big companies like Google and Microsoft there! We shot a video this week to introduce our team. It’s funny, all the nerds are like “we’re going to act gangster, and it’ll be so cool!” and then none of us actually know how. It’s sad, we stood there awkwardly wondering what actual gangstas look like.

Super busy

2011-01-13T21:19:00.001-06:00

SO, as you may or may not have guessed, I have been very busy this past month. I meant to post over the break sometime, but i ended up being occupied by this or distracted by that or something to that effect. After the break, it got even crazier. My grandfather passed away, so between the funeral and seeing my extended family all in town, i was totally occupied again! It’s kind of funny, having any amount of my family members in the same place really sets them against each other. Someone put it best “Nothing pulls a family apart like a funeral”. Personally i think it’s because everyone deals with grief and loss differently. With me, I like to distract myself with other things, while other family members prefer to not leave their beds or try to take charge of everything…

My new courses are all interesting to say the least. Lots of work!

Yesterday, I got to see the premier of The Green Hornet, starring Seth Rogen. It’s a cool movie. I think it was really well done, for a Seth Rogen movie, which i am not the biggest fan of. On that note, it’s pretty typical of a Seth Rogen movie in terms of humour, and also on par with superhero movies in terms of plot and special effects and all the other film stuff you can think of. I recommend seeing it. I specifically put this review here, the day before it actually comes out so i can get some mad hits ^_^

World War in the World of Warcraft

2010-12-08T19:19:00.001-06:00

The new WoW expansion came out on Monday. For you girls and other people who don’t know what that means, it means there is new stuff for me to do in my favourite video game! This is very good/bad news. Good because YAY NEW STUFF

I went to the midnight launch at the mall, it was really exciting, i’ve never done that for anything before! I got all sorts of free stuff, like a mouse pad and trading cards and a poster!

Bad because exams are right around the corner. I’m conflicted between my responsibilities and my non-responsibilities. I studied diligently leading up to Monday, then on Monday i finished off all my assignments and on Tuesday i played WoW! It was super cool! Though there were a lot of people everywhere. It was kind of annoying because there weren’t enough monsters for everyone to kill so everybody was fighting over them. I played enough Tuesday that i got ahead of most of the masses, but i missed supper, so i was sleepy by morning. Then i slept for a little and the rest of people caught up a little. Now i’m still ahead of most people, by the time i’ve almost finished with a place there’s a huge crowd of people that come into it, it makes it rather stressful. I play a priest, and they don’t wear lots of armor so i get killed by other players a lot if they all come and get me. It makes me really sad. Maybe i should relax and do exam stuff to make me less stressed. How ironic…

My exams shouldn’t be too terribad. I studied all weekend so i’m really prepared, and they’re close together so i can just hunker down and focus for ONE WEEKEND and then i’ll be pretty much in the clear.

Doldrums of insanity

2010-11-21T00:43:00.001-06:00

The Doldrums is a place in the ocean where there’s no current, just calm.

Which is why i’m posting here and now! It may be quarter to one, but that’s okay, because now’s the best time to post.

It snowed here! A lot! It snowed for days, and then it was cold and blowing snow everywhere. Today it was just cold. It’s pretty exciting too, it’s like real life winter!

And it was busy too. The new WoW (stop that. This is my blog and i will write about what i want. Now keep reading.) is coming out in like 2 weeks, and i’m super excited! ALSO exams are coming out in 3 weeks and i’m considerably less excited. So, basically i’ve been trying to do as much school work as possible and play as many video games as possible at the same time. Not EXACTLY the same time though, otherwise you go crazy.

Also, my ankle is pretty much better! I think i wrote that in the last post too, but now it’s better all the way. I don’t have to go to athletic therapy anymore. Though it hurts today because i was running around catching buses in the cold, and jeans, and sneakers, and snow yesterday. LIKE ALL DAY.

This week i had 4 assignments and a midterm. I also explored the entire world in wow, just to see it before it gets broken. It was pretty fun, although i didn’t sleep much. Three thirty is a tad ridiculous to go to bed.

I’ve also been playing with HTML tags, see if you can find some in the post!

I really did mean to post!

2010-11-05T20:34:00.001-05:00

like 2 weeks ago! But instead i decided to have a “WOW WEEKEND”. I made that term up by the by. It’s a weekend where one sits in a room all weekend and levels a character the last little way to 80! except it wasn’t the last little way, it was like 5 levels in 3 days. That was pretty exciting. Then there were midterms, and Halloween. Halloween is gone, but the memory is still here, because the ghosts killed a lot of people ._. Midterms are gone too, and now i can breathe. Also, i hurt my Achilles a couple of weeks ago. it’s been interesting. i’ve been going to athletic therapy, and getting better, slowly. the first time i went they sat me in the warm tub. It’s like a hot tub but not really. Then they tested how flexible and strong my foot was. Then they gave me a massage, then they did an ultrasound on it, to loosen up the muscles. After that they did “soft tissue”, which is where they move my leg around like walking for me. They also did “stim”, which is where they hook two electrodes up to you and run a current through your skin to make it feel weird. It felt like my foot was asleep, and i’m sort of sure it was twitching. The next time we did some stretching and exercises instead of ultrasound and stim. then they gave me ice. Today was the third time, my foot was hurting a lot today, so we only did a few exercises, then stretched and stim and ice. It’s getting a lot better though! I can walk and do stairs and run without limping!

SINGING NOISES

2010-10-15T23:57:00.001-05:00

So i really can’t sing to save my life. But that’s beside the point.

Instead, i’ve been seeing people who CAN sing do so. A little while ago i saw Arcade Fire, with my friend Sarah. It was good. they had a lot of drums and instruments. Then they were singing about cars.

Today i saw Lights (!) I don't really listen to her ever. But my brother is a fan, and he needed a ride and his friend bailed on him, so i got to go for free! It was good too. There was a LOT of girls there, who were like 12 years old. She sang some songs, and then she played the keytar. It was pretty good. I'm listening to her on youtube right now, and she was a lot better live. She was all "HAY GUISE, I HAVE THIS NEW SONG FOR YOU TO LISTEN TO LOLS" and it's been out since tuesday, and it's only available in canada right now! Wheeee... I've also got a lot of homework, so i've been trying not to be distracted :/ IT'S GOING POORLY.

I had a pretty good system going…

2010-10-09T00:41:00.001-05:00

Except for when i forgot to include all the stuff that people i know would do to ruin my schedule! It was seriously a great schedule, do homework ALL weekend, and then during the week i wouldn’t have to worry about any of it until friday. BUT then some things happened and some stuff. That’s all in the past now, so it doesn’t merit a real mention here. Since i last blogged, i did a lot. You probably could have figured that out though, because i didn’t blog for a while. I seriously meant to though! I was like “OKAY. Later i am going to write a bloggity blog” and then i was like “i’ll do it later. After this thing.”

I started doing all sorts of things too, Winter stuff is starting already, like skating. I also started yoga! It’s quite fun, and i feel really good afterwards. And i’m almost free from warcraft again! I’m at level 72, and once i get to 80, i’ve promised myself i’m stopping. At least until the next expansion comes out in december. In the mean time there’s all sorts of fun diversions to do. I could study, or play other games, or run or hang out with chums or do any number of things. One of them is going to be Minecraft, for sure. Minecraft is a sweet game, that normally involves bad decisions, which have hilarious repercussions

That’s basically why i want to play. The game isn’t even done yet, and it’s already made $5 million. Which is a very large amount considering that’s been split between probably like 5 people.

I also got “elected” to the computer science student association! Well, not really. I put my name in, and there were 6 people running for 5 positions, and i was the only 2nd year, so i didn’t even have to run. Everyone got in anyways, cause 4 of them are leaving in january for co op.

That’s about all i can think of right now. I have a big pile of homework to do over the next couple weeks, but i’ll try to stay regular in posting.

This one isn’t about what i did.

2010-09-17T20:54:00.001-05:00

I feel obliged to make a post now, because there’s nothing really better to do. I am about to go do some things and some stuff. THEN I will go to sleep, and tomorrow i will do more things and different stuff. After that, i’ll do some stuff, along with acivities. Then I will probably look at these activities and think some thoughts, and hear some sounds and look at some objects. Then i’ll go to a place, until a time, when i’ll do something. Not too sure what though. I just know there’s a race tomorrow I am going to do. Then a party after it. Then there’s another race i’m supposed to marshal the next day. It is very far away, and very early. But i am supposed to do it, so i can be on the track team, and that will give me something to do while i go to school, and learn some knowledge and gain some skills. Then one day i will have a job in which i will use that knowledge and those skills to make something to change the world a little bit so that other people can use their skills and knowledge to do other stuff. And things.

Last post of summer

2010-09-04T23:32:00.001-05:00

Well, not *technically*. I didn’t update earlier in the week because my friend left for BC on thursday so we were chilling and hanging and shooting the breeze. It was good fun. I also had another two days off in a row. I worked today at a new pool, way far away, and there was seriously no kids. I sat next to a pool for 8 hours and got paid for it. On my weekend that i got from the rain i had a skype party with friends Andy and Natasha. It was cool and awesome. ALSO, it was my sister’s birthday on tuesday. She didn’t know what she wanted for a present, so i didn’t get her one.

long weekend is looooooooooooong!

2010-08-17T13:08:00.001-05:00

So, this weekend it was all rainy and cold out. Sucks right? Except for when i don’t work in the rain and cold! Basically i’m at the end of a 4 day weekend right now. It’s pretty awesome. I went to the beach yesterday. Probably not the best beach day ever, but it was alright. We had the entire beach to ourselves at least. The only problem was it was super windy which made it not that warm. I made a killer sand castle though. And i’m now exfoliated in places i didn’t even know needed exfoliation! Today i got a haircut. That is all we are going to say on the matter.

Attention girl-types

2010-08-13T22:26:00.001-05:00

AND anyone who’s ever said something to the effect “lol boys are messy.”.

you have clearly NEVER cleaned a public restroom ever in your life. I mean seriously! At my pool, there are 2 (two) one stall bathrooms. That means a toilet, a sink, a paper towel dispenser, a hand dryer, a bench for changing, and a garbage can. Every day i have to mop out both of the bathrooms so they aren’t a festering pool of filth the next day, and i don’t have to worry about people hurting themselves by drowning in poo or anything gross. At the end of the day, it takes me 2 minutes to clean the boy’s bathroom. That means 2 minutes to mop the floor, clean all the water sprayed everywhere from the sink, flush the toilet and make sure there’s the right kinds of paper in the right places. After that i do the girl’s bathroom. This takes me AT LEAST 10 minutes. That should mean 10 minutes to do everything that i do in the guys bathroom right? AAAAAND to pick up all the paper towels and garbage all over the floor, sweep out the food garbage, clean up the massive pool of water on the floor, rinse all the soap out of the sink, clean the chalk (no, srsly) off the walls, and unlock the stall, which someone locked and then slithered underneath the door.

Also, on monday i went to the beach. It was fun. I made a big sand castle. Then some girls were like “tee hee, we like you’re sand castle. it’s like sooo cool and you’re like soo handsome.”. That’s definitely how it happened. Anyone who says otherwise wasn’t there, they don’t even know. Then on tuesday it was alex’s birthday. He got some nice things and some stuff. I got him a nice thing and gave helpful suggestions on everything else he got it seems.

More summer adventures*

2010-08-04T23:19:00.001-05:00

I’ve been busy once again, summer is on the way out now. technically. It’s definitely August now, Alex’s birthday is in less than a week, School starts in 4-ish weeks. All sorts of fun stuff. Work has been good. I get paid a lot. Kids are kids are kids who are bad.

Also i’ve been playing warcraft! It’s lots of fun. I "recruited” alex, meaning i got him his own account so we can play together. It’s more fun when you’re actually sitting next to someone and playing together, instead of over the internet. I’ve also had some really good ideas for stories or comic books, and they’ll probably stay good ideas until i decide to do something about them. Which will be in a while.

Work is actually pretty sweet. I finished a 1000 page book in less than a week, reading only at work and on the bus. I never thought i’d run out of the big stack of books i get from christmas, and my birthday, but i seriously went through it in a month! :S Now i’ve got to go to the library or something.

*Of questionable legality

a great many of the humblest apologies…

2010-07-21T23:31:00.001-05:00

because i haven’t been posting in a while. I’ve been super busy, what with that job and also with playing video games and sleeping and stuff. It’s quite busy actually. I sleep in (ish) in the mornings, and leave at about 9:30, then i get home at about 6:30, leave again at 7:30 or so, and don’t get back till after midnight. Then i go to sleep and wake up again the next day. I also really should be doing more running… Not exactly sure when i’ll be doing that though. Recently i went to a comic book workshop. i learned a plethora of things about comics, but not what i went in expecting to learn, which was a little bit of a downer. ALSO, i got moved to a new pool, away from the pool with the really good kids who always came with their parents. I got moved to a far away pool, in a slightly sketchy neighbourhood, with kids who always come with their parents and probably don’t realise i exist. Which is good. They also moved my partner from my other pool, which sucks because he was a pretty cool guy. My NEW partner is quite a bit younger. He gives me quite a window on “Kids These Days”. who apparently do not know how to use a broom or mop.

I still haven’t registered for university classes yet. I’ve picked all mine out though! I’m taking all kinds of comp sci, a couple linguistics, and a math and a stats and philosophy!

I went to the Fringe Festival on Monday. I saw two shows, “The Macabre Show of Horror and Macabre-ness” and “The First Five Minutes are Slow” I liked both of them, the first was super funny, and the second was a little silly, but still enjoyable. For some reason they kind of skipped out on a scene or something at the end though, because it was like the climax of the play, then the end, with no real explaining as to what happened. :( I would recommend the shows, but as the first one’s name suggests, it’s kind of grotesque, and like i said for the second, it’s quite silly. But if you like vulgar sorts of things, or improv, you should check out these shows.

And now, i must away! for it is fast approaching bedtime, and there is much nonsense to do before then!

Busy as a bee, doing whatever it is that makes them so busy.

2010-07-03T15:15:00.001-05:00

I’m busy, so i haven’t had time to actually blog lately. I’ve started my new job, as a wading pool supervisor! (Not a lifeguard, i’m not actually certified as one :/) It’s pretty cool, if you don’t mind hoards of children splashing you constantly with water. Today was my first day, and let me tell you, cleaning broken glass out of the pool for an hour and a half before you can fill it is no fun at all. My pool is kind of in a ghetto…

Also i’ve been playing video games. World of Warcraft, again, as well as this steam game called Super Laser Racer. Yes. it is exactly as cool as it sounds. It’s like Mario Kart meets Space Invaders at some crazy rave, and they do some things that are awesome, and questionably legal.

Tiredddd….

2010-06-20T14:13:00.001-05:00

I finished the half marathon! It was really hot, it was like 18 when we started, at 7 in the morning. It just kept getting hotter, until it was at least 25 when i finished, in 1:32:31. I haven’t checked my friend’s times yet because the site is really really slow, because everyone is looking for their results. I got 68th overall. Next year i think i’m going to run the full marathon, cause i’m wacky and crazy like that.

2010-06-15T10:03:00.001-05:00

I was going to write about some big adventure i had on the weekend, but wouldn’t you know it, i forgot! Yesterday i had an adventure though, so it’s ok, i’ll write about that.

First i went and biked around in the morning, then i played on the computer all morning. Then aidan came over and we went and got slurpees. then we ripped on alex’s PSP go (lol, what a noob) and how it’s vastly inferior to a DS, which costs half of what a psp does. Then we watched Auto Tune the News, cause it’s awesome. Then Safeway called and was like “HEY MAN, WHAT R U DOOIN TONITE? WANT 2 COM WERK?” and i was like “uhhh k?” and then i realised: My work uniform was 5 miles away, and i only had a bike to get to it! so i raced across town to get my uniform, and the car, and then i drove to safeway. Then i worked, and it was not horrible. Also, the marathon is on the weekend! I’m excited! I have to get up early friday to go set up though :/

Also, you should all watch The Guild. It’s a web show about these MMO-addicts, it is hilarious.

Pff… Stupid live writer having a fit about me not putting a title. what a joke

Tablet Post

2010-06-04T17:40:00.001-05:00

It's also got a cool writing function. I'm using it right now, and you can't even tell! Neat, huh? l'll post more once I've played with it more,

Feel the spice of life… mine is salt.

2010-05-29T19:21:00.001-05:00

Because salt is the most boring spice i can think of. Today it was raining in the morning, and thundering and lightning-ing. Just like yesterday morning. That all blew over rather quickly, by like 10 it was done. Then it was overcast and humid all day. I went to the mall and watched people. Then i took out my clipboard and drew. Then i made notes on it and glared at people. After that i went to the Apple store (zomg!) yes, me, yes, the apple store. I looked at the iPads. I was just as disappointed with them even with my low expectations. It’s quite literally, a big iPod touch. It’s not even as big as i though it’d be, I thought it would be like the size of a sheet of paper, but it’s smaller. And the whole “gestures” thing doesn’t even work half the time. AND i sent my friend an email from it, and it didn’t even go! when i got back home, i had an email from the mail server saying “what the crap are you doing, you can’t send emails like that.” The only cool thing about the iPad is that they all had Plants vs. Zombies on it. except you can buy that game for the computer and it’s better.

THEN I went to the food court, and i ordered french fries. Then i wandered around the mall eating french fries and then i left. Then i went for a run in the park, but because of the thunderstorms, that turned into a different adventure. It was really muggy and green everywhere, kind of like the jungle, and there was a big tree that fell over and i had to climb over it! And then there were big puddles and golf carts everywhere(for the teddy bear picnic). Then i saw some of my friends biking the other way too. After all that, i got tired, so i went back home, then it started to rain. again. In fact, it’s STILL raining! It’s just about to stop though, which is good.

Also, i started using Google Chrome, instead of Firefox! It’s kind of exciting, except i haven’t figured out how to block all the ads yet, which is a hassle. instead i spent an hour-ish trying to find a good theme to use.

all work and no play makes Paul a dull boy.

2010-05-24T00:35:00.001-05:00

Well, at least it would if i ever tried that. Something along the lines of “A little hard work never killed anyone, but why take the risk?” Strictly speaking, smelling like cold cuts at the end of the day is not the worst thing that you can smell like. Also, the whole job isn’t TOO too hard :) It’s hard to do it fast though, and they want you to be fast.

To be honest, it’s more of a “all play and no work makes Paul very bored” sort of thing actually. all i do these days is hang around and shoot the breeze.

New Computer is here!

2010-05-13T12:17:00.001-05:00

My new Computer got here yesterday afternoon, so i’ve been getting used to it… There’s a program on it that lets me write blog posts without actually having to open up the internet and go to blogger, which is handy, because i forget to do that frequently. That being said, I REALLY like Windows 7, it’s very shiny and works quite well. I haven’t tried out anything really yet, except for internet, and this, and installing stuff. I still have to transfer all my files and stuff over to it too, and pick a new desktop image. The one i have now is kind of cool, but i think i can do better. Just finished downloading all of my games from steam too, Portal is free now! It’s because they released Steam on Mac, so everyone who has a Mac and plays video games (All five of them) can play computer games with everyone else. To celebrate this, they’ve made Portal free for everyone until the 24th! Wheee! IF by some chance you don’t know what Portal is, i ask: What??? Even people living under rocks and those sealed in mine shafts for the past 30 years know what Portal is! It’s a pretty cool video game. there is cake at the end of it. That is all. I have no pictures or anything else for you today, because i didn’t move my stuff yet. Weren’t you reading!

wheeeeeee....

2010-05-08T15:19:00.003-05:00

I got a job! I got hired in the deli at safeway! Also, on wednesday i got $100 from google! But i can only use it for advertising my blog :/ BASICALLY it means that the only thing i get from it is more money for more advertising. I'd actually make real money if i had something to sell here. But i don't, so basically all i get is the next $100 faster if i use it :P
And my new computer shipped yesterday! That means it should be here soooon!
AND last weekend i ran a half marathon! My time was a little slower than last year, but it was raining and wet out, unlike last year. I still beat everyone who i was supposed to :P
That's about all i've to write right now. Time to go play mario party/kart!

NOW this is the story all about how...

2010-04-28T19:00:00.002-05:00

... I got several crazy cool things!
I got: a new computer!
i got it for my birthday! It's pretty cool. it's also not here yet, right now i'm using my old computer still... But my new one is on the way! It'll be here in like 3 weeks. my mouse came today though! It's pretty snazzy!
new shoes!
I ran this race series, and my total time for all three races was the fastest, so i won a new pair of shoes! they're also not here yet, but they're on their way.
Mewtwo!
I caught mewtwo! I even caught him without using my master ball! because i am a pokemon master! now i have all the pokemon, and nothing to catch with my master ball :/
mewtwo's not even that good though. he's really fast and strong, but he doesn't know any good moves! like actually! He's a pokemon that can explode islands with his mind, but in the game, all he can do is raise his defense, and one weak attack. and he can switch stats with his opponent.
here's a picture for you. Try it at home, kids!

I planned this

2010-04-20T13:53:00.003-05:00

This post is pretty special. If you've been keeping track, it's the 100th post in my blog! yay! Party favours for everyone! Today is ALSO my birthday! yay! More party favours all around!
That's right, today i'm definitely for reals an adult. Not kind of sitting on the fence like last year. To celebrate, i spent the day not doing what i was supposed to and playing pokemon... I MEAN... I actually sat around and did my tedious errands, and had an intelligent conversation about... politics...? yeah... that's it!
Well, not really. I sat around for the morning, then i raked the grass in the yard, then i played pokemon and had lunch, now i'm posting, then i'm going to rake some more, and then i'm going to study for my last two exams. And an adventure is called for too. I'm thinking walking to safeway to buy blue kool-aid. But that's later.
And now, cause it's my birthday I shall put some stuff here.
like songs! and questions! And other things maybe later. It will be a fiesta and a half!
SONGS: Shine On by Needtobreathe
Heavy by Collective Soul
Shine, also by Collective Soul
(3 points to whoever guesses where i'm stealing songs from :P)
QUESTIONS =
Which is the best pokemon team? Pick any 6 from all of the ~500. why are yours the best?

OTHER THINGS MAYBE LATER?
Here's some pictures from my computer. i found them on the internets! i have some other funny ones, but animated ones appear to not work :(

Exam time

2010-04-10T17:54:00.002-05:00

So classes are officially done, as of yesterday. Now i have exams! YAY! I have one exam on monday, then none for a whole week. I have 3 exams that week though, which is less than stellar.
But on the bright side, i'm basically done! I still haven't heard back from anywhere for a summer job, but i should here back within the week. otherwise i'll have to go look, which will be not terribly fun.

i dunno what put here

2010-04-01T00:10:00.002-05:00

great news everyone! Only like less than 2 weeks of school! and then exams, and i'm done! wheee!
still don't have a summer job for sure yet, but i find out early next week if i got picked for mini u, and i have to go to city hall again for wading pool supervisor interviewing
Last week, there was all sorts of stuff. there was a big party for all the athletes on thursday, and a big party for anyone in comp sci on friday. i went to both, it was pretty cool. on sunday my family left me while they went on vacation. they came back on tuesday, and it was pretty cool. I lived on my own (more or less) for a while. I'm good at it! I took care of the pets, fed myself and even did laundry and dishes! wheee! I also played pokemon :D Today i beat the 7th gym! yay! (the gym leader is a massive jerk, it took me ACTUALLY HALF AN HOUR to kill ONE POKEMON. all he did was use REST OVER AND OVER AND I WAS LIKE D:<
That's basically it for now.

Totodile, i don't think we're in Kanto anymore!

2010-03-24T22:45:00.003-05:00

AS you may or may not have noticed, i haven't blogged in the past like three weeks
That's not because my wireless card is still broken. I've had all the internets i could ask for since then. Now you may ask yourself "BUT PAUL! Why didn't you blog then? Surely you must have-" And i say, That is enough! I may or may not have been looking for a summer job. Actually, it's closer to the "may not". Basically all i've been doing is mucking around, trying to stop time so i don't have to write exams in two weeks D:
AND.... On the weekend i bought pokemon Soul Silver!
THAT'S RIGHT. I SPEND MONEY ON VIDEO GAMES MARKETED AT 12 YEAR OLDS.
It's awesome. It came with a Pokewalker, which is LIKE a pedometer, but it involves you putting one of your pokemons inside of it, and leveling it up and getting stuff with it. Also on the weekend, i got certified for CPR C and first aid. Which means i can keep you alive until the ambulance gets there! even if you're a small child or an infant! I even know how to use an AED, or Automated External Difibrillator, although i'm not legally allowed to in the province of Manitoba. (I encourage you all to go to someone in authority and tell them to get these though, seriously, they save lives.)
so, that's basically my life in a nutshell (insert joke on me being nuts here. lol.) for now.
I had a job interview today for Mini U, it's like a day camp at the university. i think it went well :)
▼ these are my shoes. You can have a picture of them.

Two clownfish, one of them has a pie in his face

2010-03-01T15:30:00.002-06:00

This is my new background, i thought i'd share it with you. My mom didn't get it until i explained it very carefully to her.

In other news, my computer broke! Kind of. It just won't connect to the internet wirelessly, from my home network. But anywhere else, and it might! probably...

You may be asking now "but Paul? If your computer won't connect to the interwebs, how are you blogging?" You know what? I've had it with you and your negativity! Clearly, i am an intelligent and resourceful child, i have ways to make you ta- err.... connect to the internet... yes...

The Olympics are pretty much done and gone. Except for the paralympics soon! And no more midterms!

I recommend songs now.

I choose 'It Hurts' by Angels and Airwaves. Good song. You'll like it. Life lessons in there.

I also choose "Young London" by Angels in Airwaves, cause it's another good song.

Those are all the songs i can really think of.... if you MUST have more songs, send me a mail, and i'll give you more. probably.

Olympics!

2010-02-21T21:31:00.002-06:00

I haven't posted because OLYMPICS!
And studying, but mostly olympics. Studying is hard :/ I've still got quite a bit to do for calculus, which will be a good time and a half. School starts tomorrow, after a week off for reading week.
I did quite a bit of stuff: studied, ate, ran, read, slept.
Exams start soon, and also races for track and skating start again. Track on wednesday, skating sunday, exams on Thursday and saturday. Another exam in march, and some exam some other time :/ I'm going to be busy busy again. And i need a job too :(.
ALSO, you may have noticed i've kinda avoided talking about the actual olympics. Super pumped as i am about them, i'm a little disappoint. Canada should be doing better in my opinion. ESPECIALLY IN HOCKEY AMIRITE?

2010-02-10T16:50:00.003-06:00

This is when my weekend starts now :P The "real" weekend was busy busy busy. Friday, i volunteered at a track meet, until the evening. Then on saturday i worked for the day, and volunteered for the evening. Sunday i volunteered again all day. It was a lot of volunteering.
Sunday night i had to hurriedly finish my computer science assignment, because i was busy all weekend.
Volunteering was cool. Friday i just sat at the finish line and said who came in what place. Saturday i poured drinks and set up and cleaned up stuff. Sunday i was helping at speed skating ( i could have raced, but i would have missed the first day, because of work.) Basically all i did was run heat sheets around.
Now i'm just studying for tests this week, and then next week is reading week!
Also, i started playing Mario Kart. I'll put my friend number here when it's convenient, if you have mario kart wii, we can race!
Here is the number! 4297 4608 9192

Everything went better than expected

2010-01-30T17:39:00.002-06:00

This week was absurd and ridiculous. I got all my assignment in on time, i FINALLY caught up (pretty much) watching Chuck, and on Monday there was a huge blizzard that dumped like a foot of snow here. I'm super excited about that, but the other residence of Winterpeg are less than thrilled. ALSO it's been REAL WINTER HERE! It's like -20 finally.
I got a job too! I'm a TA at the university for a math workshop on the weekends. It's not really permanent, cause the workshop only goes on for a month, but it's better than nothing! I'm thinking of applying to work in fastfood, but i'm not sure if i really want to do that....
Also: here is a song for you. Now, i'm off to do more stats homework!

New Spicy Chicken flavour

2010-01-24T16:12:00.002-06:00

I am taking a break from linguistics and computer science at the moment, thought it would be a good opportunity to write things here.
The weather here sucks. It's been between like -2 and +1 for the past two weeks, everything's melting and getting all messy and stuff. I was supposed to have a speed skating meet today, but it was too warm, so it got cancelled. Yesterday was the second day of it, and it really sucked. It snowed/rained (yes. rained) starting friday night, basically until an hour ago when it stopped. Saturday morning, they were using the tractor to clear the snow from the oval, and the ice was so soft the tractor actually left tread marks in the warmup lane. As the day went on, it got a little colder, so the ice froze a bit, and the tire marks left, but then it got EVEN WARMER. The ouside lane of the corner was like slush. The times were basically what you'd get if you ran the same distance on a track in skates. NO GLIDE AT ALL.
AND i think i have a concussion, from something, but i don't remember hitting my head ever. All i know is i've been having headaches, especially when i jump/stomp/run or do anything that has more impact than walking. D:
Yesterday, i took Alex and Charles to Safeway to buy drinks though. It was pretty cool. They ended up getting 48 cans between the two of them. Charles paid $4 for his 24, of assorted Crush products, (including his $2.50 donation to Haiti), while Alex paid $10 for his Dr Pepper. I got 6 cans of orange crush because i drove them there, and Alex to work today.
On a homework-y note, the comp sci project actually turned out to be easier than expected; half the work was done for us. Linguistics is easy too, only i was doing it in a semi-public place and getting weird looks as i sounded out words (we're doing phonetics. I was sitting there trying to find the sounds in "serendipity"; "SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS ehhhhh RRRRRRR ehhhhhhh nnnnnnnn d ihhhhh p ihhhhhh t eeeeeeeeeeeee". or "loquacious".)

Proggy!

2010-01-16T20:21:00.002-06:00

Busy, busy. I have been busy. All sorts of work and stuff. My stats class is a lot of work. I've also been doing all sorts of other stuff. I spent the day making graphics for a math contest. i also signed up to be a note taker for all sorts of classes. Lots of homework assignments this term too. Comp sci project due friday, stats assignment monday, and uhh... calculus homework that's not really DUE per se, but i have to do it sometime, otherwise i won't do good in that course at all.
Alex bought both seasons of Chuck today, we've been watching it for several hours. I've been doing my stats homework and those graphics for the math exam.
My mom got me Macromedia Studio MX, so i also was playing with FreeHand today. I also have Dreamweaver and Fireworks and Flash! All sorts of fun programs to play with! And on the less fun programs front, i've had to install like seven inane programs for stats. AND one of them installed all sorts of ridiculous Yahoo! add-ons for Firefox. feh.
The weather is really warm here, it kinda sucks. It's only january, and already all the ice and snow is getting.... not... good.

The End of the Beginning of the Middle bit of the...

2010-01-03T23:41:00.003-06:00

Winter break is almost over! For most of us, it probably ends tomorrow. For the awesomes of us (read: Me) i have another couple days. I start school again on Wednesday! :S This time in new and never before seen classes!? Well, not COMPLETELY new... Two of my classes go all year, Linguistics and Economics. The other three are ALL NEW!!!!1 which is fun, i guess. IT DOES MEAN that i don't have to do that silly programming practises anymore. That course was hard :\
Instead i'm in some other compy sci course and Calculus 2 and Statistics. They're mostly in the mornings, except tuesday/thursday, when i don't start till 10, but i have to stay until like 3, which sucks. I'd rather just get it over with and enjoy my afternoons.
The rest of the holidays were cool, Not sure if i mentioned it, but i got a large amount of video games for christmas, so i basically played those all day for the whole break. I saw alexander yesterday, because it was his last day in Winnipeg. He's back in Vancouver now, and getting ready to start tomorrow :P
I still have several games to OPEN, let alone beat. Haven't opened Mario Kart, Wii Sports Resort, or Wii Fit Plus. I've also only done half of Rockband 2, but that's more for having friends around to play it with right? (now... if i could just find some friends... :/)
For new year's i went to Aidan's house and we played HexBox Full rotation, for like 13 HOURS IN A ROW. I got there mid afternoon, and we went to bed around 6 (the next morning) Basically we played Castle Crashers, and Left 4 Dead 2 all evening/night and then we started watching Star Trek (the new movie, not the nerdy ones) at like one in the morning. Then we played Modern Warfare 2 for a couple hours, then we played castle crashers, then aidan went to sleep and i went to bed shortly thereafter. I woke up at like 10:30, and he didn't wake up till 2. I considered just leaving him there, but i decided against it :P
It's going to be a little weird going to bed at a reasonable hour again also :/ I don't think i've gone to bed earlier than 2 this whole break D:

Required Post-Christmas Post

2009-12-26T10:56:00.005-06:00

Christmas is sort of over for now... Unless you count the whole "christmas season" to also include up to Epiphany, but i don't.
I got some cool stuff for Christmas! I got Mario Kart and Wii Sports Resort, and some nice clothing, and books and lego and a crazy Rubik's Cube thing... It's called Rubik's 360, and it's WEIRD.
But not really as hard as a Rubik's Cube is, which is handy. The "trick" is a little difficult to grasp, but if you've taken linear algebra, it's logical and easy. :D
We also got Rockband 2 for christmas! And several other video games for the Wii; Alex got Madden '10 for his Xbox.
We debated going to Best Buy and getting in on all those sweet deals, but decided it wasn't worth it. It's snowing and windy out. It's been snowing since Wednesday night, and i've had to shovel ~4 cm of snow of the walks like FOUR TIMES in the past two days. I'm about to head out and do it again...

Note to self: Remember to make clever post title

2009-12-23T12:53:00.003-06:00

I finished my exams! Whee! Now i have so much free time!
Well, actually i was done on monday afternoon. There was a mistake in the exam schedule, and i didn't check my school email during exam week, so it wasn't until monday afternoon, at about 2, when i found out i had an exam at 3. I managed to get there in time though, which was good. Monday night and Tuesday were spent at my friend's house, playing video games.
Things to do over the break though: Running, Skating, Video Games, Hopefully an animation in flash or something. i wanted to do it last month, but i was busy with exams :S
Also: I have to buy something for my sister, but the only thing she's asked for is a pair of gloves, that are sold out EVERYWHERE (They are Olympic Gloves, really nice, hard to find.)
but for now, nothing to do for a little while...

So that's where they come from...

Asokiujyhbgtevfcdesw

2009-12-06T15:05:00.004-06:00

GAH!
I should really be doing my comp sci project right now D:
Instead i'm connected to the internet, which slows my working down to ~5% CURSE YOU YOUTUBE.
Also: Final exams are coming! I should be studying. I'll start later.
Also: Aidan gave me his lego. MORE LEGO = MORE POWER! But i don't have time to play with it until like christmas, so stay tuned for an even more epic castle. Also: I asked for more lego for christmas(to my mom's chagrin) so i can make a second castle and have a battle of mythic proportions.
Alex bought an xbox 360! Now i have one more thing to distract me from being productive! Yay!
Yesterday there was a track meet. I ran the 1000 and the 600. Also there was a math contest called the "Putnam" contest. It's named after some famous math guy. It's also the hardest IN THE WORLD. it takes six hours to write, but i was only writing the second half (I was running for the first half.) It was seriously hard too. I read the problems and i was like

Then i was like "okay, i sort of understand this one, kind of i guess." And so i ended up getting solutions to 3 out of 6 problems. Then i found out that one of the solutions was wrong. And the other two... well let's just say they're not the most acidic solutions in the world. But they're not the most basic either!
Finally, before i go to do work, you people should listen to owl city. It's awesome.

Back and better than ever!

2009-11-29T20:51:00.002-06:00

My apologies for letting my blog gather dust :/ This month i did stuff. (like not on the internet stuff) AND on the internet stuff!
I started playing lego again. I made a castle of epic proportions, with an equally epic army attacking it. If i remember i'll takey picture.
Also, i started playing Warcraft 3 again. It's still fun. There's also the same number of jerks who go AFK and make you lose :(
Also, i started running more. Not as much as i need/want to but more.
AND FINALLY, school's been picking up before exams, so i've been having less time to do other stuff.
So there you have it. 4 things that would each take up a full amount of time AT THE SAME TIME.

Halloween

2009-10-30T19:54:00.002-05:00

Tomorrow is Halloween! This is good. I carved a Jack o' lantern.
This is it.
I finished my midterms too. They were busy, but not hard. I'm done though which is good.
Now all i have is shooting the breeze for another like week until the courses get back into action
there's a sort of lull now because nobody wanted to distract us from midterm studying. Indoor track starts tomorrow, i'm super pumped! ^_^

Kitten!

2009-10-22T21:48:00.002-05:00

I GOT A NEW KITTEN!
It's a rescue kitten, four months old
He's (it's a dude) white and orange and named shane.
Picture coming later when i find a memory card reader. He's playful and nice and friendly
Pretty much everything that "My" cat, Charlie, isn't. I have 3 cats now, Charlie, Tyya, and Shane. Tyya is pretty, like really pretty. She's a long haired siamese. I compared her to this contest description and she fits it pretty well, no abnormal white stripe or spots or anything. Charlie is my cat, she doesn't like most people and she's really shy. But she reminds me a lot of myself :/ My mom doesn't like her much because Charlie only likes kids, me best of all :) Tyya doesn't like anyone, and she will bite you and be generally grumpy if you pet her too much (more than twice).
I like Charlie the best because she is mine, she always sleeps on my bed and generally only lets me see her. She hides on my bed when people are here(especially if they are loud) and when it's just me in the house, she'll come downstairs to eat and stuff. Shane's a pretty cool guy too. eh fell off the couch and doesn't afraid of anything. He also found a bag of shredded paper waiting to go out for the recycling and knocked it over and made a ridiculously big mess.

Headlong into... something.

2009-10-17T21:52:00.002-05:00

It's been *like* two weeks since i last posted. I've been busy. Last night, i got to see Blue Man Group! Well, not REALLY. I was working at a concession stand at the arena, where they happened to be playing. But we closed up after the opening act and then i just watched the rest. I missed the opener and the first 20 minutes-ish of the actual concert. BUT IT WAS SO COOL. They had all sorts of things that they were making music with... these pipes that they were hitting, and a piano with the top taken off. There is a pretty unique sound of a piano being hit by a sledgehammer. They also hit a bass drum with a sledgehammer. the drum was mounted on this big stand, and it was sort of springy so it didn't totally annihilate the drum.
Today there was cross country provincials. I ran 40:50 for 10k, which is decent for me, but i was last place :/ It was a decent race though, it was really cold and windy, and there were lots of hills.
Midterms are coming up too. My first one is economics, this coming Friday. Then i have Linear Algebra on the following Monday, and finally Calculus and Programming Practices on Thursday. There is no midterm exam for Linguistics, which is really nice, because it's one less thing i need to worry about.
Tomorrow is my parents' anniversary but we had the party tonight. It was a nice party. there was Chinese food and more food.
Also, I've taken to playing video games in the CSSA lounge, specifically Castle Crashers. It's an awesome game.

Oops.

2009-10-05T20:56:00.003-05:00

It's October!!! That means that i totally just blasted past the blog's first birthday :/ Oh well. It's just a number. Not like it means much to me. Or at least i'll tell myself that until i believe it. I seem to be telling myself a lot of things lately... like this comic i read once, about a machine that tells "beautiful lies" to people.... I might have it saved somewhere, but i don't want to go rooting through my pictures to find it. I have too many.
I got Audiosurf! It's a pretty neat game. It's like guitar hero, or DDR, for those of you who aren't total nerds, like i am :P The only difference is that it can just create the tracks for any song that you give it, so you get to play with your own music. It's really fun too. It feels a little bit like playing in the middle of a busy highway though D:

This is serious post. It is Serious.

2009-10-05T20:35:00.006-05:00

I really want to get back into WoW. It's probably a bad idea, because i already spend too much time on the computer in the first place, and it'll just be a horrible catastrophe again.
Forget if I've told this story yet, but WoW actually sort of saved my life...
In grade 7 i had all sorts of friends, who were without a doubt, some of the more sketchy people in my school. In grade 8, i was still hanging out with them a lot, watching as they all started smoking one by one, and getting into drugs I stayed out of it, and as a result i was ridiculed and such like any normal freak in middle school. At the beginning of grade 9, WoW was released, and i started playing with my friend. It was a whole new world (literally). I had used "the Internet" sort of before that, but this was my first time using it as a mask, so i could be someone else for a while. I was addicted from the first time i played it. I stopped hanging out with most of my friends, even the ones who actually played the game. I spent more and more of my time in the game, i still have my character. It's an undead warlock named "Racenthius". My parents kept yelling at me about spending too much time and the game "controlling my life". It wasn't. I didn't suffer in school or anything because of it, i just stopped doing stuff with my friends. In grade 10, i stopped playing, because my brother shared the account with me, and his marks WERE suffering (between you and me, Internet, they probably would have suffered anyways.). Suddenly there was a huge amount of time in my week that i had no clue what to do with. I tried to fill it with homework, and i was still bullied horribly in school. I didn't quite match stride with anyone else, so for grade 10, i mainly kept to myself, being a loner; becoming more antisocial and shy. In grade 11, i went into IB. My parents didn't think it was a good idea, they said I'd always been a slacker, and i should just stick with my mid-high grades in the normal program, be a regular old kid. I decided to go into IB anyways. IB is an advanced program, look it up on wikipedia or something. So, i tried to fill my time with homework. I ended up having more homework, and wasting the hours from 3:30-6:00 Monday to Friday anyways. When everyone else was doing work, i was shooting the breeze by myself, and when they were all hanging out being friends, i was doing work. Every hour i wasted, i thought "I should get off this game and do something. Right after this match/song/level." And so i kept going. By now i had a whole new circle of people i called "friend" even though i never heard from them. All my original friends dropped out of school pretty much on their 16Th birthday, once they could get a job. Then they worked at minimum wage, moved into a crappy apartment and stayed there, smoking a pack a day and god knows what drugs. I know at least one of them is living happily like that.
I've never been particularly good at anything. Just "more than OK" at pretty much everything. I know people who can do better than me at pretty much anything i can do. The only thing i seem to be good at is wasting my time and making myself a general impediment to people who actually are trying to work. I've never been particularly motivated to do anything with my life. I'm just delaying having to make a choice for a while. Right now my chosen path is "Something in computers" which is a pretty broad spectrum in the job world when you think about it.
Every so often i worry about this. I always go back to my mom's words to me, calling me "loner" or anti-social. I am. I'm an introvert in the biggest way possible. I never draw attention to myself, i hardly even make eye contact with people. Even when i see someone, i feel like i should talk to them, and TRY to make friends, but even then, i'd never dream of talking to them. I just sit there and hope that they'll maybe be friendly and talk to me first...

Nothing Incredible

2009-09-28T19:31:00.003-05:00

As the title would suggest, nothing spectacular has happened since friday. My cousin had his birthday. That was fun i guess. I went over friday at like 8, and came home saturday at 4:30 for a shower and a run. Then i went back for another party. Sunday we had dinner there too. All in all life is nondescript.

Not much else to write here, i just felt like writing a post. Here's a pic for your troubles anywho.

Zip Zaps!

2009-09-25T19:49:00.002-05:00

This week brought many new adventures, and a medium-large order of razzmatazz and shenanigans. Not much happened, I took my brother to Cross Country on wednesday, and on thursday i hung out with my friends again. It was cool. We went into the engineering building, which is awesome. Every engineering building in a university is cool. There was a couch in the main room, which we just sat on, until the people whose couch it was came and vacated us from it. Then we went up to the Compy Sci lounge, which was pretty cool too. It was pretty empty when we got there, except for me, lloyd, mandy, and sandra. There were also two Engineering Students. Then a whole bunch of people showed up and it was cool Everyone was like "hurr video games are cool" and i was like "lol ya." THEN me and lloyd thought of this great idea.... Why don't we get Zip Zaps, and race them around the EITC?! It's a lulzy idea, with absolutely NO bad parts! Almost as cool as throwing paper airplanes in the main room. (the main room is a cool place. I'll try to remember to take a picture someday. Maybe Monday or Tuesday. It's massive. There are SIX FLOORS. And balconies.

More shenanigans and nonsense adventures

2009-09-19T13:06:00.002-05:00

Today was the first meet of the cross country season. It was actually just a time trial, so our coach could see how good we are, and so he can pick who gets to go on the travel team (That's the team that goes to all the meets around the vicinity of Manitoba and the surrounding region) (they do us good...should you ever see someone wearing a Bison's shirt, i want you to stop them and tell them "Son/Girl [select appropriate]... ya done good.")
anyways. It was a 2 km loop, the guys did it three times, and the girls did it twice. I ran my 6 k in 24:47, which is alright-ish. 4:12 per km isn't that great, but it was hilly and muddy!
Yesterday i had the rest of my classes (finally lol) Well, just my first two labs. I had Comp Sci, then Calculus in the afternoon. First, when i got to Compy sci, i was afraid that everyone would be really smart and everything, because it's a second year course, and i'm not a second year chap. But it turns out that everyone's just regular old dumb kids anyways, so i fit right it. I even got everything to work! Yay me! Our lab is in a Mac lab, which means that i have to use a Mac. It's not so bad though... The whole one button thing is annoying, but we don't actually use the Mac parts of the computer. What REALLY happens is we tear a hole in the Mac bit, and get at the nice Unix piece underneath. (Unix is this other Operating System, like Windows or Mac OS X, macs all run Unix, which has been made pretty so people who don't feel like devoting their lives to computers can use it.) Calculus was a neat lab too, our TA is really nice, he just gave us some problems, and then worked through them with us. the only problem is that there isn't enough chairs in the class, so the 8 slowest people have to stand/sit on the floor at the back of class.
Also, on thursday, me and my friend Lloyd went to the Max Bell Centre (sports complex on campus) It was sweet. For those of you who don't know this place, it's got a track, an arena, and it's attached to a big gym, and the other building Frank Kennedy, which has more gyms, and a pool. The best part about it being on campus is this: The arena is open year round. The best part about THIS is that the zamboni has to resurface the ice all the time. The best part about THIS is that it takes all the snow it scraped off the ice and dumps it beside the parking lot. THAT'S RIGHT FOLKS. FREE SNOW IN SEPTEMBER. It must have been at LEAST 30 degrees out, and we were having a snowball fight! Then we took a big bunch of snow and made a snowman halfway across the campus :D

First Impressions of University

2009-09-16T13:04:00.002-05:00

University is nice. All my classes are really easy. In Computer Science, we're learning C, most of the people in my class haven't been exposed to it ever before, but my mom showed me a couple things a while ago. Calculus and Linear Algebra are easy-peasy. I already know the entire syllabus for both of them, i just didn't get the credit because i only challenged the SL exam. :/ Economics is dull. Linguistics is fun though, so it makes it all worth it.
Yesterday i went and saw the movie 9. It was pretty good. I was entertained, to say the least. It was really really short though, about an hour and five minutes. I want to go see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, but i don't think i'll see it friday when it first comes out... Too expensive on "Not Tuesday". (Movies are with free popcorn and half price on tuesdays, so it costs $10 and you get everything) I also really want to see Planet 51, but that's not till thanksgiving. Which is later...
But back to these courses! Yesterday, in Calculus, our prof just didn't show up for half the class. It was ridiculous. Everyone was like "what is this." Then they all left because you know, in university you don't have to stay there if you don't feel like it. We're all adults. Like 20 minutes after class was supposed to start, someone phoned Machray Hall (The math office) and asked where our prof was. They answered "lol i dunno ¯\(º_o)/¯"
At half an hour into the class, two thirds of the people (read: All the ones whose parents paid for uni for them) left. And one of those dumbasses left a stinkbomb in the class somewhere. There was a loud POW! Then there was a horrible horrible smell. Note to the internet: IF YOU ARE AN ADULT GOING TO UNIVERSITY YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE SMART AND NOT ACT LIKE A FUCKING 12 YEAR OLD.
THEN he just showed up 40 minutes through the class and was all "Sorry i'm late lol." The end.

Textbook "fun"

2009-09-11T14:02:00.001-05:00

So i have this gift card and coupon for my university bookstore so i can save a whole bunch of moneys on my textbooks, But i forgot them both at home when i went to buy my books today. Instead, i just bought the two cheapest ones on my list ($40 and $65) Then when i was walking to the bus stop it started to rain. like a torrential downpour. There was like an inch of water all over the streets, EVEN by the drains! When i got home, like five minutes ago, i took my new books out of my bag as fast as i could. They were mostly fine because they were right next to my back, but my Linear Algebra book is PRETTY RUINED :( AND the receipt was next to it, and it was plastered to the cover, even after i peeled it off, there is still a bunch of ink left on the cover (which is WHITE) So NOW i have my $40 comp sci book, which is still pretty good, it's a little wet on the corner, but it's fine. THE OTHER ONE, Is pretty much destroyed. I actually am heartbroken.

New Adventure, Same Paul

2009-09-07T11:23:00.003-05:00

University starts tomorrow! I'm really excited, and also a little nervous at the same time. I'm going to take the bus, at like 7:30 in the morning :/ Then all the cool orientation stuff, I've been told that it will be a fiesta of free stuff. Also i've been getting back into shape, after not doing any running for a month... I wasn't really INACTIVE... i walked everywhere, and was out and about lots, but it wasn't as much as i was used to.
http://au.gamespot.com/greatest-video-game-hero/vote/index.html?battle_id=17
Vote for Bub & Bob. Master Chief is alright, but he's really not that great of an hero. All he did was shoot stuff. Bub and Bob are the true heroes.

Home Sweet(ish) Home

2009-09-04T01:21:00.002-05:00

Well, now i am back home from my marvelous journey across the continent. It was fun. I made friends. Now i'm back at home, and life is mediocre again. I got another $800 in scholarships, my first term is only $550! Yay! But i'm also back at home with all the things i was happily free of on vacation.
Thing 1: My family.
Thing 2: Not having someone to entertain me every hour of every day.
Thing 3: No friends hanging around; they all left.

That's it.
Other than that... not much is new. I helped my aunt move stuff, and my other aunt is learning how to use Skype, so i'm getting calls and such whenever we're both on. It's a little awkward, because she expects me to be coming back as if i lived out there and am going to school there. (Read: Every long weekend, holiday, or spare chance i get) (I do not plan on going back for a while.)
I still have some things to do. I have to find this girl i barely know, and give her a present from my friend. It'll be an adventure. AND i have to find Heidi, and Andrew and everyone else left in the city for "Chilling"
I just got back from "Inglorious Basterds." It's a good movie. I officially give it the "Paul Seal of Approval."

British Columbia (tl;dr)

2009-08-30T20:59:00.001-05:00

I’m on the train back home now. I’m not exactly sure where I am, or what time it is, but I think I’m somewhere in Saskatchewan and that it’s 11 o clock. Judging by the terrain, we’re most likely in Saskatchewan. It’s LIKE Manitoba, but it’s actually not as flat. Alberta is flat-ish near Saskatchewan, but it’s still bumpier. Manitoba is straight up planar. The west coast was fun. I did basically everything. When I got there, Wednesday morning, I went to my aunt’s house, then we dropped off our stuff, then we went downtown. First she showed me the bus system, and then we went to the library so I could check my email. After that we went to NCX and bought her a computer, because hers had been broken since January. The next day we went back downtown and got her a modem so she could use the internet. Then we walked around Stanley Park, which is this huge park, right on the edge of the water. There are beaches all around it. Friday, I went downtown by myself, and I met up with Laura and Maegwin, two fine upstanding ladies who used to live in Winnipeg and went to school with me… They were like half an hour late, because their bus had stopped working on the bridge, and some other bus related excuse. I got to have a good look around the Chapters while I waited for them. I know what I’m going to spend my gift cards on when I find them  It’s going to be Pride and Prejudice and Zombies :) We went to Stanley Park, to the Aquarium. It was pretty cool, I saw dolphins, then we saw the belugas, and there were otters. I liked the otters. And there was a turtle and some jellyfish, and some normal fish and a monkey and a caiman! We also saw mudskippers. They were cool. And there were frogs. After that, we went to a coffee shop, where Maegwin threw her coffee at the ground and we had to get another one. Then we went to their place and had supper there. Saturday, my other aunt picked me up, and she took me to her house. She lives in a suburb-ish city from Vancouver called “North Vancouver”. It’s pretty nice. First she took me to Lynn Canyon, which is this canyon with a suspension bridge and river running through it. We hiked a bit there, and then my cousin and I went and splashed about in the river. We saw some guys who were using a waterfall as a waterslide! I was wearing my jeans, so I didn’t. But it looked fun! After that, she took me out to some Indian restaurant, and then we walked on the seawall. Sunday, I met with my friend Evanna from camp. We walked on the seawall at Stanley Park, and we went onto the beaches and picked up crabs and played with them. It was entertaining. Then we walked down the street and I got souvenirs for my sisters. After that we had supper, then we went back home. I took the Sea Bus! It’s a really big boat that ferries you across the inlet/bay thing that Vancouver is built on, to North Vancouver. Then I took the bus to my aunt’s house and that was the end of the day. Monday, Maegwin and I did this hike called the “Grouse Grind” It’s a trail that goes up the side of Grouse Mountain (duh) It’s a really big deal when you do it apparently, sort of like a coming of age thing there. When you get to the top, they have this house type thing with a restaurant, café, shop, and some other stuff in it. There you can buy a ticket on the Gondola back down. Also they apparently have zip lining somewhere there! We just went on the Gondola and left however. We didn’t find it too hard. We made it to the top in somewhere between 50 minutes and an hour. When I told my friends they were all “WHOA! You’re hard core!” and I was like “Not REALLY. I wasn’t really going that fast….” We stopped a couple times because Maegwin didn’t bring her puffer, and was going “Hah… heh…*Pant* *gasp* *wheeze*” In my experience, when people do that it’s a bad thing, so I was waiting for her and I was like  and she was like “oh, stop it already *pant pant*” and I was like “but what if you die?” and she was like D:< Then she fell a couple times and I was like LOL. But I didn’t say that. She would have probably hit me. Monday evening, we went on the seawall again. We saw some seals. I SAW AN OTTER! It was definitely a highlight of the trip. It was just swimming along the side of the rocks, and being awesome, and there were seagulls around trying to get it, and it kept diving under the water when the seagulls came. Tuesday, I just hung out with my aunt all day, we went and watched my cousin diving. Wednesday I caught a bus out to White Rock, where I saw my friend Rianna. She’s cool. We hung out there all day; we walked on the beach, and sat on the wharf. While on the beach, we saw these little crabs, so we dug them up and they were like *SCURRY* and scurried away. Then they buried themselves again. I found a mussel that was alive, and hadn’t been eaten by a seagull. Then we also saw this weird fish that looked like it was jumping when it swam and it buried itself in sand. :/ Then we went to KFC for supper, and then we went to a gas station to get ice cream. Then I got the bus home, and that was the end of that. After I got home, I had supper again, and then we went to this ice cream place that had 218 flavors! I wasn’t feeling that adventurous thought, so I got “chocolate chip mint”. I wasn’t really in the mood for “durian” or “wasabi” or any other nonsense like that. Tuesday morning we went to the train station which is also the bus depot. I got on a bus and then I went to Kamloops. While on the bus I was listening to loud music. I think I might have damaged my headphones :/ either that or the bus did it. Now one of them rattles a little bit. In Kamloops, my uncle Garry picked me up from the bus depot; he gave me a short tour of Kamloops. It’s a nice city/town. I’m not really sure how big it is, but it’s in a little valley in the mountains. It’s really hot there, and it looks sort of desert-y. Also the river running through it is nice; it’s cool and clean so you can swim in it, and there are sandy parts, so it’s like a beach. They also have this thing where you can get on a tube and they drive you upstream a bit and then they drop you in the river and you just float down the river until they come and pick you up and one of the beaches. I didn’t do it :/ Friday, I got a ride to one of the beaches, and then I sat on the beach all day and read a book. I read Marley and Me. It was warm too, like 32. Thursday it was 35, but it was cooler Friday because it was smokier. I saw a whole bunch of water bombers and helicopters taking off. It was pretty exciting. Saturday morning, I left really early. We got up at 5:30. and then packed my stuff, then I got on the train. The train is about half full. I also don’t have money for food D: they don’t take debit here, so I am stuck with my cookies and trail mix for sustenance :/
I’m looking forward to being home (sort of) I’m going to try and get a job right away, and also I have to hang out with a bunch of people before school starts. I have to find someone because I have a present for them, but we’ve talked like twice :P It’s from my friend in NS. This present has travelled 9000 km! and I’ve travelled about 12 500 km! Best guess is that the trip cost about $1100 including food, shopping and travel. Which is pretty good for a month, and an entire continent.

The Other Side

2009-08-30T20:58:00.001-05:00

I’ve spent the last ten days in BC. It was really fun. I saw a whole bunch of people who I haven’t seen in a while. I did lots of stuff; in Vancouver I did ALMOST everything. I didn’t get to see the Sky Train. And that’s pretty much it… Kamloops was cool too; it was really hazy from the forest fires and I saw a bunch of water bombers taking off all day.

Nova Scotia (tl;dr)

2009-08-15T08:55:00.001-05:00

This post is about the stuff I did in Nova Scotia. I got in on Friday, at about 5:30 so about an hour late. Then I got my bag from the carousel, and looked around for someone I knew. Helen wasn’t there right away, because the train was an hour late and she didn’t feel like hanging around for me. So then I went to a bench, took out my computer, and I looked up her number, and I was going to call her, and be like “hey, where are you?” and then when I got to the pay phone it wanted me to pay like $4 to call her so I was like “no”. Then I tried putting in the area code before the number, and I was about to put the coins in, when I saw Helen walking in, so I held on to my quarters, and I was like “Helen!” then she led me back to the car, where I met her dad, Ron. Helen also made me go across the grass with my big heavy bag :/ When we got to her house, Quinn was there. I said “hi Quinn” and he said “hey,” That’s about all that went on in that encounter. Then I put all my stuff upstairs in the guest room, and then some of Helen’s friends showed up because she’d invited them. I met Charlotte, Ethan, Sara V, and some others. The next day Quinn and Helen gave me a tour of Mahone Bay. It was pretty cool. We went to the marina and met Pat and Drew, Helen’s co-workers. After that we got Ice cream, and we went to the Kayak shop and met Natasha. She said we couldn’t go kayaking because it was too windy. Then we went to the Information Centre and met Morgan. She gave us some pamphlets about stuff to do, but we didn’t end up doing any of it :P That night, we went to Risser’s Beach, which is apparently the warmest, but it was QUITE COLD. I went swimming anyways. It wasn’t the coldest I’ve swam in, but it was pretty cold. At the beach, we met Haley, Katrin, Rebecca, Kyle, Ceilagh, and Alex. They’re all pretty cool. Then, Sunday, Quinn, Helen, and I went in to Lunenburg to see stuff. (Quinn lives in Lunenburg.) We walked around and then we went on a horse drawn tour, with Charlotte as our guide. It was pretty cool, I learned a lot. After that, Quinn had to go to work, so Helen and I walked around, then we got Ceilagh to meet us and we wandered around the town, then we saw the graveyard. After that we went and sat in Ceilagh’s house until Helen’s mom, Fran picked us up. (Helen and Quinn are probably the only two people in the world who can’t drive. Like not at all. D:)
Monday we went in to the Marina to work some, because Helen has to work :P It was alright, Pat was there, but because the festival is over, Helen basically sits there and gets paid. That night it was pretty nice, we went into Lunenburg again to see the Bluenose, but it wasn’t there. Instead we went fishing off the end of the wharf, and I caught a fish! It was a mackerel, pretty small too, but I caught one! I threw it back in the water. Also we caught some seaweed. We also ate supper at Fran’s pub, which was really nice. It’s called Mader’s Wharf, and I’d suggest you eat there if you ever go to Mahone Bay :D
Tuesday, we went to Hirtle’s Beach. It was foggy, actually it was foggy on Monday night, and then foggy all Tuesday. In the morning we went on the Bluenose. I got to go on the Bluenose!! It was so foggy we couldn’t see past the end of the boat though. After the Bluenose, we went to the Museum where Rebecca works, and we got a tour of the Knaut Rutland house. It was cool. Then we went into work for the afternoon, and Drew was there. He let Helen drive the boat. Helen’s good at driving boats. Hirtle’s Beach is apparently colder than Risser’s, but it wasn’t. It had really big waves though. We were at the beach with Ethan, and Quinn, Ceilagh, and Evan came later. While we were waiting for them, we stood at the edge of the water and let the tide bury our feet. Then we met Katrin and her sister, who were there to get surfing lessons from their friend. Ethan and Helen and I all went wave jumping, and it was really fun. We got swamped by the waves. And there were big holes in the sand which we kept jumping in. it was cold too. Ethan turned purple, and I was shaking a lot. Then when we were leaving, Helen and Ethan locked me out of the car and drove away without me. Quinn, Ceilagh and Evan were in the other car. They laughed and left also. It was SO FUNNY. HAHAHA. Then they came back and got me and we went to Evan’s house and had a fire. We saw a shooting star! Well, everyone did except for Helen and Quinn, because they were sitting the wrong way. Also there were deer just wandering across the street. As we were leaving, this guy named Thomas showed up and started talking to us, along with this girl who was with them. Melissa I think. I didn’t like them much ¬_¬
Wednesday we went to work again, and Pat was there. We didn’t do much again. Watched some TV, I watched A Night at the Roxbury. Then we went on the boat again to move people around. Wednesday night we went sailing with Rebecca. We saw a seal and some porpoises! Also some seaweed, and some seagulls. It was fun.
Thursday Ceilagh took us into Dartmouth, and we went to H&M for the opening. There were so many people there! They had two lines and they both went a good chunk of the mall away from the actual store. We got cinnamon buns, and then we got lunch, and then we went into the store. We spent TWO HOURS in H&M. Helen had a small adventure paying for her stuff because she forgot to get her card changed from when she was ten. The girl who was helping us was a real bitch to her when her debit card was declined too. After that, we met Ben and his cousin Thomas. They’re cool. We went to Foot Locker and I bought more Converses. They were the ones I was looking for since Toronto! They’re black on top, but they fade to white. (I also bought blue ones in Toronto) Also, I bought an SPC card, and water protector stuff for my shoes, and some cleaning stuff for my shoes too. I ended up spending lots of money. Then we went back to Helen’s house, and we had a dinner party. Rebecca was already there when we showed up, and then Natasha, and Andy, and a different Alex came. Rebecca and Ceilagh left early though. Natasha, Helen and I all went to the store to buy cheese because we didn’t have any :P
Friday, we were supposed to go kayaking in the morning, but there was a change in plans, so we ended up not doing that. I got to the train station right in time, I reserved lunch time for me, then I said goodbye to Helen, and then I went off to the train. The end! Right now I’m on the train, somewhere between Moncton and Quebec, and I’m feeling a little conflicted. I’m a little sad because I’m not going to see Helen for a very long time, if I even DO again… But I am happy because I at least got to see her, and meet Quinn and Rebecca and Ceilagh and Ethan and all sorts of wonderful people. I’m also happy because I ‘m not going to forget this part of the trip anytime soon. I’m excited because I am going to see my other friends on the other side of the continent. I’m also a tiny bit bemused because I miss my friends more than I miss my parents or family. If any of you Family Types are reading this; I miss you guys TOO, just not as much :/
***End of Part 1***

Summer Campaign

2009-08-15T08:48:00.001-05:00

Apologies for not posting in a while, I’ve had chances, but I haven’t used them to blog thus far. Right now I’m on the train. (There’s no internet here actually, I am writing on MS word, and then I am going to put it up later.) I was in Nova Scotia for the past week, specifically Mahone Bay. It was pretty sweet. I got to see Helen again; I hadn’t seen Helen for a year basically to the day. I also met all kinds of people there, mostly Helen’s friends, some of whom I talked to on MSN. It was pretty cool. Before that, I stopped in Toronto to see my cousins who live there; I hadn’t seen them for two years. Now I’m heading back west, I’m going to Vancouver to see my other good friends Maegwin and Laura (If you guys read this before I see you, Hi Maegwin and Laura!) along with my friend Evanna from camp. Along the way I’m going to stop in Montréal tomorrow morning, and Toronto tomorrow afternoon. Then I’m going to be in Winnipeg Sunday morning, just enough time to have a shower and do laundry :P I’m going to be travelling with my Aunt Pris back to Vancouver, she’s pretty laid back.

I'm in Montreal right now. I tried to get my ticket changed to an earlier train, but it was full. I have five hours here. Luckily i have found an internet connection that doesn't require me to pay like $5 for fifteen minutes.

The end of camp

2009-07-26T21:03:00.002-05:00

Camp is over now, it was only a one week thing. I had lots of fun though. I didn't get a REAL shot at the two volunteers that i wanted to. They think they are so smart, and i was READY to go up and run verbal circles around them, but then it never happened. My cousin was the director and he said he specifically put us in separate groups so i didn't emotionally scar them. I'm glad i wasn't in their group anyways. I made friends with the other counsellors in my group, which was much better than putting up with morons for a week. I still got to call them dumb in myriad ways at lunch :P
The trains are running again! The engineers went on strike friday, but the strike was resolved this morning, and so the trains have started again, and by tomorrow they should be all running again. This means that i still get to go to Nova Scotia AND British Columbia!

I'm also trying to cut down on the tl;dr posts.

I learned how to play Viva la Vida by Coldplay! whee! It's not that hard, but it's fun :P

Untitled Blog Post is Untitled

2009-07-22T18:32:00.002-05:00

This week is the Day camp that i am helping with. It's been fun-ish so far. I have this one terror child in my group named John. He's just straight up bad. Doesn't listen, bothers people (especially me), eggs the other miscreants on, and is pretty immature for a 12 year old. It's like talking to my brother!! (Fun Fact: My brother, Alex, is more than 12)

Life as an Only Child

2009-07-11T23:33:00.002-05:00

This weekend, all three of my "beloved" siblings left the city to go camping and stay at other people's cabins. That meant that i spent the weekend with just my parents. It was pretty fun. We ate at nice restaurants, where they didn't serve plain old food, like burgers, pasta and steaks. Yesterday we got to eat at a Thai restaurant, it was really good. Today we ate at a Bar and Grill, and it was nice too. The people there were really friendly, and i knew one of them! She was my friend in ~Grade 1, all the way up till now, so it was kinda neat.
Today i took a tree out of my grandma's yard. We had to get it out because it was blighted or something and whatever it had was going to spread to the big apple tree and kill it. The guy who works at an orchard looked at it and said they should take out the tree and also all the soil around it and burn the tree and not plant anything in it for 10 years, but that seemed a little extreme. So now we have a garbage bag full of dead apple tree that will infect any fruit trees/soil it hangs around with for too long with an incurable plague. Who's up for some bio-warfare???
Also, my aunt sort of gave me her old laptop!!! She said i can treat it like it's mine, but i should be careful about virii, because all her stuff on it is all out of date and stuff. Also that should she ever want it back, i'll have to give it up, but she has a really nice new one, and all the stuff on it is on that too, so she won't want it back. It's decent, relatively. It's about the same as "my" desktop performance wise, but it has a better graphics chipset! which means i can play TEAM FORTRESS 2. Except that our wireless internet haet laptops. I tried to play it yesterday, and it was so laggy it almost crashed.
I've also planned (like 80% planned) my trip!!! I'm going to take the train out to the East Coast, stay there a week, and then take the train allll the way back to the West Coast, and stay there for a week or so too. Then i'm going to go back home. It'll be AWESOME. If anyone lives in Toronto or Montreal, let me know, so i can drop by and take a shower at your place or something... The train ride is two and a half days to Toronto, a couple hours to Montreal, and then another day and a half to Halifax. And it's four days from Toronto to Vancouver. There's still some parts of the trip that i haven't worked out; I want to stay either in Toronto, or in Kamloops for a day or two, but i'm not sure which, or both could even be possible. ideas?
Also, i installed a scanner/printer! Now there are TWO printers attached to ONE computer! Whee! and a scanner! so now i can scan stuff and send it to people! Stay tuned for some hand-written blog action.
I think it's prime time for some Paul Awards tonight... Unlike normal, i haven't planned any, so it'll be interesting.
(Side note: I got an award from my school with my report card. It says "Award of Excellence". I'm not sure what to make of this, it doesn't say any subject in particular, just the school, my name, and Award of Excellence. Is it just an award they gave me because i am excellent?? I'm also trying to decide whether it would be good to put it on my resume... Either way, it's a pretty nice award. It's a black plaque, with silver writing. It looks like the sort of thing you hang on your wall next to your diploma and Ph.D...)
First off, i will award one Thumbs Up of Magnificence each to both Maegwin and Laura. Thank you SO MUCH for rescuing me from my parents! They were going to put me through more manual labour!
Secondly, i award the coveted Noob Award to Aidan, for starting Warcraft 3. We look forward to your first hilariously embarrassing defeat on Battle.net.
Thirdly i award the Medal of Ridiculosity to Andrew, for being outrageous.
The Outstanding Class Trophy goes to Alexander, for putting on Dr. Dre while his stepdad was right there yelling at him for having music with less than sophisticated vocabulary.
Finally, i give the Certificate of Win to whoever that Anon on 4chan started the "... just like wikipedia told me to" meme. It's funnier if you actually know the whole story, but that story is not appropriate for you chumps!
my reaction face was like
8 /
That's basically it for now... It's like midnight and i apparently have to go move boxes tomorrow morning as part of this whole "only child" deal.

Can't stop the Lulz

2009-07-07T16:44:00.002-05:00

I finally watched all of fight club. I've seen the beginning of it like four times, and only ever up to half way through it until yesterday. I never realised just how much /b/ took from that movie until the end of it. It's quite a lot actually. /b/tards; if you haven't seen that movie, I would.
I also went paint balling two days ago, with Alexander, Alex, and Alastair. It was fun. I got shot right in the face. RIGHT IN THE EYE. Also, it was right after the referee just kind of wandered off, so i had to play the next two games like this -_o
But it was still fun. I hit Alex in the side of the head, and also in the knee. And i hit Alexander just above the mask, so he had a big streak of paint through his hair. ROFL.
IBO marks also came out Monday. It was pretty exciting, i was up really early that morning, and then i went downstairs and waited until 7:15 when they released the marks. I DIDN'T FAIL! Woo! Also, i can receive a university credit for most if not all of my courses, meaning that i don't have to take a good chunk of the BS courses they want me to pay to take in my first year! Splendid! Also, I've figured out their infernal contraption of a registering program. Registration opens in a week. AND i finally found the form that i was looking for for the past month-ish. It's a really ridiculous path. They gave us a whole bunch of resources, Start Book, Course Calendar, 2 websites, and a part of another website, as well as numerous acceptance letters and ledgers and scraps of detritus with useful information for us to keep. I've followed a trail around ALL of these things, and there is no way to actually GET to the advance credit thing, or whatever they call it in ANY of these. just a small section in each of them that points you to the next one, so you eventually go in a big circle through a million different pages. I got out of the loop by finding an "orphaned site" in the U of M website via a document from the teacher's section of the site. (orphaned sites are sites that have no links to them. That ouverture-facile game is a series of them, where you have to figure out the next link. I was in no mood for their shenanigans or dilly-dallying.)
So, now i have a paper to get me some credits, am expecting a $1800 scholarship because i'm smart (i got 29 points total, all you keeners out there.) and i STILL do not have a job! My old boss said she'd LOVE to have me back because i'm such a good worker apparently, but she can't hire anymore people, so she's stuck with the kids who are working there now, who apparently are dumb as sacks of hammers, except they can't do stuff that hammers can. Like operate tills apparently.
Video Games Live is tomorrow. My mom said she would give me tickets to go, she went with a workshop she attended yesterday, and it was apparently "really neat". I'm KIND of excited, but everytime i go to something like this, i'm reminded of why i don't chat much in MMOs. I'd like to thank the lulz for that.

Canada Day!

2009-07-01T11:02:00.003-05:00

Today is Canada Day! That means that it's just like every other day in Canada, except people don't go to work. And there are fireworks :P But other than that, not much goes on around this place :/ It's not like 4th of July in the States, where they have fancy parades and play all manner of patriotic tunes, finishing the day by shooting a bomb into a comet very far away from Earth. (That was actually really cool. It was called Operation Deep Impact if i'm not mistaken)
Today is also Aidan's birthday! link. Today, since nothing is open, basically all i can do is chill, apply for university courses, and finish digging a trench through my yard. We are putting a walk from the deck to the garage, so we need a four-inch deep trench dug where the walk will go. I did that for most of yesterday afternoon, and while i was digging, i found a fork and a brick. Both of them are pretty interesting, the fork is metal, about the size of a big apple, and it has no handle and three prongs. The brick is a brick. It was buried two inches under the ground in the middle of our yard. Why? who knows.

New adventure

2009-06-29T21:37:00.002-05:00

Start of a new week today... Another battle with my mom/dad about my usage of the computer :P It doesn't really matter how much i use this thing anymore, turning it on is enough to get yelled at these days... They're mad at me for not finding a job yet, which is really NOT my fault! I've applied at several places, but nowhere is really looking much it seems. AND i really think that if they wanted to go "family camping" it would be fine if they left me at home :P

Now what?

2009-06-26T09:21:00.003-05:00

Yesterday i graduated from high school!!!!!!!!!!!!!1!!!!!!!!!
It's so exciting! Now the world is mine for the taking! I can do whatever i want, and become someone of great importance! Tomorrow...
Every time something really big happens in my life, people always ask "so, do you feel different now?" and i always tell them "yeah" so that they'll go away, but really it doesn't feel different. It's like a clock changing hours... The hour doesn't just click to the next one, it slowly moves there.
Anyways, enough of that inspirational stuff. The ceremony itself was alright. The MC had some things to say about me when i crossed the stage, but i didn't get awarded anything special.
Now that i'm really done though, like done done, as opposed to just done finished, i think i'll say this: If i was given the chance, i would do IB again. I don't regret it at all. Maybe a little, but looking back on how much i learned, it's quite a bit. There was some quote i was going to write here, but i forgot, because i got distracted by "Party Hard" by Andrew WK
I've been thinking a lot about stuff. That happens when Zone Alarm is put on your compy, AND it's a rainy day out. I was planning on going and hanging out with my friend today, but NOPE! Instead i sat around the house, because it rained all day basically. I tried to go on YouTube, and stupid ZoneAlarm has blocked it! For those of you who aren't familiar with YouTube, THIS IS A TRAGIC EVENT. Also, Limewire was laid low by Zone Alarm, along with Last.fm, and any other site that anyone can think of that has music, videos, or flash objects on it. Also, it was doing this thing where it was restricting in/out-going data, so i out only send stuff at about 20 kb/s. Which is RIDICULOUSLY SLOW. That would be like if you took a turtle, and tied its legs together, then stuck it in deep mud, and shot it with a tranquilizer dart, and raced it against Usain Bolt, when Usain gets a track lane, and a headstart. In this extended metaphor, Usain Bolt is the pathetic pace that my computer normally stumbles along at. My dad thought it was really funny. He ALSO said that he's not going to unblock limewire, for no reason at all. THIS MEANS that i have to PAY for music now! like with real money! :'(
ALSO. Skype, MSN, Warcraft, Zune, and anything that requires "user input" does not work properly. I MIGHT AS WELL GO OUTSIDE.
Here's a youtube video that expresses my appropriate opinions, i copied it from my history, so i can't enjoy it with you. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuw7tcftAoU

Imagine there's something clever written here

2009-06-18T17:34:00.002-05:00

Since i last wrote in my blog, about two weeks ago, lots of stuff's been happening (obviously) I've actually been doing stuff everyday that is not sitting around and playing Warcraft. I've applied to jobs at various places; Sobey's, Safeway, Price Chopper, Future Shop... I was looking at GameStop and it says they are hiring, for a new store that is opening close-ish to my house, but it's not listed yet :/ I'm pretty sure that i'll get hired at Safeway though, because I accidentally gave my application and resume to the store manager, who was just hanging out behind the customer service desk. Then he changed the hours i said i could work, so now i may be working from 7AM-11PM D:
Today, i wanted to go to the Ex, but nobody else wants to, because they're all poor. :( It's funny, you let ~50 responsible young adults out into the world a month earlier than the rest of them, and instead of seizing opportunity by whichever appendage is closest, and beating it horribly with it, they just wander around pathetically, hemorraging money until the day before everyone else gets out when they freak out and desparately scramble to get a job.
I've also volunteered to help out at the Marathon Expo. I just got an e-mail, telling me how i was approved for the following slot: Number Pickup 11-3. YAY! That means that i help people get their numbers. It's easy work, you just stand there blandly, and then look through a big box of numbers for a number that someone wants you to find. Except the numbers are ordered, so it's easy to find.
The marathon is on Sunday, by the way. I'm super pumped for it. I didn't really train at all last week, but i went for a run in the ridiculous heat today, and i'm feeling pretty good about it. I'm looking to run around 1:25, or a little faster. Look for my pictures monday or something! I'll post a link if i remember, and i'll also do something if i remember, like salute the camera man as he's taking my picture :P
SafeGrad is Monday. I'm more or less pumped, sort of i guess... I still don't have any stuff for it. I don't have a clue what i am wearing, or what i'm going to to for a corsage or all that fun stuff. Dancing the day after the marathon is going to be an adventure however. Definitely... An adventure and a half even.
Today was also an adventure and a quarter. I handed in my safeway application, then i went to sobey's, where i realised that i hadn't asked anyone to go to the ex with me, so i went back home, after seeing the sign for applying to GameStop, at the new store they're opening. Then i took the dog, and went for a run, but it was too hot out for poor Buffy, so i took her back home, and then i went out again for some more punishment. Then i came back, and hosed my self off (actually). It was great. I just turned on the hose, ran it until it was cold, and then i sprayed myself all over, and lay in the sun until i dried. Then i went in and had my sandwich from yesterday (go to safeway, and buy a lumberjack sandwich. it's epic.) Then i played warcraft and age of mythology. The end.

Safe Grad :(

2009-06-05T10:09:00.002-05:00

Safe grad is just the worst idea since twitter. Basically what happens is you have to make sure you have a designated driver, but you can't have the same driver as your date, and you can't just not drink and drive yourself home. Not even if you're under 18 (or whatever your legal age is where you come from)
Also you need your medical number, and SIN number, bank PIN at least three email addresses, and seven different phone numbers. And you have to give DNA samples as well as finger prints, toe prints and hair samples as well. And small samples of the cloth that your clothing is made from. And a bottle of air from the environment where you were born. Otherwise you can't pick up your tickets. WHICH ARE $55 EACH! It would be almost cheaper to go to a really nice restaurant for your grad instead. In fact, it WOULD because you have to pay ridiculous amounts for drinks at Safe Grad.
Now i think it's time for a good ol' fashioned LaToP post... Back by popular demand... Playing left wing for the home team... it's LIFE AND TIMES OF PAUL v15.0!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This post is brought to you by the letter "lambda", and is sorted in alphabetical order, by the title i gave to each newspiece.
Bad News...
Several bad things happened this week apparently... First of all, one of my guildmates in Warcraft III died... maybe... He was on that Air France flight that went into a thunderstorm, and got hit by lightning. Secondly there's that Safe Grad thing... And thirdly, my coach Randy broke his neck in a bike race. He was standing yesterday apparently, but they are not sure if he can race again.
Happy News..
On a lighter note, Provincials for track is today and tomorrow. I've qualified in the 1500 and 3000. The 1500 is today, and the 3000 is tomorrow morning. After the 3000 i'm planning on sticking around there to watch my friend run her 800, and then if i can convince my parents to leave me alone, i want to run home :D I think it's around 10 miles or so. It's pretty far, but i want to do it.
Music..
You should listen to "Them Kids" by Sam Roberts. And "When I Come Around" by Greenday. That second one i can play on the guitar. It's not hard, which is why i learned it :P
Rant..
STUPID STUPID SAFEGRAD. Also, they'll only sell me tickets at LUNCH, meaning that i can either buy tickets to my stupid grad, OR i can go to my track meet, the LAST one of my last high school year
Stuff i did...
Played Guitar, played Warcraft. I played an outrageous game just now... I had a lich and a Firelord, both above level 6, so every so often, i could make a massive volcano appear in the middle of someone's base, as well as some other stuff, so they couldn't move away and they'd be getting eaten by the Lich's spell.
I also did some stuff on Alex's facebook account. I'm proud of myself.

Rainy Day again

2009-06-04T10:11:00.003-05:00

Today is rainy :/ It sort of sucks because i was hoping to go do... stuff... outside, but now i can't. I'm getting insanely bored and it's only a little after 10 o clock! oh noes!
There was a funny story to tell, but I'm not really comfortable with putting it out here for all the Internet to read. I might think about reinstalling Maple Story soon.
*JUST IN*
Rather than making a whole new post, i thought I'd just add some more on the end of this mediocre post.
I had to go on an inane misadventure with my grandfather today because nobody wanted to listen to me when i said that his party he was going to was in fact, NEXT week. So, instead of buying grad tickets, and getting stuff done, i played driver monkey and got honked/yelled at because people didn't feel like giving me space to park my car. Normally i wouldn't have a problem doing this, but because this is the FOURTH time that they've sent me on an all day task and yelled at me for no reason after it, i was pretty miffed. ALSO they (the parents) make me feel like this is a service to ME, and i should be greatful that they let me ferry people around with no thanks or anything...

Nothing to do... EXCEPT MESS AROUND :D

2009-06-01T12:11:00.002-05:00

So there is officially not much to do... I convinced my dad to finally give me the administrator account on the computer, so now i can finally play like 5 games that i couldn't before because some lazy programmer somewhere couldn't be bothered to finish making a game save properly.
Now, most of you have probably been wondering what i've been up to since May 22... WELL. Everyday of my break so far, i've been forced to spend at least the morning doing ridiculous tasks for my mom. THEN i've been hanging out with my cousin. Thursday we went out for wings, and "manly" beverages. For the record: Beer is the worst.
Then, Saturday, i was at his house for a barbecue, and i had half a beer (did not enjoy) at 6:30 when i got there. At 11:30 i left and drove home la la la it was fine, the song on the radio was "them kids" by sam roberts. When i got home five minutes later my mom was like "RAWR! you're drunk right now! you can't even tell how drunk you are! NO DRIVING WASTED AGAIN. HOW DO YOU KNOW YOU CAN EVEN WALK IN A STRAIGHT LINE RIGHT NOW!"
Then the next day she was giving me grief again about nothing because she was mad at me for driving myself home instead of staying in a house with a bunch of real drunk people
But back to these video games: Since the holidays(for me) began, i've been playing Warcraft 3, but now i can also play Age of Mythology, Darwinia, The Frozen Throne, and Command and Conquer. Five points to whoever guesses my favourite genre of video game :P
Still haven't REALLY got a job yet, but i'm applying at Safeway tomorrow.

Day One

2009-05-22T21:27:00.004-05:00

Well. Today i didn't get any of the big things that i wanted to get done this summer, but i DID get all the things i normally do during the day done. And it's only 9:30! I still have some time to do whatever i feel like! Whee!
Today i went to Track in the morning, and it was hard :/ Ms. Lapp was our coach today, because our normal coach was doing stuff for student council elections. She just put us through a "light" core workout. Except it was ridiculously hard! and she just did them all with us, not even breaking a sweat, and not yelling at all, so it's not even like you can be mad and resentful at her! We did sit-ups, but not like crunches, which are what i normally do, and then we did other creative things, like the leg pushes and played with med balls and all sorts of fun stuff.
THEN i went to the University, because there was a computer science contest there. It was me, Mr. Buskell, and two grade 11s. We got there like three hours early, for whatever reason, and so we had a tour of the campus. I knew where everything was :D Then we went and had breakfast at one of the campus restaurants, and then we went back to Engineering for the contest...!
The engineering building is cool! It's really big, and there's a massive... thingy. Like a room, but it's basically a hole in the building. It's like there was a courtyard at one point in time, but they built the building around the courtyard, and then put a roof over said courtyard. It looked COOL! there were balconies, so you can look across and see people on the other balconies, but you're ALL INSIDE.
Then we had a robot demonstration. There were two robots that they showed us, one that wandered everywhere and didn't run into things. It was cool, it was like a box, with three wheels, and a laptop on top, with the web cam the wrong way. It wandered around while the guy told us some stuff. Not sure what he was saying though, i was watching the robot. Stuff about IEDs and garbage hills. The best part was you could jump in front of the robot and it would get scared and turn and run away. That made me smile.
THEN there was a little humanoid robot with a cellphone for a head. That was even cooler! It could look for this little orange soccer ball, walk up to it, and kick it! It was pretty awesome. It could also get up when it fell over. That was cool too. The guy who was helping the guy who was talking a lot put it on it's stomach, and it just pushed up on it's hands, and then moved its legs up, and stood up! Then he put it on the back, and it stood up again! Then it walked off and kicked the ball again :) It also couldn't turn very fast, so if it needed to go sideways to reach the ball, it would do the MC Hammer Slide!
That was definitely the highlight of my day.
Then the contest itself....
There were six questions, and three hours, and we were in teams of three. I didn't have a team, so i got placed with the other guys who didn't have a team. It was good working, except that we didn't really know each other, and so we didn't really know what to do with each other that well. We only got one of the six problems, so on the board it looked like we did really bad, but we were almost done two other programs, so we would have been close to first place really! The other two guys on my team were one guy from St. John's Ravenscourt, and one guy from River East Collegiate. They were pretty good. But it sort of WAS all me... :)
We got beat by some people who weren't supposed to beat us also, which was bad :/ Specifically, the grade 11s from Kelvin, and my mom's team of grade 11s. BUT we did just OWN my mom's grade 12s, so it's alright!
I'm running out of things to say right now... I did all this stuff, and it was only five, so i realised that i was done basically what i do all day except for school, and i didn't know what to do! I still need some materials for making finger puppets, and somebody should tell me some ideas for videos that i can make, because otherwise things will go bad, and i will take initiative, make a video that inadvertently goes way too far, and everyone will be mad at me :\
Tomorrow I'm going to have to remember to apply for a job somewhere, and set up my HARD DRIVE SO I CAN PLAY TEAM FORTRESS 2 AND SEVERAL OTHER VIDEO GAMES WHO WILL REMAIN ANONYMOUS.

Ding!

2009-05-21T18:19:00.003-05:00

Wheee! I'm officially done high school forever! FOREVER!!!
That means that i now have more time than i know how to occupy, at least for a while!
First things first... I want to learn how to play the guitar a little better, and i want to make finger puppets of people i know so i can make a youtube series about them and then have people tell me i'm creepy...
BUT I'M DONE FOREVER! And also, if anyone in canada has a "G" for the Subway Scrabble, i'd like it greatly, so i can spell "ENERGY" and win some money.

omgomgomgomgomgomgmogmogmogomgogmgo

2009-05-05T09:55:00.000-05:00

Exams have started! D:
That is all. Now i have to go learn about Mao and the Chinese revolution for this afternoon :/

The princess is always in another castle.

2009-04-28T21:22:00.004-05:00

Five days and i wish i'd gotten in JUST ONE MORE run.

Seven days, and i'm really not that ready for history.
Six days, and i'm only sort of ready for english.

Nine days, and i'm more or less ready for math.

A couple weeks, and i'm not ready for physics.
Two weeks, and i'm not ready for english (again).

Three weeks, and all i can manage is a wan smile for Comp Sci.
Twenty three days, and i found out i'm not ready at all for french.
Twenty four days, and i'm not allowed to play Warcraft.

It's hard to say which is the hardest... At least only twenty four days, and i'll be done making misguided decisions for the summer. Speaking of summer, i keep forgetting to ask Helen for flight info... I'm going to have to spend all my tuition funds on plane tickets! Oh no!

I never did finish blogging about my birthday... No time like the here and now in space-time i suppose...
From my friends i got assorted video game stuff... Nexon cash, Team fortress 2. That was sweet, except i haven't gone on MapleStory for weeks, and i apparently ran right out of hard drive space on the ol' compy. From my family i got three shirts, with varying amounts of buttons :P
One Atari shirt, which is cool
One button-up shirt that looks alright, i haven't tried it on though.
One polo shirt that also looks alright on me.

I also got a lottery ticket, with specially picked numbers! Only one of them was the right number though... And i got jeans, which i sort of desparately needed. Then i also got some candy (turtles and jelly bellies :D) And a book, which is really quite interesting, but i have no time to read it right now (see the top of the post). Then i got a large sum of money(!) and a portable hard drive!!! That's definitely really good, because now i have ~infinite space in the way of memory, for at least a couple years, even if i take all my files, and download(I mean BUY of course.) a new album everyday. And a new, top o' the line game every month. 250 GB is really a large sum of data...... And i got a Zune!
It's like a Microsoft iPod, for those of you who aren't enlightened. It's really quite nice, it makes more sense than those silly Apple contraptions, and it definitely seems to try hard to make you like it. The only problem is those Mac people made that ad campaign, and now Microsoft/PCs are "nerdy", so no matter how cool the Zune is, it's already on it's way to hang out with the Linux people. They really are quite a bit nicer than their iPod counterparts though, the touch pad is scrumtrallescent. And they have some entertaining games. As well as this really neat wireless thing, where you can send songs to other people nearby who have their Zunes turned on. All you need is to go to starbucks, and trade music with someone, then you can go home and buy/download the song to keep, instead of the three play thing. Which makes sense by the way!

Apocalyptic countdown

2009-04-24T09:16:00.003-05:00

Well, here it is... It's the end of April, and i'm really not ready for anything that's happening next month. Or after that even. I don't have a clue what i'm going to do during the summer, except for some vague trip for roughly a week, that is probably not going to happen anymore :[ Then in July i'm going to find out i failed high school or something, and have to go back again. THEN I'm going to get a job, and just stay working at Best Buy for my entire life, even after i've finished university (maybe), and moved out, and everything.

woot!

2009-04-20T12:59:00.003-05:00

Today i turned 18! Wheee!
It was pretty sweet. I woke up at 6:30, and then looked outside, and it was snowing! I was like
O_O
|D
Then i went and got ready, and went to school :P
I'll tell you kids... Being an "adult" is great. Everything is shiny and wonderful, and people treat you completely differently. I mean just this morning, seven people gave me candy, and nobody's called me dumb yet today! Also there's the whole thing with the children folk asking you for alcohol, which is less fun. -_-
But actually: It's not that different from the last 17 birthdays when people ask "do you feel any different?" and i say "I dunno, not really...."
That's all to write so far, except we had a fizzyx exam this morning, and it was just burtal. Brutal even.

The Internet Symphony

2009-04-15T22:07:00.003-05:00

I found this on Soul Skittles' blog, and then like ten minutes later when i went on YouTube. It's pretty cool, i wish i'd known about it earlier, so i could have tried, or at least had a copy of the music... That would have been sweet. They did a pretty good job making it all nice and "everyone can use the Internet"-y i suppose, but the people on the internet MOST e.g. TEH TROLLS are thankfully absent.

Neh.

2009-04-14T16:30:00.002-05:00

Not much to report today... Easter was pretty par, My cousin came in with her boyfriend from Calgary, that was sort of exciting. For the egg hunt, my cousins put some of Alex's eggs in a water bottle, and then put said water bottle in the fish tank. Hilarity ensues. Also, Alex taped one of mine to the ceiling. (for those of you who aren't enlightened, i am pretty short.) More Hi jinx ensue. Then we played video games. Fun was had by all, except for me, because i sat there and won twice, then tried to concentrate on the silly old Statistics take-home test. -_-
Monday was just as uneventful (more like FUNeventful.(I am sorry.(I just can't help it sometimes!))) I started playing Warcraft III again, and had some RIDICULOUS games...
My favourite two:
Massive Gyrocopter raid on the town halls around the map
Six Players, one is playing, two are messing around, One is getting freaking owned in their own base, and two just are chumps.(I was one of the ones messing around.(We built a wall of guard towers. Outside the other team's base.(I should have saved the replay. I'd put it on youtube.(Hehe, nested parentheses.))))
Today was quite eventful, sort of... I have lots of work to do, and not nearly enough motivation...

Post 50!

2009-04-08T17:24:00.003-05:00

Hooray! It's time for the fiftieth post EVER. Unless you consider the ones before the blog as posts. Then it's the sixty fourth post EVER. Whoo hoo! that's like... 1000000 posts in binary! Nice!
Yesterday was "let's-give-people-exam-schedules day". Then i went home and put a [nice neat x] on each calendar day when i had an exam. Then i took a piece of paper, and added up all the minutes for each exam until i got to the end, and then i looked at it, and thought 'hey, that seems like a familiar number of minutes...'.
Then i divided it by 60, and SURE ENOUGH, it was 24. Hooray! a full day's worth of exam-y goodness in the span of two and a half week! whee!
So, now i have four weeks to get ready for a ship load of exams, followed by the end! I suppose the question i am asking myself is: I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, but is it bright enough to keep going?

2009-04-04T15:50:00.001-05:00

i went in to school yesterday, thinking "haha, with Mr. B's help, it'll take me like half an hour to finish my Dossier!"

*FIVE HOURS LATER*

I'm sure you can figure out the rest of this story.

For all you zombies:

2009-04-03T09:25:00.002-05:00

68 74 74 70 3a 2f 2f 69 65 6e 67 39 2e 75 63 73 64 2e 65 64 75 2f 7e 6d 66 65 64 64 65 72 2f 7a 6f 6d 62 69 65 73 2e 68 74 6d 6c

Technically the last day of spring break today :/ I didn't do much, and i have a lot to do. It's been snowing all week, too. Except it's too warm out, so the snow gets close to the ground, the melts and makes everything all wet.

Basically the only things that DID get done, i did yesterday... I went and saw Monsters Vs Aliens, which was great. You should see it if you haven't. Also, we went mattress shopping, and now i get a new bed, one that DOESN'T cause me back problems! hoorays! and finally, i did like ten pages of my Dossier Write Up, which i was supposed to be doing lots of. Only around five pages left, then i have to go and get screenies!

grar. This is why we can't have holidays together.

2009-03-31T15:01:00.006-05:00

Day 2 of spring break. Already the novelty of not having to go to school has worn off, and i am stuck with the reality that i have to put up with my family for another week... it's going to be a loooong weeeeeek. They are like a pack of dogs, that is none too bright, and not very nice. I have to go around telling them things like "don't call girls n00bs" "finish your lunch" "don't yell at your children." Then they say things like "why not!?" and i say "it's not polite." But now i have a better idea. I took the 200 loose pages in my binder (you think i am exaggerating, but i am not. i haven't unclasped the rings in a month, i am scared they will break.), and scattered them around the sun room, so it's a terrible mess. Then i spread my text books out nice and pretty, and put in two chairs
THERE IS NO ROOM FOR ANYONE ELSE! WAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!
That way they look at it, and say 'drat, no room.' and leave me alone! it works too! until someone cleared off a chair and sat there watching me. That was bad. Now i have a stack of textbooks on the floor not being useful.and i have a new CS textbook for some reason.
OH! I just looked out the window, and it appears to be snowing again! hoorays for snow! Eh, it won't do much, it's all melting. And freezing overnight again. Then melting the next day. and freezing the next night. The bad thing is that it forms really smooth ice. The good thing is that it clears the snow from the high parts. The bad thing is people still think it's okay to leave poop on the sidewalk. THERE WAS FRESH STUFF TODAY.
for reals though. I went for a run. on the way back, there was a brand new turd right IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WALK. IN THE MIDDLE OF AN ICY PATCH. =( i was running and i was just like ._. That is disappointing.
And there was an email from the running people, saying "If you used a fake name to sign up would you PLEASE come and change it to your real name? people might steal your stuff. I can understand the humour in "Bob Loblaw" or "Wilma I Ball" but actually guys. cut it out."
Then i thought 'hehe. Bob Loblaw...' but i can't find the humour in "Wilma I Ball". Anyone care to explain it to me???

Edit: Today i got bullied into straightening my hair. It was an ordeal. Now i look like a girl. That is all.
Edit: It is snowing again. Hooray! That is all.
Edit: Oh goodness. I am turning into a Twitterer! NOoooooo! Somebody quick! give me something to write about so i have more than 200 characters! Must... not... become...corrupted! AHHHHhhh. It's snowing a lot! I did not have a Slurpee today, and that is actually weird for this time of year! YES! Success! Paul is made of Win and Awesome! With just a dash of Nonsense! YEAH! That is all.

Zany Break antics.

2009-03-30T09:40:00.002-05:00

Spring break starts for us Manitobans today. well, TECHNICALLY Friday. but today is the first day we do not have to go to school. I have all of spring break to finish my Dossier. Blech. AND i have to wash the walls today. I'll probably think of some deep metaphor about that during, and then i will jump off the end of it. Metaphorically.
Something else i was going to say... hmmm... training for another half marathon... taken to drawing stuff that i don't normally... OH!
There is still snow here! Several! AND I'm officially done all my CAS hours, so i don't have to fill out forms anymore! except the last one... Also, that means i am kinda sorta excused from sandbagging. Which sounds like hard physical labour. With arms. q(-_-)p (he is giving thumbs down in case you can not tell.)
I feel like i should have a massive blog post because i haven't written anything in a week, and it's a holiday. But i think I'll leave you with this stuff.
And also this game here. It's pretty tricky. I'm on level 22, after the whole weekend. I hope you try it d(^_^)b (he is giving thumbs up in case you can not tell. (sorry, if this seems condescending, but you can never be too careful on the internets.))

Snow!

2009-03-25T17:07:00.002-05:00

HOoray! It is snowing again!

And it has been for the past while, and it's not supposed to stop for another while! That means we get TWO WHILES OF SNOW! IN MARCH! It's the best news ever! Now i don't have to look at smelly dog poop melting all over the sidewalk when i go running! and just in time too, my dad was all "if you want to run the half marathon in a month and a half, then you best be steppin'." Basically he told me i should be getting in at least 10k a day, which isn't all THAT much, especially when i've only got a month. But now it's 10K in the SNOW! YAY!!

work, work

2009-03-18T14:44:00.003-05:00

Crunch time in IB means a whole different thing... "Crunch time" in normal people world means "darn it, i didn't feel like doing my homework for the past three months, and now i have to do three hours of it ALL AT ONCE! woe is me!" "Crunch time" in IB world means "You have one week to do 175 hours of homework. go." (Fun Fact: there are 168 hours in a week)
Basically, instead of squeezing kids so they go "Crunch", IB takes kids, and then beats them until they go "crunch" and THEN they bathe them in salt, and THEN they phone their parents and tell them that they were bad sons/daughters.
A new reflection. I despise Google ads. DESTEST. LOATHE.

Wet :P

2009-03-15T17:42:00.002-05:00

Today, as well as yesterday, it's warm out. That means everything is melting :O I went running, and it was all wet. I stepped in a puddle, thinking "psh, whatever, it's like two centimetres of water." THEN i stepped in a pothole which was artfully covered in water. and i went "rats!" and then i was wet up to my knee, but not on the top of my foot, because i splashed all the water out of the hole, and picked up my foot before it went under i guess.
THEN i got back, and i decided that because i don't have to wear my deep-winter jacket which is warm enough to stay alive by unzipping it, and tucking your legs, arms, and head in, then zipping it back up again, and sitting there, which could be on the top of Mt Everest, and waiting for someone to come along to pick you up and carry you like a large, warm rock into the nearest building. Anyways. I decided that it is officially slurpee season. So, me and alex, and the dog went to the nearest 7-11 (buffy swam most of the way) Then we got slurpees. The end.
I also watched this cool flash video. It involves a stick man fighting the flash interface

Animator vs. Animation by *alanbecker on deviant ART
Now, you folks watch that. i am off to eat somewhere...

Insert Obscure Hitchhiker's reference here

2009-03-12T16:26:00.002-05:00

Today would be the second day this week that i have had no school in the afternoon. YAY! except by 2:00 i've run out of things to do by myself (internet or no), and i am bored for another three hours until i go to speed skating. I need to make friends with people in... *checks a map*... England. Then it would be like the middle of the evening, so they'd be done dinner and homework and be just getting on MSN and they'd be all "eyyyy, Paul!" and i would be all "eyyyy, !" and much shenanigans would be had...
I suppose i could just go and get a full version of IRC, talk to whoever is on in the world. It would be great. It would be like... Paul and his IRC buddies on another wacky adventure!
Or i should go find a cape and a mask and then fight crime... I would be "El ?" and have unventures, which would be put into hardcover comic books. (it is pronounced "ell kwest-shunn marck" for those of you who are wondering.)
That would be sweet. Alternatively, i could do some mad core exercises for three hours, and then have like a 30-pack, and be able to run a half marathon in 57 minutes (which is really fast for those of you wondering.) OR i could maybe get a job and contribute to society!!!! Hooray!!!
Or you know... not.

I was looking at all the other people who put "Winterpeg, Manisnowba" on their profiles. I know at least one of them, but it made me sad, because all of them do not blog anymore... I wonder how many blogs are just dead, because nobody cared enough to say goodbye to them and deleted them. I'm also a little sad that someone has selfishly taken the name "inter.net" and only has a place holder page there. If you had a sweet name like that, you should at least TRY to write something worthy of it... I like the sites that use the doman as part of the name. Like "ysoserio.us" They make me smile. Like one of the IRC channels i frequent, worldch.at :P
But it's actually really sad that everyone is gone from the internet who is also in Winterpeg. What if there was a massive zombie outbreak, and i was the only one left? would it be the same feeling? What if i had to light my friend's undead corpse on fire?!?! That would definitely give me a series of psychological problems. Good thing i know how to survive zombies, at least temporarily. Run upstairs, and destroy the stairs behind you. They can't figure out fine motor skills like jumping, or grabbing ledges, so you're fine as long as you make sure there are not any nice ramps or staircases for them to get up. Though if there are enough of them, they'll pile up and make a zombie staircase in their insatiable urge to tear your delicious flesh from your bones!Good thing my basement stairs are situated underneath the other stairs, so they'll have to fill up the entire basement first :D

Second Day of Provs

2009-03-10T19:18:00.003-05:00

I'm putting this part here now, because i really don't like the way things turn out when i blog angrily.
Basically, the second day of provincials was just the worst day ever. My dad woke up late, so we ended up getting to the arena late, and i didn't get to get new skates until AFTER warm up, so i used the crummy ones for warm up, i could hardly walk. Then i got my new skates molded, and i was like :D
Then, i was like :S, because Randy put the blades on with a bigger offset than the old ones had, so it felt funny. THEN i just had a bad start. nothing to blame here than me, such that i got stuck behind Ray. Ray is a pretty big guy, and trying to pass him is like putting a quarter on an upside down lawn mower, and then trying to grab it. No matter how good an idea it SEEMS, you are going to get slashed pretty good. So, basically i was trying to inside pass him after EACH corner, but the skates were weird, so i didn't stay as tight as i used to, so i almost ran into the whirly blades of slicey death. THEN Devon fell, and he was pretty far ahead of us by this time, and Ray went around him for whatever reason, and he ran himself into the mats, and started flailing around like even more of a maniac. Like someone trying to trim one of those little desktop bonsai trees with a scythe. HIS BLADE WAS THIS CLOSE TO MY FACE:
blade__face.
AAAAAHH!
Apparently this also alarmed all the officials, along with Ray's effect on the ice. So instead of getting to skate our 3k on nice fresh smooth ice, we got moved to the very end. So, we had to skate 3k (27 laps) on basically the worst ice possible. It's definitely much worse than after a hockey game, because hockey skates can't gouge out massive chunks or anything. Speed skates are really slender, and are good at flicking little divots out of the ice. The ice was so bad... and because i'm just that light, i went *budda budda budda* over all the ruts and scratches in the ice, until my legs were actually asleep. The best way to pretend this is to bury yourself to the waist in cellphones, and put them all on vibrate, and then call them ALL. They also brought in this troglodytic rule where "if you get lapped twice, you have to forfeit the race." so basically, because Devon was so much faster than us to, it was like a game of keep-away, only you had to move to let the person you were trying to keep ahead of past. THEN at like lap 23, i fell, because my legs were all spasmy-outy and so i sat there and watch as devon caught up the remaining THIRD OF A LAP and passed me. IN SHORT, i had to drop out of my favourite distance, after it was basically ruined for me, all because of one punk kid who can't be bothered to learn how to skate in a courteous and not deadly manner!

Although, my ankle is much better now, due to the fact that it's no longer collapsing and i can walk without pain anymore. YAY! AND i passed my road test yesterday also. It was most exciting. Except that my mom took all the keys in to work with her today, so i couldn't drive to speed skating. >:( It would have been NICE TODAY TOO, because it is MINUS FREAKING FORTY. my face was "rimed" with frost when i walked into the changeroom.
Then i got home from being frozen again, and !!!! i wasn't locked out again! and even better! there was food waiting for me! this time they left the chicken fingers in the oven, so i didn't have to eat them cold. Noth that it really matters though, i don't believe in microwaving leftovers. I eat EVERYTHING cold. It builds character :)

There and back again

2009-03-07T19:48:00.002-06:00

DARN IT! I pressed enter again after typing the title. :(
Moving on. I returned from an extended vacation from the internet yesterday, and I can safely say i've missed it.
It was pretty cool though. The lake was all frozen over, so you could walk on it, and there were igloos on it too. Then it warmed up-ish, so everything got all foggy. Then i found a big stick. Then i walked out on to the ice and was alone. It was awesome. Everything was white! there were no shadows, no horizon, no noise, nothing! It made me think about dying, but in the good way. Like "whoa. I wonder if this is what happens once you die. that would be just freaking crazy. yeah..." But yeah, it was great. Nothing like absolute solitude and silence for the brain.
I liked the book too. it was Sense and Sensibility. As we talked about it, it sort of grew on me, like a callous. But then once it is almost all done growing, you get used to it, and dismiss it as a novelly useful part of your body. But seriously. I really did like it. More than Pride and Prejudice, which was okay i guess sorta.
Moving on. Aidan now has a "blog", but it's really more of a webcomic. It's moderately funny i guess, sorta. Tadaa!
Moving on. Today was the first day of provincials for speed skating. It was great. My crappy club skates are all but demolished from me going too fast for them to handle. My ankle was like breaking. BUT that means that i get to go get fitted for new skates TONIGHT!!! But yeah, it's actually the most painful thing ever. I could find out roughly the force on my ankle from skating on it, but it would probably make me sad. It's probably ALOT though. I could barely walk when i got off the ice after the 1500. And my ankle basically collapsed in the 1000 D: But aside from that, it was a pretty okay day. Some people from the Mint were there, and they were trading quarters with us for the new speed skating ones. I shall find a picture. Nahh too much work. You can just go on the Royal Canadian Mint site, and look at it for yourself. It's not even in circulation yet! I'm special! I have three of them. I got four, but i gave one to my friend Robyn because she forgot her old quarter at home, and i felt kinda bad for her :P
Moving on. I was really quite upset yesterday when we drove over the bridge, and i got a look at the river. ALL THE ICE IS ALL MELTY'D! :( That means no more happy fun running on the river anymore! I was looking forward to going running with my camera again, and taking pictures of the river! oh well. I will go tomorrow maybe if it is not dark out, and take pictures of Wellington Crescent again.

Back to the middle of nowhere

2009-03-03T19:54:00.004-06:00

Tomorrow is the second SHAKESPEARE in the snow. Not "novel study" or "austen" or whatever smart-alec name you want to come up with. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE.

Which basically means i take a three day exile from the internet, and physical activity to go read a book. Which is NOT OAKY. that's because i don't get to run in provincials for indoor track, which means that my dad will be all "hurr i am so disappointed in you." because i didn't race. :P Then on the weekend, i have provs for SPEED SKATING o_O. except it's in SELKIRK O_o. Which means it's quite a ways from home ._. That means ANOTHER two days from the interblag. How will i ever survive?!?
what i need is to launch a small sattelite into a geocentric orbit above Manisnowba, and then i just send an internet signal up to it, and BAM! LAN over mathematically half the globe (to some extent.) well it wouldn't REALLY be LAN everywhere... It would be like one common internet signal that could TECHNICALLY be recieved all the way up to a tangent drawn from the sattelite over manitoba to the surface of the Earth. If you could some how make the signal super-special-strong, then you'd have the same wireless internet for everywhere you went in...*checks Google earth* pretty much everywhere from somewhere around london to about japan. And then from like brazil (?) to around siberia and BECAUSE it's all wireless, the compy would sense it as a "local network", so as long as you have a clear view of that part of the sky, you could play whatever LAN game you felt like with your friends.
Just think! if somebody did that, they'd basically have made a private internet! for only the cost of Normal Internet, which isn't all that much. You could give your own TECH SUPPORT! :o
I switched the M and N keys in the compy lab the other day. It freaked out the grade 9s. At least one of them did not comprehend that the keys don't matter, it's the button underneath them. As in, the M and N keys still wrote M and N, but they were labelled N and M. Mr. Buskell got mad. But not really mad, more like amused in a bad way. To remove keys: take a pencil, and jab it underneath the key, and then wedge it out. Don't force it too much, and don't do it on a laptop, but they were made to be able to come out. Then you just press them where you want them with your thumb. They pop back in.
*DISCLAIMER* Only do this if you are sure you know what the hell you are doing, and can touch type pretty well perfectly, because it's weird to get used to. But in the end, it's quite worth it, because the next person comes and they look and they think "something... is awry." and then they start typing, and they're like "WTF?" "I'n tryimg to type, but the letters are wromg! TEACHER! NY KEYBOARD IS BROKEM!" Then you say "lol pwNt"

And yes, i fully intended to write 'oaky' up there, thank you very much.

Note to self

2009-02-25T22:08:00.002-06:00

more
REMEMBER IDEA.

Aw crap. I wrote this the other day and now i forget what my idea is....
This happens all the time you know. Actually only about half of my blog posts make it to the "published" part. I bet you that it was a really great idea too! It could have cured.... the whales. yes. see?! i could have cured the whales if only i wrote more on my note!
But at least i remembered the picture!
And it occurred to me. Puss in Boots is like the first LOLcat. He's wearing BOOTS first of all. Then he also can talk, and he is quite hilarious. Not the Shrek Puss, like the ACTUAL storybook Puss. Yeah. He's a trooper. Someone should make a LOLspeak version of Puss in Boots.

Once tiem Miller has three sunz. He says "oh hai, you can has mai stuff doodz." and teh first son said "i can has mill?" Teh second son says "i can has donkeh?" then ther wuz nothing left for liddle sun, except kitteh. Kitteh said "i can has shooz?" nd kid said "k".

So teh cat got teh shooz, and then kid n cat say 'kthxbai' and kitteh says 'wiat here, i go catch rabbits'.
Teh kitteh catched the bunnehs an he gived them to teh king. He says "i has bunneh. you can has bunneh. is gift." den the king was all "lol srsly?" and kitteh said 'lol ya. is from mar-kee of carabis."
Den kitteh went into fields and said "dis mine now k?" and pesents say 'lol k, but der is oger n he'll be madd.'
Kitteh said "lol, dun wurry."
Kitteh said to oger "i'm in ur base, killin' ur doods lol" oger died.
kid says "lol thx kitteh. you sav'd da dai!"
Teh end.

it's over?

2009-02-21T21:03:00.002-06:00

Well, Friday was the Hand In Your Extended Essay, Little IB Nerds Day. That means that that particular nightmare is over, and i get to go back to the rest of the internet. I would just like to say that i am kinda proud of my essay :/ Not overly proud, because i did it last week, but still, pretty proud. It was on Artificial Intelligence, and i learned a lot about it. Lots of interesting things going on in computers these days... It seems weird to me, but the whole Deep Blue thing is actually over a decade old! Deep Blue was a supercomputer that challenged Garry Kasparov to a chess match in 1997. It then beat him. Which was quite exciting. Then i went and learned about CAPTCHAs and 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the internet, and everything. I think extended essays should happen more often. And not for Marks.

Moving on. Now, the current nightmare is Relativity, which is just not easy to wrap your mind around. It's got all sorts of little holes in it, and sharp edges which poke your mind, and give you a headache. Except it's not a headache, but you just feel like your overheating, and you need a good long run or something. That's what i'd like to do. Instead of having Phys Ed in school, they should just give kids an hour, and tell them that there is a trail with money on it, and the further they get, the more money they get. MOST FIT SCHOOL EVER.

Now, off to bed with me, because i have to drive all the way to Brandon in teh m0rn.

Life and Times of Poll

2009-02-13T11:46:00.005-06:00

So, in case you can't scroll down or see it, there is a poll on the side here. You need to do it. Apparently i have to do primary research, and have to do it, and stick it in the essay for the 18Th, because Mr. Buskell decided that he doesn't want to just hand stuff in under the wire.
Also. Video+Cat = Great.

Now, let's go see what is in that fridge...

Temporary respite

2009-02-06T22:33:00.002-06:00

This post falls neatly in between me getting yelled at because of my less than stellar (but not much!) marks in the second term, and me going and writing my little heart out about the effect of Artificial intelligence on Real Intelligence. Today i didn't do much besides sit around, and play guitar. I learned Nowhere Man! It's fun :D. Then i watched a movie. after doing speed skating of course. I still can't find my... train of thought.... Yup, it just kind of left without me there, and i haven't a clue what i was going to write. Nope. Rien. Nada.. Zero.
then there is Shakespeare in the Snow next week too i guess. Smartass IB kids... They all think they are clever when they say "SitS is dead! Hahaha! I made a funny! Will you accept me socially NOW guys? Guys?? ...Please???" Their main arguments are thus:
1. We don't do Shakespeare in the snow when there is snow on the ground.
2. We are not doing Shakespeare when there IS snow on the ground.

This time we are doing Austen's Sense and Sensibility. No, it is not Shakespeare. Yes there is snow on the ground. The point of SitS is that it snows a lot here, and it stays for most of the year. There is much cynical joking to be had around groundhog day about stuff like "only 6 more weeks of winter? woohoo!" We already DID our Shakespeare play this year, last time, when it was cold enough to have frost on the ground, but not cold enough to run around on the lake, or have snow on the ground. The POINT is that you go to a place in the middle of nowhere, and focus everything on the PIECE OF LITERATURE that you are supposed to. It's just called "Shakespeare in the Snow". Just like marshmallows don't have any stuff from mallows (which, incidentally grow in a marsh) anymore, they are made from gelatin, because it's easier to work with, and keeps longer. we do NOT call them "Gelatin Dessert Treats" or something like that.

Now, for something else to write, while i gather my thoughts, so i can spew them everywhere again... I think it is time for a couple shoutouts. You can guess who they're for, or just enjoy them in silence if you DO get them...

I'll break your ankles!

I'm REALLY sorry i insinuated your boyfriend is perfidious!!

Why do you never respond anymore?!

I didn't mean *YOUR* boobs, i was talking about... someone... else?

Nice QC shirt, i always find it weird that someone else reads the same webcomics as me, but is just that much more indie.

Indie people are silly. They spend their lives on the internet, and when they get off of it, they go outside and proclaim loudly "I AM FROM TEH INTERNET", with things like inside jokes which are hilarious if your on the inside, and not so much if you are even slightly on the outside. They even have a SCORING system for it! You get points for making obscure references to things that most people think would be kind of cool, except that they're really obscure. And for wearing ripped jeans that are too tight, and high tops, and buy all your clothing at Goodwill, or the internet of course.

2009-02-04T12:10:00.001-06:00

Well. Nothing much to see here, i suppose you can all move along. Although i do feel compelled to say "You should watch the Office. It is funny. FUNNY. Ha ha!"
I failed my driving test this morning, and blogging whilst in a bad mood turns out bad, so i'm gonna leave now.

This post is part of a complete breakfast

2009-01-27T21:28:00.006-06:00

What if the Pope played WoW? That would be sweet. He'd for sure be a pali, and try and be like a "real" pali would, and defend "teh w34k n00bs", instead of bubbling and running away like a fool. What if he went in a BG, and got pwned? That would be quite something to see.
Although, the current Pope doesn't seem like so much of a WoW type guy. You know who i COULD see playing WoW?? Stephane Dion.
I don't even have to explain myself! (except to those of you who aren't Canadian >_<)
okay, well. He's pretty white, and skinny, and he has glasses, and seems really softspoken, and all the other MP's pick on him a lot. I wonder if he got treated that way in school...
Now, i should get back to getting back to thinking about doing my exam stuff for tomorrow afternoon. I'm going to go in, at ~1:50, and ask if i could just do my exam twenty minutes early. THEN. I am going to go back home, eat more food, then i'll wait for Aidan to go on MSN, and bother me. THEN i will make my way to Roger's Video, and rent Left 4 Dead, and much zombie killing fun shall be had by all. Especially me. And many funny things shall be said. like "GET TO THA CHOPPA!!!!"
More at .
In other news, i forget where i heard this, but the headline was something like "Kid bankrupts Make-a-wish foundation with wish for unlimited wishes."
OH RIGHT. Here it is.

Child Bankrupts Make-A-Wish Foundation With Wish For Unlimited Wishes

This Post needs no introduction...

2009-01-25T18:33:00.003-06:00

Head Trip - Twilight Sucks by ~shinga on deviant ART
I finded a funneh!
Julia gives this a thumbs up, so you know it's alright.
The only problem with it is that it's too small, so you can just head to deviant art and look at the full size there.

Now, let's do some old-school LaToP things. I like the song "Ironic" by Alanis Morissette. You should listen to it once.

Paul Awards!

The Annoying Fail award goes to "who" for using my cbox for disseminating Jesus. The only one who gets to spread Jesus' word is the people who actually have a reason for me wanting to accept Jesus! Jesus is a pretty okay guy in my book, but i really don't think that the internet is any place for spreading your religion. Most people hate it when jehova's witnesses come to their door and ask them about Jesus, because if they wanted to go hang out with Jesus, They. Would. Go. To. Church.

The Lolcat of Excellence goes to Soul Skittles, because she's the only one who did something related to Lolcats recently. Funny story... I woke up yesterday, and the first thing i actually thought was :O It's CATURDAY!!!! :D!! Also, monorail cat is for sure the best Lolcat ever. Next to Hoverkitten.

Who would win in a 100mile race, Monorail Cat or Hover Cat???

The Golden Keyboard goes to Helen, for having almost four full text files of MSN history... I think someday i'll take it out of the .xml format that it saves in, and actually just put it in a straight text file. Eventually.

N00B award goes to Andy, because she's n00.

Someone click the Google Ads buttons. I'm really not supposed to tell you that, because it's against the rules, but i want to see what they have, and i'm not allowed to click them either.

Self-Adhesive Permanent

2009-01-23T13:02:00.005-06:00

For lack of something better to blog about, there is a terrible mess around the compy. you should see it! if i could find my camera, i'd take a picture of it. And i'd probably have to find a memory card too... I'll describe it to you instead, it'll be just like seeing it!

Okay, so... on the actual desk, there is a pad of graph paper, a history textbook, a book about Nova Scotia, Speakers, assorted memory cards and pens and one pencil. There is a big stack of CD's at the very back of the desk, with instruction manuals mixed in :P. In front of that, there is a box of White Reinforcements. Then there is the mic that got glued into the middle of the desk, so you can't write comfortably on it anymore if you're a lefty. WHICH I AM>_<

The chair is a red computer type chair, but the padding is all squished down, because i sit in the same position too much :P if you look at it, first you see it's covered in cat hair, and then you can see that the butt print is funny shaped, because i tuck one leg in, and lean sideways on the back of the chair.

THEN beside the desk is this small table-esque thing, which is holding the printer, and a scratched up CD i found in a parking lot, and now use as a coaster. It also has paper underneath it. Lots of paper, every kind that you could possibly want; hi gloss, looseleaf, construction, dot matrix printer paper, some really nice printer paper, and some kind of okay stuff too. It's also got all the extra graph paper :P

BESIDES THAT, there is the other computer desk, which doesn't have a compy on it. It's just got some papers on it, scattered about in a haphazard fashion.

BEHIND me, is my guitar stand, with guitar attached, and then another rolly chair, and a folding chair that is really more comfortable than the other two. There is also the fuzzy pink batman blanket which i use when it's -40 and i feel the urge to use the compy. Behind all those is the treadmill, and a lamp.

BEHIND THAT is the heater, which is broken :(. There's also plants galore everywhere, they take up easily half of the room :O Then, there is an actual circle of papers scattered around the floor. There must be at least 500 loose sheets here, plus several booklets. Then there are USB cables scattered, and library books too. This must be how it looks when a bomb goes off, because there is a radius around the chair where i don't put papers, because i don't really feel like bending down that much.

That's pretty much my compy room, i'd like to write something else, but there is a cat on the keyboard, so it's getting hard to type.

Peas out.

more animals

Internet!

2009-01-21T20:36:00.004-06:00

You'll have to click it to make it bigger. It's a map of the Internet though!

Kinda makes you feel microscopic doesn't it?

I found the picture on the Internet Proper (which is what i call the searchable internet) and then i added the "You are here." It REALLY AND TOTALLY HELPS YOU FIND YOUR WAY.

Just think of the end of each line as a compy somewhere connected to the internet, All you need to do is find the right path!

Minus LIKE NONE!

2009-01-18T18:36:00.002-06:00

This weekend was the Provincial Long Track Championship. It was FKEARNIG awesome!(good luck pronouncing fkearnig.) In the mornings they had Olympic Style, and then in the afternoon they had Mass Start. There was a slight mix up with me and not being registered for Olympic Style, but they let me skate on the second day because i DID tell them when they asked "i want to do Olympic Style." Then in Mass Start, it wasn't really "Mass Start", because all the Intermediates (people who are like done high school or 16-17) get really good as Juniors (15-16) and then they decide that staying in Manitoba, having to PAY for higher education is a stupid idea, so they go to Calgary, and train with the National team, and get free jobs and then free education (somewhat). So, I'm the only intermediate who stays behind...
Now, Paul's Guide to Speed Skating for utter morons! Hooray! and the rest of you can read it too.
Speed skates are really different from hockey skates or figure skates, because the blade is almost flat. They're "rockered", meaning the blade is curved. The radius is huge, like 24m for my skates, and the blade is only around 30 cm. If you get into really high level skating, like a national or international level, then the blades are also bent to the left, so you can go faster around the corners still.
In speed skating, there are two different "kinds" Long track, and Short track. The long track is normally outside, and sometimes inside, like in really nice ovals, and it's a 400m track. In long track, you use different skates, which have a hinged blade, so you can get a longer glide, and more extension, so you go faster and farther. They're also lower on your ankle, because you don't have as tight a corner, and don't need that much support. Instead, you can get lower, and more aerodynamic.
Short track is done inside, on a hockey rink. The track is 111m, and you use 'short track skates' You can use short track skates for long track, but you can't do the opposite... Short track is generally faster, because the corner is so much tighter, and so you can get going faster.
Olympic Style is (obviously) the style they do in the Olympics, but only for long track. In the Olympics, they do mass start in short track. Olympic style is like time trials almost, you're racing for time, not position. They skate in pairs, one in each lane. Every lap they switch lanes. Inside lane has a corner with a radius of 25m, outside 29m.
Mass Start isn't divided into lanes, you can cut in whenever it is safe to do so, which means that the people starting on the outside have a long way to go in a very short time, or they go really wide on the corner and don't get anywhere. The inside people have to go really fast also, or they get boxed in by the other skaters, and have to slow down into the corner...
Short Track is all Mass Start, except they also do Team pursuit. Team pursuit is just freaking crazy. It's a relay where each skater does two laps, then pushes the next skater, so they get a boost. If you watch it, then you have to agree that it is just frakking nuts, and also really exciting. People fall lots, because there's a lot of people in the way, and they run into each other all over the place.
That's all i can think of right now about speed skating, but seeing as how you're already on the internet, you could do more reading if you wanted to.
It was actually beautiful outside. It was minus 6, with little wind. It snowed a bit, but that wasn't really that bad. it's a massive change from this past week, which was like minus a billion, and with the wind like minus another billion and a half...
Now, on to homework and studying. Blech.
Before i go, there is one actual newsworthy thing to say. I scheduled my road test(finally)! Except now i have to reschedule it, because nobody likes me enough to take me to the driving centre.

Minus stupid.

2009-01-14T21:49:00.006-06:00

So. Life has been especially ...alive... this past while. Speed skating 7 days a week only sounds fun on paper, or when it's not that cold. I'd settle for a steady -20 if it actually happened. But, the world doesn't work like that. Especially not when it's already -NotFun outside and windy. Like yesterday. It was apparently -35 or colder on Monday, because my coach just went home before practise started on account of the cold. I got there late though, and thought
"Pah. whatever. Being cold is for the weak."
*Five minutes later*
"Goodness Jesus. I really wish i could feel my extremities right now."
*Five MORE minutes later*
"Well, i sure wish that i had brought some extra layers. Four just doesn't seem right anymore."
*Unidentified time later*
"Well that was fun. Now let's go back in and warm up."
*Thirty seconds later*
"OH GOODNESS IT BURNS OH MY WHY DID I COME INTO THIS BURNING PRISON!"
*Ten minutes of agony later*
"THE PAIN!! AAUUUGH!My feet are on fire!"
*Three more minutes of torment later*
"Well that wasn't so bad. let's do it again!"
Then in the newspaper today, the front page had a handy diagram, illustrating exactly what i was feeling. Apparently if you're toes freeze and are all tingly, like mine frequently do/are, that means that something has actually frozen solid, and is now in sharp little ice crystals inside your foot. And then i learned about the wonders of hypothermia, like dementia and uncontrollable shivering.
The good news is that it's supposed to be really warm on the weekend, for Olympic Style and Mass Start! like REALLY warm! like above minus 10!!! Yay!!!!
I'll put an explanation of Mass Start and Olympic Style somewhere here later, but this is enough for one day. You're already on the internet, i'm sure you can find something productive to do.

Like i said. Ready Normal People??