Snakes and salaries

Caught a checkered garter snake in my room the other day. Went out and bought a cage for it, and now it's my pet. We'll see how well this goes. Hopefully it doesn't have worms or anything.

Changing topics here, but I read this morning in New York Times that "wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation’s gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960’s". This makes me love big business and corporations even more, hurray!

Hyped about AI Class

Went to my Artificial Intelligence class this morning. I'm really hyped about this one. Gonna use Python in it, and A.I. just seems really interesting to me.

My hectic first day of (cancelled) classes...

I went to my first class, thankfully, and turned in my force add form. Got out of that class, which got about halfway through.

At like 10:30, some lady barged in and told us all that we had to leave. They were evacuating the entire campus. Evidently, a killer named William Morva was on the loose. Next, I couldn't go back to my apartment because of the blockades since I live about 3/4 mile from the spot on Huckleberry Trail where he was hiding. I couldn't go to the library or downtown to sit and wait it out. I couldn't call a friend to pick me up because the cellular towers were completely busy for like 30 or 45 minutes...

I'm glad they caught the guy. Not fun to have a murderer running around free near my apartment. I didn't get anything done at all today cuz all I could do was sit at my friend's apartment.

All that said and done, I'm beat. Good night.

Back in Blacksburg fall '06

Well, I'm back in Blacksburg again. Had a great time with my family. Got a nice tan from relaxing in the pool, got a brand new Nintendo DS Lite...

First half of 2k6, and then some.

So, it's time again for my extremely long update about my life and what has happened in it! I'll begin where I left off somewhere around January.

As I said before, I headed back to Blacksburg. I was on academic suspension. Totally sucks. My focus wasn't in the right place. I had a video game and Internet addiction. I think I still have a slight Internet addiction, actually. I've got to work on that. Anyways, I headed back to Blacksburg. I looked for a job and did land the one at PC Land as a computer technician.

PC Land
Now, I love being a computer technician. I wouldn't want to do it for the rest of my life, but it's an enjoyable job to fill my spare time. But man was the owner of this place a royal pain in the neck. The rest of the people that worked there were pretty cool, but the owner really irked me.

I swear he was trying to run a sweatshop or something. He didn't allow music or mp3 players because he thought it would distract us from our work. In case you don't know, being a computer technician requires absolutely no brainwork at all once you know the procedure of things. When he would come out of his office and ask what we were working on, it would be in such a sour, irritating manner that it began to burn into my senses like a spark sent with the wind into the dry mesquite of Texas on a mission of wildfire. I was never in a good mood when he was around. My thoughts were always dwelling on how pissed off I was because of this guy (whose name I won't mention). "What are you doing?" "Is it okay?"

He never had any praise to give. It was always criticism. He'd call everyone stupid, asking why we couldn't be smart. Over stupid stuff. Like giving a potential customer plastic standoffs. And throwing away an old, broken case and motherboard. Yeah, I was the one that threw away the old, broken case and motherboard. I was in Roanoke when he found out. He called me at Roanoke from Blacksburg and started yelling at me, barking at me like a dog. The stupid thing wasn't worth 5 bucks and he was about to fire me over it. I mean, the time I would have spent trying to fix it would have cost him more money than he would have gained from selling it. So I took the good parts out of it and threw the bad parts away. I thought this was reasonable.

I was wrong. This man drove up to Roanoke and began to berate me in person. When he asked me why I did what I did, I attempted to answer, only to be cut off. Later in the conversation, he accused me of trying to argue with him. He said I was stupid because I didn't see what I did was wrong since I was defending myself. Grrrr...I was only trying to answer the question, but he wouldn't hear any of it. He wanted to sell the broken piece of crap to a customer. Maybe they would want to fix it on their own, he said. Alright, whatever. I didn't know we were a junk store.

I could definitely go on, but I think I should stop now. I won't mention his lack of English skills (he's Chinese) or the how he reacted to an unavoidable situation where Norton Ghost didn't work as expected. Enough of him.

My time away from work--my projects and my roomate.
So other than working, I had decided on some personal projects to occupy my free time. My old friend Kyle gave me an old AMD-K6/2. I decided to install Ubuntu on it and set up an ftp server. I decided to finally make the switch from Windows to Linux on the computers that I actually use once I quit World of Warcraft.

I did accomplish the ftp server quite easily. Set it up with vsftpd. While I was at it, I set it up as a Teamspeak server, as well.

I had done a default install of Ubuntu on that machine, not knowing any better. I should have done a server installation so that Gnome didn't come with it. I did disable Gnome, but it's still taking up unnecessary hard drive space. I've decided I'm going to format the whole thing again soon and install the LAMP server on it. Learning scripting languages and SQL are actually my current projects. I've also got to figure out PAM, I think, to require a password to access my ftp server. It's annoying to get port scanners hitting my machine 24/7. Sometimes they leave random files in my upload folder, and there was one instance where a guy started downloading something my server. Not only was he downloading, he was very aggressively downloading. I have pages upon pages of logfiles of him attempting to access a single file, but my computer was refusing because too many connections were already open. After that, I turned my server off until I decided to reinstall and learn more about ftp authentication.

Moving on, my new roomate for the semester ended up being a guy from France coming to Virginia Tech on an internship. He ended up being a really cool guy. His name's Fabien.

He actually somehow motivated me to get out of the apartment and socialize with other human beings! Yes, this actually surprises me. I enjoyed it, though. Because of this, I ended up quitting World of Warcraft early. I haven't played the game since April or so. My account expired a few days ago, I hear from my brother.

I don't think I had even been to a bar in Blacksburg before Fabien arrived. Now, though, I'm pretty familiar with all of them. He also introduced me to rock-climbing, which was very tiring but fun.

Anyways, Fabien was great. He was really easy to live with. He cleaned up after himself, he was polite, he was friendly, he made an effort to include me in things. I'm really gonna miss the guy. He moved out of the apartment last weekend. He'll be moving back to France mid-September.

So since I quit World of Warcraft, I was safe to switch over to Linux completely. For about a month I was setting up a custom set of packages on a basic, or "server", installation of Ubuntu to create a good Fluxbox environment. Fluxbox was great, but I decided that maintaining my own set of packages was too much work. Ultimately I decided on KDE. So I installed Kubuntu! Pretty happy with it so far.

I've figured out one reason I don't have many friends, even when I do get out and socialize. I don't know anyone at all that really shares my passions and interests. Learning Linux, programming languages, network security, how the Internet works, etc. are my passions right now. Can't find anyone to share my experiences with. Oh, well.

Summer, into the fall.
Actually, I did go on one "date" this summer. My first one since high school. Nevermind the fact it was with some chick that found me on MySpace. Nevermind the fact that she's seven years older than me. Bah, it was a heck of a lot better than sitting at home doing nothing... She seems like a cool person.

This summer I started classes up again. Actually, they went pretty well. I'm amazed at how much a teacher can make a difference in how well I do in a class. I got an A- in the first class, where the teacher was amazing. The second class I got a B- in, and the teacher was not-so-good. He was genuine and caring, but his teaching style sucked. He was never really prepared for class, and all he did was basically give a brain dump onto the blackboard, hoping we'd gain an understanding of the material through hearing his thought processes.

Well, thankfully I don't have many more classes to take that don't interest me at all. I just got done with Electronics, which was centered around transistors and CMOS. The last two classes that I am not really looking forward to are Optics and Microprocessor System Design. After that I get to choose stuff that looks nice. Stuff like Operating Systems and Internet Programming. I'm going to try to get into an Artificial Intelligence class this fall, actually.

I've got to try to try to get into an Operating Systems course here in Dallas, though, I think, so that I can take Internet Programming and some other courses in December 2007 so that I can graduate then. Hopefully that works out. We'll see.

Yeah, I'm in Texas with my family right now. My summer vacation consists of staying here with my family and my visit from Steve last weekend.

Steve... my old friend from MCS computers. I am never around the 757 anymore since my family moved to Texas, but I still keep in touch with my old co-worker Steve.

When I started working at MCS, Steve was the one that brought me under his wing. We seem to think alike more often than not. Steve and I had a pretty good time in Blacksburg. We partied pretty hard, and I'll leave it at that.

So now I'm at home with my family. Relaxing, enjoying the sun and the pool. Enjoying seeing my family (and my grandma's here, too, until tomorrow!).

One thing I am noticing, though, which is kind of depressing me, is how my brother is distancing from me. We are still pretty close, but we used to talk all the time when we gamed together over the Internet. MMORPGs gave us a common interest and let us stay in touch.

I come home, and now he just talks to his girlfriend on the phone. We don't really have much to talk about. He isn't all that interested in the things I'm interested in, so I can't do that stuff with him. All I can do is try to find more common ground and find what else he is interested in so I can get involved.

It's difficult. It saddens me.

And it's not the only relationship of mine that seems to be faltering. Another one that I want to keep alive is between my old friends from high school, with Ralph and Robbie and Alan and the gang.

I feel sort of guilty because I never wrote my old friend Ralph a thank-you note about letting me stay at his place over Thanksgiving... Now I wonder if he'd want to let me chill there again this year. Oi.

I hope he forgives me, and maybe if I call him he invites me or something so that I can make it up.

Well, that's all for now.

Playing sax for God

What is my purpose for playing the saxophone in a church band? Am I using my gift for God?

Tonight it came to me that one way I am using my musical gift for God is by creating music that people will enjoy hearing. If people enjoy the music that I produce, they should want to hear more of it. By creating good music, I'm strengthening the appeal of my church family. The more people are pleased by our church, the more people are closer to God.

That is, in my opinion, the least obvious of the ways that my musical gift glorifies God. Since I have not been given a verbal or rhetorical gift to bring people to know God, I use the musical one that I have been given.

Review of Silent Hill

Just came back from watching Silent Hill. The story was quite a bit different, but they did a really, really good job on the movie (in my humble opinion).

In the game, Dahlia Gillespie was the leader of a cult in Silent Hill. This cult wanted to bring the demon Samael into the world to do whatever evil they pleased. In order to control this demon, they decided it would be best to bring him into the world in the form of a child. So, through some science and rituals and whatnot, Dahlia had Alessa Gillespie.

When Alessa was seven years old, Dahlia burned Alessa in a fire because she believed that the tortured remains of Alessa (the essence of Samael would not allow her body to die) would be better able to project her horrible nightmares into the physical world. In the process of burning Alessa, the whole town caught on fire. Alessa ends up in the hospital of Silent Hill with the nurse Lisa Garland tending to her. Alessa did end up engulfing the town in her nightmare, decaying buildings and creating monsters. However, during the fire, the tramatized Alessa had created a projection of herself as a baby somewhere outside Silent Hill. Harry Mason and his wife found this baby, named her Cheryl, and raised her as their own.

Once Dahlia found out that Samael was no longer whole, she cast a spell to try to lure Cheryl back to Silent Hill. Without both halves of Alessa/Samael, her powers would be weakened and useless to Dahlia. When Cheryl was seven years old, Harry's wife dies, and he decides to go with Cheryl on a visit back to Silent Hill.

Upon arrival, it's really foggy and he wrecks his jeep because he thought he saw someone in the middle of the street. When he comes back into consciousness, Cheryl isn't in the jeep any longer. He spends the game trying to find her, of course. During the course of the adventure, Silent Hill shifts between the normal, foggy, ash-filled one and Alessa's nightmarish, dark one. Dahlia sees that Harry is searching for Cheryl, deduces their relationship, and decides to play Harry as a pawn in her game. She tells Harry that darkness is engulfing the town, that Alessa is behind it, and that he can use a relic called a Flauros to trap Alessa/Cheryl and stop her. She didn't, however, tell him that she only wanted to subdue Alessa/Cheryl so that she could control her again.

Meanwhile, the cop Cybil Bennett receives a call from Silent Hill, and she goes to investigate. She ends up meeting Harry and getting caught up in all the nonsense, as well. She ends up getting possessed towards the end of the game, and Harry either kills her or cures her with a drug he finds on his trek through Silent Hill.

At the end of the game, Harry ends up meeting up with Dahlia and Alessa/Cheryl. An old cult member runs in and throws a drug at Alessa, causing Samael to come out. Samael kills Dahlia, and Harry kills Samael. Alessa approaches Harry and gives him a new baby, who he names Cheryl and raises as his own (again).

In the movie, Harry is replaced by Rose, and Cheryl by Sharon. Instead of Dahlia being the bad guy, it's a cult of witch-hunters that burned Alessa. Dahlia's just some crazy lady. Rose and Cybil meet up and work together to find Sharon. Towards the end of the movie, the cult finds out that Sharon is the likeness of Alessa and they turn against Rose and Cybil since they don't want to kill Alessa. Cybil is captured by the cult while keeping them from capturing Rose while she goes into the hospital to confront Alessa. While Rose is talking to Alessa, the cult also finds Sharon. Rose agrees to help avenge Alessa's torturous death by approaching the cult. The cult burns Cybil, and before they could do the same to Sharon, Rose comes in. She gets stabbed by the cult leader, blood spills all over, and the church that they're in changes into the dark realm of Alessa. Rose's wound heals instantly, and Alessa comes up out of the ground and totally kicks some bootie with barbwire tentacles. She kills everyone except Dahlia, Rose, and Sharon. And that's pretty much the end of it.

Yeah, I just had to write down the differences for my own personal satisfaction. Lots of cool stuff from the game was in the movie. Lots of familiar scenes and enemies. Pyramid Head, anyone?

Don't just observe life, experience it.

It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.

Theodore Roosevelt "Citizenship in a Republic," Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

Funny VW commercials

I love the new VW commercials, with the German engineers destroying "pimped out" cars (those ones that are inspired by the oh-so-lovely Fast and Furious movie). Too bad I don't like VW.

(Hmm...doesn't look like the commercials have made it to the website yet. Oh, well.)

Got a job at PC Land

Well, I got a job working as a computer tech recently for PC Land. Friday and Saturday were my first two days. Woohoo! Been working a lot on computer-related stuff. A friend of mine has developed a tool to consolidate a ton of useful technician tools, and I've been helping debug a minor issue with it. I've been messing around with a lot of Ubuntu Linux, getting printers shared and getting programs and settings the way I like them.

I also ordered a new (Linux-compatible) wireless card for my mom's computer so that she can try Ubuntu out. My friend also gave me an old computer of his to mess around with, which I also ordered a wireless card for.

Funny quote of the day:
Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them you'll be a mile away and have their shoes.

"The biggest drama in the history of FFXI ;D"

Wow. All I can do is laugh at this post. Since Killing Ifrit doesn't like to keep their posts around forever and the link will eventually break, I'll copy it. Straight from Bamma of Garuda, I present to you "The biggest drama in the history of FFXI ;D":

Alright guys, as promised.. here is something only a few people have witnessed. I dunno if you were looking forward to this Ish/Moorcat, but I did mention it to the both of ya so here it is. But first, let me tell you how it all started. Long post so pls forgive me.. ;D

So.. Lved as a monk/thf until around 60. Was in the LS omegaturks, along with sirus, moorcat, uber, and a lot of other people I really didn't know. The leader was some ninja, forgot his name because he quit a very very long time ago.. do you remember sirus? Anyways.. was good friends with moorcat, and soon shinomori wanted to start a static which included him, me, moorcat, sandkat, huma & parasite. At the time, 4k/hr EXP was what you considered godly. We managed close to 6k/hr. Our priorities was getting to lv75 because there were only 20 or so NA's at the most post lv70.

At around lv65 on my monk (when Cherryblossom was the first and only NA hnmls, btw one of the biggest joke NA hnmls' on the server of Garuda I must add), slowly one by one everyone in my static got invited. Riaky was the leader and I could not join because I was in beach's ls, a 75JP rdm who used to be in the same shell as riaky at one point but they hated each other for some unknown reason. Beach's side was, riaky is greedy and all he wants to do is make money.. so Beach quit the LS.

So.. reach lv70, got all pro gear for my monk.. farmed ochuidos + sniper rings, bought crosscounters from beach when they were only 1.1mil on our server. And man did I want to join Cherryblossom LOL. When the rest of my static was camping money hnm's + 3kings.. I was farming crawlers & crabs at Oztroja lol. But the money was awesoming considering the economy wasn't f'ed back then with all the gilbuyers and rmt niggers. But then there were other niggers who used fishbot, all of whom I don't associate with ingame to this day. But joining Cherryblossom would mean I would have to drop Beach's LP, I couldn't do that simply because he helped me get my mnk af legs + testimony to fight maat and sold me those awesome crosscounters ;D.

Anyways, we as a decent LS camped money hnm's once in a while.. and we went to Gustav because Bune was up. Cherryblossom claimed first and they had a full alliance + backup healers. The fight was about 30mins and at 10% or so.. everyone started getting raped one by one and at 1% frivan was the only rng up. An EES would have killed it (assuming that it landed) but there was still a 30second delay timer on it. So frivan died gracefully and we took bune for the kill.. no drop but shinomori then msgs me and says, "you're out of the static." We chat for a good 20mins, he was clearly pissed that we "stole" when their whole alliance wiped and bune was free to claim.

Basically the next couple of days, no static and the rest of the static members did stuff with Cherryblossom. I basically told him if I was kicked out of the static then I would quit the game. Then one day shinomori decided that we were going to exp together again. So w/e, back to the normal routine of hardcore exping to get to lv75 ;D.

But at the same time, we all decided to finish skymissions to get to sky access. Very few select NA's had sky access at this time. It was pretty tough for us considering our PT setup was mnk, drk, drg, nin, whm, brd.. we weren't even lv75 yet and a lot of us were still newbie NA's. We got up to the chapter AA in quicksands, and then this nigger blm by the name of Damian.. who btw has one of highest records of examining me the most ingame said he needed help getting past this part. So being a leech, he himself decided he was going to come with us because he was in Cherryblossom and my static couldn't deny him.

So we get to the BC, kill the AA with a few deaths. The fight was pretty hard and then we were all like fuck, we gotta do it again for damian. So off we go, we substitute damian for parasite and shinomori dies early in the second fight. Moorcat casts Raise 2 on him and he replies, "Raise TREE ONRY" and denies the raise2. Were like WTF, were in a fucking BC right now and moorcat already wasted 150mp casting raise2 on you. "I don't care, I'm not losing anymore exp because I waste shihei exping for you guys." -.-

So guess what, huma had to tank the AA, he died a total of 4 times during the fight, received 3 f'ing raise 1's and a raise 2. We basically killed the BC without a main tank and a nearly full wipe. So after we all get kicked out, Huma was the first one raised and he says, "F this bull**** shinomori" and warps to logout. Moorcat didn't want to raise shinomori after f'ing us all over.. so he decided to ask the LS and based his decision on their opinion. And yup, everyone warped except shinomori because moorcat decided not to give him a raise3. Shinomori said in PT chat, fine.. this static is done. He hp's and seeks for an exp PT. That was the last day I saw him.

Later in the weeks ahead, Cherryblossom gets pull on Aspiniggerlone and dalamatica drops, Sevenseas won the lot but his job was a blm and there were rdms + smners in that alliance. Opeth thought the LS was about working to make the LS stronger as a whole and not for personal benefits, so he decided to quit and more than half the LS quit along with him. Opeth then created a new NA hnmls, the one and onry visvires.. which I was invited to the very next day ;D. So Opeth's side of the story was, those who stayed with Cherryblossom were greedy because they agreed with Riaky's decision to let Sevenseas lot and win the dalmatica. And the richest NA's were obviously in that LS.

But Visvires’ goal was to be the first NA hnmls to defeat Kirin. Now info at this time was scarce and we had to figure a lot of the stuff on our own in sky. So while Cherryblossom was still camping money hnm’s, we were laughing because after about a month’s hard work, we finally defeated Kirin. Moorcat, Interslayer & Leyla were the first three NA whm’s to obtain a Noble’s tunic on Garuda. And Sandkat was the first NA to obtain an osode, which dropped after about 5 kirin deaths..-.-

So after word got out that we had defeated Kirin and started busting out some priceless eq which Cherryblossom couldn't obtain with any amount of gil, they started doing sky missions. As they progressed onto the 4 gods, they couldn't defeat byakko & seiryu for a while, and suzaku was pretty tough for them. So they decided to farm Genbu as their main source of gil + get a couple abjs for themselves. But eventually, they defeated Kirin after a couple months with lots and lots of recruiting and deaths along the way ;D.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now.. to the main point, at this time I met tree Canadians. Their names were Setheron, Darkwind & Narusegawa. They were lv 60 brd, nin, drk. I camped Amemet with them all the time because that's all they ever did and visvires wasn't a money LS, we had a bank fund which all gil drops would go to. So this was my way of making money. I tanked amemet on my mnk/nin because Darkwind's nin was pretty useless so he basically leeched off us all the time. Setheron's goal was to earn 2.3mil to buy a vermy cloak which he accomplished in about 2weeks of camping amemet 3-4 times a day. Anyways..

They introduced me to the voice chat program ventrilo, which took me about 2weeks to actually force myself to download and install onto my computer. I then met this guy named Anakki who hangs with them in their vent channel. And for anyone who knows how Anakki talks.. he has the most annoying voice on the mic. Anyways they were all good friends, setheron darkwind & naru were irl friends and Anakki is some asian.

Now visvires wanted to start camping the kings more often, and fafnir was tough because our blm's weren't decked out and we had zero smners. Opeth told us, "we need smners, we need smners." So I told Opeth that Naru had a lv60 smner and we invited him. Opeth told Naru to start lving it instead of camping amemet with those nigs Setheron & Darkwind. Once Naru joined, of course Darkwind wanted to join, but Opeth hated Darkwind's guts. So I told Darkwind if you want to join, get lv70+ on your nin and then ask Opeth. After he obtained lv 70, he asked opeth if he could join and Opeth replied, "niggano." LOL. Darkwind was heartbroken, so he literally followed Opeth everywhere he went ingame whenever he was online. Finally Opeth decided, fine.. he can join.

So then months and months go by.. Opeth & Ainsley joined our vent.. our LS is becoming more and more pro.. Opeth and I lv our rdm & rng together.. Opeth obtains defending ring on our first KB which was a KB that was unclaimed. Stelvia, insane & illusion were there but they weren't engaging it for some reason. So right as Stelvia was about to claim it, Opeth all of a sudden became pro, puts on his nike shoes, turns into a nig and starts runnin for his life, ran in there & provoked KB. All the JP ls' were like, wth. Anyways first NA hnmls to kill KB. Back then the JP ls' were illusion, insane & stelvia. So a total of 5 hnmls' on our server, but cherryblossom didn't really count. Obsidiann lost lot and Ender was only in our LS for 2 weeks, btw he got koenig hands and body in those 2 weeks so no way in hell was he going to get priority to lot. Windyfeather also lotted, which was higher than Opeth.. as a joke, but lucky for Opeth he passed before the items were distributed or everyone had passed on the ring.

And then.. to my knowledge.. Leyla quit the LS because of Opeth's so-called "double-standard" with Ainsley and favoritism. What happened was, we were camping water in sky.. and Leyla came up to sky wanted to be in main PT, because usually when we fight gods and kirin, moorcat & leyla is in the main tank PT. We already had moorcat + ainsley in the main PT, so someone (I forgot who) in our alliance in another PT.. invites Leyla several times but Leyla declines all of them. This was only water so having Leyla in the main PT was not mandatory. So he logs off that day and the next day when we are camp fafnir, Leyla tells us he is quiting the LS. I forgot what his explaination was, either he wasn't having anymore fun or he had RL to deal with.

So one by one people started quitting VV, and the LS is slowly deteriorating.. then I basically figured this isn't gonna work out. So I said "Things will never be the same in visvires without Leyla.. I tired my hardest to keep the LS alive but it isn't going to work.. and I hate to see the LS end like this but things don't last forever. It was awesome being part of such a successful LS," and basically thanked everyone for being a part of it. Then dropped the pearl. Opeth was pretty inactive at the time so when he came back and saw the big mess ahead of him, he just didn't want to be a leader anymore, so the LS was finally disbanded. The bank still had around 30mil or so, he split it among the people who deserved it the most, Naru & Parasite got like 4mil each because they never got a dalmatica or adaman hauberk.

A couple weeks later, Opeth joins Stelvia.. and obtains his final koenig piece to make his full set. I join about a month later.. updates and updates / months and months ahead, we kill the tiamat, jormunasdf & vrtra. I receive my herald's gaiters and blood body. Soon later Darkwind, naru, ruhi, & sinestra join. I staticed with Ruhi on my rdm when he was still in EDI and eventually hit 75 on my rdm. Then invited him into Stelvia. So while all this was going on, other NA sky hnmls' were constantly killing kirin.

Around this time mpkcriminalmpk was the best NA hnmls. Mainly NA and Darkwind wasn't having anymore fun in Stelvia because most of the people in our vent were in this LS. By this time, uber, kyubi, jagua, thecok, later on sevenseas and a bunch of other people was in it. Soon after, Naru quit Stelvia and joined mpk also. But despite being in different LS', I always did shit with them. BC's, boroka (which I made a load of money from having monopoly on it for about 3months straight.. do the math, drop rate was almost every kill and usually split between 5ppl), ENM's, exping, crafting, w/e. Something a lot of us didn't do because of being in rival LS'.

So....

I took a break from ffxi in the beginning of May. Maybe just a couple hrs a week, logged in for boroka because it was the best moneymaker in the game. In june I hardly logged in at all. Now when I logged in on the first week of July, well what do you know, I found all my shit gone. All my Rng, Rdm & Mnk gear gone. Well worth over 200mil along with herald's gaiters which is priceless on any server. Not to mention Hansu offered 100mil for a pair but was never able to find a seller. And some extremely rare eq like 2 communion earrings, chasuble +1, mahatma pigaches, 2 behemoth ring +1's, 2 sniper +1's and so on.. The same day I found all my shit gone was the day I was going to log in to auction off all my items in hopes to sell the gil for RL money.

Basically I entrusted someone with my account, but it wasn't that person who took all my items. But because of this person, I got all my shit jacked from me. For about a month in a half, I had no idea who it was. At first I suspected it was Darkwind & Naru. But I had doubts cuz how the fuck can it be them? I've known them for like 1 1/2 years and I should be able to trust them more than anyone else ingame. But Darkwind being the stupid dumb f'up he always was gave me that suspision.

For instance, out of the many times I IMed him through aim.. he would always respond with a "?" When I IMed him this time, he responded with a "hi." Being the friend he should be because I considered him one, when I told him all my shit was gone.. he could have caredless to ask how it happened. His simple reply was ";-;." If he ever told me his shit was gone, I'd probably ask him a ton of questions.. he didn't have a word to say. So after about a 15minute convo, he said he had absolutely nothing to do with it and that this was his first time hearing about it.

Even more stupidly, when the real Setheron came back to play FFXI.. Darkwind gave Setheron my elite beret +1 to sell on the ah for gil to get him back started. And the ringer was when Darkwind sold my Desert Rope, Dune Bracers & Desert Stone on the ah.. all of which were Galka RSE's.. all in the same month in July. Now for anyone who is smart, when you do BC to farm RSE pieces, and do it 6 times.. you are guaranteed at least 6 pieces of RSE eq if you win all 6 times. I guess Darkwind did each of these BC's and only one once because he sucks ass and they all happened to be Galka pieces, ROFL.

At this point I thought to myself, what a f'ing nigger. Blatantly lied to me when I confronted him about it. I didn't even bother to ask Setheron or Naru about it. It's been a month & a half, I'm sure they knew about it.. how many chances did they have to tell me in that time frame and didn't have the balls to say so? Anyways I couldn't f'ing believe it. I've known them for how long, done how much shit with them ingame, and they pull of some shit like this on me and think they are going to get away with it? Nope.. sorry I'm too pro.

Well back a couple months when that whore we all know Mango was still around. She was going to meet with Darkwind & Naru in LasVegas.. That's what she said, but it never happened. Anyways, I had Darkwind's address because he tried linking it to all the way to Vegas through mapquest to see how long the drive would be. I also had his home phone and cell phone number. I almost forgot I had all this info but when I remembered, damn it was quite awesome to say the least.

Anyways me and a couple friends decided to give Darkwind (his real name is Gabe by the way.. but I like to call him Gabby) a call, so first we dialed his cell. My friend was talking to him on the phone and the convo went something a little like this..
"Hey is this gabe."
"Yeah."
"That fucking fag Darkwind."
"Uh, who is this."
"I'ma f your mom real hard bro."
"Uh, who is this."
"Dude, who do you think you are?"
"Uh, who is this."
Gabes Mom: "Gabe who is that on the phone?"
"Hey is that your mother? Put her on the phone."
"No."
"Yeah I just heard your mother man, put her on the f'ing phone."
"Sorry you are hearing things."
"Dude I'm not f'ing stupid, get your f'ing mother on the phone."
"Uh, who is this."

The convo lasted a good 10minutes, and eventually Gabe hung up on us. Basically he was shitting his pants and he was lost for words that he kept repeating "Uh, who is this." Next we call his home phone.

"Where do you live bro?"
"Uh, why do you want to know, who is this.. how'd you get my number?"
"You gonna tell me or do you want me to tell you?"
"Uh, ok tell me. (thinking he doesn't know)"
"-Says the address-"
~~Silence~~

Sorry this happened a month ago so I don't remember the whole conversation verbatim but you guys get the jist of it. And then the rest of the convo you could pretty much imagine he was struggling to say anything.

So anyways.. just when I was about to forgive and forget about all this shit. I get Naru's account info because I'm just pro like that. Log in and go to his mog house. There I see on his f'ing mannequin my Chasuble +1 and mahatma gear.. along with my communion earrings, morion+1, -1 blood cursed gear, snow rings, aqua rings. All ready to be worn on his rdm which he was lving and at the time around lv60. Un-f'ing believeable. I didn't see any rng gear so I'm guessing Naru took my rdm gear, Darkwind my rng gear and they split my mnk gear along with everything else. I couldn't f'ing believe it.

These guys.. were probably the last people I should have suspected pulling off some s*** like this. And to think they were going to get away with it. Sorry, but you guys aren't pro enough to get away with something like this.. And it's more unbelieveable that Naru went along with Darkwind awesome idea. Even though they may be RL friends, I don't understand why he is buttbuddies with Gabe. Naru didn't even want to join mpk and quit Stelvia, but you know why he did?.. because of Gabe. And again he went along with Gabe's brilliant suggestion. I guess Darkwind giving Naru hush money was pretty damn appealing. Darkwind is the dumbest fag I know. But I must say Naru is pretty damn stupid too.. to do w/e Gabe tells him to do. Let me just say one thing to Naru, if you should be pissed at anyone.. it should be your best friend Gabe. The irony of it all is that they are going into college this year as freshmen and they are roommates.

So guess what happened?

This..






Eventually got my gaiters back and a lot of my eq back.. but when s*** like this happens, you aren't guaranteed all your stuff back. And the rest of Naru's gear, well I decided to give that out to many of my close friends ingame because I certainly have no use for the gil. Not to mention he had alky bracelets, which is worth 20mil now?.. and never sells on the ah, gave that away too haha.

Btw.. I don't care if its your RL friend, never give out your account info to anyone. That's why I can honestly say Dihtyrant.. that you were not hacked, but rathered cheated by entrusting your account info to others.

And that's all folks.. the biggest drama in the history of FFXI. I hope you enjoyed ;D

DoJ on Internet porn

Crazy what the government is up to now, making Internet pornography such a center of its focus. Why are they doing this when there are things like...oh, say, schools that deserve the funding a bit more, in my opinion. I'm not really much into politics, and I don't know if the Department of Justice even has anything to do with school budgets on a nation-wide scale, but I do know that taxpayers' money is going where it shouldn't be...

Sure, I can see how kids looking at porn on the Internet can be a problem. However, I think that's a problem that parents should be handling, not the government. Besides, if they want to make the Internet a better place, why don't they kill off the adware and the spam?

Job hunt spring '06

Hmm...today I applied at PC Land and the University Computer Service Center. I ended up on a wild goose chase trying to find the latter one, but I finally got my application in, haha. Now all I can do is pray that I get one of those jobs, or else I'll be applying at Wal-Mart and stuff in a few days.

Initial mp3 rip complete

Just finished ripping those last two CDs that came in the mail. 7.02 GB of a music library as of now. I'm excited to finally have it all done! Woohoo! =D Good night!

Kyle Foley moves out

Well, I helped my roomate, Kyle, move out today. He moved here to get closer to a girl that he was interested in, and since it's now clear that she has no interest in him, he has no reason to stay. I'll have a new roomate on Feb. 15th. It'll be some dude from the Netherlands. O.o Until then, I get some quality alone-time; woohoo.

Initial mp3 rip almost complete

Well, I've got two CDs coming in the mail that were sun-damaged that I couldn't rip, but I'm finished ripping all the CDs that I currently have. 6.98 GB worth of music. That's 3.6 days. 87 hours, 23 minutes, and 3 seconds. I think I have enough to keep me entertained for a while!

Initial mp3 rip progress

4.94 GB...almost done. huff puff pant pant

Sony CD DRM

Hmm... ripping CDs to create my mp3 collection is such a long and boring task. I'm up to 3.48 GB now. Teaching myself how to get around copy protections was sure fun. Some of those copy-protected CDs install rootkits on your computer without your permission. That and your CD's software communicates to Sony via the Internet every time you play it.

Using spyware is definitely not a justified way to control piracy. Yet another strike against Sony in my book! Definitely don't blame the artists; it's not their fault. Some artists, such as Switchfoot and Dave Matthews Band, are opposed to the copy-protection measures and have posted ways around it.

My life in fall 2005

I haven't written in forever, so here is a nice, big update. Of course, as most people who read this blog (which is absolutely no one by now, haha) know, my family moved to Texas at the beginning of July. I took that month and relaxed. I didn't have a job or anything.

I went back to school on my first semester of academic probation. The spring semester of '05 was especially difficult for me, you see... I had to take Digital Design (for the second time) and another object-oriented programming class. These classes took up all my time, and I just didn't manage my assignments or projects very well. The software that I was required to use in Digital Design is crappy, to put it nicely, so I ended up not finishing any of my projects in that class, despite me neglecting other classes' work to try to work on them.

Well, of course I had to take Digital Design in fall '05 yet again. This time, I knew how to work the software, as I had spoken with my professor about it. I also had the lovely object-oriented programming class, a signals & systems class, and technical writing. Digital Design yet again took up a huge portion of my time. The programming class took up another huge portion. I ended up not being able to finish my projects in the programming class since I gave it second priority to Digital Design, so I withdrew. I did set aside every Tuesday for Technical Writing, so I got a good grade in that class. Signals and Systems turned out badly because of a horrible teacher and concepts that I had a really hard time grasping (mathematical symbols confuse me). To sum up my fall '05 semester, I had no social life and I ended up .06 points away from where I needed to be to get off probation.

My Thanksgiving Break was nice, though. I went to my old friend Ralph Steinert's house back in Suffolk and got to see old friends and just hang out. I got to read the second Eragon book, which was really good. Thanksgiving dinner was cooked by Ralph's brother Joe, and it was definitely awesome.

Christmas Break I went back to Texas to see my family. When I got the news that I was put on academic suspension for this spring (so I can't take classes), we had a short time of distress, but other than that the break was nice. Christmas was awesome. My grandma came down from Tulsa to spend it with us. I got an iPod Nano and my old Spyderco Endura back that I lost over the summer. I got clothes and CDs and candy and stuff, too. New Years Eve my whole family watched March of the Penguins. It was the first New Years Eve I've had anything alcoholic, too; I had a nice, tall glass of Guiness Draught. Spending the evening with the family was nice, but the penguin movie was not-so-hot. I love Morgan Freeman and all, but you can't just have him narrate a documentary and call it a movie worthy of theatres and DVDs.

Also over break I quit FFXI and switched to World of Warcraft. I switched to World of Warcraft for a number of reasons... FFXI requires me to set aside huge chunks of time to get anything at all accomplished. Everything is group-oriented, so you'd have to wait for these groups to form, whether it be for leveling, quests, monster-hunting... I never really had time to play anymore. Also it was difficult to find enough people willing to help with certain things that I'd want to get done, like the Chains of Promathia missions. Ugh. On top of these things, Square Enix has horrible customer relations. Maybe it has to do with being a Japanese company, I dunno, but that's no excuse in my book. In December they released a patch that made leveling solo as a Beastmaster extremely inefficient. I was a Beastmaster. Beastmaster was the "solo job"; no parties will invite one for leveling. I picked Beastmaster so I could level on my own time so I wouldn't have to set aside such huge chunks of time. Well, this change caused a huge uproar with almost all the Beastmaster veterans including me. We all sent in complaints and suggestions to fix their mistake, but they didn't listen or even address us. Big mistake... That was the last straw, so I quit and took my friends with me.

Oh yeah! Funny thing that I forgot to mention. On my way to Blacksburg from Suffolk after Thanksgiving Break, I got my first speeding ticket. I called the court and payed for it the very next day, on November 28th. Well, I got a letter in the mail before Christmas Break saying that the girl didn't put my information into the system correctly, so I had to call her back. I finally got a hold of her on December 28th and gave her what she needed, and all was good...supposedly. Well, I get back to Blacksburg from Texas and I see a letter from DMV saying my license is suspended for not paying! Argh! If I sent them a check, would they have ripped it up? Was this a joke? Well, I called the court again and told them that the fault wasn't mine, and they said they fixed it. I am going to run up to DMV tomorrow and see if my license is back in order.

Right now I'm looking for a job or two to keep me busy and alive during my semester off. I'll be taking classes again starting summer.

Well, goodbye for now! Maybe now that I don't have such a huge update to write I will not be afraid of visiting my own blog and updating it again.