Peasant Cube

Recently I've been playing with my friend's cube and it's a lot of fun! Basically a cube is when you take like all the best cards in Magic and throw it into a box, shuffle them up, and play with them. Generally you look for 7 other friends and draft with them, but there's a lot of different things/formats you can play with them. The more I played with his cube, the more I wanted one for my own. Unfortunately I can't afford all the crazy cards used in regular cubes, but the other week I discovered that people like to make Peasant Cubes and Pauper Cubes that only use commons and uncommons. I thought this idea was perfect for someone poor like me! I traded with a couple friends and got as many cards as I could. Right now it's like 90% done. I haven't spent too much money on it, but I'm looking for more cards to add to it right now. I used this list as reference:

http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=140278

(FNM9) Thursday Night Magic at Superstars

Technically this isn't FNM, but it's my substitute for it.

This is kind of a late blog, but I've been busy and haven't had a chance to blog. Since friday was christmas eve, I knew I wasn't going to be able to draft. Two weeks ago my friend told me that there was going to be a $10 draft at Superstars in San Jose and invited me to join him mentioning that we could carpool. Seemed like a good idea so I agreed to go. Come thursday, we all (my friend and I and four of his other friends) decided to meet up around 2:00pm to cube draft before we headed out to San Jose. When we finished cube drafting, one of the guys had to go home and the other three said they were just going to play test their extended decks. Since I was the only one drafting, my friend decided to bail out on us and wanted to go hang out with his "other friends".

"What other friends?!" I asked. I was actually asking it in a literal sense, but everyone thought I was teasing him implying that he had no friends and they chuckled. Everyone else was really disappointed and they tried to convince him to still go with us to San Jose. Before my friend actually left, he gave me some free cards I needed for my deck and everyone else went outside except for the guy who needed a ride home (from my friend). My cellphone rang, and it was one of the guys, "Hey Tim! Tell (the guy who needed a ride home) that you're gonna show him something REALLY COOL. But in order for him to see it you both have to go outside the house. But DON'T tell (my friend)!" 

"Don't tell (my friend)???" I asked. I didn't know I was supposed to be playing along...

"NOO YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO SAY THAT OUT LOUD NOW HE KNOWS." My friend sitting across the table from me started laughing. All three of us went outside to see everyone in my friends car. They were stealing his car! Haha, they were going to try to use his car to get him to join us at San Jose, but it didn't work. It was funny seeing the guys mess around with each other, but my friend ended up leaving anyways. So then we were all like, "Now what...?" After like ten minutes of thinking we decided to still go to Superstars anyways. I was okay with it, but I wasn't so ecstatic about drafting alone out there. Oh well.

On our way there, we stopped by at Wendy's and bought a TON of burgers. I didn't want to spend too much money, but I ended up pitching in $8 for the food and for gas money.. Oh well, the food was quite filling. 

When we got there, the other guys went and did there own business as I got in line to sign up for the draft. Surprisingly enough, I saw my OTHER friend standing in line as well. The one I always go to Madfish with after friday night drafts. It was quite the coincidence because neither of us have gone to Superstars for months. He was there to play Legacy. After I signed up for the draft he offered to give me a ride home. Being acquainted with the guys who drove me there, he told them they could leave early and that he would give me a ride home instead. Pretty nice of him, eh? Anyways on with the draft.

Most of the people there were white. Just something I happened to notice.. I'd say about half of the people there were new players as well. Or just inexperienced (like me). From what I heard though, the drafters at Superstars are better than at C&J's (where I normally draft). 

I first picked a Chimeric Mass questioning its power. Didn't seem like it would do me much, but I figured I would give it a shot. My second pick was an Arrest so I was hoping to lean towards white. Sometime during the draft I was passed yet another Chimeric Mass, which was pretty cool. Infect cards were floating around like crazy. Literally no one went infect. It was quite a shame. Had I forced it, I might've ended up with a decent deck. Pick's 12 13 and 14 of pack one I got Lumengrid Drake, Sky-Eeel School, and some other blue card. They're not super amazing or anything, but at that point I was thinking "Woah, blue is WIDE open."  In packs 2 and 3, I proceeded to draft white and artifacts occasionally grabbing a blue card. I also greedily took two Shatters which are very splashable. I think I pass like two or three Turn to Slags. I kind of regret it, but I didn't have the mana to support the double red so it wasn't worth taking. My deck ended up like this:

Lands (16):

8 Plains

5 Island (Should've been 6.. I think my deck got a little messed up here because I dropped it in my room..)

3 Mountain

Creatures (11):

2 Auriok Sunchaser

2 Kemba's Skyguard

1 Silver Myr

1 Trinket Mage

1 Lumengrid Drake

1 Sky-Eel School

1 Palladium Myr

1 Neurok Replica

1 Snapsail Glider

Other Spells (13):

2 Chimeric Mass

2 Glint Hawk Idol

2 Origin Spellbomb

1 Arrest

1 Tumble Magnet

1 Bonds of Quicksilver

1 Strider Harness

1 Turn Aside

2 Shatter

The Chimeric Masses, Glint Hawk Idols, and Origin Spellbomb pretty much count as creatures too.

Round 1: 

My first opponent was a young white man who seemed to be happy about life. He kept going off about how good the draft was. He managed to pull out a Wurmcoil Engine and Koth the Hammer, so he pretty much got the two best booster packs from the box. Unfortunately, such amazing cards were placed in the wrong hands. His deck was a wreck. A new player I presume because his strategies were equivalent to that of a casual player. He put in cards that he thought were pretty "sweet" only in specific situations. He had two Goblin Gavaleers and two Echo Circlets, but never used them together. He never attacked with the Golbins either. He had almost zero removal and Turn to Slag in his sideboard. He had an Ichorclaw Myr, but that was his only infect card. He also had Grafted Exoskeleton in his deck based off the fact that it can win games alone. It didn't help him at all. He didn't know how to properly use Koth, and merely used his first ability to untap a mountain every turn before I killed him with my fliers. He had three Clone Shells, but all they did was play mind games. He also had a Bloodshot trainee with NO ways to pump him. I don't understand.. He almost won game 1 with Wurmcoil Engine alone, but I had so many fliers that I was able to outdo the lifelink, and I had enough chumps as well as Neurok Replica to stall until I killed him. He even equipped the Grafted Exoskeleton to the Wurmcoil hoping to get 8 poison counters on me, but it didn't work. 1-0

Round 2: 

Yet another white man, except this guy sounded like a cowboy! His deck was black with white and blue I think. Game one I started off with a two land hand of the wrong colors. I never drew another land.. Game two, I had plenty of mana, but then it quickly became too much. Slight mana flood gave me a hard time keeping up with his decent amount of removal. It's a shame when one loses to bad luck.. 1-1

Round 3:

My final opponent was a white lady who was acquainted with the guy I played in round two. She also had a sort of happy aura to her. Just by the way she played one could kind of tell she was somewhat new to the game, although it sounded like she knew what she was talking about at times. She was playing Red White and a splash of something else I think.. Mostly redwhite though. Game 1 I started off with a fairly weak hand so I Chimeric Massed for 3. She was surprised at the low number, but it got its beat on until we traded. Then I played a second one for 6. Luckily for me I had more fliers than her, so I outraced her. Game two she got Glint Hawk with Sylvok Lifestaff and beat me pretty hard with it. Game three, I three for one'd her when she tried swinging with Auriok Sunchaser (with Metalcraft) and a Myr with Sylvok Lifestaff. I had one mountain open. Palladium Myr and Lumengrid Drake Untapped. I blocked the Sunchaser with the Drake and the Myr with the Palladium Myr. I then tapped it for mana and Shattered the Lifestaff making both the myr and the Sunchaser 1/1's causing them to die. She was completely baffled at the idea of tapping a creature after declaring it as a blocker. She thought it wasn't allowed and called for a judge. When she refused to accept it even though everyone surrounding her said it was allowed, I couldn't help but think that she HAD to be a new player. She had a pretty solid board, but nothing to block my fliers. 2-1

I walked away with two booster packs. Not too bad I guess. 10 dollar draft, 3 rounds, no top 4 and a lot of gas. Not completely worth it, but still fun nonetheless. I think what my deck really needed was more removal. Afterwards, my friend and I decided to eat at Venus Cafe on our way home. I was a little concerned about spending another 8 dollars for food, but I brushed it off and sucked it up. All in all it was a fun night and a fine substitute for FNM.

Kusudama

From Wikipedia:

The Japanese kusudama (薬玉; lit. medicine ball) is a paper model that is usually (although not always) created by sewing multiple identical pyramidal units (usually stylized flowers folded from square paper) together through their points to form a spherical shape. Alternately the individual components may be glued together.

One day in the library, my friend and I were looking up random videos on youtube and for no apparent reason we started watching origami tutorials. We happened to come across some kusudama videos. They looked pretty cool, but I wasn't entirely impressed by them at first. My friend decided to make one for his girlfriend and all my other friends said that it had outdone anything that I have ever made. I didn't tell them, but I took a little offense to it. At the end of the semester I came across an entire shelf of different types of origami papers at Daiso, so I picked up some random ones and decided to make a kusudama myself using a youtube tutorial. It took me a LOT longer to make it than I thought.

The video said you could either make 5 petal flowers all the way around and it would require 60 units or modules or whatever. But then it also showed a larger and better looking version where each 5 petal flower is surrounded by a 6 petal flower. I wanted to make that one! It ended up taking 91 modules.

Here's when I first started making the modules. I was using pink, yellow, and green flower patterned paper from Daiso. As you can see here I already have about 5 modules done on the left. I made some practice ones just to make sure I knew how to do it on the right using some post-it note size origami paper.

I actually didn't know how many modules it would take total and each pack of paper came with 60 sheets, so I started putting the kusudama together after I made the first 60 modules. I tried my best the alternate colors, but with flowers having an odd number of petals it was really difficult to do. Each little nub sticking out of each module attached to another module. It was sooo tedious!

Here's the result! Look it's my christmas tree! As you can see, each 5 petal flower is attached to a 6 petal flower. I spent 1-5 minutes on each module (depending on what I was doing at the same time), out of 91 modules, so that's a few hours total. And then it just took hours to put it all together. Doing a little bit every other day, I spent like 2 weeks putting it together haha, I guess I'm just lazy. It looks flippin sweet though!

I don't want to embed the tutorial video because it's not really important, but here's the link if anyone's interested in learning how to make it themselves.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tV1R3OJOvvk

Is it bad that I'm atheist, but celebrate Christmas?

Because I love Christmas! A lot of thoughts go through my head when I think about religion, but to be honest.. Those thoughts don't come in complete sentences.. I just can't pull all of my thoughts together the way I want them to. If anyone ever wanted to discuss religion with me, I would fail at contributing to the conversation. If anyone ever wanted to debate about it, I would lose.

FUCK THE POLICE

THEY'RE JUST A BUNCH OF ASSHOLES WHO HAVE NO RESPECT.

I have zero tolerance for adults who show no respect.

I wanted to refrain from using such profanity on the internet, but sometimes it's unavoidable. There's adrenaline rushing through me right now and I'm just... Really pissed...

I was at my friend's house giving her her christmas present from me. Apparently before I went she had called her mom a bunch of times just simply trying to get a hold of her, but the mom thought it was something urgent so she called the police. Paranoid, much? I guess some moms are just like that.

I'm assuming the police station asked who specifically was supposed to be at the house, and the mom specified my friend and her sister. I guess she didn't know I was visiting..

At some point, someone began banging on the door. Like BANGING. Unnecessarily hard. I sat still and let my friend answer the door. Outside was two Caucasian police officers. My friend tried going outside to talk to them, but they waltzed right through the door without question. They immediately began to scan the house with flashlights raising their voices with attitude ordering every person in the house to sit on the couches. My friend had a look of confusion and her sister was bawling in tears. I stayed as calm as I could as I casually asked one of the officers, "Did the alarm go off?" because the  house is armed with an alarm that will call the police station if a door is opened while armed. A similar system was set-up at my old workplace. Anyways, they asked about two or three times to my friend who was in the house. They even asked me once, but ignored my answer. Why did they ignore my answer? Because the more aggressive looking officer turned to his partner and said, "The mom said only the daughters are supposed to be home. HE'S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE."
OKAY SHERLOCK. YOU'RE FUCKING COOL. FUCK YOU.
Upon hearing that I immediately thought to myself, 'My friend's mom fucking called the police on me? That can't be right, this is ridiculous.'
The officer kept telling his partner that I wasn't supposed to be there. He even told my face that I wasn't supposed to be there. WE GET IT SHUT THE FUCK UP.
As I sat there in denial, one of the officers approached me and said, "Do you have ID on you?" and I responded "Yeah..."
Apparently they didn't hear me so he quickly asked again. "ID! DO YOU HAVE ID ON YOU?"
Getting angered by such tone, I responded "YES" in a firm voice.
"GIVE it to me." The officer said. At this point I was pissed.
I don't like to make a big scene in situations like this, so I slowly pulled out my wallet and slid out my driver's license as casually as I could. The officer quickly stepped back, pulled out some index cards, and a pen. He proceeded to write ALL of my information down as he reported it to the police station on his walkie-talkie. He then asked my friend for all of her information and repeated the same procedure. Why didn't they ask the crying sister for hers? What were they thinking? That I'm some sort of sex offender? What the fuck is wrong with these cops?
During all commotion, my friend's grandmother and their little cousins walked through the door. The kids ran around oblivious to the situation and the grandmother try to get involved with the situation but it didn't seem like it was helping because she couldn't speak english. After my friend and the grandmother tried their best to explain the situation the partner finally said to the other officer, "I think it's alright, it's just a friend."
At first it sounded like the aggressive officer didn't want to accept such an idea, but he eventually said, "Okay" to his partner. As soon as he said that though, he turned to me and said, "But YOU gotta go. You're not supposed to be here. You have to leave."
I sat there looking at him in confusion. I didn't give him an immediate response because I was trying to figure out why he was trying to kick me out of the house for something I DIDN'T DO.
"Come on buddy. You have to leave. You're not supposed to be here. The mother said you're not supposed to be here. Put your shoes on. Let's go."
At this point, I could feel my eyebrows drop. No longer in the confused state, I was now in the pissed state. I slowly stood up and my friend had finally gotten a hold of her mom. They weren't speaking in english so I couldn't understand, but the police eventually left. Outside there was a third officer who was female and three police cars crowding the neighborhood. We even approached the officers and my friend said her mom could talk to them on the phone, but they refused. Then she asked if I still had to leave. They said it was up to the mother. At that point I didn't even want to be there anymore. I was too mad to stay, and I didn't want my friend to see me pissed off. The fact that the officers showed such disrespect even AFTER they confirmed I wasn't some sex offender or stupid teenager trying to sneak into someone's house is what made me even more mad. I understand that they're just doing their jobs, but THEY GOTTA BE FUCKING DICKS ABOUT IT. FUUUCK.

Apparently the mom wasn't trying to kick me out at all. She didn't know I was there. She just thought her daughter was in an emergency due to the numerous missed calls. It's just that the time spent calling the police based off of an incorrect assumption could've been spent calling her own daughters figuring out what's wrong instead. Oh well, over-protective mothers will be over-protective mothers.

(Minecraft) Making a Train Station!

Okay so as I was trying to build my castle as I was last month, I eventually ran out of rocks. I figured okay, well I could just go down into my dungeon and start digging up random rocks clearing up massive amounts of space while collecting a ton of cobblestone, but then I figured that would be boring. So instead I decided to go out into the big world and explore a little. Too be honest I haven't explored much of my world at ALL. It's far to dangerous to walk around on the surface at any time of the day. It's too easy to get lost and once the sun goes down you're screwed.. Anyways, I tried not to stray too far from my castle. Found a couple minor dungeons, but not much, so I decided to walk a little further, but this time along the beach. I figured, okay as long as I follow the water, I could always follow it back. Venturing a little further into some woods chasing after some pigs I happened to come across a nice little cave. It consisted of a fairly large amount of coal and a few blocks of iron but not much else. As I was picking at all the coal I kept hearing the sounds of spiders and zombies. During the day time? I saw in a youtube video once that some guy was following the sounds of mobs by digging towards their growls and discovered dungeons that way, so I decided to do just that. After a couple minutes of digging I managed to find a hole with like 2 zombies, 2 spiders, and a 2 skeletons. GEEZ. After killing them I hopped in and discovered a MASSIVE dungeon. It took me days to get a decent amount of torches in. It was scary because it was SOOO deep!

It's probably hard to tell here, but imagine looking down a deep hole that's super dark. Falling down (and potentially dying) would be no joke! As you can see here, I took this picture after I torched up the entire upper area of the dungeon. I have yet to finish torching the deepest parts of it. The amount of ore to mine down there is amazing! 

I figured this would be a good way to collect some extra ore while picking up large amounts of rock at the same time. So that way, once I've collected a lot I can go back to building my castle. Unfortunately for me, The sun went down and I couldn't find my way home. The number of times I died between this dungeon and my castle was ridiculous! So I torched myself a pathway from the castle to the dungeon and then built a little home at the entrance to the dungeon.

Ah shoot I just realized I forgot to save the picture I took of my new little home, oh well. Too late to go back now, I've already made a ton of changes to it.

Walking back and forth between my castle to the dungeon started to become tedious so I came up with an idea one day while I was taking a shower. I do all my thinking when I take my showers. I decided to dig an underground cave from my castle to my dungeon and then put a railroad so I could travel back and forth with ease. It was a great idea, but not an easy task! I took just about all of the iron ingots I had saved up in my chest to make the railroad tracks. I wasn't too concerned about it though because it was a worthy investment for a good project. There's a ton more iron laying around inside the dungeon! 

Here's a little sample picture (above) of the deep narrow cave leading from my castle to my newly discovered dungeon.

At first I tried using Coal-powered Minecarts just like the old school trains! I figured, okay I want to be able to transport myself and items back and forth between the dungeon and my castle, so I decided to make a ghetto train. It consisted of a coal powered cart on each end with one storage cart and one empty cart in between. The reason why I had the power minecarts on the end was to push the train in both directions. The minecarts are only capable of pushing not pulling, so technically it's not actually a train because the carts aren't attached to eachother. Unfortunately it was extremely difficult to work the train because the coal carts only went in the direction you were facing when you put in a piece of coal so I was constantly receiving strange results. Also, pushing me, the storage cart, AND a second coal cart was an extremely heavy load, so the carts actually moved literally a fraction of how fast I could walk on my own two feet. After some internet research and youtube searches, I happened to come across Bob's Minecraft Tutorials which are specifically on the mine carts. After a lot of trial and error I was able to create a back and forth system using one railroad and the help of booster carts.

Bob's helpful tutorials can be found here.

Ok so the cart on the right is my main cart (referring to the picture above). When the button on the wooden plank in front of it is pressed, the electric wiring I set up switches the direction of of the railroad to the left causing the middle cart to come around and push the main cart. Ignoring the laws of physics, in Minecraft, when two adjacent carts ride along a railroad, they instantly reach maximum speed and travel for an extremely long distance (enough to get me all the way to my dungeon), regardless of upward slopes. So taking advantage of that, Minecraft users set two carts on adjacent looping tracks causing them to constantly ride in circles resetting to maxium speed whenever the two carts pass side by side. With the help of the electronics in Minecraft, I can change the direction of of railroads, so I set an additional track next to the center loop, so whenever I push the button, the middle cart moves over to that extra track causing it to ride adjacent to my main cart which then pushes me to my dungeon. Since that extra track leads back the middle track again, the cart just goes back to continuously looping forever and ever until I push the button again. The thing about the buttons is that they only stay pressed for about one second. The after that one second, the altered direction of the track returns to its normal state allowing the middle cart (aka booster cart) to loop again.

Here's what it looks like without the booster set up revealed.

Here's the interior of the booster area where the two carts constantly loop. The red dirt on the ground to the left is the wiring I was talking about. It leads to the back of the button on the wooden plank to the left (not shown). When the the button is pressed, the wire lights up (showing that power is being put into it) and that corner track the wire is touching switches to face the other direction so the cart rides onto that extra little track to the left to push my main cart on the track to the far left.

Here's what it looks like over on the dungeon side of the track. The booster carts are on the other side of the wall.

Here's what it looks like behind the wall, as you can see the layout for the booster carts is identical to that of the ones back at my castle.

This is the best angle I could get. The wooden plank at the back is where the button is. This one was a little trickier due to the direction the track was facing. I needed it to switch to the opposite direction this time so the redstone torch (right) constantly lights that path of wiring right there on the left. Since the wiring is constantly lit, it constantly forces the track to face in that direction. You can barely see the unlit wiring behind the wooden plank. Once the button is pressed, it lights that wire which then leads to the redstone torch. When power is put into a redstone, it turns it off, thus preventing any power going into the wiring adjacent to the redstone torches. And since no more power is going into the wire, it turns off, causing the track to switch back in the opposite direction momentarily (until the button becomes unpressed). That's when the booster cart goes onto the extra track giving my main cart a nice push back home to my castle. That's the magic of redstone torches, since they constantly provide power, unique results can be obtained with multiple setups of torches.

It was a little stressful, but I had a lot of fun making these basic railroad systems. I wanted to do something similar to that of what someone on youtube did. He put a pressure plate underneath where the main cart goes and set up what he called an "NAND Gate" where the booster cart would only come when both the pressure plate AND the button was pressed. But his NAND gate went to an RS NOR Latch which was even more complicated. I tried to make it, but it was too complicated for me. I don't know anything about circuits yet. Maybe after some engineering classes? Haha, maybe I can figure it out in the future. My next goal is to mine out some nice ore from deep in the dungeon while collecting plenty of cobblestone and then continuing on my castle!

Valse Irritation d'après Nokia

I found this girl on youtube playing this unique version of the Nokia ring tone on the piano by Marc Andre Hamelin. It's called Valse Irritation d'après Nokia. Basically the guy composed this waltz version of the song and would play it whenever someone's phone would go off. It actually sounds really nice! I managed to get the sheet music emailed to me from the girl playing it here:


I tried playing it myself and it's a LOT harder than it sounds. She makes it sound so easy!

(FNM8) How Do You Lose With That Deck?!

Yet another friday night draft. There was 11 people and unfortunately I ended up in the five-man pod. I was afraid it was going to suck, but luckily for me I was placed in one of the luckiest pods I'll ever be in! I don't want to sound like a jerk, but the two guys sitting next to me weren't very good. The guy to my left was alright, but the I knew the guy to my left wasn't very good. He was forcing his colors.. But then the two guys sitting across from me were forcing infect... but they were right next to each other... Fighting over the infect cards, cutting eachother off............. Ahem.. Anyways. The guy to my right was forcing blue for some odd reason. I'm not a cheater, but peripheral vision is inevitable. He was occasionally taking white cards but he passed me 3 Arrests. Had me wondering what he was taking over it... He definitely didn't want to go red when he passed me Oxidda Scrapmelter pack 1, Hoard Smelter Dragon and Shatter in pack 2, and a pack with Arc Trail and Galvanic Blast in Pack 3, as well as Cerebral Eruption. My P1P1 was Tempered Steel, so I tried my best to focus on artifact creatures. On pack 3 I took the Arc Trail first, but then the Galvanic Blast tabled. WHAT?! What was everyone else taking?! At that point I had like 8 or 9 removal spells in my pool, so I felt like taking a second Myr Galvanizer was more important for my deck than the Blast which is what I did, but I kind of regret it now. The guy to my left ended up taking the Blast.

Lands 16:
8 Mountain
8 Plains

Creatures 13:
1 Gold Myr
1 Silver Myr
1 Hoard-Smelter Dragon
1 Oxidda Scrapmelter
1 Golem Artisan
1 Palladium Myr
2 Myr Galvanizer
1 Myrsmith
1 Chrome Steed
2 Snapsail Glider (actually had 3 of these)
1 Vulshok Replica

Other Spells 11:
1 Tempered Steel
1 Arc Trail
1 Turn to Slag
1 Shatter
1 Cerebral Eruption
3 Arrest
1 Dispence Justice
1 Glint Hawk Idol
1 Origin Spellbomb

I actually had a True Conviction which I REALLY wanted to play REALLY badly, but my deck just didn't need it..

Round 1:
BYE. *Sad face* 1-0

Round 2:
This guy had a blue deck, but I don't remember if he had a second color or not. He definitely had a good deck because of his bombs, but my removal was too much. Game 1 He pulled off Platinum Emperion, but Oxidda Scrapmelter got in there. He also got his Steel-Hellkite out, but Shatter just happened to be chillin in my hand. Game 2, I started off strong, but he Voilition Reined my Hoard Smelter which I had to Arrest.. He then stablized with Platinum Emperion which he brought back with Salvage Scout after I Shattered it. He then proceeded to mass up Myr Propagators and swing for a LOT. He also had that blue guy that gives +1/+1 to blue creatures and has the ability to turn creatures blue. Unfortunately for me, Oxidda Scrapmelter was like.. 4th to last in my deck. I don't remember how game 3 went, but my removal got in there for the win. 2-0

Round 3:
The guy sitting to my left who took the Galvanic Blast. I think he was green and red. I don't remember how it played out, but I remember one of the rounds I got turn 2 Myr Smith, turn 3 Gold Myr, turn 4 Myr Galvanizer, turn 5 Tempered Steel. OUCH. 3-0

Round 4:
One of the guys fighting for infect at my table. He had a strong deck, but it was flimsy. Had he not picked up infect creatures, he would've had a much better deck. I saw Plague Stinger and Cyst Bearer along with some other infect stuff, but the rest of his deck was geared for normal damage.. Game 1 he pulled off Mimic Vat and was pummeling me with it while controlling the board with Trigon of Corruption. On the final stretch I managed to pull off Hoard Smelter Dragon with 8 mana on-board. I would've been able to kill both his Trigon AND the Mimic Vat, but dumb of me to block his attacking weenies followed up with Skin Render. Misplay lost me the game. Game 2 I avoided misplays and took the win (forgot how though). Game 3 I managed to barely win somehow. Can't.. Remember.. 4-0

WOAH 4-0? Second time I've ever gone 4-0 in my life! I was excited at the thought of actually winning the draft.

Top 4 Round 1:
The guy who had 5 Arrests last week. This week he drafted a similar deck. Red and White is really strong in Scars. Unfortunately for me he had answers to my bombs. His deck was filled with fliers and removal. In BOTH the games we played he Arrested my Hoard-Smelter Dragon and Revoke Existance'ed my Tempered Steel. I couldn't keep up in both games, and his score was 2-2! I was really mad at myself, but there's not much to say. Two similar decks and he had answers to mine. Unfortunately I never drew Arc Trail or Cerebral Eruption in either game. Those would've helped..
During the match my friend was like "How do you lose with that deck?!" *turns and calls for the store owner, then points at me* "Judge! He sucks!" hahahah

Overall it was a fun night, I was still proud of myself. Afterwards I went out to Venus Cafe with my friend and got Salmon & Seafood over Baked Rice. SO GOOOOD.

Kawasaki Rose

I totally forgot about uploading pictures for the first time I made the Kawasaki Rose. Was that on tumblr or here? I forgot. Well here's the pics:

The one of the left was my first attempt, which looks all wrinkly because I experimented with a lot of different things. The second attempt is on the right.

Here's what they look like from above.

I need to practice making these more. They're gorgeous! And I keep forgetting! 

Final Fantasy XIII Piano Collections!

I must be way behind on the times here because I just discovered that Final Fantasy XIII Piano Collections was released in July this year. I hadn't thought about it because they never made one for FFXII. I'm a huge fan of all of the piano collections, I listen to them all the time, and I try to play them too. I own the sheet music books for VII-X (7-10), but the songs are really difficult to play! Unfortunately it doesn't look like there's a book for XIII yet, but the songs sound amazing. Not as good as some of the previous piano collections, but still amazing nonetheless.

I managed to find it, and can be downloaded here.

Gettin Mah Poor On

Eating like a REAL college student. Yes.

Being lazy and unemployed, I'm poor as ever and it hurts! My left ass pocket has a sort of.. empty feeling to it... Almost literally.
A while back I came up with an idea while I was in the shower. I do all my thinking in the shower (and occasionally while I'm pooping). I once saw a video where a guy said that our generation with all of our technology and whatnot, don't ever sit down and think deeply anymore. But fear not! That's what my late-arrival-inducing-long-showers are for. Did that just make any sense? I'm just always late to things.. Well.. That, and my infamous long turd sessions. Well whatever, back on topic.
So I was taking a shower and I decided to remake something that I had eaten a long time ago. It was like instant noodles, except you pour out the water after cooking it and then pour the powder onto the bare naked noodles. It was some instant yakisoba dish from the local asian supermarket. It was actually really good, so I figured, what if I just make top ramen (worth what.. a quarter?) and pour out the water and then pour the powder onto the noodles just like how I did with the yakisoba thing? The idea lingered in the back of my head for a year or two until about a month ago.
My friends and I were chilling in the library one day at school and one of my friends was telling my other friend that she looked vietnamese (even though she was filipino). Upon hearing him, I turned and said, "WHAT? Okay, what about me. What do I look like?" I don't rememberwhat he said, but his guesses consisted of pretty much every asian ethnicity other than my own: chinese and filipino... I don't recall exactly what he said after that but I was eating a sandwich at the time and he said something along the lines of, "PSH, whatever, go back and eat your noodle sandwich." Obviously I was just eating a regular ole salami sandwich, but I guess that was his poor attempt at a playful jab of a racist comment. Afterwards, my friend and I were discussing what an actual noodle sandwich would be like and she laughed at the thought of it. But then I told her, "I'm gonna go home and make a noodle and you're gonna be jealous!" I was only half joking at the time, but when you're bored and hungry at home, what else are you supposed to do? And so I did just that.
I managed to find a Pancit Canton in my cabinet which is supposed to be like a filipino chow mein which is made the same way as that yakisoba I had years ago! So I made the noodles and tossed them into the heels of some wheat bread and it came out like this:

It was actually pretty good! I'm no food critic because I like almost everything, but here's what my first impression was like. The noodles were originally designed to be eaten alone and not within the bread surrounding it. Since bread and rice is usually used to balance out with other foods, the "dryness" of the bread actually took a lot from the original flavor from the noodles. I'm an absolute salt lover too. Had the bread been covered in butter, or if it was maybe garlic bread, or if the noodles were simply saltier, it would have tasted much better. I mean, don't get me wrong, it still tasted great, especially for my first try, but I saw a lot of room for improvement.

A week or two later I decided to take a second shot at it, except using the idea that came to mind in the shower. I made top ramen, except I only put in a dab of the powder so the noodles would at least soak up a little flavor. After that, I poured out all the water and poured the rest of the powder onto the noodles and mixed it inside the pot. It was a little more than the Pancit Canton so I tried my best to keep it all in one piece. It turned out like this:

Since there were more noodles, it was a little more difficult to eat, but really, it just makes it that much more fun to eat! Okay so this time it was the opposite of my first attempt. Top Ramen is meant to be eaten inside broth. So really, all that powder is supposed to go into the water, while the noodles only soak up a little bit of it. But when all that powder goes onto the noodles, it made it extremely overwhelming. Especially when I was trying to eat the excess noodles hanging off the side. The bread did a decent job balancing out the saltiness, but it was still really powerful. For me I loved it, because I loved salty foods, but for the average person, it was way too much. 

On a third try, I poured about half the packet onto the noodles, and I have to say, it tasted amazing. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture, but the only thing different about it was that I used actual normal pieces of bread. For now that will be my staple recipe until I find more or better ways to make it. Or even things to add to it. I was so excited making these sandwiches, afterwards, I wanted to give it a name like the Jose Sandwich or something, much better than that terrible name. Unfortunately, after a quick google search, I found out that there's already noodles sandwiches. Especially in Japan. Apparently Yakisoba Pan (a japanese noodle sandwich), is the equivalent to a good ole hot dog over here in the states. Oh well, it was a fun and silly experience. Mainly because I have absolutely NO knowledge of cooking whatsoever. Any full course gourmet dinner you request from me is coming straight from the microwave.

===

Recently on a trip to Marina Food I walked through what I consider to be the best isle in the entire store. The instant noodle isle. The number of different types of instant noodles they have packed in there is beyond amazing. I decided to pick up some random ones that caught my eye!

On the left we have some random seafood bowl which was actually my favorite of the four. Simply because of how salty it was. I actually had a couple canker sores in my mouth at the time. It was so spicy and salty, and the stinging and burning of the sores were so great that I thought my mouth was going to explode. But it was just THAT delicious. At some point, I think the sores were numbed to some extent from the excessive pain. Was that just because it hurt so bad? Or because it was so spicy? Or was it because eating spicy foods sometimes releases endorphins? According to wikipedia:

"The term endorphin rush has been adopted in popular speech to refer to feelings of exhilaration brought on by pain, danger, or other forms of stress,^[2] supposedly due to the influence of endorphins. When a nerve impulse reaches the spinal cord, endorphins are released which prevent nerve cells from releasing more pain signals. Immediately after injury, endorphins allow animals to feel a sense of power and control over themselves that allows them to persist with activity for an extended time.^{[citation needed]"}

Seems like a longshot, but hey, you never know! By the time I was swallowing all the broth, I felt invincible.

ANYWAYYYSSS. On the top and bottom of the picture we have Kung Fu. Really it was just any other kind of Top Ramen, except the name is just awesome. It actually came with a packet of oil along with the powder. Usually when my instant noodles comes with oil, I exclude it since its just.. bad for you. But I wanted the full Kung Fu experience so I just had to put it in. And to be honest, it made it taste THAT much better. I guess when it comes to food, the worse it is, the better.

On the right is instant Pho. How cool is that?! I swear it literally smelled like pho, and the broth tasted pretty accurate too! And it was like the mint leaves were ACTUALLY in there too! You could also kinda smell them! The noodles were a little lacking, but overall it was great.

Playing With My New Laptop

I started typing this way back in November but forgot to finish it. Woops!

===

Soo for black friday my mom generously bought me a laptop as an early christmas present! Spoiled I know. Much love to her. It's an HP dv6, 15.6" Screen, Intel core i3 processor 2.4 ghz (I think), 500 gb hdd 5400 rpm, 4gb RAM, ati Radeon 5650 (supposedly capable of running Crysis on medium-low), has a webcam that I don't know how to use O_o and other shtuff.

Back in high school I was totally against laptops because I felt that there was no point in having them when one could just get a superior desktop computer for the same price. As college came around, I noticed that SOO many people had laptops, and that I was always waiting in line to use the computers upstairs in the library with the other people who didn't have laptops. Midway through my first semester, I felt like it was almost imperative that I get a laptop of my own. Not just because everyone else had one, but because it was going to be THAT convenient. My mom was originally going to buy me one for christmas, but being chinese just like me, she had to hop on one of them black friday deals.

As soon as I got the laptop, I put starcraft 2 and minecraft on it! Starcraft is capable of running smoothly on low and medium-ish, but minecraft only gets like 30 fps on the lowest quality possible and it's really annoying.. Oh well, I still love my new laptop. What sucks the most is that the internet at school is kind of slow. Is it because so many other students are using it? I dunno.. But whenever I go onto starcraft at school, it says "waiting for server" and my opponents whine and cry about my lag. But hey, I would too if my opponent was lagging too. I can't even play against AI's without lagging out. The only times I successfully played starcraft at school without lag was in the evening. Maybe because less people are there using the internet? Does the number of people connecting to a wireless connection really affect the speed of it? I dunno.

So far I've tried using the webcam once, but the other person said it was blurry and I couldn't figure out how to adjust it..
The battery on my laptop only lasts 3 hours and will last a fraction of that if I'm playing starcraft, but it's not too big of a deal. Instead of standing in line for a computer at school, it's almost as if I'm standing in line for an electrical outlet instead now haha.

And so far, I haven't had any regrets about my laptop. It's so convenient!!! Thanks mommy!

EDIT: Okay I took pictures! It's actually like a dark-ish navy blue-ish. You can barely tell. Especially on the second picture where everything looks black. Bad lighting I guess because the entire inside part is also that dark navy blue color.

Busy Busy Busy

There's a few things I've wanted to blog about and I just logged onto blogspot to see that I have drafts of other blogs I haven't even finished yet. Geez! I guess I've been pretty busy lately. Well not really.. It's just that going out and having things to do take priority over blogging. I only blog when I'm absolutely free. I'll try to get some blogs in today, but most likely tomorrow!

(FNM7) First Time Going Infect

So tonight I was actually debating whether I should actually go out and draft or not, but I decided to anyways. I started off the draft with a Steel Hellkite which was awesome. My second pick was a Snapsail Glider because nothing else in the pack was good. After that I was passed a Grasp of Darkness. Since I was in black at that point I proceeded to grab an Exsanguinate and Bleak Coven Vampires. After that, I was faced with a really shitty pack so I just grabbed a Vedalken Certarch fearing that I might have to go blue. But then, pretty late in the pack, I saw a Plague Stinger. I was already passing some mediocre infect cards so I thought, hey maybe I can go infect for the first time! The idea came pretty late, so I was struggling for creatures, but it worked out pretty well in the end. Luckily, I pulled a Hand of Praetors, pack 3!

Lands 17:
9 Swamp
8 Forest

Creatures 15:
1 Hand of Praetors
3 Plague Stinger
1 Tangle Angler
1 Necropede
2 Blight Mamba
1 Ichor Rats
1 Fume Spitter
1 Ichorclaw Myr
2 Contagious Nym
1 Steel Hellkite
1 Corpse Cur

Other Spells 8:
2 Trigon of Corruption
1 Throne of Geth
1 Grasp of Darkness
1 Livewire Lash
1 Slice in Twain
1 Untamed Might
1 Darksteel Axe

Round 1:
My first opponent looked to be a fairly new player. He was playing blue green... something... All I saw was Wall of Tanglecord. I guess infect was too fast for him. 1-0

Round 2:
My second opponent was the guy sitting next to me. He was asian and appeared to be an adult, but I was unsure of his age. He was definitely a player I've never seen before though. Apparently every one of us surrounding him was going in different colors, so he got all the white. He ended up with 2 Arc Trails, 5 Arrests, Galvanic Blast, and Dispense Justice. Wait. FIVE ARRESTS??? We had the police up in there! Game 1 I was on the draw with a 1 land hand and five 2-drops. That meant I had 2 turns to draw a second land. Seems okay, right? Not. Didn't draw a land for more turns than I could count in kindergarten. Game two the same exact thing happened to him. Game three I faced  another 1 land hand and a few 2-drops. I decided to give it another shot. Unfortunately I faced the same problem. I couldn't catch up. The guy ended up going 5-1.
1-1

Round 3:
This guy was also asian and I once again have never seen him before. I guess it's normal to expect to see new players every now and then. Apparently, this guy won the draft! He was mono white, I believe. Game one I started off by stabilizing with infect creatures, until he played Strata Scythe. Since he was mono white, whatever he equipped became super big. Luckily for me, I managed to pull off Steel Hellkite which proceeded to wipe his entire board. I ended up winning with damage.. Game two he pulled off his Strata Scythe again and I was struggling with it until he played his Indomitable Archangel.. Then he just.. won.. Game three, my opening hand had Grasp of Darkness and Slice in Twain. He went turn 3 Strata Scythe, turn 4 Archangel, which I killed both instantly. Since both of his bombs were gone, I was able to pull off a victory. 2-1

Round 4:
The same guy that went red and black last week was red and black again this week. Did he force it? His deck was pretty fast though. Game one my creatures get too overwhelming for him, game 2, I fail to keep up, then game 3 I see a 1 land hand again.. Except this time I mulliganed! Into another 1 land hand... On the play.. Worth going to 5? I dunno... Everyone else said so.. I ended up losing.. 2-2

Since my first loss was 4-0 and my second loss was 3-1, I luckily made it into top 4 again! I just realized that I've been getting into top 4 more often lately. I'm glad because it shows improvement!

Top 4 Round 1:
The popo guy again. Mr. 5 Arrests. Game 1 I start off with 3 swamps, Plague Stinger, Contagious Nim and Ichor Rats. They were easily stopped by an Arc Trail and an Arrest, and then every card I drew after that was green. I lost the turn after I finally drew a Forest.. Game 2 I played with about 4 or 5 cards total. Why? Because I was mana flooded... Mana screw, then flood? This had to be the unluckiest day ever. I was mana screwed SO many times tonight. And the top 4 was the only round I actually won a die roll out of the 5 rounds I played.. Unlucky night I guess..

I still had a lot of fun nonetheless. It was my first time drafting infect and I really enjoyed it.

Improv Sucks

So today was the first day for ceremonial speeches in speech class. At the beginning of the semester we were given the name of a random classmate and at the end of the semester we're supposed to give a ceremonial speech that presents an award to that random person. Then the person who gets called up has to improvise an impromptu acceptance speech. I intentionally set myself to go second on all the speech dates so I could use all the students who went first as reference, so my turn to give a speech isn't until Thursday. Unfortunately for me, I was given an award TODAY and I didn't know what to say!!! I was supposed to give a 60 second acceptance speech, and it sounded super easy at first, but once I got up there I swear everything in my mind went blank. It's usually pretty easy for me to talk, but when it comes to improvising on the spot, I crumble. Literally. The second person to go up today was going off about his "High-Spirits" award, and I wasn't really paying super close attention, but then once he started listing that his particular person had done all the things that I had done, I thought "OH SHIT" and immediately started trying to think of things to say. Unfortunately, the guy's speech ran short so I was up front and center almost instantly. When I got up there I blew off the usual, "I would like to thank my parents and the guy who gave this to me blah blah blah" That covered about 15 seconds... Then I looked at the floor and subconsciously let out a big "UUUUUUUHHHHHHHHH" and randomly said, "...and my friends and family..." but then I thought, 'Wait.. I already said my parents... whatever.." Everyone was chuckling knowing that I didn't know what to say, I tried to play along the best I could, but I couldn't think of anything to say! After that I looked up , bit my lip and said, "uuuhh.. YEEEAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH...................... THANKS!" and sat down... Hopefully 5 points doesn't impact my grade... I hope I at least got a 1 on it..

(FNM6) Just Another Friday

Probably a boring blog post, but hey, I still want to get all my drafts on blogs and I can at least talk about my day. I was awakened by my dad this morning to help him fix cars, so I didn't get 8 hours of sleep, but it's okay. Today was a great casual day overall. It was neither boring nor exciting. Well actually, it had its moments. I spent the first third of my day helping my dad out, which wasn't that bad at all. No tedious jobs today, and I just made this month's gas money. We went out to Eric's Deli Cafe for lunch to get some sandwiches and they were delicious! It was expensive, but its nice to sit down at a Deli for a sandwich every once in a while. Second third of my day, I spent at my friends house playing around with her ukulele. Its a fun, affordable instrument that one could easily fool around with. A lot of chord progressions for many songs can be found all over the internet. I'm no singer, but I still find it something fun to play around with. On a random side note, for the same price or maybe a little less, I could get a melodica. I think I would have a ton of fun fooling around with one of those!! But yeah, anyways, once the sun went down, I went on down to the card store.

===
In my first pack, it was a choice between Grasp of Darkness, Turn to Slag, and Dispense Justice. Turn to Slag is a sorcery, and Dispense Justice is rather conditional, but both are in my favorite colors. Grasp of Darkness is more flexible and is capable of killing a lot of creatures including ones with regeneration and that are indestructible. Unfortunately it costs double black which makes it less splashable and I don't have any experience in black to be honest. I picked it anyways since it clearly seemed to be the best pick in the pack. Pick 2 of pack 1 I saw a bunch of mediocre cards and a Plague Stinger. I thought, "Hey, I have a Grasp of Darkness and I see a Plague Stinger potentially being the best card in the pack, maybe I could go infect for the first time!" So I grabbed the Plague Stinger, ready to push my way to infect. If the guy next to me passed a Plague Stinger, then I figured he's probably not thinking about drafting infect, especially after passing that. I guess I was cheating, but on the third pack, I saw at the corner of my eye the person next to me pick a Corpse Cur. I didn't understand why he did that. In fact it really screwed things up. He ended up drafting 3 Corpse Curs and everything else non-infect... He saw them as an infinite loop of blockers... But yeah.. anyways, I didn't see many infect cards anyways, so I avoided all signs of infect cards. I ended up staying in black though. All of pack 1 and half of pack 2 (just like last week), I spent drafting removal. Which is great, but then halfway through pack 2, I looked at my pool and realized that I had 6 artifacts, 2 Smiths, and no bombs or good beater creatures. End of pack 2 was too late for anything worthwhile, so pack 3 became a desperate pack looking for creatures and artifacts. End of pack 2 and all throughout pack 3 I started seeing a lot of white cards I wanted REALLY bad, but I didn't want to switch at the last second. It just wasn't worth it. I didn't have the proper artifacts for Auriok Sunchaser and I literally had zero equipment for Sunspear Shikari, so I just ignored all the white cards. Well actually, I grabbed a Glint Hawk Idol in one pack because the rest of the cards were crap. I didn't mind splashing for it because I had a Horizon Spellbomb and Gold Myr. My deck this time turned out being similar to last week's deck. Plenty of removal with mediocre creatures to get through.. I feel bad for drafting Mindslaver and Prototype Portal.. Obviously a terrible combo... Should've just grabbed something I needed instead.. Those ended up being the only rares I got my hands on throughout the entire draft too. My deck had no bombs in it!

Lands 16:
1 Plains
7 Mountain
8 Swamp

Creatures 14:
1 Oxidda Scrapmelter
1 Embersmith
1 Ogre Geargrabber
1 Flameborn Hellion
1 Leaden Myr
1 Gold Myr
1 Golem Artisan
1 Rust Tick
1 Vulshock Replica
1 Blistergrub
1 Painsmith
1 Necrogen Scudder
1 Fume Spitter
1 Skinrender

Other spells 10:
1 Instill infection
1 Grasp of Darkness
1 Exsanguinate
1 Glint Hawk Idol
1 Trigon of Rage
1 Panic Spellbomb
1 Horizon Spellbomb
1 Trigon of Corruption
2 Shatter

Round 1:
My first opponent was a skinny white man with glasses. He was wearing one of those jackets that say Geek Squad on them. I've seen trucks like those around Walmart before, but I'm not entirely sure what it is. He was playing green/white myrs. I our first game, I misplayed by playing Flameborn Helion and swinging into his Darksteel Juggernaut thinking it wasn't indestructible....... It was a close game, but he got it. Game 2 I don't rememeber, but I won. Game 3, I got mana screwed and stuck on two lands for the LONGEST FRICKEN TIME. I was begging for mana so bad. I only got like 1 damage to him throughout the entire game. He was never able to kill me though. My removal and small creatures held off until I drew my fourth land and was able to play Skinrender, Oxidda Scrapmelter, and Trigon of Corruption. Once I started pulling those babies out, I was slowly starting to stabilize until he pulled out his Darksteel Juggernaut.. It pulled me down to like 6 life. On supposedly the last turn, instead of drawing a card I placed my top card on the table in front of me. I asked him if I could make the Juggernaut's toughness zero, if it would die or not. He said yes, so I slowly peaked at my next draw. Grasp of Darkness. The topdeck of faith! -4/-4 to the 4/4 indestructible creature hehehehehe. After that our boards were wiped. He was poking at me with a Necropede and a Myr. Luckily for me the judge called time of the round and he couldn't kill me in time. I had like 2 life and 4 poision counters.. Whew! To be honest, it felt like my deck was fully capable of handling his, but I was having strange land problems for some reason. 0-0-1

Round 2:
My next opponent was a young white boy who was fairly chubby and wore glasses. He had a monotone and dull voice, so it sounded the same whenever he would express anger, sadness, or sarcasm. Mostly angry sarcasm... He kept complaining about how much his deck sucked, and sucked it did. He was running blue/green infect/proliferate. I got temporarily mana screwed in one of the games, but he literally didn't play anything for the first 4 or 5 turns so I was able to catch back up. Infect decks are supposed to win extremely fast. I 2-0ed him pretty quickly, although I did make one huge mistake in the second game. He swung with Tangler Angler with Bladed Pinions equipped to it and then used Twisted Image on it. It was really easy to tell he got excited because it was a combo that green/blue infect decks love and he literally threw the instant on the table and raised his voice tenfold. The 5 poison counters weren't that big of a deal considering I was at zero counters, and I could already smell victory around the corner. The mistake was that I had Fume Spitter on the field.. Had I realized it, that combo would've been toast.. 1-0-1

Round 3:
This opponent was a fairly large islander looking guy with spiked hair. He had droopy eyes and a very sarcastic personality. He was running blue/red aggro with practically NO artifacts. Just bombs.. Both games went extremely fast. My two Shatters and Scrapmelter were completely useless. Game one I started off pretty strong, but he beat on me with a Kuldotha Phoenix to a fairly low life, then played Hoard Smelter Dragon.. Game two I kept a hand with 5 lands, Shatter, and Oxidda Scrapmelter. I saw zero artifacts come out, and once his Hoard Smelter Dragon hit the board I ended up Scrapmelting my own Trigon of Rage just so he couldn't pump... It was pointless anyways, he swept me to the ground. For some reason this guy's deck always counters mine. Last time I played him he had that Asceticism (see FNM4)... 1-1-1

Round 4:
I ended up playing against my friend who was 1-2 in this round. He was running blue white fliers which looked pretty scary, but for some reason his deck just didn't work out for him. I thought it was really good though! He had 2 Arrests, 2 Sky-Eel Schools, 2 Glint Hawks, 3 Kemba's Skyguards, Steel Hellkite, I think 2 Razor Hypogriffs, etc etc. It looked scary when I saw him building the deck but he seemed to be in a pretty bad mood. The deck just wasn't working out for him for some reason. I 2-0ed him extremely fast, I don't even remember how it worked out. 2-1-1

Since I was 2-1-1 and so was the other guy who I drew with, we both made it to top 4! In excitement we cheered and gave a loud high five in celebration.

Top 4 Round 1:
It was me against the guy who was 4-0 and on the other side was the guy I drew with and the guy that drafted 3 Corpse Curs for infinite blockage... Why couldn't I play against one of them?! Anyways, my opponent was a filipino guy running the same colors as me, but better. He had two Arc Trails, two Turn to Slags, 3 Bleak Coven Vampires, Precursor Golem, Rusted Relic, two Chrome Steeds, Skinrender, and a bunch of other stuff to help out his deck. It was too aggressive for me to handle. I managed to get a pretty fast hand in game 2, but the other two games were absolutely futile.

After the draft, my friend and I decided sat around trying to decide whether we wanted to go out to dinner or not. Because we plan on meeting up with a bunch of friends tomorrow to do a draft for fun, so he didn't want me to spend too much money since we're planning on going to Madfish for dinner tomorrow after we draft. We were both hungry, and I just helped my dad fix a car today so money wasn't too big of a deal to me. At about 11:30pm we finally decided to head out to Venus Cafe to get some amazingly delicious Hong Kong style dinner. Overall it was a pretty normal day for me. Nothing went bad at all, and I feel quite satisfied, so I think it's safe to say I had a really great day today.

Busy Week

Man this past week has been hell! The end if the fall semester is just around the corner and finals is approaching for each of my classes. In my english class I had to type up a 10-12 (or 14?) page research report on anything I wanted to. I thought it was going to be a piece of cake (and it was pretty easy), but it took way longer than I thought. I'm just about the slowest essay writer on the face of the planet. I takes me like eight hours to type up a normal sized essay from scratch. I spend hours just typing up these blog posts! My english essay was something that I did not want to procrastinate on. Lets see... My teacher wanted the essay prepared by tuesday and we were supposed to have the roughdraft available for peer review today. Last week was basically thanksgiving break. I was sad that a portion of my break had to be spent typing a ginormous essay, but at the same time I didn't want to procrastinate. Wednesday I went out for a thanksgiving dinner, Thursday I had thanksgiving dinner, Friday I chilled with a friend, and then Saturday I wanted to try starting my essay. I don't even remember what I did, but I ended up not doing anything the entire day. When I tried actually starting my essay I realized that I lacked research so I spent most of the night reading.. Sunday I went out to play cards and then another thanksgiving dinner. I ended up doing nothing with my essay. A friend of mine gave me a webcam as a gift so I ended up webcamming until 3 in the morning. Monday I was so tired I spent all my free time sleeping in the library. I even emailed my essay to myself, but I was too tired to even think about it. After school I wanted to settle down and try to spend the entire day finishing up my essay so I could have it prepared by tuesday, but when I got home from school I sat around and did nothing. I feel asleep midway and by the end of the day I managed to get the first half of my introductory paragraph done... I felt bad for falling asleep so I stayed up until 1AM trying to get as much of that one paragraph done, but it only hurt me more. Tuesday, I tried to take advantage of my time sleeping in the library so I could have energy for the rest of the day. My classes are little more stacked on tuesdays and thursdays so I don't have much time to work on my essay at school, so I tried to use that time for other things that needed to be done. When I went to speech class it turned out that an assignment I didn't know about was due, so I had to turn it in the following class day for less points.. When I got home I decided to work on my essay a little before I had to leave for kung fu class which wasn't very exciting because no one was there. After kung fu, I managed to get my second paragraph going and decided to go to bed at midnight to get an extra hour of sleep so I could work on my essay in the library at school the following day. Come wednesday, I found out we had a test in music class that I didn't know about! I had no choice but to bomb it. In the library I managed to get to the third paragraph, but it just wasn't enough.. What really sucked was that I had a test today (thursday) in math, but I had no time to study throughout the entire week. It took me all of wednesday to get my essay done. I told myself if I could finish it early enough I reward myself with a solo trip to the local pho restaurant, but unfortunately I couldn't finish it fast enough. But instead my motivation became this brand new laptop I'm typing on right now! I'll post pics of later. My mom managed to get my early christmas gift from Newegg.com on black friday. I'm so grateful, I absolutely love this thing. It can run starcraft! Okay now I'm side tracking.. So today, I tried spending the day studying for math, but I kept getting sidetracked by my friends... my fault... Oh well.. The test wasn't too hard although I had to guess on quite a few problems. I'm just hoping I got at least a B on it...  I'm just glad the week is over. I'm going through some silly drama right now too, but those words should be left unsaid..