BACK IN THE MIX

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

It's been how long... 5 months? Since I last wrote something?

Fall semester sucked really bad, I hate community college more than EVAR. I'm still waiting for my grades to come in. SHOOTIN FOR THAT 2.0 GPA

If I didn't pass calculus 2 I have to drop the calc 3 class I signed up for in the spring and retake another calc 2 class, how much does that suck? A lot. Because it's all my fault. I gotta say though, my teacher really sucked.

I'm beginning to think UC Davis aint really the place to be anymore. Chances of me keeping my gpa up for transfer agreement might be slim and there are much better places to go for engineering. I better catch a date with a counselor asap. More on school in a different post.

So why are my grades in the shitter right now? Part of it's because of this computer game called League of Legends. Ever heard of it? Lemme tell you, it's the worst game ever. Once you get sucked in, there's no turning back. It's like a drug. All the symptoms, the SAME. But hey! Finally hit level 30 recently, fun times fun times. Currently focusing on ad carry role. I play support role if I can't play ad, ap mid if there is none, solo top tryndamere if there's none, and jungle master yi if there's none... Otherwise I'm pretty garbage at the game. Doesn't mean it isn't addicting as hell!

I feel like college is like the earlier years of high school all over again. All I do is play videogames and watch anime now. Just like freshman and sophomore year of high school. Dunno how that works, but it's workin. 

Fall season anime's great btw! Absolutely love Chihayafuru. Mirai Nikki and Guilty Crown are great ones too. I'll have to get into those in detail in a different post if I ever come back to this site ever again. Got Rebuild of Evangelion 2.22 You Can (Not) Advance on DVD for Christmas. Absolutely amazing movie. January 17th REDLINE releases on DVD. Definitely going to hop on that and watch it a second time! Can't wait! 

January 31st Final Fantasy XIII-2 releases. Gotta buckle and force myself to beat the first one before then. So far I'm about half way through!

Did I mention I work at my kung fu school now? It sucks. More in separate post.

Plans for 2012:

•Learn at least 1 song from each of the new sheet music books I bought for the piano

•Beat Final Fantasy 13 before 2nd releases

•Get better at League of Legends

•Try to get back into magic.. err I mean something physical (IE tricking bboying kung fu)

•Get better at school

•Get a girlfriend

BADA BING

Summer Classes in College are Rough! (plus other random updates)

I miss those days where I had the free time to consistently blog and talk about my days or what's on my mind and whatnot.. I've actually been quite busy lately with school. After realizing I'm going to be stuck at my community college for 4+ years before I transfer, I realized that I need to get as many classes done as possible, so I decided to take Calculus in the summer for some good momentum.

The semester system is really slow, and the quarter system is fast, but summer classes are REALLY fast. Especially since you're cramming in a semester's worth of material in a shorter amount of time than a quarter, you REALLY have to stay focused. A missed day of class could throw you miles behind the rest of the class... So far I've been struggling a bit, but enough to maintain a steady B in the class. My chances of acing the class are extremely slim right now.

===

So apparently two of the sifus at my kung fu school quit! So the owner has been quickly looking for employees to hire and I just happened to be one of his victims. I was concerned about the job because all the teachers are either ex-monks from temples in China or at least black belts. Me? PSH, I'm green belt, baby. So far the job hasn't been much different from my old job at the Taekwondo school, but maybe a little more lax. So far I'm making less money than the amount of gas I spend per month on driving (to school and whatnot). Hopefully I get more hours!

I haven't been playing Magic much lately, but my friend is visiting from China for the summer! We've been cube drafting and it's a lot of fun. Problem is though, I've been getting home at like 2-3 in the morning on school nights..... I'm fine with lacking sleep, I just don't really want my parents to get angry... They're still Asian y'know. Last night, we went out to Superstars in Sanjose to draft the new M12 set. I managed to pull a Grave Titan in my first pack! I personally thought my deck was really good too (2 Incinerate, Shock, 3 Wring Flesh, 2 Act of Treason, Chandra's Outrage, Sorin's Thirst, a ton of 1-3 drop Bloodthirst creatures, 2 Bloodseeker, Gravedigger, Diabolic Tutor etc.). But I guess my skill is still lacking...
I managed to win round 1, losing a game to mana screw.
In round 2 I lost game 1 from mulliganing to 4 and not being to catch up. Then in game 2 I FORGOT to announce a Bloodseeker trigger, and lost the game with my opponent at 1 life T__________T I'm so bad..
Round 3 I lost game 1 to a 2/2 bear with the +1/+1 protection from creatures aura hitting me 7 times....... That many turns of not drawing one of my removal spells..... Then in game 2 I got stuck on 2 land..... My opponent even agreed my deck was scary, but I guess he was just being nice..
Aand soo I walked away 1-2 with one booster pack, but guess what I pulled? A Chandra! That's worth 3 times my draft, plus I pulled Grave Titan! So it was still a successful night.
Interestingly enough, I also sold a TON of my cards to the store (that were about to rotate out of type 2) in order to pay for my draft and net me $91.50 worth of store credit. Spent $20 of it on Grim Lavamancers for my mono-red deck though.

Do I live in a cave or what?

Is it just me or has the words "swag" and "hipster" been being used a lot lately? Almost every other adjective has been replaced with swag. I thought it was an interesting word when I first saw it, but lately it just seems like EVERYONE'S using it.
I've also noticed a lot of people have been referring to hipsters lately. People will sarcastically call themselves or their friend's hipster. Usually in a teasing manner, but I always wonder why it was brought up in the first place, why the word is more commonly being used, and why it's most often referred to negatively.

I also noticed that EDM has become extremely popular. Everywhere I look, people say it's been popular for a long time, but I feel like it's either become even more popular or I just live in a cave or something. When I was a kid, my sister, her friends, and even my uncle were into music by people like Britney Spears, Spice Girls, 98 Degrees, Back Street Boys, and Nsync. As I hit middle school, I questioned whether I liked music or not and the only kind of music ever really heard was mainstream hip hop and R&B from school dances and whatnot. As high school came around, I had the opportunity to be blessed by horrific songs like Crank That by Soulja Boy. Mainstream music polluted my ears, as I had friends from different directions trying to pull more towards rock music or underground hip hop. Nujabes being one of the few artists I actually liked back then actually pulled me more towards hip hop. As senior year came, I noticed a large amount of people having interest in some genre I had never heard of before called Dubstep. I thought the dirty music was horrendous at first, but I couldn't help but admit that it grew on me after a while. Was I jumping on the bandwagon? No, I like whatever music I like. I'm actually quite open to nearly all genres of music nowadays. Anyways, as college came it seemed to me that every other student was into EDM. "What's EDM?" I thought. Nothing a quick google search couldn't fix. I was just surprised at how many people were into EDM. Maybe I just lack exposure to the world? Back in high school when I had my first job, all my coworkers were college students, and it seemed to me they either liked mainstream, rock, or underground hip hop... Meh..

4/24/11

Too lazy to come up with a title. This blog post isn't meant to be read anyway. Actually.. Since when do people read my blog in the first place? Anyways, it's been a while since I've blogged, and I feel like talking- or typing in this case.

I've obviously been too lazy to make noob tournament reports about my little trips to friday night magic. Long stories short, I've gotten a little better, but I still suck. I've drafted a few times at another small store and won a couple times, it was fun, but I prefer my home location. A friend of mine also invited me to join him and some other friends at a Grand Prix Tourney down in San Diego this winter. Hopefully he wasn't joking because the thought of it excites me! I feel like my life has been revolving around Magic mostly lately.. Whatever, it makes me happy..

School's been going through pretty well, I was concerned about getting straight B's, but I've temporarily increased my grades to low A's. Hopefully I can maintain them for the rest of the semester! Not too long to go! The list of classes available for summer have already been posted and I haven't even looked at it yet. I need to get crackin on it. In fact, I've been wanting to speak with a counselor lately to help me get all my stuff straight. I should definitely do that soon.. Spring break is actually ending right now. Sad thing is, my school is like the last school on earth to have spring break... It's whatevs though, I had no one to hang out with.......
Speaking of which, I've been having this strange feeling of loneliness lately.. Not that I actually am lonely or not have any friends or anything, I just feel like I've been lacking in some true friends. Like a homie, or someone I can turn to whenever I want. Someone I can call up and hang out with whenever. Am I taking what friends I already have for granted? I think where I went wrong is that I spent all my time with my (ex) girlfriend that I never really spent time building strong bonds with anyone else. I value her as a friend, but she's still obsessed with me and I'm really hoping she'll get over me some time soon. On a side note, I've been having a bit of a craving for a new girlfriend... but I probably shouldn't talk about that..

For spring break a bunch of the friend's I've made in college wanted to have a big kick it at Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk last Thursday, but it was so terribly unorganized that it got cancelled. The "event" was made on facebook, and extremely few people actually responded consistently to it. I was going to drive (and my car was full), and I was about to bring a ton of food for everyone. I was actually excited to go hang out with a bunch of friends for once. It saddens me that everyone bailed out.

Kung fu has been a blast as always. The never ending struggle to communicate with my instructors is as funny as ever. The school's 10th anniversary is coming up and I have to do like 4 different forms in a row for a performance. It's going to be really tiring, but it'll be worth it. I look forward to it!

I've spent an absurd amount of hours on Minecraft.. I probably shouldn't talk about it..
I loaded up starcraft for the first time in a long time. Obviously I suck now.. I started up my placement match and got raped. Still feeling determined I started up another match. I was playing against the mirror and my opponent sends and overlords over to my base to see my flawless build order and he's like.. "16 pool?"

I've been trying to slightly get back into tricking lately. It's hard!! I actually got the guts to throw some sweat pants on and take a trip to the park down the street. I had a friend with me so I wasn't alone or anything. Unfortunately defying gravity doesn't work as well as it does in my head...

I took a whimsical trip to Milpitas Golfland with a friend the other day. I was really surprised to see that they have Beatmania IIDX 18 Resort Anthem! And DJ Max Technika 2! Makes me wonder what Sunnyvale Golfland has. I haven't played IIDX in so long I wasn't able to perform the way I used to back in high school but I still had a ton of fun nonetheless. Too bad a couple of guys were hogging Technika 2 the whole time..

I've been trying to diversify my itunes playlist lately. I've been listening to a little bit of acoustic. Nothing worth noting though, they just happen to be songs that I enjoy with acoustic guitar(s) in the background. I also noticed that the international side of my playlist(s) consisted of korean and japanese songs. I know that j pop and k pop are really really popular, but I wanted to try sticking to my roots, so I've actually been looking into some Chinese artists. I've found a little bit of success, but I'll keep it to myself for now.

Been craving to watch some anime lately, but I just don't have to the time and patience for it anymore.. Something really good might come up every now and then.

Oh yeah, I talked to a friend of mine who's attending Cal Poly right now for Computer Engineering (the same major as me) and his rate of education is sky rocketing compared to mine. His school goes by quarters as opposed to my school's semester system, so they're a lot faster. I took trigonometry last semester.. I'm taking pre-calculus this semester.. He's taken Calculus all the way up to Calculus 4, I think a physics class, a couple programming language classes, and he's learning Java now. His first quarter started several months after I started my first semester.. I can brag all I want about saving a ton of money at community college, but the education I'm getting over here is shit. I can tell some of the classes at Chabot cater to the level of most of the students at chabot. I'm not trying to say I'm better and smarter than them or anything, but so many students there lack drive. I just want to get all this general ed bullshit out of the way so I can start my journey towards becoming a ballin-ass engineer. I'm being held back by my high school ignorance and the fact that all the engineering classes require Calculus as a prerequisite. I want to focus as much as I can right now, but it's hard when it feels like I'm just waiting... I can admit that my classes provide enough of a challenge for me to not to be able to breeze by, but none of them really throw me into the textbooks everyday. I really want to work towards becoming a successful engineer, but I'm stuck working towards working towards becoming one.

This One Day...

An Indian man poked his head into my kung fu school and asked if the instructors there were Asian. He looked over his shoulder then back at me an whispered, "I don't want to be taught by white people.."




I couldn't help, but smile.





.

School

Midterms in ALL of my classes and a 7 page essay all due on the same day? Coincidence? Hurry, someone shoot me now.

Too lazy to blog these days

I don't know how much longer this blog is going to last...

Anyways, in the past month I've started a new minecraft world, but didn't get very far on it. And I discovered some friends who play on a multiplayer server, but the server keeps crashing and going down and whatnot.

My kung fu school is having their 10th anniversary soon so they're gonna have all their students perform at some hotel or something. I have to learn like 4 different forms by June 5th! eeeehh... It'll be fun though, I look forward to it.

My birthday passed recently. It was nice. Went out to an all you can eat korean bbq restaurant where you fill your plate with raw meat and cook it on your table. It was awesome. I also got some boardgames (Dominion and Arkham Horror) from a friend as a gift, so I'm pretty excited about that.

But yeah...

So this weekend is a bit of a drag. It's friday, and there are just too many things on my mind. I don't even know why I'm here blogging. Sometimes I do the strangest things when I'm overwhelmed with things to do, and that doesn't include blogging. But anyways, it basically goes like this:
Next thursday I have a psychology midterm, a precalculus midterm, a 7 page english essay due, and on wednesday the day before, I have online chemistry homework as well as a lab report due.
Now I wouldn't be complaining about things like this too often, but the fact that it's all happening at ONCE is what's bothering me. I can handle the four classes I'm taking, but when they all coincidentally put me on blast like this, it just.... sucks... It's one of those weekends where you just gotta man up.

So friday... I'm thinking, relax a little. Maybe play some games or watch anime while I dread over the fact that the minecraft server isn't working right now. Then do some homework/study. Then once the evening hits, go out to FNM to draft. Seems like a decent friday to me. But then of course my dad appears out of nowhere and overrides all my at-home plans with car repairs. Now, I'm totally cool with helping my dad fix cars and I have no hard feelings or anything, but the problem is that the car that needs to be fixed belongs to my uncle. So that means we're doing it for FREE. And we have to remove the cylinder head. That aint no easy job to do for FREE!! The last time I had to do a job like that, my energy and drive was motivated by the big payout, but this time around I don't even know what to do. As selfish and spoiled as it may sound, my relaxing time today is being replaced with work, then if I have time, homework, then my escape: drafting. Any person like me would complain about something like that because its the free time that keeps us sane... right? I need a job... Since I actually have freetime, I can't use my homework and studying as an excuse..

So I definitely need to catch up on math, finish all my chem homework, and nearly finish my essay by the end of this weekend. If I can successfully do that, the rest of the week (until thursday) will be much less stressful.

Minecraft Boredom

Last time I mentioned anything about Minecraft, I had started a new world for the sake of experiencing updates, and I never uploaded any pictures.

Here's the update:

Here's my tree farm. the efficiency of the torches to the seedlings aren't perfect, but it gets the job done. The amount of wood and charcoal I have now is insane. 

In one of the updates, they made it so that you could turn wood into charcoal at a forge. So there's really no point in running around trying to find coal anymore. Also, I personally found that wooden houses had a certain charm to them, so that gave me all the more reason to make a tree farm. In fact, in just about every world I start, I plan to make a tree farm. It's just that essential.

At Home

At 2nd base

I realized that my booster cart systems kept stopping an I couldn't figure out why. After some quick google searches, I found out that when you step outside of a certain chunk range, the chunk that the minecarts were in get reset and stop moving. So I did some more google searching and came across someone's minecart booster system that worked best with a lever. I tried implementing it the same system with a button, but since the button stops giving power after a split second, I never achieved satisfactory results. And so, back to google again I discovered the Door Booster after some time and it was perfect. It was a little time consuming, but i really like how it works and I plan to use door boosters for all of my minecart systems in future worlds. I found the tutorial here:

Fail river

 Okay so, I discovered in this world some pretty sweet cliffs. I had envisioned a world full of tall cliffs with waterfalls and a river beneath. And then I wanted the cliffs to have wooden houses, and then canals/caves inside the cliffs to connect the house. Like a city inside the cliffs. Then with the world covered in water, I wanted to set up some nice wooden walkways threading around the base of the cliffs hovering just above the water. Unfortunately this project failed miserably. In the above picture you can see that I tried flooding the ground with water, but it was extremely time consuming and the uneven ground made the water look rough and aggressive. Not quite the calm soothing river I expected.. You can also see part of the bridge I started to build, but it was a lost cause. In the below picture you can see I tried blindly building a house on the nearest cliff, but that didn't quite work out the way I expected it to. To make the houses decently big enough to fit furniture and decorations it would have to be like twice the size of the little wooden box I've got going on the cliff up there. Plus I had no idea how tall I wanted the house to be as opposed to the size of its base. Obviously it would've been much better if I had planned everything out on a piece of graph paper first. Architects always gotta make them blue prints! It's amazing what kinds of real life skills one can put into Minecraft. Architecture, engineering, and a few other things I can't think of right now.  

Fail house

But anywho.. I a few weeks after abandoning my initial project, I discovered a video on youtube, where this guy built a portal to the Nether, then built a portal within his Nether to emerge somewhere totally random on his main world again. Where he emerged he discovered a half built house and a few other random projects along with torches he didn't place, and a bunch of boxes and items. It looked like a world somebody started and then never finished, except within some other dude's world! I thought the video was absolutely fascinating and wanted to experience something like that for myself. An sooo-

I built a portal..

..which came to this side.

Here's what the Nether looks like

I kept coming close to dying in the Nether so I had to set the difficulty to peaceful mode in order to safely explore the Nether. I kinda felt like I was cheating the game on the inside, but oh well at least I got to explore the Nether. I made the above picture larger so you can see. On the left half of the picture you can sort of see a long bridge I built. You might no be able to tell, but it forks out so that one side goes left and the other goes right. The bridge was originally designed to have a railroad placed there, but I didn't have enough iron to cover both bridges completely. It just wasn't worth it. Okay quick fact: a step in the Nether is the equivalent to 8 steps in the normal world. So I went really far off into the Nether, made a portal somewhere to the left and another somewhere to the right. They both took me to boring places in the middle of nowhere. It's not even worth putting pictures of them up.

After I finished exploring the Nether and not finding anything exciting I thought, now what? The week after, my crave for Minecraft dwindled to almost nothing. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, because Minecraft is so addicting, it consumes all my time, but it's terribly fun.

Unfortunately, it is now yet another week later and I have a couple new project ideas in mind, in a brand new world. I'll save all that for another blog post.

Super Self-Indulgent Weekend

Okay so, I had a 4 day weekend just last last weekend (Feb 18th Fri - Feb 21st Mon). That weekend was thee MOST self indulgent weekend EVER. Or at least in a while..

Prologue.. A friend of mine had a car with an oil leak. It needed a new cylinder head gasket, which is a pretty big job. Even though it needed the work really bad, she continued to drive it until everything went BAD. No offense to her or anything, I probably would've done the same. The water pump froze, cracked, and shredded the timing belt. All the coolant practically leaked out faster than it could be poured in, and with the deficiency of oil, the engine obviously overheated causing two valves to get bent. Having to replace the valves is no joke! It ended up being a two week job costing almost $1000. To be honest I'm not sure if that's supposed to be confidential or not, but it's not like anyone reads my blog anyways... What made matters the worst was that winter is coming to an end and spring is quickly approaching. Mother nature decided to pour a bucket over Fremont for practically the entire two weeks, so we had to lug the dead car into our garage.
Ultimately, the job wasn't THAT bad, but I have to say, it was on my mind constantly. For some reason, the entire week I felt unnecessarily stressed. I don't remember what sort of school work I had going on, but SOMETHING was stressing me out and I couldn't figure out what. I didn't even realize I was stressed at first, but as the week progress, I just kept feeling mad. Like REALLY mad for no particular reason. My mom was stressing over my stress, as I would bang the piano keys over my frustration of sucking at playing. It was childish, but I was just really pissed for some reason, and I needed to knock it off right away.

My dad and I finished the car on friday the 18th. And as soon as we finished, I BOOKED straight for the local card store. Hobbies make for good escape, and that's exactly what I was doing. I drafted that night and did a pretty bad job, but as long as I was playing cards it made me happy. It was my first time drafting MB/SoM/SoM.

The following day, I decided to check a new card store that opened recently in Castro Valley called Ronin Games and Hobbies. But then I decided to draft there for fun on a whim. The place is very customer oriented, so they supply based on what the customers want. Since they're new they don't have very many singles of any card game, but they do supply quite a number of card games: Magic, Yugioh, Pokemon, Legend of the Five Rings, Vampire, etc. I wanted to draft Pokemon, but the pokemon tournaments aren't run by the store, so it's really unstable. So I drafted Magic instead. Since Mirrodin Besieged released just recently, all the customers wanted to draft triple MB, without Scars of Mirrodin. I thought it would be pretty fun, but it didn't quite turn out the way I wanted it to..

Here I typed this to a friend on facebook:

On a random sidenote 
I drafted yesterday at Ronin Games and Hobbies in Castro Valley (not too far from foothill/mission blvd). They JUST reopened recently. Their old store used be called Epic I think (but I could be totally wrong). Since the place just opened, they don't have enough supply to do pack per match or anything, but they're very customer oriented. They draft with whatever packs the customers want to draft with, which are mostly high school kids. So lately all they've been doing is Besieged Besieged Besieged. Sounded interesting to me so I gave it a shot. Half of the people there didn't know how to REALLY draft if you know what I mean. So you got kids taking Shriekhorns and going nuts over Spine of Ish Sah's and whatnot.. We drafted in like a 10 or 12 man pod too.. 
Anyways, my first pack had the blue Zenith, but I dunno.. I dunno how good it is, so I took Spread the Sickness instead and forced infect. I ended up with 2 Rot Wolfs, 2 spread the Sickness, 2 Flesh-eater Imps, 2 Lead the Stampede, 2 Copper Carapaces, 2 Blightwidows, 2 Scourge Servants, Viridian Corrupter, Go for the Throat, and I was PASSED Phyrexian Hydra AND Inkmoth Nexus... I seriously thought my deck was nuts. 
The problem was that Rot Wolf was my cheapest guy. Unless I got turn 1 inkmoth nexus, my deck was super slow. I got my ass handed to me (0-2) by my first opponent who went boros battlecry. It bothered me because he had a bunch of those white 1/1 metalcraft guys and barely any artifacts, and played masters call at sorcery speed, and still outran me. But then again I was slightly mana screwed in both games, but only slightly (game 1 I kept hand full of swamps and mostly green cards, game two I had 1 forest and a bunch of a double green cards the entire game). But then for the rest of the night I proceeded to 2-0 everyone else I played and ended up going 3-1. Third place netted me 2 zendikar boosters (because they had a lot of excess zendikar boosters I assume, but I aint complaining. I could go for another fetchland anyday). Unfortunately they had poop rares haha. At least I have another beastmaster ascension for Ernest now! 
And soooo I learned that infect can still be good in MB/MB/MB, but without plague stinger and blight mamba and whatnot, its a LOT slower, and battlecry outruns it pretty hard. But then again I'm not sure what we would be drafting tomorrow, so its up to you guys.

Oh yeah, Ronin Games is pretty big on L5R, and they're really big on Pokemon. They actually have pokemon drafts there can you believe that? It's just like magic drafting too. 

Oh yeah, yugioh made a draft format recently too. It's the weirdest thing, you make a 20 card deck..

Anyways, on another random sidenote:
I whimsically did another draft at Superstars today (sunday), since I had to go there to pick up my $90 Besieged box. They were having vintage for mox and type 2 for a box with $10 drafts inbetween, and I just HAPPENED to be the 8th person to sign up when I walked through the door. The reason I really wanted to do it was because I saw 3 kids sign up for the drafts. Like.. LITERALLY kids. Maybe 7 or 8 years old? One looked to be 12-ish. I know that's kinda shady of me to think I can enter a draft with noobs- ..errr kids.. But it was just for fun, right? I didn't sit next to them anyways. It was MB/SoM/Som, pack per match win, and 3 rounds, so the prize payout was a little better than at Ronin Games. 
In the first pack, I was taking mostly red cards (2 burn the impures and slagstorm SWEET), and some green cards (hoping to get some dinosaurs in SoM). I noticed I was passing some pretty good white cards (creatures AND removal), so I figured, "Okay I'll force my left to go white, and cut all the red so pack two looks nice" Unfortunately white kept wheeling! So I grabbed 2 Master Calls in 13 and 14th pick... Then for the rest of the draft I was being passed hella white... Just comes to show how horrible I am with signals... I actually read online somewhere that white is actually under-drafted in Besieged, so you can take advantage of that. I also read somewhere that Ichorwell Spring is like 2nd pick worthy... But anyways, the dude next to me passed Mimic Vat in pack 2 and I was like WTF??? I was also passed 2 Galvanic Blasts and 2 Arrests, it was crazy..
In the first round I played against one of the kids. It was hilarious. This was the 12 year old kid. He seemed kind of retarded. Not mentally retarded, but like "slow". The way he handled his cards and placed them on the table. And he would read to me super slowly exactly what every single card did. "Okaaay uhh... I tap ooone. Inkmoth Nexus becomes a-a-a 1/1 B-blinkmoth arrrtifact creature with...... flying unti-" 
"OKAY I'm at one poison counter, my turn???" I butted in. I didn't want to be a jerk, but I could see the dude sitting next to me cracking up. 
Turns out he drafted every single rare he saw. Inkmoth was his only infect card. Carnifax demon never hit the board. He, for some reason, decided to Prototype Portal his Venser's Journal, and managed to get Painful Quandary out in both games. But hey whatever floats his boat, right? I stayed as polite as I could. One of the other kids was playing a 60 card mono red deck (and artifacts). He took every single red and artifact card he saw apparently, whether it was good or not, and played it. And he beat the 3rd kid, so I have no idea what his deck looked like. 
What was even crazier was that the kids ruined the draft. It was bothersome for everyone else but I didn't really care. In pack 3 I was handed a pack of 6 cards, then another pack of 6 cards, and I was like "what...?". Then a few picks later, I was handed a pack of 1 card and then 3 cards. At that point I was like "UUUUHHHH....... Guys......" Hahaha.

I don't think you're gonna care much about this (and I could be wrong of course), but it might affect what combination of packs we draft with tomorrow:
I noticed that besieged has significantly less artifacts than scars. So if its MB/MB/MB, you're probably not gonna get metalcraft, but it's easy to get Battlecry, and infect is slower. If its MB/MB/SoM, then its still hard to get metalcraft and battlecry is a tiny bit harder, but infect gets a little better. But when it's MB/SoM/SoM, it's a LOT easier to get metalcraft (and harder to get battlecry of course), and infect is definitely faster.

So the drafters at Ronin Games weren't as good as the people I'm used to drafting with, but Mirrodin Besieged is unbalanced without the other two SoM packs. And based off that message you can tell I drafted the following day at Superstars in San Jose too. The above message pretty much sums it up. Basically, since I was expecting like $500 from the job we did on the car, I decided to go out and blow some cash that weekend. I preordered a box of the new Mirrodin Besieged set, so that's where the bulk of my money went, but when I stopped by at Super Stars on Sunday, I suddenly decided to draft for no reason. 3 days in a row I drafted. It was a lot of fun, but a lot of money spent as well. I was out all weekend playing cards...

Anyways, on Monday, it was President's day, so my friend invited me to come out drafting with him and his friends using his own booster packs he had saved up from winning other drafts. We were going to meet up at Tapioca Express and draft there, maybe have a drink or something, then go to Madfish next door for some Happy Hour sushi goodness. That would have totally made my day! Unfortunately all of his friends had things to do, or work. So my chance of drafting 4 days in a row went splat shortly after waking up, but as the day progressed I could feel a sort of weight coming back. Something pressing down on me gradually heavier and heavier. That's when it hit me. The stress was coming back. After spending my entire weekend playing cards, all of my responsibilities and obligations had been left unchecked. Homework, upcoming tests, chores, etc; all the basic stuff. Now it might not sound like much, but after doing something you enjoy for an entire weekend, being plunged back into reality the following day leaves a bit of a shameful feeling..

Although I have to say, that week wasn't as stressful as the week before. Honestly I don't know why I stress in the first place, the school work isn't all that bad at all. I just need to learn to man-up. Seems like all my inner self wants is fun, but isn't most other people like that too? I guess I'm just not very good at controlling it.

Once Again, No Time to Blog

It always feels like years pass before I write another blog, when it really turns out being a few weeks. I'm supposed to be writing an essay right now unfortunately so I can't be at this for too long. There's a lot to talk to about, and I wish I could have written about everything that happened when they happened, but I think I might have to resort to having just one fat update of my life when I finally get the chance to blog. Sounds boring to me, but I suppose it's better than nothing. Okay back to the essay..

Get Out Of My Classroom

"I want you to drop this class."

Ever since high school, I've developed this bad habit of falling asleep in class. There's rarely ever a time where I fall asleep anywhere else. Because of my tendency to just fall asleep whenever during any given class had my 12th grade English teacher thinking I was narcoleptic. She was kidding of course. Some fellow classmates even came up with the idea that I have the ability to learn in my sleep, since I somehow fall asleep in class almost everyday, yet maintain my grades. Obviously I can't learn in my sleep, and honestly I do stay awake for a fair amount of the time; Just with my eyes closed. Often times I wake up for 7 seconds to write down the new notes before closing my eyes again. I'm going off track here.. 

Basically, I fell asleep in Psychology class today- as you're probably suspecting- just like any other day. It has only been a few weeks of this semester so far so it really hasn't been that long, but I think it's safe to say falling asleep in Psychology has become a routine. Why? Why do I sleep in Psychology? Misjudgment. I misjudged my teacher. Every Tuesday and Thursday my first two classes are English and Psychology. Not that I should be sleeping in any class (and there are obvious solutions to this), but I force myself to stay awake in my early English class which leads me to falling asleep in Psychology, the following class. The reason why I said I misjudged my teacher was because I thought he was the kind of teacher who didn't care. He even said at the beginning of the semester something about not caring what we do because it's our own grade. Perhaps I'm thinking the wrong teacher? But this guy totally gives off that sort of aura. I even asked him on the first day of class, "Do you want us to bring our textbooks to class?" and his response was, "I don't care, do what you want" *chuckles* *then half the class behind me chuckles* Was it a stupid question? But anyways, I felt that sleeping would be okay on his terms. 

There are some teachers out there who don't care whether you sleep or not. I like those kinds of teachers because they let your grades do the talking. My math teacher is exactly like that. He, surprisingly enough, seems to like to me. I don't know why. Maybe it's because I was the only one in Trigonometry class last semester that had 101% in the class? I'm not trying to brag of course, and that Trigonometry class felt that of a high school level math class. But what I'm trying to say is, I like his style of teaching, it works effectively on me (considering my performance in his class, aside form the sleeping), and he doesn't mind me sleeping. Now I'm not trying to say every teacher should be like that, or the same for that matter, but I'm just trying to say that there are some teachers out there like that. 

Now my psychology teacher on the other hand, clearly after today, does not like sleeping students. In fact most teachers don't. To be honest, I wouldn't like it either as a teacher. Does that make me a hypocrite? I don't know. But whatever, I digress. I was tired enough to lay my head on my desk rather then rest my cheek on my hand with my my elbow upright and my eyes closed. Like I mentioned earlier, I awoke every couple minutes to take in the new notes, so I definitely have all the notes. You might be thinking, "Well, yeah, but you missed the lecture." You are indeed right, however I have multiple friends in that class to refer to and the textbook at home of course. Does that make sleeping okay? No it doesn't, but as long as I can ace the class, I'm still happy, regardless of whether I slept through each lecture or not. 

But anyways, after class my teacher pointed to me and said (pretty loudly) that he wanted to see me after class. It was obvious what he wanted to see me for. He answered to students' questions after class as I patiently waited. He waited until the classroom was empty before he went off on me. I guess he wanted to yell at me that bad. Had he told me in a normal voice during class, I would have preferred that over him yelling at me in private, but whatever floats his boat. He said I sleep in EVERY class period. Really though, that's false, I've been awake for the past two class sessions, and definitely at the beginning of the semester, and possibly some other random days. Plus I don't sleep for the ENTIRE class session, but it's clearly a weak argument and pushing any further on the fact would only make my situation worse. At times like this you really gotta suck your teacher's dick. It wasn't really that hard of a battle though. He simply demanded that I drop his class and said that there are people missing desks and paying attention, while I'm sleeping and taking up space. He felt like we were wasting each other's time. I told him that I had all the notes, but he didn't care. Quite a stubborn guy I must say, but not surprising for a whit- err.. I mean American. 

Now lets take a different angle really quick. Why were there student without desks? Because the teacher took in more students than his class could handle. A bad thing? No, it's hard to find classes these days, so he's being awfully generous to let them in. Why were those students in those chairs? Because they arrived to class ten minutes late. So is it entirely my fault that I'm wasting time and space? I personally don't think so. But I still feel ashamed for I did. Really, I'm supposed to be changing from my high school days.. 

And so, I switched to dick sucking mode. "Can I have a second chance?" I asked 5 or 6 times. "What makes you think you deserve it?!" My instructor asked. "I won't sleep anymore.." I said. I felt like a child being lectured by his father for breaking a house rule. Still that wasn't enough though. After a bit of argument he said, "How do you think you'll do on the test next thursday?" "I'm going to do well on it," I firmly responded. And once more after that, "So can I please have a second chance?" I asked. The teacher was clearly mad, but it didn't look like he wasn't going to give me a second chance, so I was fairly confident. I just needed to smile, nod, agree with everything said, and agree with every challenge he offered. Our little discussion concluded with him declaring, "If you fall asleep one more time, I'm going to stop the class and point out to you, 'GET OUT OF MY CLASSROOM' you got that?! For the rest of the semester!! GOT IT?!" I nodded and accepted it. What else am I supposed to do? I then promised to do the exact opposite of what he suspected I would do. The teacher then chuckled and sarcastically said, "We'll see about that." I wasn't surprised. I've heard that line more times than I could count back in high school. 

I wish I had the writing ability to bring out the true emotion of our conversation because it was pretty intense. I recall making previous posts of complaints regarding other quarrels I've gotten into with other instructors in college, but I think I'm starting to understand them a little more. So should I blame my psychology teacher for the amount of disrespect he showed me today? No. It's my fault too.

===

It's a shame too because it's Chinese New Years, I wore a lot of red today for good luck. I expected today to be a good day. I literally came home with my ankle cramping because I hit almost EVERY single red light on the way home. It was terribly frustrating; all that shifting and whatnot. And I have a really heavy clutch in my car too! But what's the point in complaining? That's what blogging is for. I need to release my emotions here, then go do what I planned to do to take my mind off of it. I have to say the simultaneous feeling of anger, sorrow, and guilt is really discomforting, but this teacher thing is merely temporary and as long as I can prove myself, everything will be just fine. I just need to keep my head up! I'm going to go wash my car, clean my room(s), and pick up around the house. I'll even help my mom cook dinner tonight haha. Today is supposed to mark a new beginning, so hopefully tomorrow turns out much better.

Killing Time

Happy New Year! It's Chinese New Years today! In celebration of it, I'm wearing red for good luck, and I'm going to clean my room (according to wikipedia) to wipe away the bad luck of last year. I've got a lot of work to do when I get home today!

I'm just sitting in the library right now, super bored. I'm just trying to kill time I suppose. I'm talking to some guy I just met, and getting to know him. He's a really nice guy! I've been eating these interesting bags of dried noodles. It's like when you take top ramen, crush it all up, and then pour the broth powder into it. It's making me thursty though.. Plus each bag is like $2.50.. Interesting to eat, but a little over my budget for a snack of that size.

I've been practicing a lot of piano lately, but mainly sight reading. I noticed that when I spend a lot of time sight reading, I start to get kinda iffy with all of the songs I have memorized. Sounds like the most obvious solution would be to practice sight reading AND practice memorized songs in the same session, yet I still struggle to do so successfully.. Oh well!

I've been pretty addicted to Minecraft lately, but I've hit a roadblock. There are these amazingly huge cliffs in my world and I wanted to flood the ground in water, then build wooden bridges everywhere. Then I wanted to put wooden houses on all the cliffs and dig canals inside the cliffs connecting the houses. It would be like a city amongst cliffs hovering above a world flooded in water with wooden bridges everywhere. The vision I had in mind was perfect, but when it finally came down to it, it proved to be a LOT more challenging than I thought to be. Flooding the ground is extremely difficult. Having to constantly refill my buckets and pour water on uneven ground was tedious. The uneven ground made my river look retarded and a lot less pleasant than I expected it to be. I'm even considering cleaning up the water then spending hours flattening out the dirt ground with shovels. But I have a bad attention span so I thought I'd try building a house. I climbed my way up one of the cliffs and started randomly placing wood. The house didn't turn quite the way I expected it to look.. I guess I'm going to need some graph paper and a hell of a lot more planning for this one.

I couldn't stop thinking about last weekend's sealed Magic tournament so I definitely plan to go again this Saturday. Hopefully I'll be able to go. Speaking of Magic, my cube is almost finished and I'm even thinking about adding cards to it! I'm actually looking for people to play with now. I almost have four people to play with. Seems like a long shot, but if I can actually convince them to find time out of their day to play magic with me that would be really fun.

It's Been a While (or at least it feels like it)

I don't know the rate at which most other people update their blogs, but it's been almost a month since I've blogged about anything worthwhile. To me, it feels like it's been forever since I blogged. I don't have any particular passion for blogging, but it does leave off a good feeling to just write about stuff. I just happen to have some free time on my hands right  now.

Okay so... What is it.. February? Let's see...

I'm into my spring semester of my freshman year at community college now. One step closer to making big bucks I suppose. I'm just trying to keep my head up about it. I'm taking 15 or 16 units I think (math, english, science, and psychology). I planned out my schedule quite well this time around. My classes are more compact, and my break times are pretty good. I start school (mon-thu) at 9:00am and get out at 2:35pm each day. It's like high school all over again. Mondays are like my cushion day. Just my day to slowly get back into gear after each 3-day weekend. Only two classes and a nice three hour break. In my previous semester, three hours would be considered lengthy, but here, I take advantage of it in a way that I can utilize it for catching up on homework, sleep, or anything else that might require attention. The rest of the days are nicely compact (with an hour and a half break on tue/thu). I can definitely say that my classes are much more difficult this time around, but still fairly easy. Speaking of which, I got 1 B last semester! The one time I thought I was actually going to land a 4.0 for the first time in my entire life, I get a B in a measly 1 unit class.. I see a pattern here. Did you know that I have never once played a song on the piano without making a single mistake before in my life? I'm just not one who strives for perfection I guess.

I still take kung fu classes every Tuesday and Thursday, and they're still as fun and challenging as ever. I actually tested for my next belt recently, so I'm pretty excited about that. I was doing a bo-staff form before, and I'm doing some complicated hand form now. I actually have the video of my bo-staff form on facebook, but only certain people can see it. I'm still not confident enough to release that kind of stuff to the public.

I applied for four positions at the local Safeway online the other day. Just off of a whim.. My mom suggested that I apply for Trader Joe's too so I can get her sweet deals on their unique selection of groceries. Actually, before I applied for Safeway, I took a quick trip to the record store in Old Niles down the street from my house. Unfortunately, the place is so small, the owner didn't need employees. Plus it would be too pricey for him to have one anyways. He instead redirected me to the recently opened record store on Fremont Blvd, but that place was even smaller, and I faced the same result. You're probably thinking, "Why a record store? You won't make any money there." Well, to be honest at this point, I just need a small job that will make me some gas money. I've been desperately living off of the money I make from helping my dad fix cars. I guess you could say I really haven't been trying at all to find a job, and I agree. The consequences for what I've done (or more rather, have not done) have become evident. I eat out less (which is good in a sense), play magic less (also good), and just go out less period. Putting it simply, I'm being forced to do what I've never been even remotely close to being capable of achieving: Saving money. Hopefully it rubs off on me in the future..

Just recently, I got this thing called GERD. It stands for Gastroesophageal Reflux Disorder (AKA Acid Reflux). Basically, the sphincter at the bottom of one esophagus loses the ability to close properly after swallowing food. Since it can't close all the way, stomach acid ninja's its way back up the esophagus leaving an excruciating burning pain somewhere between the stomach and the chest, hence the name acid reflux. It's caused by really poor eating habits apparently. For example, eating large meals once or twice a day rather than eating 5-6 small meals a day. Or eating a big meal before sleeping. Apparently, fried foods, fatty foods, spicy foods, acidic fruits, carbonated drinks, caffeine, and chocolate aggravate GERD. I honestly don't know what I did to cause it but I think I know. I generally have bad eating habits period. They tend to get worse on non-school days. During winter break, I would stay up until 6 in the morning, wake up at 2 or 3 in the afternoon, eat a giant meal at 7 or 8pm when my mom would get home from work, then eat a snack sometime between midnight and 4 in the morning again before sleeping at 6. On one particular day, I went out to Iguanas (home of the Burritozilla) and got myself a burrito so spicy, that it actually hurt. It was a big burrito too! When I got home, I passed out from lack of sleep and food coma and took a two-hour nap. Unfortunately, it was right after I ate that burrito, so I woke up with an awfully painful stomach ache. The following day, I took a trip the the mall and bought one of those giant trays of Mongolian bbq noodles. I made it extra spicy and it was delicious, but I noticed that each time I swallowed, it left a strangely discomforting pain in my chest. The following day, EVERYTHING I swallowed hurt. After a decent amount of google research, I confirmed that it was GERD and tried my best to heal it by changing my eating habits. In the beginning, it hurt so bad, I was literally dieting. Salad, pretzels, crackers, bread, whatever was easy to consume. All I drank was water for the entire week. I made sure to eat extremely small meals every hour to be as easy on my stomach as possible. Tums, H2 blockers, and whatever other forms of antacids I could get my hands on just weren't cutting it for some reason, so five days later, I finally gave in and took a trip to the doctors. Unfortunately, all she told me was everything I had already read on the internet, and then recommended some different form of OTC drugs called PPI (proton pump inhibitors). I actually didn't start taking the PPI's until 2 or 3 days later because I had to drive to LA with my dad to fetch a car my sister broke. When I finally did take my first PPI pill though, I felt brand new. It was too good to be true for that one little pill to achieve something that numerous other forms of antacids couldn't achieve over the course of an entire day. I personally think it was a combination of the pill and my new eating habits that made me feel better. In fact I'm still taking the PPI pills now and I'm almost done with my two-week thingymajigger of taking those things. Hopefully those eating habits will rub off on me just as much I hope for my spending habits  to change as well.

Last time I posted anything about magic I went 4-0 in a draft right? Well I went to two sealed tournaments recently. The first one was a 10 dollar sealed in San Jose which I managed to go 4-0 in as well. Netted me 10 booster packs! I went to the prerelease of the new set, Mirrodin Besieged last Saturday and went 3-0-1. I actually could have gone 4-0 (because I won), but both my opponent and I agreed to tie so we would receive and equal amount of booster packs. This time I received 7. Am I on a lucky streak or is it safe to say I'm getting better at Magic??

Just last Sunday I finally replaced the timing belt (and components related to it) on my beloved Eclipse! I swear the teeth was literally falling off of the counter balance belt. It's a good thing we replaced it! We also replaced the valve cover gasket because there was oil leaking. We unfortunately discovered that there was a crack/hole in my valve cover, so we plugged it with a temporary fix and planned to purchase a new one later.

I found out that all of the updates that occur in Minecraft don't apply to older worlds, so newer worlds need to be made in order to experience ALL of the updates. It's a shame that I have to end my world from the Alpha stages of the game, it feels like I put so much effort in it. Oh well, my experience in my old world has passed onto my new world so I am able to work much more quickly and efficiently. I made a decent sized underground tree farm, and discovered some pretty huge dungeons. The cliffs in my new world are huge, so I have a big project idea in mind. I'll post pictures later when I get the chance.

Well that's all the updates I can think of for now. My writing ability is terrible, I think I changed tense like 70 times. Hopefully I find some opportunities to blog a little more.

Too Lazy to Blog

It's been a long time since I've blogged about anything. Or at least it feels like it's been a long time. A lot of things have happened too! But I'm too lazy to blog right now. I think it's just a phase though. I'll be back and blogging soon enough!

*Sigh* Just Want to Relax Right Now..

"What is up with you? Stay up all night? Party all night?" asked my dad.
Yeah, sitting alone in my nerd room playing Minecraft while listening to some of the Final Fantasy Piano Collections... Definitely partying all night..
After giving me a little more attitude he said, "Whatever," and walked away.

I can understand my Dad's concern as a parent, but he just gets upset when he doesn't get his way sometimes.. My mom and I were planning on going to Ikea tomorrow morning to pick up some shelves for all the vinyl albums laying around and my dad said that we have to fix cars tomorrow, but I told him I couldn't. Whenever I have plans that conflict with his car-fixing schedule he gets a little pissy. Honestly I don't mind helping him fix cars, but dealing with his attitude and short temper can be a pain.

Lately for some reason I've just felt like staying at home and keeping to myself. I just want a day where I can just sit back and relax. Like, the entire day. I usually prioritize going out and socializing with friends along with chores and helping my dad, so even though I have a lot a free time, I haven't actually had any days to myself yet. Whenever I do have days to myself though, my dad tries to take advantage of it. Sometimes I don't mind because there's a lot of work to get done, but sometimes I wish I could just sit back and do nothing. And that's how've I've been feeling lately.

Unfortunately we have like 5 cars on our driveway right now. The garage is full, and we have a couple cars parked at the end of the neighborhood. It literally looks like we have a party in front of our house everyday. The rate at which my dad receives these at-home jobs is pretty random, and I guess he just happens to have A LOT of cars to fix right now. Since I'm always helping him now, it sucks that he drags me in on it. My assistance is almost mandatory now, and if I don't help (or if I'm unavailable) he tries to guilt trip me. It kinda sucks, but I'm really in no position to complain because this is the only way I make any sort of money. I guess this is what I get for being an unemployed lazy-ass. But even if I did have a job, my dad would still have me help him fix cars. Except I don't think he'd get as pissy when I'm unavailable to help due to work. Bleh whatevs, I'm gonna go back and play Minecraft.

OnLive

Instant gaming on your TV!

Or at least that's their selling point. Onlive is a $99 gaming system that allows you to play games from the internet without the need for an Xbox, Ps3, or PC/Mac straight onto your TV. It was released in June of 2010, so it's pretty new. Seems pretty convenient, right? Well lets take a closer look.

I was supposed to take my uncle to the airport yesterday and he handed me a pretty small box that was fairly light in weight. He told me it was a gaming console and that his friend gave it to him to test out. I said, "Woah wait, console? Is this new? When did this release? Is it in beta testing?"

I flooded my uncle with questions, few of which he could answer correctly. When I got home I decided to open it up and find out for myself.

The box was nice and small. Along with being portable, it was very light as well. 

The lid slipped right off. The packaging was really well done. On the left is the OnLive system and on the right is the controller.

The wireless controller looks exactly like an Xbox 360 controller. It feels like one too. The only difference is that the D-pad and the left analog are switched so it somewhat emulates a PS3 controller as well. There's also some buttons on the bottom for controlling movies and other types of media.

The back looks exactly like an Xbox controller. The battery even removes the same, except the button to remove it is on the bottom instead of the top. The top has a port for the charger. The controller can be plugged into the system via usb in order to charge the controller. Something also similar to the PS3 controller.

Here's the Onlive system itself. As you can see it's not much bigger than the controller. On top there's an HDMI port that goes to your HDTV, an ethernet port for internet, an audio port for speakers I guess, and the port for the power supply. The bottom features two USB ports to support up to two controllers I assume.

This is what's beneath the controller and the system. As you can see, the packaging is extremely well done. 

Here's what was inside those little boxes. On top from left to right we have the USB controller charger, the 5' ethernet cable, the HDMI cable, and then the rechargeable alternate battery pack for the controller.  On the bottom is the power supply, and a pair of batteries for the empty controller.

Right after tearing everything apart and taking pictures of everything, I brought it straight to my room to give it a shot. Unfortunately, my router is on the opposite side of the room from my hdtv, so I had to use my nice and long Xbox 360 ethernet cable instead. Whatever works, right? Unless you have a really small room or your router is right next to your tv, the 5' cable just doesn't seem to cut it. The power button on the actual system is about the size of my pinky nail, but it wasn't hard to locate because it has a red light on it. I actually had a little difficulty figuring out whether it was on or not because when it's on the light turns orange I think. I didn't even notice the difference at first. It would have been nice if they had it turn green or something. Anyways, once the system started up it asked me to log in, so I had to go back to my pc and make an account online. Apparently you can play from their website too. So what's the point of the $99 box that plugs into your tv? My PC is already connected to my tv.. Well it comes with the controller too I guess. Anyways, so after making my account, I logged in and was treated with a pretty nice menu.

The main menu is easy to navigate.

Take a look at the picture above. "Arena" is a place where you can watch what other people online are playing. You actually get to see what they're doing in their game as well. Sounds kind of creepy, right? I guess the "Brag Clips" are where people who played games recorded their gameplay and decided to upload something funny, unique, or cool. Everything else on the menu is self explanatory. I started off by choosing "My Games", but since I didn't have any games, I was taken to the "Marketplace" instead. At the Marketplace, there was a small list of games to choose from, all of which must be bought in order to be played. From what I saw, they're mostly PS3 and Xbox360 games along with some small PC games. The prices range from $5-$50, and each game offers a trial version, but none of the games are free, and $99 isn't worth playing trials. The list isn't very big either. The games can only be played if you have internet access, and you have to have pretty good internet connection in order to run the games smoothly. The video quality of the games aren't exactly HD either, but acceptable. I couldn't even play all of the trials because some of them required a keyboard. And some of the games are meant to be used with a keyboard. So what's the point of buying this $99 box when OnLive seems better off from a PC? In my opinion, purchasing an Xbox or a PS3 provide a lot more benefits than this OnLive system. 

So is it worth it? Right now, no. The list of games to offer is far to small, but I can see that they're slowly expanding the list. If they get any games worthwhile, or even some exclusive games, then it would probably be a lot better, but I can't ever see it surpassing the PS3 or the Xbox 360. 

Black Swan

I didn't like the movie.

My friend invited me to come watch it with him and his friends before he moves out to China tomorrow. I wasn't really sure what kind of movie it even was, but I said yes since it was my last chance to see him. Luckily for me, my mom had free movie tickets, so I used one of them!

Okay so this isn't really a movie review, but more of my reaction to it. I'm not capable of critiquing anything. At all. Anyways, Black Swan is a psychological horror, kind of like Shutter Island (which I also didn't like). I guess psychological thrillers just aren't my cup of tea. Perhaps I shouldn't drink them.
Black Swan is about a ballerina named Nina (Natalie Portman) who is technically perfect at ballet and continues to strive for perfection. One day, a director named, Thomas (Vincent Cassel), walks in and announces that one of his dancers is retiring and that he needs a new person for his Swan Queen in his ballet, Swan Lake. As all of the dancers fight for the spot, Thomas ends up choosing Nina for her superb technique. The dancer of the Swan Queen apparently has to have the ability to play the dual role of the "White Swan" and the "Black Swan". Though Nina possesses the utmost ability to perform the role of the innocent White Swan, the director, Thomas fears that she lacks the emotion and character to successfully dance the darker part of the Black Swan. So he tries to find ways to get her to relax and pull her out of her shell by playing mind games. He brings in Lily (Mila Kunis) as a sort of opposite copy of her. While Nina has perfect technique, Lily has character, and the director wants Nina to learn that. Cutting it short, as Nina desperately strives for perfection, she faces mental challenges and obstacles and slowly becomes crazier and crazier which  ends up hurting her and ultimately leading to her death. By the end of the movie you'll probably have the look of "WTF???" on your face.

I have to say all of Nina's (Natalie Portman's) hallucinations got creepier and creepier as the movie progressed and at times I was actually pretty scared, despite the fact that the movie is not a horror film. Every character other than Lily (Mila Kunis), was pretty crazy and awfully creepy. Lily was just about the only character I liked. Especially the lesbian scene. That was hot.

But it really wasn't just that. I just really liked how she played her character. The acting was great in my opinion, and the movie was brilliant. I disliked the movie, but that doesn't mean it isn't good. I read a review that said "you will not have fun watching [this movie]" and I'm a man of fun, so like I said earlier: I guess it's just not my cup of tea. And that review I read was actually praising the movie. The reviewer said the director of Black Swan knew what he wanted and that the movie wasn't intended to be enjoyed. It was the director's intentions and how well they were executed that made Black Swan so brilliant. I thought the movie was pretty interesting, and it had me at the edge of my seat at times, but I just... Didn't like it. I didn't hate it either though.

To be honest, when it ended the first thing that came to my head was, "Shutter Island?" but my friend said that they were different. He said that Shutter Island revolved around an external conflict (Leonardo DiCaprio and the things around him), whereas Black Swan revolved around an internal conflict (Natalie Portman and her inner self). But really I was just thinking, 'A crazy movie where crazy fictional shit happens when really the main character is crazy all along and that's the plot twist at the end..' Perhaps I'm too ignorant to look past such things. I heard that westerners really enjoy the subtleties of movies. Back when I was dating my ex-girlfriend, we rented a random horror movie from the local Red Box. It was really uninteresting and boring. Beyond that, crazy stuff happened throughout the movie and the main character ended up being crazy all along, and nothing that had happened in the movie never really happened.. When I saw Shutter Island, I thought the same thing. And then when I saw Black Swan, I thought the SAME exact thing. Same idea, different plots? I guess the same applies to most movies, and this type of movie is just one that I personally don't like.

Parents Will Be Parents

It's been a while since I've heard my dad yell, but sometimes it's just... kinda silly. But hey, parents will be parents.

On Sunday my dad was having me help him fix a car. He seemed to be in a pretty good mood about it, and decided to end the day early so we could relax and finish the car another day. As he was flipping through channels on his tv, called out to me as he could hear me enter the adjacent room. He calmly asked me if I could do him a favor the following day (Monday). He asked if I could grab him a box of small envelopes, a box of large envelopes, some printer paper, and some order forms for mechanics. He said he would give me money to buy it, but soon after realized he had no cash on him, so he offered me his debit card instead and then left it on the counter. 

"Ah, I might be able to go today!" I said because I thought I had plans later that day, so I could go pick up his stuff on the way. The thought of me being able to fulfill his request a day earlier delighted my dad, but unfortunately my plans got cancelled so I said, "Meh, I'll just pick up your stuff tomorrow, Dad."

He didn't really give me a response. He initially asked me to do it a day later, so it's not like he could really say much about it. When I mentioned it to my mom she said, "Oh! I have envelopes he could use." She even told him, but once again he didn't give much response. I guess he wanted his own envelopes. He seemed really nonchalant about the whole situation so I wasn't really in a rush to pick up his goods. I later got a call from my friend who wanted to see the movie Black Swan, so I figured, 'Oh I can grab my dad's stuff before I see the movie. Save more gas.' 

Come Monday, I slept in, lounged around the house, and played piano after I woke up. It was a nice relaxing day. I like to spend time with myself sometimes. It's really relaxing. As I was warming up some those instant noodles I got for christmas from my sister, I noticed that all the garbage cans were full and decided to take them all out. I also noticed a fairly large pile of dirty dishes in the sink and thought about cleaning them, but my noodles finished, so I sat down for an episode of anime while eating them. Right after the episode finished, I started to surf the internet as my dad stepped through the door after a regular day of work. "Did you get my stuff???" he asked.

"Uhh.. Not yet." I replied. 

After my response, he walked over my room and proceeded to yell at me. He apparently expected me to pick up his goods while he was at work. He was infuriated that he left his debit card with me and that he wasn't able to use it while he was at work. I told him that I didn't know it he wanted his envelopes, etc immediately. He then started to go off about how it's only common sense that I get them asap because he NEEDED them. But he was so nonchalant about it the previous day.. I told him that if he needed them urgently, he could've told me, or used the ones my mom offered. He then complained that my mom never pulled them out for him. Seriously? I told him, "Dude, you didn't ask her for the envelopes..."

His argument was that when someone asks about something it usually means they need it right away. I just thought he was being silly at this point. If he REALLY needed it, he could've used my mom's.. In a sarcastic voice he said, "What'd you think?! I needed them, what.. A month later??????? Huh?!" 

And I responded, "Well, YEAH. You never said you needed them immediately! You could've just wanted a small box of envelopes and a big box to refill some you might've emptied. Or maybe you just needed them for future reference!"

After several more minutes of arguing he finally realized we were arguing over something really stupid and pointed it out. He was power tripping that I didn't get his envelopes at the beginning of the day, and I said, "Dad.. it was just a misunderstanding..." 

But arguments can't just end there. My dad always needs more. So at times like this he'll try to tie it other things, which eventually become really broad. He then started going off about how unreliable I am. As he proceeded to complain about my unreliability, he started to point out flaws and other reasons from the past why I'm unreliable. This is when I go into 'OK' mode and start nodding, agreeing, and "okay"-ing everything he says. He started small and talked about how I never wash dishes. I told him I was planning on actually washing them for once, but that's obviously not enough to pacify him. He then started using more past examples and slowly moved onto how much of a failure I am at life. That's how I know the lecture is almost over. Our arguments always end up at my dad telling me how much of a failure I am at life. I mean, he never really says it to my face, but he implies it by providing numerous examples of my shortcomings and failures and then asking, "What are you going to do with your life?!" I've heard my dad say the same things over and over again, but whenever I point it out he responds, "Well then I guess it just goes through one ear and out the other!!!" It gets annoying. By the end of the lecture since all I'm doing is saying "Yeah" and "Okay", my dad starts to calm down. I mean shoot, he's already gained power of the argument. He thinks while he lectures, you can tell a lot of it is improvised and sometimes he repeats himself or stumbles on his thoughts. Sometimes he doesn't know how to end the lecture. In fact all of his lectures end rather awkwardly, but I don't really care as long as it's over.. Once he calms, he starts to see things from my side and brings them up, but counters them with his own statements in order to maintain power. Shortly after, I stopped my dad and retraced back to the original topic of me not buying his envelopes before. Once I pull that card, he'll try to tie the original argument to his lecture about 'growing up in life' which usually comes out half-assed. I'm naive and ignorant, but not as ignorant as I was in high school. I understand what my dad feels and how I would feel if I was in his shoes. I understand my shortcomings and all the things I need to improve on. HOWEVER, the envelope thing was a genuine misunderstanding. Even though he expected me to getting them asap as a given, if he would've told me he needed them right away I would've picked them up the day he asked.. Oh well, parents will be parents.