Ok. A clarification. Er… pun?

I should say that Clare doesn’t look like Jenna Malone, but rather that the way Jenna Malone looks reminds me of Clare.

Heres an update I wrote while I was still back in San Jose:
So I’m sitting here at the airport waiting for my flight to leave. Killin time. And I look up and there’s a movie on this little TV screen. No one’s really watching it, but it looks familiar. It’s a movie I’ve seen before. Oh… it’s… Weird Science? Wait a minute… I remember this scene… They forgot to plug the computer into the doll… and now everything is getting sucked out of the house. There was something odd about that scene.. Oh yeah! A girl is stuck in the house, and it starts to suck her up the chimney, but she holds onto a window, and then… Er… wait, they can’t show that part. Whoa, they just did. That’s… not PG rated…

Anyway, back to the now. So yeah, I’ve been missing out on the updates for a while. A big reason for it is cuz of my final for my US History class has been looming. See, I have this thing where when I have a huge project to do, I put off the project for a long time, and everything else. It’s weird, I just won’t feel like doing anything, because I’ll think I ought to be working on the project, but I don’t really want to work on the project either, so I end up doing nothing. At any rate, I’ve finished it, and now all I have to do is finish up my Javascript and perl/CGI stuff.

Speaking of which, my Javascript class is teh lame. How lame, you wonder? Well, the semester is almost over, and I can verifiably say that I’ve learned about nothing so far – and supreme knowledge doesn’t seem to be coming down the pike within the next week or so I feel I can safely make this claim. The class is disheartening for other reasons… it appears that my teacher, aside from having the crappiest website design for a “Web Site Design Internet Publishing” firm, also has the typing skills of an 11 year old. Class assignments have completely retarded directions, too. Like this one, about image rollovers [which basically means when you move your mouse over an image, change the image, when you move it away, change it back]… the directions basically say: “make a sample website using javascript, which includes image rollovers. Or, if you prefer, do something else.” What the hell does that even mean?

And all the assignments have typos in them. And I don’t mean typos like, you know, spelling a word like *ahem* “deciduous” wrong. That would be understandable. But really, if you’re a computer science teacher, you shouldn’t be spelling words such as “Imag” instead of “image”, or “muose” instead of “mouse”. And to show that it’s not just just simple typos (which you know, a word processor would catch) but a true lack of caring about putting any amount of effort into it, I bring you the following quote: “Pass 2 parameters n use 1 functien” I don’t know what exactly to make of that. I mean, I know what it means – but as someone who would someday like to be a teacher, I’m extremely disappointed at the sense of apathy I get when reading these.

On the bright side, I’m totally taking a guitar class next semester. And Clare is going to be back in town in a week! Which is good, cuz Mollie is leaving in about a week, and I’m gonna probably be bored like whoa. And well, Clare totally rules, in case my opinion on the matter wasn’t yet known by the world. I feel like we totally click. We’re going to have a bake-a-thon. And have music lessons. And watch lots of movies. Cuz there’s lots of movies she needs to see. I wonder if she’s seen Empire Records. I’ve been watching a shitload of movies lately. See, whats been happening is that I’ll put on a movie on my ibook right before I go to bed, and just put the laptop on the bed and fall asleep watching it. In the past two-three weeks (some nights I get through a whole movie and put another on) I’ve watched Bourne Identity, Pirates of the Caribbean, Donnie Darko, Memento, The Perfect Score, Ninth Gate, the uncut version of Almost Famous (about three times – its good), 1776, A Guy Thing, Saved!, Three To Tango, and . So after watching Donnie Darko and Saved!, I keep thinking that Clare looks kinda like Jenna Malone. But thats probably just me.

Chevy totally just ate a moth. Poor bastard never saw it coming.

Sorry. Anyway, so its like almost Christmas and stuff, and I’ve only bought two presents. And I’m not sure what to get everyone else. And I think I’m broke. So this will be interesting.

I’m also in the middle of this fairly crappy book…. and as usual, I feel the urge to reread an old tried and tested series…. Ender, speak to me! Where are you Ender? Or maybe it’s time to visit Rand-land again.

Whoa, I found this on the Guitar Noise forums. It’s a guitar made out of wood from a pallet. Guitars are typically made out of fancy and or expensive woods (Ebony, Rosewood, Ash, Maple, Spruce, I’ve also heard of Mahogony and even Manzanita [for smaller parts on the guitar] being used) and usually a few different kinds of wood will make up different parts of a guitar. For whatever reason, these woods just have a better physical tone than others, and they also sound better as they get older. So, the higher end the guitar is, the better the materials are, and typically the older they are as well. Well, Bob Taylor (founder of Taylor guitars – probably one of the best known guitar companys) decided he wanted to prove its not just what you use, but how you use it. So they handmade this pallet guitar, and by all accounts, it sounds and plays great, there’s not many on the market, and the list price (which doesn’t always equal retail price) is $10,000. !.

Also of interest was this story about a modern day vigilante superhero, Angle Cutter Man.

Ok, I started this entry last night, and so I’ll just go ahead and post what I’ve got now.

Since tres is a slacker, and doesn’t have his own journal, he asked me to put this on mine. So here’s Tres’ 15 songs.

• “I’ll sing for you, if you want me to. I’ll give to you. And it’s a chance I’ll have to take, and it’s a chance I’ll have to break.”
• “I’ve been leaving on my things, so in the morning when the morning bird sings, there’s still dinner on my dinner jacket ’til the dinner bell rings” this ones for you, bill… and maybe tristan
• “Walking down the street, distant memories are buried in the past forever” i think i chose about the most unrecognizable line for this song..
• “I take a look and I wonder why, why these birds don’t fly”
• “Climb aboard, strap yourself in, and wait for the ride of life to begin” if anyone not named tristan or dana gets this one, i will seriously be amazed
• “Somewhere I have heard this before, in a dream of memory restored” hah! try to guess this one now, bill!
• “The hate you feel is nothing more than love you feel to win this war” look at the comment to 5
• “But I know that I’m ok, ’cause you’re here with me today. I haven’t got a single problem now that I’m with you” if anyone besides my mother gets this one, they win.
• “You don’t understand who they thought I was supposed to be. Look at me now a man Who won’t let himself be”
• “Rover, wanderer, nomad, vagabond… Call me what you will!” wow… back in the day…
• “You love to pretend that you’re good, when you’re always up to no good. You really can’t make him hate her so your tongue became a razor.”
• “She is like a cat in the dark and then she is the darkness. She rules her life like a fine skylark and then the sky is starless” you’ve got this one, bill
• “Best, you’ve got to be the best. You’ve got to change the world, and use this chance to be heard”
• “We arrive at this place of no return, my brothers, only to discover that our minds have led us away so far from the painful truth off who we are”
• “Lovely legs there are. what a big black mass, what a hunk of love. Walk her every day into a shady place. He’s like the dark, but I’d want him.” another bill song

Ok. In lieu of updating, which I seriously need to do, I’ve decided to steal a page from Lance. So here it is, the “play the first 15 songs on your playlist on random, and pick a random line from each and see if your friends can guess the songs”

• “I don’t like you and I don’t care what you think about what I do; But most of all, I don’t need your opinions” -haha, way to start off…
• “You took a long hard look at my ass, and then played golf for a while” -hey amber, they’re talking about you
• “Sometimes I park in handicapped spaces, while handicapped people make handicapped faces.” -lol, its my step-dad’s theme song…
• “Now bless me father, for I have sinned… but its the same old story again and again and again – such is the bread of an everyday life.”
• “The parade that’s electrical, It serves no real purpose; Just takes up a lot of juice just to impress us.” -hell yeah. damn straight.
• “This guy comes up to me; His face red like a rose on a thorn bush; Like all the colors of a royal flush” – wow, kudos if you get this one…
• “I’m a punk rock prom queen; Brown paper magazine; Hotter than you’ve ever seen; Everywhere and in between” -mollie’s got this one.
• “And if I had my way I’d hold you in my arms; And leave this madness all behind” -this one too, probably.
• “It’s all shallow and all so appealing I’m up to my ankles and I’m drowning anyway in a sea of sarcastic faces familiar places where everything looks quite the same.” -the only CD I’ve bought twice (once for myself, even) but never opened
• “Nothing’s so cold as closing the heart when all we need is to free the soul; But we wouldn’t be that brave I know and the air outside so soft, confessing everything” -if anyone but tres knows this one, you get a nickel.
• “She takes a drink and then she waits. The alcohol it permeates – and soon the cells give way, and cancels out the day”
• “I feel must interject here you’re getting carried away feeling sorry for yourself with these revisions and gaps in history. So let me help you remember.”
• “How did we wind up this way? Watching our mouths for the words that we say. As long as we stand here waiting, wearing the clothes of the souls that we choose”
• “I tried my best to leave this all on your machine but the persistent beat – it sounded thin upon listening.”
• “I wander the halls along the walls and under my breath I say to myself, ‘I need fuel to take flight'”

And another, cuz its a really good song.

• “And how can I stand here with you and not be moved by you? Would you tell me, how could it be any better than this?”

Well, I accidentally closed Mozilla last time when I was about 90% done with a looong freakin entry, so here we go again.

This weekend past weekend was definitely one of the best I’ve had in a long while. I went and saw my brother march in a parade in the rain on his birthday (and sat through a pretty boring presentation from some veterans afterward… and me calling it boring is pretty bad, cuz I actually like that kind of stuff).

Then Friday I cruised up to Berkeley in the rental car my mom got just for the occasion (!). After fighting my way through traffic, I got there around 7ish, and promptly found myself without any place to park. So I called Clare and had her come down with me to help me find parking. We drove around for like twenty minutes and ended up parking in this crazy dark residential part of Berkeley, like 20 minutes from Dana’s dorm, which was our next destination. So we hop outta the car, and hot foot it on over to Dana’s. There, Tristan, Clare, Dana and myself all head on over another 15 minutes or so to the Naan’n’Curry. This was my first foray into Indian food. We all got the same thing… something called “Chicken gaklghela gfl;aj” where “gaklghela gfl;aj” is a pair of Indian words I couldn’t pronounce, let alone remember which apparently both mean “spicy”. It’s chicken cut up in chunks, and served in a gooey yellow sauce. Tristan also ordered us 4 Naan’s. Or maybe its just 4 Naan. Naanai. Naanuses. Who knows. Basically it looks like a big tortilla, with the consistency of thick pizza crust (think New York Giant crust, you know, kinda soft and chewey) and a breadlike flavor. The idea is you rip off chunks of Naan and dip it in the chicken stuff. It was pretty freakin good.

So after dinner we decide that we could totally go for some ice cream. So we walk another 15 minutes out of our way to the Gelateria. I’d never had gelato before then either, so that was a new experience. The place was kind of weird. There’s like 40 flavors of this gelato stuff (which is essentially ice cream… though not quite as creamy as regular ice cream) to choose from. And they all have these weird Italian names except for the ones like “cantaloupe” and “pear”. So since these things have weird names (or weird flavors like cantaloupe and pear) they encourage you to try the flavors out before you choose one or more. So there is essentially a mob in front of the counter, of people trying dozens of flavors at a time. There were like 4 guys working the counter, and they were all just handing out trial spoons of the stuff. In order to get one of them to actually help you, you pretty much had to ask for a taste of something – if I said I was ready, they asked me to wait just a moment while they handed out a few more spoons. I eventually settled on two very sweet ones to mix that had extremely funny Italian names. After tasting mine, Dana informed me that they probably were just fancy words for “Vanilla” and “Cookies and Cream” :o/ Anyway, so we walked from there back to Dana’s Dorm, which took like half an hour. We got there, grabbed “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”, and headed to the Lounge for the community DVD player and TV. At one point during the movie, Clare totally jumped – I was amused.

By this point, it was somewhere between midnight and 1AM. And for those of you wondering, the plan was that I was going to stay at Clare’s for the night. The very sharp among you might have noticed I never said I brought my luggage out of my car. That’s because I didn’t. Clare and I also neglected to put to memory the name of the street my car was parked on. In fact, the one thing we remembered about its location was “dark creepy part of Berkeley way far away from campus”. And we couldn’t wait til morning, because it was parked in front of a sign that said “No Parking after 8 AM”, or something equally way-to-early-sounding at 1 in the morning. So we set off, in search of a car that wasn’t mine, armed with only a set of keys containing a remote capable of making the headlights blink from a short distance (these come back to haunt me later). It was a pretty fun treasure hunt, even when you factor in the random drunken homeless people that Berk seems to have in spades. We finally found my Jeep Liberty a little after 1, I’d say.

Then we decided we most definitely needed to drive around Berkeley randomly, in the name of exploration. In an effort to further the causes of humanity, threw caution to the wind and put our very lives on the line. We drove up behind campus into the big hills and national parks. It’s pretty high up… at one point we were driving through a cloud. We counted 3 deer and 2 skunks, too. And some really really bitchin views of Oakland and northern SF. It was pretty amazing up there. And I totally didn’t get lost. I made it back from crazy BFE land to Berkeley without a hitch. After about an hour of that, we headed back to campus, so we could get some sleep. We parked in some parking garage that took my $7 for unlimited parking, then told me I needed to move it by 5:30 AM. ha. We went home and she set me up on her bed and took her roomies.

Saturday was another awesome day. We woke up real early at around noon to get ready to go have “breakfast” with Dana and Tristan. Breakfast at a campus dining hall done, we did some other stuff, I grabbed a 12 pack of Smirnoff Twisted, then the four of us and Clare’s roommate Diana gathered to head up to UC Davis to visit Hanni and her twin brother Harry. We played the alphabet game on the way to keep us entertained, and rocked out to the Beatles. We eventually made it to Davis, and after driving around (through big piles of leaves on the ground) for a while, found Hanni’s dorm. I parked my car and, without looking, hit what I thought was the “lock” button on the remote. It was most certainly not the lock button. It was, of course, the PANIC button. Now this isn’t my car. It’s a rental. And I’ve only ever had one other car with an alarm, and you pushed the button to make it go off, you push it again to stop it. So this thing starts goin nuts, right. And I’m like pushing all the buttons on the remote, trying to get it to shut up. None of it works. So then I try to open the door. No dice. Keys in the ignition. Nope. Turn car on. Uh uh. Put car in drive. No. Drive around the parking lot. Not happening. After a few minutes of annoying honking and alarming from the car, I finally try holding the panic button down. Silence.

We got into Hanni’s dorm, and settled in for a few games of cards and then a fiercely competetive game of Taboo, Guys vs Girls, 3 vs 4. It was pretty close right up until the end, when the girls came out a point ahead. Of course, we later found out that our scorekeeper wasn’t keeping score properly, and the guys were actually 5 points up, but nevermind that. Then we ran out for some food and this place called Pluto’s. It’s a fast food restraunt? I dunno. They serve salads and sandwiches there. And beer on tap… *shrug* Anyway, we ate up, then headed back to Hanni’s because Clare’s roommate wasn’t feeling good. So we dropped her off there with some drugs, and headed back to go see The Incredibles (for my second time). It’s a pretty good flick. Pixar does it again. I feel like ranting, but I’ll save that rant about Pixar vs Disney for later.

Davis by the way, is bicycle crazy. At the dorms there’s a bike rack with no less than 100 bikes locked up in it, at least. Possibly closer to 200. Bike lanes in Davis are about twice as large as I’ve seen them in any other city, and they actually – get this – have lights, just for the bikes. Yeah, I was getting ready to get my left turn on, and the green light comes on. It’s not circular so I start going. Then I realize its not an arrow either… it was a green bicycle light, meaning its the bike’s turn to go. Insanity.

After the movie we cruised back to find Diana up and about, and feeling slightly better. We hung out for another hour or two, and left Davis at like 1,
with everyone in hopes of finding an INO before they close (we’d spotted two on the way up). Now, on the way in, we had Hanni directing us via phone, on the way back, we didn’t. So I managed to get us back to the freeway without getting lost (with two not-getting-lost adventures in 24 hours, you can tell Tres was on the other side of the state). Well, a few tracks into Flogging Molly and by the time I’d found that first INO, I looked around and noticed that everyone was asleep to varying degrees, with the possible exception of Clare. She was obviously tired, but I think she was trying to help me stay awake (which was appreciated, but unneeded, as I was quite wired). So I kept up the drive and had another nice conversation with Clare, about music and such. We made it back to Berkeley right around when the CD ended, dropped Dana and Tristan off at her Dorm, then headed on over to that same parking garage. We were about to pay when Diana said that the parking meters are turned off on weekends anyway. So we drove around for a bit, looking for a space and found one on the same block as Clare’s dorm, no less. I didn’t notice the street signs at the time.

We head on up to the room, and Diana gets ready to hit the sack, but by now my giddyness had spread to Clare, and neither of us were quite ready to sleep. So we sat around and talked, and played cool music from each other’s laptops. It must have been somewhere between 2 and 3 AM where I decided that it was totally time that Clare saw Fight Club. So she hopped on DC++, and proceded to download it in 6 minutes. ( #@%!ing #@^%@#! Internet2! Fight Club in 6 minutes! It’s just not fair. ) At anyrate, we grabbed a blanket and a couple smirnoff’s and headed toward the lounge in her hall. We plopped the laptop on the table and got comfy on the couch. Now the “problem” with LCD’s is that there’s a certain angle you have to view them at, otherwise you don’t see whats on the screen properly. I put the word “problem” in quotes mainly because in this case, I certainly didn’t mind having to scrunch up with someone to get a good look (at a movie I know verbatim). So we made the best of it, and scrunched up together under the blanket. About an hour into the movie, the laptop’s battery dies. We briefly talk about going to bed, but that would entail getting up, carrying stuff back to her room, and we were already comfy. So we stayed. And we talked. We talked for a few hours. Just laying there, on this small couch, with this small blanket, talking the small hours away. There’s not many ways to share a couch with someone, and few places to put things such as hands and feet, but we compromised without words. And so it was that we were simply talking, my hands lying idly around her, her body against mine, that we saw the light from the sun beginning to rise. It was totally seven in the morning. We laughed and hugged, and laid some more. Then I asked her, “What are you thinking?” Which quickly turned into the kind of conversation two people have when they have feelings for each other, but are both too shy to do more than hint at them. I’m sure you know the kind. It eventually came out in the open, on both sides. She wasn’t without her concerns, though. The distance, of course. And she’s still dealing with the hurt of older relationships. But she didn’t shy away, she didn’t back off. She held my hand, and we talked about dreams and goals and fears and watched out the lounge window some more.

At around 8 in the morning, we crawled into her bed and grabbed three hours of sleep. So around noon, we did lunch with Dana and Tristan, then came back and did laundry. We both took a 20 minute nap, and waited for Dana and Tristan to come over, so we could all watch Fight Club and have dinner. After an hour or two of guitar and mandolin playing, we ordered some delicious pizza from West Coast Pizza, and settled in for the movie. Clare and I cuddling up once more (*sigh* those damn LCD screens). Dana and Tris left, and it wasn’t long before we ended up in bed again arms alternating around one another. Sunday definitely felt like a blur, partly due to a lack of sleep, and partly because Monday morning was when I had to leave.

Monday morning came, and I reluctantly got ready to leave, only a couple hours after I meant to. Clare and I hugged our goodbyes and I hopped in the car and left (though it wasn’t as easy as that… that sign I didn’t see earlier apparently said they were doing some form of construction on the street I parked on, both ends were blocked off, so I had to wait for someone to move a semi so I could leave)

And so that was my weekend. Clare doesn’t want a relationship right now, but at least it was good at the time, and at least I know that for a brief time, someone felt the same. I’ll see her on Thanksgiving, and it’ll be funny because she’s trying like hell to give me $5, but it just isn’t going to happen.

So I’m just hanging around the house at San Jose… then all of[1] the sudden I get this IM from Melinda: “[you’re] the only person I know who goes on vacation and still manages to stay online the entire time“

Quite amusing, hehe.

[1]: “of” Cuz lance is feeling pendantic

Yay. I’m in Clare’s dorm room at Berk, just chillin’. Her n Dana are playin the mandolin and the guitar, respectively. I got to show off my 1337 guitar playing skills. Which really just means that I played a few notes of a few songs.

It’s been waay fun up here, staying up too late with Clare and running around. The past two nights have been great… I’ll go into more detail later, but basically the first night was the hunt to find my car in the dark parts of Berkeley at 1 in the morning, then we decided to drive around the backcountry behind the campus and found some awesome views from the hills overlooking the Oakland/SF area. Last night was even better, Clare and I stayed up til 8 in the morning just talking.

Anyway, more on those later.

Vote. But don’t just vote, vote your conscience.

Muse – Shine Acoustic

DAMMIT!

Don’t you hate it when you have a good idea… and I mean a great idea… and someone else does it first?

So after replaying through LOZ (That’s Legend of Zelda for the uninitated) a few weeks ago I decided that I really ought to write a clone. Better yet, a clone with an editor, so that one could make LOZ-style games. This was to be a goal of mine.

And those bastards even made the editor.

In other news, I live in a land of fantasy and denial, where reality is constructed from wisps of conversation and unimportant body language. But that is neither here, nor there.

Not much going on on this side… I hog tied a guy at work with duct tape… but we ran outta tape and he broke out. He has sworn revenge, and already managed to pummel me across the store after closing.

I’m actually making progress in my guitar playing. Playing barre chords doesn’t hurt after 4 strums, anymore. And my “Horse With No Name” is sounding a little better… I can switch between the two chords reliably now. Just need to work on the timing/speed of it. And I’ve started to learn Penelope, by Pinback.

It’s an odd little song, and I’m struggling with one part. See, the song doesn’t really have chords, its played just by plucking strings instead of strumming. So anyways, there’s this one part, right? in tab notation, it looks like this: “2p0h5” In english, it means “play the second fret, then pull your finger off the fret, then ‘hammer’ your fretting finger on the 5th fret’. And thats the part I’m having trouble with. Hammering is a freaking pain. You’ve gotta hit one spot on the fret board (without hitting its neighbors) and you have to do it hard enough so that it makes a sound, *and* you have to do it fast enough to be able to move to the next song. It’s challenging.

Then there’s this weird dream I had. See, Mollie, Amber and I went over to Europe. London, to be specific. We get there and find out they they’re both members of royalty! Yeah, Mollie is a Welsh Princess, and Amber is next in line to be the Queen of Belgium…. So we’re all excited, and we get to spend the night in Buckingham Palace. But for some reason they didn’t have any good rooms to give us, despite being royalty, so instead we’re given a room for the three of us about the size of the living room in my apartment… with no beds, just couches.

So we’re all crashing on our couches, and I get up off of mine in the middle of the night cuz its not very comfortable, and go lay on mollie’s couch. So I’m still trying to sleep, and I see the uhhh… Head Royal Maid? come in and stab the spot where I was laying a few minutes ago. So we all get up and flee the country, leaving a note saying we’ll return when its safe. We go back to Escondido, and the first thing we do is go to PetCo, cuz Amber has her Belgian credit card, and for some reason wants to buy a fish tank. So I sell her the most expensive fish tank we have, for $40, and one of my co-workers got all upset about it.

Oh yeah. And my JS teacher is still dumb. See, she gave us a midterm to do? Online… Open note, open book, open computer. 2 hours, you can stop at any time and pick up where you left off, with your time remaining. 33 questions, all multiple choice and T/F. It would have been hard to make this test any easier, really. Oh yeah, the questions were dumb, too. One went along the lines of:

True/False:

Will Sparows fly further in a tornado or in calm weather?
_ True
_ False

Obviously, that wasn’t the question, but it was the way it was phrased.

Thats all for now, I’m gonna go eat.