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A quagmire of concrete, brick and sod, that is all a suburban home seems to me now. I need to live in a big city, at least until I have kids.

Newest albums added to my collection:

Drive Like Jehu – Yank Crime


The Hives – Barely Legal


Sahara Hotnights – Jennie Bomb


Sarah Slean – Night Bugs


Eminem – The Eminem Show


Alkaline Trio – Goddamnit


Apples In Stereo – Velocity Of Sound


Descendents – Everything Sucks


Built To Spill – Ultimate Alternative Wavers


Aerogramme – Sleep And Release


At The Drive-In – Vaya


Belle And Sebastian – If You’re Feeling Sinister

This has been a crazy week. The craziest part is trying to organize one of my interviews. When they initially contacted me a couple of weeks ago, they asked for 8 possible interview dates. I gave them 8 and then realized a few days later that one of those dates was the same as my AI final! Murphy’s Law in full effect, they chose that day. I emailed my contact back immediately and asked if it could be rescheduled to any of the other days. The best she could do was to push it back a day, to April 25th. I have finals on the 22nd, 23rd and 24th and then commencement is on the 26th. Bad timing, eh? So, here is a rough estimation of my schedule for those three days:



April 24th



10:30 AM – 12:30 PM: Final


Between 3 PM and 6 PM: Fly out of DTW


Between 6 PM and 9 PM: Arrive


Afterward: Crash at hotel



April 25th



6 AM: Wake up, get ready, find office


8:30 AM: Interview, interview, interview


Between 9 PM and Midnight: Fly out



April 26th



Between 5 AM and 8 AM: Arrive at DTW


9:15 AM: Commencement

I can’t believe I am taking the redeye from an interview to catch commencement.

Current Music: “Bombs Over Baghdad” by Outkast

I’ve fallen in love with two older games lately: Gran Turismo 3 and chess. Yeah, chess is just a wee bit older.



Basically, Joe tossed GT3 into the PS2 earlier this week for the first time since we’ve owned it. He has only played the rally races (since he hates all of the races on pavement). Matt and him scrapped for awhile and I tossed my hat into the ring. I was under the impression that to correctly navigate a turn you had to be turning the whole time. In rally, this couldn’t be farther from the truth. You turn well before the actual bend in the road and then power slide through almost every one. I got smoked in those first few races. After they had left, I gave the course a few more runs. I just barely beat the course on “Easy” mode *then* I figured out turning. Each run saw my times improving after each iteration. Eventually, I was beating the CPU car by 10 seconds in “Hard” mode. That is when I got hooked.



GT3 is an extremely deep game. Even the simplistic “Arcade” mode has 30+ tracks and too many cars for me to count. The simulation mode has a depth I haven’t quite fathomed yet. You start off with a meager amount of money and no cars. My first car had a whopping 116 HP to start, which was pretty depressing since Zig had a car that was pushing 1048 HP. You can customize your car, earn driving licenses (that allow you to enter the more difficult races), and obviously race. I’ve just started, but I’m sure I am going to be hooked.



On to chess. For some reason, Zig decided that all of his programming buddies should have a contest. He will write a basic GUI that allows people to plug-in two chess engines and have them go at it. I doubt I will participate (since writing a chess engine would take hundreds of hours, at least), but that got chess on our minds. After dinner (a Tuesday night tradition with the guys), Chris and I ran to the chess store at Briarwood and picked up a chess clock. We went back to my apartment and played four games: Chris versus Matt, Matt versus Joe, Joe versus myself and then Joe versus Chris. None of the games ended with a checkmate since we were playing with the clock. The first game gave 15 minutes per person then we pulled that down to 10 minutes per game when Joe was playing. I just didn’t pay attention to the clock and I ran out of time with the game probably only half way through. Speed chess just isn’t my thing, but I at least didn’t lose in less than 20 minutes total.



Hopefully I stick with both of these games.

I *knew* I was using that word incorrectly. Whenever I feel like I am giving up and letting someone else have their way, I might say something about “subjugating my will” to them. In all reality, I have been meaning to say abdicate! I could say something like “I’m just allowing you to subjugate my will”, but that doesn’t have the same ring to it. Say it with me: “abdicate my will”, “abdicate my will” and “abdicate my will”.

Google supports wild card searching! Type in something like “give me * or I’ll kill you” and Google will find all results that start with “give me “, end with ” or I’ll kill you” and have a single word in the ‘*’ location. Sweet.

Over the years, a few people I have known personally have started weblogs. Those are always the best because you know most of the basic information about their life anyway. The weblog is just another glimpse into their psyche. Well, just recently, Eric started his own weblog. Another one of my good friends started one as well, but that is NOT for public consumption.

Last night, Joe and I had planned a little gathering. It was going to start with pizza, then drinking/euchre/video games and then finally going to see the midnight showing of Batman at the State Theater. Well, the plans quickly changed. We started off playing spades, chowing down snacks and drinking beer. Eventually more people showed up so we got pizza, played some GT3 and broke out the hard liquor. When it was time to leave for the movie, we voted and decided it would be more fun to stick around.

This is when the night started to break down. Somebody started getting pretty upset when we played Never Have I Ever, then another got upset because of sexual comments and then finally someone got violently ill. There is still a huge mixing bowl filled with puke and a blanket covered in puke in our bathroom. Other than that, it was great! See the pictures here.

Just the other day, an ex-girlfriend told me that she got married early last year. Just tonight, I heard that a friend from work last summer just got engaged. I’m a little freaked out.