This is just another update about what I’ve been up to.

Seattle Art Museum On Friday I went with Jerry, Chris, Paul, and Pam to visit see Van Gogh to Mondrian, an art exhibit consisting of pieces from the Kröller-Müller Museum. Up until I almost exited the exhibit, I was under the impression that every piece was connected to Van Gogh and that this Helene Kröller-Müller lady was his ancestor. As I looked at every non Van Gogh piece and listened to the pre-recorded audio tour, I tried to figure out the connection. At the time, I even had an explanation for the Pac-Man Map painting’s relation to Van Gogh. I started to realize something was up when I looked at a giant pre-emptive sketch of the Helene Kröller-Müller Museum. Finally, I managed to put it all together when I saw that the main showcase painting was of Helene Kröller-Müller. The rest of the museum was fun, and I especially liked the modern photography section. Giant prints are really awesome.

The Rest of Seattle We ate Chinese food at Uwajimaya, where Jerry also bought a big cup of Pepto-Bismol Milk Tea. Since my brother was still at work, we walked around the Gap because it had great air conditioning and also clothes. We dropped by another Bubble Tea place, where I asked my brother what he wanted and none of us bought it for him. Then, we met up with my brother and decided it would be great to try and melt ourselves at Mel and Everyann’s apartment. Plenty of ice cold water was there, so we were A-Ok. When our brains overcame the heat enough to think, we decided to head over to Northgate Mall. It was the usual experience, so there isn’t much to say. Plenty of walking took place and I bought my first item of clothing since our family visited Hawaii last summer.

Bowling Before we left our houses, we decided to all wear white so we would glow in the cosmic blacklights. It worked well. The teams were pretty even, and they were eventually named after their best players– Team Jimmy and Team Mike. Everything is more fun when it’s intense, and everyone is more tense when money is on the line. Even George Washingtons. I bowled a 160, which I didn’t think I would ever be able to do again, and 115+ for the other games. I don’t care if you’re in the PBA, breaking 100 is good for me. Jimmy was possessed the first game, where his team beat us with three out of four players in double digits. The second was a nail-biter, but we fell five pins short. In the third, the beer must have taken Jimmy over for a little bit while our team bowled the game of our lives. Mike even almost broke 100. I don’t want to talk about the fourth game. They destroyed us.

Donnie Darko Yes, it was my first time watching the movie. I thought it was crazy and good. Possibly crazy good. It’s probably the best movie I’ve seen since City of God, so it’s not really up against much. Anyway, I recommend it, and plan on watching it twice. The rabbit and the old lady scared me a good deal on my way home from Chris’s house. First I thought I saw the old lady’s silhouette on the road, then I thought it was just a person, then I realized I was just imagining a shadow. Yes, the shadow was not even really there. The road was completely empty. It was creepy. Then, as I s.m.o.g’d to turn I imagined the scary rabbit in my passenger side staring at me. After that, I kept imagining the old lady or the rabbit in my rear view. Finally, I was too scared and I called Curt.

Go on, make jokes.

Today I worked another slow day at the comissary, then Curt and I sat around my house waiting for Jason. I cooked some chicken yakitori without skewering the meat, so it might have just been teriyaki. Good food by any name tastes just as wonderful. We pretty much passed out after that, and I remember Jason showing up but it was less than a three second memory. He verified it later though, so I wasn’t dreaming.

I got ready to go bowling with Paul, Chris, Junior, and Jerry. While waiting for Paul I shot a few pictures around my house. Our grass is not much more than a dirt field, but the trees are interesting up close. By the time we made it to the bowling alley, we had half an hour before closing and decided to eat instead. McDonald’s was how anyone would imagine a trip to McDonald’s being. We ate and talked, then went to Albertson’s for more food. It made sense at the time. What didn’t make sense at the time was a shirtless boy in diapers walking around the store. Cheap snacks were bought, Blockbuster was quickly visited, Chris parted ways, and we met up with Jason and Curt to play video games at my house.

Virtua Fighter was fun, but none of us are good so there wasn’t a huge sense of competition between anyone. Wally will still get trashed though. Jason headed home, and we decided that Tetris Worlds would be more fun than Virtua Fighter. It was pretty entertaining. We had a small tournament between the five of us. After lines were dropped and the smoke cleared, I emerged the Tetris champion for the night.

Then I did the robot and fell off my stool.

Tonight Curt, Jason, Russ, and I sat around a local computer store for their Warcraft Wednesday tournament. It was a modest eight-player, triple-elimination tournament. The rules were quirky, not to mention the lack of Frozen Throne and any patches whatsoever. Regardless, everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. Curt won pretty quick, then waited a few hours to finish off the remaining contenders. Their names were Jason. The tourney worked in some manner so that Jason ended up playing Curt twice. Jason put up a valiant effort, but it was a repeat of the Machine Soul Calibur tournament, with Jason being destroyed by a fellow Exile member. Atari prize shirt in hand, Curt left undefeated. Jason, at least you got your five bucks back.

Other events of the day include taking my Playstation 2 home and my DVD+R’s coming in. Virtua Fighter Evolution is plenty of fun, though all of us are pretty rusty. Wally will feel the wrath of Wolf just like old times. My computer’s audio goes crazy after I use my DVD Burner. At least that’s what I suspect the problem is. Logging on and off takes care of that so I’ll just keep that up for now. I’m considering purchasing a new camera, but it’s just one of those rough ideas without any real thinking put into it. My Dreamcast controller broke and Jason and I tried to take it apart and fix it. It broke more and we were left a PCB board and some rubber connectors.

I beat Jason with a PCB board and some rubber connectors.

Well, I decided to do a written update. I’ll probably go outside and take some pictures afterwards so there should be two whole updates in one day. Amazing. This is another bolded title update. Brace yourselves and enjoy.

Ken Jennings He has won thirty-five days straight and broke a million dollars on Jeopardy last week. He’s the Mormon Mauler. I’ve been watching probably three days a week, and he simply dominates everyone else. From what I can tell, he’ll just hit the buzzer as soon as possible and think of the answer as the timer runs down. Sometimes, it seems like the opponents just give up and watch him. He doesn’t do well at all whenever the subject is related to current entertainers, but I bet he knows who Pocahontas visited three days before her seventh birthday. Go watch if you haven’t seen him in action yet.

On a side note, this site shows the maximum amount of money a Jeopardy contestant can win in a day. Running the entire board once would be pretty ridiculous on its own.

Computer I built a new computer last week. For the most part, I had video editing in mind, but I haven’t used it for that purpose yet. When I turn eighteen, I plan on opening another checking account and my own blockbuster account so I can get a movie pass. Then the extra encoding speed will come in handy. Other than that, I just need some actors to fill the roles of my storyboards. I decided to wait a bit on the video card purchase, since the new generation cards are still pretty hard to come across. My guess is that some form of Nvidia’s 6800 will be a personal Christmas present. It’s not a beast by any means, but I’m definitely happy with the purchase. For reference, I didn’t choose a Pentium 4 “because I like Intel”. Here are the components:

• Pentium 4 2.8 ghz Northwood @ 3.3 ghz
• 2x Corsair XMS PC3200 512mb RAM
• Asus P4P800-E Deluxe
• Zalman CNPS700A-Alcu Heatsink/Fan
• 2x Hitachi 160gb 7200 8mb
• NEC 2510-A 8x DL DVD+/-RW
• Winfast TV2000 Expert TV Tuner
• Beastly Gainward GeForce 4 Ti-4200

TV Tuner It’s been pretty great. I can play Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 in my room again. This sort of defeats the purpose of moving the actual TV out of my room to stay away from it, but it was a cheaper solution than waiting for an X800 All in Wonder and more flexible than just purchasing a 9800 All in Wonder right at this moment. The recording function is really nice, especially with its integration with the TV Titan website. Best of all, I can watch Captain Planet again. Water is still fine! And I’m still pretty sure Heart is useless.

Organization Two weeks ago, I finished reading Getting Results for Dummies. I wasn’t exactly expecting it to change my life, but it gave me a few ideas on organization. Right now, I have a Steno spiral notebook (it just flips up vertically and has two columns on each page) to keep track of my time. I use two pages a day, one for a to-do list and one for my schedule. On the to-do list, I write, well, things I have to do. Then I write my schedule and cross things off my to-do list when I put them on my schedule. It’s simple, but it’s worked pretty well so far. Sometimes I decide that sitting in my chair and practicing Magneto combos is really important and that it should take two hours. When that happens, my schedule gets thrown off a bit. Practice makes perfect. I’ve considered purchasing a PDA, but I’m not too sure yet.

The Electronics Guy at the Exchange Man, he’s annoying.

Larger Panorama Image.

I had two goals yesterday, to register and to meet people. One thing was verified yesterday.

I suck at talking to people. After the introduction at the auditorium we broke into groups of twelve and talked. As expected, there was an ice breaker activity. In ours, we paired off and introduced ourselves and then introduced our neighbor to the rest of the group. We were the only two people who had nothing to talk about after the first thirty seconds. Man, I sure am boring. Lunch came around and I sat alone. Luckily, someone coming from the technology seminar was sitting alone and decided to move to my table. We ate in silence, made small talk, then he probably decided, “Man, he sure is boring.” He packed up and said he had to go somewhere, then I told him I had somewhere to go and packed up. That somewhere was outside, where I walked around aimlessly until lunch ended.

Registration went alright. I think I am on the right track. I definitely hope so. My classes start at 11:30 every day except for a thursday lecture at 9:30. Every day ends at 1:20. I joined one of the two Freshman Interest Groups that included the introductory Computer Science class. These groups are meant to help freshman adjust to their new environment by taking classes together. Today I checked to see if my group was full yet. What I saw on the screen was 1/25. My initial thought was, “Only one spot left, it’s almost closed! Good thing I got in it.” Wrong. Wrong. I’m the only person in it right now. There’s still hope for my social life, since there are plenty of advising sessions left. Oh well, everyone has bad days.

The panorama turned out good. For a while I couldn’t think of a good way to post the picture as an entry without ruining the 500×350 format. Hopefully, a few of you decide to click it. Time for bed.

Today was pretty memorable. Food was the main event of the day, starting with the Nathan’s hot-dog eating championship a few minutes after awaking and ending with a multitude of meat sticks. Skewers are awesome, but ninja swords are better. There were a few major downers to the day, but it’s Independence Day and there was good food to eat throughout the day.

Kobeyashi’s record fifty-three hot dogs is beastly. While the comparisons to Tiger Woods and Barry Bonds were humorous, it’s easy to admit that eating that much is impossibly difficult–even if most people won’t accept them as athletes. The Tsunami’s twelve minute six-pack to beer keg transformation is a sight to behold, and I’m glad to have watched history made on television, regardless of the event’s significance in the future of humanity. Wimbledon ended, and I can’t honestly make any knowledgable comments, but the Men’s finals match sure was entertaining.

Hammack had a fantastic barbecue. His parents kept piling food on the table, and I gladly took it off. For some reason, we decided it would be a great idea to play some basketball without resting and digesting our food. As far as I remember, Jason was victorious in 21, but it was a tough and ugly battle all the way through. Then we ate some more and played Telephone for a few minutes. Not some sort of drinking game or obscure card game, just plain old telephone. In one round, we ended up with “Jason likes to masturbate to old men in thongs”. I recommend you try it out. After a mishap, I was back home for another get together. That meant more food.

After eating, the fun began. While everyone else watched Hoosiers, a few of us set up the impromptu studio and posed for ninja pictures. We played with them in Photoshop and made a good switcheroo of Jerry and Junior’s foreheads, making them look like Jonard and Ez for some reason. The picture posted of Jerry also came out of that session. I really need some better lighting equipment. Finally, Crimson Skies and Soul Calibur brought us far into the night. Junior’s Maxi edged out my Astaroth in a good old 4-4 battle for my last match. Still, it was hard to be all that disappointed in a loss after juggling my brother’s Taki with Voldo’s atmoic pelvic thrust.

My computer has been acting up for the past two days and I am pretty clueless right now. Any online activities go really slow. I can’t connect to Messenger and my download speed is less than 2kbps. Safe mode fixes that, but pretty much breaks everything else. Its either safe mode and browse or restart and do anything else. Unfortunately, it’s been real difficult to update my virus scanners since I can’t run them in safe mode or download updates normally. Orientation is Tuesday and I’ll be up in Seattle until Wednesday morning, so I hope I am able to take at least one picture worth posting by the time I return home. Enjoy your Monday.