Gangnam style...I know it's this huge meme now, but I can't even stand to appreciate the song itself, not one bit. It's just a very obnoxious song and I don't even know how it has exploded into the phenomenon that it is. With that said, I was also "gangnam'd" a week ago while job hunting at my local mall, though it was playing over the speaks of a Spencer's store and not from someone else's iPod. Still, a saw a few people doing the dance associated with the song, and I was like...creeped out a little.

Dude, "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" is the funniest show I've ever seen. Those guys are just flat out hilarious, especially Colin & Ryan. I'm glad that you and your family has discovered such an awesome comedy show.

Hahaha, I love that show! I used to think badly about it because it looked childish, but as soon as I gave it a chance I couldn't give it up! If you like funny TV, you might want to watch The Office. ;]

11/21/12
Washington D.C., Day 1

No layout today, can't be bothered however simple it may be.
Anyway, today I'm in Washington D.C., after what felt like all day in the car. Probably because it was a 9-and-a-half-hour car ride. We set off at 8:00, and kept going until lunch, where we ate at a Wegmans somewhere in Pennsylvania. Then we kept going all the way through to D.C., save for a fuel stop somewhere along the way.

The road system around D.C. is absolutely terrible. Our first obstacle was a closed road, so it wasn't long before we were completely lost. Now, on the outskirts, there's what's called contraflow - basically, parts of roads changing the direction of traffic at different times of day to ease congestion during rush hour. It works on paper, but is horrendous in practice. The moment we get back enroute, we get to a no left turn sign... where the directions say to turn left. Right, that's the contraflow. So we end up getting lost again, which leads us to a point where we've gotten to a do not enter sign at our side of an intersection. We ended up having to make a 7-point-turn in a two-lane road, in traffic. Eventually we managed to make it downtown. Downtown was even worse. We hit it at quarter past 5; peak rush hour. We got lost again thanks to no left turn signs that are effective from the beginning of morning rush hour to the end of evening rush hour. And we were stuck in traffic the entire time.

Basically, we spent two hours from the point that we got off the interstate trying to get to our hotel. I'm still stressed as hell from it. >.<

11/22/12
Washington D.C., Day 2

Happy Thanksgiving!
Today we didn't do a whole lot. We walked over to the Air and Space Museum and looked at some air- and space-craft. Doing that took up most of the day. Then we just sort of walked around downtown for a bit before heading back to the hotel. However, just walking around downtown was great. The weather was beautiful, and since it was a holiday the roads were almost completely deserted, meaning it was peaceful.

Oh, and by "walking around downtown," what actually happened was we walked to the Old Post Office, it was closed, and so we just walked from there to the hotel.

11/23/12
Washington D.C., Day 3

Today. Was. Awesome. We spent a lot of it walking around the city. We started by going to some park and the reflecting pool (though sadly, the bridge through it was closed). Then we just sort of walked to the American History Museum, which we stayed at until lunch when we all decided that it was boring. So we headed up to (and waited in line an hour for) the International Spy Museum, which was interesting and took up most of the day. They had a couple of Bond cars in it as well, namely Bond's famous DB5 and the green Jag that the baddies had in... one of the movies. I know nothing about James Bond

After that, we had dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe. I loved it; I've never been in one before. I got to pick a song as well. <3

Double entry today.

11/24/12
Today we headed to the other Air and Space Museum. Basically, it's two aircraft hangars just outside of D.C. that houses all the awesome stuff that doesn't fit in the main museum. And it is awesome. A few things were more awesome than others, of course. I'm not gonna go into detail because I would bore myself talking about it, but the first thing you see when you step into the first hangar is an SR72 Blackbird. Then apart from that the only thing that really stood out to me was a Concorde, which was the biggest thing in the aviation hangar. There were also a few racing and stunt planes that I was interested in, but not quite as much. Then the space hangar... I wasn't interested at all in any of that apart from the main attraction, the space shuttle Discovery.
After that, we drove back to the hotel (the museum was pretty far away - in Virginia, actually - so we took the car), and headed out to some restaurant to eat. I think that's all we really did.

11/25/12
Today was... rather miserable, actually. We started off heading to the Arlington National Cemetery, which wasn't bad, apart from the fact that at one point I was forced to wait in the cold for 45 minutes. At about 11 AM we headed home. That involved getting lost twice and returning to a snowy New York. And I have school tomorrow. >.<

12/8/12
No updates in... quite a long time, actually. But today's been really eventful. To start, the weekly roleplaying club meet.

Today, it was the winter in Mouse Guard. Our task was to stop an awful dripping noise that was audible throughout all of the main town. I might go in-depth with that later, but I haven't got much time and I want to tell you about my main event of the day. Rochester Chip Fest.

Basically, there was a monthly event called Rochester Chip going on for a couple years, and this was to celebrate its 2-year anniversary. Most of the acts were local, with the farthest ones being from New York City. The first act was called Shrimps, who did a sort of hip-hop performance. Three guys were on stage here, one with a sequencer, one with a guitar, and a special guest who did the drums on another sequencer. They remained my favorite of the night. in fact, I bought a CD from them at the merch table. The next was a three-piece chip-rock band called Chip's Challenge. They were rather interesting. My sister bought a CD from them. Next was my third favorite, Faking Amnesia, which just seemed to be one antisocial student from the college's radio station, who never seemed to look up from his Game Boy. After that, we went downstairs for dinner, completely missing most of the next performance, which I was never really interested in. Then, the one I actually bothered to look up before I went - Kris Keyser. His music is definitely full of energy, and he danced himself breathless on stage after just one song. Then... I completely lost track after that. I think the next one up was Bit Runner, but my sister and I were sick of it by that point and just left. We did get a couple other things from the merch table, though; myself a poster, and my sister a modded gray-brick Game Boy, which appears to have a backlight, new buttons, a Pro Sound port, and a new case.

Pictures below! (file names go with band/musician names respectively)

5 attached images

12/9/12
Dang, the day's over already? Well, at least I did something today. I went to a chiptune workshop at RIT. Basically, it went over how to use LSDJ, which is something someone made to sequence music on the Game Boy... which I don't have (nor do I have a Game Boy of any sort ). My sister's getting it, but I doubt she'd let me use it. By the way, the Game Boy was pretty much the instrument of choice in Chip Fest. For instance, Kris Keyser had a modded gray-brick, and Faking Amnesia seemed to have a couple bog-standard Pockets (or Colors, I couldn't tell) linked together. Once we got home I loaded up FamiTracker (it's close enough, and unlike LSDJ, it's freeware), but couldn't be motivated to make anything.

Oh, also, I've been having some frustration trying to get the CD I bought last night to work on my computer, thanks to a broken optical drive. >_<

12/15/12
Wow. It's already been a week since... yeah. To explain what happened in Mouse Guard today, I guess I should explain what happened last week.

Well, last week we were assigned a mission to solve a dripping sound that was audible throughout the town of Lock Haven - the main place that the Guard is located. After a long time of pointless searching, we came across something. It was a series of tunnels, under all of the town, that had never been discovered before. And the ceiling was cracked, and water was dripping down; hence, the universal dripping sound. We ventured in completely unprepared, and not after long we got lost. Eventually, we discovered that someone was following us. They said that if we were to drop our weapons and blindfold ourselves, they'd lead us out of the tunnels. Riiiight. Well, a few of the party members fell for it, and they were actually led out, to a random place in the town each. Eventually the rest of us got out, and freaked some guy out when we broke through the door. We were brought to the matriarch, and explained everything. She was pissed seeing as there was a major security breach that no one had found before. And apparently that guy was spying on the whole town for who knows how long.

And that leads us to this week. There were reports of attacks on a couple of coastal towns, and we were sent to investigate. Midway there, on the first night, we were attacked by an old guy. We managed to kick his ass, but he escaped. So, with that out of the way, we continued on. Our first destination was a small town called Dawn Rock, but when we got there, no one was there anymore. No one. Not a single mouse. We continued onto the next place. However, we got captured shortly after leaving Dawn Rock, by a couple rats (although, our characters didn't know what the hell they were). Long story short, we were all put in a pen with a couple hundred other captured mice, and then proceeded to **** things up. One of the others in the party ended up being thrown in the ocean. I managed to get into a fight with another in the party for the rats' entertainment, and then got thrown in the ocean as well (after playing dead). And that's where we stand now.

12/21/12
Happy Apocalypse!

So, a number of things contributed to my crappy day today.

Firstly, sleeplessness. I must have gotten 4 hours at the most.

Secondly, the internet went down for 6 and a half hours. Basically, there's a physical firewall that's really a 10-year-old repurposed laptop (and god knows why it's still in use). It decided to sort-of die today. It just completely crashed around 11:30 today. Turned it back on, and it got through boot... and it crashed again. Turned it back on again, it was midway though checking the filesystem when it crashed again. Then I just gave up. Several hours later, my dad came home from work. He went downstairs, turned it on, and it worked. It completely. Freaking. Worked. It would have been nice if it were to work a few hours ago.

Thirdly, and this wasn't actually bad (it's just a thing that happened), I went to get a haircut today. I saw three ambulances on the way there. Within 15 minutes.

So yeah. Nismo out.

1/5/13
Well, the roleplaying group that I go to had started doing something interesting. After a couple weeks where we basically did nothing, we revived an old zombie apocalypse RP we had going a while back, on an updated version of a system that we had made on our own. Interestingly, it starts on a cruise ship in the Pacific. So far three of our characters already have almost died, and I managed to throw someone else in the party under the bus (not literally, in case you were wondering ; also, it was acceptable by everyone else because our characters hadn't met each other yet). There were also a couple interesting character concepts; chief among which were an ex-KGB agent that one guy played, and "the rich kid, all grown up."

Nothing else really happened throughout the rest of the day, other than eating out at Chili's. I got a grilled ham & cheese sandwich with BBQ sauce <3

3/9/13
Yep. More than two months.
I guess I've got some news. My dad and I have been looking for an old car to buy and fix up, and we've finally settled on something; an '87 VW Scirocco that's out near Albany.
...That's about all of the news, other than some D&D stuff. The old DM moved to NYC a few weeks ago, so we got someone else in the group (who's a little crazy, I have to admit x3) to replace him, and we've already started a second campaign, which is annoying because I liked my character in the old one.
Oh well. That's all for today!

Nismoz dungeonman level 43 paladin? pretty cool yo

5/18/13
So yeah, another two months with no update.
Well, the past however-long has been pretty eventful for me. I got a new computer (a built desktop this time) and a car, and I actually started learning to drive in it today (yes, at 15, before I even have my learner's permit). I have to say, driving stick doesn't actually seem like it'd be too hard. It'd take some getting used to to start out without jerking, and to be able to downshift properly without skidding, but I don't see why people make a big fuss out of it. You can easily feel where the clutch starts to bite, changing gear is very straightforward, and stopping in gear is also pretty simple. Plus the Mazda, being an older car, was pretty unforgiving; I'd imagine more modern cars are easier to drive.

8/20/13

I guess it's about time I update you guys on Montréal and stuff. I went about a week ago for about a week, and simply put, it was awesome.

First day, we went to the Thousand Islands on the way and stayed there for a night. We explored Alexandria Bay, did a boat tour, saw Boldt Castle, and... that was all there was to do at Alex Bay.

Then we went up to Canada and the fun began.

...Specifically, horrible construction on the QEW and the wonderful Canadian drivers who will willingly cut off trucks, buses, and American drivers (but are happy to let pedestrians across even when they have right of way). The construction continued onto the island of Montréal (yes, Montréal is an island in case you didn't know that) and spent the rest of the evening trying to get to our hotel in Longueuil (don't ask me how to pronounce that, I'm not entirely sure myself) on the mainland.

Also, crossing the border to Canada involved going over this really dangerous-looking bridge; big, long, steep, really narrow 2-lane suspension bridge with a 40 MPH speed limit and tons of trucks going up and down it, followed by a tight, long, equally narrow, blind turn where I was thankful that there were no trucks on when we went through it.

The next morning, we got our Métro passes and headed onto the island. We did a bus tour, Laser Quest in a five-story arena, and got a glimpse at the underground city before it was evening again and we had to head back to the hotel.

The next few days are pretty fuzzy in my memory, but I remember going to Old Montréal the next day. Really nice place. Don't remember doing much other than that. We went down to the underground city for dinner, but it turns out Montréal operates on a really weird schedule and everything's closed down there by dinnertime, for some reason.

The next day was much of the same. We did the "Montréal Ghost Tour" at sundown; a guided tour around Old Montréal with ghost stories told at some of the locations. Pretty cool. The tour guide could put on a really good scream, I can say that much.

Around this time I also got the chance to try out Canada's signature snack food, poutine. French fries smothered in cheese curds smothered in gravy, i.e. diabetes on a plate. A single bowl was enough for an entire lunch.

Other than that, nothing really pops out in my memory. Montréal really likes international food, as shown by the huge food court in the center of the underground city. I remember eating a lot of ice cream as well. And enjoying how easy the Métro was to get around.

If you haven't been there before, go there. And stay at the Hôtel le Dauphin in Longueuil, really nice hotel.

9/12/13 - In Which I Rant About Microsoft

Today I had to install the Windows Media Feature Pack to get some Media Center stuff to work, because I'm running Windows 7 N and for some reason that doesn't include it. For starters, it took me about 15 minutes to find what I actually needed to download since they named it something completely different than what I needed from it. Then it told me I would need to validate my copy of Windows for it. Okay, it's annoying, but it shouldn't be hard. It gives me a program download for the validator, and...

...It hits me with an error message saying that that the validator is out of date and no longer supported. Pardon my language, but what the ****? Their own program that they linked to was out of date? After several more minutes of looking around, I find a support topic saying that I need to use Internet Explorer.

Bull. It gave me a standalone program, that had nothing to do with my browser. I opened IE anyway, and I get a different approach involving a toolbar or something and it worked. Okay then. And finally, finally, I get the download I want. And then it hits me with a positively massive 303 MB file to seal the deal.

Needless to say, Microsoft has frustrated me today and I'm a little disappointed that the survey failed to appear so I can't complain to them.

5/19/14

Today I bought a new pair of shoes.

1 attached image

Today is my last day of living in this house.

That means it's my last day of living in the countryside. My last day of living on six acres of land. My last day of views like this.

...I'm getting all sentimental, aren't I? Let's back this up a bit.

God I hate moving. We've been working for about six hours and were about ready to head out to the new house... only to come back and pick up some more stuff, not to mention move our various vehicles around.