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So I've been staying up later and later as of late. I used to go to bed at around midnight. The past week or so, it's inched from midnight, to 3AM, which was last night. I couldn't get to sleep when I went upstairs at 11:30, so I played Rome: Total War from about midnight until 2. After that, I got in bed, flipped the TV on, and watched George Carlin until 3. Then I finally went to sleep. Strangely, when I got up this morning, I felt about the same as when I do when I go to sleep at midnight. Then again, I'm sure it'll catch up with me later in the day, most notably this evening, when I have history class. Since last week's class was cancelled, Feight's going to be finishing the lecture on the American Revolution, and then we're going to do the midterm review.

It's going to be one very long night.

Speaking of midterms, I took my english one last night. It consisted of choosing 4 questions out of 6, and answering them in essay form. The questions were over essays and other writings that we'd read in our Patterns handbook. Before going to class and taking them, however, we had to go to the library for an orientation. The lady that gave it to us was, quite honestly, *the* stereotypical librarian, with funky glasses, a monotone voice, and.. well, she was just fscking boring. It was one of the longest 50 minute periods in my life. Anyway - we started the midterm at around 7:15. I was done at 8:30. 3 essays in an hour and 15 minutes? I felt bad, mostly because I had the feeling that I'd rushed myself. So, I checked all of my writing, 2 or 3 times in fact. I ended up replacing 6 or 7 words, maybe, but that was all that I changed. I felt that I'd answered the questions well, and to the best of my ability, so I turned them in. I decided there was no point sitting there racking my brain, trying to alter something that in my eyes was just fine. We'll see what the teacher thinks next week, probably. Before leaving, I asked him how I was doing, since I was concerned, because I haven't really written, at least in an academic setting, for roughly 3 years. He checked his grade sheet, and said that I was pretty much right on track, when taking into consideration that I'd missed last week's class.

So about Rome: Total War. As I've said before, I think it's a great game. When a game is largely turn based, and you keep telling yourself, "one more turn!", you know it's good. It's extremely deep, with countless things that you can (and generally have to) control. I like that. On the other hand, it does cause one major problem: thus far, it's been one of those games that I keep having to start over with. There aren't levels or anything like that. You start the campaign, and it's basically a giant map of most of the areas the Romans controlled at one point (and maybe a bunch of others - I don't know Roman history). Well, I keep trying to work on my starting provinces, build up an army, and take a few of the provinces north of me, which belong to the Gaul's. I accomplished that last night, and then started to move in to their territory that lies west of my starting provinces. That worked until they threw two giant armies at me and crushed my 1 major army. Luckily I had saved right before that, so I could undo my total error.

It's stuff like that that's making it difficult for me - in essence, not being familiar with the game yet. I'll think I'm making great progress, and then an enemy army will show up, and wipe out my entire army. If I didn't return to my previous save game, I'd pretty much have to start over, over and over again, because I keep making blunders. After I get a good grip on things I'm probably going to start over and play fair with 1 save game.

Ironically (and much to my annoyance), by the time I finished the bit about Rome: Total War, what I'd written about not being tired has become a lie. I'm dreadfully sleepy now.

Must.. acquire.. caffeine...

**Even more to my annoyance, after writing roughly 3/4 of what's above, for some reason, the LJ website refreshed, and lost all of it. I rewrote all of it in Notepad. I have learned my lesson.

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 What can I say? I procrastinate - a lot. After speaking to proth for a bit, apparently I don't procrastinate nearly as much as him, but I still do my fair share of it. I had an out-of-class essay that was due last Monday, which I couldn't turn in, since I wasn't at class. Well, it's due this evening, and I just finished it up last night. I also have another essay that's due tonight, and I've yet to even start on it. However, it's supposed to be a short, descriptive essay, so that should be a piece of cake, as long as I actually get around to doing it.

**after looking down at one of my previous entries** Ha ha. Apparently, I told myself that my short descriptive essay would be done by 'next week', which is, in essence, today. And the essay still isn't done. Oh well. I've still got about 7 hours or so to get it done in.

Money! So Friday was a good day for money. Not only did I get paid, but I got paid - again. In the mail, I received a cheque from the college, which amounted to all the money that was left over from my grant / loan, after paying tuition and buying books. The total? About 280 dollars. Niceness!

I could've done the totally responsible thing and put it in the bank, setting it aside for next quarter's books, thus slowly getting more and more money back, so I could pay a large chunk of the loan off, by the time I'm done with school. Well, that'd be totally against me being me. Amber and I went to Wal-Mart (hey, I happen to like Wal-Mart - they have good prices), and bought lots of stuff. I bought a bunch of new clothes, because my current 'batch' is quickly dying. I also bought Amber a bunch of new clothes. Also picked up a microwave for upstairs, so we don't have to go downstairs to heat up Daelan's bottles at 3AM in the morning. Anddd, lastly, I bought Rome: Total War. While I spent most of the money on things that we truly needed, I couldn't pass up the game - I've been wanting to play it since I first heard about it being in the works. It was going to be a long time before I had the 'extra' money to buy a game that's 50 bucks, so I bought it, and I don't regret it in the least. It's a great game. Oddly enough, it runs much better than Medieval: Total War, and yet it looks 10X better. Any company that can make the newest installment of their game look a hell of a lot better, and yet have better frame rates, get's an A in my book.

Oh, and I bought dinner for everyone. Total money left: $40. Not bad, really, considering what we got.

Gah. Also forgot buying a few toys for Daelan. /kicks memory.

In other areas of [non]interest, I really need to clean my room. It's grown to be quite disgusting, really. While I know I can be messy, my room ashames even me right now. It's that bad. I might post some pictures. Maybe. I'm not sure I want photographic records of how bad it really is.

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Current Mood: annoyed

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So I've not posted here for a long time. Why? Well, I decided that I preferred Blogger over LJ, so I started posting everything over at my blog instead of here. Which brings up a question: why am I posting here? Well, mostly because my blog has turned into more of a 'random thoughts and ideas' instead of a 'journal' thing. There's a fine line of a difference there for me, really. Then again, I could just be pulling things out of my arse, looking for a reason for me to post here as well as at my blog. This is probably the case.

Anyway - I'm posting here, too.

Tonight I've got history class. Wootage [not]. I made a major mistake this first quarter in college, and that was assuming my old learning habits (i.e., my lazy learning habits of high school) would be sufficient. Well, mid-terms have arrived, and you know what? They're going to kick me right square in the ass. I put off studying for too long, and I don't think I'm going to be able to 'cram' it all.

However, I'm not going to sweat it. I'd been out of school, what 3 years? 4 years? It's been a learning experience in itself, going back to school. If I flunk the tests, oh well - I can always retake the classes. Granted, it's costing me money (in the long run), but hey - as long as I learn from my mistakes, I'm happy. That being said, from now on, as soon as we go through a chapter, I'm taking all the pertinent notes, key terms, and things like that, and putting them into my SuperMemo collection. I figure as long as I do that, by the time mid-terms and finals come around, I'll have most of the material memorized.

In other school-related news, I missed my first class last night. I didn't go to English class. Amber called me at work at around 1:20 yesterday, telling me that I needed to get ready to leave, because she needed to go to the hospital. She'd thrown up blood everywhere. Yikes. So, she gets here, blood all over her shirt, and off we go to the hospital. To make a fairly long (and unpleasant) story short, she was poked, prodded, and had a tube shoved up her nose and down her throat. She ended up having gastritis, which is basically an irritation of the stomach lining. Sounds wonderful. We got out of the hospital at 5PM, give or take a few minutes. Well, class was at 6, except there was a major problem: I didn't have my short descriptive essay done, which was due. I'd planned on doing it when I got off work at 2, but that obviously didn't happen. So, I decided to just stay at home, work on sociology studying, and think about a topic for the paper. The paper still isn't done (in fact, I've yet to start on it), but I'll have it done by next week.

While it sucks that I had to miss class, my significant other takes precedence over the inner meanings of some essay. Just how the cookie crumbles, I guess. If the professor doesn't like it, oh well. I'm over it.

In other not-school-related news, I've been gaming a bit. Not nearly as much as I'd like, but hey - lack of time isn't the best thing to couple gaming with. At any rate, I've been doing a fair amount of Day of Defeat, so that's good. I need the leisure time. Trying to balance work, family, and school, with no leisure time, is a bad thing. I didn't realize what I was doing until I thought to myself, "You haven't played a game in almost a month!" The horror! So, I set aside school work, and blew up Germans for a few hours. It was good fun, so I've been doing it a bit every day, or every other day, to just relax and forget about pressing matters for a time.

Unfortunately, whenever I hit 'Disconnect', the pressing matters are still there, pressing ever so slightly more. Deadlines suck. Mid-terms are crap. And I really wish I could take a vacation.

Current Mood: busy

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Well, for those of you who ever visited my LJ here (probably just Proth and Khinsath), as you can see: everything that I wrote in it is gone. After skimming over most of it a few times in the past week or so, I decided that if for nothing else, I was going to get my password sent to me, so I could delete all the rubbish I wrote before. I disliked about 90% of what I'd written before, and I'm glad that it's gone now. If anyone's interested in what *was* here before I erased it all, here's a quick recap:

Me being really depressed. Me being really angry, mean, annoying, bitchy, whiney, and generally unpleasant. Me playing videogames about 15 or 16 hours a day, while at the same time neglecting my family, my pets, and my girlfriend (who is now my wife, by the way). Me spending all of my time being negative and unhappy, instead of trying to fix things for myself.

And that about covers it. My desire to delete all of that is probably very easy to understand!

And now for the good: Amber and I now have a son (Daelan Michael). He was born on a Saturday, July 3rd, at 4:36AM. He weighed in at 8 pounds and 13 ounces (big boy!). He was 20 1/2 inches long. His head was 13" around, and strangely enough, his chest was larger: 13 3/4". Methinks he got my chest, much.

As noted above, Amber and I are now married. We were married July 29th. Woot. We're doing quite well together at this point (obviously, considering the marriage).

So I received a packet in the mail this morning. Well, it was from yesterday, since we forgot to check the mail yesterday, but anyway. The packet was from the college, notifying me of the financial aid reward that I'm going to receive. It's more than I figured I'd get, for sure: $2,225.00 per quarter. Considering I'm going to a community college that is dirt cheap, that's very nice. Even if I were going to a bigger, much more expensive college, it'd be great: that's two grand per quarter that I wouldn't have been able to produce for myself, and that's around 7 grand total that I won't have to pay back somewhere down the road. And that's just for this year! Most likely, next year I'll be eligible for more, since I'll be considered independent, and I make pretty much nothing at work. (6 bucks an hour, 25 hours a week - you can't really support a family on that, let alone go to school on it). I only need to sign the reward paper, and turn it into the office, and I should be 'good to go'. Now to find out exactly how much Shawnee State costs per quarter. Perhaps I should've found that out much more in advance, but anyone who knows me knows that that is so not like me!

I'm almost over my cold now. My nose is still stuffed up a bit, and I still have the a cough every once in a while, but for the most part, I believe it's nearing it's end.

The day before yesterday Amber and I rented Return of the King on DVD. We got around to watching it last night. One has to keep in mind that you've got to have a large chunk of time to watch RotK straight through: it weighs in at.. *looks at imdb website* 201 minutes. Wow, apparently the USA Extend version runs 250 minutes! Anyways. We'd already seen it at the theater, but that was some months ago, so it was nice to see it again. I'm still amazed at what they accomplished with Gollum - he blows Jar Jar out of the water (if they're even in the same pool, which I don't think they are, really). It's a really good movie. If you've not seen it, do so. My only complaint is this, and it's more a complaint lobbed at the media, not the movie itself: film is not well suited for displaying ending after ending after ending. Whereas in a book, a chapter can be set aside for each 'wrap up' (the victory at Gondor, the victory for Eowyn and Merry against the Witch King, the success of Sam and Frodo in reaching Mount Doom, and finally the 'passing away' of Frodo, Gandalf, and Bilbo) - this can't be done with a movie. It's just one ending after another, and it feels a bit strange to me. But, again: media problem, not a movie problem, really.

So I'm torn: Blogger or Livejournal? I don't have the time (nor desire) to maintain a journal-like thing at both. I must admit: I like Blogger's interface a lot more. LJ has most of the same options and what not, but Blogger implements said options in a smoother fashion. One thing I like about Blogger is that when you log in to your Blog, it shows all of your entries in a big list, with checkmark boxes beside each one. If you want to delete one (or 100), you just checkmark 'em, and click delete. With LJ, you've got to click Manage -> Entries -> Select a way to sort them (show most recent, show so many (enter number), etc)... and then you can only select one at a time, because they don't have checkmark boxes - they have radio buttons. Doh. So to delete all of my old entries, I had to do the above said procedure quite a few times. Oh well.

On top of that, Blogger allows me to do voice entries if I want, or update my blog via sending an email. LJ let's you do this, but only if you have a paid account.

Anywho, I'll think about it.

I started playing Golden Sun a few days ago. At the moment I'm in the first dungeon, with some crazy old guy named Kraden. The game seems fun thus far - kind of like an RPG mixed in with a few of the puzzle bits of Zelda. However, the dialogue leaves something to be desired. It seems stilted at times, and kind of clunky. I believe it was released in Japan first, and if that's right, that would explain the weird dialogue: translation. :) Something else that I find a bit weird: at many points in the game, it seems that your character is asked a question (or a series of questions), to which you can answer yes or no. But... your answers make no difference. At all. :) At a couple of said questioning points, I answered yes, saw the outcome, reloaded my game, answered no, and... it gave me the same thing. Kinda' weird to me, but okay. I'm all for giving players choices, but if the choices make no difference, why give them a choice anyway?

While I started a new game on my GBA, I'm still not done with my previous one, Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga. I'm currently on the last boss, and I've not yet taken her out. Tough battle. I needed a break. :)

A quick sentence or two on my current book: 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Thus far a very good book, and very insightful. I'm gaining a lot from it. Hit your local library and pick it up. It's not overly complicated, so it's a quick read.

Sold my copy of Unreal Tournament 2004 to my good friend Aaron for 25 bucks. I don't have the time to play online games for 3 and 4 hours at a time, and I don't have the self discipline to only play them for half an hour or an hour. So, I figured I'd cut my losses. I'm sure I got 10 dollars worth of play time out of the Red Orchestra mod for it, and seeing as how paid 35 for it, hey, 25 bucks for it works for me. It also saved Aaron 15 on retail, since I'm sure he'd buy it at Walmart, and they want 40. :)

I need to get my license. Soon. I start school on September the 8th, so I need it by then. I plan on going out this week, if Amber feels like it, and driving in town. So far, everyone has wanted me to learn to drive on back roads and on highways. Last time Michelle took me out driving about a month ago, I did fine on the very curvy, up-down hilly roads, so I should be fine in town. Just a matter of becoming more comfortable with driving. I'd say 3 or 4 outings should get me where I want to be. Then I can go take my written test, and then the driving portion. The only part I'm concerned about is the 'cone' thing - I'm very nervous about not being able to judge exact distances. I can tell when I'm too close to something, but am I able to tell when I'm 2-3 inches away from it? I doubt it. Must practice!

Also on my 'to do but not urgent but stil vaguely important' list is to finish painting my roof. it's been in a 'half-done' state for about 3 or 4 months now, and I'm getting very tired of looking at half parchment color / half dark cloud gray. :)

More later, probably. Gotta' get something to drink, and I'm still stumped on this network problem at work. *wave*

Current Mood: relieved
Current Music: None. Not allowed to listen to music at work.

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