Captain's Log: 2004.07

07.22.04: Past Issues and 64 oz. Drinks

Hey there, folks. I know it has been quite the while since my last update, but I have my reasons. There is a strong chance I'll be going into surgery. That was a bit of a mood wrecker for me. At least I will get flowers and stuffed animals, so everything's groovy.

Things are getting interesting at Chimera. I knew past issues would present themselves sooner or later, but this is definitely on the sooner side. It would be wise not to go into details because the parties know who they are. *nods* Yes they do.

Out of curiosity I decided to see the 9/11 movie. I knew it was going to be biased but the film was just ridiculous. I have no strong feelings about our President. I respect the fact that he is the leader of our country and it must be tough, but he does make mistakes, some excelling others. The movie itself was trying enough but the audience was unbearable. All throughout the movie these people turned hysterical at anti-Bush comments. They need some new hobbies.

My talent journey is coming to a temporary halt at vectoring. It is a lot of work but the results are so appealing that it's irresistible. One of the cons is that it can take a little while, not to mention the insane amount of practice. If it turns out to be another thing I have a knack for I'll incorporate them into my layouts. We shall see.

Getting to the point of this update, I've a surplus of goodies for you. Two of the reviews I submitted for are complete and I uploaded them for your reading pleasure. Finally breaking my creative slump a new layout is available to the public. You have no idea how many ended up in the recycle bin the past few weeks. I'm also working on getting some of my old tutorials and walkthroughs up. They are taking the longest time to re-code. Well, most of the tutorials have to be completely redone to be of use.

Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.

Paul Valery (1871 - 1945)

07.14.04: If Keyboards Were Pillows

Once again I find myself sitting up at the wee hours of the morning in front of a computer. I don't enjoy the time spent on this thing. Do I find anything pleasurable anymore? It has been quite a while since anything remarkable happened, but there's not much to do other than trudge on. My fourteenth summer is beginning to wane. I'm not disappointed though.

Chimera is up and running again better than ever. The new version we are working on is going splendidly as well. Just typing this cheers me up a tad. It has been a little over a month since Chimera was opened to the public and it already has over one thousand topic replies and sixty members. It still is lacking in a few areas but is charming nonetheless.

Have you ever remembered a certain person and felt gleeful, irritated and murky at the same time? It always seems to happen at the worst possible time. I was giving a speech at school last year when something jogged my memory and it happened. Needless to say my heart skipped a beat and hiccups started up. I wasn't embarrassed as much as annoyed that it would show up on my body language grade.

I didn't run on the treadmill today. Perhaps that's why I'm a bit more gloomy than usual. I try to hold it back because if I'm in the doldrums I have a tendency to drag everyone else along with me. Summie isn't granted the luxury of moping. Maybe it is for the best if I channel my energy elsewhere.

Magic Waters was remarkable. Glorious will be the day when parents discipline their children. My cousins acted as though my aunts had given them seventeen espressos. At least I got a workout in. I just didn't like all the body slides I was forced to go on. If a girl is wearing a two-piece don't pressure them to go stomach down on slides. My side was scratched deeply and it stings like a wasp.

I have some other matters to attend to before I fall into dreams so I'll take my leave.

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.

Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970)

07.09.04: Invision Can Just Go Screw Itself

Gather around, children, for I have advice to share. *puts on spectacles and leans forward* Never ever use Invision Power Boards. *takes off spectacles and smiles* Who am I kidding? I'm not smiling, I'm exhausting every curse word I know. Not one thing has gone the way Mer or I planned with those evil boards. Right now they are down because we tried resetting the currency system because those wicked MunjPets messed it up. I can't wait until phpBB is up and running. I have to fix the old mistakes before the new ones, however.

I wonder what I should do for my birthday. It's coming up in a month so I hope I can think of something soon. It seems as though all of my friends are drastically different from each other and it would take a work of God to keep them from killing each other. That's why parties never really worked for me. A celebration about me is rather lackluster without tons of admirers. I could always go through the individual groups, but some of them are still immature enough to complain about favorites and such. My life is interesting.

Speaking of interesting, I just tipped over my computer chair. I was yawning and stretched just a little too far. I slammed my knee on the keyboard shelf as I was going down and it stings a bit, but it's better than being kicked in the kidneys. *nods* Ah, it's bleeding. I'm off to find a band-aid so happy trails, folks.

To avoid situations in which you might make mistakes may be the biggest mistake of all.

Peter McWilliams

07.06.04: Anyone Listen To The Pillows?

It's 2:45 AM now. Yesterday I juggled my day between helping my parents steam clean my carpet and setting up phpBB. By the end of the day I felt rather content because I accomplished a lot for a summer day. I don't think I could go through life without working on something. No life is a wasted one but still, you would be so bored.

I requested my site to be looked over by three review sites about an hour ago. I'm confident enough to put them up on my site as I get them, regardless of what they say. If the reviewers go insult-happy it can only hurt their karma. Not that giving false praise is any better. As much as I like to share my opinion it would be tough to be a full-time reviewer. I don't have much pity, patience or time. And reviewing takes a large chunk out of your day.

Indiana was a little boring. Everyone in the Regiment is around nineteen years old and wouldn't give me the time of day. I just grabbed an apple and plopped down on some bleachers with a CD player. One of the drummers actually asked what I was listening to and when I said The Pillows I just got a blank stare, lol. Foreign bands are so under-appreciated. They did the music for the much beloved Fooli Cooli series. If you haven't seen it, I recommend you go buy it right now.

I think that I'm going to go hop on my treadmill even though it's late... or early. No matter.

A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

07.03.04: Pop Rocks and Coca-Cola

I have a fish named Corky who floats upside down. No, he's not dead, so don't call PETA on me. Corky just swims around and then flips over and swims some more. When he stops he goes right to the top and just floats there. After seeing he was alive my first thought was he had some sort of disease in his air bladder but he's perfectly healthy. It's just a little unnerving to look over and see him at the top of the aquarium. It's sort of cute how one of my other fish always will go up and nudge Corky so he will come back down.

In a few hours I will be heading out to Indiana. My dad is friends with the owners of the Phantom Regiment and is helping them head over to Rockford for a Battle of the Regiments or whatnot. I don't know a whole lot about the whole thing even though I've been going to it ever since I can remember. The music is nice and it's held on my high school's football field, lol. *whistles and shoves hands in pockets* Wait, these jeans have no pockets. *throws water and runs*

Something made my blood boil today. I tried to get a song from Kazaa and it took almost twenty minutes to download. If it had just been that all would be forgiven but when I opened up Win Amp to play it all I got was the ungodly screeching noise. The kind of noise that even makes your teeth feel like their imploding. Needless to say the whole matter peeved me. Peer to peer sharing is great but Kazaa is starting to make its way to my blacklist. Not like it will, but I'm just saying they need to work on this problem because I know that I am not the only person it has happened to.

One of my chores today was washing all the windows and around halfway through I somehow managed to get Windex inside a bandaged cut. I realized what had happened immediately but it didn't start hurting until a few second later. Obviously it hurt quite a bit and my brain rushed to find ways to stop it when I saw this harmless glass right by me. In a flash I poured a little of what I so dearly hoped to be water on the cut. Luck was not with me however and it turned out to be the lemonade I made earlier. In the confusion I sort of tossed the lemonade and it hit the window. God I loathe that window. That was just another exciting adventure of Summerica.

My current online project is trying to convert my Invision Power Board to phpBB2. I must have been delirious when I thought this possible because I've been at it for two hours and can find no possible way of merging them without doing it by hand, sweat and blood. Mostly blood after I punch my monitor in frustration. Looks like Chimera will be stuck with the lowly I.P.B. for now. But it looks like I better wrap this up because I finally have my links ready to be uploaded and I wish to do so before I leave.

Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.

Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784)

07.01.04: Ow Ow Ow My Hands

My excuse for not having the links up is that I'm feeling blah. It's only been a day so I'm sure everyone's able to manage. I apologize to my affiliates about not having their links up. I'll just temporarily plug them here: Krissie, Michael, Kat, Sarah and Ally.

Swimming wasn't too unbearable. I was compelled to do a flip off the diving board but I remembered I was supposed to be babysitting. Seems like the diving boards were acting malicious anyway, because a kid slipped on the high diving board and hurt his arm. The lifeguards had to evacuate the pool for twenty minutes and call an ambulance. Meanwhile, my cousin was like, "Why did they have to get everyone out of the pool? The worst that could happen is they would have to amputate it. Go get one of the lifeguards and tell them to open the pool." Needless to say I was appalled at her lack of empathy and was not quite sure how to approach it. I ended up muttering, "Be quiet and eat your freeze pop," which seemed to work. At least I got a tan and was able to check out a few cute guys. Heh.

I'm still trying to find someone to help me at Magic Waters. Most of my friends are enjoying their vacations in other countries and won't be back for weeks. As for the remaining few, well, three of them aren't exactly the best choices to watch children with, four of them are too lazy to drag themselves away from video games, two of them apparently can't swim, and the last one has some weird grudge against the sun. *twitch* You'll all pay, just wait.

Kum Do wasn't incredibly fun today. We have to wear these heavy black outfits and it was just a little too warm to be comfortable. Plus, I just finished Tae Kwon Do and only had six minutes to change. We had to do five hundred of these strikes where you hold your sword above your head but parallel to the ground then you jump forward to strike and bring the tip of your sword to about head height. There's a bunch of little details you need to think about too. Your left foot never can go past your right when you jump, you have to be sure to jump back when you prepare for the next strike, all the bloody wristwork... And the strike has to be done in roughly one second. I have good endurance though so it's only annoying towards the end.

I am the only girl taking Kum Do and there are about sixteen guys. It's a tad funny how they ask if I'm all right when it looks like they just finished a triathlon. I can't wait until I'm allowed to spar, if anyone will fight me. I'll probably end up having to dual the instructor. Hm, that won't go well.

I saw Spiderman 2 at 8:30 PM last night. I thought it was great for a sequel but they made it a little too obvious that there would be a Spiderman 3. It wasn't as bad as when the Matrix had a to be continued sign, but the plot was wide open when the movie ended. The romance parts were well done I thought, but I was thinking about something else during a lot of the movie. One of the people in the theatre looked so similar to someone I once knew that it triggered some memories that I more or less locked away a few years back. Which was just great. Getting off this topic would be good.

I am currently reading All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot and it is entertaining. I heard part of the book on tape when I was on a four-hour car ride but I kept falling asleep. It wasn't boring, I just hadn't eaten or slept for thirty-six hours and my body went into a temporary hibernation. Don't skip meals kids, it destroys your metabolism. Such a role model, I am. A Yoda impersonation means it's nighty-night time. See you around, folks.

Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone.

Anthony Burgess (1917 - 1993)

All ramblings of Erica Feggestad 2000-2008