Posted on 13 September 2007 | Comment

Originally, I had planned to write this post when I got back from Oregon. Then, I was going to write it on Labor Day, and then I was going to write it after my first day of classes. Oh well. At this point, I’m proud of myself for writing it at all. (And really, if you wanted to go back even further, I was going to write a post with this same title last fall.) I suppose what I will do is go back and recount the past couple weeks.

Oregon

As they tend to be, my trip to Oregon was great. The weather was much warmer than I would have liked, and the eighteen days I was out there for seemed like three, but I still had a great time with Michelle. I long for the day when there are no more goodbye scenes in airports.

Back to Long Island

After I got back, I had about a week and a half of freedom before classes started. I spent my first week back shrink-wrapping newspapers and earning ten dollars an hour for doing so. I also tried to relax as much as possible, knowing full well that in another week free time would be at a premium.

Classes started this past Wednesday. I have never liked fall semesters, but so far this one hasn’t been so bad. Hopefully that isn’t just the fact that I’ve only had two days of classes. I’m going to be optimistic, though, and maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised come December.

Miscellany

As I alluded to in my last post, I upgraded from XP to Vista back in June. Most of the things I’ve heard about Vista have been negative, but I just don’t see it. Is it still Windows? Sure. Is it OS X? Definitely not. Regardless, I’ve been running it for the past couple months and I haven’t had any problems, which is something I’ve never been able to say about a Microsoft operating system. I still plan to make the switch at some point (and those new iMacs are so nice), but Vista has made me feel better about the fact that I can’t do so any time soon. Office 2007 is pretty nice, too; I’m actually writing this post in Word.

In my last post, I asked the Mets to bury the rest of their division as though they read my blog. They were promptly swept in four games by the Phillies the first week I was back, but they’ve regained all the games they’d lost since then. I’ll take it. Speaking of sports, I had forgotten how much I missed football. Today is a good day.

I had envisioned this post being longer than it is. Oh well.

Posted on 9 September 2007 | Comment

Tomorrow morning, I’m flying out to Oregon to see Michelle. I will be there until the 25th, when I return to New York. After I get back, be on the lookout for entries on my upgrade to Windows Vista (two thumbs up), my new job (selling alcoholic beverages), and a host of other topics. If I ever get around to writing them, that is.

Goodnight kids.

PS:

Dear New York Mets,

Please bury the rest of the NL East while I’m gone.

Love,
Andrew

Posted on 6 August 2007 | Comment

This past Wednesday morning at around 8:30, I woke up to the sounds of a pretty major thunderstorm. I laid back down and closed my eyes, but the storm kept raging outside. After a few minutes, I decided to look outside to see just how hard it was coming down.

I wasn’t prepared for what I saw:

I then ran downstairs to see if anyone else was awake and seeing this; my mom, dad, and sister were all downstairs staring out the front window, looking as shocked as I was. My dad said that the last time he remembered our street flooding like it had, it was at least forty years ago and there weren’t any sewers yet.

Eventually, the rain started to let up, and we made our way outside to survey the chaos up closer.

It took a good hour and a half before the water finally drained away. My car had at least eight inches of water in it, and there is a hole in our front lawn where there used to be a septic tank. It may not have been the most fun morning ever, but it does make for a good story.

Posted on 20 July 2007 | Comment [1]

Yes, I know it’s been nearly three months since I updated. Do you guys expect anything else at this point?

I have been out of work since Easter, and it really is depressing by this point.

Going to Oregon to see Michelle in less than a month. It can’t come quickly enough.

I really don’t have anything else to say right now, but I was sick of not updating this blog, so here you are. Hopefully there will be more to come in the future.

Posted on 15 July 2007 | Comment [2]

Thanks in large part to the verbal thrashing I received from Jackie, I have decided to update. It also doesn’t hurt that I actually have the time to do so, but more on that in a moment.

The trip to Oregon was wonderful; it wasn’t long enough, but is it ever? (Answer: no.) I observed a few things during the trip:

• You know those moving walkways they have in airports? Those are more fun than anyone should be allowed to have.
• The Oregon skyline (mountains) is superior to the New York City skyline (skyscrapers). I mean, really.
• Bruce Campbell lives in Oregon.
• Corn dogs are fucking delicious.
• I’ve never been much of a bowler, but I think I’m even less of one after playing Wii Sports for so long.
• Oregon really is a beautiful state.

I had planned to update much sooner after I got back, but to say that I had a lot of schoolwork due would be a vast understatement. In the past two weeks, I’d estimate the count of how many pages I wrote at somewhere around sixty. I have a few short writing assignments due before the end of the semester, but thankfully, only one more major paper to do. Classes end on the 30th, and the last day of finals is May 8th. Neither can come soon enough.

In other news, I was unceremoniously dismissed from my job after I got back from Oregon. I’d love to tell you guys why, but I don’t actually know; my boss never returned any of my phone calls. I’m not too disappointed, though; I wasn’t going anywhere, and I really didn’t like it all that much. Having to look for a new job won’t be much fun, but oh well. I’ll live.

Today was beautiful; the high was somewhere in the seventies. It’s taken long enough, but it seems that spring is finally here. With school ending soon, and the summer right around the corner, things can only get better—and they’ve been good as it is. Hopefully this trend continues.

Posted on 21 April 2007 | Comment [1]

I have a few moments to catch my breath before I head to sleep, so I figured I’d stop neglecting my blog and do a quick update.

It’s been over a month since my last update, and even longer since my last update that wasn’t just me making excuses for not updating. In that time, school weighed very heavily on me; a paper or two would be due one week, I’d have a test next week, and so the cycle would go. It wasn’t fun, and unfortunately, I let my pledge to update slip.

Since my last post, I turned 22. Not much different than 21, really.

In just a few hours, I leave for Oregon to see Michelle for the first time since January. I’m already up later than I should be, and so this update won’t be nearly as lengthy as I’d like it to be. Perhaps I’ll do a recap when I get back.

Sorry for not updating, guys. I’m as disappointed with myself as you are, and I shall strive to do better. Be back in a week.

Posted on 29 March 2007 | Comment [4]

I haven’t forgotten about the site; I’ve just been very busy, and these next two weeks are going to be hell. Once the dust settles, a proper update will appear in this spot.

Posted on 26 February 2007 | Comment [7]

Oh look, it’s February and I didn’t even realize it when I posted yesterday, which was also February. Better late than never, I suppose.

February, traditionally, has always been my least favorite month of the year. While it may be the shortest month of the twelve, it’s also what I consider to be the last month of winter, as March has always been a spring month to me. That fact makes it seem much longer than it actually is, which depresses me.

I have nothing against winter; I enjoy the holidays (for the most part, anyway), and I love looking at snow and snow days, even if I’d be perfectly happy never having to drive in the snow again. In the past couple years, though, I’ve become convinced that I suffer from SAD, if not severely. By the time February rolls around, I’m so sick of winter that it makes me want to scream sometimes.

But hey…only 26 more days to go, right?

(Aside: What, exactly, is the logic behind the silent “r” in February? Yeah, a silent “e” or “h” is nothing out of the ordinary, but “r”? Who thought this was a good idea?)

Posted on 2 February 2007 | Comment [4]

I can already feel myself starting to slip into laziness in terms of updating. I really don’t want to see that happen for the third time in the short lifespan of this blog, though, so I’m going to force myself to update for now and hope that in time, it will become second nature.

The semester is two weeks old now, and while I haven’t quite become acclimated to my schedule just yet, I’m getting there. I’m finding that the hardest thing to do is get myself in bed at a reasonable time; I always plan to go to bed in time to get a good night’s sleep, and then next thing I know, I look up and it’s an hour and a half later than I want it to be. I do get to catch up on my sleep on the weekends, though, and that’s quite nice.

My classes are going pretty well. I’m taking two education classes that aren’t my favorite, two English classes that I like a lot, a history class that I also like a lot (the professor is fantastic), and a Spanish class that, shockingly enough, isn’t terrible. I still don’t like the idea of being required to take a foreign language, but I can deal with it. I’m still very happy with Post; I don’t know why I didn’t just go there in the first place. Lesson learned, I guess.

I’m still fine-tuning the code for the layout and various other little things, but that’s more me not being able to leave things well enough alone than it is the site not being done. (Exception: the about page, which I’d like to get to sometime this weekend.) My CSS definitely needs a complete overhaul and reorganization, so whenever I end up doing another layout (not for quite some time, if I had to guess) I’ll deal with that. And I suppose that’s about it, as I’m just rambling at this point.

Posted on 1 February 2007 | Comment [3]

Here, at last, is the long-awaited (yeah, right) conclusion to yesterday’s post. I kind of lost steam towards the end, but this post ended up being longer than yesterday’s. Go figure.

November

Finally, things started to look up. Target had me start doing “comp shop,” which consisted of me getting a PDA with a list of products each week, taking said PDA to Walmart, and getting the prices for those items. This coincided almost exactly with me putting in my two weeks’ notice at Target, as I’d had more than enough of working in retail to last my entire life. For the first few days, I was good; I stayed in Walmart for most of the day. Three days later, I was guessing prices and walking around the mall for eight hours a day on Target’s dime. Fantastic. I did comp shop for the rest of my time at Target, with the exception of my last day there.

Before I started doing comp shop, I got offered a job working for a mortgage company. I took the job, because it gave me a way out of Target, but I’m kind of regretting it now. The work is horrendously tedious, and my boss is possibly the most incompetent person I’ve ever met. Oh well, live and learn.

November also saw the long-awaited release of the Wii. I played Excite Truck in a Gamestop about two weeks before launch (while I was being paid to do comp shop, no less), and I knew right away that it was going to be amazing. When it came out two weeks later, I brought it home and played for basically the entire day. Zelda was and still is everything I hoped it would be, even though it isn’t perfect. I am very, very pleased with the Wii.

Thanksgiving was nice. My aunt, uncle, and cousins all came to our house for the first time since Easter of 2002. The “kids” played Wii Sports and Excite Truck for basically the entire time, and if that didn’t prove how much fun the system is, then I don’t know what will. They all left wanting one.

Thanksgiving break also saw the much-anticipated Shrimpfest. On the Saturday night after Thanksgiving, I met up with Scot, Ryan, Matt, Tom, Dan, Vogel, and PhilCollins at the Roosevelt Raceway theater, where we saw For Your Consideration, which brought the lols home. After the movie was over, we made our way to Red Lobster, where much shrimp was consumed and much good times were had. Endless Shrimp had ended earlier in the week, which elicted a collective groan from the eight seated around the table. Oh well. Coconut shrimp are delicious.

Towards the end of November, my brand new Wii decided its system memory should be corrupt, and it thusly stopped working. I was pretty distraught about it, but Nintendo handled it very well, and it was replaced within three weeks. Go Nintendo.

December/January

December was probably the overall best month of the semester. With weekends now free, my sleep schedule became much more normal once again, and as a result, I regained my sanity. Classes ended on the 13th, and my last final was on the 21st. With my two finals (my other three classes had final essays, which was a nice change of pace) completed, I bid Queens College farewell once and for all.

My cousin Danny managed to score three tickets to the Giants’ last home game (on Christmas Eve against the Saints) and offered me the third ticket, which I quickly accepted. I drove up on Saturday night and nearly died when I had to swerve out of the way of an SUV that had stopped to let a deer cross and my car decided to keep going. I ended up on the median, quite a few feet away from where I lost control of my car, but I didn’t hit anything, which was definitely a good thing. Scared the hell out of me, though.

The game itself would have been much better if I was a Saints fan, as the Giants were murdered. The final was 30-7 Saints, but the Giants didn’t run a single play on offense in Saints territory all day, so the score doesn’t really express how poorly they played. The seats were fantastic, though. We sat in the eighth row on the 20 yard line. I’ve never had such good seats for a professional sporting event before, and it was nice to be that close to the field.

Christmas was nice. Michelle flew back in on Christmas day and spent another two weeks here. Just as with our previous three visits, it was wonderful, but never long enough. I’m sure that’ll always be the case. Wiifest was fun, and New Year’s Eve was spent at my aunt and uncle’s house. The rest of our time together was mostly spent just hanging out around my house and actually getting to spend time with each other, something that I really don’t appreciate enough. I’ll see her again over spring break, and that can’t get here quickly enough.

Since she left on the 6th, most of my time has been spent working or playing video games. Classes start at Post this Monday, and I guess I’m looking forward to it. For some reason, I’ve always preferred spring semesters to fall semesters, and I’m hoping this one will be more of the same. It’ll be nice to only have to drive fifteen minutes each way to get to and from class again, as well as actually being able to park on campus, two things that Queens was sorely lacking in.

I think that about does it for the recap. I really hope this is the last one I’ll ever have to do on here, and that updates will be both more timely and more numerous. I’ve said that already, but it bears repeating, so there it is again.

Posted on 17 January 2007 | Comment [1]

I’ve been working on the site pretty much all day. The individual article page should be finished now, and I cleaned up a lot of the stuff on the back end. I’m still not done by a long shot, but I feel pretty good about how things are going. With any luck, I’ll be able to continue this trend and finish things up before classes start next week. I really need to rewrite the “about” page, as it’s outdated and poorly written, and I’m going to do a style guide as well. I’m sure I’ll think of other things that need to be done, too, and I’ll deal with those as they come up.

I thought what I’d do tonight is do a month-by-month recap of what’s happened between my last real post and now. There were definitely things I wanted to post about during that span, but I somehow convinced myself that I didn’t have time to do it, so I’m going to try to remember it all now. Hopefully, this will be a one-time thing, and all future events will be recorded in a timely fashion.

Originally, the plan was to post the full recap in one fell swoop, but it ended up being three pages in Word, so I decided to post everything up to October tonight and save the rest for tomorrow. I’m hoping this will help me start some kind of routine here. We’ll see how that works out.

August

On July 20th, I made the following statement:

Michelle comes out here in less than a month. My pledge to update [semi-]regularly may have to be put on hold for the two weeks she’s here.

Well, as you can see, that proved very true. We had a wonderful two weeks together, after which I lived through probably the most stressful two months or so of my entire life.

September

The day after Michelle’s flight back, I started work back at Target, and the day after that, I started classes at Queens College. My schedule for the semester consisted of 7 hours of classes on Monday and Wednesday wrapped in an hour’s car ride and a three-hour class on Friday. My work schedule was 9-5 at work the other four days of the week. Needless to say, this very quickly took a toll on me, and I forgot what it meant to get a good night’s sleep—or anything more than a few hours a night, really.

The month wasn’t all terrible, though. I saw Staind and Three Days Grace in Philadelphia, and although the ride there and back was horrible (to the point where I swore I wouldn’t drive outside of New York for at least a year), the show was pretty awesome. I’m sure a lot of you don’t like either of those bands very much, but it was the second time I’ve seen Three Days Grace live, and they put on one hell of a show. Staind then topped them by putting on what I can only assume was one of the most amazing live shows ever.

My cousin Heather got married on the 23rd; the ceremony was very nice (and also very short), the reception was fairly insane (my family knows how to have a good time, especially when there’s an open bar involved), and it was great to see my cousin get married to such a good guy. Jeff, you may not be blood, but you’re family forever.

October

October was, in a word, hell. All my classes started piling work on at the time same, work continued to be terrible, I continued to get very little sleep, and the emotional drain soon overtook the physical drain I was going through. I began counting the days until the semester was over, but doing so didn’t help any; it only served to reinforce how long the semester was. I did get accepted to Post as a transfer student, though, which was one small glimmer of hope. Oh yeah, and the Cardinals knocked the Mets out of the playoffs. Boo. I was pretty disappointed about it, but most of the team should be back next year, and I’m pretty confident that they’ll be in the hunt again come the 2007 playoffs. Enough of October, nothing noteworthy happened.

Tune in tomorrow for the stunning conclusion to my year.

Posted on 16 January 2007 | Comment [1]

Is anyone out there still alive?

Contrary to popular belief, I still am.

Yes, I know it’s been a good five months since my last real update. Yes, I know that I pulled the same thing last year. I’ll do better this year. Really. I don’t care much for New Year’s resolutions, but I’ll try to not let this blog fall by the wayside again this year.

Since my last update (the one in October doesn’t count), I’ve seen Michelle twice, finished my first and only semester at Queens College, transferred to C.W. Post, saw my cousin get married (holy crap), switched jobs, purchased a Nintendo Wii, drooled over the iPhone announcement, and a lot of other, less important things. The semester was hell, and I didn’t know how I’d make it through at times, but here I am five months later.

This new year, 2007, will see more than just this blog being updated regularly, though. I’m about to start working on the new layout again, and by working on it, I mean finishing it. Things might look a little funny for a few hours, but it’ll all come together. The next post is going to be with the new layout complete.

See you on the other side.

Posted on 15 January 2007 | Comment

I’ve been playing around with some plugins lately and haven’t posted anything of real substance, so I decided it was time to do so.

Firstly, you may (or may not) notice that the “Categories” on the right there are now “Tags.” Don’t worry, I’m not selling out to the hype of Web 2.0 and social blah blah blah…I switched to a new plugin because it gives me more freedom than using two predefined categories for a single post. The downside is that it means I’ll have to be updating and stuff more often, or something, but I’ll see what I can do about that.

Moving on…

Things have been going well of late. The interview at Target I mentioned a few weeks ago was a success; I’m now employed as a cashier in the same store as one the scot which makes us, as Bob put it, “the most horrendously funny retail store on Long Island.” Accept no substitutes.

Michelle comes out here in less than a month. My pledge to update [semi-]regularly may have to be put on hold for the two weeks she’s here.

I finally got notice from Queens College…I’m in as a transfer student, and by the look of things, the classes I took at Nassau knocked out most of their liberal arts core requirements, which is good. I’ll have to take a few classes to account for what they want that Nassau didn’t, but that’s no big deal. I’m hoping that there are still some classes left to sign up for, however; I should look into that. Damn it.

I think that about covers everything that’s been going on.

Posted on 17 July 2006 | Comment [3]

So I know that I said for months and months and months that I was going to update soon, and keep updating, and do lots of other things that never came to fruition. I hope to make some small measure of recompense for misleading you all.

Oh wait, there’s only like five people who ever read this, and probably less than that now that it’s been nearly three months since my last update.

My reason for not updating…at all…has been a terrible combination of my own laziness and this past semester of school. It’s true that I did have some free time here and there, but I found other ways of occupying it. I wish I could remember what they were now.

Nevertheless, the semester ended about a month ago, and while I am taking a couple summer classes, I have much more time to do things I once loved, and that includes updating this site. As such, I’m going to try to post something at least once a week or so, even if it’s nonsense. I mean, after all, this IS my site and I can write about whatever I want. So there.

Things are good, really. I can’t complain too much. On a related note, I AM in the process of looking for a new job, so hopefully there will be some better news on that front before long. IKEA is the devil. The…Swedish devil. I should have an interview at Target in the coming week…pray for mojo.

I think there was more I wanted to say, but rather than making one long post and then doing nothing for a month, I’ll try keeping it short(er) and spreading it out over a few posts. Because here at Left of Center™, we believe in quantity, not quality.

Or something.

Until next time, which hopefully won’t be too far off…

Posted on 14 June 2006 | Comment

I’m 21 years old now.

(and also still alive…still planning on updating, really…)

Posted on 20 March 2006 | Comment [1]

So much for updating. I’ve been planning to for a while, but every time I mean to, I get sidetracked and forget.

I’m going to try harder guys, I really am.

Things are good right now. Elaboration to follow.

Stay tuned.

Posted on 13 March 2006 | Comment

/me sighs

So here we are almost 3 weeks into the new year, and I still don’t have an update with “2006” in the date. I am sorry, my dear readers (reader?), I really am. As I was just explaining to The Scot, I’m not much for doing small updates, as I prefer longer updates with more substance. However, by the time I actually get to where I want to update, I can’t remember half the stuff I wanted to write about in the first place. I guess the best way to remedy that is going to be this: when interesting stuff happens, I’ll write about it, hopefully in a timely fashion. However, my life is not always terribly interesting, so I can’t promise there will be much [interesting] content. I hope you can deal with that. =o)

So yes, as promised, here is an update about my trip to Oregon.

After getting approximately 4 hours of sleep, I woke up at around 4:30 AM on December 29th, showered & dressed, made sure I had packed everything I needed to bring, and my dad and I left for JFK International Airport at around 5:30. Neither flight was terribly interesting…a little turbulent, but nothing major. (Aside: The innovative touch screen control of the Nintendo DS is not particularly well suited to turbulent airplanes.) Landed in San Francisco, dashed down to the departure gate for my connecting flight to Portland, had my carry-on randomly checked because of the Playstation 2 in my bag (Michelle’s Christmas present), boarded the plane to Portland, and touched down a couple hours later.

I was a little anxious getting off the plane…I mean, I knew for sure that I was in love with Michelle, and all that good stuff, but there was always the chance that maybe I wouldn’t like her, or that she wouldn’t like me. I didn’t see that as being the case though, so I dashed off the plane and walked around looking for her, since I wasn’t exactly sure where I’d be meeting her.

After about a minute or two of that, I noticed this really cute girl leaning against one of the poles looking at something off to her right. A second later, it registered that I’d found her. There was that moment where our eyes locked for the first time, and the next thing I knew I was finally hugging the girl of my dreams, the woman I was going to marry one day.

A good five minutes later, we walked down to baggage claim and got my suitcase, then went out to the car and headed the two-ish hours back to her house.

I can’t say there’s very much to write about concerning my time there. Most of our time was spent snuggling at her house. But you know what? The trip couldn’t have been any more perfect than it was. I mean, other than if it were longer, but that doesn’t count. I’ve never been as happy as I was for those 5 days Michelle and I spent together. Getting back home and being apart wasn’t easy for the first week, and it seems like it’s been longer than two weeks since I got back home, but I now have those 5 days to look back on, and the promise of more good times to come in the future. The future is looking very, very bright.

One side note: coming home, American decided to ‘delay’ my bag, which means I got home on Wednesday and my bag got home on Friday, and when I got it back, the retractable handle thing was busted beyond all repair. I’ve tried getting in touch with their damaged baggage office or whatever it is, but I haven’t had any luck yet, so I’m not really sure what to do. If anyone has had any experience with this sort of thing, and can offer insights, that would be a tremendous help.

Moving on.

My winter break is about over, as classes start the 23rd. With any luck, this is going to be my last full semester at Nassau; I then plan on taking 3 credits during the summer session in June, and then I’ll be done there. That raises the question of where I’m going afterwards, but I’ll figure that out. I think so, anyway.

I guess that about does it for this update. I really will try to be better about it from here on out. I’ve said that before, to no avail, so we’ll see how it goes. So yes. Stay tuned…

Posted on 19 January 2006 | Comment [3]

Is to update this regularly, something I sought to do at the beginning of this blog’s life.

Anyway.

I leave for Oregon to visit Michelle tomorrow, I will be back on the 4th of January. In the meantime, here is a brief recap of what you’ve missed:

• The semester ended on the 22nd of December, I got all A’s again. I am content.
• I got a Nintendo DS a few weeks back, and it instantly became more valuable than my PSP, which is now a pretty, shiny paperweight.
• Samurai Western is a really good game.
• Should not have had that Chateau last night.
• I saw Narnia last night. It was enjoyable.

I will post a more thorough update when I get back from Oregon, possibly with pictures. To the few of you who read this site: Happy New Year, be safe and I’ll talk to you when I get home.

Here’s to 2006.

Posted on 28 December 2005 | Comment [2]

Post previous to this one: September 16, 2005
This post: October 14, 2005

Man, you people are going to start thinking this is my Xanga if I let this happen again. I’ll try to be better about posting from now on. Wow.

Of course, the issue now is that all the ideas I had for updates in the past month are all outdated now. I’ll see if I can remember anything I wanted to say.

Classes are going well enough, I suppose. For some reason, the workload seems a lot harder than last semester’s did. I don’t know if the classes are harder, or it’s because I’m actually at school for more hours with no breaks, or what. At any rate, I’m already looking forward to December when the semester is over.

And of course, a big part of that is that in December I finally get to go see my Michelle. I bought my plane ticket last night; I’m leaving December 29th, and coming back on January 4th. I’m excited. Only 76 more days to go. It can’t come soon enough.

I had planned on doing a Serenity update (hence the post title) after I saw it opening weekend, but I guess it’s a little late for that. Oh well, this is my blog, so I’m going to do it anyway.

If you’re planning on seeing Serenity, chances are you’ve already seen it. I honestly haven’t been paying attention to how much money it’s taken in, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume it’s far less than it deserves to have made. Serenity is quite probably the best movie I’ve seen all year. I was pretty late to the Firefly party; I bought the DVDs over the summer, and only watched them all the week before the movie came out, but I got hooked instantly. Unlike some other science fiction sagas which I won’t name (but if I did, I’d probably say Star Wars), the characters in Firefly were nothing short of outstanding. After the first episode I almost felt like I was right there on the ship with them.

Somehow, Joss Whedon was able to translate the entire Firefly experience onto the big screen without losing a great deal. I thought the beginning of the movie was a bit slow, but it picked up very quickly. I gasped out loud when I realized the big plot twist in the middle, and I was on my seat for almost the entire movie. In the end, was Serenity worth it? God, was it ever. I’m really hoping the movie takes in enough that we can have more tales in the Serenity universe; ideally, the return of Firefly on TV, but I’ll take another movie any day of the week.

I’m going to go back to the first (real) post on this blog and talk about Apple now. Yesterday, the “One more thing…” announcement was made. The video iPod. People had been talking about it for what seems like forever, so while it wasn’t a shock that they announced it, I was surprised by how much I like it. Not just the unit itself, but the whole package.

iTunes 6. Five weeks ago we got iTunes 5, and now they’ve gone and jumped an entire version. I understand the marketing behind it—releasing the next generation of what is really Apple’s flagship product looks a lot better if it seems like you’re getting a whole new version of its companion software. (Would iTunes 5.1 have gone alongside the new iPods as well as iTunes 6? I doubt it.) iTunes has been able to play videos for some time now, but with iTunes 6, they’re much more prominently displayed; the “Videos” item in the Source list, and the video section of the iTMS. Where am I going with this? I’m going here.

What the original iPod did for portable music, the 5G iPod is going to do for portable video.

How do I know? Two words: content delivery.

Let’s look at the facts, shall we?

Portable media players with video capability are nothing new. There are a ton of them on the market. They all play a myriad of formats. Even the PSP, which Sony is touting as an iPod killer, plays videos and music. However, none of these devices have a standardized way of getting media onto the player. And no, UMD movies don’t count. I don’t care how many Sony claims have been sold; the format is worthless.

On the other hand, Apple has that means to an end. They’ve always had it; it’s just been updated. $1.99 for an episode of Lost seems a bit expensive on the surface. However, the first season of the show was 25 episodes. 25 episodes at $1.99 each works out to $49.75, and they offer the entire first season as a package for $34.99, which is cheaper than the first season DVD box set on Amazon ($38.99). And because they offer the new episodes as well, if you miss an episode, or you just don’t have time for TV, you can download the newest one and watch it on your lunch break or something.

The technology is there. We’ll see where it goes.

I’m ending this update here because it’s getting longer than I’d like. With any luck, I’ll remember to update more often, and then you’ll get a lot of shorter updates instead of one long one. So yeah, tune in soon. I hope.

Posted on 14 October 2005 | Comment [5]

+3 for using a Killswitch Engage song title as the post title, and making it relevant.

As much as I enjoy summer, I am not one for hot weather. 80 degrees is about my limit (if you want that in Celsius, here’s a gun; shoot yourself with it, as the metric system is dead to me), but I cannot deal with any sort of humidity. On the contrary, I like it when summer gives way to autumn and the temperature drops about ten degrees.

So what’s up with this?

Seriously, Mother Nature…you’re a whore.

Posted on 12 September 2005 | Comment

One thing that I promised myself would be different about this blog is that I was going to update the thing. Well, an update was due, and an update you shall have.

First on the agenda: college. Yes, it’s back to school time across America, and unfortunately, I am not immune to it. As of today, I’ve been to all my classes (with one exception…read on), so I can talk about them now. Here they are, in no particular order:

• English: English is my favorite subject, and grammar is what I’m good at. So it would seem that an English class where the focus is grammar would be right up my alley. We’ll see. The professor has a European accent that I can’t place just yet, and from what I hear, most people who have him don’t like him very much. I haven’t made up my mind just yet, but I plan on doing what I always do in my English classes: let my writing do the talking. It’s worked for me so far; the lowest grade I’ve ever earned in a college English class was a 96.

• Psychology: I think this is going to be my favorite class when I look back on this semester. The material seems really interesting, and the professor is awesome. You know a class is good when you find yourself actually wanting to do the reading.

• Chemistry: On the other hand, this may turn out to be my least favorite subject at semester’s end. I hatehatehate science, and I have a feeling this is going to be HARD. However, the professor is really good, and makes things seem interesting enough. I am not, however, looking forward to almost three hours of lab. Shoot me.

• Non-verbal Communication: I took this class because the name sounded interesting. After the first class (today), I have a feeling that I was right. I learned quite a bit already; I’m looking forward to this one.

• Karate: Yes, that’s right. Nassau requires its students to take PE classes, and this is the first one I’ve signed up for. I was supposed to have it from 1100-1215 today, but for whatever reason, I had it in my head that the class started at 1200. So today when I checked my schedule at 1115 right before I left, and realized that I was already fifteen minutes late, I was not very happy. I was even less happy when I got to school at 1135, and then spent the next twenty-five minutes looking for a parking spot. And I found one…not just any parking spot, but a parking spot on the other side of campus. At this point I saw no point in going to class—if it hadn’t ended yet, I didn’t want to disturb what was going on—so I instead found the professor, explained the situation, found out he didn’t take attendance today, got a syllabus, and went on my way. I guess I’ll see how this one goes come Monday.

Overall I’m pretty happy with my schedule for the fall; I don’t love school, but it’s something that needs to be done, so I’ll deal. Blah.

Speaking of school…as of yesterday I’ve decided that I want to major in English, and then teach it in some high school once I graduate. Hooray for knowing what you want to do with yourself.
Moving on! Apple today announced a whole slew of new…stuff, for lack of a better term. There’s no shortage of coverage on the web, but I’m adding my own thoughts here, because, well, you won’t find them anywhere else.

• iPod nano: I knew that this one was coming, but what it turned out to be pleasantly surprised me. I was never a fan of the iPod Mini; I thought it was ugly and not much value for the money. The nano fixes at least the cosmetic part of that problem. In a word, this thing is sleek. It’s everything an iPod on a diet should be. The Mini sold stupidly well in spite of my problems with it; the nano kicks the Mini’s ass in several aspects, and I see no reason why it won’t do the same in terms of sales. And hey, they killed the Mini. Everybody wins.

• The ROKR: I can’t say as many nice things about this, on the other hand. I always pictured the mythical iPhone as being a thing of beauty, and this simply isn’t. I know function is more important than form, but come on. Motorola makes the RAZR; this should have looked at least as nice. The concept is sound, however, and I’m sure that in the future there will be a product worthy of the Apple tag.

• iTunes 5: I have mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand, some of the new features are useful enough. (NOTE: I hate Apple for letting you put lyrics in the song’s tag, because now I’m going to want lyrics for all of my songs, which is going to be no small feat. I have a LOT of songs, although not as many as some people.) On the other hand, Apple’s interface guidelines must be crying right now. I’m sure it looks nice enough on the Mac, but the Windows version? Ugly. I suppose I need to give it some more time, but there was nothing wrong with the iTunes 4.x UI. “Streamlined interface” is a fancy buzzword for UGLY these days. In spite of my feelings about the new look, I’m sure that in a week’s time I’ll be making use of all the new features and wonder how I lived without them. But still—it’s ugly. There’s no getting around that.

I am now going to end this post because it’s longer than anything I’ve written for one of my blogs in the past two years or so. I should think about saving something for the next update, which will hopefully be reasonably soon. To my four or so readers: tune in next time for more. And to my one reader who means the world to me: I love you.

Posted on 7 September 2005 | Comment [2]