January 2008

Yet here I am.

Fux.

P.S. I slipped on ice walking to my truck in the parking lot.  It hurt.

P.P.S.  I saw my grandma in the hospital and she’s doing good.  There were no complications from the surgery or anything and she should be out by the end of the week.  Except she was really surly and I’ve never in my life seen her like that.  It was weird.  She told the nurse, “Thanks…  For nothin’!”  My brother and dad were shocked.  Rofl.  Old people.

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She fell and brokezored her hip a couple of days ago.  Apparently she was just walking around and her leg gave out.  I think she’s 89 years old so that type of stuff happens.  She has to go in to surgery and get it fixed up, either last night or today.  I’m not sure if they’re replacing it or what.  I guess they must be.

Surgery at that age is really risky so who knows what’ll happen.  She’s lived a long life though and I think she’s pretty content.  So I don’t think that she’s too worried.  All her friends have died a long time ago.  I think she’s bored and lonely, hanging out at the old folk’s home.  But I’ll pray for her and hope for the best.  There’s not much else to do.

Peaceeeee.

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(I think)

Rey and I were discussing openness.  I respect people who are willing to share themselves completely and openly with anyone.  I hope to come to a point in my life eventually when I’m not ashamed of anything.  When I can stand up in front of a huge crowd, and have someone point out every single (seemingly) embarrassing part of my life and not feel the least bit embarrassed.

I wonder if it’ll happen.  Probably not.  Fug it. 

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<Britta> hey hatt
<hatt> yo
<hatt> i’ve been
<hatt> so depressed the past couple of days
<Britta> :( do you know why?
<hatt> i think it’s cause i took double my dosage one night by accident
<hatt> and it threw me out of whack
<hatt> hopefully i’ll even back out in the next couple days
<hatt> i don’t think the cold weather is helping either
<Britta> ahhh that would do it
<Britta> double dose of what, if you don’t mind me asking?
<hatt> celexa

Yeah, I’m hatt, obviously.  I just slept for two hours for no reason.  Just because I didn’t feel like facing anything, I wasn’t even tired.  I sure as shit hope that I feel better in the next couple of days cause it sucks being like this.  I don’t think that the ultra cold weather is helping either.  I guess that I’ll just finish watching Dark City and chill out for the rest of the night.  It’s a good movie.

I also watched High Plains Drifter.  It was pretty cool, I guess.  Clint Eastwood is a bit of a bastard in it, a lot less principled than in Unforgiven.  But I guess when you get to the end it makes sense.

You know what sucks about college?  The lack of positive reinforcement.  Most of the time you only get feedback when the teacher is telling you what you did wrong.  How whack is that?  There are a couple of exceptions, of course.  For instance, my teacher Mrs. Blay.

Is that so hard?  My other teacher, Deb, also writes comments on our written work that I really appreciate.  I remember gold stars, dancing elephants, and smiley faces as big as your thumb stuck on most of my work when I was a kid.  I loved those times.  It’s never too late for a pat on the back, even if you’re in post-secondary education.

So teachers, if you’re reading this (which I’m sure you aren’t), give a “Good job!” or a “Well done!” when they’re so deserved.  It’ll make the student happy and only take a few seconds of your time.

Or maybe I’m just an attention-craving, insecure pussy.  I’m not sure.

Peace.

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I finally watched the Deer Hunter and now I can’t stop saying, “Didi mau!”  One of the most intense scenes I’ve ever seen in my life.  I don’t want to give anything away but man, it’s such a satisfying movie.  That part, anyway.  The ending.. Not so much.

My father told me this story about when the Deer Hunter was first released.  He and his friends used to play the beer hunter.  You’d get someone to shake up a beer in a six pack then take turns putting beers to your head and opening them up.  Apparently it resulted in a lot of beer-soaked skulls.

Unforgiven’s final scene is among the top too.  Clint Eastwood’s friend gets killed so he walks into the bar where they had strung him up as an example.  He then shoots the bar owner.

Gene Hackman - Well, sir, you are a cowardly son of a bitch!  You just shot an unarmed man!

Clint Eastwood - Well, he should’ve armed himself if he’s gonna decorate his saloon with my friend.

It was super sweet.  I also downloaded High Plains Drifter, another Eastwood film.  My dad recommended it to me.

People need to pay more attention to me.  I certainly deserve it.  Like when I e-mail someone, they should e-mail back.  When I call someone, they should call back.  You know who you are.

I guess I’m outtie.  Peaceeee.

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So Fantastico finally decided to include the upgrade script and I’ve updated all of the hattscrib blogs.  No more of that “Please Update Now!” crap.  I went through and checked most of the sites and they all seem good.  If you have any problems, let me know.

Outtie.

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There was still sunlight up until about fifteen minutes ago and it filled me with a sense of hope and joy.  I can already feel the days getting longer!  I can’t wait until that bitch stays out until ten at night and I can wear shorts outside while I smoke.

Today was insane weather.  I was driving home from school in mildly bad weather.  It was windy and snowing lightly when I saw this huge cloud of snow swirling in.  It was spectacular.  In fifteen seconds the weather changed from a light snow to an all encompassing blizzard.  Here was my view:

Yeah, I know that driving and taking pictures isn’t the smartest thing in the world.  But the thing you have to realise is that I’m an expert driver and an expert photo-taker so I knew that I’d be okay.

I have to make a glossary of ten words relating to RFID chips (human-implanted ones).  It’s really boring.

Now I’m off.

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Things are good.  I’m not getting anymore of those bullshit CPU warnings.  I’m not sure if it’s because I optimized my database or what but I’m not asking any questions.  Looks like I’ll stick with Hostican after all.  They’ve been really decent aside from the CPU monitoring.

I just hads me a good workout.  Some curls, leg curls, calf lifts, and deadlifts (I’m making up a few of those names because I don’t know the technical terms).  Class starts again in an hour and a half.  Some object-oriented Java.  I’m so excited!  Nah, not really.

Hey, you want to see a good movie?  Check out Once.  I’m not sure if I wrote that in my last entry but even if I did, it deserves a second mention.  Very good movie.  I think that Roeper said that it only cost about 25K to produce.  That’s insane when you think about all of the absolute rubbish that gets pumped out with budgets of millions of dollars.  I also got this movie Sunshine from Josh so I’ll probably peep that tonight.

Gone Baby Gone also turned out really good.  Slaine is in it!  He’s this rapper from the group, La Coka Nostra, headed by my main man, Ill Bill.  It’s funny because in the movie they’re driving around in a SUV listening to this song and I thought, “Hey, that sounds like Slaine!” and it turns out the guy driving is the guy who sang the song.  Talk about egotistical.

I also watched Wrong Turn and it was mediocre.  Better than a lot of the horror movies I’ve seen.  It looks like the production values amounted to more than the change that I could find in my couch, unlike some movies, *cough* Bikini Bloodbath *cough*.

I guess that’s it.  Peaceeeeeeeee.

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So I just turned on this movie, Gone Baby Gone and the opening monologue kicks azz.

This city can be hard. When I was young I asked my priest how you could get to heaven and still protect yourself from all of the evil in the world. He told me what God said to his children, “You are sheep among wolves. Be wise as serpents yet innocent as doves.”

Friggin’ brilliant. Nothing gets my attention better than a good opening monologue. It’s about some kid who gets kidnapped and this couple gets hired to find her. I just started it but it’s looking promising.

And tonight I be chillin’ and drinkin’.

Good shit, yo.

I also watched Atonement. Aura gave me the idea. It was alright, a bit boring and the dialogue wasn’t all that impressive. Plus I think that I’m usually geared more towards movies that are set in my time. I’m not much for history.

I is outtie. Peace.

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Bikini Bloodbath, bad horror flick or the worst horror flick?  Just thinking about it makes me laugh.  If you like god awful movies then check it out.  You won’t be disappointed.

Only thirteen dollars before Google pays me.  Damn, I can’t wait.  That hundred dollars will go a long way towards paying off my credit card.  I owe that bitch like eight hundred dollars.  =\  Most of it will be paid off tomorrow, though.  Then I’ll owe about three hundred.  Damn Visa!

I’m supposed to start co-op this summer.  Who knows where.  I guess that we have to go and get interviewed and crap.  I’m not looking forward to it.  I am, however, looking forward to getting a paycheque for something that I enjoy doing and being able to pay off that blasted charge card.

I’m currently listening to Sonic Youth because of the movie Juno.  I’m not really impressed.  Some of their stuff is okay but a lot of it is hard on the eardrums.  I also got a bunch of At the Drive-in.  They’re pretty rad.

My host keeps yelling at me about those CPU cycles and shutting down my site.  I think I might just change to this Proto-host place.  It’s cheaper than Hostican and moiph knows the guy who runs it personally.  It’ll be a bitch moving everything over there, though.  Maybe I’ll be able to sort out this host instead.  They’re really pissing me off, though.

My screen is so damn shiny.  Josh brought this gel crap into class today and I wiped that bitch down.  It’s a beautiful sight.

I also added a new favicon, courtesy of Aura.  It goes well with the theme, yeah?  I thought so.  Now if only people were able to view it without getting redirected to that high CPU page.

Nowwww.  I must leave.  Tomorrow is Friday.  Fuck ya.

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Not much to update.  I had to write a thesis about human chips.

Implanted chips in human beings will prove to be a mainstay in modern society, thanks to the convenience that they offer, the peace of mind that they provide, and the profit that they produce.

Pretty goddamned sweet, if I do say so myself.

My site keeps getting shut down, along with all of its subdomains, for some reason.  Apparently I’m using too much processing power but I checked the logs and it all looks kosher.  I think Hostican is just trying to fuck me. :( 

Only one more day ’til the weekend so thank God for that.

I weigh 146 now.  Which means I’ve gained almost ten pounds.  I’m still incredibly skinny but at least I’m making progress.  Doing wide bench presses and these tricep thingos as well as shoulder flies is definitely working.  I’m also doing my legs and back now which is probably helping to pack on the pounds.

Peaceee.

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My dad and I were discussing speeding earlier.  I had told him how it was strange that I had never been pulled over before.  Stopped while walking down the street a couple of times, but never pulled over while driving.  It’s weird because I’m a perpetual speeder.  I aim for twenty over the limit (I figure that any higher and I’d be asking for a ticket) and I change lanes frequently to get around other cars.  I guess I’m just lucky.  Or it could be that I actually pay attention to the road, including the oncoming traffic.  If I see a police car then I break.  Maybe doing seventy in a fifty zone just isn’t that fast.  I’m not sure how many demerit points it would be worth.

What I’m really curious about is why people speed.  If the limit was seventy in a residential area, would I go ninety?  If it was a hundred would I go one-twenty?  I’d like to think not.  I’d like to believe that I drive at what I consider a safe and reasonable speed.  On a wide open road, why bother going sixty kilometers an hour?  That’s just pussy.  I don’t even think there should be speed limits.  There should only be unsafe driving laws.  If you see someone doing a hundred in a school zone when there are kids everywhere, pull him over.  If you see someone doing two hundred in the middle of the night on a highway with no traffic around, leave him be.  Let people regulate themselves.  I think it’d work just fine.

Except the government would lose a lot of cheddar which, as we all know, can’t happen.

P.S. I just drove by the sign I knocked over and it’s been fixed.  Yay for ducking responsibility.

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My favourite bands are as follows:

Jedi Mind Tricks, Wu-Tang Clan, Radiohead, Ill Bill, Atmosphere, Pixies, Aesop Rock, Marilyn Manson, 7L & Esoteric, Cage, Brand New, Josh Martinez, The Walkmen, Shyheim, Muse, Chiodos, The Dear Hunter, Typical Cats, OutKast, Gatsby’s American Dream, 1865, We Are Scientists, Liz Durrett, Headshots, Necro, Dear and the Headlights, Slow Suicide Stimulus, Kaiser Chiefs, Dashboard Confessional, Leak Bros, Army Of The Pharaohs, Circa Survive, The Mars Volta, Ghostface, Sage Francis, Cage and Camu, Cold War Kids, Rx Bandits, Queens of the Stone Age, OuterSpace, Guster, Ben Folds Five, Nirvana, Eminem, Slug, Ambulance LTD, Special Teamz, Jack Johnson, Broken Social Scene, Sky Eats Airplane, Check out my music taste: http://www.last.fm/user/thedalailama/

I don’t remember listening to the last band. =\

I’m in OOP (Object-Oriented Programming) right now.  Apparently it has to do with holding the data and methods all in one memory location or something.  I’m not too sure.  I guess I should be paying more attention.  We’re instantiating circle objects at the moment.  Very exciting stuff.

I guess that I’ll finish 3:10 to Yuma when I get home.  It’s pretty boring, otherwise I would’ve completed it last night.  Unforgiven is way better, Clint Eastwood is such a bad ass in that and it also has a bittersweet ending (I prefer to focus on the sweet), which is always good.

Peaceee.

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On every social networking site it asks you for your favourite artists.  I’m never quite sure what to put.  Is it my favourite artist of all time?  Who I’m currently listening to?  I tend to treat artists as disposable.  When I’ve listened to their albums enough that I’m sick of them I erase them from my playlists and forget about them.  Maybe I should just start adding every single artist/band that I can conceive of.  What even constitutes a favourite artist?  You listen to their music?  I don’t want to seem like a phony, you know.  I also don’t want to change my list every three months once I’ve gotten over whoever I was enamoured with at the time of writing.  I’ll figure this out later.

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For the third time, someone randomly offered to sell me a surround sound system.  I was at the grocery store and I hopped out of my truck, brushed my shoulders off and I see some guy call to me from a green Safari (van).  So I walk over to him and he goes, "This is totally weird but do you want to buy a surround sound system?"  I just laughed and go, "Bro, you’re the third person to try to sell me one of these things."  He just said okay and drove off.

I went to eat at some restaurant tonight with my family.  Here’s me looking quite dapper:

And another:

Here’s my grandma:

She kills me sometimes.  She told me I was too skinny a while ago and I had to correct her.  I go, "Grandma, I am not!  I’ve been working out lately.  I’m huge!"  And I flexed for her.  She was mad impressed.  I think that she forgot though cause she didn’t say anything tonight.

I ate some honey garlic chicken wings and some fries.  They were pretty delicious.

I also worked out today, benched 115, about eight reps per set, four sets.  I also did some tricep stuff and shoulder workouts.  Tomorrow I shall hit my biceps and my forearms.  Possibly my legs as well.

Hey, you wanna know a couple cool African phrases?  One is, "Charlie, why!"  You say that when you’re flustered.  Like, "Why’d you do that??" or "Why’d that happen??"  And then another is, you can say to anyone younger than you, "Small boy!  Do this!"  So if, say, you want a pack of smokes from the store you say, "Small boy!  Go to the store and get me some cigarettes!"  And they’ll do it for you.  I always call my little brother small boy now.  It’s cool.

Kbye.

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I’ve been taking my camera around snapping random photos.

Here’s one of my textbooks (English):

Here’s a photo I snapped on the way to school.  There’s a much better view of the city on that road but I forgot to take a picture:

Here’s a door in my school:

And here’s a funny-ass picture.  My buddy was playing with my camera and he didn’t realise what he was doing so he took this by accident:

The funny part was that the flash went off directly in his eyes, temporarily blinding him and leaving me in a stupor of hilarity.

Now I’m out.

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And windy.  It’s still about two degrees above zero, though, which isn’t bad for January.  We had tons of rain last night so I guess that a bunch of roads are flooded.  The creek near my house is the highest I’ve ever seen it and the Thames river is ridiculously high as well.

In other news, my arms are sore.  Those tricep exercises certainly do the trick.  I was doing curls today and my back like gave out.  It was painful.  I dropped the weights and sat down and the pain went away.  I hope I don’t wake up in agony tomorrow.  It’s been known to happen.

I have class today at noon.  I’m not sure which one, possibly web design.  Then I have a class at three and it ends at five.  I’ve been up since seven so I’m gonna be wiped by the end of the day.  Maybe I’ll take a nap before school.  Ah I love my naps.  Or maybe they’re miniature sleeps.  I’m not sure.

My English teacher is really amped up, she talked a mile a minute.  She impressed me with her vocabulary, though.  We’re going to be doing persuasive essays among other things.  I think that I’ll enjoy that class.

Now I’m gonna finish this apple and go to take a shower.  Peace.

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I got to school at 8 today to get this whole schedule thing straightened out.  I talked to the IT woman and she sent me to the registrar’s office.  Turns out my transfer form hadn’t been processed.  Yah, useless.  So I got ‘er done and went back to the IT woman and she gave me my timetable and everything.

Look at this:

THIRTEEN degrees.  CENTIGRATE.  That’s like 55 degrees Fahrenheit for you Americans.  In January!  Strange days, that’s for sure.  Almost all of the snow has melted and it’s supposed to stay warm tomorrow.  It’ll cool down later this week, though.

Today I got to school and I was heading into the parking lot and I saw that there was a spot open.  So I was like, "YES."  I turned the corner and there was a pylon blocking both of the little swinging arm things where you pay.  There was a car at one of them waiting patiently for the attendant to come back.  I was all like, "Fuck that!"  So I hopped out of my truck to move the pylon out of the way at the other entrance and drive through.  I was about a foot from the big orange cone when I hear, "Don’t you touch that pylon!"   I froze and looked around and the attendant was walking speedily towards me.  I go, "Sorry!"  And hop back into my truck.  He ended up letting me through afterwards and it made me laugh really hard.  He’s a nice guy.  I’ve dealt with him on many occasions.

I was on my way to programming when that happened.  Object-oriented programming to be precise.  I’m still not exactly sure what that is but today we were dealing with a form of two-dimensional arrays.  It was pretty simple.  I think object-oriented programming is just a term used to scare people.  It’s not gonna be very hard.

I’ve also got some C++ class, a web design class, e-commerce, a writing class, relational databases, and team dynamics (wtf?).  It should prove to be an interesting semester.

Peaceeee.

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I changed my theme and added a couple of things to the sidebar.  I was bored of the dark theme so I decided to lighten my blog up a bit with this one.  I think that the sidebar might be a bit too cluttered now, though.  Thoughts?

I just had a good workout.  I benched a hundred pounds seven or eight times per set, four sets and did the same with curls at twenty-five pounds.  I’m so weak but it’s still sweet being able to lift more than I could before.  I could barely do a hundred four times two weeks ago.  The one good thing about being sickly skinny is that you get to see results right away.  I don’t have to diet or do cardio for the muscles to appear.  I’m very sinewy.

K, I’m out.  PZ

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I was sitting here, wondering where computers will take us in the future.  I know that soon, opulent households will be completely controlled by computers.  I kind of want to be able to hit a touch pad and have every single light in my house go off or for my front door to unlock.  That’ll be pretty sweet.  I think that we’ll also have chips implanted in us with all of our medical data and maybe a GPS tracker in case we get kidnapped or lost.  It sounds kind of scary, knowing that you can be found at any time but shit, if you don’t cause any trouble then you don’t have to worry. 

I want to be able to grab anything from the supermarket, stuff it in my pockets and walk out through some type of reader that will scan all of the items and then my chip which, in addition to having my medical records, will have my banking information and whatever I have will be charged to my account.  Fuck carrying a wallet, your chip will also have your driver’s license info should you be pulled over for speeding.

Eventually I hope to have optical implants, same with auditory.  Being able to blink twice and seeing the time or browsing the internet with no monitor.  Being able to zoom in on stuff or activate your night vision would be pretty sick.  Then turning on your ear implants and hearing every tiny sound.  It would be fun as hell for young people, not to mention the help that it would give to old people.

Moving on, my class schedule still hasn’t been posted.  I’m pretty sure that we start on Monday so if it doesn’t come by then I’m going to be a bit worried.  I’m waiting for my one friend from class to show up online.  It means that he’s back in town and that classes have begun.  He’s in my program too so I think that he’ll have the same schedule as me.  I switched from computer technician to programmer so that might’ve fucked things up.  I’m not sure.  Ah well, It’ll work out.  It always does.

Okay.  Peace.

P.S.  I hate it when websites start playing videos or music without you clicking on the play button.  Hey, douchebag webmasters, AUTORUN = NO, PLOX.

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The first of which being 12:08 East of Bucharest.  It was a decent movie.  A bit boring but the old man in it made me lol on several occasions.  Even with all of the Romanian I’ve learned I was only able to understand a couple of really basic phrases along with some numbers.  I was a bit disappointed, then I realised that Romanians just talk too damn fast and it’s not my fault.  What do they think?  They’re in a speed talking contest?

I also watched No Country for Old Men.  A pretty damn decent movie, aside from the ending which left me wanting more answers and some closure.  There’s this one scene where Tommy Lee Jones goes and talks to this dude in a wheelchair and their conversation goes something like this (Tommy Lee Jones says the first line.):

“That man that shot you died in prison?”

“Angola, yeah.”

“What’d you have done if he had been released?”

“Oh, I don’t know.  Nothin’.  Wouldn’t be no point in it.”

“Kindly surprised to hear you say that.”

“Well all the time you spend tryin’ to get back what’s been took from you, more’s going out the door.  After a while you just have to try to get a tourniquet around it.”

That was the first one.  Acceptance.  Very important.

Here’s another quote that I really liked.  Tommy Lee Jones feels depressed about his job so the old guy says:

“What you got ain’t nothin’ new.  This country’s hard on people.  You can’t stop what’s coming, it ain’t all waitin’ on you.  That’s vanity.”

Realising that everything changes whether you’re ready for it or not, very sage.  Sorry if you consider these spoilers.  I certainly don’t and I’m certain that if and when you see this movie, you’ll have totally forgotten about this entry by then.

I also watched a couple of other Romanian films that Aura recommended.  The first was this movie about abortion, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days which was decent, though sorely depressing.

Then I watched California Dreamin’ which is about these NATO soldiers who get stopped in a small Romanian village on the way to Serbia (I think).  It was a pretty solid film with some good humour and romance.

Okay, I’m going to sleep.  Good night, as they say.

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