On Saturday, my friend Lia and I went to Toronto, Canada to attend Edgefest ’09 and see AFI.  We left at noon and made the 4.5 hour drive to Toronto and arrived right-on time for us to see Alexisonfire (another band that she is a fan of) and AFI (the reason why we both came).

My beautiful friend Lia.  We listened to AFI the entire trip there and back.

Crossing the bridge into Canada.  Customs gave us a little bit of trouble, but nothing we couldnt handle.

We met up and hung out with other AFI fans.

Lia and I were both very muddy and sweaty after the show, but she still looked absolutely fabulous!

It was raining all day that day.  As we were leaving the venue, we helped a car get unstuck from the mud.  It took all of us!  Notice Graham on the far left, he’s silly =P

We got on the subway to downtown Toronto

We ate sushi!  Graham’s hiding from the camera again.

Afterwards we went to a bar.  A few members of our group, including Lia, live a “straight edge” lifestyle, meaning that they dont partake in recreational drug useage.  I deeply respect her strong will against succumbing to peer pressure, and that she lives this way without looking down upon those who choose to live otherwise.

This trip was by far the most fun I’ve had since I moved to Michigan.  I made a ton of new friends and memories that I will never forget.  We disbanded that night, knowing full and well that there was a connection between all of us that could only exist through our love of AFI.

Tonight I celebrated my 20th birthday in more depth by having a dinner party with friends at Bar Louie.  Joel, Eric, Ariel, Starla and her boyfriend, Ashlei, and Andrew K. all showed up and we ordered drinks and food.  I offered to pay for everyone’s drinks, but instead Ashlei was nice enough to pay for my meal =)  I tried to not let her though, ROFL.  I was hoping that I could pay for everyone’s drinks this year so that next year, when I’m 21, I could cash in those good-karma points and have my friends pay for my drinks all night long =D  We had an excellent time though, and I’m glad that we ended up going there because they kept playing all the music that I like listening to in my spare time anyways.  I heard a couple of Jack Johnson songs, all of which I really like, and there was even some Red Hot Chili Peppers in there somewhere.  I really wish I had taken pictures, but I was so overwhelmed with happiness that I was too much in shock to remember doing that.  I’m so fortunate to have so many great friends. 

It’s funny, I chose Bar Louie because I had heard that they served big and delicious slices of cake that are intended for two people.  And, my Facebook event page for the event was themed off of a videogame called “Portal”, where the running gag is that the player is constantly reminded that there will be cake at the end of the game, but it turns out that “the cake was a lie.”  Check out the event page here.  It turns out that Bar Louie was out of cake, the cake was a lie, so they brough me a cut-up fudge brownie with ice cream on top of it instead.  Later I was still hungry, since I expected to be full off of cake, so I ordered a steak quesedilla.  I’m a big-time steak quesedilla fan, but this one was pretty terrible.  I had to eat it with a fork because it was falling apart, and overall it just didnt taste very good, I should have just gotten a cheese one instead.

I had asked for my friends to bring their Nintendo DS’s so that we could play them while we ate, and they did so it was good fun.  Our selection of multiplayer games was lacking unfortunately, but I did get to gloat as I pwned everyone at Tetris DS.  Afterwards, I thanked everyone for coming and I ended up chilling over at Andrew’s place for a bit and watching Dancing With The Stars, which one of Andrew’s childhood friends is currently participating in.  He advanced to the next round, and he danced very well, he deserved it.

Currently I’m in the Ugli working on physics for the night.  I want to get ahead on my work because our final exam is next Friday and I plan on being super-prepared to dominate that exam.  He also assigned us some extra credit so I’m hoping to burn through some of that for some extra points. 

Take care everyone, and never forget that it is the quality of your friends that counts, not the quantity.

The ability to see all traffic that is coming to and from my blog is one of my favorite features of Xanga.  It’s the very first thing I check everytime I log on.  I read that John (CEO of Xanga) was worried that Footprints may have impeded some traffic on Xanga, and I’ve seen a petition where people want Footprints to be removed completely, but the Xanga Team absolutely MUST KEEP THIS FEATURE because everyone should have at LEAST some sort of idea of who’s looking at what on their website.  Just think, if you were able to see that someone was stalking your website, wouldnt you want to know so that you could prevent anything bad from happening before it does? 

This simple convenience of privacy is something that Facebook gets an F- in, you have some flexibility for privacy but you cant actually see who’s been viewing your profile, when, and how often.  Livejournal fares no better, I can easily view someone’s private entries no-sweat.  Not so with Xanga, this is such a robust website with plenty of tools to monitor your blog’s traffic, it’s fantastic.  Xanga is THE place to be if you’re going to blog because of your ability to monitor traffic.  Footprints is a great feature, if you’ve ever used that, but to be on the safe side what I personally use and recommend for everyone out there is to also install the Suhock Anti-Stalker module  http://suhock.net/xanga/logs/index.php  It works best with the old private homepage though, it lists all of your most recent viewers and is incredibly convenient.  Then it’s just one click away from an even more detailed view, where you can see who’ve visited your blog, which outside link they used (such as if they found you through Google, or a message board where you posted a link, or Facebook where you put your blog in your profile which is kind of a dumb idea and I especially dont recommend ANYONE do). 

It also shows the IP Address of the visitor, which for those of you who arent aware, every internet connection has one of these so when you’re surfing the internet other websites see that you’re surfing the site from that IP Address.  It’s like a thumbprint, they’re all unique.  I’m not 100% on whether that’s technically correct, so dont quote me, the point was to give you an idea.  So what you can do is copy that IP address and take it to http://www.ip-adress.com/ip_tracer/ and plug that number in and if someone visited your website and they werent logged into Xanga you could still get an idea of where they are located so you’ll know if it’s a local person or just another random scammer in Nigeria. 

I use both the Suhock anti-stalker module and Xanga’s Footprints because often I find that one picks up something that the other one doesnt, or sometimes Suhock will fail for short periods of time.  I recently had an email exchange with a woman on Craigslist, she lives one town away and is a few years older than me, we never actually met or did anything more than just emailing, but with my email address she was able to find my current Xanga, as well as my previous Xanga, and she stayed up late every night that week reading through all 4 years worth of my blog content.  I know this because these two IP-tracing tools kept track of every hour and minute of her activity on my blog.  Needless to say, I wont be talking to her again.

I urge anyone reading this, male or female, to buy themselves some sort of protection and keep it on them at all times.
A GUN.
You CANT AFFORD NOT TO HAVE IT.  You CAN’T ALWAYS TELL who’s messed up in the head.  And be EXTRA CAREFUL about people who you meet online.  It’s not like “To Catch a Predator” where everyone who they show on TV is a memorable creepy character that you would spot on the street and be able to say “wow, I can tell that guy’s a pedophile”, there’s plenty of normal guys that they chose not to air on that show simply because it wouldnt attract as many ratings as the wierd-o’s. 

I’m not saying that meeting people on Xanga is a no-no, not at all.  If you’ve been talking with someone for a while, and you both feel comfortable, go ahead and go through with it!  There’s a ton of great people on this site, I’ve met plenty of folks through here and it was always chill.  But don’t just go charging into Craigslist, posting personal ads and responding to all of them without a second thought.  Not smart.  Trust me, it’s just better to go out in real life and meet people who you know already get some sun and fresh air and hang out with other real-life friends who do the same thing and spend their time doing normal activities.  I hear about other peoples’ creepy Craigslist encounters all of the time, and I worry about what could have happened had they not been prepared to handle the situation.

Be safe everyone.

If there’s one type of person in this world that I hate more than anyone else, it’s The Poindexter.  But what exactly is a “poindexter”?  I use the term Poindexter to describe people who are just completely out of it, who follow the book without questioning it, because usually when someone thinks of a poindexter they think of someone who’s got their nose planted in a book. 

Poindexters have no emotions or second thoughts about others’ feelings, they exist only to obey, like mindless robots.  They are the people who will tell the teacher if they see you chewing gum in class, even if you always spit it out properly in the trash can instead of mashing it up under the desk.  They will literally go out of their way to get you into trouble, because they truly believe that they are the deliverers of fairness and justice in this world, although in reality they’re too scared to grow up and experience life outside of their normal comfort zone every once in a while.  Poindexters are the worst kind of people IMO, because you cant trust them with anything.  No secret goes unshared, because secrets “arent fair”. 

Usually, all of my problems in life can all be traced back to one person:  The Poindexter.  Tattle-tale.  The person who didnt know when to keep their traps shut.  The person who causes others harm, even when the rules being broken are harming noone.  They are the person who should have looked away and pretended not to see anything.  A poindexter is that person at the Yo-Yo Ma! or Blaqk Audio concert who, instead of shutting the fuck up and enjoying the concert like a normal human being, annoyingly interrupts you in the middle of a few quick snapshots to rudely remind you that photography isn’t allowed.  The kind of person who makes a sudden *gasp* noise when they notice that you’re driving a few miles over the speed limit, or drinking alcohol when you arent 21 years old, or when they notice that you’re copying a problem off of someone else’s homework.  These gasps are necessary in order to fill the unused areas of their brain that normally would be reserved for “common sense” with air.

God damn you, poindexters.  Fuck you all to hell.  The world would be a better place without you.  Wake up and smell the ashes, some rules are unfair and meant to be broken.  Live life a little.  Get into trouble.  Scrape your knees every once in a while.  Quit living in a bubble your entire life.  You will not get laid this way. 

t(‘-’t)  Cry some more.

Pecs, abs, and smile are in progress y’all.  Thanks for the input, it’s always appreciated.  Pecs and abs are coming in.  Slowly, but they’re developing.  Smile comes as a result of me being a happier person, which I’m in the process of working on.  Been going out and making a ton of friends, giving my number out to random people in my class offering to study or work on homework.  I’ve also made an event on Facebook and invited all of my gamer friends to come to Pinball Pete’s (a local arcade) this Friday and to bring their friends and their friends friends, so I hope to socialize and meet many new people.  I’m alot happier now than I’ve been in a long time, my mood’s been kinda in the dumps lately, but everything’s looking up.  Life’s getting back on track and I’m back for the comeback.

All smiles here.