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  • I've been insanely busy with schoolwork lately.  They really know how to load me down with work.
     
    I think I failed to mention that I made a few New Year's Resolutions.
     
    -Eat better
    -Work out more
    -Raise my GPA
    -Get a girlfriend

  • What was/is your major in college? Why did you pick it?

    Pre-dental.  That's not actually a major at University of Michigan, so I'd have to say that my true major is Brain, Behavior, and Cognitive Sciences.  I havent declared it yet, but it's a popular pre-med school major that fulfills the basic requirements to get in and doesnt force me to take even more shitty chemistry and biology and physics and calculus courses that wont do jack-fucking-shit for my education down the line.  Those are just classes used to weed out the truly hard-working students from the kids who party all the time.  And while I dont party, I do have ADHD, which even on medication still makes these classes even harder for me especially since they're so goddamned boring.  Unless you're actually going to be a Biologist or a Chemist or a scientist or an engineer, those classes aren't going to help me at all in dental school.  With my major, I've just got to take a bunch of upper-level Psychology classes, and that's a class I actually enjoy.  That's probably what I hate the most about American colleges in general, because this behavior is accepted among pretty much every university in the country, regarding the whole weeding-out process.  If worse comes to worse, I will move to another country to pursue my dental degree, assuming I dont get into any of the post-grad dental schools here in America.  Hell, if I wanted to, straight out of high school I could've gone to Australia and they have a dental school there that you can get into and finish in 3 years.  3 YEARS!!!  Anyways, I'm going off on a rant here, so I'd better end this quick.

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  • My sister told me not to blog about her apartment, West Towne Manner, so I'm doing it because it's not her decision.  I've spent the last few days with my mom and her, getting her moved into her upstairs apartment with all her heavy furniture, including but not limited to the family couch, a "creshenda", and her new bed (and possibly her bedframe tomorrow).  Despite the fact that I've spent the last few days moving all that heavy furniture, helping her get moved in, going along with them while they shopped for furniture, me being on my best behavior and etc, I'm still not being allowed to take my own truck (which I was nice enough to let them borrow) to an arcade that I was sorta kinda hoping to go to, the Fort Sanders Yacht Club.  Even though I'm 19.  Because it's "in a bad part of town".  What does that mean anyways?  I checked streetview on Google Maps to scope out the area, and it certainly doesnt look like a bad part of town to me.  It's just a little downstairs basement arcade a couple blocks north of University of Tennessee.  I deserve to be treated like an adult.

  • Seriously... Gamerish?

    I know, I know.  You're probably saying "Another 'Ish' site?  I'm sick of those!".  But hear me out.  It seems that everyone's pretty one-sided on the whole 'ish' site issue.  Some people like them, some dont.  I happen to enjoy them, it allows people who want to focus on blogging on a particular topic do so while maintaining their status within the Xanga community.  I dont understand some of these 'ish' sites myself, I dont know why that particular gerund got so popular, but it doesnt keep me up at night.  If it makes a profit for Xanga, I'm down with it, these sites never particularly bothered me and ever since their conception, it's helped me be able to steer clear of featured weblog entries that I know I wouldnt enjoy.
     
    There was recently a featured weblog that suggested a new 'ish' site for the artistic people on Xanga.  I'm 100% down with this, because I've seen a ton of great talent on Xanga that deserved to be seen but even John can agree that featuring things like poetry and art doesnt generate nearly as much attention and comments as featured blogs do.  I would subscribe to that page, and I fully support it.
     
    However, even moreso than that, I'm surprised that Xanga hasnt greated a blogsite for the gaming community.  To me, this would've been the first thing that I did, because gaming is HUGE on the internet!  There are so many countless message boards and websites dedicated to gaming news, reviews, rumors, FAQ's, competition, conversation and debate.  Yet there currently isnt any particular website dedicated to gaming blogs, up to this point most of them have been individualized and spread out across the vast series of the inter-tubes.  I've tried a couple of gaming websites with blogging features kinda tacked onto the side, but the interface has always been terrible and it was never a main feature that was promoted or heavily used.  And here on Xanga, I enjoy discussing games on my own blog as well as reading about the games that other people are playing on their blogs.  Infact, if I recall correctly, several of the Xanga staff are gamers themselves.  Xanga should jump at the chance to bring the gaming community together with a quality blogsite!
     
    Please help support my cause by recommending this post, 5-starring it and by voting here http://www.xanga.com/ideas/368/blogsiteforgamers.html
     
    However, please please dont call it Gamingish.  We can do better than that, cant we?  Off of the top of my head, I thought of a couple of ideas, things like "insertcoin.com" or "pressstart.com" are both available domains that Xanga can purchase.  But please, leave your ideas for names in the comments, because I'd like to read about and hope that the Xanga Team will see something that they like and will use!

  •  Sup bitches, guess who just got Lifetime Premium?
     

  •  I'm all registered for classes, here's my lineup.
     
    schedule
     
    SWC 200 is about popular internet videos, which is freaking AWESOME.
     
    It's Christmas day, so I'll have a much bigger weblog entry later on tonight.  I hope that everyone has a merry Christmas.

  • MY GOD.  You people and your Xanga weblogs.  Do you realize that I just spent the last few hours reading and commenting?  Never again will I take a 4 day break from Xanga.
     
    But yes, I'm home, I have internet and laptop.  I ended up with a C in Spanish 101, which made me a very happy camper.  However, I made a D in Biology, which initially I was depressed about since I thought that it meant that I would have less than 12 credits and thus lose my scholarship but apparently that's not the case.  I made B's in my physics lab and my Black World History course, horray!  Now I need to register for classes.
     
    I've got a big stack of videogames for my Xbox that I never really got around to playing.  So I've been going through the stack, finishing up the games that I got close to beating but then gave up on, and playing through the ones that I never unwrapped.  In particularly, I've been playing through the Burnout games, my collection consists of Burnout, Burnout 2: Director's Cut, Burnout 3: Takedown, and Burnout: Revenge.  I beat the original Burnout last night.  Currently I'm running through Burnout 2, which I think is my favorite of the series.  I had already gotten through most of Burnout 3, since that was my first Burnout game and I've had it for a long time, but I havent finished it yet.  I got Burnout: Revenge last Christmas and played it a little then, but havent gotten too far.  Alot of these games are also on the PS2 and Gamecube, and there are even newer versions on the Xbox 360 and PS3, so if you have those you should check them out.  There's a game mode called "Crash", where you literally try to drive into traffic and break as much stuff as possible.  It is RIDICULOUSLY fun.  I can play it for hours.
     
    I've also got Burnout: Dominator for the PS2, but I cant play it because I dont have a Dualshock 2 controller.  That's one thing that bugs me about the PS2, because I've got a PSone controller that is alot more comfortable, but some of the PS2 games literally require the Dualshock 2 controller.  I guess that's because it's pressure sensitive and has better rumble features, but there are some games that I'd like to play that shouldnt require that controller.  For racing games, it makes sense, because since the controller is pressure-sensitive that means that you have better control of the gas pedal.  But I'd like to play the Kingdom Hearts games, but I cant unless I'm using a Dualshock 2.  There's no good reason for that.  Dualshock 2 controller is on my Christmas list.

  • Back at home in Arkansas with the family.  Doing my Christmas shopping while heckling the professors to bump up my grades while figuring out my schedule for next semester.  I'll update with more later, just thought I'd drop a line to let everyone know that I'm not dead and that I'll read your latest entries soon when I've got the time.  Toodles.

  • If you won a multi-million dollar lottery, what would your first five purchases be?

    1.  I'd buy all the parts I needed in order for me to build myself a top-of-the-line computer, $4000
     
    2.  I'd take out just enough money in order for me to buy a small place of my own out away from civilization, someplace where noone would stick their nose into my business so I could do whatever I wanted and have peace and quiet.  And I'd have an internet connection just as fast as the one I'm getting here at the University of Michigan.
     
    3.  I would hold onto every last penny for dear life, get help from my family to invest it wisely, and I'd use that money to pay college tuition for my younger cousin and for my children.  Hopefully I invest it well enough that I can live off of it and support my family and friends whenever they need me the most.

       

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  • I spend such a large amount of my time regretting things that I've done in the past that it's really beginning to take a toll.  When I was a little kid, I was in the backyard jumping on the trampoline with my best friend from across the street and I heard one of my dogs, Mandy, choking.  I ignored her.  A couple of hours later, after my friend had left, we found her dead in the backyard because she had choked on a bone that we had bought for her to play with.  It haunts me everytime I think about it, how stupid and ignorant I was.  I didnt even play with my dogs that much back then, and it really hurts to think of how she died such a slow, painful death and without getting the attention she so well deserved.
     
    I did spend more time with my pets after that.  I would walk my other dog, Checkers, around the block after school every day.  What used to be a once-a-week occasion that my parents did, was now a once-a-day thing that I did.  We would let our dogs loose in the backyard every day and that's where they stayed, ignored for the most part.  Checkers and Mandy were best friends, and as painful as it was for me, it hurt Checkers even more having to watch her die.  He had noone to play with now for all the hours that we would be at school and at work everyday.  Watching his best friend die changed him, he would howl out in pain every night for a few weeks, when normally he never made any noise whatsoever.  I was partially responsible, so I put forth a concious effort to be a better friend than what I used to be.  Without having a friend around to play with, it can get pretty lonely being in a backyard all day long, and he loved going for walks everyday with me.  From that point on, I would spend extra time with him.  When he got older, his back constantly got thrown out of alignment, so he had to spend alot of time in the garage on some blankets we set up for him to rest on while he recovered.  Since he couldnt walk, I'd go out there often to pet him and make sure he had plenty of food and water.  He'd try to get up to greet me but always fell back down in pain.  Eventually, he died of a heart attack one morning when we let him out into the backyard for the day, and I spent the afternoon digging his grave next to Mandy.  Knowing that I spent more time with my dog, and since he died a natural death, made me feel less regret than when Mandy died.
     
    After that, I knew I had to dedicate more time to my cat.  She had always had gotten the most attention, which sometimes makes me feel terrible because my dogs deserved better from us.  She was an inside cat while they were outside dogs, so it was only natural for more constant interaction.  But after my dogs died, since she was getting older, I knew she needed to know she was loved and appreciated.  I did spend alot of time with her, and now that she's dead, I dont regret the amount of attention that she got.
     
    I regret the mistakes I've made to this day, but I learned from them.  Spend lots of time with your family and friends, the people and the pets that you love, because you never know when they will be gone forever.  Put down the videogames, turn off the tv, if you're going to be the owner of a pet then it's your responsibility to treat them as another member of your family.  Dont just let them out and forget about them, pay attention to their needs and play with them until you're sick of it.  The same goes with your family and friends, there's probably someone in that group of people who you havent talked to in years, who may drop dead at any second, call them up and see what they're up to.  Do it today, dont waste a second, even if it's excrutiatingly boring to listen to them chatter on and on it may secure your place in their will and make you feel less guilty later on.  Later on, you wont feel the regret that I constantly live with.