Oh man... this is going to be a great trip to Missouri. Know why? I had this great idea. See when my dad died, he had one of those cool rectangle luggage suitcase things that has wheels... nice and solid right? So now I get to use that... which is cool I guess. What's cooler though is that I just realized I could take half the amount of clothes I was GOING to take, then I could fit my Xbox in it. That's so awesome. Better not tell my mom. I love my Xbox. I even have my own room with a tv at my grandma's house... its like all the planets are aligning just right for me to have something to do for a change in MO. Nature WANTS me to play. Thanks nature... I shall comply with your wishes.

The weather may suck here most of the time, but you really can't beat the skies. I love my new camera too. I love everything! But that might be the spring break talking. Better go... I have some spring break to do before tomorrow. I hope I get all my spring break done, it'll be nice to spring break for a change. Spring break anyone?

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Life is good, I'm having a very lucky week by comparison to some of my last weeks. I'm getting business, I'm keeping busy, and next week is spring break. Yep... things are looking up for me. I'm going back to good old Missouri for a few days next week with my mom and my aunt, that should be... interesting heh. Going to pay the grandparents a visit... that's always nice and laid back... listen to a book on CD on the way out... get lots of sleep... talk about the weather... watch shocking reality shows that my grandpa gets the hugest kick out of for some reason. Good times.

I also have elaborate plans to learn all about mysql and all the stuff I didn't learn very well in C++ over the past week or so. I remember last spring break I was studying for a Solaris certification... that was rough. I studied for days... I studied so much I couldn't sleep, just kept dreaming about running commands with different options and forever reading output - it was crazy. This spring break should be infinitely more relaxing. I'm really glad they have spring breaks and just breaks in general... its so hard to keep motivated in school sometimes - the semesters really start to drag at some point. Only two classes left to go though... College Algebra which should suck, and an art class which hopefully will be easy. If it's not someone's going to have to die to pay for the sins of my lousy core class teachers. Either way, just gotta keep my head down and keep on trucking and put my nose to the grindstone and a stitch in time saves nine. Sweet.

I'll be taking a laptop on loan from my mom's work on vacation but I don't suppose I'm going to have steady internet access. That should be frightening, I check my email like 60 times a day. Maybe I'll take up smoking hehe. No lung cancer to worry about... I'm sure my mom would kill me way before I had time to get any of that nonsense.

Well I've watched all the Star Wars episodes in order over the past two weeks. That was rewarding. I never understood a damn thing about that movie because I was so young when the first ones came out. Then I'd see them out of order over time, kind of picked up the gist but never really understood. I never knew what the hell anyone was fighting over, didn't get how all these people were inter-related... I was really missing 90% of the experience by not taking the time to understand it all. Don't get me wrong, I thought Star Wars was cool, but now that I actually understand the story, I think its a lot cooler. I'm going to begin my jedi training now. As a padawan learner I'll have to shave my head and grow a braid on the side of my head and put some beads on it. I'll also have to buy a bunch of fabric and make myself a robe. I really do wish jedi robes were acceptable in everyday fashion... if only the world knew how immensely happy that'd make me. Oh well... what can ya do. Some day I will be a jedi, and then I will kill them all. May the force be with me.

Announcements... Happy 25th Birthday to a Mr. Shaun of Colorado, a very merry un-pitcher for the Colorado Rockies and all around incredibly white mexican. Huzzah! And a thanks to "Jules" of WA for signing my guestbook. Some day I'll make zombeef t-shirts and I'll send them to anyone that signs my guestbook, and sends me $15. That'll be sweet, I could really use $15. I could use $20 more though. If I deem myself a charity, can I not pay my taxes?

Its good to think sometimes. Like when you're looking at a script and you can't figure out where something happens at all, it's good to think about how you want to change the date but you're looking at a totally unrelated time script. Yeah, its good to pay attention too. I guess tomorrow I'm going to set up a Sun server at my school... that's pretty dope. Get to put it all together and hook it all up and install Solaris 9... that should be peachy. Also get to draw on all my forgotten wisdom that I acquired in my various solaris administration classes. It's going to be interesting I think. I'm sure I will have many tales of stupidity to share at my task's completion, assuming I complete it.

I went and saw that "Passion of the Christ" movie of Mel Gibson's. I guess it was good, although I don't think I'd recommend everyone see it over anything else that's out. Maybe required viewing for religious folk, I dunno. Everyone's been complaining about the gore, and I agreed that it was pretty bad. Even if it wasn't Jesus that was getting so messed up, it'd still be pretty gorey. But let's be honest folks, lashings and crucifixions aren't really nice business. I don't think it was over the top, I felt it was hard hitting and effective, like those cat-a-nine tails, ha... ha oh that's not funny sorry. It wasn't a funny movie by any means, I cried through most of it. Who would've thought watching a really nice guy die a horribly painful death would be such a downer. Yeah, irreverency is how I cope, so screw you. It was good still. It will always be a good story, and Jesus will always be a good guy, whether he be the Son of God or just some dude with a lot of good ideas.

I did take issue with a few parts of the movie. Overall I don't think they spent enough time setting up the story, they just get right into the beatings and the lashings and all that, and then they flashback to all the good memories Jesus had and also the good memories his companions had of him. That's fine I guess, no big deal. It just seemed to me like the focus was on the negative side of it all (without considering all the actual underlying themes about salvation and all that), rather than a more overall approach. My mother speculated that that's what the Passion of Christ (not the movie, more of a common reference) was supposed to be about, the three days going from crucifixion to rising again. I don't know about that, so I guess I can't take any real issue with it.

I felt that a few of the scenes were too drawn out, but I guess with a thing like this its hard to really whine about it. Jesus kept dropping the cross, obviously because he was all messed up at that point, but they made it really dramatic every time he dropped the cross. They drove it into the ground a bit, kinda like nails in Jesus'... oh sorry... again not funny.

Overall if I gave ratings I'd give it a B. I think it was generalized enough to not seem preachy, which is why I think I had any appreciation for it at all. If Mel Gibson was smart, and I think he is, I think he knows that to appeal to a larger audience it couldn't be all about preaching. Plus everyone knows the Bible straight up is not the most fantastic reading material. It had Hollywood variety flare, but not so much as to make it wishy-washy. I think he presented the story well, fairly accurately according to my knowledge of the Bible, the actors were good, the lines were okay, the pace was decent, and overall it was not a bad movie.

Well if everything works out, I'm going to be swapping an NEC 21" monitor for a Sony Cybershot U digital camera. Not the sweetest little badboy out there, but I have a lot of monitors, and no digital camera, so what can ya do. It's really tiny though which is awesome, hopefully I'll have lots of secret spy-style pictures to post after I get it. It may even warrant me starting to carry a purse *gasp*. I love taking pictures... if only I could get a job taking pictures. I don't think they make jobs like that though... nope. Unheard of.

If you want to hear the most recent cool thing I learned in astronomy... they actually have a big theory about why our planets are the way they are, how our solar system was formed, all that junk. Pretty interesting theory. They think that initially there was a big messy cloud of dust and miscellaneous crap that was all floating around some kind of center of gravity that I don't remember what it is. Space crap kept getting pulled into that center and it got more and more compressed and eventually became what they call a protosun I guess. So then you have a bunch of space crap floating around in a circle around that thing, because I guess really long ago space was just full of crap because everything needed to settle and get pulled or pushed where ever gravity happened to pull or push it so it could all chill out. Anyways, the first four planets in our solar system are all what they call terrestrial, which means they are like Earth, rocky and they have land and you can stand on their surfaces or whatever. Such is not the case with the outer 4 planets (or are there 5? who the hell knows), I guess they are mainly gaseous except for Pluto which is extremely dense for some reason I don't recall. Anyways, the inner planets would've been formed from all the crap revolving around the Sun over time. The temperatures closer to the newly forming Sun were higher closer to it than they were farther away, so the inner planets had different circumstances to be formed under. Something about the levels at which iron and nickle and things like that condense has something to do with why the inner planets are moreso made up of hard junk. Then the outer planets were left with all the stuff that is condensed at cooler temperatures to work with, like helium and hydrogen, which explains why those planets are made up mostly of those things. All the planets in our solar system revolve around the Sun in the same direction, which supports this theory of the solar systems creation (it may have a name - I dunno).

So then, they go on to explain why the outer planets (except for Pluto because it's apparently the cosmic exception to every stupid rule) are so much larger than the inner planets. Of course I don't remember what explanation they gave at the moment... hmm. Well it'll come to me in time.

Then they explain why Venus is the only planet revolving on it's axis in an opposite direction. They figure that with all that crap out in space and with everything getting flung about, Venus probably got nailed by some space junk and was upset enough to turn it on it's head, which would explain the anti-normal rotation. Brilliant.

Well that's all the science I can muster for right now. I hope it was terrifically educational for you! I find that laying it all out like that helps me to realize that while I may've read about something, I still don't particularly understand it well enough to explain it to someone else, so I know what I need to work on. How interesting.

I just realized my date thingy on this site is reporting the wrong year. Oopsy. Guess I get to learn some more javascript to figure out what I'm supposed to do about that. God I'm boring.

Something I found comical recently. My school has this printout in the art/music area on the wall that reads "Penalty: For possession of date-rape drugs: 8 - 12 years". What I think is funny about that is that they somehow found it appropriate to put on the wall of a community college hallway. I mean, what the hell. As if the chalk drawings of fat models weren't enough for those art fags, they have this hallway filled with wacky shit like women-beating statistics (one every 9 seconds in the U.S.) and laws about date rape. Where the hell do they think they are? It's a place of education, and yeah, they're educating. But who the heck are they trying to educate? Women are the only people that are going to read that crap. Women are also the only people that are going to care about that crap. A guy that's beating his wife isn't going to think "Gee whiz I should really stop that," after seeing that it happens every 9 seconds in the U.S. A dude that's been drugging his dates for years isn't going to read that it's really bad and go "Oh damn, who knew I could get into all this trouble for drugging women and raping them? Weird. Guess I'll stop.". That's just retarded. So women are going to read these things and think "I really need to help out my poor sisters...", or alternately "Wow who knew abuse was so common?". So what does that accomplish? I'm really asking... I have no idea. I doubt raising awareness on THAT is going to do anything.

My school is pretty trendy when it comes to all this "caring about what month it is" stuff. Last month was Black History month, so they were playing all these important black movies (most of which I hadn't even heard of). Some month before that was poetry month, so they hung up all this poetry everywhere and blank butcher paper so people could put their own stuff up. Yes, very novel. Now it's Women's History month, so I guess they figure you can't talk about women's history without printing rape statistics everywhere. Perhaps the two things are unrelated. Perhaps. I hope so.

I pretty much don't care regardless. I don't care about AIDs awareness, I don't care about black history or women's history, I don't care about poetry, none of it. Maybe that makes me a bad person... that's okay. You should care about something because it's something important, not because it was done by someone you wouldn't expect to do it. Whatever. What I don't need though is to look at fat model drawings or rape statistics or any of that crap. Computer people are apparently the forgotten minority of people in my school. I'd like to see a technology month with statistics hanging everywhere about Redhat stock or something. Maybe I'll lobby the Student Government Association... in the form of hate mail. I think hate mail is an important way to affect change.

Well, tonight I'm going to some astronomy thing at Fiske observatory at CU Boulder. It's about Navajos and constellations and stars and junk. Party on. I wasn't aware of it but I guess Fiske still does laser shows to good music. I was really sad when the Gates Planeterium in Denver stopped doing those and thought it was the end. Who knew I could've just gone to Boulder, and for cheaper. Hooray! And they actually have an early 90's Nirvana-style-grunge-rock kind of show... which is pretty much right up my alley. How exciting. Guess that's it.

Okay an update, Colorado weather sucks which is going to make going to Fiske pointless because the stars will not be viewable through all of the Colorado crappy weather. Maybe tomorrow.

Well I thought that it'd been March for 2 days and I didn't notice, but really my watch didn't take into account leap year so it said today was the second. I was kind of worried for a minute there (that's not a pun, but it's something). I may not notice dates too much, but I like to at least pay attention to the months. That way I have an idea of when it's supposed to get warm. My "spring break" is the week of the 22nd this month, but the term is really misleading, because spring sounds warm. Colorado stays pretty damn cold all the way into April though I guess. I don't remember this stuff but that's what my mommy said.

My brother is moving out, so we're taking in a renter. His name is Todd, but he likes to be called Spike (like the British guy on Buffy, but not such a pansy). He has a sweet gun collection... I'm looking forward to going shooting with him. He knows some people with a lot of land... says I'm not living until I've shot an AK-47. I wholeheartedly agree. That should all be very interesting. I suspect he may be a complete lunatic, but only time will tell. I'll post pictures as soon as I have them.

I've been fixing up a dollhouse I built in like 5th grade. It's pretty crappy as far as workmanship goes (I had no skillz), but I painted it and it's looking nicer. I'm planning on moving into it once I get enough furniture for it. I don't know how to run electricity through it so I'm just going to run an extension cord from my mom's house into it. It also doesn't have plumbing... so I'm going to hook up a hose. I'll let you use your imagination with that one.

...

It's pretty crazy to paint dollhouses when you're 23, so I figured I'd run with it.

Rumor has it my site's Tetris game freezes after you reach 7000 points. It's unconfirmed at this point, so if you have any proof or evidence to offer on the subject please send it my way. That's funny, I just this minute remembered I made a contact form for this site but was too lazy to change all the links. And I call myself a webmaster, ha! Oh wait no, that's what my mom calls me. I call myself an idiot. That title will never fail me hehe. Guess I'll change all those stupid dumb links today. My whole site is a disaster navigationally speaking, I guess I like to make sites but I don't like to keep up on them as much. I guess I would if I was paying myself for the work... right now it's just kind of indentured slavery or something.

I'm reading Stranger in a Strange Land this week. Seems pretty okay so far, we'll see. Can't just read Dean Koontz ALL the time I suppose.