I finished all of the content on the other pages for now - the games section will take well-nigh forever to get to the point that I want it, but, it's acceptable for now. I'm happy with all I've gotten done.

[reminiscing]

I went to see one of Gwen's lacrosse games (she's on junior varsity i think) today, after walking like 4 miles around the school and getting Pizza from Sammy's. Paul and I sat around and watched her game, which, (no offense, please don't hurt me) was massively unexciting. It reminded me of how all Northern sports suck (excluding colleges, it's generally reversed geographically according to college). 5 of my 9 years in Mississippi were spent playing soccer (yes, I started at the age of 4, before I even started school, or close at least). Soccer is gigantically huge down there - Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina are all deep into it. The way it worked when I played, was soccer was completely seperate from school (the way it should be). Every year, there would be try outs where all the kids would perform a certain set of things (dribble around some cones, pass to another guy, recieve a pass, then shoot on the goal), and the coaches would stand around and pick which ones they wanted. My best friend at the time (Brandon Adcock....ironically, there was another kid in our neighborhood and also on the team named Daniel Cox....yeah...), his dad was a coach, so he usually picked the same people every time. In fact, most of the teams stayed the same, it was rare that you got picked by a coach you didn't know (unless, of course, you didn't know any).

All the teams had full uniforms - knit jerseys, each player got the number of their choosing, socks, shorts. Our team was usually blue or purple, and purple is actually not that bad of a color. It was darkish, so you didn't feel girly wearing it. In addition to that, everyone always got new shin-guards and cleats each year....good memories. Then there were the games, ah, the games. Our town had it's own complex of soccer fields (this is a town of 25-30,000 people, slightly smaller than Ithaca's base population), which had one baseball field, and 18 or 20 soccer fields total. Games were almost always on Fridays and Saturdays (during the school year), and usually the same during the summer. During the tournaments we'd usually have 2-3 games each day, and the games were never canceled. 40 degrees out? We still played. Thunderstorms? That was a really fun game, I still remember that one. Yeah, that doesn't happen up here. The games up here are so far form hardcore, it's not even funny.

Another thing I noticed was laxidazical management of water and snacks. When we played, players had to bring these 2 gallon jugs, which were usually used up by the end of the game. You never waited till half-time to drink, either. You'd always signal the coach and he'd sub you for 5 minutes. Someone always brought snacks, too, for the end of the game. I could ramble on for hours about my experience, but as a kid, it was way more intense than anything I saw today. Definately makes me wish there were a proper soccer league around here.

[/reminiscing]

As for lacrosse...

I won't go into it, at risk of being threatened by certain lacrosse players.

And now, I must prepare for this rafting trip over the weekend.

EDIT:

I forgot a little peeve of mine in Chemistry. If any of you know Matt Bloomfield, you know he's a pain. I walk into Chemistry...

"So, Tim, did you go to that lecture on the shape of space?"
"Nah, I would of if I could, was it good?"
"It was ok, he just talked about how we don't know the shape of space, and why that is."
"I dunno...I'd say the universe is a sphere. What else could it be?"
*Matt laughs*
"So you're saying you're smarter than all these scientists and the combined research of our entire history?"
"What? First off, history is not a collective attempt to figure out the shape of space. Secondly, I'm basing this of common sense, logic, and a lot of research on my part."
"Throughout history, science has always been attempting to figure out what our universe and like. These are scientists, they've done tons of research!"
"Dude, look at it this way. Before the Big Bang, the universe didn't exist, right? The capacity for space was not there, so when the Big Bang occured, it occured everywhere, at an equal quantity of force. As it expands..."
"No, you're wrong. Space was there before the Big Bang. How would you know this?"
"For one thing, it's basic logic, and for another, it came out of a Scientific American."
"Well, I read that too, but space was still there."
"What the crap? Highly respected scientists contribute there! You were just saying..."
*Eli jumps in*
Eli: "Tim, you're wrong, space is obviously a dodecahedron."
Tim: "What the crap? No! That's not physically possible!"
Matt: "How would you know?"
*further conversation is cut off by the teacher, whom we had ignored in the middle of class to argue*

Furthermore, he does it again today.

Matt: "So, Tim, would you like to share more of your expansive knowledge about the universe? Since you're really smart on these things..."
Tim: "Dude, I have a clue on this. Space is..."
Eli: "It's a dodecahedron!"
Matt: "It can't be a sphere!"
*again, conversation is cut off by the teacher*

Stuff like this ticks me off. But you don't need to hear more.

I have rehauled the look, yet again, hopefully you find it more appealing. Firefox has a weird glitch pushing the sidebar down, I'm not sure if I can ever get it figured out. It looks okay on the server-side pages, I dunno what's going on. You can see all the additions and changes for yourself, I'm not gonna make one of those goofy BULLETED LISTS. Or am I?

• Put everything inside one static div
• made a solid border around everything
• added "root" directory
  

That's it. The server-side pages might be done be the end of the day, we'll see.

I had another weird dream, not as weird as the other one though. So, I'm walking along somewhere near IHS, and I find Gwen and Amy planting flowers to pretty up the school. They're digging around this tree, planting really small flowers (actually, it might have been grass) in these little trenches they dug. There was a lake 15 ft away, and from then on, it stops making sense. All i remember was digging a rectangular trench around a root (I think I was showing them the proper way to plant flowers) and Amy yelling at me, I dunno. It was weird.

In other news, Ben decided to show his disgust at my beautiful poetry in the form of a flash animation.

I present to you...

my poem.

Halo Two, how I love thee,
You are a joy only I can see

Who knew the only one DVD
Could unlock so much glee?

You have so many guns to explore
Pistols, rockets, and snipers galore!

With thine battle rifle
With which none can trifle!

To you, Halo Two,
I can only say "I do"!

*bow*

I slept through two entire classes today. As in, I walked in, sat down, put my head on the desk and did not pull it back up until the class was over. I was tired. I kept waking up in the middle of the night (I was kinda cold, but not conscious enough when I kept waking up to get more covers). In case you didn't know, I was at Benjamin's Saturday and Sunday while Mom and Dad were in Boston, visiting the Luddy's. I didn't go for a number of reasons.

I had the weirdest dream ever last night, too.

Picture, if you will, a classy hotel, four-star. Very full. It is in the near future, but for some reason, the KGB is alive and thriving, armed in black suits, ties, and sunglasses, with pistols, and enough of them to occupy said hotel. This is where the dream starts off. The KGB enter and occupy the building, and people are evacuating. I'm just a spectator here, not an actual person.

So, the KGB storm the building and people are going nuts. They're shooting random people down, but for the most part, standing around, looking cool. They only occupy the first floor, though. They just stood in the lobby. Meanwhile, people are going nuts everywhere else in the hotel packing up and evacuating. Meanwhile, there's a serial killer, mildly reminiscent of somebody from Kill Bill, with a sword. In every room I observe, he's under the bed, and there's always two people on the bed. First instance: I think it's Zach (it could have been paul, but I think it was Zach), and he's talking in my general direction, I don't know, but he gets stabbed and I think he falls out the window. Keep in mind, this is a dream, things are fuzzy. Switch to the next room. Spiderman and his friend, wearing a green mask are getting ready to go to bead. Spiderman is wearing his costume, but has yellow shorts on and his right arm is in a cast. His friend is kind of like the hulk. He's really buff, and has the urge not to wear a shirt to showcase his manly abdominals. And he has a green mask on. So mask-man is laying on the bed and gets stabbed (from under the bed, I don't know how mr. serial killer did that with a sword), and starts screaming, so Spiderman pulls out a pistol and puts 7 (yes, 7) shots into the bed, somehow misses the serial killer completely, and gets stabbed. There were a couple more rooms of stuff like that happening, with one person getting killed and the other vainly attempting to stop the killer, but that's about it. Feel enlightened by my horrible dream.

Dreams that I remember are normally very, very vivid, but I often don't write them down, and thus forget. I have a few dreams I wish I could remember. Oh well.

New maps came out today - they absolutely rock. Definately puts Halo 2 on the map for a long time.

By request, this post has been outfitted with colorful bold TITLES for each section!.

Tuesday - Frisbee

An eventful two days, to be sure. Tuesday began with disorganized ultimate in Stewart Park. It was kind of hot out 70+ with humidity, so we spent most of the time sitting around on the swings and demonstrating our physical prowess to eachother. We strolled over to Purity and got some ice cream, and that was the day. Among those present were Gwen, NOT PAUL, Ben, NOT PAUL, Veda, NOT PAUL, Julia, NOT PAUL, Zach, NOT PAUL, Ryan, NOT PAUL, and Amy.

Paul was not there because he was a lazy, lazy bum.

Tuesday - Jared's LAN

[complaining]

Julia (or rather, her dad) gave me a ride home, and as soon as I sat down at my computer, I get a message from Jared, asking if I could come to his LAN. "Hmmm," I think to myself. This could be fun, but it's short notice. I thought about it as I ate dinner (consisting of grilled lemon chicken w/bbq sauce, 1/2 baked potato w/sour cream and butter, and applesauce w/marshmallows). I figure, "Why not?" and after some troubles, make my way over there, by about 9:00. It started out ok - there was a healthily-sized group there, consisting of Ben, Zach, Justin B., Jared, John (the Montana one, don't know his last name), Charlie (don't actually know this guy), and Ben Lu. After an hour or so, things got boring. Ben Lu, John, and Jared just kind of played their Counterstrike mods all night, and I mean all night. That's all they did. Charlie just played San Andreas all night. That's all he did. We were going to play some Halo 2, but Charlie was not interested in doing anything, and Jared wouldn't really do anything either. About this point, Zach's parents arrive with the Xbox we thought we were going to use, but ended up not touching the entire night. It's a 15/20 minute drive out here, so that's not a small deal. Coincidentally, Ben gets a killer headache about then, and Jared won't/can't do anything for him (who doesn't have aspirin in their house? no, really?). By this time it's about midnight-ish, and they turn on this really bad and really loud rap. Nobody in the room likes rap. Nobody. Why was it on? I don't know. But it was. Combine four computers, a one ps2, one xbox, loud rap, and you get one ridiculously loud and painfully annoying room. After 15 minutes of asking, and then telling them to turn it down, the rap goes away, but the boredom doesn't. Ben and Zach are fed up and walk upstairs to go sleep on the livingroom floor with, just about nothing. I wander around hoping something will become available to do, but again, the only person even talking to me is Justin, and there's nothing for us to do, so he sticks to playing Ominusha. After an hour, I give up, and join Ben and Zach in their discomfort. Ben went down once to look for more pillows and blankets (we only had two blankets and four pillows), and discovered four of them (the one not present being Justin) huddled around his computer searching for porn. Obviously mad, Ben takes his computer back upstairs with him, and we eventually get to sleep.

I wake up to Ben L, Jared, Charlie, and John jumping around my head. Why? Because they think it's absolutely hilarious to do that at 6:00 in the morning. Ben made mention of them possibly being drunk (this is not a remote possibility, and I am not being sarcastic), but I was unable to confirm that. Having had 4 hours of sleep, this was not pleasant. What was even less pleasant? The only food suitable (opposite nasty cold pizza and mountain dew) in the house were bagels. Bagels are fine, but they do not sustain the body. They do not cleanse the pallet of a hard livingroom floor and an upset stomache. After sitting around for an hour and a half laughing at Ominusha as Justin played it, Zach's mom picked us up and I was home by about 8:00 or 8:30.

[/complaining]

Wednesday - Power Outage

After getting a shower, I went back to sleep for a good 4 or 5 hours, and woke up about 2:00. I hopped onto the computer, and....bzzt. The power goes out. The transformer on the telephone pole down the street exploded (not in a fantastic display of pyrotechnics, but enough to set the telephone pole on fire, and make lots of smoke. The fire department showed up and blocked off the nearby streets, which was kind of amusing to watch cars drive up and wander off in another direction in a bewildered manner. The power did not come back on immediately, so boredom seeped in very fast. Luckily my dad got home an hour or so after the power went out, so we went off to his office so I could check up on his computers (he was having problems with firefox, and I wanted to do maintenence on his old computer that I will soon inherit). By about 5:30, we head out to Chinese Buffet to get some dinner. There was some kid at the table behind us who probably broke the world record for time spoken without ever stopping. He went on and on, about how his friends are crazy about Halo 2, how the Dreamcast was so great (that was hideous to my ears, his facts were so wrong..), his friends, man, I know way more about that child than I ever want to know.

Jonothan's Exploits

We got home, and the power still wasn't on. Jonothan called (on our cell phone) and that took up a good hour or two. He has some interesting stories. The prisoners at the base he's working at are apparantly pretty crafty. They make gigantic slingshots out of the elastic bands in the suits they're given, and actually have done major damage to the towers with the softball-size rocks they launch. They burn down their tents to get the wooden poles out of the structure and sharpen them to make spears. They stockpile hand-soap from the latrines and use it to light fires on just about anything. Eleven escaped through tunnels they dug under the walls (but were caught 12-hours later). It's kind of surprising, really. Jonothan's basically clashing with them on a daily basis, fighting off riots and uprisings. He's also frustrated by some of the same beurocracy that Christopher faced. Because of what happened at Abu-Grep (grape? not sure..), all the commanding officers are scared of getting blamed or accused of prisoner abuse. This means they won't let soldiers check any "holy items" the prisoners have - Q'uran, prayer mats, anything slightly religious is a no-go. Except, they keep finding that's where the prisoners hide all their illegal items. They've accidentally knocked down Q'urans to find knives falling out of them, and bumped prayer mats to see more knives. It's obvious they're hiding it there, but they can't do anything about it. Basically, they're putting the prisoner's lives before my brother's. Very, very frustrating.

After our little chat, we waited another hour and the power came back (for a total of 6-7 hours without power). And here we are. I played some Halo 2 and have generally just cooled off from a very long string of events. I was going to write up some impressions on the ALU, as well as plans that my parents have for the weekend, but this is long enough already.

I slept in for a wonderful many hours today. It feels so good.

Greg did the external evidence of the Bible on Sunday. Good stuff, I say, although I knew a good bit of it (half-ish). Afterwards, Daniel trotted on over and we had a jolley olde time. We ran out and rented Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2, and watched both, with some pizza and EXTREME!! ping pong thrown in between. The ping pong consisted of us standing on opposing benches, seperated by the picnic table, and wielding bats. The goal was to keep the ball in the air. Pretty extreme, I know.

Kill Bill was highly worth seeing, although I can certainly see why some don't like it. The violence wasn't all that bad, although I'm pretty used to that style of gore. I'm not really sure which one I liked more, though. My guess is Vol. 2, since the action sequences were of higher quality, and the story was a little easier to follow, but I can't be totally sure. They were both pretty good.

After sitting on the couch for 3 hours and 45 minutes, we jumped on the computer to attempt trickery upon IM. For the most part, it worked. Gwen was probably the must gullible (and that's saying a lot), I can definately say she never caught on. Pretty sad, I say.

I haven't done much today besides play Gothic and Warcraft III. I just got back from Boy Scouts. I went with the intention to quit Boy Scouts, but, I'm not sure I have the heart to do it. It's pretty fun, and if I ever have time, I'd wanna come back. I signed up for the rafting trip at the end of the month, which has been fun in the past.

And finally, the Halo 2 autoliveupdate came out today. I haven't gotten to see it yet, but I'm gonna try and pull myself away from the computer in a few minutes. w00t!

EDIT:

New screens on the upcoming Halo 2 content!

Pure awesome.

In regards to the previous post and the comments therein: take note of a few occurances that are worth noting.

• I recanted my stance on the Day of Silence, as shown by the edit to the previous post. As usual, I did not remove my original words, so that I don't forget what the situation was about, and so I can learn from it.
• The entire debate on the comments was almost completely unrelated to the post. A number of people (I won't say names, you can go read for yourself) decided my stance was in direct opposition of "gay rights", per se. This is incorrect. Want to find out what I think? Ask me, don't assume.
• In general, online debate, especially over forums, can be pointless. This, I believe, is an exception. Why? We have a few intelligent participants here - more mature than the average teenager. There are obvious exceptions in there, but, they are not the real participants.

Continue debating as you like - I will only remove posts if necessary (and has been twice beore). I know a number of you want it to stop, simply because it will go nowhere - I, for one, find it enjoyable, and definately a learning experience.

As for things not involving this little debate, yesterday was Friday, and today is Spring Break. No, it is not Saturday. It is Spring Break. I went over to Ben's house with Ben (duhhh), Zach, Paul, Ryan, and Matt. We stopped by Zach's house to pick up Apples to Apples (i sincerely hope you've played that game), and proceeded to play through the entire stack of cards. A grand olde time was had, and Paul spent the night at my house. After owning him as SWITZERLAND, he left about an hour ago.

The only other thing worth noting is this. Reloaded, baby. It's only funny if you've seen the original.

I hold no pity for IE.

[geek]

Also, there's a Halo 2 autoupdate Monday. The things being changed and fixed include:

• standby and dummying
• stronger melee and grenades (i've been asking for this since the beginning!)
  
• weakened magnum and SMG/Plasma Rifle combo
• easier leveling (for more balanced games)
• flag bouncing and wall-grabs
• sword flying
• auto-resolution games

Awesome, I say.

[/geek]

When I got home, mom showed me a "self-rising, self-crispening and browning" microwaveable pizza. I opened it up and it had 3 parts to it: a tray, a lid, and the pizza. You stuck the pizza on the tray, which did something, and put this little ring-lid around the edge of the pizza, seemingly to make the crust work. 5 minutes, and voila, I had a pizza that I didn't work at all for. Laziness has reached another peak, and it is good.

[rant]

Today was the laughable event of the Day of Silence, a day in which those who "support gays and lesbians" don't talk. I don't laugh because it has specifically to do with gays and lesbians, I laugh because it's just retarded. No, really. Case in point: people are trying to make a 'statement', by doing something as passive as not talking. Doesn't matter what you're trying to make the statement for, it's stupid. All this does, and I support this as a fact, is say that you're trying to make a statement, and even that might be a stretch. Most people don't notice.

Another aspect of this is that no other "group" has a day in which people state they support said "group". Don't try and tell me gays and lesbians are being persecuted - so have Jews, so have Christians, and to a far worse extent. This is life, deal with it, without making akward 'statements', that accomplish nothing in the first place.

EDIT: i must admit, upon reviewal of the evidence, the method works. but, this does not end the discussion on homosexuality. post on!

[/rant]
[geek]

I've gotten into the habit of leaving my computer on while I'm at school, so I can listen to the music on the server during Programming (and occasionally PoE). I tested it out for the first time today, didn't work well because the PoE computers don't have speakers, so I may bring one (singular) in for that purpose. We'll see.

As for Chaos Theory, I've gotten four of the levels beaten on 100% so far, about to start the fifth momentarily. I'm hoping for some kind of special reward here, but, I doubt it. I haven't heard any mention of it before, so, chances are slim. One can hope.

[/geek]

School was generically okay, nothing special to mention. Today did mark that I officially have 2 days of school left before Spring Break. I haven't needed a break this much for a while, although I could probably operate a few weeks more on my current level of motivation. The only other thing of note in school is that we took a survey today, mostly on drugs/alcohol, with a short bit on sex. Supposedely, the results go to a national average. I was kind of surprised, that the school would do something as pro-active as this, as in, getting some answers from the 1500-2000 students. The survey itself wasn't very interesting - the first 50 pages of questions (the amount per page varied, they were grouped by type of answer) were ALL on drugs and alcohol, and there were app. 70 pages. It was kind of interesting as a whole though, considering I know a handful of people who are heavy on the drinking, and know of dozens of people who, uh, seem to be stuck on the weed, as it were. We also have a group of people (hicks) that stand outside on the corner of IHS, smoking cigarettes. How stuff like this happens, and continues to happen, I don't know.

On to Hokkaido!

I am muddy, hungry, and have not started my homework. Church was normal - Greg had a good lesson, as usual. Oh, and Paul? I have some answers for you *grin*. (oh dear...using emotes in blog posts...I'm becoming like Daniel!!) It was on the internal reliability of the Bible (consistency, themes). Pretty cool stuff, especially as he's doing external next week. I might even take notes.

After Church Benjamin, Jesse, and Nolan came over, and we had pizza while watching Olde English videos. Jesse and Nolan were being bums most of the time, playing on the Xbox, so Benjamin and I started making up some EXTREME!! sports involving EXTREME!! trash cans, EXTREME!! poles, and EXTREME(ly deflated)!! soccer balls. We were playing EXTREME!! ping pong for a while, but that got boring so we moved on to playing it with bats and wiffle-balls on the EXTREME!! picnic table. It didn't really work, because the picnic table wasn't wide enough, so we degraded to smashing a deflated soccer ball back and forth. This transformed into a strange form of EXTREME!! minigolf-croquet, and then onto EXTREME!! bowling, which didn't work, because we couldn't knock down the trash cans using just an EXTREME!! shovel and a soccer ball.

We eventually got Jesse and Nolan outside (the time it took almost put me to sleep). We were hitting balls back and forth, and eventually found an EXTREME!! bouncy ball in the brush, and I SO pwned Nolan with a headshot from 20 feet with that thing (sorry about that!). They left maybe an hour or two ago.

Last night was Ben's LAN party, which I attended for 4 hours. Since I was only there for 4 hours, I didn't get to play a lot of anything, but, among what I did get to play was Halo 2, Chaos Theory (man, it sucks, you can't do 2v2 with 2 xbox's), and...that was it. Other people were playing Worms, Gauntlet Legends, and Burnout 3, though. Church conflicted with staying overnight and not sleeping.

As for me, I dismantled that computer that was to be my server (alas, not enough RAM), and took out everything that was of use. Hopefully, the hand-me-down computer I'll be recieving from my dad will suffice. Hopefully.

And now, a shower.

EDIT EXTREME!!:

Benjamin has a much more EXTREME!! write-up of our activities on his blog.

DOUBLE EDIT EXTREME!!:

Apparantly, extremophile is a word.

TRIPLE EDIT EXTREME!!:

You can't get more EXTREME!! than THIS.

I am still sick, but functional to a minimal level. Just thought you should know.

In recent events, my grades have finally "gotten to the dog house" as some would say. I present to you my postulates on the report card.

1. German 3H: A- ("Tim! You've improved so much! You're being so responsible! I'm impressed!")
2. Math 10H: B- (straight from the grade book)
   
3. Principles of Engineering: A (guess)
4. Global 2H: A or A+ (I got a 101 on the last test, did the extra credit...it's cool)
5. Programming 2: A or A+ (I've gotten A+ on all the projects, with one C- on a test and one A elsewhere)
6. English 10H: B+ or A- (102 journal grade, 90 on the test, 92 on performance...)
7. Chemistry: B (this is pending...right now, it's a B-, after tons and tons and tons of work, up from a 50%, to at least an 82, not sure on many things right now, but at least a B-)
8. PE: who cares?

In total, I've raised my grades by about a proportional 300%+, a literal 175+%, by a magnitude of 2, take your pick, it's big.

[geek]

Beyond this, I've downloaded Eclipse. This doesn't effect you, but, it's cool for me. It's the open-source version of Visual Studio.net Enterprise. Supports Java, C, C++, and all web-based and database languages. I'm really, really lost in the interface, but it's one of those things that's powerful enough to take the time to learn, and you'll be better off in the end. I also picked up this book on C++ Paul gave me eons ago, and will probably start meandering through that (I already started into some of it). I need to figure out how Eclipse works first, though. Otherwise, I can't compile any of the programs I write. Yeah, shup noob, so I can't figure out how to debug and run the programs. Nobody cares.

[/geek]

Today consisted of final work on classes (technically the last day of the marking period, meaning teachers start taking grades to apply on the next period, but some stretch the rule). I was running around school too long and ended up missing my bus, so I got to spend extra time on classes. Except, not. None of the teachers were around. I kind meandered around after calling my parents (couldn't give me a ride, I was really tired and hungry), but I decided I'd make the best of it and sang my way to Center Ithaca, got some pizza and a coke, and read the newspaper for 30 minutes. I don't know why, but that's a really nice way to spend an afternoon. I dreaded walking home alone, but strangely enough, it was just plain nice. It's a relaxing time to just get to think, and enjoy the magnificent day we had.

I got home, and the Epinepherine wore off, and I could not speak coherently, or stay in my chair. It was most hilarious. I ate the last of the chocolate roll (oh, so, very, good), and proceeded back to school to see the newest musical, "My Favorite Year". The list of attendants includes: Scott, Naina, Gwen, Amy, Mollie, Katie, me, Ryan, Matt, Ben F.. I've gotta say...for a high school production, this musical was insanely good. The mains actors were extremely good. I mean, really good. The timing was superb, everything went generally like clockwork. Often the term "good" is thrown around when involved with high school productions, mostly despite many disqualifying traits, such as poor scenery and prop movement, costumes, poor synchronization, or other non-essential traits that boost the believibility of the production. No such thing here.

Amd here we are. For those who care, I stuck my music on the server. That's a lot less than all of it, but feel free to dig in if you so please. I stuck it on there mainly to listen to while in programming at school. It gets awful boring when you've finished all your stuff and have nothing to do but sit. I still have to rip Paul's Cake CDs (he gave me some for my "surprise" birthday party).

I need sleep, and I'm awesome. But not that awesome. Just a little awesome. And hacked. Cracked, even. With no skillz. But cracked none the less. Pwn. *shnickerh* *cough cough* *HACK!* *wheeze* cough. wink wink. Nod. Smile. Pwn. I am t3h n0ne l1137.zzzzorz. Daniel is a pansy. 'Cause. Jesse is amused by a simple fan and cheese balls. And kleenex. zzZZZZZZzzzzZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ LET THE COUNTDOWN BEGIN!

I am sick. As in, actually sick, not the "oh, i feel abnormal, TIME TO STAY HOME!". I went home around 3rd period yesterday, although my mom didn't pick me up until 6th period. Kind of defeated the purpose, although I did get some sleep in the nurse's office. I stayed home today, and my sneezing's gone, but I'm coughing a little more, and my head feels akin to cotton. I would have actually preferred to have gone to school, not for the fun of it, but because I still haven't finished all the work in chemistry. Hopefully I can get it all done in the two days left. I'm going to school tomorrow, sick or not. Staying home has been boring (not completely boring, but I beat Chaos Theory, and nobody's been around to play online with). Speak of which, I think I'll give my thoughts on Chaos Theory's Single Player.

[geek]

So, Chaos Theory. I've talked it about it a lot before, and I have to say it lived up to it. The SP is amazing in general. There's always three or four ways to solve things, but that makes the game easier, since the designers can't predict what you have to do. Compared to the first and second's levels, these are a good bit longer (they usually take an hour to beat, but once you know them, you can run through in about 15-20 minutes easily). There's more enemies, the enemies are smarter, the graphics are better, think of whatever you can and it's better. With one exception. But I'll get to that in a minute.

A short BULLETED!!?!?! list of what's improved:

• New Weapon: Knife....the indestructible coolness goes on...
• Level Complexity: As mentioned before, the levels are longer, and more complex. There's always 2 ways to get to one destination, if not more, and usually 3 ways to kill any given guard (besides shooting or running up and knifing them). The game allows you to play however you want, now that alarms only increase the difficulty of taking out any given guard. In pandora tomorrow, 3 alarms meant you failed, but here, 4 alarms is the limit. It just means the guards are super-alert and fully equipped with rifles, body armor, and helmets.
• More Maneuvers: You can kill people from just about anywhere, in any direction. The new moves include neck-snapping from a pipe, pulling over edges, shoving over edges, 4 non-lethal attacks, 5 lethal stabs, the list goes on. In addition to more moves, there's WAY more chances to use these moves. Remember in the first SC, where you got to use the split jump once? I used it three times total, and probably used the edge grab half a dozen times, at least. Ah, the satisfaction.
• Smarter AI: Multiple enemies will breach rooms from multiple directions, move between cover, switch from pistols to rifles as they find more disturbed items in the levels, notice broken lights, opened doors, etc..
• Opportunity Objectives: These are always simple, but add just a little more interest to the levels. It's always about finding an X number of something (weapons crates, microphones, phone lines, whatev). While simple, they usually don't make you go searching the entire level again once you've gone through (with one exception, heh), it's just a nifty little touch. Obviously these aren't required to beat the mission.
  
• Success Rating System: At the end of each level, you are rated on your stealth skills, based on whether you killed enemies or incapacitated, alarms triggered, bodies found, and number of times identified as an intruder (as opposed to being suspected). A 100% requires no killing, no bodies found, no alarms, and never being identified as an intruder, as well as getting the opportunity objective. The non-killing objective is the hardest, as it takes longer to knock someone out, and nearly impossible to do when they've identified you.
  
• OCP: The pistol is equipped with an alternate fire, which is an electrical distruptor. It distrupts electrical objects for about 15 seconds, so you can keep moving past. This is important, because cameras are now indestructable, and is also useful for attracting guards without them identifying you.
• Gadgets Simplified: Certain gadgets are combined into one (like the noise camera and the sticky camera).
• Better Graphics: Like, a lot better, these are some slick polygons *bonk*.
• Better Sound: The sounds are a little bit better, but what I really mean here, is that sound plays a bigger role in sneaking around. There's an ambient sound meter which tells you how loud the surrounding area is, so you can adjust your speed accordingly.

But of course, with the good, comes the bad

• Plot Retardacity: I don't know how to say this...but the plot? It sucks. It's filled with a lot of unnecessary holes (things stop making sense after the 4th or 5th level), and it just doesn't flow. The first two had an identifiable villian, you felt like the levels had a purpose. In this case, however, you just kind of do whatever the objectives are, instead of intuitively knowing what you should be doing. In addition to being overly complex and filled with contradictions, it also doesn't make sense logically. A lot of key elements to it just would not happen in today's warfare, or even 20 years ago. They invoke technology that we're far from gaining, and vastly underestimate the technology we have now. EXAMPLE: You are transmitting data to the NSA, via a plane flying by. For some reason, this plane is flying directly above a war zone, barely missing the skyscrapers. In addition to this, the plane, still going x-hundred miles and hour, is shot down with an infantry's bazooka. This wouldn't have happened in Vietnam, let alone 2007. The connection cannot be so weak as to require the plane being inches away from the source. Gah, I won't go on.
• Poor Cutscenes: They may have been the same before, but I remember the cutscenes from the first two versions being far smoother. The model animations this time around are very robotic. They aren't convincing, and add to the level of vaguery in what's going on. The cutscenes are also usually cut short as a character is saying something, to try and give a "rushed" sense, but it just adds to the confusion.
• Sporadic Retardacity: Two levels are very, very poorly designed. Level 8 and 9, to be specific. They both start out nice and fun, but towards the middle, something happens to completely change the goal of the mission, and you're tossed into a situation that is not logical or fun. Example: after the plane crashes, you are faced with North Korean UAVs, invincible, flying, infrared-scanning cameras with spotlights and a turret. They follow you wherever you go, and they can always follow you because the level has only 1 direction to go. Another example: after fighting breaks out between the Japanese ISDF, you need to reach the main target, the instigator of this outbreak. Because these men are all combat-ready, they are wearing helmets, body armor, are super-alert, and have infrared nightvision goggles on. Three of these men are in one room, with two doors. One door in, and one door out. That's it. It is impossible to not kill these men, or do it by stealthy means. I tried, for over an hour. That's the kind of situation I mean, where the game's purpose is stolen by an obstacle that cannot be bypassed stealthily. This were probably the product of crunch-time, and last-minute attempts to get 10 levels in. The last level almost redeemed them, but was slightly dissapointing in the level of fun it was. SC 1 and 2 both had incredibly fun final levels. Why were they fun? I don't really know. They just were.

Beyond that, the single player alone was probably worth 50 bucks. If I'd gotten the collector's edition, I'd still have the three original bonus levels from SC, but, such things are not meant to be, I suppose. Once I play through the Co-op I'll post some thoughts on that, but as is, I have nobody to play it with. I probably won't write much about Versus for a long time, if at all, because of the extreme complexity. It's taken me about 4-5 hours of playing just to get fluent with the controls, but the strategy on what to use and when to use it is the real key, and the levels are so complex...you get the idea. Hopefully I won't forget to write it up, though. Hehe.

[/geek]

My throat feels like a lizard.

EDIT:

I got the server set up (with considerable amounts of help from Benjamin). Go explore the files I have up at the moment! What does this mean to you? I no longer have to use photobucket, which was semi-unreliable, downgraded the picture size, more annoying to link to, yada yada yada. This also means I can resurrect the random templates, unless, of course, you do not want them. If I were to bring them back, it would be be random, it would start on blue, but you could set it to whichever color you prefer. I'd also improve the colors and backgrounds and such for the red and green, and maybe introduce a few other colors. We'll see.

The Server Location

That, my friends, is all you will ever need to know. This is a very geeky post. Consider yourself warned.

Benjamin came over today, and we just spent all day doing random stuff. We played some Chaos Theory (boy is he bad at that *ducks*), took apart the old Linksys router, which was pretty cool. It was just standard hardware stuff, but it had random colored blinking LEDs, making it more cool. We also played around with my network (and the lack thereof....man, i am good), but I got it fixed now after taking a second try with the Netgear router. How did I do it? I didn't use their stupid setup CD. O, foolish self, thinking that automated configuration would surpass that of manual setup.

Beyond that, we did a little PHP stuff, set up Apache and PHP on my computer, poked around with code provided by the wonderful users of PHP.net, none of which did we get working, and that was our day. Jesse was gonna come over too, but homework/grades forced his presence elsewhere. Time to go get owned in online Chaos Theory.