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Flindiana_Jones
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Name: Flynn
Country: United States
State: Texas
Gender: Male
Interests: Programming, Movie Directing, H*R
Expertise: Wierditude.
Occupation: Being a student.
Industry: Being a student.
Message: message me
AIM:  flindiana
Member Since:
4/10/2005
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| Two thingsFirst, a joke a teacher of mine told before the final.
In a large university, there was a multi-section class that had to take its final exam all together, in one room. The total number of students was in the hundreds, so they put them all together in a gym, with the teacher proctoring in front. After two hours, he shouted "Time!" and everyone stopped.
Everyone but one student, that is. The teacher cleared his throat loudly, harrumphed, then said a bit louder, "TIME!" The lone student continued work, and the teacher shrugged. He told everyone to bring up their tests, and everyone but the one student did. After a moment of thought, the Teacher shrugged. "Let's see how long this joker persists," he thought, and sat down to his hundreds of tests, grading.
Two hours later, the student finally headed up, test in hand. The teacher asked, "Why did you take so long? What do you think you're doing?"
The student asked, leaning close, "Do you know who I am?"
The teacher replied, "I don't care who you are, you need to get your test in at the same time as everyone else. Besides, there are hundreds of people in this class. So no, I don't know your name."
The student smiled. "Good!" He said as he shoved his test into one of the stacks and dashed off.
Thing two, a True story.
I awoke, into a sudden and startling awakeness. It was late at night, dark, and a bit chilly. But none of those was what had awakened me. I lay still in my bed, eyes open, seeking the cause of my awakening. Then, I heard a noise, coming from outside my window, in the carport. Now I knew. Somebody was looting our carport, and as the sole awake inhabitant of the house, it fell to me to defend our property. I lay there a moment, seeing if they were leaving or what, as I also formulated my plan of attack.
Another, rolly, noise sounded as I checked the time. It was 3:00ish AM, and it sound like they were getting the scooters. I thought of the location of swords in the house, and remembered Anduril hung in the living room. Perfect. It was big and heavy, probably enough to do significant damage if the apparition of a pajama clad warrior didn't scare them away right off the bat. This decided, I got out of bed and headed for the living room, already formulating contigency plans and apologies to my little sister, owner of the sword.
"Oh, um, sorry it's all bloody, but it was for justice!"
I got out of my room, treading lightly, and found lights on. I blinked, adjusting to the harsh flourescents, and realized that the lights should NOT be on. As I continued, I puzzled about that. Then, I passed the dining room table, and saw a bunch of my Father's stuff there, that he had taken to work hours before. Suddenly, the pieces clicked into place. I returned to my room, and heard the sound of liquid being dumped out; the sort of sound my father WOULD make, the sort of noise a robber would NOT.
The mystery sorted out, I went back to bed, trying to quell the adrenaline rush and secure in the knowledge that our property was safe...this time.
--Flynn (SWORDED!)
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| A highdayOr, an update.
Finals week and undead week are over, leaving me zombie like and done with school, irrespectively. I also went to Dallas on Friday, with J.B and James. It was OK, but a bit less lively than usual, because J.B was getting over a sickness and James was just tired. I had fun, but would have had more if they weren't so wiped out.
I bought a mouse for my laptop; the touch pad slowly drove me more than slightly mad. Am working over break, half at IT and half at the Library. IT was...unique...this morning.
I went to work, and it was kind of awesome because all the ground was covered in frost, which rockedish. What rocked less was the fact it was about 30 degrees, take a few for wind chill, which made it a very bundle uppy type of day. When I got to work, my boss said that he thought we should stay inside for a bit. I agreed gladly, and he then looked around a bit and got down to business.
"Flynn, did you know we had a power outtage a little while ago?"
I shook my head.
"Well, we did, and it cut power to the PBX." Now, a sudden icy hand of doubt poked my soul at this point. You see, the PBX is basically what makes your calls go where they are supposed to. Power cutting to that could potentially be very bad. He continued, disregarding and icy hands that may or may not have been figuratively poking my soul. "So, I had to restore all the routing information from backup."
The icy hand was no longer poking, but now was karate chopping at my soul, since I now had no doubt of where the convo was going. You see, weeks ago Mr. Snyder ran out of work orders for me to do, so instead he had me delete a bunch of numbers from the PBX, so that dialing 9 to get out would no longer work. It was long, boring, and I hated it, but I had finished.
Mr. Snyder plowed on, confirming my worst fears. "Remember this list?" (at this point, he held up the list of numbers I had deleted) "Well, you did such a good job last time, I figured you could do it again."
*headwall*
So, I did that for about an hour and a half. And I figger I'll do it again soon...le sigh. I'll survive, somehow. Anyways, after that, we went and grabbed one of our wayward ladders (we have two, one still residing in a mechanical closet in the Big Burp Middle) and headed to Longview Hall, where we had a job to do. Or, more accurately, Mr. Snyder had a job to do. I basically gophered when needed, sitting around half awake the rest of the time. Then, a knock on the door of the closet we were in. I opened it, and the head of network services said to my boss, "Is this a planned outage?"
Turns out that Mr. Snyder, while cutting a conduit with a Dremel cutter, lost control for half a second, and knicked a fiber optic cable. BAD idea, it had caused all of Belcher Center and Longview Hall to go offline. So, Mr. Snyder messed around a bit, and fixed it in under five minutes. He went back to work on removing the conduit, and got a fateful phone call; "The Education Building just disappeared off the network."
Seems somehow another fiber that had been good was no longer good. So, we spent half an hour getting equipment and testing the fibers, making 100% sure they all worked. So, I got home half an hour late, had a rushed lunch, then went to the library. It's been much more boring here, so I'll quit for now while I'm ahead.
--Flynn(Blog Entries are like pancakes; someone had to come up with the concept, and when he did breakfast was changed forever) | | |
| Epic Entry (2116 words following, beware)This write up has been a while, but I've been busy, distracted, and it's been epic. So, how has it been epic? Well, as some of you know, I spent thanksgiving in an unusual way, for me. I started off with waking up. That was completely normal behavior for a boy my age, and is nothing to be ashamed of. Then I chilled and was cool for the rest of the morning, and I ate Thanksgiving Dinner. It was good. Awesome, in fact. After downing the deliciousness, I deliberately disposed of some of my things, and left.
Left where you might ask? Did I leave for home? A friend's house? NOPE! I went on a camp-out. Not at a lake, not in the woods, not in the mountains. At Best Buy, out in front. That's right my friends, I was one of the insanity deluxe people who spent the night out there, waiting in line for the deals. Ok, so the deal is this: Up to about 7:30 PM, I remember the sequence of events pretty well. After that until about...2:30AM, I have very little memory of sequence of events. It kinda was a weird experience. Then, back at 2:00 AM, I remember the sequence of events. So, here's how it went down.
At about 3:15 PM, I got there. Now, that may seem excessively early to some of you, but there were about 20 peeps ahead of us. Some of them had been there...since...Wednesday. Afternoon. Enough...Shatner talk. I met some pals and less pals, and we tried to play Texas Hold 'em. Peter was there (he was the mastermind, and I put my stuff in his car.) That didn't work too well in the wind which not only messed up the cards but made it pretty much too cold for bare hands.
After that, we sat around in chairs talking, going into books a million to use the restroom. (And the hand dryers. Man did those feel good) About Fiveish, IIRC, it rained a little bit. After a bit of debate among myself as to how to deal with it, I went with the draping my chair in my poncho and using my umbrella. The bit of rain blew over in a few minutes, but those few minutes were pretty exciting. We agreed at that point that bringing in my tent would be a cool idea. We had several waves of reinforcements planned, with Peter's mom bringing Pizza (home made; we looked into pizza places delivering to us, and they said no.)
My mother also was going to bring up the tent, as well as hot drinks and water bottles. The tent and bottles first, the drinks later in the night. So, at about in between 7:00 and 7:30 both mom's came and delivered their loads, giving us a tent, pizza, and hot water bottles. We ate gratefully, and then were dismayed when it started rain/sleeting again. We had not set up the tent, so we just grabbed the tarp and got under it, anchoring it with our chairs. After much ado, we had a working tentish thing. (And by much ado, I mean half an hour of preening and adjusting, adding and moving around tent poles) We sat in there a while, just chilling. (Literally; the tentish thing trapped body heat, but it was still like 38 degrees outside.)
After a while two of our neighbors, the guys right ahead of us, joined us since some friends of theirs had bailed on them. They were pretty cool guys. I liked them. However, after a while, (read: not too long after we got the tentish thing done) I got bored of sitting there. I had an awful feeling I'd be forced back there by rain, so I left and started walking around, observing the line as it grew, slowly but surely.
Before too long, I met who would be my companion a lot for the next few hours. Her name was Heather, and she was a pretty obnoxious seventeen year old, a bit further up the line than our little group. We walked and she talked mostly...it was sorta weird. I mean, usually I would never have done that. Just walking around talking with a complete stranger...especially one that annoying. Honestly, I probably would have shrugged her off under any other circumstances. But, for that time and place, she was a great distraction.
We walked behind best buy and found the lost world, went down the middle of the road to Circuit City, walked up and down the line of stores a few times, all the while her talking about this, that and the other. Wait, lost world you ask? Apparently there's a huge parking lot behind the stores there. Its about half the size of the parking lot in front, but secret. She was there for a laptop, like I was, and was over a foot shorter than I was.
My mother came at ten thirtyish with Chai, which was greatly appreciated, and I drank four cups of that. Good stuff. At some point my compatriots stirred themselves, and we messed around together some more, for a few hours. During the night Heather went to sleep I think; she left me at any rate, and didn't talk to me again. I wonder if her parents finally freaked out or what at the fact that she kept on going off alone with a complete stranger much taller than her. Whatever the cause, I barely saw her after...sometime.
Then, after a while activity, my fellow lunatics went back under the tarp, leaving me to pace around once more, playing music on my iPod. Listening to such classics as, “Because It's Midnite” and “We Don't Even Really Care,” absorbed in the music as I tried to avoid the cold. At about 2:30ish, the line (or at least the head of it) started showing signs of life. You see, the vouchers for the door busters (the limited items like the laptops) were being handed out at 3:00, so we wanted to be ready. Everyone condensed their stuff, moving it aside, and actually stood in a more dense line.
3:00 rolled around, and the best buy staff appeared. To not do much. They looked at us, offered a sign up for a stupid best buy card, and talked with the cop who was there. Then finally the manager came out and made a little speech about how it would work, and the vouchers started. The way it turned out to be was that you would get a wrist band and a brochure, which reserved whatever item you had a wristband for until 9:00. A lot of vouchers for stuff we didn't want went by, and I was irritated. They did pass out donuts and coffee for us though, which was nice.
At about 3:15ish, they FINALLY handed out the right vouchers, thus bringing horribly to mind a conundrum we had steadfastly ignored all night; what if there weren't enough? The guy came to us, and we asked with hearts in our throats, “How many do you have?”(Four of us wanted one; three of my group, and one of the guys we had hung out with) The guy looked a minute, and said...
“Six.” [Insert collective sigh of relief] so, we got our vouchers, and then put our stuff in the Van. After doing that, I suddenly realized I needed to get my checkbook from my backpack, so I asked Peter for the keys and went and got it. It was a bit of a pain since we had stuck a lot of stuff on top of it, but I got it without too much trouble. By this time it was 4:30ish, meaning the store opened in half an hour. So we waited another half hour, until at last the store doors opened! [Hallelujah chorus]
We went in, and since Peter wanted a DVD, we headed over to that table first. Having got it, we headed to the computer line...to find about forty people already in line. So, we waited more! For about an hour, we waited, listening to Abba and advancing foot by foot. At long last, we held our laptops! In our hands! Well, Peter got his first, since he was paying with cash and they had a special register for that. He went to put the laptop in the van (He didn't want to carry it) and when he got back he informed me that I had left the car unlocked. I was embarrassed, and he said he'd go get one more DVD. I nodded, and finally got my laptop. I got out a bit ahead of Peter (he was re-checking out in a smaller line, while I just walked out) and went to the car, reaching in my pocket for the keys.
They...weren't there. A horrible sinking sensation hit me, and I thought about getting my checkbook from the car. I suddenly remembered how much trouble I'd had getting at it, meaning I'd need to put the keys (in my hand) out of my hand, so that I could move thins. So, instead of in my pocket, I put them...in the car. Peter, when he'd put in his laptop, had locked the car, sure I had the keys. So we were locked out. After a minute of talking about it, Peter called up his parents at home, asking to bring the extra keys. So, cue another half hour of waiting.
The keys finally arrived, and we were blessed. (I say that because we called mere minutes before it would have been too late to do conveniently, which would have been bad) Then, we went home.
Ha ha, gotcha. Actually we went to Circuit City, to be extra Ram for Peter's laptop. I was needed, because mail in rebates generally are one per address; I'd buy one stick of Ram, Peter the other, and then I'd give it to him. Normally the Ram was like [Edit: 80] or more dollars, but we were going to get it at fifteen dollars a stick. So, after a line wait in front of Circuit City, we got in and grabbed the ram. We also grabbed a few more DVDs (one for me; Peter used the promise of a DVD to bribe me to help in the scheme)
The reason we had a wait to get in was because Circuit City was sorta smart and kept the number of customers inside the store somewhat constant. You couldn't go in until someone came out. So, we hit the checkout. After a brief scan, TWO checkout lines are revealed. Now, I ask you; what brand of insanity only has TWO checkouts on black friday? For Real. Anyways, we chose the shorter one and waited to check out. And waited. And waited. Turned out a lady was not only picky, but doing her shopping FROM THE CHECKOUT.
She was like saying, “I want this, go get it. No I don't want THAT, I want THAT! End result was over half an hour in check out again, cracking jokes at her expense with the disgruntled man behind us. At long last we hit the register, and Peter puts the Ram and movies on the counter. The lady swipes in the movies, and gets to the Ram. “Oh, were you trying to get this for the fifteen dollars?”
I get that sinking feeling again as Peter responds, “Yep, like in the ad.” The lady shrugged. “There's a glitch in the computer system, we can't give you the discount. You'll have to pay full price, no rebates.”
Cue nearly snapping. As in my snapping her neck, not my fingers. Peter and I stood in stunned silence a few seconds, digesting this insult heaped upon injury, and left, DVDs in tow. THEN, we went home, and got there about 8:00 AM. 17 hours after our experience started. Once home I crashed, and woke up three hours later to get some lunch and go work. After that, my life pretty much was monotonous in comparison; going to school, getting sleep, and using the Laptop, with Vista on it.
And so I'll end this, since you all are probably tired of reading by now anyways. I think this officially is my longest pure news blog update ever; I hope it stays that way, this has taken forever to type up. I will probably say more about the experience later, but right now I want to sleep. Sleep in warmth so good.
--Flynn (A Wagon full of Blog Entries? In the Champeenship? I'd like to see you try.) | | |
| Legendary MuffinSo, I did a timed writing of ten minutes doing NO prep going in, and here's the result:
Trouble was rampant in the kingdom. Men were
running from city to city, armed to the teeth and bearing messages of
ill will. Women hid in their houses, keeping the windows barred and
praying their husbands and sons would come back safely. And
children...well, the children just played in the street as usual,
throwing the occasional stick out at passing men. Children in the
kingdom of Balog were not renowned for their perceptiveness.
The
king sat on his throne, ruminating on the problems rife in his little
slice of the world. It had all started with that stupid traveling bard.
Telling those stories of grand feasts and recipes and about the revered
chefs of old. As far as the king was concerned, food making was for the
plebeians, not the nobility and middle classed folk.
But so few
people listened to him these days. Least of all the people he ruled. He
turned to his advisor, who was rolling a pie crust, and asked in a
voice weary with the burden of a thousand lives, “What can possibly be
done about this craze? Cooking is well and fine, but to take it to
these competitive extremes is barbaric and unproductive.”
The
advisor shrugged, careful not to mar the outline of his pie. “What can
you do sir to make it unpopular? It seems to me if it seems like an
uncool thing to do, people will stop it.”
The king nodded,
rubbing his beard. “I could propose that anyone not a servant caught
baking be baked in his own house. I think that would make it uncool.”
The advisor paled, and shook his head. “No no no, sire! Try something that doesn't lessen tax revenue.”
The
king grimaced. “Ugh, why did I get this job? I'm not the problem solver
my father was. And he only got the job because he made the current king
so unpopular...how did he do that again?”
The advisor laughed.
“He told the most witty, true sounding stories about him at parties
that no one liked him anymore. He's still around, bumming a living off
of people who never went to parties and still are loyal. The most
uncool segment of the population, to be blunt.”
The king's eyes
glittered. “that's it! I'll get him, that old king, to cook something.
Bye Jove, I'll make him cook something fabulous! He'll enter it into
one of these stupid contests, and no one will like baking anymore. Oh
thank you, father, for providing this opportunity.”
The advisor bowed his head. “How unfortunate that he was drowned in the bathtub while playing submarine, sir.”
---Flynn (That's no blog entry. It's a moon.)
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| DichotomyOk, so first the bad reason I am updating.
The scene: Chapel this morning, at 10:25 AM. We are having a concert tonight, and the concerteers would be playing in chapel, a free preview. The band is Downhere, with Jason Gray opening. They had a bunch of cool light stuff set up, and a lot of extra sound equipment. So, our chaplain opens things up, and we hear Jason Gray do a song. It wasn't awful. He had an OK voice, just used an acoustic guitar, and had a sense of humour. Anyhoo, when his song was done Downhere came on stage. They are the more famous band, and had two lead singers, generally three guitars, and drums. So, they start up, and I"m like "Oh, that's what double the sound equipment sounds like. Painful hearing loss. I'll cover my ears." so I did. It literally hurt me it was so stinking loud, and I have never been able to worship while in pain. (These were both Christian bands, hence their chapleditude.)
So, I spent almost all of chapel with my ears covered, just to defend my eardrums from the soundwave assault. A lot of people were really enjoying it, and honestly I would might play a few of those songs at my house, AT MY VOLUME. Then chapel was over, and I felt better from a hearing stand point. I went through the classes of the day, glad to be in a normal noise level.
Then it was time for my "favorite" class, Concepts of lifetime fitness. The students are all cynical and embittered by the idiocy of the class (or at least partly) so we have fun while waiting for the perpetually late teacher to show up. We all were sitting there, waiting, when one of the guys said, "Hey, what'd you think about chapel? Pretty awesome, huh?" Or something much like that. Everyone agreed, (well not EVERYONE, but most of the room. I was quiet.)
Then he went on. "Man, there was this one guy sitting in front of me, and he had his ears covered the WHOLE TIME. I mean, what is up with THAT?" Cue other students comments, "What? You serious? Really? How funnY!" etc. The first student: "Yeah, I mean it! He was like all hunched up when we were sitting, and though I couldn't see his face, you could tell he was like, 'Why are they playing this devil music in chapel?'" Cue other students again, "Wow, imagine that! Ha ha, that doofus. I was sitting up close, and It wasn't that bad!" and such like.
At this point, I was feeling sick to the stomach. Literally. Then the teacher came in, and the class proceeded, and I just sat there trying to cope. I mean, I was in PAIN. If I had not done that, I probably would have cried. I was not thinking it was devil music! I did not mean to give off that impression. All I wanted to point out with my ear covering was that it was loud. Anyways, the teacher distracted me by giving a nasty awkward lecture on cancer, but I was a boiling stock pot of emotions on the way home. I came THIS (puts fingers close together) close to going up and saying something to the student, but my common sense stopped me, luckily I suppose.
I have since talked to others in attendance, and they all said it was awesome and a good volume. I suppose I just have overly sensitive ears. *shrugs* end result being I felt sick a good chunk of today, and upset. I'm good now though, because of the GOOD reason I'm updating!
I got new finches! They're zebra finches, male and female, and young. The male is named Jean-Luc, and the Female Jenricka. Props to the first person to correctly identify where both names came from, without my telling them. Lessee what I can do about pictures: It's below.
Jenricka is on the left, Jean-Luc on the right. Aren't they cute? Anyways, that's it for today. Look for an underpink update soon.
--Flynn (That guy has serious Blogs!) | | |
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