Strange 24 Hours...

No idea if some planetary alignment or something is going on, but I've had an interesting 24 hours. Started around this time last night when we went out to dinner at Palomino's in Calgary. I heard about the place from a girl in my fiction writing class. Something about a performer that goes there a lot to do a trick where she takes special shots and breathes fire. That and the walls of the girls washroom is covered in graffiti...but it's cool because at least fifty different people have gone in there and written and replied to messages on the wall. Despite being in one of the shadiest parts of Calgary, the Palomino has awesome food and a cool atmosphere. I am definately going back.

Afterwards our little group went to go see the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra perform many of the tracks from the Star Trek movies and TV series. The show was amazing even though I don't know much about Star Trek at all. I knew enough to be interested of course, but overall I just enjoyed the music. The guys who play the holographic doctor and Q were hosting. During the intermission I randomly decided to sign up as a volunteer for the Calgary Comic Con. I hardly ever sign up for volunteers stuff. I usually just join in on other people's volunteer work. Then during the final piece of the night (the theme from Star Trek 2009) I came up with the an answer to 1 of about 15 questions that I have about my book and the plot. This was the first of many "epiphanies" I have had over the past day.

On the way home we saw something...strange. In two different rooms there was a series of flashing lights. They weren't in any sort of pattern, just random flashing over and over, pausing at different times and speeding up at others. The strange part was the rooms were in two separate buildings, and they were completely synchronized. They were both office buildings, both rooms had the lights off, and it was 10 in the evening. We guessed it might be two televisions on set to the same channels, but that didn't make any sense; no one would be up that late watching the same television show at the same time in two dark offices. Another suggestion was that it could be a screen saver, but the two computers would have to have the exact same flashy design. The computers also would have needed to go into screen saver mode at the EXACT same time. We ruled out electrical problems because they were in separate buildings. We finally decided that they were an elaborate string of flashing signals sent between buildings a pair of techno ninja assassins could communicate with each other.

Then the train was all weird today. In the morning my bus pass was checked three times. In Calgary we don't have ticket machines like in New York or London where you can't get onto the platform unless you run your ticket through it. Here the officers make random checks on the trains, so half the time you don't even need a ticket. It's still safe to have one, however, since the checks they make are REALLY random. If you want to get away with having no ticket you go at rush hour, and I personally think it's not worth it. Especially when random dudes start talking to you.

Which brings me to the random two old dudes that started talking to me on the train today. I was on the train working on some notes for my book while listening to music when this old guy sits beside me and starts talking to me. I can't remember what he asked me to start the conversation, but somehow we ended up talking about his book and how he was going to make a movie out of it. He seemed like a nice enough guy, but it figures that one time I'm actually busy on the train I get bothered. The moment that old dude leaves ANOTHER old guy comes and takes his place. I went back to work, and after a few minutes he starts complaining about the doors and how the train driver should be able to figure out which one is closing etc etc. He then talks to me about how boring Saskatoon is and when he moved to Calgary and his business and the weather in Calgary and mosquitoes in Manitoba. Then he left and I was finally able to figure out the rest of my stuff for WMRR.

The WMRR questions I have are all coming to me all of a sudden. Like a series of epiphanies. I don't know what it is, but questions I haven't been able to answer for five years are all being answered in the span of 24 hours. It's a little scary.

Getting Back Into Business

I haven't written here in a long time, mostly because I haven't had a reason to with my new Deviant Art account and how busy I've been. I haven't even had time to make any new videos. Instead I have been focusing on my education and writing, which certainly need the attention. This brings me to the new blog I have created which is solely dedicated to my current project: Where Mighty Rivers Run. It's a science fiction novel that I first devised in grade 11 as a joke. I basically sat down one night and thought up about half the characters and factions used in the story and gave what I typed up to my friend the next day. She said something along the lines of me being "extremely random and strange", which I take as the highest compliment. To learn more about the story and my progress, head over to: http://wmrrproject.blogspot.com/

Now I'm not sure what other people's holidays are like, but I'm one of those poor souls that celebrates Christmas. Every year it seems less and less like a holiday and more like a headache. I am, to be honest, sick of it. The only part I actually like about December is the actual day: Christmas. That day we sit around, open presents, eat tons of good food and see family. Before and after it's like a giant swirling vortex of agony. I was working full time in a mall that was puked on by Christmas in a store that played horrible, HORRIBLE, Christmas music and had to put up with frustrated customers and their screaming children (I worked in a kid's clothing store over the holidays...and I say "worked" because I'm technically "on call" now). So overall not the most enjoyable season.

Now I only have 4 days of holidays left and I am swamped with school work. Thank you full year English courses for giving me such a lovely holiday with your papers, research and mountains of reading material! Three cheers for university. Thankfully I got a few video games for Christmas which is a savior to my sanity. I just completed Assassin's Creed 2 last night, which is a spectacular game in many senses. The graphics are decent with it's colourful environments and extra care in detail (though the map and interface DID spaz out a few times...I think this was my fault however for playing 6 hours straight). The music was some of the best video game music I have ever encountered, created by Jesper Kyd, who in my mind now is a genius. Much like the first game, I am in awe of the character movements. The main character "Ezio Auditore de Firenze" was the best part of the entire game. His movements and actions were refined down to the smallest details, he had an excellent costume and he is honestly one of the best looking video game characters I have ever encountered (honestly he'd be a sexy, sexy man if he were real). The story was better than a lot of video games, though I'll admit I liked the story of the first game better. The ending was a surprise and though I promise not to ruin it, I'll say that it was quite the twist. I enjoyed it quite a bit...except for this one part involving an end of the world conspiracy theory which I thought was stupid...but hey, it's a video game, who cares? It's stupid to nit pick when it comes to those subjects.

The other game I was pleasantly surprised with is probably one you wouldn't expect, or maybe even have heard of: Rabbids Go Home. Yes, a spin-off game from the original Rayman: Raving Rabbids video game. This game is a stupid, random, brain-numbing, IQ dropping, mess...and it is FANTASTIC. I have never played a game so idiotic as this, and it is honestly some of the most mindless fun I have had in ages. No complex plots, no challenging puzzles, no clear antagonist, no special music or graphics...it's just you, a couple of bunnies and a shopping cart. Essentially, a group of "Rabbids", who have apparently taken to living in a landfill after the Rayman game, notice a giant glowy ball in the sky: THE MOON. Being the intellegent little critters they are, they decide to build a giant pile of STUFF to reach the moon so that they may sleep on it (or something like that I'm not entirely sure). A team of three Rabbids are sent to the city to collect items for the pile: a driver, a collecter and a cannon ball (you shoot Rabbids at various points in the game to help you through the levels). The stuff consists of XL and XS (why there is none in between I have no idea...better not to ask questions in this game), and include anything including table, bottles, jet engines, infectious patients, cows, the clothes you strip off of the humans and nuclear reactors. You can also find all the hidden "Santa Clauses", who for some reason hide in air ducts and nuclear cores and carry garbage cans around on their backs. They also drop hamburgers when you scare them. You also have the option of participating in unique challenges, including one where you have to shake around a Rabbid that has been sucked into your Wii remote in the right directions. One last feature that adds to the inanity is that wou may spray paint, tattoo and give your bunnies items to put on their heads (some examples are a cement block, a chicken and a saw). An extremely strange game, but if you have a morbid sense of humour and you havce the ability to turn your brain off at will, you'll have a great time playing it.

It's Been Awhile....

...since my last post. The blog isn't really a priority in my life, more of a thing to do when I'm bored or putting things off. As of yesterday I am officially done for the summer. I have no job, no major current projects, no school and I may or may not be leaving in a week. So I have one week of BLAH and "I don't know what the monkey to do with myself". I recently bought Overlord 2 for $21 dollars (which pleased me seeing how I have only about $40 dollars of spending money to my name) and it is absolutely fantastic. Of course it has some issues (one being that Gary, my laptop, cannot run it...well at least), and others including minor gameplay and graphics issues. Otherwise I'm enjoying the story, the game, THE HUMOUR, and the general concept behind it. I LOVE playing the antagonist, or the "evil side". Puts a new twist on things. It has one of those "choose good or evil" type set-ups, only you choose between "evil and really evil". There is a kind of neutral area as well, which I seem to be hanging around. It's nice to be able to enslave a town one day and blow it up the next. Blowing up things is fun. Especially in this game. There are a lot of jokes, puns, silly instances and sick humour, which I find hilarious. Too many games are so serious and hard and dark. This is dark with and beautiful wave of hilarity washing though it. I hope to finish the game before leaving (whenever that is), because I can't continue it while I'm gone on my laptop. I also have a time period of about 10pm - whenever I'm too tired to play anymore and pass out to finish it, seeing how that's the only time period the family computer is not being used one way or another. One thing I can't wait for is the plot twist. Apparently there's a rather exciting and surprising plot twist, much like the first Overlord. If it's anything like the first Overlord, I'm all for it, and very much looking forward to it.

So aside from Overlording, I finished my Dungeon Keeper 2 series. Mission 20 was posted about...a week ago ish, and is currently sitting in my channel in 9 parts. YES 9 parts. I promised to post Mission 20 in its entirety, and that recording was over 1 hour and 10 minutes long. I can't remember the full time, but it's all there. I only have the bonus levels to do now, and any other random things I can come up with. I will be beginning my new project soon hopefully. I'll work on it on holidays and start posting on my return. The plan is to do a remake of my "Bercuda's Quest: Avenging Gertrude" a project I started and gave up on last summer. It was a screenshot story making a farce of Dungeon Siege, a game released by Microsoft quite some years ago. It came out sometime in my late elementary - early Jr. High years, so somewhere around 7-8 years ago. I honestly can't remember and don't feel like looking it up at the moment. I have some minor changes to make to my idea however. The main character's name will probably change, I will be posting the video either in Chapters, or just parts as I record it, I'm not sure. I will not be recording town and preparation parts, so I will need map pictures and recaps of missions and quests before each video. The story is, essentially the same: a farce of a journey led by a bald farmer wishing to avenge his cow Gertrude. It is doubling as entertainment and a walkthrough, so this should be interesting. Hopefully it will be received nicely enough. I don't know what the DK2 people will say, but this is all part of a grand experiment...and to relieve my boredom.

Defeat Really is Bitter

And costs me $500 dollars. Seems unfair that a course I believed to be non-mathematical in its approach just so happens to need math in order to solve more than half of the problems. I had to judge a course based on just under less than three hours of instruction, and decide whether to withdraw or not. This first class gave me no clues as to the approaches to the course. The prof said "simple math" was needed. Someone other than a math major PLEASE tell me that calculus is "simple math". I never took calculus in my life. EVER. No where in the course description did it even say that I needed calculus, probability and algebra to complete this course. Sure there were alternatives to using calculus, but that involved more math. I walked into this course, two days a week, three hours each day for six weeks under the impression that it was pure logic, reasoning, graphs, tables and diagrams, NOT equations and numbers. After the "withdraw with no penalties" date, which was a day after the first day of this course, I was supposed to know all this. First class didn't tell me anything. POP THERE GOES $500! Oh no big deal. I'm only an unemployed student with at least a year and a half of university to go. I obviously have $500 dollars lying around to just throw down the drain!

The fact that you don't get your money back is a giant kick in the rear end...a rear end with a broken tail bone. Unfortunately I can't complain about it because it's reasonable. If they gave money back after more than a couple classes, any person could walk in, take up the prof's time, get all the juicy knowledge and then run with it. BUT (and that but is a giant one), University should cost so much in the first place. Education is supposed to be a good thing for a country right? So can someone please tell me WHY they are raising tuition prices again next fall? If you want universities to be selective about how many people they let in, why not just make the standards for getting in higher? Anyone who cannot afford university cannot get in. Oh oops I forgot! Student loans! How silly of me. Those of course take years to pay off, and that only becomes harder when you don't get that lovely high-paying job you always wanted, despite your wonderful degree(s). Of course the money goes to research and upkeep and salary paying etc etc, but the funny thing is, is that the government puts such a small amount of money into schools and universities that they NEED to charge more and more every year. THANK YOU ALBERTA FOR YOUR (lack of) SUPPORT FOR HIGHER EDUCATION.

I'm overly bitter because I was defeated by the course I thought would turn out a lot better than it did. I still think the subject is interesting, and I understand half of what we've learned so far, it's just not good enough. A withdrawal (W) looks better than a fail (F) on a transcript, so that's what I'm doing. And I feel extraordinarily shitty. Nothing like spending sixteen hours over the past two days on a single subject just to condemn it to failure at 3 in the morning the day before an assignment is due. So in the end we have dual blame: false advertising and my inability to comprehend equations I have never seen before in my life. Perhaps if I spent double the time, got some help (though the prof was out of town all weekend and couldn't answer his e-mail), and thought to browse through the textbook BEFORE committing to the class, I would have come out better. I didn't, so I paid the price.

THANK YOU UNIVERSITY AND POOR WORK ETHIC FOR SCREWING ME OUT OF MY TIME AND MONEY.

Long Walks Accomplish Things

Took my visual communications teacher's advice and did a bit of wandering and looking today. I like to wander and walk in the first place, but I paid more attention to the things around me this time. Well...most of the time. Seemed like the only time I ever completely zoned out was in the middle of a busy street. Probably not a good place. I walked for about an hour and a half from my doctor's office, ignoring all the buses on one street. I was tempted to walk all the way home, but the bus that goes to my house pulled up just as I was walking by the stop. Anyhow, I looked at the fronts of people's houses. These houses were the small, boxy and rectangular kind, but it was amazing how different they were. I saw at least 2 bright purple houses, a lime green one, more pink ones than I thought existed, a REALLY bright blue one and another in which I spent a few minutes deciding whether it was yellow or green (I settled on grellow). A lot of people had cute little bird-baths, wooden crafty things, wind chimes, and ceramic animals, which told me someone who likes nature, crafty items or decorating lived there. The houses with little upkeep, overgrown yards, worn-down siding, rotting porches and sidewalks with weeds growing between the cracks told me the owners were either busy, old or lazy (or all of those). One house was the perfect "I capture and eat children for breakfast then use their bones to build common appliances and furniture". I'm not exactly sure how you'd build an appliance out of bones...but definitely furniture. The entire house was run-down, bushes growing over and covering the path leading up to it. Weeds were everywhere and the grass was already starting to get unruly. Cracks in the wall, broken shutters on the windows, a very steep grey-shingled roof and a very un-kept sidewalk. Might have been a little creepier because the sun was blocked by clouds and it was raining. All that was missing was the thunder and lightning. Running away from that tangent before it gets any longer...I also saw houses that were perfectly clean, up-kept, plain, painted, and had straight, even and evenly green lawns. I'm guessing neat freaks and perfectionists live in those ones. A lot of them had sitting areas and lawn chairs out front for people who like to sit and relax, watch the world and chug coffee. People who had kids were easy to identify when toys or bikes were lying out front. Not too many of those. Another rarity was houses with nice gardens. I only saw about two or three of those. I guess people are too busy to work for hours on those things. Either people who love to garden or old people lived in those ones.

All in all I just found it interesting. I may do my coms project on it, but I'm not too sure yet. I keep getting new ideas. I think I'm just excited about running around taking pictures of random things, creeping people out at the same time. I just love how our prof is encouraging us to stare at people at school or on the train, and look at things we normally wouldn't. And that sounds really...creepy. Muaha

Bitterness, Laziness or Sparcity

Because I really can't tell anymore. I need to find a job, but here's my problem: Calgary seems to suck for the kind of jobs I want. My only option seems to be retail, and I'm sick of retail. I'm also running out of money. Calgary is a good city, but the job focus here is on oil, business and all the jobs that go with it. That and the only other jobs offered are mundane, repetitive, require X amount of years in experience, or skills I don't have. Working with kids, pets and plants would be interesting. There are some jobs in those fields, mostly camp directors, recreation workers and landscaping (I highly doubt I could do landscaping). The only problem with these jobs is that it involves LIVING things. I have good intentions, but knowing me I'd accidentally hurt, kill or face a law suit. Maybe with a little training and slightly more sleep I could pull it off....but I need to find it first. I'm staying away from the food industry unless it involves candy. I'd get tables, food and orders confused. AND I'M A CLUTZ. I'd spill half the stuff I carry.

Then to add problems to my job search, the workplace must be withing walking distance or close to transit, and if that's the case I couldn't work at night...because I meet tons of weirdos on the train IN THE DAYTIME. I remember taking the bus at 11pm with a friend one night, and a guy was on the phone talking about finding a guy and beating him up. Then two drunk girls got on. My point is that Calgary transit sucks, and that I can't work 1 hour away from my home, and it cannot be an evening shift (unless it's a bus...buses are safer than trains...most the time). Honestly...I could write a whole other entry about all the strange people I've met on the train. Creepy Zoo guy, spitting man, crazy neurotic lady and her escort, praying out-loud lady, and that creepy young guy who always smiles at you...and doesn't stop.

If I had it my way I'd be writing, reading, editing, making videos, designing layouts, researching cool things, working at a museum, working at library (prolly my last choice...too quiet...), working in a bookstore, working in a game store, reviewing things, cateloguing things, organizing stuff, running tours, working at information desks, playing video games all day...(yeah you're already doing that hun...just aren't being paid for it). I know what I like, I know what I want to do, it's just finding a way to do it is so difficult, and it recquires a bit of motivation. I NEED that motivation.

So what does a English and History major do in such a stiff, business city? Complain a bit first. Then run around begging companies completely relevant to your interests to take you on, even for FREE in hopes that they'll eventually pay you. After that doesn't work start looking for semi-relevant jobs with the same false hopes. Then look for anything that pays something other than minimum wage. That will probably work, but if all else fails I'm resorting to my back-up plan. To become a traveling hobo. At least I'll see the world ;)

Silly Computers

They never like to work. I've been surprisingly lucky in getting mine to work over the last two years. Gary (my computer) has survived 2 serious viruses, multiple game crashes, overheating, battery issues, corrupt files and my attempts to run many high-capacity programs at once. I don't know as much as I'd like about how computers work and how to fix them, but I have certainly learned a lot about getting video games (especially old ones) to work on my computer. I think I've just been hella lucky! I've been trying to help a guy on YouTube get Dungeon Keeper 2 working for the past little while. The game didn't work for me either until I installed a NoCD patch, which fixed the game completely (though I still have no idea how). My problem however was that the game wouldn't even start. It would start loading, and then crash. Many people seem to have problems getting the game to work on Vista, which I too run. So I'm not exactly sure why my game runs nicely while others try the same fixes and continue to have issues. This hasn't just happened with DK2 though...Warcraft III, Half Life 1 and Dungeon Siege all have worked the same. Same with other programs like GIMP, Skype and some media players. I heard the version of GIMP (image editing program) isn't even compatible with Vista. So I think I've been hit with some sort of luck bolt. My computer runs fine (most of the time) and I've gotten a ton of things to work that others can't. Maybe it's a good combination of sound and video cards, maybe a well-built computer, or maybe I just installed/downloaded the right things at the right time in the right places...all by accident. Now if I were only that lucky in my searching for a job...