Doh, Was That A Tree?
Broke down and actually PURCHASED a computer game yesterday. [waits for everyone's mouths to return to their normal size] Yeah, I know, not exactly in my usual scheme of doing things. Alas I could not find a copy of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002 ANYWHERE through my usual avenues of acquiring entertainment, and I finally made the decision that since it was going to be more a learning tool than anything else, and was actually applicable to my future career, that I could justify paying full price for it. At least it came with the strategy guide included, that must count for something.
Basically for those who have been under a rock, the Microsoft Flight Sim series is one of the oldest gaming institutions there is, with the initial product coming out in 1988, I believe. There have always been people wanting to fly a plane without leaving their room, taking lessons, getting certified, and paying hundreds or thousands of dollars for x number of hours of flight time. Interestingly enough, the program has become so advanced, that instructors actually use it as a training tool for their students to teach various concepts. It makes sense really, you can practice the same manuever over and over again without costing anyone money, and all those initial banking curves through trees and spirals deep into the dirt are much less horrific than the real thing.
I got through all of the initial student training and ground school, learning an absolute ton of information in the process. Interestingly enough I found the answers to about ten questions that I've seen on practice AFOQTs in the aviation information section, so I'm probably doing myself a real big favor by reading through all this before the test Monday, at least for that section. Spent the day yesterday over at Borders, Super Crown, and Barnes and Noble, going over more sections and practice problems, and otherwise busying myself wandering around reading random material. I always get weird looks in bookstores these days, apparently I fit in better with the glasses and braces look of middle school, people tend to look at me as if I got lost on the way to Sports Illustrated.
The big test is Monday, have to be in LA at 6:30am, weeeeeeee. Oh, and you can only take the test twice in a lifetime. No pressure. :) Actually I'm not worried, I think I'm much better prepared than your average Joe. And modest besides.
Thursday, July 11, 2002
Google Does Me Good Again...
Randomly plugging stuff in as usual, when a song comes blaring in from my mother's study that I remembered from my childhood, decided to snag it, turned out to be "Hands to Heaven" by Breathe from way back in 1988. Fourteen years ago even, scary thought.
The way I came across the title was just plugging in some of the lyrics, and I stumbled upon someone's page, who had written out all the lyrics to a few dozen songs and turned them into beautiful webpages with pictures and designs and so forth, and the song in compressed wav format playing in the background. Some were songs I'd heard, some were songs I hadn't, all were quite touching. Thought I'd pass along some lyrics from one by Billy Gilman, who some of you might have heard of, the young boy phenom who's been lighting places up all over the country
"There's a flower in the smallest garden
Reaching for the light
There's a candle in the darkest corner
Conquering the night
There is amazing strength in a willing hand
There are victories
That you've never planned
There's a hero
In everybody's heart
There's a fire inside of everybody
Burning clear and bright
There's a power in the faintest heartbeat
That cannot be denied
Go on and trust yourself
You can ride the wind
You're gonna take your dreams
Where's they've never been
There's a hero
In everybody's heart"
Randomly plugging stuff in as usual, when a song comes blaring in from my mother's study that I remembered from my childhood, decided to snag it, turned out to be "Hands to Heaven" by Breathe from way back in 1988. Fourteen years ago even, scary thought.
The way I came across the title was just plugging in some of the lyrics, and I stumbled upon someone's page, who had written out all the lyrics to a few dozen songs and turned them into beautiful webpages with pictures and designs and so forth, and the song in compressed wav format playing in the background. Some were songs I'd heard, some were songs I hadn't, all were quite touching. Thought I'd pass along some lyrics from one by Billy Gilman, who some of you might have heard of, the young boy phenom who's been lighting places up all over the country
"There's a flower in the smallest garden
Reaching for the light
There's a candle in the darkest corner
Conquering the night
There is amazing strength in a willing hand
There are victories
That you've never planned
There's a hero
In everybody's heart
There's a fire inside of everybody
Burning clear and bright
There's a power in the faintest heartbeat
That cannot be denied
Go on and trust yourself
You can ride the wind
You're gonna take your dreams
Where's they've never been
There's a hero
In everybody's heart"
Tuesday, July 09, 2002
How'd That Tennis Ball Get In My Arm...
If any of you need a way to double the size of your right bicep in a week's time, I recommend just bowling a couple times in a span of a week, playing at least 3-4 games each time, and not putting your thumb in the ball. My strange style of just using the middle and ring fingers in the front two holes and having the other three simply palm it creates this really bizarre release followed by an insane left bending curve that takes it all the way from where I release it near the center over to the right gutter and all the way back over to the left side of the head pin, generally. This is sort of the way it's supposed to look, but with a lot less control and grace. :)
By the second throw tonight I felt my arm twinge as if I'd strained my bicep, which is weird because I haven't been doing any real hardcore arm workouts since I went a full week ago. I didn't stretch as properly as I should have, I guess. Deciding to play through the pain I ended up doing pretty well, I just had to rely on leaving my left hand on the ball as long as possible so my right arm was doing as little work as possible, and aiming a little further right, since it was curving more due to not having the power to get down the lane like it normally does.
Man, I probably sound like a bowling junkie by now. Well anyway, now it feels like there's a tennis ball under the skin attached to my bicep, which is I guess a good thing, other than the fact its quite sore, and I'm sure will be hard to move in the morning. Luckily I'm not at school, or I'd have to deal with "questions" about why my right arm is bigger than my left. I'm sure you can figure out what the assumption generally is. "It's all about the single room eh Matt?" Unfortunately it's harder to form tricep that does the majority of the work during push-ups and proper pull-ups with palms facing away from you. Gonna have to lay off the arm work for a couple days looks like, though. And DAMNIT I NEED TO STOP USING ITS AND IT'S...
[flexes a few more times] For the moment, I almost feel like I could arm wrestle someone, and put up a decent fight! ;)
If any of you need a way to double the size of your right bicep in a week's time, I recommend just bowling a couple times in a span of a week, playing at least 3-4 games each time, and not putting your thumb in the ball. My strange style of just using the middle and ring fingers in the front two holes and having the other three simply palm it creates this really bizarre release followed by an insane left bending curve that takes it all the way from where I release it near the center over to the right gutter and all the way back over to the left side of the head pin, generally. This is sort of the way it's supposed to look, but with a lot less control and grace. :)
By the second throw tonight I felt my arm twinge as if I'd strained my bicep, which is weird because I haven't been doing any real hardcore arm workouts since I went a full week ago. I didn't stretch as properly as I should have, I guess. Deciding to play through the pain I ended up doing pretty well, I just had to rely on leaving my left hand on the ball as long as possible so my right arm was doing as little work as possible, and aiming a little further right, since it was curving more due to not having the power to get down the lane like it normally does.
Man, I probably sound like a bowling junkie by now. Well anyway, now it feels like there's a tennis ball under the skin attached to my bicep, which is I guess a good thing, other than the fact its quite sore, and I'm sure will be hard to move in the morning. Luckily I'm not at school, or I'd have to deal with "questions" about why my right arm is bigger than my left. I'm sure you can figure out what the assumption generally is. "It's all about the single room eh Matt?" Unfortunately it's harder to form tricep that does the majority of the work during push-ups and proper pull-ups with palms facing away from you. Gonna have to lay off the arm work for a couple days looks like, though. And DAMNIT I NEED TO STOP USING ITS AND IT'S...
[flexes a few more times] For the moment, I almost feel like I could arm wrestle someone, and put up a decent fight! ;)
Monday, July 08, 2002
What The...
Tonight's random search engine query that brought a surfer of the internet follows...
"How to force husband to leave & I do not love him anymore"
Yikes, let's hope that it was part of a joke, or something. If people who are actually serious about it are randomly typing that into Google, well, that's just a real sad thing.
Beat SOF2, turned out to only take a couple of days. That's what I like about FPS's, you beat them, and move on. Now off to the living room for some ab work. WHEE.
Tonight's random search engine query that brought a surfer of the internet follows...
"How to force husband to leave & I do not love him anymore"
Yikes, let's hope that it was part of a joke, or something. If people who are actually serious about it are randomly typing that into Google, well, that's just a real sad thing.
Beat SOF2, turned out to only take a couple of days. That's what I like about FPS's, you beat them, and move on. Now off to the living room for some ab work. WHEE.
Sunday, July 07, 2002
What A Mess...
For those wanting to try their hand at the most violent FPS out there, I recommend Soldier of Fortune II. Now for all you haters out there, the game has like 20 different ways to turn down the violence, as well as a parental lock with password option, so our children can be protected to whatever level you want them to be. Now back to those who are actually aware of the difference between a "game" and "reality." This is easily the most violent game I've played, mainly due to the realism of the death animations, the dismemberment, the groans, spurts, squishies, and various other details I'll spare my elderly readers from. It's supposedly one of the longer single player games out there, I've put several hours in over the last few days and haven't beaten it yet, but I have no idea how close I am. Will update later on that.
Still no job, which is becoming quite irksome. Not that I mind being able to focus on things like running and arm/ab work, but money is good too. Spent Friday wandering around with the father, checking out various speaker systems, DVD players, and digital cameras, not that he was actually going to buy anything, half the fun is wandering around the store and then leaving, I guess.
Haven't quite decided what my big purchase of the summer is going to be, largely because my income is not yet steady and thus I don't know how much money I'll have to work with. Possibilities include a flat panel monitor (pretty sure I've been talking about that since I started this blog, and yet I'm still staring at this not even flat pos I've had since freshman year), a Klipsch speaker system, or a digital camera. All three of those things are good for the long term, the digital camera would get a lot of use, and the speakers and monitor would make great additions to my dorm room/new place of living in the next year or so. I'm guessing my amount of income will greatly influence which purchase I make, since the speakers run about $400, the digital camera something more like $600, and the monitor well, more than that. :/ Its actually dropped down to about $2.5k from $4k, so hopefully I'll be able to find it somewhere closer to $2k or below if I decide to go that route. That's an awful lot of money still, though. Winning lottery tickets anyone?
Got an honest to goodness handwritten letter today, which by the way is always the coolest thing ever. Knowing someone actually took time to put pen to paper for a few minutes, in order to write to me even, is always enough to lift my spirits. Mailing something back will give me something else to do other than sitting around here, anyway.
Also saw Dralion and Nouvelle Experience, the last two Cirque Du Soleil shows I'd rented off Netflix, and was again impressed by the former, and somewhat entertained by the latter. Maybe it's because I'd been so impressed by Quidam, but I'd have to rank Dralion a bit below it, and Nouvelle Experience as the worst of the four. Still has some good acts, but overall nowhere near the caliber of the other three shows I snagged (the third being Saltimbanco). The DVD was full screen rather than wide screen, and at times very dark and blurry, so it was hard to see at times, not too impressive. Also ripped Searching for Bobby Fischer (5 M's) which is a quite entertaining story about a young chess prodigy. That is, if you're at all interested in chess, or the idea of young prodigys. Otherwise you'd probably think it sucked. :)
Going to have to start another mad burning spree, with all these rips having to stay local until the Fall when I can spread them around in trades for new and exciting things, going to have to burn off a lot of the old stuff. Oh, and two Simpsons eps down, 101 hours worth to go. :/
For those wanting to try their hand at the most violent FPS out there, I recommend Soldier of Fortune II. Now for all you haters out there, the game has like 20 different ways to turn down the violence, as well as a parental lock with password option, so our children can be protected to whatever level you want them to be. Now back to those who are actually aware of the difference between a "game" and "reality." This is easily the most violent game I've played, mainly due to the realism of the death animations, the dismemberment, the groans, spurts, squishies, and various other details I'll spare my elderly readers from. It's supposedly one of the longer single player games out there, I've put several hours in over the last few days and haven't beaten it yet, but I have no idea how close I am. Will update later on that.
Still no job, which is becoming quite irksome. Not that I mind being able to focus on things like running and arm/ab work, but money is good too. Spent Friday wandering around with the father, checking out various speaker systems, DVD players, and digital cameras, not that he was actually going to buy anything, half the fun is wandering around the store and then leaving, I guess.
Haven't quite decided what my big purchase of the summer is going to be, largely because my income is not yet steady and thus I don't know how much money I'll have to work with. Possibilities include a flat panel monitor (pretty sure I've been talking about that since I started this blog, and yet I'm still staring at this not even flat pos I've had since freshman year), a Klipsch speaker system, or a digital camera. All three of those things are good for the long term, the digital camera would get a lot of use, and the speakers and monitor would make great additions to my dorm room/new place of living in the next year or so. I'm guessing my amount of income will greatly influence which purchase I make, since the speakers run about $400, the digital camera something more like $600, and the monitor well, more than that. :/ Its actually dropped down to about $2.5k from $4k, so hopefully I'll be able to find it somewhere closer to $2k or below if I decide to go that route. That's an awful lot of money still, though. Winning lottery tickets anyone?
Got an honest to goodness handwritten letter today, which by the way is always the coolest thing ever. Knowing someone actually took time to put pen to paper for a few minutes, in order to write to me even, is always enough to lift my spirits. Mailing something back will give me something else to do other than sitting around here, anyway.
Also saw Dralion and Nouvelle Experience, the last two Cirque Du Soleil shows I'd rented off Netflix, and was again impressed by the former, and somewhat entertained by the latter. Maybe it's because I'd been so impressed by Quidam, but I'd have to rank Dralion a bit below it, and Nouvelle Experience as the worst of the four. Still has some good acts, but overall nowhere near the caliber of the other three shows I snagged (the third being Saltimbanco). The DVD was full screen rather than wide screen, and at times very dark and blurry, so it was hard to see at times, not too impressive. Also ripped Searching for Bobby Fischer (5 M's) which is a quite entertaining story about a young chess prodigy. That is, if you're at all interested in chess, or the idea of young prodigys. Otherwise you'd probably think it sucked. :)
Going to have to start another mad burning spree, with all these rips having to stay local until the Fall when I can spread them around in trades for new and exciting things, going to have to burn off a lot of the old stuff. Oh, and two Simpsons eps down, 101 hours worth to go. :/
