I've been keeping a dream journal for about a month now, because I read that can help you lucid dream more easily and lucid dreams are boss. Turns out I have a lot of dreams about riding in cars and going to stores. But the stores never have the same layout that they do in real life, and this should tip me off that I'm dreaming but it never does. :(

OK, so I have a good memory and pretty good tolerance for alcohol. I like math and I don't have a job.

I should be a professional gambler! Like with blackjack or something. Except that I have the worst luck ever.

:(

PAX was fantastic!!! Here's what happened:

- Wandered around the expo hall mostly. Stuck around for some NAMCO raffle drawing, and Drew won! He got a new Verizon LG enV phone, and a bunch of games, including Katamari Damacy for PS2 and some Tekken and old-school arcade games.

- Tons of PHAT LOOT (a term used by some Bioware guys). I think I got 7 shirts, some Lord of the Rings MMO subscriptions, a KOTOR download (I already have it, but), a folding "Gaming Chair," an inflatable sword, an artbook, some magic booster packs, and some hand sanitizer from Blizzard. They really dug deep. HELLO KITTY ISLAND ADVENTURE. Not really, just Hello Kitty online. I just wanted to look at it, but they were handing out free copies. My face: :\ to :o to :D! Except my smile was even wider. Also, I bought a Scott Pilgrim poster.

-Went to happy hour at Dragonfish. Good Kirin beer, sushi and calamari. Also tons of dirty looks from LSU fans.

-Nvidia was doing this contest where they handed out buttons with four-digit numbers on them, and if you found your match you could spin for some tight prizes. Some dude even made a website where you could list your phone number and contact info, but I never found mine.

-Penny Arcade Make-a-Strip panel was fun, but Jerry wasn't there at first because his wife had given birth that morning. HE SHOWED UP ANYWAY. What a champ.

-Did some brainteasers to get a ticket to this off-site Magic : The Gathering party at Trinity Nightclub. Was neat, but super crowded. But I got some free drinks made with Jones Soda. And some Magic themed Jones' Soda.

-Got to see gameplay of WoW: Cataclysm and Diablo III, but lines were too long and there wasn't really a timing system so I didn't play. But DIII looks like tons of fun. I'm super excited. And saw gameplay of Star Wars: The Old Republic. That looked good too, but I think it'll be weird to have voiced dialogue instead of quest text. They'd better let you skip it.

I definitely want to go next year. Getting a hotel would be grand, but that might be a little hard on my finances. Especially if I don't find a job soon :(

Sometimes when I wake up from dreams I feel like a ton of time has passed, like years and years, and I feel surprised that I'm still in my normal body. It's not that I can remember all sorts of things I dreamed that would have taken so many years, but the memory of falling asleep somehow seems so far away. The feeling is really strong immediately after waking but then fades quickly. And it normally only happens while I nap, sleeping for less than an hour.

I can't really convince myself to believe in some sort of afterlife, so if right before I die if I can experience that sort of long dream feeling I think it would be nice. Nicer than just sudden nothingness, which is what I guess I expect. Which I wouldn't be disappointed with, if I could be disappointed at that point, but something extra would be cool.

It reminds me of this story I read for school. I'm pretty sure it was by Jorge Luis Borges... Maybe? But it was about a playwright who was about to be executed, or maybe just randomly shot, and he percieved the time between the gunfire and his dying to be long enough that he was able to finish his final play in his head, with the gunmen and some other guys there as actors and stuff. Spoiler Warning! He does die in the end.

He wrote some cool stuff. If I'm thinking of the right guy.

I just found out that I don't automatically get my rewards from my debit card transferred into my bank account, and that I have to manually add the funds. I've missed out on a whole FOUR DOLLARS since 2004. Oh man.

Searching for jobs be the worst. Everything requires an inordinate amount of previous experience. I was looking at a job for a high school assistant coach, but to qualify you needed three years assistant coaching at the high school or college level. D:

I should have done finance or accounting. But that's yawn-central. Or maybe computer programming. I should have at least taken some more classes so I'd understand SQL or whatever the hell else everyone expects applicants to know. Or I should have tried to take actuary tests. I guess I could still do that, but... I don't really want to.

It's too hot. It's hard to do anything but lay around all day in the basement. I've been watching this show called "The IT Crowd" and it's really funny. Two thumbs up.

Good news! The Tripod site (I'm TOO COOL for Angelfire) I constructed back in 2003 is still running! Thank god I went with those guys instead of Geocities which is closing later this year :( :( :(

I was so proud of myself for figuring out that embedded frame thing.

There's a vending machine on campus that sells Mountain Dew: Voltage AND takes debit cards.

This just might be my downfall.

Girl A: You guys, Michael Jackson's gonna die soon. I feel bad for him.
Girl B: You said...earlier you said you were gonna throw a party with us.
Girl A: I know, but I feel bad.
Girl B: OK, well you can feel bad for like FIVE minutes, but..

Girl A/B?: He looked in the mirror and caught cancer.

In their (meager) defense, they couldn't have been older than fifteen. Still.

This website is saving it.

Seriously, though, the preset formats on Word 07 are just annoying. It starts of with some ugly sans-serif font (and "I can't stand sans-serif fonts"), then 1.15 spacing. WTF. Plus, adding a space between paragraphs? Get out. I have to go back and fix all this before typing anything on the school computers, and it usually takes me about five times as long as it should because the dumb menu layout keeps all the options hidden. Blurgh.  :<

My phone number is the same as the Deja Vu in Tukwila, only with a different area code. I get really interesting misdirected calls. Today some girl called me and asked if I was hiring.

<.<
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#1 Copy and paste. Even though they should be close together because they're related. But all too often I copy text, then highlight some other text to replace it, then hit 'copy' again instead of 'paste' and then LOSE the first thing. AGH.

#2 Copy and Select All. This sucks when I carefully select only a portion of the text I want to copy, but then hit 'Select All' and all my hard work goes to waste. Yes. Scrolling around with the mouse is hard work.

3 Delete and Create Shortcut. Especially in a folder full of tons of files. For some reason about half the time I go to delete unwanted shortcuts, I screw up again and make more unwanted shortcuts to shortcuts ad infinitum. Loss of motor skills due to irritation?

#4 Create New Folder and Up One Level. In that little box when your trying to save a file from the internet or whatever...sometimes I'm cruising around to the folder I want and accidentally plant empty folders all over the place. So then I have to go delete them, but that just introduces the potential for situation #3.

Everyone be quiet about keyboard shortcuts. 'C' and 'V' are close to each other, too.

So, since everyone else abandoned their blogs in favor of twitter, I got one too. It actually seems a better format for updates, because usually I just have one sentence to say, but nothing to bolster it with to make it an appropriately long journal entry.

But here is one! (An appropriately long journal entry).

I've been sleeping a lot lately. 10+ hours on some nights. And part of the reason is because our house is SO COLD, and my bed is warm so I hate getting out. But I always set my alarm for about 8 hours of sleep, and then still feel tired when I wake up. Maybe I only need like 5-6 hours of sleep, because when I do that I feel okay, and 8 is too much. Or maybe...I've never really though that I would have Seasonal Affective Disorder, because I actually really like winter. Because there are no bees, and because I like snow, and I'm not all that of an outdoor-sy person so summer is not such a big deal for me. But maybe, my body and my mind are in disagreement, and my BODY is Seasonally Affected. Ugh. I hope not. Or something more like my emotions are Seasonally Affected, but the logical part of my mind isn't, and I think I'm more aware of that second part of my mind, so I've got SAD without realizing it? That sounds kinda silly. I watch too much anime.

Wikipedia says this, from the US Library of Medicine:
"...some people experience a serious mood change when the seasons change. They may sleep too much, have little energy, and crave sweets and starchy foods. They may also feel depressed. Though symptoms can be severe, they usually clear up." So that sounds kinda right. Lulz, they also talk about one solution: Light Therapy. That just reminds me of pet lizards.

Maybe, though, it's all because our house is just too cold and our internet service is spotty at best.

November 19 - Rune Factory 2: Fantasy Harvest Moon DS $29.99
November 24 - Chrono Trigger DS $39.99

I LOVE Harvest Moon, but Chrono Trigger's classic, but I've already played that one, and it's more expensive, but Harvest Moon doesn't really change from game to game but the new bachelorettes are so pretty UGH.

EDIT: Plus if you pre-order Rune Factory 2 on Amazon you get a "fabulous" stuffed SQUIRREL "complete with nut" geez that's awsome.

Plus there's a million more DS games I want.
( A list made as a reminder to myself )

What do people who don't play video games spend money on? (Sarcastic answer: the opposite sex :), HURR DURR, lol).

School got really hard while I wasn't looking.

THIS IS AWESOME.

There's a ton of better ways the world's resources could be used. But still, it's pretty cool.

Things that really bother me but I never remember about until they come up (except for just now):
#1 - How the computers at school always have Num Lock turned OFF whenever I use them.

Is this default? Or does everyone else turn off Num Lock for some reason?

Sometimes I think about how happy I am that I'm not sick, that my nose isn't stuffed up and my ears don't feel clogged up. It's rare to be reminded of that, though. It's kind of like the reverse of when you read something like "You are now manually blinking." Or, "You are now aware of your terrible posture." Those always get me.

Our house, while not in the greatest condition to begin with, has decided to suck WAY HARDER than ever in the past week or so:

-The fridge FINALLY died, which is actually more of a good thing because it was noisy as hell and falling apart inside. So the property managers have to replace it, but they haven't yet, so most of our food is in our neighbor's fridge. Net happiness = a little more than 0.

-One of our windows broke, which isn't really the house's fault, except that it probably wouldn't have broken were the windows here not super brittle and thin.

-Two of the steps on our back stairs were unsteady so we called to get them replaced. Then the repairman declared the entire staircase hazardous and warded it off with about 10 feet of bilingual caution tape on both the top and bottom.

-And then today I was trying to lock the front door and as I rotated the key it spun all the way around. Further investigation revealed that the front door would no longer lock from the outside. (It still worked from the inside, though). So now there's no way to leave the house locked and empty without RISKING MY LIFE on the apparently deadly back stairs. Other than locking the door from the inside and jumping off the back porch. But then there'd be no way back in. UGH.

But whatever.

My computer science class has a really generous late policy that I took way too much advantage of, so I've been programming random crap for the past four days, and it's driving me crazy because I don't naturally think computer-like. My other classes, too, have been tougher than they should have been because I was pretty sick about a third of the way through the quarter, and I've been playing catch-up ever since. Finals should be okay, though. And then just one year (three quarters) left of classes! Just five more math classes! WOOOOOO. No grad school plans in the works.