good ideas

i was actually planning on trying something very similar to this at whitworth, but i never got around to it. i wanted to start a white student union. i figured, if there can be a black student union, why not a white one? and a japanese one? and hell, while we're at it, why not one for all of the other minority groups represented by exchange students from halfway around the world? i think it's because, in my expereince at least, the regular old "student union" was good enough for them. why is it that blacks were the only ones who found it necessary to form their own student union? why is it that they seemed to have a harder time fitting in with everybody else than students from japan, vietnam, germany, france, tibet, scotland, and other foreign countries? maybe there's something here that i'm missing; maybe it's right out in the open, and i've just been overlooking it. but to me, this just doesn't seem to make sense.

Holla!

A DVD copy of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children now belongs to me. It also came with a bonus anime movie that explains what happened in the time between the game and the movie. Should be good.

i <3 ann coulter

wwrd?

a cause worth supporting

no pun intended.

hot stuff

so if you're ever looking for a good space-sim to play, this is it. x2: the threat is what freelancer should have been. i'm just getting started, but already i have many options open to me... assuming i can accumulate enough credits, that is. the game allows you to become a corporate mogul, buying and placing as many different production facilities as you want. if you start overproducing something, prices for that product will go down; not just in your area, but across the entire game universe. and if you get too successful, other groups may get jealous and start attacking your assets. again, given enough credits, you can build up a fleet big enough to take out an entire system. you can set your ships up to automatically trade for you, both within a certain area of space and within a specific price range. at any given point, as long as you're in the right sector, you can fly any one of the ships you own, from carriers to scouts to transports. and the space combat, from what i've seen so far, is not too shabby either.

there are a few odd bits. whether intentionally or not, it seems that the game was translated from japanese and that some things just didn't translate. for example, your character will occasionally be told to "wait just a mizura," or that someone has been looking for him for "trazuras." or they'll stick -sama on the end of his name. the names can be fairly interesting too... the first guy you get to talk to is named Ban Danna.

overall though, it looks like a great game. should give me something to counterbalance all the time i'll be spending on guild wars once i get that.

a good point

0% of polled Americans are in Iraq.

via say anything

wish me luck

i just got an email from the folks at jeopardy... i'm going to try out in seattle on november 4th. here's to hoping i can remember all the things i've picked so far, and maybe learning a few new ones before then.

--update--
that, and being able to beat the other folks to the buzzer... that was one of our biggest problems back in knowledge bowl.

finally, a legacy clinton actually earned

Chinese condoms named for Clinton and Lewinsky. NYT article here (free registration required), or you can read a short version at Say Anything.

wow, that was more impressive than i thought... i actually used capital letters.

well that was quick

via msnbc: north korea renegs

a home away from home... away from home?

or something like that. i just got back from visiting friends at whitworth this weekend, and it was fairly strange. every fall for the last 3 years, whitworth became my home (away from home). but now that i'm graduated, i'm having to adjust to not being back there. which could take some time. it was easy for me to fit back in there, but this week will seem strange now, and i probably won't see those friends again for another month at least.

the weekend itself, however, was very fun.

Friday
got to the campus friday night around 8:30. met pat, recruited herr schuldt and jason, and headed down to the catacombs, a pretty sweet bar/pub in downtown spokane (near the spaghetti factory), where we met mark stevens and dave brewster. had some beer and some potatoes, then headed back to pat's place to watch "final fantasy VII: advent children." that movie was amazing. it was a little hard to follow (but it's japanese, so that was to be expected), but the battle scenes will drop your jaw so far it'll take a week to get it back in place. got back to campus around 2, and crashed in ben's room.

Saturday
woke up way the hell too early, around 6... my body is way too used to getting up early for work. tossed and turned for awhile, finally gave up on sleep and got up about 8:45. ben and i headed to ihop for breakfast (because let's face it, once you've got saga to release it's hellish hold on your bowels, you never want it back there), and then back to the dorm to get started on the new fantasy trip. it was originally intended to have only 4 players, but mark (schuldt) is much nicer than i am, and let some more in. we played till around 12:30, and then andrew had to leave to pick up some stuff for cool whip (improv group on campus), so pat, mark, jason, emily, nick and i headed out to lunch at red robin. normally, i think red robin is overrated. but this time was different. both mark and i were wearing our whitworth college republicans t-shirts, and somebody besides us apparently liked them. when our waitress brought the bills, she said an anonymous customer had liked our shirts and paid for our meal. so, although the odds are very much against said anonymous person being a reader of my blog, i would like to give them my profuse thanks.
after lunch, we headed to a hobby shop and picked up some various flavors of munchkin, which is ridiculous in more ways than one. 2, at least, that i can think of off the top of my head: ridiculously fun and ridiculously funny. here are some examples of cards from the versions we had (munchkin, super munchkin, munchkin fu, and star munchkin). played a round of that, tripped some more, went to jack in the crack for dinner, tripped some more, then recruited briggs and hunter for some more munchkin, and then watched advent children again. and again, it was awesome and hard to follow. bed around 1:30.

Sunday
woke up around 7:30. gave up on sleep and read from about 8:30-11ish, finishing "deception point" by dan brown. went to brunch at saga... apparently, i am still a glutton for punishment. i blame briggs for that. spent most of the rest of my time there reading news and blogs online, while everybody else was working on homework. left campus about 3:15. stopped by the phonathon theme house to say hi, bye, and democrats suck to alison, then left for home. arrival at approximately 7:00. boredom ensued almost immediately.

so, now you know more than you ever wanted to know about my weekend. either that, or you were actually there for the whole thing, in which case you hopefully skipped reading this post, as it would be fairly redundant.

now there's a hot idea

ann coulter for supreme court justice! i like the way jay tea thinks.

my new job: photo captioning

probably not time to quit my actual new job yet, but i did manage an honorable mention in the wizbang weekend caption contest (that's me at #7).

what you probably won't hear about katrina in the msm

first, read this piece by paul, who was actually there. then read this one, pointed out by rob and others at say anything.

--update--
paul strikes again.

wow. just... wow.

well, this makes me feel a little better about our own government. not a lot. but a little.

who says nothing good ever came from france?

i do, usually. but that was before i saw her. shallow of me? probably. but that happens every now and then. now if only we could get rid of all those pansy french guys, it might be a pretty decent country.

alright!

good news (in my opinion) from the judicial front: the 4th circuit court of appeals has decided that the bush administration can continue to detain jose padilla. on a sort of side note, padilla lawyer sounds like a moron.

quote of the year

“Not only would we need American forces to fight against terrorism, we need some of them to frighten our neighbors and prevent them from interfering in our internal affairs.” -- Jalal Talabani, President of Iraq

w00t!

i am teh uber 1337! or something like that. i just got confirmation today that i'm getting hired at the bank for at least another year (i'm currently just seasonal help). the details won't be hammered out till next week, but it's going to include the full package; or, at the very least, the fullest one i've had yet, including medical, dental, and vision coverage, as well as more money than i'm making now. life is good.

on a complete side note, gaim doesn't seem to be liking msn messenger, and won't log on to that account for me. anybody else having problems with this?

now there's an idea

i personally think jay tea is being overly generous, but that's just me. and who knows, it might even work. which means that it will probably never actually be tried. if bush recommends it, all the democrats will automatically say no, and the republicans in congress seem more worried about staying popular and getting reelected than about actually getting something done in the country. between those two groups, any idea that i see as a good one is bound to get shot down.

where not to shop

i don't normally like using caps, but i think this is worth it.

DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, SHOP AT GAMESTOP.COM. THEY HAVE INCREDIBLY BAD SERVICE.

i pre-ordered dungeon siege 2 from them on august 5th. the game came out on the 16th. immediately, they put a note up that said it was back ordered. i kept checking in over the next few weeks, and it alternately said under status that the game was "backordered" or "usually ships within 24 hours." i finally gave up yesterday, and sent them an email saying that if i had not recieved my copy of the game within the week, i would be cancelling my order and telling people not to shop there. earlier today, i received a reply:

Dear Customer,
Thank you for writing to us at GameStop.com
Per your request, we have cancelled your order. We value your business and hope to see you again soon at GameStop.com.

Best regards,

Castle

since they cancelled the order, i'm assuming that they felt unable to meet my very reasonable request, and that if you check back on friday, the game will still probably be backordered.

and so, in closing: GAMESTOP.COM SUCKS. that is all.

western washington: where you can't see the forest for the tree-huggers

the title doesn't really go with the post--at least not directly--but i still thought it would be good to put it out there. anyways, my roommate from last year sent me this video, but conveniently forgot to send me a link. luckily, i have another friend who are on top of things. and unlike that other friend, i do mean offense. because if i haven't pissed off a liberal, my day feels somehow incomplete.

hooray! i think

so after about 7 hours of work and way more problems than i anticipated, i finally got my new compy up and running. i'm still having problems with some of the stuff i moved over from the old one, but i can worry about that later. for now, i'm glad to be back to having a good computer.

down time

i'm temporarily out of commission... should have my new computer up sometime later tonight, and everything should be back to normal. only it'll be a much better version of normal.

those crazy UPS folk

so now, they're shipping my GPU past my house again. as we speak, it is on it's way from spokane to wenatchee, which is on the seattle side of my house. it is getting closer, though. after this--just for good measure, of course--they'll probably send it back across to coulee city, then to orondo, then to douglas, and finally to my house. but as long as it actually arrives today, i really don't care.