New Years Eve Tribulations

It's that time of year again where people reflect upon the year and drink extraneous amounts of alcohol promptly before, during and after making ill-advised decisions. Theoretically this should be my favorite holiday, seeing as how it's the one day of the year when nearly everyone is partying in some form and alcohol is involved. The past two were not so much fun. Two years ago I got too drunk, too quickly. Last year I was dead sober and ended up taking care of people. So...this year I plan to be somewhere between the two extremes.

The problem with picking a New Years destination is that there are a myriad of parties to attend but only so much time to spend. There are more than half a dozen parties that I've been invited to, but once I drink I'm stuck in one place (don't drink and drive kids, you'll die). I'm still not sure where I'll end up going tonight but I do know that Evan and I will be alcohol-shopping after I leave the dead zone (work).

Maybe I'll find someone to kiss at midnight. Someone that isn't a man, a dog or an 800 pound sumo-wrestler. I'm not an optimist, but I'm too damn stubborn to be a cynic.

Hodge Out

Walking Naked Down The Corridor

So...my boss said last week that no one would be at the office today and I should take off (my vacation time permitting). When he said that I didn't believe that the entire building would be abandoned. As in, there's absolutely no one in the hallway and I could walk naked down the hall without fear. As it stands I'm considering a nap, although the idea of being caught makes me shiver a bit. I've already checked all my usual procrastination sites but now I'm bored and sleepy, a deadly combination. What should our hero do? Take a nap or play some flash games till around 3 pm? Only time will tell.

Hodge Out

Loot and Booty

Christmas (for my family) can generally be summed up in 3 words: food, family and loot. Religion really isn't in the equation. No one in my family is all that religious except for my dear Baptist grandmother. She was the stereotypical grandma who gave me a book at high school graduation entitled, "Bible Quotations for College Students" at which point I gave a fake smile and thanked her. My father (like his father before him) never spoke of religion and I believe them both to be agnostics or possibly deists. This is getting beyond the point...Christmas...yeah...

Beyond the usual chatter and consumption, I generally receive quite an impressive array of loot. This year's list goes as follows:
- 320 gb external hard drive - Needed for the ridiculous amount of music/videos/photos and whatever else I have stored these days.
- Canon SD1000 camera - I love these little SD series cameras. The odds are 3/5 that I'll drop this camera in the next month, it's a slick mofo.
- "The Office" calendar
- Disaronno with a glass set - my Mother wishes for me to become either an alcoholic or a full-blooded Catholic
- "I Am America And So Can You" - Stephen Colbert
- Various shirts and gift cards/cash

I really didn't "need" or "want" much this year. With my new job I've been able to buy all the tech trinkets that I had desired up till now. Meaning the $1000 computer (worthwhile) and the DSLR camera that I really shouldn't have bought considering how little I use it.

The only thing I didn't get was a big 'ole smooch and some brandy. With New Years coming up I'm sure lady luck will swing my way eventually.

Hodge Out

Christmas Eve

So bored right now. Just watched "The Last Legion" and I'm almost done with "Blade Runner". Not much else to do since most places are closed. Oh yeah, and never watch The Last Legion because it's quite terrible. That's usually what you get when you let the child actor have too many poorly-written lines.

Beyond that I've been playing some computer games and waiting for the annual Christmas Eve dinner with my family.

Hope you all are enjoying the holidays.

Hodge Out

Abandoned

I'm beginning to wonder why I'm even "working" today. The halls are desolate, only a few people bothered to show up to today. I'm sure no one is getting anything done, I have yet to do anything productive besides calling IT to try and get one of our Access macros to work. Played a few rounds of chess, oh yeah, I'm decent again. Running out of websites to visit though, which means boredom will ensue shortly.

I did decide to finish my music video power hour last night. It was kind of silly to have a half-completed video project so I threw in some of my recently downloaded vids and I must say that I think this will be better than the last few power hours I've created. I tried to mix up the genres a bit, although country was shunned per personal prejudices. I put in some MC Hammer so the masses could enjoy some "Hammer Time", hah.

I believe Dave is having a little shindig at his abode tonight.
Trips to bars will occur I'm certain.
I wonder what we're truly looking for as we wander from bar to bar...

Semper Fi,
Carry on,
Le Hodge

Burn

I got my 400 disc cd holder yesterday in the mail. It's huge but my dvd collection is growing at an exponential rate. I actually need to go buy blank dvds because I burned through that 50 pack I had sitting on my desk. Insane.

Forget Christmas, New Years approaches. I wonder where I'll be...I'm 21 now so I have more "opportunities". Can't remember the last time I had a truly awesome New Years, the last 2 were both miserable for various reasons. At the start of 2006 I drank far too much and in 2007 I drank too little because of those I had to babysit due to their drunkenness. Perhaps this year will be different?

The weekend approaches and everyone should be in town right about now. That means reunions and the like. I always enjoy seeing old friends, but I miss the times of old and that leaves an unsavory aftertaste. To be God would be to control time.

Hodge Out

Guns or Butter

I think that watching all these zombie movies is driving me to feel a need for a gun of some kind. You know, in case zombies/aliens/the chinese invade I'll be needing some kind of firearm to protect myself. It could also be fun to shoot targets every now and again. Maybe a Beretta or some kind of rifle? On the other side of the coin, I could use such money for a laptop instead. Hm...

Went to BW3s last night with Bert and Derek. UK is playing like absolute shit this year. Hopefully Gillespie can whip into a decent team next year. It's painful to even watch them play.

It's kind of ridiculous how Christmas has become such an impulsvie glorification of rampant consumerism. Even as a non-Christian I am forced to buy gifts since not doing so would be unacceptable considering that I will be receiving gifts. I support the idea of showing generosity and love but I think this idea should be carried throughout the year. Perhaps Christians think that by being generous during this period every year they can atone for their sins and stingy nature?

I swear if Huckabee wins the election I might lose any faith I had left in the American public. Separation of church and state? What's that?

Hodge Out

It's nice to be alive on 9 hours of sleep

I went to bed at around 7:30 last night and watched tv till 9 when I fell asleep. Adjusting to the weekly sleep schedule after a weekend of partying is difficult for me, but right now I feel vividly awake due to much-needed rest.

I tried to watch "Resident Evil: Extinction" but I must say that it's one of the worst movies I have ever seen in my life. I love zombie movies and I enjoyed the previous 2 movies in the saga when few others did but this movie was so bad that I turned it off. That's right, I turned it off about 40 minutes in and put a different movie in the dvd player. What went wrong during production?

Also downloaded "Final Fantasy 7: Advent Children". Was this released straight to dvd in the US or not even that? I knew that a Final Fantasy movie came out several years ago but this one is different. It has some of the typical awkward english translations at times from the brief browsing I did, but the visuals were impressive. I'll probably watch it soon.

I've downloaded so many movies that my computer is working overtime to convert the files into the proper format and burn them to dvds. I won't rest till they're all done, at which point I have several projects to work on.
Media projects: (By priority)
- DL's website - On pain of death.
- Power hour - It's halfway done and now I have a decent amount of new music videos to choose from.
- Audio mixing - I have the programs and a few ideas but I haven't spent the time to sit down and get started.

I'm about halfway done with Benjamin Franklin's autobiography. Which means I need to buy a copy of Thomas Jefferson's autobiography so I have something to read at work.

Hey yaaaaa...
Hodge Out

Downloading Spree

With my newfound stable internet connection I have downloaded more movies than I could actually watch this week. I can't remember a third of what I downloaded but the list includes:
- 1408
- Resident Evil: Extinction
- Heroes: Season 2
- Live Free or Die Hard
- Final Fantasy
- Blades of Glory
- Balls of Fury
- The Golden Compass
- Blade Runner

Additional music additions (suggested by Marco):
- Massive Attack
- Daft Punk
- The Chemical Brothers
- Various top 20 techno collections

I'm such a master pirate.

Sidenote: I think I'm going to upgrade Flanagan's to my #1 bar in Louisville for the time being. I've had a lot better experiences there in comparison to Molly's. The beer selection also impresses me quite a bit. I made a little progress on my beer card but I still have a ridiculous amount to go.

Hodge Out

Torrentz, FTW

American Gladiators is coming back?!? What will it be like without the mullets and 80's attire? I used to worship this show when I was little.
http://www.nbc.com/American_Gladiators/bios/

Good news: Yesterday my Dad bought a new modem for our house. We had the incredibly annoying problem of losing our internet connection whenever we tried to torrent anything. Now I can download at >600 kb/s and the connection never dies. I downloaded 3 or 4 audio editing softwares in about 2 hours (Adobe Audition, Sony Forge, etc). Also downloading some audio "starter packs" which I assume will help me on my quest to start mixing a little bit. I was also near completion on an "Internet power hour" which is a compilation of all the viral net videos that you see every once in a while on the news. I'm guessing Star Wars Kid and the like are on there. Can't wait to watch it.

Hodge Out

"Our opinions are not in our power..."

I might try to do some music editing/remixing at some point this week/weekend. Just asked Marco for some resource suggestions...I suppose I'll just google and torrent the needed files when I get home. Listening to thesixtyone at work makes me want to give it a try.

I was reading the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin during lunch and came across an interesting statement he wrote when discussing his son who joined the Loyalists during the American Revolution, "We are men, all subject to errors. Our opinions are not in our power, they are form'd and govern'd much by circumstances that are often as inexplicable as they are irresistable." This could be applied to any number of issues including religion and political stances. I'm quite impressed with Franklin's wit, but I was unaware that he tried very hard to keep the peace between America and Britain for so long, right up to ~1775. That is, until Britain insulted the Americans a couple of times and burned and pillaged a few small towns.

I'm going to try my best to do some photography this weekend as well. If I get some good shots I'll post them as needed.

Hodge Out

Father-Son Duos, FTW

I've been able to play Day of Defeat with my Dad on several occassions now, including last night. It's kinda funny in a way. Bonding over an online WWII first-person-shooter is a trademark of the newest generation. There's nothing like covering your Dad with machine gun fire and killing Nazis while he runs up to capture a flag. The use of the mic makes it even more interesting, because I can be like, "Dad, there's two up in the church tower." And then we can do the father-son duo to clear it. We're so 1337. I bought him a DOD shirt off Cafepress, I'm sure he'll like it considering how much he plays that game.

Sidenote: I ate Wick's pizza last night for dinner, I'll be eating Wick's leftovers for lunch, and I intend on going to Wick's tonight for all-you-can-eat-for-$10 night. It's a good thing I never get tired of pizza.

Hodge Out

Finally, a decent music source...until it gets squashed

Once again I was browsing Lifehacker this morning and stumbled upon an excellent source of new music. More importantly, my office hasn't blocked the site...yet. They seem to hate streaming music, but this site is new. (http://www.thesixtyone.com) I'm sure they'll find it if it gets popular enough. In any case, it has several genres of music and you can "bump" music if you like it. Lots of non-mainstream content of up-and-coming artists. The cool thing is, if you bump it (and bet points) while it's new and more people bump it then you get points and level-ups. Dunno what you can do with these points at this point but it's a neat idea. You would like this site DL/Marco, lots of electronica and mixes.

Beyond that, today is the last day of the semester. I have to turn in my management operations take-home final (which is only 85% done right now) and then I'm relatively free (besides work). I've decided to collect all my philosophical ramblings that I made in class when bored as well as past blog entries in a binder. Maybe I'll be famous one day (like Benjamin Franklin, who wrote a ton of letters as I now know) and someone will actually want to have an idea of what I was thinking at the time. More likely, I'll look back in a few years and observe the evolution of my own mind as I got older.

Projects for winter break:
- Design a website
- Make my next music video power hour
- Downlaod as many videos as possible and make a bigger pirate collection
- Play lots and lots of Halflife 2 mods. That means you Day of Defeat.
- Do a winter nature photography shoot

Time to flee. There's work to be done. Le sigh.
Hodge Out

My Own Domain

So I just read an article on lifehacker and I didn't realize how cheap it can be to buy your own domain name. Like, $5.99 cheap for a .com site. This brings up two questions:

1) What would I put on a website if I had one?
2) What domain name would I buy?

Content...I could host some files like pictures, videos and such for when I'm not at home. But beyond that I'm not sure what kind of content I'd be able to provide. It could be my primary blogging site and so forth...ideas?

As for the domain name, I'm thinking about switching screen names again. Something to do with "entropy" perhaps? I love that word.

Entropy - "Inevitable and steady deterioration of a system or society"

If it rhymes then all the better. I need to ask Deale about web design and hosting, I'm sure he knows more about it than I do at this point. There are a couple sites that host web files for free I'm sure.

Musing as always,
Hodge Out

A Greater Burden

Now that the other co-op is gone I find it ironic that my Overlords have decided to throw every assignment possible in my general direction. I almost think that they're trying to overload me just to test me. At least I don't have time to be bored.

Finance final today after work. Guess who procrastinated and didn't study all that much? That would be me. I'm probably not going to do all that well in that class but I find it rather boring material. I think I'm starting to burn out on this college deal. Come July I'll be ready for an extended break from such matters. Graduation, FTW.

Current music addiction:
Thrice - The "Vheissu" album. It was underappreciated until I actually took the time to listen to every song. The contrast of soft and metal-thrasing melodies is well-done.

I really need to stop looking for online deals at Amazon and eBay. I have no idea what I'll be getting for Christmas and thus it wouldn't be wise to keep buying things. I've been trying to get a Super Nintendo and an N64 just so I can play the games of old. I intend on assembling a console collection, even though it might make more financial sense to just get an emulator online.

No more time to waste.

Hodge Out

Onward, upward and the spiral downward

Site was updated as I promised. Made a neato photoshop design of the blog title. Playing with photo effects is fun to do, you feel like an artist because you never really know how it's going to turn out.

Today's To-Dos:
- Gym after work.
- Finish my co-op evaluation so I get course credit. Otherwise I just wasted 6 hours of credits.
- Look over Deale's site. I saved it somewhere...I'll have to find it when I get home.
- Find something to do tonight.


It's the other co-op's last day of work. I'm getting all kinds of shit shoveled my way. Last minute task transfers and the like. At least we're getting taken out to lunch by the bosses that be.

I was wondering about the state of religious preferences in America this morning and I decided to look up some charts. Interesting stuff. You can view the charts using the link below. It doesn't show up well in the blog.

By statistics it shows that America is becoming a nation of increasingly non-religious folk. Non-religious populations rose from 8% to around 15% between 1990 and 2001. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_United_States)
I wonder if America will ever become the secular masterpiece that some of it's Founding Fathers envisioned.


Hodge Out

Crashing...we're going down

The sugar has done all it can and now I'm crashing. Sitting here mindlessly wandering the net till I can go home in about 10 minutes. Really out of it, I'll have the luxury of a nap when I get home.

I redesigned the template a little bit for this site and I'll probably make a banner. Let me know what you all think...trying to make it easy to read. I adjusted the settings so anyone can post comments now. I know several of you are too lazy to sign up for an account and I don't blame you.

Ethical wondering of the moment:
Is it really "wrong" to "steal" music via downloading? I'm guilty is this and do it regularly but I don't feel bad about it. I think it's the notion that the people who are mad about people downloading are deemed as rich and they don't need the additional music sales. One thing is for sure, they aren't going to be able to charge $20 for a cd loaded with crap. They really need to figure out how to reach consumers instead of suing every college kid and hoping that fear will drive people away from downloading.

Hodge Out

Only caffeine can save you now...

So I went out last night as predicted. Brendan's was actually a nice little Irish bar with a decent dance floor. Nothing spectacular but there was good company. Emily ended up getting trashed as is expected for your 21st birthday. The funny part is that she had been going to the bar frequently using her fake ID.

I had a few Woodchucks...did a few jigs...didn't leave till much later than I would have liked but I was enjoying myself. Going to work on 2 hours of sleep is weird. I feel half-asleep and half-awake for a somewhat surreal effect. As long as I keep guzzling down this orange juice I'll be ok for a bit. And I get to leave at 1 today, I vote for a nap.

As for what I do at work, that really isn't all that important right now. I do feel like providing you all a list of the websites that I go to on a constant basis during the workday in order to ease my boredom.

www.lifehacker.com - Usually a list of links and interesting tech-related articles that will teach you something or offer "hacks" for normal everyday life.
www.fark.com - Witty submitter headlines + Actual news articles = Fun for hours.
www.arstechnica.com - Tech related articles
Yahoo Fantasy League - I'm in 3rd place in NFL fantasy league, w00t!
Livejournal - Blogging, etc.
School email
www.cnn.com
www.newegg.com - I can't resist looking for tech deals even when I'm broke

My boss is coming. I must flee into the night.

Hodge Out

New Beginnings

I have no idea why I would start another blog but the design looks neat and I may use this account for a purpose. Maybe a place to start posting videos/pics? I don't really know at this point. So it goes.

I've actually been busy at work today, very unlike the usual pace. The other co-op is departing GE on Friday so I'm getting his entire workload. Joy. I never realized how many tasks he was actually responsible for, but I'll make do, especially considering I was actually bored with my job before this. Now I get to track an endless array of price repositions and such.

Tonight I'll be going out to a chica's 21st birthday party across town. I'm sure I'll hate myself at 6 am when I have to go to work. Such is life, and I need not remind you that we only live once. In fact, that has become one of my mantras or codes to live by. It has become obvious that we can die at any moment, and that most of us do not take as many chances as we should. Even so, I tend to be fairly reserved in social situations and I'll never be the guy that go infiltrate a flock of girls and pick up numbers. I read somewhere that you're more likely to meet the person you marry through your profession or school anyway. So it goes.

It seems as if I become more pessimistic the longer I am out of a relationship. My mind wanders and I try to figure out why this is the case. What do we get out of a relationship the makes us complacent? If I were to reference Maslow I would say it's the feelings of worth, social acceptance and sex that contribute to our overall mental health. I feel that Maslow was missing something though, seeing as how humans don't jump at the chance to get into a relationship with any person that comes along the way. It's not like I haven't had a shot with a certain number of people, but if a person only seems like an "option" then I find that this person probably isn't the one you're looking for (Queue Ben Kenobi voice). It's when you feel a "need" or an unpassing desire to date someone that such roads should be taken. Or perhaps we should take a lot of chances since our life-partner may not be apparent? The questions are endless.

I'd better stop before I exhaust an entire week's worth of content. If enough people read this I may continue. Perhaps this will be a place for my ramblings...

Hodge Out