Waiting Tables and Playing Games

July! I can’t believe it’s already July. A guess quite a bit has been going on, so I’ll elaborate a bit on how my summer has been going thus far.

Mallory and myself got jobs at Carrabba’s, a nice Italian restaurant chain that happens to be only a few miles away. Being a waiter was something I really didn’t have in mind, but it’s work and pays well. Training was a week long and was pretty brutal, but now that I’m doing things myself I’m much more comfortable with it. We got the jobs shortly after getting back from Savannah, so we’ve just been working, mostly.

Aside from working, we play games. I had ordered Pokémon Leaf Green and Fire Red from eBay and I put a few hours into Leaf Green so far. I also bought The Sims 3, which we’ve probably put more time into than anything else (well, at least Mallory has). We even took the time to recreate my house, which came out surprisingly accurate. If you haven’t played Sims 3, you really owe it to yourself to pick it up since it’s a huge jump up from the previous two installments.

Mal and myself also played through Gears of War (I had beaten it before, but we were looking for good co-op games to play), finishing it last night. We’re probably going to start on the Halo series soon so she can see what all the fuss is about.

We both ordered DS flashcarts (for those looking to order one, get the AceKard 2.1, it’s easy and awesome) with 8gb memory cards each (they’ll hold approximately 100 DS games). We decided to try out Phoenix Wright and we love it. I finally see why everyone raves about the series: it’s really good. I also tried out a bunch of other games I’ve been curious about. I had tried GTA: Chinatown Wars when Alex had it a few months ago but didn’t play it enough to really get into it, but now that I’ve put 10+ hours into it, I realize that it should really be respected as a full-blown GTA title. If I were to recommend a game on DS to folks, it’d probably be GTA.

And! Because Chrono Trigger is on the DS, I decided to finally play what is frequently referred to as one of the best RPGs of all time. I’m a few hours into it and I already see why it’s earned the title. I’m very impressed with the game thus far, and look forward to putting more time into it.

After a month of being too busy to do a new Ninten Speaks episode, I finally got around to filming one today. Then I went to the computer to open Final Cut and… no go. Apparently the update to 10.5.7 on my Hackintosh made Final Cut decide to not work. *sigh* I’m currently trying to figure out how to resolve this problem so I can get this episode up in time for the 4th of July. I’ve got Premiere Pro, yes, but my camera is weird and requires certain things be done for it to work. Whether or not it’s even possible in Premiere is yet to be answered, but I’m not willing to give up on Final Cut… it’s my baby :’(

That’s about all that’s been going on as of late. Like I stated in the title, I’m waiting tables and playing games. I’ll be sure to keep you updated on which games I’m playing as they change. And hey, who knows, maybe something exciting will happen. We’ll see.

Hello Summer

It’s been quite a while since I bothered to update the internet with my life, so perhaps it’s time I did so.

School is done, finished. The last week was absolutely crazy and I thought I would die, but I finished it. The last big thing to do was the final video for my Lighting and Field class, which I titled Burger Fever. Not my best work by any means, but it was definitely fun to do (if not a little gross and/or disturbing). I got my grades for classes just recently and I managed two B’s and one A (in Psychology). I actually don’t know how I managed that one, since looking at the grades shows that I should’ve gotten a B, but I’m not going to question it. Sophomore year is finished: two years down, two to go.

On Sunday, Mallory and her roommate Hayley arrived after a 23 hour drive spanning 3 days. Needless to say, they were happy to get out of the car. The three of us did a lot and had quite a bit of fun in the few days Hayley was here, but you can read more about that on Mallory’s blog. As her post states, we’re currently in Savannah, and leaving in the morning to head back to SC. It’s been a nice little getaway, but it’s time to get back to reality and find summer jobs. Having her with me all summer will be nice, but definitely a little different. We both feel like it’s needed, though. Here’s to a wonderful summer with a wonderful girl—and many, many more awesome friends.

An Unexpected Passing

This morning, around 4am, my grandfather woke up and went to get his paper like he always does. He takes a flashlight and walks outside since it’s dark. This particular morning was different.

My grandfather was found several hours later on his kitchen floor, flashlight lying nearby. As of right now, the cause of death is uncertain, but they suspect it was a heart attack.

8 months earlier, in August, my grandfather had a brush with death when he fell asleep at the wheel of his pickup truck and went over a bank. The truck flipped numerous times and was completely mangled: the paramedics have no idea how he survived. He had to spend a few weeks in the hospital from all the broken bones, and once he got out he was often in a lot of pain.

The last time I actually saw my grandfather was even before that, back in June. After getting back from seeing Mal for the first time, my other grandfather had passed away (yes, I lost both of my grandfathers less than a year apart) and we were up in West Virginia for the funeral. That was the last time I saw him, and it’s been almost a year ago. I had spoken to him on the phone when I was on my way back to school for this quarter, near the last week of March.

My grandmother (his wife) passed away in her 50s, and I was only 3 at the time. It’s been 17 years that he’s lived alone. For a few years he had a cat named Candy, but after she died he decided not to get another pet. A few years after my grandma died a special woman came into his life named Marty. My grandfather was an incredible guitar player and loved gospel and country music, and would always go out singing and playing with his wife (and before my mom and her brother left home, them as well). When his wife died he didn’t even pick up his guitar for a year, but eventually he got on it again. When he met Marty, a vocalist, they began to play together and formed a wonderful bond between them. It wasn’t a romantic love, as he had made it perfectly clear he didn’t want to be remarried. It was more of a companionship, and it made life so much easier on my grandfather.

Marty knocked on his door this morning and got no answer. Tried calling, but nothing. She went down to his sister’s house and got the key, and the two of them went in to find him dead on the floor. I can’t begin to imagine the shock and pain that Marty had to have gone through.

I found out today around 6pm or so. I had just finished eating dinner and was on Skype with Mal. SCAD, being the wonderful school they are, had messed up their internet, and Skype was all that worked (no browser stuff). I saw that I had a call from my dad, so I picked up the phone. I could immediately hear my mother screaming in the background.

I was in complete disbelief. There was no sign that anything was wrong. He had been sick for the past two weeks with flu symptoms, but had been doing alright all things considered. Mom even said she talked to him just the night before. This all came very suddenly for everyone, and I can’t imagine what my mom is going through.

Strangely enough, early that morning (while I was still in bed) I received a call from my dad. He told me that mom was at work and suddenly got really sick with a feeling that something was wrong. She told him to call me and see how I was doing. I was fine, little did any of us know that the weird feeling she had was toward her dad.

My dad’s father passed away last June after a long battle with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, but the passing of my mom’s father was completely unexpected. As I type this I’m still in disbelief that he’s actually gone. My grandfather loved a few things in life. He loved his family, he loved Jesus, and he loved music. He always wanted a guitar player in the family, but he couldn’t get that. My uncle played drums, and my mom played piano. When I was born, he was determined to make a guitar player out of me. For my second birthday he bought me a electric Peavey guitar, full-size (so I couldn’t even hold the thing for years). When I became a teenager I decided to start taking guitar lessons. My grandfather’s dream came true. I took lessons for five years and even played electric lead in a band, too. I can still remember when my grandfather would come to visit that we’d both sit down and play guitar together.

He lived in Maryland, and I lived in South Carolina. In my entire life I’ve probably seen him less than 100 times, and yet I mimicked much of his personality. My mother was always impressed at how closely I resembled her father in personality and humor when I saw him so little throughout the year. I had his ornery nature, and the times I was exposed to him I found that it only helped it grow even more.

His passing came too soon. I miss him dearly already, but I’m upset because I wanted him to meet Mallory. He always asked about her when I talked to him and said he wanted to meet her. Mallory is spending the summer with me and our family was going to visit him in Maryland so they could meet. I didn’t want his approval, because I know Mallory, and I know he would’ve approved. I just wanted them to meet, for him to look at her and say “she’s a good one, don’t let her get away”.

It’s also come at a bad time. This quarter is the busiest I’ve ever had, and every weekend finds me so busy I can barely finish my work. I’ve even had to decline attending one of my best friend’s weddings so I don’t risk failing any classes. But now I have to catch a flight tomorrow evening and return in the middle of next week, after things are due. I’ve emailed and called the dean of students but I haven’t gotten a reply yet.

I’m anxious to see people my grandfather knew. That’s one thing I remember most about my dad’s father’s funeral: I met a ton of interesting people. I heard stories I had never heard before. I can’t lie, I was never anywhere near as attached to my dad’s dad than my mom’s dad. Wesley was a great man, but often forgot my name, and always felt distant. Jim, on the other hand, knew who I was, and everything about me. When he would come to visit, he would ask about relevant things because he knew what was going on in my life. He was so proud of me, and always made it very obvious. I loved my grandfather dearly, and I’ll miss him just as much.

Pap, I’m sorry it had been a year since I saw you. This has taught me to always try and make time to see the ones you love, since you are never guaranteed tomorrow. I had so much left to learn from you, so many questions I wanted to ask, but now I’ll have to save them for another time. I know you’re happy—you’ve missed Darlene for 17 years, and now you finally get to hold her again. If only we could be as happy as you. We’ll join you one day soon, you can be sure of that, but until then, we sure do miss you down here. I’d give anything in the world to hear you play a guitar one more time. I’m glad you left a legacy of recordings for us to listen to, but it’ll never be the same as hearing you play live. I know that wreck you had really messed you up, and I’m sorry I didn’t get to see you after you had it. I’m just glad you’re better now: you’re probably jumping around feeling better than you have in years. We’ll meet again real soon, Pap. Hold an extra guitar for me in heaven—I want to play together again.

I love you and miss you.
Stephen

Wildfire

melcat:

In case anyone hasn’t heard on the news North Myrtle Beach has had a wildfire on the residential side of the waterway since wednesday night.  The fire is about 50% contained the wind off the ocean is supposed to pick up this afternoon and possibly spread it further towards the north east, towards Stephen’s house.

(as of 11:30 a.m.)

Preliminary damage estimate: $8,290,000

Percentage of fire contained: 50

Acres of land burned: 19,600

Homes destroyed: 69

Homes damaged: 100

Injuries: 0

People evacuated: 2,500

Wind speed this afternoon: 15 to 25 miles per hour

http://www.thesunnews.com/news/local/story/872218.html

Stephen lives between Brooksville and Stephens Crossroads on that map.

The night that the lights went out in Georgia

Good lord, crazy stuff just happened.

I was over in Hamilton Hall, SCAD’s film building, because I had to capture the project I had shot this past weekend (you shoot on tape then you capture it with a tape deck to turn it into editable digital footage). It was about 9pm or so and a deck had just opened up so I began capturing my footage. About 5 minutes into the process, it started raining: hard. Everyone was like “what?” Soon after, water started pouring into the room through the ceiling. There was a huge leak and it was going all over one of the computers. I pulled out my phone to take a picture and as I pressed the button all of the lights went out.

“Crap.” I figured the generators would come on and we’d be back in business… but nothing. The staff came around and told us we should leave, there were no generators (apparently there’s just too much equipment there and there’s no way of powering everything). I had to leave Hamilton… with my tape still in the deck. I talked with a staff member and they told me they’d have my tape there tomorrow, but if someone takes it, I’m screwed: that’s 100% of my raw footage, without it there’s no proof I ever did the assignment.

I ran outside through the pouring (read: pouring) rain and waded through water already up to my ankles to jump into my vehicle (keep in mind that I also have my 500gb external hdd in a bag: hopefully it didn’t get wet). I close the door and start up the car, and dial Mallory on the phone to tell her how crazy this all was.

At least I thought it was crazy. When I pulled out of the Hamilton Hall parking lot, there were garbage cans everywhere, apparently the wind blew them into the street. After I dodged all of them I turned right onto MLK and realized this wasn’t any ordinary storm. All of the traffic lights were out as far as I could see. There were ambulances, police and fire trucks everywhere. And needless to say, there were wrecked cars all over the sides of the street. When the stoplights went out people apparently ran into each other, and lord only knows how many deaths happened tonight because of it.

I drove home very, very slowly with mostly straightaways (one left turn, and that was the hardest turn I’ve ever had: no one knew who should go). The water was halfway up my tires for much of the trip. I pulled into the dorm and realized that nowhere in the city had power: the entire city of Savannah lost power tonight. It was truly something out of a horror movie. People were just outside of their dorms, confused. Projects obviously had to be put on hold since it’s impossible to work without electricity: you need either light to see or a computer to work with.

We talked to some folks and decided to go out to the car to listen to the radio and get some news. On our way out to the vehicle the power of the dorms came back all at once—and everywhere else, too. Looking down the street, it seems like the stoplights are functioning as well. We went back to the room and I checked my computer, everything’s working fine. Hamilton closes in an hour, though, and I have no desire to go back out tonight. Too much adventure for me.

So that’s the story of the night that the lights went out in Georgia. I’ve still gotta work on a Life Drawing project for the morning, and I have an entire midterm to edit tomorrow (amidst going to two classes)—and I hope that the tape is still there. Might be hard to explain to my professor that it was in the deck when the power went out and someone never turned it in…

I built a Mac

For those uninformed, I spent the last month or so planning my hardware configuration for building a Mac. The correct term is ‘hackintosh’, and it refers to particular hardware configurations (along with certain software hacks) that allow you to successfully install Mac OS X onto ‘normal’ PC parts (which are what Macs are built with anyway—when you pay those high Mac prices, you’re actually paying for the logo). There are actual hacked versions of OS X that you can download, but I wanted to stay as official as possible (and support Apple in the process), so I purchased a brand new copy of Leopard to install. It was a long involved process to get everything working, but you’re still reading, so let’s begin, shall we?

People have had luck getting their current configurations running Leopard, but it works best if you purchase a preconfigured setup that’s guaranteed, so I did just that. For those that are interested, here’s my parts list.

• Gigabyte Intel X58 Motherboard
• 6GB Corsair Dominator DDR3 RAM
• Intel Core i7 920 2.66GHz Quad-core Processor
• GeForce 9800GTX 512mb Video Card
• Corsair 750w Power Supply
• Western Digital 500gb HDD 7,200RPM (x2)
• Lite-On SATA 22x DVD Burner
• Cooler Master Centurion Case

Those are the essentials, but for the record I also bought this stuff as well:

• Logitech LX3 Tilt Wheel Mouse
• Apple Aluminum Keyboard
• Retail Copy of Mac OS X Leopard
• Acer 19” Monitor

Essentially if you bought all that same stuff you could build a Mac. It’s a nightmare, though. Getting it to work is the most rewarding feeling in the world. Let’s take a look at what a few days of my life were like.

After the stuff came in from newegg.com (really quickly, I might add: I ordered Tuesday evening and I was picking it up on Friday afternoon) the first step was to put it all together. This was cake in comparison to the actual installation of Mac OS X, but even so, it was my first time building a complete PC (I’ve only ever replaced individual parts), so I had my knowledgeable roommate Alex help me out.

You’re probably interested in seeing some images of the actual computer and parts, so check out this Flickr set, which has a ton of images to look at while you read through this.

Building it went pretty smoothly with the only hitch being the fact we put the RAM in the wrong slots (apparently depending on how many sticks you have they have to be put in a certain order). After we moved them all over one spot, the computer booted up. DISK BOOT FAILURE—never have I been so happy to see those words in all my life. At this point a Windows user would have it easy: just pop in the installation disc of XP, Vista, or 7 and away you go. But no, no, I have to be a Mac user. So begins the complicated journey of installing Leopard on a PC.

PCs and Macs are made with the same parts, but Macs are very funny. Motherboards have a BIOS that boots before the operating system, but they’re not formatted for Mac: Apple doesn’t use BIOS. This is the main obstacle in installing OS X (well, that and hardware compatibility): if you insert the installation disc into a system that boots the BIOS, it knows it’s not a Mac and just doesn’t boot up. In order to get the installation disc to run you have to emulate Mac’s own BIOS-like thing through a bootloader (think swap discs back in the age of copying Playstation games).

The bootloader is referred to as the boot-132 disc and is available online if you’re looking for it. I burned a copy of this and put it in the drive (after setting my BIOS to boot from CD/DVD before HDD, obviously). Reboot the computer and—awesome! It loaded up! At this point it asks you to identify the retail disc, so I took out the boot disc and replaced it with the retail version of Leopard. The key code for the CD drive was 9f, so I entered that and pressed return. A stream of text flowed all over my screen, all files from the Leopard disc. This is looking good! It’s actually reading the installation disc! After about 3 or 4 minutes of this it went black, flash a quick Apple logo and—wait, did the computer restart?

Crap. It would read off all the files of the disc to make sure they were present, it showed a quick Apple logo, then restarted the computer. At that point it was just trying to read the Leopard installation disc from the drive again, something it can’t successfully do.

This boggled my mind for hours and hours. I tried a plethora of different things but I couldn’t get it to work. It just so happened that Alex had downloaded Kalyway a few months ago and had it burned to a disc. Kalyway is a hacked version of Leopard that you can download online (I used distribution 10.5.2). It basically fits Leopard onto a single-layer DVD (only about 3.5gb or so) and includes common kext files (known to you Windows folks as drivers) for your hardware. The legality of Kalyway and the other distributions are shaky (actually no, they’re straight up illegal), but it was strictly to get my retail version to work (why use an illegal version if you actually paid for the thing?)

Anyway, I decided that I’d give it a shot, so I booted the computer with the Kalyway disc. Holy crap… it was the Leopard installation screen! I followed the steps and eventually wound up at the successful install screen, prompting me to restart the computer.

…

But when I restarted I was just right back where I had started. What happened? Well, here’s another essential thing to know. Remember earlier when I said that Macs didn’t use BIOS and had their own special thing to boot from, which is why you have to use the bootloader? Well, nothing changes: I’d have to always use a CD to boot Leopard because there’s nothing on the hard drive to boot from. Talk about an aggravation.

I eventually figured out that I needed to boot back up the Kalyway installation, format the drives again, and redo the installation. The problem was that I originally formatted only one of the drives, and in order to install retail on the other one, I needed them both formatted.

After I had installed Leopard (the 2nd time) and booted back into Kalyway using the bootloader, I took on the next step: installing my retail copy of Leopard. Since I had two hard drives I was going to install it on the other drive (I could’ve done partitions and saved myself a headache, but at that time I didn’t know). I chose my particular motherboard just because there was so much support for it at the InsanelyMac.com forums, and one guy had actually created a self-installer which made it crazy easy. First I put the retail disc in and made an image of it, followed by running a patch that allowed me to automatically install the Leopard image to the other drive. In the process, it installed something called Chameleon to that drive, which basically acts as the bootloader, but for the HDD. In laymen’s terms, I would no longer need the CD and Leopard would automatically boot from the retail installation drive. I restarted the computer to find out.

The computer booted straight into Leopard. I had successfully built a Mac and was running an official, store-bought retail version of Mac OS X. The great thing was that I could get updates without worrying about whether or not it would work. Since my copy of Leopard is legit, I can update my system with no problem.

The motherboard patch did most of the work for me. In fact, I wasn’t finding any problems at all! I could even use the mic in port, something that Macs don’t even have. I checked all my bells and whistles and it seemed stable enough, so I started installing software again. I have a legit copy of Master Collection CS3, so I put that in. The first disc installed fine, but then—

Uh-oh. The Mac didn’t seem to like the second disc and went into a kernel panic. Macs run on something called a kernel, and in order to get your Hackintosh to work, you install a hacked kernel that replaces the old one. When your system does something that the kernel doesn’t like, it goes into kernel panic, which is essentially the computer just freezing with a bunch of text on the screen.

I got a few of these as time went on but I could never figure out why I was getting them. Then I put the pieces together: they were all related to my DVD drive. I did some research and as it turns out, the problem was that I had chosen an IDE drive, something that Hackintoshes don’t seem to like. I sent out my drive and got a new SATA one, and it worked perfectly.

Running OS X 10.5 perfectly wasn’t enough though. I had a really awesome computer, and it would be a shame to let it go to waste. I needed to get my money’s worth. I needed to play games.

Alex happened to have a copy of Windows 7 beta 64bit so we tried to get it to work. This is where some major headaches appeared. I had to format the drive to work with Windows (Macs use their own formatting that Windows doesn’t like). From Disk Utility, my only Windows compatible option was FAT32, so instead I just formatted the partition table as MBR and left the entire drive as blank space (at this point I had moved the Kalyway partition to the same drive as my main Leopard installation: it’s still there, in a small 20gb partition to boot into if something goes wrong). Windows detected that it wasn’t the primary installation and wouldn’t let me install it, though. Hmm… what to do…

I’ll yank out the cable. I opened the computer and disconnected the SATA cable for the Leopard drive so the free space one was the only drive connected. Windows booted up, detected it was the only drive, and installed perfectly. When I reconnected the Leopard HDD, everything continued to work perfectly. I can now dual-boot both Leopard and Windows 7: Leopard starts automatically, and I can get into 7 if I hold F12 at startup (courtesy of my motherboard’s boot menu).

I’ve tested all of the applications I’ll be using and everything works wonderfully. I can run Final Cut better than I ever have, and Windows games run awesome (I’ve tried Oblivion and Far Cry 2 on maximum settings and they ran at 60fps). I’ve got a ton of room that I’ll never even need, partitioned perfectly to boot. Here’s a rundown of that:

• Internal Drive 1 - Mac OS Drive
  • Leopard partition (480gb)
  • Kalyway partition (20gb)
• Internal Drive 2 - Windows Drive
  • Windows 7 partition (200gb)
  • Footage partition (300gb)
    • Footage partition is where all of my uploaded Final Cut Pro footage goes. It’s formatted as NTFS to support Windows, and Mac doesn’t natively support it, but there’s a sweet application called NTFS-3G Mac that will allow you to write to it.
• External Drive 1 - MacBackup
  • Time Machine (500gb)
    • This fully backs up my Internal Drive 1 on a daily basis.
• External Drive 2 - SharedDrive
  • SharedDrive (500gb)
    • This is just another 500gb external I use between operating systems in case I need to send a big file from one to the other. It’s also general backup for Windows if I need it.

As Mallory says, “boys and their toys.” It’s true, I’m a boy and I love my toy. I’ve been enjoying having a crazy fast computer for the past two weeks now, and I’ve never had a better experience. The best part of all this is the price: a Mac with similar specs was about $2900 on apple.com. I paid $1400, less than half. Talk about crazy.

I think the best part of all of this is just telling people I built a Mac. It blows their minds everytime, heheh.

Spring break ends, back to the grind

Ah, spring break 2009. Easily the best spring break ever (second only to the previous year with the ever-talented Jon and Sabrina Kay, but nothing can trump being with my sweetheart, of course). To ensure that I don’t put off making a write-up of the things we did, I decided I would do it now. Oh yeah, as a precursor to this, I just wanted to add that I made a perfect 4.0 last quarter and that I’m totally awesome. Glad we got that out of the way.

Mallory arrived on Friday, March 13th (Friday the 13th oh noes!). She flew into Myrtle Beach airport which is conveniently located next to the Coastal Grand mall, so after she came in we went over there to look around do a bit of shopping. That night we went home and mostly just relaxed.

The next morning Austin called me and asked if I wanted to go to lunch. After I crawled out of bed and got ready, Mallory and myself met him at the Little River Burger King (where Austin and I ate lunch pretty much every time we got together). Despite having dated Mallory for an entire year, Austin had yet to meet her, but we quickly solved that problem. After lunch we went back home for a few hours then headed out later that evening to get supper at Logan’s steakhouse. Mallory (through the use of Jen’s almighty Facebook friend powers) had invited all of my friends to celebrate my birthday with me. Including us, there were 16 people there, which is quite an incredible turnout. Afterwards we were going to go bowling (something I had planned for a few months), so we headed over there. I had stupidly not called ahead and it was impossible to get in to play. In an effort to save the day, it was suggested that we head over to Carolina Forest where a new “fun zone” place had opened up, so we caravanned over there.

Laser tag! What a fun time. Normally when Austin and I play laser tag we’re always flip-flopping between first place, but this time I was a total bust. I don’t know if I was out of practice or if the lasers were just different (they were, but I guess it could’ve effected my performance), but I came in close to last place (but still a few points in front of Mal ;D). After we finished we went and got some ice cream at McDonald’s and sat in the Kroger parking lot eating it. I had a great time getting to see everybody again, and I look forward to doing it again this summer, maybe even twice.

The next morning was Sunday, and after church we ate at Golden Corral (hadn’t been there since Dan visited) followed by Mal having a spa visit. I went and got the oil changed in my vehicle while she was getting pampered. After she finished we got some doughnuts and headed home for the evening.

Monday we were supposed to meet Jarrett in Charleston (we were going anyway but it turns out he was going to be there at the same time), but since it was supposed to rain all day we postponed it. That night we went to get the best sushi either of us had ever eaten (and the most) at Miyabi’s. Tons of nigiri with every fish imaginable… it was so delicious~ Anyway, after that we were on our way home when Mallory couldn’t take it anymore and had to see the beach. Despite it being dark and raining, we stopped and walked out onto the beach. I don’t think Mal had planned on it being so cold (and rainy), so we were only out there for a minute or so before we ran back to the car to avoid the soon approaching thunderstorm.

Tuesday was the day we decided to head to Charleston. One of Mallory’s friends wanted us to visit Huntington State Park, so we did that on the way up. We looked around there a bit then headed to Atalaya, a very famous house in the park. It took about 25 minutes just to walk through the entire thing (it was quite large!), then we headed down to the beach. Mallory took a ton of photos there (try and look through the entire album of our spring break when you get a chance, it’s got 200+ photos). Once we had our fill of the beach, we headed the rest of the drive to Charleston.

We met Seth for lunch at the Kickin’ Chicken and then had him use his ultra tour-guide abilities to lead us around Charleston for a few hours. After we parted with him, we checked out the local mall then headed back home for the night.

On Wednesday, Mallory and I got up in the afternoon and drove down the road to Indigo Farms. She took plenty of photos of the flowers and we got some mini-eclairs before we headed down further to Calabash, NC. We looked around Callahan’s for an hour or so then headed back to North Myrtle Beach to eat some Firehouse subs (or sub, rather, since we split a 12” everytime). We went back to the house for more Super Mario Bros 3 (we were hellbent on completing it by the end of the week), and later we had a candlelight homemade dinner (Mallory made chicken alfredo). After a wonderful dinner we watched PS I Love You then turned in for the night.

Thursday we got up and went searching for job applications for Mallory (she’s planning on staying with me for the summer). After doing that a while, I headed over to Sam’s Club to get a membership card (bulk buying for the dorm). We went to the beach for a little bit after that, but only the crazy Canadian tourists could stand the temperature (it was cold and windy to boot). Mallory was surprised the warm beach she loved in August was so chilly in March. We didn’t stay too long, and left to get some pizza and play computer games.

If we did anything of particular interest on Friday morning/afternoon I can’t seem to remember it. It was my 20th birthday and my mom managed to get ultra-discounted tickets to the Dixie Stampede from her job. I go to the Dixie Stampede probably at least 3 or 4 times a year, and I went much more often than that when I was younger. All in all I’ve been there probably close or over 100 times. Even so, it was great being able to go again with Mallory (she saw the show in August too). We laughed at how corny some parts of the show was.

We normally stay up all night the last night of her stay, but we managed to get some sleep since we planned on seeing the sunset the next morning (the day she had to leave).

We got up early and jumped into the vehicle to head to the beach. We stood there shivering in the cold morning wind but we watched the sun come up together. We went back to the house to get some breakfast and to get her stuff packed up. It was a long drive to the airport, but even longer when I was on my way back. It took us a long time to let go: we must’ve been quite the scene in the airport. Eventually we said our last “real” goodbye, though, and turned away for good. It was a great week, definitely one to smile about. I’ll see her when this quarter ends, about 70 days from now.

I’ve done pretty good about not being too down about it, which is good since my studies are already here. I drove back to SCAD on Sunday afternoon and I’ve already had one of each of my classes. It’s definitely going to be my hardest quarter thus far. It seems like all of my classes are very demanding, and I know I’m not going to have a whole lot of free time for stuff, unfortunately.

Unrelated, I’ve been interested in building a “hackintosh” for quite some time now. For those uninformed, a hackintosh (as I’ve mentioned previously in my blog) is a computer assembled with PC components but running the Mac OS (Leopard, 10.5). I’ve been doing a ton of research since I didn’t want to mess anything up, but earlier I had the setup I was sure of. I took the plunge (and dropped quite a bit of money), but I’ve got a incredible computer on the way. It’s going to take some trial and error to get everything working properly, but you can’t beat buying a Mac for 1/5th of the price. For those interested in specs, here you go:

• Quad core 2.66ghz processor (Intel Core i7 920 which has been safely overclocked to 3.8ghz before… no, I’m not trying that D:)
• 2x 500gb WD 7200rpm HDD
• GeForce 9800GTX 512MB Video
• 6GB Corsair Dominator RAM

MeStephen.com turns 4!

It definitely went by fast. I wrote a bunch of stuff over on the homepage, so go read that when you get a chance. Leave a comment here and wish the site a happy birthday :D