This is a Blog

3 Weeks Left

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 01:22:47 -0500

Been a little over a month since my last update, and even though I’ve waited so long there’s still hardly anything new to report on.

Usually I have projects to show but despite having two different studio classes I really don’t have anything to present for it. I’m editing a film in my post production class, but since I didn’t shoot it myself (nor do I really like it) I don’t have a huge desire to put it online. My sound design class has been really easy and the projects would be uninteresting to watch. With three weeks left, perhaps there’ll be something worth the trouble of uploading, but I guess we won’t know till then.

I did sign up for my winter classes though. History of Film, Advanced Post Production and Directing the Documentary. Advanced Post isn’t actually a required class, but I really love editing and continue to head in that direction, so I’ll be learning everything I can. Documentary was a pain to get into since SCAD’s course requirements and prereqs don’t make any sense: in order to get into Documentary I had to take English 180 (ENGL 180), however, ENGL 180 was not a required class. What? Documentary is a required class, but in order to take it you have to use an English elective for ENGL 180… so why not just get rid of the elective and make ENGL 180 required? Anyway, I contacted the correct people and got into Documentary and completely waived from ENGL 180, so now I can take whatever class I want. The schedule for next quarter is:

Monday / Wednesday
- 2pm Directing the Documentary
Tuesday / Thursday
- 11am Advanced Post Production
- 5pm History of Film

Before I got Documentary all figured out I was actually thinking about taking an online Art History class, which would have me only going to class 2 days out of the week. Crazy.

Fallout 3, Game of the Year Edition, came out back in the 2nd week or so of October. I had already bought it at launch for Xbox 360, but I bought it again, this time for PC. It’s completely worth the purchase, though, and has already taken near 50 hours of my time (not such a big deal since I have nearly nothing to do this quarter). If you only buy one game this year, make it Fallout 3 (assuming you don’t already have it… then it’d be sorta pointless).

With just three weeks left to go, I’m more excited than ever to get out of here and back home. It’s not that home is all that exciting, but Mal already has her ticket to see me (December 22nd!) and I’m anxious for that day to come. I’m also planning on teaching a Photoshops basics class back at my old school, and the thought of doing even a little bit of teaching is of interest to me.

Less than 20 days remain. Break time here I come~

"[17:54] Alex Forsythe: part of being a man is knowing which emoticons not to use [17:54] Alex..."

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:55:46 -0400

“[17:54] Alex Forsythe: part of being a man is knowing which emoticons not to use
[17:54] Alex Forsythe: everyone knows that colon three makes you gay”

"[18:09] Stephen Georg: his parents have been right about everything they’ve ever told..."

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:18:22 -0400

“[18:09] Stephen Georg: his parents have been right about everything they’ve ever told him
[18:10] Alex Forsythe: man, this is why i never want to have kids
[18:10] Alex Forsythe: what if my kid turns out like this
[18:10] Stephen Georg: just beat them”

2 Weeks Down

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 02:47:09 -0400

The last entry detailed my wonderful trip to Wisconsin, so I figured since that has been a few weeks ago, it might be time to update my blog. So here goes.

I moved back into SCAD on September 12th, this time moving into Barnard Village, one of the nice apartment style dorms (this year I would not only be living with Alex, but also Dan and Taylor—and hey, Ian lives two doors down). Move-in went without a hitch, and all of us have been really impressed with the place. We each have our own room (plenty big enough for one person), there’s also two bathrooms and a full kitchen—dishwasher included (we were hoping). I haven’t taken any photos yet, but if I do (or if someone else does) I’m sure I’ll post them here at some point.

After the first week of classes I could already tell that this would be an easy quarter. I’m taking Sound Design (which right now is more or less ‘watch the sound-related special features of a DVD’ class), Editing (spend a bunch of time learning something I already know how to do—on the plus side I’ve been getting out of this class over an hour early each day) and 20th Century Art. I was most worried about that last one, but then I found out that not only are we never going to have a test, but we’ll also never have a research paper. Wow. You are graded on two or three papers that you have to write throughout the quarter, and apparently they’re both short.

With all this time on my hands, I figured now would be as good a time as any to go Super Saiyan in my geekdom: I started playing Magic: The Gathering.

Now I have to add here that I’ve always had an interest in Magic, ever since Pokémon cards started to die out quite a few years ago. I remembered all the fun I used to have going to Toys R Us on Saturday afternoons to participate in the Pokémon League, playing cards and just having a really good time. I don’t remember how old I was back then (maybe 12? younger? older?), but I did it for about 2 years and it was just a real blast. I wanted that experience again, the excitement of opening a booster pack wondering what could be inside. I wanted that magic again… so I chose Magic.

The reason for choosing Magic is solely because of it’s immense popularity—it’s been around since 1993, which is 16 years. Basically, it’s not going away. I bought a Pokémon card deck the day they came out, so you can imagine the daunting feeling of knowing I’m already 16 years late to this party. Even so, I hopped on AIM to talk to Chaz (you may remember reading that we stayed with him in Indiana on the way to Wisconsin) who is a long-time lover of Magic. He told me to pick up some Core Set 2010 Intro Packs and watch some instructional videos and I’d be all set.

So! That Thursday night we went to WalMart to pick up some groceries, I bought two decks, and we came back to the dorm to attempt play. Alex and I sat down and read through the (horribly explained) rules, and over the course of the next week, learned more through playing and asking Chaz specific questions. Since then if we’re at a store and I see a booster sometimes I’ll just pick one up, since it’s just a fun feeling to get new cards.

Yesterday (well, two days ago now, but Friday) we went to Sam’s Club and WalMart to get groceries, and on the way back to the dorm stopped by Morningstar Games, the official Magic dealer of Savannah (a place which, upon walking in, increases your nerdiness by at least 32 points). Even so, we all bravely entered the store.

The guy at the counter was probably about 50 or so years old, but dang was he ever excited about playing Magic. He talked about how they were drafting that night and we should stick around and play and how there was a new expansion and how they had new unlimited cards inside which were good (cause even the common was worth $8) and how—we couldn’t keep up. We just kept nodding along but were really lost. We explained that we were new to the game, which started another big spiel, but at least the guy was friendly and helpful. In the end, he managed to sell both Nick and myself $20 each worth of Magic cards—a box of 350 random common and uncommon and a 400 card box of land. He even threw in another box of 350, and buy the time everything was done, we each walked out with about 800 cards. They definitely aren’t the rarest or most valuable or anything, but we’ve just been playing casually, so it’s nice to have a big selection to make a deck from.

Aside from our Magical experiences, I had a horrible computer problem where ethernet stopped working, Final Cut died, and things were just really really broken. I decided that I would move to Snow Leopard to fix everything. Well, right before I decided to move, I managed to fix some things… well, everything. But at that point I was so gung-ho about moving to the new OS that I decided to adapt a ‘well, screw it’ mentality and just do it. So, yesterday I took 7 hours out of the day to wipe the internals and install Snow Leopard (10.6). Things went without a hitch, and I’m still in the process of reinstalling all the software (Logic, Final Cut, CS3… my space is gone before I even start).

Other than that, the only other mentionable thing is that Mal and I have been dating for over a year and a half now. I’ve been keeping this blog since before I met her, so if you want to see more posts about how we met and our time together, just dig through the archives of this blog.

Wonderful Wisconsin Week (Alliteration!)

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 15:59:56 -0400

To avoid the syndrome known as “oh crap I can’t remember what happened 6 days ago”, I decided to write down what happened each day at the end of each day, so at the end of the week I would have a very comprehensive list of things I had done. So without further ado, here’s how my week in Wisconsin was, August 31st to September 6th.

Monday, August 31st

Mal and I woke up around 10am, thankful that we didn’t have to set an alarm for the first time in a few days. Sleeping in was a good idea, and we were finally well-rested. After we got ready, we headed over to the brand new Sonic that opened up (it had only been open for one day). The midwest is new to Sonic, but apparently very, very eager to try it: it was so busy that people had to direct traffic to get us into the parking lot. They even tried to explain how to order (“you’re going to want to press that big red button, ya hey”), as if it wouldn’t be self-explanatory (that, and the fact we’ve had Sonic in the south for years).

Even so, we ventured through the bustling fast food joint and ordered up some food. Popcorn chicken for both Mal and myself, with ranch and honey mustard dipping sauces (I ate both of the sauces since Mal likes chicken plain… yeah, I know, gross, right?). Sonic is delicious no matter where you are, and here is no exception. I know they’re going to give Culver’s (located right across the street) a run for their money, but Culver’s welcomes them with open, sarcastic arms (Culver’s sign says “Welcome to the neighborhood, Sonic”).

After we finished eating we traveled over to Britt’s house, a friend of Mallory’s whom I had met for a few moments way back in June 2008. We spent some time talking to her and playing with her cat (subtitled by Britt, “the worst cat in the world”), and after an hour or so we headed back to Mallory’s house to meet her mom and boyfriend Rob for dinner at Waverly Beach.

Dinner was nachos and pizza with sausage, pepperoni and green peppers. We spent some time talking afterwards, but since it was getting cold (yes, even in the summer, and to make it worse I had only brought one pair of pants) we headed back to the house.

Once we got back to the house, Casey and Tara as well as Nicole and Patrick all wanted to go do something, so Casey suggested bowling. We had to stop by WalMart so I could buy some socks (hey, I live by the code of Rainbows, ok?), then we headed off to Sabre Lanes.

We bought three games and split it up men vs women. Our team consisted of Sally (myself), Peter (Patrick), and Cashew (Casey—though I’m starting to feel like I should just call him Cashew from now on). The girls used their regular names (how boring!). After the first game, I had beaten Mallory by 20 points (109 to 89), but games 2 and 3 didn’t bring in the same victory tunes. She beat me pretty badly, but hey, there’s no shame in losing to a girl, right? …right?

When we finished bowling, we said goodbye to our friends then headed back to Mallory’s house. We were both exhausted (it would be a few days before the effects of the car ride got out of our systems) so we headed to bed. Well, right after I set up the wireless router so we could use the internet. Then we used the internet and headed for bed.

Tuesday, September 1st

Today was the day we’d be heading to Wisconsin Rapids to spend a few days at Mallory’s father’s house. We woke up and were out of the house by 1pm, and headed to Mallory’s grandparents house first since it was on the way (Mallory hadn’t seen them in a while). We stopped and talked with them for about half an hour, then picked up some double chee at McDonald’s before heading off to Rapids. Somewhere in there we stopped at a game store and looked for SNES games, but there were no purchases.

When we got to Rapids, Mal had to stop by the UPS store to pick up a monitor she ordered for her computer. After that it was just a short drive over to her dad’s house where we unpacked our stuff. He wasn’t home from work yet, so we decided to use the computer for a while until dinner (we had dinner plans with some of Mallory’s old friends from school). However, since I had reformatted Mallory’s computer, she no longer had the WEP key, so we had to reset the router and set it all back up again. By the time we nearly had it working again, it was time to head over to Steven’s Point and meet some folks to eat some food.

Stephanie still lives in Pray-Sims (the dorm her and Mallory shared when Mal still went to school there), so we drove over and picked her up. She was sporting Fangamer swag on Fangamer swag, the latest in geek style this season. We went to the top of the hill to Hilltop Pub (what a literal name!) and met up with Cassie, Morgan, Liz and Lindsey. We sat outside (and got annoyed to death by the lakeflies), but had a good meal. I got a chicken tenders basket (oddly enough, with ranch and honey mustard, just like the day before) since I had been craving it. It was nice to meet Mal’s friends, especially since I had heard so much about them for over a year now. We took a picture together then we parted ways (well, mostly—we took Liz back to her house, then we drove over to Cassie’s house to meet up with her and Steph).

Cassie insisted on showing us her dog, Mini Lassie, er, uh, Romeo, then we headed over to see the lot where her new house was being built. Back at her house, we all sat around and talked about how technology sucked and disputed over prices in a Best Buy sales circular. We agreed that we should meet for lunch the next day at the KFC buffet (much to Steph’s dismay, who stated that she hated fried chicken).

We took Steph back to her dorm, and also went inside to look at it. It’s quite different from SCAD—Stevens Point looks more like a prison than a dorm, really. We met her quiet Chinese roommate, Yi, then said our goodbyes as we went back to the car. While we were on our way back to Rapids, I called my parents to say hello, but also to tell my father happy birthday (52!). 20 minutes or so later, we were back in Rapids at the house. Mal’s dad was already in bed, so we quietly made our way inside, where Mal proceeded to rip open her monitor like it was Christmas morning. After we got it all hooked up, she just stared at it, wide-eyed.

“It’s… so big!”

I mean, I guess so. 20” is big when you’ve been stuck with the Macbook’s incredibly tiny 13” screen, so I can see why she’s excited. She played around with that for a bit, then we watched a little Family Guy on television before heading to bed.

Wednesday, September 2nd

Woke up at 10am and promptly got out the Macbooks. After we goofed around for 2 hours or so on the internet, we got ready, ate some pop-tarts (well, Great Value brand toaster pastries, for what it’s worth), then headed off to Stevens Point again. As planned, we were to meet with Cassie and Steph again, this time for lunch at the KFC buffet. We went to Cassie’s house then carpooled over to the KFC in Plover (Mal and myself took a car separate from theirs since we would head back to Rapids afterwards).

I’ve eaten plenty of KFC in my day, but never had I had the chance to try the wonder that is KFC buffet. Try to wrap your mind around this concept: $7.99. All-you-can-eat. Full menu (like, near everything—original, crispy, grilled, honey bbq wings, salad bar, mashed potatoes, corn, biscuits), and even the drink was included. They also had vanilla pudding and an ice cream machine (with toppings!!). Honest to God, I don’t think I’ve ever wanted a business put into my hometown as badly as this before. Getting to pig out on the Colonel’s secret recipe before diving into applesauce and pudding (and, of course, ice cream) was the highlight of my day (well, in terms of eating). I can only hope we get these in South Carolina soon (or in Savannah), because it’s a crazy good deal. Steve Campos (Plo) even called Steph during the meal, so I was able to talk to him for a minute or so (despite the volume being incredibly low on the phone, or so it seemed).

Anyway, after my south had shown all over the place, we drove over to a petstore across the street looking for some sort of dog treats that Cassie wanted for her dog, ~~Mini Lassie~~ Romeo. They didn’t have them there, but they had some really cute puppies that proceeded to lick the four of us near to death. They were tiny and cute, but the huge signs that said “DON’T PICK UP THE PUPPIES” as well as the Wisconsin hick at the counter convinced us to follow protocol. We pet their heads and they wagged their tails, but we were off to find the pet treats again.

This time we headed to a Petco, which I’m assuming had what we needed (though we were there for a long time so I’m not really sure if Cassie ever got what she wanted). We looked at the animals (including two cats, Daisey and Vee Vee, priced $75 and $5 respecitively—putting a price on love is wrong!), then went next door to the Best Buy so Steph could get the new Professor Layton game. We also attempted to play Rock Band with no sound—we passed, but we have no idea what song we were playing. Kinda takes the fun out of the game, methinks.

When we left Best Buy we knew it was goodbye, so we said our farewells to Cassie and Steph, and gave the expected hugs. Steph’s flying out to Seattle for PAX (I wish we were going!), so we wished her happy trails (clouds?) and a safe trip. I’m sure we’ll see each other again sometime, just give it a few months.

Mal and I headed back to her dad’s house in Rapids where we’d finally get to see him (you have to remember that even though we’d been there for a day now, we hadn’t seen him yet). He greeted us and we sat and talked for a while, and showed him some pictures from the long ride up. One of his friends was having a cookout that night (apparently we were the only guests), so we waited around a bit then headed over there—but not before taking a ride in her dad’s Corvette. I had never been in a Corvette before (let alone one that had upgraded everything), and I have to say—that kitten can purr. I mean, purr. Dang. Mallory had described it to me as being on a rollercoaster. She was right. Anyway, after that, we headed over to the coworker’s house.

The guy (I believe Troy was his name) had a big house, and a fire going in the backyard (they actually had a firepit built right into the deck—awesome). He invited us down into his basement for a drink. Like a typical Wisconsinite, his fridge was loaded with this and that beer, and when he asked Mal and I what we wanted, he was sort of stunned when we repied “Coke”. He actually asked “…seriously?” We spent the rest of the night eating cheeseburgers and brats, and watching a TV while sitting around the fire. It was really nice, but I knew we’d smell like smoke later. We checked it when we got back to the house—yep. Especially our hair: it was like we had lit it on fire.

We changed clothes then snuggled on the couch to watch Donnie Darko, a movie I had seen at school with the guys, but had wanted Mal to watch for quite some time. As I suspected, she really enjoyed it, but had to take a trip over to the Wikipedia page before she understood it all. We watched an episode of Good Eats and Family Guy before heading to bed.

Thursday, September 3rd

Woke up really late, watched TV, took showers, and basically laid around not doing much anything today. When Mallory’s dad got home (which was around 5:30pm), we went to look at some houses in the Stevens Point area, and then headed over to The Bamboo House for dinner.

Our waitress was very obviously new, as she frequently did many wrong things (though it could be that we notice things more easily now that we’ve walked a mile in a server’s shoes). The food was good, however, and Mallory, her father and myself enjoyed a delicious dinner of hibachi shrimp, teriyaki shrimp and teriyaki chicken, respectively. After dinner we headed back home, then Mallory and myself went to pick up some movies at Family Video.

We knew we wanted to rent Twilight (not because we actually had any desire to see it, but because Chaz had given us the RiffTrax back in Indiana and we were excited to listen to others make fun of it), but we had no idea what else to rent. I had recalled reading on RottenTomatoes that I Love You, Man had scored at least in the 80%, so we went with that. Afterwards, we headed over to Copp’s to pick up some snacks (and lemonade!).

We got back home and put in I Love You, Man (Twilight needed to be ripped then aligned with the RiffTrax in an video editor). The reviews on RT said that it was humorous throughout, but never really gut-bustingly funny. After watching the movie, I would say that that was correct. It was okay, but we found ourselves chuckling instead of laughing.

Once the movie finished, we watched a little King of the Hill (which Mallory has finally come to love) while waiting for some laundry to finish.

Friday, September 4th

Woke up this morning around 10:30 or so. Mallory’s dad was off today, so he was working around the house. We got ready and packed most of our stuff, then went over to WalMart so Mal could do some school supply shopping. After we spent a good deal of time in there (and debated on whether we should each purchase PC copies of Left 4 Dead), we went to Family Video to return the movies and stopped to get gas. On the way back to the house, we stopped by Trade-A-Game and looked through their selection. They had a good selection, but the prices were too high (3 copies of SMRPG, but $75 each? no thanks). We didn’t find anything of interest so we headed back.

After quite a bit of time we finally finished packing and loaded up the truck. We said our goodbyes to Mallory’s father and headed off to Eau Claire (about an hour and a half drive). Our plan was to stay with Hayley, but she was in class when we were scheduled to get there, so we wasted some time in the ShopKo (think of a store that’s less than Target but classier than K-Mart). Finally we could go meet Hayley and Mark.

We took our stuff up to Hayley’s dorm, attempted to get the Twilight Riff working, got angry, tried some other stuff, then eventually settled on something that would definitely work, all before heading out to get some food. Across the street lay in wait Mancino’s, a place to get “grinders and pizza”. Option 1, sir.

Good food, normal meal, but I do feel like pointing out a ridiculous story that may or may not make me look like an idiot/crazy. When I got up to the counter and ordered, the cashier told me the total was $11.15, to which I handed her a 10 dollar bill and a 1 dollar bill. Now, in my mind I was actually expecting change back—85 cents, you see. That’s why it struck me kind of odd when she asked if I had any cents, to which I replied “nope, no cents at all.” She looked at me funny and said “uh.. okay” and started looking at the “take a penny leave a penny” station for some change. She gathered 7 cents there before looking over at the other cash register. Mallory walked over in the meantime and asked if I needed change. I was like “sure, that’s fine”, thinking that I could get my dollar back. Mal handed her a quarter and the woman gave me back a dime…. oops. That’s when I realized I was an idiot and meant to give the woman twelve dollars instead of eleven. Man, I felt dumb. Anyway…

After the meal we went back over to ShopKo to get socks or something. I don’t remember, I was very full from my huge sandwich so the world was a blur. Then we headed back to Hayley’s dorm to watch the RiffTrax of Twilight (which was hilarious, by the way). We finished the night by buying Left 4 Dead on Steam and seeing how it performed on a 2007 Macbook in Boot Camp (answer: very, very poorly).

Saturday, September 5th

Originally we were going to wake up around 8am, but I talked Mal into letting us sleep until 10am. As such, we woke up around 10am. I put on some pants then realized the horror: I had to get ready in a real college bathroom. SCAD offers each room their own private bathroom, but this was real college. Bold font.

Getting ready wasn’t as bad as I would’ve thought it (but it was still bad and I have a deeper appreciation for having my own bathroom, even if it is with Alex ‘Hairy McGee’ Forsythe), and I was ready for the day afterward. Hayley took us around her campus for a few minutes before we went back to the room to gather our belongings. We loaded the truck again and were off.

My stomach was growling seconds after we left (seconds before, too), so we stopped at Sonic to get a sausage, egg and cheese croisSONIC (no, that’s seriously how they spell it) with a strawberry slush (pretty much the only drink I ever order at Sonic). Mallory didn’t want anything (which made me feel fat), but we ventured onward anyway (despite the fact we’d eat only a few hours later at the mall of America).

Before we arrived at Hayley’s house, Mallory drove us over to Menomonie, where she goes to school (at Stout). We saw her dorm, looked at the town, then headed over to The Devil’s Punchbowl, a really cool looking natural occurrence from nature. That may or may not have made any sense, so just check out the pictures of it and hopefully that’ll explain something. During our adventure there, I slipped and got mud all over my sandal. I wasn’t too happy about that.

45 minutes or so later, we arrived at Hayley’s house to drop our stuff off. Her mom greeted us, gave us a coke, then went back to yard work (I guess you could call it that—there was recently a tornado that went through and there were like 50 trees down and they had like 10 people that day helping them cut the trees into smaller pieces and also burn them and stuff). We got back on the road, this time heading toward the Mall of America (or as I thought of it before today, the mall with a roller coaster in it for no reason).

The mall… was large. Very large. Larger than anything I had ever seen. It took like 40 minutes to walk around a single floor, and there were 3 floors. That’s not even counting actually walking into places and checking them out, either (there might be some slight exaggeration here, but it’s for dramatic effect, and thus, necessary). Despite looking for hours, we only ate a small amount of food in the food court as well as buy a single gift for my mom. I should also mention that we found a vendor trying to sell EarthBound for $129.99. I told him he was out of his mind (recent completed eBay listings show the current price is between $70 and $90). The guy was obviously insane, though: he was trying to sell a complete FF7 Greatest Hits for $99.99—what? eBay listings for that are anywhere between $25 and $40, and I bought mine new a few years ago at a KB toy store for only $15.

When we left the mall it was about 5:30pm and we headed over to Karley’s dorms in Minneapolis. We checked out the inside of her dorms then took her car over to a local sushi place called Kukigawa. At first I was worried because the sushi seemed so expensive ($4.50+ for a single piece), but then I realized the price was for two pieces of nigiri and suddenly the world was okay again. We had our fill (and tried shabu shabu) and headed out. We stopped by Karley’s dorm again to say our goodbyes, then headed back to Hayley’s house.

It was about 9:30pm or so when we got back to her house. Hayley wasn’t home (and wouldn’t be for a while), but her parents welcomed us (back) with open arms and let us use the hot tub. We soaked in there for a half hour or so then got in the showers (well, not until Hayley’s dad showed me his awesome Resident Evil 4 skills—he’s apparently beaten the one-player game multiple times). Once we finished, we caught the last half hour of Coraline on Pay-Per-View then waited up for Hayley to arrive. She didn’t arrive until midnight or so, and things after that are hazy. I recall falling asleep on the blow-up mattress.

Sunday, September 6th

Woke up at 8:30am (the alarm was set for 9, but I laid awake for 30 minutes trying to swat a fly that wouldn’t leave my poor ears alone). Eventually I woke up and got ready, then Hayley made some pancakes (I should clarify that ‘some’ was equal to about 20 or so). Mal and myself managed to handle 5 each before calling it quits. Hayley’s parents arrived back home before we left and saw us off. Hayley, Mal and myself made our way to the airport.

It’s a fairly long drive (45 minutes or so), but it feels so, so, so much longer when you know that this is the end. The end of the summer, the end of a long period of time before you get to hug that person again.

When we got to the airport I said goodbye to Hayley (who waited in the truck) while Mallory and myself went into the terminal. I got my bag all checked in, went to the bathroom, then we sat down on the benches—a position we’ve been in way too many times before. Sometimes I’m leaving, sometimes she’s leaving, but it’s always hard. We sat there for a good 20 minutes or so; Mal just about soaked the shirt I was wearing with her tears. Eventually I made my way toward the gate and she waited in line with me. As we neared the end of the line, we knew we had to stop, so we slowly let go of each other and said our last goodbyes. And then… she was gone.

There’s always a sigh after she leaves. A sigh of relief, in a sense—the event that I had been most dreading for the past 3 months is now over. No more Mal everyday. Have to go back to Skype every night. It’s a weird feeling, really. We haven’t had to talk to each other on AIM in a long time.

I made my way through the concourse and found my gate. Ate a chocolate chip cookie before I boarded. It was a pretty long flight to Charlotte (2 hours or so), so I decided to finally try out Final Fantasy 3 for DS. When I landed it was about 5pm EST.

I got a slice of pizza and talked myself into getting a Cinnabon (always a good decision). I took my time eating and eventually was able to board the plane. The time was 6:20pm, but after that I don’t remember anything. The next sound I heard was the plane coming down, to which I shakingly woke up. 7pm and we were back in Myrtle Beach.

And well… that’s it! That’s the story of my week in Wisconsin. Third time I’ve been there, even though I swear it feels like more. I unfortunately had to leave my girl there, but I know I’ll see her again in December. School starts a week from now, and I’m heading back to Savannah on Friday. 10 weeks of school… time to get back to the grind.

Oh, and as always, if you want to see the nearly 300 photos I took during the week, you’re more than welcome to by clicking here.

We Meet Again, Wisconsin

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 23:46:00 -0400

So with summer winding down and August finally here, we knew it wouldn’t be too long before we needed to stop our jobs at Carrabba’s and get everything ready for the big trip: since Mallory had driven down to Myrtle Beach, we had to take the car back to Wisconsin. Yep, you guessed it: road trip.

We stopped working on August 23rd (a Sunday) and took a few days to ourselves to wrap up any other loose ends or do things we still wanted to do. On Wednesday we went to the beach one final time, a particular visit that Mal is sure not to forget, as she burnt her feet as we ran across the hot pavement/sand (and got 5 blisters in the process). Thursday we decided to head over to my old highschool in Conway. I let them know that I’d be interested in teaching a Photoshop basics class when I got back from college in November, and they were quick to write it down. I’ve always had an interest in teaching, and it would be fun to teach something like Photoshop. We also met with Jarrett one final time at the Outer Limits restaurant (Mal’s first taste of a real country buffet).

Friday morning we were packed and ready to leave. My parents had left two days prior to head to Maryland to take care of some last remaining things with my grandfather’s estate, so when Mal and myself headed out on Friday, we left Rocko alone (but heavily armed with about 1lb of food). We were initially trying to get out of the house by 9am, but of course we got held up till about 10am. As we were loading the car, Dan Settembrini called.

He was calling to let me know he had gotten a speeding ticket (actually, no ticket, just a court date—he was speeding in a work zone, ouch). He was traveling that day as well—to Lillington, NC, to visit Rhett and Link, two internet celebrities he interned with last summer. He told me he got the ticket near Walterboro, SC, and Mallory said I should go look it up on Google Maps. As it turned out, he was 1 hour and 40 minutes from Florence, SC, which we also had to pass through. Do you know how long it takes to get from Little River, SC to Florence? Yep, 1 hour and 40 minutes. I told Dan that we should try and meet in Florence for lunch, and he was game.

First we stopped by a local vineyard to get a bottle of wine for Mallory’s father (birthday gift), then we headed to Florence. Sure enough, we ended up at a McDonald’s within 3 minutes of each other. We had lunch together and Dan finally got to meet Mallory (Dan sees Mallory on a daily basis at school, only over my shoulder while I talk to her on Skype). We said goodbye and Dan headed off to North Carolina while we trecked further west.

Originally our plan had been to stop in Spartanburg, SC, to get lunch at The Beacon, but since we already ate lunch with Dan, we decided to go straight for the interstate instead. With the GPS leading us, we traveled another 4 or 5 hours until we arrived in beautiful Knoxville, TN.

We checked into the hotel before heading off to one of Knoxville’s many malls to look around and grab some food. When we arrived at the Knoxville Center Mall, the first person we passed going through the door was wearing a cowboy hat. It was awesome. Unfortunately it wasn’t as I had suspected: not everyone in Tennessee wears cowboy hats, as that one guy was the only person that I saw. Regardless, we looked through the mall and found a store called Packard’s that dealt in video games from all generations, all ‘buy 2 get one free’. The selection was really good, including harder to find SNES titles (no Earthbound, though), but the prices were crazy. Well, maybe not crazy, but not the sort of prices I’d like to pay for SNES games (okay, so what if Donkey Kong Country is worth $30, I wouldn’t pay more than $8). I found StarTropics (NES) for $5 and picked it up. The guy at the counter reminded me that I could buy another game and get one free, but I told him it was the only game in the store worth buying.

We walked around for a little bit and got some dinner at Taco Bell, then grabbed some cookies from the Great American Cookie Company that we’d eat later in the hotel room (long story surrounding those cookies: the sugar cookies sucked completely and weren’t edible, so I had to email the company letting them know). When we bought the cookies we left the mall. It was about 9pm.

A little backtracking here: on our way to the mall initially, Mal thought she heard a rattling in her car. I couldn’t hear it at first, but after a while I started to. When we parked she looked at her engine but everything seemed fine. We thought we maybe should have it checked, but we’d do it after we had looked in the mall.

Back to the story. So we’re leaving the mall at 9pm, and as we’re driving out of the parking lot we notice a auto repair shop. We figured they were closed, but drove over to see what time they opened so we could have it looked out in the morning. To our surprise the lights were still on, but the sign did say that they closed at 9pm.

“Hi, we’re on our way back to Wisconsin and my car is making a rattling noise.”

Despite it being closing time, a friendly mechanic jumped at the opportunity to help us, driving the car around then into the shop, lifting it up and peering underneath. He found the source of the problem: apparently there’s a shield around your muffler and Mal’s bands that hold it on had rusted, causing the shield to become loose. They rattled against the muffler, but it wasn’t anything serious. Relieved, we thanked the man and went back to the hotel to enjoy our cookies (but you already know that story).

The next morning we were up in time for the continental breakfast (7am). I enjoyed a waffle with apple juice and Mallory ate a muffin and some fruit. We got our stuff packed and were on the road by 9am.

The plan was to take a 30-minute detour to Louisville, KY, to see Seth Woodley, who had recently moved there for school. GPS said we’d get there in 4½ hours, right around 1:30pm. Off we went, into the hills of TN (and eventually Kentucky).

On the way, Mal had to get gas so we stopped at a gas station that had a Taco Bell attached to it. Knowing that pretty soon sweet tea would be gone, we went through the drive-through and got a single large sweet tea. When we got to the window, he handed us the sweet tea before asking, “would you like any mild, hot or fire sauce with that?” After a few moments of silence we slowly responded “…no”, to which he started apologizing and laughing for being an idiot.

As the clock hit 1:30pm, we arrived in Louisville and met up with Seth at a Buffalo Wild Wings (despite having eaten there only 2 nights before). We ate some wings, exchanged hugs and talked for quite a long time. We could tell Seth didn’t want us to leave (and we certainly would’ve loved to have stayed), but the road was calling our name. Particularly Mallory’s name; she was driving.

As we left Louisville, we set a new marker on the GPS: Muncie, Indiana, home to Chaz Estell (aka βlackLeader, aka DJ Beta), who let us stay with him and his girlfriend, Elizabeth (who had met Mallory already, but hadn’t had the opportunity to meet me). We arrived in Muncie around 5pm and unpacked our stuff into the house. We talked for a while before we left to go eat at Amazing Joe’s (The Answer Is Yes). I had the Monterey Jack Chicken: a grilled chicken breast smothered in cheese and mushrooms. I probably didn’t rave about it then as much as I should have, but it was amazing. I hadn’t tasted anything that good in a long, long time. It even rivaled that of Carrabba’s.

Once we finished eating, we went back to the house. Elizabeth went to bed since she had to be up for work at 11pm, and the other three of us watched an episode of MST3k (Final Justice, for those who are interested), as well as plenty of RiffTrack shorts. At one point I could feel myself nodding off, so I went out to the car to grab my trusty box of Apple Jacks. Eating them one at a time kept me awake, though. We went to bed around midnight, maybe half after the hour.

We woke up that Sunday morning around 7:30am and were out the door in about an hour. We stopped at Burger King and got some breakfast before continuing our journey north. Today’s stops included Mitsuwa (Japanese) Marketplace, just north of Chicago. The GPS said we’d get there around 11:15am, but accounting for the time difference it was actually 12:15pm.

Driving through Indiana was anything but exciting. It was flat, plain and simple. 50 miles on this road, 50 miles on that road, nothing but corn on both sides. Then something interesting came up on the map. Kokomo, Indiana! A little out of our way, but worth it, right? For those who are uninformed, Kokomo was the birthplace of Reid Young, webmaster and co-owner of Starmen.net. While driving through Indiana we were passing towns that were literally 100 feet long (think of seeing a ‘welcome to’ sign then immediately a ‘now leaving’ sign), so we’d easily find Reid’s house, right?

Well, no. I was actually serious about finding his house (had I have found it, I probably would’ve introduced myself and Mallory to his parents and tried to explain what a good guy Reid was), but Kokomo was way different than the other towns. It was huuuuuge! At least as huge can be for Indiana. There were chain restaurants all over, and we just kept driving and driving. We would point at places and say “I bet Reid ate here!”, but after doing that 2 or 3 times we realized that it was beginning to sound creepy so we just tried to get back on the main road.

After taking our Kokomo joyride and losing about 20 minutes or so on our time, we continued the path to Mitsuwa. As we got closer to Illinois, we couldn’t help but notice the GPS was telling us to go through—no, it couldn’t be—Gary, Indiana. I’ve been told that Gary is the homocidal capital of the U.S. (I researched this and that’s apparently not true: it has been, however, on the top 10 list of most dangerous cities). Driving through Gary was an adventure in itself. The city is like a ghost town, with everything looking run down, dilapidated, and vacant. A once thriving steel town, Gary is now nothing more than a bad place to live (also, a name for a man). To make matters worse, the route that the GPS told us to take didn’t even exist: construction (which seemed to have been there forever) was in the way, with detour signs pointing the way.

Gary did a heck of a job with those signs. Some pointed one way, some another. Some told us to keep straight, others to turn. Navigating around was incredibly confusing, all the while the GPS is yelling at us for not going a way that would be impossible to go. At once point we wound up at the steel mills: no cars around, not even a person around. ‘Creepy’ doesn’t really begin to define it, and the entire time Mallory was freaking out. I told her to keep calm and that we’d be out of Gary soon enough. Maybe I spoke too soon when we passed a pair of rusted schoolbusses that were just sitting on the side of a residential street. Way to go, Gary.

Even so, we eventually got out of Gary and continued on our merry little way to…. traffic. Chicago wouldn’t be Chicago without traffic, and we were stuck in the middle of it. It took 30 minutes to go 3 miles, and during that time I realized that maybe I shouldn’t have gotten the 36oz Gatorade. I honestly thought my bladder would burst before we made it all the way to Mitsuwa, but by 2pm we had made it there. I rushed to the bathroom and then we looked around the market.

Mitsuwa was really cool, I had never seen anything quite like it. It felt just like being in Japan, with little shops selling everything imaginable. We went to the food court and got real Japanese ramen (no packets here) and it was amazing. We bought a bubble tea, too, then walked around a little bit more. They even had the super delicious Koala Yummies (called March of the Koalas in Japan, or Koala March), but we bought some bakery goods instead. They have these little loafs of bread called Melon bread, which is essentially a cookie/bread hybrid. Imagine if you took a cookie and inflated it using bread, then put a chocolate chip filling inside. Yes, it tastes as amazing as it sounds.

With that out of the way, we were clear to head to our final destination: Appleton, WI. It had been a long journey, but we were almost home. We started traveling again, and got out of the Chicago area.

About 2 hours from Appleton, right outside of Milwaukee, we hear a loud boom noise while driving down the middle of the highway going 70mph. We start to lose control of the car and the brakes aren’t slowing us down like they should be. Problem? Well… our tire exploded. Not just went flat, but really exploded. We pulled off to the side of the road and I got out the number for AAA (hurray for having AAA!). No sooner had I got the information in and the guy told me he was sending someone out, then did a huge truck pull up behind us. A man walked out with a nametag that read “Josh”.

“Who are you?”
“I’m with the FST, we take care of any and all road problems.”
“Oh. Well, we’ve already got AAA on the phone and —”
“Tell them to cancel it. I work for the government of Wisconsin, and we do it for free. Plus, I’m here right now, and it’ll be 30 minutes or more before they get anyone out here.”

So with that, I told the AAA guy on the phone not to come, and we watched as Josh changed our tire for us. Within 10 minutes we were back on the road again, but this time the plans had changed. We couldn’t drive all the way to Appleton on our little spare, so we headed to Mallory’s Aunt Mary and Uncle Tom’s house, conveniently only 10 minutes or so away.

We got there, looked up a nearby tire place, and got everything settled. No, we didn’t get home in Appleton at 5:15pm like we thought we would, but at least we took care of the tire issue. Everyone who looked at the tire said we were lucky to be alive: the tire was in pieces, and it was a wonder the car didn’t flip or do something crazy like that.

3 hours later, we were on the road again. Soon enough we were back in Appleton, and Mallory was home (although later she said it no longer felt like home: she was used to the South, used to my home and my family). Casey (Nesskid) called to find out where we were, and we met him for dinner at Culver’s after we dropped our stuff off at the house.

And that, my friends, is the crazy story of driving. 7 hours each day, multiplied by 3 days, is 21 hours in the car. Even so, Mallory and myself managed not to kill each other, and things are going good now as well. I’m taking a ton of pictures, all of which will be uploaded to Flickr and linked to here. I’m here till Sunday, and I’ll be sure to fill you in on the rest of my time here.

Given the chance, I’d do it again… just not anytime soon. Also, if you’re interested, here’s the entire collection of photos from the 3 day trip.

I bet you can’t guess what’s in this aisle.

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 02:32:24 -0400

I bet you can’t guess what’s in this aisle.

July Ends, August Begins

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 03:28:03 -0400

Seeing as how it’s been a while since I posted anything, I figured I would update this blog to remember things later on. Or something.

I haven’t said much because I haven’t been online all that much. When I’m not at work I’m normally playing video games or doing something with Mal, and it’s now a rarity to even see me on AIM. I know that’ll change when I get back to school, but it’s weird right now to think I’m not online very often.

Work has been going pretty good. The economy has definitely affected business, but there’s been $100+ nights (rare, but they’ve happened). It’s cool to think you can walk in at 4:30pm and walk out 5 hours later with over a hundred bucks in your pocket. The job is pretty easy and is mostly just being someone’s personal servant for 40 minutes (something some folks like to take advantage of).

I had a huge list of video games to play and beat this summer, but I also wanted Mal to play some of my favorites. She’s beaten Gears of War and Halo 3, Portal, New Super Mario Bros, and we’re almost finished with the first Phoenix Wright game. I normally don’t juggle so many games at once, but here’s my ‘now playing’ list: Fable 2, Gears of War 2, Phoenix Wright, Chrono Trigger DS, Pokémon Leaf Green, Sonic Unleashed, and a handful of other DS games. Tomorrow I’m going to pick up Wii Sports Resort, even though it’s mostly for my father.

Despite juggling so many games at once, I’m doing a pretty good job of keeping up with the stories of all of them. There’s a few other RPGs that I’d really like to start, but I know I can’t handle any more right now. I’m nearing the end of Phoenix Wright, then I’ll probably devote a good bit of attention to Fable 2. I’m also having Mal play through Half-Life 2, since that should really be a requirement for anyone who loves video games at all.

But, besides work and video games, there hasn’t been much going on. I had a Halo party for my high school graduating class again (it normally happens about twice a year or so), but I’m assuming that would fall under video games. Even so, the summer hasn’t seemed dull or boring at all, and I’m enjoying it to the fullest, especially since I’ve got Mal with me.

So there’s my update, internet. Keep on the lookout for more of that weekly Ninten Speaks stuff, since that’s the most you’ll be getting of Stephen Georg online until school starts. (And oh yeah, I also just released a new song about EarthBound—you can listen/download it here, but I’m sure it’ll show up on my site in another day or so).

Waiting Tables and Playing Games

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:07:09 -0400

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

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 23:40:59 -0400

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.

Sad but true

Sun, 17 May 2009 22:27:33 -0400

Dan: What did our parents do before video games?
Alex: They went outside.
Dan: What's that?

An Unexpected Passing

Fri, 08 May 2009 00:00:00 -0400

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

abjure: This game really caught my eye today and I thought it...

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 07:36:51 -0400

abjure:

This game really caught my eye today and I thought it was pretty cool. I’d like to see something like this but on a larger scale, maybe Valve should hire them?

Wildfire

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 18:22:23 -0400

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

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 22:06:06 -0400

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

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 22:49:26 -0400

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.

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

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

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 22:34:15 -0400

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

It might take a while, but given time I should hopefully have a computer that’ll boot both Leopard and Windows 7 perfectly. Here’s to hoping, anyway :D

MeStephen.com turns 4!

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 05:45:30 -0500

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

Our dorm is actually a really old hotel… really old. Gotta...

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 23:52:48 -0500

Our dorm is actually a really old hotel… really old. Gotta love my college.

End of February Update

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 18:04:14 -0500

February 2009 is coming to a close and we’ll soon be entering March. With March comes spring, and the end of cold weather. Unfortunately, living in Georgia and having a girlfriend in Wisconsin keeps me from ever being able to say anything about how cold it is. “I froze to death because it was 55º today” will only get a “55º isn’t cold!” out of her. It’s been nice as of late, though. 70º today here… she’s battling a winter snow storm.

Things in Stephen-land™ have been up and down I guess. I’ll try and backtrack to February 1st (my last big blog update) and remember things that happened after that.

Looking at it now, I had stated I wasn’t writing for Tree From My Youth. That has changed. When I originally wrote that, the cast was having some issues coming up with a solid time to write the script (it’s written collaboratively), and the time they eventually chose was a morning to afternoon, something I definitely cannot do. Seeing as how I was screwed in that department, I started thinking about how nice it would be to not have to write for another year, so I decided not to. It was less than a week later, though, that I was approached to come back. The writing times changed and I reconsidered. As of now, TFMY has released one episode and written the second. The first episode wasn’t so bad, but writing the second made me realize how much I hated writing FaB (I don’t think the actual writing was an issue, but working with others is something I’ve always had a problem with—I prefer to work on projects alone). Even so, I’ve decided to keep at it. Tree From My Youth is something that I feel needs to be brought into this world, and I’m going to have my hand in it in some form. It’s going to be a rough road, though, especially with some of the hard-nuts I have to work with *shudders*.

The more I think about that the more aggravated I get, so I’ll move on to something more cheerful.

This past Friday my Xbox 360 encountered hardware failure, also known as the “red ring of death”. I was in the middle of playing Call of Duty 4 with the folks from Starmen.net when my game froze. I restarted and it froze again. After freezing one more time, the box wouldn’t even come on. Bam. Red ring of death. It’s free to fix, but I’m out of a 360 for a few weeks. A minor inconvenience, I reckon. We’ve been playing a lot of Super NES games since then (my original xbox is modded so we have a ton of emulators), and I guess it’s a nice change.

Also, since the last update I released a new video. For my class we had to create a Film Noir-style video in groups of 4, so myself and 3 others produced Mystery Dick. It was written by Pat Leonard, with some basic foundational ideas stemming from all 4 of us. The great thing about not being the writer is that if someone hates it you can always say “yeah, well I didn’t write it”, heheh (sorry Pat!). I did a majority of the cinematography and directing, and all of the editing (which is all I really wanted to do in the first place). It’s not my finest work and the comedy is definitely not for everyone (I’ve been hesitant to post it on the front page of the site, especially since there’s been other content to fill it), but if you’ve got the 13 minutes, maybe you’ll like it.

Today marks the completion of week 8 out of 10 for this quarter. 2 more weeks and I’m out of here! This quarter has gone quite swimmingly and I plan on finishing strong. I’m most astonished at how well I’ve done in Math: after taking three exams I’ve managed two 95s and a 98. I always thought that I sucked in math (and honestly I still think that), but I’m realizing it was probably more of the fact I didn’t pay attention (hey, it was boring).

More importantly, I’m 2 weeks away from spring break, which means 2 weeks from Mallory. It will have been just about 3 months from when I had last seen her, and I’m ready for another visit—I miss her terribly. I talk to her everyday on Skype and we video chat all the time which has helped an immense amount. I can’t imagine how hard it must’ve been with just telephones, or even before that. Long-distance relationships are definitely more successful these days because of technology, so I’m thankful for that. Another thing to note is that in 10 days we’ll be celebrating our one year anniversary. It’s crazy to think that it’s already been a year. I’m more in love with her than ever, though, so I’d say things are definitely working out. Here’s to another wonderful year with a wonderful woman :)

The last thing I’ll update with is that I’ve decided on a good summer project: building a Hackintosh. For those uninformed, a hackintosh is a Mac built with PC components. Basically, imagine getting a Mac Pro, but instead of paying $7500 you only pay $1500. The process has become incredibly easy (you can even use a retail DVD of Leopard now), so now’s definitely the time. Not only will I have the most incredible Mac on the block, but also the most incredible PC. It’s something that excites the geek in me, heheh.

More later if I think of it.