The End of This

I'm simply ending the blog. It's been dead for a while, so no big deal. This is mainly due to my life going through another reset of sorts. I'm no longer interested so much in PC games and photography as much as I am science, nature, and other green stuff. This is not at all like my last life change where I went ape shat on friends to make some sort of point. This is a lot less dramatic. So yeah, here's my new blog that I will hopefully post more relevant issues and topics: http://scienceofmylife.blogspot.com/

I Tamed a Raccoon

No, I'm not balding. ;)

I got home from work and saw it walking down the road. I went after it and it was pretty scared. I didn't see any other coons around, so I decided to try and get it to be friendly. It is a fairly young coon, so I knew it would be easier than trying to tame an adult. I made my movements slower and tried to pick up hints of how it would communicate with other coons. Finally it starts to cry a little. The sound is a warbly sort of chatter sound.. so hard to describe. As ridiculous as this may sound, I tried to mimic the sound, but in a less screechy way. Something I assumed a calm raccoon would sound like if making the same sound. Like magic the coon looked at me and started to get curious. Finally he/she climbed up into my lap. Whenever it would cry, I would start making the sounds again and it would calm back down. After mom, dad, and Nathan came down to see it (dad with my camera, trying to figure out how in the world to use it), I fed it some catfood. It was so cute to see him (I don't know, don't feel like say he/she a lot) grab the food with his hands. I was going to leave him, but when I stood up, he started cry. I decided I should take him up to the house after he start to climb my leg. He gets along great with the new kitten, Scotty (my older cat) just avoids him, and Patty goes from super curious to "OMG OMG I'M SCARED!" It seems that all of his base instincts are well in place and that, despite a little humanizing, he should be able to return to the wildlife with no trouble.

A Great Weekend

If you look at my hand on her side, it's cupped because I'm holding the ring. At that moment, I was thinking "crap! what if she notices that?"

In fact, the best weekend ever. It was all too short, as most good things are, but excellent. I picked up Alicia and Rebecca and went with them to their family reunion in Lebanon, TN (at the state park there). It was really cool seeing all the family again since Christmas, really great people. Plus it was a chance to use the new Canon 50mm lens I got. It's a good lens for sure, but the depth of field is rarely forgiving for poorly focused shots. Heh, but that's expected from an f/1.8.


Oh right! This isn't about a lens, this is about a beautiful love story spanning a whole year and four months. Well, Saturday night, I stepped outside at one point to talk to Alicia's mother (mom! yay!) about an idea my mom and I thought up. Earlier that day, Alicia's mom had taken a photo of us with my camera. Alicia complained that I wasn't "smiling for real" in it, which was the perfect setup. So, I told her mom that the next day (Sunday) I wanted her to get another photo of us, and that is when I would ask. She totally started to tear up! Just for the record.. ;)


Sunday morning things were pretty crazy. Trying to get everything packed and everyone ready to go by 12:00 was a little hard. I ended up getting a good pic of the family, on about 4 different cameras, then I had a chance. I talked to her mom and she said she couldn't, things were too busy, but said to get her sister Rebecca to do it. So I walk over to them and say "I need you and you." Alicia thought we were going to do the picture inside since it was hot, but she thought wrong. She seemed a little annoyed that it had to be outside, and a little more annoyed that it had to be up a trail some. This was all great though since it meant she had no idea there was a ring in my pocket! Later, she says that she should have picked up on me being so sweet to her and not picking on her all morning, even though she was grumpy. I always pick on her when she's grumpy, so yes, she really should have known something was up!


So we go up the trail to some stone benches around a campfire spot. We sit down, we smile (for real this time), and I ask Rebecca to show me the shot. I glance at it and say "try it like this," using my hands to describe holding the camera different. At this moment I saw a gleam of the ring in my hand and thought for sure the gig was up! But she apparently didn't see, I think she was too busy thinking "ugh, that picture was fine, let's go back." Rebecca steps back and lifts my camera up again. I stop her and say, "wait, let me try a different pose." So I dropped to a knee and held the ring out. Alicia initially thought I was joking around and had that look of "that's not nice!" Until she looked down and saw the ring in my hand. Then I asked. There was a really big "yes" and a bunch of hugs and kisses. She cried to! Woo! That means I win. I win the cry award. But then I cried later when her Grandmother talked to me and told me some very sweet things. Then it was all hugs and handshakes from there.

Thanks for the wonderful photos Rebecca! You did great for never using my camera before.

Gosh I miss her. Sigh.. won't see her again for a few weeks! Not fair!

Popular

It's a sad day for the Deviant Art browse feature. Yesterday I attempted to find even more great artists to watch, only to be completely disappointed. I used to avoid looking at Daily Deviation picks or using the "Popular" option for recently added browsing. I went through 4 pages (120 shots each) of crap on DA yesterday. Four fricking pages! It's obvious that the emo kids are getting more computer time now since that's all that is on there. These morons don't even have the sense to properly place the categories. A picture of your fat emo friends lounging around, taken with your favorite $50 Wal-Mart special does NOT qualify as a spontaneous portrait! It's an f'ing snapshot, take it somewhere else, DA is for ART! It's not your new livejournal.

So here I am, diving through the week's most popular photos and trying to find the unknown artists through watch lists and interesting comments left on good art. Emo kids.. please, hurry up and /wrists. You're right, your lives really aren't worth it. Now go cry in your dark corner and draw another crappy picture of Emo Spider-Man.

listening to: Nine Inch Nails - Slipping Away - Things Falling Apart
(though the track and album titles to this song sound emo, it's far from it. "Classic" NIN circa 1999.)

The Puzzle (Missing Half the Pieces)

Yep, you guessed it. The junge frau in the photo above (taken with my poor broken Yashica) is the reason I'm missing half the pieces to my puzzle. There are times when I struggle to understand my own feelings and thoughts. This is clearly one of those times. I am sitting here with a void inside of me. As emo as that sounds, it's true. There is no other way to describe the empty feeling that being away from her causes. I like to think of myself as in control of my emotions and such, save the few times I get completely fed up with stupidity. But here I am. Sitting in my chair, cold and alone. Yes, I just said "cold and alone" in a blog post. Don't worry, I won't be draping my hair over one eye, putting on some eyeliner, and squeezing into tight emo jeans anytime soon.. or ever. I guess you could say I really do rely on Alicia for a large part of my happiness. It's been that way with many of my relationships. For some reason, that's how I work. Don't know why, but at least it explains how poor relationships completely soured in the past.

But you know, on the verge of me asking her to marry me (no, I will not say when), I have thought a lot on our relationship together. We depend on eachother, regardless of how capable we are of functioning alone. I realize that I am allowing myself to feel the emptiness when she is away. I'm listening to "our songs" and closing my eyes, imagining she was near. Holy crap, I'm even listening to Evanescence more than ever now. When I saw Ben Gibbard (of Death Cab for Cutie / The Postal Service) in Nashville, the whole time I was thinking "I wish she was here with me." Any other time I'd be thinking to myself, "why am I doing this to myself?? Ugh!" But no, not now. Now it's exactly how I want to feel. Nuts? Sure, I plea temporary insanity. I do pass go, and I do collect the bones of your pets.

Medical update, my back is killing me with pain, and my right testicle has joined in the party more so than before! WOO! Yes, I'm drinking tons of water. More than likely this is a kidney stone. I hear that passing one is worse than child labor. If that's the case, then I'm assuming this is some sort of natural balance. Alicia and I want a lot of kids (yes, this is something we were shocked about when we discovered we agreed), so perhaps my body is saying "well, it's only fair if you get to feel it too." And I'm saying "OMG WTF BBQ IN MY PANTS THIS HURTS." I said that in my mind. Just now. Because suddenly it hurt. A LOT.

But further down the spiral (LAWL NIN REFERENCE) I shall be going to the mountains in north Georgia the third week in June! It's so beautiful up there.. I really can't wait. I'll be seeing one of my Uncles, two of my Aunts, and spending some good time with mom and dad. But even better, I'll have my camera glued to my eye the whole time. I'm pretty sure I can fill the 650 shots my card allows. Too bad I don't have photoshop anymore... yet anyways. Ugh.

Next, there's a change about to occur in EVE. I'm getting tired of the corp I've been in, The Plundering Penguins. It was great for a long time, and I really thought things were going to be great once we became a mercenary corp. No one logs on anymore and one of my best EVE friends left to be in another corp. A pirate corp. So after some thought (and some annoying time spent being hunted by wartargets with no one to back me up) I have decided to join my friend in the pirate corp. I'm going to try and manage my sec status so I can continue to do L4 missions, but sometimes it's just too awesome to open fire on another player when he foolishly jumps into our "claimed" lowsec system. Should be fun. I invested a lot into the penguins, but it's not where I want to be anymore. Oh well. At least I'm not joining Band of Brothers.

Listening To: Bush - 40 Miles From the Sun - The Science of Things

Prey

Prey is a game that didn't seem like anything too special from the preview I read in PC Gamer a long while back. Doom 3 engine, yay, but the idea of a spirit walking Native American being abducted by aliens and having to save his girlfriend didn't sound too awe inspiring. Little did I know that I would load up one of the best FPS games out today. Interesting weapons and the storyline honestly isn't as hokey as I thought it would be. The environments are absolutely amazing. The fear factor isn't all about things that make me jump. Sometimes it's what's all around me. The creepy, crawling, living.. "ship" that the aliens sucked me into. The game auto-adjusts difficulty, which is nice, but means that it'll go from "OMG WTF" hard to "LAWL PWNT" easy. But not nearly as much as SiN: Episode 1. It's a nice distraction since my main EVE character is still about 8 days from being able to pilot an Interceptor class frigate, my alt is grinding away at L1 missions (almost to L2), photoshop is gone as are most of my unprocessed photos (stupid HD crash), and sometimes my mouth is simply too dry to do my German lessons.
Speaking of German lessons, the CD I slapped $200 down for is GREAT. Honestly, it's amazing how much I remember from a lesson after doing one, but even better after a night of sleep. The next day I know words in German. Not just what their English translation is. Is it worth $200? I've spent hours on the Level 1 CD. Hours. I have only scratched the surface of all the units and lessons. I've gained enough knowledge of the German language to put Steam's language into German and get around in the program with little trouble. Let's just say I'll be ready to slap another $200 down for Level 2 when I'm done with Level 1.Too bad it's not like EVE where I can learn things by telling my brain to "train" it over time. Speaking of EVE, many things have happened in the past month. For one, we left the 3asy Company alliance and 0.0 sec. Plundering Penguins have returned to our original home in Empire, a comfy 0.3 system. So why would we leave the ISK and status behind in 0.0 ? Mercenary work. We get paid to do the dirty work for other corporations. Our first contract proved to be difficult, but we succeeded in our mission. Had tons of fun too.

Windows Vista... will I buy it? No, not until I'm running my next PC setup. Who knows when that will be, probably the next big price drop of Intel procs. Why not yet? For one, it takes an obscene amount of RAM to run Vista. Even with all of the pretty things turned off it's got a huge footprint. Second, DirectX 10 needs to take a firm footing in hardware. It's off to a great start, but the prices on the Geforce 8 series will need to go down (for me.. hehe). Final reason? I can run EVE just fine on XP. Hehehe...

currently listening to: filter - skinny - title of record

Staying Up Far Too Late

For what reason? Fleet operations in EVE. Plundering Penguins sieged a station by a different corp. It was a long, long fireworks show, but worth the time and ammo spent. As I type this, we are working on scrambling a war target that has been harassing us throughout our POS takedown. But my eyes are getting heavy and I think Alicia is going to kill me for staying up... :)