Random Ramblings

Internet Meme

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 21:27:11 GMT

Rules of the game:

- Choose a singer/band/group
- Answer using ONLY titles of songs by that singer/band/group

Rich Mullins!

01. Are you male or female?
Boy Like Me / Man Like You

02. Describe yourself.
Man of No Reputation

03. What do people feel when they're around you?
Save Me

04. How would you describe your previous relationship?
N/A

05. Describe your current relationship.
Hard to Get

06. Where would you want to be now?
The Other Side of the World

07. How do you feel about love?
Bound to Come Some Trouble

08. What's your life like?
Step By Step

09. What would you ask for if you had only one wish?
The Color Green

10. Say something wise.
What Trouble Are Giants?

11.) What do you want to do/be in the future?
Growing Young

12.) Describe your home life.
Higher Education and the Book of Love

13.) What would your last words be?
Hold Me Jesus

14.) Describe your car.
Nothing in This World

15.) Describe your style.
How Can I Keep Myself From Singing?

Bus Ride of DOOM!

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 11:18:31 GMT

Well we made it to Indiana, though not for lack of trying. Some how a 6 hr bus ride ballooned into 11 hrs! :faint: I think it was because we missed a few turns, and ran into traffic through Chicago. Additionally the bus broke down, which would have been bad had it not been full of Engineers and mechanics. Turns out it was a problem with the pneumatics system, which was lucky, because some of the robots had pneumatics, so we were able to repair it using spare parts. It makes the geek in me feel warm and fuzzy knowing we fixed a bus with spare robot parts. :D

We got in so late that we were unable to get to the school to set up, so it will be cray this morning trying to get our pit area set up and our robot ready before matches start. I hope we do well, but we are the third youngest team here. It will be fun at any rate. :D

Busy Summer

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 13:09:56 GMT

Still here and still Extremely busy. Today I'm headed off to Indiana for the last FIRST competition this year. The Indiana Robotics Invitational is the "All Star Game"of first robotics, the all best teams will be competing all together for the first, and last time. It promesses to be a great deal of fun. I hope I have internet down there, if I do you may see another update.

Just a random update to show I'm not dead...

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 03:35:31 GMT

I haven't felt like doing much since I got back from my trip on Sunday, mostly I've been playing games and piano. I'm working on getting my thoughts together about my missions trip, but progress has been slow do to my total lack of energy.
I almost have my new laptop set up the way I like it, It's taken me several days due to Portal and Mario...

HP Pavillion dv9000 (What is with companies putting big numbers after their product names? Am I the only one who noticed this?)
Wide-screen 17 inch monitor
Built in Mic and Webcam
Built in Wireless
Windows Vista Home Premium 64 bit
Intel Centrino Core2 duo 1.83 GHz processors
4GB Ram
nVIDIAGeForce 8600M graphics card
DVD+RW CD+-RW with lightScribe (Also notice how companies can't obey basic rules like capitalization... Think iPod... :-/ )
It even comes with a little remote control, presumably for watching movies...

It plays Portal, and, more importantly, will be able to run the resource hogging software I'll be using as an engineering student. The wide screen is seems bit cumbersome for a laptop, but that's probably because I got used to a little Mac screen.
Overall I am immensely pleased with it, and my dad is immensely jealous. ;-p

Exicting Drive!

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 02:54:31 GMT

I underestimated in my earlier report that I would be visiting 5 states in three days. Since we went through Ohio I have now visited 6 states in one week.

The trip down was long, but we arrived safely. We almost didn't though.

On the way down, just inside the Indiana border, we we driving though heavy traffic. Up ahead of us, about a car length, was a small trailer, suddenly a black SUV tried to merge behind it and clipped it. The trailer began to fishtail horribly, at one point in almost tipped over. The diver of our van fought to avoid hitting the trailer and the debris that was flying off. By this point the trailer and the vehicle that was towing it were almost stopped. The trailer gave one last fishtail and the back door flew off and out fell a bail of hay, and a horse! The poor animal hit the concrete hard and rolled a bit, got onto its feet, then proceeded to wander across two lanes of traffic on rout 90! Just then our diver spotted a cop a quarter mile down the road, he had pulled someone unrelated to the accident over. So we, who were now at the front of a rapidly developing traffic jam, sped up and pulled over behind him. One of our team's mentors got out and informed him what had happed. He let the speeder go and turned around and started driving against traffic sirens blaring. After checking over our vehicle to make sure that we were not damaged, we debated staying, but decided that doing so would risk a second accident, so we moved on.

I found out later from one of my team members that the SUV that caused all this took off, that made me mad. It's one thing to cause a life threating collision because of bad road conditions, but I can't believe what kind of coward would leave the scene like that. Grr!

The rest of the drive was uneventful, and the practice rounds went well for our team, we'll see what tomorrow will bring. I don't anticipate us being high on the list, there are a lot of good teams here. The way the alliances are chosen for the finals means we could still end up on a winning one though, we'll see how that turns out.

Five states in one week.

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 10:35:48 GMT

I returned from my missions trip to Missouri on Wednesday, but I have not had a chance to update until now. The trip was awesome and I am planing a longer post about it latter. For now though I'll still be offline because I'm headed off to Michigan with my FIRST team for a mini competition. This means I will have visited or driven through five states within one week! Travel is fun, but I am wiped out. I have my new laptop with me, so if the hotel has internet access I will probably update, if not, I'll see you on Monday. :D

So Tired...

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 07:06:21 GMT

I've not been online much these past few days, the lack of a laptop means a lot of competition for the computer, And I discovered Gameboy emulators. I've also been very busy preparing for my upcoming missions trip to Missouri.

As to the completion of my summer list, I've been parked in front of my keyboard quite a bit these past few days, working on a song by David Nevue. (Take a listen, he generously provides many of his songs to listen online for free) I've decided to change "Learn to write my music down." to "Learn to read sheet music at the level I play music." I think it is a better goal to work towards, and will help me in the long run with my original one. It will be tricky without a teacher, but I still have Google. :D

Some Great News:

Thanks to some absolutely amazing people, I will have a new laptop shortly. As early as Friday. Since that is the day I leave, posting will pick up when I return from my trip next Wednesday, if you don't see any updates until then: I haven't died or anything.

Art (Kinda...)

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 03:16:28 GMT

Here's the image I was working on. I had to take this with a digital camera, sorry for the quality. There is still a little I could do with it yet, but I don't know if I will. Its just a sketch, and I think the errors are becoming unworkable...

Spent most of the day preparing for my graduation tomorrow. Which meant clothes shopping... Ugh... Still found time to practice piano, but no time to read, which is quite vexing.

This will be my last Journal update on the school's Mac... To prematurely halt the celebration: I do have a Windows computer, so journal updates will continue on schedule. Sorry. :-P

Same Old Random Junk...

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 07:45:56 GMT

Busy day today. Our family is getting a new van. It's a nice twelve-passenger (Though it only has seating for 9 due to a missing seat). This is good news because our old minivan is too small, and falling apart.

My brothers finally sat me down to play Risk with them. We have two versions, the original Risk, and Risk 2210, So naturally we played double-board Risk. I won, which is not unusual.

I had time today to practice my scales twice. I found that playing them is quite relaxing. I don't know why I bucked my teachers so much. Had I not, I might be farther along than I am now. If any one out there has the privilege of taking piano lessons, Please practice those seemingly pointless exercises, you will regret it dearly latter on if you don't.

Been working on a new drawing in my sketchbook, I've spent about 5 hours on it so far and I'm only half done. I hope I don't get to fed up with the piling up errors, I would really like to see it finished, its coming along nicely.

For some reason, I did not catch why, the city told everyone to avoid using water. I'm sure it was in someway related to the flooding, but I don't think it was contamination. I suspect the sewers are overtaxed. Been without a shower for three days now, good thing the internet is between us... At least it hasn't been too hot...

Random question:
These fox emotions are really cute, but rather limited in selection, is there any way to add different ones?

Shell Shocked

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 06:07:49 GMT

It's as if Dorthy from the Wizard of Oz and Noah decided to see who could throw the worst weather at us, with Zeus adding the frequent well-percussioned opinion. Who won? Consider that this storm has spawned eight tornadoes, though as far as I know they were all in cornfields, and the flooding led to this county having to declare a State of Emergency as well as shutting down the main highway, and all cross town traffic. I'd say the rain has caused more trouble than the tornadoes, so we'll award this one to Noah. Now he'd better hurry up with that ark!

Thanks to being stuck in the basement I managed to make progress cleaning it. That was most of my day, but I did find a fifteen minute lull to practice my scales. No time to read, but I may find myself reading late... er... early.

I am really enjoying my new pencils and eraser, Finished two sketches today, a title page for my new* sketchbook, and a study of the human head, both of which I'm quite pleased with.

*By "New" I mean I've had it for two months, but just now had time and tools to start using it. It's a nice bound sketchbook with 175 pages, not sure what brand it is, I tossed the sticker when I got it...

Thoughts for the day:

Egg rolls are mercifully hard to burn.

If you sit in a puddle your rear gets wet.

Your room is not messy until you can no longer find a place to sleep, my room is messy.

Stupid thunderstorms...

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 17:19:45 GMT

One of the bad things about having an electric piano is that I have to shut it off during thunderstorms, or risk frying a years savings. We are supposed to get storms until late tonight, which means I won't have a piano to play, and I'll have no computer when my... er... the school's laptop runs out of juice in about 2 hours... Argg!! *Goes stir-crazy*

That means I'll probably spend the day drawing and/or reading, though my brothers have been after me to play Risk with them...

Finished another chapter of Team of Rivals last night, it is most interesting to see the trials and triumphs of great men. I had erred in my previous report that it was the first biography I read not aimed at kids or teens. I realized I had read Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think? both by Richard Feynman. I'm rather shocked I forgot them since they were a major influence on me, and in many ways inspired my present path. They are both very different from Team of Rivals, and I recommend them both to anyone who likes science, especially physics.

Log Update

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 04:18:55 GMT

These past few days have brought mixed success with regards to the completion of my list.

Sunday was spent mostly sleeping, though I went to youth group to practice our skits for our upcoming missions trip. I was doing fine until I forgot my big line. Fortunately it was only a practice. Had an interesting discussion time afterwards, many questions were asked and debated: "If you could have unlimited wealth, but had to spend your life alone, would you do it?"
"If you could have one thing in unlimited quantities, not related to money or possessions, what would it be?" "If you could be one person in history, who would it be and why?" Simple questions, but they opened the door for much intellectual discussion. I rather like group talks like that, though I find I word things better writing than talking for some reason... I did manage to find time to read the first chapter in Team of Rivals, It is clearly a well researched book, though since it is the first biography I've read not aimed at kids or teens I really have nothing to objectively compare it to.

I wasted pretty much all of Monday reading through the archives of Untitled: That's seven years worth of comics! I was sad to discover the author had recently ended it, though at least /most/ of the lose ends were tied up... Needless to say I did not get much else done that day.

Tuesday was paper route day, and since I had no school work to do I was naturally expected to help out... We deliver over 700 papers on Tue, so that took most of the afternoon. I spent the evening cleaning out my school computer hard drive in preparation for returning it. *Sobs quietly at the thought of losing my... um... the school's lovely Mac* Also played two games of chess with my brother, he beat me twice, bringing our summer record to Me- 2 Him- 3.

Today I creamed said brother twice at chess, now our record is Me- 4 Him- 3. Also came to realize that I need to start practicing my scales on the piano, I've slacked off because I don't currently have a teacher, and I think its starting to show. I'm going to set aside 15min a day to start with, though I might need more.... We'll see... Also went shopping and bought my first real "art" pencils. Staples only had a set of three, one of each 2H, HB, and 2B. The brand is "Design" which I suspect is a cheep generic brand, but the nearest store I know of that would sell good ones is 45min away. They are better than the writing pencils I've been using at least. The set also came with a Kneaded Eraser, my first. It is an interesting substance, and it feels weird to erase without leaving little pink shavings all over the place.

Yes my blog is boring, I'm keeping it now more for my own personal enjoyment, an "open source journal" if you will. If you happen to be reading this, I can not be held liable for any injuries sustained by falling off your chair because you fell asleep while reading this journal, do so at your own risk.

Friend's Page Spam

Sat, 07 Jun 2008 07:21:15 GMT

Decided to start updating here, I feel funny talking about myself anywhere else...

Anyway, for the big news all my high school work is in, so my summer has begun!

Things I am already doing this summer:

Orientation at UW Madison.
* Two days
Missions trip to Missouri
* Five days

Things I hope I'll get to do this summer:
* FRC Unofficial regional in Michigan
* Take a day trip and go hiking.
* Visit some museums

My Long List of things I want to get done:

To read:
* Dante's Inferno
* Milton's Paradise Lost
* CS Lewis's Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters
* Josh McDowell's Evidence That Demands a Verdict
* Doris Goodwin's Team of Rivals

Misc:
* Learn C#
* Install Linux on one of our computers
* Write some of my songs down
* Write some of my stories down
* Write.
* Review Algebra and Chemistry in preparation for College
* Draw More
* Learn digital painting

Doubt I'll get everything done, but we'll see... I might use this Journal as a log and see how far I get...

Have a good one!!

Hello LJ!!

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 01:54:26 GMT

I just created this account because I want to be able to comment on others peoples blogs, so you may not see many entries from me. However you are welcome to head over to my deviantArt gallery and look around: http://benrr.deviantart.com/