Ramblings! > Journal Ramblings

■December 6, 2004 - Conclusion of Group Work Insanities

[Mood:Overwhelmed] In the end Ray a.k.a. The Haitian Guy never sent me his work. On Saturday I e-mailed the teacher and explained to him Ray's incompetence. The teacher replied pissed, he scolded me for waiting till the last minute to bring this to his attention. That is true. I hesitated to tell the teacher how stupid Ray is because Ray seemed to show me promise throughout the semester. I thought maybe if I told the teacher early on about Ray's stupidity, that maybe Ray would get pissed or something. In the end Ray got pissed anyway. Since he never submitted to me the final revision of his work, I didn't include him in the paper, as per the teacher's instruction. On Sunday night I had to type up Ray's part of the paper. >:( Took me about three hours. Three irritating hours of my time to make up for competence. Fortunately, Calvin and Moe did pull through with their part of the paper.

Okay, 'tis Monday, the group paper is due and group presentations must be made. I'm 90% done with the paper. Ray doesn't know he's not a part of the group anymore since he never pulled through with the paper. Our Ray-less group decided to arrive an hour early to prepare our presentation. When I arrive to the school I realized I forgot my USB memory stick at home, where the paper is saved. At the realization of this, my jaw dropped to the floor faster than Alicia Silverstone's career. Ah, but my father is home. I can call him and instruct him to e-mail the paper's Word file to myself. So I go to my car and call him through my cell phone. One minute into the call my cell phone dies. Wonderful. I rush into the school's office to ask if I could use a phone. "Sorry, students can't use the phones here, but there's a pay phone in the student lounge" ...I don't have any spare change. I furiously drove home to pick up the memory stick. As a precaution I e-mailed the Word file to myself AND to my site. I arrive to school 20 minutes before class. I caught up with my group. They're not prepared for the presentation, at all. And neither am I since I devoted all my time toward the paper. I improvised by bringing with me highlighters. I printed out the portion of the paper for each group member to act as a script. We can't just read our papers for the whole presentation (we would get a lower grade) so I thought maybe we could use the highlighters to highlight the major points, and occasionally glance at our papers during the presentation. Okay class begins. We're so unprepared for the presentation. :\ The first two hours of class was the usual lecture on a chapter in the book. I took advantage of that time to finish the remaining 10% of the paper. After lecture is a break. We struggled to prepare ourselves for the presentation. As fate oh so loves to screw people over, Ray consumed most of our precious break time with his anger and frustrations. He learned that he's no longer a member of the group. Since I'm the "leader", Ray kept on approaching me and scolding me, saying untrue things in his defense like "but I did turn in work to you", "I turned in my work on time". Ray was speaking so fast and with such a strong Haitian accent that I had no idea what he was saying. Thank goodness for Moe! Moe stepped in and handled the worst of Ray's anger for me. Those two were getting so heated up that it seemed like a fist fight was about to break out. Oh btw, all this fighting and arguing was taking place outside the classroom. Toward the end of the break we returned to the classroom to approach our Ray troubles to the teacher, because Ray just wouldn't cease his anger. I explained to the teacher that Ray did turn in work, but it was turned in very late, done improperly, and was not usable for the paper at all. The teacher concluded that Ray would be granted a few points for the effort (a "D") and that he could participate in the group presentation for some more points. The conclusion silenced Ray, but he remained immensely pissed off. Break ended, groups presented, then comes the time when our group has to present. We're so not prepared. :\ I'm the least prepared of all. I spent ALL my time just working on the paper. I had -nothing- absorbed to be recited from memory. The teacher presented us with a few surprises when we stood up in front of the class about to present.

teacher: (notices we're all carrying our papers) "I'm going to take off points if you look at those papers. The only aid that can be used is the PowerPoint presentation."
me: (wonderful! he waits until now to tell us this)
teacher: "Speaking of which, where's your PowerPoint presentation?"
Rachel: "I thought that was optional."
teacher: "Nope, its required."
me: (you fucker!)

Note: I was the one who told the group that the PowerPoint presentation was optional. I reached that conclusion because the syllabus mentioned nothing about it.

So the presentation begins. Calvin, Moe, and Rachel presented surprisingly well. Moe didn't present much of his actual content about the psychological effects of drugs, but he improvised by talking about his life experiences with drugs. All three occasionally looked at their papers. They had to, we're not properly prepared. Then it was my turn to present. I said an introductory sentence. Seconds of silence ensued. Glanced at my paper again. More seconds of silence. Glanced at my paper again. More seconds of silence. Then I gave up and said to skip me. I couldn't present, my mind was a complete blank. Ray was next. Ray gave the class a lecture on nursing, because that's what he does for a living. His tone of voice was violent, since he was still pissed off. After a while Moe politely told him "Okay that's enough, you can stop now". When we sat down the teacher came to me and whispered to me, "That's okay that you froze like that. People do that all the time. Even people who regularly talk in front of groups could fall victim to it. But you really should work on resolving that problem. Speaking in front of people is a very important skill." Of course, the reality was that I just simply wasn't prepared. While he was speaking to me I was struggling not to smile. This meant his pity for 'my problem' might grant me a decent grade for the presentation, and it turned out that it did! He gave me a "B" for the presentation! A "B" for nothing! ^_^ Next class (the final class) he handed back our graded group papers. Ours got the highest "A" in the class! So my group work adventures ended with a happy ending.

■December 3, 2004 - The Flu

[Mood:Miserable] I have the flu. :( Ever since Thursday. I've been so miserable since Thursday. The past two nights have been horrible. The first night I went to bed at 9 PM and finally fell asleep at 2 AM. My sinuses and body aches were bothering me so much that it took me that long to sleep. Even then the sleep was so uncomfortable that I could only sleep five hours. The next night I had a painful stomach ache and headache that wouldn't go away despite the medicine I took. Again, I could only sleep five hours due to the discomfort. I'm getting fever symptoms too; whenever I'm in bed I get hot quickly and start sweating. Thursday was the worst day for me, I feel like shit the whole day. My sinuses were swollen, my ears popped from my swollen sinuses, my body had aches all over, a headache, and I was exhausted but couldn't sleep. On top of that, I wanted to work on my website so bad, but the flu symptoms prevented me from concentrating. Today I'm feeling better, but I still have symptoms. I have a bad sore throat, a headache, and lack of energy. I first woke up at 5 AM; my mom gave me this nasty yet strong medicine called Mylanta, and it made my stomach pain go away. After that I slept normally and woke up at 2 PM. After I had lunch I had to take the nasty Mylanta again because I was beginning to get stomach pains again. I'll probably have to take it again when I eat my next meal. I probably have some sort of stomach virus.

■December 2, 2004 - Group Work Insanities

[Mood:Disgruntled] In Psychology we have to do a group project that calls for a 15-page paper and a 20-min presentation on it.

My group started with 7 members. We decided to each do 2 pages of the 15-page paper. That's right, just two pages double-spaced. Hardly anything, right? Plus they need to be in APA format (the standard for writing college papers). All that you need to do with APA is give credit for everything you copy, including information you copied but put into your own words. Halfway through the course two members dropped out of class without telling us. Now we're down to 5 members. This week is the last week we have to work on both the paper and the presentation; everything is due on Monday. Is everyone pulling through? Here's what each member has done:

• Calvin ... Turned in his 2 pages early, but they were obviously copied and not in APA format at all. His revised two pages had a quote that was A WHOLE PAGE. Yes, Calvin seriously believed the teacher would accept a FULL PAGE QUOTE. I have yet to receive his next revised version.

• Moe ... Doesn't come to class everyday. He turned in his 2 pages early, but they were obviously copied and not in APA format at all. I have yet to receive his next revised version.

• Ray (the Haitian guy) ... This guy has no clue. He turned in his 2 pages very late. It was obviously copied and totally irrelevant to our paper - his resource was a book on nursing! Nursing has nothing to do with psychology! He's a two-finger typer, hardly knows anything about computers, and has absolutely no clue about anything. I told him:

Me: "Look, the paper is due Monday, and I need your revised 2 papers as soon as possible."
Ray: "Ok I give Wednesday. But I no type. No have time."
Me: "Okay, how about this: Write the paper by hand in your own words as much as possible. Don't worry about APA format, I'll take care of it. Just make sure to also give me a copy of your resource. I don't live far from the school so you can drop it off at my house in the mailbox."
Ray: "Ok ok I do!"
Me: "Great. Here, I printed you a Yahoo Map with directions from the school to my house. And I pointed out some landmarks to help you along the way." Did he drop it off? No. Looks like I have to do his part of the paper.

• Rachel ... Wonderful! Bisexual Goddess of Love and Beauty! She's the only one pulling through. She turned in all her stuff on time and done properly. She has also made up for the parts of the paper the two people who dropped out were supposed to do.

• Me ... I'm the one most familiar with APA format so I'm in charge of putting together the paper. I'm also the most familiar with computers and MS Office, so I'm also in charge of the PowerPoint presentation. However I haven't been able to begin my tasks because of Calvin, Moe, and Ray waiting to the very last minute.

Okay, since this is the last week we arranged to meet this past Tuesday to complete everything. On this meeting only Rachel and Calvin arrived. We realized there's still much work to do, so we arranged to meet again this Thursday. Rachel couldn't come because she was sick, and everyone else didn't come. Yup, I came to the school for nothing.

As I said earlier, I'm still waiting for Moe and Calvin to turn in their papers. I'm pissed at Moe for not coming at all to our group gatherings. I'm pissed at Ray for being a lazy ass. I'm willing to offer my virginity to Rachel for pulling through.

Moe, Calvin, and Ray have often complained that they don't know the APA format. Okay, so I've given them copies of the APA help papers THAT THE TEACHER GAVE ON THE FIRST DAY; god forbid them keeping any papers the teacher gives out. I also gave them a copy of an APA paper I did for another class and web addresses to APA Wizard websites. Yes, there are websites out there that create APA citations for you! Did they use any of this? No.

Rachel and I decided to wait until Saturday. If Moe, Calvin, and Ray don't pull through, we're going to do their papers and let the teacher know of their incompetence.

■November 25, 2004 - Life is study!

[Mood:Enthusiastic] I'm exploring and studying their features to increase my abilities with them. Here's what I've come up so far . . .

• Adobe Illustrator - Brush Study - "Ocean" : Fiddling around with Illustrator's brushes and transparency features.
• Adobe Illustrator - Brush Study - "Cliff" : Fiddling around with Illustrator's brushes and (bah forgot what its called) the feature that duplicates objects between two objects. And I used vector gaussian blur to create the shadows.
• Adobe Illustrator - Line Study - "Boxes" : Took a break from brushes to fiddle around with lines. I put together some custom symbols to make copying & pasting various sections much more efficient. Bah, it looks better in its original size, I had to shrink it for 72 dpi.
• Macromedia Flash - Animation Study - "Shining Force Movie Intro" : Here I repeatedly used motion tweening, shape tweening, and alpha effects. I learned some important techniques when fiddling around with the two background tunes.
• Adobe Illustrator - Gradient Study - "Simone Wallpaper" : Here I used vector gaussian blur and gradient methods I've never used before. I took major advantage of Illustrator's expand feature (breaks apart the elements of any object).
• Macromedia Flash - Animation Study - "Bleu Shrine Recreation" : Ah, NOW HERE IS THE GOOD STUFF Flash has offer, and I am finally pioneering into it. I'm going to remodel the Bleu shrine into an interactive mini-Flash site. The main page will have a fully animated Bleu. Flash MX made me pee in my pants when I saw how ridiculously easy it is to trace images. So far only the main page and the first half of "Why Bleu?" is complete.

So yah, I'm really excited learning more about Illustrator and Flash. I've also recently purchased two books on creating an efficient corporate identity (i.e. logo books), and I'm going to purchase a CD that teaches you hundreds of Photoshop tricks (i.e. creating realistic textures and such). When I said I want to be better than others - I meant it! >:D

■November 11, 2004 - Ad Request

[Mood:Intrigued] Check this out, my first site spam request:

Hi,

We are looking to advertise on your site for Mastiff Games', La Pucelle: Tactics, at $0.10 per unique click. We can also give you a copy of the game for review on your site.

If you are interested in being an advertiser for this campaign, please go to http://www.hypemakers.net/lapucelle to sign up (your information will not be shared with any other party) and to see the banners available for use.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me. Or, if you would like to discuss other rates, please submit them with verification of your traffic and information on your ad-tracking capabilities. We look forward to working with you.

All the best, Erin Consalvi Hype Council http://www.hypecouncil.com

If you no longer wish to be contacted by The Hype Council about our Advocacy campaigns, please go to www.hypecouncil.net/delete

I don't care how much they're willing to pay me, I refuse to put ads on my site.

■October 29, 2004 - Frustrations, Struggles, and a Job

[Mood:Disgruntled] A new pixie haunts me... the infamous evil menacing pixie of Jealousy Brewing. The Jealousy Brewing Pixie® loves to brew jealousy. She's made up of an assortment of vomit colors and has a giant mole on her face with a hair longer than Madonna's career. Out of nowhere she appears and almost instantly she surrounds me with talented designers who are 50 times better than me. She loves to watch me squirm as I gaze upon work up to a level of quality that I cannot easily achieve at this time. At my college she tortures me by shoving work and ideas that surpass mine in my face. She grabs them, rolls them into a ball, and SHOVES THEM UP MY ASS. While doing that she says "DO YOU LIKE?! HUH?!?! TAKE IT ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!! KWAHAHAHAAAHAHAAAAA!!!!1!11!!111". Bah god dammit. It makes me want to learn more. My current abilities aren't good enough. I want to be better than most designers. No, I want to be better than all of them. I want all the Adobe and Macromedia software to call me their daddy and beg for more.

Well, I recently got my first freelance job. So far its going okay. I'm in charge of the remodeling of DemoyaGroup.com, a small group of realtors. I got this job thanks to the efforts of my mom. She's a business teacher; she's always looking for business jobs for her students, and this particular realtor was looking for a web designer rather than an office aid, so my mom suggested me. Did you see the site? Don't get impressed just yet, that site design is not necessarily mine. It's one of many themes that come with the web hosting. You see, this particular hosting this realtor has is especially made for realtors, and it comes with a really gay flash-based page builder. With it he can simply click on boxes to enable pre-made pages that fulfill all his realtor needs. It does all the work for him. The design of these pre-made pages are rather plain and dull. He hired me because he wants the site remodeled and spiced up. He's also rather impressed with the capabilities of flash, so he also wants flash here and there. The page builder gives you the option of editing the pre-made pages. This all may sound well and good, but the page builder is FRUSTRATING to work with for someone like me. It gives you very little options to customize the themes. The limitations of the part that allows you to edit the pre-made pages by inserting your own HTML code is especially annoying. It reverts parts of my code to something else! Like when I attempt to alter padding and margins with CSS, it cancels it out! The page builder also LOVES to use IE-specific tags, or revert my code to IE-specific tags. For example, browsing the site in Firefox results with my flash not appearing on the main page. Wonderful.

Besides those frustrations, I think I'm doing pretty well with the human relations part. I keep in frequent contact with the realtor. I comply with the requests and suggestions he wants. Remodeling the site is taking longer than I had anticipated. I thought I would have finished by Wednesday (ending a 4-day period), but so far the site has taken me all week. It's not easy to juggle it around school. It looks like it'll take me next week as well.

And something interesting happened last week! Okay, I had the interview with this realtor on Thursday. I wasn't sure how much I should charge him for remodeling his site, so we left it floating in the air for Friday (when we would discuss more of the site remodeling). My mom just so happens to know a web designer (she attends commerce meetings). She called the guy and asked if he would give me advice, and he agreed. So I called him and he gave me the information I needed about pricing. I took advantage of the moment and asked him "What do web designers need to learn these days? So far I know Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks, Freehand, Flash, CSS...". Before he answered my question, he asked if I was looking for a part-time web design job. =D I said yes, of course. Then he said to e-mail him my resume and information. Hehe. This is my chance to get some real experience!! But, well, I kinda sorta wrote down his e-mail address wrong. Today I received the MailerDaemon pointing that out. Although its rather strange that the MailerDaemon took a whole week to reach me, usually it comes almost instantly. Anyway, I'm going to call him tomorrow (or rather, today since its 3 AM ^^;; ). Hopefully he won't be too bothered that I'm calling him a week after I was supposed to send him my information. I'm really interested in getting hired! Real life web design experience with people who do it for a living!

■October 11, 2004 - Return of Schedule Screw-up Pixie

[Mood:Disgruntled] The evil Schedule Screw-up Pixie (rare image of her toward left) strikes again! Damn her! Damn her and her evil scheduling-screw-up ways! She recently screwed me over. It all happened with missing information from my schedule. For my Psychology class, the fields for "Campus" and "Room number" were blank. Okay, so the practical thing to do would be to go to my campus and ask the people at the front desk. The lady at the front desk is like "Hmm. Ah! Hmm. I'll ask the counselor". So she asks the counselor. Twelve minutes later (yes, I counted), I'm 2 minutes late to the class, she walks out and says "Umm. Ah! Your class is at the other campus". Well golly gee! DAMN YOU SCHEDULE SCREW-UP PIXIE. DAMN YOU TO HELL!! So I had to drive to the other campus. When I arrived I was almost half an hour late. I walked in while the class was quiet and the teacher was lecturing. I wasn't embarrassed, but I got pissed when the teacher told me "Umm, next time arrive at 1 PM when the class begins". Inside I was like "GAHHH!!! IT WASN'T MY FAULT!! >_< DAMMIT! BLAME THE SCHOOL'S WONDERFUL MANAGEMENT!", but I just calmly pointed out that my schedule listed no information for the class, and that I had to drive from the other campus because of it. He didn't reply, he just handed me the important class papers and told me to sit in the front. I suppose to ensure I'll pay attention, as some type of punishment for arriving late. The night before I had 5 hours of sleep (insomnia is a bitch) so I was yawning throughout the teacher's whole lecture. The teacher (being a psychology teacher, I'm sure he pays particularly more attention to student behavior than others) used lack of sleep as an example with one of the things he was lecturing, which I'm sure was because of me. After some time had passed, he used me again by using the marketing research that follows web design as an example of what he was lecturing. Earlier in the class we had to introduce ourselves and say our major, so that's why he knew mine. So that's twice he picked on me. He was probably trying to keep me awake. Argh, but I wasn't yawning because I was bored! After the lecture I made sure to ask questions and such to try to give him the impression that I'm not a lazy retard who doesn't care about an education.

■September 16, 2004 - I'm piss broke

[Mood:Disgruntled] I'm completely, entirely, utterly, pathetically, unenthusiastically, piss broke. My savings declined faster than Alicia Silverstone's career. I'm so broke my bologna has no first name. How did this happen? Well, I haven't been working since I started attending my university. It's almost been two years now since then. My savings went from the thousands to -$35. Now I know Washington Mutual charges you $30 once you take out more than you have. Dammit, I should've checked my transaction history more often, then I would've avoided purchasing that pizza. >_< God dammit it all! Now I need to get a job. Actually, I -have- to get a job. I may be able to squeeze out some mula from my parents, but that would get more difficult as time passes. They've been pushing me to get a job. Ugh, having a job now along with school would be difficult. Especially now that I'm nearing the end and my classes are beginning to get quite challenging. My Marketing class is still being a dirty cunt bitch whore. I spent 6 1/2 hours today at school working with one of the partners of my assigned group to type up the majority of the marketing research paper (8 out of 15 pages so far) which is due on the last day of class (in 2 weeks). I don't mind doing most of the paper work with the group I have to work with, since I'll be making the slackers do the majority of the class presentation (I despise speaking in front of people).

In lighter news, I've completed the first flash for my site! Click here to see the first flash for my site! It's the FF5 logo. Before it was an ugly, choppy GIF with aliased letters. Now its crisp and beautiful! And its not just any normal flash - it's created entirely in ActionScript! Yup, I didn't used any motion tweening at all (Flash's built-in animation feature (it's inefficient and consumes more space)). That means each scrolling graphic is a sprite! Click here to view ghetto-looking example I drew in glorious MS Paint because I'm too lazy to open up Illustrator; this example illustrates the complicated mechanics of my FF5 logo flash. Now you see what I mean by "each scrolling graphic is a sprite". Each set of scrolling squares moves independently in three different speeds. When one reaches the end it immediately jumps back to the beginning to scroll again.

■September 1, 2004 - My Marketing teacher is INSANE

[Mood:Pissed] My Marketing teacher is INSANE. Practically EVERYONE failed the mid-term test! The challenge was ridiculously high. I almost failed with a "D". I spent 4 hours doing the test for a freakin D! To make matters worse, he says the grade is final; no curves, no extra credit whatsoever. Then he made some jokes about it. That wasn't funny. For once I'm in danger of getting a "C", or worse, fail. This is my first really difficult class at my university. I mean, English was difficult to some degree, but the challenge was manageable. Marketing is just flat-out ridiculous. To be able to pass that crazy mid-term, we probably would have had to memorize the first eight chapters in the book. Wow, what a dramatic difference from all the other tests I've taken, which have been easy. I wish I had a straight Marketing teacher (he's gay btw). Homosexual teachers are too intelligent and egotistical. During the test I could easily picture him laughing like how an evil scientist does in movies, along with a dramatic close-up and lightning crashing in the background. Here's a picture I drew illustrating that.

■August 20, 2004 - Flash sex

[Mood:Explosive] asd;lfk sdflkjsd;flakjsdf as;lkdjfa!!!

CLICK HERE TO VIEW MY FIRST FLASH

Amazing. I made it right after my Web Design 2 teacher taught us the basics of Flash. So far I am progressing the most in that class. I want to learn more! As for CSS, I am progressing quite a bit in that area too. I'm still remodeling various parts of my site into CSS since early July. Check out my D&D arcade site, and especially check out the "about the games" section. Isn't it sexy? It makes me feel like a dog in heat. I should draw a picture of me humping a cascading style sheet (CSS).

■July 26, 2004 - Unexpected forum drama

[Mood:Annoyed] I'll explain my South Carolina weekend adventure when I get the photos scanned. Anyway, I'm annoyed. There's this one forum that I've been visiting for a long while. Every now and then I try to bring up deep conversations relating to the nature of the mind, just to enjoy the refreshing experience of talking about something different for a change. Someone decided to make a thread to talk about dreams they've been having. A couple people replied with dreams they've been having lately. I decided to analyze all their dreams for them and post their meaning, because I think its really helpful to know what your mind is trying to tell you. Well, two of those people got all defensive and opened up a can of drama. :\ My kind intention backfired. I was away on vacation in South Carolina, so I couldn't reply to the thread when the drama erupted. By the time I came back there were already several heated replies against me. One person told me its wrong to go ramble about as if "my theories" on dreams were true, and that I shouldn't give out "negative" readings to avoid offending people. The other person got a bit immature and used some foul language to express how much my reading was offensive to him. Somehow he thought I was calling him insecure, when in reality I was only implying that the situation the dream was projecting made him feel insecure. I know I explained my (non-offensive) readings clearly and with my best intention, because no one else replied with negativity toward me. These two guys doubted my dream analyzation skills and claimed that dreams hardly project a meaning, and that I was full of shit. So yah, lots o' drama ensued. I decided to reply to the chaos with a short apology. Judging by the severity of the misunderstanding and the degree of their close-mindedness on the subject, it would take way too long to explain to them how "my theories" are valid and that every dream has a meaning. They could just go on Google and search with "nature dreams", "psychology dreams", or "analyze dreams" to find plenty of resources to support that what I know about dreams is widely accepted as fact. But, feh, they're not worth the trouble of a lengthy explanation. Plus its not worth making enemies in the forum. An apology was the most efficient move for both our sakes. Its a pity, though; I wish they would've accepted my reading to discover and correct the situation that their mind wanted them to be aware of.

■July 21, 2004 - Summer vacation & semester conclusion

[Mood:Eager] Right now its the middle of my one week vacation between semesters. I haven't done much. On Saturday 7/17 I had the usual anime watching with my friends; we saw Project A-Ko movies 1-4. Yesterday I saw "I, Robot" with my auntie. I though it was good. Ah, before this vacation was (obviously) my last week for that semester. I survived. I had four classes: Art History I, Web Design I, Color Theory, and English I.
- Art History was easy, the tests and final came directly from the notes.
- Web Design was a joke. My teacher, Mrs. Otero, doesn't know what she's talking about. The final was just to turn in a website using (the little) she taught in the class. Her husband doesn't know what he's talking about either. I had him for Introduction to Mac. He seemed so unorganized. It seemed like everyday when class started, he would come up with what we would do then. Anyway, I'll eventually put up my Web Design final project in Illustrated Ramblings.
- I enjoyed Color Theory. I had one of my favorite teachers, Mrs. Killigan. All that we did was a bunch of art projects to teach us about color and usage of it. I'll eventually post my work from this class in Illustrated Ramblings.
- English... I hate academic classes! This class wasn't too difficult, though. Most of the work was easy. The tests came directly from the notes. The only thing that was a pain in the ass was that god forsaken research paper. At first I chose to support cloning (we had to choose 1 of 8 topics and whether to support or be against them) - it was difficult! Most of the resources for cloning are too difficult and too technical to put into my own words. Speaking of which, she was strict as hell with plagiarism. She gave us several speeches, scaring the shit out of us with what would happen if we plagiarized, and what she's done in the past for people who've done it. Anyway, the difficulty with the cloning topic made me hesitate to do the paper for weeks. To make things even more difficult, we had to have the paper in APA format, something I've never done before. She did teach us the format, but it was tricky to utilize its guidelines properly for our own papers the first time. I hesitated so much with my research paper that I had it nowhere near ready the day the rough draft was due. I tried switching to the other topics on the list, but the available resources for them didn't seem any better to absorb than with cloning. I waited to the very last minute, the day before the final version was due. I switched my topic to be against marijuana. As it turned out, the resources for it were easy for me to absorb. I finished the research paper in one night (FYI, we had the whole semester to work on it =P ). I got on A for it! =D But I didn't get a happy ending - I got a B for the class, my third B altogether. >:( That's probably because I got a B on the final and I didn't have the rough draft of the research paper on the day it was due. I would've gotten an A on the mid-term if it wasn't for one tiny little detail: in a section where we had to list information in two columns, I had the columns switched. My first B came from Foundation studio for not memorizing the final presentation. My second B came from Photography for not developing a role of film in the photo lab, which we had to do outside of class time (which wasn't fair).

Tomorrow I will be taking the flight to visit my friend, April, in Columbia, SC. I can't wait! I haven't seen her in like four years. I'm going to take like 10 roles of film and post them here! ^_^ We've already made some plans. The day I arrive she's going to drive me around and show me various places. On Friday we're going to the mountains to have a picnic. On Saturday we might go to the zoo, then in the evening we're going to have an 80's movie marathon. Somewhere during the visit we're going to squeeze in a Tetris tournament. Then on Sunday we have to wake up at like 4 AM to take me to the airport. That's the only flight available back to FL. :\

■July 5, 2004 - CSS Wonders

[Mood:Explosive] (dies) CSS!!!! CSS IS AMAZING!!!!! This page...! Its in CSS!! Yes, indeed it is! Its... amazing!! Look here, its the before and after of a journal entry in Journal Ramblings. "Before" being all the HTML trash generated by Frontpage 2003 and "after" being the beautiful and crisp CSS recreation. Once a page is recreated with CSS, the memory size of the HTML file drops from 20-40 KB. What is CSS, you ask? CSS works with HTML to define all the design behaviors of a page. It makes modifications to the design of page incredibly easy. For example, this journal page of mine. If for some reason I wanted to change all font to Times New Roman and to the color red, that can be done just by changing two little lines in the CSS file, then POOF all the text immediately changes on the page. In the past with regular HTML, I would've had to manually change the font and color in every single set of tags before every paragraph. Such a thing is such a painful task - but I don't have to worry about it anymore! CSS turns me on so much that it leaves me with incredibly sore blue balls, making me desperately beg for more like a dog in heat. Its not just this journal page I've recreated in CSS, I've also recreated: Translation Nation (every page), Classic CD RPGs (frame and main page only), and More Info. Currently I'm in the process of recreating VG Emulation for Newbies. I've practically mastered CSS! >:D All that's left for me is to learn CSS positioning; that's the cunt bitch whore of CSS. Its also CSS's backbone, which allows you to create table-like columns and place blocks of text and images anywhere you want. There's a lot that needs to be remembered and taken into consideration whenever you're putting together a complex design that revolves around plenty of CSS positioning. Its challenging. Go here if you wish to see the style sheet that is generating the style of this page. The only drawback with CSS is that it kind of forces you to work mainly with the CSS and HTML code. I've hardly had a need to edit my pages in design mode (where you can edit a page like a Word document). Btw, for now on I'm going to be using Dreamweaver MX instead of Frontpage 2003. Frontpage 2003 has too few CSS features.

■July 4, 2004 - Parental annoyances

[Mood:Annoyed] Ugh, every parent has their annoying tidbits. My father is obsessed with maintaining the plants around the house outside. He makes me help him all the time he has a big project with the plants, which is almost every weekend. Its enough that its a lot of hard, irritating work, sweating in the heat under the scorching hot Florida sun, but my father just has to bring the event to my attention spontaneously. Because, god forbid, have him tell me of his day-long plant projects in advance. To make matters worse, he doesn't plan ahead with the projects. He calls me to help me. I stand there. He goes (note: 'ehh' is what Spanish men with a strong accent say when they're thinking) "Okay... ehh... okay... ehh... grab that - no wait... ehh..." Ten minutes later he comes up with the plan of action. As the day-long plant project ensues I have to continue to endure his 'ehh' pauses to think of what to do next. He gets all feisty if I rush and do something while he's thinking.

■June 15, 2004 - McDonalds Adventures

[Mood:Reflective] I very rarely eat at McDonalds, and today was one of those days. There's no food in the house and the McDonalds was along the way to my auntie's house (I have to feed her cats for a week b/c she's on business trip). In my wallet I had a 20 and two singles. I didn't want to break that 20, so I looked around and found my wonderful little bag o' spare change. I went to McDonalds, got the double quarter pounder meal, and gave the guy my two singles and a handful of change. He looked really annoyed. ^^;; It turned out that my change wasn't enough - my wonderful little bag o' change had failed me! I had to give the guy my 20. But as I handed it to him, he gave me a glare that said "why didn't you give me this in the first place?!" Heheh. =P

■June 12, 2004 - My web design skills are prehistoric ;_;

[Mood:Aggravated] Gah! God dammit all to hell! I just attempted to recreate some of my pages using CSS style sheets. Well, so far what I've gathered with CSS style sheets is that they have all the properties of a table, so in a sense they replace tables. Ok, so I went about to try and recreate some of my pages by replacing tables. I couldn't figure out how to. >_< My basic CSS skills aren't advanced enough to do what I want to do. Dreamweaver's CSS positioning menu lists too many things! I have no idea in hell what they do. So I Googled CSS positioning and researched. I searched more than I bargained for! >_< I learned that its absolutely evil to use tables with your site other than for charts. Something about that it considerably increases the loading times of pages because of how browsers interpret tables as individual elements etc. Note that my site is jam-packed full of tables. Some pages have up to 40 or so tables. x_x Hell, this journal page is made up of nothing but tables; 25 to be exact. Each entry is within a 3x3 table. I've also learned that Dreamweaver doesn't cover all forms of CSS - everything else needs to be coding manually. Ugh, the HTML of my FantasyAnime can bring a professional web designer to tears. >_< Now I'm terrified to lay another finger on my site knowing I just push it deeper into the bowels of HTML chaos. Well, I've purchased another book: Eric Meyer on CSS: Mastering the Language of Web Design. I've heard from people before about how good it was. I'm really pushing it with all this book-buying with my tight budget. In total they're a little over $100. My savings are almost entirely diminished; soon I'll be getting loans here and there from my parents and auntie until I graduate and get a job. But I'm sure they won't mind these book purchases knowing they're for my benefit with my career. I'll eventually have to slowly recreate my site with CSS style sheets to make it more efficient. Ok, so that's CSS style sheets and Flash that I must learn and master.

■June 11, 2004 - Flash MX Rage!

[Mood:Obsessive] (12:30 AM) I'm fed up with waiting to take the web design class that teaches flash. The current status of my website isn't good enough. I want more! I want to drown it in flash. Tomorrow I will begin teaching myself flash immediately. I want interactive menus so badly it hurts. The end result will grab you by the balls, leaving you begging for more. Indeed.

So yeah, I feel my site isn't good enough. I want it to look and feel professional while still retain my obsessive rage for plentiful eye candy and humor. The biggest disadvantage with maintaining a large website is that keeping the whole thing up-to-date with the current peak of your design skills is time consuming to the extreme. I don't literally mean to drown my site in flash. The interactive menus will generally be the only flash elements. I still want my content to spread out into the page, so I won't confine my site(s) within a flash box designed for 800x600 resolution. Ugh, the anticipation is driving me insane. The thing that got me so fired is my Final Fantasy site's remodeling. That site is the thorn in my foot! I haven't updated it since the stone age of the internet. Recently I decided to remodel it and make it into a bundled FF 1-3 site because I want to complete my FF 1-7 site collection and I want to get NES FF 2 & 3 over with quickly. I decided to go with a typical design because its something quick. Well, that didn't work out for me. The 'professional' design puts too many caps on my creativity. I won't be bothered doing it for a living, but I absolutely refuse to use it with my site. Because of that I've decided against my FF 1-3 bundled site idea, I'll end up make dedicated shrines for each. I don't know when though. They'll most likely be my guinea pig sites for flash.

(7:30 AM) I've just purchased a couple books, one of them being a Flash cartooning book! >:D Flash Cartoon Animation: Learn from the Pros. Yes. I'm still using that other Flash book I have to learn the basics, but before I go full throttle into making Flash cartoons for my site, I want to know everything I need to know about creating them properly. Flash is very time consuming. I don't want to risk putting a lot of work into a Flash, only to realize that I can't do something else because I didn't do something in the beginning when I started it. I want to be prepared. I especially want to be prepared for my Shining Force 1 parody Flash cartoon series. Ya know, that hilarious comic in my SF1 site that I never finished. The Flash cartoon based on that (which I do intend finishing, I promise =P ) is going to be BIG. I'm going to be working with several voice actor volunteers for it. However the SF1 Flash won't be my first project. I want to do several smaller projects first to get the hang of Flash cartooning. For one, I want to recreate that GIF animation in my FF Adventure site into Flash. Ya know, that cute little cartoon with the tiger that goes through a sex change so he can get laid. =P I would also like to make a Flash cartoon for my FF Legend 2 site.

■June 9, 2004 - Hunter X Hunter

[Mood:Enthusiatic] Recently I've finished watching all the available episodes for Hunter X Hunter, a BitTorrent-downloadable anime. Its INCREDIBLE. I HIGHLY suggest that you download it. HIGHLY. Its not even something to think about. If you're an anime fan, it is a requirement for you to download it. Hunter X Hunter is the best anime series I've seen in a long while. Here are my reasons why I feel this way:
- Characters are plentiful, diverse, and unique. Each episode has like 1-10 new characters, each with their own unique look and personality.
- It's the first anime I've seen to include psychology into combat.
- It satisfies your curiosity. As you watch the first part of the series, you might say to yourself "Hrm, so that character is descended from a well known family of assassins. I wonder what the family is like and how skilled they are as assassins." or "Hrm, so that character seeks revenge against a group of killers known as The Spiders. I wonder how they're like." Well, Hunter X Hunter gives exactly that to you as the series progresses. It will satisfy your expectations every time too! They take the time to show you everything that entices your curiosity.
- Storyline does not involve saving anything. No over-used 'save the world' routine at all. It involves the quest for a title, revenge, and searching for a lost relative.
- Storyline actually ditches the main character for like 20 episodes, putting focus on one of the supporting characters.
- Backgrounds and atmosphere are frequently affected by nature. It's the most I've seen in a single anime yet. I.e. a sunset; background colors change quickly according to the dimming sun while objects cast dramatic shadows.
- The villains and obstacles the main characters face are clever and addictive. Many times they're even artistically appealing (in the sense of an independent film).
- The only drawback is that the first several episodes are slow and kinda boring. But you should know by now that pretty much every anime starts out slow.

■June 5, 2004 - B-day weekend

[Mood:Happy] Well today is my birthday weekend. I'm going to see Harry Potter 3 then have a wonderful sushi dinner with family and friends. June 4th was the release of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I am now 23.

■May 10, 2004 - Mother's Day

[Mood:Festive] Yesterday was fun-filled, action-packed Mother's Day. The family bandwagon and I just went to a popular Cuban restaurant (of course). Afterwards, back at the house, we exchanged cards, flowers, and presents. During the process we took at least 30 rolls worth of pictures. I did something a little different this year. I drew custom custom cards for my mom and auntie.

Mom's card - [ Front ][ Spread ] My brother's dog Spanky recently invaded the plants surrounding the pool. My mom got upset and scolded Spanky for his evil deed. But during the scolding she couldn't help but laugh because Spanky looks so irresistibly cute when he knows he's guilty. When you force him to look at the damage he's done, he turns his head away in shame. So I made the card based on the infamous plant invasion moment. I think Spanky dug all those holes just to try to get a frog that was hiding in there. He loves to eat frogs and get drugged from the hallucination fluids. In the card I also tossed in one of his many turds he scatters about and his favorite bally.

Auntie's card - [ Front ][ Spread ] My scanner didn't pick up the light shades of detail I had all over the place. The card is based on the frustrations my auntie had told me about how she's having trouble adjusting to Florida time after experiencing a week in California with California time. Her cats make the adjusting difficult by waking her up in the morning with endless meowing and shoulder touching. "Vomit made in protest!"

■May 1, 2004 - Flattery

[Mood:Happy] Wow, this is the most flattering indirect compliment I've read in a long time. :*D Its from a LiveJournal that got pulled into my referral history because in it there was a link to my site that someone clicked on recently. Here it is:

Has it ever happened to anyone that a long time a go you found a really cool site and visited it often. As in over a year ago, maybe 2. Then the site disappeared and so after trying to go to it many times you gave up and deleted the bookmark. About 2 years later that site is back in the same url as before and much better than when you last saw it! That happened to me yesterday. ^_^ Unfortunately I don’t have time to visit sites at the moment but I bookmarked it for later. It’s Fantasy Anime and it has a lot of good games to download. *.*

I get butterflies in my stomach when I hear about people who go through trouble to find my website. :D I would like to send her an e-mail, but she didn't put her e-mail address in her profile info. I see that we have similar tastes in games and anime (except Yu-Gi-Oh). She liked Cowboy Bebop: The Movie and Millennium Actress too; I have those on DVD.

■April 30, 2004 - Gameboy Advance woes

[Mood:Disappointed] Its official, I don't care for Gameboy Advance anymore. Here are my reasons why:

1) Music is a crucial aspect of my gaming interest. GBA does not deliver in that department, for its music sounds like a scratchy, highly compressed MP3. A game does not excite me at all when it has crappy quality music playing in the background.
2) Practically all of its games have no challenge. GBA is created to appeal to children.
3) It doesn't feel like its more powerful than the SNES. The only difference I'm seeing in GBA's graphics is more colors and the ability to handle more complex graphics. Its already been proven that GBA can't handle most SNES games at full capacity, since ports like Contra 3 have been watered down for it.
4) The major inconvenience of having to purchase GBA SP in order to enjoy a screen that's actually visible.

■April 22, 2004 - Annoyances

[Mood:Annoyed] Dammit, I hate it when people on the internet misunderstand you. I created a thread in some forum and practically everyone took it in a negative way, when in reality it was just a harmless rambling. This reminds me of the time when I was talking to someone over AIM who was extremely depressed at the time. He was constantly using emoticons to express his frustrations, so that gave me the impression that he wasn't deeply depressed, because I view emoticons as something silly. I started to joke around - and he didn't like that one bit. So much that he blocked me. >_< Oh well, shit happens.

■April 10, 2004 - The Last Unicorn

[Mood:Satisfied] At college we were talking about good movies and The Last Unicorn was brought up. I remember seeing this movie a couple times when I was little; I haven't seen it since like the mid 80's. The conversation convinced me to get the DVD. Well I just finished watching it and I really enjoyed it! I still remember several characters from when I last watched it, like the annoying butterfly, the creepy witch, the large-breasted tree, and the skeleton alcoholic. I'm so thankful that butterfly only makes an appearance in the beginning. =P The soundtrack by America is really good! I downloaded the mp3 of the theme song "The Last Unicorn" and "On Man's Road". The animation and effects are pretty good considering the year it came out. I'm surprised, and glad, that the storyline is mostly serious, I expected it to be more cutesy. Although the movie did have some holes in the story. For no apparent reason, the cat starts talking in a pirate accent and tells one of the supporting characters how to reach 'the red bull', the cause of the conflict. And the story never touched how the prince felt about his father and his evil plans. I suppose he just never noticed the red bull pushing unicorns into the ocean all day. Overall, its a very beautiful movie and I'm glad I own it. Actually, there is one drawback to owning it, the front cover is so fruity looking! >_< Just look at it. There's a girly looking unicorn as the centerfold. There's stars, a butterfly, and a rainbow. I would be so embarrassed if one of my brothers came across it while browsing my DVD collection.

■April 1, 2004 - Bad luck

[Mood:Pissy] Yah I haven't been making that many journal posts lately. I've just been busy with school and the site and stuff. Well for starters, my dvd player crapped on me. I'm forced to use my homosexual iBook with its TV adapter in order to enjoy DVDs in the convenience of laying in bed. So far I've been lucky that my homosexual iBook hasn't hit me with a "I'm too pretty to run DVD Player for you!" hissy fit.

School has screwed me over for the first time. I've fallen victim to the infamous Schedule Screw-up Pixie (that's a rare picture of her to the left). The Schedule Screw-up Pixie derives the pleasure from her existence by screwing people over by placing them in classes that they do not need. My experience with her began when she scheduled me for remedial English 099, which is the English before regular level English. I went along with the class until the day of the mid-term. I finished a tutorial thingy through the internet, so I was eligible to take the placement test again (which is one of the requirements for passing the class). It can be taken anytime hence forth, so I took it after the mid-term. When I finished it the placement test lady was like "Wow, you excelled it! What the heck are you doing in English 099? (checks previous placement test score) Wait a sec, the first time you took the placement test, your score in the English part was good enough for placement in regular level English. You're not supposed to be in English 099." And so she took me to schedule lady to take me out of the class and give me a refund. That's all well and good, but this is already the mid-term, I've put forth weeks of work for NOTHING. >:( Bah.

On a lighter note, I've recently completed a big project for my Classic CD RPGs subsite. =D I've created numerous printable case covers for jewel cases. This will be extremely useful for people who like to make copies of their games or burn them from ISO/MP3. Plus I've remodeled the site, added more wallpapers, and added magazine scans. Europeans complained that I didn't have any of their case covers, so I added printable European case covers. Although I had to create my own covers for almost all of them since the internet barely has any scans of European cases.

■March 4, 2004 - Vector graphics obsession

[Mood:Enthusiastic] It's official, I'm obsessed with creating vector-based graphics. What's that, you ask? Vector graphics is what all the professional drawing programs base their drawing system on, such as with Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia Freehand. Every brush stroke you make or shape you create becomes an object that you can do anything with. Best of all, a vector-based drawing can be resized to half an inch or the size of a skyscraper, and it will still look great! To give an example of what it can do, lets say you made a simple brush stroke. You can resize it, distort it, rotate it, change its curve toward any direction, change its color, change it to a different brush, and more! Lately I've been integrating vector-based graphics into the design of my sites. Illustrator does wonders with tracing over lesser quality images! Like, look at my Mokona desktop wallpaper and my Ryo-ohki desktop wallpaper. The Mokona wallpaper was originally blurry and not-so-good looking. Not anymore! And the Ryo-ohki wallpaper was traced from the tiny Ryo-ohki image in the characters section. The possibilities are endless with Illustrator!

■February 29, 2004 - College ramblings

[Mood:Proud] A's in all my classes again. ^_^ If you want to check out my latest artwork then go to Illustrated Ramblings. I added my art from my Graphic Design 2 class and my Typography 2 class. As usual, my work proves to be one of the best in each class. ;D Muahahaa! (summons Washu's ego dolls)

Ego Doll #1: "Alex is the greatest!"

Ego Doll #2: "Alex is a GENIOUS!"

Ego Doll #1 & #2: "AAALEX! AAALEX!"