Punisher

First off I'll just start off bye saying that picture is me and my resize makes the blinds look like shit, thus making the whole picture shitty. Click on it for full affect. It is an old piece of artwork I put together nearly a year ago. I still like its look over the time and it is unaltered. I saw it before I started this post and figured it should have one more shot into glory before it hits my archives forever.

I usually think of a lot of things during my free-time, especially on my walks to and from class, little 10 minute periods where my brain is allowed to wander and think anything. I suppose wander is a vast understatement, while I over-analyze myself and my actions, I often get the feeling I am the only one that does these things. While thinking I usually get the need to vent, and then I say to myself how it would be great to get back to my room and write a post on here about it. Which usually doesn't happen as you may have noticed. This blog is often a ghost. I am sorry, my lack of motivation is at the level where it almost scares me. And it isn't like its one of those things where "knowing is half the battle", because I know I am incredible lazy and it is nearly always my downfall. I went through yesterday in full procrastination mode. I had thoughts of grandeur and organized plans in which I would balance my free-time with a decent quantity of studying and homework. These thoughts are not new to me. Every day I make a list of things to do, and leisure activities I wish to partake in. Well, lets just say I usually lose myself in the leisure activities, and the only way I ever touch the books is if it is due the next day, or I have a test the next day. Even the "test the next day" force has been failing me. Perhaps it's do to my impressive start this semester. From my shitty last semester, I started this one out with the flare and wit I once possessed as a child, I thought of myself as ahead of the game again, as I was once before. This was a big mistake, because now I merely shrug my shoulders going into a test, and leave with a slap in the face. How many slaps does it take to realize my first few tests were a fluke and that I still need to get my ass in gear? According to me, it's apparently a lot. I need to pull through though, I always have, Shape up or Ship out, that's a motto that comes to mind. Just like I have been taught by my family, when the going gets tough you cowboy-the-fuck-up and do what needs to get done. Well, that may not be exactly what my family says.

I do however, have a story that could not escape the webpage. I apologize that threw my blabbering I probably lost half the readers.This story took place aproximately 2 weeks ago. Lets say a Monday, for story sake. It is monday night. And if I remember correctly, I am in my room, in a chair, a friend is on the couch to my left, playing halo, my roomate walked out of the room shortly, and I am preparing for a card game or something like that. The phone rings and I pick it up.

"Hello this is, (insert some useless name), and I am a pre-med Biology major at the University of Eau Claire(or something to that affect). We are doing a survey and I was wondering if you would be interested in taking part in it".

Usually I think of witty things to say to this type of spam phonecall afterwards, and then look back and wish I'd thought of it earlier, but this call in particular was unique because students from UWEC usually don't call. So I figure, I got nothing to do at the moment, if this gets boring I can just hang up, and I could quiet possibly think of one of those witty sayings and make this a GREAT story, I don't want to over-inflate though, so I'll tell you now I did not think of anything witty..

"Yeah, sure"

"Ok cool. Just a few questions. First, Do you get constipated, and if so, how often" *straight faced, err, voiced*

*thinking to self* "Is this a prank call?" I should mention I was slightly caught off guard, but I didn't pause in my response*"Ummm, not really at all."

"Not at all?"

*straight-voiced right back at him* "Well, I suppose I do every now and then, I'd say once a month, or every couple months, I might get cramps and/or constipation"

My friend over hears some of this and says something or perhaps chuckled, nothing too out of the normal. So at most, there is a slight conversation in the background.

"Maybe this isn't the time for this, I can c....*inaudible mumbles*" *He certainly didn't speak clear enough to be doing phone surveys.*

"I'm sorry, what was that?"

*voice of uncertainty, like he was wasting his time with me* "I should just call you back, this doesn't seem like the time."

"No, I really didn't hear you. What did you say?"

"I just said I can call back if this is not a good time for you."

Maybe you dont realize how stupid this seems to me right now, I may have not been able to convey the true feeling of this interaction, but this is a complete lack-of-commitment on his part. Basically, there has not even been a minute of conversation. He is asking me "abnormal personal questions" and I am answering quite truthfully, and not joking around as I can imagine others would. Granted he apparently knows I have a guest, so possible he thought my answers would be flawed, when infact, they were not. Also, if he was looking for a applicant to question that was alone, he should not be calling the dorm rooms. Rarely is a dorm room only holding one person, let alone two. So I see it as me being a nice find for his "survey" by how I have no problem talking of such things in front of friends. But with all my complying with him no questions asked, he keeps trying to drop the convo. Nothing so far has suggested either of us is uncomfortable. Shortly after the call I assume this to mean I "cracked" his prank phone call.

"No, actually I'm not doing anything right now, continue."

"what?"

"I just said keep going"

"Well, do you use profalactics/antacids?(Something like that. It was awhile ago)"

"Umm, No, I have some Tums but I hardly use them"

*Next he has a stern tone and again offers that we continue the conversation later. It was in the form of a question, but the way it was said, there was no options for me. I agreed and hung up. Me and whoever I saw for the next 5 minutes had a good laugh about this guy. My friend next to me agreed that I had been answering each question and there really was no reason to arrange a new call. We agree it must have been a prank call and that I was not a fun victim.*

I had a feeling he was the real deal though, whatever that means. I knew, however, that I am really not around the dorm much, and that he would probably hit an empty room a couple times if he did call back, which I was about 50% on believing would happen. At most I figured there would be some stupid voice message on our machine. But, low and behold, two to three days later me and the same guy are sitting on my couch, starting up a halo game. The phone rings, I go over and pick it up.

"Hello?"

*with a hint of distaste* "Is this the guy from the survey"

*I add a bit of shortness to my reply to counter-act his tone* "Yes."

"Well, now do you have time?"

*THE NERVE!* *very short with him* "No, I did before, now I am playing a video game."

"Fine.Click."

*If he had any of my respect before that last action, it was certainly gone. Yes, the room entitled "respect for bio-med phone survey guy" is a barren and desolate place.*

I know that was probably a long read and I apologize. The amount of funney in a joke should always be in a 1:1 ratio with amount of time spent telling it. And in real life this is a short tell. But on here it seems to take a lot more space. I hope you found it amusing.

Been so busy

Or atleast I'd like to think I have been so busy. I guess I did get a job, but right now I am taking on a mere 15 hours a week to see how the adjustment is. I am at Wendy's now and it's a pretty small changed from Tom's. A lot more relaxed and I still get the benefit of eating for free on top of getting paid. It's a big change working till 3 in the morning though. Which I wasn't really expecting to do a lot when I got the job. But now I realize that there is no "in-between", either you are a closer or a daytime person, and we all hate each other. The daytime people "don't do their jobs", and the closers do the jobs but "have no regard for rules or regulations", well except for wearing your gloves. In my mind gloves are a miniscule error when compared to talking back to the customers, food being prepared with lack of respect, the meat being stored raw and then cooked on something similar to a large frying pan, and the other poor service that goes on besides "lack of gloves". Granted I understand the importance, and for those of you that havn't worked fast food you might care, or you might not, I just figure as long as I'm washing my hands often the gloves get a little old, and annoying. But yeah, Don't take this to say I never wear gloves, I do all the time, I just take it personal when I'm corrected on my work ethic by people lack in that category. Now I am just ranting, I suppose things aren't really that bad, I just know I'm a better employee then half those guys on my first day, and they have the nerve to correct me.

If you are curious to what the title image is about, I have been involving myself a lot with cards. I spent maybe a week or two after and during break doing card tricks for http://www.21ace.com/ and recording them into videos. That site has a nice forum and tutorials of chip/card tricks. This new semi-hobby was brought along by my interest in Texas Hold 'em. A very popular poker game that is all over here in college. It quenched my need for strategic dominance over others, and gambling. Like any other competition I soon realized that I could quickly dominate it with some practice and research. I had a few bad and embarrassing beats at during some $5 games in the dorms. Once I thought I had been cheated out of my money, when it was actually a big mistake by this "veteran" card player. I was in 3rd and all in against him. He then lost his cards in the deck (I hadn't been paying attention). Now with all the facts on the table I understand he probably did have the winning hand, and all was legit. But at the time, all I could think about was that he cheated and I could have caught him. I quickly researched card cheating online so that I knew exactly how this stuff worked and I can watch for it. I may get accused of simply of trying to learn to cheat to get my money back, or something stupid like that. But thats simply not the case. Through life my family and my own decisions have brought me to be highly competetive, and NEVER stoop to cheating. I can, in most cases, always come out as the best at a skill or game requiring intelligence or hand/eye coordination, and if I'm not, then I usually stop competing and move on. Sorry if I come off narcistic here, but I just want to emphasize on how there is no reason to ever seriusly accuse me of cheating. I realize that some may take it as a compliment, like in Counter-strike when every noob will accuse someone better then him of using hacks. I simply view it as one of the highest insults out there, by accusing someone of cheating you are taking away everything they worked for, and you are saying that they need outside help to be as good as they are, therefore not being good at all.

I'm sorry, I started that paragraph to tell you about the new card playing/manipulation commmunity I have found myself in, and then went on to rant about cheat accusations. Well, anways http://www.21ace.com/ was the first site I joined. It is my base for all manipulation and slights with a forum to talk to a lot of people. I originally searched for sites to help me with my poker strategies, not tricks, but that part pulled me in just as much as the poker did. Through the last 2 weeks I have helped the people on the forum find, and explain, some decent tricks by simply watching them on a magicians commercial, or website preview. It took a lot of work though, simply to gain some prestige on a small forum for card slights. After a while of that I quickly got my eye back on the goal, to become of the best Hold 'em players. Now that sounds like a lot. But to excell you have to have a winners mentality. Everything is mental, I was a top runner in highschool, and I was the most out of shape, with the biggest gut. I was still the best runner at my school and top 10, if not top 5 long distance runners to go threw Freedom High School. If you tell yourself you can do something, and put your time into it, it should come. So back to Poker, I watched some WSOP, I read A LOT of strategies, odds, everything. My roomate followed my lead as well, and purchased a book "Winning low-limit hold'em : by Lee Jones" I have yet had time to run through it. My play has elevated a lot but still has a lot to be worked on. My wins/losses is almost even, but I still have a bad day every now and then. So I'm coming across a month or two of submerging myself into Hold'em and it's showing. If this keeps up I hope to get some scratch together and play at a high stakes game and see if I can come away with something nice.

And here are some of the card-slight videos I made :

The Spinning switch(2008 Youtubed)

The Scissors cut (2008 Youtubed) and

The Cardflip (not Youtubed, Sucks)

Alright. So I did ramble alot, but I guess thats what I get for not posting in so long. I apologize, this site slips away from me so often.

The necessary drinking picture

I finally landed a job. After putting in many applications, calling and pleading to managers and supervisors, and going to interviews, I am employed. It didn't happen like one might expect either. Over a week ago I had just finished with an interview at a local grocery store when I was waiting for them to call me back. I was pretty sure I got it. The day after my interview at the grocery store, Wendy's calls and sets up a interview with me that day, infact, it was an hour and a half after the phonecall. I was hired on the spot. And the grocery store has yet to call.

I found out from a friend that I had some uniform code to follow, and I had no clothes that fit the description. Black slacks mainly. I wanted something that would follow the guidelines and at the same time would suit my tastes and accentuate me as a person. Right. I first went to PacSun and found the pants I needed right away. I then continued to look around because I had time to burn. I caught a glance at some skater shoes, and I was attracted to them. During my hacky-sack days I had always wanted a pair to help with stalls and whatnot. I had always hated the look of them, and I knew I didn't skateboard for the most part, so I never actually considered getting some. The thought now as I was in PacSun seemed eerily an option. Which I don't know if I have changed since college, or I am just open to different looks. I quickly found some that were on sale and that looked good enough for me, not being one that really knows skateboard style, and only a faint idea of namebrand.

They are cool so far, and almost make me want to break out a hack that has been long-sence dead. Or perhaps even attempt skateboarding again.

If there is anything wrong with these shoes it's the tongue. I know that it's the style to be enlarged and everything but dear-god, its ridiculous. I have the notion to cut a slit under the tongue and remove half of the stuffing.

*Blaze2008 says: do you see that Aber-bracelet on my right wrist? Those big leather wrist belts were getting cool around this time, so guess what I did? I took an old belt of mine, cut it up, and superglued it around my wrist. You couldn't tell unless you looked real close. It had a 1 time application, when it came off it was staying off, kept it on during showers and everything. I can't remember how long I wore it, months, maybe even a semester. The best part is that some girl at a party actually criticized me and called me a tool for spending money on something so useless. When I told her I cut up an old belt and used some superglue free of charge she thought I was the coolest thing since sliced bread. Don't think I never taught you guys how to look like a tool without the high costs. Volume 2: Buying the white ipod headphones, wearing them, and hiding the cord while not plugging them into anything so you fit in while walking to class every morning.

The Tale; The Mistake

I'll start off with a mistake. Mistake : deciding at 2:00am that I would stay up all night. It wasn't that hard because I had accidently slept in till 3:30 the afternoon before. So I had all the energy, and I had all the procrastinated homework. I decided to surf the Intarweb too the wee hours of the morning. Then do my homework from 9-945 for my class at 10. Well, everything went according to plan. Soon I began to see people leaving for there 8 o'clock classes. For some reason I decided after all that, I would take a nap from 830-9 for when I had my alarm set for a accidental dose-off. I then layed down and was instantly knocked out. I have a slight rememberence of going to my alarm clock, turning it off, and for some reason laying back down. Now the part comes in when my fairy godperson must have realized something was awry, and quickly woke me up at 9:37. I have no other reason why my sleep-deprived body did not sleep for more than an hour. The following was quite odd, I knew something had gone terribly wrong as soon as I opened my eyes. I drudged over and sat on my comptuer chair. I then spent what felt for a decade stairing at my clock. Next I A.) tried to remember what time class was, B.) tried to remember what very important task that was haunting my conscience had gone undone, and C.) what had happend that created this mess. Finally like an acute detective, I quickly figured out that I had 23 minutes until class, had to write a 1 page response to an article I had found the night before, print it out in the basement, and write a graph for it. And somehow my alotted hour had evaporated under my stupidity of laying down for a "nap".

Seeing as how this story went long enough, I'll just end on the note that due to our day off Friday, the professor said that the homework deadline would be put back to tommorow. Whew. /me wipes brow.

On a brighter note(hehe, pun). I noticed a peering light through the gap in my curtains and suddenly remembered that the sun actually does rise. I then took a few seconds every 10-15 minutes to snap a quick picture for no apparent reason. Because putting it on the site was the last thing on my mind. I guess my first response to beauty in nature is to get a picture. Somethign I learned from my Mother no doubt.

Which reminds me of a time a week or two ago, one of the bigger snowfalls had started early in the morning, so that that everything was embossed with a thick white cap as I walked to class. The flakes layed thick upon the dark branches of the woods and it was something you dont see often, much less have time to sit and enjoy. I had made a point to get my camera but was to lazy later. Now, however, I have lost a bar or 2 on my "straight-meter" so I will leave it at that.

If you find no interest reading about Halo skip this post

A leaked version of Halo made it to Colombia recently. The main mission objective was to sneak your flag into enemy territory by whatever means necessary. The Colombians quickly put there quick wit and problem-solving skills together and these pictures were taken before things went south. hehe. south.

Actually that picture would be proof that I generally have A.) too much time on my hands, and B.) another person with the odd sence of humor I have. Most nights I suffice in just humping an opponent's corpse after I kill him.*

I have actually been playing a lot of Halo recently. Mainly because when I am bored I can usually always find 4-6 people who want to play. And when I am in the middle of an assignment I am usually asked to play. How can I turn down the oppurtunity to participate in a competition in which numerous people fight to the death to see who has the fastest reaction speed and best hand-to-eye coordination. Hell, it's the stuff I was born for. I will also point out that Murray First North is still undefeated in BLOOD GULCH CTF's. However, when it comes to anything else, mainly anything with covenent weapons, or stupid levels like Chiron or Derelict, we find ourselves having some competetion. And even somtimes, *shudder*, we lose.We havn't had many competetiors though, because after a week of us going to their dorms and beating them, we told them to come to ours. This usually is the end of any hopes of getting a game together, especially those Putnam bitches.

Usually with gaming comes the threat of bad grades, or loss of friends. But I've actually been getting along with my video games, and I've found that homework can always be pushed back. *I would like to point out that is bad sportsmanship and I am taking measures to quit this bad habit.

Here is one last photo to leave you with.

Remember: Different angles can be pleasing for both you and your partner!

Back By Popular Demand

Our good friend Tyler sporting his roomate Colin's new hand warmer Well, I didn't think I would be back on this site, but yet again, I am suprised by the actual requests for this website. I tend to get lazy every other month or so. And then after that month people start asking me to be back up here, and by then I'm all packed up again with good stories. First off I would like to add that my computer, I dont even remember the specifics anymore, crashed, and I nearly lost all my important information on my 120gig. Now I have diagnosed my 120gig as completely incompetent as well as my Abit KR7e motherboard. The random reboots, which I believe led to the random "unbootable drive", were just to much for me.

With the excuses out of the way, I would like to say I have been having an other-wise great time. I have been doing great in classes and even better in Halo and Counter-strike(CS). I have been playing CS at [H]ardCS . After the first weekend, (3 hours) of playing, I had made top 10 of this skillfull/popular server. That was somethign that I took pride in, but since that first weekend I have been playing sub-par at best, and now I am hardly top25.

I believe that my ability to write smoothly, with style, and less grammatical errors is infact shaping up. Whether it's due to my English class or not. Now I'm not claiming I am good at it in any way. I'm just simply stating that before college I was horrendous.

I am going to add now that my mousewheel wants to scroll up 10-15 bars, and down 1 bar, which is completely throwing me off for the moment.

Photoshoot.

Well I'm sorry I havn't been online, or doing much of anything recently. I had a cpu fan break, multiple times, which I think is part of the reason why my 120 gig doesn't work anymore. But yeah, on a good note I made it out an hour ago to buy a new cpu fan.

Alright, I can't talk alot, I need to go eat and drink and possibly think about what homework has yet to be done. Heres some photos of what the website has been missing.

Not much going on.

I really like adding pictures to my posts, which I do have some goodones. But I forgot to bring the cord between my camera and computer. I am now waiting for the cord in the mail, sent from home. I got a pic/story to go with my cpu fan, and another alchohol pic.

I met some girls, mainly because I am known as the guy who can fix computers. Maybe this might turn into me actually talking to a girl on a regular basis, well, besides jake. (jk). And on the topic of computers. I downloaded the Half-Life 2 rip from russia, which is pretty buggy. I played atleast for a half an hour at teh E3 techdemo. Throwing the dead Metrocop body into walls and barrels, and whatever else I thought of. The tractor beam is sooo fun. I also arranged a nice little scene.

That's about it. Soon I will have new images up and stories to go with them. Sorry for not updating as much as I used to. O well, time for class. And I still have to write a paragraph for some stupid intro. Ill have to save spell check for later...

Drinking. drinking. And ... drinking?

Got settled back into the scene at college. Teh parties, teh drinking, teh usual. Not really much going on as far as interesting things. I re-arranged my room, so that the printer I brought would fit. I met 2 new guys that came this semester, Matt and Logan. Both are cool as hell and Matt is in the national guard. To make a long story short one of the things they do in basic training is learn how to "blood-choke" an oppanent in hand to hand combat. Which is not harmful except in the fact that it kills braincells, but so does beer and supposedly it's a whole new feeling. So first Murph gets choked, as I'm watching I think Murph is jokeing around because he goes from a smirk to a completely dead face in a matter of seconds. Matt then slowely falls to the ground with Murph to make sure he is not hurt in the collapse. A few seconds later Murph is up and describing how crazy it feels. So im next. Being the great guy I am I had Murph video-tape it for the website. Here is the tidbit. Unfortunatly the camera stopped recording before i bounced to my feet yelling "Oh My God! It worked! It Worked!".
It's funner then it looks ;)



On another note. My cpu fan broke over break, and was making the most noise any cpu fan has ever made. And it was a factory AMD so why it broke is beyond me. The buzz got so annoying, I did not want to make bad show in front of my new friends and have them think that I was not as literate with computers as I am. So i took a extra fan SVC gave me out of its casing, unscrewed the tiny green fan that the AMD's give you. And double-sided sticky-taped the huge 80mm fan on that. So far its been working beautifully and quiet as hell I might add.

*Blaze2008 says: Wow, for being a computer nerd, my shit breaks ALL the time. (Looks cool as hell though.)

And oh yeah, you guys really want to see this blood choke video. I'll youtube these things later and re-update. Here it is on youtube.

*Gasp of air*

1 month later, here I am. Boy does it feel like I was being suffocated by a pillow and I was completely helpless whenever I think of the website. As some of you know a good friend of mine is hosting this site for me. When we both went home for break, he had no internet, and he never really got around to installing his modem and calling the phone company to get dial-up. He also had our site worked on and for some reason they deleted our side passwords and only he knew the master password. So I am sitting here with no way to communicate to my readers and tell them that I have no power to go online and update my site in any way. In current news, I am going back to college in 2 days. I had a great break. I played ALOT of foosball and pool. Partys were great. Clubbing with Jason was great. Met some awesome girls, that for some reason thought I too was awesome. And lucky for me I met those girls less then a week before I will be shipping myself off to college again. So yeah. Thats me in a nutshell.