Further Down the Rabbit Hole

So I have returned from my awesome week in Gatlinburg and have since arrived back in the land of the Buckeyes…boooooo.  I had a blast with everyone and it was a close contender for best spring break, only falling short of the awesomeness of my spring break trip senior year of high school, which will most likely never, ever, be topped.  We go-karted, hiked, mountain climbed, shopped, and drank our little hearts out….and it was good.  We left on a Saturday and returned on the following Friday only to be welcomed home by the crappy weather of lovely Ohio.  We spent the Monday of that week at the Nascar speed park in Pigeon Forge riding go-karts, which is pretty much a requirement of any self-respecting trip to the Seveirville/Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg area.  We raced each other, some punk kids, angry redneck dads, and other random assorted people until we were tired of inhaling the fumes of those tiny little engines.  Then, we had the best idea in the world.  Let’s go ride the alien space ship.  Let me describe this contraption.  The alien space ship is just a fancy version of the spinning thing where everyone stands against the wall and it spends fast enough that centripetal force holds everyone up and forces all of their blood into everyone’s extremities.  I too was suckered in by just how sweet this thing looked, and it was fun….for a bit.  My inner ear then took vengeance upon me in the form of extreme dizziness and that tingling feeling in your chin just before you’re about to vomit.  I then proceed to consume the healthiest thing in the entire park in order to appease my churning stomach….a bag of Lay’s potato chips and a Dr. Pepper.  I then had to sit out our last race in order to regain the approval of my equilibrium and then I was set for the rest of the day.  The following day we ventured out on the activity I had chosen for our group, which involved a 4 mile round-trip hike and a bit of a mountain climb at the top.  Let me say that I am thoroughly impressed with both my girlfriends courage and ability to climb jagged pieces of rock sticking 1700′ from the ground below.  She made me proud   The trail that we hiked was the Chimney Tops trail in the Great Smokey Mountains.  It’s a bit of a hike, I believe it is considered to be a strenuous trail (a fact which I successfully hid from my fellow hikers until after we finished the hike).  On the way up we had to endure complaints, moans, grumbles, etc from the people among the group who cursed my name for making them do such a horrible thing as making them walk 2 miles up a hill.  But, once we got to the top, all I seemed to hear were exclamations of amazement and joy on the views that we saw from the top of the mountain….and the hatred of my guts seemed to subside.  At the top of the trail there is a bunch of shale rock that one can climb in order to get to the very tip top of the mountain in order to get the best view of all.  I am pretty sure that all ten of us made it to the top of the first peak, which made me so happy I had to change my pants when I returned to the car.  Now this mountain is called Chimney Top for a reason, in that it has two peaks.  The second peak involves a much trickier descent down the side of the first peak, and then a trek across a small trail and back up on to the second, albeit lower, peak.  There really is no reason to attempt the climb out to the second part besides the bragging rights and the cool feeling when people pointed to us from the first peak and called us crazy.  I would also like to add that one among us made it the entire way up with a nasty hangover, which I was thoroughly impressed with as well.  The next day we took a white water rafting trip, which is kind’ve a difficult thing to describe in words but what I can say is that I was almost inadvertently drowned by my girlfriend who was tossed from the raft and then tried to take me with her…thanks love   Overall, these couple days were extremely exciting and event filled and led nicely into our relaxing day in Gatlinburg, where we proceeded to waste our money on things we probably didn’t need to spend money on.  But, what’s a vacation without spending money on useless things.    All in all I had a blast and, of course, it went entirely too fast.  There are so many specifics about the trip that I could write about on here but a lot of the people who read this care not for my inside jokes and shenanigans that my friends and I reap, since they would most likely not find any of them entertaining at all (seeing as how most of the things my friends and I find funny do, in fact, consist of ridiculous inside jokes).  So, to remedy this situation, I will now discuss something that is probably an annoyance that everyone who lives in the US of A will most likely experience at one time or another…..soccer moms.

For the record, I love soccer moms.  You cheered me on, you fed me, you bought me way overpriced cleats, but this is not the issue.  The issue happens to be both your wonderful “insight” into the game of soccer, and your tendency to argue over things that have absolutely no fundamental basis on any sort of soccer rule whatsoever.  Following my wonderful spring break, I spent the weekend at my father’s house.  I guess this calls for a shout out to my dad…hi dad!  Anyways…on my way down to my father’s house I met them at my youngest brother’s soccer game, and this is where I was reminded of this phenomenon that I thought I had finally escaped forever.  If you have ever been to a soccer game, you most likely have been extremely bored and I do not blame you whatsoever.  I have played the game since I was ~6 years old and I cannot argue against anyone that says that soccer is incredibly boring to watch, mostly because I completely agree with them.  So, in your soccer boredom, something fun you can do is people watch.  Specifically, watch the moms.  How can spot a mom you ask?  Listen for this specific phrase to be shouted from the top of a female’s lungs, “Go <insert child’s name or # here>!!!!>”  I have absolutely nothing against encouraging your kids, in fact, you should encourage your kids save being a bad parent.  But, if you do decide to cheer on your son/daughter, please find something useful to yell constantly during the game.  I can think of several examples that you can feel free to use during the course of a soccer exhibition including, “Man on your back!”, “Cross!”, “You have a drop!”, “Hands!”  <<make sure you yell this at a goalie, “You have time!”, “You have a man square!” etc etc.  I guarantee you that yelling any of this will make you the most educated soccer parent on the field.  I mean seriously think about it, what nugget of information can you extract from the sentence “Go!” being shouted at you 112,458 times during the course of a match.  The only useful thing I have come up with for this is that as long as you can hear your mom/dad yelling this extremely useful sentence, you can rest assured that they aren’t being thrown out of the game for yelling at another parent who, turns out, is actually rooting for the same team.  I kid you not, I watched an argument between two moms erupt over a call and they were rooting for the same freakin’ team! I don’t know if it’s just an American tendency to want to argue with other grown adults over pretty much nothing, or if it’s just the reaction of a person so dumbfounded by a game they know absolutely about (maybe this explains the ability to only shout the phrase “Go!”) but it is hilarious to watch.  Bottom line, if you’re going to shout during a sport…..please, please, PLEASE make sure you have something more insightful to offer than “Go #4, Go!”  Trust me, you will never see your kid stop dead in his tracks, have an epiphany, turn to you and mumble, “Holy shit I get it now…I need to go!” ….unless they are like me and they do it just to be a smartass

That’s it for today.I wrote a ton more than I had originally anticipated but I believe it to be worth it.  Now that school is back in session hopefully I’ll be on here quite a bit more, but I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

And now, for your viewing pleasure…..a scene from the best episode of Family Guy ever..

**Edit** Since Fox is no fun and took the awesome youtube video down of Patric Stewart smacking Wil Wheaton…I’ll give you something that’s aaalllmmoossttt as good

Free WiFi my ass, I had to drive my ass to a Super 8 and steal their internet in order to post this. I’ll be gone for a few more days so don’t be disappointed if I don’t write until Friday or so. Blame Baskin’s Creek…..liars.

I would have titled the post March Madness but it seemed too cliched and one of my friends feels compelled to constantly text/ask everyone he knows, “Can you feel the madness?!”  After awhile I think I actually think I could feel the madness, but I think it was more of a madness that was focused on hitting him over the head with a heavy object rather than the basketball antics this month brings along with it.  I will be the first to admit that I am not a major basketball fan.  Although, I do go to Ohio State so that pretty much makes me a fan out of school loyalty.  (And annoying all my friends who are Michigan fans b/c Michigan has sucked at a lot of things this year.)  I actually bought season tickets to all of the home games this year, and to be honest, it was actually fun.  The past two winters I have spent more time watching basketball than the previous 18 years of my life combined so I am not sure if I am acquiring a taste for the sport, or I am just being conditioned by immersion.  Regardless, I actually slightly enjoy watching the sport now so I figured I could pay homage to the NCAA tournament by making it the title of my post, with a slight juxtaposition of a synonym for Madness, but who’s judging…..probably you.  AAAnnyyways this isn’t the intended topic of this post so I will get on with it an stop boring you with my feelings on basketball.  I am currently on my lunch break at work so I am going to attempt to pound this sucker out so you have something to read while you are bored at work.  You’re welcome

So I would like to start off by explaining my absence over the past 2 weeks or so.  I made the mistake of actually telling people about my blog and they in turn felt compelled to inform my network admins that I was doing something that goes against the terms of service.  Pardon my french, but what a f*cking  tool bag.  So, to explain in full….I used to host my blog in my dorm room, seeing as how we got some nasty bandwidth and all of our ip addresses faced the Internet directly.  I thought this was an awesome idea, and it proved to be just that for awhile.  Somewhere along the way the admins got informed that I was doing something to violate the resnet ToS, which is totally false!!!  Nowhere in the ToS does it state that I am not allowed to bring joy to other peoples live via rambling about nothing on a blog that’s hosted on a server that sits underneath my desk.  This pissed me off, and rightly so, because I had done absolutely nothing wrong.  Yet, the admins decide to be dicks anyways and block the ports that I needed open in order to let you guys read my long ass posts.  In short, the whole ordeal was gay and I realize that I actually probably was violating the ToS somehow but I still think it’s dumb b/c I wasn’t hurting a gursh durn thing.  So, to all you snitches and resnet admits, screw you!  Now that I got that out of my system, I can tell you how I resolved this problem.  I moved the server to my house.  Sorry, I know you were expecting some crazy process and what-not, but that’s all I got.  My bad.

So the other sweet thing that happened recently is that I got myself a brand new, well not really brand new, Dell Mini 9.  I told this to a few people and I immediately got chastised for  it being a Dell.  I am a geek, a nerd, a hacker, a linux user, I am whatever computer reference you want to throw at me…..but I still freakin’ like Dell!  I don’t understand what the big damn deal is over this company, but I have received nothing but exemplary service and products from them every single time.  Maybe it’s just me, maybe they just know how freakin’ sweet I am and treat me like a god, I have no idea.  But this is all beside the point, I got a Dell Mini 9.  For as cheap as these little buggers are….they rock, seriously.  My other laptop, also a dell, is a powerhouse of a laptop.  Naturally, since it is a powerhouse, I do a lot of CPU intensive things on it.  For instance, it takes about 25 minutes for this thing to compile a kernel…so why the hell would I not use this thing.  If I tried to compile a kernel on my mini, I would have to come back next week and it would only be 50% percent done (exaggeration btw).  So, since I use my main laptop for a lot of CPU intensive things, and seeing as how it’s hooked up to a 22 inch monitor 80% of the time, I don’t really like to move it that much.  Enter Dell Mini.  While it’s nto very powerful, it does pack quite a bit of a punch for its little Atom processor it is carrying.  I am thoroughly impressed with the little guy and I would recommend it to anyone looking for a netbook.  It’s great for carrying around everywhere since it is so light and the battery lasts for freakin’ ever, making it even better to just carry around all day and pull it out when needed.  I just took off the factory Windows XP, loaded me up some Debian Lenny, and I was set to go.  Compiz even works decently well on the thing….which completely amazed me btw seeings as how the graphics card is just integrated.  Bottom line, get one if you are looking for a netbook.  And, if you’re gonna get one, buy a refurbished one from Dell outlet; they’re way cheaper, basically new, and since they don’t have to be built you get it in like 3 days.  Mine arrived in 2 days, which is crazy fast.

My last issue I wanna talk about, before your eyeballs fall out from reading so much text, is Twitter.  If you don’t use it, sign up, if not for the simple fact that Christopher Walken is freakin’ hilarious.  If you do, add me, my name is arollyson…very creative, I know.  But I was thinking about this in the shower the other day…but think about what Twitter actually is.  This site is just a place for you to voice your every thought, funny or not, and other people read them like their lives depended on it.  Now the situation I am envisioning goes something like what follows.  Let’s translate Twitter into a real life situation.  Basically, the real world equivalent of Twitter would be to go around telling everyone you see what you were thinking at that very moment.  For example, if I saw Mr. Walken on the street on March 16th at approx 5:30 Pm, he would’ve said to me something to the effect of, “I made a little pimp outfit and put it in the yard. The bluejay hasn’t come back since. Some weird shit going on with the squirrels though.”  Would this not freak you out?  It freaked me out and I just read it on Twitter!  The strange thing about Twitter is that it is the opposite of the real world, people actually give a shit what you are thinking about at any given time, about any given subject…and they are obsessed with it!  I just find it odd that a practice that would give off the vibe that you were insane in the real world, is perfectly acceptable, and a huge trend in the digital world.  Let me give another example, if I would’ve seen you on the street on on March 18th at about noon, I would’ve said this (given that we were practicing real world Twittering), “i would also like to thank hulu for being the patron saint of bored people at work.”  Someone would likely had punched me, or at least called me a fag.  But…that’s just my weird take on Twitter that I had in the shower yesterday.

That’s it for now.  I just wrote 1386 words and my lunchbreak has come to an end.  I am going on spring break soon so maybe you’ll get an update about how that goes, and the crazy shit it entails.  If you don’t wanna read another 1000 words, just add me on twitter and I will update you on whats on my mind at any given time….and you’ll love it !

And now, for your viewing pleasure….a song that I guaruntee will be stuck in your head for the rest of today

I can’t apologize enough for the downtime that this blog has experienced. I know it has caused you much mental anguish and I am sure that you feel deserving of some monetary compensation for the pain I have caused you, but the truth of the matter is that I am flat broke and cannot do that….so all I have to offer is my apologies and this hilarious clip from family guy.   Now that I have eased your mind, I will now inflict more pain upon it.  This isn’t going to be a full blog post just yet, I am just taking the time to apologize for my actions and tell you when the next blog post will be up.  I have many things to talk about including why the blog went down, my new tiny laptop, my spring break trip looming ahead and my thoughts on Twitter.  So, stayed tuned and I will have you something hilarious and heartwarming to read here very soon

I am deeply sorry for how long it’s been since I wrote last, I’m sure you are infuriated and all I can say is……I’m sorry.  Anyways the reason for my long siesta is the busiest week of my life (ie last week).  I really don’t have an excuse for the lack of writing this week other than the extensive work I have done on my laptop.  For anyone who cares….I made the switch from Ubuntu to Debian, which I highly recommend to anyone who is tired of the straightjacket Ubuntu imposes upon you, and it took me about two  days due to Nvidia driver issues and me compiling the incorrect kernel (the brand spankin new 2.6.28.7) TWICE!!  I know, it pissed me off too.  My next project for this thing is to dual boot OS X on this sucker and I’m pretty sure that will be happening before the end of the week….hopefully. One last note for anyone who cares…..the new NVidia proprietary driver for linux (version 180.29) is freakin awesome.   Back to normal people world. Last week was, as the title foreshadows, a week from hell.  I had presentations out the ying-yang, a paper, group projects, homework, computer science lab….you name it and I had it last week.  I am truelf glad that week is behind me.  Admittedly, this quarter has been pretty laxidaisical despite having 18 credit hours, but I am now convince that it was just winding up this entire time for the haymaker that was my week last week.  My wifi presentation went OK, it could have gone much better had I not forgotten my notes on stream ciphers and exclusive or functions….which may sound boring but trust me, it wouldve been pretty sweet.  Now I am going to tell you that you are not as mature as you think you are and here’s why….

I am going to assume that you have been to Hooters.  I am letting myself make this assumption b/c if you have not been to Hooter’s you probably aren’t readin my blog, but mostly because even if you haven’t been to Hooter’s, I am sure that you can imagine what this ordeal entails.  Last Thursday, I drove myself and a few of my friends to a Hooter’s close to campus…..which should have been a 15 minute drive but my dumbass confused broad st with main st so it ended up taking longer than expected.  Although this driving malfunction produced a rather funny even invloving my roommate chasing my car across the parking lot….but that’s a story best left off of such a public blog :p  Anywho…we arrived at this Hooters only to find that we were like 5 of 9 people there, two of those people included, what I am assuming, our server’s parents or just her really really really loving friends.   But I digresse…the point of this story is to illustrate that no matter how mature you think you are, or claim to be, you cannot say “naked” to a Hooters waitress (no matter how hot or fugly) without giggling to yourself.  This does not have to be an audible giggle, merely just a mental smile or snicker.  You can deny this all that you want but I will call you a fraud every single time.  Now if you have never been to a Hooters I will explain what would lead you in conversation to say “naked” to a waitress without getting yourself slapped or kicked out.  At this fine restaurant you have the choice of breaded or non-breaded wings.  When ordering these breaded wings it is customary to order them as “naked.”  Yes, now you realize the predicament you are in.  You could take your great grandmother to Hooter’s and she would not be able to say “naked” to the well endowed waitress without giggling to yourself…..this is a view I hold and firmly defend.  I don’t care how proper you think you are, it cannot be done…..now this might just be because proper people don’t go to Hooters but even if they did I don’t think they would be able to resist it either.  Now I realize this is the entire point of a restaurant chain more laiden with innuendo than the Todd from Scrubs but I think it’s hilarious that I myself cannot hold back the smallest of smiles when I tell that waitress with the massive mammories that I would like my wings “hot and naked.”  I challenge yourself to now go attempt this and watch yourself and your friends as you miserably fail my test of maturity.  Point being….we are all immature, even though we won’t admit it, b/c you know exactly what you are thinking about as soon as you say the word “naked” to that young lady….yep, that’s what I thought.  And that’s all I have to say about that…

I think I will wrap up this entry on this note.  Since I skipped last week’s nerdsday on account of my Wifi hacking presentation I will be following this post with another tomorrow (hopefully) about how I installed Mac OS X on my Dell laptop….which should be awesome.  I also think I’ll have a few things to say about my new favorite linux distro Debian and some more stuff about augmented reality if I feel up to it.  But…I’ll say more about this stuff tomorrow

And now, for your viewing pleasure…the amazing blackflipping baby!!! with some assistance of course