This guy has gone and done what I only wish I could/had the opportunity to do:

http://www.honda-tech.com/zerothread?id=1845064&page=1

Enjoy the bee carnage. Or if you’re the pacifist type, enjoy the beautiful flaming artwork.

Later.

I’ve written a guide (it was actually for an e-mail I sent to someone else; figured I wouldn’t let it go to waste) to getting free music via various methods. You can find the guide at the top.
Enjoy.

Later.

Never confuse the University of California with the University of Southern California. Otherwise you’ll just end up searching around for 3 hours for the proper forms and wondering why you have to apply again on a totally different application.

This has been your college lesson of the day.

Later.

Haven’t updated in a few days…but oh, the ease of use of this thing when I finally decide to.

So, events of the past week. Didn’t get a lot of sleep Sunday night last weekend, so I slept in Monday morning. That helped a bit. Finally got myself back into a regular sleep pattern. Woo! Excedrin PM doesn’t kick in as fast as they say it does.

There’s a parade today. Everyone should go. It starts at 6, if I recall correctly. The weather has been fantastic (strangely enough) the past week, and tonight’s supposed to only go down to about 40º, so come on out and see the Christmas parade. I probably should be getting ready for that, but I’m too comfortable right now. Soon enough.

Percussion tryouts have ended. Congratulations to all the new members, and to those who didn’t make it, don’t give up! The season’s looking good. However, due to the small number of groups currently signed up for PSCO championships in Dayton, we may get bumped up to World Class if not enough are signed up by January. That’d be interesting. We’re definitely doing Festive Overture this year, now that we’ve gotten past most of the copyright blockades. Here’s to hoping I don’t have to kill my hands learning 4-mallet technique.

Finally, went to Mr. Ryan Chesser’s house last night, and viewed the glorious game that is Gears of War. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more gorgeous game. Definitely a shining example of the 360’s capabilities. On that note, a short rant about Halo 3:

Ok, I’ll be honest. The screenshots don’t get me excited, nor do the trailers. The thing that made Halo so great was that it was a break from the mold. It had a good story, good gameplay, good mechanics, the works. Halo 2 was decent: it didn’t do anything drastic, but it did add a few new weapons (which were really rehashes of old weapons under the guise of alien technology or something like that), a new side of gameplay from the Covenant perspective, and so forth. But they were more or less there to help push the story along, which I felt was the only significant improvement Halo 2 made. Granted, it’s a fun game (although the multiplayer kind of frustrates me), but it just needs something never seen before. Bungie can do it, I believe in them. Halo 3 doesn’t look like it’s going to deliver any of that. At least, not from what I’ve seen. We’ve got Master Chief in the shiniest armor yet, and the rest of the game with bloom lighting and HD, but that’s about it. Some massive spaceships add a bit of intrigue to it, but that’s just because I like big spaceships. Beyond that, I’m not about to run out and buy a 360 so I can be ready to play Halo 3 whenever it decides to come out. Gears of War is a step in the right direction that Halo 3 and Bungie’s development team should be following. It’s got interesting gameplay mechanics (a neat reload system, for example), an interesting story (that has room for evolution), and while looks aren’t everything, it’s got graphics that really do take use of the 360, rather than kind of an embellishment of simple textures and such that Halo makes use of. Don’t count me out as a Halo fan - I love the games, like I’ve been saying. I just think that Bungie either needs to start leaking a bit of the better, more innovative stuff that I’m sure they’ve got hidden away there somewhere, or if they don’t have some, they need to make some.

Rant done. I’ll probably still get the game (or play it at Ryan’s/Zach’s) anyway, but here’s to hoping it doesn’t kill interest in the series.

I think the time to get ready for that parade is now.

Later.