The end of a summer

I hope this helps give you an idea of the new place and what's going on now :)

Internships

This isn’t my normal way of updating my blog but this is one avenue that is available to me at the moment since my work is a little slow. 

                Last week was quite the action packed week with travelling back and forth from Salem to Corvallis and then to the coast.  On Monday we went to Corvallis for the 4^th of July where we had the annual picnic with the neighborhood where we got to chat with the Hanauers and the Gustafsons.  Cheri was having a ball with our grandkids since they were so new and full of energy.  The food was great as usual and afterwards we had a small fireworks display.  Interestingly Scott Catchpole showed up for the get together but didn’t actually have any food.  Instead he just came to socialize basically and then left after people had finished eating.  Alan then showed up later in the evening unannounced just to chat as well where eventually we scouted around on steam for some games that were cheap and could be played in groups.

                Thursday evening we headed out to the coast where we stayed at a motel 6 in Lincoln city which dad had reserved.  We ate dinner as a huge group of us with Uncle Drew and Ryan and Martina’s family at this Denny’s like restaurant called Sambo’s (some cat like animal’s name) which was literally less than a block from motel 6.  That night I made sure to take one pill of the motion sickness stuff dad got.  After watching some espn which I dearly miss we went to bed at like 9:30pm.  Almost immediately after hitting the sack I realized it would be a long night when started snoring.  I slept through most of it but almost every 2 hrs I was rudely awakened by a loud snort or something or being nudged or something since I was sharing a bed with dad (I was literally staying on the edge of the bed just to be on the safe side, no luck).  The next day started promptly at 5:30 a.m.  where I took two of the motion sickness pills as did Dane and Dad.  We went through the Tradewinds company in depot bay to get our deep sea fishing/crabbing license and the boat to go on.  Mr. Max was the boat we went on.  I think I faired decently well for the first 2 ½ to 3 hrs until the whole stop and starting of fishing at different spots finally got the better of me and I just couldn’t hold it anymore and the water (only thing I had to wash the pills down…) just started coming out of my system.  After a couple more times it was bile at which point one of the crew of the boat gave me some bottled water to keep me from ruining my teeth by not throwing up more bile.  So I didn’t really chum the water much but everyone around me seemed to be catching fish nonetheless.  Dane and Ryan seemed to be doing fairly well because Ryan was getting two at a time and Dane fished up a beast of a fish early on that he thought he had caught the bottom of the ocean.  Dad was consistently catching fish left and right but about 9 of them had to be thrown back since they were these ugly red/yellow fish that were small and not for catching.  Dad was getting a little frustrated since he only got to keep 3 of the 12 he was fished up but he was happy to have some action.  Of the people on the boat our group of 6 got the most (I believe).  It would have been even more of a blow out if Nate hadn’t had stomach problems (non sea related) and I hadn’t been out of commission for half of the trip at sea.  Once we got back I had to promptly head back to Salem for work where I ended up being 40 min. late but no one seemed to care too much although they thought it was odd that I showed up just after the sets were done so there wasn’t much to do at that point in the day.

                Sunday we headed down to Corvallis for Dinner with everyone to have shish kabobs and hot dogs/sausages.  Not a whole lot happened honestly since it was continual watching of little people running around and keeping them happy since there were occasional outbursts every 5-10 min.  I played the piano, watched some baseball with the guys of the family, and watched an episode of Naruto during some downtime.  Besides that I think I just chatted with Dane, Annette, and Kari here and there until it was time to head back home.  Everyone is very interested in where I’m going in the near future and I wish I could give them a better idea. 

                Monday was a day off of work, volunteering, and family which was odd and nice but a little boring since I hardly get days like this anymore.  I think I just beat an indie game called Trine which was far less epic than what I had hoped since it was very reminiscent of Lost Vikings but incredibly easier.  I found out around 4 o’clock that we were having dinner in Corvallis at Papa’s Pizza so that was a nice surprise.  Papa’s pizza hasn’t changed much but the atmosphere and the play area is still great.  The munchkins enjoyed themselves but didn’t like being pulled away for food.  We only had to get 2 large pizzas to cover everyone there but they were ridiculously expensive.  Each cost around 28$ which blows my mind but that is why papa’s is a special occasion place and not a frequented restaurant.

                The next day was also nice to be able to sleep in and later in the evening Dane and Dad came to watch Thor at Northern Lights where I work.  It was fun showing them the theater and all the perks for working there.  We had free admission, drinks, popcorn, and half off all the food we ordered which ended up costing us 12.65 or something near that.  Normally all of that would have cost 45$ for the 3 of us so dad was extremely grateful.  Thor ended up being pretty mediocre which I kind of suspected but I thought the fights would have been a bit better.  The very first battle in the movie was the only one that I thought was pretty good besides the rampaging through S.H.I.E.L.D.’s security to mjolnir (the hammer).  My colleagues at work were really nice and accommodating even though they didn’t need to be but it was nice to chat with some of them.  Afterwards Dad and Dane stuck around a little bit to chat with Kari and Nate and then headed back to Corvallis.  I didn’t have much to do so I messed around playing League of Legends for most of the evening before having to hit the sack at 12 since I had to work at the hospital at 8am the next day.  If you can’t tell I’m able to write this 2 page entry due to the fact that there is literally nothing for me to do today and I’m tired of the e-learnings that are available since I tried to find some new ones only to realize that I had already done them and started nodding off during some of them.  I even had 45 unread emails that I was able to go through in less than 20 min. so it is safe to say that my time at the hospital is less than desirable (understatement). 

In other random news the summer sales through Steam have ended.  I think I purchased close to 40$ worth of games which seems like a lot but I was basically investing in things for me to do since that money got me over 20 games to play if I get in the mood.  I tried to err on the side of games that were multiplayer based since what’s the point in playing games alone if you have the chance to play with people.  There is only one game that I wish was still on sale (Terraria) but only so that I wouldn’t have to pay full price but thankfully that game is only 10$ but I’m waiting to see if people are going to continue playing it since many of the online crew go through phases of games that they play and I hate to get sucked into buying a game that doesn’t last more than a month or so.  It’s only 10:45am and I have 5 more hrs to go…

Unexpected changes :)

I forgot to mention it but I started last week with 175 lbs to be on the safe side and get form down while trying out squats.  I went up to 200 lbs this past week and I know I can do more since it seemed heavy but nothing I couldn't handle.  Oh, I got to meet old friends from Corvallis this past weekend when we had a MSYSA conference in Albany so I hung out with them sunday evening after dinner.

Time to fill :)

So I found a nice format when recording videos from the webcam so that uploading is way easier.  This file was only 17mb to upload for a 4 minute video, not bad.  Sorry if it's not all too exciting but it's what is going on right now :).

New Methods of blogging :)

I thought it would be fun to journal using the webcam I got a bit ago and see how easy it was and if it was a decent size to upload.

I had to download a converter since the file is extremely big like 117 mb raw so I converted it to like 17 mb so it would actually upload but the quality might be crap, sorry.  As it turns out the video quality uploads to a scratchy look since it looks fine on my computer, ugg.  I'll play around on future videos so it doesn't look so bad.

Keeping busy

It's kinda sad when you can't think of anything all that worthwhile in the past couple of days that is all that noteworthy.  The only thing that happened that was surprising was our church basketball game that went incredibly poorly lol.  After 40 minutes of playing our team was only able to get 21 points, yeah that is almost as bad as if not worse than middle schoolers.  I think I was 1/5 so the majority of the time I wasn't even shooting but they stopped guarding us in the last 10 min because it didn't even matter and we still couldn't even score.  It was soooo pathetic.  After that game I was so flabbergasted that I didn't even want to continue the rest of the season because our players suck soooo bad.  The players who actually know basketball strategies and play regularly are our worst players...  Simple things like stopping the ball when they are pressing up the court like on a fast break.  Giving help defense on a screen or sliding off the person you are defending to keep someone from driving to the basket.  Boxing out your man so he doesn't get in front of someone who is actually boxing out the big dudes who will score under the basket.  Don't force a pass that you waited too long to make just because they are open to score but you can't get it to them cause you have terrible timing or are blind lol.

It didn't help that they scored 50 some odd points to our 21 but man... let's at least keep it competitive.  The fact that I'm the tallest guy on our team and fastest doesn't mean I can play post and point guard at the same time... I'm only 150 lbs so boxing out is a task against 6'3" guys who are 200+ lbs.  If I couldn't jump as high as I can I would also be screwed.  Needless to say at the end of the game I am spent when I actually try.

In other news I finally got to talk to that girl I took on a date regarding what happened and I'm at least on good terms with her but I don't think I can ever trust her the same lol.  She just likes to chat a lot and be a tease it seems, fun...*shakes head*.

Volleyball this past thursday was another 1 of 2 win since we are ranked 2nd and play the #1 team each week now and can't seem to win one against them of a best of 3 games match.  We are able to beat every other team though but we can't play consistently enough against the best team to pull out a win.  We keep trying a 6^2 format for our formation which normally works well for hitters but it also creates confusion for people when there is a lose ball that didn't get bumped well to the setter so people watch waiting for a set when they really need to take charge and just set someone else instead of letting it hit the ground...

Classes are somewhat stale but the programming class I have with Java programming using BlueJ is entertaining when it is a challenge and when I feel like I have a shot at coding something without the help of a textbook or the professor.  It's somewhat annoying that the configuration of code is just different enough from C# that I swear my code is perfect but Java comes back with errors saying I'm using an incorrect symbol but really all is wrong is I need extra curly brackets {} or parenthesis () using 'if' statements or things of that nature just cause it's Java and not C#... stupid.

I think I'm about done but one last thing I noticed recently is people from Salem here like to make trips to Idaho or Utah to visit people at Rexburg or BYU.  The thing is they simply want to be around more lds people or their friends who went off there when they could simply start going to school and then they wouldn't have to waste their money with these trips that are expensive and are a once or twice type of deal.  Just boggles my mind.  Yes it is a roadtrip but couldn't they do something different for a road trip if all they really want to do is visit people... you could get that interaction by going to school or moving there for crying out loud.  Also, people who are back from school for a term from byu-i or Utah simply won't stop talking about how much they miss it to those of us who DON'T CARE.  If you don't want to be here stop whining about how boring this place is, jeez.  Some of us live here, hello!

Ok I'll get off my rant box again lol.  What to do for valentines day...hrrmm, good question.  Get a job? If only, lol.  Must stay positive :) haha. Yeah that's all I got for today :).

Rant

Ok, I gotta get my thoughts out on here or I'm going to burst a fricken gasket and I don't care if other people read it because this is my blog and my journal in a sense.  So I've only gone on official dates with 3 different girls that I can think of since coming to Salem and of those three 2 of them have blatantly been fondling, wrestling, flirting up a storm, or something to that regard THE night before I have taken them out on a date WHILE I'm there.

I'm saying this because that is just what happened tonight and I'm going to be taking this girl out the next day for dinner and a movie that you can do at this place called Northern Lights.

Now I'm not asking for them to stop dating other people, nope, not at all.  I don't even mind if they want to keep their options open because that totally makes sense.  BUT could you have the decency to fricken play around with another guy AT LEAST when I'm not around or the night before a date.  It's a small request.  What bothers me just as much is that this girl has said on several occasions that she dislikes this guy for who knows how many reasons but yet her actions speak butt loads more than her words it seems.

I feel like the guy who has a sign over his head that says "use me" cause that's what it feels like.  What's sad is I will still take this girl out tomorrow and have to do what I did the last time and act like nothing even happened because I don't want to be the jerk that makes the night suck incredibly bad (even though it basically will since it's hard to enjoy the evening with the knowledge you have).

This girl has been incredibly open with me from the start so it sucks even more when I was pressured to tell her what was bothering me when this wasn't the first time she has done this but with some other guy each time at an activity while I"m there making me wonder if I should even be there.  She tells me that it's her insecure side coming out and she just likes to flirt.  Ok...but with the guy you incredibly dislike as well who you said you will only joke with now that you know what kind of guy he is...ok you're losing me now, I'm confused.

So me being the trusting guy cause that is what you are supposed to do to even get anywhere in life I say "ok" I'll just assume it really is your insecure side coming out, fine.  But there is a pretty obvious line between flirting and hanging all over a guy to the point that the guy is almost forced to push you away (the guy is one of my very good friends and yes he is a ladies man but he is trying for someone else and has said so).

Ok, the anger has subsided now and I think I can go to bed knowing that I won't do anything stupid.  Just a little frustrated by the turn of events.  I could go on much more involving txts and conversations I've had but it won't help anybody at this point and my mood is slowly going back to chill and I want to keep it that way.

We watched the movie Red tonight and it was fairly good.  Lots of big name actors and the storyline was not bad.  John Malcovich is really hilarious despite his creepy vibe that he always sends off but it worked incredibly well in this movie.  We also played 2 volleyball games for our city league team and we wrecked both teams we played.  I don't know what was the problem with one team but I was serving for honestly 10 straight points before they managed to have a decent return and finally win a point.  I started reading the second book in the series of "Gregor the Overlander, The prophecy of Bane."  Yes it sounds like a book for a teenager but that is what Kari has available and I burn through books with the amount of off time I have with this Masters program.

I think I'm done now. Night.