I just woke up from a midday collapse. My fall semester is over, and I pulled this shit off again.

The 2D animation based off of figure drawings I had done that I blasted for “sucking shit” and “blowing hard” turned out OK. I’m medio-core!! It’ll never win any beauty awards, but the professor seemed to like it. I got props for taking on a challenging sequence (figure drawings with a dress that totally obscured the legs) and pulling off moderately successful secondary animation.

The 3d group project turned out better than I expected it to last week. It’s basically at first or second draft status at the moment. We pulled off the render, but that revealed lots of issues large and small that need to be rectified to create a portfolio piece. We’re going to try to improve it during the “slow” opening weeks of next semester. Hopefully they’re slow. Our group was applauded as the first in this class to ever not crash and burn horribly. In doing so, we were the first group to ever turn in close to a near finished piece. We got a better grade, free pizza, and apparently dodged writing a paper for our trouble.

I also bought supplies for my trip home and got an oil change today. Busy busy busy. On the down side, I passed out through the semester animation show. Poop.

I’m going to start jogging when I get back to Baltimore. This isn’t so much me informing you as me telling me to do it in a public forum. I eat like crap when I get stressed, and this has been a stressful semester. I don’t want to be a butterhazard again.

I’m nerding out at the moment. I goofed with it before, but I only seriously started using FireFox over the summer, thanks to the state of internet explorer. For those of you still using IE, there are some minor security issues with it… for example, if any of you visited The Register a few days ago, simply looking at the main page would give you a virus thanks to a mean jpg banner ad. Here’s the full story.

I like the tabbed browsing feature, which keeps me from bopping around multiple windows. I don’t know why there isn’t a clear “single-window browsing” option, but with some tweaking I managed to pull it off. I think some java code will still pop open new windows, but now most everything defaults to a new tab in a single firefox browser window. Much better. I guess I could have gotten an extension to do that. Meh!!

I’m nerding out because I just broke down and gave mouse gestures a try. Fucking sweet! I don’t need to use the keyboard or navigate all over the screen. Soon I can just look at the screen funny and it’ll read my thoughts. More boobies and explosions!1!

After I got home from school today, I watched RoboCop again. That movie is too fucking sweet. After the movie and took a nap so I could reflect on all the wondrous things I had seen. I woke up at 8:00, not knowing what day it was.

Later, those of us who are more or less done watched Elf. Even for a holiday cheese-fest, it was really good.

Tuesday is my last day of class for the Fall semester. Wednesday brings the awesome 634 mile drive back to Baltimore. I’d bitch a blue streak about how much I hate that drive, but my awesome girlfriend has done it just as many times and without any of my crying.

I can’t wait to see her again. She’s my monkey.

I also miss my family and look forward to seeing some of the friends I’ve been neglecting.

Wednesday isn’t quite here yet, though. Today I have my final Media Theory class. The paper and the exam were due last week. Unless my math is totally wrong, I would have to turn in a Wal-Mart reciept for my paper last week to get below a B in this class.

Tomorrow my collaborative project is due. I finished the rendering on this thing during an awesome booze fueled marathon session on Friday night. Right now we’re waiting on the audio, but we have a temp track if that doesn’t come together today.

I also have a 2D animation due made from quick figure drawings. It will suck. Hard. F+

Ok. So here’s what I did last night.

7:00pm
Dinner at Outback. I got free ice cream and yelling.

8:30pm
Taught my birthday guests Adam Yoe’s songs “Boobies and Cheese”, “Obi-wan Kenobi has been in your house”, and “Darth Vader likes the smell of poop”. Apparently the film department does not appreciate the subtle brilliance of “Boobies and Cheese”.

9:00pm
Recover from Outback. (read: poop and sit down for awhile)

11:00pm
Animation lab! WOOOOOOOOOO Call the fun police because I’m out of control!!

6:00am
Get home from animation lab. Talk to self whole way home. Not all that unusual.

7:30am
Somehow Half-Life 2 got on my computer. Evil spirits?

9:00am
Fucking spinny things blew me up Fuck fucking spinny things. They’re shit. I quit. Otherwise the game is the best thing that ever happened to computers or people.

I also had a few drinks at some point tonight, though probably not the point you’d assume.

I made incredible progress on an overwhelming project tonight at the labs. I still have work to do on that and another project, but the heavy stuff is seemingly over. yay.

Tonight my roommates and maybe 2 other people (if I am lucky) will be celebrating my birthday at Outback Steakhouse. Not a huge turn-out. I’m not a very social person, and it is finals.

Afterwards I’m headed to the computer labs to work on a project until late into the night. Fun fun fun.

My birthday isn’t until next month. I’ll be 25, and I have to say that this is really funny to me.

I’m only posting this because I didn’t see it on my friend’s list, and I wanted to be first with the righteous outrage. Look mommy! I’m using my blog as a leftist soap box!

Seriously, I hope being a little angry at this is common sense and not partisan flag waving on my part. BEHOLD!

From the web’s premiere site for hard hitting journalism: IMDB!
http://us.imdb.com/news/sb/#tv5

Cameraman Who Caught Iraq Shooting Is Damned by War Supporters
The U.S. military said Wednesday that it is investigating the circumstances surrounding the shooting of an unarmed wounded man lying in a Fallujah mosque that was filmed by an embedded pool cameraman working for NBC on Saturday. The Associated Press said that investigators are looking into the possible shooting of additional wounded insurgents in the mosque, noting that the NBC video appears to show other unarmed men with fresh and fatal gunshot wounds. Meanwhile, the cameraman who shot the video, Kevin Sites, has refused to discuss the shooting incident, except to tell the New York Times, “As sensitive as this is, we want to make sure the world has an accurate picture of the events.” A web log that he maintains was quickly loaded with hate messages, one calling him “a traitor and a terrorist,” another, “the lowest of the low, a traitor for sure,” and another concluding, “Good luck riding along with our troops — you’re going to need it.”

One part of me is a sad panda… but then again everyone, without exception, who uses the internet is fucking retarded.