Dropped the Ball

Hey guys, you probably noticed I never did finish that 30-day challenge. I had a lot going on what with breaking up with my boyfriend (thank God that awful relationship is over), moving back to school, and everything else. I just didn't feel up to it anymore. I'm taking some cool classes this semester (Biblical Greek) so hopefully I'll find some time to post about those later on.

I once had indigestion....

I once had indigestion, and it lasted for probably about 18 hours which was pretty awful, but it's not nearly as painful as the constant indecision I suffer from. Seriously. I don't know what to do about things and I ask people for advice but I never know how to act on it. And if someone doesn't tell me what to do about my current dilemma, I'm going to explode. And if they do I won't listen.

But Is it Really Free?

I'm a college student, so I love basically anything free. But there are some things that are arguably not free, such as anything in a "Buy one, get one free" deal (you do have to buy the first one) and there are some things I suspect are not free of some catch, like any kind of "free trial."

Some free trials are dangerous because you are asked for your payment information in advance, and after your trial period you are billed unless you have cancelled your subscription. Examples are Netflix and that one insurance company that still owes me $15 because they received my cancellation request before they processed that withdrawal.

Other free trials are just annoying because you get used to the perks of being a paid member, then those perks are taken away and if you're a poor college student like me, you will never pay to get them back. I got a free trial of Norton Antivirus when I bought my computer, but I never upgraded after my trial period was over because I didn't want to spend money. I downloaded the free antivirus software I had on my old computer and so far the world hasn't ended.

So today I found out there's a free Spotify app available for Android devices. Did I mention there's a free Spotify app for Android? I'm super excited about this. I've wanted this thing basically for as long as I've had a smart phone, but probably longer? And it's pretty cool. I'm not familiar with all the fancy features yet, but I have been able to use it just like I use Spotify on my computer, and I can adjust my volume using the buttons on the side of my phone even if the screen is locked. Maybe that's a standard feature for playing music on your phone? Either way, I love it.

There's just one problem. As soon as I opened the app, it brought up a message saying "your free trial has begun." And I don't know exactly what that means. The app is still free, right? After my trial period ends, I'll still be able to use the app but I'll have ads and I'll lose some features? I'm pretty sure that's correct. I just don't know which features I'm going to lose. I hope it's not anything I learn to like, because I'm not paying for an app. No thank you.

Overall, I really am excited about using this app. I probably won't use it as much as I think I will, but I like the idea of having music on the go without taking up a bunch of storage space. I'm just not sure how free this free app will turn out to be...

The Perks of Being a Barista

As you might know, I work as a barista. It's probably the coolest job ever. I love making coffee and making my customers happy. This summer I'm actually working at a place that allows me to earn tips, which is new for me. Tips are great. Ever since Zach gave me the idea to use my tips to buy lunch, I haven't once had to use my debit card to pay for lunch while I'm at work. I love using cash on other little things too.

But one of the best perks of being a barista is the ability to make yourself free coffee, and that right has been taken away from me recently.We have to pay for everything we make ourselves from now on. I guess the owner is trying to actually make money or something? All I know is I'm pretty sure taking away my free coffee rights is unethical and against the International Law of Coffee set down by that giant coffee bean guy from that one episode of Regular Show. I mean, I don't have it in writing, but I'm almost positive.

It's not just that I enjoyed the perk of free coffee; it's also that sometimes I make weird stuff and I'm not sure how much to charge for it. Much like the pretzel pizza the guy next door makes himself. That's not on the menu.

With all the ever-changing policies and Zach being let go and Big Brother (the owners have video cameras, with audio. They watch us from home. It might be all they ever do?) and everything else, I'm starting to love my job a lot less. Which is good, because I needed to want to go back to school next month.

Too Creative?

I have two things working against me this summer. The first is that I've started watching cooking competition shows, mainly MasterChef. The second is that when I'm at work, my favorite place to get dinner is a sandwich place. The result is that when I'm at home I never feel like making myself just a sandwich. Why would I want a sandwich for lunch if I'm going to have a sandwich for dinner. I'd rather try to be creative and make something exciting!

Friday I decided to just see what was in the refrigerator and whip up something amazing. I started by putting some fresh pineapple in the skillet, then added sliced red onion. When I decided the juices of the pineapple had cooked off and I needed more moisture, I added some pear wine. It seemed like a good idea. I also threw in a little broccoli and a bunch of cauliflower among other things, having no idea where any of this was going to go. Eventually I decided the pineapple and wine would be too sweet, so I added soy sauce to make it savory and then half and half, I'm not sure why. After it cooked for a while, I gave up on any other ideas and decided to fold it into a tortilla. I slid the mess onto a plate and plopped a buttered tortilla in the pan. Then I waited for that to crisp up a little, slid my messy concoction onto it, and folded it as well as I could.

It tasted kind of surprisingly delicious, for the most part. There was too much of something. Maybe sweet, maybe sour; I couldn't tell. Afterwards the whole idea seemed stupid. Clearly I had tried to be too creative because of too much tv.

Today I was sure it would be better. I decided to make myself a quesadilla with bacon and artichoke hearts. I changed the recipe a little when I decided ham would be easier than bacon. After throwing my main ingredients on top of my tortilla, I decided to add spices. I started with chili powder my favorite spice that I probably use on too many dishes (Ramen noodles, popcorn, scrambled eggs, easy mac...). And then I thought, Cumin. Cumin adds a nice flavor to Mexican foods, right? I sprinkled a little more than I had intended, then put the bottle back in the cabinet next to the cumin...

Wait, if that's the cumin in the cabinet, what did I just put in my quesadilla? Well, it also starts with "c" but cinnamon doesn't taste so great with melted cheese and garlic-marinated artichoke hearts.

I have to admit, the cinnamon smelled amazing as it heated in the skillet. For the most part, it was tolerable to  eat too. But the first time I bit into a cinnamon-sprinkled artichoke, I wanted to puke. They just don't complement one another.

Learn from my mistakes. Don't let cooking shows make you overcreative about your lunch.

What Goes Up...

Why is it that what goes up must come down, but not everything that goes down, must come up?

I know: Gravity. Except it rained in town tonight so I rolled my windows down in my car and one of them never rolled back up so I really wish the dumb rule would go ahead and work both ways. Whatever.

I wonder how long it will take before my mom realizes I took her car out of the garage and replaced it with mine so no one could steal my radio through the gaping hole in the side of my car that used to be a window. I wonder what I will do once I have to go back to school? I have to get this fixed, don't I? Cool. I needed an excuse to spend some good money.

I had a bad night.

The Heart of London

I was going to blog about something else, but then I was distracted, and eventually I ended up watching the opening ceremony for this year's Olympics, and how could I not blog about that?

First off, I just want to say I'm pissed I was an extra hour behind because I live in the Mountain Time Zone. Central Time isn't delayed compared to Eastern. Why do Mountain and Pacific have to suffer?

Anyway, this was the first opening ceremony I ever watched, and I was very impressed. From what I hear, there was no matching the display of Beijing's ceremony from 2008, but I'd like to think London had something Beijing didn't. What I saw tonight was a strong and inspiring national pride. In the opening ceremonies, I felt like I was seeing into the heart of London and of the United Kingdom.

Probably the first thing I was really excited about was seeing Kenneth Branagh read the quote from The Tempest. I'm a big fan of Branagh so I thought it was neat to see him be such an important part of something as huge as the Olympics, but also the guy just looked delighted. The grin on his face seemed to reveal his own personal joy at having the games return to his home country.

I also really enjoyed the illustration of the Industrial Revolution. Aside from being a pleasure to watch, this demonstration really highlighted Britain's history and really spoke to me as London's way of saying, "This is who we are." This was followed by the beautiful "Second to the Right and Straight on 'Til Morning" which highlighted numerous themes and characters of British literature. I mean, literature. You know I had to love that.

Later, Paul McCartney performs "Hey, Jude" and there is a slight hiccup somewhere in the first lines. I thought maybe he was laughing at something, but I couldn't imagine what. Then later someone mentioned he had choked up. What? Paul McCartney? But then it wasn't really all that hard to believe, because I was almost in tears myself.

Overall, I thought London did a great job. So they're not Beijing. So what? Their ceremony had incredible heart, and the lighting of the flame was incredible to watch. I'll be watching the opening ceremonies of the Olympics for many years, and I think I'll always have to compare future performances to what I saw London do tonight.

I'm Not Feeling It

Surprise, surprise. It's five minutes to midnight and I haven't even attempted to post a blog entry for today. True, part of that is because my computer died and I was too lazy to carry it up to room and plug it in. It's also because I just don't feel like blogging today.

To be honest, I don't feel like doing much of anything. I didn't have a bad day. I went to work; I made delicious coffee and smoothies; I made a second attempt to introduce myself to my new co-worker, the manager's daughter, and I think I did a much better job of that today; I had another delicious sandwich from the sandwich shop upstairs, this time with amazing grilled onions; but then I got home and just became lazy. Took a double nap. Ate the rest of the leftover guacamole. Played with the apps on my phone. Watched old episodes of Top Chef Masters, whatever that is.

I think I'm just lonely? My sister is gone, I'm sad about Zach being fired, I didn't spend a lot of time with my parents after they got home tonight.

Being lazy makes me feel awful. Tomorrow I think I'll do something. Don't ask me what.

Tacos and Pie

Shirley: Shut up, Leonard; I found your YouTube page. What's the point of reviewing frozen pizza?
Leonard: You're talking about it.
Shirley: That is true... 


I'm using the above quote from Community to argue that the following entry is not entirely irrelevant. You can decide for yourself whether or not the argument works.

Sometimes I don't feel like going upstairs for a sandwich during my lunch break, and I won't eat from anywhere in the food court other than the sandwich place, so I just skip lunch or grab a pretzel from next door. Yesterday was one of those days. I ate my free pepperoni pretzel and then told myself I'd go across the street after work for some tacos. Del Taco has a 3 for $1 deal on Tuesdays, and tacos always sound good to me. I texted my boyfriend saying I'd bring him lunch too.

As it turned out, the deal is a "Taco Nights" deal. I panicked for a second, but at Del Taco it seems night starts at 3, which is luckily when I get off work. I noticed that the "regular tacos" were 3 for $.99 and the "classic tacos" were 3 for $1.99. The only difference is tomato. I don't know why Taco Bell and Del Taco charge extra for tomato (but the Taco Supreme at Taco Bell has sour cream too, right?) but I bought three of the classic tacos for my boyfriend because unlike me, he likes tomato. I still got six tacos for $3.19 total, so I don't really care. That's a deal even if their sauce is a little spicy for my taste.

Then at home we had chicken fajitas for dinner. Tacos and the recipe we use for chicken fajitas are two of the few Mexican meals I actually enjoy, so it was a good day. I ate the leftover fajita chicken while watching MasterChef. That show makes me hungry for some weird reason. As if it's about food or something....

Tonight I worked the closing shift which ends at about 9. I told my boyfriend I wanted to try to get out of there as soon as possible and make it to Pie Rush at Village Inn. If you have a Perkins in your town, you probably don't know what a Village Inn is, because they have a hard time existing in the same area. Same basic place though. Breakfast and pie. Village Inn does this thing where you can get a free slice of pie every Wednesday between 10 and 10, but it's only good for their fruit pies and the featured pie of the month. This being the last Wednesday of the month, I wanted to try the Peach Supreme before it was gone. It was a good idea, but they were out by the time we made it. I had Lemon Supreme instead. The one failure of this pie is the whipped cream on top. You give me lemon pie, I want meringue. Enough said.

To sum up, I really like food. I also had a delicious grilled Italian Sub today from the sandwich place in the food court. The girl whose name I don't know makes the best sandwiches.

That's all I have for today. I hope you like food too.

The Darkness Rises

I'm not the kind of person to complain about the violence of video games and movies or to associate that violence with the real violence that happens in the world around me, but a few nights ago some guy walked into a theater and killed some people, and I couldn't help but see the connection.

You've all heard about it by now. It was the premier of the latest Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises, and this guy just started shooting during the film. Lots of confusion. People thought it was part of the movie or something. The whole thing reminds me of the opening scene of Scream 2, when that lady gets stabbed to death during the film, and the audience thinks it's some gimmick, and the killer is dressed exactly like so many other moviegoers.

It also reminds me of a character in the previous Batman movie, The Dark Knight. Anyone remember Heath Ledger as The Joker? He had no real motives. His game was chaos for the sake of chaos, crime for the sake of crime, murder and death for the sake of murder and death. The character was so disturbed, Ledger had problems getting to sleep at night.

I don't know much about what went down at that theater in Aurora or what the authorities have determined as far as motive, but I did hear the guy didn't even resist arrest. He didn't turn the gun on himself like so many other crazed shooters we hear about on the news. And that's why I think his motive was exactly this: He thinks he is The Joker. He wanted only chaos. There was no more rhyme or reason beyond this.

This is just my opinion. I'm not saying movies should never have violence or even that this movie was entirely responsible for the recent tragedy in Aurora. All I'm saying is I believe this was not at random, that this occurred at that specific movie for a reason, and that the violence in a movie filmed years ago has a direct and deep connection to an act of violence at the movies just the other night.

Challenge Accepted

Hello again. I've been away for quite a while, and I do have some good excuses and some poor ones, but I don't see any reason to list those. The point is I was gone and now I'm back and I'm jumping back in with another challenge. My friend at 13:13 blog decided to do a 30-day challenge, and he asked if I wanted to join him. Of course I couldn't turn him down. So for the next 30 days I will find something and anything to say, long or short, profound or insignificant (but mostly insignificant) once every day. I hope it's fun for everyone involved.

Thanks for reading!

I perform brain surgery

As most of you probably know, my precious 120 GB Zune tragically crashed several weeks ago. Has it been a month by now? Time goes by so fast when I'm here.

Last Thursday, I purchased a new hard drive and a tool kit online from gadgetmenders.com. Their site had a nifty repair video, and I thought, "I can do this! I don't need to send it in."

I received the package today and almost immediately realized the process of repairing the device would be much more simple than the video made it look. Here, I should post the video in case you want to see it. I'll refer to it enough times anyway.

So there's a little blue tool they use to take the device apart. They included three in the repair tool kit I ordered, which puzzled me at first. Why would I ever need more than one? Well, maybe because the space is so tight I shredded off a good deal of the plastic on those things just trying to wedge them in there? Maybe there's another reason for it, but personally I'm glad I had three to partially destroy instead of just one. 

After spending a good twenty minutes prying the case apart, I finally was able to get a look inside the device.  I peeled the tape off the hard drive as instructed, but I didn't understand the concept of lifting the small black latch. The guy says to "lift it upwards in the vertical direction." I thought that sounded redundant, because up is a vertical direction. So as I struggled with that, I popped the stupid latch right off.

I fumbled with it, called my uncle for help (what could he have told me?), cried, and then kept on going. It would be ridiculous to have to replace the hard drive cable too, but the old hard drive just wouldn't let got of it. I ended up just mutilating the white piece with a screwdriver until the cable came loose. No harm in breaking a broken piece of equipment, right? Now, how would I get the cable attached to the new hard drive if I couldn't figure out how to get it loose from the old one?

That was actually a lot easier. The guy in the video says to restore the latch to "its horizontal position." Oh! So flip up to release, flip down to secure. The difference between the terms "direction" and "position" was crucial here, for me. Now the whole latch idea made much more sense. I managed not to break the latch on the new hard drive.

I snapped the device back together, which was almost as difficult as taking it apart. Then I plugged the device into my computer to prepare for the software update. The screen lit up.

I was so excited to see this again. She was alive, right?

Nope, this image popped up next. The original error message. But I refused to be defeated. I took apart the device again (much easier once it was loosened, and once I knew what the heck I was doing), and saw that the hard drive cable looked a little askew. I flipped up the latch, pushed the cable in again, flipped down the latch, praying the whole time it had just been inserted wrong, and I hadn't damaged the cable somehow in this stressful process. Popped the device together again. Turned it on. 

It just gave me an error message (3 or 4, I don't remember. It's possible both showed up at different times.) Another error, really? What more did I have to do? Not too much: soon the screen displayed Error 2, which is lack of the proper software. Finally, my baby lived again!

It took some time to get the software on my computer to recognize that I connected a new device, and then installing the software onto the new Zune and syncing all my files seemed to take forever, but now she works just as well as before the crash. Except I don't have the default Zune photos anymore. I don't know what happened with that, but now I'm just using one of my personal photos as a background image. It will serve as a constant reminder that my Zunebug contains new hardware, and I don't know yet how I feel about that.

And that's the story of my day as a brain surgeon. Don't ever call on me to perform a brain transplant again, on technology or on a living thing. I'm pretty sure this was a one-time deal.

The Shadow

There once was a land filled with light, and this land knew no darkness. The ground was bare and even, smooth as steel, and no creatures populated the area. A cloud had never appeared in the sky of this realm. All was pure and true, but the land was bare of texture and of life, and this was lonely.

Then one day an event occurred in this land. and the ground became inhabitable, and plants sprouted from it, and to support these plants there had to be rain. And when the rain came, there were clouds. For the first time, the land knew darkness. but the clouds cleared, and all was light again. For a short time.

The sprouts from the ground became trees and bushes, and all varieties of flowers, and animals came to inhabit the area, and soon a small lake appeared as well. And again, the land knew darkness. For the light came from the sky, and could not penetrate the mighty trees or the smallest insects. And some days it would rain again, and there would be no light in sight. And even on days when the light shone bright, the trees and bushes, birds and flowers, and every living thing cast its shadow. And all these creations were beautiful. but there was darkness in the shadows, and darkness in the depths of the lake, and darkness on the cloudiest days.

The land now was full of life, and no longer so lonely and barren as before. But with life came this darkness, and the land was no longer pure and true. The plants and the creatures and the lake made the land beautiful, but ugliness crept in the shadows and the darkness. and there was nothing to be done about this, for where there was life, there must be shadows.

My World Just Got a Little Smarter

My mom and I recently switched to Sprint and are now using our very first smart phones. Our device of choice was the HTC Evo Design. The Evo 3D is supposed to be a better device, but one of the reasons for that is its larger size, and that's more of a drawback for me. Also, I just don't care for the 3D feature at all. So we went with its less expensive little brother, the Design.

The Transfer
We transferred from another network, and we ordered the phones online. So we had to wait for the phones to be delivered, then wait even longer for our own phones to lose service so we could power on the new ones. For me, this happened at 11:30 Wednesday night. I was still texting a couple people, so I felt obligated to switch over to the new phone, but I also had an appointment in the morning and didn't want to stay up too late. Oh well. Sleep usually loses in these situations.

For me, the transfer was clean, sudden, and obvious. My old phone no longer had any bars and no longer said "AT&T" at the top of the screen. My mom's phone wasn't as nice to her. She was still making receiving calls on her old phone, but text messages wouldn't go through. Finally, around 12 hours after I had activated my phone, Dad called me to say Mom's phone wasn't working. When he called her number, he was redirected to a Sprint voice mailbox. It was time to make the switch.

Even then, though, Mom's transfer wasn't quite as clean as mine. This morning, her old phone received a text my dad had sent. I don't know what's going on with the whole thing.

And I was dumb enough not to have saved my contacts onto my SIM card, so the guys at Sprint couldn't transfer them. Guess I have to do it manually. Yay.

My Favorite Features so Far
1) Apps
One of the first things I did after basic setup was download an alarm clock app. Sure, the phone has one built in. But I didn't see a "Vibrate Only" option, and that's what I really wanted. So I downloaded an app that did provide that. Today I downloaded an app that monitors my battery life by percentage, because the bar just wasn't accurate enough. Overall, what I like most about apps is if my phone doesn't do something I want it to do, I can probably make it do that just by looking for the right app. Also, I think I like the Android market. It's easy enough to use.

2) Texting
One feature I've been looking forward to for a while now is text messages stored in conversation threads, rather than an inbox and a sent box. Now if I forget what I said last (which I do surprisingly often) all I have to do is look up. Because switching back and forth between inbox and sent box got old pretty fast.

Another feature I really like, but wasn't expecting to be so crazy about, is the vertical qwerty keyboard. On my old phone, if I held the phone vertical, it gave me a numerical keyboard like the one I used for dialing. This one, like many others, gives me a smaller version of the qwerty keyboard. I used to just think this would be annoying, that the letters looked too close together, etc. But holy cow. I love this thing. It is so much more convenient than I expected. I can text with one hand!

And the last cool texting feature: Auto-correct. Yes, it's annoying sometimes. Yes, it can get in the habit of correcting to things I don't want to say. Yes, I have to teach it some "words." But that's actually easier than I expected. And mostly it helps more than it hinders, and I use the backspace key a lot less than before. So Auto-correct is my friend.

3) Front-Facing Camera
This is an excellent tool for anyone in a long-distance relationship. Enough said.

I could ramble more...
But I won't. This post has gone on long enough, and you need to get back to your life. I just wanted to share the newest exciting addition to my life. Thanks for reading!

Welcome to the world of Zelda

The Zelda video game series is one I've been casually wishing to play for maybe a few years now. By "casually wishing" I mean I decided I'd have to try it out someday, but I wouldn't go out of my way. I wouldn't buy any of the games before trying my hand at one, and I wouldn't even beg a friend to borrow their copy. But if the opportunity fell into my lap, I wouldn't hesitate to give these games a whirl. Just recently, an opportunity fell into my lap. Due to circumstances I don't want to explain fully, involving a borrowed game that was never returned, a copy of The Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition ended up at my house a while ago. I found out about this yesterday and was pretty excited. This disc includes some of the earlier games, including the one for the NES that I assume is the original. Don't ask me; I just got into this stuff today.

Anyway, I decided to start at what I assume to be the beginning, because it just seemed right. And let me tell you, ouch. I played for over an hour before I had any clue what to do, and that was a mistake. The whole time I was trying to figure out where to go to get to the next stage of the game. Well, I had the wrong idea...

 This is called the Overworld. There are nine dungeons to be found here, which have their own maps, but basically this right here is the whole game. And I was trying to get off of it. So much frustration resulted. Honestly, if I hadn't searched the internet and found a map like this, I would have given up on the game and counted myself a loser. Thank you, internet.

But my lack of an idea for the objective of this game was not my only problem. This is one of those games in which the player starts out with just three hearts as a health bar and can gain hearts later (so far I think I have five) but no matter how many hearts your max health is at, you restart after every death with only three hearts. This wouldn't have bothered me so much if it wasn't for the fact that, when your health is full, you can throw your sword at enemies. Now, I'm a sucker for a good ranged attack, so the whole three-hearts-to-start-with thing really ticked me off once I worked myself up to five. How was I supposed to refill my health when I'm useless without a ranged attack?

Simple: use the bow, silly. So the bow can be found in a secret chamber in the first dungeon, and I missed that memo the first time around. Then when I got there and couldn't figure out how to equip the bow, because of course you have to buy arrows first. And apparently every time you shoot an arrow it costs one rupy (Zelda's unit for money, if you're not familiar), but I still think it might be worth it. With finally a reliable ranged attack, I might have a fighting chance with this game.

So far, The Legend of Zelda has been little more than a huge and frustrating waste of time for me. However, I still see a lot of potential for this game. I'm determined to see if I can finish this game, and then I'll move onto the others. Legend of Zelda, I accept your challenge!