Life Updates 2: The Second One
09/06/2024
Recently, I've been going to school again! Community college (majoring in programming) to be specific. It's been pretty cool so far, I like the campus and the classes are easy for now. When I'm eventually making programs with Python for class, I'll probably share some here! The one I was previously attending sucked total balls, especially because my schedule was totally out of wack. 6 to 8 pm classes a half hour away from my home in the city were not pleasant!!
On another note, my Ghostbusters costume is almost fully complete (other than the proton pack, of course)! I've definitely spent some dabloons on this thing but I think it turned out pretty good! My buddy might help me get hired at a Spirit Halloween soon, and if I do, I might get a pretty decent discount on that pack. I could use it ;D Also if I get hired there, the Ghostbusters uniform might end up being my work uniform. As funny as that would be, it's been pretty hot outside for a while so I'd hope it cools off ASAP!!
Unrelated -- I'm thinking about creating a mailing system for blog updates. I have no idea how to achieve this, but if you have suggestions, please contact me!!! I may have made this website from scratch but I still need all the help I can get with that kind of stuff!
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Halloween? In June?
06/29/2024
Long time no blog post :-) My 19th birthday was a couple days ago (June 26) and I've just been rolling with the punches. I got more games for my Xbox 360 -- being Borderlands, Ghostbusters: the Video Game, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 (I only play Zombies), and Dark Souls.
On the topic of Ghostbusters, though, I've been thinking about an excuse to do a full Ghostbusters costume, and Halloween is only in 4 months. I've wanted a good Ghostbusters costume for a long time, and since I have a decent job with decent hours at this point, I'd be able to purchase one :) It's definitely expensive though! I have a planning doc on my desktop, and it comes out to $700 if I get the costume for myself and my girlfriend. That's only one Proton Pack though, because the only decent one I can find (that isn't over $1k) is the $270 Spirit Halloween pack.
As expensive as it is, I'm looking forward to having this. I'm going to buy it in pieces over the next couple months so it's not a huge financial hit all at once. When the full set is assembled, I'll post a photo here on my blog. If you're curious to see my planning document, click here :)
Life Updates
05/08/2024
It's been a bit since I've touched my website! Naturally as I run out of ideas to change it, I'll update it less, but I think it's more-so just laziness. But speaking of laziness, I finally got a haircut last Saturday! I'll likely update my About Me with a portrait of myself sometime within the next few days, but my hair was down to about mid-chest, and now it's to my shoulders in a different hairstyle. I've been meaning to rewrite my About Me but I just haven't gotten around to it lately.
I do want to spend more time away from my home, out in nature. Two days ago, I went to a nature park with my buddy Noah, and we walked maybe 6 or so miles of trails! It was pretty nice, but next time we'll probably aim to go hiking on a dryer day. As much comfort as I find in my computer chair in front of my screens, I do love hanging out with my friends/girlfriend and doing something to break up the monotony. I highly recommend it :)
Hanging out with old people
04/28/2024
My grandfather lives about 45 minutes from me, so I figured it'd be nice to spend some time with the old man. We worked on some music together, watched some videos about caves and stuff, even watched World War Z (2013) :-) He's a big part of my life, being the reason I bought lava lamps and use a lot of optical media. I don't often go out and visit but it's always nice.
If you're not too far from your grandparents (or even your parents), and you have a decent relationship with them, try taking some time out of your weekend to go hang out with them. They'd probably appreciate it a lot more than they'd let on!
Enjoying even more obsolete media
04/24/2024
This time I'm not just talking CDs, I'm talking VHS. I discovered an old VCR in a closet near the living room, and my Ma dug some old tapes out of her attic/crawlspace thing. These include the first two Beatles movies, Tank Girl, and two home tapes from the late 80's/early 90's starring my grandfather and my mother as a child. In one of them, "1987: A Year in Review", my grandfather was 33! He's now 70 years old; he still sounds and acts just about the same, other than not being able to run very well!
I honestly do really like VHS, other than how much more "involved" you have to be when watching them. Streaming/digital media is definitely easier, but VHS has that novelty feel that streaming doesn't. On that note, though, I'm planning on digitizing these old home videos while they're still around. I might post them to YouTube once I do!
Enjoying obsolete media
4/21/2024
Lately I've been buying a lot of CDs. Just a month ago, I hadn't touched the small stack of CDs that had been sitting in my closet for genuine years. But in the past two weeks-ish, I've bought probably around 6 new CDs, including some Billie Holiday, The Beatles' Revolver, the Distillers' Coral Fang, and a couple others. Unfortunately, Distillers is the only punk CD I've been able to find in-person thus far, but that's okay!
I also bought some lava lamps and some posters (the new ones being TMNT and LoZ:BOTW) for my room, and I'm really liking the look of it. Here's what it looks like:
That also kind of serves as a room reveal! Anyways, I'm definitely liking it right now. Feels nice for sure :)
Making music again
4/18/2024
Having not released anything since October 2022, I thought I might never get my motivation back. But shockingly, last night, I got back to finishing an old track that isn't done yet!! And even more shockingly, I feel excited to work on it later today! It's a really nice change of pace.
I think what's been hurting my motivation for so long is my habit of watching YouTube or playing videogames on my PC all the time. That's why I'm not going to even turn it on until I'm happy with the track. I'll update my blog as I finish the music, and I might even put the music on my website before it's on streaming services. We'll see!
The quest for a unique webpage
4/17/2024
I love that I have a website now. It's refreshing to have such a flexible form of self-expression. The problem here is that I want my website to be something people want to come back to more than once or twice. I don't know what I'd add to my site to achieve this, though. I've thought about adding a forum, but I'm not knowledgable in PHP or SQL, nor do I know if I'd even need both of those to make a forum! And a guestbook is out of the question if I can't code it myself. I don't want to pay for or advertise any services on my page.
I'd also like to have a less-overused background for my site. The space thing looks clean and nice, but I want an animated background that everyone and their grandma hasn't used on their retro-style website. I'm not trying to rip off the 1996 Space Jam website...
If you have any ideas or background submissions, please contact me! I'd love to hear suggestions and ideas. I'm currently at somewhat of a loss...
My experience trying to install Windows XP on real hardware
4/11/2024
It's not going great, I'll admit. I mean, it'd be going a lot better if I hadn't completely wiped the hard drive on this laptop, but here we are.
I got my hands on this crummy laptop at work today that probably hadn't been used since 2019. I saw it was running Windows 10, so naturally I was disgusted, and rushed to figure out how to downgrade to Windows 7. Honestly, that would've probably gone a lot smoother. But then I'm thinking, "Oh but it would be so nice to give Windows XP a try! Screw it, why not!" My co-worker handed me a mini-SD card in a USB adapter to give it a shot, and I struggled for probably about 2 hours straight trying to get this stupid thing to work. It would randomly stop being read by any computers, and was overall just unusable.
Later, after I've gotten home, I sat down at my PC to work on it some more. I got my actually reliable USB thumbdrive, and put the Windows XP .iso on it. Plug it in -- it doesn't work. I try reformatting the drive or trying extracting the .iso -- still not working. After a couple more shots, I finally get the installer loaded up, but I don't see the HDD as a valid storage space for the OS. That's when I get the very bright idea to completely wipe the drive! And so I do.
And then I don't partition the drive, so now the laptop's HDD is COMPLETELY UNUSABLE!!!
I will say, this could have been a much nicer experience had I thought things through a little longer before acting impulsively.
What's even worse is that after attempting to save this whole post, NeoCities decides to shut me out of my own website. I then have to paste my "blog.html" text into Notepad++ to save what I wrote, but for some reason, there were NO brackets, slashes, or quotes when I pasted it. You can imagine the joy I felt!
First blog post :D
4/10/2024
I'm finally trying to really get a website together. Just for the fun of it. I've always wanted one, but now I'm trying to make it my own. How fun :)
