Made a Note of it, did you Write it on your Hand?

I have one more semester left, and in the past month or so, I've done a lot of reflecting on what really interests me and what I want to continue with. I came up with a list about a foot long of possible career options, going all over the place. I have a lot of interests in tons of fields.
I'm currently majoring in history, which worries my parents somewhat, I'm guessing because I don't have a nice clear path to a high paying job afterwards. I'm okay with that, because history interests me a lot.
A while ago, I read and reviewed a book called Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters and the Birth of the Comic Book. Like the title suggests, it's about the history of comics. What it doesn't necessarily suggest is the implications that the comic book really had, such as it's birth, how it related to immigration, what it meant for media censorship and dignity laws, and all that.
That's the type of history that really interests me now - cultural/popular cultural history. What I'd love to do is find work in that sort of field - I talked to one of my professors, and learned that I probably have around three or four options - Museum work, writing, teaching, consulting. Those may overlap as well, but I'd need to obtain a Master's Degree at the bare minimum, and preferably a Doctor's as well. While the thought of schooling for the next several years isn't the most appealing, it would be in a dedicated subject that I like a lot.
I think that's what I want to do. Possibly get something for inbetween Norwich and whatever I might be going to, but that is something that I can see myself doing for a while. Definently not working in retail and probably not summer camp/youth help for much longer, as much as I hate to say that.
It's coming up fast, the end of college, and it scares the hell out of me.

Alone in the Flatland 'tween the Dream and the Real

Things have been ranging between calm to panicky to depressing to happy over the past couple of days. My lax work ethic over the break is catching up to me now, with papers due on Monday, today, Thursday and things to start working on over the next week. Not to mention reading, and other studying that I should be doing.
As of right now, I'm halfway through my five page book review for History, on the book Franklin and Winston, by Jon Meacham, a fantastic history on Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt during World War II. I was 90% done with the paper this afternoon, but when I went back over it, I decided that it wasn't worth the risk handing that particular semi-incomprehensible draft in, so two days down the drain and I'm slowly working to bring this paper from the current three pages up to the required five to seven. I think that I should make it, things are starting to fall into place.
I've taken far too many breaks, but they've been for semi-good reasons. House was on tonight, with an okay episode, then Veronica Mars with the mid season finale and conclusion to the rape case with a very typical Veronica Mars ending. The rapists are found, but to lead into the next mystery, Dean O'Dell is found with a bullet in his head. Yay for the mid season breaks to start kicking in! Veronica MarsPrison Break is off the air until January, as is LOST, Jericho will be off after this week and Heroes will be off after next week and Battlestar will be off shortly as well. Just in time for vacation, when I'll actually have the time to watch things.
And the Decemberists were on The Late Show, which was far too short. If you're going to get a musical guest on for the night, you might as well have them on for more than one song. At least talk to them a little. They're a good band, although it took me a bit longer than a year for them to grow on me - I have Sarah to thank for that. But their newer stuff sounds (at least to me) much better than some of the older stuff. They did sound good though.
And despite the work and things, I've been getting to bed earlier than usual, getting up earlier, an arrangement I'm not terribly thrilled with, but it's livable. Lonelier though.
Now, to finish up this report, get another 500 word thing pounded out and we should be shiny.

Gap in the Circle

We've lost another camper. Earlier last week, Sam Cohn, age 14, died due to injuries suffered from a traffic accident. Sam was a camper at Abnaki, and I had his brother in my village. They were great kids, and while I didn't know Sam paticularly well, news of his passing hit me hard.

Obituary

I... I don't know what to say or think. 14 years old is far too young, especially for someone with what would have been a promising future. I cannot imagine what the family must be going through right now, especially during this time of year.

Just... fuck. This shouldn't happen.

Grr... Arg...

So while the evil Black Friday wasn't too bad, I actually found a parking space and got to work about 20 minutes early, and didn't have non-stop customers all evening. We also didn't need to have the store open until 10. But we didn't get to leave until 10:40 because the guy in the kiosk messed up his cash/check pull not once, not twice, but three times while I went out and helped him, and ended up having to recount his entire drawer and several hundred dollar pull. I felt bad for him, because he hadn't done a closing in a while, while I've been stuck with it for, well, pretty much every single time that I work. I could tell that he was frustrated. At least we got another 20-30 minutes that we got paid for. And I'm bushed. Later this morning, I'm going to pick up my roommate from the airport.

Clean your visor, jackass!

I got Halo to work on my computer again. And it's not lagging. Actually, none of my programs are lagging like they were.

Just when I thought that I'd have some free time.

"Listen up! Usually the Good Lord works in mysterious ways, but not today! This here is 66 tons of straight up, HE-spewing dee-vine intervention. If God is love, then you can call me Cupid!" - Sgt. Johnson, Halo 2

And now, I'm off to a) stop at the bank, b) find a parking space in a mall on black friday and c) try and remain alive during the shopping rush.
Let's see if I survive.

And, Happy Birthday to Blackwell, one of the Geek Squad members from Camp.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hope that everyone had a good thanksgiving (yesterday now). I had dinner with the family in the afternoon, where we were expecting to have something like 13 people, but that went down to 8, which meant that some of us weren't banished to the garage. It was a good dinner. Me, my parents, brother and sister, Uncle and his girlfriend and my grandmother were all there. It was fun, and the food was fantastic, as my mother is a great cook. I contributed bread, which people seemed to like. Lots of talking and fun, which was good.
After that, me and my sister went to go visit my friend Sam and Miranda up in Burlington, which was fun, I haven't seen them since this summer. Keelia and Miranda watched Veronica Mars while Sam and I visited my friend Blackwell in his new house. He was surprised to see us, and we hung out for a little while, played with the dog that they were dogsitting and generally caught up.
It was a good night.

Hope that everyone else had an equally as good Thanksgiving.

Throw it all Away

So, it's Vacation. Number of days in: 5. Things accomplished: Minimal. I should really get going on the school work.
Did a little work yesterday, picked up my sister at school to bring her to Physical Therapy. Before I did that, I walked around my old high school, running into an old friend whom I haven't seen in years, as well as a number of teachers and people that I knew there. It was weird being back there, and I don't go to visit very often. Teachers are the same, but there's different kids all over the place. My old TA, Ginny, was thrilled to see me, and was horribly surprised that it's been four years since graduation. Another teacher, whom I'd started with at grade 7 was also surprised that it's been a decade. God, I've never thought of it like that.
Dropped Keelia off, and met up with my friend Sarah, who's back from New Zealand for the winter, spent a couple hours catching up on various things. I've also known her for ten years now. It was good to see her. Picked Keelia up afterwards, dropped by Smalldog electronics, where I got my iPod, to get them to check it out, and while waiting, played with the small puppy that was bouncing around the store. (It's called Smalldog for a reason). Keelia practically squealed when she saw him, and he was very cute, although he kept wanting to nibble on my hand.
Yeah, rest of the day was uneventful. Tried to do some more work, got some reading done, my brother came over, watched House and Veronica Mars, both good episodes.
Today's proving to be just as uneventful, as I'm finishing up some bread and random cleaning of the place, and I've got work in a couple hours. I'm going to make a serious effort to get some more work done.

Can you help me occupy my brain?

You know what is beginning to bug me? The fact that every single Fox show seems to carry the disclaimer that goes like this:

This program is unsuited for minors/Viewer Discretion is Advised.

I think one of two things:
1: That Fox is either trying to really cover their asses from possible law suits by showing shows like Prison Break, Standoff and House, which is somewhat acceptable. These shows have some disturbing content here and there, but nothing more than what you'd see in a PG-13 or so movie, and they're aired at 9-10, which is getting into the time when you can do things like that. But Family Guy showed an episode where Lois teaches students about safe sex, and that had the warning. Are they worried that some religious group is going to sue them for something like that?
2: It's a warning, and what to people think when they see warnings, like don't push the red button or something like that? Of course you're going to be interested in what's on the television if it says something like that. It's a way to say 'Hey! Look at us and how radical we're being by pushing the envelope a bit!'

While it's nice that they're thinking that they're being dangerous or something like that, it's kinda irritaing when they put up the warning and do things that nobody would blink an eye at. Granted, Prison Break showed us a slew of people dying and T-Bag getting his hand chopped off, House shows us some morally/ethically weird things, but for some episodes, I'm just beginning to wonder if they're just sticking the warnings up to make everyone think that they're being responsible by warning kids away. There's not really anything that's wrong with the episodes or really anything that warrents a warning. To me, it just seems like an advertising gimmick.

You only get what you give

Mundane day today, with an evening filled with many interesting things that will be listed. I puttered. I changed out all of the lightbulbs in my house with energy savers, finished out a couple more loaves of bread and fullfilled my obligations for Thanksgiving dinner, watched some more of Veronica Mars, did a little reading and yeah. No major progress on my reports or other readings, but that'll be coming soon. Hopefully.

Interesting / Noteworthy things:

• Prison Break, Heroes and Studio 60 were on. Prison Break was decent, but Heroes and Studio 60 were brilliant.
  
• Studio 60 made fun of Jessica Simpson and FOX and really dug at the network for product placement.
  
• Veronica Mars has been picked up for a full season, or twenty episodes.
  
• Steven Spielburg told people today that he'll be working on a Tintin miniseries and a new WWII one.
  
• The trailer for Harry Potter 5 came out, and it actually looks good.
  

Bad things:

• Peter Jackson isn't going to be directing or working on the upcoming Hobbit movie. Between financial things between his studio, Wingnut Films and New Line Cinema, over the gains from LOTR, they're not being asked back. Between that and the Halo movie, he's not having a good fall.

Also, I'm jointly posting on this blog and the livejournal that I've sorta, kinda, not really kept up for about the same amount of time.

Does Anyone Know What Time It Is?

It's Vacation. Finally! A relaxing frantic week of where I have nine separate things to for three different classes, seven books to read, four days of work, which will more thank likely be extremely busy as the holiday shopping season ramps up into full gear. It'll be nice to actually have people buy things than just poking around. Brought Kyle to the airport, he's home for the first time in a year, pretty excited about that.
I've also been subcontracted out to help cook part of our Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday - I learned to cook bread from scratch. It's an absurdly simple recipe, although it takes over 12 hours to finish, to give it time to rise and everything. I started the prep work on it last night and had it done by three this afternoon, whereupon I brought it home. My brother's reaction:

"You made that? It looks professional."

Cue the laughter from my sister and mother. It turned out great, and everyone seemed to like it well enough, so I've started work on some more loaves. Unfortunently, I can only make one at a time, but the time to let it sit is long enough that I'll be able to start it and leave it again later on. Tasted fantastic too. Made me happy.

I am looking forwards to sleeping in over the next couple days. That and seeing people I haven't seen in a while. And you know, the whole not going to class part.

Top 50 SciFi... According to Time

Took this from Jawajames:

The most significant SF/F novels from 1953-2006 according to Time. Bold the ones you have read, strikethrough the ones you read and hated, italicize those you started but never finished and put a star next to the ones you love.

1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien *
2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov *
3. Dune, Frank Herbert *
4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
6. Neuromancer, William Gibson - Keep meaning to pick this one up.
7. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury *
11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr. - I love this book, I just need to actually finish it.
13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
15. Cities in Flight, James Blish
16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany - I've read a couple others by this guy. Good writer.
21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
22. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman - Also meaning to read this one.
25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl
26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, J.K. Rowling - Fun read, but it shouldn't be on this list.
27. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams * Should be higher on the list.
28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice - Reading this now for class.
30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
31. Little, Big, John Crowley
32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick - My friend Jim keeps telling me to read this.
34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke *
39. Ringworld, Larry Niven *** - I love this book. Why the hell is it at #39? It should be #3 at least.
40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut - Need to read.
43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson - Need to read.
44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
49. Timescape, Gregory Benford
50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go,Philip Jose Farmer

That's a pretty good list, but there's some that really should be on there. His Dark Materials Trilogy, Solaris, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, 2001: A Space Odyssey, American Gods, all those have a place there.

Now I'm Pissed Off

Bah, I'm calmer now, and just getting rid of all that. Much of that was bitching about stupid bulletins by shortsighted students who think that they know something about politics.

I'm already pissed off because I almost got creamed by a truck on the way back home, but this just takes the cake. I swear, the first customer tonight with a stupid question is going to have a really fun answer to think about.

Listen Carefully

I've finally listened to every single song on my computer, something that I've been working on accomplishing since I've gotten my computer. iTunes is handy because of the different playlists that you can create, and I've gotten one that registers all the songs that doesn't have any plays on it, and thus, I've finally emptied that list. Considering that my music library is currently at 4022 items, that's quite a bit.

And apparently, Mad River Glen has 6 inches of snow on it. My brother just invited me to hike up to the snow line with him to try it out sometime next week. Sounds like fun.

Gar

Gah, it's definently been an eh day. I feel like crap, stomach ache, tired, and have had a headache for the past two days.
On the bright side, I finally isolated the program that's been giving me the insane number of popups, and found another program that helped get rid of a lot of the spywear, trojans and other crap on my computer. So it's at least running a little better.
The downside of that was that it took about 6 HOURS to scan the entire computer. Arg. At least it's clean though, sort of.
Now, for bed.

Picard wasn't gay, he was British.

This trailer just hit the web, and it looks to be one of those Science Fiction spoofs that people will really talk about. Because it's about Star Wars geeks, and it has Kristen Bell (aka Veronica Mars) in it. I know I can't wait. It looks fracking hilarious.

Before the Robots

Life has been going good recently. School's going well, work's going well, despite the increasing number of sketchy people walking around the Berlin Mall, things in general have been looking up, a big improvement over last year, where at this time, I was angry, depressed and hopeless.
Not to be depressing.
I'm enjoying work; business is picking up as the holiday season approaches. I've been making more sales while out in the kisok, which is a welcome change, as that job is horribly boring. Since we're not allowed to read while on the job, I basically have to amuse myself by walking in circles, straightening out calanders to the micron and bugging every customer if they need help with something. (They never do, they're just looking). I do get the occasional funny occurance, which is diverting. The last amusing thing happened last week: A woman burst into the mall, took about five steps in, looking like she was going somewhere important, dragging two small kids behind her. It was then that she stopped, looked around and turned to me: "Where is Optical Expression?" - the local eye glasses store and clinic. I didn't do anything but point. The store is just a store away from Walden Books. She turned and went in. The old guy sitting next to the kiosk in a wheel chair just laughed and said: "I guess she really needed those glasses." I guess so.
Today, I saw something like ten people that I a) know from school, ) know from school and haven't seen them in ages, c) knew from high school/elementary school, d) from scouts. It was weird.
The rest of the time is devoted to stewing.
I also found a movie that I really need to look into watching - The Iron Giant. I'd heard a bit about it a couple years ago, when a movie called The Incredibles, a fantastic animated film, was released, directed by Brad Bird, who had directed a box office failure called The Iron Giant. Despite it's lax returns, the movie had gained a sort of cult status (What good science fiction film DOESN'T develope a cult status nowadays?) and around the time of The Incredibles release, it was released on DVD. I'd read a couple DVD reviews, but I haven't actually gotten a chance to watch it, until I caught the last half hour or so of it on Cartoon Network this evening.
Man, what a good film - solid animation, fun storyline and likeable characters. It reminded me a lot of Titan AE, one of my favorite animated Science Fiction movies. I need to see the rest of Iron Giant, but I suspect that this will be included on the list. The basic plot is that a giant iron robot falls from the sky and lands near a small town in Maine. While there, he befriends a small boy, while the government comes after them to try and destroy the robot. I definently need to rent this at some point.
And I still need to bring my computer into Computer Services. I've been getting a bunch of popups lately, more than ever, and a lot of random applications that I suspect are spywear. I've run dozens of virus/bot/spyware checks, defragmented and optimized my harddrives, done error tests and am still having minor problems. It's driving me nuts.
And I'll post up my TV Recap sometime tonight. Haven't had a whole lot of time to finish it this week.

EDIT: YES! YES YES YES! Someone posted up the 10.23.06 Carbon Leaf Concert at the Higher Ground, the one that I went to with Keelia, where they sounded awesome - You can download all the songs here, although be warned, they're .Flac files, which are huge and require additional software to decode. You can play the files on Winamp. I'll get them all, and for those of you who know me, will be seeing me and who issued me death threats about attending this, would you like a copy?

Oh man, I'm just geeking out about that!

That's about accurate, courtesy of the Incredibles. This is because of the following news stories and other random geek things that have hit the web while I was away at work:

1. Studio 60 has finally received a full, 22 episode order for the season. Despite the lower than expected/wanted ratings, the studio has some faith in the show, and will at least bring us to the end of Season 1, during which, hopefully we'll see the ratings improve somewhat. I really wish that we'd gotten a bit more of a chance with some other shows, which were cut really fast, like Smith. This is also despite some pretty low blows from FOX, who reported that the show was going to be cancelled, presumably to force viewers away from the show.
   
2. Speaking of Smith, CBS has released the remaining four episodes that were filmed online, streaming free on their Innertube platform for the next four weeks. The first three episodes are also up, and the entire series will be put on iTunes, and apparently there'll be an explanation for the remainder of the season posted somewhere. Smith, for those of you not familiar with the show, was a heist-based show, following a band of master thieves. I'm a fan of the genre, and this show is a nice weekly dose of that. It had quite a bit of potential, with an overall storyline and some interesting characters, but it was pulled from the air after only three episodes. Hopefully, the remaining four episodes will have some closure.
   
3. The Spiderman 3 trailer has hit the web, and you can see it here. It's amazing. We see the Sandman, Venom, Spiderman, Hobgoblin, lots of flying around, some amazing looking special effects and man, May 4th can't come fast enough.
   
4. Production for the SciFi series the Dresden Files has started, and the show's slated to start on the network in January of this coming year. I'm looking forwards to this, although I'd thought that production started already, because there's trailers for it. It's about a Wizard in Chicago, and I have one of the books, which is good thus far. I need to finish it.
   

Yay!

Congradulations!

I just got word - my best friend Sam and his long time girlfriend Miranda got engaged last night! Congradulations to the two of them!

All that I can say is about time. :)

How I see the World

I mentioned a couple of days ago that I've been thinking of getting back into photoblogging. It's a lot easier now that I actually know where my camera is, and have started using it again.

A disclaimer: I have no proper training on how to use a camera, not since I took an afterschool program class in the 4th grade, where I thought it'd be cool to take pictures from an angle. It was never something that I really followed in high school, to my great regret now, although a couple of friends were involved with that.

But I digress - the pictures that I take are things that strike me as interesting, the little things that make up something else. I grew tired of seeing touristy pictures with two people grinning in front of a monument. Those pictures have their place, but not for me. That was my inspiration for the London Blog, which I've since taken down. These will be much more random, although hopefully, just as interesting.

The address is : http://seetrilobite.blogspot.com, and is the link on the side called a quick view from the far side of the galaxy. If you happen to poke your head in, let me know what you think.

In addition, all the photos that I take are going onto a program called Flickr, and can be seen here: http://flickr.com/photos/jeditrilobite . Facebook's great, but this is easier to use, and I think going over 20 albums of just random stuff that not everyone will be interested in is just a little ridiculous.

The Saints are Coming

I finally found a copy of U2 and Green Day's collaboration, The Saints are Coming, which sounds fantastic (It'll be on their upcoming Best Of album called U218) - It was a collaborative effort after Katrina, as the song has some very strong connections with New Orleans. And, given Green Day and U2's political despositions, it's also a bit of a stab at the relief effort and the government's response. (At least the video is).

And it's been reported that Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, the best show on television, has been renewed for a full 22 episode season. NBC, you've made me a very happy man.

I need to bring my computer in for fixing. There's nothing physically wrong with it, but there's still a crapload of viruses on here, giving me popups and messing with Mozilla Firefox (I switched from IE after I finally realised that IE sucked), redirecting me to random pages, usually when I go to open an image. Not to mention that I need to close about ten applications when I actually start the computer, not that it seems to do much. And in general, it seems to be operating slower and not as well as it used to. I'll stop by computer services today and see what they can do.

And there are times when I don't want to be here, here in Vermont. At times, I feel too far from certain people, disconnected and unable to go to them if needed. At times, it's all that I can do to restrain myself from running the half mile to the payphone. Why does Vermont have to seem so isolated? And why do those people I want to be with have to be so far...

Sorry, that's cryptic, but that's all that you get.