The Katamari Entry
If you don’t get the reference yet, don’t worry, it will hopefully make sense shortly. Until then we have some business to take care of! Let’s go!
The Internship
As most of you should recall I begain working at COUNTRY back in May of this year. The first meeting I had with my manager was a little briefing about the project I was to be working on and I was rather excited. The project was roughly a year into it’s planned 18 month life and millions of dollars and thousands and thousands of man hours were being poured into this project. I thought to myself, “Wow, a huge project that I get to work on. If this isn’t real world experience I don’t know what is!” Well, just last week, after working on this project for roughly 5 months, and more importantly putting over 100 hours into a little app I was writing for the business developers, I gained a bit more real world experience. Last week the rumors were not rumors, they were fact. The project I had been working on was canned. On the day that I was to show my work to my “customers” I found out that what I had worked on would no longer be needed. Truly a sad day. Rest in peace HTML Help Converter!
Another Suprise
Last Friday was the day! Rebecca had decided that she would do something for Neils birthday that would pretty much take the cake of dorkiness. Not only was she not ashamed to have come up with this idea in the least bit, she was actually quite proud of herself. Not to say she shouldn’t be, but most women I know wouldn’t have anything to do with this sorta thing. Anyway! There was to be a suprise party. Not just any suprise party though, a suprise LAN party. For those of you without knowledge of the bajillion and one acronyms out there LAN stands for Local Area Network. That’s right, we set up a good old fashion network right in our very living room and played games until the wee hours of the morning. This is what that looks like!
And I totally forgot! What would a LAN party be withouth a whole bunch of Bawls! That’s right, Jake and I purchased 12 bottles for the party. They can be seen scattered throughout the picture. I was so excited I even took my own picture! Look how excited I am!
That’s all for the LAN news! We hope to have another in the near future!
Rock Climbing
After getting to bed at 6am after the LAN party, I woke up at 9am and headed to Bromenn for a bit of volunteer work. Once home I wasn’t really that tired so I lounged about in the apartment until 3:15 or so when it was time to head to Upper Limits. I have always wanted to climb up those silos and this was my chance. We had to train on how to tie knots, how to properly communicate with your partner, and most importantly how not to kill your partner. You’ll be happy to know that Bill and I both passed this test with flying colors! We climbed around in the main area of the gym for a bit before heading to the silos. Bill made it to the top and I was determined to head on up before leaving as well. Sixty-five feet later and I was hanging out at the top. Afterwards Bill and I decided to head out and see what there was to climb outside. Crazy thing about rock climbers, they’ll climb just about anything. So, sure enough, the entire wall of the building itself was covered in rocks. Bill, fitted with a nice warm hoody and tied tightly to his end of the rope decided he was going to climb to the top. Keep in mind it’s quite dark outside (naturallly), its a bit cold and breezy, and the building is 110′ tall. In a relatively short amount of time Bill was safely hanging from the top of the building posing for tons of pictures. Meanwhile I was on the ground keeping him from falling to the ground. Exciting! After belaying him up there for a good 20-30 minutes withouth a sweatshirt of my own I was quite chilly. So I went inside and warmed up my hands in some warm water. I figured I was ready to make the climb myself. Unfortunately my hands had another plan. Maybe a little more than a quarter of the way my hands refused to grip onto the rocks. I knew there was no way to get to the top so I repelled to the ground. I will get you next time building!
…and now the Katamari Reference
A while back I came across a game at EB. This game had a nice countryscape on the front with a rainbow, a cow, and a big huge ball of random crap. At first glance the game looked to be rather dumb. Oh was I wrong. After talking about it and seeing it again I decided I had to have it. A trip with Eric and Amy to Blockbuster late Saturday night yielded nothing. Family Video also was out of Katamari. I was thoroughly dissapointed. Sunday morning Neil and I head out to Best Buy where I purchase Katamari Damacy, the first of two games.
To some of you this is going to sound stupid but this is the plot of the game. The King of all the Cosmos goes out with a friend one night and gets a little drunk. They end up destroying all the stars, and the moon in a drunken stuppor. Morning comes and people are not particularly happy with the King. He decides he has to fix the problem and enlists his son the Prince to roll up all sorts of shit on Earth to be turned into stars in the sky. Keep in mind that Prince is only 5cm tall and has to eventually roll up Katamari that are in exess of 300 meters tall. To me the game is fun because its addicting and simple. Simple means I use less of my brain, which, on certain occassions is much better than putting a ton of thought into a game.
The game can best be described as the combination of Japanese software makers and large quantities of crack, or, as is found throughout the game, shrooms. Whatever it was that motivated these people to make the game doesn’t really matter. The game is a ball of fun! (Cheesy pun intended)
Something that bugs me
Now for a slightly different tone but I feel as if I must write about this. I HATE when people refuse to be themselves and do what they want to do. Recently I’ve seen several circumstances where people choose not to make plans or visit only for a minute because they are worried about what others may think. I’ve seen people that were once good friends who were constantly hanging out together move to friends that see each other almost never. I don’t really understand how people can give up control of their personal life by letting their lives revolve around someone elses. If you are really forced to choose between one person and your friends on a regular basis you’re probably making a huge mistake. Don’t put your life on pause just because you’re not sure what someone else may want to do. If an opportunity presents itself, you would be foolish to pass it up just because someone else may eventually come up with something else to do.
This leads me to another irk of mine. If you really don’t want to do something , just say it. It really bothers me when people tell you that they would be interested to make plans with you, but arent sure what ____fill in the blank_____ may be doing. It’s really saying one of two things. The first was already mentioned above. The second is “That does sound fun, but I think I’d rather wait for something/someone more exciting to come around.” I HATE that!
Even more off topic
What is with those little white trucks. You know the ones. Orkin, Terminex, Parts Plus, etc. All of those companies provide their employees with little white S-10 to do business in. That’s not the part that bothers me. On almost everyone they feel the need to put a sticker that says “Caution: Makes Frequent Stops”. NO! I’ve never EVER seen any of these vehicles stopping right in the middle of the street to make a delivery or kill a bug. The only vehicles that SHOULD have these stickers are mail delivery trucks and garbage men. Those people really DO make frequent stops. Stupid!
There it is. All 1,472 words! That’s all for now!
^
1,482!
John
PS. Just in case you didn’t figure out the reference. In Katamari you roll up random stuff to become larger. This entry, like a Katamari, is full of randomness and is quite large. That is all!
I’m sleeping my way out of this one
With anyone who will lie down
I’ll be stuck fixated on one star
When the world is crashing down