Geek Council

   Ah, what a week. Busy, busy, busy. But here we are at long last, the promised day-Friday. And what a glorious Friday it is, because I am here to announce my latest project, several weeks in the making.
   But first, let's get y'all caught up with what I've been doing since Wednesday. Thursday was an exciting day, although not much went on during the day itself. I went to school, went to work, blah, blah, blah. But later that night I was invited to join some of my guildies in Reported For Awesome in some flex raids. I had never healed with my shaman anywhere but LFR, but I decided, why the hell not? And all in all, I think it went pretty well. We did it a bit backwards, but we ended up clearing about half the raid (we actually started with Garrosh) and I got two 540 drops, which were pretty good upgrades for my shaman, seeing as he's only existed for a few weeks. Either way, it was a ton of fun, so shout out to them, and I hope I get invited back soon.
   Today wasn't the best day ever, at first, but it got better. I got woken up by the sound of my mother barreling into my room. Apparently she had been locked out of the house for a half hour, and her knocking had not awoken me. She was therefore forced to call my grandfather to get her in. So that was fun.
   As you might imagine, I was pretty irritable all morning, until I got my hands on a computer to do some work on this blog. As you may have noticed, I have a new page up called Overheard Poetry. Essentially, what I intend to do with this is take little snippets of conversation I hear going about my own life, and sew them together to form brief poems. I find it fairly exciting, and a fun way to get myself more into people watching. That page won't have set update days, though so be sure to check back often to see what I've overheard. Could be profound, could be poop jokes. Most likely the latter.
   That was basically the highlight of my day until I went over to Nate's house to hang with the group for a while. I got there as they were finishing a Halo match (Charlie proved quite proficient at this, surprisingly, despite lack of experience) and we decided to play Cards Against Humanity. You can imagine how that went.
   We were also gonna play Munchkin, but it got late and we decided to call it a night. We may do that tomorrow night, actually, but we'll have to wait and see. Either way, it was a really great night, and I enjoyed getting to spend some time with my friends who, because of my schedule, I don't get to see very often.
   Well, now that you're all caught up, I think it's time for the big unveiling. Airing tomorrw will be the first ever episode of my new podcast, called Geek Council.
   I'll break it down for you. It's going to be a rotation-based podcast in which I will act as the host. Every week we will rotate in a new guest from the usual suspects, possibly with the occasional guest you may not have heard of on here before. The podcast will feature some really excellent news, and geek related topics, as well as spoiler-free (mainly) reviews of all the things you hold near and dear! Also featured will be a segment that will change depending on our guest that week. I'll leak one now, as it is participation based. We will have an advice segment, so what we want you to do is send us questions, and my guest and I will do our very best to try and not make it worse. Pretty sweet deal, right? Yeah it is!
   That's all I'm telling for now, so you'll have to check it out tomorrow night to see more!

Tacos!
Gladdstone

Steampunk Curious

   SAT scores were released the other day, and I'm not sure how I feel. I didn't quite break 2,000 and I'm considering retaking it. Call me a perfectionist, but my writing score was kind of pitiful. Didn't even break 600. I don't have far to go, either. And I won't be going in blind this time (I didn't study, sue me) so I think I could probably break through to the 2,000's fairly easily.
   Yesterday was a busy day. After school I had to get down to the C-Lab for a robotics meeting. Nik and I are in charge of the website (we're not really hardware guys). For the past week I've been working on an animated rectangular prism that displayed a different picture on each side which is connected to a button. You hit the button, it displays the side. It took two hours to integrate, but I finally managed to get the damn thing working properly and I simply couldn't have been more excited. It is easily the most complex thing I've ever coded (not saying a lot).

   This was, of course all in time for the robotics team director to inform us not 5 minutes after I had everything working that next week we were to begin work on rebuilding the site. From scratch. Now, I know I can just cut and paste the code, but seriously. I've put a lot of work in these past couple weeks. Of course, I can't really be upset about this. Truth be told, it's a great opportunity to learn more about coding and how it works, because as it stands, my knowledge is still fairly rudimentary. All in all, should be at the very least an interesting experience, if not a downright hilarious disaster.
   Today was a fairly busy day, to say the least. I managed to completely miss lunch working on a project for English, and then I was beaten in arm wrestling by a pretty girl in my math class. Thoroughly emasculating. I ended up eating my lunch in the band room 9th period during my study hall (I should have been practicing, but food), and reading Christie Golden's new book War Crimes. I must say, that book is shaping up to quite possibly beat out Arthas for my favorite book of hers. Once I finish it, I will of course post a full review (I'll give some warning at least two days in advance for those wishing to avoid spoilers). I also had a presentation to make for a research project I've been working on, followed immediately by a violin lesson. It's been determined I will most likely need a new violin for college auditions.
   Now, I must say, there are some who might call me sentimental. I love my violin dearly, and I've also named him-Watson. For I am his Sherlock. He's my first instrument I've ever owned and we've been through a lot together. I can't say I'm not a little saddened knowing he won't be able to see me through my auditions, but I certainly won't be trading him in. Not only is he not a particularly expensive violin, but I just can't bear to part ways with him. He'd be lost without his blogger. So with me he shall stay. Maybe not on the front lines, but always there for practice time.
   I've found myself getting into steampunk recently. A few years ago I started to dabble, but never got much farther than carrying around a couple pocket watches. I do love pocket watches, something about them is so elegant and lovely to look at. Now that I think of it, I really should get my good silver one touched up. It's gotten a bit scratched, and I think a little love would do it some good. Maybe I'll even start carrying it again. Might be fun to mix up my wardrobe a little bit, at least.

Maybe not this much

Tacos,

Gladdstone

P.S. Don't forget to check back for my exciting announcement Friday!

One Short Day

   Welcome back, friends. I hope you all had an excellent Memorial Day. For those of you outside the United States who don't celebrate, I hope you had a great...Monday. Anyway, here is my delayed post, as I promised, and I have been waiting so long to finally get this out here. Exciting things. Let's jump in, shall we?
   So, Saturday morning I rose (reluctantly) at 7am to get in the car and drive the four hours to New York
City where I had the distinct privelege of seeing my all-time favorite musical, Wicked.

source: milwaukee.broadway.com

   Now let me just say, the first few times I went to the city, I was distinctly unimpressed. It always just sort of came off as crowded, and dirty, and smelly. But every time I go, I find I like it a little more, and this past time I thought maybe, just maybe I could even live there someday.

source: my iPhone

   We got into the city around 11:30. The show wasn't until two, so after getting lost briefly, we found the theatre, parked and found a restaurant (Applebees). We finished eating around 1:00, and my sister wanted to go to the Hershey store that was a few blocks down. It's a cute little store, but I didn't find anything particularly exciting about it. By the time we got out of there, it was 1:30 so we headed back to Gershwin Theater, got in and found our seats. I did manage to get a few crappy pictures of the set before the show started. It was really quite awe-inspiring to see. Everything was very steampunk, and the way the dragon at the top moved (yes it moves) was just so smooth you would never think it was attached to ropes.
   The show itself was absolutely stunning. Christine Dwyer as Elphaba was absolutely incredible, and she just meshed so well with Glinda. We sat up at towards the top of the theatre. The seats weren't great, but there really didn't seem to be any bad seats. If I had to make one complaint, it's that the audio wasn't quite up to par with Phantom. Now that may be a little much to ask, because no  one had a mic in this show, and everyone can't be expected to project the way that the Phantom did in that show (he just filled the entire theatre with sound. You could practically feel him singing. Oh, to have that kind of voice).
   Despite the sound being a little less than ideal, it was an incredible show. I expected to tear up during Defying Gravity, but there were just so many other little moments that really, really moved me. Moments where the audience laughed, I saw something completely different. I feel like people thought that the show was funnier than it was meant to be. To me, it's a tragedy. To most other people, they seem to think it's a cute little show that gives a new spin on an old story (trying to remain spoiler-free. It's an old show/book, but still).
   All in all, it certainly lived up to everything I hoped it would be, and honestly, may have been even better than I even could have thought. If you ever have the chance to go see a Broadway show, this is an absolute must-see.
   Looking ahead, Friday you can all expect an announcement regarding my new major project. I am currently getting together plans, and people, and the like. We're looking to launch in mid-June, but the official unveiling is scheduled for Friday, so stay tuned!
   I'll talk to you all tomorrow!

Tacos,
Gladdstone