Winds of Change

   Anymore I find myself wondering just how much life will change in college. I suppose I don't so much mean life as I do the relationships I've made these past twelve years. 

   Time was, you went off to college, saw your college buddies on breaks, and sort of drifted apart from pretty much all of them with few exceptions. But now, with Facebook, Skype, and the gaming community in general, I can't help but wonder what it will be like. I like to think I'll still, if not see them, interact with them fairly frequently. Everyone involved in Nerds Under Fire I'll have to, so there's that.

   And then there's relationships. The big one. This is the one that scares me. Going off to a college where you won't see your SO for days, weeks. It makes me wonder how people hold up with that kind of thing. The old trope is that long distance doesn't work, but like I said, times are a-changing. But how much? Is long distance viable, or are we just lying to ourselves? Time will tell, I suppose. Tropes won't stop me from trying.

   Wow, this kind of bummed me out. But I guess you get days like that. All well. On the bright side, my grades are up, the new 3DS is out, and I'm back to playing the violin all the time. I even got voted Most Musical by my graduating class along with a close friend of mine, so that's pretty cool. 

   I'm looking forward to a relaxing week off. I'll definitely try to get out as much as I can, though. Lately I can't stand staying home and doing nothing. I get antsy. It's actually a nice feeling, I feel like I'm becoming a little less reclusive, especially since I started building up this blog and NuF. I've been meeting new people, both on and offline, and I can almost hold a conversation with someone! Haha.

   Well, anyway. I think that about does it for me. See you all later.

~Joe

A Day in the Life of Joe

10:00am

   Hey everybody. So today isn't off to a great start. Didn't get out of bed until 8:45 because my damn alarm was on silent. This is the third time this has happened and I'm seriously getting sick of it.
   Anyway, I've decided that today, for a change of pace, I'm going to do a throughout the day series of posts, each with their own timestamps, and then I'll post the whole thing as one conglomerate post (I think this will be a little neater than 5 mini posts clogging up the site).
   Right now I'm suffering through culture presentations in sociology. This is incredibly boring. I did finish the Day 1 drawing for the 40 Day Pokemon Challenge. I'll throw it up as soon as I get a chance. For those who don't know, the first challenge was "Draw a Pokemon that makes you smile." Cute way to start.


12:15pm

   Sitting down to lunch now. I could really use some coffee, but I don't feel like walking all the damn way to Dunkin Donuts. I just finished the first sketch, so without further ado, I give you...

   Yes, I went with Politoed. I've always thought he was kinda cute. Pretty useless competitively, but I dunno. I've just always liked him. Anyway, this is my first even remotely successful attempt at hatching/cross hatching so I'm fairly proud of myself, as simple as it is. The next challenge is "Draw your favorite regional bird." I've already got one in mind.


4:00pm

   Geez, it sure is raining out. I had to cross the street to get to my car and I nearly drowned. It was crazy out there.
   Back inside, now, thankfully. Pretty soon here I have to be at a college thing. I guess there's going to be a ton of colleges showcasing their curricula, so Tiana and I are going to go check it out. I especially want to check out RIT and Alfred University. I've heard they have good computer science programs.


8:45pm

   Just got home from the college information night. It was actually fairly informative. I'm still flip-flopping a bit between music education and game design as a major, though. The good news, is I have a pretty good idea of where I want to go for these majors. If I stick with music it's between Fredonia and Potsdam. If I decide to go into game design, I really like Alfred State and RIT. So I'm making at least a tiny bit of headway.
   Tiana and my mom got along really well, which is good, seeing as they haven't met before. Tiana was a bit nervous, but she warmed up fast. All in all it was a pretty good night. Not a bad day, actually.
   I also really liked this throughout the day blogging style. Maybe not enough to do it regularly, but perhaps every once in a while it could be a nice way to mix things up. We'll see.

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!

My Homie, Vivaldi

   Ugh...Mondays. Never fun.
   It doesn't help that my apparently incredibly sadistic chemistry teacher always schedules his quizzes for Mondays. I mean, it's not a difficult subject, but come on. Common courtesy, am I right?
   Anyway, interesting weekend. I went on that community college tour, and as much as I'd like the extra two years with a couple friends, it's kind of a crap hole. I don't think it very likely that I go there. I didn't even get a chance to check out their music/arts building. Not only could we not find it, but we couldn't even get a second to talk to the arts representative at their little presentation area. She just stood there for 30 minutes talking to these two guys, so eventually I gave up and we left.
   Nik seems pretty excited to go there. Despite the crappy school itself, they actually have some pretty cool activities going on there. His dad works at the college and runs the paintball club, so there's always that if I do choose to go there for a year or two. I really need to meet the violin teacher there before I do, though. I can't risk getting stuck with a teacher who is going to make me hate my instrument.
   So just tonight someone introduced me to the musical genre of alternative rock. I did not think I would care much for it, as I tend to be a bit of a Vivaldi, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, etc kind of guy, but I do really like the bands Fall Out Boy and Sleeping With Sirens. Dance, Dance by Fall Out Boy really struck a chord (ba-dum tsss) with me. Not sure why, but I liked that song, as well as the music video. As I type this, I'm listening to Pandora and The Anthem by Good Charlotte just came on, and damn I really like this song.

Antonio got all the bitches.

   I did get quite a lot done in WoW this weekend. I decided to finally use my 90-boost on a troll shaman on Wyrmrest Accord. Currently I'm gearing him up to be an alternate healer for my guild's raid teams. I've never healed outside LFR before, so this should be an interesting experience.

   I'm really enjoying the resto shaman play style, but I must say, I was really overwhelmed when I first boosted. They just sort of drop you in. I really wish there had been some sort of Death Knight like area to learn your class in, and I imagine we'll see that when the expansion is actually released. It seems like they would have to, because even as a veteran on Azeroth I was intimidated by the amount I had to learn. If the purpose of this is to help get new players in the game, the learning curve could prove a massive obstacle.
   My only other complaint regarding the 90-boost is you don't get any flight paths. You have to go run your freaking ass off and pick them up as you happen to wander by. This drives me nuts because I am incredibly lazy and use flight points instead of my own mounts quite a lot. So that is a gigantic time suck. The Timeless Isle has proven my best friend these past few days, as it has really helped me get geared and basically jump straight into LFR after just a few heroic dungeon runs to learn my rotations.
   More on this will be incoming as I start to get settled in. Until Wednesday!

Tacos,
Gladdstone

So College is a Thing

Pictured: Places I actually have no interest in attending

   Yikes, somehow I forget how little time I have left in high school. Even now, as my junior year begins to draw to a close, I'm experiencing the first of many lasts, as well as the first of many more firsts. Tomorrow I go to my first college open house. Granted, it's just the local community college, and I don't really plan on going there at this point in time, but hey-can't hurt to go look and get a feel for the place, right? Hopefully I'll get to talk to some people from the music and computer science departments and get their opinions. Who knows? It could be a good thing, it would certainly save me a lot of money. Plus, I could stay with my current private violin teacher for another two years, which I would absolutely love.

Because this looks
fun to me.

   Right now I'm thinking I will probably major in music ed with a minor in some sort of computer science field. I'm not sure what, but I really want to get a hang of working with computers. I definitely plan to make this a big part of my life, and being able to code my own website, and maintain my own RSS feed is something I'm definitely interested in learning to do.
   As for lasts, next week is a biggie. That would be leadership auditions for the marching band next year. Seeing as that will be my final year, I will get a position. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. It is quite simply, a fact. I'm going out for both flute section leader as well as drum major and one of those spots will be mine, that I promise you.

Pictured: Awesomeness

   I especially want to be drum major though, and here's why. When I was a kid, my grandmother (now deceased) would take me to go see the parades throughout the year. The street they were on has a Wendy's on it that at the time had a big open window area looking out onto the street. So that was where we would sit for every parade, and it was a great way to watch. Every time the marching band went by, I would think about how much I wanted to do that someday (I was somewhere between 5, and maybe 6 or 7 when we did this), but more than anything, I wanted to be the person who was conducting up front. I would always turn to my grandmother, pointing at the drum major and say "Someday, I want to do that." and she would smile at me. 12 years later, and I still want to do it-scratch that. 12 years later, and I will do it, and there is no power in this 'Verse that's gonna stop me, goram it!

TACOS
Gladdstone