WoW and Tchaikovsky

   So I've determined there is just too little going on during the summer, and I am going to cut out Wednesday posts until mid-August when marching band starts-then who knows? I might need to add a fourth post on Saturday just to cover everything.
   It's been an exciting week in World of Warcraft for the newly sprouted Nerds Under Fire guild on Blackwater-Raiders. We just hit level 4 the other day and we say a big uptick in recruitment. With any luck, we'll be pulling together some raiders for a 10-man team soon. The goal is to have everything in place for the release of WoD, however.
   Big news coming out of Hearthstone as well, as the Curse of Naxxramas pricing has been announced. The expansion will be available in five parts with a new wing costing either $6.99 or 700 gold per wing. In addition, for the the first month or so, there will be a launch event during which the first wing will be unlockable for free, after which players can purchase the other four, either individually, or as a package. A guide to the bundle is posted right here.

   To break it down even simpler, all five wings will cost $24.99 for those who don't take advantage of the launch event. For the rest of us it will cost $19.99, $14.99, $9.99, or less depending on if you choose to use gold or not.
   It is important to note that although you may buy all five wings at launch, you will not receive them all immediately. Rather, they will be rolling out at the rate of one wing per week. Upon completion of the the normal tier raid, the Heroic tier will be unlocked for free.
   Back here in the real world, Tiana just returned from her week long art camp up at Pratt University. It sounded pretty amazing. I, on the other hand, have sat home playing WoW, and practicing violin. I'm not even kidding. That has been basically my entire life this week.
   Seriously, that's all I've got to say about that.
   ...
   Well, bye.

Tacos,
Gladdstone

Thanks, Geico

   Happy Wednesday, everybody. I was going to say happy hump day, but that stupid damn insurance commercial has pretty much made it a crime to use the phrase "hump day." Thanks, Geico.

The true face of evil.

   Today was my first official day of summer break and it felt pretty good. It was nice, although I did have to work. They haven't scheduled me to work a Wednesday night in a while, and I forgot how freaking busy it is. I go from work, to my violin lesson, then I come home, write this blog, then there's usually an update to be done on the Nerds Under Fire site, and then there's audio editing to be done, and then I get to go to bed. Today was made even busier because I had a rehearsal before I went to work. So as you might imagine, I'm a bit drained at this point. 

   Regardless, I'm feeling pretty good. If you've been on the site during the day this week, you'll notice things will start to move around every couple minutes, and don't stop for two to three hours. I've been trying to find a layout I like, but I just can't quite seem to nail it down. I've been trying to set up a slider to show my recent posts, but Blogger has been thwarting my every attempt. So if anyone has some helpful tips, or just the code that would be great. 

   In light of the recent lull in Azeroth, I've found myself in Telara in the past few days. For those not familiar, that would be the supposed "WoW killer" Rift which went free to play within a year. 

   Now don't think that I'm slamming the game. It's an excellent game, but I don't like the term "WoW killer." At this point, I really think the only thing that will kill WoW is itself. From my point of view, the only way it will ever die is it will just slowly dwindle out over the course of the next decade or two. Moral of the story-WoW is here to stay for a long, long time.

   Back to Rift, I must say it's really quite good, and they really have an excellent free-to-play model from what I've seen so far. You can pick between two factions, each with three races. From there you can pick from the four base classes-warrior, cleric, mage, and rogue. Now that seems like a small amount to choose from, but from there you can select your "soul." This essentially determines how you play the game. There are four roles in the game-tank, DPS, healer, and support. What's really fascinating about this game, however, is any class can be any role (that is, if you purchase the expansion). Without the expansion, for example, mages can support, DPS, and heal. However, if you purchase their expansion you can tank. 

   Now I'm just going to take a break here to let that sit in.

   Yeah, you read that right.

   Mage.

   Tank.

Remember what happened last time?

   I nearly purchased the expansion right there and I hadn't even gotten into the game yet. 

   Once I was in the game, itself I was quite impressed. Everything runs very smoothly, and the art style, while a little darker than WoW's, it's quite pleasing, and the graphics are extremely good looking, even on the lower settings. 

   I haven't even leveled beyond the starting zone yet, so you can expect a lot more to come, but I certainly expect to play a lot more of this game over the summer, especially seeing as it's more accessible to my friends that can't afford the $15 a month to play WoW. I highly recommend this game.

   Hope to see everyone back for Friday!

Tacos,

Gladdstone

Maleficient the Passable

   Whoops, guess I missed Wednesday again. Sorry everybody! My bad! Let's all just move along, nothing to see here.
   Moving on, it has been a pretty slow week in terms on interesting-ness, but it was still fairly busy. Like I said, I had Tuesday off and I went to see Maleficient with some friends. On the docket tonight will be a brief review (spoiler free, I promise). But first, let's get everybody caught up.
   Tuesday was a nice day off, and then Wednesday was fairly relaxed other than a practice Chemistry regents. Honestly, it wasn't too difficult. I really expected to do poorly and I did quite well. I didn't go to my lesson that night because of schedule conflicts, and I finished the office later that night (either then or

Pictured: the UEHS Orchestra 2014-15 year

Thursday night, I honestly can't remember). Either way, wow. Just a fantastic end to a fantastic show. If you read Monday's post, you'll see I was getting pissed off, but I love the direction they ended up taking it in the end. It really was perfect. Thursday night I had the end of the year concert for orchestra. That's always fun, but sad. Each senior picks a song for the group to play, and unfortunately, we had 16 seniors this year. So yeah, long concert. But anyway, it was sad to think of all the people I'll probably never have the opportunity to perform alongside again. Rivenburg cried, of course, and that just made it sadder. It's crazy to think I'll be sitting in the concert master seat next year. Horrifying thought. On the bright side, I got a chance to catch up with an old cellist friend of mine, Michelle, who told me to start an 11th Doctor roleplay blog on Tumblr. So that's a thing now. Anyone who is interested in reading or participating can find it at www.mybowtiebringsallthegirls.tumblr.com. Not much there, at the moment, but it should be getting off the ground in the next couple of days. Today was fairly dull, went to school, went to work, came home, blogged, and went to bed (not yet, but soon. Soon.). With that, I think we'll move on to my Maleficient review.

Truly the face of evil

   So, Maleficient. Have I ever said how horrifying Angelina Jolie is? Her face is a train wreck. Somewhere along the line she just ended up with so much plastic in her face that she no longer appeared alive. As of right now, she looks about 4 months dead, and I honestly just don't see how people find her attractive. But regardless of her nightmarish looks, she honestly did fairly well as Maleficient. Not the best performance I've seen recently, but it certainly could have been worse. The musical score was good, but again, nothing wholly remarkable. The only thing that really leapt out at me was the CGI, which I thought was extremely good, with some exceptions such as a couple parts of the flying scenes where it just looked awful. Honestly, the CGI either looked fabulous, or dreadful, with no in between. The story I found fairly lacking. It felt very dragged out in the beginning, when it discussed Maleficient's childhood (not a spoiler), and then rushed through the rest of the movie to get to the Sleeping Beauty crap. The actress who played Aurora was Ellie Fanning. She's a very cute girl, and she performed very well. I can't say it was the best performance I've ever seen, but it was certainly some of the best in the movie, and I really hope we get to see more of her as she grows up and matures. All in all, I'd give the movie 6.5/10. I wouldn't say not to go see it, but if you have to choose between this and, say Guardians of the Galaxy, pick Guardians. If you do happen to like the idea of this extra character development, this movie may be for you. There isn't a lot, but enough.
   Before I go, I should mention the Geek Council will be available on iTunes soon, I promise. We've hit some logistical problems, but the recordings are still happening. The episodes are being developed, we just need to get it up and running. Promise.

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!

Much Music. Very Practice.

   Geez, these past couple of days have been killing me. BYSO concert/rehearsal fiasco over the weekend, then the orchestra concert Tuesday, marching band rehearsal tonight, which was then immediately followed by a two hour private violin lesson.
   On the bright side, however, I did finally pick a sonata to prepare for my college auditions. I'm going to be playing Beethoven's 5th Sonata (Spring). In a few weeks, I plan to pick out a piece from the collection of Bach Sonatas and Partitas. Then I just need some etudes and get my minor scales down, and I'll be all set!
   Marching band rehearsal tonight was really fun, it was great to see everyone again, and Mr. Bill showed us the footage for the spoiler of next year's show titled, Home Sweet Home.

   Something about that really got to me. Next year is going to be my senior year, and it seems that after all this crazy journey, starting with Haunted Carnival 4 years ago, to New York, For The Birds, and Tonight. And after all of this insanity, I'm back where I started. My home. The band is my home, it's where I belong. No matter what happens, I always feel good when I'm in the band room, or on the field. I know that I'm going to absolutely bawl the first day of band camp this year. After all I've done in this band, I just don't feel ready to leave. Even watching the video, all the old friends, all the memories, everything. I'll be honest, I teared up a little. I don't want this to end, I've never really felt at home anywhere in the way I do in the band. Even the people I don't like, I would still do anything for. I'm not sure what I'm going to do.
   Getting back to everything here, however, I've got some big, big things in the works. I've picked up the iPad again and started drawing, so hopefully I can get some nice stuff up here pretty soon. What I really would like to talk about, however, is the idea of a Nerds Under Fire podcast. Now the issue we've run into before, is scheduling. My initial thought is that I will host the show solo along with a different guest each week. At this point in time, my schedule never matches up with anyone's regular schedule, so what I intend to do is bring in a new guest each week. Our most common rotation will most likely include the regulars you hear about-Nik, Alex, Charlie, Nate-but I also have a few friends dotted around the country I've met in various fields of nerd-dom who I would love to have guest on this show if they're interested.
   This is all still in the preliminaries, of course, nothing is set in stone, but I've got plans and they will be coming together within the next couple of months.
   Stay tuned, and I'll see you all Friday.

Tacos,
Gladdstone

Freaking Fridays

   Hey, all. I know I missed Friday, again. I don't know how this keeps happening-I guess I just get busy and it slips my mind. Promise I'll do better this week.
   So anyway, it has been a fairly normal past couple of days, as usual. Wednesday was the US History AP and...yeah, I already talked about that, so let's not revisit it.
   Thursday, I got out of school for a competition with my school's wind ensemble. We had prepared three pieces, and we took gold, which is just one rank below top, so we're all pretty excited about that. Things are starting to come together in marching band, and I've gathered some very fascinating information about this upcoming year that I won't share just yet. But let me just say, Mr. Bill has some really cool ideas, and I hope the other directors agree with him, because we could really have a shot at first place this year.
   While we're on the subject of marching band, I am still working on the euphonium, despite the fact that I probably won't be playing it next year, I will definitely be playing it in college, which seeing as I have to be good enough to compete with some really fabulous players.
   Agh. I just got in from mowing the lawn and my allergies are killing me. My eyes itch so bad I want to rip them out of my damn head. Also, I'm going to take a moment to say I find the show Two Broke Girls annoying.
   Moving on, I went on a little adventure Saturday, and let me say, it is quite the tale. Let's start from the beginning, shall we? I am in a youth orchestra. It's actually quite an impressive group-it's made up of the top players in the area. Well, we had a dress rehearsal for our concert Sunday on Saturday. I live about 30 minutes away, and it was at 12, but I had to go get my car looked at on my way so I left at 11. I ended up getting out of there fast, so I grabbed Subway and drove over. I got to the high school, only to find absolutely no one there. Then, to make matters worse, I got lost in the school. Yup. Finally I found a door that led outside. Now here's the thing about this school-they've got gates at every entrance and these ones just so happened to be locks. Now irritated, I tried to get back in only to find all the doors were locked. So-you guessed it-I had to jump the fence. With a violin. Yeah. Then I had to walk all the way back around the building to my car. So now I was a little pissed, but figured it must be at the West Middle School, which happens sometimes. So I set the GPS in my iPhone to take me there, seeing as I don't head that way much. No sooner did I get there, than I realized it had sent me to the East Middle School.  Pretty angry now, I told it to take me back to the high school because I thought maybe I could figure it out myself from there. Well, an hour later, my phone could not get me back there because of constructions and detours. Now more lost, I told it to take me home. Thirty minutes later I was calling my mom and she was telling me how to get home. So essentially, I was driving aimlessly for 2 hours. Did I mention my car has no AC? Oh I didn't? Well it doesn't, and I wasn't sure I was going to make it.
   In summation, the website was wrong and the dress rehearsal was before the concert Sunday. Wonderful.
   The concert was very good, at least. We played Rumanian Rhaphsody No. 1, which let me just say, is an insanely hard piece. We also played an excellent Mozart flute concerto among a bunch of other fantastic pieces. It was our last concert of the year, too, so no more driving 30 minutes every week for 3 hours of practice! Yay!
   That's about it. I've got robotics tomorrow-Nik and I are going to be working on the website. See you Wednesday!

Tacos,
Gladdstone

Sharpie Face=Passing Grade?

   We've finally reached that blessed halfway point in the week where the weekend begins rapidly approaching. The only downside here, is my English AP Exam is scheduled for Friday. Kill me.

The man who I'm relying on to help me
pass APUSH

   The good news is Krieger says that you only need about a 6 on each exam to pass as well as roughly 46/55 multiple choices (subject to change depending on the number of questions and the curve). I feel pretty confident that I can nail this. As for the American history AP...well, you win some, you lose some, eh? I'm really banking on John Green to get me out of that one. For those who don't know, John Green has an entire video series out that covers the entire course and it is a truly beautiful thing.
   I thing it's only fair to warn you, this is gonna get a little personal for a paragraph or so, so feel free to skip over this bit. In fact, I even encourage it, because it's really more for me than you guys.
   Sometimes I just get sick of being single. And by sometimes, I mean all the time. For a while I just ignored the entire dating/crush thing, and it served me well. But after a while, I just started to get lonely, and it sort of makes me regret that I ever started dating in the first place because I know if I hadn't, I wouldn't have this unique sort of loneliness. I'm always surrounded by good friends, but now when I'm single, there's that little emotional void that nothing really seems to fill. Don't get me wrong, I don't totally regret ever having had a girlfriend because some wonderful things have come from my relationships, and they've caused me to grow as a person. But for several months (almost a year, I think) now, I've been consumed with this awful regret, and I can't seem to figure out how to approach it. i made a really terrible decision one day, just out of no where and I don't understand why I would do it, but I did, and I went with it without thinking and I've never hated myself more. It's just one of those things where you can't seem to find a way to broach the subject, and just spend your time desperately trying to build up to it even knowing that you'll probably never reach that point.
   Anyway. Let's pick the pace back up, shall we? In the world of music, I had a violin lesson tonight with my private teacher, and we discussed my college plans for most of the time I was there. But what's really interesting is I've finally gotten to pick up a brass instrument. Specifically, low brass. Specifically-er, euphonium. This is because, as a flute player, I can't continue in marching band without picking up a different instrument. Another factor, was that Mr. Bill had been pressuring me to do it for a while now. Apparently we'll be low in that section next year, so it's looking like that's where I'll be spending my senior year, which I find kind of exciting. I think it will be fun to relearn all the parts for those couple songs that pop up every year.
   Speaking of exciting, ho-boy did something exciting happen today. at long, long last...it has been announced...by Nintendo...that coming soon...in November 2014...is the long awaited Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire remakes! Words simply cannot express how excited I am about this. Along with the announcement came a short, 30 second video. There's nothing super exciting in the video itself, but this is incredibly exciting. I, personally have been waiting for this since Heartgold/Soulsilver and I could not be more excited that it will (most likely) be running in the new graphics engine-although I wouldn't say no to a return to the old style, either. For those who haven't seen it, here's the video.

   Beyond that, I don't have too much going on in my video game life. I should be wrapping up this crazy music writing stuff in the next week or two, and then I'll be back to screwing around.
   This site is looking pretty sparse, and that's something I plan to work on soon here. If you guys have any ideas of what might be cool, feel free to leave a comment below!

Tacos,
Gladdstone

It's a Brand New Day

   Monday evening again, and here I am again. It's good to be back, like slipping back into a familiar coat.
   Friday was an interesting day. It appears I am now the Pam of the marching band ((go watch The Office if you don't understand, you uncultured swine). Not sure what I do, but whatever. Should be a good year nonetheless.
   Saturday was, as I'm sure you all know, Free Comic Book Day. For me, the day has become less about free stuff, and more about meeting new people. Nik, Nate, and I all went to the mall and enjoyed talking to some likeminded nerds. We even saw a couple cosplayers. Power Rangers. I stopped in the middle of the mall and saluted them exclaiming  "God bless America." because what else could you possibly do at a moment like that?
   Slightly less exciting than that was that I had to take the SAT first. Let me say, that was the most absurdly stressful thing I've ever done in my life. And I had to pay money for it.
   Don't get me wrong, it was incredibly easy (never even picked up a review book), but the time constraints were absolutely killer. The math portions were less difficult, and more time consuming. Sort of so that one brief mistake could cost you the time to do an entire question.
   Enough about that, though. Let's talk music! I haven't quite found the time to finish that violin cover of I Miss You yet, but let me tell you, words cannot describe how excited I am to finish and perform it. It's going to be so fantastic. The intricacies of the parts and the way they fit together are just so great.
   Speaking of which, Rivenburg (orchestra teacher) had a guest violinist in today. And not just any violinist, a rock violinist. Yeah. Think about that. Basically what he would do is he'd set his equipment to record from his acoustic/electric violin and then loop while he played the melody. It was all dne live, too which made it all the more impressive. He would lay down the bea, then base, some decoratives, and go to town. It was truly incredible. If you want to check him out (and I highly recommend you do), his name is Andrea di Cesare. He's an Italian violinist, and he didn't speak much English from what I could tell. It wasn't too bad though, I know enough Italian to get the gist of what he was trying to say. I must say, though, it really got me excited to try broadening my horizons with my instrument a bit.
   Speaking of broadening my horizons, tomorrow I'll be picking up a low brass instrument for the first time. For the marching band, or course, just like basically everything else I do. I love my fluties, but it looks like the low brass are going to need warm bodies, and Shannon and Megan have it all in good hands. I'm sure they'll get along fine (read: better) without me.
   That oughta do it for tonight. I'll see you all on Wednesday.

Tacos,
Gladdstone

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