Waiting... Waiting...

By the title you would think this next post will be depressing. It might be just be that. I am actually waiting on a game (among other things) to install called EverQuest that my friends have been wanting to try. This will give me a break from Minecraft I guess. I spend WAY to much time on that game. I got bored of just building castles and other things and moved to designing stuff out of redstone. I have made a 9 digit keypad with the combinations and I also made a smaller 4 digit one as well. They open up hidden entrances, blow up everything with TNT and activate hidden staircases. I did this for awhile and I wanted to actually do something that no one else had or at the very least design something that I had seen but had no design specs.

I decided to make a game center. My first game was Minesweeper. It was fairly easy to design. The hard part was laying out all the cobblestone... After the design was completed, I made a sign out of wool above the whole thing that says "MINE (picture of a broom). Then I saw of version of "musical chairs" on YouTube here that had a series of different colored blocks surrounded by lava. When a switch is flipped, it pops up the desired color that everyone has to make it to before the others fall into the lava. They have about 5 or 6 seconds from when the block on the wall pops out to when the others fall. It is quite a jump but it was the best I could do without sprint in the Xbox version. I will eventually get a rail system to go out there so it isn't such a long walk.

Wow this game takes forever to install... Well I GUESS I can ramble about my life. I still haven't been able to find a job. Kind of frustrating. Also one of my roommates think I am taking advantage of him I guess. I really am not. I don't ask for anything and if we are out shopping I suggest something and I make sure I tell him it's up to him. I only suggest it if its something I think he would like also. I haven't done this in awhile because I felt like that is the impression he might be getting. I DO feel bad every time we go out to get food and other things because I can't help. I literally have no money to help and I don't want to ask my dad about it but I think I will have to soon...

On a better note, I made friends with an old friend of mine. We have not talked in awhile and it is good to be talking again. It is a little rough but what do you expect? Time does indeed heal all wounds..

Now just a note: I have been watching a lot of Joss Whedon's stuff on Netflix lately. He makes awesome stuff. Firefly, Dollhouse, The Avengers, and Serenity are all things I have seen. And they are amazing. If you like Sci-Fi and other strange stuff, he is your man. Fox seems to hate him though. They always cancel his stuff. At any rate the stuff is good.

Wow the game is still installing. We are at 50% now. I have run out of things to talk about so I will sign off. Good day!

Computers and Me

It has been awhile sense I have posted on here. So here I am at 1 AM posting a thing about computers. Here we go...

I have always been fascinated by computers. My mom used to tell this story of me resetting the computers at the grocery store when I was little one time. Guess you got to start somewhere right? haha Then a few years later we got an old Mac from my grandpa. It had Mac OS 8 (or System 7) on it I believe. The thing is extremely slow (133 MHz I believe) by today's standards but man was it stable. You could leave it going for days and days and it would still be good to go when you came back to it. Then we got a "new" computer. This time it was a PC with Windows 98 Plus! on it. This came with a bunch of cool themes and sounds. (I think the CPU was 333 MHz) However it liked to reset a lot and actually made this horrible noise after awhile. (When we got a new computer I actually fixed that) It had an awesome motocross game on it that my brother and I loved to play. However, being the curious person I was, I somehow managed to delete it.. My brother was PISSED. We never did get it back. We then got a new computer in 2001 or 2002. It was 2nd to top of the line at the circuit city we were at. The thing cost a VERY pretty penny as well too. This one was a lot faster than our last one (2.54 GHz CPU). It also came packed with a bunch of software and games. This is about the time I started to get more curious about computers and how they worked. We still had the old PC and the Mac and I took the PC apart and fixed the horrible noise from earlier. I also reformatted it and made it a little faster. With the Mac, I did the same. It was pretty useless though. Besides being one of the most stable computers I have ever worked with, it didn't have any use for me. There were no games or anything an 8 or 9 year old would want to work with. Also, some time later, I was given an old Toshiba Satellite Windows 95 laptop by dad. This was also very stable, besides being slow and heavy, it was one of the best computers I have had as well. After awhile, my dad suggested putting Windows 98 Plus! on it because it would make it faster. So I said alright and he helped me delete everything one by one on the hard drive (including the system and boot files...). We then rebooted it, put in the Windows 98 setup CD, tried installing, and things stopped. I can not remember why, but we could not install it. I looked all over the Internet using Ask Jeeves to figure out how to fix it. Eventually I ended up giving it to my cousin who was able to get it to install after a few hours of working with it. Now it would be cake for me to install it. This experience got me introduced to text based operating systems. I actually sort of liked it or at least got a weird feeling when I used it (I want to say close to a classic car enthusiast working/restoring a classic car). Ya that probably sounds weird but we all have our interesting hobbies. I didn't get much more into the text side at that point but I will later. A little while after that I heard of this piece of software called Damn Small Linux (Yes that is the actual name). I decided to try it and burned it to a CD. It was a whopping 50 megabytes in size (average CD holds 650-700 megabytes). It booted up and worked. I thought it was really cool and it included games like Tetris and other things. I had this going on my laptop and sometime after that decided to start up a few games of Tetris all running at once with the computer playing it and see how long it took for them to loose. I THINK one or two lost in a three day period. I didn't get farther then this though because my laptop decided to start smoking with Magic Smoke. The laptop still ran though! I decided that it was no longer safe to run the computer in this state and took at the hard drive and through the rest away. I actually still have the hard drive actually. Haha.

After this it is just filled with a whole bunch of me just tinkering with a bunch of computers and accumulating a bunch of PCs and Macs and taking up a lot of space.

And I thought that was okay. I am surprised my mom and dad
and every one else didn't  strangle me or throw it all out...

I eventually got to fixing some people's phones and failing somewhat on that (nothing seems to go right for me the first time huh? Ha), modding iPods, fixing computers, upgrading my home's network capabilities, spending a lot of time on the Internet (I wouldn't call it wasted. Generally I was reading up on how to do something or looking what I could do in the future), and just a bunch of other stuff. I also started using different kinds of operating systems. I installed Mac OS X on the computer we got in 2002 and found a way to install it on the Dell we got in 2008 (also super beefed up. It still probably has 2 or 3 years before it will be slightly outdated). I eventually got a laptop (I actually still have a picture I sent to my friend right after I got it). I still have it too. It will be three years old in June. I might have to make it a cake. Haha just kidding. Although I might still..... Anyways that was in 2009. I started using Ubuntu on it (what I have on here right now) and that operating system needs a lot of text based work sometimes. I again got that feeling I described earlier and haven't forgotten about it since.

A lot of this is out of order but I can't remember when exactly it all happened. And it is getting late (almost 3 AM) and I am starting to loose focus somewhat. But if I stop now I won't be able to remember it all. So on we go...

When I started high school, me and my friends decided we were going to make a game or two before we finished high school. We had all these plans and ideas. My friend Sam and I actually would text each other game ideas as soon as we had them. They were pretty good too actually. There is still one that I think would make an amazing game. Hopefully we will be able to make it or at least have it be made. In order to make all of this a reality, we had to learn the code and all the other skills required to make a game. I ever went and found a free teaching guide off the Internet that had a schedule for every one to use. However, like the high school students we were, we all fell pray to procrastination. After a few weeks, we stopped following the schedule and stopped all together shortly after. We tried again and again but never made it far. Could we have made those games? Maybe. I think we could have at least made a very crude version of SOME of one game.

My senior year I got into HTML programming and actually modified a template of a page I got off the Internet for the school's journalism page. If you go to Malad High School's website, you will actually see an image that says "Da Scoop". I actually designed that. That is as far as the journalism page got to being put on the site though. When I modified it though, I kind of felt like I was reverse engineering it (and I guess I was in a way). I had no idea what the anything did. I basically made a change and loaded it in the browser to see what changed visually. I got it to look pretty good I think but no one will ever know.
In the spring, I actually took a class and learned HTML and CSS. Someone actually used my final webpage and changed a few things and submitted it as their own.. (You could tell it was mine due to them not changing the image resolutions for the different pictures. Theirs were stretched to fit) My teacher said it looked very professional and I agree. Everyone else's (at least the ones I looked at) were simple just the bare minimum.
I now code web pages and mess with text based operating systems for fun. Currently I want to use a software called DWJukebox. Why? Because it is a jukebox and me and my friend Spencer talked about making one and then I found that software without even looking (weird how stuff works like that). What makes this unique is I am going to try to use it on FreeDos (free version of MSDOS). It is supported and was originally coded on there. The hard part is is that there is no modern hardware support for these old operating systems. It will run on newer systems on DOS, but the sound will never work and the video could be a little weird. The reason I want to run it like this is because once I have it working, it will continue to run like that for years and years and years without having to reformat it. It will also be up in less than 30 seconds versus a few minutes in Windows. It will also give me a reason to use my old Pentium I computers I have laying around. It will also be quite a challenge because 1) I have lost a lot of the parts that it came with and 2) I haven't really messed with DOS in a long time so it will be fun (to me at least). On top of all that, I have to make some form of cabinet for it to store it in and figure out a number of things. All in all, I think this is a great summer project!

Wow is this a lot. Sad thing is is this isn't even close to all the experiences I have had with computers. I have a lot more that I am sure I could recall with some more thinking (Xbox modding is one). It is all quite interesting. Computers mean a lot to me. Could I live without them? Probably. However if civilization collapsed and I came across a computer, you could bet that I would at least look at it and see what was in it and if there was a possible way to get it working. Not because we would need it or anything, but purely for the heck of it (who know's, it could be used to communicate with other people). Anyways there ya have it. Sorry if it falls apart toward the end. It is a very long post and it is very late (3:16 AM). I didn't think it would be this long. I posted this mainly so that I could remember and so that others could understand why I like them so much.

Untitled

The title is named "Untitled" because there is a lot that is going to be posted here and I feel random.. So ya. Ha

First order of business: ISU

I got accepted to ISU. Hopefully it was as an in-state student. If not, oh well. I think it would still be worth it. There is going to be a lot of changes in the next few months and I can't wait to get started! What I plan on doing is:

• Finish the semester at Weber and hope I stay above a 2.0... I only have about two weeks left so time will tell. 
• Decide if I think it is worth staying in Ogden and walking all of May for money. The job isn't too bad but idk. I need the money. I am half way there to what I wanted to save.
• Stay in Malad and help my dad a little with the farm. My brothers will take over moving pipe this year I think but I will help a little.
• Start looking for jobs in the Pocatello area. Hopefully in some form of computer job. I could probably transfer my job to a Pizza Hut up there but I am not completely sure if I would like that...
• Then look for an apartment or house if my friend decides to stay and not move out.
• When school starts, I will hopefully have a job and a place to stay. If no job by than, hopefully I will have saved up some money to live off of by then....

My dad isn't overly thrilled with this. I am not sure why. I guess he seems to think that I will live with someone the rest of my life? He said that he would be fine with it if I went and stayed at his girlfriends house (which is in Pocatello also). But then I would be back to square one and I will not have gained anything that I wanted to... Hopefully my grades will get better up there. I do a lot better academically when I am happy. Right now I have to keep motivating myself over and over and over again. That is why I have periods in my grades where I do awesome and then slip into a terrible spot. I know I will have to motivate myself up there to as well, but hopefully it will be a lot less frequent... 

Second order of business: Tyler

My brother Tyler also decided to move back home. I am glad too. That was NOT a good place for him to be. He is a lot like me and he was at a VERY fragile stage where he was willing to do anything for acceptance when he went down there. I can see he has already changed quite a bit but not near as much as I thought would happen. Anyways my brother Kyle went down there this week to get him and spend some time with the family. I would have went too but I had a test and I did not have enough notice to get time off for work. Hopefully I will be able to see Tyler this weekend.

Third order of business: Life/Stress Levels/???

These last few weeks I have had an overwhelmingly low amount of stress for some strange reason. Even though I have a large load of homework I am backed up on, I have this sense of calmness over me. I have yet to decide if this is a good thing though. Ha. It could mean that my mind has found a way to take it all in and work with what I got. It could also mean that I have given up and am just waiting for it all to end... I am hoping for the first one! Haha

Also, I got into a pretty big fight with my friend this weekend over why they would not hang out with me. That may seem like a stupid thing to get in a fight about (and it may have been), but after waiting a long time (a year) to hang out with them, they still refused. They said that I am afraid to get out of my comfort zone and that was why they didn't want to. That is no longer entirely true though. I have come out of my shell a lot this past year. Not as much as I would have liked to but still, progress is progress right? I actually think it is the exact opposite. But oh well. I am not sure whether to talk to them first or wait for them. I just got tired of waiting and tired of not being able to say all that I had on my mind about it. What good is a friend if they won't talk to you in person when they live in the same town? Enough ranting about that... If they see this, maybe it will help (probably more likely to piss them off but oh well...). Kind of sucks not having anyone to text now though. Ha

Third order of business: Technology/Blog/Others....

Remember the computer I told you about in my Hobbies article? Well I decided to give up on putting Mac on it and slapped Windows 7 on it instead. It was working great for a long time! I had ePSXe (plays Playstation 1 Games :) haha) on it and a bunch of other things. Then the WiFi decided to screw up (happened before I tried putting Mac on it too), so deciding it was a Windows issue, I put Ubuntu on it today. Much better! The WiFi has only acted up once but it does that on my laptop too so that isn't too big of a deal.
My blog is still kind of bland. I need to add some stuff to it and make it my own. Since I know a little bit of HTML and CSS, I should be able to whip up something. Probably won't happen until I have a LOT of free time (which won't be until the end of April sadly). So boring it will stay for now! 

I wrote "Others" at the end of the sub topic. I thought there was going to be more that I would want to add but it is getting late. So rather than delete it, I figured I would waist more of your time and ramble on about how I probably should have deleted it but didn't. So there you go.. Yup still there. 

Couple of Things....

You know how I said I wanted to move to Pocatello? Well I still do. I now know why. Yesterday I was grabbing my wallet from the house so that I could go to Taco Bell with my lab pattern while we waited for the lab to start. I notice the RV outside the house (I noticed it before I left but I just assumed he was cleaning it (they do that sometimes). He (my lab partner) asked about it and I told him that. After going to Taco Bell we went back to the school. My uncle was walking up the steps to his vehicle when we passed and I asked him about the RV. Apparently they were going to Wendover this weekend and I had no idea. I didn't want to go but still. This happens a lot. They last thing they told me about as far as an event goes was Disney on Ice and that was only because they asked me to go. If I weren't going, I am sure they would not have told me that either. Why am I mad about this? Because I live here and I am family. I feel like I should know what is going on; at least a little bit. This only adds to the feeling of me not being included at all and making me feel like a live in a one room apartment with no lock and my neighbors have the rest of the house. All I do is go to school, work, and do my homework in my room. Now that I have less hours (went from 30 hours to about 10ish in one week), I have some free time to do whatever and I don't even feel welcome anywhere else so I stay in my room. So here I am alone the whole weekend. I have nothing to do but play games. That is what I did for almost 12 hours straight yesterday. (5 PM to about 3 AM ish...) Don't get my wrong, I enjoy it. I would rather be spending it with other people (I have decided I am a very social person for some weird reason even though new people make me feel awkward...) or doing something else new though. I can't really go out and do anything either because now that my hours were cut, I have to save even more for the move to Pocatello so I don't end up going broke as soon as I get up there.

If I don't end up going to Pocatello, I am pretty sure I am going to move out of this place... That is what it is getting to.

Spring Break

Haven't posted for awhile so here it goes..

My spring break was last week. To start things off, I found out I scheduled the wrong week off from work (put this coming week as my time off instead of this week) last Friday. So over the next few days I had to find people to work for me. It was not as bad as I thought it would be. I only had to get one day covered (picked the new girl because she didn't have a lot of hours). Got it all sorted out on Sunday and I left that night to go see my friends in Pocatello. I didn't end up getting there until like 2 am but oh well ha. On the way up there though I started to get I sore throat. Of course I got the flu (or cold or something else...)... So I spent Monday feeling like crap, spent Tuesday feeling like I was going to freeze to death, and spent Wednesday recovering some. (I am still sort of sick but it is mainly just my sinuses)

While I was up there, I did a lot of stuff. My friend Sam only had to work one day while I was up there and the rest of my friends had all the days off that I was up there. Sam and I got hooked on playing Chess with Friends on our iPhones and finished playing co-op on Halo Anniversary. The rest of the time was spent watching movies, playing Rock Band (1 (PS3), 2(PS3), and 3(Xbox 360)), and just doing what ever we could.


The main reason (well one of two) I went up there though was to try out Dungeons and Dragons. Sam was really wanting to try it out and see how it was. He was the Game Master (basically the AI of the game). He did an awesome job at it. I died once (wasn't paying attention ha) but he let me come back. It took us a long time to finish one game. We started at like 11 pm I think and did not get done until like 3 am. Probably would have stopped sooner and continued the next day but I was leaving the next day so they would not have been able to finish as easily. Spencer did end up quitting about a half hour through the game though.. Jerk haha. We just had his character go through the game (he was our healer) like normal and then we divided up his experience points at the end and gave them to everyone else (got me to level 3). Overall it was a fun game and I hope we can play again sometime. The second reason I went up there was to give Sam his birthday present. I got him Halo Primordium. It is the second book of the Forerunner Saga.

What our game looked like. I "died" while opening the doors to
the room and the far left corner. I guess that was where the
boss was. My bad... Ha

I went to Malad on Wednesday and stayed with my family for a few days. I helped Kyle fix some electrical stuff on his truck and did a bunch of other things. I played a little of Little Big Planet (I love that game). I also did a bunch of little stuff. I had to go to work Thursday but I was still sick so I called in sick and tried to find someone to cover for me (didn't find anyone but I did not end up having to go). I left to go back to Ogden on Friday (a little late though). I ended up being ten minutes or so late for work. I thought the manager was going to kill me. I was on her bad side for awhile that night. And I smashed a pizza that night too because a two liter soda bottle fell on it (never had it happen before). She gave me a hard time for that too... After that things got better and I am on her good side again I think. Moral of the story: don't be late for work....

For the weekend I worked and just sort of sat around. I should have been doing homework but oh well. That is what Sunday nights are for right? Ha.

Decisions... (And Some Background)

I have been debating something a lot the last two to three months. I'm not happy here. There is just something that I am not fulfilling in myself here. I'm not sure what it is. Maybe it is the lack of friends? Either way I think I am going to ISU in Pocatello for a year or so. Then on to Digipen. That it the plan so far.

What is it that I need in my life? For starters, I want to see what it is like to live on my own. Right now I have no rent, no bills, and have just recently got a job. Don't get me wrong, it is nice not having bills and rent to worry about, but I just want out really. I'm tired of having nearly everything provided for me. It makes me feel like a "moocher." So the plan goes as follows:

• Get through this semester at Weber and hopefully pass
• Work the whole month of May to make enough money for a few months worth of living expenses

For the summer: 

• Either help my dad with the farm this year and spend a full summer in Malad (for maybe the last time in a long time..)
• Or move to Pocatello in June and find a job so that I can start saving up money for college and other expenses. 

After summer:

• Go for a year or so to ISU (part time (for a little))
• Either get my degree there or transfer to Digipen and get a degree in game design
• Go from there....

Right now, I want to be a game designer of some sort. when I was reading though one of my friend's blogs, they referred to the music they posted as "epic music" (and I agree 100%). When I clicked on the first one, link, I couldn't help but play a game scene that just randomly formed into my head. A few years ago, I used to have this happen all the time. Me and my friend Sam would always share these ideas back and forth. We had dreams back then of making those a reality with our own gaming company of some sort. Then I went to engineering state and saw that biological engineering looked pretty cool. So I kind of went off on that for awhile. I still like the idea (I love biology and love messing with code so messing with the DNA of cells seemed to fit right in). Then I got back into coding websites and doing them for fun and that sent me back to wanting to be a software engineer. I love being able to make and fix my own stuff. Since I am not artistic by any means, this is the only way I have to show off that ability. My friends blog only reinforced the idea even more. 

The only pitfalls to this plan are that since I have been living in Utah for almost a year, I may not be able to get in-state tuition at ISU and I will have to pay for rent and bills. I still think it is more than worth it though. My life here is school and work. At least there it would be school, work, and friends. Will it be harder? For sure. Worth it? I think so... 

Hobbies

I need a hobby I have decided. I see way too many things on Hack A Day that I would love to do if I had the knowledge. One of my personal favorites is this POV Clock. It spins a series of lights in a circle so fast that it makes an image. Perfect for an interactive clock. That is what a lot of people use them for. I personally would like to see this used in a car as the speedometer and the RPM gauge or as an interface for the radio (placing a touch panel over it though of course). If spun fast enough and designed correctly, maybe it could be used for video too?

What I do right now as a "hobby" is mostly just computer stuff. I write web pages from scratch for fun. I spend hours just playing with them figuring out new stuff to add and debugging the pages when I do something wrong and break it. If I knew a little bit more about them, I don't think it would take me as long to do a lot of the stuff.
Other things I like to do is to do stuff a lot of people don't do with their computers. I switch between operating systems as if it were nothing. Currently I am using 100% open source software am my laptop (including the operating system. I currently run Ubuntu 11.10). I usually reformat my laptop every few months because it speeds things up quite a bit and it gives me a chance to clear out all the useless crap I had accumulated over the months. I also like to experiment with Mac OS X and put it on PCs. I have a project PC sitting under my desk waiting for me to buy more parts so it will work right with Mac right now.

I also like to work on my Jeep for fun too. Nothing too big has been done with it yet. However I do plan to do a lot of things with it. I plan to make it my "Weekend Warrior" in the next few years. Swapping the engine, more lift, new tires, new paint job, and a bunch of other things. Right now the only thing stopping all this is lack of money. So this is a project that will take a few years to finish.

Geo caching is another thing that I have been meaning to get into. I tried finding some of the ones in the Malad Valley (there are a lot of them actually). Here is a map of what caches there are in and around Malad. I couldn't find the ones I tried. I will look more this summer though.

I guess I have more "hobbies" than I thought. Can't hurt to add more though right? Ha

Money... "It makes the world go round"

This is a problem. Before money, society used to use a system of trading. You had something you wanted (say a loaf of bread), you would have had to trade it for something of equal value (a rug). In this system, nothing is created out of thin air. Even if you were a baker who used their own wheat to make their bread, the process still requires time and work to make. Thus the bread wasn't created from nothing. Today however, you can make money from doing nothing (stocks, interest, investing in a start up company, government printing it, etc). Where does this end? In this system, you have terms such as inflation and deflation. In the old system (trade), you had a similar concept as well. The difference being the "inflation" and "deflation" was on a per item basis. In our current system, if the money inflates, everything does as well. This is bad. It makes the money worth less sense most of the time the amount people are paid doesn't go up either; making everything cost more. Why couldn't deflation fix this? Same problem. The money value would go down, but at a different rate than the pay rate.

This system also goes directly in the face of many laws of physics. One is "energy cannot be created or destroyed." Now you may say what does this have to do with physics? Nothing really. However, how can you make money by selling something for more than you payed for it? Easily. BUT, you can't do this forever. Something like this isn't stable and it puts value on everything and makes people greedy and uncaring. Why do we have thieves? Money. Murderers? (Life insurance fraud) Money. Why does society have any negative things in it? Maybe not all of it has to do with money, but a large part of it does. Our government is controlled by money. If a big business is financially threatened, all they have to do is send money to the government (not exactly but in a nut shell) and they will more than likely be taken care of. The SOPA and PIPA bills that almost passed are perfect examples of this. We even have proof the media companies were bribing them. Here I was blown away when I read this.

I also think the current system we are in is stalling us as a society. The automobile isn't improving because the oil companies buy the rights to patents that increase the efficiency of gasoline engines (look at the U.S. patents online and you will find tons of patents for this like this). As a result we still have the majority of our cars still getting under 30 mpg. We will also never have the miracle cure to cancer. Even if it does exist, the drug companies will never let it out unless they find a way to make into a yearly vaccine sort of thing. They would go out of business. We aren't advancing ourselves into space because of why? You guessed it, money. We don't have any to do that...

If everyone was working to better society and to make a living for themselves, we would be a lot better off. With this thing we call money, we will never get there. People always like to hoard it and they turn greedy as a result. Yes it is a lot more convenient to use money over trading stuff straight across, however it won't last. Especially with all the mismanagement countries and large corporations are doing with it.

I would seriously like to see a place made to try out this "free and open" society. Instead of money, there would be a form of trading and people would have to make their own contribution to society. It would be like the old villages society used to live in. I don't know if this system would work in this age though. We have the Internet which makes it so much easier to share and contribute. However, due to greed by the large media companies, we may soon loose that. This will stagnate society even more...

Hopefully you see now that money is source of the major problems we as a society have today. It is the main cause for greed, people take advantage of other people for it, and it is a way to control people (try living without it). We can't live without it though so I don't see an easy way of fixing it without having a group of people (a small "start up" created for the sole purpose of demonstrating this is about the only way I see of trying it out...) test this out and even then I doubt it would prove anything.. Maybe this is what society has become; full of greed, power hungry, and just evil. If there was a way to make it in this world (without being a homeless person) without making money and just making good contributions to society, I think I would try it out for awhile. I don't think there is though. All I can do is live in this world and hope enough people think about this and start taking power back so we can change society as a society, together. I would rather this then have a bunch of greedy, power hungry small group of people making changes to society that only benefit the people paying them...

Well, rant off. If you have something to say or something you would like to add, post a comment or send me a text or email. I do hope this has at least made some of you ponder about the system we are in.

Music and Me

In my "About Me" thing on the right side of the page I make mention of liking basically all forms of music. Why is this the case? Well I made this "discovery" a week or so ago while listening to some music. No matter what I listened to, every single song I could find some kind of meaning to it. Most of the songs had a good meaning to them; meanings that could impact the listener's life if they listened to it.

Another reason why I like almost all forms of music is because just one kind of music gets boring to me after so long. Some genres get more boring to faster than others. With instrumental music, I can usually feel it flowing, and I start to "visualize" what the music is doing. If it is an up beat song with lots of drums hitting (the halo soundtrack comes to mind), I think of a fight or some other intense type of scene. Or sometimes a song will have certain things in it that will give me goose bumps every time I hear it. Like in the Halo 3 Soundtrack that song "Roll Call". Around 1:50, there is a series of string instruments playing that just takes me away for some reason. I have always loved that part. If I need to calm down and think, I usually play a form of instrumental music.
I am not a fan of rap music really though. No reason really. I just don't like most of it. There are a few exceptions though..

Another form of music I like even though a lot of it doesn't make sense or have a reason to it is Dubstep. I like hearing what other people have created, even if it isn't 100% their own work. A lot of what people make isn't the best, but there are some that are just awesome. I don't know what it is about low hitting bass that we like but that is what dubstep is all about. It is basically just remixed songs with some other sounds thrown into the mix. One of my favorites is made by Skrillex called "Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites". Link The "Oh my gosh" is actually from this if you were wondering. (My brother noticed that. I didn't even know of it. Ha)

Some other music I would like to listen to more is the stuff that people release for free. Why? It may not all be good but they actually wanted to write it and they are only doing it for themselves. (This is actually going to create another topic for me to talk about in another post. Ha). I just wish more people were like that. Giving their work away instead of selling it for profit. I realize they have to make a living too. I will post a longer discussion about this in a later post.

At any rate, I love music. It is my life. There is a reason why every single culture in the world has some form of music. It makes us who we are.

Been Almost A Year...

It has been almost a year since life as me and my brothers and dad knew it. Still cannot believe the way I found out. It was the day before spring break on a Thursday. I was going to the last class of the day which was band. Mr. Bennett asked me into his office. Didn't think nothing of it. Me and him were pretty cool. He asks what was going on. I asked what he meant. He said Allen and Tyler had checked out of school that day. I think he immediately realized I didn't know about this. My reply was "She actually went through with it then.." Basically we talked about what had been going on. I had an idea that she still was thinking about leaving my dad. She only talked to Allen and Tyler about it though. At this point, I got the idea that my mom had somehow "brainwashed" them into thinking it would be awesome down there. (It was far from it as we found out later..) I came into band. I swear I probably looked really stressed but I was somewhat calm. When school got out, I drove home, came through the door. Saw my mom on facebook (whole other story about that..), and just let her have it... First and only time I cursed at her. (May not seem like a big deal but I believed it showed them respect by not cursing around my parents. So it was a big deal) Kyle joined in on the "conversation" at this point. He was clueless as well. Basically it ended with me packing my stuff and heading to Spencer's house for a day or two. After that I went and helped her pack. What else was I supposed to do? I had to make sure she didn't take everything we had so that me and Kyle could survive until my dad got home. However she did take most of our food.. When she left, I can't even remember what happened... It was quiet with only me and Kyle there.

Sad thing is, we were already sort of used to living on our own. My mom pretty much became a "leech" a year or so before. A lot of the time we had to cook our own dinner and I usually had to clean the house before my dad came home so that he wouldn't get mad. She would spend her day on the computer playing games or talking to people on facebook.

After a few weeks, we were sort of used to it. One of my friends didn't know the whole story and thought me and Kyle were moving too. It was all a messed up situation... Allen and Tyler came up for the summer. We had a hard time sometimes. We all usually got along but there were times when we would fight. Thats what brothers do though. Allen had to go back early for something. Tyler stayed up there for a little. We went all the way down there instead of halfway (which is what is supposed to happen). Mainly to see the condition of the house they were living in. It wasn't good... The outside was horrible. There wasn't a yard (actually there was, trash...), the roof didn't have tar paper or shingles so it leaked, and the back of the house had a lot of structural damage. Honestly, if my dad wanted to, he probably could've had a social worker sent there to evaluate the house and had them out of there. The inside was a little better. It was at least painted and redone a little. We then took Tyler down a few weeks later for school.

Not long after that, Allen decided to come up. I still don't know the whole story but I guess he had had enough. I went down in my Jeep and picked him up in Green River, Utah ("half way") and brought him home. We went to Lagoon the next day and had a lot of fun. He has been a lot happier up here.

Tyler might come up here soon by the looks of things. I should probably talk to him more. I do miss him. My mom I guess isn't getting any better. I don't know what is going on down there. From what I am reading on Facebook though isn't good. Tyler needs to come home though. If he doesn't, I have a bad feeling he is not going to turn out well. That is NOT a good environment for him down there. It is just too unstable. My mom doesn't have a job and from what I have been told, she drinks a lot and has no intention of getting a job.

Like I said on Facebook, it is amazing what can happen in a years time. I did see myself living in Ogden. I did see myself living at my aunt's house and going to Weber State University. I did see a lot of things happening. One year ago today, I sort of saw all the above coming. However, once my dad stopped drinking for a long time, I thought that maybe stuff would work out. Guess not...

In some ways, we are all better off I guess if you think about (well, almost). My dad is happier than he has been in a long time. The only people who have a net negative outcome I guess would be Tyler and my mom (however she would say differently)... Hopefully he will make his way back up here..

This sums up the story of what has happened in the past year with my family. A lot is missing but the general stuff is hear. I'm sorry if I go off on a tangent on some spots or if some parts don't really make sense. I just wrote this as it came for the most part. Seemed like the thing to do. Hopefully "happier" items of my life will be posted on this blog for now on...