A Day In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup

Listen Up!
I needed a break last week. For some reason I just didn't want to do ANY typing or ranting, or even sharing myself. Last week was an introverted and boring week. But this week is different, most definitely.
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So my job search is really becoming repetitious, and not in a god way Damned the alleged economic crisis. I do have two new eds that I think should be promising, Petsmart and Bed Bath ad Beyond thanks to someone I know. The Bed Bath and beyond will NOT be floor work if I get it, it will be night stocking work, so be quiet about me selling perfume and crap, lol. OH! And the US Census 2010 is also hiring, so I've got to find a time to get an interview there too.
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TechMCC is turning out to be quite a strange little dangle off of my life. More about what happened at the last meeting in the Daily Life section, but just thank god that next week is the Movie Night, where I don't need to do any planning or whatever. Demolition Man FTW.
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What else do I usually say here? College is exactly the same as it's been so far, and my home life is pretty simple, so yeah, that should be it.


-- Music Release --
I know I haven't done this in a WHILE, but I've had a few ideas after listening to so many different tracks in my car on the way to and from college, so I MAY end up doign a new mash-up or two over the course of the month, so if you were interested in that, keep a lookout here for if and when the arrive.

Daily Life:
So let me talk about TechMCC, because really not much else is happening that I can talk about besides what goes on there. I mean my job search is getting redundant and predictable (Go to the place, get application, fill out, return, call back 3 days later to have them say sorry, do the same a week later to have them say sorry again). So are my college courses, well, about as redundant as they can be with me still learning something every day. So yeah, the club is the most interesting thing for me to talk about because I don't go out much, though I should mention the past 6 days or so have been absolute HEAVEN for me. Because with my sister at Monmouth University, my parents took a vacation down to Myrtle Beach and the new house. So I was left alone for 5 days to tend to the pets and do whatever. I love it whenever I can just walk around nude through the house and nobody's there to do anything about it, lol. But that was great, so now back to techmcc...

So this week was supposed to be two things, the Inter-promotional game tournament between TechMCC and the Anime Club, which would be a dollar entry fee, a third of which will be split evenly between the prize pool and the two clubs, in a neutral game which neither club had an advantage in. This was all setup very nicely, and then in the 2 days before the meeting, the entire thing fell apart ad there was rumors of it being cancelled. Well, after having it fly apart at the seams, me and the event organizer for Anime Club decided at the meeting to postpone it for 2 weeks, so now basically TechMCC was at the Anime Club meeting for no reason other than to play video games for nothing. Which was kind of useless, BUT THEN, that was only half of what happened.

Also, that day was the day that me and Gordon decided to go hang up fliers around campus for the club, and we'd already gotten the design and details approved, and we went to make copies, which was fun. Gordon told me that we'd be printing and copying them in the office of our supervisor because he had a color copier. Turns out, not true. What he had was colored paper and a black and white copier. Now. That was ONE problem, the next thing that happened was how after I spent a LOT of care in making the design, all the sudden the advisor says that the border I made to attract attention looked bad, and on THAT ALONE, he cut off the border and started making copies. Basically no input from me, and for no other reason, he changes the ART MAJOR'S design. How much sense does that make?

BUT THAT'S NOT THE END. So the next half hour after that, Me, Gordon, and two other club members are going around campus stapling them up, which was no problem, and we did a good enough job of it that we ran out just as we each finished our assigned buildings. So fast forward a DAY. I receive an call from Gordon telling me that ALL of the fliers we'd put up have been torn down. That gets me confused and pissed at the same time, I ask why. "Someone made a complaint about one of the things on it and notified the staff. The staff then too them down." So they didn't even BOTHER to contact me, or even let me know what was going on, they just went "Oh! You're complaining about the posters? Well we can't have that happen, let's tear them all down!" I'm going to go in on Tuesday and find something to complain about with EVERY POSTER PUT UP IN THE COLLEGE.

I eventually learned that what was complained about was a line I had on the flier which simply said. "Learn how to unlock your media and to make money on craigslist by selling old things." This was taken as "We the Technology Club of Middlesex County College, support the practice of PIRACY and will INSTRUCT you how to pirate media from companies!". Which is crap, but I can see the leap they made, and though it's not a small pond or an Evil Knievel record, it's a fair jump. So NOW I have to change the design AGAIN, and then next meeting we will make copies AGAIN, and put them all up, AGAIN. God damnit I hate administration. This is why I believe in small government EVERYWHERE, at college, the Federal gov't, etc...

And that was my TechMCC Hell over the past few days...

Juggle This:
So let me talk about my new best pal Jacob. Youtube user The Rising Iris. I go to college with him and we've had a lot of the same classes before, all for engineering. Now this semester he's in my Strength And Materials Testing class, and that meets three days, and I never have a class after them for at least a few hours, and neither does he. Now, you're wondering what this has to do with juggling, well, he's my new apprentice. I say new, though he did learn to do it a while ago, actually about a half a year ago at least, but recently he's become as addicted to it as I am, and has asked me to coach him and teach him some new tricks every time after that class. Being a juggler, this is one of the most wonderful things you can ask for, it to have someone who is absolutely hooked and looking to you as a mentor, because you have the opportunity to not only watch him progress and reflect on how you progressed when you were learning, but you can also steer him in the right direction so that if he keeps going long enough, he will become better than you. That and it's just great to watch someone and know they're having a blast.

So three weeks ago, I sold him my set of 6 fo-leather penguin balls that I had never used, and every day now he brings at least 4 of them to practice with, and over the course of those three weeks, I have taught him a 3 ball half shower, reverse cascade, tennis, 423, 1up 360, 2up 360, 1up 180, 1 up 2 up, and the 4 ball fountain (synch and asynch). I've taught him about how siteswap works and he seems to have a basic grasp of it, so I can tell him a random siteswap and he'll be able to know if it's valid or not and with how many objects. Oh, and he's also gotten a 5 ball flash on camera, so go him.

He's progressing really well, and one of the things I'm, I guess proud of the most, is that he is getting good enough now to recognize and see where his mistakes are. He doesn't need me to tell him that he's throwing his 4 ball throws in front of him too much and not to the same height, he says it before I do. Of course, seeing the problem and fixing it are two entirely different things, but then again, he is just learning and it's good to go one step at a time.

But what I'm more impressed by is not how many tricks he knows right now, because tricks are fairly easy with balls, but it's that he's also learned to juggle rings and clubs even. As you can see in the video above, his 3 club record is 13 catches, 1 past a double qualify! And that was only about 30 minutes after he first touched a set of clubs. Needless to say, I was impressed. He's also been practicing with my rings almost as much as he has with balls. On Thursday (the last day I saw him practice) I saw he was only a few practice sessions away from qualifying 4 rings. This was again, his first time ever trying 4 rings, so even though the best I saw him do was 6 catches, it still was really good. I let him borrow 4 of my rings to practice over the weekend, and we'll see what happens on Tuesday when he shows me again.

But to end with, let me tell you what I'm most excited about in terms of him and his juggling. It's his enthusiasm. He's pretty well obsessed with it, and when I told him abotu Juggle This (the Pratt Institute convention) coming up in about a month and a half, he said he's right on board and will go with me.He's also proposed to me the idea of doing a joint juggling video like what me and Joseph Jaeger did with Two Guys From Jersey, the only difference being, that he's not just proposing a joint JUGGLING video, but a joint juggling and longboarding video. He's also a really good longboard rider already, and so we've been coming up with ideas as to what I could do creatively juggling in a skatepark, and what he could do combining longboarding with juggling. So far, we've come up with a LOT of good ideas, and it looks like we're going to start shooting the video in summer.

A Day In The Life Of A Peanut Butter Cup ~ Reeses2150