Wednesday, January 27, 2010

 

The Rimshot

Listen Up!
Alright, so this time there's a reason I posted this blog entry late, classes. No it's not that I'm being bogged down by them, though I am, it's that I wanted to wait until I'd had my first class of all my classes so I can talk about them here.
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Man I really do need to get a CAD job. it's the one shot I really have at being able to make up that 1000 dollars in less than a semester and still have spending money for stuff. Of course, I have my certificate and good references, just need a good connection so that I can get to work.
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Speaking of work though, my job with Cutco has finally really solidified, and I know with confidence what I'm doing when I go to the office once a week. I still loathe the core of the job, which is that I'm selling knives and relying on people to say yes to an appointment, but it's not all that bad really. It's just complicated is all, at least the presentations are fun to do :P
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I've thought a bit recently about Jugglers On Juggling, my juggling podcast, and I think I'm not really going to continue it until the summer, partly because of some advice I got from Michael Karas, and because I've already had the show on hold for almost a full half year. I do want to continue doing it sometime, it's just such a chore to do, especially when with the current show format I'm really doing all the work and stuff, but yeah. We'll see what happens with it in the future...

Daily Life:
So college has started, and right now a few things are immediately clear, it's going to be a varied one. I have two computer courses and two art courses. Like I said last week, the classes suck because both art classes start at either noon or 9AM, when the college is most packed and when I'm having the most trouble staying awake, and I did find myself fighting off the urge to nap during my 9AM classes, but luckily they only last for 2 and a half hours so they're not hard to get through, that class would be Graphic Design skills by the way, where I'm FINALLY getting to use more photoshop and technology to put together art as opposed to doing things on paper and in theory.

My noon class is also tough to stay awake through, and I'm still a little unknowing as to what we'll be learning in it because the class was vague, even the description is vague, "Print Production", but all I know about it is that it's a full 5 hours, and it's going to be the class I like the least almost for sure.

BUT! There is another competitor for least liked class this semester, remember two semesters ago or so when I took my computer applications in business course? Basically it was a tutorial course on how to make a slide in powerpoint and indent paragraphs in MS word. This Tuesday course of mine seems to be the hardware equivalent of that course, "Microcomputers" is the course title, and basically we'll be learning how a motherboard transfers electrical signals to the cpu and out to the different devices and stuff like that. Basically everything my dad taught me about when I was 10 and I watched him build my 2nd ever computer from scratch.

The last class to round out my semester I suspect is going to be the most useful and fun one, and it's "Information Security". Just from the title you'd expect it to be some course about how to control and oppress data within a network, but the professor is a professional white-hat hacker, and he's already outlined our final project as going to a website, and doing some hacking to discover and report vulnerabilities :D That ought to be awesome.

Juggle This:
So I've really been interested in working on my beer-pong tricks video recently, and so far I've gotten quite a good bit of new footage for it, of course each clip only being 4 seconds long or so it takes a lot of clips to make a video even with slow motion replays on some clips, so I've got a bit of a ways to go with it. So far though I've found that I can use spare wall tiles that I found in the basement to make pretty good bouncing pads so even though the entire house is pretty much carpeted I can do shots anywhere. They're definitely hard targets to hit, being only 4" by 4" and having a few surface imperfections from the way they've been painted (they have a big pattern on them), but their versatility definitely makes up for it. It is strange learning this new skill, because like bounce juggling, I'm used to throwing upwards, and here I have to throw downwards, AND add in the fact I'm using an entirely different size ball and throwing technique.

I am making some really good shots like I said though, including a massive pinball machine ramp like shot where I bounced from the floor to about 5 feet high, landing in a channel I made and falling out of the channel back to the floor where the cup is. Another shot I made was of course the long distance shot, which by my measurements was about 8 feet and no bounces. Then another of my big shots so far is the 6 bounce shot down a thin strip of bouncing surface, which came courtesy of my new bed frame.

Besides that video though, I'm also working on an idea or two for my next renegade performance coming up at Juggle This. I thought about doing Muffin Clutches again but after getting advice about repeating the performance from Sean Blue and Michael Karas I figure they're right, it's no fun doing an old routine everyone's seen before, especially if it's so short and basic. I really wanted to do another routine which takes advantage of my body type, especially in a Renegade style way, but so far I'm just coming up completely dry on ideas other than maybe leaning back and doing balances on my chest? Nah, that sucks.

I've got another idea I'm kicking around with a ball on an elastic string and using it in a cascade with crazy 423 type tricks and stuff, but right now I'm nowhere near consistent with it or have enough tricks with it to show it off. I thought about doing a routine using my yo-yo sticks, but I have absolutely no idea how people would react to it, especially since I haven't come up with more than 3 more tricks since releasing the big video showcasing them, and they're really tough to make a routine that flows with them. It's another idea, either way I'll be performing for Renegade again, what I'll be doing is anyone's guess. Maybe I'll bounce a ring up off the ground behind me and catch it between my butt cheeks x_x

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

Monday, January 18, 2010

 

*facepalm*


Listen Up!
Ok, really sorry about letting the blog slip by a full MONTH this time, I really need to get motivated to write this thing every week, of course it just seems when school is out that it's my job to relax and be unproductive X3 So it's what I've been doing is playing video games and stuff without doing much in terms of anything. I really need to kick my own ass here for next week.
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So, I'm preparing for the new semester to start, and especially the new semester for Tech.MCC, because this time I'm gonna make sure we DON'T miss the club fair and that we'll actually have a room and reliable projects to work on. So far, I've made a mock-up of the table layout with bristol board, and posted pics of it here and on the forums. So things are looking up, I just need to make sure they don't fall down before they get started again.
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My juggling. Seems to be hitting a weird place, as I went to the NYC Juggling Club last Thursday for some much needed practice, socialization, and the reappearance of the Magic Club. It seems as though my high numbered basic patterns are getting nice, I made a new record of 50 catches with 7 balls on the very first 7 ball cascade I did! CONVERSELY, my rings seem to be suffering with my usual tricks like 5 ring reverse and half shower, BUT my 360's were quite good that day. Just seems so strange and I'll be heading back next week to try again.
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Now, I've hit my stride with my new job, and it seems the job does pay nicely, of course there's still the massive amount of BS where the managers are pushing you to do more and more and more presentations and intent on making you come in for (what is essentially) the twice weekly brainwashing session. It works though, I'm finding the people I'm presenting to are having fun with it, and I'm making a few sales every now and then, like i expected, and it seems I'll be making around a hundred dollars a week so far, which is good for what my goal is.
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Daily Life: Ranting about my 2010 plans
Ok, I came up with a list recently of what trips I want to go on this year, seeing as how that's usually what eats up all my money each year. The way it looks now, I've got a trip once every two months, most of them are going to cost less than a hundred bucks because they are local, but the others may cost more, especially WJF6 when it finally happens. Now here's the big point that I want to make, I have a 1000 dollar debt to pay off by the end of the semester to my parents, because right after the semester ends is my first major trip. That's where the problem is though, is that the reason I did so well last semester was I wasn't actually worried or really trying hard to get a job, and was focusing on the college work.

Basically this is what happened last semester. I started off having just been let go from Home Depot, and the semester began with my parents on my back to get a new job. I listened to them. I spent a lot of my time searching for a job and trying to figure out what I was doing with my money, and I saw right before midterms came up, that things didn't seem to be coming together right with my classes, I luckily (unlike previous semesters) had professors and classes, where most of the major projects and tests were due at the end of the semester, stuff like the 100 page sketchbook for 2d drawing which I had only filled to 10 pages by midterms.

I suddenly stopped looking for a job and set myself down to work on classwork. IMMEDIATELY I knew things were getting better. Of course my parents were still hounding me because of my job status, but the thing they STILL can't seem to get into their heads is that I do NOT use my ADHD as an EXCUSE!!!! I really CANNOT MULTITASK between big things like school and working! It's why I've been floundering with my GPA for the past few years, because I cannot balance a job/finances and college at the same damned time! I don't know what's so hard to understand about that for them.... Either way, I just felt like ranting on that because it was really getting to me when my grade sheet came in and I realized what happened over the semester.

Bottom line, I'm the type of person that either has to be a full time, unemployed student, or a person with a job and income in order to be able to do EITHER any better than competent...


Daily Life:
So I got two quick things that happened last week. First was obviously my trip to NYC on Thursday for the Carmine St Jugglers meeting, and of course I realized one thing that day as I was coming home. Two hours is WAYYYY to short of a chunk of time to meet during that. It takes a full hour to really get comfortable and warmed up, and then the other hour goes by as if it were only ten minutes. Especially true if you're me trying to get footage from other people to make a short video. But that wasn't the least of our problems this week. The basketball players on the court the club uses were really adamant this week for some reason, and as the club went from me and another two people to about a dozen, when the employees asked to clear the one of two basketball court rooms for us to not be squeezed in a corner they got really agitated, even going so far as to smack talk juggling. "This shit ain't even a real sport!!" I heard one of the white skinny guys with the headband and spiky hair say as he passed by, in my head thinking "neither is weight lifting, jogging, stationary bicycling, or free shooting basketballs, but you can do all of them here."

So that was fun for sure, but luckily they didn't start anything and the employees got us our designated space for the week. Oh, and let me mention that there was no Karas, Paris, or any of the other NY performers besides Sean Blue, so that was fun. Anyways, After the short 2 hours, everyone headed for the usual Chinese place, like always, and I tagged along. I realized after the last time that I do indeed have enough time from when we're kicked out of the gym at 10 to the last bus home at 12:30 to eat, hang out, make it up the subway to Port Authority and get on the bus, which is essentially what I did. I had my usual chicken lo-mein, hung out for a while, and then proceeded up the subway line to the port authority.

Of course I did screw up a little when I ducked out a station early, because the thing is, I need to transfer trains or walk the long ass tunnel between the terminal and the 1/2/3 line, and since I'm not a fan of walking when i have a duffel bag full of equipment, I like to transfer. Of course I got a little confused somehow and jumped out at the times square station on the 1 train. It was actually good though, because it's been way too long since I've really been to the urban parts of Manhattan like Times Square especially, and I walked right down the middle of it at midnight to the sounds of the city. I love doing that kind of stuff. So either way, I found my way over to the terminal and caught the bus home with no trouble, except of course for the headaches I get from trying to play my DS on the bus where the pedals basically are either 100% throttle or 100% brake no matter how hard the guy presses, so it's constant jerking forwards and backwards. Fun times XD

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Speaking of my DS though, I recently picked it back up again and have been playing it constantly, why? Simple, I got an R4 (Revolution for DS) card. So I've basically been trying out new games of all sorts on there, including the Japanese Quendan series, which is the older sister of Elite Beat Agents, the best rhythm game ever. Of course here's the problem though, my DS is one of the very first DS Lite's, and essentially, the left shoulder button does not work reliably, the right shoulder button works only when you press it at the right angle, and most importantly, the screen hings is broken so the top half of the DS is being held together by the other side hings and the wires inside, and the wires get pinched easily so the top screen turns to white. Basically, the bottom line is it needs REPLACING or REPAIRING.

Now, the problem is, I would have just gone to Gamestop and traded it in for a new system and paid the difference, which is what I was gonna do back in the summer, but turns out if the hinge is broken they can't buy it from me. So my only two options are ebay or send it to Nintendo for repair or replacement. Granted they have a decent deal, 75 bucks to repair, 85 dollars to replace with a new system, but it's still money that I need to use to pay college debt. Oh well... I'll figure something out, but in the meantime, I can still play plenty of good games on it by holding the top screen delicately and using my plastic shell as support for the hinge.

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

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