Diary02/01/00Today's big issue: a month already? Does it seem like it's been a whole month since new year's? It doesn't to me. I mean just yesterday I was putting 99 in my dates. It's better than 1900 I guess... Anyway, yeah. This is the first new diary entry on bigorangecrayon.com. I wish I could put up something worth reading to celebrate, but I've been very very busy busy. It makes me so sad that I haven't written a new review in almost two weeks, but there just hasn't been that combination of time and motivation that I so desperately need. So today... a lot of it was spent on physics. Due to the magic of the blizzard last week, I had to make up a physics class in addition to the normal one today, which meant 4 hours of physics class plus another hour doing homework. That's almost 20% of a whole day! Imagine if all of my classes took that much! Ack! Anyway, other than that I've been getting down to really worrying about how my group's presentation for dinosaurs is going to work out. I mean, it's just for five minutes and we have the work done, but I always get super nervous about these types of things and I HATE being in the first group of people to present since we can't get a feel for what he wants before going in. We just have to hope for the best, I suppose. Being a guinea pig sucks. So yeah, otherwise... today has been ok, I guess. It has been pretty much straight through work, either for school or getting everything straightened out web hosting wise, but I had a stack of new music to listen to, so I'm fine. I got to talk to Ariel for a little bit before she had to go to bed... she has been stricken with a horrible illness that forces her to drink TheraFlu, the most disgusting beverage ever to be made, poor thing. I swear, from what I remember of that stuff it seems like it was designed to give you the impression that you are about to drink a warm glass of urine. How unpleasant. Oh well. 01/31/00 Today's big issue: oy. So here's the status with me getting bigorangecrayon.com: it's finally going to happen! But that's the good news, here's the bad. Ok, so the first place I tried wasn't working out. It had been more than two weeks since I ordered my account and they hadn't done anything other than give me vague and rude and generally unhelpful respones (or no response at all) to the emails I sent them. "Fine," I said "I'll just go elsewhere." So I did. I got an account at another place and they had it set up within an hour (I just have to wait for the internic refresh). Jolly good. But then... I got an email from the first place saying that they just set up my account! Fuck! After I told them not to, they finally decide to get around to doing it! They have to be the dumbest people on earth! Anyway, so that's where it stands. The new place gives me less space for more money, but they have the advantage of not being a bunch of brain damaged, ham-handed gibbons. Er... anyway. Today. I had class. Fun. Then I went to the post office to get the cds that I ordered. I got back and found that the guy had given me someone else's package instead of the one I ordered from cdnow, so I had to sludge back there and exchange it. Grr. But now I'm happy. Today's catch: Tiara - Calling the Whales Tiara - "It's a Message" 7" Yesteryear - Under the Rug B'ehl - Only a Paper Moon B'ehl - Bright Eyes Momus - Ping Pong and a few issues of the Restaraunt Fuel zine Then I talked to Ariel a bit on the phone. Lucky high school people had the day off because of the snow. I miss snow days. Here, to have a snow day you not only need a major blizzard, you need an unexpected major blizzard and then you only get half the day off and you have to make up the classes that you missed. Lame. Then I had the first meeting of my research group for my dinosaurs class. It turned out to be a sordid tale of tragedy and intrigue as to how the group turned out since one of the four original members left to form another group and another had a family emergency and had to leave, leaving just me and Merideth to work on the paper/presentation due on wednesday. Oh well. We got the paper done and the presentation will pretty much follow from that. Plus Merideth likes (or liked depending on if they're still together which I guess isn't the case) Me and Jeremy, so it's all good. 01/30/00 Today's big issue: Tomorrow? what's that? So yeah, today I went back to school. Not really out of the ordinary since I do this every sunday, but it was Zak's last weekend at home, so this means that my break is now officially over. Before I could pretend that I wasn't really totally at school since he was still home and I could still have fun on the weekends. Oh well. I shouldn't get too depressed about it. I'll see him soon hopefully and Ariel is still in town since, you know, she lives here and all. Anyway, yeah. Today I just went over to Zak's and chilled. We wanted Ariel to come over but first she was gone and then she was sick, so that sucks. Bah. Anyway, we played a lot of Carmageddon (what else?) and discovered that it's more fun (or at least different) if you TRY to kill yourself and die in multiplayer games... whee! So yeah, our last (*sniff*) game of Carmageddon was played normally and I want it to be Zak's eternal shame that I defeated him with THE FARMER. Muhuhahahahaha But I finally took a picture of Zak's Crazy Rice mini cereal box that came from uh.. some foriegn country. I dig the crazed look in the chipmunk's eyes. would you believe I needed to use Zak's tripod to take this? Yesterday was really cool, though. Zak, his dad and I went to see Ernie Williams and the Wildcats and Long John Hunter at the Egg. You have to love old blues guys. "Yesyesyes..heeheehee". hee rad. Old blues guys are really the coolest though. Zak's dad was saying that Ernie Williams, at 74, is still the kind of person that will "completely disappear and then three days later show up wearing the same suit he had on when he left and have the same seven dollars in his pocket." Er maybe that's not the exact quote, but yeah you get the idea. As for friday.. more chillin, and I saw this play thingie at the high school (eek!) with Ariel that was pretty cool. It wasn't really what one normally associates with "play", since there wasn't a set or any costumes or anything, just seven (i think) actors sitting and reading their lines, but it was interesting nonetheless. Plus Mr. Owens was in it. After that we all eventually got over to Zak's. Like usual. But not anymore... spoot. Hey weird I wrote this backwards. Next morning addendum: Really, how out of touch with pop culture am I? I mean, I don't follow football, but I thought I knew the names of the teams. The Titans? what the fuck? Not only do they not exist, they wouldn't have a reason even if they did. There were already the Giants, right? Don't you think that a bit unoriginal? "Gee, what describes our players? Well they're big and stupid and smell weird. Uh... 'Giants!', no that's already taken... 'the behemoth!' no... too many syllables.. aha! 'the Titans!'.. there you go." Really. I still think it would be fucking cool to have a team for some violent sport called the Pixies. Or, going the other direction, the Dismemberment Plan... 01/27/00 Today's big issue: laa laa. Today was mostly uneventful. I had a few classes... found out that I have to make up the physics class that was cancelled because of the snowstorm monday night from 7 until 9 so that sucks. Oh well. I got my stuff from Tweekitten in the mail today! I got: the Moshi Moshi compilation on March Records, Operation Heavenly by Heavenly, Fun9 by Takako Minekawa, and the You Make Me Smile compilation on Shelflife. Woo! Hee... I had a race; I ordered stuff from Pal, Tweekitten, and CDNow at the same time. Tweekitten won, and hopefully tomorrow I'll see who comes in second... So yeah, other than that... I talked to Ariel on the phone a bit, and she's just as mad as I am about the fact that they're doing a "charter" school in schenectady. All it's going to do is give money to some businessman and cause the school district, which already having money problems, to possibly get rid of more teachers/schools just to pay for it. And nobody wants it! The state legislature voted to allow it just becuase it was tied to them getting a payraise. Jerks. I hope it all falls through. 01/26/00 Today's big issue: whoo Wow, two nice days in a row at school... I sense a great disturbance in the force. Ariel and Zak came up today to watch The Iron Giant with me, so that was cool. I love that movie. I know, I'm a dork. Anyway, yeah, two more days here and then the weekend. Whoo! It's kind of weird how I keep track of the days here: tofu hotdogs. That's all I eat for dinner here, so since they come in packs of 8 and I have 2 per day, when they're all gone the next time I have dinner will be at home. Odd, eh? I'm still waiting on the web hosting people, but now it's gotten to the point where I'm not even expecting them to do anything, so it's not as annoying when another day passes with no word from them. these make me giggle especially the John McCain one...hee. 01/25/00 Today's big issue: Late afternoon; stays cold till June I think today was as close as a day can get to "today fucking ruled!" while I'm at school. I got an email from Jodi from the Secret Stars and she said, among other nice things, that today the song "Snowday" is all for me. Yay! And it worked! A bit later on in the day classes were cancelled because of the next wonderful part of the day: a LOT of snow. There were people skiing past my window. For some reason, I had the desire to go for a walk in the snowstorm that was so severe that RPI cancelled classes (something that they've done twice in the last 12 years). I had fun. There's something appealing about walking in wind that is so thick with snow that the snow stops being weather and seems more like part of the atmosphere (if that makes any sense). Normally, snow is just something that falls from the sky, but today the air WAS snow. And it was blowing so fast that it wasn't fluffy... it stung. But I still had fun. I have this weird thing with snow, I guess. Here are some pictures of said snowstorm (sorry about them being a bit wobbly, but it was really cold and windy): a lot of snow the camera-eating-stairs covered with snow The little bridge thingie Also today, I got a little card that lets me take the smartmedia card from my camera and stick it right into my powerbook to get the pictures off of it, so it's a LOT faster and easier, too. Plus no cables. Dig. I should be getting a few boxes of cds in the mail (byebye birthday money...) so I'll have some new reviews soon, hopefully. Oh yeah, and check the survey page if you haven't already... bask in the glory of the victor :) 01/24/00 Today's big issue: Me and Jeremy, R.I.P.? It seems that Me and Jeremy may not be together much longer. That would totally suck, since I'm both a big fan and that I link some of the better things in my life to them. The first time I ever really became friends with Ariel was going to a Me and Jeremy show... so yeah, it would be sad to see them go. Mark said he'll keep making music, so that'll be good still. Well, beyond that, today was pretty ok, if a bit blah. One cool thing that happened was that one of the reasons that I love indie music was reaffirmed: I wrote Geoff and Jodi from the Secret Stars to tell them that they were the victors in the survey on this page, and I got a response from Geoff Farina. It's so cool that you can write to your heroes and get a response. Try THAT with [name of major label act]. Something I won't get into: which is more important: honesty or not hurting people's feelings. I think most people say honesty, but only when they're being idealistic. When they're confronted with a situation that would put this choice into effect, not only would they choose the second, but they would look like jerks if they chose the first. Anyway... Still no luck in getting my web hosting set up. The new curt and mean response (to being asked if I could have some idea of when my account would be set up): "Sorry, we cannot. It will be processed in turn." Grr. And why am I the only person in my dorm that can't fucking stand the Dave Matthews Band? Not only do I dislike them, I grow violently ill in thier presence. Well, not really, but inside I do. I don't care what other people think. I still believe in melodies. 01/23/00 Today's big issue: I've developed a pattern! This is how it works: every friday I have fun, every saturday I end up alone and sad, and then every sunday I realize how silly I was being on saturday and have a bunch of fun which promptly ends when I get back to school. So it's not really all that bad. Today was pretty nice, nothing all that special, but it was a good day. I went to lunch with my dad and had the vegan cake my mom made, which really didn't turn out all that bad. Oddly enough, my mom and my dad got me the same birthday card: a tomato with googly eyes. I wonder what that says about me as a person... Well after that I picked up Ariel and went to Zak's. Like usual. And like always it was fun. We played with legos and played Carmageddon. Like usual. Then we went to the supermarket to get my supplies for the week (...like usual) and then Ariel had to go home so I dropped her off and went back to Zak's. I saw Leanne for the first time in forever today. I think she's going to come here on tuesday, but I'm not really sure if I can go anywhere. We'll see. It's usually bad to leave in the middle of the week. Also, today was my birthday! Woo! But I turned 19! NOOOOO! This means that in less than a year I'm not going to be a teenager anymore. I can't deal with that, so I'll happily ignore it until the time comes. It seems strange how I've never had a birthday work out completely right: I was lucky in that I didn't get sick this year, but both of my big presents: real hosting for this page and a cool little adapter that lets me stick the smartmedia card from my camera directly into the side of my powerbook, are both having problems. I've complained extensively here about the web hosting, and the adapter was dead out of the box. Spoot. And as is my tradition, I spent all of my birthday money before the end of the day at Pal and the Twee Kitten. Woo! And if you're wondering about why there has been such a slowdown on new reviews on this site, there's two reasons: I haven't had much money, and what I have had was mostly spent on music that wasn't in new releases, so I didn't have much to review. So keeping with my policy of only doing positive reviews of new releases, there have only been a few for me to write about. But I do have some stuff coming in the mail that I know I'll love. Anywho, now I've got to go to bed, because you know, I'm at school and I need to go to classes tomorrow. 01/22/00 Today's big issue: why do i always do this to myself? I spent all of today alone (unless you count being out until 2am yesterday). Yesterday was cool. Today was not. Ack. I always do this: every week I get all excited about being able to do stuff with my friends on the weekend and then we get to saturday and everybody already has plans and then I go back on sunday. This is getting really depressing. I spent most of today trying to keep myself from thinking about that, and I did manage to keep myself happy for a while but then every once in a while things would just fall apart and I wanted to go somewhere or at least talk to somebody but no one was available and it was cold out. At least I got to make a cool thing out of legos (a space lumberjack and his insterstellar disco sled, I'll post a picture tomorrow once I have a way of getting my pictures out of my camera). So that's today. I'm going to turn 19 alone. Yesterday was good, though. I got to see Matt Gelina for the first time in forever, so that rocked, even if it was only for an hour or so. Then Kevin, Zak, Ariel, Thea and I all went back to RPI (ick, I know, but it was good this time) to see Fight Club. It was the first time I saw that movie, and there were a TON of people there. That was the most people I have ever going to a movie at one time. The line was thick and wrapped around the whole hallway. Weird. Also, are there any Guided By Voices fans out there confused about why a character named Robert Pollard was played by Meatloaf? Hee... I wonder if it was intentional... Anyway, after the movie, we shuffled around like people in those really early films (where people seem really hurried and jittery because the speed of the film is changing) because it was so cold out, and then went to my dorm room becuase I wanted to drop off the records I got the the mail (I found my white whale: a Car vs. Driver record! woo!) I brought everyone in since I thought that my roommate was going home for the weekend and then after we had been in there for a few minutes, we realized that he was in his bed, about to go to sleep. Whoopsie. At least I didn't put any records on/say anything about him. After that we dropped Thea off at her dad's house in Albany then went back, and everyone was finally home at 2am. We covered all three major (ha!) cities in this area in one night! Whee! And still no word from the people that are eventually going to host bigorangecrayon.com, but I figure they'll get around to it sometime, hopefully. It's not like this is a job. Speaking of this site... it seems that there are some people out there that like it, and I'm not really sure why. It seems that all I ever do is either complain about my life or write not-so-well written music reviews that are not even close to being as good as the ones in Pitchfork or Kickbright or Western Homes or Rocket Fuel or Delusions of Adequacy and so on. Not that I'm complaining about people coming here, it's just that I feel totally inadequate compared to those sites. I still enjoy doing this, though. And I wanted to thank Mark from Western Homes for the link and for being so nice to me. He seems to have pretty high standards for music reviews, so I don't really see why he didn't either ignore this site or say it sucks... not that I mind. There are some emails that i want to write, but my head hurts now, and I found it's best not to fill people's inboxes when you're feeling like a pathetic loser-type-person, because you end up being embarassing. 01/20/99 Today's big issue: eeeesh huuuule! Does this seem as rude to you as it does to me? I sent another email to the web hosting people that have spent 5 days setting up an account that they said would be set up in 10 hours asking when they were going to get around to it, and the response I got was "You will be sent it when your account is ready." No "we apologize for the delay," no "your account will be ready in..." no "thank you for your patience as we have consistently broken the deadlnes we've set for ourselves and ignored your emails," just a totally fucking curt and ambiguous "You will be sent it when your account is ready". RRRRRAAAAA! I swear, if they don't give me some actual information tomorrow, I'll... well I'll just wait a few more days since I'm timid and prone to being pushed around... In addition to that, today was not all that great. I screwed up a calculus quiz and got screwed over on a question on my physics homework becuase the computer that grades our assignments doesn't understand significant digits (when there are two significant digits in each bit of data given in the problem, you'd better fucking accept -97 when the answer you calculate is -97.4). At least I got some pleasant emails. Plus my mom told me that one of my Secret Stars 7-inches that I ordered through GEMM arrived safely. GEMM rules. If you're looking for out of print/hard to find music, look there and give up if they don't can't track down someone who has it. And my birthday is on sunday! woohoo! But I'm going to be nineteen! AAAAAAAAA!! Just a year away from not being a teenager anymore! What am I going to do? Basically my whole life has been spent trying to recapture the innocence and simple pleasure of being a little kid, but the fact is that every second I'm drifting further and further away from that... pretty soon I'm going to have to think about getting a job and having a career and everything that comes with that but even now I'm playing with the assorted toys I have on my desk and taking a class on dinosaurs. ugh. 01/19/00 Today's big issue: tick tick tick... STILL no respone from the hosting people. I'm getting angry. I don't like getting angry. I think the thing is that I thought I was getting such a great deal but it turns out that I'm getting nothing for the hundred dollars. I could get nothing for a lot less than a hundred dollars. anyway... school...work... so on. emails that i haven't yet responded to because i've got a headache (and I complain about the web hosting place not responding...) 01/18/00 Today's big issue: grrrrrr.... So I think I'm going to have my own domain soon. The hosting place has been constantly messing up, first there was a bug in their software that sends out account info that kept them from setting up my account, then when they said they were going to resend my info in 10 minutes, I wrote back to them after one hour and then 5 hours and still haven't heard anything. This is getting aggrivating. I mean I do this page for fun so it's not really stressful, but it would be nice if everything worked correctly, you know? Anyway, it was far too cold today. This has to stop. Stupid Canada dumping all their cold air here... I didn't do much today, but at least I talked to some of my peeps online/on the phone. And now I sleep. 01/17/00 Today's big issue: giggle Has it really been 4 days since I've updated this? Wow. So yesterday, my dad and I put in the order for the space that will become bigorangecrayon.com once everything is settled. Hmmm... now I kinda wish I had chosen a shorter name for my page, but i guess that one's kinda nice, if a bit of a pain to type. I just hope that we didn't get scammed.. the place said it takes about ten hours for accounts to get set up and it's been 36 and they still haven't responded. We'll see. Hopefully things will be fine because I got a kickass deal: 100 dollars per year for 500MB of space on a server with a faster connection than my school (OC48!). It was better than I was hoping for actually- I was willing to spend 10 bucks a month for 50MB until they started this plan, so its all good. Today me and Zak just chilled. We played around with some old games and Icon Factory icons with ResEdit and made a very silly variation of Ingemar's Skiing Game that involves a disembodied Yoda head floating down a hill, plus I made a varient of Jared that had Ackbar (the brown googly eyed guy from Star Wars) singing a Busta Rhymes song and Zak made one with Lobot singing a funk song. Very very silly. I might post them up for all my fellow Mac users when I get everything working with my new web space. But on the not-so-good stuff side, things ended in a very messed up manner on Matt's last day in Scheneck and pretty much everyone involved could have done things differently so things would have been a lot better, but that's not really the issue anymore... as long as we keep talking things will be fine though. I hope. 01/13/00 Today's big issue: ladeda Today was pretty dull, but yesterday was interesting, which is why there isn't an entry for then. Zak, Matt and Kevin all rescued me from school and brought me back to Zak's house, where we played a bit of Twinbee Rainbow Adventure and then went and watched The Thomas Crown Affair at Kevin's. I liked it mostly, but nude scenes still make me nervous. I'm a dork, ok? When I got back to my cell, my roommate was asleep but no one else was, so I tried to be as quiet and polite as I could, even if no one else was. I think these are the words I most dread hearing at night: "let's just get drunk here!" Grr. Noisy noisy noisy. Plus I had to get up early to go to class. Hmm... commuting is beginning to sound better and better. Plus the sink in our bathroom was FILTHY and I have no idea why.. not icky slimy goo filthy, but lots and lots of black dirt. I don't get it. On another note, my dad is probably going to give me www.bigorangecrayon.com for my birthday! Whee! And IT SNOWED! IT SNOWED IT SNOWED IT SNOWED!!! I've been waiting for snow for so long! I missed that squeaky cruncky noise under my feet. The older entries are here... |
