Ancestral

I feel TL.net has not yet had it's fair share of my complaints and inquiries about bitches.

I am a full time student and also work as an economics tutor for the school of economics. Most people I tutor are pretty stupid and have non-technical majors so I think they just give up when they see anything that involves math.

But there is a girl who has come into the tutor room a couple of times. She's dark skinned (some kind of exotic thing I think), has dreadlocks, and is skinny, not too tall, and generally just good looking.

Anyway, she was there today, and through mundane conversation it was uncovered that her major is environmental science, and she is writing her thesis on desertification in Africa.

My major interests are economic development, collectivist theory, and design processes for chemicals (I'm double majoring in chemical engineering). Anyhow, that kind of relates, since desertification results in a ridiculous amount of deaths and ruins the land, which is bad for development.

Point is, I want to ask this girl out, but asking a girl out is something I have rarely done, and when I do, I'm asking someone whose answer I am sure will be no. I don't even know how to legitimately talk to girls, and the other problem is that the situation is kind of awkward, since there's always one or two other tutors working at the same time, and usually several students.

Soooo that's one issue but how the fuck do you ask someone out, awkward situation notwithstanding? Do I just fit it in like, "remember a profit-maximizing monopolist will set price equal to marginal revenue, and that for a monopolist the marginal revenue curve lies under the demand curve .... so, what are you doing Friday night?"

I've dated girls before, so I don't lack fundamental social skills, but honestly, the girls I've dated were kind of crazy and obsessed with me so I didn't have to do any work. This girl is ridiculously hot though, and the quarter is almost over, so I want to legitimately give it my best shot. Failure isn't a worry for me, though I'd like to do all I can to avoid it.

Of course, being that I am a tutor and she is a tutee, that's probably unethical in some way and I suppose she could get me in trouble if it was her only goal, but hey, what's life if you don't take risks?

So my band Tassadar recently played it's first "real" show (a show that is not in someone's basement). We fucked up a lot and it was terrible, but the crowd reaction was still decent, I guess with death metal if you fuck up no one notices. Anyway, here is a souvenir we took away from that fateful night



The title is "Call from the Deep"

We are in the early stages of working on a demo that should be done by the end of December. The sound of this video is terrible but I think it's important to rep a death metal band named after a StarCraft character.

If any of you are into this kind of stuff at all, I'll let you all know when the demo is done, so you can submit your ears to higher fidelity brutality and rape!

Several people have written dream blogs, so it's my turn I guess. I woke up ~20 minutes ago, and started writing as soon as I woke up, so it's a little random, but it's a dream so it was random anyway.

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I'm back at OSU campus for the beginning of school. I'm there with Dan and Judy. Maybe we drove down a freeway to get there. We go to some kind of orientation or something in a dorm. I don't know exactly what's going on. I'm wearing a helmet and glasses, now I may have ridden my bike there. My mom is there and says she is going to go see Jean who is apparently living in this dorm. So many people are there though, and the elevators are full with nearly every trip. But I manage to eventually get on an elevator just as the doors are about to close; though the place is nearly empty now. I don't know what floor to go to as my mother already got on an elevator and did't tell me where to go; I am resentful of this. Though I guess the fourth floor because this is the floor on which my sister lived the previous year. The dorms are starke. I see her and ask her why she chose to live in the expensive dorms, and she said an offer opened up. I think of the small church I lived in the previous year, it's rather dark.

Back downstairs I see my father again. I'm wearing the helmet and glasses again, it's kind of winter now, and the dorm is more of a small house on the outskirts of a small town. I am now wearing it to be weary of randomly falling asleep, so that my head is not damaged when it hits the ground. The wind is blowing all of my papers in the chair next to my father around, so I arrange them such that they are held in place.

I'm back at the house and it's summer again. Catalina, the Ecuadorian girl from my business class walks out. I resent her because of how she ignored me, but it seems almost like we had a close relationship at one point. Apparently I talked to her on someone elses Facebook at some point. At some point, I am driving or cycling through a beautiful green countryside, with farms and things somewhat like the drive I take from Columbus to Newark on Morse road. There are many stars in the night sky.

I seem to not randomly fall asleep anymore. Bob Saget walks out, and I ask "Bob Saget, what are you doing here?" He says he had a show at OSU. I tell him I watched it on TV. My dad talks about cat litter or something, and I ask about the reprinting of textbooks so often creating such a huge surplus of books. I ask him what he as a comedian would do about these to problems. He comes up with some reply that I don't remember, but says now he is hungry and rubs his stomach. He says he wants to go to lunch, and I ask where. It's some OSU dining hall, I don't remember the name. I tell him I think it's northwest, not northwest of our current location, but on northwest campus. We're currently on Southeast Campus; now that I think about it I should have said northeast campus. But a friend comes out, college age to take him to the dining hall. As he walks away, or perhaps as we walked away, he picks up a book on a shelf above the chairs with my papers, and where my father was sitting and opens it up. He makes a joke about the book, being The Hardy Boys. Apparently it's volume 20 or so of the hardy boys, and is written in second person. He makes fun of it, regarding a line about a dog being happy to see the reader. The small house is now more of a dorm again.

My father gets up and we go to leave (at this point it's a house again). He's very old now, and when he gets up he pees his pants. I am very surprised at first. As we're walking by the dorm, which is now a house again, I say "perhaps I should grab some of these." And grab trash bags from a ledge on the porch of the white house. We get to a parking lot, much like the one at the shopping center on Westerville road with Platos closet. A black man drives a white car through the parking lot and my dad waves, the man keeps a serious face though. I don't know who he is. We walk by a white van with an open front passenger door at the same time, I look in but the man seems to think I shouldn't have done that. When we get to my dad's Volvo, I put the two trashbags around the seat. I know that at this point he is very old and his time is short. I think of the times when I was young, and would go to his house every other weekend. Always we would get pizza at night and have it with orange juice, and watch a movie. I think that before he goes I want to hearken back to those days, and watch the Star Wars trilogy with him one last time, maybe in the hospital. I think of my gradnfather who lived in Arizona and has already passed on. I think of a beautiful land with hills, red mountains like the Red Rocks in his Sedona home, and beautiful wildflowers of all colors.
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My sister didn't live in dorms ever, and though my dad is 68, he's pretty healthy. He goes on long bike rides all the time, and I rode 30 miles (~50k) with him a couple of weeks ago.

The dream is interesting to me because I joyously recollect the times with my father though he is not long for the world, and with my grandfather though he is gone. I take comfort in knowing that their passing is just the beginning, as evident by all the beauty that appears to me. Though I still dearly remember and miss the times when I was a child.

Interesting to note, that although it's about death and beyond, when I think of the church I lived in on campus and may well live in again this year, there were many shadows and it wasn't too bright.

It keeps me alive and allows me to think and all that, but it doesn't do a very good job of sleeping.

I've woken up like three times in the past hour, from nightmares or sleep paralysis and hallucinations. I thought it was maybe around 6:00AM, but when I looked at the clock it was 4:00, meaning I had been asleep for about 1 hour.

Incredible dismayed and incoherent I decided to do what I always do no matter the circumstances; come to TL.

Does anyone else have any problems with this? The internet information on sleep paralysis and hypnogogia is sparse, and even the research information I can find from my school is virtually non-existent. The book titled "Hypnogogia" is out of print and sells for several hundred dollars, and none of the doctors I've talked to really know much about it, other than the name.

I've found a couple of studies and the Wikipedia article, and that's about it. I've also been prescribed a couple of drugs that don't seem to do anything.

Gay

After using a browser for a while (FF 2 and now FF 3), I can't load any webpages, but I can still internet just fine. If I'm watching DAUM or have BitTorrent open, I can continue streaming / torrenting but when I try to internet a webpage it gives me the cliché "make sure you're connected to the internet check firewall blah blah blah." And a couple of times, I've tried using IE, but I get the same thing. So I can't see any webpages, but the internet is definitely still connected (including the globe picture next to my network icon in the system tray).

I'm not sure if it affects SC, since I haven't been playing out of fear. I'd google this problem but I'm not sure I'd find anything for "After using a browser for a while I can't load any webpages but I can still internet some other things."

I'm trying to find a thread (I think it was in blogs) about a father who took photographs of his daughter and compiled them into a blog entry.

It was an exceedingly beautiful work, having photographs from infancy until adulthood. I've searched on TL and google, but I get things relating to that Austrian happenstance that I'm sure you are all tired of hearing.

I wouldn't ask but I've just about given up looking, however it's totally great. I promise I'll bookmark things in the future if I think they are worthwhile...

Whenever video files are saved in my program files folder, I can't see them. If I download videos anywhere else though, I can. So I can see all the VODs I've downloaded, but lately I've been trying to record some FPVODs to see if I can get better by watching where I f*** up in first person as well as replays.

When I open VLC / Winamp / WMP and go to the directory, I can see the files, but not in Windows Explorer. At first I thought the program wasn't saving them, but the problem is not with the program.

Do any of you have any idea why this would happen?

Thanks all

Edit: It's not directly in Program Files, it's
\bobyte\AVI Screen Recorder Pro\Screen captures
I think

I have Vista, I use an ethernet connection because I live on the top floor of my apartment and the signal strength is too weak from the wireless here.

Oftentimes, and seemingly without cause, I'll get "limited connectivity" as indicated by a hazard sign over my network icon in the system tray. Now I read all over the tubes during one of the times it was working, and disabled IPv6, and it didn't seem to help.

My connection comes through a modem downstairs, to a switch on the second floor, then a loooong cable to my laptop in my room. Also, I pried off my caps lock and WN keys and my engineer room mate thinks I must have f***ed up my integrated network card (i.e. physically damaged) when I did this.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, and it will randomly work or not work without anything happening in between. Of course, intermittent internet is a problem because:
1) I have lots of assignments due online (this is not the future, this is t3h g4y)
2) I often have red lag on BNet and apparently lag sometimes in game even when I have green

When it's working, my connection is pretty fast. So I'm just wondering if it is more likely: a damaged cable, a damaged network card, a connection that is too long, something else.

A cable of this length is pretty expensive, and I guess I could test it with some other random cable, but if it works that wouldn't tell me if it's the length of the cable or the fact that this one has some damage somewhere.