Two sad, sad stories.

As I mentioned in my last post, I got a new computer. Yay?

No.

Vista is a sack of poop. Bloated poop. I couldn't tell which apps were necessary and which were just nice ones--what if I deleted Mediacenter and lost my sole opportunity to use the spiffy remote that came with the computer?

I also decided to prepare for my education at a school widely acknowledged as a geek haven and install ubuntu--more specifically, Jaunty. Yes, I picked ubuntu because of its trove of delightful flavor names. Jaunty Jackalope, Dapper Drake, Intrepid Ibex? These people should be naming cars. Or pro wrestlers. Or strippers. Wouldn't you handsomely tip someone called Gutsy Gibbon?

Anyhow, I installed ubuntu. Then, since the disk I was using was made by my old, decrepit computer, there was some kind of error. So I removed ubuntu. Then something went insanely wrong and I couldn't access either system of my dual boot setup. So0oo I installed ubuntu over the Vista partition, booted up vista from the recovery partition--and vista failed. So I was so fed up that I just installed ubuntu over the whole thing and called it a good day.

Unfortunately, ubuntu has its errors, chief among which are a failure to support internal microphones and initial errors with audio output. Besides, I couldn't use the fingerprint scanner anymore. So I spent three days playing with config files and flaying my computer alive with a redonkulous amount of reboots. And..now I am awaiting the delivery of my Vista recovery CD from HP tech support.

Yes, I know what I said in my last post, but I didn't have to pay since my computer is..5 days old and about as chipper as a dentureless octogenarian.

Well, I'll just wait for that CD, then attempt a dual boot again so I can record facebook videos (and piano videos) without wanting to pull my hair out. Stay posted.


Story #2
I celebrated my 18th birthday with the most terrifying experience of my life*.

I gotta admit, I don't put much stock by birthdays. I haven't had a party in four years and I really don't mind. It's just another day.

Still, I have to admit that I do harbor this secret desire for everything to go perfectly that day. Unfortunately for me, that didn't happen.

I planned to catch a bus to see one of my friends. I took careful precautions to look up the directions on Google and even wrote down the times and everything. But when I started to look for a bus stop, I realized that at the intersection Google told me about had four bus stops.

This was my first brush with public transportation in the US. In Japan, I'd had Quail and two other experienced international travelers with me. But I figured I was an adult and could do it myself.

Then I realized that the bus stops had signs with numbers on them. Duh. The one across the street from me had a "62" sign. Success! I looked no further.

Big, big mistake.

I sat down and awaited my 12:42 (isn't that great? Google had it down to exact minutes) bus, but I figured that nothing would ever be exactly on time. Still, I kept pulling out my phone to check, nervous about this whole "taking the bus" idea actually working.

I pulled out my phone exactly as it ticked from 12:41 to 12:42, looked to the left, and saw a bus approaching. Ecstatic, I hopped on the bus, now fully convinced that Google was, in fact, God. I looked up after the estimated 7 minutes but realized that I was nowhere near my destination. Figuring that something could have added to the travel time (such as the 10 stops the driver made to let other people off), I went back to reading my book. Or I tried. I was so nervous that something was going wrong that I gave up and stared out the window.

I'm not very good with directions. I'm a "turn right here, turn left there" kind of person. I don't do all the "left on Murphy and right on Oak" stuff. But I did know that I was definitely not where I needed to be. The bus was going deeper and deeper into the seedy area of downtown.

I summoned my courage and asked the bus driver about my stop. He laughed.

Uh oh.

I had gotten on bus 62 at 12:42 exactly as my written directions had said--but somehow it was the opposite direction.

I got off the bus into a blistering hot day on an unshaded residential area. I made a call for a rescue, but had to wait 20 minutes before I could be picked up. I walked around the street, trying to look like I had a place to go. I couldn't find a store to go into or a side street close enough to the main street that didn't look like a haven for unsavories. I sat down at the bus stop and tried to read, but the hot sun cracked down on me like a baseball bat on a squishy watermelon. So I resumed walking around.

Let's just say the attention of some passerby made me EXTREMELY nervous. And scared out of my mind. Maybe someone more used to the grittiness of east side wouldn't have cared at all, or at least been as sensitive to it as I was. But in the end, I got out of downtown without mishap. And I definitely learned a valuable life lesson.

Don't trust a ho. Even if it's named Gutsy Google.

(I still can't figure out how the times and the buses matched up so PERFECTLY WRONG. Well, it'll be better next time. Btw, no offense intended to Google with the closing statement, but I couldn't figure out a nicely alliterative stripper name for "my own foolishness").

*yeah, not really.

Apologies

I received my new HP HDX 16 on Tuesday and as much as I would like to say I love its shininess, I've had nothing but problems with it. I've completely reinstalled my OS (ubuntu) about 3 times, and I've been forced to wipe out the Vista boot partition. But I really don't care, because Vista was a sack of bloatware. To get it back, I'd need to pay $15 for shipping for a recovery disk set.

Hah. Yeah right. I think I'll just struggle along with ubuntu instead until Windows 7 comes out--then indulge in this dual boot fiasco all over again.

Unfortunately, one of those problems includes the microphone not working...so I can't even upload the videos I promised in my last post. Or I could, but you wouldn't be able to hear anything, which kinda defies the point of posting music.

In the meantime, please watch Mike Song be absolutely epic.



In other news, the spectre of college looms, still unsatisfied despite its continuous consumption of those dear to me.

...I miss you, Quail =(

A very happy anniversary with Life to you, my dear friend

Let's all wish Awkward Hawk a very happy birthday, eh?

She's all grown up! *sniff*


This comes in the midst of frantic packing, as Quail prepares to embark on a journey of a lifetime to parts unknown.
But really, she just feels like the whole thing is blown out of proportion.

Current impression of the future: About as much forethought as a goldfish might have.

Quail out.

(Tony) Hawking it Up

This post is dedicated to one of the more famous Hawks out there.

Over the weekend, I bought a skateboard for $25 (a bargain considering the usual prices) with the help of my shady business partner the Duck. The idea is that since the time it takes to lock a bike would negate the benefits of biking around my tiny college campus in the first place, I'd teach myself how to board over the summer. Why a skateboard? I didn't feel like shelling out the $200 for a longboard, and all my Ebay bids on cheaper, used versions were easily outbid or failed to reach the minimum threshold. Besides, there's something uncomfortable about paying big bucks for an item before you see it.

I spent a little time rolling around my kitchen, which is a pretty small place. It was pretty hard getting my balance (and getting up the guts to put both feet on the board while it was moving), but the crowded kitchen had plenty of handholds. I must have added a couple dollars to our energy bill every time I grabbed on to the fridge for support, since the door opened whenever I lost my balance (often).

But once I had a little bit of confidence, I trekked over to my grandma's house in search of a helmet (not only in observation about California's helmet laws for minors, but also because college is starting soon and I'd rather not lose any more brain cells than I already have over this summer). I found a treasure trove--wrist guards, knee pads, and elbow pads. I geared up. With all this protective equipment and a helmet, I was soon sweating bullets under the heat of the afternoon sun.

Which brings me to the question--why was I doing this at 4pm, when the sun was high in the sky and shade had retreated from the street I was practicing from?

I am a creature of whim. That is all.

But because of the added layers, I was definitely craving a whimsicle (see what I did there?). I spent about an hour soaring up and down the paved road in front of my house, flapping in a rather ungainly fashion and running foolishly after the board the few times it got away from me.

But it was a thrilling experience. The road rumbling beneath the wheels, the adrenaline rush and sense of doom as I looked up from my path to see my brother's Mustang directly in front of me, the sigh of relief as I stopped myself by grabbing onto the mailbox and the screech of pain as the hot metal burned me (ok, so the Mustang-mailbox part isn't true, but it so could have happened).

I can now coast in a relatively straight line and make extremely wide turns. Unfortunately, I can only turn to the right. I know everyone has a "good side" to them, but seriously. This is a little ridiculous. Maybe I'm just paranoid about falling onto my butt, the ONE place I was not artifically padded up on.

P.S. I noticed that my rendition of the Super Mario theme and the Schubert piece are woefully below the level of quality that the pieces deserve. Expect repostings of those sometime this week.

PLAIDIPI

PLAIDIPUS.





We had a little trouble with the pattern, resulting in many different sizes of Plaidipus, like this longipus





Plaidipus stack!

Dork Days (hella videos ahead)

I had the house to myself and...I like to make noise. So I pulled out some sheets and tried to sight-read a little.

No, I haven't figured out a way to get better sound quality. Apologies for that.

We begin with a nod to all the Legolas lovers out there. Because everyone knows that Link=Legolas.


My favorite game. I'll see YOU on omgpop.com (though I haven't been on in a while)

Unfortunately, that theme sounds so..dead and unexciting. I tried to make it more exciting. Did I succeed?


And no nerdfest is complete without Naruto.


It's not a party without Mario. This one was the hardest of the bunch =(.


At least this one was easier.


Logically, if you're a good pianist, you should be able to play all sorts of music easily. For me, though, video game music is kinda hard to learn. Maybe it's because I was taught by a--I guess you'd call it classical?--piano teacher. It's sort of how abstract art is different from "real" art. There are strange phrases and, personally, I find that my fingers don't really move the way the Super Mario Theme demands.
Here's one of my favorite "classic" pieces :)--Schubert's Impromptu. I should post a better version of it later.

I...don't know what to say.

http://xkcd.com/621/


On another note,

http://mylifeisaverage.com is pretty rad too.

Seeing both sides.

Today's installment of "A Lifeguard's Doody" is brought to you by the always epic, I-can't-wait-to-see-if-Marco-has-a-Phoenix-Zoan, newly posted chapter of One Piece.

A Lifeguard's Doody
'Cause Doody or Duty, it's nasty either way.

Incident I

I was lounging on my plastic green chair on the lifeguard tower and shifting uncomfortably as the vinyl rescue tube (which I OCD-ly always arrange so the "GUARD" painted on it is the right side up) slowly began to adhere to my sunscreen-coated legs. And, as was my wont, I was people-watching.

A man hopped into the medium lane, which was already occupied by another man and a lady who had split the lane. And this is where the problem began.

Lap lane etiquette isn't that hard to learn. You want to swim with other people, you tell them--better yet, you ask them politely.

So the man began his doomed quest to notify the two members already in the lane. The other male acquiesced nicely, but the lady kept swimming. And swimming. Not only that, she was swimming at a distressing speed that wouldn't stratify nicely in the pool's sophisticated "SLOW, MEDIUM, FAST" system and at the moment was causing problems with the other two men in the lane. Looking around, I saw that there was only one man in the slow lane. Solution: GET!

The new man tapped the lady on the shoulder, but she shrugged him off and kept swimming. Whoah. So I sighed and got off of my perch, waited until she got to the wall, and then tapped her on the shoulder. She did stop --which I took as a good sign, since it showed that she would comply with my requests, right? I asked her to move to the slow lane.

And she started screaming in my face.

"I'VE BEEN IN THIS POOL FOR FOUR HOURS AND YOU LIFEGUARDS HAVE BEEN MOVING ME BACK AND FORTH. AND I HAVE TO ADD TIME."

Needless to say, I had no freaking idea what she was talking about. And it was rather disconcerting to get hollered at when I was asking politely. But at least she moved. And, sadly, I was so rattled I almost wanted to cry.

Yet as luck would have it, there was already a man in the slow lane, also. When she joined HIM, he stopped her for some reason. Probably because she hadn't notified him about joining or something. Part of the fault for that could lie with me for not telling him myself. The next thing I know, she's screaming at HIM and pointing at me "SHE asked me to move here. So DEAL with it, old man!"

Wow. I run over to the old man, who is standing in the middle of the lane, looking rather shocked. I try to apologize, telling him that she's a little cranky and that I did ask her to move.
"She's a BITCH!" he cried. Wow, every single member I had the misfortune to interact with that day was not quite in a jolly mood. "She was here yesterday, too, and they kicked her out because she's a BITCH!"

I was sorely inclined to agree at that point. But anyway, it was all over. So I crawled back into my chair and memorized the lady's swimsuit pattern and the color of her swim cap (blue) so I could stay away if I ever saw her again.

All the OTHER lifeguards on duty had heard that lady, even over the screaming of little children on the waterslide. But of course, no one really understood what was happening. I chalked it up to the lady's pure crankiness and eagerly watched the clock for quitting time.

But right when I was leaving my station at the end of my shift, I started talking to one of my guarding friends. He'd heard about the fiasco with the lady, also. "Yeah, I feel kinda bad for her," he said.

Whoah. What? From what I'd seen, I would have been feeling sorry for the old man in the slow lane. Or the guys in the medium lane. Or me.

He elaborated. "She's got a kidney problem, so she has to swim continuously for three hours a day or else go on dialysis. And the speed she swims at--she's not slow enough to be slow, and she's not fast enough to be medium, so she's always getting moved around. And whenever she stops, she has to add time."

I mentioned the old man in the slow lane and his glowing reception of her. My coworker shrugged. "Oh, that guy. Yeah, he's the crankiest guy in this pool."

With all this spinning in my head, I waddled to escape the pool deck, excited to get home and watch Hannah Montana with a big bucket of ice cream to drown my confusion. I was almost at the door--

"Excuse me, miss?" I saw a blue swim cap and cringed mentally, but turned around. I faced an elderly lady with a kind-looking face. She wasn't much taller than me. "I'm sorry about earlier. It's just that I was in that pool for so long and they were moving me back and forth and--"

Well, we had a pleasant conversation after that, during which I assured her that I now knew about her condition and would watch out in the future, and her re-asssuring* me that I wouldn't need to do that.

So just remember, kids--most situations, no matter HOW one-sided they seem, could always use more perspective. I didn't appreciate Picasso before, but I sure do now-- in a metaphysical sense at least(refer to the title of this post).

On a side note, TWO HUNDREDTH POST. WIN.

*Yes, I know the actual word is spelled "reassuring." *props* if you didn't need this footnote to tell you the misspell was intentional.

It's a Blackberry shirt with a lego man on it.

I woke up this morning and I had no sense of purpose. Life is so directionless when your movements aren't mandated by the necessity of performing perfunctory duties in order to "bring home the bacon," as you will.

In other words, I have the day off and I was bored.

Sound quality is terrible--yeah, those weird noises are NOT all due to me messing up. The stupid video ended TEN SECONDS before the end because my camera's 4 years old and has a 3-minute limit =(. Taken from the left side because that's the more exciting side--there are a lot of chords farther away from the main body of the bass rhythm, so my hand jumps out and attacks once in a while. It would look more impressive from a bird's eye view, probably--but I was too lazy to figure out a way to rig that.


I dusted off my old CM piece, too (right hurrrr ). To accommodate the limit, I only played 2/6 of the pages. I did record the other 2 parts, but meh. Two videos in one day is enough.

I might redo these and upload versions with better sound (and fewer mistakes). But it is kinda fun to watch the attacking hand.

Note: awkwardhawk is a different YouTuber. I'm THEawkwardhawk, tyvm.