Benign Thoughts

Still Alive...

2010-09-08T13:28:00.000-07:00

So, to say I haven't been active recently is a huge understatement. I really, really haven't been active. Unlike previous posts of this nature, I am not going to say that I am going to try to post more often. In fact, the opposite will likely happen. After I am done writing this post, I will probably go back to playing World of Warcraft, watching Netflix, and doing schoolwork. Actually the school stuff would take priority over everything else but still, you get the gist.

School started for me a week ago... and now I'm back at home. Why is that? The geniuses over at SUNY decided to start class the week before labor day, and Binghamton, with its large population of Jewish people, gives us off for Rosh Hashanah (I'm right, right? That's the holiday this weekend). So basically, we have a whole week off so we all get to go home. Oh well, at least I get to see my family... oh wait I just had an entire summer off. Dumbasses.

So what did I do this summer? I worked my ass off at Panera Bread, took Calc 2 at Stony Brook University, played trombone in my local community band, and decided to un-quit WoW after almost a year. I actually got a lot done, it was a good time. And now I'm back at school taking physics classes. It's actually pretty rad. I really like my classes, as well as the professors who teach them. They're all very understandable, and very cool in general.

Google released its instant search today. It's pretty nifty. Basically what it does is search as you type. This way, it's constantly showing you the results for what you're searching for, as you are typing. If it's not working on your browser, you should probably switch to Google Chrome. In fact, if you're not using Google Chrome, you should switch to Google Chrome. I know in the past I've been a big fan of Opera, and I still am. But Google Chrome is an incredible browser, and everybody should give it a shot.

And finally, remember how I said I'm using Movable Type now? Well, I'm just about done with it. Wordpress is just so much better for my needs right now. MT has all sorts of cool features, but the problem is it's just too much. I don't need to be able to manage a ton of sites on one engine, and I don't want to have to rebuild my pages and get used to a new theming system. And it also didn't get me to blog more. So I'm done with it.

This one is for Future Louis

2010-02-21T19:15:00.000-08:00

The other day I was reading very old blog entries and I realized, if I don't post regularly, Future Louis won't be able to do the same to what I'm writing now. Because nothing will be written for him to read. Doesn't that suck? Yeah. I've already put writing this post off several days. I mean, I had this thought on friday, when my sister wrote on my Facebook wall to tell me how pathetic my old "content" was. I would literally post about the weather. I also wrote... decent short stories (I won't call them bad, I was like 15, okay?). I also used to get really off topic, really easily. It happens. At least I wrote more often than I do now. I mean, this is my first post of the new year, and it's in February, for fuck's sake.

So yeah, I'm kind of on the debate team here at Binghamton now. True story. I joined this semester, and the very first weekend, my partner and I had to go to a tournament. I was literally not prepared for anything, but I managed to get my shit together and do fairly decently for a beginner. There's another tournament this coming weekend, plus this time of the year it apparently gets crazy because people go to tournaments every weekend (thankfully I only have this one and maybe one more left). But yeah, I've been working hard on that stuff.

As of last night, I've had this urge to watch Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons, and rewatch the movie but I can't find them anywhere! A while back the movie was on one of my on demand stations. Not HBO, but one of the other ones. I love it: even though it's not really a good movie, it's still really funny and a good time in general. The cartoons were also on Google Video for a while, but not anymore. They're on hulu now, but hulu doesn't work well on my college connection. Go figure. You'd think that a state school would have good internet, but it's not nearly as good as I have at home. Ah well, I can kind of watch the 20 episodes that are available on Hulu, but I still want to see the movie again :(

Speaking of movies, HBO is fucking awesome. Now if you have HBO on Verizon Fios, you get access to HBO Go, which is like HBO On Demand, except on the internet. That being said, it sucks on my campus connection. Yeah.

Alright, so before I go, Kat wanted to tell Future Louis something. She says "If you didn't suck so much, you wouldn't be sucky." She's doing it wrong. Really, it should be "If you set aside how much you suck, you're not actually that sucky." But yeah, she fails."

So soon?

2009-09-14T18:12:00.000-07:00

Yep, another entry within 7 days. I know, it's rare, but it happens occasionally. I'm usually the type to post about random celebrity affairs, but I feel that this is appropriate:

Sorry, I just had to do it. Anyway, yeah. With all the madness between Kanye West and Patrick Swayze, it's been a little strange this weekend. Especially between Twitter and Facebook. I can't turn on my computer or blackberry without finding something about either Kanye, Lady Gaga (still haven't seen her performance), or Patrick Swayze (btw, for those who haven't gotten it yet, he died, and he will be missed).

So my Tuesdays kind of own. I didn't do it on purpose, but I have no class until 1:15 (pm). It's pretty rad, actually. And even then, all I have is a physics discussion, then English (which is interesting), and then a break until 6pm when I have a 3 hour Debate class, in which currently we are just going over the various regulations and such. Once that's over, we'll migrate to meeting on wednesdays at 5:50, and actually debate. I really enjoy my Tuesdays. Most importantly, though, I can sleep later :D

Wait, so I am actually enjoying an English class? Yes, yes I am. It's all about analyzing how different people perceive literature scientifically. For the last few classes we've just been talking about whether or not it's possible to study literature from a scientific point of view, and how everybody has a different "lens" through which they read literature. Our class on Thursday ended with a rather enthusiastic discussion about whether or not art is dying out because all possible ideas have already happened, and people have to look for new, crazier ways to be "artistic" (read: lady gaga). I, of course disagreed. There are always people that tend to have crazy ideas about what "art" is, exactly, but it doesn't mean that everything's already happened. We're constantly discovering new technologies, and with that comes new ways to use the technology, hence new art. What the synthesizer did to music is just one example. Computer animated movies, for instance, are becoming more popular with Pixar creating such masterpieces as Wall-e and UP. Not to mention 3D movies. And who knows what'll happen in the next 10 years. One argument was that music today is using samples from older music, and we don't have a distinct style for the 2000's, which is bullshit. In about 2015, the style for the 2000's will have become apparent, just like the style of the 90s has become apparent. It doesn't matter that music is using samples from older music. Music has always been inspired by past music, and in the days of classical music, plenty of themes would be reused across all sorts of works. Not to mention the whole concept of "remixes" that has been around for a long time now.

Anyway, I'm done. I said I would stop doing these sort of closing paragraphs, but whatever. This is one of those useless closing paragraphs. And Scott, if you're reading this, you need to blog too, man.

Switching to Movable Type

2009-09-09T15:33:00.000-07:00

So today I decided I wanted to try to revive this blog for my longer postings. LouisC.com will still be used for all sorts of random bullshit I find on the internet, but here I plan on posting, like I always have, about day-to-day stuff that I do, as well as some useless shit I find on the internet, but more in depth.

One thing you've probably noticed, is the new design. It's a default Movable Type theme. I'm way too lazy right now to redo the CSS to make it my own quite yet, but I'll get around to it sometime soon. This is all because I've made the switch from Wordpress to Movable Type. Basically, it all comes down to speed and security. Wordpress requires updates all the time because of new, crazy bugs that tend to be utterly ridiculous. I used Wordpress in the past because MT required a fee and WP was a brand new thing that looked amazing. However, I can barely recognize the code anymore. It's a completely different beast, and Movable Type is just so much more feature rich, even before you get into the plugins (which, admittedly, WP has more of). Because MT's pages are mostly static (and designed to be mostly static, unlike the silly WP-SuperCache plugin), they should load at least a little faster.

The trickiest part of the switch was getting the database over intact. MT and WordPress are very different behind the scenes, and MT doesn't really offer a database import. Basically, you export everything from WP to a file, and then upload the file (it's Enhanced RSS or whatever, not mysql) to MT, which then makes sense out of everything. There were a few entries that were misplaced, but I grabbed the original times from WP and fixed them. Also, I needed to delete a few comments. They were very insignificant, otherwise I would have put more effort into fixing the timestamp (which MT wouldn't let me do for some reason).

So that about wraps it up. To comment here now, I believe you need to log in. Movable Type supports logging in via Wordpress.com, Facebook, AIM, Yahoo, Google, whatever. It's a nice deterrence against spam, so yeah. I should be able to post again soonish. My twitter updates are in the tab on the left side of the screen. If I don't update in like a week, feel free to poke me there, or by leaving a comment here.

Quick update

2009-07-16T20:30:00.000-07:00

I got a new tumblr account. It's much more active than here, but I plan on keeping this blog for longer, more formal blog posts. My tumblr is LouisC.com. Be sure to check it out. Whatever I post here will also be updated over there, so I'm really only keeping this site because I've had it for so long.
A more formal post will come soonish, but be sure to read LouisC.com for all sorts of random updates.

About to go to bed, but before I do so...

2009-06-25T22:17:00.000-07:00

So I figured I'd post before going to bed real quick. I haven't been posting as often as I'd like to, but it's at least more often than before. I'm sure if you actually read this site, (which you probably don't given the complete lack of readers I have since my huge hiatus) you'll have noticed some changes. First of all, instead of using images as my post titles, I'm now using text. If you're using a browser that supports CSS fonts, your browser will automatically download Gentium Book Basic, and use it to display my post titles. It won't install it on your system or anything sketchy like that, just download it like it'd download an image. Also, I got the google ads working finally. It was some stupidity with how my pages were being sent as XML+HTML instead of HTML. They're still all XHTML, completely valid, like always, but now the google ads work.

Also, you should be able to see my twitter status in my sidebar. Just a tiny feature that I've been wanting for a while. I got Wordpress working properly finally by basically deleting it and reuploading it. It had some issues with constantly being upgraded, and no fancy javascript was working in the admin area, including managing widgets. Sucks, but now it works. :D

I've been watching a lot of Dexter recently. All 3 seasons are on Showtime on Demand, so I couldn't resist. Plus, it's HD, which is great! Verizon consistently impresses me. In case you didn't know, I use Fios, which is Verizon's TV/Internet/Phone over Fiber service. On Demand stuff uses the internet on TV, so you'd think that it might adversely affect my internet service. It doesn't. Somehow they count the bandwidth for On Demand differently than the bandwidth for my internet. So I can watch Dexter in HD whenever I want, while uploading all my photos from the past year to my "new" flickr account (not really using it yet, so I'm not posting it), while downloading the latest version of Arch Linux for my desktop which isn't handling the latest Ubuntu quite well. For the record, it took less than a minute. I'll set it up tomorrow.

SO MUCH SPAM!

2009-06-11T18:06:00.000-07:00

Since I posted that I was going to fix up the site a bit after finals, I've been getting an unbelievable amount of spam. I'm talking well over 100 spam comments per day. It's completely retarded. Defensio wasn't really doing its job well, so I switched over to Akismet and so far so good. I actually have reworked the site a bit, though it shouldn't really look any different. However, I did recently upgrade to Wordpress 2.8 and I must say, it's pretty nice :)

Speaking of upgrades, Linkinus 2.0 is out over at Conceited Software. For those Mac users who are wondering whether it's worth the 10 euro upgrade, it is. It's a lot less buggy than 1.3 was, which is fantastic, though they really should release a free bugfix release for 1.3. I only have a couple complaints: The "Identities" functionality is a bit strange for IRC. Basically, each nickname you use is an identity. If you use the same nickname with the same password across multiple networks, you're golden. If not, you need to set up an identity for each nickname, which includes your User Name, Real Name, Nickname(s) (in priority order), and Passwords. If you use the same nickname across different servers with different passwords, then things can get confusing but you'll manage. Also, when upgrading from 1.3, Linkinus does not know what kind of nickname authentication service any manually added networks use, so you have to set them up in order for Linkinus to identify for you. Also, the current themes available are a little buggy, and some are ugly, though user-created themes should be on their way. I personally have no complaints on the appearance of the default theme, Whisper, except how actions look, which is really just a minor annoyance. So basically, Linkinus 2.0 is worth the upgrade. If you don't feel like spending 20 euro for an IRC client, however, LimeChat is also worth taking a look at, Adium added IRC support in the latest beta, and there is always Colloquy. Linkinus is my favorite though.

Quitting WoW quite frankly isn’t an option.

Remember when I said that? Well, I quit WoW. Figured there are better places to put my time, and frankly, World of Warcraft is a waste of it. However, I did not leave my guild. I'm still fairly active in talking to friends I made in the guild and posting on the forum. I'm still not going to play WoW again anytime soon, though.
Instead, I'm playing The Sims 3! I am, of course, kidding. I'm not playing it as a substitution for WoW. I've always been a big fan of The Sims franchise, and I've owned every release since the original version. In fact, I recently found my Prima's Official Strategy Guide for The Sims. I forgot I even had it. Anyhow, with the Sims 3, Mac support is through Cider (smooth enough on my mac, but a lot of people are complaining), and it's missing Sims classic items like hot tubs, diving boards, instruments besides the guitar, and some other things. But even though there are a few things I don't like, I really do like the improved Sim customization, traits, moodlets, and the new neighborhood. In fact, I might go out on a limb and say that it's possibly the best Sims game ever. It is at least better than The Sims 2, and I can't wait to see what the expansion packs bring.

That's all for now. Feel free to follow me on twitter at Twitter.com/LouisC.

Possible site revamp coming soon?

2009-05-12T09:14:00.000-07:00

Yeaahhh so I haven't been updating the site. This is understandable since, you know, I haven't really updated the site regularly in years. However, I want to be more active. It's just with my poor time management skills and lack of the ability to overcome my habit of procrastinating things, well, I procrastinate. However, this semester has, quite honestly, sucked. Previously I was worried about my performance in Calc II. Now I'm worrying about failing CS140 because of spending too much time on Calc II and putting shit off. Plus, I enjoy playing World of Warcraft, which takes up a massive amount of time. However, I try not to make that time conflict with time spent studying, with friends, etc. Quitting WoW quite frankly isn't an option. And I'm not leaving my guild either. My current raiding times are fine. I just need to get past procrastinating, and do work when I get back from class instead of putting it off until the last minute and I run out of time. And I also want to get this site updated more regularly.

So, in an attempt to get back into the swing of things on this site that is, starting once finals are over (tomorrow night), I'm going to look into possibly redesigning the site, but definitely revamping the site. There's still a lot of old-wordpress stuff back from when I started using wordpress (pre-1.0), and a lot of stuff that breaks because of it. I just got around to deleting the contact me form on the contact page. Why? Because it uses a captcha system that has been broken for about a year. The images it generated were practically impossible to decipher. I've known this, but have just never gotten around to fixing it or removing it. That's how bad I am. Anyway yeah. Tomorrow night after Calculus I'll get started. Probably.

Rerolling Alliance

2009-02-16T15:56:00.000-08:00

So I'm posting again in less than a month. It's crazy, isn't it? Granted, my previous post wasn't really a full post, but meh. It was still more than 3 sentences. Anyway, in the past almost-month, I've been playing WoW, like always. You know the deal, Naxx, H. Naxx, Malygos, Sarth, etc... Well, we couldn't get enough people to do H. Naxx and decided to server transfer. People chickened out, others decided to go to other servers since they were transferring anyway, and everything was a mess. So, since basically the guild is defunct, I'm leveling an Alliance mage on Lightning's Blade named Tassels. I'm at level 23 I think now. I've been distracted from leveling.... by what you ask?

By Monk, of course! It's such a good show, and I wish I had started watching it sooner, but I had always just ... excuse me a second. I need to talk about something that just came up.

Apparently it's basketball season. so my roommate, Austin, has been watching Basketball whenever possible. I got dragged into a fantasy basketball league, but yeah. I'm not entirely thrilled about it. Actually it's been brought to my attention that he's just playing a game at the moment, but the point still stands. My suite is loud when they're watching sports. I thought it was bad during football, but Austin yells and talks to himself while he's watching a game or playing the video games. It's very irritating and while I was typing about Monk, he went into a yelling spree with another suitemate (Ryan). Anyway, back to Monk.

It's a good show.I had just written it off as silly, but I'm actually enjoying it as a good detective show. The cases in it are less far-fetched than they are in Detective Conan at the moment, and it's quite refreshing to watch a good show again. Also, I've been watching Dollhouse. The first episode aired last friday, and I'm really looking forward to this friday's next episode. Hopefully it won't get cancelled any time soon.

I think I'm done here now... I don't have much else to talk about, just wanted to post a quick update. I'm gonna continue leveling Tassels again right now.. Hopefully I can reach 25 or 26 tonight, since I have no class (again) tomorrow. (:

I’m so good at not posting

2009-01-25T11:42:00.000-08:00

So while I didn't post for the last few months, I basically did my finals, played World of Warcraft, went on break, worked at panera again, then came back to school. I'm good at not keeping promises to post again.

My world of warcraft guild split. My half created <Sanity> and the other half remains as <From the Internet>. We're still friends but the west coast section is now its own guild. Our website is at SanityDentarg.com. It's badass.

Really not much else to say. Seriously, that's why I haven't been posting. Fail, I know, but whatever.

Hooray for Raiding Balance!

2008-12-07T20:27:00.000-08:00

So I now have the best raiding schedule ever. I am in my guild's West Coast raid, which means we start raids at roughly 1am, and finish at about 4am. THIS IS FANTASTIC for a few reasons. Firstly, while this semester I have to deal with waking up at 9 (which isn't even a big deal going to bed at about 5), next semester I do not have class until noon at the earliest. Plus, the time conflicts with nothing I am doing in real life: By 1am I am finished with my schoolwork and I will be finished at Panera for sure; I have meetings for hall council and college council at 8 and 9pm, which will be finished by 10-ish; and, well, yeah. 1am guarantees I will be able to make it to any raid, which was an issue with my last guild (7pm raids suck). A video of us killing Patchwerk is below. We're currently up to Sapphiron (who owned our asses this morning). If you click the video, you can watch a higher quality version over on youtube. If not, you have to deal with the crappy quality.

Normally there'd be a youtube video here but you don't have flash.

Oh yeah, I'm still alive. Forgot to mention that. Will post tomorrow after studying for music. Toodles.

Oops, I did it again.

2008-11-05T13:33:00.000-08:00

Yeah, so I stopped blogging again. My bad. Didn't mean to do that. Anyway, some shit went down in the last few days so I figured I should cover it.

My suitemate Colin, started a Facebook group against the "Saved by Zero" commercials last Sunday. This previous sunday it had 400 members and was featured on a news blog. Now it has almost 2000 members, an AP article written about it (Colin even got interviewed), and is in tons of news sites nationwide. It has completely blown up. Redonkulous.

Obama won the election. Personally, I don't care about the result. I wanted Ron Paul, and he didn't even get the nomination. Hopefully he'll get it in 2012. Obama is at least for net-neutrality, but I hope he doesn't place regulation on TV and Radio. We'll see what happens. If he does anything too extreme, I'm sure republicans will get voted into congress.

So yeah, I'm out. Useless! Oh yeah, also I should probably say that I broke up with Caitlin this weekend. Just as a followup to my June 13th post where I said I have a girlfriend now and I quit WoW, both of which are now null and void. Funny how things work out. Or don't, rather (long distance makes you realize things you've been in denial about). Oh well, shit happens and the world goes on. Toodles!

Back home but going back tomorrow.

2008-09-30T14:47:00.000-07:00

Yeah, so I came back home for the weekend since we had off for Rosh Hashanah. School starts again thursday though, so I'm headed back up tomorrow. Other than that, I don't have much to say. I'm bringing my wii up with me so I can play Megaman 9 and some other games which I'm bringing with me. I just need a bigger TV -_-.

All Nighter.

2008-09-23T22:08:00.000-07:00

So I decided to pull an all nighter right now. Yeah, so it's 5 in the morning and I have a class at 9:40 so if I go to sleep now, there is no way I'd possibly get up, and I cannot miss the class. So I'm using this opportunity to catch up with homework and do random things like this. SOOOO I am currently listening to techno music and typing this while reading about random stuff while doing homework with Kat.

HOLY BALLS! Now that I have your attention, I just want to express my disappointment in the LHC being shut down until spring 2009. REALLY? All because of stupid magnets. It annoys me because I have been looking forward to the LHC opening since I first found out what it was (circa 2003-ish?) and when I found out about the whole cancelled SSC (no, not serpentshrine cavern, the Superconducting Super Collider) deal. And now we have to wait another 6 months. Hey! Maybe they'll power it up on me and Ryan's birthday! :D

Michael J. Gelb is freaking weird. ALL of my friends in Scholars classes are reading this DaVinci book, and it is really, really stupid. It asks you to close the book and look at the mona lisa, than when you're ready, open it again and write your thoughts. Basically, it's a huge waste of time and mostly answerable by bullshit. Re. Tard. Ed.

I am now in the stage of an all-nighter when I feel tired. If I stay awake through this stage, I will be able to make it through no problem, though yeah, it'll be difficult. I just have to keep myself amused. For now, though, I'm done blogging. Toodles.

The Penis Question.

2008-09-23T17:21:00.000-07:00

The following question may be slightly odd, but it is very very interesting. Please answer it in a comment. If a visible male was making sweet, sweet love to an invisible female, would you see the penis through the female? My dorm is divided. Do not ask where I came up with the question, it's complicated.

Best Facebook App Ever.

2008-09-22T19:29:00.000-07:00

Yeah, so just saying something really fast. The best facebook app by far is this one called Food Friendzy. It is godly. Food Friendzy lets you earn money for food by playing a simple concentration type game and matching 3 like tiles with a money value on it. When you match them, you get that money to spend on campusfood.com, which is great for here at Binghamton since all the good food places support it. You get three tries per day and the money expires in 3 days. It's fantastic for ordering pizza.

Also, I'm addicted to charmed. I'm watching it now, then I'm going to sleep. Today is my 5 month monthiversary with Caitlin, so yeah. Caitlin, if you're reading this, I love you and happy monthiversary. :D

Might I start blogging again?

2008-09-21T20:00:00.000-07:00

So I've been thinking, I shouldn't let this website go to waste. I've been putting off blogging for ages, starting sporadically and then stopping again. In fact, I haven't really blogged seriously in over a year. I've always just stopped. I actually do have things to write about, but I just don't have the drive to write it. So you'll see my entries being more freeform, just me letting thoughts out as they come to me (like your mother last night, [couldn't resist]). So here goes nothing.

I'm in college now. Yes, that's right, Louis actually made it to college. I currently go to Binghamton University. If you go here too, contact me and maybe we'll hang out. Probably not though? See, I'm not holding anything back, just saying exactly what I'm thinking. I just paused for a second, sorry. So right, I'm on the chemical free floor of Mountainview's Hunter Hall. It's great here, fantastic view (mountainview... get it?), but the walk up is a bitch. I usually don't want to walk up and down the hill more than three times per day, so during weekdays I usually go down and stay down unless I have more than an hour between the classes, in which case I will come back up. It's not too bad just going to the lecture hall since I can cut through Hinman, another community, and the lecture hall is right there, but other buildings can be a bit of a trek. Especially going to the gym. That's a bitch, because there's an additional hill down there, and by the time you're at the gym, you're pretty much dead. Especially if you're an unfit nerd like me.

Right now I'm taking Calc I, Intro to Music, Intro to US Politics, and some stupid writing class I don't really get. I don't know what it's supposed to be. Right now we're writing an essay on our beliefs and starting on how to write cover letters. It's a well rounded schedule, to try to get done with as many general requirements as soon as possible so later on I can immerse myself in math and comp sci land. Yeah, right now I'd like to be a Math major with a Computer Science minor. It's not set in stone. Another possibility is a Math major and then go for education and become a high school math teacher. It's been what I've been saying I want to do for a long time, but I'm not so sure I can spend my life doing that sort of thing. I'd rather work for a company like Opera or something. Yeah, that's right, Opera. One thing that's always fascinated me was web browser development, and I'd love to be a part of it. Hey, I know me working for Opera is far fetched, but I can dream, right?

I've made a bunch of friends at my dorm. First, there are my suitemates: Ryan, Austin (my roommate), Colin, Tejas, and Dean. The way Mountainview works is we have a common room, two bathrooms, and three bedrooms in a suite. There are two people per bedroom, and both bathrooms have showers. Since half of us take showers at night and half in the morning and most of us start classes at different times, there are no shower issues. It's great. And our common room is huge. Besides my suitemates, there's our RA, Chris, and many others, like Hillary, Kat, Devon, Lee, Morgan, Mark, John, Sean, and Saad. Then there are people outside our hall, like Andrew, who is a fellow nerd yet has never pirated anything (really), and Scott, who comes from Miami Beach. Really. It's great being here, meeting so many different people. In fact, I haven't actually seen the people who came here from high school all that often. It's strange, you'd think we'd be tighter, but we're not.

So, that was my brief reintroduction. I might update semi-daily with random things that happen. Or I might not. One thing that will never change is this retarded pointless closing paragraph. Nighty night. It's 3 and I have a class at 9:40. fun.

Wrath of the Lich King Beta

2008-07-17T20:35:00.000-07:00

It seems as though Blizzard is getting ready to send out invites to the WotLK beta. As of yet, I haven't gotten one, but I don't think that anybody else has gotten one either. As a mac user and beta tester of many different open source and closed source applications (some of which are under NDA so I cannot talk about), I am hoping I get an invite. Especially since I love WoW so much.

Speaking of World of Warcraft, I started playing again. Yeah, I couldn't help it. I am, however, still active in real life and have given out 25-man raiding. Only 10-mans for me. It seems like a good compromise to keep it from taking over my life again. I am in a non-raiding guild on Arthas called "Fabulous". The players in the guild are generally good players and often get picked up for other guild's raids, so I guess we're kind of like mercenaries.

So every time I get a new email, I jump. I have the gmail notifier and it beeps whenever a new email comes in, and I keep hoping I get a beta invite. Don't worry, those who actually read this blog, I will remain (sort of) active like I am now. If I get a beta invite, I will share all the information on it that I am allowed to. If not, well, I'll be reading other sites for said information. Anyway, that's all for now. Toodles.

Edit: I haven't gotten into the beta yet. Hopefully I will still get an invite, but if not, oh well. If anybody has an extra one that they're not planning on using (or selling on ebay - that'd be the wrong thing to do!), I'd happily take it :). My email address is on my contact page, but if you are too lazy, it's Louis [at] benignthoughts [dot] com. Fat chance though.

Muchobene

2008-06-23T19:39:00.000-07:00

Well, this is gonna be a shortish entry to talk about a neat service I found. I have no idea how long it's been out, but it's pretty neat. It's called Muchobene, and it's a neat little question answering service. Basically, you enter a question, and in like a minute you get thrown into a conversation with someone running the Muchobene plugin, wanting to answer your question. You don't always get good answers, but yeah. I'm running the muchobene plugin and occasionally a popup'll show up asking me a question. I can just choose to answer the question, talk to the person a bit to clarify the problem, and throw him an answer. Usually, the person just thanks you and goes on his merry way. So yeah, check it out, and see if someone can answer your question. It's pretty neat.

I'm not going to write a blog post on a single service, of course No. There is something much more important than a silly question-answering service. George Carlin died sunday. I was talking to my friend Antonio late sunday night, and towards the end of our conversation, as he was going to go to bed, he was like, "oh shit, george carlin died." So, all night tonight (it's still monday for me even though it's actually tuesday), I've been watching George Carlin videos on Google Video. There are quite a few videos, so check them out. I actually haven't seen his standup in a couple of years, and even then, I was too young to really understand it. So yeah.

Speaking of sunday, I had my graduation party that same day. It was pretty good, I had a few friends over and my family. Crap, you know what I just realized? I say "Speaking of" as a segway a lot. Speaking of language, speaking of badly designed sites, speaking of this, speaking of that. I do it a lot. I guess it's a good way to link two separate topics that have nothing to do with one another. Yeah, so George Carlin died. By the way, I had my graduation party. Mhmm, yeah. Anyway, I had my graduation party on sunday. I graduate from highschool this thursday, so my party was a "Party in Anticipation of Graduation." It's my dad's words, I didn't come up with them myself. Sorry.

So that's it. This closing paragraph also has no real value whatsoever. I don't even know why you're reading it. I guess you're just expecting me to say something of value here, like give you the meaning of life. Or perhaps you're not reading this at all and you've caught on to this years ago and never told me about it. In which case, you're a douchebag and you should've told me that my last paragraph of almost every one of my blog posts makes no sense and has no value whatsoever. Gee, thanks a lot.

Epicness

2008-06-20T21:34:00.000-07:00

So, something truly epic happened this week... If you read reddit, you know what I'm talking about. Yes, the epic thread. It truly is epic. Read it and see if you can make it to the end. When I first came across it, I was on the floor laughing.
Speaking of reddit. I took Digg off my speed dial. Yep, it's about damn time. All of you should know by now that I am an avid Opera user, and therefore have the nifty speed dial feature. Right now my speed dial sites are: Facebook, What.cd, Last.fm, Benign Thoughts, Netvibes, Reddit, Netflix, Google Reader, and Benign Thoughts Mail (branded gmail. Google manages my Benign Thoughts email. It's nice). Usually I typed Benign Thoughts in my address bar, but since I now exclusively visit Reddit (it gets all news like four days before digg anyway), I replaced Digg with BT. Maybe it'll force me to post more often, I dunno.
So my site was not XHTML 1.1 for a little bit. Yeah, it was invalid. Some pages around are still invalid, simply because they're old. I just kind of realized this, but I've had this site since November 2002. It's moved domains and blog software for quite a while (earlier posts had no titles, and that drives my title image plugin insane). I was actually *just* looking on my Quotes page (which is still around, believe it or not) and reading old AIM and IRC and Yahoo! convos I once had. It's amazing that i still keep in contact with Bobby and some other people after all these years. Pretty insane.
But yeah, about XHTML 1.1. Turns out my WoW script that turns links that link to WoWhead stuff different colors isn't compatible by default. I had to modify the plugin a bit to fix it. Oh well, no big deal. Still, though, something broke the mime type, not sure what. Opera's detecting it fine, but the W3 validator isn't. Go figure. Also, quick site change. I never actually agnowledged the ads. They're a futile attempt to make some money back from the site. I also changed the search bar to a google sitesearch. It's nice because it shows me what people are interested in from BT and makes me money too. Plus it's nicer than Wordpress's search. Site integration sucks though, maybe I'll fix it, but it doesn't really bother me so yeah.
Speaking of Opera, Opera 9.5 has been out for a week. Go get it. It blows Firefox 3 out of the water and isn't even a major release. Opera 10, here we come (:
So uh, I'm done. It's 04:30, and therefore time for me to sleep. Goodnight all. Well, good morning.

At school.

2008-06-13T04:37:00.000-07:00

So I'm in school right now and really bored. It is the last day of school, so I have a bit to say. However, I have senioritis and only 15 minutes to write this entry, so I'll make it quick.
I quit World of Warcraft. Yep, I did it last month, actually, shortly after I got some T6. See, I have a girlfriend now and I'm about to go to college, and they stopped taking me raiding so I really don't have the time anymore to sit there for hours and wait for a raid spot. That's all I'd do for hours every night, wait from 6 until around 7:30 for a raid invite, then get disappointed when I don't get one. It happened for two straight weeks, so I just quit.
Yeah I have a girlfriend. It's Caitlin and I'm going to prom with her. If you've read my really old stuff from 2004 you'd know her. She's awesome, and this feels right. However, I'm going upstate to Binghamton to college and won't be seeing her for a bit. Still, I have Skype and my webcam and the phone and long weekends and breaks, so I'll see her pretty often. Just not often enough >_< .
K, done for now. Toodles.

I hate mother's day.

2008-05-11T10:07:00.000-07:00

Happy mother's day! My family went to the NY Botanical Garden today, but I personally find it boring, so I stayed home. Hoorah. So anyway, I'm sitting here playing World of Warcraft waiting for my raid to start, if we even raid tonight because it's mother's day.

I got my first piece of Tier 6 in WoW the other day It was Gloves of the Tempest. They're replacing my Spellfire Gloves, finally breaking my spellfire set. Now, because I'm breaking the spellfire set, it's a downgrade, but properly enchanted and gemmed, it's just as good. I had to break the set eventually, so yeah. I'm pleased.

I may post another update later after the raid or when the raid is cancelled. For now, though, goodbye :).

Another entry in two days? Holy crap!

2008-05-05T17:14:00.000-07:00

Hey guys, I'm here again! Jesus, I'm just kind of forcing myself to blog, even though I have nothing really to talk about that I can. Big news is coming soon, but I can't tell you about it for another few weeks at least.

I'm addicted to twitter now, but I have no followers. I just kind of post updates to absolutely nobody. I suppose I'm not that interesting, but still. It'd be nice to have some people to respond to me. Check it out, it's pretty neat.

I want a new calculator. Yeah, right now I'm using a TI-89 Titanium, and it's great and all, but randomly it decides it doesn't want to shut off and drains my batteries. It's kind of a big problem because I take it out for a chem test, and lo and behold, it's dead. Anyway, I'm hoping to get a HP 50G. It's amazing from what I've read, though it takes a long time to figure out. Steep learning curve, you see. I'll get it eventually though, and it'll be fantastic.

Goodnight all. I'll be back tomorrow maybe. I don't know yet. I have a lot to say but I can't share all of it. We'll see.

Hey, here I am

2008-05-04T17:46:00.000-07:00

So this should be interesting, my blogging for the first time in a very long time. Well, a lot has changed in the last like, year of non-serious blogging, so here's my attempt at catching everything up.

One interesting point to note is that I now use a mac. I still use linux on my desktop, but it is only a file server for downloading torrents and running overnight. I have a miniature gigabit network between my mac and my desktop so I can transfer the files very quickly, and my little setup works rather nicely. The mac, of course, is a Macbook Pro 15 inch with the 2.6 ghz processor, 4 gigs of ram, pre-2008 refresh. I got it last year shortly after leopard was released. It's nice, but I have no multitouch trackpad :(. Oh well, it'll do. The pros of having a macbook pro? Well, right now I'm sitting on my bed, macbook on my lap (bad idea, I know, but it won't overheat) typing this up in TextMate, my new favorite editor for editing anything. It's fantastic, go get it.

So, why haven't I been here, you may ask. Well, the answer is simple. You see, I've been playing a timesucking game called World of Warcraft. Right now, it rules my life. Well, something else rules my life but I can't talk about that yet at the moment, but WoW rules my life when the other thing doesn't. Basically, I've been playing WoW, going to work, or having a life all this time, without blogging about it. I know, I should just put a halfhour and blog every night before going to bed, but it never happens and probably won't happen until I get back into the swing of things.

I currently play my mage, Tasai, on the Arthas US realm, in WoW of course. Tasai is a level 70 blood elf mage in <spire>, a BT/MH raiding guild. Tonight we got a decent amount of attempts in on Illidan. We made it to phase 3 of the fight, and hope to get him down tomorrow.

I figured out what school I'm going to next year. I'll be going to Binghamton for Math. Yeah, math. People say I'm insane, but I plan on becoming a math teacher, and well, gonna need to go to school for math for that. Some friends of mine are going (or maybe going) too, so I won't be alone, and the dorms freakin' rock there.

Well, that's all. Some last minute things: Yes, I have ads on the site now. I'm hoping to make some side money from this site. My dad didn't allow me to sign up for adsense, but now I'm 18 so I'm able to just do it myself. They're not too intrusive, but if they start to be bothersome, I can limit them more or set some settings to make them appear less. Goodnight.

I'll be back.

2008-03-30T08:14:00.000-07:00

I'm going to start blogging again. For real this time. Maybe.