Lets see...Classwork:
Layout massive scene painting project.
Read "Lend Me a Tenor" and do intensive character analysis assignment.
Read Cunningham book Chapters 1, 2, 5 and pages 121-128
Complete pattern alteration samples 4, 5, 11, 12, 13, and 35
Look up an internship for BFA
Read flat patterning chapter 2
Sophocles research for group project.
Read Theater History chapter 2 (P.10-32) and 5 (P.105-139)
Read Worthing book p.11-22
and finally, read Duran p. 3-50

Other stuff, that I prolly won't have time for:
Laundry... omg laundry. Like 3 or 3 loads... Lots of towels... O.o
Dishes as usual
Get to Wally's and get groceries
Clean the refrigerator, as I'm wondering if that's where the gnats are coming from *grumbles*
Clean the bathroom and fix the toilet seat as it's really loose...
The ferre'ts laundry still needs to be done, but there has to be someone here to watch her while it's done.
Cleaning the rest of the kitchen, as the stove is nasty!
The trash will need to be taken out in2 or 3 days again...
Vaccuming the apartment.
and cooking dinner. 

-Sigh- I wonder how much of this I'll actually get help with without having to nag?  Off to get ready for work for a couple hours and then on to wally world!

~~Banjo the Overly Busy Bear~~

Heavens, it's been FOREVER and a day since I last posted! Simply too busy sometimes to keep up with positing here.

Lets see, what's happened recently... Hmm. We had a huge hail storm a while back, and my parents are having to get the roof fixed- guess the storm completely totaled it. Also gave moms car a good denting on the top, but left mine untouched but for a small ding on the very front that's hardly noticable. I came back over to my parent's house today so someone would be with the dog when they started fixing the roof, but a huge thunderstorms slated to come through at 2 PM, so they're putting it off till tommorrow. Guess it's better to wait then to replace the inside of the house as well, eh?

Besides that not a whole lot has been heppening. All my grades came back A's and B's so no worries there. In fact classes were relativle ty easy this last semester, but for the huge prompt book mockup due for Stage Management that was 2 weeks of absolute hell to prepare. My more artsy classes were simple, especially since I'm not the stupid type to college student who drinks, parties, or stays up till 4 in the morning when I know I won't be able to get up. Of ocurse the rest of the class rags on me because they are that type of student and it makes them look bad, but whatever. Can't help being responsible!

Still very much into WoW. Been raiding and such with our guild, and despite some guild drama, it's been super fun. Brunnstag's in class to full 10/25 man Naxx gear. Wish I could go more often, but I'm one of the solid DPS for our raids and we're slated to start 25 Ulduar this saturday! I even invested in the dual spec for him, even though he's a hunter. He's now MM/BM for his main spec and BM/MM for his off. the BM plus a bear makes it TONS easier to run lowbies through stuff and to farm for instance drop mounts! Oooooh! Did I mention I got to the 50+ moutn mark? I managed to get my Albino Drake because of it, and some of the other really awesome ones like the Cenarion War Hippogryph, Bronze Drake, Green Proto-Drake, and the Ice Mammoth, not to mention my Nether-Drakes! Woot! But anyway, it's nice to have a solid tanking pet as well as my dps wolf, and I definately feel that beast master is the spec to go with if you want to have the strongest tanking pet you can.

Anyhoo- it's started raining now. The roofing dude is just waiting to talk to dad. I'm prolly gonna stick around here and try to organize my desk and such. Try and make it to where it's not a pain in the ass to work on myscrapbook because I have to put everything aay and get all the stuff for it out...

~~Banjo~~

Well, back to class, really.

First day was yesterday- bought most of my books. Only 285$ so far, so not tooo bad. I was surprised and a little alarmed to find out that Scenographic Techniques is actually drafting- and 3 of the books for it are HUGE AutoCAD manuals... The bookstore didn't have one of them in, and the other book for the class besides the two manuals was one on hand drafting...

But so far this semester looks like it's going to be hellacious. My excitement at being back at class has dissolved into a looming fear that all my time will be spent either at class, on homework, or at work. I've only been to two classes and I've got 3 full chapters, two 20ish page assignments and a play to read. The play by Friday, everything else by Wednesday. And of course, I work close or late evening shifts Tuesday, wednsday and Thursday. This is gonna be bad...

EDIT: I decided to drop Creative Writing after I went to it today.  All of the classes I'm taking this semester are VERY time consuming, and I don't want to sacrafice my GPA by struggling to get work done because I ended up with a class I don't really need. Besides the fact, that for all the work, we're  not doing anything in there I care abaout. Much of the class is poetry, which I am neither good at, nor interested in writing myself(Although I love getting poems from a certain someone ;)... and when we do write stories, we're not to write them in a genre... so no fantasy, sci-fi, Historical fiction, romance... just... Literature. The uninteresting true to life stuff I don't read anyay and have no interest writing myself. So blah. I can take it later on when I have the chance and maybe try another professor...

In other news, Telain and I got a pet Ferret- she's named Sabriel, after the Garth Nix book character. She's adorable and great, but now I don't think I'm going to have any time to feel like playing with her at all. But yeah, so far she's been wonderful, and her vet visit was both cheap (YAY!) and a good checkup.

Brunnstag, my WoW character, is up to level 74 now. I'm really annoyed with the guild I'm in though. Not only can I not keep up with the others levels, seeing as they all have no lives what so ever and had most of them hit 80 by the end of the first week, but they've got all these restrictions on being invited to the raids and instances now. Pisses me off. I can see the need for the people to be able to finish the raid, and not make the group wipe- but having damn tryouts for spots in the Naxx raids where you have to able to carry a certain DPS in a certain room? Fucking lame. It's a team effort people, and some of us don't have the time to get all the perfect gear and make every macro PERFECT. What I'm saying is, it looks like, at least until they cool down about it, I won't be able to do SHIT with my guild until I'm completely in epics again. Which is a lot more like work to pug it, than fun....

Boop.

~~Banjo~~

Really wierd glitch came up a few weeks ago. I was running with one of Telain's lowbies to level her faster- and this happened. I looked perfectly normal on my screen, but on Telain's Bragi was HUGE (The size this tallstrider is before you tame one) and Brunnstag was still mounted... in a building.... weird.

After a few minutes of us snapping screenshots and running around with my giant pet, Telain's toon got far enough away from me it reloaded the graphic and was back to normal. Great pictures though!

I have two major pet peeves myself- people who tailgate me, and people who mess with the temperature on food I have cooking.

Twice last week, mom and then dad repeatedly turned the temperature down on my ramen. I cook ramen on the stove for twenty to thirty minutes; I LIKE it to be really well done and let the seasoning cook in for more flavor. But I come in, and they've turned the temperature down from a 'boil' to 'barely simmer' - TWICE- and instead of my ramen being done when it's supposed to be, I have to turn it back up and wait LONGER. I don't have time for that in the morning. Moms excuse is that things don't cook faster at a boil than a low simmer, and that having a larger fire won't heat things faster. WTF? Why do you thionk things boil start boiling harder when you turn the freaking fire up? You logic for god's sake. And yes, they will cook faster- That's why my food wasn't done when it was supposed to be, ause you messed with something that wasn't yours.

And people tailgating me- OMFG that pisses me off! Especially when I'm speeding. I just can't see putting my life in danger, your life in danger and everyone elses life in danger because you were too damn lazy to leave the house five minutes earlier. I'm sorry that your in a rush, but that doesn't mean you can risk an accident and get a special asshat driver pass.Besides, you don't want to tailgate me. I WILL go slower. And if you decide to race around me like a bat out of hell, I WILL speed up to annoy you. So back off and wait your damn turn!

So, anyone who reads this, what're your pet peeves?

Cross-posted from </a></font></b></a>customerssuck . I work at a movie rental/game store/ barnes and noble place, and this is what happened the day after Wrath of the Lich King released...

""So it's the 13th, the day that Wrath of the Lich king (New world of warcraft expansion) released; I'm an avid player, and had stood in line for an hour and a half in the frigid cold at midnight the night before to pick up my preordered copy of. But this afternoon, I'm stuck at work checking in movies insetad of slaying monsters. Darn! But you can imagine the rush of people to get the game if you know anything about it at all.

So a guy walks up to us (Me and my manager are working at the info counter) and says to my manager in a rather ambiguous way "Wrath of the lich king...?". Could hardly even tell whether this was a question or not. But my manager politely tells him that he's sorry but we're sold out. 

So the guy glares at us and announces in the rudest way I've yet heard "I KNOW. I just wanted to tell you that other stores have it, so I'm taking my business ELSE WHERE." *shakefist!* and storms out of the store in a rage.

Okay. WTF. For a few seconds afterwards we stare at the door then start laughing. Wow, I felt spited. And I hate to burst this guy's bubble, but no. Other stores in town DO NOT have a copy of the game. They are sold out as well. I know this because at least four other customers have told us this, and several of my friends are SOL on getting it too. Seriously, 7 million people are on that game right now, and you don't expect us to be sold out? You should gave preordered it buddy.

I can't feel too upset over his rudeness though; while he's out being an asshat to retailers who are only allowed to order so many 'free' copies next to the ones that are reserved, I'm at home exploring a new continent and riding on an armored brown bear with my preordered collectors edition. BOO-YAH! :)

~~Banjo~~""

But seriously, if you didn't preorder such a popular game, you really have no business getting upset that stores don't have it. Every single place that sold is offfered preorders on it, doesn't that clue you in that they're expecting to run out?

So one of my buddies is... meh. She drives me absolutely crazy sometimes. Her exact quote on her facebook right now is: ""(Person's Name) is wondering...if I died, would you still be too busy with college to even go to my own funeral?""

And seriously, this isn't like the first time this person's been like this. Everytime I turn around since I've met them, one week they're good, the next is "OMFG, EVERYONE HATES ME, I NEED TO GO ROLL UP AND DIE". I mean seriously, WTF? This person does have a horrendous home life, and I don't blame them for that. But this constant, bouncing depressive state is getting out of hand. I've suggested in the past that they go in and see the doctor about doing something about it. There's obviously somehting wrong. Normal people don't go all manic depressive all the time. The sad thing is, it's probably something that could be easily addressed with medication and counseling.

Now I don't know if her facebook status is addressed to me or not; frankly it's probably addressed to the whole world. A while back this person became convinced that a friend and I were 'avoiding them' and 'hated them and didn't like them anymore', when all we were doing is being swamped with homework. Once again, I had a talk with them and smoothed it over, but it's happening again. But I'd like to address this person's facebook status for my own piece of mind.

You know what? I'm sorry that we're all busy at college. College is time consuming, especially when you're holding a job as well. I'm sorry you cannot 'afford' to go to college. I promise you, it's not hard. With loans and state assistance it's very possible you'd be able to get a full ride. But YOU have to go out there and get it. No one's going to hand you anything. I've tried to show you this and offered to help, but you refuse to do anything about it. It's terrible that your not going to school with us and all, but we have to continue on with our lives whether you choose to come with us or not. I cannot afford to stop everything I'm doing to coddle you. If you want to see it as if we're avoiding you, that we hate you, etc, that's YOUR choice. You are blatanely avoiding the facts and not taking our feelings into account either. It hurts us that you would think that about us. It's silly and childish to act this way, and at a certain point of time you need to get a little more mature. No one says you have to 'grow up' but you have to act like an adult some time.  At a certain point in time, you've got to 'put on your big girl panties and deal with it'. Go out and make something of yourself- go get that loan, go to college, pick up a second job, get your drivers liscense, move out into an apartment, SOMETHING. But the world isn't going to wait on you.

~~Banjo~~

So for the last couple months I've been complaining about never getting to go instancing or raiding. It sucks being seventy but never doing anything! By the time I hit seventy, my guild had kinda stopped going on runs of Kara, where I needed to go to start gearing up... It's frustrating watching Telain's character beat the living crap out of things, whereas it takes me twice as long to do it! Annoying!

So on saturday, Malagain our guild leader whispered me to go on karazhan. Woot first time! Telain was the only other Hunter there and everyone else was well geared, so I would auto get most of the good hunter drops... I got some good loot, like RIDICULOUSLY good loot. I got The Worgen Claw Necklace, Emerald Ripper, The Decapitator, One epic helm (Unfortunately that replaced the Storm Helm we'd just farmed 32 primals for...) and then My T4 helm token. OMFG, that' a lot of crap. Unfortunately no bow drop, but meh.

So the next day, I went on an heroic Steam Vault run, my first heroic ever. The last boss dropped both the Beast Lord Mantle and the Beast Lord Leggings... Holy crap! And then that evening I tagged along on a Magtheridon raid- and won the T4 chest piece roll too! WOOT! So now I feel a bit better about my gear, and am kicking more crap out of things... Yay!

So Brunnstag's got him so good gear now, and I'm happy. I LOVE the new pet features. The fact that all the pet's are viable for combat now is great. I was finally able to get my Tallstrider without ruining my DPS. I've always loved them, but they were so obnoxious to have since they had no special abilities but dash and terrible armor and health.

So here's a little piccy of Brunnstag and his pet tallstrider Bragi!


And another of me screwing around in Blades Edge Mountains cause I'm a dork...



Yay dragony OmNoms!!

~~Banjo~~

Mom told me that I 'need to stop acting so resentful' of them going out to ride their stupid motorcyle. Resentful? of you going to ride? I'm not resentful of you all going off to ride your stupid bike.

I'm resentful of the fact that I had to take out 2 loans this year to pay for college and that it's probably going to put me in debt for 20 years once I graduate, whilst I see them go through a small sportsbike that was too small, a large sportsbike that was too dangerous, and a cruiser now, with all the bags and matching jackets and helemts for each. I'm resentful of the fact that dad has told me randomly for the last 2 months that Christmas will be 'tight' this year and that we won't 'be able to get each other much' when I've watched leather rivetted saddle bags, leather boots, helmets, windshields, ect, show up in boxes on the front porch every other day. I'm resentful of the fact that it's 'too expensive' to drive down to my grandparents house in Oklahoma City, but it's not too expensive to blow several hundred dollars on leather gear to ride in winter with.

And yeah, I'm pretty damn resentful that you bitch and moan all fucking summer that I don't spend enough time at the house with you guys, and when I make EVEN MORE of an effort to be with you, you spend every day riding your stupid, freaking bike.

So maybe I'm jsts being selfish or something, but yeah, I am a little resentful of getting left ot home to babysit our dog while you all go off and ride your wasteful, useless mototrsycle after complaining that I don't make enough of an effort to be with you two. I swear, if I hear another word about how my 30 bucks a month for world of Warcraft is 'too expensive' and a 'waste of time and money', I'm gonna get all up in someone's face about it. Hmph.

~~Banjo~~

Blargh- so the new patch that prepares the games for Wrath of the Lich King came out yesterday, but I've yet to get to play it... I tried to get it to install the patch, but hell, it wouldn't even show the launcher! (I've never had 'show launcher' checked anyway, but I've a right to see it when I want too!) So I took my laptop to Telain's apartment so he could mess with it; I'm not uber computer literate like he is, and he finds it to annoying to walk me through things on the phone or IM...

We tried to send the patch straight from his laptop to mine- but it wouldn't apply the patch. After dinkering with it, we decided to just remove all of the folders accept 'WTF' and something else, and then resend all the other files from his PC to mine. We've done a complete installation of the game this way, when I first got my trial account, as sending the files from one to another is a LOT faster than updating online for the most part. I had to leave for work before it was done, and left my PC at his house so he could dinker with it when he got back from class.

After all what he did afterwards (I guess there were corrupted files or something...) I get back from work five hours later. He's managed to get his running, barring a few server crashes on the game, and 'thinks' mine is working. Well, it goes to the new Wrath login screen (WHICH IS BITCHIN!) but won't ever get past authenticate. He fiddles with it a bit to fix that problem, and when we try it again it came back with a critical error. Disgusted, we decided to delete EVERYTHING, 'cept my screenshots (God, I loves mah screenshots!) and send it back over- but by then it was eight at night, and I didn't want to wait the 3ish hours to do that...

After all that I resigned myself to having to reinstall 'World of Warcraft' and 'The Burning Crusade' from my battle chest disks, then update the thing... Right now it's running the first update, patch2.4.0, or has been for the last 40 minutes. it's at 39% and has been estimating around 30 minutes to finish... and apparently the 3.0 patch is freaking HUGE. Hopefully this is one of the last patches I have to run before the new one, but I can't remember what patch it was last... O.o

And all I wanted to do was get my dwarf a hair cut... :(

~~Banjo~~

Oiy. So my cousin's fiancee, Ryan, went out to ride their motorcycles a few days ago. As they were going through an intersection, Ryan's bike did something that made him lose control of it, and he laid it over in the middle of the intersection. Another rider, not his friend, hit Ryan's bike, flipped his own and was killed.

Normally this would be a simple, if tragic, accident. But Ryan doesn't have his motorcycle endorsment. x.X He could be charged with manslaughter. Oiy.

Not his fault or anything, but seriously. Endorsments aren't hard to get, and they don't cost a lot. Plus, it's the freakin' law to have one. Should have had one.

So get your motorcycle endorsements kiddies, or you could have an accident and cause someone else to kill themselves, and then be charged with manslaughter.

What a week...

Other than that, life's good. Telain and I's anniversary's soon- can't wait!

~~Banjo~~

OMGOMGOMG! DING 70!!!

~~Banjo~~

Cross posted from

customerssuck, which Streak the Tiger mentioned....

Seriously, I thought humans were supposed to be 'better' than animals?

First off, do I look like a dog to you? Fur and a waggy tail? No..? Then why do you expect to me to fetch? Quit tossing your stuff at me onto the counter like a moron- it's demeaning and rude, and of course MY fault when it falls onto the floor. And chances are, I may just toss it back at you.

Don't switch your form of payment mid transaction and then get pissed when you have to wait for the computer to get out of the credit card screen and back to the cash screen. I have to change that when your about to swipe your card- deal with it. Getting smarmy with me won't make the machine go any faster.

 This is a five dollar item, and you want to pay for it with a 100 dollar bill..? WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU?! I start with fives and ones in my till, and with that and the coin it only reaches a hundred dollars. Don't get pissed at me when I have to security marker it, then wait for a manager to come make change for you. Go to your damn bank and have them change it out for you there- you won't even have to buy this shitty thing you really don't want.

Furthermore, don't come in and try to pay with all coins- or rolls of coins for that matter. I STILL have to count them to make sure there's enough. No I don't care if you just bought that roll; maybe you should have bought a freaking BILL instead.... Yes mam, I understand you just counted out ten dollars to me in dimes and nickels, but I still have to count to make sure theres not a mistake or I could get fired. SHUT THE FUCK UP.

Yes, the movies you just rented are 60 dollars. Why is it sixty dollars for a three dollar movie..? Because you're and ass hole, and can't be trusted to turn them in on time. You get a fucking WEEK to watch these and drive by and drop them in a box; you don't even have to get out of your CAR. Oh, I'm sorry, you want to make a partial payment? Oops, I didn't realized you were a half assed moron, intent on driving up the cost of everything for everyone else. Maybe you should just be fucking glad you are still allowed to rent movies, you ass hole.

Just because I'm a cashier doesn't mean that I am the master of all things register. Sometimes I need help to do something. Maybe if you didnb't ask me to do something that SOUNDS like a manager needs to do it, you wouldn't need to hold up the entire line? Also, why are you asking me about the up and coming releases in books, movies, and video games? No, I have no fucking idea when the next spiderman comic is coming out. Ask someone in the comic department or look it up ONLINE you idiot!

GET OFF YOUR FUCKING PHONE. Seriously, do you talk on your phone in front of other people like that? Is it so hard to say "Hey, gimme a sec here to check out."? Also, why are you mad at me because you can't hear what I'm saying? And don't give me a half assed argument about the cost of something while trying to talk to your friend. You look like an idiot trying to have an argument with me, and a funny conversation with your buddy. PUT THE PHONE DOWN, SHUT THE FUCK UP, AND PAY.

WHY are you coming in toe RENT A MOVIE without your freaking MOVIE RENTAL CARD? You don't drive without your liscense. You don't leave the country without your passport. Yes, I would love to infuriate the next thirty customers while trying to look you up in the computer. No sir, I'm sure they don't mind that your holding up the entire line while we try and figure out which nickname of which family member is on the account.

Your infant child is SCREAMING FOR A REASON. Babies that young (And why are you even bringiong an infant child out and about? GO HOME.) don't just cry like that. They need something- Go home and practice being a parent. And don't let your little rat child slobber all over the DVD case I have to take apart to get your movie out. You may not have a problem with your kids spit, but everyone else does. And I'm practically chained to the register, no I can't go wash my hands. By the by, why are you letting your child put something in his mouth you have ni diea who or what's touched it? And PLEASE, don't waste my time so you can let your brat pay for you. This is neither an educational moment, nor a cute "Look at what little Billy's doing" moment. This is an annoy the hell out of EVERYONE moment. Like I want to wait for your little kid to get all the bills in order, drop allt he coins and run around like a confused gerbil picking them up. And neither do the people behind you in line.

Yes man, I'm afraid a manager has to do that for you. Well no, I don't have the authorization for it. Yes, but a manager still has to do it. Asking the same question multiple times will not magically change the answer. If a manager has to do, then I'm sorry, a manager has to do it. I cannot give you a break, nor can I bend the rules just for you. You are a little useless blip on my radar, and as soon as your gone I completely forget about you. Hence, you mean nothing to me. So no, I'm not going to risk my job for you- and yes, a manager still has to do it!

And lastly, who the HELL do you think you are? Do you think I like standing here for five hours, on aching legs and feet, trying to run a cash register and please all my customers? Does it look like I enjoy the endless counting, random questions and angry outbursts? Do you really believe that I get up everyday thinking "Hey, the next eight hours of endless confusion, counting, questions and constant fear of being fired for a simple mistake, are just going to be GREAT today!"? I bend over backwards for you; or I would were I not trapped in this tiny box. I do everything in my power EVERY DAY, to make sure you have a wonderful experience in a store that believe it or not, I'm proud of. I try to make things go smooothly for you, and all I ask is that you bear with me when things don't. Is a little common curtesy so difficult? We're all there for YOU. The least you could do is be there for us.

~~Banjo~~

 

So yeah- this is the first week of school! My first day back was great, and I've been looking forward to getting to see everyone and have something somehwta intellectual to do all the time. And theater! God, I've missed th the theater. I only have one class on Mondays, so things went really smoothley- although it's annoying going there for an hours worth of class and then having to drive home again... I have the strangest schedule. I either get out really early in the day (Usually by noon or one) or I'm here until 5... Today I have a three hour break in between my first and last class.

Went out with Buffy, Telain and Buffy's boyfriend David to Qdoba for lunch on Monday. It was great- the Q is a personal tradition for Buffy and I and most of the theater department; it and subway are right across the street from the theater, so we're always over there during show times.

After that Telain and I headed to my house for World of Warcraft and such.Later that evening we got the bad news- my grandfather was diagnosed with Prostate cancer. O.O;;; I'm really really upset and worried. It's treatable; whatever scale they use to rate it one, a 1-7 means it can be treated, but any higher and the prognosis is much more grim. He's a six. But my main concern is his depression. He just 'retired', and just before that, his best friend died of stomach cancer. Like terrible, painful, lingering cancer. So he's been facing the boredom of having nothing to do all day, on top of worrying about his health- turns out he's been terrified of getting cancer and dying and leaving my grandmother all alone. -_-;; But anyway, the doctor sent him home with two or three huge books to read over and see what he wants to do... He'll be fine, I know he will, but it still worries me. I've seen what chemo does to people, one of my favorite friends and teacher's had cancer. The chemo wiped him out...

But yeah... so school work and stuff. Fun times!

~~Banjo~~

I've said it before and I'll stick to it; Dell does have great customer service. Everytime we've ever dealt with them, they've bent over backwards to help, and this time was no different! My new computer arrived today, in 2 days since being shipped! I'm so pleased we could get this settled quickly, and hopefully nothing weird happens to this one. 

 I did manage to get the other laptop booted and all my files moved to Telain's external harddrive... where they will remain copied until I'm posiive that this one will run fine. I was really upset to learn that all the pictures and such I'd saved and scanned would be lost. I can probably find them all again on the internet, but that's a lot of time wasted on my part. Now all that's left is to send the corrupted laptop back.

Spent the last 3 hours getting things updated on the new one; I found an NVIDIA graphics driver update on dell that came out a month ago and installed it. It said it fix's an odd error on Inspiron 1720's that causes the display to go black and then show an error massage- which sounds similar to some of the problem I was having on the other. With luck it's fixed. as to why the other was mysteriously crashing, I still don't know what the problem was. Telain and I were thinking at the time it might have been the Bios or the hardrive got corrupted, but I guess it could be anything... Thank god that's done with!

Things are going well otherwise. Getting ready to start classes again at OSU- I'm so ready to be having something intellectually challenging to focus on. I really don't mind school at all, I just hate it when our classes are reduced to $500 of busy work. Gotta get my loans settled out this next week so I can afford to go... We've paid the first year and semester out of pocket, but we just can't afford it anymore... O.o

~~Banjo~~

PS. Hooray for sudden endings!

So I got my new laptop last wednsday- It came right before I had to leave for work, so I didn't really get the chance to mess with it. But that evening Telain and I set it up, and it ran beautifully! World of Warcraft looks amazing on, and I bought it so I'd be able to run Wrath of the Lick King when it's released (My other laptop, which my father now owns, barely handled Shattrath at the worst possible graphics settings...) On Thursday I installed Zoo Tycoon 2, and Age of Empires III, and then spent the whole day playing Zoo Tycoon with no problems at all.

Friday morning it happened- I turned it on, got on Zoo Tycoon, played for all of ten seconds; Suddenly the game did some horrible lagging thing complete with repeating sound effects, went to a blue screen (Windows has encountered an error and was closed to prevent damage to your computer) Then restarted itself. WTF! But it seemed to boot fine, and I was able to login- or at least I thought I was, until it refused to load past the 'welcome' screen. After that, for the next half hour at least, you'd turn the power on, all the little lights would come on, you could hear things going, then everything but the power light would go off and the screen would remain black. O.M.F.G. This computer's less than a week old and I've already killed it?

We eventually got it to come back on, and everything seemed normal. Just thought it was normal 'brand new computer gettings ettled with lots  of new programs on it stuff'. I was wary of Zoo Tycoon, so I played WoW for a while and it ran fine. Took it over to Telain's (We had D&D that night) started up Zoo Tycoon and it crashes again, blue screen and all. But it won't come on again.

After a good 3  hours of fiddling and messing with it, and chatting to Dell, it comes on, but by then we had to go. The next day it booted fine and seemed normal. But WoW would freeze the whole thing, no ctrl-alt-delete allowed. 

Yesterday we decided to update the graphics drivers- I don't know why the drivers were'nt at the highest update available on a BRAND NEW computer, but whatever. We finally got the drivers fixed, and amazingly, WoW ran like a dream again! I was so excited! We had fixed it! I packed it up and took it over to Telain's again so we could make sure everything else was up to date, then play WoW all evening. But lo-and-behold, I get to his house, push the power button, black screeen of death. *SIGH*

We finally get on the Dell  live chat thing again-It's very telling that the first thing he said to us when we described the problem was (And I QUOTE) "Oh my.... I'm surprised your willing to troubleshoot this...". Oh shit. He actually had us wait while we found out what to do, which was to mail me another PC, and then send mine back in the same box. I guess it's so bad, and could be any number of things, it's better to just get another instead.

So I'm now WoW-less and Laptop-less for the time being. Sposed to be here in 3 to 5 days, so pretty darned quick, but still. I don't get why it would run fine for 2 days, then all of a sudden die on me. And I hate not undertsanding exactly what's wrong with it. I'm not tech savvy enough to know what could be wrong with it, so I have ni chance of figuring it out on my own anyway. Heaven forbid something weird goes on with the new one too!

~~Banjo~~

Woot- things have been going a bit better here with only a couple of rough spots here and there. But that's life, and to be expected!

Have finally gotten a job! I'm starting out as a chashier at Hastings (It's kinda like a small Barnes and Noble; not everywhere has them) I go in for training sometime this week... Plus, my manager mentioned on several occasions that he'll get me moved to books once I get my training at the cash register and become confident at it, so I'm hoping and hoping that this place'll finally be the good work experience I've needed since the library... And the best part is, once a week I can pick a book off the shelves we have more than one copy of, get a manager to sign off on it, tear the cover off, and take it home to read. Hooray!

I'm also getting a new laptop! With the new World of Warcraft expansion coming, and my computer barely able to run it as it is at the lowest graphics settings, I figured it'd be best to invest. I'd originally intended to save for it, but Dad got wind I wanted one and struck me a deal. He'd buy my old one for $500, and then I'd simply pay off the rest at least $50 a month to him, and I get my new laptop now. Plus I got a better PC for much cheaper. For those of you who are tech savvy and want to know what I'm getting, I can snag the specs for you and post them- I only have a half clue of what it all means myself!

We're also getting close to he end of out D&D campaign. my parents are urgung me to stop now- they 'miss me' and want me to spend more time at home. But I just don't want to. I mean, I like to spend time with them, but it inevitably ends up with us just watching tv in semi silence. I just don't enjoy doing that. I like to play WoW and talk and dink around on the pc and such. Mom complains that that used to be what we always did, but it's not enough for me anymore. I don't like sitting around like that being bored; it makes me depressed... So my parents and I have been at odds a lot recently. I don't really know what to do about it- I want to be on good terms with them, but I don't like sitting around here either. Meh.

So that's life. Mostly filled with WoW. Brunnstag, my main on Garona, is exalted with all the Alliance peeps- I have all the epic mounts set to a random mount macro. Takes up a lot of space to carry them all, but it's far more fun to randomly be riding a new mount everytime.

~~Banjo~~

So the last few days have been kinda bad...

First off though, Saturday was pretty good-Telain got a bunch of pictures in his suit, a Furmeet at IHOP (Although we were only there half an hour) and then D&D afterwards. Great game although I got completly smashed. For some reason I thought I'd be fine drinking an entire bottle of honey wine in an hour, Had I been drinking like I normally drink (Mixed drinks with lots of tastey snacks) I'd have been fine; but straight alcohol isn't something I'm used too. The game ended up breaking up a bit early as Telain and I needed to get home and everyone had a rough day.

I was rather hungover the next day- felt like crap. I discussed with Telain about RCFM though, and we decided (Or rather "I was the voice of monetary reason" as he put it) that we simply didn't have the money to go and putting it on a credit card right now wasn't a good plan. So no con for us right now. With both our jobs falling through and such we simply can't afford it. He emailed the con staff though and they refunded our registartion payments, which was a lot more than I'd expected! So we're not out the money we put down to go, just the experience. Oh well.

Then on Monday I started to feel pretty crappy again. I discovered I'm actually rather sick, and probably have been for a few months; I'll spare you all the details of exactly what it is. Yesterday I went to the doctors and got antibiotics for it though. She also gave me a three month prescription for the anti-depressant Zoloft. I've been depressed since I went to Florida and it hasn't gone away since I got back. She says we'll run me on that and then wean me off of it to see how I do. Whee!

So that's been my last four days- good than total crap.Not to mention my Warcraft subscription runs out on the 25th. *Sigh*

~~Banjo~~

Heyhoo- I made myself a new blog just for arts. You can find it over at  http://banjosscratchpad.blogspot.com/ . I've got a picture of my con badge in progress up on thee. Seeing something that looks more like a conbadge is really encouraging to me; I really think I will open for commisions!

~~Banjo~~