The Weather

The weather in Baltimore is starting to get pretty awful...

Graduate School

Is ridiculous. Discuss.

Finals

Are awful...

The final countdown? Great.

Watchmen Poster

Found this poster, been writing about Watchmen a lot over at Your Comic Relief. Not one, but two posts in the past two days. The first post is what I found positive about it, and the second is what others found to be negative about it. I am particularly proud of the second post, and I think you should check it out. Possibly another one tomorrow with some art/pictures, and then a fourth in the future maybe there or here about the Watchmen game for the 360.

Return of the Blog

I know everyone always says "Don't write posts about not having posted in a while." Well f that, I'm going to do what I want. I've been ridiculously busy these past months. Applying to graduate school, accepting to graduate school (!), coaching two teams to the state championships, and having one win, planning a trip to Las Vegas, having a birthday, working a crappy job, quitting that job today. All in all, I've had my hands more than full. I would like to talk about a few of these subjects, possibly over the course of a few posts. Applying to graduate school was not a last minute decision, but a last minute action. I got most of my applications out just before the last deadline (of February 1st), and waited. First (and so far only) to respond was University of Maryland, Baltimore, which was the top school that I applied to by the numbers. I went, interviewed, and was accepted one week later. Probably much less stressful than many other people's application processes.

Let me tell you about some of the other schools I applied to however. University of Delaware has requested my personal statement three times, my application fee, my transcript, and a recommendation a second. As I'm sure you can guess, they've been taken off my list. I applied to Seton Hall just in case I got in nowhere else (no offense to Seton Hall as a school, I love the Pirates, but their graduate chemistry program is a little small). UMass spurned me from the beginning, and Case Western is being slow. All in all, I got in my top choice school! Sweet. That's about it for now, I have much to talk about over the next few days of semi-unemployment.

Happy Thanksgiving

I would like to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving. Your Comic Relief has a comic related thanksgiving post up. I'm going to be taking the rest of the day off after writing that though. Tomorrow though I plan to take on Darren Rowse, the problogger himself, so make sure to check back.

Thoughts On Blogging

Blogging is something I that enjoy quite a bit. I don't make money from it, nor do I intend to; I know those Adsense banners are up there, but they function as more of a real-time google analytics for me rather than a functional money source. I run three blogs currently, although I have tried getting into a number of topics. Right now I run Your Comic Relief and Online Fencing Coach in addition to this one. In the past I have had a haphazard approcach to updating, a few here, a few there, nothing really regular. This one has been the least regular of all, and I simply put stuff up here when it strikes me, although I have resolved to update this more as well. I read several blogs about blogging, the most prominant of them being Problogger.
In the past I have had an inconsistant update schedule because of college etc, I'd get swamped, and get behind on updating or reading comics (the source material for Your Comic Relief), and then abandon the whole idea alltogether for some period of time before picking it up again. However, now with a job I'm starting to update with a greater frequency, although, as I work two jobs, one at a flower shop, and the other coaching fencing (and I'm going to start volunteer coaching at a high school in the near future as well), I generally get home around 10:30, write some posts, and then crash. The message here is that, while I have a less variability from day to day, I also seem to have more work every day, and blogging has become something of a release. Generally during the day I end up communicating to the outside world via Twitter. I've had that floating around in my head today, and it feels good to get it down on 'paper.' Hopefully I won't get too burned out with the blogging anytime soon.

Stuff about YouTube

My brother showed me this today, pretty funny stuff. By the way, what's up with this YouTube Live thing? Does anyone really understand what the heck it is?

Really Weird Dream I Had

So I woke up today, and for some reason I was incredibly paranoid that every time my cell phone alarm went off that I had lost Two Hundred Dollars so whatever it was going to. I don't even remember. It was incredibly bizarre, but I was seriously concerned about this.

Studying for the GRE's

I'm taking a GRE class, which I payed out the ass for. But I need to learn words. I'm ok at the math, I just make idiot mistakes. So I'm thinking I should make a list of words to learn each week or something, the guy says to learn 5 a day, I feel like that's preposterous, and I've tried to learn lots of words, know them for a while, and then forget them, like canard. I forgot that the other day, but I did know it a month ago. (GRE studying has been a long process). That's my thought for the night, I should get some sleep though work in the morning. Have to talk about that later too.

Nifty Phobia (Fear) website

Surfing the internet yesterday while watching Discovery Channel - I heard some phobia name I had not heard before. Me being me, I looked it up, and found a whole site devoted to cool phobia names. Check it out: http://phobialist.com/

Being a True Sports Fan

This applies not so much today, as the New York Mets won last night, and did it in style, but yesterday I was wearing my favourite Mets hat, and someone said to me something along the lines of "You're wearing a Mets hat? Did you not see the game last night." Indeed I had seen that game, and I knew exactly how disappointing it had been. However, I am not a fair weather fan and I am going to support my team no matter how well, or poorly, they happen to be doing. Let's take a step back here, I'm a Mets fan. We're used to losing, or atleast, those of us who have been fans for more than a few years are. We remember how to watch a baseball game, and appreciate the moments of glory that you get, not just remembering the final score. We can manage to find it in ourselves to support our team not just in the good times, but also in the bad. Yes, the game on monday was a verified disaster, and the fact that their pitcher got a grand slam was just awful, but if they hadn't scored the other 5 runs, that wouldn't have mattered.

Hopefully, we can get Shoenweis to pull his head out of wherever it is stuck, and if Maine is well enough to pitch in the post season (here's hoping), we should end up doing pretty well. I say this because Wright is on a hot streak, Santana seems to be overcoming whatever issues he had, and Delgado is doing pretty well also, making up for his poor performance in the beginning of this season. One player was quoted as saying "If we win the rest of our games ... the Brewers can win all of theirs and it still doesn't matter." That's the kind of optimistic attitude we need from our players, and our fans. Unlike Yankee fans, we don't desert at the first sign of terbulance, Mets fans stick it through to the end.

We had a big win yesterday, and I think that the Mets can pull this off. This doesn't make up for last season's debacle, I'm not sure what could, but it shows they the team has moved on, and are willing to take it one game at a time. While that sounds cliche, it is incredibly important.

6am...

It's far too early. I really have no interest in being up quite this early. It's also really really cold out. I'm kind of exhausted. I have to drive my brother to school though, why he can't take the bus like I did is beyond me.

Walking the Dog

So, in my unemployment, I've taken up doing odd jobs. Currently I find myself as a nanny replacement until the neighbors find a new one. It's a fairly stress free job, I walk the dog at 10-11, and again at 1-2, run errands (dry cleaning, grocery shopping), and pick kids up from school. Now, the dog next door is a pretty relaxed dog, maybe like a schnouzer/poodle or something, I'm not quite sure, but it's pretty mellow. It doesn't chase or bark at other dogs, it doesn't try and dig holes, it doesn't try and escape during walks, etc... I mean, it will go after a squirrel, but only if it's within like 5 yards or so. However, today, when I was walking him, we passed a mail truck (mail car? we passed the postman at any rate), and this dog went as close to berserk I've ever seen it. It struck me, all those times I watched cartoons and the dogs went after the mailmen, I just figured it was a dog-stereotype. Maybe there's some truth to it.

Most Awesome Tattoo

So, I like tattoos, I think they're pretty cool, I have one myself actually, but this one that I found is just awesome, and really exemplifies all that is geek-dom with the black lotus and D20.

Ebay Week Day Two - Comic Lots: Buying in Bulk Supplemental

Welcome to the supplemental, hosted right here at Life of a Welshman. Today's topic is lots, both random and specific.

Superman, run from 440-452
Bid - $9.99, Shipping to the US - $6.49
Lot of 100 Random Comics (Different from the link in the main post)
Bid - $41.00, Shipping to the US - $10.33
26 Random Comic Books
Bid - $19.50, Shipping to the US - $6.13
17 Specific Issues of Flash Comics
Bid - #3.00, Shipping to the US - $3.11

Those are a few examples I came up with myself quickly, experiment and find some yourself!

Ebay Week Day One Supplemental

Here's some examples of great single issue finds that I sought out for you as a supplemental to Ebay Week Day One:

The Mighty Thor Vol. 1, #298
Bid - $0.01, Shipping to US $3.50

The Mighty Thor Vol. 1 #2
Bid - $17.48, Shipping to US $6.00

Superman #331
Bid - $0.99, Shipping to US $5.00

Goofy Comics #26
Bid - $7.45, Shipping to US $5.00

These are just a few examples of what you could find yourself when you look, make sure to use as many options as you can to narrow your search if you're looking for a particular genre/issue/pricerange.

Eve Online, and Star Wars

Well, it seems my love of Star Wars has translated, into Eve Online... An MMORPG game, and quite frankly, I probably don't need to pick up a new MMO, WoW ate my life for a while, and I don't really want to repeat that. But as luck would have it, they have a free trial, for which I have 10 days left. I feel a little jipped because a day of that free trial was taken up by expansion addition, but the expansions are free, and the world is mind bogglingly vast. Plus, it reminds me of Star Wars, and to me, that is priceless. I'm some sort of Caldari guy, and I'm splitting my time between killing pirates and mining, generally doing missions however. It's pretty fun, and I really like how I can read or write/work/study GRE's while mining. Hence why I split my time, I can mine in high security sectors while I get my work done, I've even done some lifting while mining. I also like how it will train your skill even if you are offline, although, I can see how later in the game, getting one more level on a skill could take like 20+ days and be really annoying. But hold on a second, my spellcheck doesn't know offline (or spellcheck for that matter), come on, this is the 21st century!
Speaking of Star Wars, I'm reading the final book of the Heir to the Empire series, and let me tell you, it is pretty damn amazing. There is a lot of stigma focused towards science fiction writers, even though they are the peak of the Geek Hierarchy, especially Star Wars authors or the like because their source material is not genuinely their own. Then again, who's is their own today, Star Wars was just a retelling of another story, which was a retelling of another story before it, just with extra flair. Some Star Wars etc. authors deserve this criticism as well, they really are poor authors, as far as published authors go anyway, but Timothy Zahn is pretty good. Look for a review or more in depth thoughts soon as I come to the close of the book. Also, be sure to check out Ebay Week over at Your Comic Relief!

Thoughts on the latest Indiana Jones film

Finally got to go see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull last night. All in all a pretty damn good movie, a good plot and a decent length (124 minutes). It was a good fun movie, with all the classic Indiana Jones stuntwork (note that I never saw ANY Indiana Jones movies until less than 6 months ago) and shenanigans. It was however, far less plausible than the previous three movies, which, in some cases does not say much. However, as a man of science (not scientology!) I am much more willing to suspend my disbelieve magic and aliens in a movie far more easily than I am to believe that Indy survives a nuclear bomb in a fridge, regardless of if the fridge was made of lead or not, the remains of Trinity, the first nuclear test was complete destruction. Following up with that, the fridge was blasted into the air and hit the ground, no, no, no that could never happen, and if it did, he'd never survive it. They also clean the radiation off of him with soap or something, but the radiation emitted from a nuclear blast is equivalent to several lifetimes of x-rays and the hemapoietic cells in his bone marrow (the ones that produce white blood cells) would be shot. But, I am nitpicking. The movie was excellent, Harrison Ford can still play Indiana Jones very well. There was even a "I have a bad feeling about this" line, which as a colossal Star Wars fan was a big deal to me. Also, as a fencer, the sword fight on two cars blew me away, it was expertly choreographed as well as well executed, alone with the side commentary. There is a spoiler concerning one of the characters, but honestly, I was negatively surprised by this and pretty much saw it coming the minute s/he became a main character. All in all, if you have not seen it yet, I would highly recommend it, each character plays their role well.

I'm also trying to get my recent trip to the Mets online (Johan Santana's 100th win!), but it just doesn't seem to want to get up there. The problem is that I have the pictures on one computer, which doesn't seem to have Microsoft office for some reason, and it doesn't want to put those pictures on the internet, nor can really email them at the resolution they are at. Confounding my problem is that the computer only has one USB slot (wtf Sony), and that is being used by the mouse; hopefully I can use my love of keyboard shortcuts to work this out. As always, thanks for reading.

So I graduated

Wow, I made it. Granted that was a few weeks ago at this point, but it feels like months. I tried writing this up before, but it just didn't feel right, so I will try it again. I've been just sitting around since graduation, I tutored a little bit, ran some errands, but other than that, I've not done much. Well, I did go to the mets game the other day, but a post on that is coming as soon as I get the pictures sorted out. I have been playing a stunning amount of xbox 360, and have been enamored with first person shooters recently, specifically Team Fortress 2 on the Orange Box. I've even been slacking on my posting over at Your Comic Relief, which is no good because I really need to keep up with that. The problem there is that I have not had the chance to catch up with my comics recently, and I have well over 200 comic books to get through, and these distractions, such as studying for the GRE's doesn't really help at all. I say that as if I have been studying consistently, the closest I have gotten is that I've started reading daily to help prep myself for the literary comprehension section, I need to get on this, making flashcards etc... but I just can't seem to find the motivation. Know what I mean?