| Best internet game ever |
[Jun. 14th, 2008|03:23 pm] |
I found this game on a forum and I think its fun heres rules.
Make your own indy album cover
1. The name of the band
Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of the band.
2. The name of the album
Go to Random quotations: http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3 The last four to six words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your album. - If you want to do this again, hit refresh to generate new quotes, because clicking the quotes link again will just give you the same quotes again.
3. The cover image
Go to flickr's "explore the last seven days" http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/ Third picture will be your album cover.
Put it all together, that's your album.
heres my favorite outcomes from doing this
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 3rd, 2008|10:27 pm] |
A game i got from Angels journal:
Copy and paste to your own journal, erase my answers, and add your own. Use the 1st letter of your name to answer each of the following questions. They have to be real places, names &/or objects, but nothing made up! Try to use different answers if the person you got this from has the same 1st initial. You CAN'T use your name for the boy/girl name question. And Have Fun With It!!!
1) 4 LETTER WORD: Pelt
2) BOY NAME: Peter
3) GIRL NAME: Pamela
4) OCCUPATION: Pyrotechnic
5) A COLOUR: Periwinkle
6) SOMETHING YOU WEAR: Pants
7) BEVERAGE: Peach Schnapps
8) FOOD: Potatoes
9) SOMETHING FOUND IN A BATHROOM: Piss
10) A PLACE: Palm Springs
11) REASON FOR BEING LATE: Passed out
12) SOMETHING YOU SHOUT: Pandas! (If i were to see some unexpectedly) |
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| Formala Hybrid 2008 |
[May. 9th, 2008|12:59 pm] |
As some of you might know, for the past 2 months I've been devoting almost all my time to the hybrid racer team, and for the past 5 days I've been on a trip to new Hampshire to take it to compete. Having started only 6 weeks before competition where most teams start almost a year before, or even skip a year of competition and start 2 years before, we had our work cut out for us.
We ended up spending several nights without sleep working in the basement of boughten hall, Michelle showed up the night before the trip out with snacks and Gatorade for the team. We still didn't have the racer done when it was time to leave for the trip, but we loaded it up anyway and, Andrew, Saleem, Ali, Justin, Josh and I took off, Ali and our adviser Terry were in the truck pulling the trailer with our racer and tools, and the rest of us were in Andrews CRV. Justin drove as he was the only one who had slept in the past 24 hours, and the other two fell asleep.
It was an interesting trip, we saw DC and NYC from the car. It got expensive as gas in the north east is over $4 now in some places, and the toll roads were up to $12.50 a stop in some places.
We arrived at 4am and the raceway was already closed, some of the guys slept in cars and one or two had hotel rooms, Justin and I each had brought a tent and we set them up in the parking lot between the side fence and the trailer so no one would accidentally run us over in the dark and fog. The temperature dropped rapidly during the night and it was very cold by the time Andrew woke me up at 7.
We registered ourselves and went in to our assigned garage and unloaded the racer, we immediately got to work. The wiring was only about half done at this point, and the nose needed modification. The batteries were not fully covered and the chain guard had to be installed, also the body needed the sharp edges where the sheet aluminum had been cut to be lined with rubber tube. That night most of us were up all night again working on the wiring and throttle control. It turned out that the nose needed round sides with padding and all the wires needed to be wrapped in conduit. I was able to modify the nose in a few hours but the conduit was a massive undertaking as the wiring had been rushed and was not well organized.
Also we had the issue of a missing CV joint, this is the part that allows the drive shaft to turn the wheel while still being able to pivot up and down when the shocks move. without one we couldn't possibly drive. Andrew found out that IIT, the Illinois institute of technology had a spline that could fit the differential side of our CV joint, and in their hunt for a complete CV joint at scrap yards, they had found a CV with a bearing that could for the axle end. I talked to the people at IIT and they were kind enough to let us have the spline. So now what we needed was a machine and welding shop where i could do the work of taking the two parts and making them the part we needed. I found out that one of the officials was the owner of a racing shop near by and he was willing to take me there to work on the part. The parts we were working with were made out of highly tempered high carbon steel, and with the torque they would be subjected to they would have to be very tough, and meticulously true and well centered. after using an abrasion saw to cut off the ends of both parts, I disassembled the CV bearing carefully and cleaned out all the grease so it wouldn't burn up during the machining and welding. With the shop owners guidance I carefully machined the spline to have a plug end that would fit into a plug on the bearing that I drilled out. I cut the spline a hair too thin and though it could barely move we needed this to be almost perfect, so a thin strip of .002 shim was wrapped around it to hold it tightly in place, then I preheated the part with a torch to 500 degrees so that no warping would occur during welding, put in a fine root pass and a wash pass for strength, let it air cool, reassembled the bearing and brought it back.
The others had the wiring nearly done when I returned and Ali and I stayed up till 4 getting it finished except for the final cable for one motor since we wanted to test one motor at a time, since if they were out of sync they could cause some damage. That night, thinking that it was warm enough I tried sleeping in a bag in the truck outside, but while i slept it got colder and dew settled on me, and i woke up freezing cold, but I got back into the shop and warmed up in a chair in there, and took a hot shower the next morning.
It was now the day of the competition and we still had some setup to do. The work on the motors went well and they were ready to run, at this point we had missed 2 of 3 main events, only the endurance race remained and it was starting in 2 and a half hours. the electrical inspection took some time, not all of the conduit was secure and we had to have them come back, then we took it to mechanical, the seatbelt needed some modification to the bolts and we each had to sprint back to the garage and get something at least once during the inspection but we passed, at this point only 5 minutes remained until the end of the event.
We still had to do the break test, where the car must get up to speed then lock the breaks and leave skid marks from all four wheels to prove they locked up, the first time the car took off slowly and wobbled as it stopped, this was the first time it had driven under its own power, five minutes left. Then we topped off the break fluid, pumped the breaks and tried again, this time with both motors switched on, the car took off rapidly, but still twisted as it stopped, one tire was not locking up and the judge shook his head again, 3 minutes left. This time we bled the breaks for air and ran it, knowing that if it didn't work we would be absolutely out of time. The car took off nicely, and just after passing the line, skidded straight to a stop leaving smoke from the times, the judge gave a thumbs up and nodded, and the inspector radioed the track "NC state has passed inspection and were going to let them run" we only got in one lap before endurance was over. But we got the car inspected and passed and we didn't have to go home without ever running it, the other teams who had seen us work non stop and helped us with some of the parts we were missing applauded as we brought the racer back to the garage. Some teams hadn't run at all, some needed no modification at all and passed inspection on the first day. But even though we didn't get many points at all, we will know what we are facing next year, and this time we have a year to raise funds, recruit members, make a solid plan, do testing, build a solid car, and compete for real. [Update with pictures of the racer soon] |
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| michelles taking her test |
[Feb. 23rd, 2008|11:32 am] |
| [ | feelin' |
| |  optimistic | ] |
I hope it goes well, I'm not sure how good her chances are because I'm not really sure how hard a test it is, but she seemed really well prepared, I'm impressed that she was able to memorize that many formulas. Really I'm more worried about how upset she'll be if she fails than anything, because I know if she doesn't pass, that with a few more months of studying she will pass, but she's going to be really hard on her self if she doesn't even though this is a test that statistics grad students often fail. I'm not doing much at the moment, i should probably be starting on homework for next week, but since i worked all day and till at least midnight on homework every day this week I feel like a break, but for the same reason I should get a head start, we all know this dilemma, i need not go into it. I guess some reading wouldn't be too bad, it's not as if I have anything to do anyway. |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 18th, 2008|05:29 pm] |
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I'm doing worse than some people but better than others. This whole engineering thing is right at the limit of what i can handle. I've seen a lot of people who don't seem to think it's a very big challenge though. And it's hard to gage how well I'm doing because of all the aspects out of school that it relates to, like negotiation skills, creativity, making connections. It's pretty clear that I'm going to have to cut down my free time even more, I think if i study from when i get to school around 8 until 7 at night minus the time I'm in classes, and about 14 hours on weekends, i should be able to to do alright. I can manage that. All i really want to do is create things, but being a fabricator you just make things, and being an engineer, in many jobs, you just calculate things, or sell things. But some engineers get to create things. I'm wondering if people these days just don't have time for other people any more, because me and my friends haven't got time to see each other with our schedules, and it isn't as if you get more time when you get a real job after college. I think the only thing that really makes people happy is other people. Engineers and scientists rarely ask if the big plans we make will result in happiness, other than through higher yields, higher gains, and greater efficiency. In our world it seems as if things are planned by politicians who are basically lawyers, and executed by scientists and engineers, then medical, sociological and psychological professions try to repair the damage. It seems like a better hierarchy would be one where the medical, sociological and psychological people find out what the people want and decide what must be done, the engineers and scientists figure out how to do it, and lastly, the legal types decide if anyone got gypped. But since the politicians and lawyers are the best at getting the people of their choice in power, obviously they aren't going to put themselves on the bottom, and the engineers and scientists are inexorably in the middle, because no matter who decides what to do and who looks at the results, there has to be someone in between who can make decisions into results. But i don't really think i can change much, so I guess if it isn't and wont be a world where you can spend a lot of time with your friends and loved ones I'll just have to get my happiness from job satisfaction. Job satisfaction is to life fulfillment what a suitable companion is to true love. our nation consumes a lot of antidepressants, and i think loosing sight of people as the center of society is a big part of the reason why. I guess the question for me to figure out is if anyone is hiring humanist mechanical engineers. |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 12th, 2007|07:20 pm] |
I got this from angel who got it from jenny
Comment and I'll...
1. Tell you why I friended you.
2. Associate you with something - fandom, a song, a colour, a photo, etc.
3. Tell you something I like about you.
4. Tell you a memory I have of you.
5. Ask something I've always wanted to know about you.
6. Tell you my favorite user pic of yours.
7. In return, you must post this in your LJ |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 11th, 2007|09:40 pm] |
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this semester is going quickly for me. When you're constantly rushing to meet a deadline time can get away from you. In one more week it'll be thanksgiving break and then less than 3 weeks until finals. I might come out of it with just average grades but I can live with that. A lot of people don't make it through engineering at all. It seems to be a good choice for me, the classes that are specifically for engineers are the ones where I'm the most ahead of the rest. NC state is in many ways just like people told me it would be, they have engineering but its harder to find help with anything and in general they don't seem to care about their students as much. Most professors don't have office hours and if you want to use any campus resource like tutoring or a machine shop you have to ask 5 to 10 people before you'll even find one who admits that it exists. They don't provide cheap entertainment for students like ECU does, except for some video game consoles in the library. These none of the concerts, outdoor events or things like midnight madness. I know it all sounds very negative, but i do appreciate that the resources are there, they just won't help you find them. There are machines with which you can fabricate microelectronics and micro electric machines here, and of course there is equipment to fabricate normal scale things. There's machines to run almost any test or experiment you can think of. And there are experts in every field of scientific research. The hard part is finding any of it. ECU was more fun, and I don't mean that in a derogatory way, morale and well being are important to education, and depression is a leading cause of drop outs here. But I'm doing my best to find out what is going on around here that I might be interested in, there's supposed to be hundreds of campus organizations, I've found 4, I don't know how they hide so well. |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 4th, 2007|08:00 am] |
well there didn't seem to be much going on there, but they said there's a fire in the basement. I heard fire engines and they made me move again out of the brickyard but I didn't see any fire. I suppose it's regulation, I just came to the room where my math class is going to be later to study. Most of the crowd that just got displaced from the library stayed out front to watch. But i seriously doubt they're going to see anything much. |
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| In the library again |
[Oct. 4th, 2007|07:37 am] |
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The library seems very peaceful at 7:30, compared to when I'm here any later time of day, when people are playing rap from their laptop speakers and playing halo 3 or guitar hero on one of the many video game stations scattered around the study area. I'm just finishing up a Differential Equations assignment. My professor in that class is really more of a problem when he does show up, which is only about 1/3 of the time. It's much easier to understand his grad student who teaches when he's gone, shes a young Laotian woman and though very sarcastic and prone to laughing at students questions as "so easy" she does at least teach the material instead of talking about her research and maybe if we ask doing one example problem. The actual professor also makes fun of questions but he doesn't actually answer them afterward, usually just going into a speech about how we need to study more. I'm not paying the university thousands of dollars for him to be there so i can learn solely out of a book. Anyway, that class aside, things are going pretty well, Im learning all my subjects, and...evacuating the library? gotta go |
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| major pumping required |
[Jun. 18th, 2007|02:36 am] |
Yes its a real product, heres a clip from its description:
"Just when they think you’re coming at ‘em with water, blast ‘em with a shot of icky bio-ooze!"
Yes, its called Bio ooze. I'm not sure how this product made it through the whole process without someone saying something about the wrongness of it. The description also says that you add warm/hot watter to the powder to make the ooze. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 12th, 2007|09:49 pm] |
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Since the semesters ended I've been catching up on stuff i needed to do, fixed up my truck, built michelle a computer, cleaned up the place. By the way, i got accepted to the engineering program at NC state! but anyway, now Im bored. I want to work on something creative since ive had no time for it, but it's been such a long while i don't know what to do, and after all this serious buisiness it seems kinda like a waste of time, even if i do enjoy it. Everyone seems to be somewhere else right now, I'm so bored. |
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| I saw this quiz on michelles so i took it |
[Apr. 22nd, 2007|02:35 pm] |
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</form> Northern. Whether you have the world famous Inland North accent of the Great Lakes area, or the radio-friendly sound of upstate NY and western New England, your accent is what used to set the standard for American English pronunciation (not much anymore now that the Inland North sounds like it does). Take this quiz now - it's easy!
oh and i thought this cartoon was pretty good, and really it kind of makes me feel better about the issue.
If only the resultant people werent somehow running the government and most of the media. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 21st, 2007|03:36 am] |
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It seems like I'm going to come out of this semester with the grades and credits i need. Odd that I'm still not sure what I really want to do. I've decided to push myself, which is good because I need to be sure of something. I can really excell at things when i really feel like theres a reason for it, but i can't decide anything anymore. I used to just do what i wanted, but now it has to form a plan. How do you make a plan for such a big span of your life that you only get one chance? I can plan small things well from expierience. I suppose like all things that must be done purely by theory, I'll just expand on what works on a smaller scale. And in the past my plans that have worked out well were those where i chose the best corse of action i could based on what i knew at the time, Reseached it a bit, then just went for it. But this is more complicated because the goal is also hard to choose. It would be some balance of being happy and improving the world. They are not opposite, but they arent identicle. I am on my current academic path because i know i want to gain a lot of knowledge and use it to create real things. For a long time i thought I wanted to be an artist, and there is a little bit of artist in me, but not enough for it to truely be worth while as a life career, any pure art would be a side project. But it can add to creations, things of efficient and funtional beauty with vast and profound implications for the good of living things, that is the ideal. But what will alow me to contribute to such goals? will being a mechanical engineer alow me to Create, lets say, the new carbon free energy source, or just to design its cage. I have nothing against being just one part of the process of doing something like that, but I want to be a creative and important part of it. I was naive enough before to think that i would be creating things with my education in fabrication, and i suppose it does contribute, but it is not enough alone. Maybe engineering wont be either. But it has a lot more flexibility, however much of what you are allowed to do comes from how you go about finding what you will do. Technically theres no reason i couldent design and build things now, but i want the route of optimal freedom, which being a combination of support from others and independance, is somewhere in between the totally buisness and college path, and the independant path. This is where the research part of planning can come in, I'll look at people who have done things like what i want to do, and modify it. There are a lot of people who took education then went on their own path to do something inspired. You cannot do something great tottaly without others, we are constantly reminded of this, but neither can you do something great without yourself. Writing this has helped me think a bit. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 16th, 2007|03:48 pm] |
if i tried I couldent come up with responses to events as innapropriate as president Bush manages to. But I avoid rants about him because i could go on for pages and pages and only scrach the surface of things that are FUBAR about him and his administration.
Anyway, events in the news aside, ive got to say my life is good. Even when ive got to study all day on stuff i can barely grasp, and stay up almost all night writing papers, my wonderfull girlfriend and my generally pretty sweet life make it still a good day. Not nearly everyone in the world gets to have a heated home, a bed, fresh food (usually), their own car and all kinds of little luxuries that we too often take for granted.
still, i do wish there was something we could do about that election stealing asshole. though it was never a perfect world were everyone had these things, i'm sure that many fewer people have them because of him, ecspecially those who are dead. It seems things have been thrown off center a bit, the debate is weather he is a bad or great president when in an even playing feild it should be weather we will exile him or meerly strip him of his power. I know im not privding any supporting evidence now, i dont feel like writing a report on it when i know that if a loyal bushy showed up to read this nothing i could say would effect him anyway, and most of you already know. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 7th, 2007|09:11 pm] |
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Im bored, michelles gone, everyones left town or is otherwise engaged. maybe i'll just watch the whole lord of the rings trillogy, or something, ive been working on my english paper and studing calculus and physics and im tired of it. |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 26th, 2007|12:03 am] |
I just took tom back to the airport. He sounds like he might decide to move here, but no definite answer was given. It was a fun week. We saw 300 and played god of war II. It's like its Spartan awareness week. Now I've got some catching up to do since i spent so much time hanging out with my brother. But its ok I'm in an easy part of the physics class.
Michelle's going in for a job interview tomorrow, for Sanderson, Which I understand is the best in Wake County. I think she'll get the job, she's got all kinds of credentials. |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 20th, 2007|11:36 pm] |
i think i was tagged more than once, but i've got no one left to tag.
1.] grab the nearest book.
2.] open the book to page 23.
3.] find the fifth sentence.
4.] post the text of the next three sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5.] don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! i know you were thinking about it! just pick up whatever is closest.
6.] tag five other people to do the same.
I really didnt dig around, so this is kinda nerdy
"Moving right along, you should note that the main reason for including this section is to give you, the gentle reader, the right sense of how much behind-the-scenes work is done for you by the engine
Basic controll flow
The torque game engine initializes libraries and game functions and then cycles in the main game loop untill the program is terminated. The main loop basically calls platform library functions to produce platform events, which then drive the main simulation"
I can tag some people, but i dont think anyone i know who reads this hasnt already got it, so i'll tag people probably dont read my journal, its just as well, because i dont want to bother anyone.
Thomas
Judy
Lilia
Summer
Jon |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 16th, 2007|01:26 pm] |
| [ | feelin' |
| |  accomplished | ] |
Never mind about help with the TV, i managed to fix it myself without taking it out of the house. |
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| this week |
[Feb. 15th, 2007|02:57 pm] |
I dont post very often cause not much happens but this weeks been weird.
On sunday we got up really early, because michelle was sleepy from working the previous day and wed gone to bed at like 9. So i figured as long as were up early for once, lets go to target and see if they have a Wii, id had the money saved up for a while buy could never find one. it happened that they had 3, it was only 9 am, but the guy there said theyd gotten 12 at 8, and it was the first shipment hed seen since christmas. So we lucked out on that. Too bad my tv just broke, but im going to get it fixed soon, for now the wii is on the old tv.
Monday michelles car broke down at 7 am so i had to go meet her at the dunkin doughnuts where it had happened and wait for tripple A with her, then I took her home and let her take my truck to get to wilson. I could tell something was wrong with a bearing in the enigne, but i dont have the tools to take it apart and look for the problem.
Tuesday her car was fixed and I got my truck back. It turned out to be the timing shaft bearing.
My physics teacher is even more insane than his terrible rate my proffesor ratings would sugest, He gave a pop quiz every day this, the part that makes it a "pop" quiz is therefore not the timing, since i know im getting one daily, its the content, which me and every student in the class agree, is out of no where, WE CANT FIND A PATTERN, its not from the material covered earlier, or the previous day, or the homework, or something on black board, its not even from the next chapter. Its from what hes going to teach the NEXT DAY, which is RANDOM! this week the lesson for day pattern was like this 30.1 to 30.5 then 28.4 to 28.6 then 31.2 to 31.4 then 30.6 to 30.8 then 29.1 to 29.5 today. And his lectures dont even have much to do with actually solving the problems, he just shows pwerpoints full of animations which he clicks through really fast. And you might think from my bitching that im doing horrible, but ive got the current higest grade in the class, the grade sheet is at the beginning of the powerpoint every day with the last 3 of your ss#. Yep, im right at the very tip top with a 64! And he emphasizes that there is no curve, on the first day his powerpoint said it over and over NO CURVE like 20 times. I had an anglish paper due this week too but thats no big deal, she did want photocopies of all sources but i suppose thats standard. The ten hours of community service shes making us sign up for seems a little odd, but i'll deal with it.
Wednesday i was pretty piled with stuff to do, my plan being to go to calc 3, then during the hour between that and physics turn in my paper and study for Physics, as if i could possibly cover enough to insure that I would know whatever random 15 part problem he was going to give us. Then i somehow needed to finish my paper, and get the place cleaned up and make a nice dinner for michelle before she got home for valentines day. But on my way to the bust I saw some guy smashing his way into the apartment across the street, my phone was dead, so i was going to call the cops with the bus drivers phone when she arrived, but then i saw the guy coming out the front door with a TV, a flatscreen. he went into a lot between two buildings and though i didnt want to get close i ran around to where i could see into the lot between them, i got a good long look at him, then he went into one of those apartments, I was only about 40 feet away. He didnt break into that one, he unlocked the door. when the bus got there i called the cops, i gave them the adress hed broken into, the one he had entered, and a detailed description of his apearence and everything he was wearing and my name and phone number. But i did have to go to class so they might have come right after i left. They called me later that day, but all they did was confirm my name and that i saw the guy. I still got the place clean before she got home, but i didnt manage to have any surprise dinner ready when she got home, all the same i made her some broccoli alfredo after she got here, and later went to the library to finish my paper.
Today Just a minute ago on my way back in from the bus, i knocked on the door of the place that got broken into, I talked to the guy that had been robbed, it was a plasma screen that was taken. And he said the police had caught the guy. Hes also suspected of having broken into two houses yesterday, and many others over a long period of time, and was found in possesion of dealer sized portions of marijuana and crack, an unlicenced fire arm, and a lot of possibly stolen goods.
Im so glad i have no classes friday. I gotta study the hell out of some physics, and though pravica is much nicer than my physics teacher, i do need to study for my test on monday. I just need to get my checklist taken care of so i can relax a little. By the way, i dont want to call anyone directly and make them feel obligated, but i want to get that TV in for repair tommorow and i need help to lift it on the truck. Sometime between 1 and 5 so if anyone would offer it would be apriciated, and if youve got time, I'll cook you some food, and once the TVs fixed you can come over and play Wii games on it, but then all my friends can do that, so really yould just be helping me to help. |
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| Finished welding the set |
[Feb. 5th, 2007|04:51 pm] |
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I just finished the last set peice for "Urine Town" That was much quicker than chicago. If anyone wants to go see it I'm told that tickets are on sale now. But i still dont know when the play is. So i should have a little free time once i catch up on all the stuff ive been putting off. I need to get a rough draft of a paper done and prepare a problem to present in physics but it shouldent be a big deal. I hope you're all doing well |
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impressed