Sunday, November 28, 2004

I'm now enjoying my last hour (or less) of vacation. Very sad... I won't even be able to wake up late tomorrow! Sad, sad, sad. Oh well. To honor the occassion, I'll now run through what I did this past week. Get ready for one of my longest posts ever!

Friday (Nov. 19)

My last class ended at 11:40, and then we went on a field trip to the mall until 2:10 (it's a very long story why we'd be doing that... but the good news is, while there I picked up two new Star Wars action figures!). After that, a few friends and I went to a new store near my house: "The Container Store." I had at first expected it to be fairly boring, but then I started hearing good things about it. Now that I've been there, I agree that it's great. :-) I got a stapler that, instead of staples, cuts a piece of the paper to be stapled and then folds it over itself in some weird way so that it acts as a fastener! It's great.

After that, we did... well... nothing, really, except kind of sitting around. Then we went to the school play, which was "On the Razzle" this year. It was pretty good, depite some pretty obvious (but very well handled!) errors. ;-)

Saturday (Nov. 20)

I went a couple different friends to go see the movie "National Treasure." It was pretty good, although the heroes acted pretty stupid at times. "Hey!" they say, "let's just pull out the Declaration of Independance in front of a trillion tourists and hope no one notices us discussing buried treasure!"

Sunday (Nov. 21)

We went out to Concord briefly to visit my grandparents, and then we left and went to the Celtics game! We won! Better yet, David Ortiz was there! He got ten times more applause than anyone on the Celtics, as is to be expected. :-)

Monday (Nov. 22) & Tuesday (Nov. 23)

I didn't really do anything but read and play Halo 2. That's not to say that I hadn't been reading and playing Halo 2 quite a bit those other days -- it's just that it's all I did on Monday & Tuesday. Well, except for a little computer stuff. Actually, a fair amount of computer stuff... but not as much as reading and playing.

On Tuesday, I played around with Adobe Atmosphere a little bit, which I had gotton as an early Christmas present two weeks ago today (the 28th -- so I got it the 14th). Previously I had opened it once or twice, but on Tuesday I actually managed to -- gasp -- create a small room with a red floor. (I still had the problem that every time the viewer opened the file they fell past the room into the empty void beyond, though.)

Wednesday (Nov. 24)

At this point it started to hit me that, tragically, vacation was halfway over! Unfortunately, that didn't at all spur me on to work more on my web site or anything, and to this moment I haven't worked on it one ounce, which is really a shame. Seriously -- I wish I had gotton more done. Sigh.

Anyway, on Wednesday I went to Finding Neverland starring Johnny Depp with a couple of the same friends with whom I went to the Container Store. It was a good movie, but very sad. (Although I argue that it has a "happy" ending -- at least sort off. It's that "the-world-is-dead-but-it-lives-on-in-your-heart" kind of ending.)

Thursday (Nov. 25)

I was greeted in the morning by my older brother, back for the weekend from San Diego!!! :-) Unfortunately, he had to head off to Rhode Island for the day almost immediately.

Later in the day -- around 1:00 -- we started the 1-hour trek (great for more reading) to my cousin's house for my family's annual Thanksgiving party. It was in a different house this year, which was interesting. My cousins have a GIANT golden retriever (Shamrock), a TINY little fluffy dog whose face looked like an Ewok (Logan), a cute little kitten who looked like one of Hasbro's "FurReal" animatronic toys (Spencer), and three other cats and a rabbit.

The kids spent almost the entire time in the basement, playing EA Sport's Madden 2005 for PS2 and ping pong.

Friday (Nov. 26)

We finally got some quality time with my brother -- YAY! There was plenty more Halo 2 to be had, as well as some computer time and reading -- how typical.

Saturday (Nov. 27)

My brother's friend came over, and my older brother, and another friend. We (but not my older brother) played with Nerf guns. Hehe... fun! Shooting! Guns! (Just kidding. ;-) ) That night, we played Red Sox Monopoly (but didn't finish our game) and watched some extras on the Harry Potter & the Prizoner of Azkaban and Star Wars Trilogy DVDs. There are some funny interviews on the HP disc, and the Star Wars DVD set has a great 2-hour documentary Empire of Dreams about the making of Star Wars that I just started watching earlier this week (maybe during that Monday-Tuesday lull -- I can't remember). The best part is the original screen tests -- they're hilariously bad, in some cases!

Sunday (Nov. 28)

How sad -- the last day of vacation. It also happens to be today. I woke up and immediately went on the computer, determined to get something done -- preferably web site related. Instead, though, I ended up making some read progress in Atmosphere. I was creating a simple maze when my older brother came over, and we started making a house together. Now it's a two-story mansion, although it still has no rooms -- only floors, walls, and stairs. Still, at least I've figured out how to texture the surfaces!

I'm hoping to put some of my Atmosphere stuff on my web site in time for version 4.0, which is now looking at a possible Summer 2005 release, although I'm still hoping and trying for a Christmas 2004 release, which with any luck will become a reality.

Later in the day, I (and my brother, Willy) did our family's Christmas card. Willy wrote the message and drew a couple little things, and then I scanned it, edited his handwriting in Photoshop to try to make it a little more readable, and put in some scanned photos. Next, sadly, I had to do my Spanish homework. We definitely shouldn't be given homework over vacations.

Finally, the same people who came over last night to play Monopoly came over tonight in an effort to finish the game, this time accompanied by their younger brother, who spent the time playing Midtown Madness 3 -- the first game to be in our Xbox other than Halo 2 since we got it on November 9th. In Monopoly, I landed on Free Parking and got about a thousand dollars, only to land on a spot with a rent of $1,150, go to jail, spend three turns trying to get doubles & fail each time, have to pay $50 to get out, and then get a Chance card that forced me to pay another $50. Yikes. Bad luck. By the time we stopped, everybody was in debt except one person: Mr. Diego Moneybags, who not only had that I-Owe-You worth over a thousand from me, but also other IOUs from the other people. Ironically, he has the fewest properties out of all of us: just four.

Even after today we didn't finish the game. Hopefully we'll have some other chance later.

Well, sadly it's almost time for me to get my last sleep of the vacation. Before then, though, I still I'll squeeze in just a couple minutes of web site editing. ;-)

Saturday, November 27, 2004

According to the latest issue of Wired, Murphy's Laws have been proven to be statistically true.

I'm currently on my second-to-last day of Thanksgiving Break, enjoying a nice game of Halo 2. It is GREAT. :-) We've now created a clan, Tiny Green Men -- the name is based on the original-but-too-long name we first had in mind, Deep Space Leprechauns. Strange, I know... it's a VERY long story. If you play Halo 2 on Xbox LIVE, get an account over at Bungie.net for the best stat-tracking I've ever seen, and then check out the site we have over there for our clan and join!

Saturday, November 13, 2004

Halo 2 sold 2.4 MILLION copies in the United States and Canada the day it came out (November 9th), which is equivalent to $125 million dollars for Bungie and Microsoft. That's more money on opening day than any movie in history!

I can certainly see why so many people bought it -- it's awesome! I've been playing a ton online, and soon my friend and I will be starting our very own clan. :-)

I have to go do homework now. :-( Bye-bye!

P.S. Yesterday was the first snow of the season -- yippee!! There was actually a couple inches outside today, which is a lot considering it's only November.

Tuesday, November 09, 2004

Guess what??? TODAY WE GOT HALO 2!!! It's awesome!!! Sadly, I haven't had too much time to play it due to homework, but I've played plenty to know that it rocks. :) Go buy it! Or, if you don't have an Xbox, go buy it and and Xbox! And buy Xbox LIVE, too, if you don't already have it! See you online!!!