Where I Went, The Economy (Sort of), My Plans For the Future, and Some Other Stuff

First off, I would like to announce that no, I have not died.  Second, I don’t want to make excuses, but I blame my absence on school.  I have been very busy with my school life and college applications and all that junk lately that I have not had too much time at all to blog, or do anything for that matter.  Also, I happen to be on the laziest people I know and I have been known to be very unmotivated when it comes to all things.

What’s that? How have I been these past two months? Well let’s just say that this year has been one big cliche roller coaster.  I have had plenty of amazing experiences, but also some pretty terrible ones.   Rather than get into the details, I will change the subject completely.

So the economy… All I have to say is that the country finally knows how I feel all the time.  Sucks doesn’t it, not having money all the time.  Yeah. Not fun. I don’t really know where I am going with this.  I have just realized I do not really have much to talk about in terms of the economy which in a way I don’t think is entirely all that bad.

One of my dreams has always  been to go on a road trip across America, coast to coast.  This past summer I talked with some of my friends about it and we are hoping to go cross-country this summer.  I live in Pennsylvania and I think we are going to go all the way to the California coast.  Do any of my total of 4  readers have any suggestions for where we should stop?

One way I am think of paying for this trip is to start my own internet company.  How I will make money is the issue.  I am leaning towards a  t-shirt company.  I would design and sell t-shirts online.  Pretty standard.  But I kind of want to do more than that. The problem is that I have very little to offer the world worth paying for.  And after typing that I feel like shit. So if any readers (all 4 of you) out there are looking for a partner for a business start-up that requires minimal to no experience with anything important, I am your man.

In other news, I have been downloading a buttload of music lately.  Almost all of it has been coming from The Hype Machine.  For those of you who use Firefox, get the DownloadHelper add-on.  It will allow you to download music from there.  For those of you who do not use Firefox, you suck.

Well I don’t really know where I am going with this post.  I am feeling very unfocused and I am mostly just posting to take up time now that I am on winter break and have very little to do and this is a run-on sentence.  Hopefully I keep up the posting.

My Desktop

I just put my desktop through a makeover. I didn’t plan on changing so much, so I don’t have a before/after ready for you.

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Google Chrome

If you have been on the internet at all since yesterday, chances are you’ve heard of Google’s new project: Google Chrome. If you haven’t, basically Google decided to take one more step in total internet domination and made their own web browser.

The install was very painless and took only minutes. No restart neccessary. It prompts to import your Firefox bookmarks and such. The import process took longer than the actual install.

Now I would like to state right now that I haven’t tested it out all that much. I am blogging this post using Google Chrome. I have visited a few sites. From what I can tell, it is not any faster than Firefox on non-Google sites. Chrome is much faster on Google-owned sites however.

I think the deciding factor for many people will be the setup of the browser. Google Chrome is very simplistic… and blue. It is very clutter free and is very easy on the eyes. Google made the tabs the main feature. As you can see in the picture above, the tabs are at the very top of the screen. There is only a navigation and a tab toolbar. There isn’t even a statusbar at the bottom. This browser is good-looking. If Google Chrome is Brad Pitt, Internet Explorer is Steve Buscemi.

So after making that, I realized that about 98% of the internet is dudes (myself included). If I didn’t take the time to make that, I wouldn’t post it. So here is the translation: If Google Chrome is Megan Fox, Internet Explorer is Felicity Huffman from Transamerica.

Now what bothers me about Google Chrome is the lack of features left after it was simplisticated. I like Firefox because of all the addons and such. All those added perks really ammount to something. They may not be goodlooking per se, but its their functionality that is important. Internet Explorer has neiter hotness nor functionality. Also, Google Chrome’s bookmarking system sucks compared to Firefox’s.

Try it yourself if you want. Personally, I will be sticking with Mozilla Firefox.

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10 Songs I Am Crazy About (List 2)

Below is August’s list. You can listen to the mix here.

10] Data Select Party – “You Should Know Bedda”

9] The Rumble Strips – “Girls And Boys In Love”

8] My Luminaries – “Petrol Station Union Jack”

7] The Cinematics – “Alright”

6] Joe Lean And The Jing Jang Jong – “Where Do You Go”

5] The Maple State – “Temperate Lives”

4] Pinback – “Good To Sea”

3] I Was A Cub Scout – “Pink Squares”

2] Black Kids – “Look At Me (When I Rock Wichoo)”

1] GoodBooks – “Beautiful To Watch”

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I Am Kind Of A Bum Definitely

This summer will be remembered by me as the most nothing I have ever done. I have spent most of my summer watching countless episodes of various television shows and movies. I have gone from show to show, watching all of their episodes. With a little more than week left, my current list of completed shows (in no particular order) is as follows:

1] Avatar: The Last Airbender

Sure this is a cartoon on Nickelodeon, but don’t let that discourage you from watching this great show. Honestly, this show is amazing. The storyline couldn’t be better.

Avatar takes place in a fantasy world where four nations live: the Fire Nation, the Water Tribes, the Earth Kingdom, and the Air Nomads. In the world of Avatar, each nation has people called “benders” who can physically control one of the four elements. Then there is the Avatar, a reincarnating bender who has the ability to control all four elements.

The story begins with a young water bender named Katara and her older brother Sokka from the water tribe. They discover Aang, the current Avatar, frozen in a block of ice. He had been frozen in this ice for 100 years. During his absence, the Fire Nation has begun a war of world conquest. Aang, Katara, and Sokka set out to defeat the Fire Nation and restore balance to the four nations. But before they can do so, Aang must master all four elements.

This show is incredibly well written. The show recently finished its fourth and final season. I highly recommend this show to all people.

2] Arrested Development

This is one of the funniest shows I’ve seen. It is hilarious to see how self-centered the Bluth family gets and the ridiculous situations that result.

The story centers around the Bluth family, a rich and dysfunctional family. When George Bluth, the CEO of the family business is arrested for shifty accounting practices, the company as well as the family is in the hands of Michael Bluth, his son. Michael is a widower with a 13-year-old son named George-Michael (played by Michael Cera, Superbad). Michael’s mother, Lucille, finds herself living alone in a penthouse with no one to complain to. Michael’s two brothers, Gob and Buster, and his sister Lindsay, along with her husband Tobias and her daughter Maeby, are forced to move in with Michael and George-Michael. Hilarity ensues.

Gob (played by Will Arnett) is my favorite character. He is a failed magician and an idiot. George-Michael is also very funny. Michael Cera is more awkward than his character in Superbad. In the show, he has a crush on his cousin Maeby with whom he has to share a room.

This show will see you laughing constantly. It gets better with every episode.

3] The Big Bang Theory

There isn’t much to say about The Big Bang Theory. It is a good show as far as sitcoms go. Being a geek myself, the humor is just up my alley.

The show is about a  hot chick who moves into an apartment next door to two brilliant but socially awkward physicists. The friendship-ishness that results shows them how little they know about life outside of the laboratory (and thus the source of all comedic subject matter).

4] Burn Notice

This show is kickass. Tons of action and illegal stuff.

The story follows Michael Weston, a spy recently fired, or “burned”, by the US Government. When a spy is burned, they are stuck in a city, this case being Miami. Michael spends his time helping out those in need with his special ops training. Also, Michael is trying to find out more information on the people who burned him and why.

Like I said, there is tons of sick action and shit. They do awesome spy stuff in every episode too, and literally explain what they are doing. So don’t let your kid watch this if you don’t want them making explosives and/or tapping into your phones.

5] Chuck

Chuck is a great show. It is like a hybrid between The Big Bang Theory and Burn Notice in that it has both geeks and spies.

Chuck Bartowski is computer geek working at a Buy More (basically Best Buy). When his old roommate who is a spy sends him an email containing super secret government intelligence in the form of a brainwashing slideshow thingy, Chuck inadvertantly downloads them all into his mind. Now Chuck is a government assett and has two undercover bodyguards, one a hot chick from the NSA and the other is a CIA agent (Adam Baldwin, Jayne from Firefly/Serenity).

The show is basically about Chuck and his two bodyguards trying to take down the bad guys while maintaining Chuck’s geek identity. It is both funny and exciting. It has some great music in it too.

6] How I Met Your Mother

This show is one of my favorites of the summer. It is hilarious and doesn’t feel like a sitcom.

The story follows Ted Mosby, a bachelor in New York. He lives with his best friend Marshall (Jason Segal, Freaks And Geeks/Undeclared/Knocked Up/Forgetting Sarah Marshall) and Marshall’s wife Lily. The story is narrated by Ted’s future self (Bob Saget) who is telling his children the story of how he met their mother. Neil Patrick Harris plays Ted’s “best friend”, Barney. Another main character in the show is Robin, a girl Ted dates and a friend of the others.

While I am a huge Jason Segal fan, Neil Patrick Harris really makes the show. Between the two of them, the show has enough comedic power to blow milk out of your nose.

7] The IT Crowd

This British comedy is rocks. Yet again, this show is about a bunch of geeks.

Roy and Moss are two friends who work in the IT department of some big company. The story begins with the hiring of Jen, a woman who knows nothing about computers. She is given the job of managing the IT department.

Not a lot happens on this show. That’s okay though because this show is hilarious. Moss is my favorite character. He is just plain ridiculous. This show is good for some quick laughs.

8] Undeclared

I went through a phase after seeing Pineapple Express where all I watched was stuff listed on Judd Apatow’s IMDB page. This show was created by him.

Undeclared is about Steve Karp (Jay Baruchel, Knocked Up/Tropic Thunder) and his roommates during their freshmen year of college. Seth Rogen (Freaks And Geeks/40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Superbad, Pineapple Express), one of my favorite actors of all time, plays his roommate Ron.

This show was pretty funny. It was canceled after one season though.

9] Freaks And Geeks

Freaks And Geeks is a great show. It has Seth Rogen and James Franco from Pineapple Express in it, as well as Jason Segal. Also, Judd Apatow was the executive producer.

The show is about two groups of friends. There is the Freaks, a group of outsiders made up of the newbie,  Lindsay Weir (Linda Cardellini, Grandma’s Boy), the leader, Daniel (James Franco), Nick(Jason Segal), Ken (Seth Rogen, and Kelly (Busy Phillipps). The Geeks are a group of freshmen made up of Lindsay’s younger brother, Sam Weir (John Francis Daley, Waiting…), Neil (Samm Levine), and Bill (Martin Starr).

This show features some good acting, specifically from James Franco and Linda Cardellini. While the parts about the Geeks tend to be an annoyance, the parts about the Freaks are worthwhile. It is a great show.

10] Stella

Stella is just plain silly. It stars Michael Ian Black, Michael Showalter, and David Wain. They play three roommates who always wear suits. That is about as deep as it goes. This show is incredibly funny though. It has a very specific humor. Stella is the kind of show that either you will love or you will dislike. The humor isn’t reached by all.

11] Reaper [Work In Progress]

Reaper is another great show. It reminds me much of Chuck in the sense that it follows a character who works at a chain store who must live a secret life.

The story follows Sam, a 21 year old employee of The Work Bench (basically Home Depot) and his best friends Sock and Ben. Sam’s parents sold his soul to the Devil before he was born. Now he must catch escaped souls from Hell for the Devil for the rest of his life.

Like I said, it is very similar to Chuck. If you like one or the other, you will like both. I am only 5 episodes into this show out of 18 but I suspect I will finish it by the time summer ends.

I hope you enjoyed this list. It took a long time to write and even longer (much longer) to watch. It was both a long and fun task to do. Now If only I could write an essay for my college apps…

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