Wednesday, July 23, 2008Anyway You Want It"Here’s a YouTube tale with a happy ending: Filipino singer Arnel Pineda (pronounced “pin-eh-da”) posted footage of himself performing Journey covers with his band the Zoo and was discovered half a world away by Journey guitarist Neal Schon, who was trolling the site for new blood. Schon got in touch with Pineda (and convinced the vocalist he wasn’t pulling a prank on him) and voila: Pineda has been named the band’s latest frontman, replacing Steve Augeri, who left last year." --Rollingstone.com If Hole needs a new singer, look me up! Post topic jacked from JoshNichols.com btw. =) link : 2:54 PM
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Monday, July 14, 2008Miscellany It's hard to imagine that in less than twenty four hours I'll once again be jetting off to San Diego to visit the family. Here are updates on recent goings on before the San Diego/Comic-Con stuff fills the blog.
Labels: animals, anthropology, games, Keeley link : 6:11 PM
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Monday, June 30, 2008Diving into the New with Dr. Wadley MU lost one of its best faculty members last weekend. Dr. Reed Wadley had been fighting cancer for the past few years all the while doing what he could for the department.
Dr. Wadley and I arrived at MU in the same semester. As I ran around trying to make sense of grad school, I saw him adapt to his new office and his new class in Middlebush. Because of our mutual newness he kind of became my anchor: if hey can work this out (being in a more high-pressure position), then so can I. On September 11th, a month after we started our first semester and hours after the event, I sat in his class and we discussed the breaking news and he reminded us that facts are scarce compared to speculation-disguised-as-fact. Dr. Wadley's class was lighter on other days. He told us about his research in Borneo and the Iban friends he made there. He told us about the battle for indigenous rights. He told us how he sacrificed a pig to increase his social standing in a traditional society. Some things were a mystery with him: the tip of a large tattoo could be seen on the back of his neck peeking out over the collar of his dress shirt but I never got the nerve to ask its story. In a way I didn't want to know: it spoke of a life of unique experiences that cannot be distilled into an answer. Here's to six years of knowing Dr. Wadley and his impact on the lives of me and all of the students he advised and taught. Labels: anthropology link : 12:31 PM
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Wednesday, June 25, 2008 Any one else find it odd that the iMacs at Ellis Library boot into Windows? I mean why spend the money to get Macs when they'll just mimic a PC?
Labels: whut link : 8:18 PM
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Friday, June 20, 2008Mission Accomplished Yesterday was my last day of work at the Assessment Resource Center. I've been there since March (a fact which shocked me when one of the higher-ups mentioned it). I can rest easy knowing that I've graded thousands of exams and my part in all of the projects I've been doing is done. Also, I've met a lot of cool people and I have most of their emails and facebook profiles.
Now it's back to being a doctoral student full time. The extra money is wonderful, but I rarely had time to work on my studies after coming home from work. Right now I'm still staring at the same page of a pdf article I've been trying to read for the past week. And then in a month it's off to San Diego and its Comic-Con! Wooohoooo! Labels: personal link : 5:38 PM
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Tuesday, June 17, 2008Singing, Strumming and Standing Still Games My birthday wish came true when my family conspired to get me Rock Band and an Xbox 360. Kind of... it's almost a month later and I think the statue of limitations on hijinks has expired. Well, what really happened is that I couldn't take it any more after my Illinois trip and ordered Rock Band a few weeks early. Then my family said they were going to order it for me. I quickly calmed down and told them I was already on the case, not really mentioning that I've been playing Rock Band for a week by that point. =)
Rock Band is as incredible as I remember it from Anna and Anthony's house. Unfortunately Kristin and her boyfriend were very unimpressed by it so I'm pretty much playing this party game sololy with me trying out every position. I've taken to vocals and I'm actually doing the best in that area at the moment with a firm grasp of expert mode. Guitar is a close second with me in the last set of hard (curse you Flirtin' With Disaster, Train Kept A-Rollin'' and Green Grass and High Tides!). Drums is giving me trouble and I'm struggling at medium difficulty in the drum tour. There's a subculture of Rock Band players who play "voxtar" or sing and play guitar or bass simultaneously... like Jewel does in real life. I've taken up voxtar, even buying a real life mic stand to make things a little easier to manage. Voxtar is really fun, and makes doing vocals or guitar by themselves kind of empty-feeling. It's a challenge though as you can guess: I'm working on simultaneous hard vocals and hard guitar at the moment and some songs are very troublesome. It helps if I know the words already like I Think I'm Paranoid or Sabotage. Rock Band was not all that happened around my birthday. A mysterious package from my family had arrived a little before the date. Since Rock Band was well out of the bag, I kept the box sealed until May 28th so I'd something to open on my birthday. It was a rather large Amazon box and very evenly dense and heavy. I had absolutely no guesses what it could've been. When I opened it I was completely stunned because out slid out Wii Fit! Wii Fit is another unique Nintendo game. Jokingly I call it The Scale Game, or Standing Still: Hyper Turbo Championship Edition. While there are a lot of active things to do in Wii Fit, many minigames just as yoga or the balance tests simply asks you to hold a pose perfectly still. It's certainly a different gaming experience than the norm of pushing buttons as accurately as possible, and therefore quite a challenge. With all these new games, a job, and research my plate is so very full. I haven't played Warcraft in almost a month. I wonder if my guild hates me. Labels: games link : 5:00 PM
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Saturday, June 14, 2008Hero in A Half Shell One morning started off ahead of schedule (point A on the map). I needed to go to the supermarket (B) to pick up a lunch for work so I woke up early. Maybe too early. I was half an hour early as I left Gerbes with a sandwich from the deli section. I got in my car, started my car, and looked behind me to back out. On the ground was an odd small object. It took me a second but I realized it was a real live turtle! I got out of my car and walked over to it. The parking lot of Gerbes didn't seem like a great place for a turtle so I picked it up by the shell and took it to my car. I put it on the passenger seat next to my sandwich and thought for a minute. Where should I take this turtle? I decided the nearest park was the newly renovated Flat Branch Park (C) which is near downtown. So off I went! I put the turtle down on a rock near the stream that runs through the park. It looked up at me uncertainly as I watched it. I was running out of time so I went back to my car and made it to work (D) with two minutes to spare. So much for starting half and hour early!
 link : 7:30 PM
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