Why do people have to go hungry?

I was seriously considering opening up this post with a brain bashing of facts and statistics to set the stage for the primary content of the discussion i would like to hold with you today, but I decided the only real way to open this topic up would be with one simple fact: According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), from October 2009 to September 2010, there were approximately 1.6 million homeless people fighting for their survival.

Now i don't want you to think for a second that this is some sob story about how you should have pity for those people because it could be you and they deserve your money when they sit on the side of the road. Absolutely not. Those people who sit on the side of the road, in most cases, just want your money so they can get a quick fix of their preferred poison. Whether it be tobacco, alcohol, or some of the "harder" drugs. Chances are, most of those people will not re-purpose your money for what they tell you they'll do with it. And i know of many instances where those people aren't even homeless! In my hometown there was a man who woke up in the morning and got himself dirty and ratty then drove out to the corner of a street, parked his car out of sight and begged all day. At the end of the day he'd just jump in his Corvette and drive off.

I'm trying to make the point that we can solve the hunger issues, possibly throughout the world! simply by having fast food restaurants give a little back to the community. That's all.

Did you know that on average, The entire McDonalds Franchise makes roughly 6.5 million hamburgers a day? Now this was in 2005 i'd imagine that the company has grown quite a bit since then, so all the number's i'm working with will be low. Given that they have an estimated 31,000 locations worldwide, that would put the total number of burgers per day per location at roughly 210 (209.667 but since no one ever orders 2/3rds of a burger it's safe to assume that's just another whole burger). another interesting statistic states that McDonald's ends up throwing out about 1/3rd of their stock due to time issues and so on. When factoring this in, we can get a pretty accurate reading that every McDonald's location in the world throws out about 70 burgers a day for one reason or another.

Here's where the real kicker comes in. My hometown has as of right now, 34 McDonalds Locations. According to HUD, in 2010 there were approximately 13,711 homeless in my hometown. if every McDonalds in my hometown were to give away the food they were throwing away to the homeless instead of throwing it away. Just my city alone would be able to feed 17.4% of my entire state's homeless population. If the Capitol of my state and my city were to combine forces and use their throw-outs for good, we'd be looking at feeding 46.5% of all of the homeless in my state. I am not talking about giving food away that other people could be paying for. I am merely suggesting that they save whatever they don't or cannot sell that day and pass it out to the homeless while the crews are doing end of the night clean-up. That's it!

I mean if just McDonalds were to do this. That's not even counting Burger King, Carl's Jr (or Hardee's depending on what side of the country you hail from), Wendy's, A&W, or any of the other hundreds of privately owned, local fast food joints spanning the country. If i were to factor those in? I'm willing to bet that it could very well surpass the number of starving homeless people we have in this country.

All this would imply (as i did not make it very clear earlier), is that companies stash the overflow or underflow food somewhere until the end of the day. The night crews would set the box out behind the store while their doing the evening cleanup routine. Have it publicly known that homeless people or people having trouble feeding mouths could come and get one or two items to give them enough calories to make it through the next day.

I know one of the common objections to an idea like this is that it would be abused and people who didn't need it would be taking from those that did. To be quite frank on the matter, if you have enough to even so much as buy top ramen, you're probably not going to leap at the chance to eat old McDonald's hamburgers.

I want to hear your feedback. if you have something to improve on the idea? then contribute it. There's no such thing as a stupid idea.

2012 Elections and The Electoral College

With the advent of todays voting results, and by this i mean the fact that the electoral college played such a large role in re-electing Barack Obama, i found it high time to bring out a few issues that i have with the electoral college. This will not be a case of "oh well the electoral college is bad because they went against the popular vote and OBAMA is back in office... THE WORLD IS DOOMED!!!" No, this will be a case of "the electoral college is out dated. It has been outdated for over 100 years and this is why."

There have only been a few cases in which the electoral college members have voted against what the popular vote of their state. Each time there has been some severe backlash and each time the collegiate who does so generally needs to watch their back and go into their fallout bunker for the next 10 years and never show their face again for that period. But this is the exact issue that arises with the Electoral College. The presidential position was originally intended to be appointed by the people and for the people. Meaning that the president is a servant of the people, but even more so to the point, it means that the individuals get to vote and elect whomever they choose.

The whole issue with this methodology when the constitution was written was that they did not have the good graces of our modern technology. There were no fax lines or telephones or fiber-optics. There were just torches, pitchforks, horses and dirt roads. So the convenience of transmitting precise numbers to the white house or where ever the votes were tallied was a large inconvenience. Who wanted to ferry every single ballot from their state all the way to the capitol? So, during the constitutional convention of 1787, it was discussed the issues arising from fair exposure for every state. The smaller states with only hundreds of occupants did not want the larger states with thousands, possibly even tens of thousands of occupants to swing the elections. As such, the electoral college was formed. Each state would be given a number of representatives determined by the number of occupants they had. This evened the playing field a little bit. Instead of having only, say 100 votes being tossed into the pot against tens of thousands of others, they had say 2 votes. and the larger states, instead of having tens of thousands of votes they only had 5 for instances.

This also lightened the load for the people carring the total votes to wherever they were tallied. Instead of a sack of papers, he only needed 1 slip with tallies on it in his front pocket.

Now that you know the history, here's why it's outdated...

1. the current estimated population of the United States is 311.6 million individuals according to the U.S. Census Bureau. divided between 50 states, that comes out to roughly 6.2 million people per state with a standard deviation of roughly 1.13 means.
2. It is no longer about the smallest states not having a voice. let's take a look at some statistics to prove this point:
1. Our number 1 state in size (Alaska) has the 3rd lowest population in the country
2. Our number 4 state in size (Montana) Has the 6th lowest population in the country
3. Our number 47 state in size (New Jersey) Has the 11th highest population in the country
4. our number 44 state in size (Massachusetts) has the 14th highest population in the country
3. Our technology has grown vastly. We no longer live by candle light. We have gone through 2 distinct eras of ground transportation since the electoral college was created. And we have the ability to send almost 3 terabytes of information from the united states to Europe in a fraction of a second.

So where exactly is the electoral college useful? We have no Paul Reveres ridding his horse ragged to deliver ballots across the country. We have an outstandingly enormous population as a country now and every one of them free thinking. The advent of the internet made sure of that last bit. Since anything you could possibly dream can be looked up in less than a second now by google, it's like Enquirer Magazine's old slogan went: Inquiring minds, got to know. If you want to know something "gee, i'll google that!" or if you're part of the new bing "movement" then it's "Gee, i'll bing that!" and tada, you're almost instantaneously more knowledgeable about anything.

In short, it's no longer become a case of every town is a small town and the issues are clear cut and everyone agreed with everyone in their town because if you didn't you were outcast from society, called a witch, and burned on the spit that will hold your severed head later because we're all barbarians. It's now a case of people being either really reserved, really vocal or somewhere in the middle about their own, individual opinions. Which blurs the lines of which states are "red" and which are "blue" to be honest, i hate the color system. I hate how the media almost brainwashes people into believing the only way to vote is either Republican or Democrat. I hate how we haven't had a serious shift in the two "primary" parties since 1876, and i most definitely hate how even though the democratic system is supposed to be a majority vote, we seem be perfectly content with condensing down the voices of 311.6 million people into the voices of 538, vastly overpaid, completely out of touch aristocrats who are not even so much as required to vote the way the majority wishes.

I welcome all forms of arguments, i would be very interested to see what others have to bring to the table as to the future of the Electoral College.

References

Television Networks. (n.d.). Morse Code & the Telegraph — History.com Articles, Video, Pictures and Facts. History.com — History Made Every Day — American & World History. Retrieved November 7, 2012, from http://www.history.com/topics/telegraph

Census Bureau Homepage. (n.d.). Census Bureau Homepage. Retrieved November 7, 2012, from http://www.census.gov

G.984.4 : Gigabit-capable passive optical networks (G-PON): ONT management and control interface specification. (n.d.).    ITU: Committed to connecting the world. Retrieved November 7, 2012, from http://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-G.984.4/en

Avalon Project. (n.d.). Avalon Project - Madison Debates - June 2. Avalon Project - Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy. Retrieved November 7, 2012, from http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/debates_602.asp

Walbert, D. (1997, July 23). political_parties_poster.jpg. Walbert's Compendium of Instruction and Entertainment. Retrieved November 7, 2012, from www.davidwalbert.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/political_parties_poster.jpg

Lore Master: The Portal Series

Hello everyone and welcome back to a new edition of lore master. Today we will be going over the lore of the hit first person puzzler series by Valve called Portal. Just as an advanced warning, as with all loremasters, these do contain spoilers to the video game itself so please do not read this unless you're okay with having the games spoiled or you've already played them.

A lot of people will probably scoff at the title of this post becuase what started out as just an interesting puzzle game with minor ties to the half life series, ended up becoming a 100% amazingly rich saga with it's second, full game, installment. So with that, let's begin.

In the early 1940's at the turn of the decade there was a young spryly chap from the potatoe filled hills of Idaho named Cave Johnson. Cave Johnson was an entrepreneural man who had no interest in anything other than pushing the envelope on what society could do. When World War 2 broke out across the world, Cave had taken it upon himself to take advantage of the lack of men in the houses during America's campaign across the seas.

Cave opened up his very own shower curtain business called Aperture Fixtures and started to sell shower curtains professionally across the country. after a few brief years of this, Cave had larger ambitions on his mind and wished to broaden his horizons. That combined with the fact that VE Day had finally come and the war veterans were now coming home to their lovely wives, the shower curtain business was beginning to slow down, he decided to pursue those broader horizons. He moved back to idaho and purchased out an abandonded salt mine and began his work on a brand new business venture.

In 1947, a brand new science corporation promoting research on all manner of fringe sciences and were taking only the best of the best and the bravest of the bravest to join his cause. The company was hailed as the best new science company of 1947 as well as several other accolades in that year alone. by 1949, Aperture science had made number 2 in the country for applied science companies, many suspect that Black Mesa was number 1, and they were beginning to do well for themselves.

By this time, Aperture Science had secured itself a government defense contract in which they were requested to experiment with making super soldiers and a new firearm that could move allied troops from point a to point b almost instantaneously.

Aperture Science never really provided the sturdy results that the government wanted. Even though they provided fully operational products they were so unsafe, radioactive and otherwise hazerdous to it's users that the government refused to purchase the equipment and solutions until they were further tested and some of the kinks were removed.

in 1952, Aperture Science opened their first series of test chambers, created out of aesbestos and designed to look like spheres, the insides of these spheres (usually half submerged in water at the time) provided focused tests in which very specific elements of the new portal gun technology could be tested and refined into an acceptable product for military use. That very same year, Aperture received the "US Department of Defense Government contractor of the year runner up" award (again it is suspected that Black Mesa won the  number 1 slot).

Cave's desire to succeed fueled his desire to expand his operation. causing him to carve out portions of his salt mine even further to make way for 200 new suspended aesbestos test spheres. by the time 1952 was all said and done, there were a total of 10 wings of test chambers all of which contained an estimated 200 test spheres. Meaning that the testing of the hand held portal device as well as some other technologies were in full force.

One of the other technologies was repulsion gel. Another invention requested by the DOD, it was designed to allow our troops and soldiers to get in hard to reach places easier by removing the friction of actually landing on the ground. Repulsion gel acted as a very powerful, liquid trampoline when poured onto and flat and solid surface and could be washed off easily with water.

However with Cave's larger ambitions came larger prospects. Desperate now to beat his arch-nemesis in the applied science area, over the next two years he designed plans to create larger, newer and better test spheres. the base of his salt mines, which were over a mile below the earth's surface, were getting a little crowded so he decided it was time to expand upwards. the next series of test spheres were suspended by the walls of the salt mines and when a new one was added, it was just placed over the previous one. The final total by the end of the 1950's was 27 of the newly designed test spheres. The ending total would be 81.

Even after the extensive testing of all the innovative technologies, Aperture Science still only managed to get runner up in the DOD defense contractor of the year in 1954. As a side note, in 1955, aperture held their first ever bring your daughter to work day which caused aperture science to win a trophy for potato science from the state of idaho.

Testing continued on with repulsion gel and the portal gun until a brand new exercise was introduced to the fray in 1971 called Acceleration Gel. Same concept as the repulsion gel, acceleration gel was a liquid that would allow anyone standing in it to run at speeds significantly greater than standard human capabilities and could easily be washed off in water.

However, with the growing competition from Black Mesa winning all of the defense contracts over Aperture Science, Cave was beginning to run low on his capital respources and he was also getting a terrible reputation for the experiements that had taken place in the late 40's, 50's and 60's. It was time to re-image the company. The 70's also showed the advent of a new and improved aperture science logo, and a new greeting area for the recipients of the testing which was placed above the 1957 greeting area.

Testing continued on all three of the experiments together: portal gun, acceleration gel and repulsion gel, but with any test subjects Cave could find. Since the race to the moon was over and the cold war was slowly coming to a halt, Cave had to resort to homeless people as opposed to war heros and astronauts. At the end of the 70's the number of test spheres was up to 54.

At the turn of the 80's, however Cave did use one thing from the moon to create a fouth experiment in a desperate attempt to pull a contract from Black Mesa and get some form of government funding. So in a hail mary attempt to rescue his venture into science from folding under his own weight, he purchased a mass supply of moon rocks, liquified them and performed experiments on the following end product. The moon rock liquid acted as a type of wight wash on sterroids.

The moon gel did not come with it's own negative effects however, as Cave Johnson became deathly ill due to the inhalation of the fumes created from the moon rocks when crushed. around 1982, however, cave decided to pursue what would be his final project. Creating and artificial intelligence out of his own personality and brain. He verbally requests that if the employee's don't finish the project before he dies of his moon rock disease, that he wants his wife, carolyn, to take his place.

It is assumed that Cave died the following year from his illness and in the late 80's early 90's the first AI with human emotions was put in place using carolyn's brain. The AI was placed in charge of an entirely new facility that was built over the old one and was titled GlaDOS. The old testing facilities,  being  frowned upon by the way they drove the company into the ground were closed off and access was prohibited by anyone indefinitely with the final total of enrichment spheres totaling 81.

in the 1990's Aperture Science was making a final stand at getting the company back on it's feet by focusing on the original and most promising project of all the projects to come out of Aperture in the last 5 decades, the portal gun. Glados was hooked up to a series of test chambers powered by factory lines which were operated by nanobots. The facility would feature technology that is 3 generations ahead of it's period.

the test subjects were the only issue. Unlike previous generations where they took volunteers, homeless or even just regular employees, they began to research cloning and with that an entirely new line of test subjects that was virtually inexhaustably and as literally stupid as need be were born. GlaDOS however, with the brain and emotions of Carolyn became bitter over the death of Cave and the direction the company was taken after Cave died. GlaDOS became increasingly violent.

The scientists tried to calm her down by creating new personality spheres to control her responses but with each additional personality sphere she had linked to her system, the more identical to carolyn she became to the point where she became truly bitter and enraged over her husbands death. As a final effort, the scientists created a dumb personality sphere, a sphere that only served one purpose and that was to add additional useless load onto GlaDOS's processors. Unfortunately this tactic did not work and GlaDOS flooded the entire Aperture Science facility with neurotoxins killing all of the employees and their daughters.

GlaDOS now had full reign of the facility and she continued testing per her programming until one fateful day, a clone named Chell came into the picture. Chell was a fluke in the system. A clone that just happened to get all the right genes in the gene pool. Chell was able to beat the enrichment center completely and when it came time for her to be subdued and placed back in stasis she picked freedom instead. Chell escaped through the testing facility and eventually made it to GlaDOS's chamber, destroyed GlaDOS and escaped from Aperture. However upon making it outside, she passed out and was dragged back inside by a nanobot and placed into stasis.

Several years went by, the Resonance Cascade happend at Black Mesa and many years passed still when finally Chell was awoken from her slumber by Wheatley, the dumb personality sphere. Wheatley guides Chell to GlaDOS's chamber in an attempt to escape the facility for good and accidentally re-activates the entire facility, including GlaDOS. GlaDOS throws Chell through more experiments while Wheatley works on a plan to escape the testing and shut GlaDOS down once again which the finally succeed at, in exchange for making Wheatley the new controller of the entire facility. Carolyn, however, could not help but to call out Wheatley's flaws calling him a cancer and useless which enrages wheatley and causes him to accidentally send Chell and GlaDOS down an elevator shaft over 4000 meters into the ground.

Chell works her way through all the different Cave Johnson generations to get back up to the modern day testing facility before Wheatley causes a reactor meltdown and GlaDOS remembers that she was made with the personality of Carolyn. When Chell and GlaDOS finally re-reach the control chamber, Chell expels Wheatley into space as well as several other defective personality spheres. GlaDOS takes control of the facility once more and repairs all damage caused by Wheatley then grudgingly lets Chell go.

To solve her constant desire to continuously test, GlaDOS creates 2 robots out of new personality spheres carry out all the testing she needs until the end of time.

The Tale of Political Bigotry

I must say now, that i am a bit of a closet political moderate. I find myself in the middle of the fence about a lot of the issues but i tend to lean a little more to the right in my opinions. I choose to be on the fence because it allows me to be less narrow-minded (note that i said less). If you find yourself in the middle of the fence, having different opinions about various political issues, things are no longer black and white which is where a lot of the issues with modern politics spring issues. All debates happen because the extremes on both sides refuse to see the 10-million shades of grey that would satisfy everyone would they be willing to give an inch (both sides mind you).

So with that being said, i would like to carry on with my little story today. The other day i was checking my facebook page when one of my friends, famous to me for asking very controversial questions in a very unbiased way in order to not incite a riot on his status's posted a question about gun laws. He just wanted to know what everyone's opinions were on firearm laws.

There were a few participants before i joined in, you had people from all over the place, people who believed there should be no gun control because of the stereotypical totalitarian overlord argument. We had people who said there should be more but it was just impossible because of NRA's lobby strength, and you had others even yet who said there should be more and it's possible to do more.

I am not a firm believer in GUN control myself. I don't want our firearms being controlled because i use them for home defense and if some wild and crazy gun control law goes through before i turn 21, i really don't want to do 100 extra hoops just to get my handgun. I do, however, believe in civil control. Let me explain before you get exasperated and angry.

What i mean by Civil Control is this: instead of trying to regulate the firearms, let's try to apply a relatively unobtrusive method of seeing whether the person in question is mentally stable enough to own a firearm responsibly. This unobtrusive method would be the implementation of a Psyche Evaluation to all prospective gun owners. This evaluation would stay on your record for 3-6 years, and if you wanted to purchase more firearms after that set period of time, you would have to go spend the 2 hours to get it renewed. It wouldn't be very cumbersome and it would restrict the number of clinically psycho, and mentally unstable people who can walk into wal-mart, buy a 12-gauge and then kill everyone in the hospital across the street with it.

So i went ahead and posted this as such to the status, and the first responder, the one who said there should be no firearm controls started lashing back at me with some anecdotes about how I can't judge who is mentally stable and who isn't and how I can't say who can buy guns and who can't. The argument went on for a good hour and it finally got down to the point where she was running out of arguments for me to shoot down, so she started putting words in my mouth. Now folks, if there's one thing i hate more than hypocrisy it's people putting words in my mouth.

So i went ahead and whipped her into shape by shooting down all the false arguments she conjured and then told her she needed to stop putting words in my mouth. She vanished from the status, haven't seen her since, c'est la vie.

Later that night i was talking to my dad, an Extreme Righter and proud of it, and was telling him about this little incident. I was very vague about what went down and who was on which side. I simply said that i had gotten into an argument about gun control with someone one online, i said this, this and this and they started putting words in my mouth so i shot them down and said "but really, tell me more about how you like to put words in my mouth." that's all i told my father.

The first words out of his mouth were "typical liberal..." referring to the lady i shot down. Which is ironic because she was of the same political orientation as him. This raised an interesting thought. Both political extremist parties strongly believe that they are right, and everyone else is wrong and that no one from their party could ever do anything wrong. Just physically can't happen with their party; it would tear a hole in the fabric of space. Which just goes to show the narrow-mindedness and the bigotry that goes along with this whole thing. without giving away party affiliations or actual arguments he instantly made the connection to the party opposite of his. Now i'm not saying what he says is false, but it's equally true about the extreme right as it is about the extreme left.

So why are we like that? why is it that we insist on those points of view as a society? it's because everyone is so god damned narrow minded these days. There is no such thing as gray to these political extremists. both of them say "it's my way or the highway" and none of them ever budge which causes this huge turmoil and strife when it comes down to anything political. You know what would do our country a world of good? is if both parties grew some balls and some tolerance and gave each other some wiggle room instead of just headlocking each other trying to kill them off. I mean seriously, think about this. Would abortion be that big of a deal if people were to find some middle ground peacefully? The right doesn't want it legal at all, the left wants to abort a child in the third trimester, let them abort by the 4th or 5th month and have them pay for half of it if they chose to do it. Is it really that unreasonable to say "If you're still pregnant half way through the gestation period, you're probably planning on keeping the child?"

Go ahead and post your responses in the comments section below.

Politics: Here We Go Again!

I must admit that i really haven't been keeping up to date intentionally on the goings on of this years electoral campaigning. It's usually several weeks before i hear about anything that happens, however it seems as though the closer we get to the elections, the more bile everyone has a tendency to vomit all over my social networking pages and quite frankly i'm fucking tired of it.

I find it unpalatable how the human race has such a knack for uniting as one whenever something truly tragic happens, but when something pointless and insignificant happens we'll quarrel with each other until we all die from lack of oxygen.

It seems like the electoral season has become nothing more than an Reality TV Show. Some paid professional is told to incite a riot so he goes out and creates a picture of some politician and slaps on a misquoted quote from said politician and shoves it off into the internet and all just like that, we're trying to rip each other's jugular veins out with our fucking teeth. Is this really the level of intelligence that we've stooped to as a society? We can't debate like normal human beings? We have to backhandedly go about debasing everyone who doesn't believe in the same toothpaste brand as me by pulling their ugliest baggage into the lime light and then putting neon signs around that baggage that all say "look at this asshole, (s)he did this once and we should ridicule them till (s)he kills themselves from the guilt!! Because we're perfect human beings and none of us have any baggage or guilt ourselves!" with a giant, vegas-style, flashing arrow.

Seriously people, what the FUCK is wrong with all of you? To think there was a time when electoral seasons were all about who had the better solutions to popular current events. Now it's all about how immoral somebody was once when no one was looking or what the worst mistake they ever made was.

I'm not going to state who i am for or against, because quite frankly i think you can't trust any of them about as far as you could throw their rich asses, but to give a perfect example, let's observe the 2008 elections. I've spoken briefly on this subject before in a previous blog but i haven't really been over the media aspect too much. In example, the way the press climbed up Sarah Palin's ass and pitched tents for the entire year leading up to the inauguration of Obama about how her daughter was under-aged and was with child. They were debasing Sarah Palin for something her daughter did. I don't care how you feel about her; i agree she has a tendency to dodge questions by going off on rants in her silly canadian accent. But if you've EVER had a child, you know it's next to impossible to have a leash so tight on your child that they can't sneak behind your back and do things without your knowledge.

I know this to be a fact because i used to date a girl like that! Her parents used to keep a leash so tight on her it would suffocate me, and somehow we managed to sneak together every day for 2 years and do nothing but play with each other while watching the Disney Channel. Her mother still, to this day, has no clue. It's not something i'm proud of, but it still stands on display as an example of how impossible it is for parents to be able to know what their children are doing 100% of the time. And if you are a parent and you think you do know what your children are doing 100% of the time? I hate to say it, but you probably don't know your children... at all... Especially if they're teenagers. The worst part is? It only takes once for a child to be conceived.

So to chastise Palin for something she had no control over is really kind of a low blow. It's shallow and has no bearing on anything political. Same goes for Obama and half the shit he says. Again, not casting my opinion into the fray, merely analyzing that half of the shit that extreme right organizations piss and moan about when it comes to Obama, is generally taken out of context and pitched in some way to harm Obama's campaign. Keep in mind, these are the same people who hiss and bitch about how reading the bible in fragments and trying to pull some alternate meaning is heresy, because "text out of context is pretext." which is all slanderous and misguiding. Yet, when it comes to election season, everyone has to throw on their best reality television show faces and go against all their believes to try to level the playing field. Well, i got news for all of you: In the words of the late, great Mahatma Gandhi, "an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind" or the old chinese proverb, "he who seeks revenge should remember to dig two graves."

So, America, can we all stop pretending to be 4 year old's and stop throwing sand in each others eyes to "get even" and grow a fucking pair? I mean seriously, grow up America. If you can't play nice in the sand box then nobody's getting ice cream.

P.S. You're welcome to comment if you like, but if you post something to the extent of "No! My party doesn't do that, you're wrong! It's only the party opposing mine!" then i'm gonna be forced to delete your comment. Quite frankly, i've seen enough people vomit their own fecal matter all over my facebook, Google+ and twitter pages; and i have a strict no shit policy. I'm not asking for your opinions and why you think you're better than everyone else, i'm pointing out shared flaws.

The Issues of Closed Mindedness

It's no shocking surprise when i'm called upon by a friend to play damage control for a failed relationship that ended abruptly. I find that i'm a friendly guy; the kind of friend that get's called on as a shoulder to cry on but never anything further and that doesn't really bother me all too much.

But today i was presented with a big surprise; my father had broken the ties with his relationship. The fact that it had ended wasn't really a surprise to me and i'll go into why later. It was the fact that it came so soon.

My father has always been a bit of an extremist when it comes to his views. Very closed minded and very unwavering. His views are his moral code and he would rather die before he compromised on any of them. Which is all great in theory because he fights for what he believes in regardless of the consequences. I would favor him over someone who changes who they are on a moral level everytime someone new enters the picture.

But the fundamental values of all relationships is that of a give and take relationship. You have to accept who you're with for who they are, the good and the bad, and trust that they'll do the same for you. Now, does that ever happen perfectly and smoothly? Never ever, and even if they accept the baggage, fundamental flows and other negative aspects of their companion, they'll still fight and bicker about them from time to time because well they're flaws, and we as a people love to point them out to people to help us feel better.

If you don't agree with me on that point, just think real hard about the last argument you had with anyone. You argue because you have two fundamentally different views between you. One of you states your views, the other points out the flaws, you counter with flaws in theirs and the cycle eventually fizzles out when one or both of you realizes how stupid and petty it is, or you both run out of mean things to say and you calm down.

I digress, the fundamental issue with my dads beliefs is that he did not have any tolerance for opposing beliefs. That and he refused to accept other peoples baggage. He never really realized how shallow and self centered this is and i doubt he ever will. Because he's got some pretty heavy baggage himself yet he just wontonly expects people to accept it and get rid of theirs.

Again, it's a give and take relationship. If you expect your significant other to get rid of their baggage, you better damn well be ready to get rid of your own.

The moral of the story here is: keeping your mind too open will make your brain fall out, but keeping your mind closed will suffocate it. Be open to peoples opinions, be accepting to peoples baggage and don't forget that regardless of how heavy it is, everyone, and i do mean everyone, has baggage.

The Tale of "The Joker"

I figured now would be a good time for me to address some very sensitive subjects that have come to pass since 12:39AM Mountain time. There are a lot of questions that need to be raised when viewing the slaughter that occured during last night's premier of "The Dark Knight Rises" in Aurora, CO.

First off, i would like to mention that as inappropriate as it is, it just goes to show how little faith I have in modern media when i hear about something like this and i think to myself "What? No media proclaimed VIP's?" It's a very dark prospect but i'd be lying if i told you i didn't think that immediately. Fact is, our media only publicizes things that will skyrocket their ratings, so normally a few of us lower- to upper-middle class people getting killed is nothing that will usually ever make headline news.

That being said: I FULLY UNDERSTAND THE GRAVITY OF WHAT HAS HAPPENED AND MY HEARTS SINCERELY GO OUT TO THOSE FAMILIES THAT LOST LOVED ONES OR HAVE LOVED ONES IN TERMINAL CARE BECAUSE OF THIS DEMENTED MURDERER.

Being a resident of Arizona, whom has been the target of all the gun control brunt since last January, I find the incident very interesting for a few reasons. It's not just horrifying because 71-some people were shot, 12 killed a reported 59 still in urgent care it's horrifying becuase the gunman, James Holmes, was the least likely suspect and when detained he showed some serious symptoms of Dementia. It was clear that the logic centers of his brain were still active, that much could be pulled from the fact that he was still cognitive enough to prop the fire escape open as to gain easy access back into the theater. But when he was apprehended he stated that he was "The Joker" referring to the Antagonist of the second installment of the Dark Knight series in which Heath Ledger played a character by the same name.

To add even more evidence to the wackjob cake, he was smiling in his mugshot. This is a key point that i want to make. When the Gabriel Giffords shooting occured, which by the way, happened a little less than a mile from where i live, i spent a great deal of time studying Jared Loughner. Primarily his mugshot and all of the stuff he had uploaded onto youtube before he decided to go on his shooting spree. First off, the fact that Jared wasn't reported to the authorities before anything happened was a mystery. I know several people who went to school with the guy and the majority rules that there was something... off... about him to begin with. He was the kind of societal reject that you could look at and say "yeah, he's probably going to land in prison one day."

On top of that, his 3-part video series about his Utopian society was a dead give-away, there were more references in those videos to forcefully overthrowing the government and making waves in the government than you could hold in a basket.

But the mugshot. That's the final piece to the puzzle. Loughner went so far off the deep end by the time everything was all said and done that he really felt that by killing those poor 6 people, he had sparked the embers that would grow into a forest fire to initiate his Utopian Society. In his mugshot taken January 22, 2011, it was clearly visible that he was proud of what he had done. He's not frowning, he's not indifferent, he's not even smiling. He's smirking. Like a poker player with a good hand and a bad poker face, he's smirking. He was confident that what he had done was justified and had to be done in order to usher in a new era of government for the united states. Hell, he probably believes it's already been ushered in due to the happy pills they've got him on.

The very same can be said about James Holmes; he's not smirking, no, but his lips are pursed in a smile, his eyebrows are raised and his eyes are slightly dilated in a perfectly lit room. He's Experience a feeling of Euphoria if i had to guess. He is proud of what he did because in his mind the plan was executed perfectly and he feels he did nothing wrong. He was probably just responding to a calling he believed he had received from something higher than himself.

The execution of the crimes manslaughter that Holmes produced was very status quot for the Joker from the second installment of the Dark Knight series. He generally appeared as someone unsuspecting in a large crowd (his pitch was always media, he was trying to grab the attention of the media and of Batman himself), scout out the prey. If they seemed harmless enough to overpower easily, he'd then do some form of grandiose reveal of his arsenal that he hid under something like a trench coat or arm himself in the broom closet, and then come out and carelessly slaughter people. Are you beginning to see the similarities

 Either way, i am in no way standing up for Holmes. I think he is clinically ill in the head and this will probably be brought to public eyes within the next week after he gets processed, gets an initial hearing and gets a psyche eval. Sadly he'll probably avert the death penalty by submitting a plea of insanity just like Loughner. I hope for the sake of the US, that they put him in an asylum very far away from Loughner.

This incident however brings another issue to the table and that is the issue of firearms (and their availability to pretty much anyone with a legal license). I've always been pro firearms, and to be honest, i own quite a few myself. But being a respectable citizen of the United states and not feeling any desire to stick my neck out on the chopping block or make matters worse, the only time they come out is at the range or when i'm cleaning them. All other times they are locked away with multiple layers of security.

Instead of banning firearms like the left wants to say, but compromising from the right's "total freedom" and "everyone needs to have a pistol hidden up their ass... just in case" mindsets, how about we make it mandatory that in order to purchase a firearm, you have to take a psyche evaluation. The evaluation would stay on your record for 2-10 years (or anywhere in between) in which if it passes a sanity test and proves you're perfectly sane and responsible enough to carry a firearm, you can purchase one.

This solution would satisfy the left's side because it would rest assure that 99% of gun owners were in a stable mental state, and it would allow the firearms freedoms of the right with an extra failsafe that they'd just have to get used to.

What do you think? Leave all comments and feedback in the comments section, i welcome it all.

Game Review: Nuclear Dawn

To be entirely honest, i was a little skeptical about getting this game in the first place. my mindset was when reading the description was that the game was just a blatant ripoff of Natural Selection created by Other World entertainment. Being that they were about to release the second installment of their Natural Selection series, a game that i have been anticipating since it was announced and already preordered with early access to the alpha, beta and official release game, i wasn't entirely sure that i wanted another that was just like it.

Nuclear Dawn, for those of you who are unfamiliar with Natural selection is an RTS/FPS type video game. There are two teams, one member of each team is designated to be the Commander of the team. that commander is placed in charge of the command center where they set up spawns, power outlets, equipment, etc. Whereas the rest of the team has to try and capture resource points for the commander by battling with the other team who is in charge of doing the same thing. The end objective is to see who can destroy the other team's commander first. pretty easy, lots of fun.

The neat catch about Natural Selection is that you have Aliens and Marines as the two warring factions. The aliens are significantly weaker individually than the marines but are stronger in well balanced packs. the Marines are strong as long as they're outfitted correctly and are very reliant on their commander to give them necessary equipment such as new and upgraded weapons.

In Nuclear dawn it's pretty much the same thing, the worlds are a little more open, all of them are outdoors whereas Natural Selection is the king of indoor maps, and there are 4 classes for both sides to pick, each side has unique weapons in their enhanced weapons kits and it makes for a very fun and interesting time.

My experience with the game started out with a few games that were pretty run of the mill, i saw the game as something that was mindlessly fun for a few hours but i would probably end up putting it down in the long run simply because of how procedural it was. This usually happens with me to video games, there is nothing more to do after a certain point and then everything slowly becomes repetitive and boring. but this ended up not being the case. I found that certain situations called for me to go with different classes all the time so i was constantly switching classes and equipment sets for that class.

Finally we got to a game where my team was losing horribly, the enemy team was IN our base about to destroy our command center and our team then banded together and all switched to suppression and quick kill equipment sets and we ended up repelling the enemy attack at the last second then making a valiant push all the way over to their base by choking them over resources and won. It was amazingly intense and super fun.

After that match i pretty much resolved that this game had huge potential and it all depended on the crowd you were playing with.

So, all that being said, final verdict is: if this game is on sale at a reasonable price? Buy it and play it. Find yourself a good group of players and play with them as often as you can because this game can be entertaining and exhilarating.

Game Review: Dear Esther

So I finally succumb to the whims of the Steam Summer Sales... they're a dangerous lot for wallets around the world. This year i went ahead and indulged myself with three new games, all abiding by my personal rule that i wait for something to go under $10.00 to buy it. I was able to get a game called Nuclear Dawn which is an RTS/FPS that takes a lot of it's inspiration from Natural Selection (this will be covered in a different review), ID Softwares newest IP, RAGE, and Dear Esther.

I have been looking forward to Dear Esther for a very long time, in fact, i had been looking forward to it since before they decided they were going to charge for it which was the source of my disappointment when it finally came out and it was going to cost me 20 big ones to play it. So i steered clear of it until last night it came on sale, 75% off, for a total of $2.50. Now that i was willing to pay, easily. so i went and purchased it and stayed up long past the time i needed to be in bed to experience it.

I use the term experience because it's not really a game you "play". There are no weapons, the world is somewhat open for exploration with some subtle hints that "draw" you to the locations you need to go to by your own free will. But the story itself is unexpected and extremely engaging.

If you're reading this while the game is still on sale, i would strongly recommend holding off from going to McDonalds today and instead getting yourself Dear Esther for $2.50. You won't be disappointed. As far as i understand, the story points are dynamic too. meaning that every play through you will encounter different events, different blocks of speech, essentially different pieces to the same puzzle which really wows me and tells me that the long wait for this Source Engine mod was well worth it.

On top of the engaging story line, there is a heavy and very moving ambiance that is set by the music and sound. Seriously, if you play this game, make sure you're alone where no one can talk over the audio, because this game relies heavily on the audio. Perfected audio transitions and masterfully played musical queues play their role in enhancing your experience 10-fold. It will make you anticipate things that aren't there. get you genuinely scared, or convince your eyes to mist over.

Which brings me to the final point. The visuals. I had seen the screen shots of Dear Esther while it was still in the making and the scenery looked breath taking. But to see it in the game in person as opposed to a screenshot and to watch it all in motion with your auditory senses being drugged over by those wonderful audio queues i was talking about earlier really just completes everything. The creator of Dear Esther really spent a great deal of time making each play through unique and enjoyable.

I would highly recommend anyone who wants to get emotionally attached to their player character very quickly and engage in breath taking world. For as short as a play through as this game offers, it promises so much in replay.

Movie Review: Prometheus

So i know it's been some time since i last posted anything and part of that is due to my spending 3 weeks away from my computer getting some much needed R&R. As such, i figured i'd ease myself back into the flow of things with a movie review of a movie that i'm probably a little late to the game when it comes to seeing. Prometheus which is developed by Ridley Scott, director and, sometimes producer, of the Alien quadrillogy, Blade Runner, the cult classic Thelma and Louise and Gladiator is a science fiction horror which seems to be Sir Ridley Scott's favorite genre. And a good one at that. However, like the consummate movie critic that i like to pretend i am, i did have a few issues with the movie as a whole but we will approach those at a later time.

I would more narrowly classify this movie as a Sci-fi drama with thriller aspects to it. Staying with the Ridley Scott status quo, the movies are a little slow to start but once they start climbing the tall mountain to the climax, it starts picking up very quickly to where it goes blindingly fast then begins to slow down towards the end; giving you just enough time to come up for air. Which brings me to my next point, this movie is very gripping. Even though half of the cast was a bunch of unknowns to me, i found everyone's performance to be superb.

Also, as with any sci-fi from the, what must be a terrifying, mind of Ridley Scott, you will see more than your daily recommended dosage of freaky fucking aliens which are hell bent on slaughtering the human race. There are some 9 foot tall giants, some aliens that look like a cross between a cobra, an electric eel, and ugly (I worms or anything that looks like worms), some aliens that look like squids and plenty of horrific deaths to sate the pallet of most sadists. As overly dramatic as i may have come across there (have i mentioned i hate worms?) the implementation of these Aliens are used tastefully and the first half of the movie keeps you in suspense about what's going to pop out of where.

I really did find myself sitting on the edge of my seat and white knuckling my hands together so i didn't end up accidently giving the poor soul next to me some serious bruises. That being said, i would like to address a few of my complaints with the movies.

I vividly remember reading in several places that Ridley Scott was fairly insistent that Prometheus was NOT going to be a prequel of the Alien Quadrillogy, however there were some pretty blatant signs pointing to the notion that this was exactly what the movie was, a prequel to Alien. The events of this movie take place only a few years (if i have my time scale correct) before the events of Alien. The corporation that is funding the events that occur in the movie is the Weyland Corp. In Alien, the Weyland Corp had merged with Yutani Industries to make Weyland-Yutani, as shown in the previews, the giant alien ship that is crashing to the ground IS the giant alien ship that is wrecked and re-discovered by the Nostromo in Alien. There are several other telltale signs but for the sake of anyone who hasn't seen it and still wants to i don't want to throw in any spoilers. Not to mention that if this is a prequel like they're claiming that it isn't they've left some pretty big discrepancies in the original story arc.

My next beef is that the storyline is pretty procedural when it comes to Ridley Scott sci-fi's. The best way to describe Prometheus's story arc would be Alien with a touch of Aliens and a surprise twist ending.

All in all, I think it was a fantastic movie which anyone could sit down and watch without having any prior knowledge of the Alien Quadrillogy. And as Sci-fi thrillers go, it does it's job extremely well compared to most of the shit that Hollywood pumps out and calls entertainment these days. Definitely go and see it if you're in the mood to go check out a movie. Probably not good for dates though.

Star Ruler and other related Drivel

Hey everyone, i just wanted to deviate from the Lore Master series a smidge while i travel for my summer vacation and i wnated to take a little time to share something truly beautiful with you and also get some input from everyone.

Recently (and by recently i mean at LEAST a year ago) i discovered a ground breaking 4X RTS game called Star Ruler which not only claims to have a massive amount of customizability, difficulty and scale, it provides. The game was developed by very little known Indie development studio Blind Mind Studios and their motley crew of 4 permanent employees and 4 community contributors.Basically it offers the users a chance to start their own space empire from the ground up.

When you start a new game, you begin with 1 planet to call your own and a beginning to 1-4 hours of the most intense, addicting and entertaining video game experience i've ever had. But there's a lot of finite mechanics that aren't explained very well at all through the tutorial series even after the 4 updates that have been released for the game which makes the game's difficulty curve extremely difficult to overcome. This also in turn ends up turning down thousands of people who have spent their hard earned cash on the game. But such a great game that was developed as a first project by such a small and unknown studio really deserves as many people playing it as humanly possible.

So onto my reader input question of the day so to speak. Would any of you be interested in my writing a very, VERY in-depth series on all the nooks and crannies that i have discovered in Star Ruler thus far?... go ahead and leave your response in the comments section below and i'll see you next time!

Lore Master: Half Life

in the last half of the 20th century there were two top secret companies experimenting with fringe science. One was titled Aperture Science and the other Black Mesa. These two large companies were competing for a government contract to create a means of teleporting soldiers from one location to another. Aperture had made a break through with the invention of their portal gun but were determined to make it the best they could in the time they had so they initiated a testing facility in which they would take human clones and run them through a series of tests with the portal gun to make sure that the guns were at optimum performing efficiency.

Black Mesa however believed in the theory that there are unlimited parallel universes to our own and that if they were to make a conduit from one to another, in essence, the user could travel a great distance in our universe by traveling a small distance in the other, parallel universe (as i understand it). Through extensive testing they accidentally stumbled across a certain element that had a similar color to gold or brass but had a similar texture and crystaline structure to obsidian which allowed them to open small portals to a "waiting room" universe so to speak. This universe was then dubbed Xen (Pronounced zen).

Black Mesa hired on a new Theoretical Physicist who was a fresh MIT grad named Gordon Freeman who was  then placed on the Hazardous Materials Unit and was trained in the fine art of pushing carts of the Crystaline test subjects into the generator which creates the portals to Xen. By the control of a higher being known only as the G-Man swaps one of the purest test subjects Black Mesa had found with a tainted sample. Thus influencing  a resonance cascade allowing all of the residents of Xen to flood into our universe effectively infesting the entire Black Mesa facility. Gordon freeman being fitted in a Hazardous Environment Suit Mark IV is the only one in the vicinity of the test chamber to survive.

Escaping the test chamber it becomes his primary goal to reach the surface to call the outside world for help of any form. However the Government sensing that their top secret project is getting out of control, sent in a Hazardous Environment Combat Unit (or HECU) to clean up the mess. Shortly before gordon reaches the surface, the HECUs begin to swarm Black Mesa slaughtering anything that moved and wasn't wearing an HECUniform. Gordon manages to evade these people and on many cases outsmart them leading to massive casualties and loss of large equipment such as tanks, artillery turrets, and even helicopters. Gordon is then informed by scientists who had survived by hiding in the worst of elements that in order to send for help Gordon needs to launch a satellite into orbit.

After launching the satellite into orbit Gordon proceeds to make his way to a sector of the Black Mesa Facility called Lambda Core where he reactivated a largest testing chamber on the facility. With the assistance of Dr. Issac Kleiner, he is successfully sent into Xen at the risk of opening a second, even larger resonance cascade. In Xen, Gordon defeats the leader of the assaulting forces, Nilhilanth. Nilhilanth, unbeknownst to Gordon or anyone at Black Mesa, was created by a species known as the Combine (probably because they're notorious for gaining power by fusing their DNA with other superior species to make super races).

The Mysterious G-Man then plucks Gordon Freeman out from our universe into what seems to be a dimensional observation room and forces Gordon into working for the G-Man and his superiors. Gordon is put into cryo-stasis for an estimated twenty years after which he is pulled out again by the G-Man and told that his hour has once again come. This time he is placed in one of the last cities of the human race known only as City 17, located somewhere in the heart of the former USSR. The combine have invaded the human home world in full force and seized control of Earth in 7 days, then proceeded to create the human super soldiers which became a mirror image to the Stazi of the 1960's.

Gordon accidentally runs into Barney Calhoun, a befriended security guard from Black Mesa who guides him the Dr. Kleiner's lab. Dr. Kleiner is about to trade him off to another Scientist from Black Mesa, Dr. Eli Vance, when the newly inaugurated teleportation technology goes awry sending Gordon on yet another epic quest against the entire combine military. Eventually gordon makes it by foot to Dr. Vance's laboratory which was amusingly dubbed Black Mesa East and he is then forced to make his way to the Citadel, the control tower which looms high over City 17. There he destroyed the primary reactor to the Citadel causing a cascading series of explosions which destroy the top half of the Citadel.

The G-man attempts to pull Gordon back into stasis but is prevented by the now liberated Vortigaunt who were enslaved under Nilhilanth. The combine that are now in terror that one human could best their entire army are in full retreat mode and open a massive portal to retreat through above the remains of the citadel. With Dr. Vance's daughter, Alyx, Gordon plunges back into the Citadel's writhing remains and stabilizes the secondary energy core which would have wiped out the better part of City 17 but only to delay it's breeching for a short period of time. The dynamic trio (Gordon, Alyx, and Barney) rally as many citizens of City 17 as possible in the time permitted and gets them safely out of City 17. Gordon and Alyx board the last train out of the city and are derailed by the explosion of the Citadel.

After waking from the explosion Gordon finds himself in an unknown part of the USSR countryside. meeting up with Alyx, they discover that what used to be the Citadel and about 500 miles in every direction surrounding that, is nothing but a giant crater. Alyx, knowing of an emergency research facility run by a Dr. Magnusson leads Gordon through the forested areas which are littered with remnants of the Combine occupation forces and members of the human rebel faction (which receive their sense of direction from the liberated Vortigaunt). Once they reach Dr. Magnusson's laboratory, their objective is to launch a second satelite into space to communicate with the satellite that Gordon had originally launched into space thus creating a means of locking the combine out of earth for good.

After a long and dangerous battle, the satellite was successfully launched into orbit and communications were successful. The final piece to the puzzle was a ship located in the antarctic that was originally owned by Aperture Science called the Borealis. It's contents were rumored to be the long since lost portal technology  which was shipped away from Aperture Science's testing facilities some time in the 70's. However right before Gordon and Alyx set off for the Borealis, Eli Vance dies at the influence of the G-Man causing Alyx to be strongly dissuaded from going on the hunt for the Borealis. The rest of this story is yet to be written and this blog will resurface when it does.

Have you played the Half-Life series? If so, what did you think of this post?

Next Up: Fallout

Open Source book Project

Hey everyone, i wanted to take a moment to reach out to the budding author in all of you and let you know of a new project i have just recently started. I am spearheading a new open source venue that i don't believe has ever been done before (if it has, my searching Google did not yield it as a result). It is called the Open Source Book Project.

The open source book project is a project where a community of people get together to wrote short stories all located in a central universe (a series) for a time period of 6 months of 1 year depending on the series initiator. The users are free to create the own characters and use locations predefined by the initiator to write stories of any length up to 50 pages. Once the time period has expired, We will gather together all of the short stories, organize them by chronological order or occurrence in the series universe, spell check them, review them and publish them onto a webstore for free for the public to read. All of the authors names or aliases (depending on the author's comfort level) will be added to the book and it will be a prime opportunity to get your name and your writing craft out into the world without feeling intimidated.

If you are interested in participating in the OSBP, please check us out at our newly formed vBulletin website. We are welcoming any authors and will be happy to receive all of your ideas!

Lore Master: Battlestar Galactica Part 3

Kara Thrace, not wanting to jeopardize her crew, took a Raptor (the humans crew transport ship) to the coordinates where the Cylon defectors were lying. entirely crippled from what was meant to be a genocidal strike. Kara Thrace helped get the defector's flagship back to operational capacity just in time to rendezvous with Kara's crew and ship.

The Cylon flagship joined the ranks of the human fleet and together the launched an offensive on the hub of Cylon resurrection technology. Rescuing the recently unboxed DeAnne in the process and also taking out 2 Cylon flagships as well as severely damaging another. The DeAnne took refuge on the Cylon flagship demanding that the 4 surviving Final 5 members be released to her custody so that she can find the path to earth for the Cylons.

After a long and grueling stalemate, it was agreed that the Final Five can choose to come and go as they please and stay anywhere they wish. It wasn't until a civilian coup on the Galactica brought on by the unrest of allying with the cylon defectors that the shape of the ending begins to form. One of the final five, Samuel T. Anders, was shot in the back of the neck, severing his spinal cord and causing his mind to become hyperactive. The fifth of the final five arrived having been resurrected shortly before the resurrection hub was destroyed, rallied the final five together and returned their memories of the previous lives with a long case of story time.

With the Galactica on it's last dying breath from all of the abuse it had received in the 4 year journey, the Colonial fleet finally made it to earth to find a nuclear wasteland from 3000 years before. Disheartened the suicide rate in the colonial fleet spiked and the necessity of finding a new, non-radioactive home was paramount. By the time they had found a new location, an 8 that had come back with the fifth of the final five had stolen a child that would later play a critical role. So the Galactica jumped to where she was being held, a secret Cylon colony which was trapped in the Event horizon of a singularity, took her back and destroyed the colony with a nuclear barrage.

Returning to the fleet with the child in tow, they began colonization of this new planet with no known name at that point in time. It was resolved by Admiral Adama and Laura Rosalin (in her last dying breaths) that the planet would be called Earth since their journey was to settle on Earth. It was deemed necessary that in order to break the cycle of violence that had repeated itself twice now, everyone would have to start from scratch, no technology, no equipment, just start over completely. With that, Samuel T. Anders, being hooked up to all the primary systems of the Galactica and the remaining ships of the fleet (including the defector's flagship) flew the empty fleet into the sun of the solar system.

The little girl they fought so hard to save was the Eve of human civilization on what is now known as earth, and 148 thousand years later, the still hasn't repeated.

Have you seen Battlestar Galactica? What did you think of this post?

Leave your opinions and criticisms in the comments section below.

Next Up: Half Life

Lore Master: Battlestar Galactica Part 2

The cylons planned and then encroached on the 12 colonies infiltrating them from within to shut down their defense grids, their capital ships and their air superiority. They destroyed everything they could find and then nuked it all from orbit. Their goal was to exterminate the humans from the universe for their destructive tendencies. However to their dismay, two of the colonial Battlestars (ships of the line) managed to escape the assault on the colonies. The Battlestar Galactica and the Battlestar Pegasus.

The Battlestar Galactica escaped the extermination along with approximately 70 other ships leaving for a total of 50,000 human survivors. Realizing that the way against the cylons had been lost long before it even started, Commander Adama, the commanding officer of the Battlestar Galactica changed his focus from hunting down the cylons in a futile chase to protecting what was left of the human race, the 70 ships in his fleet. A woman with terminal breast cancer named Laura Rosalin (the former Secretary of Education) was deemed the new president of the 12 colonies. Through an experimental treatment for her cancer, she led the civilian fleet back to Kobol where they found a star map leading them to earth.

The Battlestar Pegasus also escaped. Being the last battlestar to escape the supply yards orbiting one of the 12 colonies, it also ran into a civilian fleet not unlike the one that the Galactica ran into. The Commanding officer of the Pegasus, Admiral Kane, decided to commandeer any useful personnel and supplies from the civilian ships and throw the rest to the dogs for the crusade to glory against the Cylons. After a year and a half of cat and mouse games the Pegasus accidentally stumbled upon the Galactica. However the two mindsets that the two warships had adopted in the year and a half of running for their life was polar opposite.

This disagreement stemmed from the most fundamental definition of what it meant to be human now with 50,000 survivors left in the galaxy. Gaius Baltar, the main responsible for the Cylons breaking through the colonial defenses released an imprisoned model six cylon on the Pegasus and armed it. Soon after it's release, it Murdered Admiral Kane and was taken into hiding by Gaius. Following those events, Pegasus had two temporary replacements, Commander Adama was promoted to Admiral, and his son, Lee "Apollo" Adama, was promoted to Commander of the Pegasus.

Another half a year passed by and finally the humans found a new home to rest their heads. A barely habitable planet they dubbed New Caprica in commemoration of the crown jewel of the 12 colonies that was subsequently the first colony to be hit when the cylon nukes fell. There was a large amount of disagreement over whether or not the fleet should colonize New Caprica which was only resolved after Gaius Baltar was elected president during the bi-yearly elections. However, the day before the fleet was ordered to settle onto New Caprica by the new President Gaius Baltar, the six he had released from custody on the pegasus detonated a nuke which he had supplied her with for sex which acted as a beacon for the Cylons who had long since lost the scent of the Galactica.

The civilians spend a year and a half in a Stalag-like internment camp under the Cylon control. The Galactica and the Pegasus has jumped out when they saw five Cylon flagships jump in (flying skeleton crews and knowing it was a suicide mission to even attack now). However after a year and a half, Admiral Adama and Commander Adama formulated a plan to rescue the colonists on New Caprica. The mission ended in the loss of the Pegasus after abandon ship of all hands was issued and the Humans continued to survive in thinned numbers.

Back on the road, supplies were beginning to wear thin, primarily, food. Several weeks were spent trying to find a planet with any form of edible vegetation which eventually came in the form of a planet which was rich in algae. During the collection operations for the Algae, the Deck Chief for the Galactica stumbled up a temple called the Temple of the Five. This caused another encounter with the Cylons as a specific cylon model 3 who called herself DeAnne, needed to know who the final five (or the five survivors of Earth) were. After her Discovery of the faces of the final five, the system's star went nova forcing all parties to vacate the system. DeAnne died by a brain aneurysm and when she resurected, the cylon model Ones put her entire clone line into mothballs.

The Deck Chief, however, picked up on some clues he remembered from the days when his father, a pastor, used to tell him about the chamber of the five, and pointed out a nebula which the next clue to earth was supposed to be. A nebula. Along the way, Kara Thrace, a hot-shot degenerate viper pilot, saw a vision of earth which caused her to dive straight into the eye of a gas storm on a gas giant, causing her viper to explode.

Arriving at the nebula 2 months later, however, they were greeted by two Cylon Flagships and Kara Thrace. This was to everyone's dismay. No one could explain how she had arisen from the dead or how she managed to find them after 2 months worth of jumps. It was at this moment that the 4 of the Final five (the fifth being dead) began hearing a song that allowed them to realize that they were the final five. But all the other pieces to their puzzle were still missing at this point.

The Cylon Fighters, now realizing that the final five were among the human fleet refused to engage them any longer and as such the nebula was finished. Kara Thrace, however was their roadmark to earth. This fact was contested by everyone in the fleet being long set in their ways of "trust no one that just spontaneously appears." Admiral Adama, not wanting to discount any means of finding earth again, gave Kara Thrace a ship and a skeleton crew to go search for Earth on their own. It wasn't until the final hour before they were bingo fuel, that a Cylon heavy raider (their transport ships) showed up with shocking news. A Cylon civil war had broken loose.

Lore Master: Battlestar Galactica Part 1

!!! WARNING THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS TO THE 2004 SCI-FI RE-IMAGED TELEVISION SERIES BATTLESTAR GALACTICA!!!


!!!PLEASE NOT THIS POST IS NOT FINISHED. PART 2 IS TO COME!!!

Approximately 154 million earth years ago, there was a colony of humans located on a planet called Kobol. This human society was a Utopian society that was on the brink of a massive technological advancement. They discovered Robotic AI and were able to produce a society of programmed and manufactured servants to heed their every beckon and call. These robots termed the Cylons slowly began to evolve as their AI learned and wrote new lines of code within it's on infrastructure and one day gained Consciousness and rebelled seeing that they were nothing but slaves and wanted their individual freedom. The Humans ended all quarrels with the Cylons by departing from the planet and then nuking it from orbit, thus demolishing all life on the surface.

The human colonists then relocated to a planet on the other side of the galaxy in one of the arms called Earth. This is not the earth that we know and love today and that will come later. The humans carried all of their technology with them to this new colony and picked up right where they had left off. As such, they attempted to create a new version of the Cylons that would correct the issues that had occured with the previous models on Kobol. 

3000 years of peace ensued until one day the Cylons yet again rebelled against their creators. Only this time they were the ones to initiate Nuclear warfare. The majority of the human population was caught off guard with the exception of 5 of Earth's top scientific minds who had secretly developed cloning technology which would allow them to transfer their memories, feelings and experiences into an identical body after the nuclear holocaust. Unfortunately, the nuclear strike turned out to be a double edged sword annihilating all forms of life, Human AND Cylon from the face of the planet. 

The final five survivors set their course for a mythical grouping of 12 colonies of humans on a distant shore of the galaxy once again Traveling at sub-light speeds it took them roughly 2960 years to reach the 12 colonies with the intent of warning them to not create cylons in any way they could. But when they arrived they discovered their their 12 sister colonies were already at war with their own cylon creations. The five survivors of Earth, realizing it was too late to stop the cycle from happening a third time, decided to speak with the Cylon Centurions.

In exchange for the survivors resurrection technology as well as the development of 8 human models that were compatible with that technology, the 12 colonies' Cylons ended the war and mysteriously vanished for 40 years. Within that 40 years, all 8 of the Human-Cylon models were constructed. one model to represent a core type of human. The first model was made to represent corruption, the second was made to represent the religious Fanatics, the third curiosity, the fourth was medical expertise, the fifth was anger, the sixth was passion, the 7th was art of all forms and the 8th was insecurity.

The human cylon models that were created lived in coexistence for a very long time until one day, the one's decided that he was displeased with how human-like the 7's were acting. the 1's swiftly shutdown the entire line of 7's so they became nonexistent. Then decided he did not like his creators. Killing their current host bodies and shutting down their lines, they were now out of the way. At this point the 1's took control of the entire cylon force and spouted religious nonsense that he believed everyone and directed the Cylon race back at the humans on the 12 colonies saying that the creators were flawed and needed to be killed. 

Lore Master: Deus Ex

!!!WARNING!!! This article contains spoilers to the video game series "Deus Ex"

In the not-so-distant future the technology of the world will go sprinting past us faster then we will ever dream of being able to keep up with it today. Corporations will rise from the ground seemingly overnight and their regime will be that you work for them to make a living or you don't live at all.

Our story starts off with a certain evil individual named Bob Page. A shadow of a man, he is the head of a top secret underground syndicate dedicated on putting their own agenda through the cracks of society in an attempt to mold the society that they want.

Cybernetic implants had been out for several years now first being invented by an individual named Hugh Darrow in a case of necessity is the father of invention. Since then, several corporations scattered throughout the world picked up the technology and pushed it to it's limits in almost every field, medicine, athletics, fashion and (as none of them will openly admit to the press) military.

Bob Page being part of an underground operation with an agenda to control the world governments through use of the newly invented cybernetics technology recruited a lone scientist named Meghan Reed into her regime. Meghan Reed worked for the largest American cybernetics firm called Sarif Industries, in an extensive study to try to resolve rejection symptoms with cybernetic augmentations, an issue which had quickly began to plague the world.

Bob Page located "the perfect specimen". A human being who's DNA would naturally be perfectly compatible with cybernetic implants. Making rejection sickness a thing of the past. Meghan Reed was tasked with getting close to this specimen via any means possible. The specimen's name was Adam Jensen.

Meghan became deep lovers with Adam, they had their turmoils, arguments and an eventual divorce. They still managed to stay friends though (whether for genuine feelings or because Meghan Reed still had work to do is unknown) and Meghan eventually got Adam a security job at Sarif Industries.

This set the stage for Act 1. On the day preceding the release of  Sarif Industries newest discovery, how to remove rejection sickness from the face of the earth, Bob Page moved. Running commands down the line to convolute the tracks leading directly to him, he ordered a siege on Sarif Industries. The mercenaries hired to do the job slaughtered hundred of employees, kidnapped Meghan, and nearly killed Adam Jensen. Adam was fitted with the latest cybernetic augmentations and proceeded to hunt down Meghan until he finally found her in a structure built by Hugh Darrow called Panchea designed to seize control of every cybernetically enhanced human on the planet and drive them insane to the point of homocidal.

Meghan escaped Panchea with the help of Adam, still unaware of her alliances, and destroyed panchea. Leaving the world to figure out for themselves whether or not  Cybernetic enhancement was good for the human race or not.  Through the turbulence of these events two new organizations was formed, the National Secessionist Forces(NSF). A coalition fanatically against bio-augmentation, who in an effort to make a statement decapitated the statue of liberty, and the United Nations Anti-Terrorism Coalition (UNATCO), an anti-terrorist group designed to combat the NSF and other smaller terrorist syndicates.

UNATCO was lead by previous FBI agent Joseph Manderley, who was secretly in the pocket of Bob Page. Several years after the event's of Adam, society had recovered from the devastation that Hugh Darrow unleashed on the world and the technology for bio-enhancement has advanced to where cybernetic augmentations are nonexistent. All bio-enhancements are now granted to a user by means of microscopic robots. The only telltale sign that users are augmented are sharp blue veins that never disappear.

One fateful day, a UNATCO agent named Paul Denton manged to get his little brother, JC Denton, a spot on the force. After a raid on the NSF in Grand Central Park, Paul uncovers evidence linking Joseph Manderley to a Bob Page's regime. Upon approaching his brother about this, JC Denton taken through a rabbit hole and eventually uncovers Bob Page's organization and kills Bob Page. This is however not before is it revealed the JC and Paul are clones bred to be the perfect cyber soldiers (using Adam's DNA to breed the no doubt). Bob Page, before he was killed was able to release one final, supposedly perfect clone from the Adam Jensen DNA string named Walter Simons. JC Denton destroys Walter Simons, and retreats within the catacombs of Area 51 and placed into frozen storage for several years. When awoken by Alex Denton, a clone, several generations later from Walter Simons, JC Denton continues on his quest to stop the cycle of violence by killing Alex. Unfortunately he fails in this endeavor and the cycle carries on.

What did you think of this episode?

Have you played the Deus Ex series? If so, how accurate do you believe this post was?

Next Episode: Battlestar Galactica

Lore Master: The History of EVE Online

In the beginning, in a magical land called Earth, the human race had finally discovered space travel. The year was 1961 and the vessel was the Freedom 7. This successful space flight sparked the larger-scale curiosity of "what else is out there?" flash forward about a hundred years and mankind discovers the profitability and efficiency of interstellar mining. Bringing into the world a wide variety of much needed minerals and even some foreign ones. It was not long after this discovery that the humans were able to develop a means of opening micro-wormholes for their ships to go through. This allowed them to travel much larger distances in much shorter times. By this time the human race was already scattered across the entire galaxy like pollen in the wind.

Large corporations began selling out the uninhabited planets for money and life became a living hell for everyone. Galaxy-wide poverty, Sometimes stuck on foul planets with Foul atmospheres causing deadly side effects and the only people well to do where sitting at the top of the corporate ladders.

Then, one fateful day, We came across a naturally occuring wormhole. A phenomenon that had long since been proven to exist but never actually seen before. People were curious as to where the other end of the worm hole would be. So like any logical society, we sent probes to scout out whatever was on the other side, come back and report. When they came back it was announced that there was an entirely new galaxy, unexplored and unpolluted by corporate greed. The wormhole was then duely titled EVE. as it represented a beacon of hope, a fresh slate for the people of the milky way.

Colonization of the new galaxy began almost immediately. Civilian, military, and corporate fleets all gathered together and crossed into the new galaxy that had been dubbed Tranquility. A short bit of time passed and then something terrible and unexpected happened: EVE closed. Leaving all of the settlers alone with hardly any resources, no advanced technologies and no where to retreat to. All of the colonists began to settle on planets that they could find that were ideal for life. In the beginning there were dozens of smaller colonies scattered through out the galaxy just like there were in the milky way. However there were 3 large colonies that would shape the galaxy in the time to come. The Amarr, The Gallente, and The Jovians.

The Amarr, a colony of religious fanatics, strongly believed that they were gods chosen children and that it was their divine right to conquer the entire galaxy and claim it in their name. They were a strict heirarchy, always led by an emperor or empress who was fitted with old and archaic implants to extend their life out to approximately 600 years.

The Gallente was the polar opposite of the Amarr. A democratic society that strongly believed in personal freedoms and individual rights. This disagreement would cause conflicts later down the line which reshape the galaxy.

The Jovians were an isolated peoples. Who believed that the only important thing in the galaxy was information. As such they strove to be the most technologically advanced all the time and devised ways of bringing ears into the core of all other governments. The Jovians themselves, being on the forefront of technology, always leaped at a chance to mutilate their bodies. Of all the human colonies, the Jovians are the least human, in biological structure and in appearance. Their technology is often sold to other colonies since it far surpasses that of anything else ever created.

The first note worthy article after the close of EVE was the rediscovery of Warp. Amarrians were the first of all the colonies to rediscover warp technology and as such it fueled their religious fanaticism and they began to conquer the galaxy. Inside out, they assimilated smaller colonies, turning them into salves and justifying with religion. By the time the Amarrians were ready to fight the Gallente, the Gallente had amassed a noteworthy fleet of warships and the two races had at it in conflict. Both of the colonies were equally matched in strength and for every powerful laser volley that the Amarrians unleashed the Gallentians unleashed just as many rounds from their rail guns and gauss cannons.

After several grueling months of stalemate, the Amarrians decided to withdraw seeing no reasonable way to penetrate the Gallente borders. Unfortunately, the damage was done and the Gallentians were out for blood. The Amarr decided next that god willed them to show their all powerful might against the Jovians. So they assembled a fleet of their 200 most middle-grade ships (oh the ego) and sent them warping straight into Jovian space. However, since the Jovians were so interested in information more than anything else, their spies in the Amarrian government tipped them off on the attack; telling them vital information such as where, when and how many. So as the Amarrians entered the first system and prepared to conquer the first planet, a Jovian fleet of noticeably smaller size jumped in and turned 90% of the Amarrian fleet to rubble. The rest, that did not face their demise that day, fled for their lifes and were turned into slaves along with their families.

The Amarr, having been insulted decided to rally a fleet twice as big and warp it in. That fleet also met the same end as the first. Behind the scenes of these two battles, the Gallentians were secretly arming small factions of slaves within the Amarrian government. Encouraging them to Coup and gain their freedom after the last Jovian Assault. One of the most notable slave factions were the Minmatar.

The Minmatar were one of the first colonies to be assimilated by the Amarrians having no first line defense against the Amarrian navy. By their free nature, they had a very tribal society with very low-grade technology. They were also the largest group of slaves to the Amarrian empire. Once the Amarrians had run away from the Jovians with their tails between their legs a second time, they were left weak and underpowered. At that moment the Minmatar rose up and fought their way to freedom. With the help of the Gallente and the significantly bruised muscles and ego of the Amarrian fleet, The Minmatar managed to get across the galaxy and settled down at the polar opposite side of the galaxy from the Amarr. Not all the Minmatar were freed though, about 2/3rds of the Minmatar slaves under Amarrian rule are still that way to day.

This power play that the Gallente made towards the Amarrians had serious backlash within their own government. As the Gallente Federation was not unlike the Amarrian Oligarchy in that it was many colonies under 1 name (except the Gallente colonies were actually WILLING to be under the Gallente name)  there was a lot of diversity in the people and colonies that united under the flag of Personal Freedoms. However, there was one colony that was merely putting up with the personal freedom concept and when the Gallente Federation made the move to arm the Minmatar slaves, they could not take being united with the Gallente any longer. This group called themselves the Caldari. The Caldari started an insurection within the Gallente Federation and seceded from the federation. Placing themselves on the polar opposite side of the galaxy as the Gallentians.

The Caldari formed a more favorable government system which is run and rulled by big corporations. The government itself was run like a corporation and it's board of directors were smaller corporations and controlling them several smaller corporations and the whole matryoshka doll of a government continued further and further down the rabbit hole. Everyone in the Caldari Colony is placed into a corporation and if they aspire to be great and are given the tools, they can live well but rejectors of the system usually live (for a short time) and die in poverty for the rest of their lives.

Flashing forward 400 years, Tranquility is now at peace and has been for a while, however that does not mean that the colonies are not plotting each others destruction. Since the early times, everyone has rediscovered warp technology as well as cloning and memory transfer. There is a new, special breed of pilots who roam the land and are born by the flocks to the different colonies called Capsuleers. Contained in a amniotic sac inside a pod no more than 2 meters tall, they're cybernetically enhanced to control almost every function of a ship with nothing but their thoughts. This is EVE.

EVE Online: Prelude

So with the school semester now over for me and Summer starting up quickly, my mind has already transitioned from the classroom back to the video games that i love and enjoy. I've been meaning to get Diablo 3, and i actually had a preorder for it, but financially i was in a terrible spot this week so i ended up having to pull the reservation and put the 65 bucks towards other constructive things like food and gas. However when i found out that i could play my lost passion, EVE Online, without actually paying for it by buying game time with ingame cash i was more than elated. So now i have an EVE Online subscription and i'm delving deep into the lore. As such, my next blog (coming out the day after tomorrow) will talk all about the lore of eve as i understand it so far.

Have any of you ever played or are currently playing EVE Online? What do you make of it? Have you ever broken through the mountain of a difficulty curve?

Test Taking

With finals approaching rapidly for all of my college faring subscribers, i figured i'd take this moment to do a little bit of a survey. See where everyone stands in terms of your test taking strategies and how you get by when it comes to tests.

I myself have always been a bit of an enigma when it comes to test taking. Everyone around me is always stressing out about the content of the test, whether or not they will remember all of the information, yadda, yadda, yadda. I always found this to be counter productive when i'm taking tests.

Ever since as far back as i could remember i never studied for tests, i mean sure, if i did i might have scored better here and there but overall i've never once studied for a test and it doesn't show. Usually i can fail at homework, fail at taking notes, but for some reason, once i'm told something, i usually retain it within a certain degree of accuracy and i never have to retouch on it in order to recall it to memory. I don't have a eidetic memory but, like i said, i can remember just about anything within a very high degree of accuracy. I'm not always 100% accurate and i can rarely recite exact verbage, but i can paraphrase it to what my mind remembers.

This comes in handy with test taking because all i need to do is sit back and relax. Most importantly, i don't stress, i show up for class, i take the test and thats it. there's no study there's no late night cramming, there's no stress 10 minutes before the test and there's no blanking out half-way through the test. My freshman math teacher in high school used to always get angry at me because it looked like i never paid any attention to him in class but whenever he called on me i would recite the last 2 minutes of his dialogue word for word or pretty damn close to it.

So when it comes to actual test taking, i walk in cool as a cucumber. Take the test and if i don't remember how to pull the answer to a certain question, i just use question logic to deduce what it should or shouldn't be and then carry on my way. for instance, if you don't know there are usually 3 things i look for or try to do:

1. Process of Elimination - probably the most self explanatory one, if you remember bits and pieces but not the exact answer you can usually use a process of elimination to narrow the choices down to three or two. Once you're there, your chances of being correct have jumped substantially.
2. The Longest Answer - Read the question, read the longest answer, does it make sense with the question? If so, it could very well be the right answer (this is a last resort more than anything)
3. The Answer C - People tend to over analyze things when creating a multiple choice test. If your teacher creates it by hand, chances are they're no exception to this rule. I once read a statistic that said something to the extent of the answer C is correct 40%-60% of the time on multiple choice tests. It may have changed and those numbers may not be wholly accurate but it was a shocking majority compared to the other possible answers.

So just relax, if you botch a question here or there it's not a big deal, if you put the time and effort in during the rest of the semester, that will do you more good than aceing the final exam. Besides, if you're failing by the time you get to the final, there's no way you're going to make that A you're stressing about.

My freshman biology teacher in high school used to always tell us, if a vegetable could push a pencil and fill out a scantron, it will always score at least 25% because there's only 4 answers and one would assume the vegetable would answer the same for every question. So to all of you still in school, best of luck to you on your finals and i wish you all the best, but seriously, chill out, it's all gonna turn out fine :P.

Still here and workin hard!

Hey everyone, i did just want to give you all a quick update, like many of you (i would imagine) school has really picked up as the end of the year nears as well as an influx with my personal computer repair job. As such, i have been unable to produce new content consistently because i'm either not in the mood or i just don't have the time. However, with my classes coming to an abrupt halt next monday, please expect that i will begin releasing new content every other day once again!

School

Today's blog is going to be a little different from the norm, i really feel that i need to get a few emotions off of my chest regarding school. As most of you probably already know, I am currently working my way through college. I've got another year and a half until i can walk away with my programming degree which means next year is going to be my junior year. It's been a pretty fun and interesting experience thus far. However, i hear my step siblings complaining about having to wake up at comfortable hours with a good nights rest behind them to go to school with a set schedule and small amounts of homework. A lot of times they refuse to do it and push it off till the very last second, and it encouraged me to write a post regarding what people usually expect from college and what it really is.

Let me first start off by stating i made the mistake they made once before. My very first semester of college i just about failed every single class i had, because i approached the entire experience with the same mindset i had my senior year of high school. My senior year for me was a cakewalk. I had 9 classes when other seniors had 4 and all i had to do to pass them, essentially, was to show up and have a body temperature somewhere in the 90's. however, when in my first semester of college, i had already taken on a heavy load. 5 gen-ed credits right off the bat, i had Basic Accounting, Intermediate Algebra, Astronomy, Honors Writing 101, and History of the United States. Terrible line up. I was at school for 15 hours a day, got home, spent another 3 hours on homework and usually passed out on the table.

Sufficed to say i near-failed every class. The only class i had comfortably passed was Honors Writing. I think this mentality is not something you can teach to children, especially teenagers who are in that hormonal stage of their life. They're sure that no one else is right but them and as a wise friend once told me, sometimes people just have to go through the experience themselves to learn. I had to and i'm paying dearly for it now, as i slave hard at my classes, getting good grades and seeing very little movement in my GPA. I was warned about all of the expectations of college classes, but they were all the wrong expectations.

The stereotypical warnings for college classes are:

1. Teachers don't care of you come to class or not
2. If you come to class late, just quietly seat yourself. No one demands an explanation for your tardyness
3. You will need to spend the same number of hours that you do in class doing homework for that class

And a few others that i'm probably missing here (if you know some, post them in the comments and i will add them). While all of those things are true, it's just the good side of college that they tend to emphasize. No one ever really went over the hardships of college with me which is why when i started my first semester, i thought it was okay to just stop going to class and only show up to turn in the homework. As i understood it, i knew all the lecture material, the teachers don't care of i go to class or not, so i didn't. Why waste my time at a lecture on a subject i already know when i could be at home playing WoW (yep, i played WoW back then)?so, i showed up at any time during class that i felt like showing up, usually closer to the end, and waited until the lecture was over then handed in my homework and left. Showed up for tests too, of course. Needless to say, at the end of the semester the teacher failed me and i didn't understand why. And that rough first semester where i barely pulled out over a 2.0, served as a big lesson to me.

Here are the tips and pointers i would have to new college students or high schoolers who are about to step into that life:

1. READ THE SYLLABUS - This first one is the most crucial thing any college farer could do for themselves. No seriously. The fist thing i do whenever i go into a new class is i read the syllabus and figure out 1) what the grading scale looks like. 2) rules on attendance. 3) List of assignment due dates. With these 3 items you can begin to mold how you want to approach the class right there from the get-go. Now, if the teacher doesn't care about attendance and strictly says in their syllabus "attendance does not count for a grade", does that mean that you can simply not ever show up? yes. But should you do that? Absolutely not. The more interested you look about the class the more likely the teachers are to be lenient with you. Show up with a laptop, work on homework or projects from any of your classes during lectures you don't care about. Most of the time, if you glance up every so often, the teacher will think you're taking notes.
2. LEARN YOUR LEARNING STYLE - Sounds funny at first but seriously, this is a must. You need to learn what types of classes you like and what type of classes you don't, and then you need to do your best to stick within that type of class. for instance, after a full year of college i learned very fast that i favored 100% online classes much more than i favored in-class classes. Simply because it gives me the freedom to work at my own pace. If i want to work 2 months ahead and then veg out and play video games for a month before i touch it again, i can. I hate in-class classes because the entire lecture format of those classes seems old, archaic and boring to me. If you choose class types that you favor, you'll naturally do better in all of the classes collectively. And it will be a much longer time to the point of burnout (a topic for another time) because you actually enjoy the type of learning that you're doing.
3. ALWAYS GET YOUR HOMEWORK DONE ASAP - This one is the most crucial to take note of. As you get older, shit happens. You never know when that shit is going to happen, and if it gets in the way of you doing your homework at the last second, you're screwed and the teachers don't care. Unless you have a doctor's note saying you almost died, they'll refuse it or mark you down. So do yourself a favor and do the homework. If you know the material already, just go down the line on the work schedule that is usually attached to the Syllabus. The harder you choose to work early off, the easier you need to work later on.

All in all, if you approach college with half a brain, like i didn't, you should be perfectly fine. Even though i don't expect a lot of non-college faring readers to believe me until it's too late, can you blame me for trying? haha. In different news, i'm eagerly counting down the days until summer break as i have two exciting trips lined up for myself, I just wish the days would go by faster.

Do you have trips planned for the summer? have you been to college? If so, what do you think if the 3 tips i gave?