A majority of my day today was spent either sitting around being bored or moving heavy furniture and construction materials.

During the time that I wasn’t doing either, I did make a few updates to my website. I have a handful more planned for the next few days, and once they’re all done, I’ll probably put up another Site News update, seeing as I haven’t done that since 2010.

In other news, Dell called me today telling me that my exchange laptop will be arriving in the mail tomorrow via FedEx sometime before 3 PM. That probably means I’ll be spending most of tomorrow sitting in front of two laptops trying to transfer over all my files and configuration.

Picture of the Day

Weathered Pavement

I got bored while I was at our business today, so I went around to the back of the building and peered through a broken fence.

(Taken with an Apple iPod Touch, 4th Generation)

Keeping Track

Local Drive: 40.1 of 402 GB (-8.4 GB)
External Hard Drive: 71.5 of 931 GB (+0.3 GB)

I didn’t get a chance to mention this yesterday, but I managed to find some time to go to the local library to borrow some books.

If you’ve been reading my blog for more than the past 3/4 of a year, then you most likely remember the “What I’m Reading” sections where I give quick summaries and opinions about books that I’m reading. I stopped doing those after I went to university because I had a lot of other things that I had to do, but now that I’m on summer break, I have a lot of time to do some spare reading.

I put a lot of fiction books on hold that were recommended to me numerous times in the past, and I checked out some non-fiction books related to psychological topics. I’m going to get started on reading later today or tomorrow, so the “What I’m Reading” section will make a return in the near future.

Photo of the Day

This is a lake behind a condominium that my parents own. I was there with my parents today to do some construction and to prepare it for renting out, and I went out in the back to snap this picture while I was taking a break from working.

(Taken with an Apple iPod Touch)

Today seems like a random day to do it, but I have a few blog updates to share. The first is the section at the bottom of all my blog posts. Since January 1, 2011, I’ve been keep track of how many times I’ve been doing particular things. Unfortunately, I’m ending up doing these things so infrequently that it’s not even worth keeping track of anymore.

One of the things I was keeping track of is how many tacos (or any food items in general) I had at Taco Bell. It was a good idea at first because I go to Taco Bell frequently, but I also like to get variety in my meals. As I got more familiar with my university’s campus, I started going to different food places. I still like eating Taco Bell, but I was trying different food from new restaurants that I was running out of opportunities to go to Taco Bell. That’s why the number of tacos I’ve eaten in 2011 has stayed idle for a while, and it’s only going to stay idler because I’m back at home for summer break and I don’t go out to eat frequently at home.

The other thing I was keeping track of was the number of times I did my laundry. There were a handful of problems with this, all related to the number being too low. I have quite a large amount of clothing, so I don’t really need to do laundry very frequently – I can do it about once a month and still have fresh, clean clothing to wear each day of the month. As expected, not everyone knows this, and the low number of laundry trips was giving off the impression that I was unclean or unsanitary.

Another problem with this is that the number increases so slowly that it’s not even worth keeping track of. Sometimes I go even longer than a month without doing laundry, and now that I’m home for the summer, my mom will do my laundry for me and that wouldn’t qualify as the “number of times I did my own laundry.” So, I estimated that that number will probably not reach over 8 or 9 times, and decided that I would stop keeping track overall.

Instead of the “So Far in 2011” section, I decided to come up with a “Keeping Track” section where I keep track of other more interesting and more dynamic things that aren’t necessarily restricted to 2011. If you have any suggestions for things I should keep track of, let me know via the contact page on my website or via email.

RuneScape Accomplishment of the Day

The second update to my blog is a temporary section that will be making an occasional appearance throughout the summer. For those who don’t know, RuneScape is a Java game created by Jagex. Now that I have more time over the summer, I decided to log in and check out some of the new updates in the game. Another factor in my decision to include this in my blog is the fact that my RuneScape critical analysis articles from 2010 were some of my most popular pages on my website, and I’m hoping to bring some of that attention over to my blog.

I decided that every time I sign in, I’ll try to accomplish at least one small thing related to a recent update and post a screenshot. For example, the screenshot for today was taken a little over a week ago, and it’s inside the waiting room of a minigame called Castle Wars. A recent update released some new in-minigame items as well as some new rewards for playing the minigame, including special armor and capes.

For some reason, a surprisingly large number of people are asking me for my opinion about yesterday’s announcement of the death of Osama bin Laden. Most people who know me well know that I don’t really care about government or politics, but I think that was the point, and they were curious how this affects people who are uninterested in this type of thing.

I’ve run into tons of people who are devastated because we are celebrating somebody’s death. They claim that death is a bad thing, and even the death of a bad person should not be followed by celebration. I think people who take this stance are oversensitive and need to go take a nap.

On the other hand, I saw on the news that there were tons of universities across the nation that had students who ran out on the streets to celebrate. I think this is excessive as well on the other end of the spectrum, and these students need to go back inside and keep studying for their upcoming final exams. I’m actually slightly saddened by the fact that the University of Wisconsin-Madison didn’t take to the streets, though, because I could’ve probably made an interesting video out of that.

Overall, as expected, I don’t think the death of Osama bin Laden is that huge of a deal. Of course, he’s an important member of a terrorist organization, but he’s not the only man standing as the foundation of the organization. I’m sure there are a handful of other people who take powerful leadership positions in the organization, and simply because the founder is killed does not mean the entire group will collapse. I think Osama’s death will most likely cause some sort of retaliation by al-Quaeda to prove to us that they are still powerful as a group.

So there’s my unexpert and unexperienced advice with essentially no background information. If your opinions differ from mine, then I probably don’t want to hear them, primarily because I don’t really care to debate about politics and government, and because I don’t like to argue with my readers in the first place. If you email me about this telling me that my opinions are utterly wrong, I’ll probably ignore you.

So Far in 2011…

Number of Taco Bell tacos eaten: 24

Number of times I did my own laundry: 3

I literally have no time to blog today because I’m doing extremely time-sensitive work right now – work so time-sensitive that every minute counts and every minute spent on something else may end up becoming detrimental for me. So this is all for today; I’ll try to write a little bit more than usual tomorrow.

So Far in 2011…

Number of Taco Bell tacos eaten: 24

Number of times I did my own laundry: 3

Hi humans and portals.

You see what I did there? I’m also saying Hi to all the new portals out there that are being created in Portal 2, which came out today.

So everyone has been asking me if I was going to get Portal 2 today. I don’t know why you would ask me that, seeing as I don’t play that many games in general, but I decided to answer it here – no, I’m not going to get portal today (or, seeing as it’s almost the end of today, no, I did not get portal today).

I learned of Portal’s existence about three years ago when one of my friends at the boarding school I went to during my second year of high school was playing it on his computer. I was never interested enough in it back then to play it though. However, because of all the hype Portal 2 was getting, I decided to get a hold of Portal and play it a few days ago.

It was a miserable experience.

I played it for 15 minutes. It wasn’t a miserable experience because I wasn’t doing well – I was actually doing quite well. But after 15 minutes, my head felt like it was going to implode because I was so dizzy. Literally all first-person games make me dizzy, and Portal is no exception.

Even Minecraft makes me dizzy.

So Far in 2011…

Number of Taco Bell tacos eaten: 24

Number of times I did my own laundry: 3