HAPPY BIRTHDAY TESSA VIOLET / MEEKAKITTY

Everyone should go tweet @meekakitty and wish her a happy birthday.

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Stop Burning Your Food

Within a few hours of arriving back in Madison, the fire alarm went off and we all had to go outside.

I still don’t know what the cause of the alarm was, but what I do know is that the attendant on duty was missing in action, which ended up being the reason that we had to wait longer than we should have.

Also, lol @ the people who come out about five minutes after the alarm first starts ringing, holding a freshly brewed mug of coffee in their hand.

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Topic #70: Chocolate or vanilla? Why? Give an example.

Generally I prefer vanilla for pretty much everything, but I’m overall fine with having chocolate if vanilla isn’t available and the chocolate flavor contained in something that I really want.

I’ve never found the slightly bitter taste of chocolate very appealing ever since I was little. I’ve become pretty resistant to it as I got older, but I still have a strong preference for vanilla over chocolate.

For example, if I have ice cream, if there is an option of vanilla, mixed, and chocolate, I would go for the vanilla first. If the vanilla was out, I would go for the mixed; if the mixed was gone too, I would go to the chocolate as a last resort because I would still want the ice cream.

Even for actual chocolate, I prefer white chocolate (which I have no idea if it really does have vanilla in it or not – it most likely doesn’t, but I’m considering it as an equivalent to vanilla in the vanilla vs. chocolate comparison) over regular chocolate (and of course, I prefer regular chocolate over dark chocolate).

So Far in 2011…

Number of Taco Bell tacos eaten: 18

Number of times I did my own laundry: 2

Today is my last full day back at home for spring break. My dad and I were originally anticipating on going back tonight, but we ended up deciding that going tomorrow morning would be better.

A handful of people asked me if I went vacationing for spring break, and no, I did not. I don’t really like vacationing in the first place, but I would definitely not vacation during spring break when there will be millions of people concentrated in spring break hotspots.

I realize that I can go somewhere random where it is not considered a hotspot, or to somewhere I would actually enjoy going (like California), but I had work to do and couldn’t afford to spend a week wasting my time. If you’ve been keeping up with my blog for the past several days, you’ll notice that I actually got a lot of miscellaneous stuff done that I had to do for a long time (such as getting my first ever blood test).

Also, during previous breaks, I usually end up making huge plans to finish tons of work and end up barely getting any of it done. During this break, even though I didn’t finish as much as I wanted to, I was still significantly more productive than I usually am during breaks.

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Pile of Garbage

The house in front of mine has this massive pile of garbage in front of it.

The weird part?

That house has been vacant for several months now…

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Topic #69: If you could work from anywhere, where would you want to live? Why?

Regardless of if I can work from anywhere or not, I want to live in California. USA. If I was able to work from anywhere, it would be a lot easier to find a job, but if I wasn’t able to work from anywhere, I would most likely try to find a job in California so I could live in California.

California seems like an appealing place for me to work because of the weather and the technology-related events that go on in California. I’ve lived in either Illinois or Wisconsin for all of my life so I’ve been overexposed to cold weather, and I’m starting to get tired of cold weather. I used to be hardy against changing weather and didn’t mind below-zero temperatures or snow, but I’ve recently become more sensitized to the weather and now feel more discomfort than I used to.

As for the events, almost every single event that I would be interested in attending seems to be situated somewhere in California, and it would be convenient to live in California so I’m able to attend intriguing events.

So Far in 2011…

Number of Taco Bell tacos eaten: 18

Number of times I did my own laundry: 2

I complained back on the first of January because the alarm clock on the Apple iPod Touch randomly stopped working. Now it’s at it again, but instead of not working at all this time, it’s going off an hour early.

Of course, it’s better to be woken up early rather than not being woken up at all, but really? Is it actually that difficult to program an alarm application that works properly and correctly? People have been making alarm clocks that work 100% of the time since forever ago, so I don’t know why Apple can’t do it in an application.

I did some research and apparently it has to do something with Daylight Saving’s Time. … Which brings me to my next point about how Daylight Saving’s Time is completely useless and a waste of effort.

A long time ago when I was on a very regular sleeping schedule, the time change would throw me off. It’s not like that anymore because my sleeping habits have become significantly more volatile since then, but it’s still annoying. Also, if you happen to be like me and know people from all across the world, it’s annoying keeping track of the hour difference between your time zones, then suddenly having to re­memorize the hour differences because some regions observe Daylight Saving’s Time and some don’t.

… Have a nice day.

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Bookmarks from Google eBooks

Because I definitely need to use these with those eBooks that I purchased from Google.

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Topic #68: Name a book that changed your life. What influence did it have on your thoughts, attitudes, and actions?

I can’t really think of any specific books that changed my life in themselves, but a book that got me interested in reading again while I was in middle school is Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz.

I used to read a lot during my young childhood years – I would be known as someone who always had a book in his hands. Then, for a reason that I can’t remember, I suddenly stopped being so immersed into books. This change was so abrupt that even my parents noticed the drastic change and were curious what was going on.

A random day during middle school when I was bored in study hall, I decided to go to the library because I had nothing else to do. The librarian there suggested to me that I should find a book to read. At first I denied the offer, but she pointed out a book and said that based on my personality, I would be interested in it. That book happened to be Stormbreaker.

I checked it out and put it straight into my backpack.

After going back home that night, I dug through my backpack to make sure that I had finished all my homework, and came across the book. I decided that I would take the word of my librarian and try reading it.

A few hours later, I finished the book and had a sudden inspiration to go to the library the following day and borrow the next book in the series.

Since then, this same occurrance has happened a few times, just with different circumstances and different books. Whenever I happen to get extremely busy, I tend to forget about reading and my interest diminishes. Then, on a random day, someone would recommend an interesting book to me or would convince me to read a particular book, and if that book happens to be really good, my binge reading would come back.

This happened with a handful of different books at various points in my life – the books included Harry Potter books, books by Dan Brown (who happens to be one of my favorite authors), and surprisingly, some fantasy books such as the Mortal Instruments series.

I haven’t gotten a chance to read any books lately except for textbooks and other informational books for class, but I plan on reading regularly again when I’m on summer vacation.

So Far in 2011…

Number of Taco Bell tacos eaten: 18

Number of times I did my own laundry: 2

I think we can all agree that one of the main purposes of having a website is to you can present information to a massive and variable audience. This audience can come from different time zones and can have different schedules that limit their activity on the Internet to a particular time period.

For those of you who are not aware already (which is probably most of you), I will be taking courses during my summer break at my local community college to get credit and reduce the time it will take for me to graduate at my university with my degree.

I recently received a letter in the mail with information about registration. As you probably already know (if you’ve been reading my last few blog posts), I’ve been spending a lot of time at the laundromat, our family business. When I get back home and check the mail, it’s late at night – almost midnight.

I opened up this informational letter and logged in with the information I received.

Then I got one of the most ridiculous messages I’ve ever seen in my life.

“This website is only available between 8 AM and 10 PM. Please try again later.”

Are you serious?

Your WEBSITE has HOURS?

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Topic #67: If you could bring one fictional character to life for a day, who would you choose? What would you do for the day?

I thought about this for a while and tried to think of a character who possesses a skill that would be useful for me to learn, but I couldn’t come up with anything realistic.

Of course, there are plenty of superheros that have special abilities like super strength or laser vision or extreme speed, but they wouldn’t be able to teach me these abilities. There are also some characters that have teachable skills, but then I realized that one day wouldn’t be enough to learn.

So, I decided that if I could bring a fictional character to life for a day, I would bring Ash Ketchum from the Pokémon series.

Pokémon was the first game that I ever played on a hand-held gaming system, and I still occasionally watch the Pokémon cartoons when I have spare time. Meeting the main character of the entire series would essentially be living my childhood dream in real life. Pretty much like every other child that played Pokémon, I used to imagine what it would be like if Pokémon were real. Assuming Ash would bring his Pokémon with him, I would be able to meet his Pikachu and any other Pokémon that he happens to have in his party.

So Far in 2011…

Number of Taco Bell tacos eaten: 18

Number of times I did my own laundry: 2