My day:

11:30am - Woke up "early" today. Normal wake-up time for a Sunday is much later, but alas I had a mission today: I was going to shoot stuff. Yes. My post from early this morning was very real. I was getting ready to shoot at stuff. The hour between waking up and leaving for the apartment consisted of sitting at the computer for 30 minutes, showering, dressing, and drinking coffee off and on. I put on my best fleece for my excursion - I was ready for wind.

12:30pm - Arrived at the apartment. Mike and Ann were getting ready, and it was determined that we should go to Wal-mart to pick up some ammo and some clay pigeons.

Sometime between 12:30 and 1:30pm - Stopped at Wal-mart to get the stuff. It was my first time actually looking for something in the "hunting" section of the store rather than just passing through it. We got what we needed and headed to Ann's parents' house, which is in the middle of nowhere.

1:30pm - Got to the house. Ate food - it was good. Some chicken concoction, zuchinni and squash with cheese, and green bean casserole. For desert I had some Fannie Mae candies, and a little later some lemon pie (made with Cool Whip...yummy!). During dinner I got to drink Squirt, which is a favorite drink of mine back home, but it's unfortunately not available in Oklahoma. It's a citrus drink, kind of like Citra, but way better.

3:00pm (approx.) - Went out with the guns looking for crows. The gap of time between dinner and our crow excursion is due to the fact that Mike had to clean or lube or do something to his guns. Anyway, we got out to the field and saw some crows. Ann was driving, so we approached slowly. They were up and to the right in some trees, and we were on a dirt road that cuts down the middle of the field. Ann pulled up so were were nearly parallel with the treeline. The theory was that if the birds didn't see us get out of the car, they wouldn't get spooked and fly off. It worked, but once mike got his rifle out and was ready to shoot, he had to go out in the open. As he crouched down to steady his aim, the birds took notice and flew off. Disappointing, for sure.

Some time later - Mike encouraged me to shoot the guns. To be honest, at this point I was still toying with the idea of just watching. But curiousity overtook me, and I went for it. My first gun to shoot was the handgun - a Ruger .22 Competition something or other. It's a nice little gun with a sight. It's loud, but not too loud. One shot didn't bother my ears much, but three or four in quick succession did cause some mild - and temporary - ringing. Next up was the rifle, which was of the same caliber as the handgun but of course a lot longer and with a more intricate sight setup. That gun was a bit quieter than the other, but in a way a little less fun. Finally, I got to use the shotgun - a 12-gauge. I only fired that one once, and it had quite a kickback. All of the bullets at this point were being shot into the ground...I wasn't actually aiming at anything. Actually, one time I got pretty close to a piece of farm equipment while attempting to aim at a mound of dirt. That's the last time I aimed for anything but the ground.

A little more time later - Once we realized that the crows weren't coming back, we went back to the house to grab some pop cans: Squirt and Diet Rite. We also grabbed some adhesive targets. We went out to what is essentially a gravel drive with tiers of railroad ties to one side. The first tier is about 5 feet tall, then there's some grass at the five foot level, and then antoher wall of railroad ties about 5 feet high. All in all, it's a great place for target practice. We lined up the cans on top of the first wall of railroad ties. This way, any low shots would hit the first wall; any high or off-center shots would hit the second wall further back. Of course, the object is to hit the cans. And hit the cans I did. Well, at least a few times anway. I didn't use the shotgun any more, but I did use up a lot of clips in both the handgun and the rifle. It was fun

7:00pm - Well, have to stop the story here (temporarily) because I have to get some food. More to come!

Ok, so, I'm going shooting tomorrow. Yes, shooting. With guns. Or maybe a gun. I don't think they'll let me touch the big ones. Mind you, I've only touched one other gun in my life, and that was a big ass shotgun when I was in New Mexico. I nearly shit myself. Now, I've held and touched all of the guns I might encounter during my outing, so at least I know what to expect. But to actually fire one...that will be interesting. I'm actually excited. This could be a milestone in my life. I'll make sure to give a full report.

This is a great video that I want to share with everyone. I'm sure many of you have seen or at least heard of the infamous Windows 98 crash during a demonstration with Bill Gates there. Here's a link to the video - I hope you have a good laugh.

Windows 98 Crash

Pearl Jam
          Riot Act
          Sony/Epic, 2002

Musical Quality:
Fun Factor:

Review:

Review coming soon!!!

Avril Lavigne
          Let Go
          Arista, 2003

Musical Quality:
Fun Factor:

Review:

Well, this is my first album review, and I must say it's a pretty good one. You'll notice that there are two star ratings: one for "musical quality," which takes into account how the album sounds, whether or not it's innovative or different, and of course lyrical relavance and prowess. The second star rating is what I call "fun factor," athough it could also be called "pop factor." Basically, I'm rating the "poppiness" of the album. How catchy it is, how radio-friendly it is, and how much it will entertain the masses. Some music lovers hat "poppiness," but I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing. So anyway, if you hat "pop" music and you see a high "fun factor" rating, stay away! Also, the reason why I call it "fun factor" rather than "pop factor" is that there are two kinds of music I like: good music and fun music. Good music might get a high rating on "musical quality" but little or nothing for "fun factor"; fun music may be musically awful, but it's either damn catchy or just plain fun, hence "fun factor."

Anyway, on to Avril. I'm actually really impressed with the 18-year-old from Canada. Other than the fact that her first two singles, "Complicated" and "Sk8ter Boi" were and still are horrendously overplayed (and her third single "I'm With You" is well on its way to joining them), the songs really are good pop songs, and the rest of the album lives up to the reputations of the first three singles.

The album is definitely a fun listen; the only song that sometimes makes me want to puke is the pseudo-rapping Avril attempts on "Nobody's Fool." It seems a little out of place on such a hard-rocking pop album. Speaking of hard-rocking pop, I think Avril is doing a great thing for music. Even though it's just as bubblegum as Brittney in a way, at least she's helping to reintroduce guitars back into mainstream pop music. And that's definitely a good thing.

I'll stop here, but if I feel like adding more later, I can. Ciao!

I'd like to start doing music reviews, since everyone else I know thinks that reviewing movies is the coolest thing in the world. My reviews will probably be a lot less useful, but considering some of the shit y'all watch, I don't think my taste is weird at all. Anyway, my first review is for Avril Lavigne's Let Go, released last year (but I just started listening to it). Enjoy!

Woohoo! All of the pages have been "adapted" to a color-changing scheme. How do I do it? Advanced technical know-how, that's how. Actually, it's just a mix of ASP and stylesheets. You see, every element of each page--both colors and graphics--is controlled by the stylesheet. By having five different stylesheets and five sets of images (thank goodness there are only two per page), the ASP code merely rotates in a different stylesheet each time the page is accessed.

It's interesting because all of the images were originally created in grayscale and then "colorized" in Paint Shop Pro to create the various color schemes. Supposedly, stylesheets allow you to overlay a slightly transparent color over another, thereby chanigng the color below. In theory, this would work for my grayscale images since the stylesheet considers them to be background images, anyway. So, just call in the background image, then overlay any color I want over it, making it 50% transparent or so. Cool! I should try that.

Anyway, I hope everyone thinks the color-changing is nifty. On the old version of the site, only the background image changed, and there were only two of them, and if your monitor didn't have high enough contrast, you could even tell that there was a background image there. I think this color-scheme changing is a lot more effective.

All of the pages have now been transformed. Colors are coming soon, I promise.

Last set of "entries" in my AIM profile. It's changed now...

It's early fall, there's a cloud on the New York skyline
Innocence, dragged across a yellow line
These are the hands that built America
These are the hands that built America

The best show on television is back on. I'm talking about 24. Watch it. Tuesdays at 8 PM on FOX.

back in Norman...
back at OU...
back as an RA...
but on a different floor.
Well, at least something changed.

Redesigned the main page. Redesign of other pages to match will follow. Colors are coming. So is Iowa. More on that later.