Andrew Knapik

Charlie's name was drawn in the Binge-a-thon contest, making us the victors! Thanks again to all of the rad people that helped us; come on by and partake of the bounty when our long-earned prize arrives.

If you would like to help our war effort to win SCAD Radio's minifridge during this year's Audio Binge-a-thon, please get in touch with me before noonish tomorrow. Any hour is fine; waking me up is no worry.

The idea is that, during this event, SCAD Radio gives away a prize at the top of every hour to the first person to call in after they open the lines. They give you a CD or some other bit of loot; they also enter you into a drawing to win a mini-fridge. Each person can only win, and thus get entered into the drawing, one time. That's where you come in. You listen, call in, win your prize, and then, out of the pure goodness of your soul, offer your fridge entry for the glory of Knapia. We need you.

To understand why, though, some a brief history lesson is in order. Friend and Knight of Knapia Rhys Finch is one of the DJs competing for the honor of being the last one left awake at the end of the Binge-a-thon. He has competed before, and we stayed awake along with him out of solidarity and covetousness. Last time, we secured 23 of the 25 chances to win. They drew for winners TWICE, and we did not win either. (The odds for that, in case you were wondering, are less than half of one percent.)

Now, we must win the day.

Do your part for honor and glory! Just listen to SCAD Radio and call in (912.525.6831) at the top of an hour. Win for yourself and for us! Post here about it when you're done and I shall enshrine your participation forever! If you have any questions, call me at 210.867.8760.

Thanks to those who have already helped:

• Connor
• Rob
• Charlie
• Cliff
• Jim
• Katy
• Sarah
• Colin
• Alex
• Chelsea
• Matt
• And, of course, my dear, sweet mother (Try again tomorrow! We believe in you!)

Thanks are also in order for Phil (of OB fame), who had a crackerjack response time to my tweet for help.

I was admitted into the UT system's Summer Law School Preparation Academy. I'm glad about it, but it surprised me. I have no community service record and my only relevant extracurriculars are old. My "personal statement" essay was pretty good, I suppose; it was shorter than the guidelines suggested, but I think I made up for it in passion.

What this all means for me is that I'll be eligible for a Certificate in Legal Reasoning by halfway through the summer. It also means that there are things I'll need to do to get ready.

Law school prep prep:

1. Cut out the swearing. I know for a fact that one of the professors I will be having hates swearing. I'm pretty sure that I'll be having that professor early in the morning, which may have an effect on my ability to moderate the habit in his presence. To counteract that, I'll just have to work on doing away with it entirely. This may be a challenge.
2. Get used to waking up early. And eating breakfast while I'm at it. My first class will start at 7:30 a.m., and I won't get more than 15 minutes of break time at once until 2 p.m. Naturally, I have to be awake in time for class to be there, and if I don't eat first I will be a tired, shaky, irritable basta assh person for just about all of it.

I'm sure there will be more, but that is all I can think of at this point.

Back to psychology homework. Ugghhhhhhh

Some strange chap insulted me! I bridled at his remark until I realized he was just trying to stirrup a bit of conversation.

I had a presentation today at school. It went all right.

Someone on OB linked this Couch-to-5K thing, which I began tonight.

A kitten with a bell stalked me for most of my block at the end of my walk. That made me smile.

The lady in front of me at the drive through paid for my chicken sandwich!

Scruffy, my dog of 14 years, died today. He was well-behaved and friendly. I loved him very much. We will miss him.

Hooray, college.

I have finally finished my Experimental Psych homework, and the experience has soured me to OpenOffice.org.

Don't get me wrong; it's effective for doing basic word processing stuff. I just can't sign off on it being a worthy replacement of MS Office, though. For instance, I need robust numbering support, including the ability to custom-define an outline hierarchy. I want a more user-friendly method of generating graphs from spreadsheets--wrestling with an underpowered interface for an hour before finally deciding to hack my data so that I can get a graph that looks like it was properly constructed does not a satisfied user make.

To be honest, I can't remember if even Office supports the stuff I want. I feel like I remember being able to do this stuff, though, or at least having an easier and more fun time tricking the program into giving me the results I need. Anyone out there with a 2003 or more recent version of Office able to confirm those features?

Moving on: the TA who runs my Experimental Psych lab wanted me to e-mail her a paper I wrote so she can run it through turnitin.com. For those of you unfamiliar with it, it's an anti-plagiarism service where instructors can submit writing, which is added into a database and compared against the other entries to see if it has stolen content.

Just so it's perfectly clear, I didn't plagiarize any portion of the paper; I hate plagiarism. I don't think this TA singled me out for this, but I'm a little nervous about it, even though I tend to write just a little bit differently from my peers, especially for academic purposes. The worrisome part of it all is the idea that I might have accidentally repeated the phrasing used in some paper I have never read before and will consequently be punished for it. I am currently feeling unlucky enough for that to happen.

In other news, getting a degree is a drag and no one should do it.

I don't care what your review says, The Watchmen was rad.

My latest eBay victory just came in. It's a Russian training manual, "Soyuz Want to be a Cosmonaut."

There's an enemy that appears in Persona 3 and 4 called "Natural Dancer." Every time I think of any enemy that even looks like it, I get They Might Be Giants' "Damn Good Times" stuck in my head.

A chubby for you if you don't need to Google that to understand why.

I bookmarked a celebrity lookalike porn site. It's not the real thing, but I'm satisfied with a reasonable fapsimile.

The next time I see someone misuse "populous" for "populace," I'm going to burn down my house.

IT'S AN ADJECTIVE, MOTHERFUCKER.

Poking around NPR.org's podcast section, I found this an entry for one called Grammar Grater. From their site:

Grammar Grater™ is a weekly podcast about English words, grammar and usage for the Information Age.

Sweet! Here's a link: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/radio/podcasts/grammar_grater/

The shows are short, topping out at around six minutes or so with many less than that. I found it good to download a big batch and listen to a queue while playing games. Some of the topics are already well-understood by those in the know, but many of the episodes discuss words with which many well-spoken people have issues. If nothing else, they provide listeners with good mnemonics that can be shared with others to help them keep similar words straight.

From a linguistic perspective, the show is decidedly prescriptivist, but I would argue that some prescriptivism among the general speaking population is necessary to maximize a language's intelligibility. The positions they advocate tend to be supported from historical and well-regarded academic positions, at least.

All in all, I think this is a fun show for those who are interested in English grammar and usage and vital for those who lack confidence in the same. Check it out!

What does a weather report have in common with my butt?

They both have a dew point.

 

For the first time in a while, I have devised a joke so stupid that I'm not sure I want to put it on OB. Thoughts?

My family was supposed to have adopted the rule that adults don't buy gifts for other adults this year, but I still got two of the best gifts I could've asked for.

Dad gave me enough money to take a concealed carry class, which I tentatively plan to attend with my brother in January. My dad's wife's brother (my uncle? step-uncle?) gave me a Kaplan LSAT study guide. Sweet!

My grandmother gave me some money, too, which was conveniently just enough to cover my part of my mom's birthday present. I'm very glad about this development, as it has allowed me to eat this week--even when my family is not directly feeding me!

The roommates get paid tomorrow or Friday. Their rent is pretty much necessary at this point, as some part of the refrigerator that plays a role in making the air cold has stopped making the air cold. I now have a large, insulated box which I am pretty sure is warmer than the rest of the house. Visitors have taken to chilling beer in the back yard, though today's high of 72°F didn't do a lot in that regard.

Tonight's Christmas event at my dad's place went pretty well. This was the first family gathering at which I have felt comfortable drinking. (I spent my teenage years foolishly swearing up and down that I would never drink, so I had to eat my words and swallow my pride before I could get a beer down. The process took a couple of years. Once that was out of the way, things became much more pleasant.) The food was as enjoyable as the company, which was splendid. I hadn't seen most of the attendees in months, and they all had nice things to say about my new hairstyle. Conversation was light and pleasant.

Tomorrow, I'll have a smaller meal at my brother's place, where I hope my mom will be in better spirits. She was pretty down at Thanksgiving, as the man she had been seeing had died not long before. She's clearly still hurting, which is to be expected, and I wish there were something more I could do to help her. She seems fixated on how bad this year has been for her and is looking forward to its end; I don't know what she's expecting out of 2009, but I hope it's realistic. As it is now, I won't say anything to her about that as I don't want to threaten her hope.

I was going to end there, but a) that's a real downer, and b) I have recalled more good things. Rhys, namesake of the Feast of St. Eve of Rhysmas, gave to the house the first two seasons of Arrested Development. I'm so happy I could have pop-pop in the attic!

Speaking of the Feast of St. Eve of Rhysmas, we're looking at having a New Year's party, tentatively titled, "First Feast of St. Eve of Rhysmas Jamboree, Fish Fry, Pillow Fight, and Gun Show." [Update: Sadly, the fish for the fish fry portion have gone bad due to the aforementioned refrigerator issues, and vendors aren't exactly lining up for the proposed backyard gun show. The jamboree and pillow fight segments should proceed as planned.]

I beat Persona 4. It took me a little over 100 hours of recorded playtime, which of course does not include segments replayed due to death and untimely power outages. The game came out last Tuesday, the 9th, and I picked it up around 1 p.m. I finished it tonight at a bit before 2 a.m.

If my calculations are correct, that means I averaged at least ten hours per day playing this game.

Knowing this, the part of me that wants to make something of myself dies. The part of me that likes cool characters and murder mysteries, though? So alive.

In all honesty, though, I did about as much during the week as I would have normally. The boys and I won a Rock Band competition, I bought a gun (props to stuntcock for recommending the XD Compact), and I even did well on all of my final exams. Managing to squeeze in more than two full-time workweeks' worth of a good game is just icing.

I wonder sometimes if I'll look back with regret at all the time I have spent and will continue spending playing games. The fact that I still go out now and again prevents me from feeling bad now, but I can only guess about what I have missed while shut away clutching a controller. Will there come a day when my hobbies' opportunity costs are too obviously great to ignore? I feel okay about where I am in my life; if I keep up this rate of progress, I'm not sure that I'll miss enough to mourn the experiences I have overlooked.

New Game Plus play begins sometime next week.

Persona 4 came out on Tuesday, so I'll be out for a bit. It is, of course, quite to my liking.

See you after finals.

Fuck anybody who rings my doorbell seven times in a row for any reason. I don't care if my roof is on fire--one ring will do it.

Hooray for the First Amendment, though.

In other news, Connor's car is now being impounded.

Pedialyte. Apply liberally to gullet. Down it before bed if you can remember; if not, a morning dose will still help.

Thanks for the tip go to my drinking mentors.

TCP/IMP