Lack of posts

Sorry about the lack of posts this last couple weeks.  This last week in particular went by super fast with finals and all.  Hopefully that I will be able to kick back into my blog after the holidays.  I'll make it a New Year's resolution . . . . . Well Merry Christmas all!!

-- CK

Job Position

I think that a new job position that grocery stores should have is "Tall Guy".  At work today I was asked four times to help costumers reach products that were either too high or too far back on the shelf.  One of the times I was actually addressed as "Tall Guy" when asked for help, so that's where the name of the position comes from.  Either this, or new shopping carts should be made that have some sort of short ladder that can be extended out so shoppers that can't reach what they want won't have that problem anymore.  I wonder if I could actually make any money with this "invention", or if its just another day-dream at work.

Anyway, I was really surprised how slow work was.  I was sampling Popzels.  Popzels are pretty much spherical chocolate covered pretzels, so they look quite like a malted milk ball.  Given that my demo was chocolate I would have assumed that there would have been a mad rush to get samples, but I was wrong.  The insane thing was that I had 36 pounds of three different flavors of the Popzels to give away, and I think I only went through 3 pounds of each, at most.  Oh well, at least I got my paperwork this time, although most of my co-workers didn't so . . . . . .  Until my next post . . which my amount of posts are increasingly decreasing due to the fact that finals are coming up and I can't think of  much to say.  Hopefully soon I will start posting my comic as I am almost finished with the pre-drawings.

-- CK

I Gotta Question

Why does melted cheese always taste better than before it is melted . . . is there some chemical change that makes it taste different?

-- CK

Pizza Insanity

So I worked again today giving out samples at the local grocery store.  Today I was demoing Palermo's Pizza.  The pizza was good and went fast, probably too fast.  I mean it is like insane how fast that stuff goes.  You have to sit there for between 15 and 20 minutes while the pizza cooks.  All the while that is happening people are walking by asking when it will be done.  When it is finally done, you pull it out of the oven and immediately there is a line of at least 5 people standing there waiting for you to serve the pizza.  In the time that you finally cut the pizza and fumble to put the first napkins out on the table to put the samples on, the line has pretty much doubled.  The pizza is then gone in less than 2 minutes, depending on how fast you are at dishing out the slices.  And this isn't normal pizza slices where you might get 12 slices out of one frozen pizza.  No, you have to cut it into squares and get about 30 pieces out of it just so that you can serve as many people as possible.  And then you have to wait another 20 minutes to do the same exact thing.  It is totally insane.  Luckily I am not doing that again for awhile.  My next demo is pretzels, a nice peaceful ongoing sample.  That will be so much nicer. . . . although, probably not.  It will most likely be super slow.  Oh well, I can't complain (well I can), but the pay is pretty good.

-- CK

Headlights

If I got a dollar for every time someone has flashed their bright lights at me while I was driving, I would be rich.  And no, my brights were never on any of those times.  I gotta check if the angle on my headlights is off or something.  If not, maybe my headlights are just brighter than normal or something.  I get flashed at least once every time I drive during the night.  It is actually getting quite annoying.

-- CK

Computer Art

I was stumbling around the internet and I found a really cool site.  It's called doodleBug.  With doodleBug you get draw whatever you want to (aka a doodle) and then people will vote on your drawing after you submit it.  The one problem is that with this site, you are drawing with a mouse, which makes it harder to make good drawings.  One of the cool features about this, is that once you submit your drawing, everyone else can watch a playback of how you drew the picture, so they will see every line that you made, in the order that you drew them.  Other than the fact that I can't think of anything to draw, I think this site is amazing.  You should check it out.

-- CK

College Pride Skype Profile Pictures

I was on Skype awhile ago looking through all of the pre-made pictures that the developers made for Skype users.  Frankly I think that they are fairly pathetic.  Then I came to the one called "College Skype" and I thought, why not make a picture related to my specific college, and then I could show my pride.  I then decided that why not have one for every college so that current, or even graduated, students can show their own pride for their college if they so choose.  I decided that I was going to create a website where you can go, find your college, and then download the profile picture for free.  I was wondering about legality of that because I would be using the mascots of that school in the picture, so if anyone knows about that, please tell me.  Lately I had to slow down on the progress of this project because of how much other stuff that I have been doing, but I have made pictures for all of my friends so far.  If anyone would like to request a college I could make up a picture pretty quick.  Hopefully I can pick this project up again and get back to it.

-- CK

buıdʎʇ uʍop ǝpısdn -- (upside down typing)

This is a pretty fun thing to do while chatting to friends, although after awhile it does get annoying, so use this rationally.  Typing upside down usually amazes people because they have never heard of doing this, and most people love new stuff.  To type upside down just go to either here or here.  The second of the two is more simple, but both work depending on how much you care about website appearances.  Its pretty cool and you should check it out.

-- CK

Italian Food

I went to an amazing Italian Restaurant today with some friends, and I have decided that I love Italian food.  Well I had already decided this awhile ago, but I am re-deciding.  Since my plans are to go teach abroad, I was thinking that Italy would be the perfect place.  Then I could eat Italian food all I want, which at the moment seems like a perfect idea.  But probably I would just get sick of it eventually, so maybe I can just live elsewhere and then just go to Italian restaurants whenever I like.  That would probably work best.....

-- CK

Thanksgiving

Well another Thanksgiving has come and gone (technically, i know its not over until midnight, but I have left the gathering).  The lovely annual day of stuffing our faces with food, and the traditional meaning of giving thanks.  Now here is where I do my part in that tradition.  I thank God for my family, especially my parents who have been there these whole eighteen years to help me on my way through life.

-- CK

No Post

I got nothing for a blog post today.  I cleaned my car and most of my room.  Other than that I can't really think about anything to say . . . . . Sorry.

-- CK

Piano Covers

Lately I have become very interested in playing piano covers for certain songs that I like.  For those of you who do not know what a piano cover is, it is pretty much playing a song that is not meant for the piano, on a piano.  The first song that interested me was Linkin Park - What I've Done. (original song, piano cover) I saw that and I wanted to do it also.  Sadly though the person that made this video has not released any sheet music yet, so I tried transcribing it myself.  That is a lot harder to do than I thought.  Luckily I did find another person that made sheet music, although it is a little bit simpler than that video I linked to.  I haven't actually played it in a while so I forgot most of the notes, but I did get almost a quarter of the way through the song with both hands.  Then later I found out that someone made a piano cover video of Dimrain 47 - Twilight Techno.  For those of you that know Dimrain, you know that this is almost impossible.  For those of you that don't, lets just stick with that fact.  (original song, piano cover)  She does make some mistakes in the really fast parts, but I don't hold that against her, I still believe that she is an amazing pianist.  Obviously I want to do this, but yet again, she hasn't released any sheet music yet, so I would have to transcribe.  I wonder if there are any free programs out there that can transcribe music by listening to it.......  Wish me luck, I'll need it if I ever plan on actually playing this.....

-- CK

Work Problems

So I went to work on Saturday expecting the normal long boring day of handing food out to shoppers, but this day was different.  I got there and had no paperwork telling me what to do.  I didn't even know what food I was supposed to be sampling.  My supervisor told me that I should ask the store if they received a fax of my paperwork, but they said that they didn't.  So I had nothing else to do instead of just going home and figure out what to do on Sunday, because I was scheduled to work then too.  So on Sunday I showed up, not having paperwork I was expecting to not work again.  I asked the store again if they had a fax this time.  This time they did, but it was not my paperwork for Sunday.  It was the paperwork for the person that was working the day before.  Since she had done the same demo as I was supposed to be doing, I used it to do my own work.  As I was looking over it, I noticed that it had a staple in it with more paper attached so I looked to see what other instructions it said..... The paper attached was my paperwork for the day before.... I had still not received any paper for the current day so I had to cross off the other persons name and write my own so I could send it in to get paid.  With this episode I'm trying to wonder if the company is any better now that they merged another company than before, and I'm thinking not.  Given that case I wouldn't be surprised if they went bankrupt again.  Gotta love work.

-- CK

Burnout 5

I just stumbled upon the fact that there is a 5th game in the Burnout series, Burnout Paradise.  When I still had my Xbox I owned the 3rd game, Burnout Takedown.  Out of all of the racing games that I have played, I think that Burnout is one of the best.  I like that in Burnout when you are flying down the road going 130 mph and you miss the turn you actually crash into the buildings or the side rails.  Unlike many other racing games where you will just come to a complete stop and there is no harm done to your car.  You can no longer just hug the side rails to make sure that you make it around turns fine, you will most likely hit a protruding hunk of metal coming off of the bridge that you are crossing, destroying your car.  Your car does reload so it is not like once you crash, you are done with the race forever.  I actually think that that would be a really good thing to add in the game though.  A survival race, which looking at the trailers for the newest game they kind of did this, where when you crash you are out of the race.  The only way to win is to make it all of the way through the race without running into anything, including traffic.  I am totally psyched about the new Burnout other than the fact that I don't have the console to play it with, but maybe a friend might get it and I could play it with them.  The graphics and the ability to interact with so much of the environment makes it look just amazing.  I hope that once I am out of college I will have enough money to buy a Xbox 360 so that I can play this game.

-- CK

Homemade Cards

One thing that I like to do is make personalized cards, be it for a birthday, a graduation or what-not. My whole goal with these cards is to make them rhyme with themselves. I will take one word and use http://www.rhymezone.com/ to find all of the other words that rhyme with that one word. Throughout the card I have scattered words that rhyme with that first original word. So far I have used "graduation", "birthday", and "guy" (fathers day). I am still trying to find other words that work really well because I am trying to not use the same rhyme more than once. Here is an example of one of my cards.

-- CK

Congratulations on your graduation in this great state of our united nation. I send my greatest gratification and appreciation of our friendship through all of the integration and beta radiation. All civilization and the population will have a celebration as your education moves on to a new location. Working in collaboration with your job application, you will cause extreme consideration in the corporation. Best luck in college and beyond.

My Job

I have a very, very part-time job as a food demonstrator at the local grocery store.  I bold the "part-time" because when I actually get to work I am working 6-12 hours a month, and these last 5 month i have been averaging a whole zero hours a week.  That is because the company I work for went bankrupt and had to merge with a new company, so my boss pretty much changed all of a sudden, even though I really never knew who my boss was anyway....  Well with this job I get to go to the store and prepare food for the customers to sample so that they will want to buy said food.  It's a good job, if you don't mind standing in the same exact spot for 6 hours, sometimes not having a customer come up to you for up to 30 minutes depending on what you are sampling.  It gives me a lot of time to think actually, which I kind of like.  If I remember correctly, I wrote most of the book that I am planning to write there, but it's in my head, and I am unsure how to put it on paper...  Also with this job I get to meet a lot of interesting and sometimes strange people while there.  I believe the most common thing that get said to me is "You look tired" or "What a great job! You just stand there all day and they pay you".  It gets hard on the feet after a while...  I think I will always remember the time that one of the shoppers mistook me for a mannequin.  I was in the produce section demoing a bleu cheese dressing on a salad.  Because not very many people actually like bleu cheese, traffic was quite slow.  I found it interesting to watch how often the workers at the store had to restock the bananas because of how fast they were going.  So there I am staring at the shelf of bananas, sort of day-dreaming, when an elderly lady comes up to my table.  When she is right in front of me I cut out of my trance and look at her.  She jumped!  After she got over the original shock, she was laughing that she thought I was just a mannequin sitting right next to the food stand.  She then proceeded to walk away.  I thought that was an odd thing to say, because I know of no grocery stores that have mannequins in them.  But I took that episode into consideration and started moving a little more while I work....

I'm going to cut this post off because it is getting quite long, but there is more I can say on this subject, so I will most likely come back to it, especially once I start working again.  I actually work this weekend (score! Thank you mom) so I might get more interesting stories from this.

-- CK

Final English Essay

For Honors English we just got the assignment for our last essay. It's a cause and effect paper on any online social network that we choose, preferable one that we use. Blogs fit into the category so I thought perfect timing that I just started this one. I don't know if I will write about blogs, Facebook might be easier just because of how much more commonly used it is. Oh well, wish me luck on my paper. (Not due until the end of the semester, so there is no rush at the moment. And no mom, if you are reading this, I do not plan on holding it off until then.)

-- CK

Excerpt From Book

I had a horrible headache last night so I wasn't able to take the time to write a new post. I made the goal of updating my blog daily, at least for the beginning, it might change later. And because of that I am throwing in part of my book that I am writing. This part is the summary of what took place before the book actually started. Enjoy.

-- CK

The government has become corrupted. A democracy has changed into a dictatorship. The nation is in shambles, everything is chaos. If this isn't ended, it will soon spread to the rest of the world.

It all started back a year and a half ago. It was election year and Senator Hank Jorgensen was winning the votes of the whole nation. Everybody loved him. He brought together the two previously fighting parties and made one goal, one that everyone agreed to. His speeches were hypnotizing. Wherever he went, there was always cheering. I don't recall a single protest occurring because of one of his principles. Oh wait, there was that one. We should have listened to them. Instead they were thrown in prison for a couple months until the elections were over. If we would have let them talk, none of this would have happened.

The police had to use brute force to stop the protest. Many of the members got beaten bad. There was only one that was killed. He was beat to death because he was assumed very deadly when he tackled a police officer who was beating another one of the protesters.

They actually let other criminals out of jail so there would be enough cells for the whole group. They were held there until after the election. But then it was too late.

So far the government has been able to hide their actions from the population of the country, and it is just a matter of time before they unleash their plan.

New Zealand

I have decided that If I could live anywhere in the world, it would be in New Zealand. By far it is the most beautiful place that I have ever been, given that I haven't been very many other places . . . . (Canada, Australia, and about 15 states) so . . . there could better places, but so far New Zealand wins. Just by the vast openness of it, and the rolling hills, it is an amazing place. I do remember being confused when I saw the deer farms . . . . that would make some easy hunting :P . . . . Also the temperature there is perfect for me, at least in the winter, I might have to move farther south in the summer. But when I was there in July (winter) the lowest the temperature got was 40 degrees. Yeah coming from the states where it is 80 degrees out that time of year it is a little chilly. But for me the perfect temperature is around 50 degrees. I would just love it. The only problem is that the gas prices are humongous! I might have to buy a motorcycle. . . . which I'm not sure I want one of those anyway . . . . Well anyway, I'm done writing for now.

-- CK

Comic

Lately i have been trying to start a web comic. So far all I know is the main character and a little bit of the story line. My first drawing of Phil (the main character) actually happened in my Art History class. I was bored and was doodling. It actually started off as a line on my paper, which then in turn ended up being the eyes. In the end, I had a character, a robot. . . . My inspiration to start a web comic with this drawing actually came from my favorite web comic, Ctrl-Alt-Delete, by Tim Buckley. I have been reading his comic for about 4 years, and since I started it has been my favorite comic . . . My mom said that I could try to get my comic into the local newspaper, which I guess I could try, but just making it on the web would be so much easier, and for those of you that know me, you know that I am all about efficiency (intelligent laziness). I'll post more on this when I actually get somewhere with it. Currently I am trying to design a spaceship so if anyone has any ideas I would greatly appreciate that.

This drawing is the
potential logo of the comic.

It also shows a quick sketch of
the main character, Phil.

-- CK

The Pilot

Here's my first post of this blog, no clue what to say. So I'll start out with a little about me. I'm a college student, doing a Double Major of French and Teaching English with a German Minor. If you hadn't noticed, I like foreign languages. I am currently self-teaching myself Swahili and Esperanto. I like to draw and have started drawing my friends; people are extremely hard to draw, mainly faces, i can't seem to get them right. My favorite car is a 1969 Dodge Charger, no clue why, it just is. I would love to have one of those someday. Umm, I like to write. . . . I am kind of working on a book, maybe I'll talk about that later. I love playing tennis, that's my favorite sport. And my favorite food is lasagna . . . . . You're taking notes right? Cause there will be a quiz in a week :P . . . . Umm, well that's all I can think of right now so until the next post here is what you get.

-- CK