New Display Technology

Are you guys ready for this? Absolutly insane. . . Say goodbye to flat panel displays

New operating system...well.. testing it...

Ok, so i'm testing out windows Vista Build 5342. It's pretty cool. It runs well on my laptop but none of the fancy video extras work. and the media center portion lags a great deal. I tried to install it on my desktop and it went blue screen on me after the first reboot. It keeps doing it everytime i try to continue the installation. Now i'm trying to get rid of the Vista install boot screen. I have to sit by my computer and click option 1 or else i see the blue screen in 10 seconds. Well... here is a screen shot of it... it is quite pretty.

Click on it to see a full sized image...

chattanooga daily times

Ok, it's monday morning and i just spent a fabulous weekend in chattanooga, or "chatty" as we like to call it. I'm going to tell you how i feel right now then we are goign to back track it and work up to the present. I have a GIGANTIC scratch on my chest.


yea, see it over there --->
looks like it hurts, doesn't it?


My back is sore my arms are sore and my belly has been on the virge of blowing up for the past 3 days now.

The drive to chatty was fun and quick. It was myself, rachel, cole, and amanda riding up in cole car. A van tried to change lanes as we were coming out of knoxville and they about changed lanes right into our faces. Luckily cole pulled out his evasive manuevers. And he saved us. Amanda lives in the middle of nowhere and her house is absolutly beautiful. Hopefully i can upload some pics later. I didn't bring my camera because I didn't want it to get wet on ther boat.

We got out of the cars and were greeted by amanda's 2 dogs. Buster and Buddy. both of them were really soft and really white. they were outside dogs and i liked petting them. Until buster sat down to lick his penis. Then i saw the gigantic red sore. It was nasty. and it was on his weiner. At that point i stopped petting the dogs much.

Amanda's mom cooked an awesome dinner for us. Briskit, potatoes, rolls w/jam, beans, and a couple other good things. She also made this delicious dish called "chocolate mess'.

This was me after eating the chocolate mess later.





No, that is actually just a google image search of chocolate mess.



We relaxed and played some Croquet. Cole won the first game then everyone sent him back during the second game. . . I almost won the second game then everyone lost interest and started rolling eachother down hills in big tubes. I didn't go because i was waaaaaaaaay too big for those tubes ( i'm a big guy). Once we were all done with that we were going go see a movie but ended up staying in and watching fun with dick and jane.

Sleep, end of day 1

Wake up to the smell of sausage and waffles.

So Amanda's mom cooked waffles, bacon, sausage, toast, eggs... we had all the juices, strawberries, whipcream and syrup we could handle too. To top it off we were surounded by some amazing flowers. Both inside and out. It was quite a tasty breakfast. We all then split up, boys down girls up. (that is how we slept and yea) and got ready to goto the lake. Some of us showered some did not. I did because it was a nice shower. John ballard and i played a 'quick' game of ping pong. First to 21 wins, you must win by 2 points, on the game point the winner must defend. Game ended John ballard 29, john kennedy 31... YEA!

And you can tell there were 2 johns on the trip this weekend. You can imagine that might get very confusing. We threw around some ideas; using middle names, completely different names, something else! we ended up settling on a number system. I(john kennedy) was 11. John Ballard was 2. If you had to address us both we were 13. Only 2 and I really stood by the rule. I believe rachel was the only other person that used it normally and that was once. Other people had numbers but they dind't really stick. Rachel was 6.5 and cole was 3.14... or pi. I don't remember Amanda's number and i don't think Tara had one.

We went out on the boat. Just the 6 of us and Number 2 drove. The lake was really pretty. It looked alot like cherokee lake and one of the coolest sites was the power plant that was right on the coast. Those cooling towers are massive!!!

We spent the whole day out. We went out around noonish and came back around 5:30 or 6.

Number 2 drove us over to a Rope swing to jump off of. I swam there with the intentions of maybe doing it and i fell... that is where the gash on my chest came from. I fell... really really sharp rocks too. . . So i fell climbing up the rocks. And i didn't really fall. I slipped and scatched my chest. That picture up there isn't my chest, that is a google image search of "Chest Wound" = ) I held the Rope fo a while, thinking about going down. I never did it. I enjoy a rush... but man i am a pussy. Yea rachel and tara both did it. Depending where you help the rope and how far up the hill you climbed the drop was anywhere from 30 to 75 feet... off the edge of incredibly jagged cliffs.

We wakeboarded for a little while. This was my first time.
It was alot of fun, I fell the first few times. not that hard. held on for a while my last time. I got tired, let go, then then came around a picked me up. my legs were sooo tired. Rachel tried it next and got up the first time.











When we were done the sun was going down and john floored it back to the docks. I sat on the front of the boat. It was windy and cold but it looked really cool, the water was so smooth and there was absolutly no one on the lake.

We ate at Acropolis
It was delicious.

we saw Stick It It was corny and kinda dumb. But it was still funny and a good movie. The girl was hot and that is that.

We went back to amanda's and crashed, ate some cookies, ate a buncha other food. Played with a wheelchair. played bandu, and played a fast paced crazy game of ping pong with 3 balls and 2 fribees. Then at 3am Cole and 13(2 and 11) tried to sleep in a queen size bed together. Needless to say... at 4 we heard amanda's dad walking around upstairs. at 4:30 cole got out of bed and slept on the couch. It was nonstop laugher and i think number 2 wanted to play the DutchMasters.

DutchMaster?
So john found these games and he saw a box that said "the Dutchmasters" well he thought it was a board game about pilgrams. which would be a really funny board game. So i kept refering to the dutchmasters for the next 24 hours.

We woke up, ate some breakfast and came back. Cole, amanda, rachel, and i stopped at wal-mart in k-town. We parked and got out of the car. Then this dude walked up to cole and started talking to him. . . Rachel hid behind me, cole stared at him and amanda talked on the phone and payed no attention. I was trying to understand the guy and protect rachel. The guy grabbed coles arm and mumbled some more. Cole said "uhhh no" and we all walked away.

Here are some pics!

Sleeping on cement, New friends, Chuck P

So today was the first study day. We have 2 before finals. I woke up at 8 and get in the shower. I didn't have class so why did i get up so early? I was supposed to meet the boss at 9 to do this microsoft exchange migrations. At 9:05 i get the e-mail that he is too busy to do it today. So that means i just woke up for no reason.

It might sound like i'm complaining but i like to wake up early. Laying around all morning it the worst thing ever, unless of course if i had someone to lay around with. Then i would be cool and i would lay in bed until mid-afternoon.

So i did some stuff online and honestly... i'm not all too sure what i did. Oh yea, i wrote some facebook and myspace messages. Then i went to Red-Lobster with the brady and it was delicious as was our conversation. Afterwards we went back to campus, i did some work to get ready for the eventual migration of the Minority Student Affairs mail system.

I installed a video card that i'm not currently using into my friend's comptuer. Well, then i let him use one of my 19" monitors. He hasn't seen it yet but i'll feel bad when i unhook it in a few days to bring it home = (

I went back to my room Dual monitor-less... now one of my 19 inchers are missing. So then i got online and looked at some funny stuff, read a little bit and had some good conversation with people that i havn't really ever talked to before. The internet rocks. It's so much easier to IM someone than walk up to them and randomly start talking. Even though i don't have a problem with that either.

I have a paper due in English 232 - Literature since the civil war era - It is basically a simple eassay about an author that we think should be included in our anthology of authors and why. This paper isn't due until wednesday but i needed to do it today since i have 2 finals wedneday plus this paper plus some photography work that i can only get done tomorrow.

I went outside at 4 this afternoon because it was beautiful and the blue sky helps me think of what to write. I wrote down some ideas and flipped through a couple of Chuck Palahniuk's books but ending up falling asleep from about 4:20 to 5. It felt pretty good but then i was really sweaty since i crashed out on hot cement on a sunny day.

Surfed the net some more, watch family guy and simpsons from last sunday, ate some dinner. then worked on my paper. took a total of about an hour and a half.

Oh yea, and apparently from today on, watching star wars with a girls means ... ehhh... just ask me and i'll tell you, or you can comment and use your imagination.

-Keep an eye out for some photos that i will be posting on quackpipevideos.blogspot.com

Paper written about Chuck P

Chuck P: A writer for the non-readers

“Most of the noise a gunshot makes is expanding gases, and there’s the tiny sonic boom a bullet makes because it travels so fast.” That is on the first page of Fight Club: A Novel. Welcome to world of Chuck Palahniuk. I was introduced to Chuck P in 1998 when a friend won some sneak screening passes to a strange movie called “Fight Club”. Sadly I didn’t enjoy the movie the first time. But after watching in a couple more times and understanding more about it I forced myself to learn more about where it came from.

I never read much when I was younger and still don’t read as much as I would like. Chuck Palahniuk helped me enjoy reading. Before I go any further let me clarify the pronunciation of his name. It is pronounced Paula-Nick. I learned this from various online sources but mainly from his DVD. Many people seem to say it different. I used to say Paula-nee-ook.

The first novel of his that I picked up was Survivor. That book especially shows you how much research he does before and during his writing process. There are just tons and tons of useless and useful information in every one of his books; information such as how to make a silencer, how to make soap, and various ways to clean up different messes that you may or may not encounter. It is fun to read his books because you think to yourself “oh wow… would that really work? Well yea I guess it probably would.”

Each time I pick up and read something that he has written I can tell by the style. The way he narrates and conveys information to the audience is very distinctive. I have read 4 of his 9 novels. The Three most recent novels are not the same pieces of work as the others.

“Fugitives and Refugees” is a Guide through his home city of Portland, OR. “Stranger than Fiction” is a collection of stories that he has gathered over the years, all being true. His newest Novel is “Haunted” and that consists of numerous fiction short stories and poems that are compiled by a list of characters stuck in a house. I have only been able to read some of the short stories; they seem entertaining and disturbing at the same time.

Once I read these other short stories I would probably suggest one of them for the anthology. I know for a fact Guts in Haunted would probably be too much for some people. I could barely read through that. This seems to be a good time to throw down a disclaimer for you. I should tell you now that most of his stuff is R rated with a dash of X and PG13, when I say X, I mean the bad X not the entertaining bright neon flashing X – X – X.

My favorite out of what I have read was Lullaby. Just imagine what your concept is of words and noises around you. It will completely change. You will notice people being noiseaholics or quietaphobics. Some of the later scenes in the novel would be so awesome if it were made into a movie. But once again some of the described imagery is very graphic and quite horrible.

His novels of course have some tie to reality, well his reality. Chuck P has been a diesel mechanic, a hospice worker, and a journalist. He pulls some aspects from his life into his stories. Lullaby’s main character is a journalist working on a story. Fight club was created after Chuck was in a fight with some neighbors on a camping trip and the next day at work nobody acknowledged his completely destroyed face. I learned that from the commentary on the special edition DVD.

I would probably choose fight club to be read in an anthology. It isn’t too long. It’s a very easy read. There is a great deal of information to analyze. And you can watch the movie afterwards and talk about that as well. I wish the book would have somehow found me before I saw the movie. Since I saw the movie first I knew that they were the same person and I wonder what my reaction would have been as I read through the book.

Fight Club is what made Chuck P soar. The movie made people read the book and branch out from there. It made them read more and more. Palahniuk made me, a non-reader, enjoy reading. It is very real and feels so interesting to read. Introducing his work to people will help them read more of his work and other pieces of literature.

Bibliography

- http://www.chuckpalahniuk.net/

- Lullaby – Chuck Palahniuk - Doubleday (September 17, 2002)

- Fight Club – Chuck Palahniuk -W. W. Norton & Company; 1st ed edition (August 1996)

- Postcards from the Future: The Chuck Palahniuk Documentary (2003)

o http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0398273/