Tuba Dude Update

Ok, been a really long time I know so here's the news.

After one semester at SIUC I increased my GPA by 1 point compared to MSOE. I'm now on some honors list for a 3.2/4.0 What sucks is that I didn't even try. I got my new FF character to levels (gil levels not included) higher than my old one. What took me 1 year of playing took me 3 months. This probably due to an amazing level of help and donations by Tsuki. (I owe you one million or so hehe.)

My parents are moving to Oklahoma City. They have already bought a house in the area and we're looking to sell our current house. I will continue to attend at SIUC and somehow trick the government into thinking I'm a IL res.

A good friend of mine is going to tie the knot with his girl in September. Barring a catatrophic mass transit failure I will be attending.

I'm currently employed at McD's and it sucks. They pay me min. wage despite being an excellent no training needed employee.

With my money I'm saving from the job I'll be saving for a car (to buy next summer probably) and for a new computer. I will hopefully be able to take advantage of Intel's release of the Conroe core that will force price drops on Intel and AMD proc. Here are the current specs I want to build:

CPU, AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Orleans 2000MHz HT Socket AM2:
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16819103639
Motherboard, ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe Socket AM2 NVIDIA nForce 570 SLI: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16813131013
Video Card, eVGA 256-P2-N564 Geforce 7900GT KO 256MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16:
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16814130015
RAM, OCZ Gold 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400): http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16820227030
Case, RAIDMAX Astro ATX-268WB Black 0.7mm Japanese SECC:
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16822135106
Hard Drive, Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JD 80GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s : http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16822135106

Other Extras:
Replacement/Add-on Fans: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16835150037
Power Supply:
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16817374001
Cooling Fan, CPU Cooler, ZALMAN CNPS7000B-Cu LED 2 Ball Blue LED:
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16835118119

For helping around the house my Mom is buying the case fans for me ^_^

I will probably change what I want several times over the next month or so and will try to keep the links up to date.

My life in the past few months in a nutshell.

This Past Weekend

For a few weeks now I have been a part of a design team to build a Moonbuggy.

"A what?" is what you just thought/said.

A Moonbuggy is a man powered cart that can traverse the simulated surface of the Moon. (Simulated as in piles of gravel, sand, while going up and down hills.)

The first night there 2 guys and I went out to find some local bars and get a beer. Turned out there where no bars still open at 1am in this part of town only gentleman's clubs.

After we got back from drinking I played some video games and then fell asleep.

Before I had gone out it was decided that we would leave at 9am for the competition. My roommates had decided to set there alarms for 7:00am, 7:00am, 7:00 Freaking AM!!!! Needless to say I was not thrilled to discover this at SEVEN &@$#ING AM in the morning.

I got up and ready at 8:30am and was fully ready to go by 8:50am (breakfast and everything).

We got to the competition and started to test/fix/finish the buggy. Every time we fixed something, another vital part would break. We finally got our problems down to a chain slipping off our differenctial and tranny. We managed to "fix" this while we where getting out safety check and assembly times. During the assembly process, a piece fell off the buggy. That's right FEEL OFF!!! We have folded and un folded this thing 10 times in the past hour and a piece FALLS OFF when we are being timed. Our driver had to get out of his seat and pick it up before the timer stopped. This brought our amazing 10 second assembly time to a 38 second time.

As we brought it up to the start line the chain slipped again. It was obvious we could not fix it in less than 5 min so we had to take a "Did not complete" for our first run. We got the buggy back to the pit and found our problem was the differential got jostled out of place on the drive down. We quickly fixed that and started to successfully run it when our female driver complained that her ends shocks where getting weaker. We discovered that the afro mentioned piece that FEEL OFF was the piece that held the rear shocks to the frame... Yah not good. We mange to fix this relatively quickly and began test's again.

We finally had finished this buggy before lunch even.

A couple of us who had fished the shock problem went to lunch and spent the rest of the time before our run watching other teams, mainly the female driver from Purdue University...

Our time came and I our buggy flew through the first few obstacles. We got to about obstacle 5 (6?) and the buggy got stuck. They tried powering over it but that caused one of our rear axles to break. We are still cheering them on and they had to get out and push for nearly every obstacle after that. Accept the sand pit, despite it being mud from the previous nights rain, despite only having one powered driver, we where one of the only teams to make it over with NO penalties. We finished the race with a time around 20 min (11 min race 8min in penalties). The first place winner had a time just under 4 min.

We left feeling pretty good because it ran and we had the coolest looking buggy.

We went to O'Chalies for dinner that night and then hung out at the pool for the rest of the night. The next day (same alarm clock problems -.- ) we went to the Space museum and road the rides that where there, and then we went to lunch at Sonic.

At Sonic I met the girl of my dreams. I was wearing my yellow FLCL t-shirt. I had finished my burger and decided I wanted a frozen something. The waitress that brings it out to me hands me back my change and says "I like your t-shirt." I was literally speechless. My eyes went wide and she rolled out of my life. I didn't know what to do, here I am in Alabama on my way back to SIU and I meet the chick of my dreams. When I had bought this t-shirt I had told my little bro that I would marry the girl that said "I like your t-shirt." I wanted to stay at this point but the driver and the rest of the van wouldn't let me. She is now and forever will be known as Sonic girl to me.

I'm f%&king stupid for not at least asking her name...

We moved on down the road and we stop at a rest stop to do our business. On our way back out to the van we run into the "Red Bull Crew" handing out cans of (guess). As one of the guys is handing me a can he starts to read the katakana on the t-shirt aloud. He was freaking awesome for knowing katakana. We hung out for a few minutes and then it was time to get back on the road. We got back without anything else of interest happening to us.


WHY DIDN'T I ASK FOR HER NAME!?!?!! WHY!?!??!?!

My roommate

My Roommate has the WORST timing ever.

Five seconds earlier he would have seen me in my pants. Five seconds later and I would have been in the shower.

Give that a second to soak in.

Instead he manages to pick the time that I'm bent over getting my shampoo off the bottom shelf with my behind facing our door. He doesn't just open the door he SWINGS it open wide yells "WWWWOOOOO!1!!1" and jumps back as if he'll get sucked in. I was surprised but had seen something like this happening since 4 people share one bathroom. SO I straightened up and say "wooo!" and he stops gaping long enough to shut the door.

I started laughing because I felt sorry for him.
Even I don't look at my hairy ass.


I'm never going to let this go so comment ass jokes of all kinds.

SIUC Experience Wk1

One week down a Semester to go. Somehow I think this will be easier than MSOE simply because they aren't teaching me anything new.

Off of classes, my internet is capped at 60k up and down. I'm really missing an open connection to the net. I am required to login every time I restart. A friend helped me get Azureus running, but I have a feeling its really only connecting to people through decentralized tracking. This is resulting in connecting to a max of 3 people (seeds) and 2 people (leechers). Anyway, if you hadn't noticed I don't like dog collars.

On happier notes:
I have friends who do everything that I like to do.
They are in separate groups unfortunately.

D&D Group:
I started a new D&D character Friday night. Haruhara Harukois a human female fighter (yes the name is from the chick in FLCL :-P ).

Magic Group:
I went on a solo adventure the first Sunday I was here and found a magic tourny going on in the Student Center. Apparently they do this every Sunday at noon. I also found out there is a casual play on Wednesday in a building near my dorm.

Computer Engineering Group:
These guys and gals are about one semester ahead of me, so I should catch up eventually since all my math, science, and basic engineering credits transferred. This group also contains the friends that I hang with on a daily basis (comprising mostly of girls, screw you MSOE and your shitty ratio *cough*).


I'm torn between which MMO I should start again. I know more Everquest 2 players through my friends at MSOE, but know nobody here who plays. It also has a stable economy. Final Fantasy XI has the fun group based game play that I felt was lacking in EQ2, and I know someone on one of the servers (not including Odin). But, inflation is running rampet and SE isn't doing anything about it.
I'll decide something and report it here.

Laterz,

Tuba Dude has Left the Cold!!!

Hello everybody,

190 visitors ago I had a life. ;_;

Then the first triad of my junior year started...

Long story short, I'm now changing schools and changing majors. I'll be attending Southern Illinois University Carbondale and be majoring in Computer Engineering.

I'm looking forward to taking the easy courses of freshman once again while also enjoying a much easier course load.

I hope to visit Milwaukee throughout the year because I left behind a lot of really good friends. Its going to be hard to find another bunch of geeks who enjoy playing games AND enjoy going out doing stuff.

I'll probably not post again until I find some internet connection that costs less than $0.50 per half hour and doesn't send web reports to my father.

So, See ya all later,
Tuba Dude

500 HITS WooHooo

Woohoo 500 hits!!! To celibrate I made this:

Thanks to al those random people for randomly finding the site and to my friends who visit frequently!!!! :-D

:-/

I went home for a quick visit this last weekend. Most of the the visit was spent trying to find ways of avoiding my fathers lectures about the different ways his foot can be manovered in my ass to get me to study more. Most of which where threats to take me out of the apartment. Here's the damage:

Fewer A's than B's means stay in MSOE but back to the dorms. (AB counts as an A)
A C in any of my major classes result in going home.
I must retake Strengths of Materials ASAP (screwing my schedule over till winter of my Sinior year.)
Can not have more than one C.
Must have proffe of being social in some way outside the apartment. (through pictures and whatnot)

I'm sure I'm missing a few, I have them written down somewhere but am currently to tired and lazy to find it.

Also, while I was visiting...
I got to see a Cardinals game. It was an extreemly quick game against the defeated Huston Astros. I was very pleased. :)
On Tuesday, I helped my Mom run her Vacation Bible School (VBS) crafting classes. It was horrible. I had no idea what a rucuss 40 children could make.
I got to go to the movies with my Mom and little brother. I went to go see the "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" with my Mom. I really liked it, just wish I was young enough not to have read and seen the first movie. I liked this ones ending alot more too. I saw "War of the Worlds" with my little brother. It was alright. I was happy that they didn't make Tom Cruise out to be some giant "I killed 50 aliens by my self, zOMG I rock!!!" type of character though.

I have finished reading the new Harry Potter book. It's to bad I'm old enough to figure out who was going to die at the end and who the Half-Blooded Prince was by page 100 or so. A deent read if you have a few hours to kill on a train.

Laterz.

Better!

I got my second grade back about a week ago. It is a B. This means I can continue going to MSOE.

Alao, thanks to a heavy support by my Mom, I can stay in the apartment. I only have one thing to say to this...

WAAAHHHWHOOOOOOOO!!!!!!1!1!1!!!

*cough*

In other news, I have started hanging out in a new forum called Campdoc. It was started by a group of friends from thedarktower.net forums. It's main pupose is to provide an online support group regarding sex and drugs. Since I do neither, I'll just hang about as an electronic shoulder to cry on and zanny comic relief. These people post almost as fast as 4channers do in /b, but I can keep up pretty well. You will find me most often in the IRC room they established.

It seems that I am very close to having some 500 visits. Guess I'll need to make or do something to celebrate the occasion. (I did this without tricking google as a certain friend of mine did o.o )

Which reminds me, I need to post a link to his and others blogs... someday...