Sunset Beach Trip - Day III

Well, today I walked down the beach to bird island, then to the jetty, than around the back of bird island, then back through that again to get back. My feet hurt. Today is less typing and more pictures.

Mail Box full of notebooks people write in, hidden in the dunes

Sunset over marsh again

Me at a Sea wall caused by a storm

Beach

Beach and Sky

Me

Sunset

Bird

Dock

Sunset Beach Trip - Day Two

Day two has come and gone, Now I get to sit here and recap it to my one reader. My day started at some ungodly early hour (7:30) when I was awoken by a loud sound, I rolled over and eventually it stopped and I continued to sleep. Later I found out it was a mixer making cake icing, what a thing to make while I am sleeping. Once I awoke we had a huge fathers day brunch, and I packed up and sun blocked up to head out to the beach. Clouds were in the sky but I didn't care. Well I was in the water for a bit and I noticed dark clouds and thunder, I returned to pack up my chair and umbrella, so when the storm strikes I will be able to get out of the ocean and run on home. I reenter the water and enjoy for a bit, I look back and see a sky full of lightning in the distance. I decide its time to go home. I have good pictures of the sky and area around the house, but that will have to wait I need to sleep. But here are a few pictures:

Sunset Beach Trip - Day One

5:00 AM: I am awoken and told to get ready, We leave in a 3 vehicle convoy 20 minutes later. I become fully conscious about 30 minutes later when we stop at a Bojangles outside of Charlotte.

9:30 AM: We Arrive at the Food Lion near Sunset and prepare to spend the remaining part of out day until the Beach House is unlocked at 3:30. After some calamity and discussion over the driving skills of woman I preside in the back seat of a Dodge Caravan for the 30 minute drive to Barefoot Landing.

10:10ish AM: We wander Barefoot landing, eventually get free tickets to the aquarium; spending some time in the AC there.

12:20 PM: We decide to take the slightly less direct way to NASCAR cafe for lunch, I had the Brickyard Burger. Once I settle my tab and tip the waitress we depart on another 30 minute ride back to were the rest of out convoy was parked, a stones throw from a Food Lion.

2:00ish PM: We browse the local used book store looking for gold buried in the shelfs of crappy romance novels. I found a few interesting Orson Scott Card books.

2:50 PM: Big Bird and Rubber Ducky hit the road and manage to slip across the Sunset Bridge right before the Hour, meaning we did not have to stop and wait for the bridge to open and close.

3:00 PM: Nine and a half hours after I woke up, we arrived at the beach house and began unpacking.


Now for pictures:

Capitan Obvious in Socks on the roof.



Major L. Oblivious in front of the sun.

A Sunset at Sunset Beach.

More later, for now a night of sleep and sleeping.

I hate needles

I have not posted in a long time, why? Cus I am lazy and have no inspiration. But today my English class was canceled so I wasted 2 hours getting a flu shot. Fun.

If I hate needled than why would I voluntarily get a shot? Cus the flu sux, and spelling only the first half of words rulz.

Well the 3 month drought here was broken up by 4 days of sporadic rain, now the outside temperature has dropped quite a bit. Now I love 60 degree weather, but the rest of this campus bitches non stop about how freezing it is out there. I don’t even call it cold until its under 40, and windy.

The only drawback of cold in my opinion, is the fact that it’s harder to start my truck and it shakes violently until the oil gets moving. But that just makes driving more interesting.

Well I have nothing more to rant about before my history class starts.

Bored

Well I am bored, My English class was canceled so I road by bike down to my dorm grabbed my laptop, and now I am sitting in a lounge outside my last class that starts in an hour. I had hopes that I could connect to this supposed WiFi that covers all the academic buildings around here, but I can only see one wireless transmitter out there and it is not responding to my attempts to connect. So much for all this WiFi. What really sucks is that in my dorm I am required to connect through a wired Ethernet connection and I am not allowed to have a wireless router. That leaves me stuck to my desk, but they make up for it saying that the whole central part of campus has WiFi, but so far I am seeing nothing. But I digress, from a topic that I have yet to establish.

My last class of the day is Global Connections, its basically 20^th century history, but the professor is very old, hard of hearing, and rambles a bit. I like the class and the subject, but I fear his expectations on tests are going to be too high. His next test is Wednesday, and today is an optional review day so I am showing up to learn as much as I can. The class is extremely interesting, its focus seems to be the connections between nations and events in recent history. If the professor had a more reasonable test format this could be my favorite class, but all his tests are 8 pages of open ended questions. He also says he will count spelling, which sucks for me, since I use spell check like a crutch.

Quick Cash

Well this is a quick college update, Will; one of my roommates made $30. We were supposed to right down goals and turn them into our RA. We had will turn in one saying "Bang the RA". He also put a real goal on there too. She read it and laughed so much. We are still laughing about it.
Than 2 of us decided to put on towel capes and walk around the building. Some people gave us funny looks, but no one asked. Though we might have scared the guy in the elevator.

Towel Man Away!!!

Moving Day!!

Well I suck at keeping up on my posting. So cry me a river.

Anywho, I moved in to college yesterday. I am living in one of the best buildings on campus at UNCC. We have a suite with two rooms attached to one living room and bathroom, all shared by four people. My classes start on Monday and I hope I do well in them. Post more tonight.

How To Waste a Indefinite length of time

How To Waste a Indefinite length of time

By: Evan Schatz

Early this morning my father informed me that I had a Dermatologist appointment at 2:30 that afternoon. Visiting the dermatologist dose not bother me, but the fact that we use the best one in the state and there is a minimum hour long wait to get in. A typical visit starts with me arriving 10 minutes early, and signing in on the registry. Than I wait anywhere from the unusual 45 minutes wait to get called to a room, to the normal 1 hour and 10 minute wait, or all the way to the sometimes 2 and a half hour wait. Now after all that time sitting in a completely silent room, where all you hear is the flipping of pages in woman’s magazines, you think you would get in a room and the doctor would see you. But instead you wait more, this second wait time vary in length and can easily be expressed in words, but since I am now in the doctors waiting room trying to kill time with my new laptop I will instead create some mathematical formulas to represent the time that you have to wait.

First I need to create some variables:

t₁ = The first wait time

t2 = The second wait time

A simple idea could be something along the lines of:

t1(1/2)=t2

or in basic terms the second wait time is half the first, but this is only true is basic terms, where as there is in fact a margin or error in calculating this statistic and given a sample of wait times I could calculate that. Maybe I will start to record wait times in order to find this out.

But to be more accurate I could include the time of day and number of people in the equation, possibly a coefficient derived from both added to the equation would work. And if I am going that far why not add in external factors such as time of year, day of the week and so on. Why, if I was not so lazy, and limited by battery life than I could accurately predict just how long I will have to be sitting here.

But I digress.

Even with all of that I am still sitting here in a silent room getting funny glances from people over there magazines because I am typing on my laptop in the middle of the doctor’s waiting room; I can imagine their thoughts now as they look at me. Something along the lines of this:

“look at the young man over there, so caught up in modern technology that he has to carry around on of those machines with him where ever he goes. I bet he couldn’t go for one day with out that infernal contraption on his lap.”

Well, for your information imaginary person; I just got this thing and I have lived for years of my life without it.

“look at that weird guy over their with that laptop, who dose he think he is with that thing anyway? Just because he is rich enough to be able to afford one of those things dose not mean he is better than me!”

I may be weird, but I am most assuredly not rich, in fact I had to get this thing for collage and my dad paid for it. And I am better than you even with out this thing anyway.

“Look at that hot guy over their with the fancy laptop, I wonder if I can get his phone number”

Sorry ladies I am already taken.

So as you can see, the waiting room is full of strange people, one of which is on a laptop and paranoidly imagining what other people are thinking about him.

[[Life lesson #1: avoid waiting rooms, the crazy people will get you if you don’t, and all doctors do is witchcraft any way.]]

What was that just now in the double brackets? That was my new blog feature I just made up, where I point out important life lessons in my writing.

So after all that typing I am still here… waiting.

Well I went off and waited for while, listening to music and what now. But I just overheard that they are a hour behind, but when they admit that it really means they are much more than an hour behind. Oh well, I still got 58% battery remaining and my power supply cord if I really wanted to keep running. I disabled my wireless antennas and turned my screen brightness all the way down; that should conserve my battery a little more. This is a good test of the power system and power saving setup. There is quite a difference between the predicted battery life when in ‘power saver’ vs. ‘performance’ mode. Almost and hours and a half extra time.

Wow, this is turning into a 2 page long rant in MS Word. Oh well, no one reads my stuff anyway so I guess no one minds a long post.

Well I think I changed the room’s impression of me, an elderly woman with a walker tried to leave, but she was having difficulty with the heavy door. When I looked and saw this the rest of the room just watched, probably wondering I the old woman would make it or not, while also thinking about dinner or something. So I pulled out my earbuds and set my $1800 laptop on the floor to hold the door open for that woman to get out. Now I remember why I hate people, they never help anyone but themselves.

[[Life Lesson #2: Old Ladies can be funny to watch, but helping them is a good thing. Helping someone out make you feel better about yourself.]]

Haha! I used the life lesson thing more than once! It might catch on with me.

Well, now they say there an hour and twenty minutes behind. I have been here for exactly and hour and twenty minutes so I hope I will get through soon. I helped another elderly person with a walker through the door, so now the room probably thinks I am Jesus or something. At 38% battery on maximum power saver I have exactly 1 hour remaining.

Well finally I was called in to see the doctor, 2 hours after my appointment. Although I only waited for five minutes for him to come see me, which is strangely short. I had my five minutes with the doctor, than I left. Making an appointment for another visit in six months, better bring my laptop again.

Sunset Beach

Well, I have been at Sunset Beach since Saturday, and I am leaving Friday morning. I love it up here. Every year we rent a beach house on the far end of the island where it is not very crowded and spend a week or two relaxing. My days here consist of waking up, applying sunscreen and eating, walking up the street to the beach assess and than onto the beach. Once on the beach I set up my chair and umbrella, and chill. Sometimes I dig a hole, sometimes I swim, I read my book in the shade, than toss discus in the water. Around lunch time I walk back down to the beach house, shower, then make some nachos for lunch. Some times in the afternoon I head back to the beach, other times I read or go into the small shops in Calabash.

My only link to the outside world is either my stolen wireless signal or my cell phone that only gets reception on the roof. Hopefully I will be not lazy and I will post some more about my vacation when I get back. After I leave here Friday, I got on a canoe trip on the New River, then onto Student Orientation at UNCC.

Love of my Life

I have never mentioned her in a post before, but I think she deserves some recognition. For over Five months now I have had the greatest Girlfriend in the world. We had been friends for quite a while beforehand, and afterward it just seemed so obvious that we where made for each other. As per my policy I don't give out and specific personal information about people, but suffice it to say she is beautiful (and pocket sized). I just felt like posting something about her and how luck I am to have her.

I have never mentioned her in a post before, but I think she deserves some recognition. For over Five months now I have had the greatest Girlfriend in the world. We had been friends for quite a while beforehand, and afterward it just seemed so obvious that we where made for each other. As per my policy I don't give out and specific personal information about people, but suffice it to say she is beautiful, and pocket sized. I just felt like posting something about her and how luck I am to have her.

Green Thumb

It’s been a while and I need to post an update post, but that’s boring. So I got one of them to do later. For now I have a random and unlikely topic to blab on.

I came home today to find piles of rosemary branches on my driveway, now to any one else this would mean my dad has killed the rosemary bush and thrown it all away. But to me, it means the bush just got a trim, there is no way he could have cut down our massively large rosemary bush in one day. Well I had been meaning to root some more rosemary for some people, so I decided to root a few of the branches my dad was throwing out.

The first thing I needed was something to put the branch in soaking in water so it will grow roots, I normally used glass jars, but I didn’t have any so after a few minutes of searching I found a large number of deer park water bottles. By cutting the tops off and inverting them back down into the bottle I created the perfect rosemary holder. I made four of theses and put two sprigs in each one and placed them on my windowsill than held them in place with some spring clips. Hopefully they will root in a few weeks and I can give them away.

Great ...

So with all this rain the ground is saturated and the water table is rising, unfortunately the water that flows underground hits one of the walls to the crawl space under my house, which in turn works into the crawlspace. In short the area under my house is flooding. And when this happens who's job is it to crawl down there in the water and set up the electric pump? Mine!

But hey, life's not all bad. I found out I have one reader! She even commented once! And thats why I love her. So if their are any more of you out there, comment.

8 Ohm Wonder

So along time ago I rescued my dads 21 or so year old stero system. What’s left is the original amplifier, the tuner, and phonograph. The tape deck is dead. I set up the system with a large FM radio antenna and some small 8 ohm speakers. I later added a tie in for my mp3 player. Well that set up was fine and good, but I always enjoyed the sound of some large speakers with subwoofers that shake the whole room. But for a while I was content. But recently I have felt the urge to hear my Boston and Doobie Brothers in their loud and right form. So I ventured to my local Goodwill (my major supplier of things I want cheep) and found a set of very nice 8 ohms. I spent a few minutes wiring them in to the secondary channel, and I was off. There is something about large speakers that allows them to sound loud and deep without sounding like they are trying hard. Right now I am leaning back, with Boston playing loudly and crisply; annoying my parents and watching the end of Star Trek.

Life is good.

So Yea...

If you haven’t noticed, (and I know no one reads this so I know no one noticed) I haven’t posted at all recently. Why? Because I am a lazy slacker and don’t do much of anything online that requires typing. I aim to change this, so I might post a bit some. Hey what do you know? I might even say something interesting. If you non-existent readers have anything you want to read about email me or leave a comment and I will write about it. Email to: wesjansonni (at) hotmail.com

(in your face spambots! Try and email to that without the @)

Another Day

Today my family went to visit my Grandmother in Florence S.C. it's about two hours from Charlotte. So me, my mom, dad, and dog pile into my Accord (best car for long trips) and drive down. My grandmother has no computers in her house, nor has she ever used one; so I brought my craptop (crap + laptop = craptop). Its actually a great machine, but built for Windows 90/NT, but I have XP running on it. Too much OS for the poor thing (for all you computer illiterate people I have provided the following example: It's like you grandmothers little 4 cylinder Geo trying to pull a train up a hill). The only possible way to reach the Internet would be through her phone line, but I hate dial up, and I don't want to whip out my PCMCIA modem to connect, so I will be posting this when I get home. The machine has a tiny hard drive so to play music I burned play lists onto data CD's, fitting about 700 MB on a CD. Than I just play the CDs in windows medial player, either though the laptops poor speakers or through headphones. I would type this on MS word, but when I discovered Abi Portable and how effective of a program it was I downloaded the full Abi word and put it on this machine. It is smaller than MS word, and takes less power to run, which is good for an underpowered laptop. I am curious as to if people actually read this, so if you are reading this, please post a comments or send an email, its fine if all it says is 'hi'. I just want to know if people read what I wright.

Caving in a Hanging Rock

Well I'm out of school, Christmas is almost here, and its time I typed up something to post. Well I have been meaning to type about my trip to Hanging Rock; so I will.

Hanging Rock State Park's main attraction is a very large rock feature hanging off the side of a mountain. Below are a few pictures I found online of Hanging Rock. It is quite larger and more impressive than the pictures lead you to believe. (click for larger)


Now after hiking all the way to the base, I was awed by standing under a few thousand tons of rock hanging a few hundred feet above me. Than I hiked all the way to the top. After catching my breath I walked all over the rock structure, which stretched a few hundred feet back onto the mountain. I ate lunch and wandered more over the overhanging part. I found a small opening where a large flat rock had fallen over a few others, I poked my head in to investigate and discovered a cave. Once I wormed my way in I found enough room to comfortably sit in, with an opening looking out the other face of the rock structure, Their was also a narrow area leading up to another opening; I crawled up their (banging my knees and elbows quite a few times, I need to lose some weight). I found the other opening looked right out onto another small mountain, making for the perfect picture; which I posted below. One of the pics has a member of my group in their to show size perspective, I think he is around 5'4" or something; you short people all look alike to me. (Click to enlarge)

We also followed a ridge line to wolf's rock where I took this pic of me posing.


Than me being Atlas and holding a giant rock on my shoulders.



All and all, a fun trip. I recommend Hanging Rock as a good state park to stop off at. Thus concludes my few minutes of typing, until next time; Capitan Obvious away!

Portable Post

I again find myself writing this article in my drama class with the freshman; it seems this is my time of day for writing these posts. I am also writing this on AbiWord Portable, a new program on my flash drive. It is basically a open source Microsoft Word ripoff. I like it though because it is simple, it dose all the useful things that Word does, without all the flashy things you don't need. Some genius (John T. Hallard) created a portable application out of this program. Their are a few issues with the way some fonts look; their are odd looking spaces after some letters but it has live spell check which makes up for quite a bit considering my spelling skills. I have installed seven portable applications on my 128 megabyte drive. These programs are; Abi Word, Audacity, Firefox, Gaim, Sunbird, Torpark, and VLC portable. I wish I had room for two more programs, one is GIMP (kind of like if photoshop and paint had a child, than it took steroids and trained under Chuck Norris for years). The other program is a full office suite; like Microsoft office but free and easier to use. Below is a screen shot of Abi portable, look like any program we know?



My next class is English, but for the last week all we have been doing is spending class time reading Othello and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I have finished most of them, but I can't read in class, I don't know why. Sigh, another 90 minutes of pretending to read.

Six Blade Knife

Any of you people out their heard the Dire Straits song Six Blade Knife? (song is under my music section) Because that song title relates to an adventure I had on Wednesday. To tell this story I must start from the begging, so I will.

It was Tuesday evening and I checked the mail on my dads desk, one of the items was a package from Gillette, it was a free Fusion; their newest bigger and better razor. The package was shiny and impressive looking, tempting me to use it and buy stuff. But would the razor live up to the outrageous price of blades? Will this marketing ploy of giving away a razor so people buy expensive blades for it capture me? I decided I would try this razor and see if the five blades really did shave better than my standard two bladed Sensor (also mad by Gillette). I didn’t have the time to shave that night, but vowed I would uncover why this razor cost so much on Wednesday. Come Wednesday when it came time to put the razor to its test I opened the package to find a shiny chrome, blue and orange contraption with a large heavy head on one end holding six blades. Five on one side for shaving, and one on the other for detail work. This detail blade may seem impractical at first, but I quickly found out that the head of this razor was so large that it was impossible to maneuver, and was quite difficult to use. I also feared for my life while using this thing, having five super sharp blades moving over ones face can be quite nerve racking. After finishing my face I attempted to use the detail blade to trim up my sideburns, but no matter what angle I held it at I could not get it to cut anything. When all was said and done I hate a few sore spots where the razor took off a little too much, and a very close shave on the rest of my face.

The Fusion lived up to its ability to shave closely, but at what cost? How many souls a year will be lost to this massive collection of sharp objects? I prefer not to risk life and limb for the perfect shave, my two bladed Sensor dose me just fine for now. Their for I have sealed the six bladed beast away in my bathroom drawer of no return and walked away.

The Fusion:

First Post - Dearly Departed

I sit here now typing this in my Drama class, it is a class with all freshman and me; the only senior. I was supposed to be put in a higher level class so I could do tech work but the school schedules screwed up. But its fine, I have quite a bit of fun screwing with the freshman. Right now the class is reading the play Dearly Departed. I am supposed to have a part too, but my part is not until farther into the script, so I am sitting here typing right behind a couch full of freshman reading a show. It’s amazing how none of them have noticed. Next I have English with Mr. Hazard, it’s a fun class but Hazard believes in complicated long answers to questions, not the short A B C we have been trained to do. I do like the higher level thinking but at the end of the day it just seems like too much work. Than I can jump in my car and drive home. That’s my one consolation this year, I get to drive to and from school.
I just read my part of the show, and now I’m back to here typing. I wonder how offend I will actually remember to log in and type up something for this. I also and trying to settle on a design for this page, if your reading this please post a comment on how it turned out.