The meaning of this title is unnecessary

What is the point of procrastination? I have had most all of this weekend completely free of distractions and things to do, yet I still decide to not do most of my school work till today. The day of rest. Why do people procrastinate? Are they just used to being forced to do stuff and as such force themselves to work by having the deadline come close? I could have done all my work yesterday and have Saturday to do absolutely nothing, yet I decided the opposite. Is the act of procrastinating something that I do to alleviate the pressure of boredom? I want to say that's too far-fetched to be plausible, but it's starting to make sense as I keep thinking about it. Oh well. Just four more abysmal days and then I have a month of not knowing what to do. Don't get me wrong, I love the break and the holidays, but school adds a sort of structure to my days that makes it easier to believe that the days on the calendar are moving forward. When I wake up into a day with absolutely nothing that I have to do, I feel almost lost. I don't plan out my days, but I like to have an idea of what I'll be doing (On a side note, I also turn into a lost puppy when people aren't somewhere exactly on time/are difficult to get into contact with).
It could just be OCD, but life is more fun than that

ANOTHER BLOG POST

I WAS CHECKING GRADESPEED AND NOTICED THAT THERE IS A BLOG POST GRADE SCHEDULED FOR THE 2ND OF DECEMBER. I AM TYPING THIS ON THE 10TH OF DECEMBER. As finals approach, I'm learning more and more about seniors. They seem to do nothing but joke and laugh at doing work. They just spent nearly ten minutes trying to change the screen from being "high contrast" to displaying the regular colors. Ten. Minutes. That's a total exaggeration, but last class they were doing the same thing. What project are they even working on? It seems all the work they do to their tic-tac-toe game is add in SUB-PAR-QUALITY code and then removing it after realizing that it completely breaks what they had somehow managed to piece together already. I don't even want to know what problem they're trying to confront right now, but apparently making a matrix wouldn't help them any more than a regular array. "they were going over electricity...mr.davis?" This Pseudo-English they speak makes no sense, it's as if they're intentionally conversing in a dialect so foreign that they reinforce the stereotypes their ethnicity carries.
I'm just shack-a-lackin', I can't think of anything to talk about this time. Thinking about it, this has been a fairly eventful weekend, but it'd wouldn't be fun to reflect about. oh well.

Making Progress

In my dark, passionate fit of emotion and angst, I went to reddit.com/r/aww and found the most adorable picture:
 A large Bassett hound taking a bath with a rubber ducky on it's back. It was souper cute. He was standing in the bathtub, facing West, staring into the majestic beam of sunlight that made it obvious that this picture was intended to invoke a spiritual meaning into the reader. The first time this angel's silent lips caressed my eyes... I was awe struck. It was truly magnificent. By the time my agape jaw finally shut, the clock had traversed twenty minutes into the future. Utterly astonishing. Oh yeah and the proxy I was using for my online course decided to stop working, so I'm fairly screwed until I can find another proxy/alternate method to watch the youtube videos. What. A. Shame. Well I'm extremely tired and not in a very good mood, so this blog post ends now.

blog post? more like, final blog post

Well, this has been a fun year ^_^
     I had a pretty fun time learning all about Java, but I must say it was more fun learning XNA and C#, because you could see what you were creating in a graphical manner instead of just having a number be printed out in a box. I really want to get to the part where I say what I really liked and what I didn't like, but I suppose I should make this first paragraph a tad longer. LOL screw that, time to go onto my analysis and what not.
What I didn't like about this course:
     First off, I thought it was interesting, but some subjects were rushed and parts of Java that we were expected to understand weren't explained (example: the reason to add "static" or "void" didn't become apparent until later in the course). This is more of a suggestion, but could we do more projects that involve a graphical part to it? (Sperpinksy's triangle, Space Invaders...)  Those were really fun because we got to watch our code affect the final outcome instead of just get errors until the right number came out. The work sheets were extremely easy except for when it came to the free response, in which it felt completely foreign to write out the code instead of type it. I'm sure this isn't a problem for everyone, but it was tough getting used to for quite a while. I'm not too sure what else I can say about what I didn't like about this course right now, so I'm going to go onto what I did like about it
What I did like about this course:
     I liked the stacking effect. When we learned one topic, it almost always had something to do with or was able to be used with the previous topics that we learned fairly fluently. I enjoyed not having a strict class schedule, instead all we did was go at our own pace as long as we got the work done.

The Cheating Android

Oh boy, time to gripe about what I'm going to be doing today even though I already told you! I need something to talk about. I guess I'll talk about the wrestling duel tonight. We will totally win and I am not saying the outcome of this duel from the point of view of the future. I swear. I'm a tad worried that I'm gonna lose (I didn't).
New subject, because I don't want to talk about wrestling right now. The viscosity of water. What if water were more viscous? How would it affect the world around us if it suddenly changed? What if it had always been more viscous? If all the water in the world suddenly became more viscous, I doubt our bodies would be able to function long enough for us to notice a difference and marvel in the scientific anomaly. But, what if life evolved around sludge-like water? I feel it would be extremely similar, but life would be more centered around the necessity for water because it would be more difficult to transport and work with.

the beauty of simplicity

The beauty of simplicity. Such a simple concept, yet at the same time one of the most difficult things to achieve. People can strive to make the most simple, beautiful things, yet usually achieve just making something that is extremely complex and ugly. Why is that? What makes it difficult to think simple?
To address these questions we must first try and define simple. "Simple" is defined as: free from elaboration or figuration. When people usually try to make some work of simple art (I'm using myself as an indirect example), they often will try and annex more and more to their art to complete the intended goal. But when you add more, that work of art becomes more elaborate, thus going against the definition of Simple. Is the secret to create something simple, that only accomplishes simple things, and hope that it functions beautifully? I would assume that that is how it is done, but I don't know. I wish there was a handbook on how to create simplicity, because if that were a thing I wouldn't ever have to worry about making something impressive ever again. That's just a dream though, and I need to drink more water.

When presenting a WIP is just a WIP

So, considering I'm going to be using this period to type two blog posts, I decided I will first add in my two cents about our presentations. How do they benefit the presenter? How do they benefit the audience? How do they benefit the teacher? How do they benefit society? How do they not benefit(harm) the presenter/audience/teacher/society? Today we'll find out.
First off, the first question. From my point of view, when you present a WIP you have to first put the entire project into scale, instead of just the aspect that you were most recently working on. You have to conceptualize what you've been slaving away at and decide the best way to present it to an audience so that it looks like a proper project to present to a board of investors. This is good because it helps the presenter get feedback on his/her work and know how to improve on what he's just started. Yet, at the same time, this can also be bad for the presenter because they can get extremely embarrassed about presenting. Some people just don't have the courage to show their project until it's in a more formal state. Totally understandable. But instead of following the train of thought that I just lost, I think I'll just say, "It's a grade so you might as well present what you have and if you really have to, you can just ignore the suggestions you get from the audience".
How does someone presenting benefit the audience? The Audience benefits from these presentations by giving them different insight into different styles of thinking and methods of building a project and assessing each aspect. They CAN learn a lot from how someone else has learned and grown their infant into another infant with more features, like an arm that actually functions. But of course, the audience isn't guaranteed to learn if they don't want  to learn; that is, if they see the presentations as a waste of VALUABLE work time, then most likely, they aren't going to absorb much from what the presenter is saying.
Alas, that's just my two cents (And I didn't even address 4 questions)

Project, found?

As the title (Project, found?) suggests, I have found a project to work on for now. My idea is that I will create an interactive soundboard/synthesizer that uses SoundCipher for all the samples and some of its helpful features. If I had a MIDI controller, I'd have access to a lot more of the utilities of SoundCipher, but since I don't I'm just going to work with what I can. I already have the basic window set up, and three rectangles, consisting of two different sizes and three different colors. And of course I have more than that, a bit. I have IF statements to detect whether or not I am clicking on the boxes, and depending on which box I click, different things are altered (ex: pitch up or down, or just play a note). I also recently (recently as in 15 minutes ago) learned how to change what sample instrument the note is playing, so now I can add in more boxes to allow the user to change what sample is being used at what time. I still am not too sure as to how the samples are stored Mr.Stephens, but I'm working my hardest to deduce the debacle. Other than that, I have not accomplished too much in regards to the project itself, but I'm learning a lot about the variables of SoundCipher and how to use it's methods and utilities to my advantage. Besides my new-found project, there isn't too much else to report about. Pfeiffer, signing out

Apathy and me

For some reason, I'm feeling extremely apathetic today (10/15). I have no clue why. I had a great time this weekend at ACL, I expected to feel really excited and not in a bad mood this week. Apparently not though. Speaking of apathy, I think I'm going to drop my Tetris project. I'm approaching the design of the code completely wrong. one example: I have a method that will randomly select a block and then instantiate a new version of that block. Of course, when I call that method, it will only draw one block and then be done. If I try to use a boolean to trigger the method, then it will only draw a block as long as that trigger is true. After trying to use a double boolean setup, I found that no matter how I try it, if the trigger to make the method run is ever false, then it won't run. Oh well, maybe I'm just tired. I don't really want to complete this though. Time for another choice: whether I should scratch this Tetris and start anew; keep working with this Tetris and basically reform the whole program; or drop Tetris entirely and find something else to pursue with my time in this class. hmm.

What to do for my Project

I am currently encountering a dilemma. I have no clue what to do for this class! I just CAN'T think of anything to do with Processing. Don't get me wrong, she's nice and all, but I just can't see myself spending the rest of my life with her, I just can't. I could just code one single game that's extensive as an extendable ladder, but I don't know what I'd do! Z-man suggested that instead of focusing on one project, I should instead just spend my time learning different programming languages. BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE. I don't know what language to move onto if I were to take on Z-dolla's suggestion. You know, oh well. I'm planning on coding Tetris in Processing before I move on anyway, so I suppose I'll just do that. But how should I go about doing that? I dunno, what else is there to talk about, I want this blog post to be a tad bit longer. OH! I watched "End of Watch" last night; it was awesome. Oh, you don't know the story? Well here's a hasty synopsis: Two cops that work in Los Angeles start getting popular among the community and the rest of the police force but get mixed up with a cartel operating in their area.

project presentation week six

Well, two days ago I had my first six-weeks-project-presentation. It was... interesting. I was not prepared for a full blown presentation. Oh well. At the same time though, I feel that my presentation was as full-blown as it could have been. It gave me a scope at to how much progress I need to start making on my project. But anyways, I was pretty interested in the logic gates group. building a processor and memory up from literal scratch? That's awesome. I'm gonna talk about how absurd my English class is now. First off, today after our Iliad exam, we had an "Asian vs. White" Gangnam Style dance-off. Both groups didn't do so hot at accurately recreating the music video, either. Also, Ms. Longoria directly insults me. I asked the question, "Are we able to use our copy of the Iliad on the test?" because I felt like asking just to make sure. Her response: "no, of course not. thats a dumb question (or something along those lines)". But following that, she said, "Okay I'm sorry, that was rude of me. There's no such thing as stupid questions...just stupid students". I couldn't handle the bullshit I was taking. From a student, I honestly would care more if my desk was crooked slightly. But it was a teacher. Insulting me. Directly. It makes me flustered on the inside. I've been thinking about how to get her fired, but some friends convinced me that though that would be a great thing, we wouldn't have an easy teacher that doesn't even teach us and there's always a chance that the replacement teacher would be tougher and we'd actually have to work. I can't decide which would be a better long-term decision.

how to optimize blog posts

STEP ONE: Do your blog posts the day after they're due. STEP TWO: dont write blog posts about blog posts from now on, it's a lame subject that you do too often. Anyways, this weekend. This weekend was interesting. I had two and a half full days to get my physical, yet I came to school this day without one. I am ashamed. I could have easily gotten it, all I had to do was take 20 minutes out of my day and go down the the CVS Minute Clinic, yet I didn't. I even managed to progress in the Story line of Torchlight 2, but I didn't get my physical. OH, I also managed to do my entire Planet Earth Site Description (go to your park and write down stuff) without leaving my house. I feel accomplished.  Speaking of procrastinating, at lunch today I read and did my English homework on the Iliad 20 minutes before I turned it in. But my academic habits are besides the point. What IS the point is whether or not I should clean my computer case soon. Maybe I'll just go in with some good 'ol canned air, but I have a feeling my secret OCD is going to make me take the time to re-wire everything. Again.

First code review!!!1! ^_^

I completed my first code review today. It was fun. I made a new friend, Jorge. He is nice. I made a 100. I am proud. My mom will be proud. I miss my dog. School is boring. These chips taste bad. I learned more about Processing. It is interesting. Okay fine, I can't keep this up. Simple sentences are wayyyy too boring. I'm getting in to functions in the Processing book I'm reading. 
Anyways, how was your day?
...
Well, that sounds swell! What's that? You're asking how my day went? Weeeeeeelllllllllll, I first went to Spanish 3 and learned more spanish. Then I went to Advisory and started reading more of the Iliad on http://www.shmoop.com/. Afterwards I went to Planet Earth with Mr.Walker, where we watched a National Geographic movie about Hawaii. I then went to lunch and finished my reading in the Library. Walking into English, I quickly learned that we actually weren't having a reading quiz, and I had wasted my Advisory AND Lunch by reading. darn. Once I completed doing nearly nothing in that class, I got to make the journey to my favorite class of all time: Advanced Computer Programming! After learning more about Processing, I decided to type up my Blog post, which I'm doing right now!

The first blogpost and it's already late

So far, Processing is proving itself to be hallucinogenic. I can make anything from a simple ellipse in a grey world to some interactive program that is stimulating and actually not a waste of time- at least hopefully I'll reach that level of Processing prowess. I'm looking forward to this WONDERFUL year, and I have high hopes for this class and what I achieve with it. I labored all summer, dull and walking without direction, all because I wasn't able to attend a class with the magnificent, marvelous, magical, MYSTICAL Mr. Stephens.  

...[this is signifying my short intermission in which I got back to work with Processing and had Freed assist me/show me something that would have taken me a week and probably would have done wrong anyway]. I'm scared of this year to come. I am realizing that Processing won't be very difficult, but it will be a fair amount of work. Good. I want to work. I'm excited to work. I want to finally take a concept from my mind, spend time on it and expand it, and then create it with my own hands inside a program that expresses that concept efficiently. Oops, ten minutes left in class, I suppose I'll put the last of my efforts into learning a morsel more of Processing ^_^

AP? Gnarly!

Well, I took the AP exactly 3 hours ago (I actually dont know) so I'm gonna say my opinion on it. First off, I took too long on the multiple choice, so I was only able to complete 35/40 questions, but at least they weren't as tricky or difficult as Mr.Stephen's Quizzes. The free response was surprisingly easy, but I'm afraid that I was doing it all wrong and I just thought it was correct. I'm not too sure if I'm allowed to talk about this on my blog post or not, so I wont, but I'll discuss this on a later date ;)
HASTA LUEGO! <3

lazy sundays

For some odd reason, every sunday, no matter what I did the day before, I'm always really tired. Does my body just know when to rest, or am I just thinking that I'm more tired than usual? I dont know. Its odd, but I sort of like being stuck in my room all day ^_^
But it does get old, I hope this doesn't happen often over the summer. Which reminds me, what am I going to do this summer? I'm hoping I can work out a deal with the neighborhood so I can mow the Boat Club's lawn every other week or so, because I would make SERIOUS cheddar if I did that. But if I don't get to mow the lawn...oh well. I can find ways to make cash and have a good time over the summer, there's an infinite( not actually infinite) number of opportunities for me to make money this summer.

Torchlight? Gnarly!

I recently purchased the game Torchlight, (and my recently I mean two hours ago). So anyways, It's an amazing game. It fits the Diablo style perfectly, the classes are fairly unique, and the satisfaction you get when you're continually upgrading your gear is wonderful and not often found. my issues with the game? The controls. and interface. The controls arent that bad to get used to, but the interface is abysmal. but hey, its just the interface, that's not enough for me to hate the game. All in all, its a really fun game that I will find myself losing alot of time to, and the non-linear story along with being open world is perfect.

Sharing.

Late last night, my friend chats me on Facebook and tells me to get on Steam. I quickly log on, wondering what it was that was so urgent for him to show me. In about a minute I then received pop up message. What did that pop up entail? It was my friend gifting me a really cool game that was on sale at the time. I didn't even care that it was on sale, I was touched by my friend's constant simplicity and sharing that he gives. He's honestly one of my best friends, and I don't see how he is so nice all the time. Keep in mind though, that he has given me random gifts like this in the past too, so I felt greatly in debt to him after this event. And I told him that. But to my surprise, he says that I don't have to repay him!

But don't worry, I'll bring him some big surprise within the next month, it's just the right thing to do.

Only the third blogpost?!

Gah, I completely blanked on any thoughts that I could have written about for this blog post and the next. Oh wait, I do have two fairly fresh thoughts that I could write about!
So, first one goes like this. Last night, I was playing some League of Legends. I never played LoL often, and I still qualified myself as a total noob at the game. So I log in, join in on a match, and pick a cool looking champion from the list of randomly selected champions that are free for that week. His name was Graves. A ranged carry that was an all around bad ass with interesting abilities. The match starts, and I soon realize that I am soloing the middle lane; the most important lane in a match (keep in mind it's teams of five going up against eachother). I'm having a mediocre start because Graves is fairly weak very early on in game, but I soon pick up the lead in not only level but also gold and kills.
Now, my (very limited) prior experience to LoL has not been the best. I would always play weaker champions (without knowing it) and get my face grinded into the dirt by people that knew what they were doing. So when I'm playing Graves, I realize that he is a total ganker, as in he can sneak up on an enemy, completely massacre them, and run away without taking more than a minuscule amount of damage. It  was really fun. So fun, that I laughed multiple times at how powerful my champion was. It was a blast. Sadly, the rest of my team was pretty much relying on me to keep the team afloat, and there were really skilled players on the enemy team, so we lost without too much of a fight. But it was a fun experience in a game that I don't usually have fun playing ^_^

Gnarly Ollie!

About a month ago, sitting in the mall, I decided to buy some skateboard wheels and trucks. I already had a blank deck back at home, and I decided that today would be a good day to learn how to skateboard. So, I go home, build my deck, and just let it sit there, because it's a sunday and it's also fairly late; not enough time to go out riding. I wait the week, and bring it with me on saturday when hanging out with my friends. First thing I notice is that skateboarding and longboarding are COMPLETELY different. It was too new to me. I let my board sit there for about another month or so, only occasionally touching it, but mostly giving it the cold shoulder. Then my friend Joey (who has been skateboarding for a while) tells me to bring it with me to the party that upcoming weekend. Being that Joey is a really good friend, I quickly say yes and eagerly wait for the weekend.
The weekend arrives. Me and Joey go skateboarding in the local neighborhood. It's tough for me to get used to, but I get the hang of it. blah blah blah, over the course of the afternoon I learn how to skateboard and do some simple tricks.
Long story short, I learned how to Ollie that Saturday. Aren't I pro ^_^

missing blog posts? okay

Well, it appears as if I am missing four blog posts. Gosh Darn. Anyways, I guess I'll talk about my adventures in Azeroth, since nothing else is coming to my mind at the moment. I recently left my guild. They were becoming close friends, so why did I leave them? Here's the reason. I left that guild because after spring break, i renewed my subscription and logged on, and BOOM, I realized that none of the active members were logging on like they usually do. I was suspicious. So I decided to wait a week or so, just to see if they would log back on. To my dismay, none of them did log back on, and the raid schedule was never updated. I was sad. I was getting attached to this guild just like the last one. But being that it is only a game, I decided to join a new guild that was being formed out of other people from similar guilds that died over spring break. It seems like an interesting group of people, but they just don't have the same feel as my old guild. Oh well, I might just move to my friend's server soon anyway because the one I'm on is dying. These are difficult decisions considering I've been on this server for my entire stay in Azeroth.

Last six weeks blog posts

Well, I noticed something this week. The two blog posts that I did last six weeks on the last day? Turns out: Blogger decided to not show ANY of the text. Those were long posts, too! Thank you, Blogger. Though i shouldn't blame you for me failing last six weeks, I am going to with all the passion and hatred in my heart. Sincerely, your loving user Pfeiffer <3
But on another note, I cant think of anything else to talk about. Should i talk about sports? my plans for spring break? What i had for lunch? So many options, so little time...

VICTORY

WOOOOOT, GUESS WHO JUST MADE AN 80 ON THE MATRICES QUIZ?!
No, it wasn't Bat Man.....it was me! ^_^ I'm actually surprised that I made an 80, considering my grades on the other recent quizzes. But the only issue is: I'm currently making a 50 in Comp Sci. Why? Because I keep procrastinating on my blog posts, which for some odd reason is worth ALOT of our grade. I personally think that that is a silly thing to do, but hey, I'm not the teacher, it's not my job to decide. Well, I'm gonna go type up the other two blog posts I'm missing >.<
Hasta Luego!

wait, what? part deux

wait, what?

oh, a blogpost?

Well, im tired. But im glad wrestling is over. This season was fun, but I didnt really care about the competition. i was focusing on actually learning the sport. And im glad i did, which makes next year sound so much more promising. Anyways...
what are you doing this weekend?
well, im probably gonna just major chill Saturday, and go to the movies with the lady Sunday :3
eh, i dont want to write too much more, im tired.
goooood niiiiiiighhhtt blogger <3

season coming to an end

well, this six weeks is abysmal

The Internet is wasting me away

Every night that i get home, i take a shower. Once i get out of the shower and eat dinner, i have to make the crucial choice of either doing my homework, or getting on my homemade computer and burning my retina away. tough choices. sadly, I always think i can just blow off my homework because it really isnt that much. While that is sort of true, blowing it off has not yet proven successful or beneficial to my grade. yet.
I just need to practice self control, which right now im really bad at.