Yesterday was my mom and dad’s 24th wedding anniversary so a big shout out to them first!
HAPPY ANNIVERSARY MOM AND DAD!
And while we’re at it (discussing weddings/anniversaries and the like) take a moment to visit my friends Rachel and Jai’s wedding page! They get married in June and they have the cutest story! Take a read…
As for my life, not much different. I’m still fighting off a hoarse voice so Strange Haven is set to broadcast for Spring Semester a week late. We’ll be launching Wednesday February 11th. Jeremy says they’re looking into podcasting it on FRS’ site so that’s cool. I also get my own Dee-jay page, will include a link to that at a later date. I did go through the extra effort to hire myself a co-host. I know he’ll do well but he’s the other reason there’s a hold on the show. I have to go through a dry run and the current formatting for it. Just to let you all know Strange Haven’s new time slot is going to be Wednesdays at 6PM.
Though I’ve had a rough start to the semester it’s starting to even itself out finally. Besides my new MAC Desktop comes in today so it’s going to be a great couple of days with my new computer Bernie (Get it…Bernie Mac? Ha ha). Goodbye Microsoft! Guess you should have never made Vista or I’d still be with HAL. I’m sure going to miss him.
So yeah made it through the first two days of classes and OMG I have more out of clas work than originally anticipated. I mean it’s not like I wasn’t expecting out of class work but there’s a lot more. First though let me tell you about my classes.
Radio News opened the semester and it was about what I expected. We’ll be doing class work for the first half of the semester but then we’ll head into production aspects the second half. So yeah I kind of figured on that format. Rhetoric & Criticism is going to be probably the easiest course this semester. No lab work just a few papers and homework assignments, pretty easy. However where the fun really comes in is the video courses. Yeah… First I had Performance. This is a class meant to teach us to be on-screen TV/film actors so that when we become producers/directors (if we do that is) we know how to respond to actors and how to work with them. It sounds quite fun but it is a bit time consuming.
The pain in the ass class however is the Studio Production course. Let me explain this class. First there is 21 people, but only 3 of them are girls! He broke us up into 4 groups and we work with this same group all semester. Lucky me as odds would have it I’m the only girl with 5 guys and our first assignment is Soap Operas so yeah… fill in the blanks. We also have a series of various productions including a product demonstration, 3 interviews and an original adaption. It’s going to be fun times and a lot of work. I know I’ll be alright but now I find out that our Chromatic colour on set is blue, therefore I am not allowed to wear blue on shooting days. Problem… all I’ve ever bought and worn for 14 years straight is blue jeans, with the occasional dress pants for certain events. Now I have to go out and buy clothes I don’t even like! Yeah me!
I hope the semester evens out better. Well I’m off to find a dramatic play to adapt to a screenplay for next Thursday. Our first assignment for Performance is a closeup dramatic dialogue from a play adaption. Check back later.
Today is my 26th birthday, but it was also book shopping day for classes which are starting Monday morning. First I went driving for like the first time in two years and the best part was I almost killed a college student! Yay me! but seriously I was making a turn on the campus onto Science Drive near McEwen Hall and I wasn’t used to the turning radius on the Trailblazer and didn’t turn back quick enough, ending up on the sidewalk and nearly took this poor guy out. God I felt horrible! After that lovely endeavour I parked in front of University Commons and went to have my College ID card replaced as one of the corners warped last semester. I had a great new photo taken (which was needed since my hair is much different now) and proceeded to fill out the forms for my meal plan and debit account for my books.
Afterwards I went to the book store and purchased all my books. First though here’s my classes for the semester so you all have an idea of the workload, good thing they’re all fun, at least I think so…
Rhetoric and Criticism - MWF 1-1:50PM 3 credits
Radio News - MWF 11AM-11:50AM (class) 3-3:50PM (Lab) 4 credits
Performance (Dealing With Actors) - TR 9-10:50AM 3 credits
Studio Production - TR 2-3:50PM 3 credits
Desktop Publishing - R 6-8:30PM (2/5-3/5) 1 credit
Desktop Audio - T 6-8:30PM (3/24-4/21) 1 credit
Now the one credit courses didn’t have books but the others did, and luckily as with most Communication texts they weren’t too bad in price, only one was pretty bad. The titles for each class are (they’re in order with the classes above)…
Communicating Terror- The Rhetorical Dimensions of Terrorism - $33.75
Basic Radio Journalism - $38.95
Directing Actors- Creating Memorable Performances for Film and Television - $26.95
Video Basics 5 - $92.00
So yeah the last book was the clincher (and that was used!) however I don’t feel too bad after looking at the cost of Chemistry, Math and Psych books… OUCH! Yeah, no complaining here. I also bought a new sweatshirt, and a cute little cat statue as well as a few pens and notebooks. My big purchase however was my birthday gift to myself… a 32GB Apple iPod Touch. Okay so $400.00 is not a little gift but my 80GB Video was 3 years old, the center wheel was quite loose and the battery only stayed charged for about a 1/3 of the time it once did. It was just plain wearing out. Now that I have this little gadget I don’t know how I lived life W/O it! OMG it’s amazing and endless with its capibilities! Score another BIG ONE for Macintosh!
So yeah I suck and said I’d be back the next day to write about my more pleasureable experiences last semester but alas I lost track, as I typically do. I will try harder though I promise. I may not be on all the time with an update but I’ll try really, really hard to be around more often than normal. Well now back to the interesting stuff.
First off as some of you know by now I landed my own talk radio program on campus. My show is only one of few that is hosted on both WCVF and WDVL, which are our stations. One is a local FM channel and the other is an internet channel, so yeah… I can be heard around the world. My show is on Paranormal Research and is called “Strange Haven” currently it is slotted on Monday’s at 10PM but I’m getting ready to move it to Thursdays at 9PM, hopefully depending on if I can get a free slot on both networks. I have episodes which I will share with you all soon.
In other fun news we had an awesome hate speaker on campus back in October which was loads of fun. He hated on everyone from Minorities to foreigners to Jews to Muslims but his top target was gays. Once on that he went for hours. Unfortunately since we are a public college covered by state tax dollars the school can’t tell him he can’t com on campus and share his “viewpoints”. Being a press person with the station I got to get down in the muck of things and despite his horrible comments do interviews and try to learn how to be objective and not let personal feelings get in the way, which you can’t in the Media Industry this didn’t go well this time but I got better as the day wore on, next time I’ll be better oh well that’s why it’s a learning environment right?
Firstly I had to change jobs to accomodate school since Kwik Fill couldn’t work around my schedule with the way that they have their hours set up. So now I’m back working at Taco Bell which was where I worked during my senior year of high school. Yeah it’s fast food but they pay me pretty well to stand in a drive-thru and it’s quite laid back and I get 35 hours a week. I’m planning on looking for another waitressing job in Erie or Buffalo once I buy my new car in February, so perhaps after spring break I’ll start looking for something more.
School went well this past semester but I kind of hoped it would have been easier as far as time available went. There were a lot of crazy moments that were so hectic I wanted to scream. I went days W/O even checking the boards at BB and sometimes even more between chats with my friends on skype. To be honest I can’t really remember this past semester in a blow by blow situation as it just flew by at supernova like speed. Every day was so harrowing and hence the reason I wasn’t around much of anywhere during the fall.
To start out I had 17 credit hours as stated in a previous post. I later cut that down one class as a class I was taking was just not quite what I was looking for. The class was Religious History, which is my hobby and an integral part of my minor and if you’ve ever talked with me I’m pretty good on the subject of Judea-Christian studies. However the professour, who was a wonderful man was very much a philosopher and thus took that stance on the subject which is just NOT my approach. I’m a logical person who’s interested in facts and theories and approach the subject in a very scientific way. I had a hard time grasping his concepts on the subject and his classes tended to drone on and on. Based on the class description I thought the class would be just that, a study of the formation and concept of Judaism through modern day Christianity and Islam, nope, this was not the case. I later talked with my friend Tanya who had been in the class with me and from what I understand he didn’t even get into Judaism until 3 weeks before semester’s end. I dropped the class just after the midterm as I knew I wasn’t doing well and I didn’t want my GPA ruined by it.
Now that I was no longer in that class I focused mostly on my others. I had a final project in the formatting of a radio station for my Audio II class and we did an awesome two week microphone lab where we learned how to mic various instruments, I finished out with an A in that class. I also got an A in my Intro to Violin course and learned how to play several beginning songs including the Minuet which was fun. My last A was in Flash which is another story I’ll share at a later time as I’m not quite thrilled with this outcome.
My other 3 classes were Bs starting with my level 400 Telecommunications Management course which was by far the hardest class I had all semester. I learned a lot though about managing various forms of media from TV to film to radio to cable companies and telephone/internet providers. The final was quite harrowing however and like the Flash class I’ll share the whole story at a later date. I also received a B in Writing for Electronic Media where I learned the basic forms of scriptwriting for all forms of media including TV, film, radio, news and commercials as well as storyboard creation and interpretation of media, and another in Greek World where we discussed the entire ancient civilization of the Greeks through the invasion of Rome during the Hellenistic period.
I know that this post is getting quite long so I’ll stop there and continue on tomorrow when I talk about the fun things I did in college this past semester as well as key highlights that weren’t class or college related. So check back tomorrow for the next part.
Well it’s been a long time… a really…really…really long time. I want to thank all of you who have been faithful to this blog long after I had written last. I know many have checked back and I apologize to you for my tardiness around here. The last six months have been quite hectic and depressing to say the least. I had a lot of ups and downs that came on throughout and the last thing I was concerned with sadly was my blog. However things have worked themselves out and now I’m back to blogging. Yay me!
Well I should probably tell you all in short what’s been “up” in my life. First off though you’ll all notice that the Indiana Jones theme is now buh-bye, and a long time coming that was. I mean I planned to take it down after the movie hype had subsided but instead it lasted well beyond the DVD’s release… yikes! However you all now notice my new unique styled theme from smashingmagazine. I had been hunting for the last few weeks for a cute new, individualistic theme and was getting annoyed with the choices I was finding. I found this one after a long time searching and at first wasn’t going to use it because it was a two-column system only and I tend to prefer three-columns. But I couldn’t get my mind around it and figured that the column was long enough to accommodate what I needed it too. I’m so happy I decided to use it.
I added a few new widgets as well. No doubt the first one you noticed was the music player as it started playing suddenly when you came on. I’ve loaded 18 tracks into it all with similar sounds but set it for shuffle so you won’t hear the same tracks in the same order everytime you visit. I also noticed the lack of info about the tracks as the player played them so I wrote up a Playlist Info page with all the track information and included a link to it just above the player, for anyone who’s interested that is. You’ll find both items located further down the page.
The other new widget is one that features my graphics and hand drawn artwork, this is very much a WIP (Work In Progress).The current images are old drawings I have done and I won’t lie thanks to my increasingly busy life I haven’t had time to do anything recent as far as hand done work in concerned. I have loads of Computer Graphics made for various reasons that I will include shortly so do keep an eye on the widget for those additions.
Well this post is already too long so instead of continuing on I’ll save my life recap for tomorrow’s post till then thanks for standing by!
So I’ve been spending the last week or so working on Bonanza Brand. We have had loads of new members and things to work out there. The majority of it has been cushioning the multilingual forums at the Brand, I’ve also been working on a new feature for the Brand and the rest of the time spent online was trying to get the database error worked out at the Brand. It’s a good thing I love the Brand or I’d be extremely pissed off by now.
Keep an eye on the Brand over the weekend as our new feature steps up to the plate.
As for my Thursday VOTW check this one out it’s too too funny!
Here’s a little side parable. Do you ever get the feeling God is trying to tell you something but you’re not listening? If you answered no you’re lying, JK. Actually this has been the case since I started work at Kwik Fill. Never in my life have I worked in such a drama induced environment! Okay maybe there was one other time… recently… Anyways. I’ve had rumour issues, missing money, trucks hitting my store and all kinds of other crap! The latest was when I hit my head on the hand dryer in the mens bathroom. Damn that hurt! I think God is telling me in a subtle way that I need to quit. Well that’s no big issue as I started reviewing my schedule for classes this week and I can’t work the set hours that this job requires. Yay for college! Now my new objective is to find another job before classes start, something with more flexible time frames.
Incidentally I know we missed the video of the week segment last week, sorry about that but I had another matter that kept me off line, but that’s a story I’ll share tomorrow. I have decided that Thursdays will be video days. I also hope to start work on another feature that deals with my Captain Jack Sparrow doll starting next week so stay tuned for that.
Evidently nothing interesting is going on in my life during the summer. I can’t wait until I have a real career and then have more blogging material.
Basically it’s the same stuff… work (and I work by myself all night with no one to talk to so no conversations to write about), shopping and getting ready for college. The only good thing coming out of this summer is the knowledge of knowing it’s my last minimum wage summer. As of next year I’ll have my third year of college completed and enough classes and knowledge to intern at a Radio or TV station.
But that’s next year, these last few weeks have been basically catching up on buying stuff I needed and paying bills, handling the board IPS driver error and working on some new graphics. Shopping has been quite a pain with rising gas prices and such but I still make a trip almost every week up to the Indian Reservation to buy a carton of cigarettes (a carton lasts my about 2 weeks but I buy other stuff up there other weeks). I’ve switched my main brand to a natural, additive free tobacco produced by the Senecas which is most likely better for me (I know smoking in itself is bad but when I say better I mean no additional crap that’s really bad for you). I always wanted a cigarette that was just paper, tobacco, some menthol and a filter. That other stuff is completely unnecessary. Do I miss Camels? Yeah a little but the Skydancers I’m now smoking are a better and much cheaper alternative ($15.00 a carton). Besides I still buy a pack of Camels here and there.
Okay so now that I’ve bored you all to death with my day-in-day-out BS here’s something to keep you more entertained. My “Video of the Week” Segment. In honour of the loss of the great comic genius George Carlin I give you this clip “George Carlin’s The Milwaukee Seven”. This of course was the skit (started as a radio piece) that made him a household name as it went all the way to the FCC and the Supreme Court which ruled that they in fact could not be said as these words were indecent. To this day most of them still can’t be said on TV.
Okay so since I’m a bit behind on my “Video of the Week” segment we’re going to do an extra one this coming week to even it out.
This video is a…well… interesting flashback (no disrespect intended to actual active or post active members of the Navy of any country). This ones for you Libby!
I will try harder though I promise. I may not be on all the time with an update but I’ll try really, really hard to be around more often than normal. Well now back to the interesting stuff.
