Napkin Poem

I had this idea the other day when I was sitting in the TMC with nothing to do because I got to the Star Wars concert too late. And without a computer or any sort of distraction, I grabbed a few napkins and my pen and started drawing. I drew a river and a bunch of sweet evergreens. Then I figured I'd change it from being just a scene to have some meaning and added a canoe floating down the river with no one in it.
So I had a drawing that took up about 1/3 of the napkin, now what? Write a poem about the drawing of course. So I did, and it wasn't the greatest thing in the world, but I liked it. It wasn't just a poem, it was a poem and a picture. It somehow, through visuals, had more meaning now.
So I drew another scene, this time a lone bike leaning on a tree on a hill. Vary basic stuff because I still don't believe in my drawing talent to attempt people just yet. But then I wrote a long paragraph about what I love about spring.
So I have two creative works on napkins and I didn't want to just throw them away, so I thought I'd just leave them in the TMC. Well, in the end I didn't because they were about to clean up and they would've been thrown away, sadly. But I came up with the idea to leave unnamed drawing/poems around the TMC or other cafes. I got some inspiration from Tahsa and Julie's trip to target where they left random poems. Gertrude Stein was the poet. (thanks tasha) And with some more inspiration from post secret, I thought of an idea.
A website that hosts images of napkin poems. You write a poem or a story or draw something on an napkin and you leave it in a cafe. You write down the website address and when/if someone finds it, they go and upload what they found. I think that would be really interesting. It would work on a viral level that it is spread by someone and they would get it and tell some people.
I also see it not working as a very obvious possibility. But that isn't the real point. I don't need a website or a central figure, I just want to draw and write on napkins and spread some sort of something to a random person.

Built to spill is great

So, Senior year in Canelake's photography class Dylan gave me a cd with a bunch of bands on it. One of those bands was built to spill. I never truly listened to them until I think at earliest this summer. But when I did, I was amazed. It was basically my perfect college rock band. Think of hockey night, but not only one guitar being amazing. Built to spill had three guitarists. And they have had some of my most underrated lyrics in new music. I set my status on facebook to "Martin is random at best" Which is a quote from the song strange that I love ("This strange plan is random at best.") And then I listened to the third song of the same album and heard another of my favorite quotes: "observing the process will change it, and afterwards even if you, subconsciously rearrange it, it doesn't seem any less true." Which I think is amazing.
Another of the great songs is actually the song that shares the band's name. You really have to hear the song, but here is a couple lines:
"you feel like you are on the verge of something real
on a role and built to spill
this is how you'll always feel it's no big deal"
Seriously though, listen to the song, hell, listen to the whole album, it is one of my perfect albums.

Then I jumped to the album keep it like a secret and was yet again pleasently surprised by the first verse off the whole album. The way he sings it makes it somewhat harder to understand but today I use songbird which fetches lyrics and puts them up next to the song, it awesome. Here's the lyrics:
"The plan keeps coming up again
And the plan means nothing stays the same
But the plan won't accomplish anything
If it's not implemented."

This basically describes how I make goals, plans and live day to day. I make changes a lot, and I do mean a lot. But I never go through with them, I make goals and never fufill them. So again, thanks built to spill, you're amazing.

About as useful as a batter(y)ing ram

So, my computer's battery is broken. Like, messed up broken. I used to get at least two hours out of it and now it died during a one hour class. What the hell happened? I blame Ubuntu. The battery monitor said once that my battery might be broken, but I probably ignored it at the time. So I wanted to test the battery. After Ubuntu shut itself down at the 5% battery level. I booted into windows and was surprised it lasted even ten minutes. Then I looked at the battery level and it was higher than it was in ubuntu. "Hmmm," I said to myself, "what the hell?" So I just ran windows for a bit. After another ten minutes, I wanted to kill the battery, so I opened up itunes, windows media player, and as many programs as I have installed and ready to go. This took it down to 15 pretty fast. But then something strange, it didn't die. It stayed at 1% for 5 minutes, then 0% for 3, then back to 1% for a while. Basically, it got another half an hour of more battery life on what Ubuntu said was 5%. Crazy right? Well yeah, I was crazy mad at this thing.
So I did a full recharge with the computer off and booted ubuntu. Bam! Battery shows at 53%. Wait, what? It's not seeing that it is fully charged. Ubuntu must be reading the battery wrong or the battery's level monitor is wrong. So I drain it again, this time in ubuntu. I turn off the automatic shutdown and was again amazed at how much longer it lasted than before. At 7:35, it showed the battery at 1.5%. At 7:44 it was the same 1.5%. I opened up three videos and ran WoW and a bunch of things. At 7:55 it died. Freaking A man, it's like I have the battery with a bunch of ectra lives hidden or it's a zombie battery.
So I decide to charge it in ubuntu. Start it up and charge it up to 100%. At 10:14 it was at 100% and I unpluged it, with it telling me I'd get a full 2 hours 5 minutes off the charge. It is now 10:30 and it says I have 1 hour 50 minutes left. So basically it is accurate at the moment. I'll post more updates as it gets closer to actually dying.

Back on my game

Okay, so after a week of being strange, sad, and just plain lazy, I am done with that. I can't say I'll be normal in the sense of the word that anything about me is normal, but I will be better. And I know better can describe a million things and that it is very vauge and nondescriptive, but isn't that the point?
Anyways, I will be taking more responsibility from now on and enjoying things. I take a lot for granted and I want to stop that part of me.
So watch out world, but you probably won't even notice anyways.

Housing, a monster

So it's been a fun past few days, and by fun I mean kinda painfully awkward. The housing deadline for renewing and starting leases is coming up soon. I think I've mentioned how I have wanted to move to a different house and don't want to live with Ryan anymore, while I wish it was that easy. Over break I was talking to my two friends Colin and Meghan and we decided we'd all like to live together. Colin knew someone who wasn't living in their house next year and it's a three bedroom and so it worked out that we have a place to live. So, we're all set basically.
But the awkward part comes from other people, Ryan, Meghan's current housemate Nicole, and Colin's girlfriend Remy. I hadn't told Ryan for sure I wasn't living with him next year, but had been slowly hinting at it more and more, like saying that we were going to look at a house. I thought that was pretty obvious as a hint. After the three of us looked at the house we wanted to talk about it and so we went to my house. Ryan pops into the kitchen and has this look in his eye. He points to the manila envelope that has the leases in it and goes "What's this?" Well, he then went into a short outburst of he doesn't know what's going on and he doesn't know why I'm leaving, what he did and what's up. He asks us to all four live in my current house and says he won't mess with the water or the heat. But it can't work like that. And so it gets really freaking awkward in my kitchen.
The same (not exact) situation has happened for Meghan and Colin too. So it's like us three are fine and everyone else is going completely crazy around us. I understand why they are, but I really just wish they weren't. So housing is basically done, but I think it will be a bit different between Ryan and I until at least he finds someone to live with next year.

Pwn'd

Soooo, actually I'm awesome and just finished the sudoku.
Here is the start of it:

+ 6 + 7 + + + + +
+ + 4 2 8 + + + +
+ + + + 3 6 + 4 7
+ 1 3 + + 9 5 + 8
+ + 6 + + + 3 + +
5 + 9 8 + + 1 6 +
6 5 + 3 2 + + + +
+ + + + 9 8 4 + +
+ + + + + 7 + 3 +

And go!

The sudoku made me do it...

The University Register is our school's weekly newspaper. I has a comic and puzzle page and on it is a weekly sudoku. This week's sudoku has a difficulty level of masochistic. I don't know where that falls in the easy/medium/hard rating system. But I can atest to it's difficulty. I have spent waaay too long on it. Like, at least two hours on it tonight. Had to start over twice and each time worked myself into a impossible solution. It's horrible. I've been relearning all my old techniques in how to solve this blasted puzzle. But yeah, it's hard.
I was going to post it, so you all could give it a shot, but I've had too many things ruined by people using online solvers. Sooo, maybe after I finish it.