HOLY BALLS! Now that I have your attention, I just want to express my disappointment in the LHC being shut down until spring 2009. REALLY? All because of stupid magnets. It annoys me because I have been looking forward to the LHC opening since I first found out what it was (circa 2003-ish?) and when I found out about the whole cancelled SSC (no, not serpentshrine cavern, the Superconducting Super Collider) deal. And now we have to wait another 6 months. Hey! Maybe they’ll power it up on me and Ryan’s birthday!

Michael J. Gelb is freaking weird. ALL of my friends in Scholars classes are reading this DaVinci book, and it is really, really stupid. It asks you to close the book and look at the mona lisa, than when you’re ready, open it again and write your thoughts. Basically, it’s a huge waste of time and mostly answerable by bullshit. Re. Tard. Ed.

I am now in the stage of an all-nighter when I feel tired. If I stay awake through this stage, I will be able to make it through no problem, though yeah, it’ll be difficult. I just have to keep myself amused. For now, though, I’m done blogging. Toodles.

Also, I’m addicted to charmed. I’m watching it now, then I’m going to sleep. Today is my 5 month monthiversary with Caitlin, so yeah. Caitlin, if you’re reading this, I love you and happy monthiversary.

I’m in college now. Yes, that’s right, Louis actually made it to college. I currently go to Binghamton University. If you go here too, contact me and maybe we’ll hang out. Probably not though? See, I’m not holding anything back, just saying exactly what I’m thinking. I just paused for a second, sorry. So right, I’m on the chemical free floor of Mountainview’s Hunter Hall. It’s great here, fantastic view (mountainview… get it?), but the walk up is a bitch. I usually don’t want to walk up and down the hill more than three times per day, so during weekdays I usually go down and stay down unless I have more than an hour between the classes, in which case I will come back up. It’s not too bad just going to the lecture hall since I can cut through Hinman, another community, and the lecture hall is right there, but other buildings can be a bit of a trek. Especially going to the gym. That’s a bitch, because there’s an additional hill down there, and by the time you’re at the gym, you’re pretty much dead. Especially if you’re an unfit nerd like me.

Right now I’m taking Calc I, Intro to Music, Intro to US Politics, and some stupid writing class I don’t really get. I don’t know what it’s supposed to be. Right now we’re writing an essay on our beliefs and starting on how to write cover letters. It’s a well rounded schedule, to try to get done with as many general requirements as soon as possible so later on I can immerse myself in math and comp sci land. Yeah, right now I’d like to be a Math major with a Computer Science minor. It’s not set in stone. Another possibility is a Math major and then go for education and become a high school math teacher. It’s been what I’ve been saying I want to do for a long time, but I’m not so sure I can spend my life doing that sort of thing. I’d rather work for a company like Opera or something. Yeah, that’s right, Opera. One thing that’s always fascinated me was web browser development, and I’d love to be a part of it. Hey, I know me working for Opera is far fetched, but I can dream, right?

I’ve made a bunch of friends at my dorm. First, there are my suitemates: Ryan, Austin (my roommate), Colin, Tejas, and Dean. The way Mountainview works is we have a common room, two bathrooms, and three bedrooms in a suite. There are two people per bedroom, and both bathrooms have showers. Since half of us take showers at night and half in the morning and most of us start classes at different times, there are no shower issues. It’s great. And our common room is huge. Besides my suitemates, there’s our RA, Chris, and many others, like Hillary, Kat, Devon, Lee, Morgan, Mark, John, Sean, and Saad. Then there are people outside our hall, like Andrew, who is a fellow nerd yet has never pirated anything (really), and Scott, who comes from Miami Beach. Really. It’s great being here, meeting so many different people. In fact, I haven’t actually seen the people who came here from high school all that often. It’s strange, you’d think we’d be tighter, but we’re not.

So, that was my brief reintroduction. I might update semi-daily with random things that happen. Or I might not. One thing that will never change is this retarded pointless closing paragraph. Nighty night. It’s 3 and I have a class at 9:40. fun.

Speaking of World of Warcraft, I started playing again. Yeah, I couldn’t help it. I am, however, still active in real life and have given out 25-man raiding. Only 10-mans for me. It seems like a good compromise to keep it from taking over my life again. I am in a non-raiding guild on Arthas called “Fabulous”. The players in the guild are generally good players and often get picked up for other guild’s raids, so I guess we’re kind of like mercenaries.

So every time I get a new email, I jump. I have the gmail notifier and it beeps whenever a new email comes in, and I keep hoping I get a beta invite. Don’t worry, those who actually read this blog, I will remain (sort of) active like I am now. If I get a beta invite, I will share all the information on it that I am allowed to. If not, well, I’ll be reading other sites for said information. Anyway, that’s all for now. Toodles.

Edit: I haven’t gotten into the beta yet. Hopefully I will still get an invite, but if not, oh well. If anybody has an extra one that they’re not planning on using (or selling on ebay - that’d be the wrong thing to do!), I’d happily take it :). My email address is on my contact page, but if you are too lazy, it’s Louis [at] benignthoughts [dot] com. Fat chance though.

I’m not going to write a blog post on a single service, of course No. There is something much more important than a silly question-answering service. George Carlin died sunday. I was talking to my friend Antonio late sunday night, and towards the end of our conversation, as he was going to go to bed, he was like, “oh shit, george carlin died.” So, all night tonight (it’s still monday for me even though it’s actually tuesday), I’ve been watching George Carlin videos on Google Video. There are quite a few videos, so check them out. I actually haven’t seen his standup in a couple of years, and even then, I was too young to really understand it. So yeah.

Speaking of sunday, I had my graduation party that same day. It was pretty good, I had a few friends over and my family. Crap, you know what I just realized? I say “Speaking of” as a segway a lot. Speaking of language, speaking of badly designed sites, speaking of this, speaking of that. I do it a lot. I guess it’s a good way to link two separate topics that have nothing to do with one another. Yeah, so George Carlin died. By the way, I had my graduation party. Mhmm, yeah. Anyway, I had my graduation party on sunday. I graduate from highschool this thursday, so my party was a “Party in Anticipation of Graduation.” It’s my dad’s words, I didn’t come up with them myself. Sorry.

So that’s it. This closing paragraph also has no real value whatsoever. I don’t even know why you’re reading it. I guess you’re just expecting me to say something of value here, like give you the meaning of life. Or perhaps you’re not reading this at all and you’ve caught on to this years ago and never told me about it. In which case, you’re a douchebag and you should’ve told me that my last paragraph of almost every one of my blog posts makes no sense and has no value whatsoever. Gee, thanks a lot.

Speaking of reddit. I took Digg off my speed dial. Yep, it’s about damn time. All of you should know by now that I am an avid Opera user, and therefore have the nifty speed dial feature. Right now my speed dial sites are: Facebook, What.cd, Last.fm, Benign Thoughts, Netvibes, Reddit, Netflix, Google Reader, and Benign Thoughts Mail (branded gmail. Google manages my Benign Thoughts email. It’s nice). Usually I typed Benign Thoughts in my address bar, but since I now exclusively visit Reddit (it gets all news like four days before digg anyway), I replaced Digg with BT. Maybe it’ll force me to post more often, I dunno.

So my site was not XHTML 1.1 for a little bit. Yeah, it was invalid. Some pages around are still invalid, simply because they’re old. I just kind of realized this, but I’ve had this site since November 2002. It’s moved domains and blog software for quite a while (earlier posts had no titles, and that drives my title image plugin insane). I was actually *just* looking on my Quotes page (which is still around, believe it or not) and reading old AIM and IRC and Yahoo! convos I once had. It’s amazing that i still keep in contact with Bobby and some other people after all these years. Pretty insane.

But yeah, about XHTML 1.1. Turns out my WoW script that turns links that link to WoWhead stuff different colors isn’t compatible by default. I had to modify the plugin a bit to fix it. Oh well, no big deal. Still, though, something broke the mime type, not sure what. Opera’s detecting it fine, but the W3 validator isn’t. Go figure. Also, quick site change. I never actually agnowledged the ads. They’re a futile attempt to make some money back from the site. I also changed the search bar to a google sitesearch. It’s nice because it shows me what people are interested in from BT and makes me money too. Plus it’s nicer than Wordpress’s search. Site integration sucks though, maybe I’ll fix it, but it doesn’t really bother me so yeah.

Speaking of Opera, Opera 9.5 has been out for a week. Go get it. It blows Firefox 3 out of the water and isn’t even a major release. Opera 10, here we come (:

So uh, I’m done. It’s 04:30, and therefore time for me to sleep. Goodnight all. Well, good morning.

I quit World of Warcraft. Yep, I did it last month, actually, shortly after I got some T6. See, I have a girlfriend now and I’m about to go to college, and they stopped taking me raiding so I really don’t have the time anymore to sit there for hours and wait for a raid spot. That’s all I’d do for hours every night, wait from 6 until around 7:30 for a raid invite, then get disappointed when I don’t get one. It happened for two straight weeks, so I just quit.

Yeah I have a girlfriend. It’s Caitlin and I’m going to prom with her. If you’ve read my really old stuff from 2004 you’d know her. She’s awesome, and this feels right. However, I’m going upstate to Binghamton to college and won’t be seeing her for a bit. Still, I have Skype and my webcam and the phone and long weekends and breaks, so I’ll see her pretty often. Just not often enough >_< .

K, done for now. Toodles.

I got my first piece of Tier 6 in WoW the other day It was Gloves of the Tempest. They’re replacing my Spellfire Gloves, finally breaking my spellfire set. Now, because I’m breaking the spellfire set, it’s a downgrade, but properly enchanted and gemmed, it’s just as good. I had to break the set eventually, so yeah. I’m pleased.

I may post another update later after the raid or when the raid is cancelled. For now, though, goodbye :).

I’m addicted to twitter now, but I have no followers. I just kind of post updates to absolutely nobody. I suppose I’m not that interesting, but still. It’d be nice to have some people to respond to me. Check it out, it’s pretty neat.

I want a new calculator. Yeah, right now I’m using a TI-89 Titanium, and it’s great and all, but randomly it decides it doesn’t want to shut off and drains my batteries. It’s kind of a big problem because I take it out for a chem test, and lo and behold, it’s dead. Anyway, I’m hoping to get a HP 50G. It’s amazing from what I’ve read, though it takes a long time to figure out. Steep learning curve, you see. I’ll get it eventually though, and it’ll be fantastic.

Goodnight all. I’ll be back tomorrow maybe. I don’t know yet. I have a lot to say but I can’t share all of it. We’ll see.

One interesting point to note is that I now use a mac. I still use linux on my desktop, but it is only a file server for downloading torrents and running overnight. I have a miniature gigabit network between my mac and my desktop so I can transfer the files very quickly, and my little setup works rather nicely. The mac, of course, is a Macbook Pro 15 inch with the 2.6 ghz processor, 4 gigs of ram, pre-2008 refresh. I got it last year shortly after leopard was released. It’s nice, but I have no multitouch trackpad :(. Oh well, it’ll do. The pros of having a macbook pro? Well, right now I’m sitting on my bed, macbook on my lap (bad idea, I know, but it won’t overheat) typing this up in TextMate, my new favorite editor for editing anything. It’s fantastic, go get it.

So, why haven’t I been here, you may ask. Well, the answer is simple. You see, I’ve been playing a timesucking game called World of Warcraft. Right now, it rules my life. Well, something else rules my life but I can’t talk about that yet at the moment, but WoW rules my life when the other thing doesn’t. Basically, I’ve been playing WoW, going to work, or having a life all this time, without blogging about it. I know, I should just put a halfhour and blog every night before going to bed, but it never happens and probably won’t happen until I get back into the swing of things.

I currently play my mage, Tasai, on the Arthas US realm, in WoW of course. Tasai is a level 70 blood elf mage in <spire>, a BT/MH raiding guild. Tonight we got a decent amount of attempts in on Illidan. We made it to phase 3 of the fight, and hope to get him down tomorrow.

I figured out what school I’m going to next year. I’ll be going to Binghamton for Math. Yeah, math. People say I’m insane, but I plan on becoming a math teacher, and well, gonna need to go to school for math for that. Some friends of mine are going (or maybe going) too, so I won’t be alone, and the dorms freakin’ rock there.

Well, that’s all. Some last minute things: Yes, I have ads on the site now. I’m hoping to make some side money from this site. My dad didn’t allow me to sign up for adsense, but now I’m 18 so I’m able to just do it myself. They’re not too intrusive, but if they start to be bothersome, I can limit them more or set some settings to make them appear less. Goodnight.

Today was free hug day. Well, yesterday, the tenth, was. I got a decent amount of hugs and it made me happy. I was, however, disappointed to see that I was the only person in my school with a sign, and so many people thought I was actually kidding. Who kids about free hugs? I mean, seriously. People are like, “Oh, my friend here wants a free hug.” And I reply, “Does he really want a hug or are you trying to embarass him like a douche?” Usually those people do not want hugs. See, forcing hugs on people isn’t in the spirit of free hug day. I did average about 4-5 hugs between each class, with some scattered in class and a bunch before and after school.

And now it’s time for me to write about things I’ll write about next time while I still remember:

• Class switching in my school
• College Search
• My classes this year
• World of Warcraft
• My addiction to Facebook

and whatever I feel like writing tomorrow.

Until then, goodnight.