AiriZel: Thoughts

So after an amazing fourth of July spent with David, Kartik, Keila, Noah, and Sunny, I’ve been pretty crazed the past week trying to get all the work done for both of my jobs.

Two jobs at once is a hard sell if you try to factor in being social. Which makes one wonder if being social is all that beneficial. It definitely wasn’t in my plans for the summer to be hanging out with these (albeit awesome) people this summer (mostly because I didn’t realize most of them were even going to be here heh). That said, I tried to spend this past weekend figuring out what I wanted to do going forward in terms of prioritizing my actions (that way I can play less basketball and just work out more), but of course the world cup threw a wrench into my plans haha.

So I suppose I’ll just document a few things that I’ve done the past few days in terms of purchases and what not.

About 12 hours ago (give or take) I purchased the 1 Pair of USB Powered Woot-Off Lights 1 Crappy Anniversary Promotion (see below) . So let’s all hope that the Dow Jones ends in a 1 today (that way I can be provided with an awesome bag of crap). That said, happy birthday to Woot and its staff. The website was recently bought and made an independent subsidiary of Amazon and honestly it’s one of the cooler ventures I look up to when I think about where I want to be in a few years.

But moreover, I’ve bought some cooler things as well. Such as the Woot random shift grab bag and a pair of Able Planet NC500SC Sound Clarity Noise Canceling Headphones.

Man those headphones were a great find. I can’t wait to get them and test them out (In fact, I’ve been checking out the post office every other day in hopes that it’ll finally come). I’m always on the lookout for headphones so it’s all good on that front. Once I get the shirt and the headphones I’ll be able to talk about that then.

Lastly, The United States Gov’t taxes 30% on WSOP winnings.

Does this post seem disjointed? It should, I’ve been writing it over a few days heh. Anyway, after the podcast tonight and the Dow Jones close, I’ll come back with another post (probably.)

-Sebastian

So this is a mighty tangent, but a few years ago when my Playstation 2 broke, I’ve been wanting to play Final Fantasy 10 and 12 through. Unfortunately, my desktop at the time, with its single core action and X800 Graphics card could not support such a feat at the speeds I wanted (I built it in 2006 for christ sake )

Enter my new desktop (as cited before). Whereas my Lenovo T400 failed at really rendering these things well, my new desktop has had no problems (in that it only uses about 40% of all 4 cores and isn’t overly taxing the graphics card either).

Yay! In related news, I have Final Fantasy 7 working as well and my PC also has stepmania at full speed.

Dream of 2007 here I come

I told myself that I’d keep a blog starting this past year with all my thoughts. And well, I’ve done it! And although this post was originally supposed to have been posted a week ago, Strep throat and New Years activities disagreed with that time table.

So here are some statistics. I have 88 posted blog posts with 15 additional blog posts saved on an external from South Kore (they’ll be posted eventually). This blog is now over a year old.

Things that have happened since I started this blog:

Obama became president, I graduated high school, I got into Yale College, I went to Korea, I started playing poker, the PureMTGO Freed from the Real podcast was started (and is still going strong), Haruhi season 2 started and ended (I’m currently on episode 12. Started yesterday haha), I moved my reachable address to Yale, Facebook had privacy issues, Twitter still has no business model (and may never), with Avatar, the 3D medium of watching movies has become more readily accepted, and I turned 18.

These are a variety of things that happened and honestly, there are more things that happened than that even. Anthony Platon got a girlfriend for example. I severed ties with some of my high school friends (tis the college process I suppose). Taylor Swift became really big. So much happened this past year and more the past decade.

So now, what’s on my mind going forward? Well, I’ve been watching hours of Haruhi on the plane back to Yale so my one resolution is to for as much as possible follow this:

“Feelings of love are just a temporary lapse in judgment. Like a kind of mental illness.”

That’s forefront in my mind right now. I feel like my search for happiness and love is getting in the way of progress. So enough of that. Back to the hard rigor of life.

Not sure if there’s anything else really. One change I’d like to announce is that my hosting has changed from Vlexo to VlexoFree. These guys have always been amazing to me and continue to be.

I’d really like to send a New Years thanks to my good friend Erik Friborg. Without him, the Freed from the Real podcast would not be in existence right now. I’m really glad that he agreed to do the podcast with me because as a result I not only saw the creation of a podcast, I also gained an invaluable friend in him.

Also shoutouts to AJ (the necessary British character), Mike Janssen (thanks for all the technical help and filling in time to time. Also congrats on your marriage man), and Joshua Claytor (who despite having yet been on the podcast, continues to give his full support).

I’ll have a thank you post soon (I think).

Happy New Year

-Sebastian

I don’t remember exactly since I saw it as I was speeding past the church to go eat dinner with Christine Seo, but it went something like this.

“Wealth should not be measured by the amount of things one has, but rather by the amount of things a person has that money can’t buy”

I thought that was pretty deep.

In other news, I’m getting into magic form, winning the majority of events I enter (getting QPs on the way from limited haha). Good stuff. Poker play is still very strong as is (fundamentals anyway).

-Sebastian

SPOILER ALERT: This is a post in reference to Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles. If you dislike spoilers and/or anime stuff, then don’t read this post.

-Sebastian

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For anyone who visited the website this weekend, the link farms are gone.

An issue with the DNS name servers had caused the website to direct to a nuseek link farm, but all problems have been resolved.

So what am I going to do now?

I’m playing my newly bought Left 4 Dead and studying (somewhat) for APs.

Also have to fix my desktop (meh).

-Sebastian

Ah. The first serious post on this blog in the last couple of weeks. They’ve been pretty busy and I feel I’ve been neglecting this blog a tad. But fear not, my little blackbook has been very apt in the “oh my god I have a thoguht I need to write it down so I don’t forget” department. So I do have thoughts written down on paper somewhere. I guess if I’m bored I can post some of them onto this blog.

Anyway, the podcast has been doing really well lately. The number of hits the podcast is getting is up and I feel that the content of the podcast is getting better and more streamlined. Originally my brainchild, I feel the best idea I had was to bring Erik into the fold. That guy is a beast! He keeps up with everything and makes podcasting so much easier with his awesome host abilities. Cannot thank him enough. He was and continues to be an essential part of the podcast development, as we bounce ideas off of each other and figure out what should go in and what should go out (case in point: this week’s podcast may have a section where I talk about the decks I’m playing. It won’t have a section of me talking about how I got into the University of Chicago).

So everyone should definitely go listen to Freed from the Real. It goes up either Monday or Tuesday night, depending on how Joshua is feeling (and how fast I finish editing).

As for prom, I figured I’d answer a few questions. Yes I am going to prom. Yes I do have a date. Yes this may be unexpected, but I expect to have a lot of fun. As for the details, I’m still looking for a group of people to go in a limo with and I’m still trying to figure out how I can make it a more special day for my date (and by default for myself).Prom is the pinnacle of a lot of people’s lives and I’m 100% sure it won’t be the pinnacle of mine. That said, I want to make sure that it works out for my date ^_^.

Lastly, I must talk about pokemon. Yes Pokemon. For some reason (IE Leo Simkin) a good number of my close friends have become serious pokemon TCG players.

Seriously. No joke.

Considering how much work and play I do with Magic the Gathering, I feel inclined to let them have their fun with the game. The game itself isn’t that bad, although I feel there are inherent problems with the mechanics. I’ve mentioned that I’d be very willing to teach them how to play magic (and in fact built two beginner type decks for two of them), but my collection compared to others is really small (I only opened 3 boxes so far and the rest of my cards are from drafts and trades). If anyone has any suggestions about turning these Pokemon players into magic players (because we all know which one is a better game), do tell! I’m definitely interested in hearing about it.

College decisions continue through next week. Once everything is done I’ll definitely have a comprehensive post about what the hell I did these past 6 months in my quest to get into a great college.

-Sebastian

So as of right now, I’m uploading Rune Drafting #5 onto youtube. That’s two rune drafting articles I’m finishing in the last 12 hours. That’s more than I did all of January. Now that everything has quieted down, with only the Science Bowl competition being the main event coming up, I have time to write articles and what not.

On the topic of articles, I have to say that the podcast got off to a rough start. After the very first edition died due to sound quality errors, the second one was lauded(I wish)  received very poorly by my standards. Then on top of that we were unable to record for 2 sucessive weeks. Luckily, we’ll be in good shape to record this weekend, so look forward to an edition of the Podcast (which name will be revealed later) on President’s day!

Anyway, I’m going to go grab some breakfast before I go to Simrat’s birthday (and get him a gift).  But I’d like to say I’m really enjoying Persona 4 so far. The voice acting however, is not as great as some of the animes, but hopefully it’ll get better

-Sebastian

As part of my blogging, I’ll be going over my weekend in review. The weekend will encompass 3 days from Friday to Sunday.

So the weekend is over, and I’m now onto my last week of break.

So just a few general musings from the weekend in list form!

• Gundam 00 didn’t release a new anime. This is the first weekend I haven’t seen a Gundam 00 episode in months ( I even watched them when I was swamped with apps and finals!)
• Naruto the manga got really really good really really fast. Naruto became more epic very quickly. I have this weird sense that it’s ending though.
• Bleach on the otherhand seems to be going the other direction. How is it that Ichigo can go from losing to the same guy to having a chance at beating him within the span of maybe an hour… Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, since the storyline is set so that the events in which he seeks his revenge and to protect his friends occur at the same time as when the rest of the Gotei 13 fight people in the other place.
• I finished all my apps on the 30th, but didn’t finish my FAFSA until yesterday. Apparently I have to wait to receive my EFC until I can finish the rest of my FAFSA (IE sending it to more schools).
• The CSS profiles are getting done!
• I met up with Ryan Meyerhoff, Minh Dan, and Betty. That said, I saw Elliot and Jeffrey Koury randomly more times the weekend than anyone else.
• Greg Trigub likes Zero Punctuation. That earns him a point in my book.
• Rune’s Ramblings: The Pauper Burn Standard went up (although never occupied the top slot).
• I got a wireless headset (Logitech USB wireless) from Best Buy for about 85 dollars. I had a gift card so that covered about 60 dollars of it.
• I ate at CPK, specifically pepperoni and BBQ chicken pizzas with a Shirley Temple (which cost me about 20 dollars), had sweetened (well it was supposed to be) Black Tea Boba from Boba City, and a Passion Fruit Iced Tea Lemonade (Grande size, which is like a regular drink elsewhere) from Starbucks along with some coffee cake, and a slice of Pumkin Pie at the Kourys with Cool Whip.
• I finally saw someone play Gears of War 2. That game looks really cool.
• Ironically, post is in every category with the exception of General-Random
• I went to Collector’s Paradise for FNM for the first time in months. I finished 7th due to the lack of  a 3rd mountain needed in order to cast Violent Ultimatum. Other than that 1-2 loss, I went 6-0 over the next 3 matches.
• I playtested against Affinity (Eric) on Saturday. I went 3-7. So I added Shattering Spree to my board.
• Elliot, Jeffrey, Justin, and I tried to play basketball at 7AM @ Northridge Park. That failed, we packed it up and went home by 8AM.
• I fell asleep Sunday watching the Lakers play the Trailblazers. Slept around 8PM waking up around 5:15AM.
• I dreamt about racing with my father, and mused over the state of my life.

And that’s the weekend in review!