The Almost Official and Rather Pointless Goings On of Greg

• [7/16/05] A few new updates -- pretty standard stuff, all around. I've got 24 of my many new AOL words. I suggest you give 'em a look through since some of them are actually pretty comical. I envision a giant supercomputer looming in some cavernous basement room at AOL HQ, continually spewing forth ticker-tape with randomly generated words printed out on it in angry blocky computer text. And some poor intern sits there, typing the words into the AOL database, furiously trying to keep up with the supercomputer's demon-like speed. Why wouldn't they have the supercomputer directy enter the words into the database? Because that would be far too simple.
  
      What really amazes me are some of the words that are in that database. "ATAXIA"? "HATBOX"? "WAMPU"? "BENDAY"? I realize that they probably just have a digital compendium of words they randomly select from, but sometimes there seems to be some creepy demented logic in the word pairings, as though there was a little man inside the machine manipulating things every once in a while just to let us all know that he in fact does has a sense of humor. After all, getting something like "GREAT-DINNER" out of random chance is almost too good to be true. I wonder if anyone else pays any attention to AOL words besides myself and a few select others who seem to enjoy helping me out in the collection process.
  
      Then there are the links. There are some that are old news, and some that are awesome things that might have slipped past your notice. I especially recommend the "Baby Got Book" link. Thanks to B.A. Nathan for that one.
  
      As for the GPFI update, I looked at my list and noticed that there were a few problems. First, there were several movies that I had already seen, yet had never removed from the list. Also, there were a slew of movies that were quite frankly not all that appealing to me. I don't know if they ever were. At some point when I first did the GPFI showings, I think I just started scrambling for movies to fill up slots. Problems would arise when these "filler" movies got randomly selected and I didn't want to waste my time watching them. So I went through the list and pared it down from 160 movies to 120. In addition, I went through my "Movies Having Been Watched" list and changed the ranking system. Instead of putting a star rating next to each movie, now I've simply asterisked all the movies that I recall as being especially worthwhile or relevant or just fun to watch.
  
      I've kind of decided to leave news of my actual life out of this website and restricted to my LiveJournal. However, I've also decided not to post in my LiveJournal until I've finished this damn story of mine. Fortunately, not much has been going on. I've been working on my Lego Star Destroyer, which has come along quite nicely. I forgot how much fun Legos are. I'll blast a TMBG CD over the Bose stereo in my family room, sit down, and start constructing for an hour or two. It's a terrific escape. Before this, I wasn't sure about getting the Death Star set ($300), but now I'm damn well looking forward to it. I might even try building one of the models we have sitting in the basement to see if that's any fun, too.
  
      I'm going to try to get back into the nickname business. If you want one from me, contact me. I'll try to come up with something in a day and then get back to you with it. If you like what I've come up with, we'll keep it and I'll post it up; if you don't, I'll try again and come back to you with a new one the next day. Here's my nickname queue from long ago: Nick Mucci, Thomas Lee, Annie Theodoropoulos, Paul Showalter-Blades, Nancy Kazarinova, Angela Theodoropoulos. If you still want one, get in touch with me. Otherwise, I'll drop ya from the list.
  
  One last thing. Sign my guestbook! To be honest, I enjoy reading what people come up with. Only Cliff and Laura have had the guts to sign anything. To be quite honest, I'm disappointed in all the rest of you spineless bastards.
  
  G'night!
  
  
  
• [7/9/05] It's 3:38 A.M. Saturday morning, and I've just finished the largest update I've made to this for a while. Unfortunately, Facebook and LiveJournal have been taking up most of my time, and my website has suffered because of it. For some reason, it seems like people are more willing to go to a LiveJournal site than to a personal web page. Admittedly, the feedback option in LiveJournal is a nice feature. Even so, it's not like it'd be impossible to simply email me if you wanted to comment on something I put up here.
      I've come to be far less distasteful of the whole LiveJournal phenomenon in past months on the whole; it has its place. The one thing that still makes me a little uncomfortable, however, is the whole commenting process. I won't go exactly into why since it's very late and I don't think it's important enough to take the time to reason it all out, though it may make the issue clearer to you if I simply mention that it's similar to why I don't like the "eprops" system on xanga.
      Anyway, enough of that. I intended to keep this post focused on websiteage, and so I shall. I've updated most of the important sections, and I'd appreciate it greatly if you checked them all out. A few highlights:
  
  -- The GPFI is back and in action! I figure I might as well give it one last shot now that it's summer and college is just around the corner. I'm going to try and do at least 3 movies a week until I leave for Boston in early September.
  
  -- The new review that's up is of The Ring Two, and it's another AIM conversation. This time it's one I had with my cousin, and there are lots of spoilers. It doesn't matter so much, though, since it sounds like a really shitty movie. Funny stuff. I laughed.
  
  -- New guestbookery! That means all y'all should go ahead and sign once more. Unfortunately, I was running out of guestbook space, so I had to go ahead and delete a bunch of the earlier entries. C'est la vie.
  
  -- Also, in assorted other news: I have a damnload of AOL words and will be updating in groups of 20 or so until I post them all up. There are a bunch of new quotes that are all very funny. I'm working on cleaning up my links page. I have one new nickname, and I don't know if I'm going to get too many more anytime soon. We'll see how it goes.
  
      So basically, you should just go through all the stuff I've asterisked and enjoy yourself. If nothing else, I hope to somewhat alleviate the crushing boredom of summer some of you may be experiencing, if only for a few minutes. Godspeed!
  
  
  
• [3/13/05] Again, it's early Sunday morning. Funny how I tend to update most frequently at this hour.
      So New Trier Scholastic Bowl lost to Deerfield today at sectionals, which means that we're not going to state. A bummer, but ah well. Best of luck to the victors.
      Interestingly, although we didn't win, the closing of today's tournament marks a somewhat significant event for me. Technically, Scholastic Bowl's over. In reality, there's still the Nick Poulos Memorial Tournament, as well as some kind of national tournament at the end of the year. But the fact remains that I'm never going to be playing Illinois Scholastic Bowl again. Sad, ain't it?
      Not really. Illinois questions suck balls.
      And I'm not bitter at all.
      But I've recently been told that there really aren't all too many days left in senior year. Two weeks until spring break, then not too many more until AP Testing. Not much time left.
      And I've been putting some things off for way too long. I feel absolutely wretched about it.
      Unfortunately, I really do feel like a jackass. I need to do something about that.
  
  
  
• [2/13/05] Happy new year!
  ...
  So I'm a bit late. Sue me. Right now it's very early Sunday morning (read: 2:51 A.M.) and I've just updated the guestbook. I noticed that my most recent entry was a back to school post, and that just seemed wrong. So I'll give a general update of what's happening, at least in the realm of this site.
      First off, there's the new guestbook, like I just mentioned. More of the same utter randomness. I was reading some of the old entries, and I noticed that people are actually somewhat clever with what they write in there, and I wanted to see if I could elicit some more good responses with some new prompts.
      Oh, the poor GPFI. I really would like to continue it, but school is kind of a nasty bugger. Add in the fact that pretty much every Saturday from here to eternity is booked, and film-watching gets pushed aside a bit. But we shall see. It is second semester, after all. And if I have the time to create a DDR Club at New Trier, then I'm probably able to make the time to watch a movie or two every weekend, no?
      The AOL words are chugging along. I have a good number of new ones to add in there. But the AOL words seem like one of the least popular aspects of the site. I don't mind, though -- I don't do it for the glory. I do it because I'm fairly convinced that I'm the only person on the internet that has such an archive going, and that it may just come in handy in some frighteningly bizarre set of circumstances.
      People seem to respond to the nicknames. Recently I've been getting a lot of, "How the hell did you come up with that nickname?" It gets a bit tiresome, but it's probably a sign that the general quality of my nicknames has been decreasing somewhat. The net result is that I've been questioning my nicknames quite a bit recently, which explains why some nicknames appear on the list and then quickly disappear soon after. I think Laura Mayer's nickname has appeared in at least three different incarnations, and yet she still has no final nickname registered on the "official" list. As of the moment, I'm being pretty picky about nicknames, so they're not getting updated all that often. Ah well. *sigh*
      SpiffyLinks™ and my playlist are in desperate need of updating. It'll happen sooner or later. Maybe after I finish reorganizing my songs for all my portable music needs.
      Reviews? Maybe when I actually have something to review. And hopefully my reviews will get better. I haven't reread any of my old ones, but I'll bet they're not very good. Except for the Time Machine one. I like that one.
      I have new quotes. I might actually expect to have those up in some reasonable about of time. I'm generally pretty bad at writing quotes down, but I'm trying to get better at it. Hopefully the fruits of my labor will show soon.
      As for the creative genius section, I do have something fairly clever planned. But I don't quite know how I'm going to execute it, and I get the feeling that geocities is not the best place to host it, since large pictures are involved. Nothing vulgar, at least.
      That's about all I can think of. Nothing too surprising, but if I've accomplished anything at all, I've at least wasted a good half hour. And I generally feel marginally better about this whole website thing. And I've probably wasted some of your time, too, if you've bothered to read this far. If you have read this far, you deserve an award of some kind. Talk to me about it. I'll mark you down for an extra point in my book, or something.
  
  P.S.: Sorry about the general unreadability of the post. It's late. I'm tired.
  
  P.P.S.: I just noticed that as of late, I've been averaging about one news post a year. In spite of this fact, I am going to force myself to believe that my life is interesting enough to justify marginally more than one post a year. (Probably not.)
  
  P.P.P.S.: I don't know why I'm still adding these, but I should mention that John's section of the website doesn't look like it's going to be updated any time soon. Which is a damn shame, but I can't really do anything about it since it's all largely up to John's creative whims. I'd suggest you go over there and reread some of the things he's written, though; they're good for a laugh or two. Especially the one about the origin of his nickname.
  
  
  
• [7/31/04] Well... it's that time of year again: back to school. All the office stores will be having sales soon, everyone will start to scramble to catch up on their summer reading, and all the families will be taking their last minute vacations. Like mine -- we'll be in Southeast Asia for two weeks starting August 4th. Which is only a few days from today. We'll bum around Singapore, Hong Kong, and Bangkok before finally returning home. Maybe by then I know where I'll be applying to college? Fat chance.
      In other news, I recently saw The Village and Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. I'll be writing up reviews for those later today, so come on by later and see what I had to say.
      As for the rest of summer, there are still a great many things I want to do before school begins: go to Great America, finish building DDR pads (we got the supplies, finally!), finish the Lagniappe script, figure out where I want to apply to and perhaps begin college essays, beat Ratchet and Clank 2, and finish my summer reading. The only thing people might be interest in, however, is Great America, so if you feel like helping plan that out, contact me, preferably before I'm off on vacation.
      The POULOSPLEX and GPFI SOCR seem kind of... dead. Which is mildly ironic because the whole movie-watching thing seemed to die down just as we got the brand new basement. Still, I'll keep up the GPFI site in the pathetic hopes that it will at some point be resurrected. Somehow, things change during the school year, and I seem to do a lot more even though I have far less time. Go figure.
      I should also mention that I've got a bunch of new AOL words and links up in this update. I've actually got a lot more words and links I need to put up, but I've decided to do put them all up in a series of 2 or 3 smaller updates rather than one huge one. So check 'em out, but also come back in a day or two to see more.
      Well, on to the most important part of the update. Today, I got my class schedule. So here it is:
  
  

  Period	Class	Room
  ADV	Advisery	T292
  01	AP Physics C	140
  02	AP Physics C (Lab - MW)	153
  03	FREE PERIOD	N/A
  04	AP Latin 5	366
  05	LUNCH	CAFE
  06	AP Eur History	323
  07	MV Calculus	427
  08	AP English 4	334
  09	KW Team Block	GYM

  
  
  
• [11/29/03] I know, I know, you guys are all sick of me updating so damn often. I'm sorry -- it's just something that I feel compelled to do.
  Over the course of the past month, school has continued to suck at a steady rate. This is why there hasn't been an update in a while. And it's not math or biology or history that's the problem. It's the incredibly pointless English journal and the tedious memorization that goes into Latin that gets to me. I'm sure anyone who shares these classes with me will agree. Junior year is not terribly challenging intellectually, but they weigh you down with enough busy work to make you go insane. Thankfully I'm not taking pre-calc, so math is really not a problem. Yippee!
      I just realized now that I haven't updated since Hallo-freakin'-ween. As long as that's been, surprisingly little anyone would actually care about has happened. I got back into a DDR groove since Taeil let me borrow his excellent dance pads. Halloween occurred with little fanfare. Monkeys typed nine letters of Shakespeare while links were found and collected and internet memes were discovered. I could describe all the exciting things, but I won't, since it's all there in the nonexistent new updates I've done for the past month.
      I will talk about my new basement, though. That's worth talking about. Basically, we got a new couch, a new TV, surround sound, DVD player, and did lots of moving around of shit. In short, the POULOSPLEX has moved from a crappy little TV to a respectably large TV and entertainment center that I am proud to watch movies in. There are still issues of setting up the surround sound, and we need to wait for the little entertainment center to come before we can find a final resting place for the DVD player, but things are coming along quite nicely.
      Hopefully everyone had a happy Thanksgiving. Don't call it Turkey Day, please, as it's not a holiday to celebrate ugly farm poultry. It's a holiday to give thanks for the second greatest gift ever given to mankind -- pumpkin pie. Cheesecake is the first greatest gift, but pumpkin pie comes in a very close second. Nick and Theresa came back to celebrate the holiday, which I am very much thankful for. My parents have been getting on my nerves as of late, my dad especially. He is the kind of person who, if the internet goes down for a day, says we should cancel the internet service entirely and just use the computers at school and work. What an ass. *sigh*
      Anyway, back to school on Monday. I'm so non-excited. But before I go, I want to leave you with a link to Machinae Supremacy's website. They're an excellent alternative rock band, made better by the fact that they use the SID music chip (used in the Commodore 64) in their music. And their music is free. Eat that, RIAA! Huttah!
  
  
• [10/27/03] I'd still feel evil for not updating lately, but I'm too overwhelmed by goddamned English homework and tests across the bored to really bother. Sorry about the lack of updates, though. Maybe after the end of the quarter (Friday) I'll have time to put something substantial up. For now, though, you'll have to settle with John's rants (Thank God someone is consistant. Hooray for John!) and with my little news updates I put here.
      This Saturday we had a big ol' Scholastic Bowl match. Twelve games broken only by one break for lunch. I was the captain of the B team, which consisted of Cliff, (E)lyse, Charlie, David Q., and Thomas (Buley, the sophomore). In any case, the B team got 4th, while the A team got 1st. That's pretty damn good for a B team, seeing as we ended higher up than most of the A teams there. And as always, these tournaments remind me that Scholastic Bowl is about 30 times more tiring than one might think it is. By halfway through the day I think we were all drained, and weren't playing at our top game. Anyway, there were some funny stories from the tournament that I don't feel like relating here. If you would like to here how I embarassed myself multiple times, however, feel free to ask me.
      Since I'm not going to bother updating my links section, I'll just throw this in here. Fun song, strange video, good times. What else, what else... Oh yes, Lagniappe was probably the best I've seen (though it's not like it's terribly hard to beat the last two years' shows), though I was somewhat disappointed with how the skits John and I wrote turned out. I'm glad people liked the Driver's Ed one (Simulation), and sometime later I'll post the whole thing up on this website so you can read it in its full glory. The psychiatrist skit (Analysis) was not quite as satisfying, though it was edited quite a bit from the original. In all fairness to the editors, however, it was rather long and probably inappropriate. In any case, maybe I'll post the original of that one up as well for you to judge yourself.
      It's 1:30. Let me have my sleep. Otherwise I'll leave the car light on and kill the battery again. And sleep through piano lessons.
  
  
• [10/14/03] I feel so evil. I haven't done a real update in a few weeks now, even though I have a stash of links and updates I could make to my playlist and the such. But the simple fact of the matter is that over the weekend I'm extremely lazy, and during the week I'm swamped with homework. However, I worked on a little something and I actually have two brand new "Nice Work Guy" things up. Just scroll down to the bottom of this page and look at them. I think they're funny...
      Clubs have started, so things are a bit hectic now. As you know, we had a first math team meet a little while back, and I was the oralist. Now I have to learn about vectors for the next meet. They're not hard, but there's a lot. Hopefully I'll learn it all and get a 50. THOUSAND!!! My first Scholastic Bowl tournament of the year is this Saturday, and I'm delaying the PSATs to go to the competition (I know, what a sacrifice). All I can tell from these few practices we've had so far this year is that I need to learn a lot more than I already know to be a useful addition to the team. I don't know when I'll learn these things, but I'll learn them sometime, hopefully. And Science Olympiad is just as intense as it's been before, but hopefully I'll snag some events and actually do something this year. It's just a matter of beating those incoming sophomores into the ground. I'll get them if it's the last thing I do!
      AHA! My basement is entirely refurnished. There is now a posh couch and wide open spaces in which to prance in. Not that I prance. Nope. Never.
       But the basement revamping process is closing in on the final stages. All we need is a new TV, maybe some surround sound, and a new little entertainment center, and we'll be set. And then you must come over and see the new coolness. Because it's really new. And cool.
      Well, Robert Frost awaits my analysis, and I hate to keep him waiting. So I bid you all adieu with the possibility that I might actually make a meaningful update sometime in the near future.
  
  
• [10/6/03] Only a tiny little update for today. Maybe I'll put something more up a little later in the week. I might be able to scrounge up a new quote, or update my playlist, or put some new links up. We'll see. But since I would feel bad if I told John he needed to write something for me to put up, and then not put it up, I decided to make some kind of update.
      As you can see, we've got another quality... thing written by the one and only John Chouinard. I've also got the new movies chosen, and believe me, they are some excellent films. Pink Floyd's The Wall, The Godfather, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid -- I'm definitely looking forward to seeing these films. And 4 new AOL words have been added for your pleasure, to boot. That's all I've got for now. Off to study for Latin! Wheeee!
      Also, if you're good boys and girls, I'll post up my hilarious math team story. Because math stories are ALWAYS the best stories of all. Right? Right.
  
  
• [9/29/03] I'm stalling studying for my history test and finishing my English journal. I figure this is a great way to spend my time, since I for some reason or another never really got around to updating this weekend. And it would seem as though the second part of that majestic updat I was talking about last week never came. Oh well. To make it up to you I give you this spiffy new colour scheme for my site. I think it's much easier on the eyes. If you don't like it, too bad, since I certainly like it quite a bit. Also new to the site is John's newest rant (which I haven't read but I'm assured is exquisitely crafted), some AOL words, a new quote, and a new link. Of course there's the mandatory GPFI update, but no one ever pays attention to those, so I shouldn't bother mentioning it. Unfortunately, there are no reviews, though I hope to do a Sould Calibur II review soonish.
      Speaking of Soul Calibur II, I must say that it is a very fun game. It comes highly recommended from me, although I can't really recommend it any more than F-Zero GX, since the two games are fun for very different reasons. For example, F Zero is better for larger groups of players as it is 4-player, while Soul Calibur is only 2 player but great for tournaments and practicing specific skills. You probably know all this, though, so I won't belabor the point. If you were wondering, the character I fight as is Ivy, and I'm up for a challenge whenever I have some free time.
      Free time is becoming more and more scarce as Math Team, ScoBol and SciOly are gearing up. For math team I'm the oralist (AHAHAHAHAHAH ORALS!), which basically means that I get to stand up in front of a panel of math teachers and solve/explain challenging problems to get the team points. And as I have no backup, a large number of points are resting solely on my performance. As if there wasn't enough pressure on me, the topic I need to present on is MODULAR ARITMETIC. For those of you who don't know what this is, it is a subject in number theory that deals with division and remainders and. I'm not very good at number theory in the first place, and mods are pretty confusing to compound the problem. I'm hoping this Thursday will not be a reprise of state, where I did very poorly (was it 19 points out of 50?)
  
  *sigh*
  
      Well, wish me luck. I'm gonna need it.
  
  
• [9/21/03] This is the first installment of a majestic 2-part update I'm planning. And when I say that I mean that I'm being lazy and rather than spend the time to do a full update in one day, I'm spreading it over a period of 2 days. And by that I mean that I hate you all. So please tell all your friends about this website so I can tell them I hate them to and then have all my bandwidth eaten up.
      In other news, I've been spending WAAAY too much time on the OCR message boards. It's funny - I've been posting so much on those boards that I'm beginning to forget to d/l the songs that get posted up. Oh wait. That's not funny. That's pathetic. THIS is why I'm not playing any MMORPG's - I'm afraid I will be addicted and there will be no hope for me. If I can spend this much time at a message board, imagine what will happen where there is an actual GAME behind the mindless conversation?
      In even more... otherer news, I need money! I'm willing to do work for people! I'm mainly thinking about doing some sort of graphics work, because my Photoshop skills are so incredibly amazing and you obviously want to take advantage of that. Right? RIGHT? Meh. Well even if you don't want to pay me, I'm willing to talk about helping out with some kind of graphic design that you might want me to do, as I could always use the practice. If you want a BBS signature, for example, I'm SO there. I'm kind of rambling now, so I'll just say "Give me money!" and leave it at that.
      The reason I'm so low on money is because I just got Soul Calibur 2. It's a great game and all, as I'm sure you've heard. If you want to challenge me, I'm up for some training. I'll need as much as I can if I want to be awesome. :D My character, randomly selected for me by the game itself, is Ivy, if you were curious. So let the fighting begin!
      It would seem as this news section is gradually turning into a (*gasp!*) blog. I don't know why I said that, but it seems somewhat relevant. So bleh.