Calc 2

In 2012, I didn’t know I had autism. I didn’t really understand my ADHD. If you’d asked me at the time, I would’ve said I was still dealing with my mother’s death from 4 years earlier. I had no idea that my dad was continuing to emotionally abuse me. The fact that I had PTSD couldn’t have been further from being discovered. I had never tried SSRIs, let alone weed. I didn’t even know I had any mental health issues whatsoever. I lived for the weekends, when I would get drunk and laugh with my girlfriend. Saturday and Sunday were oases that motivated me to keep crawling through the grit and heat of weekdays in my small singles dorm room at my university.

My Calculus 2 professor was woman so old, she used the PA system wired into the walls of the classroom. If she hadn’t, the people in the back wouldn’t have been able to hear her speak. She was about the height of a mailbox, and looked like she weighed about as much as a couple of bowling balls. I wasn’t foolish enough to ask her age, but she couldn’t have been younger than 70.

She was passionate about her subject and her job. But, when she would raise her voice, it would come out through the PA system. One day, she kicked out two girls who were chatting. She went over to their desks, gathered their belongings in her arms, and lead them out the door. You may be asking yourself, “How does a 5-foot, 100-pound, 80-year-old math professor kick two college girls out of her class?” The answer really is quite simple. It’s easy to do, really. All it takes is being terrifying.

I didn’t go to class for weeks after that. It might’ve even been months. I hated myself for not going, and I knew what I was doing was setting myself up for failure, but I couldn’t help myself. No matter what I did, for some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to go back. Every time I tried, her furious voice would ring in my ears, and I would shrink away from the thought. Those mornings, I didn’t even leave my room. I would eat handfuls of peanut M&Ms and pretend not to be in if friends knocked on my door.

At the end of the semester, with exams approaching, I panicked. I flew into a storm of studying.

I got a B in the class.

I’ve changed. I have autism. I’m pretty sure I’m a genius. I’m only being arrogant if I’m wrong, right? Well,

Eugh what the hell is this font. Sorry about the long title, but I couldn’t just not say anything. Then again, I had other things to say, which is why I wanted to write in the first place. So, if you’ll excuse me:

Axiom 1: I’m an autistic genius
Axiom 2: Weed is well-known as an apparent creativity boost
Axiom 3: Weed seems to make my autism “worse”
Axiom 4: Monologuing is a symptom of autism

I could probably write some pretty good books about how I view the universe, with weed enough and time.

My Webcomic

Hello everyone! I haven’t updated this blog in a long time, but I still consider myself to be a creative person. In January, 2010, I started a webcomic called Between Classes. It’s been going pretty strong. I’d like to consider it to be one of the best things that I’ve ever started. So far, I’ve made almost 80 comics. Right now I’m drawing 3 new webcomics a week. I’m also updating the site with my girlfriend’s webcomics once per week. If you like what’s on this site, maybe you’ll like my webcomic, who knows!

Check it out!
www.between-classes.com

Why is 9/11 a popular topic NOW? [update]

Why NOW? It’s the news flavor of the month! It’s repulsive!

digg search: “911”, last 30 days, sorted by most diggs

digg search: “Twin Towers”, last 30 days, sorted by most diggs

digg search: “WTC”, last 30 days, sorted by most diggs

UPDATE – Check out this data from Google Trends:

You can observe huge spikes in each of these graphs:

http://www.google.com/trends?q=9%2F11 

http://www.google.com/trends?q=Twin+Towers

http://www.google.com/trends?q=WTC

Boston police blow up traffic counter chained to lightpost

Click here for the video…this is just pathetic. I live close to Boston, and have no idea why the city has recently fallen down the apparently slippery slope from irrational to paranoid, to just plain stupid.

[watch the video]

[found on digg]

Teacher cuts off noisy kid’s tongue

This is terrible…what time period are we in, the medieval age or something?

An Italian teacher has been suspended by her school in Milan after cutting off the tongue of a lively 7-year-old child with a pair of scissors, daily Corriere della Sera reported Tuesday.

[Source | Found on digg]

John Daker Sings

This is unbelievable…just watch. Words cannot describe this. Just click play, watch, listen, and enjoy the hilarity that ensues.

[Link to the video | Found via Jawbone]

Huge Underground Ocean Found Beneath Asia

This is strange; if I lived in Asia, I’m not sure how I would feel to discover that I was on top of such an amount of water.  Personally, I prefer being on top of lots of dirt, and then magma.  Yes, always with the magma…the molten hot magma.

A giant blob of water the size of the Arctic Ocean has been discovered hundreds of miles beneath eastern Asia, scientists report.Researchers found the underground “ocean” while scanning seismic waves as they passed through Earth’s interior.

[via National Geographic | Found on digg]

Downloading Movies to your Xbox360

So I saw Wrath of Khan and I figured hey, why not. I’ve only seen snippets of it on TV, and it’s only 240 Microsoft Points.

OH NOES! – I was in the middle of writing this post when I decided to start the download of Wrath of Khan. An error message popped up:

The download could not be completed. Please try again later. Any points you used for this transaction have already been deducted from your balance and will not be deducted again. Status code: 8007000a

I looked at Major Nelson’s post about the Video Marketplace again, and saw that he gave a link to the Video Marketplace Forums. I saw that there’s a thread about this exact error!

Some people are saying that they restarted their console and everything was fine..although some people are saying that they restarted their console and nothing is different. I’m going to try to download it again and if it fails again, I’ll try restarting my console.

Ahhh….it’s giving me the “Download Again” dialog…good times! Uh oh…it’s not looking good! (I’m typing this as it’s happening) Ahh! The same error popped up! I’m going to try restarting the 360. I’m doing it the nice way, by the controller, instead of the power button on the 360 itself. Good sign – after restarting the 360 it still is saying that I can download again…but it’s not looking too good. It’s holding at 0% completed. There it goes! Status code: 8007000a. Trying again…no; again…no; again…wait! I think the little bar moved! Wait a minute…I hope that this works! I shall use my awesome magic super 1337ness to make it work! Come on…I believe in you! Hmmmmm….It’s still at 0%…OMG! TEH ROXXORZ, it’s at 1%!!!! WOOT!

The solution for Status code 8007000a is to keep trying to download it, apparently.
It’s at 3%!!!

OK!  Now on with the original purpose of this thread!

I’m downloading Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan for 240 Microsoft Points.  The file is 1.51 GB.  HERE ARE SOME THINGS THAT EVERY SINGLE PERSON WHO IS EVEN THINKING OF BUYING ANY KIND OF VIDEO OFF OF THE XBOXLIVE VIDEO MARKETPLACE NEEDS TO KNOW:

When you purchase a video off of the XboxLive Video Marketplace, you do not own it.  It’s a rental* that expires one of two ways.  The provided Media Usage Rights describes it well:

The license rights to this content is limited in its term and duration to 14 days from its original date and time of download or 24 hours from the start of its initial play, whichever occurs first.  You may view the content as many times as you want for this period of time.

Something else that you NEED to know, and if you know it, you NEED to keep it in mind…Just because it is only 240 Microsoft Points ($3), if you have less than that already, you will need to purchase at least 500 Microsoft Points ($6.25) since that is the lowest available chunk of Microsoft Points.  But hey – keep in mind that I don’t mind.  I’m downloading Wrath of Khan as I type this, it’s at 17%, and I’m going to enjoy it.

Superman Returns Demo

I downloaded said demo, and this is unbelievably hilarious – so it starts out with all of the logos and whatnot, blah blah blah etcetera…and then the following flashes agonizingly slowly on the screen:

…

…

…

SUPERMAN RETURNS

…

…

…

THE VIDEO GAME

…

…

…

No, REALLY?!

Seriously – there are 4 ways that you could be seeing it

1. You download the demo on xboxlive, in which case you already know, of course, that it’s a video game.
2. You see a demo of the game in a store, in which case there’s no way in hell that you wouldn’t know that what you were seeing was a video game
3. You download a video of the game, in which case it’s impossible that you wouldn’t know that what you were seeing was footage of a video game
4. You see an advertisement of some kind of the game, in which case it will say that it’s for the Xbox360, and 99% of people, including the miscillaneous soccer moms, know what an “X-BOX” is.

Sheesh, EA…lay it on thicker, please.

Not un-bad news

Remember this?  I got a 100% on the written portion of the test, and was doing great on the driving when the man asked me to park backwards in the shape of “r” where the “i” part of the “r” was the space that I was backing into.  For some reason, and I tried this several times after I left the DMV and failed then as well, I kept ending up straddling the line; always half a space to the left.

I did everything else well, and the guy said that I could come back on Monday and redo it.  Although that is kind of good news, in that I don’t have to retake the entire test again, it means that this weekend I will be without Gears of War, since my parents have restricted me from being driven anywhere besides the DMV until I get my license.  This sucks in a big way, and I mean big time…I’m really pissed off.