posted 2003/12/31 at 23:07
I don't know how I'm going to be ringing in the new year. The folks are all downstairs showing Mark old home movies, and of course there's no way I'm going to be a part of that. None of the stuff on TV interests me, my Web connection is too slow to do any online video ... and of course I don't have anyone to celebrate with, thanks for asking. Hope you're all a lot more lucky than I am.
posted 2003/12/30 at 23:17
Just to give you all an update on my Dance Dance Revolution addiction, after seven straight days of playing it for at least ninety minutes, I'm going to force myself to take a day off tomorrow, just so I can give my legs a chance to recover. My legs aren't particularly troubling me, actually, but even the most strict exercise plans I've seen have said to take one day a week off to give the muscles a chance to recover. It's going to be hard, though, because I swear that game is super addictive. I'm even thinking of buying a high-end pad, just because I'm sure that the el cheapo pad I bought last week won't last; I'm already having sliding and bunching problems with it.
And when I haven't been working on DDR, I've been getting around my application to Syracuse (which went out yesterday) and, despite already getting a ton of video games recently, playing Dragon Warrior I & II for Gameboy Color, which I picked up on the 26th along with Dragon Warrior III. Hey, I'm an old school RPG freak, what can I say?
posted 2003/12/28 at 23:06
Remember how I said I wasn't going to talk about my GPA anymore? I lied.
Final grades for Fall Semester 2003:
EBUS-3180: Website Design for Business Communications -- A
ENGL-3050: Persuasive Writing -- A
ENGL-4080: Writing Workshop-Fiction -- A
ENGL-4090: Current Writing Theory -- A
FILM-3350: Screenwriting I -- A
Grade Point Average for Semester: 4.0
Cumulative GPA through 29 courses/90 credit hours: FOUR POINT FUCKING OH.
Don't ask me how I pulled this one off, because at this point even I'm not sure. All I have to say is with that GPA, and those GRE scores, if I don't get a huge scholarship offered to me somewhere then I'm going to be really pissed.
posted at 16:09
This is Sean Shannon's Infantile Sports Whine of the Day:
Stupid Bengals ... stupid Browns ... stupid lousy officiating ... stupid season ... stupid hopes I got up ... stupid football ... stupid sports ... stupid Kitna ... stupid Corey ...
This has been Sean Shannon's Infantile Sports Whine of the Day. Tell your friends.
posted at 15:37
New on Backwash: "Great Big Dancing Dork". Yes, I've gotten so far into Dance Dance Revolution that I just had to talk about it on Backwash, and even that got me overly self-conscious. I don't know if this is a column about Dance Dance Revolution or my neuroses. Either way, go read it, and someone tell me when the Bengals game is over because I can't bear to watch it at this point.
posted 2003/12/25 at 21:22
Okay, when it came to stuff that was on my list I didn't get as much as I wanted -- the folks pretty much went on their own notions of what they thought I wanted/needed, and I only got two of the things I explictly asked for, one of which was Final Fantasy X-2, which I'm sure I'll have a fun time playing if I can ever tear myself away from DDR.
But the other thing ... the other thing made the wait for today worth it. Ladies and gentlemen, two and a half years after the fire, I once again have a piano. Okay, to be more precise I have a Yamaha keyboard, but it's got the full 88 keys and and pretty good key action. I haven't been able to practice in all this time -- UT only lets music majors on their pianos -- and I'm hoping like hell that this is one of the key parts of reclaiming my sanity. Or whatever it was I had that used to pass for sanity.
Fuller Christmas report later. For now I'm going back to DDR ...
posted 2003/12/24 at 23:38
Holy crap, is Dance Dance Revolution the most fun ever. Not the kind of fun I'm ever going to show anybody, mind you, but playing by myself it's like ... where has this been all my life? I have great fun, I get a good workout, I'm challenged without getting frustrated ... what's not to love?
Anyway, happy holidays to one and all. It's looking like a pretty good Christmas is shaping up here in the Shannon household, and hopefully I'll have a full prezzie report here sometime tomorrow. Although given what the "big gift" is rumoured to be, I might be too busy to blog here for a while.
posted 2003/12/22 at 23:51
Yeesh ... I don't think I'm going to wake up until spring semester starts.
I had a fair chunk of change come my way recently, so to celebrate the end of the semester and kicking ass on the GREs, I went to Media Play and got me some gifts. On the Playstation 2 front I bought Kingdom Hearts, which to be honest I haven't been too terribly thrilled with since I started playing it. What I bought and haven't played yet, though, is DDR MAX 2, and yes, I bought a dance pad, too. Yes, I can't dance worth shit, and this probably won't help me learn how to dance too much, but I've always wanted to try, and at the very least there's a lock on the door of my room so I can look foolish by my damn self when I want. And maybe it'll help me take off some of the pounds I've been putting on over the holidays.
On the DVD front, I picked up the divine Ms. Cho's I'm the One That I Want which kicks ten kinds of ass (like you need me to tell you that), and also the Björk DVDs Miniscule and Greatest Hits. The worst part is that I know there are some Björk DVDs I still haven't gotten, but I honestly can't remember which ones I still need. I'm pathetic like that, aren't I?
posted at 00:02
New on Backwash: "A Very Backwash Christmas". I'm still so fucking wiped from finals and the GRE it's not fucking funny, so I half-assed a "Christmas List" column and cobbled together a bunch of links I'd been saving for other purposes. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go back into a catatonic state here.
posted 2003/12/19 at 19:16
Verbal: 750
Math: 800
If I do say so myself, BOO-FUCKING-YAH. Now watch as I get the official results in a few weeks, they knock off 300 points and I only get a 3 or 4 on the writing section. For now, though, I'm feeling a hell of a lot more confident about my grad school apps, even if my 4.0 gets flushed down the toilet this semester.
posted 2003/12/17 at 23:59
Oh, hi. So here's the thing: my only "final" final was Monday, and I had two papers due this Friday but I got both of them turned in before Monday too. So Monday at around 1830 I left campus completely done with my penultimate semester at UT. Fun, huh?
The thing is, I went ahead and got a book to study for the GRE with, and that's kind of been keeping me more than slightly occupied. Well, that and the copy of NFL 2K3 I picked up for ten bucks over the weekend, but no, I'm pretty gung-ho on GRE preparation right now.
Then after that I have to fix up my stories for my grad school portfolio, and get more applications sent out. And let's just say that I may have something very important returning to my life after Christmas. This isn't going to be a real vacation, I swear.
posted 2003/12/14 at 22:15
New on Backwash: "Something for the Holidays". Just what the title implies, as I go totally polemical thanks to a television commercial I've had to watch these past few Decembers. I think you know the one.
posted at 20:28
According to Bengals.com, the Bengals would hold the tiebreaker over the Ravens if both teams win out at this point. I know, the Bengals winning at St. Louis next week is a longshot, but it's not a total impossibility. They may pull this one out yet. At the very least, they've matched the record for greatest one-year turnaround in NFL history, plus guaranteed their first non-losing season since 1996. That counts for something, right?
As far as the other news of the day goes, I'll just say this: Wait a couple of months when the bodycount of American soldiers isn't slowing down and anti-US sentiment in Iraq is still growing. Then see how much you want to celebrate. Hey, I'm just as glad as the next person that we've got Hussein, but his capture may be as much of a photo-op moment without real substance as Dubya's secret flight to Iraq to serve turkey to troops. (And how much did that cost us taxpayers? Sorry, but after the GOP asked that question about everything Clinton did ...)
posted 2003/12/12 at 23:32
Okay, anyone out there into the file-swapping thing, is there an MP3 of Tom Waits covering "Eve of Destruction" out there somewhere? It's driving me totally insane right now just thinking about it, and my resident file-swapping guru can't help me because she's across the pond with her fiance right now. Gurg.
posted 2003/12/11 at 15:04
I just sent my first grad school application out to Michigan. It's kind of a difficult thing for me to do; I feel like I'm putting myself out on the line even more than usual with my stuff. And of course there's always that fear of rejection I've got gurgling in my system. Still, I'm sending seven apps out (at the suggestion of my academic advisor, I'll also be applying to the Universities of Oregon and Indiana, in addition to the others I listed earlier -- Syracuse, Sarah Lawrence, Bowling Green and Antioch University Los Angeles), so hopefully I'll get some hits somewhere, and maybe get a good assistantship/scholarship package that will facilitate my decision. That's what I hope, anyway.
posted 2003/12/09 at 23:15
It took over two years, but I finally had my first experience of running into someone from my private school on UT's campus. Thankfully it was one of the good people -- there weren't that many good people at that school, believe me -- and she seemed cool with all the changes that had happened since I graduated, including that one. In all honesty, though, it kind of freaked me out a bit. I've never really learned how to deal with situations like that, and in all honesty I'm dealing with too much drama in my life as it is right now.
posted 2003/12/08 at 23:57
Great. So when I should have been working on my portfolios tonight, I went and played Super Mario 3 most of the night because I got fixated on completing the game as quickly as possible after posting that video clip to Backwash. And mind you, I was playing Super Mario All-Stars, beginning on Level 8 with 97 lives and a boatload of stuff in my inventory, and ... well, okay, I did keep track of how many lives I lost just to beat the final level of the game, but it's a number too high for me to say here without feeling deeply, deeply ashamed of myself.
The first grad school app -- to Michigan -- goes out later this week. Why does it feel like I'm getting ready to fire a huge cannon that could just as easily backfire and blow me to bits? Sigh, wish me luck.
posted 2003/12/07 at 23:55
New on Backwash: "Michael". Against my better judgment, my (very brief) thoughts on the whole Michael Jackson thing going on.
posted at 22:38
I actually went into Wal*Mart earlier tonight. I didn't actually buy anything, mind you, but I looked around at what was there. I was out picking out stuff for my Christmas list, and I figured I might as well stop there and see what the big deal is. Yeah, some of the prices there were a bit better than you could get at, say, Meijer or K-Mart, but all the time I was there I wished I had a big bullhorn so I could go around screaming at all the "associates" to unionize. I'm a bitch like that, what can I say?
Oh yeah, I did see the Bengals' loss today coming from about a mile out. Modell just had to fuck us over one last time, didn't he? Even if the Bengals win out the season and go 10-6, I can't see them making the playoffs, especially with Denver holding a tiebreaker for the wildcard and the Ravens having a remaining schedule so soft you could cut through it with a rusty butter knife. Still, the Bengals have already more than tripled their wins from last year, and I think one more win would tie them with Jimmy Johnson's Cowboys for the biggest one-year turnaround in NFL history. That has to count for something. But a playoff spot would have been nicer.
posted 2003/12/06 at 18:54
Mark proposed to Heather last night. Heather accepted. The wedding will be next summer. I hate my life.
posted 2003/12/05 at 23:26
I think I've mentioned before that UT somehow seemed to "lose" a lot of my loan money earlier this semester, so I've been going through the past several weeks getting bills from UT saying that I owed them a load of money. Well, I finally got that taken care of this week, and in the process of getting that cleared up, it was revealed that I'd actually won a $3,000 scholarship for this year and they hadn't bothered to tell me about it. What the?
posted 2003/12/04 at 17:25
One of the good things about being in English is that you don't have too many "final" finals, just papers that are due. This year I'll only have one "final" final, in one of my business courses, but now I just found out that the last day of finals week (by which time I'll have completed all my courses), I'll have to come in for the GRE. I still haven't "studied" for the GRE, but from what I've read it may be better for me to go in blind; that's what I did for my SATs, and the strategy seem to have paid off there. Of course, considering I haven't had a math class in nearly a decade, maybe I should go review some basic algebra and trig, but that shouldn't take me too long.
posted 2003/12/02 at 23:26
I started filling out my grad school applications today, getting my recommendation letters to my professors and all of that. Strangely, I kind of got a bit of a lift from that, and had a pretty easy day of it today. Of course, I could get rejected across the board and then I'd be really depressed -- even by my standards -- but we'll see about that.
It's the homestretch here -- just this week and next before finals week -- but I'm already starting to think about winter break. It must be the senioritis.
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