Life update and 2013 Annual report

Hey guys,
Steve here.

Believe it or not, but this happens to be the last post I will ever make in 2013. It certainly has been a great year… and I have the annual report to prove it.

As a start, I changed up, and began new things on this blog since January 1st of last year. They are as follows:

  • On February 19, 2013, I quit the “how my day went” entries, as I felt they were getting a bit repetitive
  • On March 3, I released Stranded part 1, the beginning of my action choose-your-own-story type book trilogy
  • On March 31, I did my first ever storm recording
  • on April 21, this blog turned 2 years old
  • on April 30, this blog reached 5000 views
  • on May 12, I began the Steven D Podcast
  • on June 18, I released Stranded part 2
  • On July 22, I switched my site’s files over to drop box
  • August 25 was one year after I purchased stevend.net
  • on September 22, I released the swamp campaign maker
  • on December 5, I got up to 100 followers
  • On December 9, I began the Monday’s musings entries
  • –I don’t remember dates for these things–

  • I changed several pages (deleting audio, recreation, jenga, bouncy balls, animal, cat, and weather, but keeping natural events, my audio game reviews and demonstrations, and weather radio forecasts
  • My writing and post quality increased this year (oh yeah it did)

As for stats, wordpress has created this report for my blog, and here it is

Here’s what you guys achieved:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 4,900 times in 2013. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.

Not only that, but you and I helped this blog achieve other awesome stats, and they are as below:
-In 2013, I published 115 posts (this being the 115th), growing the total number of posts to 722!
-In addition, I uploaded 20 pictures (7 mb worth), averaging out to about 2 pictures per month.
-Aparently, you really liked these posts and/or pages:
the podcasts page This was number 1, so I guess it was most viewed. I’m glad you enjoyed my podcast!
The close second, another seemingly popular page, was the gamebooks page, so I guess you loved my gamebooks.
Coming up at #3, although no longer existing, was the audio page.
In fourth place, *holds out a fourth place ribbon*, was the audio game reviews and demonstrations page. So I assume you thought my reviews and playthroughs were good?
And finally, bottoming out at #5 but still pretty awesome, was the no longer existing recreation page.
-All the traffic I got had to have come from some source(s), so here are the top 5 sources that people found my blog from:
In first place, *holds out a gold metal*, was the great website http://forum.audiogames.net. This is the audiogames.net forum, a place where I frequently post, and I have the link to my website at the bottom of my post signature.
Our runner up, *holds out a silver metal*, was http://stevendaughertysblog.wordpress.com. I plan to take this site down–it used to be the address of this website, now all that is on it is a post called “changed blog address” with a link to this site.
Not far behind our runner up, dmweb.usa.cc came in at 3rd place. *holds out a bronze metal* This is the website of the game Death Match that my friend Danny is making.
Coming in fourth place, *holds out a fourth place ribbon*, is http://users.smartgb.com. This happens to be where the guest book on the chat with steve page is hosted.
And finally, in last place but still bringing that good traffic, *holds out a fifth place ribbon* is mail.google.com. This means that people clicked on the link to my website directly from emails I sent them.
-As a final method of searching people used to find this site, you guys searched using a search engine. the 4 most common tags you used to find my blog were:
1. stevend.net
2. funny stories about eggs
3. where can you create a free blog
4. last time that hail in 75181.

Obviously, I am the new Mr. World Wide. Because in this year alone, people from 62 different countries viewed this site. Although the United States was the country where the most visitors came from, Germany and Canada were not too far behind.
On a last note, there were a few of you who gave a lot of feedback. As a start, Monday’s Musings 2: to be like my cat for a day… do I really want that, published on December 16, was the most commented on post of the year. The top 5 commenters are as follows:

1. Rebecca Dunn-she wrote 8 comments for this blog.
2. MRS. Moten, who wrote 7 comments.
3. DeWayne Handy wrote 6 comments.
4. Dadams8105 wrote 4 commentss. Visit her site at dawnadams.org.
5. Sharon wrote 4 comments.

And that about concludes the annual report for 2013, keep helping me produce these awesome stats!

With that out of the way, let me give you a brief life update. Since Thursday night, I have not done much. On Friday, the only productive thing I did was going to Walmart with my mom and getting craft supplies. On Saturday, I didn’t do much, besides playing lots of swamp and taking advantage of the oppertunity to relax. Sunday was pretty much the same, besides the morning church service. Yesterday and today were more or less the same–I just relaxed, and took advantage of the time to chill. I hope that I have more to talk about in the next life update.

I guess that about wraps up tonight’s post. I hope you enjoyed this post, and all other posts in 2013. Though this was the last post of the year, I hope you look forward to the posts that are published in 2014, and I also hope you have a great new year!

Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

Monday’s Musings 4: enough with the updates and new releases… at least for now

Hey guys,
Steve here.

For a while now, I have wanted to become a software developer when I grow up. I was thinking about maybe working for microsoft, or even starting a software company of my own… however my opinion is slowly changing.
Earlier this evening, I had to downgrade my screen reader to an earlier version. The reason this had to be done is the same as the reason I will most likely not become a programmer–the rapid speed that technoligy is being updated, and new pieces of technoligy are released.
This particular screen reader (software that turns what’s shown on screen into speech) allows for the use of extra voices. My screen reader was updated twice in 3 months, thus the add on for the voice I wanted was no longer supported, so I had to downgrade to use that voice. With technoligy going this fast, by the time I were to develope software, it would already be outdated.
Another prime example of the rapid advance in technoligy is windows OS. Windows 8 and 8.1 were both released with in a year from each other… so software made for windows 8 had to be made compatible with windows 8.1 shortly after it was developed. If you ask me, I believe that the creators of these technologies need to slow down just a little bit–because the more frequent technoligy is updated, the rate that software becomes outdated and/or not compatible with the new technoligy will increase. And eventually, if the rate that technoligy advances continues to go up, software developers will decide to quit making new software, because it will be too hard to keep up with new technoligy.

Right now, you might think that I am being just a bit irrational… however I have two examples of software developers discontinuing their software due to the fast pase of technoligy development. First, let’s consider a mozilla firefox extention that was used to enhance the accessibility of webpages. As we Mozilla Firefox users know, Firefox used to update quite a bit. The developers of this extention called Web Visum (visum is vision in Latin) decided to stop working on the extention all together, because they just couldn’t keep up with firefox updates. Aditionally, although a small insignificant piece of software, that voice for my screen reader is still outdated, because the developers of it haven’t had the time to make it compatible with the latest version of my screen reader.

So having read this post, do you see what I’m talking about? Do you agree that the development of technoligy needs to slow down? Because after all, I’m sure your phone and computer are still good, even without all the unnesisary updates and tweeks.

Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

A great Christmas!

Hey guys,
Steve here.

Before we get started, I have an important thing to tell you followers of this blog. For some reason, “how my day went” posts from last year have been appearing on my blog this year. When I did the daily entries, I sometimes forgot to do them that day, and typed them up the next day and changed the publish time to the day it was origionally supposed to publish on. For example:

I forgot to post the journal entry on December 26, 2012. So on December 27, I wrote it up, went to the “date published” section of my new posts page, and told it to say that it had been published on December 26, 2012 so that people who were new visitors of my blog would think I never forgot to post the how my day went entries. Unfortunately, it has come to my attention that I selected 2013 on the publish year, instead of 2012, thus you have been getting random posts in your in box. I will do my best to make sure this doesn’t happen anymore, so you can continue to enjoy my normal content without any annoying interruptions.

With that taken care of, let me tell you about my rather intresting last 7 days or so. On Wednesday, I posted that life update, as I’m sure you have found out by now. I won’t talk about that day, since I’m sure I did in that post.
Thursday was not really exciting. It was an early release day at my school, but I didn’t have my computer, so I had a hard time finding stuff to do… but I survived :).
Friday was exciting. First of all, it marked the start of winter break! Also on Friday, my church youth group had a camp out. As for the camp out, I told the church people, and my sister that it was going to rain, but they did it anyway (it was fun, and I wanted it to happen, but I was giving them a heads up). Turns out, I was right. We were awakened in the middle of the night to pounding rain, and intense lightning. We ended up having to get up at 4 in the morning, in the freezing cold rain, and walk back to the church.

On Saturday, me, Libby, and dad attended a christmas party that my that my dad’s step mother’s side of the family set up. It ended up being pretty fun… but I did learn one thing:
Don’t eat two two inch blocks of solid fudge. You’ll feel sick!

Sunday and Monday weren’t too exciting. Those days were filled with ever growing excitement for the coming holiday, and on Sunday our Christmas church service.

On Tuesday, my dad’s dad’s side of the family had a party. Man, I’m not sure who made dinner, but that person can cook some roast beef! After enjoying that roast beef, we opened presents and generally had a good time.

After the Christmas party, me, my sister, my mom, and my dad had our Christmas celebration. We opened our presents Christmas eve night, because my mom was going to work the next day and if we had waited we would’ve had to get up at 4 in the morning, something I wouldn’t have minded, but mom and dad would’ve.

Christmas was pretty uneventful. Since my dad’s side of the family had their celebrations, and my mom’s will have theirs in January (my great grandma and great uncle will be coming down), we just went to Apple Bee’s.

As for today, it has gone well. I haven’t done much of anything, besides messing with the stuff I got for Christmas.

Now that we have the life update out of the way, let me tell you what I got for Christmas.
1. an olympus me51s high quality stereo microphone. My Spanish teacher called me James Bond for making my IPhone a wireless microphone for my computer–just wait until he finds out about this 1 inch wide, 1 half inch thick microphone that can pick up noise from a long distance away.
2. Digital air drumb sticks. My parents didn’t want me to have a big old drumb set, because it would make lots of tremendously loud noise, so they got me these drumb sticks that make sound. I haven’t explored them yet, however I will after writing this post.
3. a new laptop. Since my other one broke, I got a new one. Want to know some intresting facts?
fact 1. I can do the podcast using the internal microphone on this one, because it is high quality and will not pick up too much computer noise.
fact 2. The first program I downloaded was swamp, my favorite zombie first person shooter game.
back to my list:
4. a miniature bowling set. It is about the size of a laptop computer, and is actually quite fun. You pull on a little button (It feels like a button, but you pull instead of push) to set up the pins, and it comes with a small ramp to roll the ball off of.
5. Head phones. I got two pares of them, and I still have a working pare. Looks like I won’t have to buy any in the near future.
6. sweat pants. I got 2 or 3 pares, so I could say that I won’t need to buy any more of those either.
7. a remote control car. It is really cool, and is fast, and can pop wheelies.
8. a robot called the doom raiser. It walks around, and shoots phome discs at people… pretty much raising doom.
9. gift cards, and money. You can never go wrong with that.
10. t-shirts. I already have a lot, but some more comfortable clothes can’t hurt.
11. a talking coin counter. It looks like a jar, but the lid has a slot for dropping coines, and buttons for checking how much money is in the jar, and adding or subtracting to the ammount. When you slip a coin into the jar, it tells you something like “10 cents” or “1 cent,” and then gives you the total amount.

I don’t believe I left anything out… but if I did I will put it in on another post.

I guess that about wraps up today’s post, because that’s about all I have to day. Otherwise, I hope you and your family had a merry Christmas, and enjoy your new year. I look forward to another great year of posting–and be sure to expect an annual stats report on December 31.

Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

Monday’s Musings 3: the true meaning of Christmas

Hey guys,
Steve here.

Christmas is here, whether we like it or not. Christmas, the great holiday it is, brings family time, great food, and cheerful music, a smile to every one’s face, presents, and most importantly the birth of Jesus Christ. I often find myself forgetting that last, but most important part of Christmas that defines its true meaning. I’m not what you’d call a religious person, however I still believe in god, go to church, and know Christ for who he is.
This not-so religiousness is most likely the reason why I find myself thinking that Christmas is only a time to spend with your family, eat great things, sing cheerful songs, and give to people… however I am remotely comforted by the thought that I’m not alone.
Proof of my theory is that people shorten the word “Christmas” with an abbreviation that leads me to believe that people who use it have forgotten, if only temporarily, the true meaning of Christmas. The particular abbreviation I am talking about is one I’m sure you have used, and that I’ve used as well. “Xmas,” although a very simple and seemingly harmless way to write “Christmas,” is very wrong, if you think about it (I didn’t even think about it until a few days ago when it was brought up at my church). When you write Xmas, little do you know that by putting “x” instead of “Christ,” you are basically Xing Christ’s name out of Christmas, this being the reason I refuse to use this particular abbreviation; the Christ in Christmas helps me remember the true meaning of Christmas, why this holiday is celebrated in the first place, and the truly remarkable man born on that day, over 2000 years ago.
So each year, as you shop, sing and listen to great songs of happiness, eat lots of tasty things, decorate, and spend time with your family, pause a moment to remember the true meaning of Christmas, just as I have to do 99% of the time.

Thanks for reading,
Type you later,
Steve.

updates and some devastating news

Hey guys,
Steve here.

For the first time in… well I don’t know how long, I have some bad news. This isn’t just bad news that will affect me; it will affect a lot of you guys, and bring some great disappointment.
For some reason, my computer has broken. It’s not the average virus or blue screen; nope, my hard drive stopped spinning. It turns on, makes some weird noises, and then just stops all together. I’m thinking that the hard drive is stuck… and if that’s the case, and my dad has the time, knowledge, tools, and is willing to, he might be able to open up the computer and adjust the drive if that’s the issue. If not, I will have to use the netbook, another smaller and slower computer but one that I can use. Fortunately, that problem will be easy to fix for me.
You might not think this affects you, but it does. For one, I will definitely not be doing the podcast episode on Saturday. I am using my school computer, and this does not have the game I was going to do, and nor does it have administrative privileges for my account. In addition, I can’t download dropbox, so the file would not be uploaded. Fortunately, due to dropbox uploading everything you put in the folder, if my computer’s hard drive were to be beyond repair, the site files would still be safe and uploaded.
Also, due to my computer being broken, you and I can forget stranded for now anyway. It will definitely not be released in seven days, unless a miracle just so happened to occur. If my hard drive can’t be restored, the release of stranded will be pushed back way further because I’ll have to restart.
As for me, I cannot play swamp any longer… so that is also disappointing.

On a better note, today was the last full day of school before winter break. I’m not sure why, and definitely not complaining, but we have two early release days (tomorrow and Friday). In addition, I won’t have to go to all my classes each day either. Tomorrow I have to go to choir, math, social studies, and English, while on Friday I go to Spanish, orchestra, science, and then back to English. I don’t think we’ll be doing much work, so I guess I’d better charge up my book reader and download some nice interesting thrillers.
Even though the schedules are flipped around tomorrow and Friday, I really don’t care. I just want those two days of school to be done and out of the way–because once school is over with, the wait until Christmas will be a lot less agonizing.
On other news, my parents have started Christmas shopping. It’s not bad now… but once there are gifts under the tree that I bump into, it will be very tempting, I’m sure of it. On the bright side, that will only last a few days.
As a final note, I hope you all liked my Monday’s Musings post. I know that quite a few of you liked the part about the “messed up fur advisories.” That was something I added just to put some humor in that post.

Thanks for reading,
Type you later,
Steve.
P.S.
I’m glad I got the broken computer news out on this blog post, because even though it was important, it also helped with some of the frustration and anger that I had because the computer broke. And now don’t you see why I love writing so much?

Monday’s Musings 2: To Be Like My Cat For Just One Day… Do I Really Want That?

Hey guys,
Steve here.

Often times, I wish nothing more than to be like my cat. Small; impervious to the world around me, living a stress free lifestyle. Though I know that as a cat I wouldn’t have the good parts of the human life, but nor would I have the bad parts.
Although the stress of the past week has fallen off my shoulders (I’ve turned in my history project, finished the Spanish exam, and got that choir concert out of the way), there’s still another long week of school to get through. If only I could be a cat for a day…
The pros to being a cat are as follows:
1. Their only stresses are “when am I going to get more food?” “My gosh… I want out of this room I’m trapped in!”, “Errrrrrrrg! Won’t these people stop petting me already?”, “Dang it, there’s no soft bed for me to lie on.”, and, for some cats anyway *puts emphasis on his cat Bell*, “Ah man, there’s nothing to play with! *swishes tail threw the air in frustration*.”
2. If I were a cat, I wouldn’t have a care in the world. News and world events could happen, and I’d just meow in disgust at the urgent-sounding talkers.
3. I would be small–so, if I ever wanted alone time (not that I don’t get any in our current world, but there’s always going to be someone calling my name at one point or another), I could just go hide in a secret out-of-the-way place.
3. I could run real fast, and for long distances.
4. I could eat, drink, sleep, and do whatever else I wanted to do at any time of the day or night.
5. There would be no responsibilities; no one telling me what to do all the time.
6. I could lay around being lazy all day, and nobody would make any unnecessary remarks. (We are all lazy some times)

As with all luxuries, there are some major catches. They’re as follows:
1. As a cat, I’d be looked down upon by every human being or other living creature in the world, except rodents, small insects, and fish.
2. As a cat, I would miss out on great family moments. I would not participate in any traditions, memories, or celebrations.
3. As a cat, unless a show called “Dog With a Blog” that plays on Disney channel were real, and happened to cats too, I couldn’t do my favorite thing, writing and blogging.
4. As a cat, I would drink and eat the same things every single day.
5. As a cat, I couldn’t reach out for help. Therefore, if I was unlucky and got adopted into an abusive family, there would be no way out for me.
6. I couldn’t communicate. Thus, if I was feeling ill, and it turned out to be serious, I couldn’t just ask my mom or dad to take me to the doctor.
7. When people did get a hold of me, I could never tell them to “let me go” or “stop touching me.” This is especially bad for my cat Bell, who never expresses her frustrations by sound.
8. If I were lost or in danger, I couldn’t just pull out the good ol’ cell and call up Mom or dad and ask them to help me.
9. I could never check the weather forecast before I went outside. So if baseball sized hail or a tornado or even just rain were coming, harsh luck to me. God, I wish there were a cat weather forecast on weatherbug.com. Because then if I were a cat, it could issue “messed up fur advisories” that would tell me when not to go outside so I would not get caught in the rain or other fur ruining stuff that would be coming down.
10. I would be so vulnerable out on my own. If a big dog comes out of some old rundown yard, I’m done.

Basically, even though I get stressed (and I’m almost positive you do too), I would rather stay human. Because after all, the cons out way the pros, and a life with lots of good things and some stress would be better than a life with a lot more convenience but a lot more stress and danger. Of course, at least for me, there will always be times I forget this, and wish as I said I did at the beginning of the post that I could be a cat, if only for one day.

Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

An overdo update… well sort of

Hey guys,
Steve here.

When writing a blog post, I often find myself looking through it and trying to polish my writing. It seems as though I’m a perfectionist when it comes to my writing, even if I don’t pay much attention to spelling. That is probably the main, and only reason I haven’t blogged recently–the limit on time would rush me in the post writing process, and it would come out to me as being crappy.
I did quite a lot the past week; there were lots of things on my mind, lots of things I had to get done. I don’t know whether I had a stressful or exciting week; both of those emotions played a big role in my past few days. I guess that I’ll unfold my week for you guys in chronological order.
Monday:
That was one of the least active days of the past week. I was disappointed that my school district held classes, but none the less I was still thankful for that unexpected 3 day weekend. One thing I did that day was post my Monday’s Musings post, which I hope you liked by the way.
Tuesday:
Tuesday was when the stress started rolling in. On Tuesday, I found out that I had several written things I had to do for my history project. A title page, a process paper, and my topic… what I was doing (type of presentation)… and who was in my group. I normally prefer to work alone on these kinds of things so as not to slow me down or cause me to receive a bad grade because of miscommunication. Well I had to get those turned in by Thursday, and not to mention the project is due Monday. Thank God I’m almost done with it.
Besides the project, there was the choir concert. I was looking forward to it, however it added something to my to-do list. And, to top that off, now that I’m almost done with the history project, the thought that I have to work on Stranded is slowly creeping its way tback to the front of my mind.
So I guess that with all that stuff going on, I just haven’t had the time nor had I the motivation to blog the past few days. Speaking of which, let me tell you about the rest of my week.
Wednesday:
On Wednesday, I forgot the NJHS meeting. Oh well, I got the hour sheet to the teacher, and all she did was act surprised… but I wasn’t kicked out. Unexpected, but none the less good for my college resume.
Thursday:
On Thursday, nothing much happened. I was relaxing in the bath, listening to another episode of We’re Alive, an audio drama about the zombie Apocalypse I remember mentioning on this blog, when I heard of a book that caught my attention. It’s called the Enemy, and is written by Charlie Higson. The book is about a mysterious disease that suddenly strikes everyone over the age of 16. They develop huge pustules, blisters, and boils, soon after they go mad and turn into zombies (eating kids and the like). And finally, they die… in a way that I’d rather not mention on this blog. I think you could read it because although you get a feel for how the disease progresses (from going mad to dieing), it’s not the most gruesome book you’ll ever read. And don’t tell me you’ve never read a gruesome book in your life.
Back on topic, let me tell you about Friday:
Friday was Friday the 13th. That sort of snuck up on me, but luckily nothing bad happened. I just remember waking up yesterday going “Wait… is it Friday the 13th?”
Also, we had a church event with my youth group. There’s only about 5 or 6 people in there, and all of them are fun. We hung out, hid, ate nachos and s’mores, drank hot chocolate, and generally had a good time. It was over around 11, and I was pretty tired.
Today:
So today started unexpectedly. I was awakened by my bedroom light, and my dad telling me that I had to go with him to take my “fat cat” to the vet. He had to go because he has a flee alergy and licked his lower back raw.
Anyway, I was genuinely grumpy that I was awakened so early for that reason, but I went anyway. After the vet trip, I spent the rest of the day at home, playing swamp and the like. Tonight was the exciting part, though.
Me, my sister, and my mom got to see catching fire! I won’t give the details, in case you guys didn’t see it yet, but I will tell you it was good. Best of all there was descriptive audio (you’d put on a headphone, and listen to the lady describe what was going on in the movie. So, me and my sister got the real hunger games experience!
Well I guess that about wraps up tonight’s post, because I’m getting tired, and have said all I needed to say plus some extra :). I hope you enjoyed this post, and have a great rest of your weekend!

Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

Monday musings 1: Why promote a blog anyway

Hey guys,
Steve here.

I have been blogging for two and a half years now, if not longer than that; yet I still only have on average 13 views per day, 100 followers, and only 8600 views, even after two and a half years. So why do I keep blogging? Why not just say “Oh… this is horrible traffic, and I give up?”
I could very well be doing that if I wanted to… but I don’t. For one, my 8600 views and 100 followers are good enough for me. For two, I didn’t come here to get staggering traffic amounts; I came here to talk about my life, and for the opportunity to write on a regular bases. And even if I stopped receiving followers, or people decided to quit following my blog, and I was blogging for other people, I could still think: there are still people listening.
The small amount of people reading this helps me if anything; after all, It’s better to have a small audience of people you care about than a staggering number of followers whom you don’t know.

You might be wondering why I started off the blog post that way. It has to do with blog promotion, and why I will never attempt to do it. There are so many blog posts (on Google, blogger, word press, live journal etc etc) that talk about how to promote your blog. I must say, that most of these people know quite a bit, and I’m sure this stuff would work well if I tried it.
“Why don’t you try it?” you might be wondering. Well because I think promoting my blog would be a waste of time. Now if you other bloggers want to promote your blog, you go right ahead. Heck, I could even help you get some views, but I myself will not be doing it. In my opinion, a blog like mine wasn’t meant to get 50 billion views per day. A blog like mine wasn’t meant to end up #1 on Google or anything like that. My site was meant to be a sort of notebook, journal if you will… a place where I could talk about my life and I knew anyone who read it would be listening to what I had to say.
So basically, I think that blog promotion is only for those news blogs, tech blogs, or government and/or enterprise sites. Of course, there are others out there who blog like me and will continue to promote their blog, and I wish them the best of luck.

Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve

life updates, and a new blog development

Hey guys,
Steve here.

I’m starting something new on my blog. It will happen every Monday, and is called Monday’s musings. On the Monday’s musings post, I will share my thoughts, opinions, and rants. These will not be life updates; although life updates will continue. Basically, a Monday’s Musings post will be for my thoughts and rants that have no part in my life update posts, and wouldn’t make sense in them. I hope you look forward to these new posts!

On to some other things, I did the podcast episode 15 Friday, and will do episode 16 today. As for that q9 series I was doing, I will have to do it differently. Instead of doing worlds now, I will do it level by level, but there are only 6 levels left. It will not be the same thing every time; the amount of action and excitement will increase. Well, I guess that gives me a game of the day for at least the next 5 or 6 episodes. Also, while still on the topic of pod casting, I will try to create a feed burner for the podcast. I hope it works so you can subscribe to the cast with a feed reader or something.

As for my life, I had a fun weekend. Although I didn’t go many places (due to the ice storm that I will tell you about later in the post), I did other fun things. For example, I did the podcast, baked cookies and a cookie cake with my mom, hung out with dad yesterday, and talked to friends on Skype and wrote this blog post today.
Although I appreciated the unexpected 3 day weekend, I don’t want to go to school tomorrow. That will bring back the stress, the work, the projects… and everything else that goes along with having to go to school. On a positive note, winter break is in two weeks. I seriously can’t wait for that! Oh and by the way, I finally composed a Christmas list, so I bet my parents and the rest of my family are happy.
On another note, my old vision teacher, and a family friend named Dawn has created a really great blog. I think you should check it out. The address is
http://dawnadams.org.

As for the winter storm, I definitely did not get ripped off. That storm was pretty extreme–it dumped 1 to 3 inches of ice and sleet, and from Thursday night to about an hour ago I think, temperatures did not go above 32. I caught a recording of this for the interesting segment of episode 15 of the podcast, and I also got one on the natural events page.

Well I guess that about concludes today’s post. I’ll be back tomorrow night with the first Monday’s Musings post. Please comment on tomorrows post when it comes out and tell me what you think.

Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

Latest news concerning Steven D: Winter storm causes extreme excitement, a strange thing or 2 about school, and out with the sister… temporarily anyway

Hey guys,
Steve here.

As I’m sure you know by reading my blog post about a week and a half ago, the winter storm that was expected to hit our area turned out to be a complete rip-off. The most recent one, which is supposed to begin shortly, has actually turned out to be worse than I last said in my Tuesday entry. Now, my weather radio (see the weather radio forecasts page for Update 2 which will be posted around 10:00 this evening), has told people “do not travel unless it is an emergency.” Not only that, but 1/2 inches of sleet, and 1/2 inches of ice accumulation are expected over night. Also, if it doesn’t sound obvious to you by now, there is also a winter storm warning in affect. Although the warning only extends through 6:00 tomorrow evening, temperatures will remain below freezing through mid day Sunday, and another round of wintery precipitation is expected Saturday through Sunday morning.
Besides weather, my sister has gone to Austin for the weekend. She is going down for an O&M (orientation & mobility) thing with our O&M teacher (I’ve been wrapped up in my life to know anything more about the trip). All this means for me, however, is that Libby will be gone for 3 days; piece and quiet at last :))).

In the title of this post, I recall saying something about a “strange thing or 2 about school.” What I meant by this was my progress report. As of right now, my grade in math exceeds that of orchestra. The math grade, 100, strangely tops the orchestra grade of 89. Although both grades are good, I still can’t believe that I’m making a better grade in one of the hardest core subjects than I am in some easy (just because it’s easy, doesn’t mean it’s not fun) alective class like orchestra.
While I’m still on the subject of school, I am proud to say that I’ve started my National History Day Project. I’m doing it over the underground railroad (the theme is rights and responsibilities). I will definately finish it by the due date (December 13, I think), and after that is out of the way I will do Stranded.

In the podcasting part of my life, I only have one more make-up episode to complete–Episode 15. Of course, I have episode 17 to do on Saturday, but that is a scheduled episode, and not one I have to make up. Also, as episode 14 was recorded, expect me to use my sony ICD-PX720 recorder to record most of the podcast, except of course the game of the day section.
By the way, while still on the topic of the podcast, I have all but one of the remaining episodes of 2013 completely planned out. Do not, however, think I’m going to spoil anything.

On another note, I recorded and submitted that review for main menu (the radio show that reviews products for blind people). And although this review was submitted Wednesday night, I still have yet to receive confirmation that the review is going to be included in this week’s edition of main menu.

Finally, I am still editing the website. The navigation menu is all kinds of messed up; links to certain pages such as blog test 2012 appearing twice in the menu. Fortunately for you however, I am working diligently to fix this issue. I hope you enjoy the new page names and site revisions! For more information about what I’m doing, see the site news page (I don’t know the exact url, so you’ll have to use my navigation menu (that page is in there).

Thank you for reading this post, I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

P.s. I got my 100th follower! Thank you so much Nate $mith for being follower 100, and all you other wonder people for being follower 1 through 99!