a good but slightly tiring week

Hey Guys,
Steve here.
For the most part, it’s been a good week, the exception to that being school, of course. Though it’s not been too stressful, I could gladly take another break. I was pretty tired last week, though I can’t really complain because that’s mostly my fault. Despite the three day weekend we had, I’ve been tired all day, and my head’s been hurrting a little.
With the exception of those minor obstacles, my last week went by fast, and was quite enjoyable. To start off, I’ve read some pretty awesome books. As I said I would in my last post, I read Cress, the 3rd book in the Lunor Chronicals by Marisa Meyer. Since it was so long, and I’m a bit of a slow reader, I just finished it yesterday, and have now began the Ender Wiggin series. For some reason, this is the 3rd consecutive science fiction book I’ve read, and they’ve all had the same theme–outer space. I’m not speciffically looking for this type of book to read, though the ones I’ve so happened to stumble upon have immediately got my attention. When I finish this one, I’ll check out the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, because Danny has been quoting it, and told me that I would love it. And from some of the quotes he’s shared with me, I think I will. I don’t think this one’s a book, but an audio drama and/or a movie. Either way, I’ll subject myself to that story, whatever form of media it’s in.
Moving on, my friend from church came over this weekend, which is precisely the reason why I was unable to record my podcast, for those of you who follow that.
On a sort of related note, I’ve been learning Bach’s Minuet in G Major, and for the most part have the song memorised. There are still a few parts I need to work out, but I think that I might be able to let you hear me play it in Sunday’s podcast.
As for weather, it’s not really been too harsh on us lately. Tuesday and Wednesday of last week were cold and rainy, but after the sun came out on Thursday, it improved. Today, in fact, it got up to 70, something it hasn’t done since… well I can’t remember. But tomorrow it will be 10 degrees cooler, and another 10 degrees cooler on Thursday with rain. So much for pleasant weather…
On the technical side of things, I haven’t done much in the way of programming, except a small text to speech application. This application has actually enspired me to create some audio productions with the all to famous microsoft Sam, that good old low quality text to speech voice that came with the long discontinued windows XP. Perhaps I’ll air a few of them in future podcast episodes.
Speaking of the podcast, I know it’s been 2 days since Sunday, when I was supposed to record, but I wasn’t about to podcast while I had a friend over. Though he went home late yesterday afternoon, I hadn’t yet downloaded the game I was going to demonstrate, so I had to download and familiarise myself with it. I’ll record the episode and have it up tonight, though.
That concludes tonight post. I’ll blog you later.
Thanks for reading,
Type you later,
Steve.

A wonderful birthday party

Hey guys,
Steve here.
Yes, I know it’s Monday, and that usually means Monday’s Musings. Monday’s Musings 17 will still happen, but it will be next week–I have a lot to say in this update, and don’t currently have a good enough topic for the Monday’s Musings post for this week.
Unfortunately, I must start off this post with some bad news; not crushing news (to you guys anyway), and not news that will impact this blog and how it runs, but none the less bad news. So I was telling my dad about the software I’m creating, and he informed me that he doesn’t want me releasing it. I can understand where he’s coming from, he only is doing this for my good, but none the less I wasn’t very happy about it. I should’ve told him about my software developing dream 2 years ago when I first got it, so maybe then I woulddn’t have gotten so deep into creating software and wanting to do it.
I’ll admit, that after learning that I wasn’t supposed to release software, I was a bit upset Thursday night, and decided to quit work on my software. This decision still stands, and until I can release them, my programs will be safely tucked away in my private dropbox folder.
Moving on to better, less depressing news, Last weekend had to be one of the best birthday parties I’ve ever had. We went to the lake as promised, and though my sister brought her friend, two of my best friends Oscar (the one from church) and Joseph (a friend from school) got to come.
To start it off, Friday was an all out good day. Besides school, I got a great storm recording (that I will share at the end of the post and on the natural events page), that contained some hail, and a really good close up of wind, rain, and lots of lightening. And yes, my cat was in an attention seaking mood that day, so he meowed at the end of the recording, and of course I had to meow back… lol.
Anyway, after catching that recording, my friends came over, and we hung out until it was time to make the hour long drive to my grand parents’ lake house. When we got there, we had a dinner of hotdogs and chips. Then, my dad and one of my friends went out fishing, and I fell asleep very early, so I don’t know what all the rest of them were doing.
On Saturday, I awoke to the refreshing smell of pancakes, and ended up having 10 of the things. Oscar and I were trying to see who could eat the most, and I out ate him 10 to 6. Moving on, after breakfast, we went fishing for a while, and spent the rest of the day riding the pontune, and playing and having a good time.
For dinner that night, we had hamburgers, and then a fantastic tasting cookie cake. And before I knew it, it was time to go home.
Although that party ended with me getting a pretty painful and red sunburn, it was well worth it. Getting to go to the lake house isn’t something we do often, so when we do go I try to have as much fun as possible–and my birthday party was no exception. I had lots of fun, and look forward to the next time we go.
Since we got home around 8:00 Saturday night, nothing worth blogging about happened for the rest of the night. But on Sunday, we had pretty much a full day of church. You know the singing practice I was going to last Sunday right after I wrote that post? That was to practice for 5th Sunday singing, which occured yesterday afternoon. Someone from church and I sung “He Knows My Name” for the 5th Sunday Singing (It’s up to my mom whether or not she posts the link to the video in the comments). But the reason we were at church all day was because there was morning survice, a potluck lunch (I had meat loaf, fajitas, a ham sandwich, spaghetti, and chocolate cake), and right after that was the 5th sing service, where people would either play or sing a christian song in front of all the people in the church.
Besides that, nothing else happened this weekend. On the bright side, I recorded episode 19 of the Steve n d podcast on Thursday night, so you can go to the podcasts page if you want to listen to it.
As for today, it was a normal school day. Tomorrow and Wednesday, however, we will be having staar testing (state of texas assessment of accadimic readiness), over math and English. I’m not sure which day is which; but I know the only test I feel nervice about is the math one. English I feel pretty confident about, but math… well not so much. I think I’ll do fine though. I haven’t failed that class all year; I haven’t made anything below a B minus in there.
As a final note, we could have some more potentially severe weather mid week. And the most promising day for bad weather just happens to be April 3, or severe weather day as I like to call it. Will April 3 continue to live up to its name? Will we get a massive tornado outbreak? Or will something happen and there are no storms that day or the ones that do occur aren’t severe? Well we’ll just have to see, I guess.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this post, and sorry (yes I am sorry) there was no Monday’s musings post. Don’t worry, they will resume next week, It’s just that I needed to get this post published, and couldn’t think of a musing topic. Just letting you know for future reference, that kind of stuff might actually happen in the future.
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.
p.s. I didn’t forget the storm recording, here it is:
download
or listen to it online:

tlc

Hey you guys,
Steve here.

If you are wondering what “TLC” stands for, it is Texas Lions Camp.

This week was a fun one. Camp went by pretty fast, and there were lots of fun activities. This might be a long post, so sit back and enjoy it…

On sunday, we drove up. Same as last year (see the July 2012 archive to see last year’s trip). It was getting to know everyone, seeing old friends, opening night etc etc.
Monday was the first day of activities. Since I was one of the older campers, I got a block class which is like a school elective but lasts 2 hours. There was water front (a water aerobics class), ceramics (you know, the class where you make clay stuff), music, radio, and I think that’s about it. I chose ceramics, which actually turned out pretty fun. So, after getting up at 7 in the morning, eating breakfast, cleaning up the cabbin we stayed in, and going to the usual morning activity of Flag Pole, that is where I went.
Monday was the day we made our project, and mine was a cat.
After block class, there was lunch. I shouldn’t have to explain that in detail (it was just lunch). Next, was archery. My first shot was a bulls eye, however every one after that hit the grass beyond the target.
Next, was rest period. That was from 2 to 4, and it was basicly self explanitory–we would have rest time. After that was r&a, (recreation and athlettics; a PE type of activity). After that was swimming, then dinner. For our night activity on Monday’s night activity, there was a carnival, where you’d play games, earn tickets, and buy some food and drinks. I got a stick of cotton candy that was almost a foot wide (and didn’t finish it), popcorn, and fruit punch which my sister shook and sent it all over me.
After that, we went to bed.
Tuesday morning went similar to Monday, except we played games in ceramics while our clay projects dried. Instead of having archery at 1:00, we had ropes. I guess it was low ropes on Tuesday, because we just played games.
After ropes and then rest period, we had horses. The weird thing about the horse I rode, was that it caughed. I literally never new that horses could caugh.
After horses, we had swimming.

Tuesday night was pretty unusual, because we did camp out. Camp out is where we go to a camp sight, eat hobo packs, sleep outside, and get smores. Instead of eating our usual dinner, that is what we did.
Wednesday morning, we had to come back from camp out. We ate breakfast, skipped the cabbin cleaning (and instead took showers), skipped flag pole, and went to ceramics. That day, we made crayon projects where we drew a picture, and melted crayons with a hair drier to make a pattern. Mine was meant to look like curtains opening on stage to reveal a kitten, but it ended up looking like a kitten trying to escape a volcano.
After that, we had archery and lunch and rest period again, R&A, swimming, Dinner, than our night activity.
The night activity was night court, in which one of the staff at camp acted like judge Judie. Campers would get to file clames on there councilors and say they were doing bad things to them. Then, the defense attorney would try to save them from punishment, the prosecutor would come out and try to proove them guilty, a witness would sometimes come out after that and also proove them guilty, and then the jury would vote on whether they were guilty or not guilty. If they were guilty, the judge would give them a punishment similar to what they did. For example a councilor named Colton was clamed to have thrown a camper in a trash can, and eat more smores at camp out than he should’ve. For this, his punishment was to be put in a trash can, and he had to look like a smore since he liked them so much. They dumped chocolate, crushed gram crackers, and put melted marshmallow all over him. Oh yeah, it was said he put the camper in a moldy trash can, so he had to put a piece of moldy bread in his mouth, and then ware some on his face.
After the councilors would be punished, they were sent to jail.

After getting a good laugh at that activity, it was once again time for us to go to bed.

Thursday was the last day of activities. The morning went similar to Monday and Tuesday, except we fired our clay projects, and listen to the radio class as they did senior speeches, where the 16 year-old soon-to-be graduates of tlc talked about there experiences as a camper. After that, we had lunch, ropes (I climbed the 40 foot rock wall and hit the top), rest period, our final R&A, swimming, dinner, then a dance. I danced with about 4 people, all of them campers and councilors from Libby’s cabbin.
After that, we went to bed.
Friday, was just the day we packed. We didn’t do much, besides picnics, the talent show, rested, and ate lots of pizza. The only big thing was the award saramony, which was at night. I got the funniest camper award.

After that, it was time to go home.

That is all I did at camp. Hope you enjoyed.

Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

updates and future plans

my cat hacks up a hairball, a wasp gets in my house, my dad takes me on a bike ride, and my mom takes me swimming, find out how this all went down, and how I got my cat to be okay again, it's pretty intresting!

Hey you guys,
Steve again.

I’ve had a pretty good week so far. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything worth blogging about until today, when 2 rather not fun things popped up and I did something else besides relaxing last night.

So yeah, all I did was relax sunday, monday, tuesday, and for the most part of wednesday. 2 of those mornings, I stayed up until 2:30 and 3:30 playing my game, swamp. By the way, I just so happen to be a level 14 on the game, and found out the game has graphics.
Here are the graphics that I know:
green-grass
brown-durt
a moving t is a zombie and the purple sircle is you.
On another note, let’s talk about yesterday and this morning.
First, I went swimming at my grandparents’ house for about 4:30 to 9. It was pretty fun–I swam, ate chicken and fried potatos, and had a nice long conversation with my papa Dutch about space, weather, and just random stuff. Since he was an air traffic controller, I guess he knows about that stuff. He even told me that the speed of sound was 756 knots.
Well, after that fun little evening, I came home and the nasty thing happened.
My dad came home around 11, let my cat in, and he started hacking. me and dad thought he was hocking up a hairball, and sure enough it stopped. When he came in however, he sat in the middle of the floor like he wasn’t feeling good. It’s not like my cat to just sit there in the middle of the floor like that, so I picked him up and brought him to my bed. There, he started the hacking again, and I did something I’m sure noone I know would ever do to save there life–I squeezed him. I was actually glad to have to clean that up, because I knew my cat was done hacking. I mean, he’d been doing it for an hour, so I knew I had to help him get it out so he could propperly meow and purr again.
So, thanks to me, he’s normal this morning…and feeling well.

The next thing that happened was the 4th wasp in my house. It watched over me while I was eating, until dad killed it.

Other than that, me and dad went on another bike ride this morning, and ran a few errands and hung out. For the rest of the day, I just plan to hang out with good ol’ dad and maybe go to my friends (I don’t know, just about a 30% chance).
For further future plans, I don’t know what I will do tomorrow, probably the same things as today, and Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, I really don’t know what I will do. Thursday, we might go to the lake for the 4th of July, and we’ll still be there on Friday. Saturday July 6, I will definantly blog, because you won’t get to read my awesome award winning blog posts for a whole 5 or even 6 days!

Last, I will try to do a video recording of me playing swamp, and it will also be audio. Hopefully I can include music… I don’t know when that will happen or even if it will. I will for sure edit this post when I record that, so read back on it often.

Thanks for reading,
Type you later,
Steve

Happy 2nd birthday to the blog!

Hey you guys,
Steve again

Can you believe it? Two whole years of this blog have come and gone just like that! Makes you wonder how fast the next several years to come will pass. Huh?

Well, I have as usual to tell you an anual report. If you would like to compare last year’s to this one, click here to view last year’s anual report, along with a few ore posts.

Well, this year’s report is as follows.

  • 4902 views total
  • 44 followers
  • 654 blog posts
  • 20 pages
  • 22 blog categories
  • 72 comments
  • 953 search tags

This website has undergone some major changes. If you’ve been in touch with the news page, you know that the site got a real domain (at this time last year, the site was sssjournal.wordpress.com), and that I was also able to get a site upgrade for audio. Another thing, I quit the how my day went posts, since I thought they were quite repetitive and you guys didn’t enjoy them as much. To proove my theory, the day I announced I was quitting them I received 3 followers.
Like I said last year, I amsstill getting posative feedback from you readers. Just remember, keep reading, and I’ll keep posting!

Thanks for reading,
type you later,
steve.

p.s
the blog’s birthday also happens to be on one of my best friend’s birthday! So, wish them both a happy birthday, and have a wonderful day!

how my day went

Today was my first day in austin. Well, when I got up this morning, me and my mom just packed my bags, and I played on the computer and ate nachoes until it was time to go. We didn’t leave until Libby, who was at her friends, got dropped off at the house. She wanted to come with us to see the counsilers when I got dropped off.
At around 11:15, we finally left the house. It was a long 3 and a half hour drive, and we stopped for lunch when we got to Austin. After that, we finished the drive to the school, which only took about 3 minutes. When we got there, we had to walk quite a way in the humid hot and thick air to get to the health center, where we would sign in and get my hair checked for lice. When we got there, I had a nurse check my hair, and almost fell asleep because I was tired, and it felt good. After that, the 3 of us got back in the car, and drove to my dorm. After getting there, my mom showed me to my dorm room, and the two of us unpacked while Libby socialised with the counsilers in my dorm.
After I was finally unpacked, the first question I asked was “Where is the computer room?”
Shortly after that, my mom and sister left, and I got on the computer, and posted a blog post. Finally, I just went in the kitchen and socialised with the counsiler Misty, and then ate dinner. When dinner was done, I just got back on the computer for a while, and socialised with some friends that I made. I can’t tell you there names, because I don’t know how to spell them.
After talking and playing on the computer, there was a meeting that described the rules and schedule. This lasted about about 20 minutes, because my friends couldn’t be quiet. I admit, that I tried to start pillo wars with them, but that’s not the point. I still blaim the roudyness on them.
Finally, the meating ended, and I got to post my blog entry. That is all I did today.

how my day went

Today, I got up and went to school like normal. Then, I came home and played on the computer for a while, until it stopped playing sounds. After that, I just updated my i-pod to iOS6, then ate dinner. After that, I just played with my i-pod, exploring the new features, until I went upstairs and fell asleep for a while. After that, my mom came home from work with my sister’s friend, and we all just hung out, and then I played on my i-pod before finally posting my blog entry. That is all I did today.

how my day went

Last night after I posted my journal entry, the three of us had went outside to sleep in tents. Well, this morning, I was awakened by the sound of the rain as it pattered down on the roof of my tents. The girls slept in one tent, and I slept in the other. Well, after waking up, we all got up and had breakfast. Then, we watched full house, until me and Libby home. When we got home, I played on the computer and listened to my book off and on until I ate lunch, then I did more of the same until my dad got home. Then, I laid in bed for a while listening to my book, before playing on the computer and watching tv for a while, I ate dinner. After dinner, I posted my blog. That is all I did today.

how my day went

Today, I got up very early because my mom and dad were at work. When I woke up, I just played with the kitties for a while, laid on the couch, then ate breakfast. I spent the rest of the morning playing on the computer, listening to my book, taking a shower, then getting ready for goalball. Then, I ate lunch, and hung out with my sister until my dad got home. Then, I just listened to my book until it was time for goalball. Me, Dad, and Libby went to goalball, had practice for 2 hours, then me and dad dropped libby off at her friend Madison’s house. Not to much later, I joined my sister and her friend at her house while my dad went home to lay down, and the treo of us ate some burgers and fries for dinner. Then, we spent the rest of the evening watching full house, before I posted my journal. That is all I did today.