The intresting and exciting recent happenings of Steven D: tech discoveries, new projects, and junk food

Hey guys,
Steve here.

A lot has happened since Thursday night. This might seem surprising; it being the weekend and my sister and dad being gone. Well, all things said in my blog happened, and I mean everything. And yes, I did have lots of junk food last weekend.
So, let’s go day by day and unfurl these recent happenings and discoveries one by one, so you can take it in and gasp in awe at the epic things brought to you exclusively from the deep depths of the awesome, genius, and creative brain of Severe Storm Steve.

First, Friday night. On Friday night, I started work on Stranded Part 3. I haven’t come up with a title, nor have I come up with a sufficient synopsis or preview for you readers to get insight on this gamebook. Be expecting that soon, as I get deeper into the game.
On Saturday, that was a very lazy day. The more exciting tech discoveries happened yesterday. But before you scroll to the next paragraph, please read what happened on Saturday, just so you don’t miss any part of this post. :).
Well you know how I talked about junk food? Well there was some major junk food eating on my part Saturday. In the morning, breakfast consisted of donuts and coffee. For lunch, I had a nice high class plate of pizza rolls. For dinner, came the fancy; ultimate dinner for the president of the United States, frozen bean burritos! After that, I had a first class bottle of chocolate milk and a rare; exceptionally good candy called M&Ms.
On Sunday, I took out an item on my to-do list for November! I actually fixed my computer! You know how I’ve been looking for registry and disc cleaners for the last several months, well it turns out that indows disc defragmenter was the trick! What took me 4 months to do is something I could’ve done in 15 minutes! Okay, you can laugh at me now, I give you permission, because frankly I was laughing at me too! 🙂
Not only did I fix my computer yesterday, but I also did the exciting tech discovery! Are you ready?
I turned my iPhone into a wireless microphone for my computer!!! Here’s how I did it:
1. I purchased senstic pocket audio for $1.99, and put it on my Iphone.
2. I downloaded the free pocket control app for my windows computer from senstic.com.
3. I downloaded bonjour printing service from senstic.com as well.
4. I made sure my iphone and computer were both connected to my wi-fi.
5. I then allowed the pocket control port and stuff through my fire wall.
6. I ran both apps and it connected! Now I can record with them!
In english (by that I mean for non-tech users), this means that I could put my computer on the kitchen table, go upstairs and into my bedroom with my iphone, and if my computer is recording the phone will act as a microphone for my computer!
Moving on to today, it was an average Monday. There was school, and chillaxing, and then writing this blog post. Tomorrow, we are supposed to get such a strong cold front, it will bring the high temperatures in Texas into the upper 40’s, and the overnight lows ranging from the lower 20’s to 31 degrees!

I guess that concludes this blog post. Expect more life updates in the future. Also, expect clearer stranded updates, and later on a good summary. Also, the podcasts will come up soon, so expect a preview of it in one of those episodes!

Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

Frequent Blog Update #3… an extremely awesome tech discovery and Latest Life happenings of Steven D

Hey you guys,

Steve Here.

How did you like that blog post title? I hope you liked it a lot.

As my post said, I discovered an extremely awesome thing about my computer. It’s called windows speech recognition macros. Skipping all the techie stuff that is libel to turn non-techie followers and readers away from my blog, I’ll just tell you what the thing does in English terms.
Well, as you know, speech recognition itself will let you control your computer with your voice. Speech recognition macros is a way to enhance speech recognition so that you can make custom commands and use them to your liking. For example, I made my computer have a conversation with me, and best of all I recorded it. You can listen to it… non-techie people; there is no tech talk in this recording. So, here you go:

Listen offline

I hope you enjoy!

Now, switching topics, Let me tell you about my recent life happenings.
On Sunday, I had church. It was your average Sunday school, and service. Except one thing: we were like the “old people class at Sunday school” as quoted by some one at the church. Here we were, a whole bunch of teenagers chilling and drinking coffee.
Besides that, I also got my robot reference manual finished on Sunday, and Libby’s 5 friends left (In case I didn’t mention it in Saturday’s post my sister had friends over for a slumber party; it being her birthday weekend and all).
I didn’t do much else on Sunday, besides crashing for a bit, and Just hanging out really.
Yesterday, was when I found out that my computer could talk back to me. I went from not even knowing it could talk back to me (barely even knowing about speech recognition) at 9 in the morning to having sophisticated conversations with the machine. Please lord, whatever you do, don’t let me be the weird dude sitting in his office and having 5 hour long conversations with his computer about how the registry was acting up or how mad he got when his cat bit him or something. 🙂
So yeah, that is what I was doing on my free time Yesterday. I also had to get a hair cut, and a nice refreshing bottle of chocolate milk, but you know that’s a little beside the point.
As far as today goes, it was yet another school day. There was nothing much to talk about today.
Tomorrow, we’re supposed to get lots and lots of awesome rain. I can’t wait for that. Not only because we need that rain, but also because I like the sounds of rain. Here’s a little catchy poem I wrote about the forecast:

The forecast calls for rain,
this should help you grow your grain.
Rain is good for my brain,
though not for traveling by plain.
I like the pattering against my window pain,
but the dreary days drive me insane
Hope you enjoy my nice little forecast there…
Moving on, my mom’s cousin is coming to visit on Thursday, and I believe she’s staying for the weekend. We’re having a family get together on Sunday, partly because Libby’s birthday and the fact that my mom’s cousin will be here.
Also, I still have that upcoming orchestra concert, which my sister and dad will be missing because they’re flying to Florida for a goal ball tournament. Unlike mine, she gets to miss 2 or 3 days of school. Erg… why is she so lucky!
Although I kind of have to admit I’d rather go to school and get to attend my orchestra concert than miss two days and fail such an easy class.
Well, I guess that about wraps up today’s post. Talk to you soon.

Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

the Busy Life of Steven D

Hey guys,
Steve here.

Choir and orchestra concerts, sporting events, festivals, Halloween…

Okay so maybe I don’t have as much going on as you might’ve thought after reading the title of this post. I have been kind of busy this passed week though.

On Friday, I went to that goal ball tournament I told you I would be going to. I ended up playing on two teams because the Central Texas Avengers were short a player, and thus needed me to play for them. Of the games I played, (1 with the team I was origionally playing for and 2 with the Avengers), my team(s) won 2 of them. I can’t say that I did, because I was on a team of 3 or more people during the whole duration of the tournament. Here’s how the games went:
game 1–I played with Texas Goal ball, the team I was supposed to play with: we won.
game 2–I played with the Central Texas Avengers and we lost.
game 3–I played with the Avengers and we won.

So overall, if you ask me, I think we all did great. Now I’m sure you guys (being sited, or just craving for some form of media) are wanting the pics and video. I have already designed the goal ball 2013 page, and I could do 1 of 3 things, which I will sort out from nicest to meanest.
1–nicest: I could do all that work to get the picture code and video on to this post.
2–not too mean, not too nice: I could put the link for the page on this blog post.
3–making you do all the work: I could tell you to go to the nav bar and look for the page.

I pick the second choice. So, here’s the link:
page for goal ball tournament of 2013
Now, on to more important topics, Let’s talk about sports extravaganza.
When we arrived at the school for sports extravaganza on Saturday morning, it was really cold. Your’s truely, the sometimes full I am, chose to wear basketball shorts in 45 degree weather, with a 15 mile per hour wind blowing and the sun just barely coming up. I even to this day wonder why I had to do that.
Well anyway, after listening to the opening saramony, we started events. Instead of going on a long drawn out speech about the day, because I know that would bore you, I’ll just keep it short and simple.
I had standing long jump, 100 meter race, discus, lunch (that’s the best event ever), a goal ball demo for the audience that I participated in, 200 meter race, and shot put. As far as awards go, I got 3 gold and 2 silver metals. Impressing… right? 🙂
Now before I leave this topic, here’s a picture of me getting a first place award.
getting first place
Besides sports ex, I’ve been having quite a busy week. On Tuesday, my sister, mom and I went to my sister’s orchestra concert. It ended up sounding pretty good, but unfortunately I didn’t get recordings or video to put on the site.
Yesterday, my sister and I attended church, as we normally do every other Wednesday. And finally today, I had a concert of my own, but this time it was choir. My orchestra concert is November 7, so I’d better get that music down, huh?
Well tomorrow, my mom and sister are going to a haunted house with some friends of theirs’. I am not much of a fan of haunted houses, so I opted not to go. So tomorrow I’ll have free rein of the house…
On Saturday, we’ll have goal ball as is always done on Saturday. In case you’ve noticed that my dad hasn’t been a part of this post, it’s because he’s been at work and will be until Saturday when he gets the weekend off. He started this schedule 2 or 3 months ago, but I don’t remember whether or not I told you guys that. Well he’ll be coming to goal ball and coaching it, and joining the rest of us to go to a festival thing. I’m not exactly sure what the festival is, just in case you’re wondering why my description of it was so vage. Unfortunately, there is a possibility of rain on Saturday (I mean a good chance that it will. *crosses my fingers and hopes it doesn’t*
Well basicly, besides that festival, and the orchestra concert, there’s only one thing left to say.
October 28 will be the birthday of my sister, so be sure to wish her a good day. Don’t worry, I’ll try to pick on her as much as possible. 🙂 :)… just kitting.

Well, thanks for reading this post. I really hope you liked it…

Thanks for reading,
Type you later,
Steve.

P.S. this is post number 699. The next post will be 700, I can’t believe that. And, I reached 8000 views. You guys are really inspiring me to keep going. With the amount of views you’re givving me, likes, and followers, don’t expect me to quit any time soon.

Future milestones, and a look into the passed

Hey guys,
Steve here.

Cooler weather, rain, goalball, computer registry errors…

I suppose I could end the post here… right? Well not really. A blog post that is less than a sentence, in my book, is classified as a twitter or facebook update; both of which I refuse to mess with.
My last week was stressful yet kind of fun at the same time. It was boring and exciting as well. Unlike the last couple posts, I refuse to use the one plane word “good” to describe my week, for it is not true about all 7 days of it.
So, basicly here is how those days went.
Monday was, as you know, a day off of school. Tuesday through Friday were school days. In English class, we began to read Shakespeare. Though I have been at this blogging/writing business, my writing skills remain well below those of Shakespeare. So beyond that, we’re also doing a booklet project in social studies which I am all but finished with. In this we had 5 action pages, where we would describe stuff (we’re covering the American revolution and Brittan’s 13 colonies… just historical stuff like that) so the events would be like the Proclamation of 1763, the tea act, the stamp act, the townshend acts etc etc. You would also have to copy a cause and effect chart, look up 8 key people and what they did in the revolution, and define vocabulary words. I’m on the vocab part and will have that finished tomorrow.
By the way, while on the subject of school, I made all A’s on my report card. the lowest grade was a 90 (I don’t remember what class), and the highest was a 100 in choir class.
Now if you’re wondering about the weekend, here’s how that was.
Saturday was a whole day devoted to goalball. I feel as though I am a broken record when talking of my Saturdays; for they mostly seem to be all about goal ball. There is of course, no problem with that; goal ball is a really good sport, and I do have a tournament coming up on Friday. If I manage to get my mom to video tape or snap pictures of the games, I will create a goalball 2013 page for it.
Now back to the passed, also known as Sunday, that was a day of computer registry cleaning and relaxation and church. In the morning was when me, my sister and Dad went to church, after which I came home to get on my computer as I usually do on days like this. Unfortunately, my machine refused to cooperate–freezes, slow coming on, and even some instances where it wouldn’t come on at all and I was forced to run it in safe mode.
Well yesterday, deciding I’d had enough, I downloaded 3 registry cleaners so I could have a variety. Come to find out I had 2,800 registry errors, as stated by one program that was not quite as friendly with my screen reader (the program that uses speech output to describe what events are occurring or the text being transmitted to my computer screen). The program that wasn’t screen reader friendly was reg cure pro. So, I used c cleaner and AML registry cleaner which both proclaimed that I had 291 errors. I’m not sure what was right.
Well, skipping the rest since I know that non computer orianted people are probably hitting the exit button on there web browser or trying any means of escape from reading my blog, I’ll just tell you the end result. My computer hasn’t froze up since 24 hours ago when I finished the registry cleaning, and it seems to be going a lot faster.

Well that wraps up my last week of life. However, my podcast isn’t posted, but me and my cohost Devin ran into trouble.
I am not exactly sure what type of internet router I have, and you need to forward ports or something on the router in order to connect to multi player games or otherwise connect to someone else’s computer via remote access. Unfortunately, you must know the kind of router and how to forward ports or you’re basicly just out of luck. So, there’s this program called hamachi which overwrites that rule and lets you connect to other computers anyway via secure vpns (vertual private networks). Well this program has been malfunctioning, thus disabling Devin and I to test or play Death Match, the game of the podcast. I’m thinking about doing a different game until we get Death match figured out, so this podcast can be done.
By the way sorry for that confusing rant about computers I did there.

Well, I guess that about wraps up today’s post, so…

Thanks for reading,
Type you later,
Steve.
P.S. We’re coming onto both the 700th post and the 1000th day! This blog is truely reaching some stunning milestones! Keep reading, and I will definately keep updating.

Updates, part 2

Hey you guys,
Steve again.

As I promised, I am finishing the blog update.

Like I said, I am here to talk about the program I am creating. It’s a utility called Swamp campaign creator, (listen to podcast episode 4 and 5 to hear some recordings of swamp being played). Basicly, swamp is a game where you walk around a town killing zombies. To learn more, go to Jemery Kaldobsky’s games website where the game is stored along with some useful info and other software. Well, there is more to swamp than just killing zombies. There is a thing called “campaigns,” which are custom adventures players can script that will run in swamp. For example, one who wanted to script a campaign could make something from an egg hunt campaign, to a more complicated mission or even an episode series of missions.
Unfortunately, there is a catch. That is that you have to learn the scripting language in order to create campaigns, which unmotivated me to even create a campaign, despite how cool it sounded. So, I created, or recreated the swamp campaign creator. Let me tell you some history of this project.

About a year ago, a guy from the audio games .net forum decided to create the swamp campaign creator. I was one of the first to try this out, and found that there were some major faults:
1. The thing didn’t allow you to create zombies in your campaign.
2. The campaign didn’t write to any file, so it didn’t type any script.
3. The way he coded it, all the script would’ve been put on one line, and that is prohibited in the swamp campaign scripting language.
4. I accidently removed the program from my computer, and when I tried to get it again, the thing was gone and replaced with a message that he was going to update it and that the link had been removed.

Let me just say, this happened 6 months ago, the audio games thread it was posted on has been dead for 2 months now, and I got tired of waiting honestly because I asked a question or 2 about it and never got a response. That’s why I recreated it. I will not put it on the audio games forum at this time, well just in case he ends up updating it in the future.
For now, I will just post a link to the software so people who play swamp and visit my site can try it out:
Download the latest swamp campaign creator
Information about what this program does to
aid the process of campaign creation can be found in the help file.

Now on to some other life things that happened that I left out in last night’s post:

I got these cool head phones. They are not only noise canseling, but they have a lot of base and good quality. I’m really enjoying them, especially when playing my games because they can penpoint enemies and items better.
Also, me, my dad, my sister, and Grandpa went to the rangers game today. They lost 1 to nothing, and the game ended real fast because noone was hitting runs or anything. It just seemed like it was back to back outs from the time we got there to when we left, but it was still exciting to watch anyway.

Well, I guess that about wraps up my blog update. I will hopefully do the podcast tomorrow, seen as how I went practicly streight from goalball to the Rangers game.

Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

Latest Severe Storm Steve news

Hey you guys,
Steve here.

Reporting live from the Steven D Studios…

oh yeah whatever.

You’re probably wondering what was up with that intro. Well, I’d better tell you, huh?
Most of this news is about computers, and some of it is actually about storms.

First thing’s first, my new school computer
I got a new school computer yesterday! It’s very light, speedy, and purfect for what I need it for anyway. I am real glad I got that; it really beats my old, slow, warn out school computer that has seen better days. Anyway, the brand of computer I have isn’t dell or Apple, but it comes close. I believe it’s a Lenovo or something.
Now, moving on, I have some rather depressing news about my personal computer I use at home.
It looks like I’ve caught a virus on that computer, and now am using it in safe mode. This isn’t all depressing however, since I know just what to do (for now anyway). After I finish this blog post, I’m going to restore the computer to August 8, which will most likely fix the problem. If it doesn’t, just be preying for me :).
Lastly, I will be shortly making 2 more storm recordings available to you. I have one from June 9th, and another from July 16th. I know that’s way outdated right now and really isn’t anything new, but it’s dead in the middle of summer and I’m afraid there hasn’t been any powerful storms to record. Well, you can check them out on the natural events page

And finally, I should probably give a quick little summary of my first week of school.
I’m glad it’s over.
Okay, let’s try that again. That wasn’t much of a summary…
Well, It’s gone pretty well. I’m saying that now because that was the easiest week of the whole year (besides the last one), so I bet it will get quite a bit hard. If you’re wondering, my outlook on math is grim. I’m already getting confused, so I’ll have to talk to the teacher about it on Tuesday. Hmm, seems like a few tutoring sessions are in my near future.
Other than that, I don’t have much to say about my first week, since you already know my schedule.

Thanks for reading,
Type you later,
Steve.

My Last Week of Freedom

Hey you guys,
Steve here.
I’ve had a good last week of summer. I just pretty much got to hang out while my mom and sister did all the back to school shopping Monday and Wednesday, the 3 of us and my of&m (orientation and mobility) teacher went over my new school schedule, and me and my dad went on a bike ride yesterday and today. We completed the 9.23 mile ride in 35 minutes and 13 seconds yesterday, and 35 minutes and 1 seconds today. I don’t know about our average speed for yesterday, but it was 15.9 miles per hour today.
If you’re wondering what I’m going to do the next 2 days, I can’t tell you. Probably the same thing I’ve been doing… hanging out and messing around the computer.
Speaking of computer, I’ve done some awesome things to the site, and also found a new game to be addicted to. I’ll first start with the site change.
Instead of having a links widget on my side bar, I now have a “My Favorite Sites” page. If you go there, you will see my links organized into the following categories:
games
friends’ websites
audio and podcasts
other useful stuff
development tools
sites that caught my unseeing eye(misc).
Now I bet you’re wondering, “What game could he possible be addicted to now?”
I’ve got an answer to that. There’s this online; multiplayer game room with the following card and board games/features:

  • 1000 miles
  • Uno
  • dominoes
  • connect 4
  • La Scopa
  • Jass
  • chess
  • monopoly
  • Poker Texas Holdem
  • Bouillabaisse
  • Rummy
  • Battleship
  • Reversi
  • Yahtzee
  • The Little Exam
  • Farkle
  • six picks
  • black jack
  • spades
  • and, the ability to create free chat tables
  • pretty much fully customizable
  • you can chat any ware

I think you should check it out.
Well, I guess that’s about it for this post. See the bottom of it to see my school schedule.
Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.
school schedule:
1. choir
2. math
3. pre-ap social studies
4. pre-ap English
5. Spanish–yep, the two language classes are right next to each other.
6. Orchestra–yep, I’ll have a lot of concerts this year…
7. Science–I have a good teacher (It’s better to have classes your big sister has been already).

updates and a trip to Maine

Hey you guys,
Steve again.

I went on vacation again. Though I got home Wednesday, I just didn’t want to blog until right now, because of reasons you will find out later on in the post.

I should probably tell you how vacation went… huh?
So here it is.
We flew up on Tuesday afternoon, thankfully. It used to be that we flew up early (I’m talking get up at 3 in the morning and on the flight buy 7:30 early), but this year and even last year we didn’t. The trip was your average plain ride, not much to it. We got to Ocean park Maine around midnight eastern time, so there was no unpacking, or trips to the beach (read the archive for june 2012 to familiarize yourself with where we stay and all that stuff). So anyway, we just basicly went to bed. Wednesday was a beach day, so we hung out there all day pretty much. The water was too cold for me to swim in… they were saying it was in the lower 60’s but it felt like 40’s to me.
That night we had dinner with the family, and then we had pie night. That is a night where my grandma Potter cooks up all sorts of good pies, and everyone in the cottage enjoys them. After pie night, there wasn’t much to talk about. I just played on my computer and stuff while my sister, mom, dad, and a few other members of the family played a game called catch phrase.
Thursday and Friday were just lazy days because it rained. The biggest part of those days were at dinner time. Thursday we ate out and Friday we got to enjoy not 1 Maine lobster, but 2 each. Those things are so good… I’m sure you can’t get lobsters that good in texas no matter how hard you try.
Saturday was another good beach day. The water was so cold that day however, that putting your foot in there would feel as though you’d just put it in snow without any socks and shoes on.
Sunday was yet another beach day, but we spent half of it hanging out with 2 of our family members who were going to leave later that morning. They have 2 of the happiest most energetic kids I ever met, along with a little 7 month old who is relatively quiet and calm. For the rest of the day, we just kind of hung out, played cards, and tried to go to the beach at one point, but it was too cold.
Monday, we did go to the beach. This time, it was easy to believe that the water was in the 70’s because I was able to get in up to my stomach, and ride the currents of the creek that feeds in to the ocean. I made the most out of that day, because I knew we’d have to leave the next day.
That night for dinner we once again got to enjoy some lobster.
The next day, Tuesday, was the day we had to pack up and go home. Every thing was normal through the middle of the day, saying goodbye to family and packing, and even most of the travel was normal. However, our flight got delayed 30 minutes because of some rough weather, and we had a 45 minute layover before our next flight. Well since our first flight didn’t leave on time, we missed the second flight, and didn’t end up catching a flight back home until the next morning. Thankfully however, we got home by 10:45 yesterday morning.

Now on to some more life news.

Just because vacation is over with, doesn’t mean I am done with the post. Me and my dad were able to do another bike ride. There is one downfall to these rides; because of Dad’s work schedule and school starting up soon, this was one of the last ones. We only have 2 or 3 more opportunities to ride, before the starting of school. So, I will have to work real hard on our next rides.
Now, if you remember at the beginning of the post, I told you that I was doing other things and that’s why I didn’t blog when I got home. Well, there’s this addicting game I found while I was in main. It’s called alter aeon. Here’s the link to there website so you can learn more:
http://www.alteraeon.com
Now if you are wondering, the time counter on that game says I’ve already been playing for 16 hours total, and I got the game last Thursday. Not to mencion the 2 days of travel and time with family causing me to set aside the computer and focus on other things. Also, another game, bokurano daiboukin, the game reviewed in episode 6 of my podcast (visit the my podcast page for the episode), has become rather addicting. I have spent 23 hours on that one. You could say I spend quite a bit of time on the computer. Also on the computer, I’ve been skyping friends, and playing a few games over the internet like pong, top speed (a racing game), and pallis punch up (see see this page for a little demo).

Other than that, I really can’t think of more to put on this post, so I’ll wrap it up as usual…
thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.
p.s.
regarding the thing I said earlier about the water in the ocean feeling real cold, here’s an intresting fact:
did you know that you can get hypothermia 250 times faster in the water than from cold air)?

your average blog update

Hello guys,
Steve here.

I am posting this update because:
1. I haven’t updated in a week and a day (I talked about what was going to happen with the podcast, but that doesn’t count, as it wasn’t a life update).
2. I’m bored.

My life hasn’t been bad the last week. There wasn’t much to say about it, but I guess I’ll tell you what I did those days:
Sunday of last week: nothing at all.
Monday: worked on my project, skyped friends, helped my mom bathe the dogs, and spin class as usual.
Tuesday: went swimming, and skyped friends.
Wednesday: pretty much the same as monday– working on my projects and skyping friends etc etc.
Thursday: I went on a bike ride with Dad, then did a whole lot of nothing.
Friday: Nothing much besides going to a pool party with my mom and dad and there friends, and skyping my friends.
Saturday: that was a lazy day–not much to it.
Today: I had to do some cleaning, learning more programming etc.

That about sums up my last several days. Now regarding what I said a second ago about the programming thing, that’s still going well. I am still in the dark about… non-technical people can just scroll down a bit…
arays, handles to functions and objects, along with http and internet functions.
Here we go non technical people, you can start reading again.
So yeah, as I said, learning the language has been going well. On another note, I should probably tell you about my near future plans. As we all know, I’m not a psychic, and don’t know what exactly will happen, but I’ll tell you what I do know:
Today, Tomorrow, and Tuesday and Wednesday, I honestly don’t know. Thursday, packing for broken bow(I’ll be going on vacation out there with my dad’s side of the family), and releasing the podcast episode 8. I don’t know, but there might be another person joining the cast (we’ll have to see).
Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, we’ll be at broken bow. I’ll have to blog monday when we are home, because I think we are coming home Sunday evening.
Basicly, I won’t have a lot of time to do anything, because monday we will be repacking and washing clothes, so we can go to Maine on tuesday. That will last another week, and we’ll come home on tuesday August 14, and spend the rest of summer getting ready for school and trying to fit in a few more fun things before the August 26 doomsday.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this little update, and I’ll hopefully post a sneak peek of my next podcast release when I get the arrangements and technical stuff that none of you guys have to mess with out of the way.

Thanks for reading,
type you later,
Steve.

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.