Ok, I'm not going to drop any spoilers.

I picked it up on Saturday for $23.  Very smug about skipping the cost and the price tag :P

I'm not going to drop spoilers, but I'll say it is definitely the BEST of the books and is extremely well written.

I'll leave it at that ;)

So one of my mom's friends invited us over to her house.  She's really interesting.  She has all this original artwork around her house, and she knows the story to each and every pieces.  And she's a good cook :P


But when we went home, this is the suprise part.  Literally.





I walk in to use the washroom near our kitchen and hear that something's in our kitchen.


I round the corner, and it's my friends from youth.  They set up a suprise good bye party while we were at dinner.  Shari, Grace, Natalia, Abby and Angie, Sierra, Kayla and Grace were there.  Shari, Grace and Kayla had been planning the thing at Drama camp at church this week.  There were posters up for all the holidays I'd miss while I was in Africa.  Ben also presented some stuff like a book to read on the flight (a Robin-Hood redo which looks really interesting) and a Rubik's Cube.  I have the best friends in the world :)

I took the party as an excuse to write my first post on the blog I've had reserved for about six months:

www.outofafrica.wordpress.com

I also have more photos and even (gasp) a video on my Photobucket account:

Suprise Party subalbum

They also gave me this compilation CD with holiday songs (Well, my personal theme song (that being Weird Al's "White and Nerdy") isn't really a holiday song...) with lots of great stuff on it.



So the second purchase (After the Ratatouille soundtrack) I made with my credit card was one I didn't want to make... $200 laptop battery.  Mine only held a charge of 30-45 minutes.  I just got the new one (really quickly.  I ordered it on Sunday) in the mail, and at 75% I have 2 hours left.

But there's another purchase that's coming soon... HP7 is coming out tommorow.  My plan is to skip the midnight releases and stuff and go to Costco or Loblaws, which had them day of release for half the price of Chapters when Half Blood Prince came out.  I preordered and payed about $55, and then got it four days late.  Not doing that again...

Ok, so mom used to watch this TV show while she was growing up called Get Smart.  So one day mom and dad went down to the local video store and got a season on DVD.  It was hillarious, and we all love them :D


So we go to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (which is the best, btw.  Left out some of the little good parts, but cinematography was excellent and the effects were the best I've ever seen.  But back on topic...) and the trailer for Get Smart comes up.  I didn't even know they were making a movie.

(trailer:  http://www.slashfilm.com/2007/07/10/get-smart-teaser-movie-trailer/ scroll down a bit)


So we have Steve Carell as Max (he did a great job as Evan in Evan Almighty, another great movie) and Ann Hathaway (who I've only faintly heard of, but is probably famous) as 99.  I can't wait for this movie.  It's set for Summer 2008, which is also when Narnia: Prince Caspian, The City of Ember, and Artemis Fowl are slated to come out.  Lets just say I'll be going to a lot of movies.



And how I'll pay for that, well, I just got my first paycheck!  A great job at Jankins Computers!  It's all going to sending me to China with the Model United Nations though.  The big one I want to see is Artemis Fowl though.  AF5: The Lost Colony was excellent, and I've heard there's another one on the way (as well as a new standalone book by Colfer.  Personally, I'm waiting for the sequel to Half-Moon Detective Agency).

So one of the members of my church owns a local computer store. I submitted my resume a few months back for a job there. Now they have a bunch of contracts they need to finish by the end of the month, and they've asked me to come work for them! :D Right now, I'm working 8:30-6 friday and 10-3 saturday. This is one of the great things about being flexible due to homeschooling :) It's great to get a job at a computer shop (even though I'll just be a minion :P )

Aunt Sue (as she now insists I call her) called up my Mom to say that she should give me a health course so that I can free up an elective for Africa.

She looked at the Ministry of Education site and it said that I would need a 110 hour course >.<

Of course, homeschooling is much more time efficient than the public system (there's a stat that we're 10x more efficient time wise than the average classroom), so mom put me in a Tennis camp, I'm (finally) going to get my Level 7 in swimming (it looks like a pretty good chance of that), and I have to write a paper. Definitely better than spending time in Africa doing a health course at the cost of an elective.

Speaking of electives, Aunt Sue got back to mom with the list of electives to choose from. I've chosen the Model United Nations and African History as my first choices for the first semester, and Arabic as my second choice. Then I'm trying to nab a spot in the Media Arts and Communication class during the second semester (which sounds really cool), with Economics and Geography as my second choices.

So yeah. At the end of this year, the Model UN kids are going to Bejing for a meeting, and IIRC next semester is either The Hauge or Barcelona. I really hope I get my choices.

But until then, back to the literature and trigonometry that is my life right now. And I have to finish a presentation on Panama by Saturday morning for a Missions Fest at our church (only part left is the fun part. I've done all my write ups)

^_^

A few days back I had a hard disc failure. Something about drive inconsistency. Windows did a bit of patching and managed to extend it's life.

Ubuntu ran fine, but Windows was limping along. Everything was slow even if I had the visual styles turned off to save RAM.

After a bit of work, I'm pleased to announce that I have both operating systems running normally again. I just used the System Restore utility in Windows and it works fine. I never thought that could repair my drive.

Anyways, I've learned my lesson and I'm staying away from the game which caused this headache, Star Wars Battlefront, which on exit one day after a long play session gave me a BSOD and started this mess.

I know this sounds like a lame subject for a blog entry (and in all fairness, it kinda is), but today I'll talk about printing.



So I've stuck through with Ubuntu Linux, and I must say it's AWESOME!  So much easier to use than Windows.  It's great for the very beginner and the expert, but as soon as you try to run a game or something in kind of the middle...


I'll tell my story on that later.



Anyways, printing.  I had to print my 9 page essay on the French Revolution so I could ask my Dad to proofread it.  Then I remember:  I haven't configured it to run with Linux.  I wrote it all in the pre-bundled with Ubuntu version of Office called Open Office, who's format MS Office is incapable of reading.  Plus, it took me around two hours to install a printer last time on Windows.

Oh joy.

So I google my printer name and Linux, and one of the first things I find is a HP sanctioned Open Source driver.  Perfect.  Downloaded that, went to the System--->Admin--->Printing, and followed a few easy steps (including an easy driver install) and presto.  9 pages on the French Revolution in 5 minutes.

That was fun.


My other large endevour with Ubuntu so far is trying to cajole my copy of Photoshop CS 2 to run.  I have it installed on the Windows side of my laptop, and I have GIMP (The open source and, IMO, horrible free version of Photoshop that comes bundled with Ubuntu) on my Linux side.  But I hate GIMP, and I want my precious Photoshop to run on what's now my prefered OS.  So I download WINE (Wine Is Not an Emulator, which helps Windows programs run on various distributions of Linux) from Synaptic (built in program manager for Ubuntu.  Stroke of genious) and try to run Photoshop.exe straight out.  No go.  It opens, and then crashes.


So now I'm working on trying to get my Adobe registry copied over, because apparently that's what's stopping PS.  It doesn't seem an uncommon feat to force Photoshop into running on an Ubuntu install, and apparently it was possible two versions ago, in Ubuntu "Dapper Duck" (codename.  I'm on 7.04 Feisty Fawn) but it's not working in the latest and greatest version.

So yeah, a few more headaches there.  Still working on it...

You Are Not Destined to Rule the World

You are destined for something else... Like inventing a new type of cupcake. You just don't have the stomach for brutality. But watch out - because many people do! Are You Destined For World Domination?

Apparently, I'm not so ready to rule the world as I thought. Better cancel that Intercontinental Ballistic Missle shipment.

And I'm 48% nerdy (which is 20% more than my aunt who works for MS, who'da thunk?), but because some of the questions (like coffee, calculus, and cars) didn't apply to me, I might be between 55-60% nerdy.

Good news on the Linux front (which was worth a few points on the nerdy quiz :P ): I borked the file myself and a fresh install has sent Ubuntu back to work. Thank goodness for virtual partitions.

Bah.

Ok, so Linux is working find for a few days...


and then I get this (apparently) common problem with Ubuntu7 beta where there's a completely borked up file which prevents you from installing anything...

Theory is that it came from a corrupted Ubuntu7 ("Fiesty Fawn") update.  It seems that the Ubuntu update servers are also feeling the heat, as I keep getting 404s intermittently on some of them.  One of the ironic things is that, even if the devs at Ubuntu have released a fix (which it looks like they have; 112 small updates in one package today) I can't install it.  Bah.

I finally got Compiz, Emerald and Beryl for Ubuntu to install.  I had one glorious moment with Emerald with a Vista glass theme on (no blur), and as soon as I use the cube interface to switch windows...

It dies.

Since then I haven't been able to open Emerald, though Beryl works fine.  Just my luck.

I learned Terminal though.  I can now navigate the blasted thing.

Just when you think a technology has died out...

(Btw, Ubuntu Terminal resembles MS DOS, and is quite tedious, IMO, though it's nice to be able to see where you go wrong)

WEEEEE!











I just ran the Wubi installer and I'm posting this from my Ubuntu installation. It's super fast. I'm still getting it configured. It took a long time to download (a whopping 700MB) and about half an hour to install, but it was totally worth it. This machine is going light speed.

Happy Easter to everyone :D

I did a double shift at EasyWorship at Church today. The second service was packed.

Pastor Gord found this awesome video which is right here:

EDIT: Hmmm... Live Spaces doesn't like Flash video. Here's the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjnjqFv1Mus

I love it :D

Whew

Next time I post here, I may be running the Ubuntu Linus OS.

I found this nifty installer called Wubi (http://cutlersoftware.com/ubuntusetup/wubi/en-US/index.html) which will allow me to install a full version of Ubuntu without partitioning (which is potentially dangerous, hard, I don't know how, and with a 50GB hard drive on my laptop, after I partition it there wouldn't be much room left on the Win and Linux installs...). I just run the installer, and it creates virtual hard drive partition for me to run Linux, and then I just run it like any dual boot, with the option for Windows or Linux at startup.

I looked into uninstall, naturally, and all I do is boot into Windows and uninstall it through the add/remove programs! That's easier than the Win OS X fiasco (weekend's worth of headaches from that one. I forgot to stop running it before uninstall and so I had a botched version of SP2 and my Control Panel was in French. I had to do a system restore (and my old mySQL server install is still bugging me over that because my registry thinks I have it even though I uninstalled...) and a reinstall of the SP2 patch. Yippe.

Yeah, so this looks pretty risk free... not saying I won't back up every byte of data on this thing.

I can't wait. The Easter Long Weekend gives me plenty of oppurtunity :D

So I've been putting together a short (5 minute) movie called iSpy with my youth group. We shot it last Sunday and I've just put the finishing touches on it. It's for a film festival made up of the members of several Kingston church youth groups, and is called the Youth Oscars. I think that iSpy will definitely win in the comedy category. We're also taking care of Pastor Ben's dog Jake. He's about 8 years old and is really nice, but boy is he a suck up :P. He's always trying to get up on the couch and I'm always having to scratch his back. He's not staying over night, but on the 10th he's staying until the 23rd while PB goes to Michigan to pick up his cats (and his wife). I just logged into Uru Live (And finally got that Negilahn portal) and got two new goodies: The Book of Payiferen and a relto page that gives you fall trees. It's a really nice piece of work. I also tried out the new dances with Kedri and some others in The Great Tree's Eder Delin (The female dance looks like they should be wearing a tribal headdress, ours just looks like we should be in straightjackets... some kind of "gangsta rap" dance. I liked the classic "shuffle... clap"). Payiferen is really impressive. Almost as realistic as Riven, and great for real time. It's a desert Age with sand stretching in all directions. The sun is apparently EXTREMELY intense. The windows look like they're normal windows, but there are four cracks in one of them, and the sun shines reallllllllyyyy brightly through them. It's started to snow... again. Where did that nice weather go?

So I have about 3 blogs on Wordpress (Lego on Uru, Out of Africa, and Myst Mafia, all in my blog list), but I don't actually have one about me.  Hardly suprising, really.  So I was looking at my aunt and uncle's blogs, and I thought I'd fish up my old space and retrofit it.  Well, it promptly crashed into oblivion and so I set this one up instead.

I had a RL blog once... on Blogspot I think.  No clue where that went.

Anyways, this is my new blog.  I'll (try) to update it often :P.