Completely Different

Are there modern day adventures? That is the question posed by a friend during a recent conversation. With the obvious implication that we live dull uninteresting lives I would dare to say that we do not experience adventures in the way that popular fantasy tales describe adventures. The great and perilous oddesey with heroes and villains are either things of the past that the vast majority of us will never see, or they are just tales that are entertainment with no basis in reality.

The epidemic that is sweeping through our society is not some virus or bacteria rather it is the infectious disease of passivity. Many people have no purpose in their lives. I can tell you that there are many college students that have no idea what they are here for, they live their lives one weekend to the next, one drink to the next with no idea where they are heading in life. With no goals or direction to your life you end up drifting and it�s pretty easy to go from lucky break to just plain broke in this world.

So my friend has decided after two and a half years of school that he still doesn�t know what he is here for, or where he wants to go. Not being in school this semester and with no real job to tie him down he is seriously considering setting out on a modern day adventure. Hitchiking across the nation may not seem like the most glamorous way to go on a great adventure, but I have no doubt that a journy like that will turn into a truly interesting journey. I feel sorry for those that are still searching, the answer seems pretty obvious to me, I am living for the big man, J.C. After that everything else seems pale and worthless. Yet, there is still nothing wrong with seeking an adventure. The need for adventure is pretty deeply rooting in each man�s personality. It�s seen as a sort of escape from the mundane pressures of reality. People realize that they are stuck in a boring life that isn�t going anywhere and then they go see Lord of the Rings on the big screen and they feel all warm and fuzzy inside because they all of a sudden think that the world is an exciting place where great feats are possible and good always triumphs over evil.

My own life isn�t as exciting as an epic tale of bravery, but I am not dissapointed with where I am or where I am going. I have a good job, a great boss, lot�s of other activities to keep me busy, such as my weekly radio show, and also my involvement with Campus Crusade. And of course we cannot forget to mention my lovely girlfriend Becca who always makes my life more interesting and exciting. With the addition of my responsibilities to the fraternity to that list of commitments it�s a miracle I have any free time left at all. What little time I have left over can be sunk into the many hobbies that I enjoy so much. Honestly I think that juggling all the elements in my life is plenty of adventure already. But there certainly is something tempting about the image of a man on his own living for his own purposes and being obligated to nothing and no-one. The renegade is truly an image of the opposite life to what most men in this society experience, and therefore it is desired, on some level, by all of us.

A little worst case scenario

With the start of a new year, I decided it was time to once again post.  The semester is starting out busy with things like interviews for internships and applying for grad school.  Luckily, I’m taking the tough class of Bowling to balance things out.  The other class my Bowling professor teaches is Walking for Fitness.  How you become a professor for that is beyond me.
I think it is time know to play worst case scenario.

The question is: What is the proper way to eat a rat or mouse?
A)Cut off the head.  Gut and hang the mouse upside down to bleed, then cook it at high temperature.
B)Skin it, cut off its head, feet and tail.  Soak it in saltwater, and then roast it.
C)Cut off the feet, gut, and skin it.  Pound the remainder, including the head, until the bones are ground up enough to eat, then boil it.

Hopefully I’ll never be in a situation where rat is the only thing on the menu, but the Worst Case Scenario game I got has given me the knowledge of what to do if it is.  Its also given me insight into what to do if the bubonic plague strikes or slightly more practical advice about what to do if a bear is about to attack.  In fact, I think the only thing the game does not answer is the age old question of how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie pop.
The last thing I have left to rant about is that I wish I saved me receipts!  There is a way of getting back the sales tax you pay on your textbooks.  One of my friends is getting back well over $100 on receipts from the last 3 years.  If only I was more organized :(
Note: Notice the correct use of two spaces after each period in the above rant.

Coming to you live�

Strainght from the radio booth on my campus, I am writing this rant. I have the 10 to 1am shift for the Campus radio station. Tonight is my first night on the air and I must admit that I am having a little bit of trouble learning the theory behind good radio content. I have no theme really to speak of, I have played techno remixes, some pop-rock, a couple punk-rock songs, and pretty much anything that I enjoy listening to in no particular order. I hope that as I become more comfortable with the whole broadcast idea I will be able to talk without actually boring all 3 of my listeners to death. This is a lot harder than I first thought it would be. I am having trouble keeping up with the whole fast paced world of live production. I am used to being a low man on the totem pole, not the main director. At least I know that a few people are listening because I keep getting requests on the phone.

My hope is that soon I will be able to have my show broadcast from a streaming server over the net. This could be done a few seperate ways. Right now I am working on a lot of possibilities with my business Level 1 Media. I guess there is nothing quite like poverty to make one work harder to get a small business started up. Apart from that i actually have a lot of stuff I could be working on right now, several websites etc. Or I could be back in my room watching the last 2 episodes of 24. The show I have really been watching for a while.

Time has flown by while Iwas sitting here messing around with the radio station. After my first experience on the radio I must say that I am really looking forward to next week. If you are in Kearney make sure you tune in to 91.3 KLPR, hopefully I will have my playlist set out a little better next time.

This is DJ Timbly Signing Off

[play national anthem]

All play and no work makes�

The fun thing about life is that even though I never know what to expect next, I am never totally surprised by the outcome. I am a fairly disorganized person, and I have recognized the necesssity of a certain amount of forced organization. Through use of my PDA and Outlook I manage to maintain a certain grip on the events that spin around me. Some people have more responsibilites than I, and also have better toys- ahem, �tools�- to manage their time with, such as Aaron and his posession of a Tablet PC, as well as access to a wireless network at home and at work. For this I may never forgive him. Others, such as my buddy Mike across the hall tend to live life with no more than a half-hour of planning or forethought. Surprisingly this method of calculated indifference works really well for him.

I certainly have my own identity, the specifics of that identity are somewhat vague and I do not really feel like elaborating on my own nature, but suffice it to say that I am not a person that goes �shopping�. I have been known to browse some aisles at Best Buy if I am near one and have nothing else to do, but clothes shopping is completely out of my character. Yet, yesterday I was walking through the mall here with my girlfriend, mostly for her sake rather than through any desire I had to look at stuff in the mall. But, not only did I stumble across an article of clothing that I really wanted to purchase but I actually made the purchase. I have never owned a leather jacket, I am a geek and am not exactly obsessed with fashion, but I found a really sharp black leather jacket for half price. I feel really fricken cool in a leather jacket.

With a new leather jacket comes a much more important change in my personal style, the ownership of a new domain name. timbly.com is now up and running, so click away to reach either my blog, which you have already reached if you are reading this, or my portfolio. The interesting thing about owning this new domain name is watching the statistics for visitors. A couple guys I know were looking at my video work and jumped my bandwidth up to 45MB in one day, all the rest of the days had bandwidth usage measured in Kilobytes.

Well, I have some recording secretary type work to be done today and must get on that before I can hit the old counter-strike addiction again.

Restarting

Well, I�m patching Windows yet again and have just gotten the message that I need to restart my computer. It�s times like this that I long for the loving embrace of Linux. Unfortunately Linux doesn�t fit in with my computing lifestyle at this point, unlike Aaron who enjoys the freedom of several computers all in his office, one powerful machine for Windows, one little crappy iMac, and now a little old Linux Box for his exploits in the land of Linux server administration. Ah the memories about my first linux experiences� anyways, speaking of lifestyle and personality I must admit I am a little disturbed by this article.

I thought I had finally found a place where I really belonged, that being online. The internet community seemed to be full of geeks like me who abhor the majority of society and seclude themselves from the prying eyes of �they�. But now it seems that the internet is not filled with �loner geeks who spends hours of their free time on the Internet and rarely engage with the real world�. What happened? Can we not have any safe refuge from the rest of the non-geek population? Why must I browse and chat along with so many people who �spends more time engaged in social activities than the nonuser�. Dang, what happened to my internet. I still dream that congress will enact a bill to require liscences and regular exams before someone is allowed online. As a tech support helpdesk schmuck this would make my job much easier. I cannot tell you how many people call in because the cannot connect to the network, and I go out there to find that they are trying to use a phone cord and their modem with the ethernet jack on the wall. A majority of the problems I deal with are quite simple. Well, they seem simple to me anyways. I realize that most people do not have enough interest in technology to take the time to learn all that I have. I can accept that, but some days users are more frustrating than other days.

****SPAM****Product Placement

I thought I would warn everyone first that this is an advertisement from a satisfied consumer. It�s not exactly spam, but I thought that ****SPAM**** would look funny in the title. I�m not getting paid for this either, but if I did, that would be awesome.

Tonight I desired to consume food. I went and got a bag of popcorn from my room, a bag I had received as part of a Christmas present from some of my relatives. It was an ACT II Mini Bag, advertised as being able to pop more quickly, but oh the experience was more than that. I stood by the microwave and waited for the popping to slow instead of just letting it pop on its own�this prevents burning. I pulled out a bag of popcorn that was not burned and contained only three old maids. I was amazed. This product is ideal for low-power microwaves, that in my experienced have a habit of burning. I have yet to try it in a high-power appliance, but I assume I would get similar results. There is less popcorn in the bag, but it was enough for me eating it all myself. Oh man, I was so happy.

As you can see from Tim�s previous rant, he came to visit me and Santa got into an accident. Strange things happen when you get a bunch of guys together.

In Jon�s Room

This is an urgent message from the room of Jon, he has kidnapped me and is conducting experiments that would harrow the most twisted of souls. Please rescue me from his awful machinations. He and his cohorts have already killed santa.
dead_santa.jpg

Please save me soon, or else they will kick me out and not let me eat their cold pizza and use their high speed internet access. Umm� a video report of the santa killing will be coming soon.

maniacal laugh

Ignoring all of you is a really fun passtime. Instead of writing something to put up here for your entertainment I have decided to completely ignore my blog over christmas break. I don�t really have a need for any outlets to my procrastination instinct while on break. Only while classes are in session do I have the time to blather on mindlessly in my blog. Well, twas the night before christmas, and I am being a bad little boy, staying up late and writing nonsense online. I have been so busy with my girlfriend, my family, my girlfriend, my buddies from back in the day� umm and my girlfriend too. Hey Becca, what�s happeining sugar! Whoa, better turn the cheesyness down a notch. Anyways I have no idea what I am getting for christmas in the morning, though I did get a very nice watch from� you guessed it! Becca! I can take a wild stab in the dark and say that my parents might get me something computer related. The short list of potential presents is still pretty unlikely. Mainly I want money for my trip to DCC in a week or so. I suppose that I may post something tommorow about what I got for christmas, yet that seems fairly unlikely. I would tell you my guesses, but that might jinx it. Though I could jinx the gifts that I don�t really want, hrmmm�. I think I will be getting a week old tunafish sandwich for christmas.

Whew, good thing I got that out of the way, no more rotten yuletide tuna for me this year.

I hope you all have a great christmas, and remember the reason for the season - Christ. I mean, he�s got his name in the holiday�s name, so duh people!

Vacation

I�ll tell you that after the stress of the past week I was most definitely ready for a break of some sort. The weekends are usually a good chance to restart my brain for another week of school. This weekend I needed something different to recover from pretty much the entire semester. What is it that I did for a Vacation? I went to Kamp Ed and hung out with Craig Johring, a truly great guy who can totally change the way someone looks at life. Spending time with Brother �Bro� is like taking a trip to the twilight zone. It is something that truly cannot be explained. He lives in the ultimate bachelor pad on a peninsula between the Platte River and a lake. This is a sweet cabin with a garage that he turned into a bunkhouse for the people that he has come over to visit. And believe me, he knows just about everyone who is worth knowing in this state. I could probably spend hours talking about this guy, he is one crazy character. Anyways, the point is that I am feeling much more at peace with many aspects of life the universe and everything right now, that�s what a meal of Smoked Turkey, baked Coho Salmon, Halibut, and Trout. All caught fresh from the waters of Alaska earlier in the summer and frozen till now, when my roommate and I came down to raid his supplies.

Anyways, despite the many aspects of my life which continue to confuse me with their complexity I have had some fun and interesting things going on lately. One of those things is the movie The Last Samuri with Tom Cruise. I don�t know why but that movie just keeps making me think about it, it has so many deep concepts in it that really need to be pulled out and examined to get the full enjoyment out of the movie. The Las Samuri is without a doubt a pure guy movie, much along the same lines as Gladiator and Braveheart, in fact one of the battle scenes really reminded me of Braveheart quite a bit. The only problem that I have with the movie is that I have only seen it once, and I do not really go to see movies very often, so it is likely that I will have to wait until it is on DVD to really enjoy this cinematic experience.

Now I think it is time to go out to eat on a gift certificate I received as a gift in return for fixing someone�s computer. Woohoo!

Special Extended Edition

Since the last post was relatively short compared to what you people are used to, I have decided to make another post as a sort of extended rant from monday night. The days are flying by so quickly that it really does seem like monday night was actually last night, which it wasn�t. Last night was Tuesday night and also the night that our fraternity held a charity bowlathon for this really cute little baby boy who had special surgery for spina bifida. It went over pretty well from what I can tell.

Yesterday also marked the end of another class, this one a TV workshop class where we had to produce 2 30 minute productions to be aired over local public access cable. Everything went pretty well, except for the small fact that Adobe premiere needs to die a quick and painful death. Our project file would freeze the computer when trying to open, every single time. Eventually we found out that there was a corrupt title file which apperantly cause the Mac to hang while Premiere checked files.

Oh, I just looked at the clock and it looks like I get off work in about 10 minutes. That means this extended edition rant won�t really be very extended. As soon as I am done here I will be going back to my room and working on throwing together a writing portfolio for one of my classes. I do not have a 3 ring binder or those little plastic paper protector sheets, so this may not be the best looking portfolio ever. At the same time I am working on a portfolio website for a Computer Design class final project, I am actually excited about working on that assignment. I also have a 5-7 page paper about a british poem/book due friday in another class. Oh, hey look it�s the end of the semester again� maybe this time the rapture will come before finals happen. I can always hope�

I should be able to post something about The Last Samuri soon, believe me, I have a lot to say. And in other news my roomate is completely nuts, I will try to convince him to post something about the adventure he had this morning.

Bar Mitzvah in a Camper

Quit attacking me for not posting recently. Sheesh, you would think that I promise some sort of regular update scedule. At least I don�t have a bad case of Sandy Channel like Aaron.

Well, I have been doing so much stuff lately with school, work, and the fraternity. Sometimes you just have to have a weekend to reset yourself from the stress of the week. Don�t ask about the title of this post, it really isn�t funny if I explain it.

The whole Level 1 Media thing is getting more frustrating than I had expected. The three of us involved with it have some questions about legal and tax issues for a small business. I guess it�s a good thing that there is a business department at this university, we may be able to ask them.

I have been watching a lot of 24 lately, this is one sweet TV show that is now in the third season on FOX. I have just finished watching the first season on DVD, and am trying to work through the second season of DVD�s with my roomate and some friends.

I don�t even know what else to write about, lacking any method for prioritizing the thoughts and events of my life I will simply give up and call it an evening. I now need to go back to my room and work on a portfolio site, then am planning on seeing The Last Samuri tonight. I will let you all know if it is any good.

Word of the Day

It�s funny sometimes how you pick out the meanings of words simply from context and never really think about what the actual definition of that word is. I do not question the definitions of words while I am reading, usually I just move right past without any idea what a particular obscure word may mean. Sometimes I may be asked to define some little known word and am unable to put into words the general feeling that the word elicts from my subconcious. Or more embarrasingly, the vague sense of meaning that I may have associated with a particular word will be completely wrong. Just now I was going to use the word gregarious to start off this rant, I had the idea that gregarious meant something similar to fat, full, and slow. Obviously I was mistaken.

The nice thing about the internet and the web is the instant availability of information, and the accessability of that information is rapidly improving. Just now I was able to try to look up a definition from a word that I used earlier in this rant, �elict�. According to dictionary.com and Merriam Webster this is not a real word. Which is funny, because I seem to remember having read it several times before.

Greeeeeeeen Acres is the place to be,
faaaaarm livin� is the life for me� doo da doo doo da doodooda doo dat do.

Sorry for the interruption just needed to get that out of my system. While at school, I do not read much, I simply do not take the time to sit down and enjoy a book. I usually read a fair amount during the summer when I am bored. I wasn�t nearly so bored this past summer, thanks to a special someone back home. The point is that I have noticed a marked decline in the amount of leisure reading that I do. I hope that this is not a continuing trend as it would be a shame to stop doing something that I have enjoyed so much in the past. I think that my enjoyment of reading has really benefitted me. A large vocabulary and refined writing skills are the results of extensive reading, from what I have seen so far these are the foundations of success in many instances. Especially in school, I freely admit that I do very little in the way of studying or organized preparation for most of my classes. High school is a joke if you can understand the system, and college is simply a variation on the same theme as high school. Probably the biggest difference in the collegeiate world is that all of a sudden you are choosing to take classes that you actually can enjoy. When I can actually enjoy the accomplishment of learning something because I wanted to learn it, that is when I am the best student. The rest of the time I make a really awful student.

Whoa, I�m not sure how this turned into a rant about education and such, but I promise not to slip from my whimiscal inconsequential ramblings again. There will be no forays in the essayists world again� until my next rant� maybe.

Thanksgiving break was a much needed relief from the pain and drudgery of my regular schedule. I was able to enjoy a great deal of time with Becca as well as a little time with my family. A great deal of food was eaten, but I certaintly did not feel gregarious after that meal. Well, maybe just a little, but that was because of all the taters, ya know� mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, baked potatoes. I�m thinking Lord of the Rings when I�m writing that line about the potatoes. I happened to watch the Extended Edition of the Two Towers over break and I must say that it is simply awesome. I have to assume that Jackson and New Line realized after the immense success of the first extended edition DVD set that people really wanted a second version, and would pay to get some quality extra content. I assure you that this extended edition more than delivers in the extra content department. I�m not sure about the total number of extra minutes of footage, but content wise there is a plethora of addittional information absolutely vital to the story. Some of the plot elements that I missed so sorely from the theatrical release of LoTR:tTT have been included where they should be. Fanghorn forest comes to helms deep, and there is some much needed character development for Faramir and Aragorn. The Tolkein Purists will be somewhat appeased by the many additions to this fine motion picture.

Now that I have partaken of some Two Towers goodness I am really really excited for the Return of the King. I hope that I will get to see it in all it�s glory soon after the release date. I wish that I was in a position to go and wait in the freezing cold early morning lines to get tickets to the first showing at my local theater. My local theater sucks, and I am already planning on seeing it a couple days later for the first time with my girlfriend. So the wait is excrutiatingly sweet.

My semester is meandering to a close in a way that college has never presented before, slowly and easily. I�m sure there will be a few last minute projects that I will put off til� well, the last minute. So, work is done for the night, and I am about to trek back to my room through the harrrowing winter weather. Dramatic wording seems to be flowing from my very soul tonight. Well, the clock says 8, so I guess I will believe it and close up. Later gater. Wow, that sounded really dorky.

They

I�m convinced that my University is trying to kill us all. I�m not sure what their motive is since we pay them exorbitant amounts of money to attend this school. It must have seemed like a good idea at the time to begin tearing up the main east-west sidewalk right in front of the Otto Olson building. There is a gaping crater in the earth where our sidewalk used to be. This forces the hundreds, if not thousands of students who use that route each day to walk in the street for a short distance. So the university practically forces us to walk through a very busy street in order to get to classes, a street full of commuters who are probably in a rush because they are going to be late to their classes because there is not adequate parking on campus for all the students, and the department of public safety usually oversells parking permits. Now it�s about 5 degrees outside and they decided they didn�t need to clear all the sidewalks of snow and ice from the weekend. So the sidewalk before and after that huge hole in the ground have not been salted or plowed, making walking even more treacherous. If this is how UNK handles the first snowfall of the year then I may have a plethora of excuses at my disposal for skipping classes as the winter progresses. Now that all my righteous fury is spent I will get back to my homework, which I like to do at work instead of at home.

Los Tres Friends

The question remains� if the moon were made of barbeque spare ribs, would you eat it? It�s a simple question, a baby could answer it. As for myself, I think I would not eat that moon.

The world as I know it is interestingly boring. A lot of up and downs in my life the past several days. Sunday afternoon, just mere hours after I finished that Terminator movie marathon, I was supposed to do a bunch of taping for a class and of course nothing went as planned. Some people weren’t there on time etc. I had to leave early that evening from taping to prepare for the fraternity meeting that night. I am in my second year of college and 19 years old, I have a Junior standing. This means that I am already starting to feel my college time slipping away. So, what this means is that I ran for recording secretary for my fraternity and won. This means I get to be on the exec board, which is pretty dang cool. So Sunday night was a long night yet made me quite happy.

Around midnight my roommate and I decided to go to Hardee�s for some Swiss and mushroom burgers, we had forgotten that the new Hardee�s menu made all their burgers much bigger, so we bought 2 each to sate our impressive hunger. This proved to be a bit of a mistake, 2/3 pound of beef piled high with sautéed mushrooms and Swiss cheese is more than mortal man was meant to ingest.

Now it�s suddenly Wednesday and I have no idea what happened to the first 3 days of the week. As far as actual school work goes, I have had very little to do this week. A little video editing last night, and a test yesterday morning were the extent of it. I now have an assignment to finish up in freehand, but I can luckily do that assignment away from the lab.

I had quite a nice length of time this afternoon where I had nothing to do so I took a nap and excelled at doing nothing. I just don�t feel right not having anything to do or anywhere to go for multiple consecutive hours. I�m sure I could have found some pressing task to take care of at that time, but I didn�t.

This rant has had very little to do with anything that anyone other than myself would really care about, so how about I actually get down to a little ranting. I suppose it isn�t the smartest idea to hide real content within my inane ramblings about my personal life.

My opinions on Adobe premiere are not exactly wonderful. We have to use Adobe premiere in the labs at school for video projects, that is the program that everyone learns because it is a sort of industry standard for NLE. Sadly I am not so naive to think that Premiere is the only option out there. My buddy Aaron turned me on to Vegas Video which is a simply awesome video editor that far surpasses the compositing abilities of Adobe Premiere. Vegas allows for such simpler operation and makes producing more precise and complex projects that far exceed what is possible with the rather pedestrian premiere. As far as functionality goes it is more of a combination of Premiere with After effects all in one seamless package. I�m not going so far as to say that I don�t like After Effects, it really is a powerful tool, but not as beautifully simple as Vegas Video is.

One program that I desperately wish to use is Final Cut Pro, they have it installed on the brand spanking new G5s over in the art department, but that doesn�t do me a lot of good. I have heard that Final Cut Pro really blows Premiere out of the water as well as fulfilling some people�s masochistic desire to spend money on Apple computers.

Aside from my forays into video editing lately I have been still looking at portable digital audio players. The complexities of all the options is really frustrating, the deciding factor for me at this point is that I cannot actually afford to purchase any of the devices that I have been looking at. Perhaps if I get another job or two I will then be able to� nah never mind I always have something more important to spend money on. Speaking of which, I will get to see my wonderful woman Becca next week for thanksgiving break. I can hardly wait

My contacts on the inside tell me that wal-mart now has Dance Dance Revolution for sale, I mean they have the PS2 game as well as the whole metal pad to stand on. I have been trying to convince a friend with a PS2 to purchase this game and allow me to come over and get my boogie on. This is probably the only way that I am going to get any sort of physical work-out as a college student, excepting the walk to the union to get some T-Bell.

I will leave you with the most interesting linkage I can remember coming across in the past few days, a detailed analysis of the ever important question �What is the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow?� You just have to know these sorts of things when you�re a king.

Timewarp

Early? Nah, this ain�t early. It�s approaching the 6 o�clock hour here, and I am just getting in now. �What have I been doing?� you may ask� well, I have been doing what any college aged guy would be doing late on a saturday night/early sunday morning. Watching all three Terminator movies of course. My good buddy Mayday and myself decided around midnight to go rent the entire Terminator trilogy and watch them consecutively. I should probably just get to bed seeing as how I need to get up for church in a few hours� but this is a time of day that I rarely see. And rarely do I stay up this late, let alone get up this early.

I�m starting to feel coherence slip out of my grasp so I had better make this quick. Some people say that sleep is good, and I do have a full day ahead of me tommorow. Perhaps I will tell you about it� tommorow, which is actually tonight, unless I end up staying awake late again, in which case it might actually be tommorow when I tell you about what is in reality the events of today. Righto.

G�night all.