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	Welcome To My Home... October 28, 2002 Zen and the Art of Warcraft So I've been working on my term paper on Buddhism quite a bit lately, and I will inform you that playing Warcraft III is not a good activity to pursue during breaks from research. In theory, an average game only takes about 25 minutes, so after a couple hours of study, it seems that one could justifiably take a quick break to, shall we say, apply Buddhist philosophies to Warcraft III and return, with a renewed enthusiasm, to research soon after. This scenario can possibly occur if one manages to win his game. That falls under the "Quit while you're ahead" principle. And even that is very likely to be undermined by the more popular "Ooh! I'm on a winning streak!" philosophy. It's when you lose the game, though, that problems really arise. You can't just quit when you know fundamentally that offensive tower rushing is a cheesy tactic. That can't really count as a game. Then you find yourself unfairly matched against two guys both 4 levels higher than you and, very shortly, your base is once again being pummeled into a pile of rubble. Or perhaps your troops were plagued, that game, by an unfortunate abundance of bad luck. Or your ally readily acted in ways so as to identify himself as a dedicated moron. Or whatever other excuse you can come up with. It's just too difficult to return to the wonderful world of Buddhism with that weighing on your mind. So what's just one more quick game, anyway, eh? Being, right now, so intrinsically bad at Warcraft III, I unfortunately seem to find myself in the above situations an unsettling number of times. This, as I have mentioned, has somewhat of a negative impact on my research efforts. And when I do get back to research, it probably doesn't help much to have a virtual Warcraft III shrine prominently displayed directly over my workstation. To counter this problem, I have now shelved my Warcraft III CD. Having it reside outside of its usual home in the CD tray gives me those crucial seconds to ask myself "What the heck are you doing?" before once again leaving to wage war in Azeroth. This small step has helped greatly, and I now no longer play Warcraft III when I should be studying. Instead, I compulsively update my website. Comments October 28, 2002 Composers' Forum I get back from the Composers' Forum, and the whole suite smells like a freaking ashtray. Do smokers not realize that (as odd as it may seem) the rest of us may not want to fill our lungs with their recycled malodorous tar? Anyway, like I said, I went to the Composers' Forum tonight. That's where a bunch of compositions by CSUF graduates and undergraduates are performed. It was... interesting. I had asked my music teacher if it would count for a concert report, and it looked like he was about to break out laughing right then. "Heh.. yeah. You can go to that. That would be for the... 'C' option: 'other', I guess. Heh. Those can be... interesting. Different... than what you're probably used to." At the time, I thought, "How the heck would he know me well enough to know what I'm used to? There's like 200 people in his class." (Of course, only about a quarter of them ever show up any more). After attending the concert, however, I now know that his statement would have been a pretty safe bet for anybody. I'm not sure I like the direction modern composition is heading. The piano pieces had absolutely no thematic structure or sustained rhythm whatsoever, and they seemed to resemble a cat walking across the piano rather than an actual musical composition. A few of the works showed promise, but even they quickly became very repetative and tiresome. And then there were a couple pieces with that... artistic quality (for lack of a better term), defined by their collections of sounds that were completely removed from anything even minutely resembling music. October 29, 2002 Overnight Development I have with me, right now, my digital camera. This means that you guys can now stare in envious wonder at the interior decor of my living quarters. This gift did not come without it's trials, however. I had actually meant to reference this picture in my original post, but the camera had other ideas. I took a bunch of pictures, and everything was cool. Then I popped the installation disk in so I could view these picture. I excitedly clicked "setup.exe" and waited for it to do its stuff. And I kept waiting for a few more seconds before I got bored, thought "Bah. Stupid Windows XP," and went to the website for help. Fully twenty minutes later (while, incidentally, I was typing my question to support), the installation flash screen popped up with a status box telling me that it was going to start the installation wizard. "Woohoo," I thought. Then "Darn. It froze." I needed to get to the Composers' Forum at that time, so I left. When I came back, the dialogue box was gone, but the software was still not installed. Bah. So much for that. I went to bed. When I got up this morning, I was greeted (at long last) by the installation wizard. October 29, 2002 I'm Losing It You can probably tell. I've been gradually going completely insane over the last week. "Information overload" is what we call it in Speech Communications. I've got so much Buddhism and ancient China shoved in my head right now, that I don't know how to begin organizing everything. And if you think I'm bad with regular people's names, you should just see me trying to keep track of all these fine ancient Chinese folks. Weird does not even begin to describe the dreams that I've been having. I wouldn't be surprised if Jared told me I was singing lullabies and crap in the middle of the night or something. Not that I actually remember anything. I just know it was weird, and I have vague recollections of stuff that, I'm assuming, I dreamt about. I'm not even sure what's real anymore. I have memories of doing things that I haven't, and I do things with no recollection of having done them. For instance: I sat up and closed the freaking window last night - in my sleep. I woke up this morning, and I asked Jared, because I was curious, "Hey, did you close the window last night?" "Uh... no. You did." Supposedly, writing your thoughts down before going to bed is supposed to help you sleep. Right. It got the window closed, anyway. Who knows what kind of stuff I'd be doing if I didn't have this journal. Haven't had much time for links, recently, but here's a few to keep things going. The Hunt This is very cool. I'd be there if I lived in Florida. They're Gone. This is good news. I was afraid that one of them might get off. October 29, 2002 Nice room... Nice room reige... It's a heck of a lot bigger than what I've got over here. But why is your side of the room so messy? And why don't you ever rearrange the icons on your desktop? ; ) Hehehe... naw, it's cool. I like your Warcraft III collage. Nice rug too, adds a bit of flavor to the room. And is it just me, or is that a brand spanking new backpack?!?! How exciting.... -Victor October 29, 2002 Indeed, It Is My side's actually not usually nearly that messy. I just happened to be in the middle of researching from about eight different books at the time I decided to take pictures, and I didn't want to bother with tidying stuff up. Besides. It gives it personality. The rug is actually to hide the LAN cable that needs run across the middle of the room. But I like it, too. I could never use that rug when I had cats around. Brand spanking new backpack - since a couple months ago, anyway. It says "CSUF TITANS" across it, too, which means I'll need to get another one if I ever want to transfer. =) And I like my desktop the way it is, thank you.		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