|
|
So yeah, it's been a while eh? The best summer of my life continues, and I quite literally just haven't had ANY time to update. I get less than 6 hours of sleep a night most nights, and I think I'm going to look forward to going back to school just so I can slow down a bit. But in the meantime, since there are no "I dont' have any money" or "I have a test on Monday that I have to study for" excuses, it means every night and weekend there's something going on somewhere. It's great! The only reason I have time to update today is that I'm not going bowling until 9 tonight and I didn't feel like joining the basketball game going on right now.
So just for the record so I can look back on this in 5 years and go "Oh so that's what I did that summer". Since the last update I've:
Saw some of the most gorgeous scenery of anywhere I've been, on the coast of Oregon
Went to Vancouver, Canada for the weekend. First time ever in Canada and first time ever going through customs and handing foreign money.
Saw the largest trees in the world in Nothern California in the Redwood Forest
Went surfing for the first time ever in Half Moon Bay just south of San Francisco
Went to San Francisco over the July 4th weekend for 2 days with 5 other interns. Rode on the side of a cable car. Saw the fireworks over the bay. Visited Stanford. Played on one of the original DDR machines at Sony Meteron
Had my camera break on the morning of the second day of the SF trip
.
Saw two red cards in a Portland Timbers soccer game (at the weekly Thirsty Thursday at PGE Park)
Had my glasses broken by a crowd surfer for the 3rd time in a row of going to Warped Tour.
Saw Offspring at Warped Tour
Went to the beach on a workday as part of an Intern event
Saw Top Gun on a huge screen in downtown Portland.
Saw the line for Harry Potter at Powell's go around the entire city block and then some.
Went white water rafting on the White Salmon river in 40 degree freezing water. Went over a 14 foot waterfall in the raft, and jumped off a 25 foot bridge into the river below.
Saw my very first drive-in movie: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. With copious amounts of chocolate.
Went bungee jumping for the first time off the tallest bungee bridge in the US (200 feet) and absolutly loved it.
Bought a new digital camera to replace my old one
And I know I'm forgetting stuff. Yeah, it's been that kind of summer. Four more weeks until I get home (fly in Sunday August 14th) and still have a ton more to cram in (camping in a rain forest in washington, visiting mt st helens, skydiving, and I'd like to try windsurfing since apparently it's the best place in the world for it)
And so in quick succession:
Oregon Coast pictures
Canada pictures
California pictures
The beach interns
Video of me bungee jumping (5 MB)
There would be a lot more of course, but with my camera broken I haven't had many opportunities. But as of today I am the proud owner of a Canon Powershort A510 3 megapixel camera with 4x zoom, and more random features then you can shake a stick at. I got it really cheap too from a guy who had bought it for his ex girlfriend but she didn't like it and it was too late to return it. So far I really like it, though I haven't had much of a chance to play with it. But it does mean the cam page is updated yet again, with the same kind of picture I started it out with. See June 2003 and July 2005.
And cause an update without a random link just isn't allowed, apparently being a dork is cool. Which has always been true, but now that everyone knows it's true, it'll become untrue. Or something like that. I got in touch with my inner nerd a long long time ago, and ever since I stopped caring how nerdy I acted things just got a whole lot easier.
Holy crap it's another update! Plans kinda fell through for tonight, so I managed to have to clean my room, write some emails/letters/postcards, and even update the website.
I love my new camera, especially the panorama feature. I took a cool picture of Saddle Mountain of the view of from the top. And then today I took one of PGE Park where the minor league baseball and soccer teams play. So far I've been quite happy with the quality of pictures, and the battery life is great. I also like having a 1 GB memory card, I don't have to worry anymore about using up all the space.
The top 10 Internet fads of all time. I'd forgotten about Mahir, that guy was awesome. Though I really got to question Blogger as an internet fad. It just doesn't really fit in with the rest of them.
I need more hours in the day.
I felt like typing things tonight. So type I shall.
The War on Terror (tm) as demonstrated by a bash prompt. Oh those crazy computer nerds and their computers.
Speaking of which, apparently nerdcore rap is the next big thing. Because computer geeks know how to keep it real on the hizzy. I personally have always been a big fan of MC Hawking and who can forget Weird Al's awesome "All About the Pentiums" parody.
And speaking of rap, Hustle & Flow is worthy of the hype it got at Sundance. I hate rap and I still really enjoyed the movie.
Completely shifting gears, in an entirely unsurprising move, the Greeks decided to blatenly try and pull a fast one on UF students and create a bill for online voting for Student Government elections that has nothing to do with how most students intended online voting to work. So much for all those worthless campaign promises to bring voting to the Internet, not that I'm surprised that they pulled this kind of stunt over the summer when no one's there to put up a fight. How convinent eh? I can't place all the blame on them though, the general student population is so apathetic that they let the Greeks win yet again this past year so they could make ridiculous bills like this. I don't get why everyone doesn't vote, it's not hard, takes exactly a minute, it does make a difference (a la this bill wouldn't be up for passing) and you even get the kickin rad "I Voted" sticker which is proven to make you 323% more attractive to the sex of your choosing.
The space shuttle is back! Huzzah!
Wait, apparently it's not longer the War on Terror, it's the global struggle against violent extremism. Thanks for letting us know Bush! Because changing the name is just as good as actually accomplishing something.
As far as life on the West Side goes, Friday went to see Back to the Future downtown, Saturday was spent swimming in a river and cooking hotdogs and making s'mores ("Smalls, you wanna s'more?", "I haven't had anything.", "No, do you wanna s'more?", "How can I have some more of nothing?", "You're killing me, Smalls!") over a wood fire, and Sunday was running a bunch of errands. Monday was playing frisbee golf for the first time in about a year (I really need to play some at UF this coming year, who's in?) and today hanging out with the interns in the apartment's pool in an impromptu after work pool party since it's actually been kinda warm up here finally. Tomorrow's hiking, Thursday is the last Thirsty Thursday of the summer, Friday is the Oregon Beer Festival (not that I drink, I just want the glass. Portland is famous for all its microbreweries though, so it's a huge festival) and this weekend is camping and deep sea fishing off the Oregon coast. Only one more weekend left after this one, and there's still so much I haven't gotten to do up here. This summer has just flown by...
Obligatory pictures:
Fire!
Jumping in the river
Some small rapids
Sunset on the Coast
And yet again I'm getting to bed too late. I'm looking forward to going back to school just so I can get a decent night's rest!
|
