funny picture

No matter how hard you try, pregnancy can happen.

Nintendo Wii

The other day I was in best buy looking around. I got a gift certificate for Christmas so I wanted to see what new games were out. I first went to see if they had a Nintendo in stock. As usual, they didn't have one. I didn't have enough on the gift card to get a Nintendo. However, between the gift card and the money I had saved for something that I actually didn't end up getting I did. I went back to look at the computer games.
The Orange Box immediately caught my eye. I stared at it for a while and then continued browsing.
I stumbled upon Bio-Shock. It looks like a cool game. From the box I read that you go around and kill stuff. You can also drug your enemies and make them do stuff for you. You can do stuff to yourself and turn yourself into a lightning flinging wombat. Weird, but I thought it looked cool. I turned it over to check hardware requirements. My Pentium 4 wasn't fast enough. I could pull a Travis and somehow make it run. I am not sure how he does it. I think he just wills it to run. No matter how hard I try, my will just doesn't seem to influence my computer. I went back to the orange box. I checked its requirements. Yes! I had the hardware to run it with ease. However, I don't like buying stuff twice. I already own Half life 2 and episode one. but, I don't own the other stuff. I took it to the register and bought it.
All of sudden I see a gleeful employee run to the back with a Wii held over his head. "Spreeloink," I thought. He must have gotten first dibs on it. I went and asked him where he got it. He said, "Yeeeeeeeee! we just got in a shipment!" I had already gotten the orange box. I wanted a Wii but I didn't have enough for the orange box and the wii. I made a decision based on logic. I already own two fifths of orange box. I don't own anything to do with the wii. I took the orange box back and bought the wii. I also bought Zelda: Twilight Princess. I had to dig around in my wallet for that one. So far The wii is the coolest system I have ever played. Tennis is awesome. Sword fighting in Zelda is even better. The internet connection is very nice. I sent myself a message from my computer. Send me names and wii addresses and I will add you to my list of people I can Wii mail. I won't publish them as comments
The Nintendo Wii receives the H. King Houston III Stamp of Approval

Portable Apps

I recently found a new program that I have really enjoyed. It is more of an operating system than anything else. The cool part about it is that you run it off a flash drive. I downloaded it from PortableApps.com
So far I have five programs on it. I have Abiword, Audacity, Sumatra PDF Viewer, Mozilla Firefox, and Sudoku. They all run great. I am running Firefox off of my flash drive right now. It is running smoothly. I cannot detect any significant slowdown in the program. There might be a barely perceptible amount. I believe that it might just be the computer.
The programs that I downloaded are designed especially for the portable apps program. They are available for free on the website. They are portable editions. However, they do not act in a crappy and slow fashion like the title portable implies. The ones that I have tried seem to retain all of the main functions of the full program.
Being able to run your own programs on any computer is definitely a plus. You can save all of your links on your web browser. Then, you can have them available on whatever public computer you are using. You can use audacity to capture sound off the Internet or record yourself. Not all computers have this program. The school computers probably won't let you download it either. With Abiword you can make word documents on any computer.
The website claims that you won't leave a record of the programs that you used on the computer that you are using. I am not sure how to test this. Leave a comment if you know.

This program receives the official H. King Houston III Stamp of Approval

Songza

Here comes another great music website. http://songza.com/
This website is a music search engine. Basically, anything that is on I-Tunes, it will play for you. It was a project done by Aza Raskin son of Apple computer cofounder, Jeff Raskin. The site is supposed to be popular for the design of its user interface. I don't particularly care. I just like it because of the music search abilities. I have one criticism. I recently listened to a song and the audio ended exactly the same as a youtube video I watched. I believe that the songs are not the cd recordings. Some of them might be. I believe the audio came from wherever they could get it. However, the ability to listen to any song you want is awesome.

Pandora

I just found a really cool site using stumble upon. It is called Pandora. I went to the home page of the site. They claim to be able to play any music that you want for free. This sounded cool so I typed in a song. To my surprise they played a slightly different song. Apparently, they can't play exactly what you ask for. They play something similar. The program is kind of like a radio. You tell the dj what kind of music you like, and he plays music similar to it.
I looked around the site to see how they do it. Apparently, a team of dudes sat down and listened to a whole lot of music. They categorized all of it. When you select a song, every song that is in that category will be played. They are able to play stuff that you will like because each song is in several categories. They simply play songs that match categorically to the one you select. Right now I am listening to ska music. I typed in "The impression that I get." They are playing me a bunch of different music by different ska bands that have a similar concept of sound. They have played some stuff by the bosstones, reel big fish, as well others. They all have really good horn sections. Give it a try with the music that you like.
Pandora

True Story

This is a slightly scary story. I will relate my whole day. I believe

I was having a slightly busy day for Christmas break. I woke up around 9:30am. I went and had two cookies and a bowl of granola for breakfast. I did nothing for about thirty minutes. I then played with my mp3 player. I selected "random surprise". It came up with Strauss Ein Heldenleben. I was going to have to buy a cd with this recording on it. I had obviously gotten it somewhere and forgotten about it. Now I don't have to buy the cd. Finding this isn't the best part of my story. I sat down on the couch and listened to the whole thing while reading articles about it. Ein Heldenleben roughly translates to "a hero's life." Strauss wrote it about himself. He was a bad ass and he knew it. I then looked up my new favorite band "The Black Eyed Peas" on youtube. I then had this nagging feeling in the back of my mind. You know the feeling that you get when you are about to fail at life unless you do something. I remembered that I had to rewrite some music in a different clef. I have learned that if I have something in treble clef I need to rewrite it in bass clef. The last thing I need is to be struggling with reading the music when I am performing it. My mom called me about this time and told me that I would be in the paper as an "Academic All-Star." I went back to writing music. I did this for about an hour and then went to lunch. I got a giftcard to chick-fil-a for my birthday. I went there and I ordered from an angry black woman. She served up my lemonade to me sideways. the top was on it, so it didn't spill. She then tore some white boy a new one. I just got my food and left. I went back to my house ate my lunch and wrote out music for another hour. I then started making mistakes and decided I needed a break. I went to my computer and looked at random videos on youtube. My dad called me and asked me if I had anything planned for dinner. I told him he'd have to do himself because I had a rehearsal. He then called again and asked something similar. The phone then rang again and I was about to not answer it. The caller i.d. said "Blocked call." I decided to answer it. At this point in my day life became exciting.

Me: "Hello
Pre-pubescent male voice: "Are you Elizabeth?"
Me: "No, but I'm her son."
PPMV: "We have Elizabeth's bag."
Me: "How did you get her bag?"
PPMV: "We found it on the side of the street."
I found this quite alarming.
Me: "Where are you? Tell me so I can come get the bag from you."
PPMV: "Uh . . . I can't tell you that.
PPMV: "Do you have any history of hurting anyone?"
Background girl voice: "Don't ask him that!"
Me: "no"
This let me know I was just dealing with kids. This is what I hoped at the time. I was afraid that it was some kind of twisted plot to get me to go to a weird part of town. I was being moderately careful. Probably not enough
Me: "I need to get the bag from you. Are you in midtown right now?"
Me: "Can you leave it in front of your house."
PPMV: "I can't tell you where i live."
This was starting to get frustrating. The kid was smart for not telling me where he lives. For all he knew, I could have been a terrorist with an absent-minded mom. however i still needed to get the bag and find out how my mom had lost it.
Me:"Do you know where that church is?"
PPMV: "Yes"
Me: "Can you leave it at the front desk?"
PPMV: "Maybe.'
Me: "Can you leave it in front of one of your neighbor's houses?"
PPMV: "Yeah, we can. What's that house over there?"
PPMV: "We'll leave it at 400 split rock or at the church?"
he hangs up here. This had seriously harshed my groove. Me mom works at that Church. I was concerned that something had happened to her. I decided to give her a call. I called her cellphone and immediately got the answering machine. This made me feel worse.
He calls back.
Me: "hello"
PPMV: " His dad isn't home so ,we're going to leave it at 416 split rock."
Me: "Good, It will take me twenty minutes to get there. Watch it to make sure it doesn't get stolen before I can get there. Could you wait a while and then put it out?"
PPMV: " yes we'll wait ten minutes and then put it out."
he hangs up. I went and frantically grabbed my shoes, trombone, and half finished music. I then said goodbye to my dog and ran out the door. On the way there I was nervous that I was on a rendezvous with something awful. It seemed to take me forever to get there. I missed every light and got stopped by a train. I then drove past the house twice. I did this to see if I could see anything that felt very wrong. The area was in midtown. Big houses do not mean that it is a good neighborhood. The only unusual thing that I noticed was that the neighborhood was crawling with yard men. I parked, grabbed a mouthpiece for protection, and jumped out of my car. I looked around and then quickly grabbed the bag. Some little kids ran out of a back yard across the street. I waved at them and jumped back in my car. I immediately left the area and headed for the church. When I got there I found my mom. She said "what are you doing with my bag?'
"You left it on the side of the street."
"oh, I remember now. I was in that neighborhood playing harp. I put down the bag to help someone into a car. I then must have walked off and left it."
Feeling relieved, I went upstairs and made music with an african drummer and a choir. I did have time to finish my music. Life turned out ok.
I am going to go throw up now.
Peace out

What to do

Well, Christmas break is upon me. I tackled my exams and passed them all. I now have to find something to occupy my time since i don't have to wake up before six in the morning. I have a few plans. They are of the nagging kind. You know, the kind that if you don't follow through you will feel like a dirt bag. You could possibly ruin your life. The kind that will cause people to nag at you if they are aware of your plans.

1. Learn audition music for college. This is my main plan. It involves a lot of really hard boring work. This one will draw some nagging from complete strangers. ex.

Old Dude: "I hear your going to be a music major."
Me: "Yes"
Old Dude: "You got your audition music memorized yet?"
Me: "No"

Old Dude: "Better get on that. Let me tell you a story."
Me: (****)
Old Dude: "You know that homeless guy over there? Well . . ."
three hours later
Old Dude: "That why you should have learned your music by now. You might turn out like that guy."

you get the idea

2. Learn to type on a Dvorak keyboard. This is just something I decided to try out. If I don't learn it, I will feel like a dirt bag.
3. Go through my most recent ear training CD. This is something that I actually enjoy doing. I actually seem to have a knack for it.
4. Overdub some orchestra parts. This will be for my new CD.
I believe that is enough for a Christmas break. If I don't play too many video games or talk to too many old dudes I will succeed.