Undergraduate Admissions

This week has been what I would call a Jack Bauer week.
Why would I call it that, you might ask? Because…

WE’RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME!!

Seriously, all week I felt like I didn’t have time for anything. My brain is more fried than it has been anytime in recent memory. I feel like even when I do have some time to relax, I won’t remember how. Since all I have to do tomorrow is my internship from 10-2, I guess I’ll find out if that’s the case when I get home tonight!

So, I started my internship this week. I’m going to be doing some web design and graphic design for a place that provides IT support to companies in the Western New York (and Southern Ontario?) area. It’s in West Seneca, so it’s about a 20 minute drive, but since it’s all highway driving, it’s actually a lot more relaxing than driving to UB and finding a parking space is!

So far so good though, and it seems like it’ll be interesting. I’m already making some pretty significant progress on some of the projects I’m working on. It feels good to accomplish things that have some sort of tangible end product. I’ll definitely post some links on here when anything I’m proud of ends up on the web.

A new Japanese restaurant opened up in the Commons here at UB. I think the food’s pretty good, and it’s really inexpensive. It has a pretty nice vibe, too, with a big TV that was playing music videos while I was there and employees wearing regular clothes instead of stupid/bland looking uniforms. I look forward to eating there on the one day a week that I work at night! I’d be worried if I was the owner of the Korean place in the Commons.

Guess what I had for lunch yesterday? PORKCHOP SANDWICHES!!!!

I hope somebody out there knows what I’m talking about. I really did eat a porkchop sandwich. (And no smoke detectors went off and nothing burned down!)

I cooked last night. I’m starting to get ok at cooking some things. Finally. I’ve been horrible at it for a really long time, but being that I don’t live on campus or with anybody that cooks I’ve had no choice but to keep trying. I made some sort of beef stir fry, with carrots, corn, and water chestnuts. It turned out pretty good! I also had some rice to go with it, but I have a (cheap) rice cooker so I don’t even consider making rice to really be “cooking”. It’s like making toast if making toast took 20 minutes, you just put something in something else and then press down a switch. I took a picture of my meal just because I haven’t really taken any pictures lately, but I’m at work right now, so I’ll update this post later tonight to throw the picture up here. Here it is!

This post is pretty scatterbrained. It’s been a long day. Luckily, I get to go home (and eat leftover stir fry) in about four two minutes (spent a couple minutes proofreading this post, haha) so that’s pretty awesome.

I haven’t posted lately, mainly because I haven’t done anything particularly interesting. I don’t really like the first couple weeks of school in any semester, and this one is no different. Getting back into the rhythm of being busy is tough, and I feel lame about it because I’m not actually that busy. It is just the first couple weeks, after all.
Classes have still been going good. I have an internship I start on Monday that I’ll write more about after it begins. I’ve still been playing Rock Band a lot lately, and it’s still awesome, especially with a bunch of people. I don’t think I’ve had this fun playing a multiplayer videogame in a long time. It doesn’t even feel like playing a multiplayer videogame. I’d say it’s closer to multiplayer, multi-instrument karaoke. Speaking of which, I had some friends from classes/work/whatever come over and play Rock Band, and it was a good time. They’re gonna bring Karaoke Revolution over next time, which should be cool.

Before I played Rock Band, I hadn’t sang a note in front of anyone other than myself since middle school. Now I’m totally willing to play Karaoke Revolution and maybe do actual karaoke sometime. Who knows if I ever would have tried if not for Rock Band?

Things that I’ve found fairly awesome lately:
American Gladiators - This show is cool because it is exactly what it should be. It’s some flashing lights and quick-moving cameras away from being a fifteen year old show. It’s refreshingly simple; who couldn’t enjoy people attempting violent and arbitrary physical tasks?
Justice - I love Daft Punk. It only recently occurred to me that they aren’t an island, and if I like their music so much I should see if I can find anything else that’s similarly awesome. Justice is exactly that. If you like Daft Punk, you should absolutely check them out. Also, they’re playing in Toronto in April or something like that, and I’ll probably go if I can convince anybody to go with me.

I went last night at midnight to see Cloverfield with my roommate. He bought the tickets online ahead of time, which was pretty cool. I could see myself doing that pretty often.  (As a side note, since when is the smallest popcorn you can buy over $5? I was gonna get some, but that’s just ridiculous.)

The movie was really great in a lot of ways. Filmed excellently. I wouldn’t really change a thing about the directing or even the acting. But one thing that really got me was the lack of story. Most people who don’t mind this say “It was about the people, not the story!” which can be true, but I think that makes for a less meaningful movie.

It’s like they say in the Blue Oyster Cult song “Godzilla”:
“History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of man”
That was the part most missing from this movie. What is this monster? Where did it come from? Why is it attacking? Without any one of these issues clarified, the movie seems devoid of meaning. Maybe it’s part of the 9/11 allegory that is obviously in the minds of the creators, but I disagree even with that. Many people see 9/11 as something that came from out of nowhere , with no reason or warning, and perhaps the creators were trying to put this feeling into the film. But I think that’s a bit naive. Everything has its causes; whether it’s justified or not, nothing is really pure destruction for destruction’s sake, but that’s all Cloverfield provides.

The fact that there are cryptic alternate reality game websites providing information that has nothing to do with anything directly mentioned in the movie only makes it worse. I guess I should have expected this kind of shenanigans from the guy who made Lost, which I’ve heard so many complaints about for the same reason–that it ends up seeming like the creators are just toying with the people who are searching for some kind of real meaning or explanation. More than an explanation, though, I’d have liked a message. I also would have liked some kind of twist; for a movie with marketing this cryptic, there really was pretty much nothing that shocked me throughout the entire movie.

Oh, and in the ending credits there was a Godzilla-sounding ending piece that referenced/ripped off the music from a bunch of Godzilla movies. In a way it was a nice touch, but I thought it was a little patronizing. It sounded like somebody who never saw a Godzilla movie was trying to replicate the music from them. (This is something that I would never in a million years expect anyone else to notice/care about.)

Though this post is filled with complaints, I did enjoy the movie. I certainly wasn’t bored and I thought the characters were all great. I’m just frustrated because it did everything right that most monster movies (including most Godzilla movies, I’ll admit) do wrong. The characters, the directing, the pacing, the feeling, were all spot on. But it felt like somewhere along the line they left out some of the aspects that made giant monster movies so impressive in the first place. I’d still recommend that anyone who thinks they might like a movie about a monster attacking a city filmed from a camcorder go see it, because it’s definitely, absolutely worth seeing. But without some kind of meaning to it, I feel like I have no reason to ever see this movie again. It’s like a ride at an amusement park. It’s a lot of excitement, but after you’ve gone on it, you pretty much know what it’s like, and there isn’t really anything there beyond that.

My classes are going pretty well so far.

Japanese was kind of discouraging at first. I don’t know why, but my head just wasn’t really in it. Partially because I didn’t do anything with it at all over break, and also because of the change in format from “teacher with me and one friend” to “actual class”, I think. But after the first homework assignment, I got back into the game and I realized that there’s still tons to learn.

Advanced Digital Art seemed a little daunting at first. It’s gonna be way more intense than Intermediate Digital Art was. But again, after a couple days I realized that I’m up for it, and there’s a lot I can get out of a class like this. It also helps that I know tons of cool people in the class.

Programming for the Web will be cool if it goes far enough. I’m sure starting out, it will all be stuff that I already know, but I think later in the semester, it will really fill in a lot of the more specific and strict details that are passed over in my more artistic Media Study education.

It’s kinda funny, really. The teacher for Advanced Digital Art is the same one who taught Basic Digital Art when I took it in my very first semester, and the guy who I’m sitting next to in Japanese sat next to me in 101, 102, and 201. Things really have come full circle.

Well, winter break is about to be over. I had a pretty good break. The first part was pretty unremarkable; I just worked, hung out with friends, and did stuff with my family. After Christmas, my girlfriend Catherine came to Buffalo, and that was great. I took some time off work (and off of this blog, too, as you can see) and had a good time.

This next semester is my last, and I don’t really know what to think about that. I have some cool stuff lined up though. I’m gonna be doing an internship, and taking only 3 classes: Advanced Digital Art, Japanese 402, and Programming for the Web. All are really relevant to what I like doing, so it should be cool. I think I can get a schedule going that isn’t too strenuous.

My roommate and I got the game Rock Band this week, and last night we had a bunch of friends over. It’s amazing! For those who don’t know, it’s like Guitar Hero with drums and singing added as well. I knew I’d like the drumming quite a bit since I play “real” drums, and the game definitely is pretty close in terms of what you’re doing and how it feels. The guitar parts are really entertaining too. What surprised me the most was singing. I thought I’d never do it at all–I haven’t sang anything since middle school–but last night we were all rotating through all the instruments, and Metallica’s Ride the Lightning was calling out to me, so I gave it a shot. It wasn’t too hard, and (according to the game) I did an alright job, so I sang a few more songs too. It’s really fun getting everybody into the game. Playing with two of your friends is really great, especially when you can (as the old Nintendo commercials used to say) “play it loud!” The company that developed Rock Band has stated that their goal in making games is to bring the joy of musicianship to a wide game-playing audience, and I think Rock Band is an unprecedented success in doing this. Even my friends who weren’t playing seemed like they were having a good time.