Life

Grad School FFFFFFUUUUUUU

On 08.30.10, In College, Family, Life, News, Pictures, Videos, By Philip

Sometime back in late March/early April of this year, I randomly decided I wanted to go to grad school, so I scheduled an appointment to take the GRE, studied 45 minutes for it, applied for the ISDS masters program, and now I’m back in school. I thought I was done tagging posts with the “college” tag, but I guess I have another two and a half years of that (if my poor blog lasts that long).

Anyway, I haven’t updated in a while (surprise, surprise), so it’s catch up time. Back in July, a good bit of my family flew to North Carolina to spend a week at my brother’s cabin. It’s pretty awesome up there (except for the spotty cell phone coverage ).

That’s me on Chimney Rock. The view was awesome.

That’s the sunset over the lake my brother’s cabin is on. Yeah, it was really pretty.

I got to fly in an airplane, ride on crazy curvy mountain roads, swim in a mountain lake, and go white water rafting; all things I’ve never done before. It was pretty awesome. If I ever get to go again, I want to take my car so I can drive on those roads.

I’ve been writing a good bit lately (for fun, not for school/work). I’m just shy of 40,000 words on “Business As Usual,” which I’m trying to get to novel status (50,000) during editing. Also, I decided I don’t like that title. :\

My web hosting expires in about 27 days, and I don’t think I’m going to renew it. My friend James offered to host my site for me, and since I don’t really use it as much as I used to, I may just take him up on the offer and save myself some money.

I recently posted this on Facebook and on reddit (where I got my highest upvote count ever), so I’m going to put it here too so anyone that still reads this can watch it and get all nostalgic all over it with me.

What would one of my updates be without random embedded YouTube videos of music I’ve been listening to? In case you haven’t realized it yet, I like electro-*anything*, and these videos are proof.

Electro-post hardcore:

Electro-pop:

-Philip

Yasseah

On 05.20.10, In Cars, Life, News, By Philip

I never realized how much college and my old job used to shape how much stuff I had to write about here until now. Since I don’t write about my current job here as a precautionary measure, that’s eight hours out of my day that go unrecordable. That combined with Twitter seems to have eaten most of my blogging abilities.

I always feel like talking about my car on here, but for some reason, I keep from doing it because I’m worried that other people will think that I’m bragging, when that’s not the case at all. I just really like my car, and I want to talk about it, just like I talk about my computer(s)…and, well, everything else I own that I talk about.

That said, I still haven’t posted any detailed information on it, and I plan on getting around to it at some point, complete with some pictures. I need to wax it, but I’m going to wait until the body work on it is done.

That reminds me: do not, I repeat, do NOT take your car to Winner’s Circle in Tigerland. I took it there to get my tire plugged and I got it back with some missing paint on the edge of the driver’s side door. One of my friends also messaged me recently to ask how I got them to pay for it, because one of their friends brought their car there and it came back with a scratch. Some of the people that work there apparently do not care about your car, and the owner is convinced that all of his employees are 100% honest about reporting accidents, so it’s fun to try to convince him that you respect your property far too much to fling your door open into something without even noticing.

I went to the dentist the other day – the first dentist I’ve gone to in Baton Rouge. That said, I highly recommend Bruns Family Dentistry. It’s run by a husband and wife, and though I didn’t have my appointment with the male doc, I can say that the female one was the best and most open dentist I’ve ever been to, if it’s possible to judge based on a first time visit. She told me a lot of stuff that I didn’t know about my teeth.

That’s all for now. Keep up with my experiments with lucid dreaming on my dream blog.

-Philip

Lucid Dreaming

On 05.16.10, In Life, By Philip

Back in January I wrote this post about my first experience with becoming lucid in a dream. It was a truly amazing experience; in fact, it’s one that I wish to be able to replicate on command, and for that reason, I’ve started a dream blog.

http://www.inphiltrate.com/dreams/

It’s more for me than for anyone else, but I thought I’d link to it anyway. There’s no posts on it yet except for the ‘About’ page, which explains the purpose of the blog: “I’ve had one lucid dream in my life, and it was a completely amazing experience. Because of this and a general interest in (lucid) dreams, I started this dream blog in hopes that it would increase my dream retention. Apparently, by keeping a dream journal, it alerts your brain that dreams are important and that it shouldn’t just discard dreams like it does most of the time. In turn, you’ll be able to remember more dreams – the first step to being able to control them.”

Norirama

On 03.30.10, In Life, Opinion, By Philip

I think I bit my tongue in my sleep last night, cause it hasn’t felt that great today.

And with that, welcome to another exciting blog post here on inphiltrate dot com!

I’ve always made political commentary in the past, especially on big subjects because I hope that I can do something, but lately I just accept this crap I’m forced into and don’t bother as much. The people that truly care never get what they want and the people that kind of care and just go out on election day and vote down their party lines are the ones that get exactly what they want. It’s extremely annoying. So now, this healthcare bill has passed, and while it’s not universal healthcare, it’s still incredibly frustrating that I’m going to have to pay for other people’s medical expenses, whether directly or indirectly. And that’s all I have to say about that, because what I think doesn’t matter in the big picture anyway.

I bought a ticket to see Paramore this September. I’ve been a fan of theirs since 2006, so I’m pretty excited to see them.

I made sushi the other day, and it was pretty tasty, save for it caused me stomach pain afterwards. However, all sushi does this to me, and I can’t figure out why. I eat both cooked and raw sushi, and just about the only common ingredients between them all are the rice, avacado, and nori (seaweed paper). I know I’m not allergic to rice, and guacamole doesn’t bother me, so I guess I’m allergic or something to nori? :/ I wonder how sushi tastes with soy paper…

June 2010, new episodes of Futurama, here I come!

-Philip

Who is that?

On 01.25.10, In Life, Opinion, Pictures, By Philip

I had a pretty awesome experience Sunday night as I watched the New Orleans Saints beat the Minnesota Vikings from some pretty good seats right in the Superdome.

However, that does not mean I am okay with this “Who dat?” thing. This is why it has to go:

1) It sounds extremely uneducated. Do we, as members of a state that already gets made fun of for being uneducated, really want to further the propagation of that stereotype?

2) “But it’s part of our culture!”

Exactly what part of our cultural heritage, pray tell, does this awful phrase pay homage to? Perhaps our rich French heritage? I’m sure when they were leaving Acadia during Le Grand Dérangement, all they could say was “Who dat?”

Seriously, it’s a stupid phrase someone made up. You can’t try to glorify it by attaching some sort of false cultural meaning. (And if you’re going to try to argue with me that butchering the English language is part of our heritage, then I kindly invite you to move somewhere else and lower that state’s average IQ instead of ours).

3) “But it boosts team morale/intimdates the other team!”

I’m sorry, can we not accompish that with a phrase that sounds a little more educated? Personally, I like the “Here we come to get you” chant that they do at every Saints kickoff. In the dome, that was far more intimidating than people shouting “Who dat?”

4) It is ridiculously easy to turn around.

“who dat say dey gon’ beat dem Saints?!”

Uh, The Dallas Cowboys? The Tampa Bay Buccaneers? The Carolina Panthers?

Please feel free to throw arguments at me so that I may debunk them.

Saints

-Philip

Lucid

On 01.20.10, In Life, By Philip

For years, I’ve thought lucid dreaming sounded amazing, but I’ve never really done it. Despite all of the ridiculous things that have happened to me in dreams, I’ve only realized I was in a dream a few times that I can remember, and those times I just woke up.

Last week on Reddit, I read something really cool about some guy that has lucid dreams all of the time, and one of his pieces of advice to others that want to start having lucid dreams was to get in the habit of always testing if you’re in a dream. He said that he tries to fling people across the room with telekinesis when he starts talking to someone. If it works, he’s in a dream and then he can become aware of that and start doing crazy crap. Well, I thought that sounded cool, but that’s not what worked for me.

Yeah, I finally had a lucid dream last night, and it was insanely cool. For some reason, I was on a school bus going from Terrebonne High to my parents’ house. Of course, the fact that I haven’t been in high school since 2004 and haven’t ridden a school bus since 2003 didn’t phase me in the dream.

So I got out of the school bus, walked down my parents’ driveway, and my Kia was sitting there…and I snapped. I was like, “WHERE’S MY FREAKING CAMARO!? HOLY CRAP THIS IS A DREAM!”

From then on, that dream was pretty awesome. I changed a bunch of crap in the dream (including turning the Kia into Evey, because no one should have to drive a Kia in their dreams) and I flew around and stuff. For some reason, the house caught on fire and I made some water appear and put out the fire with it by moving it around with telekinesis. What I can remember of it was really, really freaking cool. I know this sounds ridiculous, but it really happened (in my dream, of course).

That’s all for now.

-Philip

2010 to do

On 01.04.10, In Life, Lists, News, By Philip

I managed to let Christmas and New Year’s Day come and go without a blog post, so I’d like to wish a belated Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all of you.

So, I am not really into making New Year’s resolutions, because I always seem to come up with one unachievable thing that will take far longer than a year to accomplish. I’m still working on my resolution from 2005 (at least, I think it was 2005), which was to learn to be ambidextrous. I’m actually pretty decent at writing with my left hand now.

Anyway, this year I’d like to just make a short list of very achievable things I would like to do, so here we go.

1.) Take a roadtrip to Massachusetts and maybe somewhere else.
2.) Upgrade Kalmiya with an SSD and some RAM.
3.) Install a cold air intake in Evey.
4.) Go to a doctor about my freaking ear.
5.) Finish the story I’m writing with at least 50,000 words.
6.) Memorize pi to 200 decimal points (currently at 80).
7.) Finish memorizing the Architect’s speech.
8.) See Creed again during their spring tour.
9.) Make at least one new friend that’s pretty spontaneous.
10.) See Panic! At the Disco, even if their tour this year doesn’t come close by. Four years of waiting is long enough.

That’s all for now. Hopefully I can get most of the things in that list done.

I also plan to make a detailed post about Evey sometime in the near future. All I’ve really done so far is post pictures of her, and I want to do a little more than that.

-Philip

Q’s

On 11.12.09, In Life, By Philip

Some things I think about sometimes:

-Is what I see as the color blue the same thing you see it as?

-What kind of signals can the human eye send to the brain that can possibly be interpreted as what we know as sight? How in the world does that work?

-Do we have an untapped potential for “supernatural” things like telekinesis?

-Is time travel possible? If so, how would it work? I have lots of ideas about this one that I may write about someday.

-Why is Scott Stapp’s head so big?

Remember, Remember

On 11.05.09, In Life, Movies, TV, Technology, By Philip

“Remember, remember the fifth of November.”

Plans for tonight: Community, The Office, then V for Vendetta. However, I have to sit through Parks and Recreation in the middle, so that’s kind of lame.

Anywho.

Lately I’ve taken to trying to memorize useless things, like a massive amount of the digits of pi and famous movie quotes. I don’t know why.

I really miss fixing computers sometimes, which makes me want to try to start a little side business, but I know I’ll never do it. :/

I reinstalled Snow Leopard and it fixed the issues I was having. Overall, it’s a much better experience, but still not all that much different from Leopard. I guess I can’t complain, since what is different only cost me $30.

Actually, I meant for this to be longer, but I’ll finish my thought process some other time.

-Philip

How to get a driver’s license in Baton Rouge

On 10.23.09, In Humor, Life, Lists, By Philip

So, you want to drive in Baton Rouge, but you don’t have a license. Here are some handy tips I’ve picked up from other drivers in the LSU area and downtown.

1) Make sure to ignore street signs. Some handy ones to ignore downtown are “DO NOT ENTER” and “ONE WAY.”

2) Don’t bother learning what the colors of the lines on the road mean. Just pretend like you can drive in either lane on a two lane road with yellow lines in the middle. It’ll all work out.

3) Make sure that when a two lane road of traffic flowing in the same direction is merging into a one lane road that you wait until the last possible second to merge. Don’t bother waiting in line like everyone else. You deserve to be in front.

4) When traveling down River Road from downtown towards the Tigerlamd area, ignore when the speed limit changes from 35 to 45 to 55. Just go 40 the entire way. It won’t piss off anyone behind you.

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Grad School FFFFFFUUUUUUU

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Who is that?

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