It's been nearly a month since I last posted anything of relevance. A lot had happened since then. I've completed my first month of school and, as such, my first set of classes. Now I won't pretend to understand I know how a traditional college works but I do know that Full Sail's approach is much different (and, in my opinion, much more sensical). Every month we have two courses that we attend for four weeks. These are broken down into, generally, five eight-hour days per week with few breaks in between save major holidays. This is how we pull off a four year degree in only twenty-one months. These five day weeks are broken down into one subject being done three days and the other two. This month I was lucky enough to only have four days of school per week but all I did were gen ed classes, namely art history and english composition.

Art History Art history was interesting if nothing else. We got see all sorts of art from various periods of time starting with the cave men and their wall paintings. My favorite eras were definitely the Renaissance and Baroque. It is rare to find an artist that skilled these days. The Greeks were awesome as well with all their master marble working. The only problem with them, however, is their crazy preoccupation with penises. I could've done without that, thank you very much. We also took a trip to the Orlando Museum of Art. Some pretty interesting stuff their from ancient artifacts up to Andy Warhols. But, the best part of the whole thing was when we had to make our own pieces of art emulating other styles and then have them displayed in front of the whole class. A lot of good laughs shared there. Here's my pieces:

For this we were supposed to do a cave painting using a movie as the theme. Fifty points to the person who can correctly name the movie.

I was shooting for cubism but wound up pulling a weird combo of things, namely cubism, abstract, and pop art. I like it, though.

English Comp This is the course I've been sweating through the most. Though I have a better than average grasp of English and grammar, primarily through keeping this blog and a lot of reading, I felt that my writing was too erratic and too concise to pull off this class successfully. Luckily we only had to write three papers (four if you include the ungraded one we wrote at the beginning of the course). They were each a different kind of paper, these being a memoir, a print ad analysis, and a research argument. We've also had to do some group presentations in front of the class. The last of these almost got seriously screwed up because we misread our little topic card. About ten minutes before we did our presentation we realized this and were scrambling to come up with relevant information. We wound up just pulling the whole thing out of our asses at the last minute but still managed a one hundred. I'm surprised points weren't taken off for my visible knee shaking.

On the whole I've been having a good time considering that I'm in school learning stuff. I've made a bunch of friends and at that ones who are in the same boat I am, meaning they can quote the 300 PG trailer. Next week I get to look forward to designing computer graphics and networks and operating systems as my courses. Should be awesome.

No, I'm not dead. I'm not even necessarily all that busy, just no real drive to write anything on this blog. However, there is something I need to bring to light and here it is:

Maybe some more on me later after I'm done with finals and stuff this week.

I do not consider myself an Apple zealot, but I'll have to admit that they make very nice hardware. I'm completely loving my Mac Book Pro. It's doubley more awesome that my Mac mini in almost every respect. Clock speed, RAM, hard drive space, video, you name it this thing is better. And it's portable. And it gets blazing hot when it's doing heavy processing, hotter than the surface of the sun I'd say.

Yesterday I picked up my books and softwares, those being Final Cut Studio 2 and Adobe Creative Suite 3 (adds up to a grand total of $3000+). I loaded up CS3 immediately and had fun doing stupid Photoshop jobs all day.

[gallery=Photoshop Fun][/gallery]

I tried screwing around with FCS2 last night but didn't really get anywhere. Final Cut Pro itself seems fairly straight forward so far but I couldn't figure out Color (color grading app) which is a bummer because one thing that my videos need are to be color graded.

School doesn't start until Tuesday and I'm beginning to get a little bored. E and I have been playing Halo 2 and we watched all the Back to te Future movies, but I'm ready for school. I do have my copy of Eternal Sonata now so maybe that'll ease the pai of waiting even if just by a little bit. I could always draw, I suppose. But I don't know if I'll be able to top this:

Before I delve into the juicy, gory details I will warn anybody who's unfortunate enough to be on dial-up: there's going to be pictures. Lots of them. Be patient.

I guess I'll start with the beginning. I was born around 10ish on June 8th, 1986. Life was pretty good until they cut my umbilical cord. You see I... Okay, too far back.

Last Monday, Sept. 17th, was a crazy, hectic day because I really hadn't packed much up to that point. About the only things I had packed were my books and DVDs. That left this:

(be sure to follow the link. I've got region thingies set up on the flickr page)

As you can see it was quite a hellish nightmare. But, I got everything packed and by that evening it looked more like this:

Evening came and morning followed the first day.

The next day, Tuesday, began the first leg of our near thirteen hundred mile trip. After I said goodbye to my family we started off. Then we promptly returned because I'd forgotten some things (that's not to say I got everything I'd forgotten, though). That day we drove about seven hundred some odd miles, well over half the trip, passing through five states (Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama). We stayed in a little town past Birmingham called Oxford. Evening came and morning followed the second day.

There's really not a whole lot to say about the second day of driving. We passed through Atlanta (uneventfully I might add) and drove from there on down to Florida. One thing I will say about Atlanta, though, is that there's an assload of cars on the road. Twelve lanes and all of them packed. Once in Winter Park it took about an hour and a half to find our lodging for the night. Luckily we did find it and it was an easy drive to the apartments. We ate at Boston Market that night. It was pretty good (though the service was... weird). I'll forgo the Genesis reference this time.

So, it was finally the big day (or at least one of them). We made our way over to the apartments and got there without any trouble. However, we did circle the whole complex nearly three times before we found the leasing office which was tucked away discreetly behind some trees. It was there that I met up with my roommate and signed my life away to the dark cabal that controls everything. However, we did get a sweet apartment in return: [gallery=Apartment Interior][/gallery]

As you can see in that last picture we have a sweet TV setup (or I do. It's all my stuff). The gibberish on the screen is our (at the time) messed up cable. Dragging everything up and in wasn't to big of a deal and really didn't take too long. Getting setup, that was another story all together. My room isn't completely unpacked yet though it's functioning at one hundred percent capacity.

That evening we went and bought some furniture.

[gallery=The Furniture][/gallery]

The next day we didn't do much aside from pull in some of the more minor items we needed. I spent a good chunk of the day working on the mess that was my room. I think I did anyways... By this time it was Saturday and I had to see my Dad off as he prepared to redrive the roads we had just been on. We (my roommate and I) didn't do much over the weekend. Bought some stuff, played some games, watched some TV, drew some pictures. Just kept low. Then came yesterday (Monday).

We were both getting kind of tired of not having much to do so we packed up and went to the beach. Daytona Beach, that is. Up to that point the closest I had ever been to the beach was watching LOST so it was something completely new for me. It was a hell of a lot of fun.

We tossed a Nerf football around, we rode some waves, we walked up the beach (probably a mile or more not including the trip back). Being the off season there weren't too many people there and at that most of them were seniors. With the exception of the little kids we were the youngest people there. While it was fun and all there was a price to be paid. I had purchased some sunscreen before we'd gotten there, but was unable to get my back. My roommate, who I will refer to as E, didn't put any on at all. So by the time we got home he was completely red and my back felt like it was on fire. That evening we laid low and watched all the new offerings on NBC and headlines on Jay.

Tonight we're going to be going to a little meeting thing at the school and tomorrow is registration and the getting of our Mac Book Pros. It'll be sweet to be sure. I'll be back a full update including pics. Until then, stay cool.

It is currently September 16th, 5:30AM CDT. Temperature is in the mid-sixties with some cloud cover. I'm sitting here asking myself what the hell am I doing up at five in the morning? There's a myriad of ways I could answer that question but the one that seems to fit the bill the most is anxiety... and heartburn (one too many sausage calizones) . Today marks only two days left until I set out on my cross-country trip to begin my new life.

I've only been waiting for this moment for twenty-one years but when the time is actually upon you it feels different. Everybody and everything I've ever known will all be left behind; thirteen hundred miles behind. I've known this for some time but it didn't really hit me until it was brought up that I'll never live in this house again. Never again will I call it my home. From here on out I'll be fending for myself. Alone.

Another thing on my mind is the actual trip itself. The longest car trip I've ever taken is up to Morrison, Missouri a six hour trip that was generally broken down into two days on familiar roads. This trip to Florida, however, is more than three times the length over the same amount of time on roads completely unfamiliar. Luckily there's Google Maps to help with that, but twenty hours is still a long time to be cooped up in a car.

Tomorrow I'm going finish packing all my stuff, taking apart all my furniture, and trying to mentally prepare myself for the day after when I have to say goodbye to my family. How do you say goodbye to those that you've been around all your life? To the siblings that you grew up with and are your best pals? I'm really bad at goodbyes and I can tell you now that Tuesday morning is going to suck.