I have a new blog, screen name, and e-mail address, making the current ones obsolete. I will continue to use the ones you are familiar with until you all adjust fully.
AIM: Factor of 23
E-mail: Factor.of.23 [at] gmail [dot] com
Blog: http://factorof23.livejournal.com

The majority of this post will be cross posted on that blog, that portion is behind an lj cut for your convenience. Consider the uncut portion the nutrition and the rest can be ( the meat of the entry )

Speaking of new blogs, Jessica seems to be refusing to promote that she now has a livejournal. I was not informed it was intentional, and thus I am promoting it here, if you know her, friend her. That way she’s not using my friends page to silently stalk others.

I witnessed the quiet death of 2006 from my dad's new house in Georgia, watching Dick Clark stagger through his words like an old Disney animatronic, but completely forgot about the yearly tradition of lying to oneself about the accomplishments one wishes to achieve in this so called 'new' year. Thank the livejournal community for reminding me to create a list of my own to ignore and forget about until the following year. Actually you all have no need to thank them, thank the dentist appointment that woke me prior to noon but offered me nothing to do for an hour prior, without that I'd be happily avoiding life in sleep.

In the upcoming year I plan to:

• Stand by my words shamelessly


• Be more social, and that doesn't mean stay up to date on livejournal or facebook


• Get back in the gym


• Get back into ass kicking


• Follow my instinct more trustingly


• Get a job


• Finish something creative, not just start it


• Learn guitar, not just a song and a half


• Do my laundry more often


• Pass


• Attain Godhood

The last one is so that when I look back at these resolutions next year I can chuckle that I at least did one thing list specific...

I've had a good winter break thus far, however I'm still a bit consumed with the whole waking from sleep activity and embittered about the necessity of today's dental work. By the afternoon I will be back to normal, damn dentistry.

Recounting my horrible morning to a friend leaving the mealplan I realized it nicely summed it up, so I took mental note.

“Did you bathe in Rockstar, you reek of energy drink?”
“No, just finished this one off a second ago actually”
“You look like you had a rough night? You kinda look and sound like you’re on crack with your hair doing tha--”
“No, I’m not on crack. Rough morning and I haven’t had enough sleep to be fully coherent”
“Studying for finals?”
“Let me tell you a story.”
“A story, that can’t be good.”
“Well, I’m not composed enough for a story, so it’s more of a disjointed rant.”
“And…”
“I had a 7 o’clock final this morning, which I woke up at 8 for. Generally if I’m awake at 7, I haven’t slept. Actually, woke up isn’t quite the right phrase for what happened to me this morning. It was more along the lines of I stumbled out of a waking dream in a groggy panic.”
“Good job”
“The kicker is that somehow my six alarms, paced on fifteen minute intervals leading up to 6:30, did not seem to go off until I checked a text message at 8:09.”
“Ouch, that sucks”
“Yes, very much so. I throw my shoes on, locate my shirt and backpack, check for my calculator and jump on my skateboard after briefly contemplating throwing myself down the stairs to attempt to gain sympathy from my professor and take a make up.”
“That’s more than a little messed up”
“Perhaps, however it wouldn’t explain why it took me an hour as someone obviously would have shaken me to consciousness before 8.”
“You really thought hard on that didn’t you?”
“So anyway I skateboard my way across campus, clear across campus, brushing past people with carelessly thrown apologies while I use their shoulders to propel me even faster. Made it to class in 3 minutes out of breath, incoherent, and speaking a bit too fast.”
“Always a great way to present yourself”
“Much to my surprise I am given a test and a seat. After recovering from the minor heart attack I gave myself and a severe lack of oxygen I breeze through the exam finishing with time to spare. For some reason though that feels like yesterday and it’s only noon.”
“At least you managed to get it done”
“ I’m rethinking my decision to throw myself down the stairs”
“Great, I’m going to leave you now for legal reasons”

I must leave my room by this Sunday, my key stays inactive until the 5th. I’m thinking of leaving one of those chocolate Andes mints on my pillow and cleaning my sheets so I can come back and feel like the people ‘inspecting’ my room were a good thing. Though to be honest if the maids who insist on vacuuming my room at one in the afternoon left little chocolate mints on my pillow I’d wake up with it plastered to my face. Why must they insist on fighting the losing battle at what may as well be 3am? Everyone who’s anyone is asleep at that time.

Moving on in a distinctly irrational manner.

Why does it seem everyone at UF assumes that those in other Florida schools are there because they can’t be at UF? It confuses me greatly. I must admit, I didn’t get into UF. I didn’t apply either. In fact my acceptance rate was 100%. I applied to one school, and got accepted. I’m happy as hell with my school; it’s great for my major and in a great location. However, I would be lying to say that the attitude of UF’s vocal minority wasn’t the most aggravating thing I expose myself to on the internet every day. Other things I expose myself to on the internet include — wait, we’ll get into that later. Either way, this is my formal accusation of jackassery to all UF students. If it means anything my opinion of you lessens drastically with every instance. If you one day message me and find that all you get in return is a string of vulgar words, just look over your facebook history or the like.

http://www.myspace.com/tljoy

I have a myspace. I don't want to hear your bullshit about it. Deal.

Between 7 and 9 every morning I hear sirens blaring in what I can only imagine is a thinly veiled attempt to wake up the campus itself. I hardly believe that there’s a daily fire that must be put out, nor do I believe that anyone speeds that early on a college campus. Generally it’s heard more then once, I honestly thing they’re lapping the school. I get the point, wake up… now stop the laps. After that the lawn crew comes by with an item whose use I have reasoned is simply to make noise. It’s a machine, on wheels, that is pushed, and has a motor. Yet I have not seen it do anything yet, other than be pushed around by a bored looking individual. They generally run that in the early afternoon; when most of the dorms are sleeping. It was early today.

The above paragraph has been modified from its original form, which was written in the present tense at some point this morning.

I think I hacked my sleep schedule. To be honest I no longer know when I woke up, what classes I had today, or whether I enjoyed them. I do know, however, that it is the early morning, as late night only lasts until 3am in my opinion, and I have slept for one and a half hours. I don’t understand why my body decided that an hour and a half is all the sleep I need, but I went to sleep at 1am, woke up at 2:30am with no desire to sleep any longer and a hunger for tacos. Mike was in a similar situation, he counted change and I searched for my wallet, and we made a fourthmeal run around 3:20am. He went back to sleep about ten minutes ago (4:15am) but I can’t do that. I have a test tomorrow at 8:30am; if I sleep I won’t go to the test. I know that for a fact.

At least I’ll be awake for the test. I’ll probably come back and take a nap before I hit the road. Apparently all I need as an hour and a half to sleep and I’m set to go about the world.

Today I leave at 3:45 (I think) for Naples Florida, and then I immediately continue on to Davie Florida until Sunday evening, where I shall reverse my course. If you are a resident of Davie, seek me out if I don’t already seek you. I found a monk robe for twenty bucks at a nearby Halloween store, I was really hoping for something white though. Oh well, perhaps they’ll understand from the holes in my wrist with the monster make-up. I’m going to hell for this, people better laugh at it.

Speaking of religion, I just wrote the worst essay of my life, but it doesn’t matter because it’s mandatory extra credit. To explain, I had to write an analysis of a feminist’s analysis of Genesis 2 and 3. Follow? I felt like I was playing retarded religious telephone. I was asked to summarize and discuss three pages in three pages. That hardly seems fair. On that note I did write a full paragraph based on three sentences, thank you high school English. I felt like someone told me the sky was blue, and then asked me to explain what colour the sky was. I now notice my Microsoft Word is in U.K. spelling/grammar. I doubt that will affect my grade any more than the fact that I swapped between using ‘adham and Adam depending on whether or not I was going to write Eve afterward.

November’s almost here, I think that’s national novel writing month. I don’t know if I’m going to lie to myself this year or not. I probably am. I could probably write something similar to the Illuminatus! Trilogy in a month’s time, it wouldn’t be as deep but it would be just as disconnectedly coherent and odd. It’d be fun to write and possibly read. I think I’ll be lying to myself again this year. I’m the only one I lie to anymore, it’s novel. Heh, that was an unintentional pun that made my night. Day. Current cycle of consciousness. Is it cheating to start early? Does it matter because I'll probably not bother finishing?

The line between dreams and reality is blurring as the length of my sleep cycles is decreasing. This evening I woke up wondering how I was going to get my teeth back into my mouth through my eye and why they had turned purple, only to notice they were back in their proper place already. So I brushed them instead. Yeah, that was odd. I also somehow thought I have something like 20 facebook messages, but woke up to find only one that had been there for days. That made me feel better, as I’m still not used to the whole facebook thing and generally use other forms of communication first. We’ll not get into the messed up actions of my dream, that will take too long and I really only need to procrastinate for another ten minutes before starting an essay I put off all day.

I should take a bit more control of my dreams. I notice the secret shapes part of them, but I want to focus on it more while dreaming.

This entry is a sort of stream of consciousness, or unconsciousness if you desire. Not intentional, it’s just that the word file I’[m writing it in is just always open so weird things make their way into it. At one point it consisted of a full three pages of “I don’t want to write this stupid paper,” and “I hate feminists.” You are all welcome that I have the restraint to not post that online. Otherwise I’d update daily with something to the effect of “Life is great, but this sleep thing is getting in the way.”

Necessity is the mother of invention they say, especially with word choice once you become too lazy to right click words for the spell checker. However my desire , er, necessity, was math related, not English. I wrote a nifty little program to calculate out the annoying portion of the quadratic formula for me. It goes step by step up so that you can’t manage to forget how to do it even though you’re just typing in the numbers and letting it work. However, it will not yet simplify radicals or separate real and imaginary numbers. But it’s merely a tool, not a brain, so it suits my needs. If you’re curious, here’s a link.

On an unrelated note my luck continues to hold out, thanks to Irish ancestry and the use of The Secret. The essay I didn’t do wasn’t collected today, our math quiz was easy compared to what it could have been, the programming test was laughable (except one problem with integer division) and yesterday’s world civ was cancelled. Did I mention this isn’t going to be in order of events nor cohesive in any way? Good. Sleep now, eyes unfocused, been sleeping in 3 hour intervals.

My sleep schedule is rather unconventional. I was initially thinking of switching to a polyphastic sleep schedule, yet the parts of sleep I dislike the most is waiting for it and waking up from it. Creating more opportunities for both doesn’t seem like a fun choice at this point in time. Instead I practiced free range sleep, with interruptions for class. Unfortunately that kept me out of the gym thanks to the rest of the world still working on conventional sleep patterns. Currently I’m working on a staggered one night on, one night off sleep schedule, punctuated by the occasional daytime sleep cycle. It keeps me from accruing sleep debt, which means I’m not sleep deprived, while attempting to minimize oversleeping. It works decently, however at some points I wonder why I’m still awake and others I wonder why I’m going to bed. I think I’m slowly working my way to the polyphastic schedule, just familiarizing myself with random waking and sleeping. All this while not sleeping through, nor in, class. The fact that any of this is possible proves that college is better than both the real world and K-12 schooling.

While I’m taking about changes in personal life, recently I tried using an astringent to remove blackheads, and got pimples instead. It dried my skin out, which apparently isn’t what I needed. But hey! My blackheads are going away! Now I wonder if there’s a less counter-productive manner in which I can clear my skin…

I should really go to my math class more awake, or at least open my eyes and look around more often. I didn’t sleep last night so I wasn’t tired in math like I normally am, so I got there early for a change and spent a good while completely astounded at the individuals in the room. It was like my class had been slimmed to only the generic and easily ignored people and the attractive people. More of my classes should look like that class. If all classes looked like that I would be a professor…

Thanks to Dethklok Metalacolypse, my re-discovered collection of Metallica, and Dragonforce songs available on Google Video and YouTube, I seem to be taking an unhealthy liking to the metal genre. That’s unnerving. Balancing this is my love of musicals, fuelled by exposure to Rent and Moulin Rouge. You shut your mouth pre-emptively! Someone on iTunes had the entire Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack, so now I don’t have to watch the movie when I want to hear the songs. I memorized the entire thing before attaining the soundtrack; I know more about that musical than I learned in religious instruction. However, I learned more about accents from church than I did from the movie, so they’re both necessary experiences I guess. So, in conclusion of that though, there must be a metal musical made at some point in my life. I don’t need to do it, I just need to see it.

Never on Task will continue, I simply have been too busy with school and living to really focus on it like it deserves. For those of you playing eye contact, keep it up but add a new level of play: smile. When you make the eye contact smile at the person immediately, you’ll see what happens. It’s more amusing that way.

On a related note it’s almost November, which means National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo as it is occasionally abbreviated. My attention span is questionable, so I work best with constant reminders on what project I should be working on. For example, last night I was playing poker online, and decided I wanted to study. So I juggled for an hour. Luckily I’m doing well in all my classes but I need to rethink my use of the word study before that changes.

This next paragraph is time sensitive!

On an unrelated note, I’ll be in town the weekend of Halloween, getting in that Friday evening and leaving Sunday evening. For those of you in UCF who want a ride down to the Davie area, get in contact with me. My car seats four, excluding the driver. One or two seats are filled at the moment. Carry-on should be minimalistic, and please try to be in the Davie area, I don’t have infinite resources and gas is expensive down south. To contradict myself directly, I may be stopping in Naples on the way so if you’re from that area that may also be a destination. I’ll be leaving no later than 3:!5 Friday afternoon. I have newfound reason to attend my math class so we’ll be back before Monday.

I would like to apologize for those of you actually wanting to watch more of me humiliating myself with a webcam; for all intents and purposes I fell off the internet last week. I have plenty of material for a least a week of NoT episodes, however my roommate and I are on these weird shift sleeping thing. Whenever I’m awake he’s asleep and the same in reverse. For a while we ended up on this weird staggered 48 hours on 12 hours off thing. I love college.

I returned to my hometown of Davie today in order to retrieve an orthodontic device I, er, misplaced up here as well as a bit of visiting. I have never felt so strongly as if I was visiting somewhere before. The entire time I felt out of my element, though vaguely comfortable. I hate driving alone though. Three hours there, three hours back, that’s six hours of iPod music. I actually spent the last three hours singing along to the Rent soundtrack keeping myself awake. Visiting was fun, got to talk to family I don’t see much anymore, hang out with friends who need to transfer up here, and essentially remember a lot of random stuff. I also miss my animals, but I got to see two of them while I was there.

Upon returning, after getting lost as is the custom, I realized something that made me happier than I’d been recently. I honestly feel more at home on this campus than I really do elsewhere. I returned to the campus, after a fun adventure through both Brevard and Orange counties via an under construction monstrosity of a road, to find some random girl outside my building in roller skates talking to some guy with a guitar case while some other person with a separate guitar was singing several tables away. I enjoyed the site and happily stepped over the broken beer bottle on the staircase as I made my way back the room. I’m actually enjoying myself and not doing so at the expense of my ‘education.’ Now if only I had people I hung out with up here…

Never on Task #8

Episode 8 is lacking in quality and content and has been online since about 4 or 5, but just not linked anywhere. Day late and a dollar short, but that’s nothing new. Nor anything to worry over, as I have better news.

The Never on Task site is now up at http://neverontask.com. The links section isn’t up yet and I hard coded the content so it’s not exceptional or anything. Carson provided me with the template, which he found on codedfx or some such site. I tweaked the template because the site is obviously not a web design portfolio, especially considering I couldn’t manage to design a site on my own. What kind of a person would use a web design portfolio template? Actually it’s odder that someone would chose to make one.

Those of you playing eye contact, keep me up to date on your scores via whatever mode you choose, AIM, e-mail, comments, creepy voicemails, or stalking are all acceptable. Just remember that I don’t sleep, so it’s hard to stalk me unnoticed. Start playing!

To update you all on my life I am now making a halfhearted photodocumentary of the garbage pile in the mini-hall separating my room and the suitemates room from the real hallway and the bathroom. I realized that the dorm floorplan lacked any real explanation of what the rooms would be like. I fixed that.
( My redrawn floorplan )
I have a Religions test I feel pretty confident about. I’m confident that there is an exam. The rest I could use some brushing up on. Did a bit of that today, but I still don’t know if it’s open note, open book, or open neighbour. I guess I’ll figure that out when I get there.

I feel great. I’m happy with my life, happy with my conditions, happy with the day. I’m enjoying life to the fullest, there are very few things I still want and I am a patient individual. My luck is great as ever and I’m on top of the world.

My roommate Mike taught me poker the other day; I’ve been playing on Party Poker, no real money of course. Today I placed 89th out of something like 7-10 thousand people in my 3rd tournament. My Irish really shines through in my game. Unrelated I’ve been bowling amazing as well, I shot a 201 last week and a 187 the other day.

I’m improving over all.

I also found my favourite video, the video that changed my life, on google video. It’s called “The Secret” and it’s set up as a documentary about this coveted secret governing law of the universe, the law of attraction. This law is why I have good luck, why I’m happy in life, how I got into McFatter and UCF. I didn’t work hard for what I got; I was confident and believed in myself without even a shadow of a doubt. The secret is how I live my life: I attract that which I think about. Watch it with an open mind, it’s not a cult, you don’t have to spend any money to put the secret into effect, it is honestly the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

Now for a meme:

I want everyone who reads this to ask me 3 questions: no more, no less. Ask me anything you want (though I reserve the right to not answer, or to answer evasively). Then I want you to go to your journal, copy and paste this, allowing your friends (including me) to ask you anything.

On a related note I’ve decided I will no longer lie unless it is completely necessary. Not that it changes much, it just makes me feel better knowing that I will never be caught in a lie.

Never on Task #7

Oh yeah, I have one consistant week. Booyah!

I should have a website up by Monday, depending on how much I enjoy my weekend.

Never on Task #6

I also fixed #5, accidentally encoded it as an mpeg-2.

Never On Task #5

Rocky at Citywalk was greatly amusing. I liked it better than Flippers. It almost made me want to join their cast... then I got some sleep and my brain kicked in again. They preformed an OK Go dance perfectly! Lots of fun, too bad I don't have outings like that as often as I would like.

I spent to day watching Dethklok, reading, and occasionally eating. I also went to the gym, because I forgot to on Friday. Today was so interesting I could've turned it into a reality show. I call it "Don't fall asleep!" It's an audience participation show.

Next video on Wednesday, I'm going to explain why I'm making them and how often they'll come out. Website coming soon. As soon as I can remember how to make a website.

Never On Task #4
To be honest he presented the most logical and down to earth don't eat meat presentations I've ever seen. I just honestly don't feel that the cow's quality of life is deeply impacted by whether or not it's lived in a box. If it doesn't get love it grows up retarded and even for an already dumb beast. It was proven that children who aren't given love and affection by parents and only provided physical needs do not mentally develop or develop mental disorders like austism. Can an animal be expected to unhappy if it's autistic and provided its needs. The cruelty comes in the last hours and minutes of life, I agree it's sad, but they're not human no matter how it may seem from our experiences with domesticated animals. The animals in the meat and dairy industry are born and raised to meet the needs of those who bred them, they are raised knowing only what they see. It's horrible what they go through, I agree, but it's not the same as if we were them. Our sentience would only know physical pain, we would know no hunger, no boredom, no loss, no longing. Who has better quality of life, us or them?

Never On Task #3
So long as I begin filming on one day, it gets that date. You know the drill. As of two hours ago it was talk like a pirate day, I can't wait to see Ze do it. I refuse.

Never On Task #2
Day late. It's been online but not linked anywhere. Sorry

This time I have more substance to what I'm talking about, something that I feel is more amusing when spoken than written. As a disclaimer I don't hate America, but blind patriotism. It's not so much a hate, I just wish I could stop it like a video file.

Never on Task #1

I'm thick skinned, tear it apart.

I didn't have much to write, but I had a bit to say. And the visual element almost gives substance to the nothingness. I'll be more organize next time, I just didn't feel like typing and decided to give myself a new hobby.

Never on Task (Pilot)

I'm thick skinned, tear it apart.

I’m adaptable, college is easy to adapt to, so I’m very chill right now. I’d like to meet more people, but I figure I’ll just wait for the most amazing invention in the history of entertainment to return: The Adult Slip and Slide! The technology of a bounce house, combined with the concept of a slip and slide, placed in the middle of the path to Academic Village Dorms is probably the greatest way to encourage social interaction.

I’m not big on sports, but Mike is, so I’ve seen more of the Little League World Series than I have of any real World Series, simply because that’s the only sport playing right now. Comedy gold, as long as it’s watched in moderation

Snakes on a Plane is probably one of the best movies I’ve ever seen, unnecessary added scenes and gratuitous violence to secure the R rating included. Indescribably good movie, the death scenes really made it great. The music video is great as well.

I love the whiteboard on the door of my dorm, I’m sure I’ve learned more than fifty different ways to draw a penis and misspell every offensive word known to man. The following are little gems passers-by discard upon the door.
“Emo fags live here! Rainbow boys! *picture of a poorly drawn penis and rainbow*”
I assume they’re referring to my suitemates, with The Mars Volta poster on their side of the hall.
“Fuck you.”
Never gets old, but I think it’s missing that personal touch the first one had.
“Come back naked.”
Just confusing, I don’t know who wrote it, but I don’t think it would help me any.
“I *heart picture* *penis picture*”
I would say this is the default image on the whiteboard. Anytime something is removed or erased a new message is generally up within an hour or two, often it’s this one. I once decided to erase the penis and replace it with a chicken. The resulting ‘correction’ to my artistic critique brings up laws PETA wishes they didn’t have to address.
“real street art is your DEATH!”
Good to know. So… why are you informing us through such dangerous methods? Couldn’t you leave pink sticky note like the RA? I decided this one also required a different angle. I don’t think the writer enjoyed having his mother compared to street art. That one lasted less than a half hour.

The other day Mike informed me of a great message left on the board near the stairs.
“*other roommate’s name*: I called the bug guy.
Bug Guy: There are bugs fucking everywhere!”
The other day on our way back from wandering to the vending machines this was noticed on one of the girl’s doors. For the record it was not written by me, but they sure as hell thought it was as they walked out to see me reading it.
“cum inside for buttsecks”

It’s like the internet, only slightly more consistent.

Jessica has gotten me addicted to The Show with Ze Frank. I am going to be buying a webcam now. Dammit. Perhaps this will end up being a video blog because I do happen to have gaps in my day ranging from 5 to 7 hours and maybe about 3 hours of combined homework.

[EDIT]
This next hurricane is going to own Orlando, I can't wait.

I have a facebook now.

I still refuse myspace, it's the fucking devil.