Last night I helped my dad replace his 26GBs of hard drive space with a new 200GB drive. (Which he got at Office Depot for $90! There were two applicable rebates for it that brought it down from something around $120) Its a Maxtor drive so it is pretty good quality too. The thing is, though, he wanted to put XP on the new drive and take out the old 6gig that used to be his boot drive. Seemed easy enough, but Windows wont let you install another instance of XP on a different drive if the one that is running is a more updated version. So we ended up putting the drive in my computer and installing XP to it there because I am running 2000Pro (which is much better by the way) The install took about 7 minutes on my computer. It was cool, but then when we put the drive back in, it saw NTLDR as missing and wouldnt boot! So we ended up booting from the install CD (which I hate doing) and installing from there. Once that was done, it all went smoothly (except that now my computer seems to think that there is a XP install somewhere on my computer and gives me an OS choice list at bootup. The problem is that I can’t find a boot.ini anywhere, so I can’t tell my computer that there is no XP install on there and that it doesn’t need any XP install!) This took many hours also, because I was rather distracted by the James Bond movie that was on TV in the background. Later on, my dad said that I was a great help, untill the movie came on.
Oh well.

Great news! I’ve convinced my dad to make the switch to Firefox !!! It is fast and easy to switch. Now, all I need to do is convince him the Thunderbird is way better that Outlook Express. Now is the time to work on him for that because he is more accepting to change when there is a big change going on. Gotta keep trying.

-Allyn

I just got an electric guitar for Chrismas! I’m really really happy. It’s a Fender Squire. All black. I happen to have a little webcam, but it is really cheap so the picture isn’t very good at all, so I’m not going to put it up. Also, I don’t know how to post an image off of my computer just yet. (i’m getting there, ok?) Anyway, I don’t have an amp yet, so for now I’m playing really quietly. Its a lot of fun. I’m looking at buying a Vox amp, but I’m not sure and I have to ask around first. I don’t like to spend money, so it is much better if I can find out where I can get bang for the buck. Can’t wait to get an amp though. There is only so much that you can do with an unpowered electric guitar. Later.

-Allyn

PS
I now know how to post the pic so here it is!

this is really funny and interesting
check it out
this is what i am

Which File Extension are You?

-Allyn

PS: Don’t take this too seriously!!!

well,
Since Aaron beat me home because I was helping clean up the church after the marathon, he managed to beat me to posting about this. We were both at the marathon. I will be much more specific about things than Aaron was. He gave a more general rant about the trilogy as a whole, but there are a certain few things that drove me CRAZY!!!

One major thing that Aaron forgot to tell you (I reread his post thoroughly to make sure that I didn’t miss it) is after Darth Vader dies. When the Ewok Celebration should be going on (I’ll get to that later grrr…) there is a part where Obi-Wan, Yoda, and Anakin Skywalker (no longer Vader) appear to Luke after all the battles have been won. It is the end of the movie and it give a great sence of finality when you finally see that Darth Vader had indeed turned back to the good side of the Force. It was always a really good part of the movie.

They took out the actor that played Darth Vader and they freaking replaced him WITH HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN!!!!!
This is an outrage. I was just sitting there, enjoying the end of the movie, and he managed to get himself into the original trilogy!
Wow. horrific

I can understand the square around the tie fighter in that one scene. They remastered the whole thing and they couldn’t effect the tie fighter too much, they couldn’t get to close to it. They could have done a better job with that though.

But, the Ewok Celebration Song was unnacceptable. That was the most cherished song in the entire trilogy. I could play it on piano and I could probably tell you most of the lyrics by heart. I even know most of the english translation of the lyrics. They are all in a music book that i have. Everybody who loves StarWars loves the Ewok Song. If you don’t like the song, then you must reexamine your love of StarWars. They took out the song, and put in a much less lively, much more mellow, much more boring song that included scenes from Couresant, Naboo, and it was just wrong. Someone who hasn’t seen any of the previous movies would be like, “Huh what was that!?!” They never show Couresant or Naboo in that movie. It is just WRONG.

There is no excuse for that, but there are a few things, though, that were pretty cool that they added. For example, there were some very cool scenes that they added in between traveling especially during the space travel scenes. They added new CG parts where the ships would do manuvers that weren’t originally in the movies. They did a good job of thoes.

I just wish that was all they did. They didn’t have to make so many changes to the movie itself. It just isn’t fair that they took out the Ewok Song. What got into thier minds to change it. There was no plot change that required it. I just think that some higher-up said that it shouldn’t be there any more. So they changed it. Not only did they remove a good part of the movie. Just think about all of the embarrased ewok voices that will be forever in shame because they did all of that for nothing.

And the Sarlac! I just can’t see why he added that beak thing. The Sarlac needs no extra mouth. The Sarlac is a mouth!!! It really looked stupid when the mouth was there, but when there was someone falling into it, the mouth was gone. It also looked strangle like the worm in the asteroid. (I think his creativity is running quite thin.)

Such a shame. It had so much potential. We will always have The Lord of the Rings… right?
All i will say is that they better not change anything about thoes movies unless it is a change towards the accuracy of the books.

*sigh*

Yoda said, “There is no try. Do or do not!” He was right. They should have listened.

oh well…

-Allyn

I sit here at my desk, the broken remains of the Star Wars legacy held in my hands. My heart weeps. My soul longs for what was, but will never be again. Woe, this day shall long be remembered as the day that Star Wars died for one former fan, in the small chapel of E-Free. Alas, alackaday, woe!

Okay, enough with the poetics. Our church just recently (like, as in tonight) had a Star Wars marathon (if you live here, and didn’t go, you’re a bum, by the way), where we watched the entire orginal trilogy back-to-back. After this, I have only one thing to say: They broke Star Wars.

Well, this post would be rather boring otherwise, so I suppose I’d better explain further. They RUINED it. Smashed it over the head with a hammer. Obliterated.

Their first major mistake was introducing the idea that Greedo shot Han first in the Mos Eisley cantina. Bad idea, it was one of my favorite parts of the movie, and they ruined it for the sake of “poitical correctness”. Secondly, George Lucas seems to enjoy forcing badly designed and rather stupid looking Computer Generated characters upon us. In a New Hope, they introduced a scene that not only showed us the hideous CG version of Jabba the Hutt again, but totally wrecked his character. He now appears as an almost Godfatherly like character to Han. Stupid, stupid, stupid. So this new version is digitally remastered, huh? What’s with the HUMONGOUS BLACK BOX around one of the TIE fighters, eh? *grumblegrumble*

The Empire Strikes Back was acceptable. No major storyline changes that I noticed, just a couple nice scenic changes. Oh wait, there was a shocking scene where they changed the Emperor’s face to look more like he does in Return of the Jedi. If you didn’t know why his face looked nothing like it does in Return of the Jedi originally, it’s because they weren’t quite sure where the script was going, and weren’t sure if they were going to show any more of the Emperor than that. On top of that, the actor who played the Emperor in the Empire Strikes Back died, if my memory is correct. I was quite happy when I learned they were going to change it, as it was a continuity error that had always bugged me. Unfortunately, it didn’t look anything like either version of the Emperor, or even Senator Palpatine, for that matter. It was some strange mixture of Palpatine, the Emperor, and Pizza the Hut.

Return of the Kin- err.. I mean, Jedi, was horrendous. For some reason, George Lucas felt like he had to change the song performed in Jabba’s palace by the band with some more disgustingly bad CG characters, and an even more stupid song. George Lucas also felt like he simply HAD to add some weird clacky-thingie in the middle of Sarlacc, for what reason, don’t ask me. It was stupid looking, made the whole scene disgustingly humorous and unbelievable, and there were even silly high-pitched sound effects the “Sarlacc” made too. It looked more like a tentacled flower living in a hole than anything else. Oh, and they took out the spikes in Sarlaccs gullet, because, of course, his gullet now looks like a beak. No major changes up until the very end, where they TOOK OUT THE YUB-YUB song, and pasted in some cheesy celebration scenes on Tatooine, Naboo, and Coruscant, where people ran around screaming (supposedly in happiness, though I have a feeling that it was in anger at George Lucas for taking out the best song in the movie) and blowing stuff up. As if to mock us fans, George Lucas threw some random clips of Ewoks playing with stormtroopers’ helmets, but it wasn’t the same.

*sigh* He broke it. Star Wars is broken.

That said, I’ll probably go see Revenge of the Sith and be done with it, but it will never be the same. Thankfully I still have my original Star Wars trilogy, which I will be keeping thank you very much.

Okay, I’ve heard the phrase “separation of church and state!!!!exclamationpoint!!1!” one too many times now. Maybe it’s a pet peeve of mine, but I can’t stand it when people use catch phrases without properly comprehending the reasoning behind it. How many times have you heard someone scream “he’s bringing religion into politics, thus violating separation of church and state! Burn ‘im at the stake!”? How many people actually know that the phrase “separation of church and state” appears nowhere in the Consititution or any of it’s amendments? It’s become just a phrase that many people use to pimp the idea that religion and politics should have nothing in common. You know, a “wall between politics and religion”? Don’t you?

Here are some facts. Let’s check out the wording of the first amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Now, obviously, the portion that spawns the idea of “separation of church and state” comes from the first section of the amendment, “Congress shall make no law blahblahblah…” Now, can someone please show me where the phrase “wall of separation” or “separation of church and state” appear in this amendment, or in the entire Consititution, for that matter? Someone? Please? That’s what I thought.

So, let’s delve a little deeper into this thought, shall we? The phrasing of the amendment says that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” Note the wording “Congress shall make no law…” The Constitution only states that Congress shall not make any law respecting a religion. There is nothing in the Constitution that says that individual states can not have a state religion. In fact, Congregationalism was the state religion in Connecticut until 1818, in New Hampshire until 1819, and in Massachusetts until 1833. And our founding fathers saw nothing wrong with it.

Maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe I’m reading everything wrong. But until someone can show me otherwise, I will continue to believe that there is no (and should be no) “separation church and state.”

Well…
I’ve been really busy. All of my teachers seem to think that it is a good idea to give us all of our chapter tests right before the break at the same time. I’ve been so busy, that I’ve not been able to give a quality post in a few weeks. (no… wait… i never write quality posts) Anyway, I will probably have something good to say on Friday, when I will be done for the week and for the year.
Oh, I forgot to mention that all my finals are the week that we get back from break. One of my teachers is gone for this week, and another will be gone over finals week. I’ve been working from about 3:30 to 10 almost every day loaded down with homework, so that is why this site has gone temporarily by the wayside. Talk to all y’all later.

Note: Tyler’s site has changed. It is no longer “Big Red Button” so don’t go there. His new site is called The Bit Bucket . There is a link to it in the blogroll.

-Allyn

Free Translation and Professional Translation Services

Just a quick comment.

This site is really cool and works very well as long as you don’t put anything more than one or two words in at a time to be translated. FOR THE SAKE OF ALL THINGS GOOD, DO NOT TRY TO TRANSLATE AN ENTIRE PAPER WITH THIS!!!!!
If you do, you will fail your assignment and I will laugh at you. Where it does come in useful is when you need a particular word or the conjugation of an obscure verb. That is all I have to say.
French Projects are boring. It takes forever to type well in French…

-Allyn

Okay, I’d like to apologize to everyone for having the site down for so long. I could go on and on giving reasons and explanations, but none would really fit the bill, so I’d just like to say I’m sorry.

I’ve taken measures to ensure that it won’t happen again, or at any rate, it won’t happen for such a long period of time. Thankfully no data was lost, so that’s a plus.

This is a seriously wierd book. I really don’t like it very much. The main character, Holden Caulfield, has some serious problems. He seems to be having quite the identity crisis, and I’m only on the 7th chapter. There is a lot of trash in the book though. The language is horrible. I understand some authors using coarse language at times to emphasize a point or something like that, but you can’t read two lines in this book without profanity. I know that this is supposed to be a classic, but I really don’t like it so far. Unfortunately I have to read it. There is no choice of mine in the matter.

I know this is a rant, but hey I can rant if I want to and you can’t do anything about it. So there.

As long as I’m ranting, I might as well mention that my PreCalc teacher has left for the week because of an emergeny, and isn’t able to teach us some particularly complicated trig. But I still have to do the homework. GRRRR!!!!

Very stressful week. Need more sleep.
Don’t like coffee
*Allyn has a mental breakdown*
(Note: This rant only scratches the surface.)

-Allyn