Writing and School and Stuff

I'm just really bad at this. I'd say I should make no goal at all, but then I'd never post. Mostly, I'll just be doing some updates today. A lot of stuff is coming up, so maybe I'll be doing pictures and other stuff soon.

First of all, JulNoWriMo 2012 is less than 2 months away now and I've seriously got to start getting some writing and planning done. I got a notebook and I'm going to write one page a day. Only one, no more, no less. I figure I'll have a decent amount of planning done if I do that. I've got some serious character building to do though. The setting is pretty well all worked out because it's the same one from last years' story. Just a different plot.

Second. School. I don't think I thought entirely about how intense of classes I signed up for. There's a lot of writing involved this term. Which is a lot harder than taking a bunch of tests every couple weeks. Government is really fun, he's a great teacher. All my teachers are pretty good really. My "required high school class" isn't that great. It's been going okay though. I think I'll have straight As this term. I don't think I've had 100% A's since elementary school. Which doesn't count. But my GPA is rising slowly but surely. Another thing I have to do is start looking into scholarships. So that's a thing.

Next up, there is a LOT of stuff going on in the next couple months. First of all, my birthday is coming up in a couple weeks. I'm pretty excited about that. I'm not sure what's going to happen though. All I know is Byron is planning it all and I get to be surprised on my birthday. Then, I have graduation a couple weeks after that. Though I feel like it's going to be more like a high school reunion than a graduation. It'll be interesting to see who talks to me at all.

Then, a couple weeks after that, I go to VidCon! I'm freaking out so much about this. It's going to be expensive, but I don't care too much about that. We've gotten the majority of things paid for already like hotels. Mostly it's just gas and food that we have to pay for during the trip. We're going to see a lot of people on the way down and back so it'll be a really crazy trip.

Then of course there's JulNoWriMo and 4th of July and all the awesome car shows to go to this year. I predict an amazing summer. If the weather ever clears up.

Also, there's a lot of things I'll be doing on my car too. A lot of it is maintenance stuff to stop oil leakages and fix little problems because my car is old and needs new knees or whatever.

So, I'll definitely try and keep you updated on things. I also have a potential secret project in the works. I'll let you know if anything awesome comes into the picture.

Is this thing still on?

Well, hi.

So, you know that whole post once a week thing I was planning? Well that didn't work out to well if you hadn't noticed. I'm going to try and pick that back up. I've been busy though.

Since I last posted I've started some major planning on my JulNoWriMo novel for the year, started a new term, written a couple essays, gotten a gym membership, gone to way too many movies, and read a couple books.

First off, I read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I haven't read the second and third in the series, so don't spoil it for me. I've also seen the movie 5 times I think? All with different people and I've only had to pay for myself one of those five times. The thing I've been telling everyone about the movie is that the emotions are real. The short clip of Katniss, Peeta, and Effie all in the car when Peeta is crying is ridiculously realistic. So are all the other crying scenes. Also, Katniss's face when she's cleaning out the burn wound is crazy emotional too. I still won't watch that part.

I believe I saw The Lorax twice as well. I recommend them both. They're great.

I've also gotten a fair bit of headway on my JulNoWriMo novel. Once again, I'm hoping to actually finish a novel. Which may or may not happen. It's called Three Stars, and is basically a prequel to Rising Sun. It's more of an adult novel than previous novels I've worked on. I'm going to have to tackle at least two sex scenes and it's going to be interesting. Not quite sure how that's going to go.

The thing I'm most excited about though is the fact that I got a gym membership! I am really excited to get in shape. I've gone once and I've literally been jumping up and down in excitement to go again. Sadly, I'm busy with lots of other things and can't go all the time. I'll let you know how that's going.

Blogger.com has gotten a new layout since I've been gone, so I'm going to go back and figure that out. There's a button that says schedule and I'm really interested in what that's going to do.

Words For Thought: Ideas and Other I- Words

Before I begin, yes I've missed my week mark once again. In my defense I've been going to school full time, working five days a week and still managing to have a little bit of a social life. Which does preside over the internet. Sorry, guys. I may just have to make my goal a little less demanding. Or maybe manage my time better.
On the plus side, I have so many things I want to post about. I don't think that I'll run out of topics for the next couple of weeks. I have an ongoing list on a little post it note on my desk.

Today, I'm going to start a new segment (Is that a good way to put it? I think that's more of a video thing.) I'm calling it Words for Thought. I never understood why the phrase "food for thought" especially since I'm writing this all down. Not... eating it. Yeah.
Anyways, the whole purpose of this is to put a little more content into my blog besides "Hey guys, I'm still alive. Bye." I have a lot of random thoughts that pop into my head throughout the day. So, I figured I'd actually start doing something with my thoughts. (What a novel concept.) Here goes.

Words for Thought: Ideas and Other I- Words

Today, while catching up on my macroeconomics reading, I started going down a rabbit trail of thought. About thought and why humans are smarter than animals and so much more innovative than animals (I- word #1). And the notes I made in the margins say this: "Ideas (I- word #2) are powerful things. --> Humans are above animals because of ideas?? --> Animals don't have ideas. They have impulses (#3) and instincts (#4)."

I think this was a great epiphany. Because anyone who's studied animals and spent hours watching animals live and interact know that a lot of them aren't dumb animals walking around with surviving as their only goal. They have thoughts. But they don't have ideas.

Dictionary.com defines idea as this: any conception existing in the mind as a result of mental understanding, awareness, or activity. Also, an opinion, view, or belief. It also defines thought as the product of mental activity. Animals have mental activity. Especially animals like apes, elephants, dolphins, cats, dogs, even parrots and a few other animals. I'm not so sure about things like snakes and reptiles and definitely not bugs.

Animals do not have ideas. They don't sit around and debate the existence of a God or whether they should eat canned food or go hunt something down and eat that instead. They don't have little proverbs and parables to teach their children lessons. There's no ideas and wisdom. There's certainly intelligence (#5). I think intelligence and wisdom are too often considered one in the same. It's like someone being book smart or street smart. Intelligence and wisdom is the difference between something on the surface level and on an entirely deeper, conceptual level.

Anyways, I have class to go to and there's some words for thought. Let me know if you have any opinions at all in the comments or something. (I pretend I get lots of them just to humor myself.)

PS I don't think it's coincidence that all these words start with I. Probably some Latin or Greek thing.

I'm Really Not Sure What This is About

So I have been busy. Insanely busy. Therefore, I actually haven't even made my 1 post a week goal. BUT it was only one week. I didn't miss a whole month or anything.

My life hasn't been very interesting lately. I'm pretty sure all I've done in the past couple weeks is school, job, and work. Valentine's day wasn't even a big thing. I did homework with Byron. Super romantic, right?

I'm getting really close to finishing The Fountainhead (how many times have I said that?), but I really am this time I swear! So, I'll be doing a review-ish thing on that soon I hope.

Also, I've been playing The Sims 3 as a form of procrastination. I'm determined to finish a Legacy Challenge, however I'm not following all the rules this time around. I didn't buy an empty lot. And after taking Macroeconomics, I'm really interested in playing Civilization IV again with ideas of productivity in mind and a few other things. I'm also curious to know if the success of any civ has to do with GDP type stuff.

I really have nothing interesting to talk about though. Nor do I have the time. I have some homework I need to go do.

I'll be back next week!

People Aren't Excited and I Don't Get It

I love school. I'll probably be taking night classes my entire life. Just because I want to. I've been looking at what my schooling schedule will be like the next few years and I have a lot of credits that I want to fulfill, but also, I just want to take all these classes. It makes me wonder why people don't enjoy school.

So, that's what I've been thinking about the past couple weeks. Why don't people don't enjoy learning? Why people don't get excited about things? And why don't people want to know everything?

I don't really know, but I have guesses. Everyone in the entire world gets excited about something. The only problem is, getting excited about anything except for sports and the latest scandal in pop culture is usually looked down upon. And the people that do get excited about things are called nerds, which is for some reason, often considered a bad thing.

I believe the world would be a better place if people got excited about things. I've never been one to care about what other people are thinking. I find everything interesting and get excited about so many things. But I get weird looks, get called a freak a lot or people just nod their heads and smile when I get excited. Truthfully, I don't even realize I'm way over excited about something people don't think anyone should care about. I don't understand why things aren't interesting to people.

What I find sad, is that people don't realize the importance of enjoying things and getting excited about things until they're old. Too old to get a second chance usually. Whenever I talk to older people, 50+, they think that it's great when I get excited about things. They're very encouraging to anyone who is excited and wants to do anything.

There's so many things out there to learn in life. For me, I'm bothered by the fact that I probably won't live long enough to learn everything. (I'm going to try my damned hardest though.) It bewilders me that people can just sit back and let the world happen around them.

Busy Busy Busy

All right, so originally I had planned to do this post on my opinions on SOPA. But seeing as it's been indefinitely banned, that's a bit pointless now. And then the whole ACTA thing started up and I was going to do a post on that. But I'm busy. In case you were wondering, though, you should check out this video. It explains ACTA really well.

Then I was going to do a bunch of other posts, but I've had stuff get in the way.

School's going well. That's all nice and stuff.

More importantly, on Thursday night I had to leave early because my grandmother went to the hospital to get heart surgery. So I've been at the hospital for about 6 hours now and I was there for about 4 last night.

Through all this time, I've come to the conclusion that I don't like hospitals. Oh the waiting rooms are all fine and dandy, but I just don't like being around sick people. Especially in a Cardiovascular Unit. Everyone is so old and they're all so frail and seem like they're about to die. It gives me the heebie jeebies. And it's so somber and.... gah...

I know I need to be here and be supportive but hospitals just give me the creeps.

I respect doctors so very much. But I really don't know how they do it.

Thoughts on PIPA and SOPA: Part 1: What is it?

Originally I was going to post about a different subject, but I decided that the internet has a higher priority. This is going to come in parts, so brace yourselves.

Before I even begin my talk, I'm not about to tell you that SOPA is the worst idea ever and the world will end if it passes. I'm also not going to tell you that it's a good idea. Fact is, it's neither. It just needs editing. A lot. While it does make things easier to explain, most things are not black and white. Especially when it comes to politics.

First of all, what are PIPA and SOPA?

The Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) and Stop Online Piracy Acts (SOPA) were introduced to Congress on October 26,2011. Since then, many people, mostly users of the Internet have been pretty enraged with the idea of SOPA. I'm going to do my best to sum up what the current bill is proposing as of today. You can read the official text here.

First, the bill discusses "foreign infringing sites". This is a site that sells "infringing products" like music and movies without authorization; this also includes knock off products of clothing and medicines. The bill basically defines a foreign infringing site as a website run, or partially run, somewhere in the US or a site used by US users.

Basically, the bill says that a website can be sued for being an infringing site. After this the court will rule and order some sort of restraining order or injunction - causing the domain name or portion of the domain name to "cease and desist".

After the court order is issued, the service provider in question must take action to "prevent access by its subscribers located within the United States to the foreign infringing site (or portion thereof)". Search engines (such as Google) must prevent direct hypertext links to the infringing sites. Payment network providers (PayPal) must prevent, prohibit, or suspend transactions involving customers in the US with the infringing site in question. And Internet Advertising Services that knowingly advertise with the infringing site must cease ads and stop any affiliation with the site. This all has to happen within 5 days and if they do not comply within the given time, the company must present information showing how it was not feasibly possible for them to comply within the given time.

Then it moves on to sites "dedicated to the theft of US property", or in simpler terms, pirating sites. It's very similar to what infringing sites must do, and payment network providers and advertising services must cease affiliation with the site, but says nothing about search engines.

All in all, not so bad, right? Just stopping pirating and selling of fake goods.

Well, it then gets into the part that everyone is up in arms about. This section is all about the streaming of copyrighted law. And I'm not going to lie, I got a bit angry just reading this section. The bill starts by discussing who can be accused of criminal infringement. The first and second things listed are about if you're doing it for commercial gain, and if you give away enough that it equals at least $2,500 worth of product, etc. (If you don't know, bills aren't the most riveting things to read.) Then it says this:

"Any person who willfully infringes a copyright shall be punished as provided under section 2319 of title 18, if the infringement was committed by the distribution or public performance of a work being prepared for commercial dissemination, by making it available on a computer network accessible to members of the public, if such person knew or should have known that the work was intended for commercial dissemination."

Basically, if you upload a video of a public performance of a work being prepared to be sold and paid for to view, listen to, etc. you have committed a criminal act. The amendment then says it has to be viewed 10 times or more for this to apply.

Then comes the punishment for uploading said video, which is already a law, this is just now amended to include uploaded videos.

So, let's say you upload a video to YouTube with someone's song in the background, or you singing their song, or something like that, and you get in trouble with the government because the government found your video or the original artist wanted to sue. You would get fined and up to 3 years in prison.
Then, if it was discovered that you did it for personal gain monetarily (you started selling the cover on iTunes) you would get fined, and up to 5 years in prison.
Then, after you got out of prison, you decided to upload another video, you would get fined and up to 6 years.
AND THEN, because for some reason you want to go to prison again or something, I don't know why, you would get up to 10 years. And fined again.

That's a grand total of 3 uploaded videos minimum and up to 19 years maximum.

This last part all about uploading copyrighted content is what's got everyone up in arms and protesting. Granted, there are people who still want their pirated movies and such, but mostly, it's the uploading content and shutting down websites because of user uploaded content.

And in case you're wondering, this is where I got all my information:
Bill Text
Business Center on PC World Article
Cornell Law Information Institute