Wiieners

Thirty-Three.

That person sword fighting me with a Wii remote is BB. He is my best friend from high school. We got together (with Phillip) to eat dinner at Granite City. Afterward we went to my house to play a little Mario Party 8 (He won) and watch some funny videos online. It was great to see him again (I hadn't seen him since the day of the MCS ultimate game)! After he left, I went to sit on the deck with the rest of my family. I (of course) brought the camera with and took some pictures of some of the things on the deck that illuminate. I can't decide which one of these I like best, so I am gonna post them both.

Till tomorrow,
~Pat

Fitted

Thirty-Two.

I got fitted for a tux today for my cousin TG's wedding. This will be the first wedding that I have "been in". And I couldn't be happier for the two people involved! Since we were in the area (Rosedale), my cousin IH, my brother and I hit up the FFGEC (Fantasy Flight Games Event Center) again and we played some Dominion. I tied with Phillip the first game, and won the second. You could say that we are starting to become regulars around there... Here is a picture I took of one of the rooms that you can play games in:

Later,
~Pat

Yep, I've Been Doing This For A Month

Thirty-One.

Yep, a picture of my computer in my dark room. I stole my brother's f/2.8 lens for this one. I have been on the computer all day. This isn't that different from any other day, but today I actually got kinda bored with it... I am contemplating getting a new bike. I just wish I wasn't so poor. I payed my credit card bill today (yikes!) but it is ok, there are people who owe me money... Anyway, I watched the rest of Arrested Development (great show, I recommend). I also got a sandbox mySQL server working and did a little bit of coding. I also started to look for some open source work to pad my resume.

One month down, Eleven to go,
~Pat

Old Lady

Thirty.

It was my mom's 50th birthday today. The day started at church where the church organist JB played "Happy Birthday" after the church service was over. After church, one of my mom's friends came over to give her birthday wishes. They wanted me to take a picture of them, so I did:

Our family took mom to see Alegria (Cirque du Soliel) at the Target Center. There were some awesome acrobats and contortionists in the show, but there was also waaay too much clown humor. After the show we ate at the Hard Rock Cafe downtown and concluded our day on the deck with the new torches burning. I hope my mom had a great time on her birthday (even though U2 postponed her real birthday present)!

Later,
~Pat

OMBF

Twenty-Nine.

Today was the Osseo Marching Band Festival. I marched (more like meandered) with the Alumni band during the parade. I can't believe how much lung capacity you lose when you quit playing an instrument. I was winded... After the parade I stole my brother's camera and snapped some pictures of the award ceremony. It was started by a performance of a Marine band:

Since most of the volunteers knew me, I was able to sit on top of the press box and take some pictures. The Mankato 77 Lancers took the grand champion award this year. When I got back home I ate pizza with my parents and grandparents. They came over to celebrate my mom's birthday (which is tomorrow). They gave her some new pots and pans. It is possible that I get some of the old pots and pans (yay!).

Pretty sure some shots were fired on my street tonight, there were like 9 squad cars very close to my house. I have never heard gun shots before, so I am not sure if that is what I heard...

I have an early morning tomorrow, and a long day so I am gonna sign off.

Later,
~Pat

On The Road Again

Twenty-Eight.

Hung out with TA, KM and Patty again today in Madison. We went to the terrace on the UW campus (Deja Vu). We chilled out by the lake and had our picture taken on the big chair. The metering was screwed up because people don't know how to use my camera:

After going to Toy Story 3 (highly recommended), we had to leave Madison. The trip was great!

Later,
~Pat

Swept :(

Twenty-Seven.

Me and the gang (+ Patty now) went to Miller Park to see the MN Twins take on the Milwaukee Brewers. They ended up losing 5-0 (at least we got a couple hits). Even though the Twins didn't win we had a good time anyways. Here is all four of us in a giant baseball glove:

After the game, Patty brought us to this really awesome top secret restaurant (after navigating downtown Milwaukee). We concluded the day by watching the Futurama season premiere at Patty's dad's office and looking through Patty's old yearbooks at her house.

Later,
~Pat

ROADTRIP!!!

Twenty-Six.

Went to the dentist this morning (no cavities). After I was finished getting my teeth clean, TA and KM showed up at my house and we departed on our road trip (Trevor was driver #1). After hearing "Bulletproof" by La Roux 3-4 times we arrived in Tomah, WI. It is a popular stop for Patty and I when doing the same trip. We stopped at an A&W ate some delicious cheese curds and I snapped this picture:

We arrived in Madison safe and sound and I am blogging at Patty's house. Patty's mom is so great for letting us crash at her place.

This blog post is actually on time today because I have to go to bed early to depart for Milwaukee in the morning to catch the Twins game!!!

Till tomorrow,
~Pat

Games Again.

Twenty-Five.

I watched two episodes of Arrested Development today (only a week left before they take down season 3). I am disappointed that FOX managed to kill this show just like they killed Futurama. Maybe Arrested Development will come back just like Futurama is coming back this week! (*crosses fingers*) I also went to the FFG event center to play some games with Phillip, IH and MH and a new addition to the group TS! We ended up getting one of the back rooms (which are really nice). We played a game of Dominion and another game of Small World. Great times had. Photo is a little more relevant today:

Tomorrow begins the epic road trip with TA and KM. Going to be at Patty's house!!!

Later,
~Pat

Biggest Fan?

Twenty-Four.

My friend RA came over today, it was good to catch-up on life again. She and I haven't interacted in a while, but she is pretty much the same as I remember her. I realized that she eats Oreos the same way Patty and I do (Twist off the garbage cookie, eat it [usually in one bite], then eat the cookie with the stuff on it in smaller bites to savor the correct stuff to cookie ratio). Talked with Patty on the phone and she told me that she is transferring into my Nature of Math class, which is great because then we will have a class together in the fall. I also started playing with some of the other features of the program that came with my camera. I altered this photo of a fan in my living room to look like this:

I will stop doing lame pictures soon, as I am going on a road trip on Wednesday with TA, and KM.

Later,
~Pat

Father's Day!

Twenty-Three.

Father's Day! Went to church and operated the screens again this week. One misspelling in the whole service, so  I am doing well (Hoping for 0 next week). My dad got a card from the rest of us, as well as a set of 4 of those cool Samuel Adam's beer glasses that keep fizzing because of the laser etching on the bottom. We had an amazing early dinner with steak and glazed carrots. After that, we went over to Grandma and Grandpa's place and chatted with them for a while. My Grandpa explained to me how to start and drive a Model-T Ford. It was very enlightening (Apparently there were 3 petals[low-gear, reverse, brake], 2 faders[throttle and something called spark], a valve[for opening and closing the gas tank] and a lever[high-gear]). It is fascinating to think about all of the technology that has occurred in my grandparent's lifetime. (They didn't have electricity growing up!) It is amazing what the integrated circuit and transistor has done for us! I can't even imagine how the technology will improve in my lifetime or that the gap will be as large as it is for them. After leaving their house, we came back home, and ate cake. I didn't take any pictures the whole day, and randomly took a picture of this porcelain cat that my mom recently removed from storage in the basement:

As a parting thing, you should watch this video by Hank Green (other half of the vlogbrothers).

Also, Happy Summer Solstice!

Later,
~Pat

Lady In A Tater Daze

Twenty-Two.

Woke up to a flustered Mom. I didn't really get the details right away, but eventually the puzzle pieces came together. Tree. Branches. Idiot. Car. Reverse. Damage. A woman managed to back into our front pine tree (going rather fast I might add). My dad spoke to her and has a sneaking suspicion that she was high. Here is a photo of the damage:

Notice the tire tracks and the damage to the lower branches of the tree. Since these branches were probably going to die, and my mother wanted to get the tree trimmed on the bottom anyway, she got what she wanted a little earlier than intended. The whole family helped. I did most of the cutting of limbs in the heart of the tree. I got all sappy and there were a ton of spiders living in the inches of dead needles under there. We found a few golf balls, a few cans and water bottles, and a baby doll (which looked really creepy). There is a funny looking whole where the car hit, and my mom took this picture of Phillip and I:

After trimming the tree, I took a shower and got all of the sap off of my hands, (Pam cooking spray works the best) I went to the FFG event center to play a game with Phillip and my cousins IH and MH. I was impressed with the facility (and that I didn't have to pay to get in). We played a little game called small world. It was pretty sweet. Afterwards IH took us all out for pizza at Davanni's it was delicious. The day concluded with fireworks for the city festival called Tater Daze. I tried my hand at firework photography again, and this one is my favorite:

JPEG Compression did not do this photo justice...

Till Tomorrow,
~Pat

Video Game Controller Series: Part 1

Twenty-One.

I chatted online with one of my old High School friends RA. She told me she liked posts where I took pictures of objects, so I decided to play with some down lighting and a Wii nun-chuck. I really didn't do anything more than programming the screens for church, so it was a good day to shoot a random object.

That is all for today, hopefully I will have a firework for tomorrow!

Later,
~Pat

Lamest T-Storm Ever

Twenty.

TA came over today because he was working in Brooklyn Park and wanted to see how his ex-roommate was doing. It was good to see him and catch up a little. We were going to go to the Tater Daze parade, but the weather forecast made the city cancel the parade. It turned out that it drizzled a little...thanks a lot meteorologists... TA and I played some Mario Cart Wii and watched the food network *drools a little* The sky was really orange after the storm passed and I had my brother snap this picture of TA and I on our deck:

Thanks for taking this pic Phillip!

Till tomorrow,
~Pat

Muffins!

Nineteen.

Woke up, did some mild housework, and then I made banana muffins:

Yes, they taste as good as they look! I also had a skype date with EH and we talked about Thambo and how to go about improving their website. I did some more nerding (brushing up on my javascript) and learned about how to make SQL queries more secure. Tomorrow I hope the weather will hold off so TA and I can go to the Tater Daze Parade!

Later,
~Pat

P.S. I am actually posting on time tonight!

HD Video!

Eighteen.

I started learning everything there is to know about Apache web server today. Did some test runs of adding websites to it and started to work on the Ruby on Rails installation. Didn't have enough time to figure out why that wasn't working. My computer was needed to watch the Blu-Ray of Avatar with Phillip and Mom!!! I can't believe that technology has advanced so far to bring us such beautiful CG video! I am convinced that Blu-Ray is going to be the way of the future, and that DVD's are likely to go the way of the VHS tape. I have a skype date with EH tomorrow evening and am excited to hear what project he has for me!

Later,
~Pat

Lame Post

Seventeen.

Not much to report today. I renewed my Guthrie season tickets, and forced 1st Financial Bank to reverse an annual fee on my credit card. My picture today is a bunch of clothes on my bed, because now my mom is home from work. We are starting to organize and get rid of some things in the basement and the first step was to get all of the clothes upstairs...

Played some D2 with DM and MK too today.

I hope it doesn't rain tomorrow so I can go to ultimate.

Later,
~Pat

Looking For Alaska!

Sixteen.

This shot encompasses pretty much all of my day. I talked with the other members of the group that I go to the Guthrie Theater with regularly. Our season ticket renewal form will be taken care of tomorrow. I also finished reading Looking For Alaska. I think it was much deeper and more symbolic than most teen fiction. John wrote a great story that makes you think about life in a different way, and in a way that makes you value it more. I think it was good enough to recommend, so I think you should read this book too! Let me know if you want to borrow it.

Later,
~Pat

Graduates!

Fifteen.

Another late blog post. Today I went to a HS grad party for a friend from church, RS. She is going to St. Olaf next year, grr. Anyhoo, I spent a lot of time chatting with people I know. I saw JR for the first time in forever. The picture for today is of RS's niece on the swing set. I like her facial expression and how her hair is flying around:

I was going to try out my Blu-Ray player today, but it thought I was trying to pirate movies. This comes with good and bad news. The good news is that my Blu-Ray player works now and I can dim my monitor again! Yes, these things are strangely related. The bad news is that it took some time to fix, and I didn't have the time to watch Avatar...

Till tomorrow,
~Pat

Game Night

Fourteen.

I went to my cousin TG's place and played games with him, and cousins SG and IH, as well as T's fiancée JK and one of S's friends J? [the question mark is the initial for his last name]. We played Settlers of Catan, J? won [his first time playing]. Then we played Dominion, it is a pretty cool card game.

Also, IH gave me a early graduation present. It is a computer science book called Code Complete. I think it looks promising and look forward to reading it!

Later,
~Pat

Pizza w/ Mom

Thirteen.

That number is supposed to be unlucky, but there was no misfortune today. I was able to sleep in, play some Diablo II, watch Jeopardy, drop Phillip at work. I am slightly disappointed that I didn't go to ultimate today, but I don't have a car so when there isn't one to borrow, I can't get to where I am going. After dropping Phillip at work, I went to Rosedale Mall with Mom to kill some time and get some dinner. She bought some end of the year gifts (She works at an Elementary School). We went to Green Mill and ate some pizza and had some 1-on-1 time. It was great! The picture for today is a solar powered plastic light-up flower that my Mom bought a few days ago, I should have closed the aperture a little...

Till tomorrow,
~Pat

Dozen

Twelve.

Another day of bringing people to work...8am and 2pm today. I get a break tomorrow and get to sleep in, yay! I said yesterday that I was installing Diablo II...lets just say I have a level 20 Paladin that wasn't there yesterday. Call me a nerd all you want, but I wasn't being anti-social, I played with my brother, DM and one of DM's friends. I couldn't think of a pic for today that was Diablo related, so I did some lighting play with a toy I have in my room. I had a incandescent light shooting from the right side and a flash at the end of the exposure with a red gel over it. Let me know what you think.

I also coded up a little counter to track blog views...it is invisible to you guys, but I can see if anyone is actually reading this thing...

Also also, if you didn't notice my adsense account got approved, so now there are relevant (or semi-relevant) ads with my posts. We'll see if they amount to any sort of profit...

Till tomorrow,
~Pat

A Bout of Narcissism

Eleven.

Grades came out a while ago, but I haven't bragged about them here yet, so here goes: P, A, A, A, B-. This is a 3.666 term GPA which is pretty good (for me at least). The B- comes from Theory of Computation. I think that is about what I deserved. Today was boring and rainy. I took Mom and Phillip to work today. Pretty dull day...I took this picture of myself in front of my closet doors:

That is literally all I have to say,
~Pat

P.S. I am downloading Diablo II right now...

w00tstock

Ten.

Went to W00tstock today. Basically all of the nerds in the twin cities were there. (Got back late, therefore late post) I went with PD and DM. It took place at the Guthrie on the Proscenium stage. I didn't bring my camera, because I thought it wouldn't be allowed...turns out the whole thing had a creative commons licence on it, so I could have taken a ton of pictures...oh well, this picture of peonys will have to do:

Click Here for a playlist of videos from W00tstock 2.3.

Later,
~Pat

New Background

Nine.

As I mentioned before, the screens at my church kinda went downhill after I left. Since I have been gone, they have been using the same background. I felt it was time to change this, and created a new one:

As you can see, I used design elements from the window (actually blatant rip-off) removing the horizontal bars occluding the glass. Also, I designed the bottom corners, as they are cut off by the pillars in the actual window. With white text (Georgia 40pt.) the background looks great!

Now that blogger is back up and running, I am adding some pictures that I took at my Aunt and Uncle's house. They invited us over for a Sunday lunch. Mmm, brats! I also decided to take some dog portraits...

Later,
~Pat

Stranded

Eight.

This is a picture of me that Patty took at an Arby's roughly 2 hours after I was supposed to be on a bus. Let's just say that my face shows how pleased I am with a certain bus company (ahem, Megabus, ahem). Eventually a coach bus showed up to pick up the 6 of us that were on our way to Minneapolis. We were able to spread out more than if the other bus showed up, so in a way it was kind of a perk. I am home now, and working on a cool background for my church. (It will be my pic for tomorrow)

Later,
~Pat

Mad Town

Seven.

Wow, I have been doing this for a whole week. Looks like I can be persistent enough to do this for the rest of the 51 weeks! I arrived safely in Madison, WI at 4:15am. I promptly got to Patty's house and crashed. We then went to the grocery store, had some lunch and took a nap. After we woke up, we went to the UW Madison campus and got some ice cream cones and fed the ducks a moldy loaf of bread.

We walked around the campus a bit until we were hungry, and we went to the Old Fashioned for some pub chips. On our way there I saw a pedestrian bridge and I had to take a few shots off of it.

After we left the Old Fashioned, we met up with one of Patty's friends at the Terrace on the UW Madison campus and listened to crappy jazz and talked. The weather was beautiful. Now I am back at Patty's house and I am going to go to bed.

P.S. LATE POST

Till Tomorrow,
~Pat

Off I Go...

Six.

For reasons I will not say, I am heading to Madison, WI tonight on a bus. Hopefully the bus will have internet and I can get the photo on this post, before it automatically posts at 11:55pm. EDIT: Added photo at 2:30 at a Wendy's about an hour outside of Madison, WI.

Later,
~Pat

Baby Birds

Five.

Today was a rather boring day. I cleared out my Hulu queue (except for the U.K. office and Arrested Development season 3). I took today's picture through the boards of the deck...I was hoping that there would still be eggs in the nest, but it turns out that the robins decided to hatch. I would have tried to get some better pictures, but their mom was getting pissed at me.

Till tomorrow,
~Pat

Shattering News.

Four.

I picked up a book today. I don't know what is wrong with me, but Patrick McDougle picked up a book today. I began to read John Green's Looking For Alaska. For those of you who don't know, John Green is a teen fiction writer who makes up half of the vlogbrothers. The vlogbrothers are famous YouTubers who decided to vlog (videoblog) every weekday for a year. I have seen all of their videos. The book is pretty entertaining and gives me an excuse to get out of the house.

Peace,
~Pat