Bic-B@ll

im healing bitches

you can see here

http://www.zeroproof.com/bicball/healprocess.gif

I got touch for Christmas and think it's badass and was wondering what the rest of you think. I'm thoroughly impressed with all of the nifty features in it, though there are some things that bug me. Firstly, I'm not a fan of iTunes, then there's the issue of Apple allowed-only apps, it doesn't work with he XBox 360, my powered USB hub can't charge it, it downsizes (considerably) high-res pictures etc. Most importantly I think the touch screen is pretty awesome, especially the multi-touch zooming, however I used my previousnMP3 player in the car often and it had physical controls that I could use without looking. Now, I have to press the unlock button, slide the unlock, stand it up to get out of album mode, and find the next button, same goes for when its in my pocket. Oh and the keyboard is freaking hard to use and half the apps won't let you use it in landscape mode which makes it 20x easier to use. It still is really cool and I've added a couple of apps that I think I'll get a lot of use out of. I'm going to be pissed if when I return to school I find that it won't work with the wireless internet system there but it should. I don't know if I'll ever pay attention in class again, so much of my beautiful mind thread I was wondering what apps any of you owners have, so far I have:

Tap Tap Revenge

Pandora

Last.fm

Wikiamo

AIM

Facebook

Night Stand

Kitchen Timer

The Weather Channel

WiFinder

dalmatian mice will make any movie funny

Omg iPod touch wee

well for accelerating, yeah, high gear will lower your torque and reduce slipping, starting in second gear is the way to go in slipper conditions. but i was going down hill and was engine braking to slow things down

i ordered the wheels at 10 am on the 23rd and got them at noon on the 24th, free ups ground shipping from maryland. awesome. just need the tires

i mean, its salt in the wounds, but i can understand it since driving in those conditions with shitty tires is simply retarded, i could have caused an accident very easily. i would have bought any tires in town if i could have, but they had nothing, i didn't really have a choice at that point.

wow how could that happen? I don't know about US laws but over here you need to have special winter-tires during november till march and if you are travelling such a region you need steel wheels or you get stopped, pay 500€ and will be send back... o_O

basically, i gt out of school on thursday the 18th and went skiing instead of going straight home since the mountain is near school. dad met me there. there were a few inches on the ground but the road was dry. on friday it began snowing. we were going to leave saturday night after skiing but the roads were awful. we stayed till sunday and left that morning. after a few miles i was going down hill in second gear, didnt turn the wheel, touch the brakes or change where my foot was on the gas pedal. the car just started sliding horizontally, i was hoping to gain traction and never did, then i was hoping id hit the snow back and bounce off, i didnt. it was just fluff and i slid right in. you can see in the first picture, my dad's passat is in the road, thats how poor the roads were. i called a tow truck to pull me out, that cost 100. a cop came by and was like, you have shitty tires, go into town, get new tires tomorrow, or get a 200 dollar ticket. we went back into town, stayed over night and the morning after walked to the tow truck/gas station place to get new tires. he had none that would fit my wheels or new wheels+ tires that would fit. its a reallly small town and this was the only place. my dad had already missed a day of work and more snow was coming so we made the decision to drive to the next town which was larger and had snow tires. went down the same road again, even more carefully this time, and made it 4x as far and the same thing happened, only this time i slid to the left. i was going down hill in 1st gear, under 10 mph. i gout out, called the insurance company and got a free pull out. while waiting for the tow truck, state troopers came along. i sat in the front of his car and he wrote me a 200 dollar ticket for "driving too fast for the conditions" and said no matter how fast i was going i lost control and im getting the ticket and theres no fighting it. so im sitting in his car waiting for the tow truck and bam, a civic comes over and hill and locks its brakes and taps me, there was no damage. tow truck comes, pulls me out, i drive over to the side of the road and have the tow truck guy bring a flat bed and just drive me the rest of the way to the highway. that cost 150. once i got to the highway its was smooth sailing. t give you and idea of how terrible the road i was on was, here's a terrain view of the road with the two places i slid, i was going east. factor in the twists with the hills, add strong wind and a covering of snow on the road with no plowing, dirt, or salt. and two different pairs of shitty tires.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&saddr=E ... 9&t=p&z=12

wheels are arriving today and tires should be here monday. at home the snow is very minimal and not an issue, but where i go to school ill get use of the tires, plus ill be going back to the same area in vermont to go skiing and im sure i can use them again. i'll have two sets of wheels/tires from now on and hopefully wont be stuck in the same situation.

it only got better

over the weekend this

and this

happened.

i bought 4 cheapo steel wheels and quality snow tires this morning.

i just bought my parents 2 tickets to wicked.

its been an expensive week. i still need to buy my brother something, i think ill browse this thread and look for ideas

not to be a dick but i think twitter is retarded and would like to keep facebook to people i personally know though i've made a few exceptions.

12 years and finally they fucked up

i <3 puppies

im pretty confident that this is going to suck balls

i love it for its sheer simplicity and the effectiveness of getting the message across. however, im not sure that's all that scouts are looking for. but wouldn't you also want to include what tools you're proficient in and other such info? it seems like all that's listed is you name, email address and pics of your work.

how about you just don't lose your debit card or keep large quantities of cash in your checking account?

this jsut kinda confirms that im going to buy a new pc, i loved mafia and have wet dreams about II frequently

What you’re reading absolutely affects how you read it, but I remember having issues like this when reading Tom Clancy books that I was in to. Don’t worry, 14 hours and I pulled it off…I haven’t gone to sleep yet and the final is in three hours, if I fall asleep I’ll forget everything D:

Exercise is on the list of things to do, there’s a small exercise room in the dorms that I think I’m going to start use the treadmill and bike in.

Making myself food isn’t really an option, I live in a dorm room and am not allowed to even have a microwave. The dining hall doesn’t have great food but I can still get square meals, I’m not big junk food eater.

I don’t know if I could ever part with IRC.

My homepage is like 30 RSS feeds

Of the four forums I visit, only two are active enough for me to post in.

I have my IM boot on start up, but it’s definitely crucial to close while doing any kind of work, I’d end up turning it back on though.

Don’t have a physical phone, but my cell is on me at all times.

I just went to sell my books back and they offered me $118 for $353 worth of books. That's not including the most expensive one that I still need. Pretty pissed about that but I'm going to go to an independent bookstore down the block tomorrow and see if I can get some better prices. Not sure why I wrote this as it's completely irrelevant, but fuck textbooks.

they weren't testing the roof...they do skits that are basically for pure humor, and they do reviews/comparisons/track runs, they're all cut up and scattered into segments throughout the show but they're clearly separate.

That's kinda the issue, there aren't more important things to do, I still haven't gone to sleep

I think next semester I'm going to get a job, I just have far to much free time, I used to enjoy working.

I was on Facebook between refreshes (omg new friend ). Putting the computer away is key. When I started reading I had Pandora playing some music and I could see the IMs popping up and had to reply, within the first 20 minutes I ventured onto IRC and had an hour long chat about I don't even remember what. Even if I turned it off it would still be there haunting me. I literally tore all the cables out and hid it in my dresser 'till I was done. I was ready to hand it to my roommate and tell him to not let me use it. I think I'm going to start going to the exercise room and riding the bike and running on the treadmill a bit, physical activity is supposed to help mental stuff too. I do a lot of sitting around now-a-days. I think the best course action is alternative activities; it doesn't help that is like 4 degrees out, but just about anything is better, guitar is a legitimately excellent one.

I like the guitar idea, my brother has one that I can pick up and learn, and I’ve always wanted to, but I’ve been too lazy. Problem is that I'd hop online to learn how to play and end up surfing the web for 12 hours with a guitar in my lap. It's something I can take back to the dorms though which is cool. I see what you're saying about losing interest and I'm definitely there, I'm taking classes on the atmosphere, business law, economics, and American literary history. Two of them are three hours long and they’re all beyond dry. However, I've always been able to pay attention in school. I never really did homework or studied but just always went to class and paid attention and did rather well in school. Luckily, my grades aren't suffering currently, well, as far as I know.

I'm no slave to news, I have a few RSS feeds but only read things that peak my interest or are big stuff (F/18 crash ). A lot of it is technology stuff. I don't know if you've ever been on Digg but it's a stockpile of funny, interesting, creative etc type things that can keep you occupied for a long time. Maybe you should stay away if you're like me. I too used to have IRC on my second monitor to be a constant distraction. I only have my laptop at school but IRC is open as long as my computer is on.

I'm not sure if I can call it an issue, but it's like there isn't much to do in society as a whole. You can only go out drinking or something so often. I spend hours in other people’s rooms, yet I still have tons of free time. Bowling and such isn't going to touch it. The internet and video games and such are always there easily accessible to entertain you. Combining the computer and education is absolutely a huge issue for me; how the hell am I supposed to concentrate on my paper in Word with people IMing me, people chatting on IRC and the internet right there. I have a class that has all its homework on the internet, it's awful. I think it's almost an unrealized society issue, technology is great and all but we use it all day and it takes away from socializing and normal interaction or even stuff like reading actual things.

As for music, I love music, it's playing all day. The right kind can relax me and I listen to while studying, especially acoustic or instrumental stuff. But I don't find it very relevant, if anything it helps in shutting the environment out.

there are probably 15 from me

you look at the great cars they produce in europe and they shit they shovel to us in america and then see them asking for a bailout and want to stab yourself in the eye

So I’ve been in college for a few years and this semester transferred to another school. I now sit in huge lecture halls and stuff. Anyway, its finals week and being the procrastinator I am, I have to cram about 400 pages of reading, finished a thirty-six page journal on Sunday, and have a five page paper due. I’ve been noticing in class and when doing reading and stuff that I simply can’t focus. It’s been getting worse over the past couple of years. I’ll sit in class, look at the professor and then think about any random thing. I’ll think about random shit all class and if I’m lucky hear 4 words from the professor. I think sitting far back in a huge stadium lecture hall contributes to this but there is an underlying problem. I used to read books but haven’t in a while; when I read the ones for class, although dry as hell, I can’t focus for shit. Just like in class I’ll read something and then my mind wanders. I have to go back and reread the section, sometimes several times.

I legitimately think that the root of this problem stems from my computer usage. I’ve used it daily and frequently since I’ve been able to walk. When I was in elementary school I played Counter-Strike all day, when I got a bit older I talked on forums and did some Half-Life mapping and played some console games. As I got older I got a laptop and could use the computer anywhere, plus I had a cell phone to txt on and play Tetris. I had a job for about two years and that suppressed my usage. When I did use the computer it was usually on the couch watching TV; I’d take hours to watch one 30 minute Daily Show because I’d pause it to read stuff on the internet. Now I’m away at college in a dorm with no job, no television, and once again spend copious amounts of time on the internet. My current trends are Digg, IRC, AIM, Facebook, 4 forums, and all the RSS feed on my iGoogle page. While my usage obviously is excessive spelling it out like that makes it seem really bad, I’d like to assure you that I do have friends, am not fat, do leave my room, do go out, and when I was at home rode a bicycle daily.

For those of you who focus as bad as me and are scared of the wall of text, I'll break it up with a silly picture.

The way I browse Digg and the forums is to open whatever I find interesting in new tabs and quickly scan through each tab for a few seconds and read what I want. I read a few comments too. The point of all this explanation is that I think the quantity and type of usage has altered me mentally. I think in quick thoughts like a scatterbrain, I’m all over the place, on a new news article every 2 seconds, alt-tabbing, chatting etc. If you apply that to real life, that’s how I act when in class and reading. To compound it, when I have to do work I’ll do a bit and then hop on the computer; on top of making me not think straight, it distracts me. It’s hard to say it’s an addiction, but it probably is.

Today I had 274 pages of business law to read, possibly the most boring thing ever. After doing the typical read and inch and then hop in IRC for half an hour, someone I know came in my room. I asked him about the Adderall he takes and tried one for myself (I’m not sure if this is going upset/offend anyone, but I don’t really care). It took quite some time to kick in but eventually I closed the blinds, closed the door, dismantled the laptop and hid it in a drawer, turned off the phone, turned off the music, turned a fan on for a little white noise and started reading. I soon realized that reading out loud helped me focus immensely. For 14 hours I read that damn textbook out loud and just finished.

So what I really want to know besides reactions is if anyone else can see a relationship between the way their (or anyone’s) brain/mind/thoughts/focus is affected by their computer/internet usage. I haven’t looked into any type of research on the matter, but I’d be surprised if there aren’t scientific studies linking the two. School is over next Wednesday and I’ve got a month off. I’m going to make a conscious effort to cut computer usage back very drastically. Things like reading books, taking the dog for walks, watching some TV shows straight through, going snowboarding…any activity like that to help redeem my concentration. I don’t want to say it’s destroying my life, but I can’t continue in college like this and I don’t want to be like this for the rest of my life. I feel like I need to do something about it and cutting back/stopping is clearly the answer. I don’t want to be one of those kids who throws “ADD” or “ADHD” around because they think it’s funny or something but I’d be surprised if I didn’t have some of both. I don’t want to be medicated though. Just something I wanted to get off my chest and it came to a huge point today.

/longest post I've never made on Mapcore