Notice

Due to various factors, I'm afraid I must take a monthlong leave of this blog... since my posts aren't frequent enough anyway, this probably won't cause all that great of a ripple in anyone's existence, but just in case I have a devoted fan somewhere, somehow, I promise to be back and writing a new entry after I return on February 8th. Talk to you then! :)

Concerning life...

Hey, everyone, time for another entry chronicling the life and times (this time, specifically the life) of me, your humble blogger.

Yeah, so life has been pretty crazy for me lately... everything's been good on the whole, but I feel like I've been so busy I haven't had time to stop and smell the coffee (or is it roses?). What with a very demanding school schedule and a number of time-sinks that seem to pop up on a regular basis, everything has been a massive whirlwind. Although school isn't necessarily all that difficult, it is very time-consuming (although some would question whether I make it more time-consuming than it needs to be). Things just seem to be exploding into my life at every level; I feel as alive as I've ever felt, and at the same time as overwhelmed as I've ever felt. I am experiencing life in all its wonder and in all its troubles, all its beauty and joy and all its ugliness and misery. As all these new experiences well up both externally and internally, it's easy for me to be overcome at times by the sheer power of it.

Thankfully, I'm not alone... I have wonderful friends to strengthen and relieve me and a wonderful Savior to guide and, well, save me. As I sojourn through this high and low point in my life, I often tend to despair of ever successfully navigating the dangerous waters of change which haunt the high school/college transitionary period I'm now experiencing (metaphor much?). I thank God daily (or at least, I SHOULD) that I rarely feel the weight of loneliness... without the people who make my life so pleasurable, it would be nigh-unlivable, and without my Savior, it would be UTTERLY unlivable. So I guess what I want to say comes down to this: thank you, friends, and thank you, Christ, for always giving me hope during difficult times. I couldn't handle it without ya :)

As promised!

Well, here I am, at long last, with a long blog entry... unfortunately, as of right now, I have absolutely no clue what it'll be about...

So. Let's see what I come up with.

My life has been crazy busy this summer, what with college visits and everything. I'll be graduating next year, so I've been spending the last three months studying my options, and making visits to some of the schools I'm interested in. So far I've visited six or seven, and three or so have definitely emerged as the ones I'm very interested in. These three are, in no particular order (although the first and second outrank the third), Patrick Henry College in Virginia, Hillsdale College in Michigan, and Cedarville University in Ohio.

These are all exceptional schools (in my opinion at least), and PHC and Hillsdale are liberal arts colleges, something which really appeals to my tastes.

Oh! I just realized you may not know what my tastes are... I'm looking at majoring in Political Science, with a minor (or at least a specialization) in political history. Later, I may eventually continue into law school, but that's not something I'm permanently decided about yet.

Anyway, this summer has been pretty crazy. But it's also been good... I've had a chance to make new friends, and build some friendships that had only been vague. Life has been pretty pleasant, which is something I really needed after the chaos of last school year. I've had lots of time for physical recreation (and discovered a love of Ultimate Frisbee), as well as some good gaming ;-)

I've been playing a lot (for me anyway) of my favorite game, Star Wars Battlefront II, as well as some fun DS games that have come out this year. Also, I've actually gone back and beaten New Super Mario Bros., so that was a fun use of an afternoon =P

I'm also CRAZILY looking forward to a new DS game coming out September 15th, called Scribblenauts. To some extent, it defies categorization, but it's been labelled as an "emergent puzzle action game". It's a somewhat 3D side-scrolling platformer/puzzle game where the player can summon literally any object (except vulgar or copyrighted things, for obvious reasons), and use it to solve the problem. What makes this awesome idea so incredible is that it seems the developer has really managed to pull it off. From the footage that's been released on the major gaming websites, it actually seems to work exactly the way it's supposed to, something that's absolutely amazing for this kind of completely new concept. The other almost-magical part is that each object actually behaves just as it would in real life. In other words, a cat hates water (and won't come down from high places like trees and roofs), celebrities are afraid of paparazzi, beavers like to eat trees, cops love donuts, etc. etc. etc...

Here's my favorite trailer, which really shows off the game's philosophy:

Can you see why I'm looking forward to this game?

Anyway, that's just one of the great Nintendo DS games coming out this fall. There's also Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days (don't ask, I don't know what it means either), Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story (the sequel to one of my favorite RPGs on the system, Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time), Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: Mobilized (yes, this game will be so awesome it gets TWO colons in its name), and many, many more. But Scribblenauts tops my list of anticipated games, for its innovation, and more impressively, the fact that it actually seems to all work.

Well, that about wraps up my video games segment... Since I don't post as often as I should here (although that will hopefully change as the year goes on), I'll go ahead and talk about everything in one massive post. I just started schoool a few days ago, and that's been a big change for me. This year, I'm spending much more time outside the home than ever before. I still am a "homeschooled student", but this year I'm spending three out of five days at a very school-like institution called Veritas Academy. It's a terrific place, and I think it's really preparing me for college. It's tough, though... I should probably be doing my homework right now :)

But anyway, I'm away from home a lot doing school, and I can tell already that it's going to be a tough year. However, I think that's exactly what I need... I tend to get complacent if things are too easy, and I think this will kick me back into the gear I'll need for college next year.

Well, I'd better be going now... I'll try to post updates with greater frequency in the future. Cya around! =P

-Daniel

Still alive

Hey, everyone! I'm just snapping off a quick post to let you all know I'm still present and... mostly accounted for ;-)

You can expect a new, much larger post in the next few days (which for me means the next few weeks, but hey, time is relative and all, so...).

Cya later!

Long time, no post!

OK. I know what you're all thinking: "He still exists?" Yes, and I promise all of my eager readers(hey, that sort of rhymes!) that one of these days I'll get back to fairly regular posting. In the meantime, however, this is just a quick update, upon which I'll expand in(hopefully) the very near future.

First, I'd like to welcome any Facebook readers, who are probably wondering what I'm talking about by this point. Let me explain: this is my blog, and I've told Facebook to import any new entries as they are made. Older entries, for anyone who's interested in reading some facile political thoughts and a few other bits of randomness, can be found at lifeuniverseanddaniel.blogspot.com.

For the rest of this post, I will refrain from discussing the current political situation, as I'm sure pretty much everyone is already about as saturated with it as they can take. I'll save my thoughts for after the election, which is only 2 days from now!

But anyway, I'd like to talk for a while about food. Specifically, the uniquely American habit of eating as much of it as we can possibly hold without becoming seriously ill, and perhaps a bit more. I must confess that I am not entirely immune to this myself. Yesterday, my family and I went, as we do every year, to Red Lobster's endless shrimp promotional event. Sounds harmless enough, shrimp's a light food, you don't have to eat any more than you want, etc., right? WRONG.

There is some deeply rooted American psychological imperative which makes us feel that when we pay for an essentially unlimited amount of food, we absolutely have to eat every bite we can possibly hold, whether or not we really want it. Even your humble blogger is not immune to this effect. I ate far more than was necessary, and ended up feeling miserable for most of the visit to Barnes and Noble afterward. But I digress...

Another exciting bit of news is the release of Nintendo's new portable, the Nintendo DSi. As of about 11 hours ago(thanks to the difference in time zones), it is available in Japan. A U.S. release is expected to be delayed until after April of next year due to the continued popularity of Nintendo's current DS portable. I must admit I'm drooling over this new incarnation, which is a major upgrade from my current DS Lite system. The DSi features a pair of cameras, one facing toward the user and one facing out. It also has built-in web browsing and music playing capabilities, both of which I already have, thanks to the marvels of homebrew software, but the official versions will of course be more polished and functional. The DSi also has a Shop function similar to that of the Wii, where shoppers buy points and use them to purchase and download items directly to the DSi.

There are a lot more major upgrades, but I won't waste any more of your(or my) time detailing them. For anyone interested, there is a good feature overview video here. It's in Japanese, and thus is a bit uninformative on the actual hard data, but the video is enough to make any portable gaming people drool;-)

Did I say this would be a short post? Oh, well. I'll stop while I'm ahead. Oh, wait, I should have stopped about a paragraph and a half ago. It's a good thing I didn't get into politics as well...

OK, well, bye for now!

Daniel G.

News Flash!

Well, for anyone who doesn't know(or care), John McCain has chosen Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate in his bid for the presidency. This choice pretty much came from nowhere, and is being hailed by many as one of the most brilliant political moves in history. While I wouldn't necessarily go that far, I do agree that McCain made the best choice he could have possibly made in Sarah Palin. One reason for this is that she appeals to so many different classes of voters: women, union members, career military people, those conservative Christians still unsure of McCain, environmentalists, etc.

This choice has the potential to give John McCain the boost he needs to break the stalemate that has formed in McCain's race with Barack Obama.

As an aside, another benefit of the timing and surprise of this choice is that it goes a very long way toward canceling out Obama's boost from his landmark, if logically inconsistent, acceptance speech last night.

Well, that's all for now... just had to give a quick update there;-)

Bye!

Daniel

Politics and more...

Well, it's presidential election time again, and I must say that this is one of the most complicated and important elections I have studied or experienced. Right now, I am sitting on my couch watching the Democratic National Convention. It is, perhaps unfortunately, one of the funniest and fluffiest things I have seen in quite a while. All I am hearing is continual rehashing of a few basic talking points over and over again, often word-for-word. I don't know about my readers, but personally, I expect more from what should be a serious presentation of the candidates. To be honest, I couldn't care less about the childhoods of Barack Obama or Joe Biden. I care about how well they will be able to lead this country in the tough times ahead.

I predict that I will feel the same way about the Republican National Convention, but I'll hold my comments until I have seen it.

So which candidate is better suited to lead this country? This depends upon each voter's personal priorities. We each want our leaders to lead in our favored direction, and it is each candidate's challenge to make more people believe that they will indeed move in that direction, whether they will or not. This is the foundation of the politician's art.


Enough about politics for now. I will be starting school next week, so this week is a very hectic one as I attempt to accomplish all of the tasks I intended to do this summer but never actually completed. Tomorrow is an especially busy day as I will be having one friend over in the morning, and going in the evening to visit another.

I am more nervous about this school year than about any I have been through so far. I have been told that this will be my most difficult year. I have many, many activities outside the home, as well as a very intensive set of studies at home. This year, I am taking English Literature, and if what I have read so far(for example, Bede's Ecclesiastical History Of The English People) is any indication, it will be a fairly difficult study. I am also looking forward(or not) to Pre-Calculus.

Well, tonight's convention speech-making is over and it is time for me to go to bed. Goodbye, all!

Daniel