Well I was wrong, the truck had 700 boxes. I got the crappy job of sorting the boxes after they were scanned - my arms were pretty tired by the end. The company thinks that all of the boxes should be unpacked and put in the store ASAP but there's no way that is possible. It took about 4 of us 5 hours just to finish unpacking boxes that need to be out by Tuesday so there are still a lot left. Oh well, I guess that's what I'll be doing the rest of the week which isn't that bad.

MTU e-mailed me my "final" schedule except for this english type class I have to register for when we go up there. It's mostly a math and computer schedule right now. There's that linear algebra class and some probability one that I should be able to get waived when I see an advisor at orientation. The computer classes seem okay I guess. One is only once a week and basically makes sure you know what a computer is, so that shouldn't be hard. The other one covers beginning programming, but they say at a faster pace. I've seen their website though, and it doesn't look like they go that fast. It should be fun though. Hopefully I can get that math class waived and get into Physics or something though.

I haven't been able to watch the Cubs recently but they won today so I'm happy about that. They are doing pretty decent lately.

Nothing much happened today. The last few blog entries have been about work so I won't really talk too much about it in this one. Today I basically just did register work and stood around doing nothing. Tomorrow a big truck is coming (with 300? boxes) and I have to unload and unpack them. That should suck.

I just watched Kerry's speech and he seemed pretty awkward at the start but he got better later on. Like with other people's speeches, I liked parts and I didn't like others. Overall, I don't think it changed any of my opinions or anything. The balloons and stuff at the end was kinda weird though.

There's a Halo 2 ad-thing that is going on right now with a weird Internet address with a countdown on it. The latest rumor is that on August 24th the Official XBox Magazine might come with a Halo 2 demo, which would be cool. I'll explain the ad sometime later, it's too long to explain.

I woke up today pretty stiff. I guess I wasn't used to all the crouching and lifting I did at work. Thankfully I'm not that stiff though, because I had to work again at 3PM. This time I got to meet the store manager. I was kinda hoping I would have a job of putting stuff together again or something but instead I basically straightened shelves and worked the register the entire time. It's amazing how long some people will spend in that store. Later on in the day I was told to unwrap these giant rugs and then get them ready to put on these rug display things. That turned out to be a huge pain because the rugs were all wrapped in multiple layers of plastic. They were all really dirty too, which was kinda weird. Anyway, the day went much faster than my first one so I'm happy about that. They asked if I wanted to work Friday too, so I'll be working tomorrow and Friday probably.

I found an article on Halo 2 that describes a lot of the stuff it has in it. I guess the beta version that this person played did not contain health packs. He believes that they aren't in Halo 2 and are replaced with a stronger shield. Also, the sniper rifle recoils up when it is shot so it isn't as easy to take someone down with one now. There were other cool things the article mentioned but I won't bore you with the details.

So my first day at work wasn't that interesting. I was shown around the building in the beginning and then given a list of stuff I was to work on while I was there. The only hard/annoying part was putting stuff together. There were these foot rest things and about 14 lamps that needed to be taken out of the boxes and put together. The foot rest things weren't bad but the lamps were impossible to get out of the boxes and assembled. That took quite a bit of time. The rest of the day was spent putting stuff on shelves and helping customers. Yea, I guess the store is open(?).

That's pretty much what I've done today. My dad said he returned our cable DVR box yet again because it started making a really loud noise. It's supid how they won't just give us a NEW one and not some old crap one that someone returned for a reason... it sucked. I think my family rented some movies so maybe we'll be watching them tonight.

The doctor visit was interesting. I had to get a tetnis shot and I was supposed to get a meningitis shot but they didn't have it. Funny, seeing how they told us over the phone it wouldn't be a problem and they would have it. Next we went over to Cellcom and they actually fixed the phone, for now. I was hoping they couldn't and we'd get a new one.

Spacers don't seem all that bad. My teeth back there seem a little more tender right now but it doesn't hurt that much. At least they only have to be in there until next week.

Tuesday Morning finally called and I work Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Honestly, I don't really want to work there at all. I'm hoping the people will be nice or this last 30 days until school will go by very slowly.

Edit: Gamestop is reporting that my ESPN NFL 2K5 problem will be fixed by a downloadable patch on July 30! Yay!

I finally got to catch up on some sleep this morning - I decided to sleep until about noon. Afterwards I went to I, Robot with TJ. It was a pretty good movie, probably one of the better films Will Smith has done in a while. The special effects were really nice too.

Nothing really happened the rest of the day. We ate Hardee's for dinner and I watched various TV shows and now I'm writing in here. I was waiting for a call from Tuesday Morning all week about when my first day is and I still don't have it yet. I guess they'll call tomorrow.

Tomorrow is a pretty busy day. In the morning I'm going to the doctor for a checkup before college and some shots that the school recommends I have. After that my dad and I are going over to Cellcom in DePere to get them to fix our phone. I'm kinda hoping they can't fix it and give us a newer version of the phone. I don't really like it very much. Later in the day I have to go to the orthodontist for "spacers". That's all I guess, but it seems pretty busy to me.

No luck yet with ESPN NFL 2K5, they better fix it soon though.

We came back from Chicago today after a long trip. The funeral stuff was alright but it was kind of awkward the whole time. We also got to see my older brother who flew in for the funeral and my other grandma. Nothing super interesting happened I guess. I decided not to blog in the hotel because I didn't really have enough time to write anything.

ESPN NFL 2K5's online play is beginning to irritate me. There are major problems with a lot of people logging in and getting error messages. They say they are working on it so hopefully it is fixed soon. I think this game is one of the first games to use a special new package for XBox Live! that allows the server to be located outside of XBox Live! so the company can run it themselves. It seems like Sega and EA (EA with NCAA Football) both are having problems with it.

This game is great. ESPN NFL 2K5 took last year's title which I thought was pretty good and transformed it into the best football game I have played, to date. They changed some of the running mechanics though so you can't just run and turn on a dime anymore. It's momentum based so it takes longer depending on how fast you are moving. It makes it much more realistic though. Anyway, I love it.

My brother and I bought my dad this map program for his PDA for his birthday and after a little bit of frustration trying to get the thing to work today we finally figured it all out. Something must have happened when we first transferred it over to his palm the first time. It's cool because it can tell you the best route to get to an address anywhere in N. America - assuming you have the correct maps on your PDA. We can use it this weekend in Chicago.

I'm off to bed now I guess, we leave pretty early tomorrow and then we meet my older brother who is flying in to Chicago, so that will be cool to see him again. We won't be back until Saturday night but I may be online on AIM and may post here if I get enough time - we have free Internet access in the hotel again.

The interview went pretty good, at least I think so. Because the store is closed this month for restocking I was supposed to knock on the door for them to let me in. They were already there waiting for me and brought me in and only really asked a few questions. The assistant manager who was conducting the interview told me she would call me tomorrow. About 5 hours later I got a call from her telling me I could have the job and I would most likely start next Tuesday. Tomorrow I go in for paperwork. It'll be weird only working there for a month, but whatever.

We also took back our cable DVR box today to Time Warner. It stopped allowing us to record things so basically it was useless to us. They seemed to understand perfectly and gave us another one. Of course they had to mess it up though - they gave us one that had scratches all over the front and even had some food stuck on it. After we returned that one we finally got a good looking one and it works fine now. Our old DVR box just must have gotten too old or something.

Tomorrow seems like an action packed day already. Since we'll be gone on Thursday we are "having" my dad's birthday tomorrow instead of the 22nd when it really is. On top of that I will be gone finishing my job application stuff, lunch with a friend, getting a library card, possibly registering to vote, and then finally getting ESPN NFL 2K5. Obviously I'll be playing that for a majority of the night tomorrow.

Today I received an e-mail from MTU telling me I had been given credit for Calc I and was to be enrolled in Calc II. I e-mailed back and told them about my score and she replied telling me she gave me credit for Calc I and II and then put me in a Linear Algebra class that is required for Computer Science majors.

Sure, it sounds like everything is fine now but I'm really not sure what the deal is with the credit for Calc. The letter they sent me said I got credit for it while the other thing they sent me (a pre-printed sheet) said that credit is only granted if I take Calc III and get a "C" or better. I have no idea what to believe.

So now I am registered but have no idea what I'm "really" taking. If the lady was right and I'm supposed to take the Linear Algebra class then I thought I was supposed to get this other probability math class waived, but I didn't. I guess everything is just all crazy right now.

Maybe I'll just wait until orientation and fix it.

Oh yea, the Cubs game was pretty good tonight. Zambrano from the Cubs went crazy like he does a lot and hit this one guy twice in the game with a pitch and shouted back and forth to him. The dugouts cleared twice!

I had pretty much just given up on finding a job because school was approaching in a little over a month, but I got a surprise today. The new store in the area, Tuesday Morning, gave me a call and asked if I was still looking for a job. I mentioned I was only going to be around for another month but she said they still might have something for me to do. I'm supposed to go in tomorrow for an interview. If I get the job, it would probably be stocking or moving stuff I'm assuming, since I only have a month before school. That's fine with me.

We also ordered the Calculus textbook online so that I can start to review over the end of the Summer. I called MTU and the bookstore said that both Calc II and III use the same book, so no matter what I decide I still have the book. Thankfully, it was free shipping. I can't imagine how much I'd have to pay for a big math book to be shipped.

I'll be gone Thursday-Saturday (night) in Chicago for one of my Grandma's funeral. We knew she wasn't doing very well so I guess it wasn't that much of a shock. We've never really been that close to my dad's side of the family so hopefully it won't be very awkward when we go down there.

Like I said in yesterday's post, I really enjoy Rainbow Six 3's online play. I decided to go on again today during the day and had some fun playing team survival like I did last night. I wasn't nearly as good as I was last night though. I was killed right away almost every round. Oh well, I guess I'll get better.

After watching the Cubs we saw Along Came Polly. It was an alright movie but it wasn't as funny as I had hoped. I wanted to rent The Butterfly Effect but we decided my mom probably wouldn't like to see that movie.

Like I said before, I downloaded Picasa to see how it was and I'm pretty impressed with how well it does things. I really only care about its ability to transfer photos easily and sort them (by the date they are taken, which is cool). I've put all my photos in it and then took all my dad's digital photos from about 1999 and put them on Picasa too. It's cool how easy it is to look at anything with the software. I'm sure I'll be using it in the future.

Tonight I went to Heather's graduation party, which was pretty fun. I haven't seen a lot of people in a while so it was cool being able to talk to them again. I left about ten because I was getting pretty tired and the bugs were getting on my nerves.

After I got home I saw that an online friend left me a message telling me that he was planning on playing Rainbow Six 3 online tonight. I jumped online and found him in a large room that was pretty close to lag free. I hadn't played Rainbow Six 3 in a long time so it was hard to adjust to the game when everyone was killing me but after the first games in the meat factory level I got used to it more. I never really played the game online that much before but it seems like a really fun online game. I'm going to try and play it more often until the new Rainbow Six 3 comes out in August.

4 days until ESPN NFL 2K5 is in stores (including today-Sunday). I can't wait to get my hands on it, it sounds really fun. I hope I can get into the game though, I'm watching a ton of baseball lately and it may take me out of the football mindset.

Oh, and I installed the shop mod to the forum today and it seems to work okay so far. I had some trouble with it and had to change a lot of the code so I'm hoping that nothing goes wrong in the near future.

The first interesting thing that I found today was online. I
found out that some people are making new maps for Halo, the XBox
version. I thought this was pretty close to impossible but they
sure proved me wrong. It's called "Halo NMP" (New Map Project)
and it includes many maps. Some of them are just Blood Gutch with
trees or other things added but other maps are totally new. They
also edited the weapons to look and act really cool in a lot of the
maps. In one map they have a gun that looks and sounds like the
SMG from Halo 2. What's really cool is people play these maps
online, so I think I'll try them out soon.

In other news, Google bought someone else. They purchased a
company (or maybe just the software?) called Picasa. I haven't
read about it much but it apparently is a image reader. I just
downloaded it so maybe I'll post what it's like tomorrow.

I also spent a lot of time today looking at phpBB mods for my forum, which you should all go and post at. I installed a "cash mod" so that people might get more incentive to post after I open the forum "store". I'm also going to add some other mods later tomorrow including a file attachment one and maybe even the calender mod, who knows.

So right now I'm leaning towards taking the credits for Calc 1 and 2 and going on to the next class which turns out to be basically Calc 3, not what I originally said. If I take the credits I can skip this "functions" class that I have to take because I'm a Computer Science major which would allow me to take Chemistry or another class that counts more towards my schooling. I've been reading on Calc 3 though and I guess MTU uses a program for math labs. Hopefully they'd review how to use that if I went directly to 3.

Anyway, enough of that for now. There is a loud siren noise outside and I have no idea what it is. At first it sounded like the bad weather siren but it stayed constant so I knew it wasn't that - plus we have no bad weather. It sounds now like it might be fire sirens or police sirens. I wonder what's going on. It's pretty loud though, it woke up my parents.

So I was just about to type in here that I barely slept last night but my dad called me downstairs and gave me some mail and I think that I'd rather talk about that.

Two things came. One was my AP scores and the other was from MTU telling me how many credits I get for my AP scores. I was nervous because I didn't want an embarrassing score for the Calc test but it ended up being a 5! This shocks me, I wasn't even planning on getting a 4 on the test. My parents were very happy and they seem like they want me to take the credits for Calc 2 and go right into the next class. I guess I still have time to decide. Oh, and I ended up with a 4 on the U.S. History test which is good because now I won't have to take as many classes later on.

Now the question becomes whether to take the credits for Calc 2 and go to Differentiable Equations or to stay back and redo Calc 2 to make sure I know what I'm doing. I want to take them but I know that I forgot a ton of stuff over the summer.

As promised, here's some pictures I took on the 13th and 14th of two military transports, Air Force One, and President Bush's motorcade.

Click each link to see the picture. This way it won't eat up your connection if you are on dial-up.

Transport Plane #1
This plane was big but skinnier in size compared to the other transport. It also had long wings.

Transport Plane #1 w/nose open and cars entering
This transport opened to let cars in by lifting up its nose, leaning the front down (really cool to see), and lowering a ramp.

Transport Plane #2
The other transport was a lot like the first one but it seemed much fatter. It featured a new design that had smaller wings and a little thing on the end of the wing that points up which is supposed to create more lift.

Transport Plane #2 w/back open and cars exiting
This transport opened a lot less "cooly" compared to the other one. It just let a ramp out the backside of it. Cars can be seen in this photo. They were actually taking these two cars out for some reason.

Air Force One
I got a pretty good picture of Air Force One when it was going toward the end of the runway. Check out all the radios and stuff on the top of the plane.

President's Motorcade and Air Force One
This is probably the closest picture I have of the two Bush buses and one black car from his motorcade. It looked cool because the backdrop was of Air Force One.

I guess having the 10x zoom has paid off already!

Today was actually a pretty cool day. After getting my haircut in the morning we went to a few stores and ended up buying some storage stuff and a cheap desk lamp for college. Later we decided to go see if we could find Air Force One at the airport but we got stuck in a traffic jam because they closed down 172 so Bush's motorcade could go through. I don't remember if I mentioned it earlier or not, but there has been a huge military transport plane at the airport for about 3 days now. We think (well we know it is now, you'll read later) it is used to carry motorcade cars around. I got a picture of that plane earlier but I didn't post it.

Anyway, we went back to the airport later after we knew the traffic was gone and we found Air Force One parked on the runway. We not only saw that though - there was another huge military transport plane right next to the other one. I got pictures of all three planes that I'll post as soon as I can. For some reason I can't get on my FTP server right now.

After dinner we went to see if we could watch Air Force One take off and we ended up being right on time. We got to see the motorcade drive in the airport and then Air Force One taxi and take off. Again, I got pictures of these too that I'll post later. There was a ton of activity at the airport while all of this was happening, including two helicopters. One looked like a coast card helicopter and the other looked like some military one.

Once Air Force One was gone we decided to wait and see if they would start putting the cars in the transport planes so they could leave to go some other place. After a long time they finally started loading the planes with the cars which was really cool. The newer transport plane (newer design at least) had a ramp that came out of the back that allowed things in and out and the older transport plane lifted its nose up and then let a ramp down which was really cool looking. These pictures turned out pretty well too so I'll be posting those as well.

We stayed until it got dark because I wanted to see them take off but they didn't do so until later in the night - around 9:30 PM I'm guessing. I think it would be really cool to see a plane that big take off from an airport as small as ours. I also thought it was interesting that all the motorcade cars got on the transports except for the buses that Bush traveled in. Instead of getting in the planes, they turned around and left the airport and looked like they kept going down 172. Maybe they are going to where Bush is visiting next.

Overall it was really cool to see. I'm assuming Kerry will visit before the election so hopefully they fly stuff in like this again. It would be neat to see again - I'd probably try from the other side of the airport though so the sun wasn't in the way.

I'll post the pictures as soon as I can get in my FTP server again.

It seems that most of my posts on this blog have been pretty much the same lately. I guess that's how things go in the Summer. Today I went to Wal-Mart and other stores shopping with my mom in the morning and then went out later to more stores with my parents. That's basically it for today. I watched the All-Star game but it got boring after a few innings.

It's July which means that a lot of things about college should be coming in the mail soon. I'm hoping the AP test scores will come pretty soon so I can start trying to decide which math class to take. If I got the credit for all of Calc I'd love to take it but I don't remember any of it. I don't think I'll get that high of a score anyway. They should send the scores out now instead of making us wait and pressuring us to call and pay even more money for scores. MTU is also sending out more stuff in July. They have the room assignment, schedule, bill, and credit notifications all due out in July. Hopefully it all isn't at the end of July.

I just took a look at some of the proposed topics for this "Perspectives on Inquiry" class and there are a bunch of them, but none of them really look that interesting to me. I'm not sure how many of these things I have to pick but judging from all of the topics I'd guess that it is more than one. Oh well, I'm sure there will be one or two I might care about. I'm really looking forward to going to college though so I'm sure I won't care if I have to take a bad class.

The server that I publish my blog on is currently down so you won't read this post until after it's up. Cool, I guess? My parents drove to Chicago today because one of my Grandmas isn't doing well. My brother and I stayed home and took care of the dog and other stuff. Nothing other than that really went on. The Home Run Derby tonight was pretty cool but Sammy Sosa didn't do much of anything so I was disappointed. Maybe next year.

In geek news, I've noticed that Winamp now can play Napster and other DRM protected files. That's pretty cool because I was getting sick and tired of trying to use Napster's horrible Windows Media Player skin. Winamp seems to crash a lot while doing it though, but maybe they'll fix that up later.

I guess that's all for now. Hopefully the server will be up soon so I can post this and other things.

Finally the Cubs won for a change! They beat the Cardinals pretty badly although the score shows that it was a pretty close game. I hope they keep up their good work now.

Today was spent going to some stores with my parents and watching the movie The Last Samurai with my family. It was an okay movie but it was very long and boring at times. It had a lot of action though so I enjoyed that.

Tomorrow will probably be spent doing much of the same stuff I have been doing recently. The Home Run Derby is tomorrow too so that should be fun to watch. My camera case is also supposed to come tomorrow so I should have a nicer place to put it - now I won't be worried about it being scratched all the time.

The Cubs lost for the 5th(?) game in a row today. They have been plauged with an injury to their 3rd baseman and terrible fielding by almost the whole team. Hopefully they'll win tomorrow when Kerry Wood returns to the team after several months. Next week they play the Brewers again.

People seemed to like the rabbit picture I posted earlier so here's another one, but of a much larger rabbit.



This rabbit was in our backyard when it was kinda dark out so it didn't come out very good in the picture. There are two bunnies (REALLY small) in our front yard that we just found so I'll try and get a picture of them, but we haven't seen them in a few days so I might not be able to get one.

Today was pretty much spent watching the Cubs game. Earlier in the morning my mom, brother, and I went to Wal-Mart for some grocery stuff. They haven't had many good free samples lately but today they had free Hansen's pizza. It looked good but I don't think I can eat that yet, I don't want to screw something up.

At about 1PM today I had all four wisdom teeth and four normal teeth taken out because my mouth is too small for all my teeth. I wasn't really worried about it that much but I was obviously still nervous because I don't really like people messing with my teeth. Anyway, after he stuck the IV in I don't remember anything until I was wheeled out to the car. My parents and I thought I would be messed up for the rest of the day but I feel really good actually. They gave me some type of pain medication like vicodin but it really isn't bothering me that much.

Anyway, I was wondering if I could go out later tonight but my parents told me they'd rather I stay home. Hopefully I'll be able to do stuff tomorrow though, as long as there isn't a lot of pain or anything.

I guess you blog readers like rabbit pictures so I'll try and post another one of a different rabbit in our backyard later tonight or tomorrow. I have the picture on a different computer so you'll have to wait until I get around to it. My dad was telling me when he walked through the yard he saw at least two or three rabbits we've never seen before. I can't believe we have so many around.

On the video game front, I beat Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow yesterday. I was pretty disappointed with the ending but I guess the story was pretty good overall. I always enjoy the military type games/stories. I can't wait for the third game in the series but I hope they don't rush it. There has been two Splinter Cell games (and almost three soon) in the time that has been only one Halo game. I guess Halo is being totally changed around, but still I'm surprised.

Tonight some friends and I went to see Spider-Man 2. I read that there were many mistakes in the movie but what I didn't read is how lame the movie was. The first movie was pretty good, in my opinion, and I was expecting more of the same type of thing. This movie was full of awkward scenes and forced acting. The start was very slow and I pretty much hated the movie until it finally got into real Spider-Man stuff. From then on the movie was decent until the end which was ridiculous.

I don't know. Maybe if I saw the movie again I might see it differently, but from what I saw I was very surprised that many critics liked the movie. I guess I was just expected a different type a movie. One that had less MJ and more Spider-Man.

Before I went to the movie I went to Gamestop and reserved ESPN NFL 2K5 which is now coming out in July instead of late August. When I went back to the car to see if I had missed any calls on the cell phone I found I had missed two. I don't have called id (or voicemail) on the phone so I called my parents to see if anyone had called the house. A few days ago I had problems not being able to hear ANYTHING out of the phone when I called or answered a call and I experienced the same problem today. I called my parents and they answered but I couldn't hear them. I hung up and they called back - again I couldn't hear anything at all. Finally after the third time of doing this it worked. I have no idea what its problem is. After I got home from the movie I told my dad it was acting up again and he turned it on and poked a button which appeared like a reset button with a pencil. Now this shouldn't have done anything because the button is really just to tell the phone the lid was closed but instead the phone froze. Yea, it froze. Now it is a vegetable. I NEVER EVEN USE IT! There is no excuse for this phone to be acting up since I never toss it around or do anything to hurt it.

Today I got to take some pictures of a few of the many rabbits that now live somewhere in our yard. This one is is pretty small and was fairly far away from the camera. I took the picture through the window at full optical zoom and then did a little digital zoom afterwards. It turned out pretty good, but the focus isn't all that good around the head area.



All these rabbits are eating all my brother's vegetables that he is trying to grow and all my parent's flowers!

Anyway, today was my mom's birthday so today we did a lot with her. She did spend a lot of time talking on the phone with some of her brothers and sisters though too, a lot of time. We went out to Applebees later on and then watched a movie.

Tomorrow I'm going to try and see who wants to go see Spiderman 2. I'd like to see it since I enjoyed the first one and the second one looks pretty cool too. I guess I'll make some calls about that tomorrow.

Once I got up today I checked where my package was on FedEx.com and found that it was scanned and had arrived in Green Bay. I figured they'd deliver the camera today so I finished charging the batteries. About 1PM I checked again and they scanned the package as if to send it on its way to my house but it was put back into the warehouse because it was ahead of scheduled delivery!! I waited another hour and decided I'd go to the warehouse and ask for the package. It turns out the FedEx warehouse in Green Bay is only about a street away (or straight through the woods in the back). The lady there was nice and got the package for me so I'm glad I decided to go.

Overall I'm pretty impressed with the camera. It came with a 32MB "high speed" compact flash card which can take about 30 pictures on the highest quality - pretty good for coming with the camera. I tried my old "slow" 128MB compact flash card and it saves the files about the same speed as the high speed card so there must be some internal memory in the camera or something. With my larger card I can take pretty decent movie clips. Because the card is slower the movie clips are limited to 43 seconds though at highest quality (they'd be longer with a high speed card).

The zoom is extremely fast, almost too fast at times. I'm very impressed with that and I'm glad I got one with that type of zoom. I haven't had a real good chance to try out the image stabilizer but it seems to work. The only real problem I've had so far is the camera not auto-focusing perfectly in full zoom and low light. I guess it might be too much to expect, but it took several times for the camera to focus at the highest zoom and low light. I could always use the manual focus too though.

Anyway, now I have to hunt around and find a case for it. I want one made just for this model and it looks like only "real" camera stores and websites carry them. I just tried Camera Corner and Harmonns in Green Bay and they both don't have a specific one for the camera. There's one more in De Pere so I still have to try that one.

Today was the last day that my relatives were in town. They stopped by for breakfast and then left for Chicago early. The rest of the day I decided to start to clean my room. My parents want to paint it while I'm in college and I don't really want them throwing away/giving away anything I'd like so I decided to sort everything instead. I'm done with almost all of it now so that's good. Tomorrow will be spent watching the Cubs game and waiting for my camera to arrive. Wednesday is my mom's birthday and I think we'll be going out for a day-trip to some state park, if it's nice out.

As most of you Blog readers are probably aware, I definitely have problems with my teeth. Obviously I wasn't trying to let them get as bad as they are - it just happened that way because I have a "fear" of dentistry or mouth pain I guess. I consider it a pretty embarrassing fear so I never like to talk about it (also I just hate thinking about it). Well this Summer I've elected to finally fix them and get braces. This Friday I'm getting my wisdom teeth out as well as a few other teeth because I have such a small mouth. A few weeks later I should be getting the braces. I figured I'd post that in here so it doesn't shock you when I randomly show up with braces on.

I didn't do much today either. We weren't sure when we were going to meet with our relatives again so we just kinda hung around the house until they came over about 3 or so. We had a BBQ then decided to go to the fireworks downtown. It was pretty windy at first but it settled down later on. This year's fireworks seemed a lot shorter than past years though.

Anyway, tomorrow is a federal holiday so I'm assuming FedEx isn't going to deliver. If they don't, they I'll probably get my camera Tuesday. I guess I don't really care when I get it as long as it works fine.

Today I woke up pretty early because we were expecting some relatives from Chicago to be dropping buy today but we weren't sure what time. They ended up coming about 1PM and then stayed until about 5. They're staying at that Tundra waterpark place, I can't remember the real name of it. After dinner we went and took a look at the place and it seems pretty cool. The thing I think is funny is this giant bucket that fills up with water and then dumps it on people.

Nothing super interesting happened tonight. After watching Something About Mary on TV I went online and Andy and I played some Halo over the Internet. Lately when we play we always seem to get stuck with teammates that either betray us or just play around instead of actually playing the game. It's irritating but I guess it's fun to get mad at them after the game is over. I'm looking forward to Halo 2 so if someone is a jerk on XBox Live! I can send bad feedback and chances are the person will eventually be punished if he/she stays a jerk.

Tomorrow I think we're doing some more stuff with the relatives and then maybe go to the fireworks depending on if it's raining or is to wet. My parents said I could do stuff with friends though so if we're doing something call me and I'll try to get there. We'll probably be at the fireworks pretty early though (maybe 5 or 6) so call during the day.

Green Day's new CD is coming out in September and their new single "American Idiot" is supposed to be on the Madden 2005 soundtrack. I'm assuming they'll release it to the radio sometime around the release date of Madden. I have no idea why Madden has a soundtrack - music like that doesn't seem to go well with football at all, but I haven't played Madden lately so I guess I don't know how they put it in the game.

Oh, and the Cubs won again.

After spending the last few days playing Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow I have come to realize that Ubisoft makes some really great games. I never really liked the first Splinter Cell, mostly because it didn't have multiplayer and it was REALLY hard, but Pandora Tomorrow's single player mode is great. It makes me want to go back and try the first game and see if I'd like it now more than I did before. While the single player mode is good the multiplayer mode is just as great. It basically fuzes together Rainbow Six 3 style gameplay and Splinter Cell style gameplay. It is REALLY fun once you figure out everything in the game.

It's a shame that most Ubisoft games require one XBox per player for multiplayer modes though. Rainbow Six 3 would be an outstanding multiplayer game but it is hurt by the one player per box deal. Of course, if you have XBox Live it isn't a problem at all (seeing how it's the most played XBox Live game), but if you want to LAN with friends it is a problem. I've heard that Rainbow Six 3: Black Arrow is supposed to fix that problem though, so that is good.

Enough with the game talk, what happened with me today? Nothing really. I woke up and had to help clean part of the house because we are having relatives visit this weekend. Although they will be doing stuff with us a lot during the weekend I'm allowed to go with friends somewhere else, so don't hesitate to call me. After cleaning we cut the lawn and ate dinner. A while after I began to play Splinter Cell: PT offline and online and I looked up at the clock later and it's 10:30 already! Time sure flies when you play that game.

The camera I ordered has shipped but its estimated delivery time is next Thursday. My last package from the same place was delivered much earlier than the expected date so hopefully that will happen this time too. I've been looking around at memory cards just in case I have to get a faster one for the camera but I'm not sure the speed it can handle. I guess tomorrow I will spend some time searching online to find that information.

After the Cubs won a 10 inning game versus the Astros I decided I'd take a look on G4TechTV to see what was on. So I switch the channel to 44 and sit for a little while and start to wonder why in the world it says BET in the corner of the screen. Soon after I went over to a TV with a cable box and flipped to 141, where G4 used to be, and found G4TechTV. Time Warner decided to change G4TechTV to a digital cable station and screw over everyone who doesn't have it. I admit, since G4 and TechTV merged the programming has been pretty crappy (basically terrible G4 shows and little TechTV shows) but I still want to be able to watch it on non-digital cable TVs. I went to the computer and checked TV Guide and they say that the station should still be on 44 and nothing is on 141. They're probably just late on changing it, but I'm still annoyed. I have no idea what Time Warner is thinking.

Of course I'm assuming it's Time Warner's fault. It could be G4TechTV, who knows.

The NetGear router came today and I'm pleased with it so far. It seems to have all the features I want and need and is really small so it won't take up much space in the dorm. As far as the camera goes, Best Buy had only one left. He took it out and we checked to see if all the parts were in the box when my dad noticed that the camera was wrapped like an art project from a 3 year old. The guy at Best Buy claims the camera's wrap was never opened, but it clearly was. I tried calling the Appleton Best Buy and they were totally out of them. I'll have to order it online now I guess. While we were checking through the box I realized the camera didn't come with a case. My dad later informed me that none of our digital cameras have ever come with one. This blows my mind - you buy an expensive camera and they don't even give you something to protect it in?