And we're back on another episode of Free Blog!
In case your too lazy to scroll down (like me), we left off on our adventure when we were just coming out of Atlanta traffic. It hadn't taken hours as I had thought, but it had pushed back our arrival time distinctly. We had set our destination course at around 2:15ish, and the handy GPS told us that we should arrive at around 6:20. By the time we had left Atlanta, it said 6:50. This wasnt too bad I guess, but still later than I'd liked.
Anyway, we continued on I-75, rather uneventfully, for about 70 miles. When I say uneventfully, i mean minus the rain of course. Thats just a given. The rain pounded down on us the entire time, but we kinda started getting used to it. We talked about various things, and I actually joined in because the road straightened out and the other cars cleared. Driving at this point was easy.
Until we hit Interstate 16 (which i had never heard of). We had to drive on that highway for 116 miles, and even afterward we still wouldnt be there yet. So I went ahead and told the passengers that if they needed to catch up on sleep, now would probably be the best time. At least it wouldve been the best time until we started hearing thunderclaps and flashes of lightning, and the roads started getting so flooded and slippery that i nearly hydroplaned a few times. Everyone was a little nervous after that, understandably.
The sky was getting very, very dark at this point. If I didn’t have a clock in front of me and a watch on, I might’ve thought it was 11:00 at night or later. I could barely see the road, much less the cars in front of me through the maximum speed windshield wipers and blinding rain. The occasional flash of brightness from lightning bolts was actually welcome, granted that they weren’t too close. But, me and the rest of the cars on the highway put on our emergency lights so we could see each other. Plus, we were only going about 35 mph. You can imagine this wasn’t healthy for our destination time.
But, it seems as though we’re out of time! The road trip section of our story is rapidly approaching a conclusion, especially at 2 blogs a week. That is, unless I decide to take more breaks. But, probably not.
Stay tuned!
Friday, March 26, 2010
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Free Blog 3: Lets Take a Break.
I know you must be on the edge of your seat waiting to see what happens on my exciting narrative, but I think it's time to chill for a little and talk about something else. The topic this time? The terrible, awful, Rock Band competition at Southern Poly on Wednesday. Ugh, it was awful.
First of all, it was a band competition. Meaning, every player had to have 3 or 4 members of their group. No soloing it or anything sneaky like that. That was the first downside. Second downside, the prize was one copy of Left 4 Dead. Not even Left 4 Dead 2, just the regular one. So, out of a 4 person band, theres only one prize to go around. So who gets it? Rock paper scissors i guess!
The thing that got me the most was the "scoring." The way that the tournament director decided that she would choose the winner of each round by taking an average of each band members percentage of notes hit. Does that sound fair? I'm not sure how much you may know about Rock Band, but notes can be pretty damn easy to hit depending on the song you choose and the difficulty. So, what was stopping a band from all choosing Easy mode and getting a 100% average? Nothing at all.
So, some participants tried to explain this to the director. What she said next really got on my nerves. She said "Well, you guys are all making a really big deal out of this, but you have to remember that I'm taking time out of my very busy day to host this tournament for you guys. I just want to get this over with and go home, so sit down and just let me run this tournament, ok?"
That really got to me. It was all i could do just to not get up and leave out of frustration at that little comment, but i stayed because there was free pizza. The way to a mans heart is through his stomach, right?
Anyway, 3 hour story short, our band lost the first round because our opposing team had picked a long and simple song, and they had a perfect vocalist who got 100% on everything. So, that was rather annoying. But, even if i had won, its not like i wouldve gotten the prize so i guess im not too upset. I'm just not happy with the wasted time.
So thats my rant for the week. Our story will continue on Free blog 4!
First of all, it was a band competition. Meaning, every player had to have 3 or 4 members of their group. No soloing it or anything sneaky like that. That was the first downside. Second downside, the prize was one copy of Left 4 Dead. Not even Left 4 Dead 2, just the regular one. So, out of a 4 person band, theres only one prize to go around. So who gets it? Rock paper scissors i guess!
The thing that got me the most was the "scoring." The way that the tournament director decided that she would choose the winner of each round by taking an average of each band members percentage of notes hit. Does that sound fair? I'm not sure how much you may know about Rock Band, but notes can be pretty damn easy to hit depending on the song you choose and the difficulty. So, what was stopping a band from all choosing Easy mode and getting a 100% average? Nothing at all.
So, some participants tried to explain this to the director. What she said next really got on my nerves. She said "Well, you guys are all making a really big deal out of this, but you have to remember that I'm taking time out of my very busy day to host this tournament for you guys. I just want to get this over with and go home, so sit down and just let me run this tournament, ok?"
That really got to me. It was all i could do just to not get up and leave out of frustration at that little comment, but i stayed because there was free pizza. The way to a mans heart is through his stomach, right?
Anyway, 3 hour story short, our band lost the first round because our opposing team had picked a long and simple song, and they had a perfect vocalist who got 100% on everything. So, that was rather annoying. But, even if i had won, its not like i wouldve gotten the prize so i guess im not too upset. I'm just not happy with the wasted time.
So thats my rant for the week. Our story will continue on Free blog 4!
Friday, March 19, 2010
Free Blog 2: A Minor Setback.
And we’re back with another episode of Free Blog!
Where we left off in our story, the brave heroes (Me, Ryan, Justin, and Beth) were out on the open road, ready for a fun – if not too eventful– drive down to Statesboro. Now, to stop talking in third person.
So, we drove out onto Cobb Parkway, heading towards I- 75 to start our adventure. I had a full tank of gas, we had all just eaten breakfast and used the restroom (though Beth had brought about a quart of sweet tea to drink in the car, probably not the best idea), and it was about 2:30 PM, so the morning grumpiness had faded. It seemed as though this were a good beginning to the trip, minus the heavy rain that was still practically denting my windshield. But usually in Georgia, it rains for about 20 minutes and then changes straight to sunlight with maybe a little drizzle still falling. I soon found out that perhaps I was a little bit too optimistic.
We finally hit I-75 and the first thing that we encounter is – traffic. Lots and lots of traffic. Now, it’s not like I hadn’t anticipated traffic or anything; I mean, that’s a vital part of any road trip of course. But not this early. I resigned myself and blamed the rain, then sank back comfortably in my seat getting ready for an hour or more of misery and taillights. I decided to tune in to whatever it was my passengers were chatting about (I kind of zone out while I drive…I’m not sure if that’s such a good habit) to keep myself occupied. But all I find is…odd. My friends are a little weird, not that I’m the most normal person to be judging. I would call Beth the weirdest; she says some strange things sometimes (I’ll spare your ears, or eyes, in this case).
Anyway back to the exciting prospect of driving. The traffic didn’t last as long as I’d thought, and it turned out I only got to be comfortable in my seat for about 10 minutes while the traffic moved. I was pretty upset at that, being comfortable in my seat is a pretty major hobby of mine. But, driving smoothly didn’t last long. Mind you, it was still raining. When I say driving smoothly, imagine about 45 mph on the highway. Not the ideal speed for a road trip, but what can we do? We hit Atlanta, and non-profane words just can’t describe how the driving conditions were there. Not to mention non-profane words weren’t really passing my lips very often during this period. (Hey, Atlanta drivers do that to you. I swear I’m usually a great guy.)
But, it seems as though were out of time! Stay on the edge of your seat (or the floor, I know these stories can get exciting at times) for the next part of our adventure. We soon go through over half of Georgia, pitch black skies, tornado warnings, flooded meadows and beautiful rainbows….and not Atlanta. All on the next episode of Free Blog!
Where we left off in our story, the brave heroes (Me, Ryan, Justin, and Beth) were out on the open road, ready for a fun – if not too eventful– drive down to Statesboro. Now, to stop talking in third person.
So, we drove out onto Cobb Parkway, heading towards I- 75 to start our adventure. I had a full tank of gas, we had all just eaten breakfast and used the restroom (though Beth had brought about a quart of sweet tea to drink in the car, probably not the best idea), and it was about 2:30 PM, so the morning grumpiness had faded. It seemed as though this were a good beginning to the trip, minus the heavy rain that was still practically denting my windshield. But usually in Georgia, it rains for about 20 minutes and then changes straight to sunlight with maybe a little drizzle still falling. I soon found out that perhaps I was a little bit too optimistic.
We finally hit I-75 and the first thing that we encounter is – traffic. Lots and lots of traffic. Now, it’s not like I hadn’t anticipated traffic or anything; I mean, that’s a vital part of any road trip of course. But not this early. I resigned myself and blamed the rain, then sank back comfortably in my seat getting ready for an hour or more of misery and taillights. I decided to tune in to whatever it was my passengers were chatting about (I kind of zone out while I drive…I’m not sure if that’s such a good habit) to keep myself occupied. But all I find is…odd. My friends are a little weird, not that I’m the most normal person to be judging. I would call Beth the weirdest; she says some strange things sometimes (I’ll spare your ears, or eyes, in this case).
Anyway back to the exciting prospect of driving. The traffic didn’t last as long as I’d thought, and it turned out I only got to be comfortable in my seat for about 10 minutes while the traffic moved. I was pretty upset at that, being comfortable in my seat is a pretty major hobby of mine. But, driving smoothly didn’t last long. Mind you, it was still raining. When I say driving smoothly, imagine about 45 mph on the highway. Not the ideal speed for a road trip, but what can we do? We hit Atlanta, and non-profane words just can’t describe how the driving conditions were there. Not to mention non-profane words weren’t really passing my lips very often during this period. (Hey, Atlanta drivers do that to you. I swear I’m usually a great guy.)
But, it seems as though were out of time! Stay on the edge of your seat (or the floor, I know these stories can get exciting at times) for the next part of our adventure. We soon go through over half of Georgia, pitch black skies, tornado warnings, flooded meadows and beautiful rainbows….and not Atlanta. All on the next episode of Free Blog!
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Portfolio 2 Free Blog Beginning: An Interesting Weekend
Spring Break wasn't all too noteworthy. It certainly beat being in school for a week (lord knows that we all needed some time off), but it wasn't particularly exciting the whole way through. My focus for this blog is going to be my weekend trip to Georgia Southern University that spanned the past 48 hours of my vacation.
It started around 1:00 PM Friday afternoon, which is about when me and the friends that I was taking with me woke up. We ate breakfast, got dressed and prepared for our two days away from home in about 30 minutes. So now it was 1:30, but we had told everyone we were leaving at 2:00, so we decided to sit around and do nothing until then. We got a few calls from our friends at GSU telling us that we should stop being bums and leave already, but me and my friends are all about taking our sweet time (especially when we have a 4 hour drive ahead of us, or so we thought.)
Finally at 2:02 we decided to move all our stuff into the car and head out. I was driving - mainly because I had the nicest car out of the people going - so I brought out my GPS, and did a satellite search for points of interest in Statesboro. Not surprisingly, only Georgia Southern came up. Now we had our route, and we only needed to pick up one more person: our friend Beth. She only lived about 6 minutes away from me. It was a pretty uneventful drive over there, since my friends and I had pretty much chatted ourselves out in the past hour. The only noteworthy thing about this drive was that as soon as we called Beth and told her we were parked outside waiting for her, the sky opened up and pounded us with some of the heaviest rain I'd seen in weeks. Of course Beth was carrying five days worth of clothes and beauty products for a two day trip (women...), so I had to walk outside with my oversized umbrella to help her into the car without getting her stuff wet.
This already seemed like a bad omen for the drive down there (which is, if you didn't already know, about a four hour drive) but we were optimistic. Plunging onward through the rain, we neared the highway that would take us through over half of Georgia, pitch black skies, tornado warnings, flooded meadows and beautiful rainbows. Stay on the edge of your seat, that's all for next time in Free Blog 2!
It started around 1:00 PM Friday afternoon, which is about when me and the friends that I was taking with me woke up. We ate breakfast, got dressed and prepared for our two days away from home in about 30 minutes. So now it was 1:30, but we had told everyone we were leaving at 2:00, so we decided to sit around and do nothing until then. We got a few calls from our friends at GSU telling us that we should stop being bums and leave already, but me and my friends are all about taking our sweet time (especially when we have a 4 hour drive ahead of us, or so we thought.)
Finally at 2:02 we decided to move all our stuff into the car and head out. I was driving - mainly because I had the nicest car out of the people going - so I brought out my GPS, and did a satellite search for points of interest in Statesboro. Not surprisingly, only Georgia Southern came up. Now we had our route, and we only needed to pick up one more person: our friend Beth. She only lived about 6 minutes away from me. It was a pretty uneventful drive over there, since my friends and I had pretty much chatted ourselves out in the past hour. The only noteworthy thing about this drive was that as soon as we called Beth and told her we were parked outside waiting for her, the sky opened up and pounded us with some of the heaviest rain I'd seen in weeks. Of course Beth was carrying five days worth of clothes and beauty products for a two day trip (women...), so I had to walk outside with my oversized umbrella to help her into the car without getting her stuff wet.
This already seemed like a bad omen for the drive down there (which is, if you didn't already know, about a four hour drive) but we were optimistic. Plunging onward through the rain, we neared the highway that would take us through over half of Georgia, pitch black skies, tornado warnings, flooded meadows and beautiful rainbows. Stay on the edge of your seat, that's all for next time in Free Blog 2!
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