Stylesheets

Another week and I still can't get my stylesheet to work. I'm really close to just giving up. It publishes, but it doesn't DO anything! No one else seems to be having this problem, either, and I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. I left a note on the page I was supposed to format saying I followed the directions to a T and nothing will make it work. If I can't get it figured out after the chat, then I give up.

Sam & Max season 2

To continue my nonstop plugging of Telltale Games, they just announced the second season of their Sam & Max game! According to the article, they've taken a lot of player feedback into consideration for the new season, so they can fix any flaws that were in the first season.

Now, if only they would get working on part three of BONE...

Argh

I've been trying to do this "inline styling" or "stylesheet" or whatever stuff for a while and none of it is working!

I've also come to the conclusion that all I've really learned in this class is that I hate all of the programs we've had to use and I never want to use them again. :(

Forgot to mention

I never was able to connect to Pitt's Internet, because it kept trying to uninstall my virus scanner. That... is weird. I guess it wouldn't be a problem if I already had Symantic, but I have Avast, and it works better (in my opinion).

Fun Stuff in Pittsburgh

Yesterday I checked out the Carnegie Museum for my "exploratorium" time. It was my first trip there, and it was really cool. I saw the hall of architecture, the gemstone exhibit, the Egyptian exhibit, the Native American exhibit, and a small part of the art museum. I'll have to check out the rest when I come back in October.

And speaking of things I need to see the rest of, I saw some of the Nationality Rooms today, too. I'm extremely jealous of the students who get to take classes in some of them. I'd love to have a class in the Indian room!

Here we are in Pittsburgh

I'm in Pittsburgh! I used to have tons of family in Bethel (they all moved to Missouri a year ago), so we came to visit all the time, but I've rarely been to the city itself.

That's all for now.

EB Siege: Attack of the Internet!

Starmen.net is a huge EarthBound fansite with an even bigger community. They're actually pretty well known even by big name video game websites and journalists because they have done some spectacular things to raise awareness about the game and the series it comes from. EarthBound is actually the second game in a trilogy known as MOTHER in Japan. The first game was going to be released in the United States, but was canned at the last minute. MOTHER 2, EarthBound, was released here, but it sold rather poorly. Despite this, it garnered a pretty large fanbase, mostly thanks to Starmen.net. They had organized several petitions to help garner awareness for the series, each one gathering more signatures than the last. Their last petition was simply a "hey, we're fans of the series, and there's a lot of us" kind of thing, and racked up an amazing 30,000+ individual signatures. It was around this time that a compilation of the first two games was released in Japan on the Game Boy Advance, called MOTHER 1+2. Unfortunately, despite the gigantic petition that caught the attention of some of Nintendo's big names, the compilation has yet to be released outside of Japan.

A year and a half ago, the final game in the series was released in Japan. And after about six months of waiting anxiously for an announcement of a US release, fans and members of Starmen.net recieved news straight from Nintendo that they had no plans to release it here.

Insert uproar here.

A few months ago, the webmaster and staff of the site started putting together a project called EB Siege: an organized attempt to let Nintendo of America know that there is a fanbase for the series out there, and they didn't want to be ignored. The idea behind it was that it would be more active than an online petition. There are several components to the siege:

Do-It-Yourself Devotion: Not actually part of the Siege, this was started almost immediately after receiving the news that Nintendo had no plans to localize MOTHER 3. It's a fan translation patch of the game that will allow people to play the game with English text. It's still in progress, and the team working on it has said that they will immediately stop if they hear ANYTHING from Nintendo regarding an official release.

Propoganda: The first part, started months in advance, was pretty much fanartists producing art that would get everyone else pumped for the rest of the project.

Envelope Art: Nintendo Power, the official magazine of Nintendo of America, regularly features envelopes decorated with fan art in every issue. Starmen.net has done "NP Sieges" before in the past, where people would mail in envelopes decorated with EarthBound-related art, but this one was going to be just one part of a bigger project.

PK* Call'n: People call up Nintendo's customer service line and ask the representatives about the MOTHER series. This was also tried in the past, but only for one week. This one is planned to be non-stop until Nintendo of America makes an official statement.

(*"PK" is a term from the Japanese version of the games that are the names of the psychic power attacks characters can use, aka "PK Fire" and "PK Beam")

PK Mail'n: Kind of like the Call-in. People can print out cards with fan art printed on them, write a letter, and mail them to Nintendo Power and Nintendo of America.

Wii Are Starmen: Community members with Wii consoles recently formed this group, and immediately realized it could be used for the Siege. They use the "Everybody Votes" Wii Channel and submit questions about the MOTHER series (such as "Do you want MOTHER 3, the sequel to SNES classic EarthBound, released in America?"), and trade EarthBound-themed Miis (kind of like Sims, only funnier-looking) with other users.

Donations: In order to raise money for the most crucial part of the siege, the webmaster asked for donations from anyone interested. A certain amount would net you a keychain of the starmen.net logo. Originally, the goal was $2,500, but it was surpassed in less than a day. By the end of the fundraiser, they had raised almost $7,500 in donations.

The EarthBound Anthology: The most crucial part of the siege. A 250+ page book chock full of fan art, fan music CDs, fan movie DVDs, and a detailed history of the MOTHER series and its future in the United States. This was sent to several video game news sites and journalists just in time for Electronic Entertainment Expo, the biggest video game news event of the year. The purpose? To get reporters to ask Nintendo about the MOTHER series. Copies of the book were also sent to Nintendo of America, and there are plans to translate it into Japanese and send it to Nintendo's headquarters in Japan and the creator of the series.

The biggest reason they organized all of this was because they have news from a journalist that EarthBound is scheduled to be released on the Wii's Virtual Console very soon, and its sales may very well be the determining factor in whether or not MOTHER, MOTHER 1+2, and MOTHER 3 will ever be released outside of Japan. The best way to ensure that was to spread the word- let Nintendo know there is a large fanbase, and let other people know about the series.

Despite how militant it may all seem, the staff of Starmen.net actively discourages rabid militarism and other things that may reflect negatively on the site and their efforts, for example:
-They actively discourage trolling and spamming on Nintendo.com's message boards, as well as spamming any Nintendo-related e-mails
-They encourage people to use the Call'n not to represent Starmen.net, but to voice their own opinions regarding the series. As well as to ask any other Nintendo-related questions they wanted to ask. :)
-...At the same time, they discourage being anything but super-polite to the representatives taking calls.
-Everything is 100% voluntary. For example, the Anthology book was kept a secret during the donation drive, and several people expressed concern about where the money was going. The webmaster immediately responded by saying that they shouldn't feel pressured to donate if they had any doubts. They want the whole thing to be really from the hearts of the fans, and not just them pushing people to do it.

Are the folks at Starmen.net crazy? Well, probably. But this is really an extension of how consumers are using new technology to make their voices heard by the big corporations. Petitions and other grassroots efforts helped get television shows (such as Family Guy) back on the air, and the prevalence of peer-to-peer networks ushered in new ways of selling and distributing media. If EB Siege works, it might change the way big video game companies listen to their fans, and get some really cool games released here in the process. :)

Koha books

Koha keeps giving me an error when I try to use it, so to copy what a few people have already mentioned on the discussion board, here's a list of books I'm going to import if it ever lets me:

Already uploaded:
1. The Art of Mesoamerica: From Olmec to Aztec
Mary Ellen Miller
ISBN: 0-500-20392X

2. The gods and symbols of ancient Mexico and the Maya : an illustrated dictionary of Mesoamerican religion
Mary Ellen Miller
ISBN: 0-500-050686

3. Maya Art and Architecture
Mary Ellen Miller
ISBN: -500-20327-X

Still need to upload
4. Popol vuh : the Mayan book of the dawn of life
Translated by Dennis Tedlock
ISBN: 0684818450

5. The Maya
Michael Coe
9780500285053

6. Myths of pre-Columbian America
Donald A. Mackenzie
ISBN: 0486293793

7. Aztec and Maya myths
Karl Taube
ISBN: 029278130X

8. The Ancient Maya
Suzanne Lieurance
0766051978

9. The Maya Indians
Victoria Sherrow
ISBN: 0791016668

10. The Aztecs
Jane Shuter
ISBN: 158810589X

11. Technology in the time of the Aztecs
Nina Morgan
ISBN: 0817248781

12. A commentary on the Dresden Codex : a Maya hieroglyphic book
J. Eric S. Thompson
ISBN: 0871690934

13. Remarkable remains of the ancient peoples of Guatemala
Jacques VanKirk and Parney Bassett-VanKirk
ISBN: 0806128666

14. A lexicon for Maya architecture
H. Stanley Loten and David M. Pendergast
ISBN: 0888543085

15. The hungry woman : myths and legends of the Aztecs
Edited by John Bierhorst
ISBN: 0688027660

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Website!

Finally, something that worked (and something I finished on time)! Here is my website.

Zoomclouds

Can I just say I really hate Zoomclouds?

EDIT: Oh what a surprise, the code doesn't work.

Double edit: I gave up and used Superglu instead.

Catch-up

So I thought that since I was off work today I would take the time to play catch-up and do the LIS 2600 assignments I was supposed to do when I was busy scrambling around to work on the last paper for LIS 2000. I really had attempted the Zoomclouds and Scopus things before, but going to Zoomclouds continues to net me some weird Spanish site, and I couldn't export anything from Scopus because it kept timing out. I try both again today and surprise surprise, I'm still not getting to Zoomclouds and Scopus is still timing out. Lovely. I'll have my Second Life write-up finished soon.

I'm not really learning much from all of these assignments other than these programs/websites don't work very well.

Google Co-op search

I'm pretty sure this is late, but oh well. Here's a search engine I made for ancient central and south American culture and folklore!

Fun With Mesoamerican Mythology

I can't get the code it gives you to work for whatever reason. Ah, technology.

Edit to add: Here's a link to my Bloglines folder.

Blogline's script thing doesn't want to work, either.

WiiWare and getting sick

I think I might be coming down with something. This morning I woke up feeling tired and sick, and while I was cleaning my room I had to lie down from nausea. I still have my paper to write and we have visitors coming this weekend- my aunt, uncle and my cousins ages 10 and 5. Should be fun, huh?

In other news, Nintendo just announced a new feature for their Wii console called WiiWare (I wonder if Wario gave them the idea?). WiiWare will allow developers to publish custom-designed games for the Wii controls that will be available in the Wii Shop Channel along with the classic Virtual Console titles. In addition to big-name developers like Sega using WiiWare, Nintendo is encouraging small, independent game developers to get involved. They want to see "shorter, original, more creative games from small teams with big ideas", and they're giving developers the freedom to publish what they want on the system, with Nintendo only intervening to check for bugs and compatibility issues.

This is really cool because it takes a lot to get your foot in the door in the video game industry, and this might very well blow the door wide open for indie developers. I hope this leads to more companies like Telltale Games (I'm a big fan of theirs if you haven't noticed yet) getting noticed and becoming more popular.

Book discussion stuff

Not much to say right now. I'm working on the next book discussion for LIS 2000. All of this copyright law stuff is kind of making my head spin.

Grazr Widget

Okay, posting my Grazr Widget thing-a-ma-bob. I hope I'm doing this right.

Sopranos fans whack show's creator

Kind of old news, but heh.

You gotta give the Internet credit for one thing- it certainly allows people to voice their opinions about things easier, even if it's just calling The Sopranos creator a homosexual for how he ended the show.

Radio killed the music star?

So the other day, I was listening to the radio, and they had a pretty interested interview with a guy at MTV News who wrote an article/scathing angry rant about something that happened at another radio station in Chicago.

The gist of it: q101 gets a hold of a leak of the White Stripes' new album, Icky Thump. The DJ, being a huge fan of the White Stripes, decides to play the whole thing on air because she wants to get everybody hyped up for the finished album (the leak was actually of an unfinished version). There's much rejoicing, right? Wrong. A mere two hours later, lead singer Jack White
actually calls the station and chews out the DJ for playing the album, claiming that she's doing terrible things to the music industry by jumping the gun and whatnot. The MTV article was essentially blasting the q101 DJ and radio DJs in general for doing stuff like this, and the interview I heard was pretty much the DJs trying to get this guy to see the other side of the issue.

So, who's to blame for the mess? If you ask me, definately *not* q101 or the DJ. Sure, playing the *whole album* without thinking that there might be some backlash might not have been the smartest move, but if anyone's to blame, it's the person who leaked the album in the first place, or possibly even the record company itself. I'm more than willing to bet that these "accidental" leaks aren't as accidental as we're led to believe. Hey, what better way to score some free publicity for a new album than to cause a big ruckus over it getting leaked onto the Internet just weeks away from the release date? It also seems to happen quite a lot when there's a big name involved- Evanescence and Linkin Park's latest albums were also leaked prematurely.

Does Jack White have a right to be angry? Yes,but taking it out on a *fan* who loves his music and wanted to share it with other fans was totally uncalled for, not to mention, it smacks of looking a gift horse in the mouth if you go back to that "free publicity" thing. As someone who commented on the MTV article said, "There are thousands of musicians trying to get their music played on the radio and these guys are angry because too much of theirs was played?" If White didn't want the material leaked, then he should redirect his anger to whoever leaked it, or the record company itself. But what is there to be angry about? The copy the radio station received wasn't even the finished product, and anyone who might have recorded it not only got an unfinished album, but a radio rip of it.

On a related note, I present to you the story of Year Zero, the latest Nine Inch Nails album. In an effort to protest the way the recording industry is handling itself in the digital age, Trent Reznor personally leaked some of the songs on the album early by leaving USB drives containing the songs in easily noticeable places at NIN concerts.

Telltale again

Recently, something awesome happened to Telltale Games, to the tune of six million dollars. That's a lot of money for a small, independent game developer with about fifty employees to its name. I'm really happy for them and can't wait to see what they do with it. Lots of fans are clamoring for them to buy the rights for the Monkey Island game series from Lucasarts, which *would* be absolutely amazing, don't get me wrong, but my guess is that they'll start developing games for the Xbox 360 and Wii, since they've hired developers for both, but haven't announced anything yet...

Oh and I'm definitely expecting more BONE to come out of this, which is good, because I've been rereading the comic recently.

User-created music videos

So a big aspect of Web 2.0, or just about anything 2.0-related, is user-created content, right? Well, I just realized that if that's the case, we also have Music Video 2.0 now.

Barenaked Ladies (which happens to be my favorite band ever, but I digress), has held two contests where fans film themselves singing, dancing and generally acting silly to the singles of their latest album, Barenaked Ladies Are Me. Then, the band released 'fan videos' for the singles featuring choice clips that were entered.

The first contest was for "Wind Me Up", and the resulting fan video can be seen here. Later, BNL released an "official" video, featuring a cameo appearance by the contest winner.

Their second contest was for "Sound Of Your Voice", and the video is here.

Just the other day I found out that the band Incubus had held a similar contest for their song "Dig". They also filmed themselves performing the song in front of a green screen so that contestants could have footage of the band in their entries. There were two winners- a fan and band pick and the grand prize winner, both of which are featured on the contest page.

So there you have it- Music Video 2.0. I think it's pretty cool that bands and their fans are interacting like this, and it would be great to see more big names get involved.

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Double Fold

I'm slowly working my way through Double Fold, and once again I'm finding myself analyzing the writing style instead of the argument. I *really* dislike Baker's tone- it's so condescending. I should have expected it, since he flat out says in the introduction that he wasn't going to be unbiased about it, but still. The book is making me angry, but for all the wrong reasons- I'm angry at Baker for the way he's presenting his argument rather than being angry at what he wants me to be angry at.

Another thing that bothers me is the two problems that I thought of when I considered his "keep everything no matter what" idea, namely:

1. Where are we supposed to put everything? Trust me, I'm a pack rat, and I love the idea of preserving newspapers for historical purposes, but seriously, WHERE are we going to keep everything? Do we build a bunch of off-site warehouses? If so, how are library patrons supposed to access them? He always seems to skirt around this issue.

2. I've been searching on Google and I can't seem to find anything that supports his insistence that paper doesn't deteriorate as quickly as most people believe. In fact, all I find is more evidence to the contrary. Not to mention, there's a lot of other factors in keeping paper in good condition- mold, insects, exposure to light, handling, etc. Baker immediately pooh-poohs scanning high resolution images of texts as too costly, but keeping it in good condition with all of those factors in mind would be pretty expensive, too, don't you think?

I've also been reading/skimming Understanding Digital Libraries, which is a little dry. Lesk, like Baker, makes good points, but I'm not finding myself entirely sold yet. He's the opposite of Baker- instead of "save EVERYTHING!!!" it's "scan EVERYTHING!!!" and he never seems to acknowledge the other side at all either. However, he does get one bonus point for not being angry about it.

In other news, I spent the weekend at Lake Anna for the Virginia Renaissance Faire. It was a lot of fun, not to mention a little interesting after being submerged in technology from these classes. It would have been nice if the weather had cooperated a bit- it was sweltering on Saturday and raining on Sunday, but what can you do about that? I had a good time listening to raunchy songs and making s'mores, though!

DRM... not so free?

So, Apple has started offering DRM-free mp3 tracks in their iTunes store. Sounds great, right? Well, apparently, instead of DRM, your tunes are full of your personal information.

Creepy? I'm thinking yes. And apparently, eMusic.com does this too. Yikes.

This also begs the question: Is it too much to ask to just own something you buy without some funky copy protection strings attached?

Well great

I missed the deadline for the Hot Topic discussion in 2600. I didn't even realize we had something due for that- I was too busy trying to figure out the assignment due on Thursday!

Speaking of which, I don't know if I'm going to be around this weekend, so I have to get that in by tomorrow and get my response in on Thursday just in case, and I'm not really sure what to write yet. Man.

Busy week

Wow, busy week. I haven't been able to do much class-wise. Not a good thing. Fortunately I have some time finally.

I managed to get a webcam AND get it working! Here's proof:



Zam is usually more talkative than that.

He really likes to look out the window, which explains why there's a big wet nose smear on every glass surface in the house. Our old house didn't have windows with windowsills, so he's enjoying being able to rest his head on them now.

More Kuhn Fun

So I'm putting the finishing touches on my Kuhn review. I can only hope I did it right. I'm currently working on the part that always got me stuck- the conclusion. I always hated conclusions, since they make me feel like all I'm doing is repeating everything I just said earlier. Not to mention, in longer papers, by the time I'm at the conclusion I'm ready to be done, and the only things I can think of are variations of "arrrgh" and "graaaah". Yeah, I don't know how I managed to survive being an English major, either.

Speaking of which, this thing was a pain to write not only because I haven't written a formal *anything* in the past year, but also because I'm more accustomed to analyzing literary techniques and writing style instead of scientific theory.

Kuhn book review

Well, I have a handful of random sentences, some kind of disjointed argument, and a quote from the book so far. The good news is, I just need to write some more sentences that connect the ones I already have and I'll reach the 500 word limit. The bad news is... well, I only have a handful of random sentences, some kind of disjointed argument, and a quote from the book so far.

I don't miss writing essays.

But I haven't had a chance to listen to the podcast on Kuhn yet, so that might help. I think I'll give it a listen after dinner... and the season finale of Heroes. :)

Microcontent, Telltale Games & Other Stuff

So I was reading the article for this week (Information Format Trends), and the part that interested me the most was the bit (no pun intended) on microcontent.

I'd argue that microcontent has been around a lot longer than the Internet, in the form of serialized content. Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, and other authors of the Victorian era published their novels bit by bit in magazines. Granted, a novel published in installments works a little differently than selling individual MP3s of songs from an album- installments are typically published on a certain schedule (once a week/month, etc), and the author has to make sure he or she keeps the reader interested enough in the story to buy the next installment. A more recent example (i.e. one that's not a hundred years old) of a serialized novel is The Green Mile by Stephen King. The novel was split into six volumes, and they were released monthly at a lower price than a complete novel (much like a single MP3 costs significantly less than a full album).

Another thing that I could argue is a form of microcontent are television shows- especially more recent shows like 24, Lost and Heroes, because they seem to follow the structure of serialized novels. Each episode doesn't contain a complete story, but rather, all of the episodes together form a large, overarching plot, and viewers are kept interested by plot twists, foreshadowing, and cliffhangers, and kept up to date with flashbacks and recaps that remind them of what happened in previous episodes.

But anyway, what I really wanted to write about was video games and microcontent (it always seems to come back to video games with me). The first thing I thought of when I was reading the section on microcontent was Telltale Games, a small, independent company that's pioneering serialized gaming. The decision to make their games episodic was originally done out of necessity- in order to cut down on publishing and packaging costs, Telltale decided to offer their games through downloads rather than seek a publisher and try to get their games sold in stores, and in order to make downloads as small as possible, they decided to break their games up into smaller increments. Coincidentally enough, their two major titles are based on comic book series, which might be yet another form of microcontent.

I first heard of Telltale when I learned they were making a game based on my favorite comic book series, BONE by Jeff Smith. The comic itself was published in nine volumes, and Telltale plans on splitting the game into nine parts that more or less correspond with them. So far, they've released two episodes of BONE, with each one ranging from about 4-6 hours in length (and although it's very hard to accurately measure a game's length, I will say that yes, that's pretty short as far as games go). Originally, the release schedule for BONE was to be "every couple of months", but the game was temporarily put on the backburner in order to put more effort into their second, and arguably more important, game: season one of Sam & Max.

Sam & Max, like BONE, is based on a comic book series of the same name by Steve Purcell. Sam & Max differs from BONE in that it has a unique storyline that merely draws on the themes, locations and characters of the comic, and it had a very different and much more strict release schedule. Season one contains six episodes, each one ranging from 2-4 hours in length (or so they claim- they *all* took me much longer, and I still haven't finished the final one). Episode One was released last October, and after a two month break, each episode after that was released once a month. I'm pretty sure Sam & Max is the very first *completed* episodic game, which makes it pretty notable. It (and BONE, to some extent) is also a good example of developers listening to customer feedback. For example, one major criticism of the game was its reuse of locations and characters in each episode. Telltale paid attention, and in the fourth, fifth and sixth episodes, the bulk of the gameplay takes place in entirely new and unique locations, with many new characters to interact with.

So what's my point? Well, the article seemed to put a negative spin on the concept of microcontent. I'll agree that buying a wallpaper for your cellphone seems kind of silly, but I don't think it'll ever get to the point where you pay $.25 for a sentence. Also, buying and selling content in small increments has been around since the Victorian era, so it's hardly a by-product of the instant access of the Internet. And in the case of Telltale Games, using microcontent put a small game developer on the map, which is pretty hard to do in the video game industry. By giving customers small chunks of games that they can download from their website, Telltale can get their games to the masses without relying on publishers and retail stores. And it's not just independent game developers that benefit from it- musicians do it all the time, and the course blog even has an article about Jonathan Coulton, who makes a living selling MP3s of his songs. So, I think microcontent is a good thing for independent artists (video games, music or otherwise) who probably wouldn't be able to get their material out there as easily without it.

Oh, and I also highly recommended any of Telltale's games or Coulton's music. :)

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DRM-free

Is DRM dead?

According to this guy, it could be. Amazon.com is planning on launching a music-downloading store that sells only DRM-free music, other digital music stores (like eMusic for example) have been successfully selling it for years, and even iTunes is offering music without copy restrictions. I'm the only person on the planet who doesn't own an iPod or use iTunes (whoo Rio Carbon!), so as far as I know, I've actually never dealt with DRM myself, but I can definitely see where people have a problem with it.

In other news, I started on the Kuhn book for LIS 2000. Not too hard to understand, but definitely hard to plod through. I give it a resounding "...Meh."

Wikilife

Here's something neat: Massive Wikilife project underway

It's called the "Encyclopedia of Life" and it promises to have multimedia pages for 1.8 million identified species of life. Unfortunately, it won't be up and running until mid-2008.

Hi?

So I made this blog thing. I'm not entirely sure about this class yet- I know *of* things like Skype, RSS feeds, FTP, etc, but I've never actually used them myself. I've flipped around the textbook and noticed that I know some of the stuff in it already, so I guess that means I'm off to a good start here. But to be honest, I only ever seem to learn technological stuff by poking and prodding at something until it kinda-sorta work. That, and my dad's a programmer, so I've grown up surrounded by computers and computer stuff.

I'm kinda psyched that one of our assignments involves using Second Life. How many classes grade you for playing a video game? Finally, all of those hours I've spent in front of the TV and computer will be put to good use!

Speaking of video games, that's where my username and blog name/theme comes from. My favorite game is this old Super Nintendo RPG called EarthBound. In EarthBound, you're a normal suburban kid named Ness, and you discover that you not only have psychic powers, but it's your destiny to save the world from an alien invasion. So you grab your baseball bat and head out to travel the world and kick some alien butt. Along the way you meet these little critters called Mr. Saturn (they're all named "Mr. Saturn") who live in Saturn Valley. They give you coffee and build you a time machine, and they like to say random things like "boing!" "zoom!" and "ding!" The first one you come across will greet you by saying "We feel groove!"

So now to ramble a little about me: I live with my family- my parents are letting me stay with them until I finish grad school and can afford my own place. I have a brother who goes to VCU, and we have a golden retriever named Zam, short for "zamboni" because my parents are hockey freaks (our last dog was named Puck). I have a BA in English from Longwood University, which obviously means I love to read. As you might have noticed, I'm a nerd, but I've long since come to terms with that. I also love to draw, though my skills are only slightly about "cartoonish".

We just moved into a new house- my parents have been dying to get a bigger house for years, and since my brother and I are going to be sticking around for a couple more years (sorry mom & dad), we needed the space. Most of my stuff is still packed up in boxes on one side of my room, but hopefully the giant bookcase I ordered should be coming soon and I can finally get organized (organized? what's that?).