automaticable

As I sat there on a Friday night, the only logical thing that came to mind to do was to play stupid 2D games with a couple of my closest friends: my brothers.  The time was 9:26 and I was happily downloading a new game just so I could have fun and be sociable.  Granted this is nothing new to me, because I am an avid gamer.  I tend to like the more interactive games such as first person shooters and MMORPG’s .  My favorite first person shooter game(s) are anything in the Half-Life series, mainly Counter Strike, Counter Strike: Source, and Day of Defeat.  For the MMORPG side of gamer life, I have a new addiction to a game called Minions of Mirth (MoM) that my brother downloaded and bought.  For all you people out there that don’t know what MMORPG stands for, it is an acronym for Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game.  Games like this include Everquest, Asheron’s Call, Minions of Mirth, Final Fantasy (series), and World of Warcraft (Warcrap in my opinion).

My gaming career goes back quite far; I’m talking back into the first stages of apple computers, back with the computer with green screens, using “floppy disks” that were actually floppy and the size of your average sandwich you’re going to have for lunch.  Granted these games I started out with were all educational and not really for personal amusement, but trust me, it wouldn’t take many more years before I started to find games that I really enjoyed.

As you could probably tell, I was never really one to play games on a game system all day because that just didn’t appeal to me.  I really liked the way a PC felt and played games.  I want to say my gaming really started to emerge once Windows ’95 came out.  I started out with the cheesy solitaire, minesweeper, and a few games of free cell (even though I still to this day can’t figure out how to play that game).  From there I was introduced to games such as Need For Speed and Doom, and that’s when my career really took off.  I progressed into more strategy based games like Age of Empires, Myst, and Tribes.  From there I moved onto the MMORPG’s and the first person shooters.

After that stage my love for gaming focused more on the first person shooters and the MMORPG’s because I loved the fact that you can interact with people from all around the world who had the same passion as you; to grab a dessert eagle, semi-automatic P-90, 2 flash grenades, an HE grenade, and just storm up the middle to surprise the terrorists and keep them from planting the bomb at bomb site A.  (For those of you who didn’t figure it out, the game described above is Half-Life: Counter Strike).

I don’t really know where my gaming career will lead me next, all I know is right now I feel as if I have a second set of friends that I meet up with every day, all around the world.

Well, two weeks and three days away until I leave on the trip of a lifetime with some of the closest people to me in my life.  Most of them you have heard from if you’ve read automaticable for a while.  Kyle Wegner, Scott Wegner, Joe Wegner, Stacy Friel, Lindsay Gerke, and I will all be road tripping down to the Smoky Mountains in Bryson City, North Carolina. This trip should be a lot of fun because it’s our first real big vacation where our parents haven’t been watching over our shoulders and there to guide us in what we should and shouldn’t do. My brothers and I have been camping and being outdoorsy for as long as I could remember, but we’ve never done anything of this caliber without our parents planning and them being there. But we’re finally making it our own and going down a path that has yet to be ventured by all of us. Granted we’re using a lot of the techniques that we’ve learned by observation through the years, like cooking teams, cleaning teams, planning out our expenses to a T and how much each meal SHOULD cost and what not. It’s kind of exciting to see how it will all come together in the end. So far we don’t really have many adventures or excursions planned for our trip, all we know is we have a cabin next to a lily pond, six people, two cars, and a weeks worth of time to have fun and enjoy everything that the Smoky Mountains and North Carolina has to offer us. If any of you Automaticabalites have been there and have suggestions for us to do or see, please, leave a comment and let us know! I’m sure when we return, there will be plenty for us to tell about our adventures and photos to go along with our delightful adventure.

Happy Download day everyone! This is an exciting thing on all ends, because not only is this my first techy blog on good ole automaticable, but today is the Firefox 3 Download Day!! There’s many plans going on, the biggest of all, of course, is the ability to pledge to download the new update today, in the next 24 hours, to be apart of the Guinness Book Of World Records 2008! That’s right, with the new release of Mozilla Firefox is trying to have the most downloads in a 24 hour period. When I pledged, just moments ago, there were 1,683,932 other pledges just like mine! So head on over to www.spreadfirefox.com and make your pledge today! While you’re there check out some of the other cool things happening. You can plan an office or school Download Fest where you all meet up on your lunch breaks and download the new Firefox 3, join some of the great Download Day groups on Facebook, or Myspace, or become a campus rep for Firefox! All of these things are very exciting and I want to encourage ALL of our automaticable fans to head on over and make the pledge to download Firefox 3 today and be apart of the magic happening all around the world!

With Finals just around the corner, I look back at my college career thus far and I see all the good decisions that I’ve made. I switched from Medical Science with a hopes for Orthotics and Prosthesis to Recreation Management and I couldn’t be happier. I came back home from SIU to finish up my general education classes and receive my AA from College of DuPage and I love every minute of being home. I’ve switched around from a couple jobs and finally found something that I enjoy doing and that gives me hope for a brighter future. The relationship aspect of my life couldn’t be better. I have a steady girlfriend of over two years now, and we’re always talking about what the future brings, planning little trips with each other, and we can never stop smiling when we’re with each other.

With the weather turning nice I’m becoming more and more optimistic and becoming less stressed. Finals should be pretty much a breeze this year due to the classes and the requirements that they have for me. I gave two huge project presentations yesterday that I worked for 6 hours straight on over the weekend, and I found out immediately afterwards that I had aced both of them. I feel a sense of accomplishment this semester through all the trouble and stress that my classes brought me. I feel I did the best I could in all my classes and I’m not afraid of anything that future classes throw at me.

I used to sit in my room with the blinds closed to keep the heat in my room so it doesn’t get too cold, but I came home the other day and my mom had opened them, and I realized how beautiful of a view out my window I have. There’s a beautiful backyard with trees lining the perimeter of the half acre backyard, thick green grass, a flower island in the middle of the yard, and horseshoe pits in the back. I could probably sit and look out my window all day and watch the birds, squirrels, chipmunks, and the neighbors cats run through our yard all day and be content.

Basically what I’m getting at here is that through all the stress and hard work that have been hitting me this entire semester, I’m glad that it’s finally over and I have a bright, relaxing summer to look forward to. The warm afternoons, the stormy nights, the bonfires, the hookah parties, or just relaxing on the screen porch, falling asleep in the chase lounge are all things that I have to look forward to. So all you college students out there fretting over finals and worrying about grades and their futures, take a step back and look at all the good things you’ve done so far and all the great things in the future that lie ahead of you. Realize that ultimately they’re just grades and a beige piece of paper, and that what you should be worrying about is how many times your going to ride Superman at Six Flags this summer.

Well, It’s official, there is another reason why the Nintendo Wii is almighty. Today I had the urge, the urge to splurge, so you know what I got? I bought my girlfriend Mario Kart for Wii with an extra steering wheel. I want to start off by saying that the fact that the Wii incorporates a steering wheel to play mario kart is just AMAZING in itself.  It brings a whole new sense of awesomeness to the game. Being the stubborn person I am, I didn’t bother reading the little instruction manual before I started playing the game because I’ve played so many different Mario Kart series that I’ve realized how to do just about everything. I was wrong this time.  There’s so much more you can do now with the Wii version that you were unable to do in any other version of Mario Kart, so take the time and read that manual and learn all the cool tricks before you play!

I’m now going to go through a list of Pros and Cons of the game from my point of view and at the end give my final opinion on the game and if you should buy it, or just mooch off your friends.

Pros:

• Automatic Drafting for those of us who were never good at it in the other versions
• An actual steering wheel instead of just a lousy controller
• Mario Kart against people across the world via internet
• Incorporation of tracks from previous Mario Kart versions
• More tracks

Cons:

• Automatic Drafting: Although it may help those who don’t know how to do it, it makes it too easy
• No co-op Grand Prix
• The mini-map while racing is a little larger than I’d like, and haven’t figured out how to get rid of it yet

In my opinion, I loved the game. I think it is a GREAT upgrade from both Game Cube as well as N64. I have played I think every version (except DS) and I have to say that by far Mario Kart is the one game that Nintendo will never stop making, and you basically can’t screw up, you can only make it better. For those of you wondering if you should buy it, I HIGHLY suggest it. Also pitch in and buy a few more of those steering wheels.  They’re only ten dollars more and will add a GREAT deal more fun for those around you wanting to play. So go out there to your local Best Buy or Toys-R-Us and get Mario Kart for Wii today! You won’t regret it for a second!

The trash on the ground, the gum under the desk, the empty toilet paper roll in the bathroom, and the smudges on the windows of the doors all are cleaned up or taken care of by type of person in public areas: the Janitor.  When you think of a Janitor, do you think of the guy with the raggity old clothing that has a faded name patch on the side?  Maybe the loveable gray cart with the yellow trash bag on the back?  There’s many things that come to mind when you think of a janitor, but the sad thing is, none of it is positive.  When ever someone thinks of a janitor they always think of them as a nothing, not a person.  People don’t realize that they are people too, just like you and me.  Most of the people in this position are NOT high school drop outs that took that sort of job because they have nothing going for them, or ever will.  Some of them have graduated from either a two year or four year technical school or university with a major in engineering or something of that sort, and decided that an easier job like this best sooted their needs.  Then there’s also the younger kids and young adults you see doing this job.  Most parents look at these kids as worthless individuals who wasted away their lives and have to resort to doing shit jobs because they can’t make anything of their lives.  This is false.  I currently hold position where some of my duties require me to take care of custodial tasks, and I haven’t wasted away my life, I’m not going nowhere, I haven’t dropped out of school.  I’m working my way up from the very bottom in hopes to make it to the very top, so that way I can see what it really takes to run a business where all the employees are happy and treated equally.

The workplace is no different.  You would think your fellow employees would treat you with more respect because they work with you and know how bad of a job it is, but this is entirely false.  I receive radio call after radio call from people at the front desk for the smallest little tasks that we have 5 different people on staff that could do the job, but they always call me because no one else wants to do it.  The most ridiculous call I ever got was someone had dropped a piece of paper on the floor and they wanted me to come pick it up.  Now, let me just set the scene here.  It was a Saturday afternoon, so there was a Building Supervisor, two Open Gym Supervisors, a person running Registration, a Fit Desk worker, and me working that day.  I was busy downstairs cleaning a fitness studio when I get this call, and when I go upstairs to find this piece of paper, I find it on the opposite side of the desk where the Registration lady sits, and behind the desk are the Open Gym Supervisors, and the Building supervisor, all talking, doing nothing. One of them is actually on the computer checking their facebook.  Even though these people were sitting right there, doing nothing, the registration lady thought it would be best to pull me from what I was busy doing to come pick up this piece of paper for her.

This is the type of ignorance that I’m talking about. The simple tasks that they can take two seconds out of their time to do themselves, they decide to just pawn it off onto someone else, they pawn it off to someone else, until finally it gets down to the lowest guy on the food chain who has no one to pawn it off to, so he has to do it himself.  I have multiple examples of this sort of stuff but it’d just turn into me ranting about how people become so much lazier once there’s a janitor employed at their workplace.

I want to change the stereotype of janitors, especially the ones that are younger individuals like myself.  They’re not worthless individuals, and they shouldn’t be looked over.  These people work hard and are good at what they do.  They’re the reason why when you walk into a building and you think “Wow, this place looks awesome!”  They’re the ones that make it look awesome.  Next time you see a janitor, young or old, take a look around and realize that the place they’re in charge of looks the way it does because of the hard work and commitment they put into their job.  Don’t overlook them, appreciate them.

It’s 2008, so you know what that means. No, not the Olympics. No, not your daughter who was born on February 29th, 2000 will FINALLY turn 2. What I’m getting at is that it’s the year of the vote. This is no more fun that doing taxes, except you have to do taxes every year and only vote every four years.  Politics are like the bible, you know what’s going to happen, but you keep going back to them anyways in hopes that there’s going to be some kind of change, but inevitably there won’t be. Now, I’m not very political at all, hell, I usually vote for the guy that can be best photoshopped into a monkey (sorry bout the Bush vote, totally not my fault). Sorry, dramatization there, I do actually take the time and do some research and pick who I think will be best for the position (again, sorry for the Bush vote, totally not my fault). This year we have two front runners who basically sum up the the entire schlepper of man/woman kind. Now, I mean this figuratively of course, because who really is a schlepper now a days, other than Ralph Nader. The two candidates I’m talking about are Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton. (Sorry McCain, you have to be a bench warmer for now….)

Now, here’s the first thing that sets these two people apart from every other candidate we’ve ever had; they’re different. Obama is African American, and Hillary is a female. (Is it sad that I thought of Kindergarten Cop when writing about how Hillary is a female?). ANYWAYS this is the first time that the next President of the United States will either be a woman, or an African American and frankly that scares a lot of people. Now, I’m not saying that it scares me, I think it’s a great idea! Maybe in another 4 years we can have a Disney Character in the office! I should prob stop with that part of the rant right now before I take it too far….

But anyways, back to the candidates. So Brittney Clinton, er, I mean Hillary Clinton has been bashing Obama a lot recently. The big one that comes to mind is she is releasing photos of him over in third world nations dressed in typical Muslim attire and implying that he is working with terrorists (she won’t directly state this because THAT is an outlandish statement!). So, yeah, she’s using sly tactics and is just getting bashed beyond belief….oh well!

Now, to be fair, Osama, er Obama’s (wow, slip of the tongue there) no saint either, he’s using mud slinging tactics as well, but unfortunately he’s not as bad as Hillary so therefore, no hard evidence to prove that he’s such a bad guy.

If I come off a little biased here, what ever, its a blog, you should be a work working anyways, not reading this silly thing. For now I’m gunna go eat some frozen french toast sticks with warm eggo syrup and drink a quarter gallon of milk, because I live in America, and darnit, that’s the healthy American thing to do!

By the way, Happy Birthday all the sons and daughters out there born on February 29th….I know your birthday comes only once every 4 years, but trust me, in 84 years, you’ll be able to drink legally!

As most of you know, on Wednesday, February 20th, 2008 there was another miraculous sight given us to by nature; a Total Lunar Eclipse.  This is something I have only seen a few times before in my lifetime, but by golly, I swear it gets better and better every time!  I’ve always been a fanatic for anything astronomy, hence why my freshman year of high school I went on an Earth Science field trip just so I could be in the desert and see as many stars as possible.  Tonight’s viewing of the lunar eclipse was especially magical for me because I got to watch it with Lindsay by my side.  The astros has always been regarded as something magical and romantic and I totally agree, star gazing is still one of my favorite pass times.  As we were desperately waiting outside in the -6 degree weather not only did we get to witness a total lunar eclipse, but from where we were standing, we were also able to view a shooting star from our location.  We also couldn’t have asked for a better viewing setting.  For one of the very few times during the year, the skies over DuPage County were clear of any clouds, fog, haze, or smog.  I swear I was able to see more stars tonight than I have ever been able to see in a suburb.

I was excited to see tonights Total Lunar Eclipse, and I’m also excited for another three years from now, for when the next one is.  For all you people out there that missed it tonight, mark this date on your calenders; December 21st, 2010!  Keep your eyes on the sky, for you’ll never be sure what you might see.

Well, I guess I can take ahold of this new place in line as the “New Guy.” Let me introduce myself, My name is Doctor Fraiser Kraine, professional radio psychologist. No, actually, I kid. My name is Brian Wegner, brother to all three of these other crazy bloggers that you have met so far. I reside in a cold cabin that I like to call, a bedroom in my parents house located in Downers Grove, IL. I’m currently attending College of DuPage, the local community college going for a general AA (Associates of Arts) degree and hopefully transferring off to one of the cardinal colleges to obtain a bachelors degree in Recreation Management. I, much like Scott (because he is my twin), am 21 years old. Let me talk about this a little bit actually.

Warning ahead of time, there are mention of underage indulgences ahead, so if you disagree with this, then stop reading now and please visit www.disney.com they’ve been waiting for you.

When I turned 21, I feel as if I changed a full deal more than I ever have before. When I first started college, attending Southern Illinois University Carbondale, I did as most freshmen did on their first weekend of college; I went out to find the best party in town and drink the night away. Needless to say I succeeded and was glad that I picked the college that I did. As time went on, and the weekends kept coming up quicker and quicker, and the parties got rowdier and rowdier; I realized that I loved the party atmosphere, but I didn’t like the skunk beer. So I started to have my friends buy me my own beer. I would make sure that I indulged in enough of my better, non-skunk beer to where when we went to a party, I was unable to taste the bitter beer. This went on for about two semesters, and when I came back in the fall of my sophomore year, I had my own apartment, my own fridge, and my own beer crisper (vegi-tray). I had also turned 20 that semester and decided I was against the house parties, and more for the bars, so that’s what I did. I frequented more bars than house parties. I enjoyed this new setting, it gave me a new sense of belonging and the atmosphere was amazing, but best of all, I didn’t have to drink skunk beer if I didn’t want to. I kept frequenting bars, and enjoyed every minute of it. After my sophomore year, I moved back home to finish up my AA. I turned 21 on a weekend and spent the majority of it with my girlfriend (Lindsay), my twin (Scott), his girlfriend (Stacy), and the rest of his roommates down at UIUC (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign). The rest of the weekend is obviously a blur, but it was definitely one of the most memorable weekends of my life (ironic huh?). Now that you have the background and lead-up story, I can now explain the change.

Since turning 21, I’ve noticed that drinking just to get drunk is really immature. The parties, the beer bongs, the drinking games, they all seem so…childish. Yeah, it’s fun to indulge in your young side every once in a while and do these things, but I have no real motivation or wanting to do this on a regular basis anymore. Instead of drinking every weekend of the semester, like I did freshman and sophomore year, I now only indulge in a tasty beverage every once in a while and haven’t been to a bar since my 21st (which was in October). I don’t drink to get drunk, I drink to socialize. Basically what I’m trying to say is I’ve lost my desire to be a “party animal” and now love just drinking on occasion, and this is by no means, a bad thing.

I hope this first blog doesn’t make me seem out to be an alcoholic, because I’m not. I’m just another 21 year old, living life day by day, and changing with the world around me. Enjoy the rest of your day, because I know I will.

-Brian