MikeRapin.com http://www.mikerapin.com/blog The words of your average geek who happens to be a cynical college student Sat, 15 Nov 2008 05:14:35 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.3 en http://www.mikerapin.com/blog http://www.mikerapin.com/blog/images/favicon1.png MikeRapin.com I just pitched a TV show http://www.mikerapin.com/blog/i-just-pitched-a-tv-show-20081115.htm http://www.mikerapin.com/blog/i-just-pitched-a-tv-show-20081115.htm#comments Sat, 15 Nov 2008 05:12:34 +0000 Mike http://www.mikerapin.com/blog/?p=272 Yea. That’s right. I pitched a TV show to GVTV, the on-campus TV network. I don’t know what came over me to do this, but I just did it.

The show is called “Jeff & Mike Write a Comic Book” and guess what it’s about? My friend Jeff and I writing a comic book. But it’s mainly about our really wacky ideas for characters and such with a plot that influences our thoughts and all sorts of awesomeness.

So I pitched it, explained some basic plot, got some questions asked of me about the show and yeah. What was the best part was that I made all four of the judges laugh. That boosted me up like none other. So, I ended up explaining things and got off stage. Leading up to my pitch, I was fucking nervous. I mean, seeing 3 other people present their shows relieved my nervousnes, but seeing them laugh just eased all nervousness.

After the whole “Pitch Your Show To GVTV” meeting, I left and as I was heading towards the stairs to go upstairs in Kirkhof when one of the judges came running after me and she tapped me on the shoulder and she told me she “loved” my script I gave the judges and that she’d fight for my show.

Could I be any more excited? Just wow. I know I probably didn’t have the best show idea, but the fact that one of the judges liked my story just made me happy. Here’s to hoping I get seriously considered…

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]]> http://www.mikerapin.com/blog/i-just-pitched-a-tv-show-20081115.htm/feed Need the feed reed http://www.mikerapin.com/blog/need-the-feed-reed-20081027.htm http://www.mikerapin.com/blog/need-the-feed-reed-20081027.htm#comments Tue, 28 Oct 2008 02:41:22 +0000 Mike http://www.mikerapin.com/blog/?p=265 It’s “read” I know, but nevertheless…..

Thanks to Bob, I was inspired to write a monster post about ALL the RSS reeds I read. I’ll let you know which once are my favorite as I go. Let’s just go with that and start… now:

Blogs

Comics

Gawker Media

  • Gizmodo (RSS) - Favorite tech/gadget blog on the net
  • io9 (RSS) - Favorite sci-fi news and awesomeness on the net
  • Lifehacker (RSS) - Favorite general awesomeness site on the net

Tech News

Tumblrs - I can’t really describe most of these, so check them all out.

Webcomics

Other

So… I read a lot of damn news.  I hope you got something out of this :).

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]]> http://www.mikerapin.com/blog/need-the-feed-reed-20081027.htm/feed Halloween is upon us http://www.mikerapin.com/blog/halloween-is-upon-us-20081023.htm http://www.mikerapin.com/blog/halloween-is-upon-us-20081023.htm#comments Fri, 24 Oct 2008 03:37:49 +0000 Mike http://www.mikerapin.com/blog/?p=262 Been a while since I updated, but it’s a Thursday and I have nothing better to do between 9PM and 1AM. Also, my last post was semi-depressing so let’s get it off of the top of my page. ha!

Aaanyways, Halloween is coming in about a week. I think I have my costume picked out for the 31st… My hope is to be The Hulk. The shirtless, furious, green, mean, fighting machine! My hopes are to dress as The Hulk and wear nothing but purple pants all night (unless I venture out of my house, which I definitely don’t plan on doing). What I’d like to do is wear green body paint all over my body–I’m talking head to toe in green paint–then dye my hair green (temporarily of course). And that’s it. Awesome costume right?

My other idea that I’m actually doing this weekend for a party in Kalamazoo is to be Multiple Man–aka Jamie Madrox. Now, you can’t just be Multiple Man by yourself! Oh no, you have to have a slew of people dressing as Multiple Man. So! My plan is to go to Kzoo this weekend with Jeff, Nick Nelson, Rob and myself and we’re all planning on dressing as Multiple Man! The costume is simple: Black t-shirt with 6 green dots on it (like this) and just wear blue jeans as pants. Then we go around all night telling people we’re all Jamie Madrox/Multiple Man and how the others are just duplicates of ourselves. It’s going to be classic.

So, what are you doing for Halloween?

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]]> http://www.mikerapin.com/blog/halloween-is-upon-us-20081023.htm/feed Nearly 20 years old http://www.mikerapin.com/blog/nearly-20-years-old-20081009.htm http://www.mikerapin.com/blog/nearly-20-years-old-20081009.htm#comments Fri, 10 Oct 2008 02:50:14 +0000 Mike http://www.mikerapin.com/blog/?p=257 It’s that time of the year again when the leaves start to change and all that other cliché stuff starts to happen, but what also occurs this time of year is my birthday.

I realized that come next Tuesday I’ll be 20 years old. 2 decades. Yes, I know people always say “wow I’m old” but I don’t feel old. Should I feel old? I know people in my age bracket who are stressed about being 19 or being 21 and I can’t help but say, “You’re only [insert age] and you’re worrying about being old?” When the hell did being around 19-24 become an issue? I thought you were supposed to be happy that you were so young. 

All I’m saying is that I’m glad to only be 20. It’s kind of a cool feeling now. I mean, sure I am young compared to many of my friends (most of them are 20-21 by now), but now for the first time in my life I am able to just look at freshmen coming into college or seniors graduating and say “Yea, been there. It sucked and it’s only going to get harder.” It’s a great feeling.

I guess I’m coming out of this whole “I own the world!” phase of being a teenager now and am seeing a bigger picture and blah blah blah. It’s not like I’m going to join some cause or become part of a cult (do comic books count?) because I am still a liberal cynic at heart–so cynical I can’t even get into movies sometimes–but it’s like, I see the world as the world now and not so much as just whatever is in driving distance. I’m sure it’s some part of “growing up” that anyone who is older than 20ish will come and say “Yea, been there. It sucked and it’s only going to get harder,” and I’m fine with that.

It’s just a good-weird feeling I have now being so close to being 20. 

To somewhat add to this whole “feeling” I am having, I was coming upstairs from my room after a nap today and had a mini-panic attack. I was thinking of how on bad days I work at a bare minimum just to get by and how in a worse-case scenario I would lose both of my jobs for some reason or another. Then sets in the “holy shit, I owe so much money in student loans” feeling. Then the, “holy fuck balls, I owe my parents my own weight in hundreds for raising me, how am I going to ever pay them back after paying for my student loans?” … it’s not fun. But as I said, this was a mini-panic attack, and those only come up randomly. 

Now, when something like that mini-panic attack hits me, I later start to think of how I’ll manage to pass all my classes and how I would have NO FUCKING CLUE of what to do if I didn’t get through college and get a degree. Pile on top of my relationship and how I would have no idea where that would go if I couldn’t find a job that paid well enough to pay back my loans and my parents and whatever debts I have. It turns into another mini-panic attack.

So, I guess what it comes down to is me being afraid of being a full-on adult. I mean, I know everyone gets scared of the unknown (some much more than others) at some point but I wonder sometimes if people have back up plans for their life. Like, for me, if I failed out of school I don’t know what I’d do. I’d seriously be fucked beyond reason. Or if I lost one or both of my jobs, I don’t know what I’d do. It scares me. I guess that is normal though, right? I mean, being a student my grades depend on me, so if I work hard I will/should do good in school. As for my jobs… it all depends. It’s the working world. You may get fired for doing shotty work, or for being lazy or for doing your job incorrectly or for being disliked (though, your employer would never say that). Thank whatever for the kindness of people when it comes to that though. 

Maybe it’s just me, but I see a lot of things in life as if they are hanging by the brim. It could be my irrational fear of whatever, but from where I sit and from what I know, I don’t see much security in a lot of things. I trust Google with my e-mail because I just do, but how do I know that some joe working at Google is having a bad day, does a bare minimum job and because of that someone can exploit some flaw in the GMail log-in system and get into my e-mail? I guess I don’t, and it’s my half-faith in humanity that reassures me that all is well. Yes I said half-faith… that’s for another time though.

So ranting aside, my birthday is coming up and I’m pretty excited. I’ll try to update and let whoever reads know how things went and how it feels to be 20. 

–ending note, I hate how I defend myself before being attacked when I write sometime…

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]]> http://www.mikerapin.com/blog/nearly-20-years-old-20081009.htm/feed Stressful two days http://www.mikerapin.com/blog/stressful-two-days-20080925.htm http://www.mikerapin.com/blog/stressful-two-days-20080925.htm#comments Fri, 26 Sep 2008 03:28:57 +0000 Mike http://www.mikerapin.com/blog/?p=251 I don’t know what it is, but since yesterday morning I have just felt damn stressed. Sure I know nothing of the pressures of being a non-student living in the “real world” but fucking hell I have been feeling stressed.

I could say that it all started when I ended up taking a shower on Tuesday night–where usually I take showers in the morning–and so on Wednesday my day was just whacked all out of shape from that. Or it could have been that I broke my Monday, Wednesday Thursday schedule of working for the web team on Wednesday morning going to the dentist and finding out I have a fucking cavity–I haven’t had one since I was nine (god damned wisdom teeth fucking everything up for me). Or it could be the massive amount of homework I’ve had since Tuesday and my first exam in CS350–a class so boring not even an energy drink can keep me awake–along with my German vocab quiz which is going to be harder than solid steel.

I just feel fucking stressed.

But with that aside, DestroyTheCyb.org! is doing fantastic. Mark Millar just featured THREE of our reviews in his forums (Jake’s War Heroes review, Nick’s Fantastic Four review and my Marvel 1985 review) and that just kicks so much ass. I really couldn’t be happier with that site, unless I had a few more writers… that’d be cool. haha

BUT, let’s hope tomorrow doesn’t fucking kill me. This exam is going to blow majorly because I couldn’t give two shits about software models, use cases and fucking software requirements. BLEH.

I’ll be back…

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]]> http://www.mikerapin.com/blog/stressful-two-days-20080925.htm/feed iPhone 2.1 update and a cool new feature I noticed http://www.mikerapin.com/blog/iphone-21-update-and-a-cool-new-feature-i-noticed-20080913.htm http://www.mikerapin.com/blog/iphone-21-update-and-a-cool-new-feature-i-noticed-20080913.htm#comments Sat, 13 Sep 2008 06:41:39 +0000 Mike http://www.mikerapin.com/blog/?p=246 With my iPhone woes (mainly that I have/had shitty signal at my house), I updated my iPhone to firmware 2.1 and boy has there been some significant changes:

The UI is much faster, the keyboard rarely–if ever–lagging and I’ve noticed that most applications load much faster and are way less lagging. Plus, my signal strength is a lot (I’m talking 2-3 bars worth) better. Overall, it’s a significant improvement and I haven’t found anything to complain about.

But one thing I noticed that was really cool was the viewing of multiple albums at a time. As shown in my  picture, you can see I was listening to a bunch of Girl Talk and as I was viewing all of the songs by Girl Talk each song has the album then the artist underneath it. I don’t know why, but I think this is awesome (especially for someone like me who might just make a random playlist of songs or maybe for those using the new Genius playlist). This same type of thing happens in a playlist (see the link at the end of the post).

Just wanted to contribute to the massive amounts of rants and raves for the 2.1 software.

Another picture, this time in a playlist.

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]]> http://www.mikerapin.com/blog/iphone-21-update-and-a-cool-new-feature-i-noticed-20080913.htm/feed Apples & Oranges first meeting of the year http://www.mikerapin.com/blog/apples-oranges-first-meeting-of-the-year-20080911.htm http://www.mikerapin.com/blog/apples-oranges-first-meeting-of-the-year-20080911.htm#comments Thu, 11 Sep 2008 15:50:09 +0000 Mike http://www.mikerapin.com/blog/?p=242 Well, it’s that time of year again; time for me to be the big man and head up the Apples & Oranges group for GVSU. Apples & Oranges, in case you didn’t know, is the Apple User Group for Grand Valley which I am president of.

Last night we had our first meeting and it was pretty good. I bought some ice cream chips and pop and at about 8:45pm, I ended up at the meeting. The usual suspects (ie. Nick, Rob and Beckey) showed up with probably 10 more new people along with our advisor, Eric. Jeff, my house-mate was there for the free food and pop, and Dallas and Samantha showed up for a moment. From how I saw it, it was actually a pretty damn good turn out. I got e-mails from two or three other people who wanted to be there but were either busy or just forgot, so I see that as a good sign for next week’s meeting.

This week, I kind of stood around like a professor and tried to help people with their Apple issues by talking them through the process. We got onto som crazy topics like torrents, converting movies for your iPod and ripping music from your iPod (specifically the iPod Touch, ugh). Nick and Rob had comments here and there and by the end I was sitting down trying to fix Mail problems which sucked (I absolutely hate Mail).

Outside of having no structure and me not having my damn mini-DVI to VGA adapter to show people how to do things on the projector, it was a pretty good meeting. Next week I’ll have to take a more commanding lead and keep the discussions focused. We drifted a lot.. but I’m not going to go further than that. As I said, next week will have to be more focused.

I have plans to show off how to rip music off of your iPod (specifically the iTouch, but also any other iPod) as well as maybe showing how to transfer your iTunes library. Nick wanted to show off Transmission and how to use BitTorrent so we may have 2 mini-meetings going on. After next week I want to definitely show people how to use Handbrake and iSquint, then maybe one day I’ll show off the greatness that is Quicksilver. All in good time though.

Here’s to hoping next week is just as successful as this week.

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]]> http://www.mikerapin.com/blog/apples-oranges-first-meeting-of-the-year-20080911.htm/feed Random IMs — wtf? http://www.mikerapin.com/blog/random-ims-wtf-20080820.htm http://www.mikerapin.com/blog/random-ims-wtf-20080820.htm#comments Wed, 20 Aug 2008 20:43:13 +0000 Mike http://www.mikerapin.com/blog/?p=229 I’ve been on AIM a long time. I mean, a long time. And this is probably the first time I’ve ever really been harassed on AIM by a bot-type service.

Up until about 3 days ago I hadn’t really ever been bothered too much on AIM by anyone… I mean, I have come across some weirdos, but starting about 3 days ago I’ve been getting random instant messages from screen names from people whose names end in “trout” and always ask a question or say something that should get you to respond (see picture for this post).

I have learned to not respond at this point but, it just so happens that I talked to one person for a small bit of time. She was very polite and used some random internet slang which had me convinced she wasn’t a bot. It turns out that on my end, her screen name appeared to be “weightytrout” and mine appeared to be “MortifiedTrout”… it was odd. Especially since the IM started like this:

weightytrout: You’re downright wonderful! I love you, I love you, I love you!
Me: ?
WeightyTrout: um…
Me: um
WeightyTrout: uuuumm, why would I die?
Me: what?
WeightyTrout: who is this?
Me: Mike
Me: who is this?

and the conversation continued and this person (it was a girl) ended up being kind of cool. Now, I don’t know how the hell someone could have gotten my AIM screen name since I don’t really give it out too much, but someone has it and is using it in a strange anonymous-based random-meeting type thing… I don’t know what to call it… I’m not sure if this whole *trout thing is supposed to be a way to get people to randomly meet or whatever but it’s getting damn annoying since I get 3-5 of these IMs a day. So long as I don’t respond, nothing happens, but yeesh…

What really surprises me about all of this is that in all of the years I’ve used AIM I’ve never had a problem with bots or anything like that (though there was one time I got some crazy AIM hacker virus when I was in 7th grade that spammed all of your buddies thus making a giant chain of death). I mean, MSN and Yahoo! chat are always prone to random pr0n-bot IMs but this surprised me, especially since AIM is usually pretty good about that stuff (as far as I know).

Let me know in the comments if you’ve gotten anything similar on your AIM account(s) and maybe we can figure this thing out… somehow…

–UPDATE–

I tweeted this post and a fellow Twitter user (@funkcoaster) pointed me to a wikipedia article explaining this fun little happening. It turns out (from what the user(s) who created this article think) that Facebook is to blame for this random “attack” on random screen names. Nothing malicious has come out of this (yet) so here’s to hoping AIM won’t kill us all.

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]]> http://www.mikerapin.com/blog/random-ims-wtf-20080820.htm/feed Move in was a complete success! http://www.mikerapin.com/blog/move-in-was-a-compete-success-20080817.htm http://www.mikerapin.com/blog/move-in-was-a-compete-success-20080817.htm#comments Sun, 17 Aug 2008 17:06:59 +0000 Mike http://www.mikerapin.com/blog/?p=219
We're so bad-ass we have THREE TV's in our living room! Ha! Beat that you scurvy bastards!

We're so bad-ass we have THREE TV's in our living room! Ha! Beat that you scurvy bastards!


Despite Dallas’ problem with money (there really wasn’t a problem) we got everything move in okay yesterday. Penny (Jeff’s mom/landlord of sorts) just finished putting in a metal rod in the closet in my room this morning–so Dallas and I can hang things up and such–so we’re all set in our room.

We got 90% of our stuff unpacked by about 1AM last night and set out how we like it and we should be about 99.9% moved in as of tonight. Of course, after that Dallas went straight to bed given that she had to work at 6AM today. I, on the other hand, stayed up until about 4:30AM with my room mate Bud watching some TV and having some extra-fun. But before we could watch TV we decided to move Jeff’s little 19-inch TV into the kitchen set up my 32-inch TV. After moving the little TV and setting up the 32-inch TV I realized that I didn’t have the remote to turn it on (the power button is all fucked up on the actual front of the TV) so we decided to use Bud’s 22-inch TV… which we found Bud didn’t have the remote for. SO! We ended up rolling Jeff’s little TV back into the living room, thus the picture at the beginning of the post. What a fun first night. haha

We watched the Roast of Pamela Anderson for a bit and had some Dr. Pepper and some Coke Zero… Bud’s girlfriend conked out earlier in the night but woke up at about 2:30AM or so to watch TV and hang out. We had a good time.

I’m thinking this year is going to kick ass living here. Now I’m going to go get some Subway or something because I have NO goceries and Dallas isn’t around to go grocery shopping…

[Slashdot] [Digg] [Reddit] [del.icio.us] [Facebook] [Technorati] [Google] [StumbleUpon] No tags for this post.]]> http://www.mikerapin.com/blog/move-in-was-a-compete-success-20080817.htm/feed Moving — Day 1 http://www.mikerapin.com/blog/moving-day-1-20080815.htm http://www.mikerapin.com/blog/moving-day-1-20080815.htm#comments Fri, 15 Aug 2008 12:23:12 +0000 Mike http://www.mikerapin.com/blog/?p=211 Hey look, my stuff is packed up

Hey look, my stuff is packed up

So, I’m in the process of moving right now. Currently I’m living in an apartment in Allendale, MI, with my buddy Nick Nelson and have been doing so since the end of April. It’s been fun.

The new house I’m moving to is in Allendale as well, although a bit further into the actual city. It’s not such a bad distance from GVSU (probably around 4 miles) so biking to class is an option for the upcoming school year which is pretty cool–if I can buy a bike or get one donated to me. In the meantime I’ll be driving back and forth every day, but it’s not so bad.

As I said, I’m in the process of moving so today I plan on moving some boxes over with things I don’t need at the apartment–computer parts/accessories, books, DVDs, etc.–and somehow I plan on pulling some money out of my ass to pay nt only the $950 for this semester, but also the $400 security deposit. Sadly this vast amount of cash is putting Dallas on the brim wondering if she’ll be able to afford living at this house with me. We’ll see how that pans out this coming weekend…

Now, I’m excited to be living in this new house but like any house, it’s going to have it’s problems… For one, the house apparently is prone to flood but only if the electricity is out… so let’s hope that never happens.

This of course brings up the question of which room I want to live in and I have three options–all have closets mind you:

  1. Upstairs in a room that gets sun all day thus tends to be hot, has stained/not fun carpet, and has 1 big window. This is probably the smallest room.
  2. Downstairs in a room with no carpet, just cement floor, has 1 medium sized window, a cool mini-entertainment center built into the wall, one wall has a ledge to stack movies/books/etc and the room tends to pool small amounts of condensation on the floor every so often. Probably the middle-sized room.
  3. The biggest room, has a ledge on 2 walls for books/movies/etc., has tiled floor, 2 medium sized windows, a light in the closet, has no tv access (the other two do), and tends to flood the least if there is a flood.

So those are my options. Let me say that this house was left in a terrible state by it’s previous inhabitants so all of the problems with the rooms were caused by those who lived their last… also the basement flooded this past spring thus ruining all of the carpet in the basement, so that’s a factor.

I’m just waiting on Dallas to see if she will be able to live at this house… she claims she can’t afford it, but that’s so not true. I know she’s just worried about the possibility of not having enough money which is understandable, but as of three days ago she was all for living at this house whereas now she isn’t… I’ll see how this weekend goes after I move in and she sees the house and I’m hoping she’ll change her mind once she sees the house and all that jazz.

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