I relaxed a little more. I kind of let myself spread outside of the confines of my room. All good things must come to an end, however, and my remaining roommate returned yesterday.

I almost wish he hadn’t left, because I got used to living alone. I could wander around the apartment in my underwear whenever. I could leave dishes and pans in the sink for a couple days. I didn’t have to get my clothes out of the dryer as soon as they were dry. I could leave a mess of razors and face cleaning stuff in the bathroom.

But now I have to go back to living-with-other-people mode. And it’s annoying.

Last night I simply could not sleep. I tossed and turned for what must have been at least an hour. I’m woken up this morning by a phone call. I knew that the weather today would be shitty so I was expecting this to be my instructor telling me that she’s canceling this morning’s flight. It was my instructor, but she was asking whether or not I planned on coming in this morning. I had overslept. So we plan on me coming in at 9:30 and I apologize for oversleeping, and then I’m getting ready. I had apparently not re-set my alarm for this morning and it was still set for 10AM, which is when I woke up yesterday.

I get to the airport and my instructor had left me a practice exam to do while she was in a meeting. This practice exam is in preparation for a test that I have to take before I’m allowed to fly solo, and it’s kind of a big deal. There’s a certain number of failures, which implies that the test is somewhat difficult, and if you bomb out you’re done in the flight program. The practice test is short answer, which is the bane of my existence. I can take multiple choice tests all day but short answer is the worst because then I actually have to recall the things I’ve learned.

The practice test went well though, and I did pretty well on it. My confidence was building and my instructor and I went over the questions I missed and a couple of things that weren’t on the practice test. She asks me if I wanted to take the pre-solo written now. I was feeling pretty good about it and I know it’s a multiple choice test and by now I just want to get it done with so I agreed. She did some admin stuff, and made a phone call, and then she asked me if I had an E6B with me. The E6B is a little metal plate with some slides and charts for computing numbers quickly. I don’t entirely know what it’s used for. I told her my E6B is at my apartment because we haven’t really used it yet. She told me it wasn’t a big deal, if there were any questions involving the E6B it’d only be one or two, and I’d probably be OK guessing them. Another instructor pipes up to say that his student (a friend of mine) just took the test and didn’t even need the E6B. With that she sent me up to the terminal to take the test.

I got up there and talked to the lady to administers the test. She asked me if I needed a pencil or any materials. I couldn’t fathom what materials I would need beyond the E6B which I am now not concerned with, so I went into the testing room which what I have; a pen and my coat. She handed me a blue binder and piece of scrap paper. The test is computerized through Blackboard so I logged in, and started it. The questions were worded a little different from the practice exam and some of them covered topics not even hinted at in the practice exam, but it was a multiple choice test and I considered myself pretty knowledgeable as far as I’d been in the course. Then I got to a question that referred to figures and diagrams. This is a computerized test and there were no figures or diagrams on the screen so I assumed this was one of those E6B questions that I can disregard. I made an educated guess and moved on. I got to another question that referred to figures. Okay, two questions out of 36 isn’t that bad. All told there were about 5 questions involving figures. By the end of the test, I was slightly concerned. I submitted my answers and logged out.

Then I noticed that blue binder the lady gave me. I opened it up, and lo and behold, diagrams and figures. It was a little late now, though, because I had already submitted my answers and logged out. Oh well. At least I get multiple tries at this exam, right? I returned the binder and my scrap paper and the lady kind of looked at me like I was done, even though Blackboard didn’t immediately give me my score, and she clearly wasn’t going to tell me. Okay, I guess that means my instructor will let me know how I did.

Back in my instructor’s cubicle, another of her students is already there. She was astonished at how fast I had finished the test and asked me how I did. I made a face and told her about the blue binder. She assumed that I had failed and asked me if I wanted to try to get a retry now based on the fact that I’d missed out of the blue binder, or if I wanted another day to study and I could give it another go tomorrow. I knew that the difference in taking it with the binder would have saved my score so I told her I wanted to try to re-take it now.

She called the lady to administered the test and told her I didn’t know about the blue binder and that I failed. As soon as the words “failed” exited her mouth, I had to interject that I didn’t actually know my score and that I may not have failed. I was not looking forward to re-taking that test and if I passed, then the blue binder is moot. My instructor hung up with the lady, so she could try to check my score. Her account wouldn’t show her my score, so she asked me to log in to see if it’d tell me. Sure enough, I got 26 out of 36. Quick math revealed that I got a 72%. My instructor called up the lady to ask what was needed to pass and she’s told a 70%. Even without the blue binder and the diagrams, I passed.

That shit is embarrassing. I am so totally okay with bombing out on a test. I’m okay with bombing a test because I’m too dumb to realize that I have the testing materials and I’m not using them. But no, this time I get to limp across the finish line, with a barely passing grade. I almost would have rather failed the test and re-taken it and gotten an appropriate score, rather than slide through with the absolute minimum score.

I know my agonizing is ridiculous. I know passing is passing, and no one really cares how well (or poorly) I did on my pre-solo written exam. But I am seriously embarrassed.

I still have a theater class and a philosophy class to get through, on this rainy, embarrassing, shit day.

I came back to Carbondale last night. Okay drive but it was all in the rain. Both of my roommates were gone. This morning I found out the little refrigerator that I use to keep my soda in was turned off for however long they were gone for. It was gross though because my roommates keep some meat in the freezer section and it had all de-thawed and stank.

Then my xbox 360 died. Not like the last time it died, where it was acting weird and not turning on but ended up working fine. No, this time it won’t turn back on without showing a screen that says E79 error. E79 is hard drive related, and since it won’t turn on with or without the hard drive, the internet tells me that the console is fucked. I have the good fortune of having just received a big check from the government for god knows what, so I didn’t have much work convincing myself that the best solution was to replace it entirely.

Soooo I did. I went to Best Buy first but they didn’t have any of the bundles with Halo: ODST and Forza 3. I found one at Gamestop. It was possibly one of the best experiences I’ve had at a Gamestop. I asked the lady behind the counter if they had one, she said they did and got it for me, and rang me right up. No Game Informer, no reservations, no warranty, no bullshit. In and out in less than 5 minutes.

I got it home and agonized over opening it. Unopened, I can still return it for a full refund. Once I opened it, though, it’s all mine. I stared at it for a while. I plugged my old xbox back in and tried it again. Same crap. Then I bit the bullet, took out my knife, and broke the seal.

Don’t get me wrong; I did want a new xbox. I wanted a bigger hard drive and quieter console and more reliable hardware. I just didn’t want it like this; my old xbox in a state of limbo, not entirely dead but definitely a brick until I open it up. I’m still going to need a transfer kit to move all my savegames and downloads from my old hard drive to my new hard drive.

I did it. I have a new xbox, huge (well, 120 GB) hard drive, HDMI support, another controller and headset, and Forza 3 and a bonus copy of ODST. Life is almost good again.

Visceral Games is now making Dante’s Inferno. It’s a God of War-esque button smasher. They took a low-key walk through hell and social commentary, and turned it into blood soaked tits and violence. It is a remarkable departure from the source as well as an enormous shift from the tone of Dead Space.

Dead Space has a lot of action and violence but it’s deliberate. You’re encouraged to conserve ammo by taking aimed shots at limbs. There’s an equipment upgrade system that allows you to choose what upgrades you want and how you get to them. It has a lot of scares and shocks but it’s also nearly impossible to fight off a crowd by panicking and wildly blasting away. There’s only two actual guns in the game! The rest are industrial tools!

After Dante’s Inferno, Visceral’s focus will shift to Dead Space 2. There is so little information that has excited me about Dead Space 2 that it may drop off of my wanted list entirely. From what I’ve read, it features more wide open environments, more aggressive gameplay, and a no-longer-silent protagonist! So what, they’re turning Dead Space into Dante’s Inferno in space?

For being an unreleased and, thus far, barely developed game, I am amazingly bitter and unexcited about what should be an impossibly easy sale.

I’m done with Digg and Reddit.

Digg has slowly devolved into strictly stupid pictures and top 10 lists. Reddit gets huffs and tisks at every wrong doing while rarely doing anything about them and is a general wellspring of negativity.

Now I am batshit insane about getting new news but only when it’s stuff I care about. I could not care less about top 10′s, dumb pictures, and I can wait for good tech news if it means I don’t have to wade through a sea of bitterness. So I’m back to relying on old favorites, Slashdot and Ars Technica, and Google News.

I call the admissions office to ask if I can fax it to them. The first person to answer sounded a little overwhelmed and I think they shut off as soon as I said “veteran” because they immediately transferred me to the veterans advisory office. I spoke to someone there who gave me a number to which I could fax this letter and called it a day.

Two weeks pass and no letter of admission. I’m getting anxious. This letter of admission is the one piece of paper I need to start the process of getting out of the Army early enough to start school in January rather than have to wait until August of next year. I’m stuck in the field so Katie emails the admissions office a letter I dictate to her over the phone.

Over the course of a week of slow email conversation the admissions office gives me another fax number (apparently the one I had used before was just the veterans advisory fax and they’re not the ones who needed my letter, the admissions office does) and I fax off the letter again and admissions tells me that they have it and I’m in and I can expect a letter in the mail in the next couple weeks.

So I wait.

Recently (May?) the Army lifted their ban on social networks. From work I can get to Facebook and Twitter and otherwise. We hypothesized that the motivation behind this was that it makes it easier for soldiers to tell share their stories and communicate easier. I guess the Marines still have their heads up their collective asses and continue trying to stop their service members from sharing their perspectives.

Here’s a friendly heads-up to the senior leadership of the Marine Corps: those who want to get their stories out will. If they have to jump through a million hoops and fight off a command that strives to stifle them, those stories probably won’t be told in a positive light, if there was a positive light to them to begin with.

This really sucks. To those of us insane enough to care about the details such as packaging, as time goes by our selection of buyable games will continue to diminish. Thanks to others’ lack of concern, the prices of complete games will artificially jump up just for the fact of having the whole game in one piece.

What is so hard about keeping the game in the case with it’s manual? It makes sense! It’s one package that keeps the disc safe and the manual handy in an attractive package!

Here’s the shirt. It’s rather thin, which is why I chose it because it’s kind of hot out, but that didn’t help me much in the fall.

Left hand. Just a couple scrapes. Not pictured: Right hand. Can you break the tip of your pinky? Because it felt bruised, now it feels numb and it’s turning purple.

Right hip. I don’t even feel this. I only noticed it when I stripped down to hose off.

Right leg. This kind of burns but at least it’s clean.

My back and shoulder. It too kind of burns.

After I’d hit the ground, I jumped up because I don’t trust drivers in the area I fell and I didn’t want to become roadkill too. I almost wanted to complete my trip but after getting a good look at my right forearm I decided it’d be better for me to turn around and go home and hose off. I called Katie and she freaked out and yelled at me to go see a doctor. My medics weren’t there today but I went to my assigned clinic and one of the medics there patched me up. The white bandage comes off tomorrow, it’s not so bad. The tan one I’ll probably take off Sunday night. It’s the worst of my injuries. Pictures of both of those forthcoming!