'Sup all you sons and daughters of mothers and fathers!

I was cruising around Microsoft.com yesterday, and I encountered something that rocked my socks off. First off, Internet Explorer 7 beta 2 was released, and it includes a bunch of things that should have been added much earlier, such as support for tabbed browsing, and RSS feeds. Also, CSS Level 2 is getting a lot more support!

Then, I was surprised uber alles. here I encountered Visual Studio Express, a suite of applications that Microsoft offers free. That's right. Free. I'm talking about compilers for every .NET language you can name. Visual C++, Visual Basic, Visual J#, C#, and of course ASP.NET. The interface is hard to master (I still haven't), but it's a. free. compiler. from. Microsoft.

Also, I'm gathering material for a new Bloghogger template (a project of mine that has had more false starts than Howard Dean's presidential campaign). I think I have the key to its future success in the following:

td { overflow: scroll;}

Some of you may recognize this choice bit of CSS, but I think with a regulatory glance at the sidebars (or by linking to the link page?) we can compact this site into incomprehensibilityocityness. yep.

I know. It's been a millennium since I've went on a rampage of the 'rant' variety.
Don't worry, I'm sure I'll think of something I loathe. Lately, (as in the past 5 months) I've been in a pretty good mood (meaning my manic-depressive stage is over). Hence, the rant department is going bankrupt, and someone needs to remedy this horrible situation.

BUT HAVE NO FEAR!

I'll whip something up sooner or later. Of course, I could be lying. I've been known to promise things but then never get around to actually doing them.

Anywhaaaahh, I'll be poppin' out a pipin' hot rant for y'all, gangsta'.

Seeyu.

I knew it.

And everyone thought he was just a sweet 2D Italian plumber. Yeah right.

You Belong in Barcelona

When it comes to Europe, you don't want to decide between culture and fun. You want art by day and a big party by night. Barcelona is ideal for you. You can check out some Picasso, eat some tapas, take a siesta, and then dance all night!

Hola, fools! As Brian mentioned, he and I recently attended MegaMission '06 in Sacramento, CA! I succeeded in raising him up from his laziness long enough to get us to the Seattle-Tacoma international airport. Then we acomplished the miracle of getting through security at the said airport. Two hours later, after a small oxygen-related delay (if thirty minutes is your idea of small), we were in the air. Landing in SMF, we noticed that something was very different from the place we had just left. There was no urban sprawl covering half the country in every direction. It had been replaced by wall-to-wall farms and other agricultural land-hoggers.

After we collected our luggage and were found by our picker-upper, we went to the National Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, played some B-ball, and got hungry. Our picker-upper, Pablo, had mentioned that there was basically no fast food in that area of Sacramento, and that he'd be happy to drive us to a restaurant, but he mysteriously disappeared when we came back from our b-ball binge. So we decided to walk for some food. One of the girls doing registration for the mission warned us that this was gang country, but we were undeterred. When we came back with the results of our sacking of the local back-alley barely legal grocery store, the registration girls were surprised to see me only with a nicked ear and a slug in the leg, and Brian cradling his arm and sobbing. heh heh.

After the commissioning mass, we got shoved into a car full of spanish speaking people for about an hour. Occasionally one of them would say something while looking at us, and the whole carload would erupt in laughter. Brian and I would grin ignorantly and more laughter would ensue. Once we got to the thriving city of Maxwell (population: 25 counting us) we had a really fun time, missionizing, playing soccer and basketball, and chilling with the cool kids that showed up along with us.

Hey! Wuz up, foo’s? Joe and I just got back from CA, and boy, do we have some wild stories to tell you!

Okay, first off, an introduction to this whole Sacramento business: A while ago, Joe persuaded me to come along on a door-to-door mission he attended last year. Joe, being extremely charismatic, knew I had no chance of refusing. Thus, we jumped on a plane and flew to Sacramento.
The difference between Seattle and Sacramento
The main difference between Seattle and Sacramento is the subtle fact that THERE WERE NO HILLS IN SACRAMENTO. It was completely flat. The second thing one might notice about SAC is that there are no fast food joints anywhere. Joe and I walked a good mile and couldn't find anything food related, except for a small, seedy grocery store located in some alleyway.
The third thing that stood out was the palm tree-like things that towered over everything. Oh, did I mention everyone was Mexican (exaggeration)?
The Mission: (This is an extremely brief summary of the mission. Hopefully, Joe will enlighten you later)
The mission took place in a tiny down called Maxwell (sp?). Seriously, you could throw a rock from one end of the town to the other. It was...small, to say the least. Around 80% of the population is Spanish speaking, which made things...interesting (Joe and I were some of the few kids who didn't know Spanish). Anyway, we were supposed to go door-to-door inviting people to church events and asking the people if they had prayer requests.
I don't want to get into too much detail, but we had some pretty memorable (and hilarious) adventures. These adventures ranged from visiting hospitable Mexican Catholic families, to being verbally assaulted by lunatic Protestant crazy people (Joe will fill you in).

Anyway, I made some awesome friends (despite the sometimes obvious language barrier) and had a lot of fun doing it.
P.S. Sorry 4 gramatical erors, im 2 sleapy 2 fix them.

Needless to say, I'm not actually shutting down the blog. And I don't think I need to apologize to anyone for this immensely retarded "prank," seeing as how I posted it on the 1st of April (C'mon!).
And no, I was joking when I said we only got 7 hits a day. ;)

Oh, and all you useless Maddox wannabe tool sheds at Ubersite can burn in the Horned One's domain..

IN OTHER NEWS:

Joe and I will be gone for around a week. We'll be down in Sacramento being rained on, which sucks. Why? Because one of the many reasons I hate Seattle so much is because of the pervasive downpours. Therefore, CA won't be much better. C'mon! It's never supposed to rain in CA! Oh well.

Merry Christmas

I just found the disturbing piece of news that Brian is planning to shut this little operation down. Not on my watch. Maybe things are slow, but they sure ain't dead. Anyway, after that little pep talk...
I just got back from a hiking trip (though I'd really call it an "expotition" if you Winnie-the-Pooh fans know what I mean) throughout the area of the Palouse Falls in Washington. It was awesome, in that my previous image of Eastern Washington being a dry, sagebrush-y and overall boring place was blown out of the water (ugh. No pun intended). Picture some of this:
Staring over a chain-link fence, you see below you a pool of muddy, coffee colored water, which is surrounded by soaring cliffs of rock over which creeps moss, grass and shrub. Above the pool, through a niche carved into the top of the cliffs, thousands upon thousands of gallons of water are cascading downwards, a miniature Niagra.
About five hundred feet east-ish of this spectacle is another: The river flowing from the falls curves and winds about two hundred feet directly below you as you look down, and as you look up...You see an expanse of green hills which suddenly collapse into a craggy gorge through which the river is following its millenia-old path. Over this view, the sunlight seemingly flows through the gray rain clouds that are now dispersing, and the entire view is lit with the burning, golden light of sun after a storm. Wow.
Then, go a ways south and you see wooden power lines, lacing electricity across the landscape, their insulators glinting like glass buttons. These power lines are running parallel to a railroad, which is just emerging from a canyon of dynamite-carved rock. You are standing at the very point where the canyon walls slope back to the ground, and looking down at the tracks, you can imagine dust-smeared workers hacking and chipping through the rock decades previously, planting the dynamite charges that will blow tons of the stone sky-high.

Once the tracks have emerged from the canyon, you see alongside them three, maybe four trees. These trees are old, their branches bare of leaves but covered in yellowish moss, and they have a thin, twisting, spiky beauty to them that speaks of age. Blaaaugh, I'm waxing unforgivably poetic, but unfortunately for you this is cyberspace, and you can't slap me. Hah!
The last stop I want to mention is farther away, to the north. Once again, you eventually find yourself staring down a craggy precipice, but this one is only fifty feet or so, and a somewhat muddy trail will lead you down it. You follow it down and find yourself alongside the same railroad you were next to earlier, walking on a bed of rocks that, once again, have likely been blown to bits by explosives. Wheeeee.
The trail switches back down a steep hill covered in these rocks, and eventually, when you're at the bottom of this hill, you then enter a forest of exceptionally tall sagebrush, about as tall as a full-grown man. Over this sagebrush, you can see a sheer bluff of basalt columns looming in the background, and in the center of this bluff is a strange pockmark, formed by some of the columns curving about in a very peculiar way.
Through the sagebrush you can see swirling, roaring rapids, muddy brown like the rest of the Palouse River. In and around the rapids are rocks, random lumps of land, and one or two outcroppings that make a fine place to stop and have lunch. In the midst of this, you stop for quite a while, to savor both your surroundings and the pleasant change in the weather. As you sit on a rock outcropping, staring at the bluff, the sagebrush, the swirling brown rapids, whatever, you reflect on how beautiful the place is, contrary to your previous perception of the area as being either shrubby or dead. You wish you could come down into this little valley, with the bluff and the rapids, as often as you liked, becuase while it's beautiful, it's not a tourist destination; it's not riddled with trails, litter, and plaques describing how Lewis and Clark fought of the Hopi Indians here, or whatever. It's deserted. It's a haven. As C.S. Lewis may have liked to put it, it's a patch of God-light.

I'm sorry this has to come at such a random moment, but I'm shutting down Blog Hogger for good.
Most of the posters on Blog Hogger have informed me that they are unable to post anymore (due to family matters, internet access troubles, school etc). As a matter of fact, Joe is the only one who is still capable of posting, but he's too busy being Joe ("Joe" = busy with school).
And if that isn't bad enough, we're now getting only 7 hits per day, including me.
Not too long ago, Blog Hogger was actually getting 70 hits per day, and before that, 100 hits per day. Now, unfortunately, BH suffers only 7 hits per day, and 3 comments per post if lucky.
Trust me, I visit this blog at least seven times a day, and I can assure you that most activity is dead.

To make a long story short, I've removed almost all the contributors from Blog Hogger and I've now informed Blogger.com of the shutdown (which means the blog will be deleted in a few days). Sorry for the quick unexpected deletion. There's a lot happening in my life, and a lot happening with my friends.

You can email me if you wish to ask me any specific questions about why I'm shutting down the blog (email link listed under BH title).

Seeyu for now,

Brian

P.S. I'm sure I'll get around to updating some of my other Internet stuff (Myspace, Newgrounds, Randomocity [doubt it though]).

It's been a good 3 years, guys :(