A New Meaning For Patriotism

So it's official. I've been accepted to George Mason University's Software Engineering program for this fall. Who knew that onc sentence could change my life so much. For at least (the very least) next 2 years I'll be living in and around Fairfax, VA. For those of you who don't know, that's right near Washington D.C.. Which is a very VERY big place. I've only been there twice in my entire life so the big thing I'm going to have to get used to is living without that SWVA friendliness and with that NOVA every-man-for-himself-ness.

Luckily I won't be completely alone there as I know several people from up that way. It seems like the more people I tell, the more say "Oh I used to live near D.C.", which makes me feel a little better.

The awesome thing is that I'll have my own apartment, which will be a first. I've never been by myself away from home before, so it will definitely be a HUGE adventure.

Element(ary) My Dear Watson.

And so another 5 months have passed with absolutely no blog post. Let me update you. First off, I'm about to graduate with my B.S. in Computer Science from UVA-Wise. This is both exciting and scary at the same time since I'll be officially in the "Real World" after May 19th. I've got a few options right now, and all seem to be leading in the direction of the Reston/Fairfax/Washington D.C. area. I'm not really worried about moving since I've got some friends up that way. It's really just the fact that I'll be away from the other 99% of my friends and family that I'll be leaving behind. I won't be able to just call everyone up and go play games or music or run to Wal-Mart like I always have.

In other news, I got a new vehicular! That's right, the parents helped me get a new 2007 Honda Element. It's absolutely the perfect car for me: enough space for all my guitar gear, hidey holes everywhere, everything is water resistant so I can throw my snowboard in there, and enough gadgetry to get my tech fix.

So, graduation soon and then probably a one-way road trip. Hope they have some good snowboarding up that way because I wanna get some use out of my new toaster on wheels.

-Ryan

New Year. Old Hat.

So we herded in the new year of 2007 with festivities at my house this year. On the list of those attending were my immediate family, Sabrina, Coby, Brett, Sarah, Ryan (J), and April. For a lot of the time we played a bunch of random games from Bubble Brain to DVD Scene It. However, we probably spent the most time playing the Nintendo Wii that I waited in line for back in November. If any of you out there haven't played it yet you really should because you can use it as an invaluable tool to persuade parents and "old folks" that video games aren't so bad after all...in fact, they may actually have some fun with it. For example, you would imagine that me, being the big video game fanatic in the household (and the fact that I own the system), that I would be playing it more than I do. Actually, Dad plays it almost as much as I do. Every game of bowling that you play, you can add a few points (usually around 20~30 points) to your overall rating. It takes 1000 points to reach "Pro" status and Dad has been Pro for at least a month and his rating has constantly gone up every time I turn on the Wii.

Anyway, back to New Years. We all played board games, the Wii and from 2:00AM to 5:30AM we played the infamous Gears of War. Brett seems to be wanting to get a 360, and so I let him play on Xbox Live for the first time during the XBLive Gears for New Years event. During one of his last matches he came back as the last person in the squad and chainsawed the last 2 members of the other team.

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of all the festivities right now, but Sabrina took a ton with her new Canon SLR 30D (I think that's the name of it) camera. She takes great pictures so I'll see if I can get a bunch of those and post a link to them.