As some of you may know, I am a 2006 graduate of Kent State University. I spent thousands upon thousands of dollars on tuition, housing, and books. I was quite, for the lack of a better word, poor during those few years. After graduation, I was thrilled to not have to send the school anymore money - loans were a different issue, though. A little over a year goes by and the school is pestering me to donate money - whether it be for an alumni association or just for the sake of donating. For numerous reasons, I will not be donating money.

First off, the school refused to award me scholarships or grants. Not to toot my own horn, but I was valedictorian of my high school and the school would not give me the Valedictorian Scholarship (approximately $3000 per year). The reasoning: I was considered a transfer student and not an incoming freshman, although I was still a freshman.

Secondly, one of the measly grants I did receive ($500) was rescinded because a few of the classes I took were not at the main campus - even though my major was based out of the main campus. Pardon my language, but what a crock of shit.

Thirdly, and probably the topper, while still a student at Kent State (a sophomore to be exact), the school called my mother asking to donate money. That doesn't sound too surprising, but wait, here it comes: the school even called me, still a student, asking to donate money. So, I am paying tuition and you want me to give you even more money. No thanks.

After complaining and meeting with financial aid and student affairs for two years, I was awarded $1000 for my last semester - probably to shut me up. That didn't satisfy me, but it was better than nothing.

Why do I bring this up? It's because I received a letter addressed to Miss Kevin Slodic to join the alumni association. Yes, that is correct, Miss Kevin Slodic. Kevin is a male's name - Wikipedia says so! I don't know or have heard of one single female named Kevin (correct me if I'm wrong). This could most definitely be an honest mistake, but I do not care. It is just one more reason why I will not be giving the school anymore money.

I know I'm ranting and I apologize, but the school acted more like a business than an institution. For the dedication I had towards my academics - graduating summa cum laude - I only received approximately $1,500 from Kent State. Gee, thanks. Whatever, time has passed and I am a graduate, I have a good job, and my school loans are almost paid off - things turned out fine. Let's hope they stay that way. I guess this was just big outburst because of the letter addressed to Miss Kevin Slodic.

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For those of you who may know me, I like the music of Tim Kasher (Cursive and The Good Life - brought to the world by Saddle Creek Records). So, I was listening to The Good Life's Album of the Year and I came across an image of Dennis Kucinich while browsing the web - it was either an article on digg or one of those lame "Guess Who This Person Is and Win a Free iPod" ads. As I stared at Dennis's image, I thought to myself, "wow, Tim Kasher and Dennis Kucinich look very similar" (minus the twenty-eight year age difference).

Now, it was quite difficult to visually display their facial similarities because of the age difference and it was hard to find a good picture of Tim - he either has his mouth wide open (singing) or has the full beard, but I was able to find a decent black and white photo. It would have been better if it was a straight on shot of his face, but oh well. I was also able to snag a picture of Dennis from his mayoral days in Cleveland to make their ages fairly close (what would I do without Wikipedia).

In my opinion, they have a similar nose, squinty eyes, and an almost exact hair style. Also, I saw an image of Dennis with his wife and he was wearing a tuxedo that reminded me of the tux Tim wore when I saw Cursive play at the House of Blues. Maybe when I get some time, I'll post those two pictures as well.

Hopefully the descriptions and images I provided help you realize I'm not nuts. Do some image searching yourself and try to find some more similarities. As a reminder, I don't have the comment section up yet, so if you want to send me a message, please go to the contact page.

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To put it lightly, I'm a bad, I mean horrible, blogger. My last blog was a month ago and I promised I would write consistently. I'm not going to make promises like that anymore, because I'll probably end up breaking them.

On to web talk, I've been introduced to two new pieces of software for web development - Coda by Panic and Eclipse. I haven't really tested either, but from my reading, they sound great. Panic has Terminal, Transmit (one of the best OS X FTP clients around), and a Javascript console built in. Eclipse is suited for PHP development and displays server and client-side syntax errors (very helpful in the development environment). It is very similar to Visual Studio (which is a great IDE, even though I may not like the .NET framework very much). I will have to test out both of these programs.

That's pretty much it for now. Also, I still need to work on the comments section of my blog, I know I've been slacking. Until next time...

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Today my friend Bill at Weeping Willow Design sent me a message:

dude...

check out the image...

http://www.nintendowiifanboy.com/2007/11/29/vc-brings-in-cash-but-it-doesnt-print-money/

Upon clicking the link, I found that the blogger Candace Savino at Nintendo Wii Fanboy used my Wii Points OS X Widget as the image for her blog about the virtual console.

It felt good inside that the work I did on a not-too-useful widget was acknowledged.

I thank Bill for sending me the link and also to Candace Savino for using my image.

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My last blog was almost a month ago. I told myself I would update frequently, but I have failed at that. Do I have a good excuse for not blogging? No, not really. I have plenty of time to write up a quick blurb (during lunch at work, when I get home from work, etc.). I will make up some excuses, though.

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption and Guitar Hero III for Wii have consumed my life for the past few weeks. I beat Metroid with 100% pickups and it took me around 19-20 hours to beat. It was a good game. Guitar Hero III is addicting. I played through on Normal and thoroughly enjoyed it. Playing on Hard and using the orange fret button is a tad difficult for me, since I never owned the previous ones. I'm sure I'll get the hang of it soon.

Enough with the Wii talk, some news on a project - MakeMiiFamous is going through a redesign. I'm redesigning it from the ground up using Actionscript 3.0, cleaning the database, and tidying some things up. So, look for the new changes in the next few weeks. Also, if there is anyone out there that would like some help on a project just send me a message

There will be a new blog in the next few days. I promise.

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