And hey, I’ll admit it – sometimes I catch myself slipping up and committing one of these heinous crimes of rhetoric, although I do try to stop myself before I go to far. But if anyone wants to call me out for being, say, Mr. Redundant, I don’t really have a problem with it, you can have all the fun you want pointing out my hypocrisy.

1. The Loud People

I realize that sometimes, it’s necessary to be loud when talking – for example, when the other person is being stubborn, obnoxious, pigheaded, and/or a Republican. And sure, if you start yelling when you’re talking about something that’s exciting to you, that’s great. Enthusiastic screaming every now and then is fine, and spices up conversations that might otherwise be mind-numbingly boring.

Eardrums? Hold on, let me pick them off the floor.

What I have a major problem with is the people who yell and scream for no apparent reason. You know, the people who carry on conversations with each other while standing on opposite ends of a hallway, football field, hockey stadium, jumbo jet, etc… There’s also those people who scream at you when you’re standing in front of them, as if you couldn’t hear them at all – whenever I start talking to one of these yellers, I try to find a quick way out of the conversation, because that thing is as doomed as a goldfish in the middle of the Sahara, trapped under a 100-foot mountain of sand, surrounded by sand-sharks, and in the belly of a giant python.

2. The Naggy Ones

If I say yes and don't do it, will you shut up?

Here’s how it works: if I say “no” the first time, nothing’s going to change the second time unless something changes. If you’re trying to buy something from me and I don’t agree with your price, saying “please” over and over again won’t get you anywhere – what makes you think that “please” after an unreasonable demand will make me change my mind? It won’t, but it sure will piss me the hell off after one time.

3. The Preemptive Clarifiers

Oh yeah, that's exactly what I was about to say

If I haven’t said anything, don’t ask anything. I can’t clarify if there isn’t anything to clarify, and your questions are stupid. I hope I’m not so horrible at explaining that you’d rather play charades than wait. Chances are, by the time you’re done demolishing me with questions I’ll forget my original request and just walk away.

4. Mr. Redundancy

I never knew you thought so poorly of me...

I understand that you’re excited and you want to make sure I don’t mess up this  big moment, but seriously, you shouldn’t need to tell me to open the door when I say that I’m going to take out the trash or something. I think staying alive for 16 years says something about a basic knowledge of how the world works; you don’t need to give me precise procedures to complete a simple task. If I was the kind of person who needed to be coached through everything, you probably shouldn’t have asked me to do something by myself in the first place.

5. Once Again, With Energy!

Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it.

Unless you’re asking me to do something that only takes a few seconds, don’t ask if I’m done just a few seconds after you ask the first time. No, I can’t build a computer in 10 seconds, nor can I finish my calculus homework in that time, or write a song, or do much of anything, really.

Maybe, just maybe, SOME kind of God exists

Occasionally, I like to entertain the notion of an existent God. The first, and really only, thing that comes to mind is that I would definitely go to Hell. I may have my facts wrong, but I think that’s typically what happens to atheists in most religions. Then I start thinking about all the different ways that Hell could really suck, and that’s when my little daydream gets a little scary. I think I’m a little captivated by this dichotomy between Heaven and Hell and what they represent – pure awesomeness and everything that sucks, respectively. It’s pretty cool to imagine awesomeness, but it’s scary to think about all the stuff that can go on in Hell.

One of my more common perceptions of Hell is as a place where I’m killed over and over again in less-than-pleasant ways. I’ve never experienced anything in my life that would pass for excruciating pain, and I don’t think I’ve ever been in a situation when I’ve actually feared for my life, so this possibility of Hell is pretty darn scary to me.

Sometimes I start thinking about reincarnation too, and that maybe there’s no Hell. Maybe after I die I’ll just be reborn as some really smelly guy with no friends. Or maybe, and this has the potential to be a little scarier, the rules of reincarnation aren’t bound to temporality. That is to say, I could be reincarnated as a person living in the past. To me right now it seems like it would suck a lot to have lived 1000 years ago, but everything’s relative, so perhaps if I was reborn in the year 500 I wouldn’t really think that life sucks, because I wouldn’t have my experiences from this life to compare them to. Now I wouldn’t mind being reborn in the future though, I’d definitely like to drive a hovercar, even if I was smelly and had no friends.

What if God just trolled atheists like this?

This presents me with a unique dilemma – do I reject what I believe in and live inauthentically because I’m too much of a pussy to risk going to Hell, do I stay with my beliefs, or do I “hedge” my bets and only haphazardly follow a religion?

The only option that appeals to me right now is the second one – to remain atheistic as long as I didn’t believe in the tenets of any religion. If I wanted to become religious, I’d make damn sure that I didn’t have any doubts about it. I’d rather not have my life be governed by some possibly irrational fear of the afterlife. I want to be the only person to determine how I live my life, and I’m not willing to sacrifice my individuality for anything or anybody, including a magical mystery man in the sky (or a flaming pit in the ground, for that matter).

What does Hell look like in your head? Also, do you follow a religion because of an arbitrary reason (parents, friends, fear, etc…) or do you truly believe?

One of my main gripes about iTunes is how mind-numbingly slow it can be. When I load the Music Store on iTunes, I have to wait as long as 30 seconds for the damn thing to load. I don’t have a top-of-the-line computer or anything, but with my specs I think something like the iTunes Store should load quickly. Sometimes if I get too impatient and start scrolling up and down while the screen is loading, the damn program freezes.

And then it loads for the next day and a half...

And you know what, that’s another problem I have with this program: it freezes. So. Damn. Much. I plug my iPod in, and guess what? It freezes. When I click a link on the iTunes store, it freezes. When I start the program up, it freezes. When I update the info on a song, it freezes. When I click the scrollbar, it freezes. When I blow my nose, well, it doesn’t always freeze.

Something that really makes me mad is the way iTunes is updated. Every 2 weeks or so, I get a new prompt asking me to download the newest version of iTunes (10.1 now, I think), and every time, I click “no.” This cycle repeats itself over and over again before iTunes sneakily finds some way to force me to download the newest version.

I think this ragecomic quite nicely sums up my feelings about iTunes updates. iTunes is quite a sneaky vixen – even if I keep saying “no,” it keeps asking me and eventually starts taking away functions one by one, until I can’t do a single damn thing on iTunes without getting a pop-up about the newest version.

I really wouldn’t have any problems with these updates if they actually fixed anything at all. However, they all say they fix issues, add a few new fancy features, and then actually fix nothing. In fact, most iTunes patches bring up far more problems than they purport to fix. It’s almost like Treyarch and Black Ops for PS3, but that’s for another time.

I think generally a big problem within the software community is releasing software or patches before testing is fully done, especially with video games. A lot of the time developers release their software early to get some hype but then release a slew of patches to fix all the problems with that early release. Maybe developers need to move away from this trend, because quite frankly, the thought of being chained to future updates for software that doesn’t work like it’s supposed to is a little irritating.

I’m just using iTunes as an example, but I’m not really trying to pick on it. I think it’s a great program that suffers a bit from updates that are always released a little too early, much like software in general nowadays.

Well, actually, I still think that it’s slow and freezes too much.

I have a serious problem with procrastination. When I get home, I usually waste away a good 3-4 hours Stumbling, refreshing Facebook over and over again, or playing video games.

Usually what ends up happening is that I waste my entire afternoon in front of my laptop stumbling through hundreds of pages. I also have this amazing capability to stare at my Facebook news feed and refresh it for hours on end and never get bored. Of course, when I exhaust both of those options I either play Black Ops or watch all the new videos Machinima Respawn uploaded while I was at school.

Triple Spray!

What then happens is that one of my parents gets home and I realize exactly how much time I just wasted. What follows is a short conversation that goes something like this:

Parent: How was your day?
Me: I have a crapton of homework I’ve been working nonstop since I got home from school!
Parent: OK, go back to work

The funny thing is though, that every time the doorbell rings I’m startled as if I had no idea of the time I was wasting.

After dinner I then have to work as fast as possible to get all my work done while still maintaining an outer appearance of calm so that I don’t give away to my parents that I wasted my time after school. I think they’re truly under the impression that I’m working really hard to maintain my grades in my classes, which is great because that means I can spend more time doing nothing useful.

Even though it’s kind of miserable having to rush to get all my work done, I can’t imagine having it any other way. If I actually work intelligently and get all my work done in the time between dismissal and dinner, I would be extraordinarily bored with my schoolwork. I love nothing more than a challenge, and the formidable task of finishing all the homework for a day in one or two hours late at night makes mundane work a lot more exciting. Every time I try to get work done early I just end up slacking off, since I start to think to myself, “well I have all this time to do this anyways, so I’ll just do nothing for a few hours!” This means that if I get a challenging assignment, I don’t really hesitate to start on it because I take any challenge as a kind of personal attack. Of course, this rarely happens, and when it does, all I do afterwards is sit around thinking, “Oh man, it sure was amazing that I got all my work done for once!”

One of the scariest things about going shopping for me is not filling my cart up. Anytime I’m at a grocery store with a cart in front of me, I get all self-conscious if I have a pathetically empty cart. It’s almost as if the empty space in the cart mocks me for being such a powerless shopper. It’s tough to describe this phenomenon in writing without sounding completely insane, so instead I will rely upon my powers of illustration to communicate my point coherently.

Yes, that is a tear

This feeling of inferiority gets so strong eventually that I start thinking of excuses in the astronomically unlikely event that someone approaches me to ask me about my empty cart. In a weird sort of way, this astronomically unlikely event seems like something that could happen at any moment during my time of duress.

This feels a lot more distressful in real life

I think that if I ever am approached in this state of panic, I would suffer a complete mental breakdown of astronomical proportions on the order of the inverse of the probability that such an event would ever happen. That made a lot more sense in my head, so I’ll illustrate again.

I think I may scream more if this actually happened

After I conquer the dangers both mental and physical of a near-empty cart, I then have to suffer through the scariest part of any shopping experience: putting the cart back. I genuinely think that I have yet to rack one of these on my first attempt. In 16 years of life, I have not managed to complete a task as simple as putting one shopping cart inside another.

Before I go on, I would like to clarify something: I am not a total klutz. In fact, in private I rarely do clumsy things (not that I’m very graceful anyways). However, when I’m out in public the pressure of being around people who will laugh at, and not with, me when I do something clumsy and stupid triggers some hormonal response in my body that renders me completely incapable of completing even the simplest of tasks.

Usually what happens with the shopping cart in the parking lot is that I sprint toward the stack with the shopping cart in hand to try and accomplish with brute force what I am seemingly unable to accomplish with finesse.

Me breaking the Olympic world record for the 10-meter shopping cart dash

What follows is a spectacular collision. When the dust, smoke, and dismembered body parts settle, lo and behold: the cart is still not in that nice horizontal stack. This usually puts me in a frenzied panic, whereby I make a few more hurried passes before I become aware of the enormous racket I am making. Defeated and thoroughly humbled, I make my way slowly back to the car with my head down in an embarrassed state, hoping that nobody finds out who I am when the cart runs into somebody’s car eventually.

It NEVER works

These things are of the devil. Shopping carts make me dread grocery shopping. If shopping carts were the only option in grocery stores I think I would starve to death before I went shopping just so I could fill up my cart completely.

I fished around on Google for some information on all the equalization frequencies and spend about 1 hour making and fine-tuning this custom EQ. My goal was to make an EQ setting that would work for all genres of music because I listen to everything, although I did try to gear it more towards rock. I’ve been pretty satisfied so far with the results I’ve gotten with this setting, and at this point I would probably recommend it to just about anybody.

I created a playlist of multiple songs covering just about any genre I could imagine and compared this setting with a default “flat” setting. All my results are (if you’re viewing this on my homepage) either after the more link or just a little bit farther down the page (if you’re viewing this post standalone), for those interested.

For those who don’t really want to read through all my write-ups for the songs, I can summarize what this EQ does in a few short sentences. It seems to work best for small-ensemble (5 or below) music with multiple guitar/stringed instrument tracks, and it works especially well with distorted guitar-driven music, and generally it will make all music slightly warmer.

Vocal-driven music, pop, large ensemble music (orchestral classical/jazz), solo recordings (1-2 instruments only), and hip-hop barely benefit at all. For me it’s OK because orchestral recordings are usually pretty nice “out-of-the-box” and, in my opinion, hip-hop/rap doesn’t really need a substantial amount of EQ. I’m thinking of making a separate EQ setting for pop, I’ll have to see how that turns out. Overall though, I have to say I’m pretty satisfied with how this turned out.

My question to readers would be, what do you think about this EQ setting? Do you think it’s better or worse than a flat setting, and how so? And, for those who are more experienced with equalizers, how would you change this EQ setting? Leave a response in the comments section.

Just a quick note, I know true audiophiles may cringe because I have chosen to boost many frequencies (gasp!). However, I feel like the risk of clipping in certain frequencies is worth the better sound that I get out of this setting from speakers and headphones alike. For those who are really concerned about clipping or like to play their music a little louder, here is a slightly modified setting that works a little better at high volumes.

Anyways, here are the results of the tests that I did:

Hard Rock

Old School

AC/DC – You Shook Me All Night Long

Encoded at: 192 kbps – MPEG file

Right off the bat, the guitar intro sounds much fuller than with the EQ off – it’s much deeper and sounds less “cheap.” In the verse, the vocals sound much less nasally and fuller instead of sounding like they come from behind a piece of paper. The distortion on the guitar sounds much crunchier and the rhythm lick is clearer and more precise. I can actually pick out the bass line – it’s got a punchier sound and is clearer than it is without EQ. The bass and snare drums don’t sound cardboardy anymore, and have a good amount of kick while the cymbals and high hats aren’t quite as annoying as before.

Led Zeppelin – Trampled Underfoot

Encoded at: 160 kbps – MPEG file

There’s much more “boom” in the lower end at the beginning lick, and the bass line is clear and loud throughout the song without being overpowering – I can feel it in my ears and I can clearly pick it out if I listen for it. The guitar is full without being tinny, and distortion sounds crunchy like it’s supposed to. Vocals are less scratchy and nasally and sound much fuller. Synth sounds nice and full, not like it’s being played out of an AM radio. Drums aren’t changed too much.

Old Metal

Metallica – Master of Puppets

Encoded at: 128 kbps – AAC file

There’s more punch in the opening, and the guitar riff has a very characteristic distortion with a nice, heavy low end. The cymbal crashes and high hat are crisper, they don’t sound like the drum set is at the end of a long hallway anymore. Vocals sound generally fuller and there’s no more annoying echo. The bass drum articulates clearly, it’s not muddled, and has a very distinguishable punchy boom, even through all the other parts. There’s more bass in middle section, and solo guitar sings instead of whining. The low frequencies growl, high frequencies sing, and guitar solos scream.

New Metal

Slipknot – All Hope is Gone

Encoded at: 128 kbps – AAC file

The guitar is fuller and deeper, not tinny and annoying. Distortion sounds like a chainsaw and has a nice amount of  crunch instead of sounding staticky and cheap. Vocals sound closer – Corey Taylor may as well be screaming in my face. When there are multiple vocal tracks it actually sounds like there’s more than one person screaming and the vocals sound deeper overall. Bass drum sounds like a machine gun instead of being slightly muddled and hidden behind the other tracks, and the solo guitar absolutely wails.

Rock

Alternative/Punk

Blink-182 – All the Small Things

Encoded at: 128 kbps – AAC file

There’s more low end in the guitar, and the palm muting sounds crunchy but still blends instead of being too staccato, although during the chorus it sounds slightly muddled. There’s no more scratchiness and nasal sound in the vocals. I can actually feel and hear the bass now. There’s not much change in the drums except for slightly more clarity in the snare.

Psychedelic/Progressive

Pink Floyd – Pigs (Three Different Ones)

Encoded at: 256 kbps – AAC file

There’s fuller sound in guitar at the beginning, otherwise there’s no significant difference. The low end generally booms more throughout the recording. Distorted guitar bites more and drives the song a little better than before. The middle and low parts of vocal harmonies are brought out over the high end, which makes vocals sound warmer. I can really feel the bass drum and it’s not overpowering, and the bass and piano parts are clear but subtle. There’s not much significant difference between the EQ’d and flat versions of this song, although I have a feeling it’s because of the quality of the recording.

Genesis – Dancing with the Moonlit Knight

Encoded at: 256 kbps – AAC file

The guitar parts were brought out a little more, but not enough to feel like they were overpowering the vocal part and the distorted guitar parts had much less of a cheap, 15-watt solid state sound to them. There was a little more bass presence in the entire track, and the bass drum really popped. Vocals were slightly warmer, but the instrumental sections were really what benefited in this track.

Classic Rock

The Rolling Stones – Rocks Off

Encoded at: 256 kbps – AAC file

The EQ removes scratchy vocals and rhythm guitar, and clears up the guitar parts in general.  Vocal harmonies sound more balanced and rounder. The bass booms more although there’s not too much of a difference here. There’s slightly more kick in the drums and they’re a little louder. The brass is brighter and not as tinny as before. Again there’s an overall warmer tone and I can pick out all the parts, nothing’s covered up but it’s still a great blend of all the tracks.

Pop

The Beatles

The Beatles – Here Comes the Sun

Encoded at: 192 kbps – MPEG file

Strings in the background are warmer and are brought out a little more. Removes “hallway”  effect from vocals and makes them sound closer. Vocal harmonies are warmer and clearer to the point where I can actually pick out separate parts easily, especially the lower parts.

The Beatles – Can’t Buy Me Love

Encoded at: 192 kbps – MPEG file

Apart from warmer vocals and slightly better clarity and tone on the solo guitar, this track barely benefits at all from EQ.

Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson – Beat It

Encoded at: 256 kbps – AAC file

The rhythm guitar has more of a growling low end that helps push the song forward, and there’s less of a treble-ly, tinny tone. There’s slightly more bass presence, but still not very much -  the guitar riff is what really drives this song, though, so it’s not such a big problem for me. Vocals are brighter and less canned and seem just a little bit fuller, and the guitar solo gets a little more bite.

Jackson 5 – ABC

Encoded at: 256 kbps – AAC file

Honestly, there was virtually no difference in the sound. It sounded a little warmer and brighter, and vocal harmonies sounded more filled out – it wasn’t just MJ overpowering everyone else. Except for a little more bass, there’s barely any more discernible difference.

Dance

Basshunter – DotA

Encoded at: 220 kbps (VBR) – MPEG file

The drum loop in the background immediately sounded less “cheap” compared to flat settings, and the bass drum had a nice pop to it. The vocals felt warmer and less nasally, and the tone of the synth was definitely less annoying – less obnoxiously electronic and it felt like it was more balanced range-wise, it wasn’t treble overpowering everything else anymore.

Classical

Contemporary

Clint Mansell – Lux Aeterna (original Kronos Quartet recording)

Encoded at: 256 kbps – AAC file

This one really amazed me as far as how good it became with EQ. As I flipped EQ on and off it was like I was listening to two entirely different tracks. With EQ, I could hear the cello of the quartet while when I flipped it off it was almost as if the entire bottom dropped out of the recording. And that cello made all the difference – it really made the piece haunting like it’s supposed to sound. Violins sounded a ton less whiny and annoying, like they were being played by the professional musicians I know they were being played by instead of third-graders.

Piano

Jeno Jando – Beethoven Sonata No. 14 (Moonlight Sonata)

Encoded at: 256 kbps – AAC file

Moonlight was the piece that benefited least from EQ. Literally, the only difference I could hear was that the lower notes were slightly louder. This is probably because it’s just a single piano and the recording is done so masterfully anyways though.

Again, my question to readers is, what do you think about this EQ setting? Do you think it’s better or worse than a flat setting, and how so? And, for those who are more experienced with equalizers, how would you change this EQ setting? Leave a response in the comments section.

So when I got the chance to visit the summit of Haleakala, the only logical thing for me to do was to run. Uphill.

After hiking about 1.5 miles downhill on the sliding sands path, my parents got bored of the monotonous, moonlike landscape and they also got out of breath. So while they hiked slowly up, I decided up go for a run.

1.5 miles up a very easy slope is not a difficult run at all… at sea level. I figured that it would only be slightly more difficult to run 10,000 feet up in the air, so I took off at an easy 7:45 pace. It took no more than 400 meters at that altitude to reduce me to a blubbering mess and at 800 I had to stop. I could barely breathe, my legs were burning up, and I was starting to trip over random stones. I felt like I had just finished the 2-mile in track even though I barely went half a mile. The backpack on my back suddenly felt 10 pounds heavier and I could barely lift my feet. That easy slope was starting to feel something like this hill:

The only difference was that it just never seemed to end. Clouds like to make their home at around 10,000 feet so every few seconds or so a new cloud would always roll in and chop visibility to no more than a few feet, making it rather difficult to judge how far I went. The next mile seemed like it would drag on forever. I would run about 400 meters, cry (not really), walk for 100 meters, and then start running again. That 7:45 pace turned into an 8:00 pace which then slowed to a virtual crawl – I estimated that I was probably wussying my way up the slope at an 8:30-9:00 pace near the end.

Once I finally got to the end I felt like I had just finished a race. My legs were shot, I was dripping sweat despite the 50-degree weather (my jeans didn’t help much with that), and I could barely breathe.

I saw another cross country runner preparing to go on a run down the same path as I inched my way back to the parking lot at the top of the hill. He asked me how it was, and I thought a bit before replying,

“Oh yeah, it’s a piece of cake.”

Step 1: File -> Open -> Site URL

Step 2: Save As -> Go to the bottom drop-down menu and select a .xls format, and save it.

Make sure you select a .xls format!

A neat little warning that looks like the one below should pop up. Just click yes.

Oh how nice of it to warn you... click yes.

Step 3: If necessary, manually select only the table portion of the page, deleting any images that get in the way. This way, you’ll avoid all the unnecessary formatting and color.

Aaaaand… You’re done! That’s all it takes to import an HTML table into Microsoft Excel. Was this helpful? If you need help, feel free to ask!

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