Waldon here, and guess what? It's almost finals!

Which sucks, but they have to be done. Bleh. Careers.

Anyways, I've been reading a lot of MegaTokyo recently. It's a webcomic by Fred Gallagher, I believe. I love it! It's actually entertaining me.

So, my bio class is pretty much done, and all that's left in Math is this week. Chem, we'll be done in a few days and in English we're just coasting. Stats is... Stats is odd. We're done all the essential work, but our teacher is still giving us work that won't be on our exam.

Whoops! I need to go pick Bre up lol, I'll blog again another time!
-Waldon

Waldon here! Sorry that we've been updating a little... Oddly, but school comes first you guys. Actually, I was doing a lab report right up until a few minutes ago. If I hadn't checked my email to see what was happening with everybody else, I'd still be doing it. As it was, I did an extra like, 13 questions that I didn't need to do.

So, I just checked the stats on the site, and right after Bre posted the last time, we went right up to almost 92 hits. :S That's intense! We average like, 14 a day, usually. Now, We WERE getting about 75 a day before this new (unintentional) update schedule came about. So, I think that this incredible surge of views has to be because of the math in Bres post. It's the only thing different about the posts! xD Maybe I should start posting more math?

Speaking of Bre, today is her birthday! :)

Happy Birthday babe, I love you! :) xoxox

Now, I'm going to bed. After that long, pointless, 6 hour trek through the bio lab that didn't need to have that much done, I need sleep. Good night all!
-Waldon

Ah, Math. It makes for a lovely title. For those of you who may not know, the title actually DOES make sense. It's something that we're doing at the moment in Calculus II called integration by parts... Basically, you have a little squiggly line with a bunch of x's and arcs and trig functions and lns and dxs next to it, and you have to find the original function. It's fun. We have a test on it tomorrow, so I need to get back to studying it soon.

SPEAKING OF TESTS, we have a bunch of stuff to do this week! So much stuff, in fact, that it needs to be put in a list.

Stuff that needs to be done/will happen this week:

- Math test tomorrow: not too bad. I'm pretty good at Math, so I'm not overly worried about the outcome of the test.

- Chem quiz on Wednesday: hm. A little worried, but not too much. I'm more worried about Junior and his... Difficulties with Chem.

- Chem pre-lab due Wednesday: I need to check qith Rami about something tomorrow, then I should be able to do everything no problem?

- English presentation on Wednesday: honestly, this came as a bit or a surprise for all of us. On Friday, Tony asked us to start writing our draft for our essay (we had to analyze an ad of some sort). We knew that we would eventually have to make a little presentation of it, sure, but today's news came as a surprise. Apparently, we need to do the presentation on Wednesday. Of course, very few (I won't say the entire class) had anything done, and I have a feeling that most will be in a panic soon.

- Physics test on Thursday: well. We had a test last Tuesday, but we did so horribly on one question that Ranjan took it out of the marking and told us that we'd have another test on the SAME MATERIAL this Thursday. He's going to be out of town from tomorrow to Thursday, so Rami will be watching us. :p

- Psych test Thursday: we all knew this was coming. Michelle told us at the beginning of the semester when all of our tests would be. This is just unfortunate.

- Physics assignment due Thursday: this is just the online stuff... No biggy.

- Physics assignment due Friday: what is this, you may ask? A typo? Am I going crazy? No. It's not a typo. I'm not crazy. We have a second Physics assignment that's due on Friday when Ranjan comes back. Yay.

And finally,

- English essay due Friday: sigh. Another one.

Yeah. We're going to have a busy week, but that's okay! I'll get everything done with enough time to help Junior out, haha. On the plus side, I got to work on the English presentation with Junior tonight! We're partners and, so far, it's working out well. I haven't had a panic attack yet. Tomorrow afternoon, I'm going to study Psych with Cody for a bit, before I go to the airport with Nan. She's going out of town for a week to see my cousin's song release. It's exciting! Then, tomorrow night, Junior and I will be working on our English. Again.

Well. This was longer than I had anticipated. I need to go study! Good night!

- Bre :)

P.S. The cafeteria is STILL closed. I doubt it'll be open tomorrow. David and I have been doing Tim Horton's runs for the past couple of days, and I don't think I can handle anymore Tim's! xD

Whoa! First line is the topic. I'm being new and innovative!

Yeah! So, it's been really warm the past couple days, and I'm loving it. The snow is finally melting and I'm able to walk on pavement again. :P We've been wading through about 8 feet of snow for the past 2 months, so it's good to see some heat again.

I bought the game Dark Souls the other week. It's INTENSE. The tagline of the game is "Prepare to die." And that's seriously what it is. You just try and use a combination of brute force, skill and trickery to make it to various checkpoints of the game without dying. When you die, you have to start over at the last checkpoint. It's very easy to die. :P

So, Bre was over this evening, and we just sat there and vegetated while listening to music. You have NO idea how awesome that is. Unless, of course, you're like me. In which case you understand completely and are envious of me right now. I found an app that lets me control my iTunes from my phone, so we just sat on my bed and let the music lull us into a nearly rock-like level of mental activity.

We had classes all day today, and in about 3 of my 5 classes, something was due. As well, there was a bio test for a small mark today. It was... meh. :P

Yesterday we didn't have classes, because... the roof of our cafeteria flooded. Now, if you're anything like me, you just paused so you could comprehend that. Yes, I really did mean it. Our ROOF flooded. The water pipe above the mens washroom busted, and the water gathered up in the ceiling crawlspace until... well, it couldn't fit. :P So, the cafeteria is still being renovated for use again. Hopefully it'll be up soon, because in order to leave campus to get food, I've got to pack up all my stuff and go, and that usually means that I can't get any work done during that period. So, I tend to go without a meal instead. xD

So, without further adieu, I am saying goodnight!
It was a pleasure speaking to you all again, and I thank every one of you from the bottom of my heart for sticking with the blog and reading what we have to say. :)
-Waldon

Hey! It's me! Breanna! Again! My, it's been a long time! My apologies! I don't really know why I haven't written... To be honest, I don't even know what day it is. Yay me! My brain has been... Addled lately. I don't know if I'm comign or going. That could be why I haven't posted since... My last post.

All kinds of things have happened! We had our March break, which was quite fun. Junior and I didn't do a lick of work until the last weekend of our break. Not the best idea, I'll admit, but it worked out fine. I got everything done that needed to be done (for yesterday, our first day back at school). Now I need to focus on what needs to be done for tomorrow! And the upcoming exams! Thank goodness the exams are in a month. I really need to study. (><)

Unfortunately, we have an English essay due tomorrow and I have quite a bit to do, so I'll just post a filler post! Yes, a filler post. It won't be too exciting though; it's one of the essays that I had to do this semester. Until next time!

- Bre :)



The Night I Accomplished the Impossible

    Procrastination: the story of my life. On second thought,
procrastination is not the story of my entire life, but only the story of my school career. As far back as I can remember I have always left all of my important school assignments to the very last minute. I spent many a night, and early morning, struggling to finish my school work.  Math assignments, English papers – you name it, and I did not do it until the night before it was due. Unfortunately, this turned into a bad habit and it kept with me throughout high school. In my last year of school, my biggest challenge had been writing my English essays. Instead of writing, I always found something that I deemed better to be doing; Math, for instance, was of a higher priority than English. I remember one particularly difficult essay that I had to write in my last year of high school.

    It was early December, and the Christmas break was fast
approaching. The teachers had piled on us mountains of homework that they expected to be completed before school let out for the holidays. I was not very enthused about this because, as part of our homework, our English teacher had
graced us with a writing assignment. It was an essay, to be written on a major theme of the play, Macbeth. I dreaded writing this composition because I knew, like all of my other
assignments that year, I would write it the night before it was due. I also knew that, despite my knowledge of the play, I would have great difficulty writing the essay because of the pressure of writing a good quality essay at the last minute. As was my nature, I sat down that fateful Wednesday night and began to write.

    The clock ticked impatiently as I sat at my desk, reminding me of how little time I had left. I listened to my light hum, and to my bed sweetly calling my name, tempting me to give in to sleep. My head throbbed with an
impending migraine as I tried to push thoughts of sleep out of my mind and think of my thesis statement. I sighed and sat back in my chair, hopeless and tired, and wished that I had started my essay the day it was assigned. I rubbed my eyes; looking at a computer monitor for an hour and half was beginning to take its toll on me. I turned to look at the clock and a horrible realization washed
over me: it was bedtime for my siblings.  

     It started with my brother and sister arguing upstairs about who was going to use the washroom first. It grew increasingly difficult to write as the night wore on because they began to argue about everything that came up. I became frustrated and, as a result, I had to stop working. The flow of words stopped the moment that my siblings opened their mouths. I groaned. “Why can’t they just go to bed!” I thought. Worry started to set in after a few minutes of arguing and I began to feel unwell. Time was getting short and I needed to finish my essay. When my siblings finally calmed down enough to sleep, I began
writing again, but to no avail. 

     I became frustrated and angry with everything that I did, everything that I wrote, everything in my room. My clock ticked too loudly, and I could not think; my lights hummed too much, and I could not concentrate; my
computer was so bright that it hurt my eyes, and I could not see straight. Even the tapping of my nails on my keyboard was beginning to annoy me. By midnight, I was too angry at myself to write any more. Thinking was almost impossible at this point, and writing became nothing but a dream that would never be fully realized. I began to contemplate going to school the next day with my
half-finished essay, but my eyes began to water just at the thought of disappointing my teacher with something that was half-done. Frustrated, I shook my head, expelling the thought from my mind before I had the chance to seriously
consider it. “Why,” I thought, “did I have to put this off? Why didn’t I do this last week?” I wiped my eyes and prepared myself for the long night ahead; there was no more self-pity for me. Breathing deeply, I exhaled my frustration and began working on my essay once more. 
 
    I am pleased to say that, despite all of my frustration, I
finished my essay and handed in the day that it was due. However, I was exhausted that day and I could not concentrate on any of my classes no matter how hard I tried. From this trying experience, I learned that procrastination is never the answer; all of the frustration and anxiety that go along with it is never worth the trouble in the end. Although I may sound enlightened, in reality
I am nothing of the sort. Procrastination is still my favourite way to get things done.


P.S. For any who read that, thanks! It's not great. Personally, I think Junior's was WAY better than mine.

Waldon here! We're still experiencing some technical difficulties!

This site in editor is taking a very, very long time to load!

So, I'll post a few links and call it a night, because I'm getting fed up with this.

Here's some links to a site called Real Monstrosities. It's filled with various animals/organisms that are scary/unique/disgusting and so are, of course, fascinating. :P

The Surinam Toad is particularly disgusting to me, and I still get cold shivers from watching it.

http://www.realmonstrosities.com/2010/11/goblin-shark.htmlhttp://www.realmonstrosities.com/2010/11/camel-spider.html
http://www.realmonstrosities.com/2010/12/surinam-toad.html
http://www.realmonstrosities.com/2012/03/what-is-biggest-insect-in-world.html

Okay, so, good night all!
-Waldon

Okay guys, Waldon here and I think I'm having some technical difficulties. I couldn't get the site to load last night, and tonight I had to write this in notepad and copy/paste it here. Writing it was actually taking upwards of 10 seconds per letter to show up.

Is Weebly working for all of you? Is there any problems with the site loading? If so, please leave a message in the comments. I want to get this fixed.

Hopefully, this is just server traffic increasing, but... Yeah, my luck with technology hasn't been the best lately. If there are no comments, I'll assume everything is good?

Good night, I guess?
-Waldon

(If for some reason, you cannot leave a comment, you can feel free to email me at [email protected])

Waldon here, and the smell of my hot chocolate is driving me crazy, but I don't want to get another one cause I'd wake up the house. XD

Anyway, for my first post since getting out for March break and Weebly letting me log back in, I'll finally do a post that I've been thinking about for a day or so; Music.

I'm branching out guys. I NEVER talk about music.

(Apologies in advance, I doubt this is very coherent. I didn't exactly plan it out before writing it.)

I was listening to Breaking Benjamin the other day, and I realized something about the genre of metal that linked it to classical; even to things like folk and spiritual music. You see, heavier rock or any of the sub-genres of metal (That's really vague, but believe me, there are hundreds of ways I could classify this. I'll just use these two categories.) ARE passive music. You can sit down and listen to it while working or relaxing, but it's also involved in the active mind processes. It is thought provoking and stimulating. It will give you ideas that you've never had before, or create mental channels that you've never used. Because you have to TRY to hear it.

When I'm listening to metal or heavier rock where others can hear it, numerous times, I've been told that it's not really music, or that it's just senseless noise. It's not senseless at all. It's HEAVY. That's the point of the message of that particular song. It's when the emotion is so strong in a piece that the singer has to yell it out. That song has to get out; it has to get out, or the emotion is gone. The genre is almost pure, if you look at it that way. But that isn't the point that I'm trying to get across here.

What I'm trying to say (albeit in a roundabout, convoluted way) is that you need to actively LISTEN to the heavier genres. You need to concentrate on the song itself and filter out the "noise" about it, so that the vocals are clear to you, so you can distinguish between the individual instruments and listen to the song itself; how they all fit together.

Now, I know at least one person reading this is going to wonder; where do genres like Classical come into this?

Simply put, classical music is open to interpretation as well. As is Folk, Trance, Spiritual music and all the other non-canon (I do not believe canon is the word I'm looking for, but alas.) musical genres that are considered weird by a majority of the population.

This is because a good portion of what ends up being mainstream music, or the music that the average person listens to, is passive. It allows you to just turn it on, and let the words and beat, rhythm and meaning come to you and influence you. It tells a story or presses an ideal forward that we can readily agree with, whilst that message may not even be what the artist intended, because we've all decided to make the song mean what we want it to mean.

People, en masse, do not want to have to work to hear a song or have to focus to understand a message. Music for most people is for relaxing. They listen to music to hear bands or artists that they relate to "talk" to them. People want to feel like they're listening to a friend. They want to turn on the radio or iTunes or browse youtube and listen to things that aren't harsh or directly related to themselves, and I completely understand that.

Think about when you listen to a song and the vocals aren't clear. Now, I want you to think about how often you subconsciously dismiss something that's just gibberish or pointless rambling? That's because we process all of those things on the same mental level; white noise.

If I may step back to a previous point; people say metal or heavy rock is just noise, and I personally I hear the most objections about metal or heavy rock that have to deal with how the words of the song are all just growling or too jumbled to hear. "White noise."

When I started listening to metal and heavy rock, I couldn't tell what the vocalists were saying. I didn't have a CLUE. But, I kept listening to it. I wanted to know what they were saying, I wanted to know what they were trying to tell me. Slowly, I began to actually hear the song itself and not just some amalgamation of cacophony (That would make an awesome band name, btw) that's blaring from my speakers.

And I slowly began to enjoy more, and more of the genre. I noticed that bands that I thought were just yelling at me, were actually just angry; angry at themselves, at the world, at the unfortunate things that happened to them. And then I noticed that people expanded that again, they made the genre into it's own breeding ground. Comedy, drama, serious musical compositions. It was all there. It was just under the surface of that harsh exterior.

Similar to the wordlessness of classical or trance, wouldn't you say? It's almost impossible to tell what the maestro is trying to tell you, exactly what the composer was trying to say, even though the sounds are clear and concise. Classical and trance music are the equivalent of images without pictures. You paint your own, you create an image from the sounds you're given. It's similar to hearing a soundtrack to a well loved movie; you can see the actors going about their assigned roles.

Since starting to listen to metal and the harder rock, I've found myself liking more and more of the other types of music. Including hip-hop, rap, blues, jazz, trance, electronic, folk, acoustic and classical. I started to really listen, and I guess I just couldn't stop.

The genres of metal and hard rock make you start to think. They make you sit down and process their music. It creates a fandom within itself. You feel more personally connected to the song. Like listening to a well loved soundtrack... right? It makes you actually hear what the band or artist is trying to say, because if you don't actually LISTEN to them you won't even hear the song. It'll just be noise. It makes you think and process... and if you listen to the music and say you love it just because it's harsh and you're an angry individual, all the power to you.

But you're not really listening, if you're making a generalization like that, are you?

Now, I may have just made a few people irritated with me after hearing that, but I want you to look up two songs by Breaking Benjamin, and one by the universally loved Eric Clapton.

Layla [Unplugged] - Eric Clapton
Rain - Breaking Benjamin
I Will Not Bow - Breaking Benjamin

You'll notice that Layla [Unplugged] and Rain sound fairly tame, don't they? They sound like something relaxing, pretty, even. But I Will Not Bow? I bet a bunch of you didn't enjoy it, even though it was by the same thought provoking artist that made Rain. Within metal and hard rock, it isn't all just "yelling" and sacrilegious intent. Is music about the sound, or the message? That's entirely up to you, of course. After several years of listening to metal and heavier rock, I don't even need to try to filter them anymore, the words are clear to me. Musical preference is subjective, and I'd guess that a good portion of people if they ever read this, just dislike metal and hard rock just because. But if you've read this far, then I guess you're of a similar mind to my own, and I implore you and everybody around you...

Listen.

Just please. Sit down, and actually listen to the song. Listen to the sound of the song, and how it influences you. Listen to the words being said, and how they change your mindset. Listen to them both, together. Listen to the actual song.

Don't just dismiss metal and hard rock as pointless noise. It's a message, and a message left unheard can only hurt you, in the end.

Every thought you have that you've never had before, will enrich you.

Thank you all for listening to me.
-Waldon