Fun week!

               This was a good week, I’m going to be pretty straight up about that. I accomplished two major things that I wanted to do with my summer. One was out of necessity and the other less vital but of similar value to me, if that makes sense. I like didn’t need it, but I really wanted it.

               First off, I found a place to live this fall! WHOOOOOOO! That’s a huge relief for me, because as I began my search things just weren’t really going my way with it, so when I started the week I was starting to legit think I might be bumming off couches for the first month of my life in Edmonton. Jeez that would have been an experience. Probably would have sucked, but I would have learned a lot from it. That doesn’t really matter now because I did find a place to live. Nothing super special about it, 5 bedroom place in Southeast Edmonton, it has close proximity to shopping and LRT so I don’t need a car up there. (Huge plus for me!) It has a surprisingly nice looking kitchen in my opinion. But yeah, the LRT location is important for me because….          

Pretty Good for a Rental eh?

               With the confirmation that I will not need a car, I felt comfortable enough with my money to order the parts to my PC that I’m building! Yay! Isn’t it cool how those things actually link together like that? The build I decided to go with is the same one I talked about in my last post, so I don’t feel like I need to link it again. About 1100$ cost including shipping and handling, and Im confident that it will be able to do what a 1800$ pre-made rig would, so yeah. Lesson to the peoples, building yourself is way more cost efficient than buying a pre-made.

               You know what else I just thought of that makes this week even better? I’ve found what I believe to be a solution to my frustrations with League of Legends. Stop playing ADC. (Attack Damage Carry, I shot things a lot and win fights for my team.) Why? Because when I play ADC I feel an obligation to carry my team through the ENTIRE game. That’s not good, because when I think like that I get really hypercritical of my own mistake which leads to most of my frustrations. So I’m going to be looking to play more assassin like roles. Cause then I just make plays and be a cool dude. Yay!

               So yeah! Good week overall. Like a solid 8.5/10 More blogging next week! Or maybe tomorrow. Provably next week though. 

Lots of Small Rants and Birthdays

               Well it’s been a bit of time since I really sat down to write something, mostly because I haven’t; felt like I really had anything worth saying on the blog, but a good friend of mine in Chrissy Williams asked about it today and since it is her bloody birthday after all I guess I can muster enough motivation to put at least one post together.

               So what to talk about? This is kind of the problem eh? I usually want to write about just one thing but I suppose writing on several things isn’t that bad right?

               So let’s start here. This is the going to be the computer I build later this summer. It`s almost entirely based on this build. I excited to build it. There were a couple of parts I thought about changing up, but ultimately this would be the best bang for my buck. I like my laptop and all, but let’s get serious; you need a desktop to get the performance I want without paying like $2500 or so. This build is about $1000 and should be able to play any game I want and record/stream it with at least passable quality.  So yeah, building a computer like this is like way way way worth it because I’ll save hundreds of dollars that would have had to be spent on a pre-made computer. The only real downside to this is that when it’s done, everyone that I’m related to will think I’m some sort of expert that can fix any of their computer problems for them. Which might be true, but only because I know how to use this site.

               Quick note on my thoughts about Yeezus and Magna Carta Holy Grail. Yeezus not that good. Magna Carta quite an enjoyable listen. It seems to me that Kayne feels like he still needs to prove himself, which he totally doesn’t. Jay-Z though just makes stuff he likes and it sounds like that. Thus fun to listen to. Magna Carta is not a very deep album in all honesty, buts I like listening to it. Don’t take these criticisms to seriously though, cause you know. I’m not really qualified in any way. (Pseudo-intellectualism at its finest!)

               As a final note let’s just briefly mention that the United States government recently recognized players of the League of Legends Championship Series as professional athletes with the same visa privileges as players of the NFL, NBA, NHL and other organizations. This is huge. It means that E-sports is really here to stay. Huge numbers at the Evolution championships this weekend are also another great sign for the community. All in all, I’m super excited for this fall so I can watch The International Three (Dota 2) Season 3 Worlds (League of Legends) and WCS finals at Blizzcon (SC2) Gonna be a huge time for E-sports this fall. One can only hope to see my boys Dignitas make it to Worlds for League. If your intrested in reading more about the whole League players getting recognized as pro athletes you can read the article here. 

So Good!

               

Shoutouts and Feeling Good!

               It has been quite the week let me tell you. Filled with all sorts of experiences and feelings. Some good and some bad, but in an effort to stick to what I was talking about in my last post I am going to be focusing solely on the positive things from my last week. I’ll talk about two three things in particular.

               The smaller one was that I once again returned to the work force back under the employ of the Town of Magrath. Even though I haven’t been paid yet for my work it feels really great to one know that there is income that will be coming in and secondly that I actually have something to do during the day now! Man, you would be surprised what full time work can do for a guy that’s bored, suddenly I hardly feel like I have spare time at all and its awesome!

               The big one that I really want to talk about was the opportunity I had to see one of my absolute best friends and a critical figure of my life get married to the man she loves. Big congratulations to Samara and Scott Dewey! It was so easy to see from the way they look at each other that they have a bond that is simply unbreakable. I’m thrilled that she found someone so good for her. I've probably talked about this before, but I've always felt like I had this “Duty” to ensure that the two Lybbert girls that I knew well ended up happy and with good people for them. I think this because I feel like I owe it to them. In reality any positive attribute I've developed over the past few years could in one way or another be attributed to something they did to help me grow.  I know for a fact that neither one of them realizes what they've done for me over the years. So yeah, it was important for me to see her so happy with Scott and I would be a liar if I told you that I didn't shed a tear during that day. Augh, how embarrassing.

               This isn't quite as long as I wanted so I’ll throw another positive thing that came out of a negative thing. Suffice to say there was drama this week and I got to discover that a friend of mine is a truly outstanding individual. I haven’t had the chance to properly thank Makinna Kristensen for how helpful she was this past week. I most definitely owe her one. 

               Well this was nice, I like all these positive feelings and such. Maybe I should like try to keep this positive vibe going. confirmed, Being positive is good. Jonny Tollestrup 2013. You can quote me on that. 

Unrelated picture of Fiji cause I can. 

Change of Plans Folks!

               Right, so I’m going to go ahead and change up the summer goal deal. I’m only changing the goals in regards to gaming so really no one ought to care much for it. Originally I set out to complete a run through of Ocarina of Time, The Wind Waker and reach Diamond rank in Starcraft II. While it’s defiantly not that far out of reach to complete this, (Ocarnia of Time already done, Wind Waker can probably be complete in a single day with some dedication and a red bull and I finished Top 8 in platinum for the previous ladder season of Starcraft, which is basically as close to diamond you can get without actually making it.) I've decided it’s not really what I want from my gaming experience right now.  

               What do I mean when I say that’s not what I want from a gaming experience right now? Simple really, I play games for one of two reasons. First being I like becoming immersed in a new world and all of the cool details that go along with it. That normally lies within a Single player game when the narrative or game play is the driving feature. The Second reason is that I’m competitive and I can win at them. This is where Starcraft and League of Legends come in, and at the moment it’s really all I've been playing, and I’m getting increasingly more frustrated every time I play them. I play games because I enjoy them, and in reality I’m just not enjoying games like Starcraft or League right now. So I’m taking an indefinite break from them until I feel like I've “ Calmed the freak down.”

My average face while playing League, Witnesses can confirm unfortunately.  

               My plan to calm down is going to come by rediscovering the first reason I play games. I've always greatly enjoyed the experience of becoming part of a completely different world. That’s why I particularly love games like Mass Effect, Skyrim, Dragon Age, and The Legend of Zelda. They are all these fantastical worlds that simply don’t exist in reality but are very interesting to explore and learn about. So for the time being I’m going to focus on playing single player games and trying to remember why I love games in the first place. It’s like a good movie really, because you kinda forget that you’re just a viewer or player and simply become part of the world. It’s partially why I like games so much, just by the very nature of you participating in a game makes them feel more immersive. You know? Maybe not, but it’s true.

               Taking a break from games like League does leave me in a mild dilemma though, how on earth am I supposed to help my friend Seth with his not sure if serious or not idea of making a gaming Youtube channel if I’m not playing the leagues with him? Let’s play’s? Come on, no one really wants to watch someone like me with no presence in any gaming community play through what can easily be a 20 hour game like Mass Effect. So with the power of editing I plan on making simple highlight stuff. Parts of games that I think people need to know why they make those games good. Maybe look at freak out about how dumb I think that game design has changed so dramatically in the past twenty years. (It’s no actually dumb, it’s just be being a baby.) Who knows what’ll happen, I know it’ll be fun though. That’s why I’m doing it. Also the rare chance for dat YouTube money obviously. 

How Real am I?

               Jeez, I am just awful at keeping up with this eh?

               Anyways, let’s get a quick update going here. Since my last post I have become unemployed. I have been unemployed for this entire month. I decided to leave my previous employment for lack of better words, “Scheduling conflicts.” Getting consistent work was a struggle and I just decided that it wasn’t worth the hassle anymore.  It may have been smarter to just stay on until I had another job lined up, but it is what it is.  It’s also been quite the drain on my bank account. I learned how to do my own taxes though, so I guess that’s neat. I also learned how to make Sloppy joes, which sounds really easy and in reality it is pretty easy. Here’s my obligatory picture!

              

You can't really see the actual part I made, but trust me, it was good. 

               The really big thing that this month has given me is an insane amount of time to think. Like its just silly how much thinking I’ve been able to do this last month. There’s still a whole freaking week left in it to! My goodness. One of the really big things I’ve been thinking about though is me. No not in the ego driven oh my look how cool and awesome and good looking I am and everyone who doesn’t see that just doesn’t get me way. Ugh. Goodness that would be just awful. I’ll be frank, I’m not a very positive person to begin with (Shocking!) but the fact of the matter is that the person I’m hardest on has and probably will always be myself. I use the term Self-loathing when I describe it to other people and I often mask it jokes. While I do definitely think that if you don’t know how to laugh at yourself, for better or worse, you are going to have a bad time. For real.  However, just acknowledging your flaws through jokes is not enough. If a person isn’t even trying to fix those flaws with themselves and just continues to just joke about it, I kind of find it disgusting. This sucks, because I’ve been feeling like I have been like that for a while now. I’m making so little effort to really move forward with my life right now. I refuse to adopt an exercise schedule simply because of my laziness. I’ve been falling back on calling out people when they are being stupid, which is something I actually liked about myself. I wasn’t afraid to tell someone that what they were doing isn’t smart at all. I really haven’t been doing that. I’m working on that though, so I guess it’s not a total loss there. I’ve continually allowed my diet to remain absolutely abysmal. I’m not looking for new and interesting music, just listening to the same stuff over and over. The only thing I really have going for me right now is that I am in fact going to be attending school in the fall. As my sister so eloquently put it, “Yay for real life plans!” Lastly I feel like I’ve totally lost touch with what I can do with my sarcasm. I used to be able to pretty accurately pin down what jokes I could or could not make without legitimately upsetting someone. I just feel like I cross the line every bleeding time right now

.

               I guess I just needed to really take the time to call myself out on what a miserable human being I’ve been for the past few months. The goals I made for the summer were supposed to change that. I guess I’m really down right now because it’s really the first time that I’ve looked back and thought, “Man that guy from 6 months ago wasn’t such an idiot.” To clarify, I’ve always felt like I’ve made good progress as a person every few months and I just don’t feel like I have these last few. Only thing to do though is just step my game up, moping about it on the interenet doesn’t change anything. 

Starting Goals and a Bit of Real Talk

               Well I`ve crossed one and a fourth goals off of my list already, I mean one of them was my completion of a Pikmin run in thirteen in-game days. Each day is 15 minutes so my run was about three hour and fifteen minutes in total. That is my fastest run to date yet. Honestly I think I can cut a few days off if I did another run within the next few weeks, but I probably won`t be booting it back up again so quickly. Great game, although I know it well enough to make the game really easy. It`s less about wether or not I can win, but rather how long is will take before I win. Oh well, still a great game and definitely looking forward to playing the third one when it comes out.

               The fourth portion of a goal I completed though was a new dish I learned to cook. Lemon Chicken. Nothing complicated, but something that I wasn`t 100% sure how to make. So I learned how to make it. Cooking is like a lot of fun, did anyone else realize that? Maybe I’m just saying that because I only legitimately cook every once and a while, but I really do enjoy it when I do, definitely going to be cooking more in the future. Food tastes great and its cheaper, what more could I ask for? Anyways, the Lemon Chicken went well enough, didn’t light anything on fire or burn myself/the food so I’d call it a successful activity.

Yum. 

               Beyond that though, I had an intresting weekend as well, kinda. It was a good friend of mine’s homecoming, Keaton Moore. Loved seeing him again. Really cool to talk to him and  such. It’s always kind of awkward with these things being an early return, but that part wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Got to see some other faces I hadn’t seen in a while. Kind of sad to see where some of them are right now. Particularliy the people that I feel are being pushed into bad circumstances rather than being there as a result of their own decisions. One in particular was apparenly going through some rough stuff. I use the word “apparently” because I was kind of shocked about how well they seemed to be doing despite being in a rough patch. I’m happy they seem to be doing well but fear that it may be a act to keep the appearance of strong. That’s just pure speculation though, and only time will tell if any of it is true. I hope its not.

               Lastly another one of these 30 topic things. #25. Wouldl you rather date someone plain with an amazing personality or someone beautiful with a plain personality? Peronsonality wins here hands down. I really think that if a person has an amazing personality and you do get the chance to get to know that personality then looks really won’t matter. I would be attracted to that person because of how awesome they are of a person. End of story. That sad truth is that lots of guys (myself included) don’t give the more normal looking girls that do have incredible personalitys the chance to show off that personality. I’ll admit that I did not introduce myself to many of the girls I consider now to be my best friends. I kind of had to be put into situations where I got to know them and I’m lucky that I did, because they are incredible people. They aren’t even plain looking either. I was just pretty stupid then. Still am. Probably will be for some time, but you know what I’m getting at here.  I didn’t give them the chance to let their personalities shine on my own, but rather simply learned about it by chance. I don’t regret it really, excpet I do think about how many really cool girls I didn’t get to know in my life because I simply didn’t give them a chance? Shouldn’t dwell on this, definitely going to get depressed if I do. Let’s stop right now. Thanks for reading if you get this far. 

Let the Heckling Begin!

            So I haven’t written here in like forever, but I’m not even going to go into that, because I’m here now to start getting a schedule together. That’s all this post is going to be about, me putting together a few goals before I head back off to post-secondary education.  

            Firstly I want to become consistent with this blog, to help with that I’m going to give this blog a clear definition. I will talk about things that are interesting to me. That means that there are going to be E-sports posts, there will be ones where I rant about stupid things people do, I will talk about my personal thoughts on a variety of subjects. I will occasionally rant about what a dork I am. I will talk about cute girls; I will talk about a good restaurant I might go to. I will post pictures that are related to all these topics.  There will be many Calvin and Hobbes references. I am definitely going to talk about music in games and movies, as well as games and movies. I will probably say things that people will subsequently call me out on. It’ll be a good time. I will criticize almost everything.

           - I’m going to read 3 full books by the end of the summer. Any suggestions?

          -  I’m going to reach Diamond rank on Starcraft 2, and complete a play through of Pikmin and The Legend of Zelda: Wink Waker and Ocarina of Time.

           - I’m going to learn to cook 4 new dishes.      

         -   I am going to find a steady exercise schedule and be consistent with it.

          -  I will go on at least 2 dates.  

          -  I will discover one new band that no one else knows about (Hipster cred inc!)

            We’ll cut if off there for the sake of being realistic. I think Starcraft, exercise, and dates will be the hard ones on this list. Ok blogging consistently will be the toughest, but that’s a given.  Still, dates will be difficult just because of what a recluse I am and breaking out of that shell. Exercise because well because I’m pretty freaking lazy. Starcraft because it’s a really difficult game to get good at, and I’m prone to getting really really frustrated at myself when I play it. I think if I accomplish the other two difficult tasks though I should just become a happier person which will make it easier to tolerate the rage inducing nightmare that is the battle.net ladder.  

            Why blog this though? Because the biggest lesson I’ve learned in my life knows when you are beyond your own capabilities. Not that I can’t do these things. Just that I know that I won’t on my own. So I humbly ask whoever reads this, to please pester and bother me about accomplishing these things. Pick the ones you want me to do and hassle me. I think that’s manageable. Another excuse to get on my case? Gladly. That’s what I imagine most of you are thinking about this. That’s all for now, happy pestering!

            Don't think I forgot about that 30 topic thing though, nice and quick. Something little that makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. The ending to Rudy. Goodness me I love that movie and I hate how it can just play with my emotions like that, but it can. If you haven't seen it, let me know. I have a copy and will gladly loan it to you. Heck I could even watch it with you if you want to see me nearly break into tears. 

So good.....