Just in case I'm still here in August...

Registration for the QuakeCon 2007 BYOC Area will kick off at 9:00pm EST on March 2, 2007 at http://www.quakecon.org (make sure you have an account set up if you havent done so previously!), and if you’ve been under a rock for the last 12 years, the event continues to be FREE thanks to the support of the incredible volunteer QuakeCon Staff, id Software, and our yearly sponsors and exhibitors.

Wow, I was smart as a freshman.

Check out my writing from 4 years ago:
This won me some money.

The point of the essay was to write a retrospective history on the war in Iraq from the year 2013. Keep in mind that this was written in summer 2003 - and "mission accomplished" was "declared" in May 03.

I was wrong about one thing. The Democrats didn't win in '04. You may also think "hey, wait, Al Qaeda did show up in Iraq," but you'd be wrong. The guys that are shooting at and blowing up our vehicles are not Al Qaeda, and the whole label of "Al Qaeda in Iraq" is a name we made up to justify the invasion. I'm not saying they don't belong to some kind of big extremist family that includes Al Qaeda, but that network has grown so big, with such blurred lines, that to say that it's them in Iraq is a misnomer.

I expect I'll be wrong about Americans getting attacked at the Beijing Olympics, too.

But it won't be long before I'm right about Dick Cheney. Read the paper to find out what happens to him.

Sadly, my writing was pretty much downhill from here across my college career. Thankfully, my thesis is shaping up to be a reclamation of my older, good writing style. That'll be readable come May.

OH HELL YES

Dear friends, I've had a musical conundrum for a while:

I've been contemplating wiping my mp3 folder. Just taking a small handful of albums that are very near and dear to me, and killing off the rest.

That operation will have to go on hold, because The Avalanches are back.

Finally. After like a 6 year wait.

Apparently they're posting their live sets and some new tracks (which are always amazing; they have the best mixing around) over on theavalanches.com, so go grab those.

It's going to be a good year after all!

Woo hoo!

Looks like I have a shot at going to Japan again.

I got a JET interview.

For some people this is a high-pressure situation where they examine everything from your personality to your ability to teach obscure subjects to children who speak no English.

For others it's a mere formality where they just get your preferences for living circumstances, and things you can and can't live without, just in order to get you the best placement for your almost-certain new job in Japan.

Which one of those you get seems to be a crapshoot, according to the internets. Or it could be someplace in between. Or it could be something entirely different. Apparently the phrase "your mileage may vary" gets a little too much mileage within JET.

For what it's worth, it looks like I'll be making a day-trip to Houston in a couple weeks. That will probably be the single worst detail of my entire JET adventure.