My Spring grades are finally up:

Creating a Nation: US 1600-1877: A

I was except from the final because I had already achieved an A for the semester. That was a nice thing to know, since I had to study a bit for my other classes.

Politics and Government: A-

This was with my adviser and the head of the department. He only gave out tests, but he had some weird grade curves on them, so though I got 80s as raw scores, I wound up getting As with the curves.

World Politics: B+

I was worried about this class because she only accepted assignments through the online portal and at a few points it didn't take my assignments and I didn't find this out until the weekend before finals week. I hastily emailed her and explained the situation and gave her my missing assignments. I was mostly worried because she gave me C+ for both of the missing assignments. Luckily the final and midterm were weighted more than all the other assignments and having an A- on the midterm and a B+ on the final probably helped greatly.

Political Parties, Elections & Interest Groups: B+

This was an interesting class. The professor didn't believe in tests, so she assigned us 4 essays throughout the semester to hand in as a packet at the end of the semester. She was very easily sidetracked and we barely had lectures if at all most weeks.

Semester GPA: 3.58
overall GPA: 3.52

And to think, in highschool I had a GPA of 2.014. My GPA went up from last semester when it was a 3.47.

I withdrew from one course, Model UN because it was basically a class to go along with a trip to The Netherlands, which I couldn't afford and the teacher was the same one as the World Politics who is not a very effective instructor.

I am handing in a few essays and doing a timed essay next Monday for a credit-by-exam for English Composition so that I can take Advanced Composition in the Fall, which is required for my minor. I'm also hurting for credits ATM since they didn't take all of my credits from community college.

I spoke to a pre-law adviser who didn't help me at all in figuring out the whole deal about getting into law school, but I have a list of 10 or so colleges I where I fall comfortably into their entering-GPA and will begin studying for the LSATs, and take them at the end of the summer. I am hoping for a 160 on them, though most schools I am looking at have median scores in the 150s.

don't Europeans and Canadians call it University?

Whatever.

I am finishing up the semester and am pretty excited about how it is going. I am already exempt from one final (An American History course) because I have received and A for the semester.

I got into an honor society this year and am having the induction ceremony on Saturday. My dad is coming out to visit so we cleaned the house today. Even shampooed the carpets. Then I made a mess in the guest bedroom because I felt like cleaning out the closet in there...he can deal. At first he was going to come out with my aunt, but she had to cancel. Then he said my sister was going to visit, but I asked her about it today and she knew nothing of it (she's in Maine right now going to school).

Last week I finished a small battle with the school. I had taken two AP English exams back in high school and received a score of 3 on each. For most AP exams my school will take a score of 3 on an exam as a 3 credits, but for some strange reason the English department only accepted scores of 4 or 5 on the exam. I requested to have an exception since I badly need the credits. They denied my request on the grounds of "the English department sets the standards". I apparently took that the wrong way and when I asked the head of the English department, she agreed with my reasoning of allowing two exams with a score of 3 each could count for at least one English requirement on my transcript. She notarized a new request for me and I did a run around and got into an advanced English course required for my pre-law minor. I was a bit surprised when I got a letter back saying they denied my request again, but this time there was no note as to why it was denied. So I set up a meeting with the guy who denied it. After he gave me the run around of the same answers he gave last time and me getting upset at him not explaining himself at all beyond what I already knew, he kicked me out of his office.

I went to his boss, the Provost. So the Provost, the head of the english department and this guy all got together and talked about me. They decided on a plan. Not overly diabolical but you can keep your image of a dark and smoky room. So, I'm getting this first-year English course tagged onto this semester, but I'm not actually part of the class. I am going to write a bunch of essays they will assign to me this summer and when I do that,t hey will give me my english credits I want. Since they are tagging it onto this semester I wont have to pay any fees for it, which was my main concern with not having any english credits because otherwise I would have to take a course during the summer/winter for $900 per credit hour or pay $600 per credit for going over 17 credits in the Fall or Spring of my senior year.

I have also decided that I will be attending law school after I graduate. I am getting in contact with the pre-law advisor at my school (apparently there is one here, but I was never assigned to one when I declared my minor) and I will probably take the LSAT this fall and next December if I have a chance. And it is slowly dawning on me that I am signing myself up for at least 3 more years of schooling. To think I hated highschool...

I own a motorcycle. It's something I like to brag about a lot this time of year because with the warmer days and nicer weather, it's all I can think about.

I find that I don't associate myself as a "biker" because it is not simply that I am an enthusiast for the sport of motorcycling, it's that I use my motorcycle as a primary form of transportation during the warmer months.

And I don't even ride that fancy of a bike. I ride on a puny 2003 Suzuki GZ250. With a 250cc engine, it's the smallest you can find for road bikes. But, it gets the job done and does it well. My little putter gets 70 miles to the gallon, which is sweet when gas prices push $4.00/g, and puts even my hippie of a wife's 07 Camry Hybrid to shame (it gets a measly 40mpg).

It is a blast to ride too! You'd think that to have any fun on a motorcycle you would HAVE to buy the fastest crotch rocket supersport bike with a name like Ninja or Katana [discontinued] or own a Harley or Victory...but you really don't. Any kid who's used a friend's dirt bike can tell you how much fun even going a few miles per hour around a dirt pile can be. Any bike will give you a feeling of freedom and exhilaration, no matter the name or the size or the speed you're going. In fact, with my small bike, you get all the fun of whipping down the highway at 90mph when you're putzing around at 60mph because there is no windshield or fairings to protect you from the wind.

That being said, I still want a new motorcycle. My little bike has served me well, but now that my wife has a full year of riding under her belt (taught her how last summer and she got her license too) she is itching for something that can get up highway speeds without going downhill with a tailwind.

I've been looking at sport/cruiser corssover bikes like the Suzuki GS500F, and the Suzuki GSX650F and even looking at some traditional cruisers like the Suzuki Boulevard M50 or the Yamaha Star V-star Custom. They all have a lot of great things, but at the moment, if I were to buy a bike tomorrow I am leaning toward the V-start Custom or the GS500F. Both are real solid bikes, and I like how both are not overkill for my needs (like the boulevard m50 and gsx650f).

I have also gladly put tons of money into safety and safety equipment. When I first got my motorcycle at 17, it was because my mom wanted to get a motorcycle. She had signed herself and I up for a motorcycle safety course that summer. We took the course through the Motorcycle Safety Foundation and they managed to teach me, someone who had never even driven a standard car, all of the basics of riding a motorcycle. They had their own bikes they taught us on, and at the end of the weekend-long course they had us take their own version of a road test. When I passed their tests, I was given a waiver and didn't even need to take my road test to get my license! It was so cool. Afterward my mom bought a bike just like the ones we learned on, the gz250. Unfortunately, she always felt the bike was too heavy (she had used dirt bikes as a teenager and was never comfortable on a road bike) so she gave me this brand new motorcycle she had gotten!

And now, after it has served its purpose and has taken all of the bumpd and scrapes of 3 new-to-sport riders, it is ready to move on to someplace better. Still runs like a dream, but yeah, I've been thinking about a new bike for a couple of years. I may get $1000 trade-in for it, and that can go toward the bike i really want.

Also, check out my first youtube video (sorry the sound is messed up lol) of my cat trying to figure out why he can't jump over our railing onto the neighbor's deck.

I've always wanted to live in British Columbia for a while. I visited there for a week a few years ago and I loved it. Vancouver is a really cool city, and so close to the Canadian Rockies.

I would also like to live in Northern California, I hear it's beautiful. All of my friends move to Colorado...but they never stay long, and from what I hear it's either urban sprawl or nothingness.

I liked living in the Adirondack Park in New York...but there's way too much elitist locals and over-protectionist seasonal residents and since it's a state park it's got jurisdictions of building codes and realty at an excessive level.

I like living in New Hampshire right now. I'm right at the souther tip of the White Mountains National Forest, in the dead middle of the state. I am 2 hours away from Boston and 4 hours away from my family. 2 hours from the coast. It's a great place. Although, to tell the truth, I'm unsure about the job market here. I can find winter employment easy, but the cost of living here is pretty high. Rents around here are expensive, and although I got a deal on a nice place, the utility bills are still expensive and our rent is still higher than before. And of course the simple stuff is more expensive because NH doesnt have an income tax or a sales tax...which in reality is a big savings, but when I want to register my car or get a new license..it's damned expensive, like a few hundred dollars a year for the vehicle registrations. Which I don't mind paying.

The job market, as I said, I'm unsure of. I couldn't find a job when we first moved mostly because I was about to start school so nobody was willing to hire me for less than a month anyway and I was hoping to get a work-study, which I did..but this spring I'm going to be without the work study and my current job, obviously. There is a wal-mart and a hannaford, but I'm going to have to check up with my school's internship office and see if I can land a paid internship at a law office or a political science type thing...something close to what I'm studying.

I don't think my area is being hit by the recession though, which is hopeful, but we'll see. I see a few businesses opening up here and there, but i haven't been around long enough to see if there have been any closings either.

Boy, I neglected this for almost a month.

Alright, so what's going on in my life?

School:

Semester started in late January. Now finally in the thick of it. A couple of winter storms and a teacher getting stuck in London have so far only canceled few of my classes. We are only behind in 2 classes, which is nice.

I had my first exams in Politics and Government and my American history classes. I felt I did very well.

Not-School:

My dad stopped by and helped us clean out one of our rooms in the house and then did our taxes. getting a nice big refund.

With that refund we are going on a 6 day vacation to one of those Sandals resorts in the Bahamas. Got a great deal on it, and it was one of the super premium suites too. A fucking roylls royce is picking us up at the airport. We have a butler for the whole week. food and drank included the whole time. It is fucking swank. And since we had to basically move/find jobs immediately after our wedding last August, this is going to be our honeymoon.

BlueHippo made me an awesome duck sig, which is proudly displayed in my userpage image because he put so much detail that is simply lost when it is cropped down to 50px tall. Thanks man!

With my vacation being at the end of June that means my schedule may be more open for the Montreal Meetup in early June.

I'm very excited for this summer.

[random video]

[random picture]

I just purchased the Samsung Saga from Verizon and updated my calling plan. Unsure whether we'll keep my wife's Palm Treo. It's been missing calls and acting funky lately. I may just keep the vcast/internet on my current Samsung Alias. She's getting the Saga for herself, since her phone is the one crapping the bed, but I'll be using it for all of it's cool features like wi-fi, mobile net and suchlike.

Edit: using phone now. it has a super awesome opera browser! javascript even works!

Business Ethics and Society: B-

I was worried about this class because the teacher wasn't that great and on the midterm I had gotten a C as a raw score (A with a curved score) and I felt really weak on the final. I was glad I got a B- though, even though it is my lowest grade.

Criminal Adjudication: A

This was an awesome course. The teacher was some hot shot lawyer who was a bit flaky, but I did well on all of his tests and quizzes.

Global Problems and Power Politics: B

I was expecting a little bit better grade in this course, as it was a total fluff course and not major specific. Technically it's a general education credit and a lower division course. I found her teaching to be effective, but we only had one exam and that was the final, so I went into it pretty much cold turkey.

Elements of Logic: A

This wasn't much of a surprise. My first grade for the class was a 99%.

Foundations of Sociology: A-

I had actually withdrawn from an Intro to Soc. course in community college because of a poor teacher. The instructor this time around was amazing. She actually cared about each student and made it a point to try and have some one-on-one time with each of us (even though there were 30 students in the class) sometime during the semester.

GPA: 3.47

I beat my wife's GPA this semester. I am smug.

Sometime around 9:30 tomorrow morning my account will be turning six years old.

That's a long time considering the ages of most new users is 13-15. I first created this account at 15 years old.

I was barely in high school at the time.

In fact, I spent the first half of that school year messing around on Newgrounds playing games like Rooftop Skater and The Lusty Barfly during my CAD class in the PC computer lab which was next to the shop class room in the basement of my school.

I had first seen Newgrounds that previous spring during another introduction to CAD class I was taking for half of the year when older kids were watching funny albeit inappropriate movies in the class (Like Taliban Women's Revolt)

That Christmas, my mom had bought a brand new Medion (yeah, I never heard of it either) to replace our aging first generation iMac (which couldn't even load the front page of Newgrounds without crashing, or having AIM and Netscape running at the same time).

So, first day of school after vacation rolls around, I make a newgrounds account and I leave a review to something...which I wish I could remember, but the review itself has long since been deleted. My account name was something like MalroxDevonsux (who incidentally was my best friend at the time), then a few days later I changed it to the same as my current email address, malforpresident.

A few minutes after creating that review, I went to the BBS (this is about halfway through the class now, so my time was running low on exploring Newgrounds) and in somewhat of a precursor to the future, I made a post in the Politics Forum. Oddly enough I am now a Political Science major.

And so I ignored my account for nearly a full month, until late January arrived and I began being a habitual user of the BBS while in class.

Then I lost interest for a little bit, and finally came back in full force in March and created my first thread...and apparently I picture spammed...

From there I became a regular in due time, and treaded lightly by the rules. In fact, in the 5 years I was a regular user, I had never received a BBS ban. I had friends in the Clubs & Crews where i lurked for the most part...and even met up with some in Vancouver in 2004

But back when I was 15...When I first began using Newgrounds...I was totally different from who I am now. It was my second winter volunteering at the ski mountain where I would later instruct until last winter. That summer I was still a camper at the summer camp I would later be a counselor at for 3 years. I was a total slacker in all things school, and I was heavily involved in school activities ranging from being on the Soccer, Basketball, and Track teams, playing in an indoor soccer league, traveling and participating in forensics (not science, acting competitions!), to even playing roles in school plays.

I was also socially inept. Not only was I loud and annoying (still am) during all classes, I also lacked anything resembling talent at gaining the interests of the young women I fawned over.

I made about 5000 posts in my first year on the BBS. about 1/3 or so of my total posts were made in that one year, six years ago. I lurked pretty much after that. I joined some offshoot communities like Spasmbot and latingrounds and hung onto whatever e-friendships I had like they were real. I am still friends with many, and now we can all throw goats at each other on face book and know each other's full first and last names, watch videos of each other on youtube and see myspace-style self pictures...something that was totally alien when we first began conversing in 2003. To say I was surprised that biteme2514 was asian or that olskoo wasn't in fact another pasty white kid is an under statement.

Then, in 2007 I found myself totally nonplussed with the site. Everyone I had made friends with had moved on or were off the net entirely and the swarms of teenagers were drowning out any intelligent conversations that could be had.

2008 has been a very interesting year for me in many ways. First of all, I started forging some new friendships with Newgrounders in the Politics Regulars Lounge where I had rarely posted outside of for many months, and eventually began participating again. And in late January I was contacted by Wade Fulp himself...who, despite my assurance I believed who he was, went on to quote to me my email and password, asked me if I would like to review moderate for the site.

If you ever look at my reviews (I wouldn't suggest it), you'd think I wouldn't exactly be the best candidate for the job (and some of you who I may have banned at one time or another still may feel that way). I protested a little bit, stating that I didn't have a deity whistle or had even written a review in almost 2 years...but I agreed to try it out. I picked it up (it's not that difficult, really) and found myself actually enjoying Newgrounds again.

Since I lack any semblance of artistic talent, I have been unable to actually contribute anything to Newgrounds worth a damn. By helping out with the reviews I felt like I was finally giving back to the community I had enjoyed for so long.

In March I attended a Montreal Meetup, where I got to see face-to-face many people I had known through Newgrounds for 4 or 5 years. It was an awesome experience and I would do it again in a heartbeat.

In June I attended the annual Moderator Meat where Tom and crew totally blew us away with hospitality and a totally kickass office (seriously, if they had a non-artistic position available that didn't require knowledge of computers...like...resident free loafer...I'd KILL to work there).

And in July I was asked to help forum moderate. Which I was happy to oblige since I had loved the forums sinc day one of having my account.

On a personal note, during those six years I have grown tremendously. I am now a Junior in college pursuing a Bachelor's in Political Science with a minor in Pre-Law. I hope to go to law school after I graduate.

I got married this past August to my girlfriend of 3 and a half years.

I totally uprooted and moved to a whole new state, set up a little abode (and by little I mean a fricken huge and awesome condo of which I am not shy to brag about after the last few dumps I've lived in).

But through all of those major life changes, the one constant has been Newgrounds. This community is probably one of the best you will find on the internet, and I am proud to tell others exactly what kind of place my T-shirts, keychain, Tankmen Captain, and stickers all come from. I'm still waiting on some patches and some more stickers. Edit: the patches and stickers came, with some extra cool stuff like a post card...which, doesn't have any room to write on! there's a damned tank logo where I should be able to write, a angreh faic sticker and 2 tank stickers to ad to my collection of HALF A GODDAMN ROLL...what am I going to do with all these stickers?

I hope that I can get my shit together and actually contribute something of worth if Tom's rather blunt hints at a writing portal ever comes about, because I can write (el oh el at all of this). Or maybe I'll use this extra expensive and fancy Adobe Master Suite CS3 I've got on my computer...who knows.

But six years.

Fuck.

abusive reviews should jump off the screen at you just screaming 'I'M ABUSIVE' if you don't notice it as such at a first glance, then don't bother flagging it.

the flagging system is not an instantaneous process. It can take time between you flagging something and it actually being dealt with, from minutes to weeks.

If you have a low whistle level, it may take even longer if you flag something that is NOT abusive, because others probably won't flag those. It takes more than one person to bring a review to our attention, so if you have a low level it still has a way to go before being brought up.

There's no expiration date on your flags. you can flag something wrong the day you first create your account and it might not be dealt with until today or next year after enough people have made the same mistake.

What you lose when you are wrong is more than what you stand to gain if you are right. It's a nasty curve.

Garbage is NOT rock bottom. You can flag yourself into oblivion if you really want to. But since you will have no effect on things with a garbage whistle you'll probably need to have some pretty bad luck to keep losing points.

abusive reviews should jump off the screen at you just screaming 'I'M ABUSIVE' if you don't notice it as such at a first glance, then don't bother flagging it.

Really ancient reviews will never get you negative whistle points. In some cases they are deleted, in others, flags are cleared with no penalty given. In no case will you lose points on an old review. If you see somebody giving off this as some type of fact or rule of the mods, they are talking out of their ass.

That being said, if you really want to help the site out, try to find the most recent of abusive reviews. It doesn't do us any good deleting really old reviews from people who haven't visited the site in years and it's not that nice to ban somebody for something they had done a while ago.

The whistle system was created to help artists. You bring abuse to our attention, and we take it off of a flash to HELP THE AUTHOR. There is absolutely no focus on the those who flag things beyond if you are good at it, you get a better whistle and have more weight when you flag things, and if you're wrong, you get a broken whistle and we don't have to deal with you throwing the wrong stuff at us.

There's no numbers, figures, ratios, graphs or anything known about the whistle system. Liljim made it and he's been tight lipped ever since. We don't know. If somebody is telling you numbers or how many flags gets you to what...they're talking out of their ass and you shouldn't bother listening to them.

I hope this helps you guys out a bit.

abusive reviews should jump off the screen at you just screaming 'I'M ABUSIVE' if you don't notice it as such at a first glance, then don't bother flagging it.