One of my biggest pet peeves is people's MSN names. Corey and Kacy always has some really long message on his name, Kevin had those dumb soccer balls around his name, and Chris has some amazingly out of date message on his name (if he got on more often then that wouldn't be the case!). But finally there is a solution! In build 604 of MSN Messenger 7, they allow for custom names. You would know if you have build 604 because you would not have gotten it from MSN's site. The best place to find it is http://www.thaiware.com/download/programinter/msn700604.rar. What I like about this build is that you can have your name as (for example) "Brian" and then have a personal message as "MSN 7.0.0604 RoXoRZ!!!" or something like that. Then when you are chatting with people, it will show up as "Brian says" instead of "Brian - MSN 7.0.0604 RoXoRZ!!! says". So please, do me a favor and download this version. It is really stable and it is well worth the download.

Danielle is gone. She had put it off as long as she could, and got to stay an extra month, but of course the day would come. Today was that day. Apparently she stayed up until 9 am packing, and then slept until 11 am, when we came in to bring her to brunch. Oh well. After that, we hung out with her until about 4:00 when her parents showed up (4 hours late) and picked her up. She was not very happy about going because I guess her mom, Anne, is doing something... I am not sure what. She told me something that didn't line up with what Danielle had told us for quite a while, and that did not make Danielle happy. I am not sure why her mom would lie about something like that; was she trying to get me mad at Danielle? Because it just got her madder at her mom, and made me wonder where Anne gets off treating her like that. Sigh, she has a house in McCall that she has the option of staying in, but I made her promise to give her mom a chance for two weeks, but I doubt that will happen, and I don't think that I would blame her... but I guess you have to love your mom right?

The nice thing is that nothing will change with how I communicate with Danielle, because I usually just talked to her over IM anyway. Now I just don't have to be bothered with interacting with her face to face... now if I could just get that with everyone, I could hole up in my room. Then I would stop signing in to MSN and then I would be like Chris! The problem, of course, is that I wouldn't be able to play Solitaire Showdown... and that is bad. Especially this week when I gave up gaming and I could not play... it was terrible. I would have soothed my sorrows with chocolate... but of course I gave up sugar too. Dar. I have been doing really well for my Lenten observance too! The only mess-ups that I have done so far have been meat on Fridays (which is a no-no), but I will have to keep working on that.

Heh... a funny thing is that Kacy is giving up computer games for lent, but I went to see him today and he was playing Final Fantasy X on the Play station. First off... that game sucks. The FF series is one of the most boring games I have ever seen because you just run around and fight people... and it is the same fight sequence over and over. Bleh. But anyway... Kacy gave up computer games for lent, and he said that it was ok for him to play the Play station because it COULD be considered a "console". Sure... I can agree with that, but if you are going to get technical, let’s look at the definition of a computer. If I remember from Mr. Sidenstricker's class in 6th grade, a computer is something that takes input, produces output, processes information and stores information. Yep... PS takes input from the controller, outputs to the screen, processes the information from the CD and stores information in its RAM. But let’s look at some other definitions from http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=computer.

1) A device that computes, especially a programmable electronic machine that performs high-speed mathematical or logical operations or that assembles, stores, correlates, or otherwise processes information.

Heh... yeah... while you could say that the PS isn't very fast, it does assemble, store, correlate, and process information.

2) Machine for performing calculations automatically

Yep... PS does that

3) Computers can perform complex and repetitive procedures quickly, precisely and reliably and can quickly store and retrieve large amounts of data.

Complex processes... yeah (graphics engine), repetitive (especially with FF... everything is the same while loop) and reliably (Kacy said that he had had it running for 48 hours straight) and retrieve large amounts of date (it is a 5 gig DVD). If you continue to read that definition, it talks about having a CPU (PS has it), input (controllers), output (monitor), and memory (RAM).

Shesh Kacy... it sounds like you are making up the rules as they suite you! But I am not going to judge you... just heckle you! :P I mean... what else am I good for.

But in all honesty, Kacy is doing pretty well giving up sugar, IM and SOME computer games. Even Yohan gave up pop for the duration of lent... and he is doing really well on that. I have been pretty amazed as to how many non Catholics that I have talked to who are giving up something for lent. It really is a good feeling to give something up that you would really love to have. And the weird thing about me giving up sugar is that I want it less and less. This rocks!

Anyway, I am going to try and play a game of Solitaire Showdown (since it is Sunday). My record right now is 976-659-43 (1669 games total). I want to hit 1000 wins here pretty soon, along with 1700 games overall. See ya!