Tuesday, February 12, 2008

When You Can't Play Games

You know, it is really difficult to want to do something when you can't. Take me for example, I am a pretty big fan on online gaming. I've played Final Fantasy XI, World of Warcraft, Everquest, tried to play Everquest 2 but my computer wouldn't run it, City of Heroes/Villains, and the Matrix Online. Most of this happened either on my summer breaks or before I got to college. You see, where I go to college it's very difficult to play something I want to play. This wasn't the case at first. When I was a freshman three years ago, any online game I wanted to play was open. Now this was a problem for the small campus. Because all the ports were open people were free to use filesharing programs like Kazaa or Limewire. Okay, so I used to use these too, but they ended up taking so much bandwidth (or something) and the IT department closed every port except for the general internet.

This was bad for me. I was paying monthly for WoW and City of Heroes at the same time, along with XBox Live. What was I going to do? I couldn't play any of my games! Eventually World of Warcraft became unblocked so I played it for a while. Now XBox Live is unblocked though I have to hotwire it in a way to get it to work. That's great and all, but what's a gamer to do if he wants to play, I don't know, another game? I'm not so sure yet. In fact I just re-bought Final Fantasy XI on the 360 so I could try it out again. Justin and I spent at least 30 minutes last night trying to figure out how to hotwire the XBox before we just gave up. This morning I tried it again and it worked but lo and behold, Final Fantasy XI's ports are blocked.

Well, this is certainly a rant post, so I'll keep it short. I'll keep you all updated when I figure out exactly what I'm going to do. For now, I'm going home for the weekend between trimesters, so if nothing else I can play it then. Thanks for reading.

Saturday, February 9, 2008

St. Louis on Film

Note: If you missed our Introductory message you might want to read it over here.

I don't believe I mentioned the fact during my introduction, but one of my major interests is photography. Recently, I was on a field trip to St. Louis and found myself immersed with many unique subjects for photography. In fact, I believe I was consistently the last person of the group to leave a sight and multiple times was told I "got lost" when everyone was ready to leave. How this happened I am not sure, I knew exactly where I was. Anyway, Dr. Nicovich and the rest of the group had enough patience to wait for me so here are the results. Maybe there not the best, but hey we're working on that!


To see all the pictures please view my Flickr album here or click on the gallery picture below.
















-Justin



Thursday, February 7, 2008

The Symposium Begins

Symposium: A conference at which a certain subject is discussed.

Random:
Lacking any definite plan or order or purpose.

Thoughts:
Mental process which allows beings to model the world

So it begins. What begins you may ask? Good question; essentially whatever. In a break with the set in stone conventional blogging wisdom, this blog has no specific topic. Why? Quite simple really 1) We are new to this and have no idea how to blog correctly. 2) We have many different interests and don't think it politically correct to single any one of them out. 3)We felt like doing it this way. 4) Unless you immediately leave after reading this sentence we will assume you are at least somewhat interested and therefore our new scheme of blog writing has at its core some merit.

So the next question is "Who is we?" The simple truth is we don't know exactly who we are, but we are normally called Justin Gunter and Jeff Holingsworth. We're both students at William Carey University and are roommates (selected by a random process I might add).

Justin Gunter
I am Junior at William Carey University majoring in History and minoring in Business Administration, Spanish, and Communication. I'm a member of the Speech and Debate team and Pi Kappa Delta chapter at WCU. I work as a student in the WCU Information Technology Office. My interests include: computers, video games, reading, philosophy, theology (Christianity), history, and debating in no particular order.

Jeff Hollingsworth
I am in no way a clone of my roommate, though the following personal interest statement my make you think otherwise. I am also a Junior at William Carey University going for a major in Religion and History and thinking about minoring in English. I don't do a whole lot of anything for extra curricular activities except teach a small group for Middle School boys at my church on Wednesdays and play a whole mess of video games. As for what I like, I enjoy such things as video games, reading (novels, comic books, and theological books), and various shows on television. Also, I am a movie fiend.

So what can you expect to see on this blog? Well that is perhaps both the easiest and most difficult question to be asked. Short answer, everything. Not happy with that? Well I wouldn't be either so here's a list of possible topics: Book Reviews, Movie Reviews, Game Reviews, Personal Stories/Observations/Memoirs, Interesting News/Facts/History, Societal/Controversial Commentary, Religious Topics/Christian Living, picture galleries, funny stories/pictures/comics, and the occasional rant about absolutely nothing of importance.

With that said, I encourage you to check back often, hopefully there will be new content whenever you check back. If not you can most likely blame our professors or bosses, not ourselves. To facilitate your continued and perpetual observance of this blog there is a nice link located conveniently to the right that will assist you in setting up delivery of our blog post through the always amazing RSS feed. (its even better than sliced bread, trust me.)

-Justin

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

The Symposium (Batman?) Begins

I agreed to the title "Symposium of Random Thoughts" not only because I thought it sounded cool, but because I couldn't think of any other title that most described what I plan for my part of the blog. I really enjoy writing; I write stories from time to time and I can articulate my interests better through word than through talk. This gives me plenty of space to let my own interests be known, as if I thought any reader might care. However, everyone's thoughts are equally valid, so hey, why not make mine known?

My sincerest wish is that someone other than Justin or myself will get some sort of enjoyment out of this dumping place for the mind's garbage. I believe we have agreed that our interests are varied enough (at least in intensity) that we will likely talk more about different things depending on who posts. From my side of things, expect reviews of games and movies and poignant glimpses into a (semi)beautiful mind. This is certainly not the rule though. Justin my decide he wants to tell you about this new game he's played or I may decide to critique St. Thomas Aquinas. As two different people, our differences bring a unique perspective on similar ideas.

So sit back and enjoy the ride.

- Jeff