"Off"-Roadtrip 

Summertime... and the fish are jumpin'

Hey all!
Well, it is summer break. Spring classes are OVER! Yay! I've been sleeping in late and staying up late like my body's clock is set. Thanks a lot mom, for that marvelous oddity. :p

I've been playing a lot of World of Warcraft, and am happily moving along in levels on a few of my characters, most notably my Warrior on Proudmoore. Right now he's level 58 (out of 60 levels). Nattsu and I both made Hunter alts on Elvis' server so I could chat with him more often, and we're Loving the Hunter thing. Nattsu likes it because she can name pets, make clothes, and fight from a distance. For me, it is a welcome change - fighting from a distance that is, from the Warrior - plus, pets are cool. :)

I'll be teaching two classes soon for Summer 2nd session. I have no idea how I'm going to squeeze all that content into two months' time. It just doesn't seem right they offer these classes and give the same amount of credit for them in so short a time in the summer. I think it is wrong. The state Board of Regent's should mandate that lesser credit shall be given. There's NO WAY to cover the same content and require the same work for some classes. =/

In the Fall, I HOPE I'll be teaching Play & Technology. The course was approved and is on the list, but as of right now I only have 6 people in the class. I need to do some marketing this summer and try to boost those numbers so they don't close it. Perhaps I can talk to some other department heads and convince them to give credit for it in their departments. Then I can open it up to Engineering and Education majors as well. That'd be super!

Sunshine, Pollen, A New Outlook, Random Happenings

What the hell does the title of this post mean? Seriously? I don't know other than the fact that it is sunny outside and I'm feeling good despite the pollen. I mean really, what else am I supposed to title a post?

Lately I've felt really well. I know I shouldn't be saying this or I might jinx it, but what the heck. I figured I have enough sad, angry, and complainant posts already. Why not post a happy one for a change? :)

The weather has been absolutely gorgeous as of late. I like opening the windows and doors of the house to let the breeze flow through and to let the sunshine in. When I sit in the warmth of the sun it feels as if my energy is restored. It feels as if my internal mechanism is rejuvenated. I love this time of year - not too hot, not a ton of bugs, always a nice breeze. It puts me in a good mood. This past weekend I went shopping and got some new clothes. For some reason it feels good to buy clothes in the spring.

Spring has such an effect on people they ought to make "Spring resolutions" instead of ones for New Year's. Honestly, who keeps a New Year's resolution when it is colder than Dennis Miller on a grumpy day? But who would keep one if they made it in the Spring where the air is fresh and inspiring? I would. I'd bet a great many people would, sans allergies. Those allergies I'm sure would make it difficult for some.

I went to see the movie Constantine - it was "okay". It was actually pretty decent except that even though the plot follows a person who can see the demons and knows tricks to banish them (a unique perspective), the overall principle of a war between the angels and demons to influence mankind has been done a gazillion times in different yet very similar forms.

On the gaming front; I am jonesin'. I am twitching. I am getting the shakes. I want this semester to be over so I can take a short break and relax! That means I am ready for some relaxed gaming! I have a few MTG ideas in my head of decks I'd like to put together but I just don't have the time to do so. I want to get done with all the grading and dedicate some time to that. Get ready pals! New decks incoming!

The World is a Vampire

"Despite all the Rage, I'm still just a rat in a cage."

Sometimes I'm angry.
Sometimes I'm sad.
Sometimes I'm a goody-goody, and
Sometimes I'm bad.
Most of the time I'm just surviving.

Life, Love, Peace, War, Apathy, Care, - we all live in one whacked out world. There was a great cartoon I saw today; in it the man at the bar said to his neighboring patron, concerning the television up above them, "Yeah, I used to get depressed watching the news too. Then I discovered the miracle of apathy."

Since my recent posts have been about students' work, I figured why change from that. Obviously sometimes my students excite me by expressing their eagerness to learn. Also obviously, sometimes they piss me off by not following simple directions.

(Recent Ex: I posted directions to follow one of two formats for their speeches. One format has TWO main points, the other has FIVE main points. What did many of them post? THREE main points! Go take fucking 2nd grade again, people.)

Anyway, right now we have only a few weeks left in the semester. Many of my students are whining because they say they don't have enough time to do the work. Many of them complain, "What?!? I can't give my speech. Thursday is my last day on campus! How do you expect me to get my speech comments back and give it on Monday?!?"

All I can say is, Get a damned clue. Drive up here again. God forbid you'd have to do some work on the weekend. "Oh my, do homework over the weekend that entails me making one extra trip to campus? Oh NO!" Get over it. Grow the fuck up. Getting an education means you have to WORK for it. This isn't kindergarten, kiddies. This isn't even High School. This is COLLEGE. You know, the place that is supposed to prepare you for the work force, for the "real world" if you will. You think they don't work on weekends in the work force?

So at this point I'm fed up with the whining. I'm sick of the childish complaints. I don't want to hear them and because they've whined so much, I don't care. Do the work or FAIL. See if I blink. Huzzah! APATHY!

Ya know,... re: students

Ya know, even though oftentimes the students who are late with their work make my life a living hell, the job still balances out on the happiness scale.

I am extremely happy teaching. I often have students who call me, write letters, e-mail me, or who just drop by that tell me how much my class has helped or changed them for the better.

Those statements, those thoughts, and the fact they bothered to express them to me, mean a WORLD. Sometimes people aren't happy at their jobs. There's a big difference in not being happy WITH one's job and not being happy AT one's job. Everyone has days where they hate work. Lucky people are the ones who enjoy their jobs even though they have an occasional unhappy day. I'm lucky. :)

Thank you to my former students that remind me from time to time what rewards teaching brings. And on that note, I'm writing e-mails to my former professors thanking them for all they've done. Let the cycle continue!

Late Students Can Bite My Ass

Thank goodness it is Friday. I'm so frikkin' worn out. This last week was one where all my students hand in outlines then within either 28 hours or 56 hours (the outlines come in waves) I have to have them graded and get them back to them. That's a lot of work. These aren't like math tests where I just have to check the answers. HOPEFULLY they're intellectual pieces of work written well in order to be presented to the class in speeches.

There's one problem with this - students who don't do their damned work. Fuck those dumbass slacker students who make my life hell. Yeah yeah, they were sick. Yeah yeah, their grandma died. Yeah yeah, they had to fly out of the country. I don't give a shit - especially if they didn't call me to let me know! What the fuck is up with that?!? I can't wait till these kids get out in the real world. Try pulling that shit at work, fuckup. Your boss won't give a damn if you had 14 family members die in a bizarre electrolysis accident in the jungle of Brazil and you had to fly out of the country then got sick while there so bad you barfed up a kidney. You know what he'll say when you get back if you didn't call him before you got on that plane? "Don't bother coming back Monday. Your office shit has been mailed to you already."

Turn your work in on time. Turn it in with all the required materials. God damn, I go over this shit in class, I provide you a handout with the requirements on there, and I even make myself a tally of how many times I say it in each class so I know I've covered it. Hell, I told them five times to provide me photocopies of the title page, copyright page, credibility page, and the pages they use. I told them, "If you give me your folder without all your source materials I'll just hand it right back to you and it will be considered late and counted at half credit." How many students do you think didn't do this? About 30 of them didn't. Damn America is in trouble. If this is the efficiency and ability to follow simple instructions we have to look forward to in our future leadership, we're doomed. Plain and simple, doomed beyond repair. No wonder politicians are so retarded sometimes, hell, look what we're letting out of High School as "competent in the English language!" My wife from Japan has better grammatical sense than some of my students raised in America!!! How sad is that ????

Seriously, 30 students is FAR too many to deal with. I'm giving them the option to make up this speech within ONLY two time slots. If they can't do it, tough shit. 30 is ludicrous. I refuse to do this shit again. I schedule my time to grade. Fuck them if they can't turn shit in on time. I am modifying my syllabus to read, "NO LATE WORK, WHATSOEVER, WILL BE PERMITTED. IF A WRITTEN ASSIGNMENT IS NOT TURNED IN ON TIME, YOU GET A ZERO FOR IT." That will count for the people who can't follow directions too. I won't accept it without the proper source documentation - and tadah! they just earned a ZERO.

Put that in your bonnet, slackers.
Damn I feel better now that I've vented.
But for some reason I still crave the urge to kill virtual creatures. :)
Too bad my server is down for maintenance. Grrr....
I need to vent about that too I guess.....
Another day perhaps.

We got squashed by a BIG bug in Razorfen! If you look carefully you can see me under his right front leg. Hey, I go for the heart of the problem. :) - Bullox tells the group, "I wonder what banging this Gong does..." - famous last words. 

Bullox and Kotori share a sunset 

Never Light all the Candles! 

Same Game, Same Job - New News for You

Several things have been happening since my last post - most of which are good news. Yay!

JOB News:

• I got a letter stating that if the budget remains the same I'll still have a place to work at the University of West Georgia. Woo!
• I finally got that laptop I'd won. The department bought and installed Dreamweaver for me. It is software that is great for webpage design. I plan on requiring students to use it to make their webpages in that new class in the Fall. I'm also helping out with the new Speech Communication website we'll post for the University. When it gets published I'll let you know. Now they're investigating purchasing some RAM for the laptop as currently it is extremely slow in running the applications I need for the class.
• I got invited to the University of Illinois to present a project I'd done a few years ago. I created a Virtual Forest to represent a communication social network. This was done inside ALICE (Adaptive Laboratory of Immersive Cognitive Experiments) for a interdepartmental project class funded by the National Science Foundation. Many thanks to Noshir Contractor, Michael Twidale, and Narendra Ahuja, the three professors of that course I so fondly remember. Here you can read about ---> ALICE.

GAME News:

• I was in the alpha test (a time for friends and family of employees to play a game in order to find problems with it and to make suggestions for changes and/or new ideas to the game) and beta test (for a larger group of gaming enthusiasts than just friends and family of the employees) for a combined period of just over a year for a game called World of Warcraft.
• World of Warcraft, or WoW, is a MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game). If you'd like to read about MMORPG's, you can do that here on a page I created for another project.
• WoW is a game that allows players to create a character to control inside a virtual world. This virtual world looks very similar to earth in that it has forests, cities, swamps, and many of the same natural features of a civilized planet. The characters you can create can be of different races (if you've seen Lord of the Rings, imagine making a dwarf, elf, orc, or human), and different classes (this determines the characters function in the world - warriors can take damage, priests can only wear cloth armor but are powerful healers, etc.).
• Now that this game has been released, both Nattsu and I play it very often. My main character is Bullox the warrior, and Nattsu plays Kotori the priest. We group up with the characters some friends have made and go adventuring together. This allows us to stay in contact with people we know from Albany, Atlanta, and Urbana-Champaign now that both we and they have moved.
• I have several other characters I play. Below you'll see a screenshot from inside the game of my warlock named Andirak. Yes, he is a gnome, and yes, I chose green hair for him. In this game you can learn different professions such as leatherworking, tailoring, and blacksmithing. It's no surprise that Andirak is an engineer. :) /wave Rick - hehe

This is my gnome warlock Andirak, in WoW. WoW stands for World of Warcraft which is an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game). 

On my way to class...

Wow, I have a lot to catch you up on but it will have to wait for now. Rest assured I'll fill you all in soon. Right now I'm getting ready to go listen to my students' first round of speeches. So far the speeches are decent - a few wonderfully mastered marvels and a few that lack insight and/or preparation. There's always some of each level in every bunch. We'll see how today's go. :)

I also have my students rank each other using a "rank order" system - on a scale of one to five, with five being the best (just like a 5-star restaurant or 5-star hotel). They rank each other on:

• Delivery (eye contact, posture, gestures, and fluency), and
• Content (main pts in into/body/conc, Attention-getter, Final thought, also on Audience adaptations, source citations, and a descriptive passage).

So on their papers they write: Name, Thesis topic, D #, C # (for each person)

Then at the end of each day's speeches they circle the best speech of the day. At the end of the entire round (I call the speeches Rounds like in a boxing match), they vote for whom they think did the best job. Winners get prizes! Wheeee! :)

Amazing how time creeps up - it is almost time to go to class. More to come later.

New Year Update - January

So far this New Year has been going fairly well. Here are some notable events:

• Marc Smith came over from Atlanta to see where we live. /wave Marcus
• School started back and the University changed its name from the "State University of West Georgia" to simply, "University of West Georgia."
• If the University rehires me for next year then I have my courses approved. I'll be teaching a class of "Play & Technology" in the fall of 2005. Exciting!
• We still are having problems with our internet but at least we have some access.
• We went down to visit my brother Ken and his wife Sherry over the MLK holiday weekend. It was a great trip and they have a beautiful home! We had FUN! The guys went shooting (yay for blowing up water-filled jugs at 300 yards!) and the women went shopping. We played Taboo!, ate low-country boil (YUM!) and Ken gave me a trombone! Thanks little brother! =) I love you and miss you already! It was SO great to see them!
• Regarding that "shopping" trip... can you believe I gave Nattsu money to spend at the outlet mall and she didn't spend but 10% of the money?!? Damn, a woman who won't spend her cash on clothes?!? What's up with that? I guess I'll have to take her to a mall in Atlanta now... maybe the Mall of Georgia will change her mind. ;)
• While returning from the trip to South Georgia (Ken & Sherry's house) we stopped in Swainsboro and met Chang's parents and saw their restaurant. VERY nice place, both business and home - and wonderfully nice parents. No wonder Chang's such a well-adjusted guy. Hehe - It was good to see ya pal, thanks for meeting up with us! Now learn how to make those two dishes!!! I want some! Mmmmm!!!
• My classes are going well. So far I can tell I have a few slackers and a few really motivated people. Overall they seem to be a fun bunch of students. We'll see how they do as the semester progresses. Good Luck!

That's about it so far this year. I hope it gets even better. Stay tuned blog fans. :)

HAPPY NEW YEAR !!!
Well, it is now 2005. What does that mean? It means we're now in an "odd" year. So, what's going on since the peach dropped? Hmmm...

• Caryl, Nattsu's former college roommate visited us from Boston.
• Santa brought me some poker chips. Anyone up for Texas Hold'em?
• I start back to work on the 10th but have already gone in to get prepared.
• My proposal for a new course won me a Dell Inspirion laptop (which will likely belong to the department but be under my 'control')
• My lame-ass cable company, CHARTER COMMUNICATIONS is neglecting maintenance on their lines, causing my connection to be REALLY slow and its pissing me off. The trouble started 3 weeks ago RIGHT at the most critical time - when we got off for the holidays and wanted to do some online gaming. Fuck you, Charter.
• I visited John McDole's new house - very nice John, very nice.
• I saw John May's busted ass car - yes, the new one. Go go speed racer. But grats on the fiance.
• I'm teaching five classes this semester. 4 Public speaking 101 classes and 1 Public speaking for Engineering students class.
• My aunt Kathy didn't call me back about visiting during Natalie's stay. =p
• We did drive over to see Thomas, Hiromi, and Theo while they were down. Thanks to John and Alice who have a beautiful home underground.

That's about it so far. This is only the first week of the year. We'll see how the rest of it goes. I am hopeful for a great year, 2005.

Merry Christmas Everyone! No, the Angel isn't on fire! =Þ 

Okay, right now you're thinking, "Chris...errr ... Veloche doesn't even like wine, so why is he serving cheese?" Well, you're right. Enough with the cheese. It had to be said, but Thanksgiving is now over. Now I'll get on with the more mundane items in life, which quite often turn out to be very entertaining. Isn't it funny how that works? I guess that's what Jerry Seinfeld realized when he came up with the idea for that wacky show. Too bad he just didn't blog it, eh?

Speaking of which, a lot of friends and family members are asking me, "What the heck is a blog?" Go read. =p Seriously though, "blog" is short for "web log" - which are free online journals to document pretty much anything imaginable. They're a pretty nifty idea. They exist because they can exist, because the creators can make money off of them, because believe it or not they're a good source of information, and because it is a democratic approach to net access. Even the homeless in Los Angeles have a significant web presence due to blogging (and some other programs that allow them and encourage them to speak up concerning city issues by using library computer terminals). Yay for the freedom of speech, eh?

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This week is nice. I'm off work. Hurrah! A friend of mine from Atlanta, Chang, came over last night and we played some MTG. Chang's a good guy even if he is a bit nuts. He makes me laugh. Its good to keep people around you that make you laugh. Isn't that what makes the world go 'round? My world works that way at least. I wrapped a present today for Nattsu. I know she's going to go crazy. She hates surprises. I hope you all are going to have a great holiday. Christmas Eve day I plan on driving down to my mom's. We'll have Christmas there and probably drive back Christmas night so that we can hit the party on the day after Christmas.

But I know on the 26th I'll be thinking about more than any party or what I got for Christmas. I'll be thinking about Grandma - Nana - My wonderful grandmother who passed away a couple years ago while I was up in Illinois. I couldn't leave to come down for the funeral without seriously messing up my schoolwork. :( It really bugs me. I hate the system for that. Having to miss your own grandmother's funeral or fail your classes - tough choice, huh? Not for some. For me it was. I worked damn hard to get there - to be doing what I was - to be earning that degree, and I know that Nana would've approved of me staying. That's the only thing that kept me up there - was the thought of her and her words. She always told me her mother said, "What you know you don't carry on your back." And I know Nana would've shouted that phrase at me when I thought of coming down to see her buried. I just know she'd yell at me, telling me, "I'm dead! They're putting me in a box, big deal! Go get your education!" Hehe, I love her SO much and miss her SO much it hurts. She was a beacon of light for me throughout many hard times in my life - and she continues to be in spirit. I really want to go down to Jacksonville soon and visit her grave. I'll probably do that this summer.

A New Poem

Well, since the old poems make the blog seem blacker than its own background, here's a new one. I'll write it right now. Hmmmm.....

At the special time is when upon,
I felt the world anew all dawn.
Pockets full of morning air,
Chestful of pride and hopeful care.

Man and wife and house and dog,
now a truck and new weblog.
Sunshine eyes and friends afar,
if only they knew how close they are.

In my heart dwells the love,
for those whom I hold above.
Peace and warmth I reach with strife.
Thank the heavens this is my life.

This is for all of you. Thank you. I love you.

An Old Poem

I figured I'd start posting some of my poetry here - some of it old, some of it new. Stay tuned for more to come. :)

Fucked-up delusions of me on a bike
riding through this amusement called life.
Where will it end, with death or beyond?
Only the wind knows and tomorrow is gone.
Today we need the answers for life, love, and sex.
Tomorrow we die, with eight minutes left.
All the papers graded, the answers are in.
Now it's too late though, we died with our sins.

I wrote that one somewhere around 1999. Who knows what the hell I was thinking but I've always liked that one. Here's another you might enjoy although it's a bit apocalyptic.

Rampant rivers, pebble beds,
forest trees, green, are dead.
Mother Nature, shot in the head.
All our world soon will die.
All our world soon will die.
Cars on freeways, move along.
Senseless words in meaningless songs.
Nuclear testing, atom bombs,
puncture the ozone in the sky.
All our world soon will die.
All our world soon will die.

I don't always have that bleak of an outlook on life. *shrug* I wrote that poem one day (sometime in 2001) and used it as the attention-getter in a persuasive speech I gave in a contest at Georgia State University. The speech was persuading people to use public transportation (which I did for several years). I formatted the speech using Monroe's Motivated Sequence, a form that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. often used, which illustrates what the world would be like if the problem continues, and then what the world would be like if we implement the solution. It is a very powerful and emotional format for a speech. Mine won the contest. Thank you Aristotle and Alan Monroe. ;)

My brother Joe and his Girlfriend. 

After some thought

I figured I'd write more in order to catch everyone up to date.

• I graduated from the University of Illinois with my Master's.
• I got married to Nattsu.
• I still play MMORPG's (recently switched to World of Warcraft).
• I still play MTG.
• Yes, I'm still slightly crazy.
• I don't play pen & paper games much because the people around here suck ass as far as entertainment and culture goes. Thank God Atlanta is close by.
• I bought a truck (obviously, see other post with picture).
• I rented a house.
• I feel almost too frikkin domestic.
• I now teach college at a small University west of Atlanta.
• Yes, that means I get to warp...errr... educate the minds of youth.

As you can most likely discern, I am doing fairly well. I hope you're doing well too. I really wish you all the best the holiday season is capable of bringing. You are missed. *tacklehug*

Voices in Veloche's Head

Welcome to the first blog post. I guess I'm here because I need a way to express myself. Whether you read it or not I don't give a shit. I'm posting here for me. I am attaching a picture of my new truck to see if the picture upload tool works. Let's see if it does work.

My Truck