I, Curtis

Category: Hobbies

  • Getting a Handle on the Instrument

    This image is evidence that I presently suck at using the CyberPad as a drawing tool. It will take me some time, but I intend to become proficient in using the pad for anything I can find to possibly use it for, including as an artistic tool for drawing. I attribute most of the crudeness of this drawing to the fact it was really quick with an application that is really designed for single stroke operation. In my opinion, it looks like a graphic for a really bad DOS game.

    Western Landscape in Digital Ink

  • I am NOT an Internet Addict

    According to the Internet Addiction Activity in my Health/Wellness course… I am not an Internet addict. I scored 28 on the following survey.
    —
    Score the following on a scale of 1 – 5 (1 is rarely/never and 5 is always).
    1. How often do you find that you stay online longer than you intended?
    2. How often do you neglect household chores to spend more time online?
    3. How often do you prefer the excitement of the Internet to intimacy with your partner?
    4. How often do you form new relationships with fellow online users?
    5. How often do others in your life complain to you about the amount of time you spend online?
    6. How often do your grades or school work suffer because of the amount of time you spend online?
    7. How often do you check your e-mail before something else that you need to do?
    8. How often does your job performance or productivity suffer because of the Internet?
    9. How often do you become defensive or secretive when anyone else asks you what you do online?
    10. How often do you block out disturbing thoughts about your life with soothing thoughts about the Internet?
    11. How often do you find yourself anticipating when you will go online again?
    12. How often do you fear that life without the Internet would be boring, empty, and joyless?
    13. How often do you snap, yell, or act annoyed if someone bothers you while you are online?
    14. How often do you lose sleep to late-night log-ons?
    15. How often do you feel preoccupied with the Internet when off-line, or fantasize about being online?
    16. How often do you find yourself saying “just a few more minutes” when online?
    17. How often do you try to cut down the amount of time you spend online and fail?
    18. How often do you try to hide how long you’ve been online?
    19. How often do you choose to spend more time online over going out with others?
    20. How often do you feel depressed, moody, or nervous when you are off-line, which goes away once you are back online?
    The higher your score, the greater your level of addiction and the problems your Internet usage causes.
    20-49 points: You are an average Internet user. You may surf the Web a bit too long at times, but you have control over your usage.
    50-79 points: You are experiencing occasional or frequent problems because of the Internet. You should consider the Internet’s full impact on your life.
    80-100 points: Your Internet usage is causing significant problems in your life. You should evaluate the impact of the Internet on your life and address the problems directly caused by your Internet usage.
    to take action.

  • The Psychological Impact of Doom

    For the past few months I have been playing a PC video game, something that wasn’t normal for me for the longest portion of my life (unless we include Chess, Checkers, and Minesweeper). For a long time I never had any interest in computer games, especially not first person shooters, I considered them to be pointless. Now I find myself drawn to playing an old game that I played many years ago, Doom. Lately through a tool called ZDaemon, I have been playing the old standard Doom and Doom 2 games. In addition I have been playing with some add-on files for those games (WAD files) which extend what the game is capable of and provide new and more interesting game maps. When I originally started playing Doom again I was worried that I might become more aggressive or perhaps more anti-social, but I have noticed lately that it has made me more calm and less easily stressed about things. In addition, I have been playing in “cooperative” mode and have experimented playing with a specifically cooperative WAD. This type of co-dependent team-based game play is something I have never experienced before, but I have found it to be a good way to become closer to a person and begin to understand the cooperative strategies of that person.
    I don’t know why I am posting this, I guess it seems like the only major aspect of my life I haven’t written about yet.

  • Have A Cookie


    Out of a burst of craving and a bit of bordem I made a batch of chocolate chip cookies last night. It is an odd thing that the cookies you make yourself don’t taste quite the same as those you remember from your childhood when someone else made them, even if the same recipe is followed exact. My attempt (aided by Chris) satisfied my craving for chocolate chip cookies, but there was still something missing, some element I was expecting was not present.

  • What to do with ground beef?

    Lean ground beef is rumored to be one of the most versatile foods available, but I am having difficulty with this theory. I was encouraged by Chris last night to prepare something this evening based on beef. My first thoughts were something with a tomato sauce and a pasta, second thoughts were with something like stroganoff. I went to my usual recipe resource (Cooks.com) to find some ideas, but all I could find for ground beef was pasta and stroganoff. There are no interesting foods that can be made with ground beef. If you pair beef with beans it becomes a chilli, if you pair it with anything tomato is turns into a pasta based dish, or something mexican. Beef with a cream sauce turns into a stroganoff, so I guess I’m screwed. Beef Stroganoff it is for tonight…

  • Lunch – My Sandwich Process


    Some of my photographic adventures are boring, some are redundant, this one leaves me still feeling empty. Maybe I should have taken more time to take more pictures from more angles and not been in such a rush to eat.

  • Missing Grade

    I now know all of my grades for Spring 2008, except for my Drawing II class. All of my other instructors have either posted their grades to the registrars, or sent emails, but my Drawing II instructor is still keeping me in suspense.
    I feel like I did well with the drawing course, but with the way some of the grades on the assignments went, I feel like I may have not gotten the grade I would like in the course. All of my grades that are presently known are A’s. I feel like I worked extremely hard in the course this semester. My instructor even said that I had completed the most preliminary drawings of any student in the class. What I am feeling now is a form of confusion I suppose. I have been told that I have made progress and that I have tried the most attempts at the assignments, but yet I have seen the gradebook and know about how my mid-term in the course went, but somehow I still can’t pull together what my final grade will be. Worse yet…. when talking to my instructor last night, she didn’t seem to have a clue what our grades would be either. I am a little worried that my GPA might be harmed by this course, which would make me really sad. On the other hand, the instructor could be having issues of confidence in her own grading policies and that could be creating the feeling I am currently experiencing. The fact that the instructor hasn’t turned in grades yet is absolutely killing me. I suspect that either tomorrow or Thursday, the grades will be posted and I will return either very happy with an A, or I will be sad and mopey with something less.
    It is times like this that I question myself… could I have done more? Could I have pushed myself just a bit harder? I don’t know. I feel like I gave this semester everything I had, but I feel like somehow I didn’t accomplish a lot.

  • Meet my new Hibiscus


    I have been looking to find some perineals to replace some of my “re-seeding annuals” in my front flowerbed. I was scouring the Burpee catalog and looking online for some good plants. I found many of the plants to be overly expensive for what equates roughly to a freeze-dried live plants. The other day in the Lowe’s garden center (I had a valid reason for going, I really did) I found these nice hibiscus plants, all on sale :-), so I bought one. I bought one that had none of its blooms open yet, so that the plant would stay dormant a little longer. I was hoping to plant it shortly after I purchased it, but the weather went cold again, so the hibiscus (and the Moses in the Cradle that I bought the same day) have become house plants for now. I am hoping to get them both in the ground this weekend, although, the hibiscus gave us a nice show while inside (see above).

  • Randomness, Uncertainty and The Pursuit of Accomplishment

    Today I woke up fairly late in the day and have been having the weirdest mood shifts and changes in objectives. I have a chapter to finish for my novel, I have put in several random attempts at effort on it, for the same course I also have to “explicate a poem”, which I can do, but I just have to pick a poem for it. In addition to those assignments, I also have to finish my perspective drawing to turn it in on Monday, and also draw an orange with full shading and texture in my sketch book. I have been letting all of this go through my head and I am bouncing between thoughts in my head way too quickly. I have considered working on the mid-term for one of my online classes as well, but haven’t started on it (100 questions, all to be done and turned in by April 7th, most likely by UPS).
    Other than academic stuff, I have been looking at LiveCurt.net again, working on some stuff for it and trying to get a grasp of what it is supposed to be. I am feeling like I am trying to do a 4 dimensional website in a 2 dimensional space. I have played with Google Analytics some, primarily adding the Art blog to it. I have also been playing with the idea of a centralized location for all of my blogs, which I then realized are all about me, so therefore belong on LiveCurt.net (my domain-registering addiction is foiled again). Oh, and I have been trying to write blog posts on random shit, and pretty much getting no where. I played a game a little while ago, thinking maybe it would calm me down and let me focus, nope, didn’t happen, I’m still bouncing off the walls with stuff to do, but not nearly enough ambition to accomplish any of them.
    Finally, I did finish my loop of looking for a digital camera for my course this summer. I still haven’t decided on or purchased one, but I have at least placed a fall-back candidate in my head. If I can’t decide on anything else, then I am going with the Fugifilm FinePix S5200. It isn’t a true SLR camera, but it gives me the functionality I need for the course. SLR cameras are a little scary with how they work. I don’t like the idea of using a camera that has to rotate a mirror to take a picture, but I guess if I find a real SLR camera that I like, I will go for it, although, the S5200 is definitely a piece to drool over.
    Today I have done a lot of “half-done” things, but fully completed nothing. Maybe tomorrow will be part 2 and I will get everything done.

  • Strawberries Are In The Ground

    This evening I convinced myself that I should never accept a good deal from a plant supplier. Back in December my mother was becoming excited at the concept of growing her own strawberries, in January, Burpee sent me an email offer for strawberry plants. I purchased 25 strawberry plants for $15. Not a bad deal, oh, but they made the deal sweeter, for an additional $10, get 50 strawberry plants… ok, no big deal, 50 strawberry plants ordered, to arrive at a later date. The strawberries left my mind until about a week ago, I received a UPS Quantum View notification from Burpee, a package was coming to me. Last Thursday they arrived, 50 strawberry plants, neatly wrapped and ready for planting. I was far from ready for the plants, so I had to make quick plans to get them in the ground.
    Yesterday I obtained 100 lbs of cow manure compost (its better than it sounds) and 3.8 cu.ft. of peat moss. I prepared the ground today, placing alternating layers of peat and cow until I was satisfied that I had a good growing surface for the plants. The row was then covered in a garden fabric to keep down weeds, keep the moisture in and also keep the plants warm. The worst part of doing this today was having to soak the strawberry plants in water before planting. The water was cold and once the water became cloudy, it was hard to locate the plants, requiring me to submerge part of my arm. Twenty one holes in the fabric later (all the holes there was room for), 21 of the first 25 plants had been trimmed (roots to 3 inches) and placed in the ground. After that, I sealed the row off with a layer of straw.
    Now, I just have to hope the plants don’t freeze in the next few weeks.
    Related Links:
    Burpee – Ozark Beauty Strawberries