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Mysterious Minifig

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Blog Entries posted by Mysterious Minifig

  1. Mysterious Minifig
    The moniter for one of my family's computers died last night.
     
    It happened sometime between when two of my brothers were using. My second youngest brother was having trouble getting it to work. My sister and I didn't want to help him, I wasn't feeling well and my sister didn't want to get off the other computer. My dad eventually went to look at and he couldn't get it to work so he restarted it and it still wouldn't work.
     
    We grabbed the moniter from my computer, and hooked that up. A message appeared on the screen saying the computer failed to start and the computer was attempting to repair whatever was damaged.
     
    I'm now without a computer since I don't have a moniter for it. The CRT I was using orginally won't fit on the desk I'm now using for my computer.
     

  3. Mysterious Minifig
    I got a recently purchased a cell phone off of ebay. It's a Samsung T401G and it's pretty slick. It's got a slide out qwerty keyboard. It's a Net 10 branded phone, which is what I wanted. I wanted a prepaid phone and they had one of the best rates. 10 cents a minute and 5 cent (3 cent with my phone) text messages.
     
    My phone arrived yesterday. The listing said it was a new phone. When I opened it I broke a seal on the package. Apparently it wasn't the original seal however. I was suppose to get 300 minutes and 60 days of service free with the phones activation, but my account was never credited with it. After spending 15 minutes with Net 10's customer support I learned why I never got my minutes. The person I talked to at Net 10 said that sometime back in 2008 my phone was activated. She also said that there were still minutes on the phone, although I wouldn't be able to see them until I added service days to the phone.
     
    The phone's seller is sending me a minutes card equivalent to what I was suppose to get when I activated the phone. So once that arrives I should be good. In the future I might be more careful buying electronics, although this wasn't one of those "too good to be true" deals.
     

  5. Mysterious Minifig

    1 Year

    By Mysterious Minifig,

    I realized that as of today I've had my drivers license for about 1 year. It isn't exactly, but we sorted popcorn for the Boy Scout fundraiser so I'm going to count it as one year.
     

  6. Mysterious Minifig

    1 Year Spinny

    By Mysterious Minifig,

    I got my one year spinny about 2 weeks ago. Some how I missed blogging it when I got it.
     
    It's weird though. When I joined a year ago I never thought I would end up paying. I guess that's how life goes.
     
    RC-
  7. Mysterious Minifig

    100 And 500

    By Mysterious Minifig,

    This is my 100th Blog entry. For anyone who has a blog here at BZPower it is a major milestone. I also made my 500th post today, for that is also major milestone.
     
    My most commented entry was Two Merit Badges Left. My MLN Store entry has a few more comments but it's not really a real entry. It seems like on average any entries I make involving Boy Scouts get a more comments then entries on any other topic.
     
    I also submitted one news item that made the front page so far. That would be that the June Club Magazine is starting to arrive.
     
    My most recent topic is for my Dark Horse MOC. Before the server crash it was also my most commented MOC. You can still post in it without reviving it so go ahead and comment.
     
    Overall, I can look back and it has been a pretty good experience here at BZPower. When I first joined I never would have saw my self as a Premier Member. Now it's something I don't want to lose. Unfortunately I don't have a job right now so come January when it's time to renew I may not have the money.
     
    Thanks for reading and I hope my next 500 posts and 100 entries can be just as good.
  8. Mysterious Minifig

    100 Books

    By Mysterious Minifig,

    At one point, there was this list of books that had gone viral and was spreading around various social networks. There were 100 books listed and you were suppose to mark those that you've read. A lot of them are books that could be assigned for English class, but there are some modern ones. At some point I would like to read through a lot of them, but there will be a few I'll probably have to skip.
     
    The list along with it's formatting information is after the jump.
     

     
    Bold means I've read the book.
    Strike-through means I will probably not read it, at least in the foreseeable future.
    Colored Words are my comments.
     
    1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (It got better towards the end.)
    2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (Done, even though it took me almost three years.)
    3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
    4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (Spent most of summer 2011 reading all seven of these.)
    5 To Kill a Mocking Bird-Harper Lee (Really Good Book)
    6 The Bible - the whole thing. (1 Year and 8.5 Months, It took a while)
    7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
    8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
    9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
    10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
    11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (Very Unlikely)
    12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
    13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (It really wasn't that great of a book, I've read better)
    14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (My family owns a copy of this, but I don't think I would be able to read all of it.)
    15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
    16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
    17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
    18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (I didn't really enjoy this one and I'm not sure why it's a classic)
    19 The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
    20 Middlemarch - George Eliot (This one was okay, the story got better near the end)
    21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
    22 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald (I started this but never finished it.)
    23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
    24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy (Competent work, but I wouldn't reread it. )
    25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
    26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
    27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
    28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
    29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
    30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
    31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
    32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
    33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
    34 Emma - Jane Austen
    35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
    36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
    37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
    38 Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
    39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
    40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
    41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
    42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
    43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
    44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
    45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
    46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
    47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
    48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
    49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
    50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
    51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
    52 Dune - Frank Herbert
    53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
    54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
    55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
    56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon (So good, I almost want to go buy it.)
    57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
    58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
    59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon
    60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
    61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
    62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
    63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
    64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
    65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (Really good book, if you can get past the beginning.)
    66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
    67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
    68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
    69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
    70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
    71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens (Fun and enjoyable)
    72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
    73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
    74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
    75 Ulysses - James Joyce
    76 The Inferno - Dante
    77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome (I think I read this a long time ago, but I think it was good, so rereading wouldn't hurt.)
    78 Germinal - Emile Zola
    79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
    80 Possession - AS Byatt
    81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
    82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchel
    83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
    84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
    85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
    86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
    87 Charlotte's Web - EB White (Who hasn't read this one?)
    88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom (This was a fairly decent book.)
    89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle (Yes!)
    90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
    91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
    92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
    93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
    94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
    95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
    96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
    97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
    98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (Wouldn't this be covered by Shakespeare's complete works?)
    99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
    100 Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
     
    (Originally Posted on 11/4/10 with 11 books read)
    (Bumped on 1/30/11 with 17 books read)
    (2/6/2021 - 38 Books Read)
  10. Mysterious Minifig
    On this date in 1910, the BSA was incorporated by publisher W. D. Boyce. Boyce first learned about Scouting when a Scout refused payment for helping him through a London fog. He was simply doing a Good Turn. For 100 years, Scouts across America have kept to that example. Today, we celebrate the 100th Anniversary of this great movement and begin our next 100 years of service.
     

  12. Mysterious Minifig
    There is 16 inches of snow in the forecast for the rest of this weekend where I live, which is really too bad since I want winter to be over with.
     
    I guess the forties we've had for the last week or so were too good to be true.
     

  13. Mysterious Minifig
    I should be running the 1600 Meters in today's track meet. My goal is to run faster then 6 minutes. I'm mostly healthy now. My shin splints are pretty much gone. I'm probably going to skip the spikes and save those for the last meet of the season next week.
     
    I haven't really done anything good since that 2:30 I had at the beginning of the season. Maybe this will be the point where I turn it around.
     

  14. Mysterious Minifig

    19

    By Mysterious Minifig,

    Let's just say over sleeping is not a good way to start your birthday. I wanted to show up for work at 8 AM, but we I set my alarm the night before I neglected to make sure it was turned on. I rolled out of bed at about 7:45 in a huge panic. So, yeah that wasn't a great start.
     
    As for my birthday, I didn't do anything exciting at all. Most of my birthday's have been pretty low key these last few years. I'll probably have to change that at some point. I didn't really expect anything big for a present, since I got my computer last year. I ended up getting an LL Bean turtle neck sweater. It's been years since I've worn one of those.
     
    I'm going to say that over the last 19 years of my life I've probably changed the most over the last year. I don't really feel any different, but I know I've changed a lot, which is probably due to the transition into college more then anything.
     
    My one year staff anniversary was also about a month ago. Was it really a year ago that I got asked to become a Forum Assistant? I can still remember being in shock the whole day I received that PM from Black Six.
     

  15. Mysterious Minifig

    3 Years

    By Mysterious Minifig,

    Thanks to Gatanui, I've been I been informed that I've now been on BZPower for three years. I can't believe it's really been that long. It certainly doesn't seem like it's been three years.
     
    I don't know if that qualifies me as an old timer yet, but I'm certainly no longer a newb.
     

     

  16. Mysterious Minifig

    400 Posts

    By Mysterious Minifig,

    After about 1.75 years here at BZPower I've finally hit 400 posts. Some what of a major achievement considering I usually don't get above 600 posts on a forum before I either lose interest or the forum closes.
     
    No post special this time, maybe in another hundred. I also have a update to my blog I will be making pretty soon. You'll have to keep an eye out for it.
  17. Mysterious Minifig
    I found my 75th Geocache yesterday. It was pretty exciting. The 75th on was a multicache that someone I know hid. It ends with a hollowed out book in the reference section of the local library. It is probably one of my favorite hids.
     
    I will probably find number 100 sometime over the next week while I'm on vacation.
  18. Mysterious Minifig
    I ran a 5k this morning. It was the second time I've run a 5k. My last one was over 2 years ago. I ran a 26:07. I think it was a pretty good time. I got lucky and there were only 4 people in my age group. I guess everyone else was at one of the other five 5k's in the area. I got 73rd overall out of about 160 and 3rd in my age group. I finally have a medal from my running.
     
    A girl who is on the high school track team was running too. I hadn't seen her since the season ended. She's fairly slow, ran about 31 min. There was barely anyone in her age group and she also got 3rd in her age group. She left before they gave out the medals though so now I have to try to track her down to get her her medal.
  19. Mysterious Minifig

    A Few Pictures

    By Mysterious Minifig,

    I uploaded a few pictures earlier one of which was from my vacation to the Dells.
     

    This part of Minneapolis, the largest city in Minnesota. You can't really tell that from this picture though.
     

    This is what the sky out side my house looked like earlier this afternoon. Add more grey and less blue to the sky and add a cold wind and you'll know what my day has been like.
  20. Mysterious Minifig
    This will sort of be my end of year wrap-up, since I really haven't done much blogging lately. I just want to cover the highlights of the year, along with a few pictures.
     
    Right away in January I started my co-op in Manufacturing Engineering with Bobcat Company in Bismarck, ND. It was significant in more ways than one. Primarily, I mark this is the point where I officially moved out from my parents house. I had been gone at college since the fall of 2011 and had an apartment with 2-3 other guys since the fall of 2012, but I always came home when school was out, both over summer break and winter break. When I moved to Bismarck in January, I left with no intentions of ever moving back. One of my younger brothers also took over my room at that point, so I don't really have a room to go back to. Working for Bobcat was also my first 'real' job that I started where I had no prior connections to anyone there. At almost all of my previous jobs, I had connections that helped me get in the door and get started.
     
    On March 15, I got married to the love of my life. We had initially picked that date as it would have been the start of my Spring break, had I been in school. Since I was working it just ended up being a week off of work. The wedding went well and there weren't any disaster stories that you sometimes hear about. The reception also worked out nicely as well. We had originally been concerned about the number of guests, but the hall ended up being at capacity instead of overflowing. For our cake we had a LEGO topper that we had found at the Mall of America LEGO story when we visited it the previous fall.

     
     




    Since we were out in Bismarck, we ended up taking about three trips out to western North Dakota to go hiking. The first trip was to the south unit of Teddy Roosevelt National Park. That's where the two bison pictures were taken. The second trip was to the north unit of Teddy Roosevelt National Park. And the third trip was to some of the hiking trails that were south of the north unit. The third trip was mostly a geocaching run. We wanted to find a bunch of the secluded Badlands caches. Many of them had not been found in over a year. The panorama was taken on top of a butte in the badlands. Imaging being surrounded by that on all sides with no signs of human activity except the road.
    The train, we saw when we headed off of the interstate looking for a heavy rain we could see in the distance.

     
     


     



    The rest of the year, after the summer ended mostly consisted of working my way through another semester of school. It was a little rough at first, but after about a month my brain was back in school mode, instead of work mode. I was also promoted to head teaching assistant, since the previous head TA had finished school and was now working in South Dakota. I only have 1 year left and then I will finish my degree in Mechanical Engineering. Current plans are to stay at NDSU and continue on with earning my Masters in Mechanical Engineering. That will put me in school until the end of 2017, but it should be worth it. To go anywhere in most larger companies a Bachelor's degree won't get you very far.
     
    2014 was a good year and I am looking forward to another good year in 2015. I'll leave you with two other pictures that I've enjoyed from this year. The cat's name is April and my wife brought her with when we got married. We're not 100% sure what kind she is, but if you google flame point birman, all of the picture look like her, so it's probably a good guess.

     
     




     

  21. Mysterious Minifig

    A Musical!

    By Mysterious Minifig,

    Last night was the opening night for the musical the local homeschool group is doing, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. I'm not doing anything with, but two of my siblings are on the stage crew. It was pretty good although there were a lot of set changes, almost to the point of being too many. This will go down as another great Homeschool Theater production on of all the other great plays they've done in the past.
     
    Next year I'm going to be on the stage crew of what ever play they decide to perform. I got offered a spot this yeat but I turned it down because I thought there was going to be track practice and I thought I would have some extra hours at work. Neither of those things ended up happening.
     
    Someone needs to knock some sense into me if I try to get out of working stage crew next year.
     

  22. Mysterious Minifig
    I was in Walgreens the other day looking at batteries. (I was thinking about getting some but the prices for the kind I needed weren't very good.) They had some quadruple A batteries. I'm curious does anyone have something that takes AAAA Batteries? I have never seen this type before.
  23. Mysterious Minifig

    Absolute Zero

    By Mysterious Minifig,

    For the last Physics lab we did an experiment involving the the pressure of air at constant volume with varying temperature. In other words, we watched water boil and took pressure measurements at different temperatures. We didn't measure pressure directly, though. We had a special gauge that that changed it's electrical resistance based on pressure.
     
    Due to the jumpiness of the measuring tools, the extrapolated value we got for absolute zero was ~-292° C. The accepted value is -273.15° C.
     

     

  24. Mysterious Minifig

    Ackar

    By Mysterious Minifig,

    I picked up Ackar from Target today. I originally went in there for the heat vision rahkshi, but they had Ackar so I got him instead.
     
    It goes a nice compliment to Mata Nui and my Tahu Stars. There's nothing complicated about the build. I like the color scheme, for some reason it seems like I'm partial to red sets.
     
    Next on my Bionicle to get list is the Stars Rahkshi. Nothing else really interests me.
     
    -Michigan J. Frog
  25. Mysterious Minifig

    Act

    By Mysterious Minifig,

    I had the ACT this morning. Out of all the thngs that I have/had to get done recently this was probably the least stressful.
     
    I had studied a little bit the beginning of last month but I really didn't put too much work into it. I feel like I did a pretty good job. I can count on my fingers the number of problems that I'm not sure if I got right. I really didn't have much trouble with the time limits. When I did the practice tests I cut it really close on the math and science sections but today I was done with just about everything before they called five. The fact that I had some previous experience with some of the science parts really helped.
     
    Now I get to wait until I find out how I really did. =P
     

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