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Mysterious Minifig

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  1. 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)
  2. Mysterious Minifig
    Now that summer is finally here, I have a little bit more time on my hands. I am continuing my quest to finish my list of 100 books. In that regard I finally finished A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens a while back. I thought it was a reasonably well written book, although it still wasn't on the same level of Great Expectations.
     
    I also just finished Wuthering Heights. It wasn't a bad book although it was rather depressing. At least the last chapter closed on a somewhat happy ending.
     
    I'm starting on Jane Eyre now, and hopefully it won't take quite as long as some of the previous books. It's also the last book I have from my parent's house, so I'll need to venture to the local library again to find my next book.
  3. Mysterious Minifig

    Winter Break

    By Mysterious Minifig,

    I finished my last final of the semester yesterday around 3 PM which means that winter break is finally here. This past semester was crazy busy and it didn't give a lot of time to do much of anything besides school work. Grades won't be in for another week, but I feel like I did pretty well in most of my classes this semester. The grades may not be quite as good as the previous few semesters, but at this point I'm not hugely concerned.
     
    Now that classes are done I have a little bit of time to relax and catch up on all the things that I didn't have time for this past semester. It would be nice to pull out my LEGOs and do something with but it probably won't happen as I packed them all up together towards the end of the summer.
     
    The other exciting bit of news is that I accepted a Co-op position with Bobcat as a Manufacturing intern, which means I'm done with school until next August. It means I also have to move out of my current apartment. It's kind of sad in way, as the apartment is probably one of the best possible places to live. It's on campus and only 5 minutes from all my classes and the rent is really cheap. Moving out was an eventuality though. If it didn't happen now, it would have happened in March when I get married.
     
    Anyway, that's what is happening with me.
     

  4. Mysterious Minifig
    "It was an early morning yesterday
    I was up before the dawn
    And I really have enjoyed my stay
    But I must be moving on"
     
    I guess had to come to this at some point. Over the last semester my free time had continually dwindled down until there was barely enough left for me to do a lot of the stuff I wanted to do. I finally hit a wall this semester as I've started working at my college's tutoring center. That combined with two of the more challenging and/or time consuming classes in my college's engineering program has left me with almost no free time for anything.
     
    I don't want to say I'm permanently leaving BZPower, but really, I'm only confirming what I've know since pretty much the start of this year. I am stepping down as a forum assistant. I don't want to leave completely, but even now, I only have the chance to visit the forums once in a while. Not enough time to do anything of substance. I've also all but stopped blogging. I probably will poke around every once in a while to post a new entry, but nothing regularly though.
     
    It's been fun getting to know the few people I've managed to befriend on here. I don't want to completely let that go, but I guess if I'm always gone it's kind of hard to keep in touch.
     
    "Goodbye stranger it's been nice
    Hope you find your paradise
    Tried to see your point of view
    Hope your dreams will all come true"
     

  5. 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.
     

  6. Mysterious Minifig
    The first is from back in September, when I took a walk around the NDSU campus to take a few pictures. The second was at my grandparents cabin earlier in the summer.
     
    I feel like I should make a content block for photography, but then I would have to update the rest of my content blocks and that would require work.
     

  8. Mysterious Minifig
    Woke up this morning and it looked like it was winter again. As much as I love snow, I don't want to see after March, and I certainly don't want to see it near the end of April.
     
    I miss last year, it warmed up right after spring break and then it was pretty much nice the rest of track season.
     

  9. Mysterious Minifig

    My Knee 2

    By Mysterious Minifig,

    Yeah. I talked to the athletic trainer and I looks like I have tendentious in my knee. I guess I'm going to be doing a lot of cross training over the next couple of weeks and hoping it will get better. I've tried running with it, but that really hasn't worked that well.
     
    I'm probably still going to be running in meets, but this definitely won't help my times, not that were that great before.
     

  10. Mysterious Minifig
    Not sure what exactly is wrong, but something happened to my knee during track practice on Monday and it hasn't felt right since. I've been icing it like crazy (relatively speaking) and hopefully it will heal up so I can start running again next week. I tried running yesterday, but that didn't really work out.
     
    Maybe in a weird way this is a good thing, since it's forcing me to rest giving my shins some time heal too.
     

     
  11. Mysterious Minifig
    Some how I don't think my life is ever going to be the same after I finish Calculus 1. I'm still in awe of the power of the derivative. I'm seeing all these connections with the non-calculus based Physics class I took last semester. Physics is going to really fun when I finally get to take a calc based course this fall.
     
    We also got the take home test back that we took last weekend. I guess I did pretty well, but the I was most surprised with the rowing rate problem that was on it. I wasn't sure if I even did it correctly, but the professor handed out copies of my solution to the rest of the class so they could see how to do it.
     

  12. Mysterious Minifig
    I managed to stop into Toys R Us earlier today since I heard that the series four Collectible Minifigs are showing up in stores now. I guess I got lucky since the associate I talked with said they got their shipment of series four the previous day.
     
    I ended up getting a Musketeer, the Hazmat guy, an Artist, the Garden Gnome, and the Soccer Player. I felt almost all of the other figs, but I had to pass on most of them since I didn't want to spend $50. The only ones I didn't find were the Frankenstein and the Mad Scientist.
     

     
  13. Mysterious Minifig
    This is a list of all the albums I currently own. I own a compact disc for almost all of the albums, which means I have a pretty big stack. The singles and remaining albums I've purchased off of Amazon. (I hate the iTunes store.)
     
    I should also note, I define a single on this list as a single track, regardless of whether it's from an album or an actual single release.
     
    Album or single - Album Name - Single Name (If it's a single)
     
    3 Doors Down
    Single - Another 700 Miles - Kryptonite
     
    AC/DC
    Album - Back in Black
     
    Aerosmith
    Single - Gold - Dream On
     
    Anberlin
    Album - Blueprints for the Black Market
    Album - Cities
    Album - Never Take Friendship Personal
     
    Arcade Fire
    Album - The Suburbs
     
    Bachman-Turner Overdrive
    Album - BTO's Greatest Hits
     
    Backstreet Boys
    Album - Millennium
     
    The Beach Boys
    Album - The Very Best of the Beach Boys: Sounds of Summer
    Album - Pet Sounds 40th Anniversary
     
    The Beat Tornados
    Single - Kremlin Karamel
     
    Big Daddy Weave
    Album - One and Only
    Album - What Life Would Be Like
     
    Billy Joel
    Album - Greatest Hits Vol. 1 & 2
    Album - The Stranger
     
    Bon Jovi
    Album - Crush
    Album - Bon Jovi
     
    Boston
    Album - Boston
     
    Brandon Heath
    Album - What If We
     
    Bruce Springsteen
    Album - Greatest Hits
     
    Bryan Adams
    Single - The Best of Me - Summer of 69'
     
    Casting Crowns
    Album - Casting Crowns
     
    Chicago
    Album - The Best of Chicago
     
    Cloud Cult
    Single - Feel Good Ghosts - Journey of the Featherless
    Album - Running With the Wolves EP
     
    Coldplay
    Single - Christmas Lights
    Single - Clocks - Crest of Waves
    Album - LeftRightLeftRightLeft
    Single - The Scientist - I Ran Away
     
    The Doobie Brothers
    Album - The Best of the Doobies
     
    The Doors
    Album - The Doors
     
    The Eagles
    Single - Hotel California - Hotel California
    Album - Their Greatest Hits
    Album - Eagles Greatest Hits Volume 2
     
    Elton John
    Album - Greatest Hits
    Album - Greatest Hits 1970 - 2002
     
    FM Static
    Album - What Are You Waiting For?
     
    Frank Sinatra
    Single - Come Fly With Me - Come Fly With Me
     
    The Fray
    Album - How to Save a Life
    Album - The Fray [Deluxe Edition]
     
    Grand Funk Railroad
    Album - Greatest Hits: Grand Funk Railroad
     
    Green Day
    Single - 21st Century Breakdown - 21 Guns
    Album - Nimrod
     
    Hall & Oates
    Album - The Very Best Of
     
    Hawk Nelson
    Album - Hawk Nelson is My Friend
    Album - Smile, It's the End of the World
    Album - Letters to the President
    Single - Crazy Love
    Album - Crazy Love w/The Light Sides
     
    Huey Lewis & the News
    Album - Time Flies... The Best of Huey Lewis & the News
     
    John Denver
    Single - The John Denver Collection - Take Me Home, Country Roads
     
    Joshua Rifkin
    Album - Scott Joplin Piano Rags
     
    Kansas
    Single - The Best of Kansas - Dust In The Wind
     
    Lifehouse
    Album - No Name Face
    Album - Smoke & Mirrors
     
    Louis Armstrong
    Single - Golden Voices - What a Wonderful World
     
    Mark Schultz
    Album - Song Cinema
     
    Matthew West
    Album - History
    Album - Something to Say
     
    Michael W. Smith
    Album - The First Decade: 1983-1993 [Reunion]
     
    The Monkees
    Album - The Monkee's Greatest Hits
     
    Newsboys
    Album - Adoration: The Worship Album
     
    Owl City
    Album - Ocean Eyes
    Single - Peppermint Winter
    Single - Legends Of The Guardians: The Owls Of Ga'hoole - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack - To the Sky
     
    Ozzy Osbourne
    Album - Ozzman Cometh: Greatest Hits
     
    Pink Floyd
    Album - Dark Side of the Moon
     
    Plain White T's
    Album - Big Bad World
     
    Popple
    Album - Plaid
     
    Relient K
    Album - Five Score and Seven Years Ago
     
    R.E.M.
    Album - Eponymous
     
    Revive
    Single - Blink - Blink
     
    Ricky Martin
    Album - Ricky Martin (1999)
     
    Rush
    Album - Moving Pictures
     
    Seventh Day Slumber
    Album - Picking Up the Pieces
     
    Sister Hazel
    Album - 20 in 10: Digital Collection
     
    Steppenwolf
    Album - 16 Greatest Hits
     
    Tobymac
    Album - Momentum
    Album - Portable Sounds
    Album - Tonight
    Single - Diverse City - Diverse City
    Single - Christmas This Year
     
    Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
    Album - Greatest Hits
    Album - Into the Great Wide Open
     
    Wilson Picket
    Album - In the Midnight Hour and Other Hits
     
    Yanni
    Album - Live at the Acropolis
    Album - In My Time
     
    Other
    Album - Wow 1998
    Album - Wow Hits 2010 Discs 1 & 2
    Album - Wow Hits 2011 Discs 1 & 2
    Album - Wow Worship: Yellow Disc 2
    Album - Wow Worship
    Box Set - The Doo Wop Box
    Box Set - The Doo Wop Box Volume 2
  14. 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.
     

  16. 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.
     

     

  17. Mysterious Minifig

    My Font

    By Mysterious Minifig,

    Does my post font seem too big? I thought I had it set to a good a size, but I've been using my laptop and it seems like it got a lot bigger even though I have changed anything. I'm wondering which other people see it.
     

     
  19. Mysterious Minifig
    Normally I would just make a list of significant events that have happened over the last year, but really, I don't have the desire or the willpower to dig through all my blog entries from the past year. So you'll have to settle for a little rambling.
     
    Over the past year a lot of stuff has happened, both in my life and in the world as a whole. Probably the most significant thing I did over the past twelve months was my trip to Washington D.C. and the 2010 National Scout Jamboree. You spend most of your life seeing pictures of the United State's Capital in books and movies, but to actually walk those streets, with the Capital Building and the Washington Monument towering over you, it's almost unbelievable. Those two weeks were probably the best two for my life so far, even though I essentially spent my life savings on them.
     
    I was also promoted to the BZPower staff a couple of months ago. I almost had a heart attack when I read the PM from Black Six. But more seriously, I'm glad I was picked to make a larger contribution to this site which has been an important part of my life for almost three years now.
     
    I also passed my Eagle board of review in October. That's probably one of the most important things I did this year. Hopefully my three younger brothers will follow in my foot steps and get their Eagle when they're older.
     
    So yeah, Happy New Years everyone and may 2011 be even better then 2010.
     

  21. Mysterious Minifig
    My birthday present arrived in the mail yesterday. It turns out it's a new Laptop, and a high powered one at that. I was going to buy myself one at some point this summer but now I don't have to. I wasn't even going to buy one this powerful.
     
    It's an HP Pavilion Entertainment PC, or at least that's what the label says. This is probably one of the largest laptops you can buy. It's even too big for the bag I got from my dad a couple of months ago.
     
    18.4" screen
    1 TB Hard Drive Space (2 x 500 GB)
    8 GB RAM (maxed out)
    Intel i7 1.60 GHz processor (8 core)
    Nvidia GeForce graphics card
    CD, DVD and Blueray player.
     
    As long as nothing breaks, I should have a good computer until I at least finish college.
     

  23. Mysterious Minifig
    I originally thought I missed out on the series 2 minifigs after Toys R Us sold out before I was able to get over there. However, fate had other plans for me.
     
    While I was shopping this weekend I discovered a massive stock pile of series 2 minifigs in the Christmas of a local Shopko. I didn't have a bar code chart, but I manged to feel out a Karate Master. I got lucky with that one, since it came with two of the minifig statue things.
     
    I went back the next day with one of my brothers and a bar code chart. This stockpile was basically unsearched. My brother and I sorted through less then half of the packages and we found 3 Spartans. Total finds included a mime, the disco dude, the pharaoh, the karate master, and two Spartans for my self, and my brother got a Spartan, the skier, and a karate master.
     
    I'm pretty happy with what have for now, so I should be set until series four comes out.
     

  24. 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.
     

     

  25. Mysterious Minifig
    I braved the somewhat slippery roads earlier to day to go to Toys R Us and pick up some of the series 3 minifigs.
     
    They had a bunch there. I ended up using both the dot chart and feeling the bag to find the figs I wanted. I hadn't realized how faint the dots were so I almost thought that case was defective. Toys R Us had the price $4 per minifig, but I ended getting them for $3 each, since they were having a buy 1 get one 50% off.
     
    I got lucky and found an elf almost right away. I also got an alien, a baseball player, and a sumo. The sumo I really wanted since I wanted one of the trophies and I missed the karate master from series 2.
     

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