I have been neglecting you.

Hey people. Wow, it has been a long time since I posted anything here. I guess that Conference got a bit busy (you know, 5 weeks ago) and I was sick for the 4 weeks after that, so I guess I didn't really have any desire to blog anything, since nothing really was going on.

So, Spring break. I went home to Colorado, which is, in my opinion, the best State in the USA. It was good to be home, especially for two weeks. I took quite a few pictures while I was there, as well, of both Lego stuff and Mountains (when we took a day and went through Estes Park and Denver).
Here are a few of the shots I took:

 These shots were taken at a little Glass shop in Estes Park. Not too bad, if I do say so myself.

And last but not least, here's  couple Lego shots.

Of my Dragon Temple (which got as many favorites when I re-posted it on Flickr as the original had.) and the Phantom 7.

I took a ton more pictures over spring break, which you can see if you are my friend on Facebook. These pictures here are better though, since they uploaded through Google instead of Facebook. The Facebook up-loader does terrible things to pictures.

Anyways, I had some really good shots from the Art Museum, so I might do a new post just dedicated to that one later.

As for now, I am going Bowling, so I'm going to sign off and make another post out of the continuing story of why I neglected all of you lovely people who actually read this.

Preow

Kevin

TV: Game of Thrones Season 2
Game: Minecraft
Movie: nada...
Food: Not enough, really.
Music: Gotye, The National, Coldplay

Conference Day 1

Hello all, just wanted to give you an update on the swim meet!

Today was the 200 Freestyle Relay (4x 50's), the 1000 freestyle, and the 200 Medley Relay.

I swam in two of the events today, them being the 1000 Freestyle and the 200 Medley Relay.

In the 1000 I went a season best time of 10:16, which is only 17 seconds slower than my lifetime best time that I wet two years ago. That was before my whole major injury thing put me back a bit. But I am getting over that (albeit slowly.)

The second event I swam was in the 200 Medley Relay. I did the butterfly leg (the third one) and I went a time of around 24 seconds. That was ok, but I have gone faster in practice before. I think it was because I completely ran out of energy in my 1000 free by the end. The first 500 of my 1000 was really good, I went a 5:02! I totally felt like I went somewhere around a 5:08 or a 5:09 or something in that range. Feeling that good at this stage bodes very well for my 500 Tomorrow.

Until then

Kevin

TV: South Park
Movie: Nada
Music: Sigur Ros
Game: Republic Commandos
Food: Awesome food provided by the Valpo Parents!

Oh, I'll post some pictures eventually, probably in a couple days.

Jobs and Cameras and all thats good!

Well, I have been been incredibly busy for the past couple weeks. Lots of homework and lots of swimming and such.

Speaking of swimming, Conference is coming up in two days! The whole season comes down to this meet, basically. We are tapered down, and I will get to shave my legs again! Not something that most guys say...

I will be swimming in quite a few events, here is a list of said events (at least as of now),
1000 Free
500 Free
100 Fly
200 Medley Relay (fly)
400 Medley Relay (fly)
400 Free Relay
800 Free Relay

So I'll have a long meet ahead of me, but that's all right. It is exciting to swim a couple different things at least.

Other news is that just today I got a job! The company that I interviewed with right before my prior blog post offered me an intern position for both the rest of the semester and for the summer! I will have to find a place to live this summer, but I can do that. It is really exciting to get my first "real" job, at least that isn't either from the university or from my family.

This company makes industrial hose and cable housing links, to protect delicate cables and hoses in large manufacturing plants, or on bridges, or basically anywhere that has moving parts that could potentially destroy said hoses or cables. They said that it would be mostly doing SolidWorks or AutoCad, but I know how to to SolidWorks, and AutoCad is very similar to it, so that's good! So I'm very excited for this opportunity. It will also look very good on a resume.

And in celebration of getting this job, I bought myself a new lens (well, I was planning on getting it anyways, but this just gave me an occasion to get it!) I ordered it today, and was able to pick it up tonight! That's fast!

It is a 50mm f/1.8G lens for my Nikon D3100. It is my second lens, after the kit lens that came with the camera, and I must say that it is excellent! The lens auto-focuses much faster than the kit lens, and it is much sharper as well. Now being a prime lens means that it only has one focal length, so there won't be any zooming on it, but that's what it is for. It makes you think about your show more, to move and adapt with your environment in order to get the shot exactly right, instead of just zooming to the situation. And that is awesome.

Here's a couple pictures that show the depth of field:

The top one shows how sharp the focus can be at mid-range ISO, and the bottom one shows the fairly limited depth of field (the focus is on the center of the lens cap).

Here's a link to the amazon page for the lens:
Nikon 50mm f/1.8G

Now I need to go to bed, for some reason taper makes me exhausted.

Until Next time

Kevin

Movie: The Invention of Lying
TV: Downton Abbey
Game: Skyrim
Music: The National
Food: Popcorn Chicken and Grapefruit Juice.

Slight delays.

Hey guys. Sorry for the lack of posts in the last week. I have been training a lot in Florida, and it doesn't leave too much awake time where I feel motivated to blog anything. I'll have a really long post once I get back to School with pictures and words and lots of stuff going on. Just not quite yet.

I leave you with a picture of a Maserati from my phone:

The internet here really isn't the best, which is another reason that I haven't really posted anything.

Anyways, preow.

Kevin

TV: That 70's Show
Movie: nada
Game: Minecraft
Book: Barsoom Series
Food: Not really that good...

New Years

Well, its another day that just happens to coincide with a new year. I don't really care, as in my brain I still think that it should be sometime in the 90's. I don't know...

Anyways, had a good Christmas, and a really good New Years.

We went to the Great Sand Dunes National Park near Alamosa Colorado. Awesome scenery and it was really fun climbing up the really tall dunes. It was good exercise too, as when I was swimming today I could really feel it.

Here's me flying my brothers acrobatic kite. Really fun, though it kept dragging me across the sand, the wind was so strong.

Now I'm in Boca Raton, Florida with my swim team. Training trip is upon us, the time where we basically get destroyed by our coaches and trainer.

I'll take pictures of the pool and training facility and such and post them later.

Am now sitting in my room, my tablet on one side and my netbook in front of me.

Oh, speaking of which, I got an Asus TF-101 Transformer tablet for Christmas basically, and its awesome. 'Nuff said.

So, meow meow.

Kevin

TV: Top Gear
Movie: Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
Music: The Script
Game: Angry Birds...
Food: Mongolian Chicken.

Two for the price of one!

Yeah, its nothing really exciting, just that this is my second post of the day.

After I posted this morning, my brother and I shoveled the driveway, something that I haven't done in a while, living in an apartment on a college campus. It was actually kind of enjoyable.

Once that was done I played some minecraft for a while. Working on making an underground mob trap, so I am now playing on normal difficulty rather than peaceful.

That was some time in the afternoon, then around when it got dark I went swimming with one of my friends at the CSU Rec center. Quite interesting pool. 4 lanes of lap lanes, and a lazy river, hot tub, water volleyball net area, and even a climbing wall.

The climbing wall and the volleyball area are over to the right out of the frame.

It's ok for a rec center pool, but what my friend told me was that it used to be a 10 lane 25 yard competition pool, but then they tore it up (spending a ton of money to do it) and ruined it with all of the other junk in there. The whole rec center is only a few years old, so they very recently built it as a 10 lane pool, then wrecked it and spent even more money to make it useless. I don't understand some people and how they manage money (e.g. Valpo.)

Anyways, I managed to do around 3000 yards before we got kicked out because the pool was closing (earlier than the sign said, for some reason). Here's my practice:

400 Swim
300 Pull
200 Kick
100 swim
12x 75 Kick, Drill, Swim x25 IM order,
100 easy
5x100's "fast" (so harder than "easy")
500 warm down.

Not too bad normally, but I am still feeling it as I'm writing this 3 hours later. The pool was pretty warm (81 or 82 degrees F).

Also, I am definitely feeling the altitude when I swim. That makes it way harder than swimming at sea level, and anyone who has swam at altitude will attest to that.

I had a good chat with my friend on the way back from the pool, about classes and computers and stuff. Then got back, showered (I forgot shampoo at home), and had some food. Watched a couple episodes of Top Gear, played some ping pong with my brother, and now here I am. So there you have it.

TV: Top Gear Series 13
Movie: nada
Game: Minecraft
Food: Hamburgers

Buy one get one free!

Kevin

Slightly chilly

So it seems that winter is finally upon us. It snowed a little bit last night, but not too much. It has just been really icy here.

I got to hang out with some of my high school friends for most of the day, working on my collaborative castle project with one of them. Here is another sample image with some stuff you can see in the background:

We are still working on the landscaping, so no buildings have gone up yet.

After that, I went down to Denver with some of my friends that I used to swim with at Loveland Swim Club. It was really nice to reminisce with them about the times that we had in high school, and now we are all so far removed from it. Only a few of us still swim competitively, and it was really cool to hear how the other people are using their time. I always wonder what it would be like to not have to swim every day. To actually be able to have the time I need to get all of my homework done well and understand all of the material, instead of being rushed and exhausted every time I need to do it. It was good to see them, though, but it also made me miss my new swimmer friends from college.

I have been having a really good time taking pictures with my camera. Figuring out how the lighting affects it and how to compensate for different things, and how to get it to focus exactly where I want it to. I love the precision and quality of the DSLR, and I'm probably never going back to a point-and-shoot again.
Speaking of pictures, here's another random picture of a cat:

Lucy this time, in her hiding spot behind the Christmas tree.

That's basically been my day.

TV: Cowboy Bebop
Music: Cowboy Bebop OST
Movie: Castle in the Sky
Food: Italian

Until next time,

Kevin