Found this band:

They're pretty good, I think :)
Great music for relaxing/working, but not so chill that it puts you to sleep.

Also been listening to Bon Iver, As Cities Burn, and Matisyahu more lately.

I've got some great imaginary conversations in my head these days.

Wish I had more time to write them out.

Tomorrow's plan:

1100 wake up
1200 chapel
1300 brunch
1330 start studying 특허법
1745 dinner
1900 DSP
2030 특허법
0130 bed

In my spare time, (and in my busy time), I've been watching TwitchPlaysPokemon. We're pretty close to beating the E4. I hope the save file gets released for download.

Also, I've been working on compiling a wishlist for the soundtrack to the game I'm working on :). Still need a few more songs, to flesh out all the parts of the game that need unique music.

This song is on the wishlist, and I've been kindof addicted to it lately:

Also, this song is pretty cool:

"I don't think you realize how this works."

Ozzie Nelson...I love this song.

The Cass Eliot version has a better YouTube recording, but I kinda like the grainy vinyl sound.

I've been really back and forth lately about what I like. I dig the mellow electronic stuff and some hip-hop (the kind which is written by people with self respect), but I can't seem to escape the oldies. These are the stations on my Pandora Shuffle right now:

StarF***er
Hiromi and Chick Corea
Ratatat
Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald
Psyche O and Nujabes

(Each with an assortment of likes and dislikes, of course).

This week I've been taking some time to appreciate the lessons I've learned from my mistakes in the past. Without getting into detail... ;;; I'm really blessed by God's grace and forgiveness. I'm a better person, in part, because of the way God has used my guilt to push me away from repeating my mistakes. I still feel regrets because of some things... but that's because I now am able to see how strongly my actions affect the people around me, and how much my words and actions also affect myself (as well as the other way around). I feel like people are going to read this and think "Zac's being melodramatic," or "Zac hasn't done anything that bad. He's just a first-world kid with exaggerated problems." Don't suppose that things I've done fit on some scale of good and bad that you've conceived of.

Without defeating myself here... it's the little things that bother me the most. Big things, like going to jail, send a clear message: "don't do that again!". The things that bother me the most are things I've gotten away with. They say you're only in trouble if you get caught, but... I think it's much easier to let go of your guilt if you've been punished for it. I guess the point here is that I'm really blessed that God has given me the ability to self-analyze. I recognize my regrets, experience them, learn from them, and then let them pass over me like clouds -- becoming new. I've done a few things I really really wish I could apologize to somebody for... God, please continue to mold me into the person you want me to be. And don't cut me any slack.

Also, I made my blog a little wider, but I'm not sure if I like the way the header sits on it. I'm gonna experiment with the dimensions more later.

"because the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son."

These days I've been distracted. I've been pretty stressed, and I feel like I've been neglecting my relationships. My work load isn't even that big. It just feels weighty. My job is contingent on my graduation, and my marriage is contingent on my job. Also, somehow, I just always have something in my schedule.

Last semester, late in, I deleted all my video games to make room for studying for finals. I figured I'd install them again at the beginning of this semester, and delete them around midterms if they were hurting my productivity. So I deleted them again on Wednesday. In their place, I have about 150 pages of reading material about patent law and intellectual property.

My piano teacher's husband didn't wake up, and when he was rushed to the hospital they found three tumors in his brain, and so they both need prayer. Also, My good friend is in a custody battle with her ex husband, and she needs prayer for that.

Didn't get much sleep this week. Monday and Tuesday it was video games; Wed-Fri it was homework.Also, every time I'm about to stop writing this blog, a song I like comes up on Pandora.

Tomorrow is Saturday. I have all the time in the world to get my long-desired sleep. I can push it off for another 3:55...

"This is the promise of our liberty."

The Blue Dream, considering the bitterness of her guilt and overwhelming sorrow, doesn't know if it's what she's meant to feel. A specter; the nostalgic imaginings of a former friendship, which has never been too far out of reach for her to attempt to grasp it, is now completely obscured by a wall of awkward social complexes. It's what we're trained to give-up against, even when opposed by the deepest longings of her heart and the hole left in it by a Red King.

I know better, and want nothing more than that my darling, Chowon, will never forget that I love her. I want an honest friendship that lasts forever -- humble and fearless. With God's blessing, I can give that to Chowon and work toward her happiness forever, experiencing great joy whenever her sincere smile is given back to me.

Dear Father in Heaven, please bless my friends with peace in their lives. More than anything, please give them a full sense of your love for them.

"I met the devil and I stared her in the eyes. Her hair had scales like silver serpents; I, a statue, stood there mesmerized. I took the fire escape and made it out alive. Yeah, I still burn from time to time, but I have a healing hand against my side"

So blogger has a problem with "referrer spam", which is where some dirtbag on the internet has a bot view your page a few hundred times a day. This fools noobs into visiting that site and becoming victim to whatever the site contains.

It's not too hard to tell which sites are fake and which are real, because many of the fake sites will just hit you with like 2 or 300 views simultaneously in less than a second. Also, it's pretty safe to assume that if you don't recognize the site, it may not be legitimate. But it's frustrating because usually I only expect like 12-20 people to read, and it clutters my stats hardcore. There's no way to exclude the sites from your stats. If your blog is too small or has too small of a viewership then your voice doesn't have much weight on the Google forums, but if your blog is huge and has huge viewership then a few hundred extra views doesn't matter that much.

Yeah, that all sucks and stuff, but the point of this blog is to say, I was really humbled by an exchange I had on the forums with one of Google's "top-contributors". The guy, http://blogging.nitecruzr.net , has been operating on blogger since 2005. He's also pretty well informed about the way blogger works in general. I've got to hand it to him, he's doing a great job helping people.

I've been on blogger since spring 2010, when I was assigned to make a blog by my freshman English professor. She was pretty cool. Before blogger, I was on Xanga since... maybe 2003? 2004? It was freshman year highschool, when I started blogging in order to keep better touch with one of my friends. Blogging has become one of my primary means of stress management. 

I don't blog for anyone else's reading pleasure, but I don't keep my thoughts to myself.... I guess.... I blog for the following reasons:

a) It forces me to organize my thoughts in a manner understandable by humans, including myself.

b) It encourages me to measure my ideas against my perception of public opinion -- so the whole world is holding me accountable.

c) Knowing that my thoughts are available to anyone who looks hard enough to find them liberates me from a certain kind of insecurity. I have no room to wonder, "will I still be accepted if someone knows me very well?" It's like taking a leap of faith. In order to make the leap, you have to come to terms with the fact that there's nothing you can do to change the outcome of the leap once you've taken it. Now that I am on the internet, the consequences of people knowing my thoughts are out of my control.

But I've had my blog for so long that b and c are almost not applicable to the continuance of my blog. If I want to make a difference, I may have to reshuffle my whole blog: get a better layout; decide on a theme that has appeal; write about things other than my own situation. I'm almost afraid that choosing a theme will stifle my motivation for blogging. I'll consider this for a while. I need to answer the following questions:

1. Do I want to add an external agenda to my blog?

2. What is my goal? What is the difference that I want to make?

3. Can I make that goal interesting and worth reading for outsiders? How?

4. Is the goal something I want to make apparent immediately? or do I sell-out for viewership and then let my goal drift-in when I've established myself?

5. Again, is this something I want to spend my time on? Is it something I can commit to?

If there's no legitimate difference for me to attempt to make, then there's no point for me to blog with any external appeal.

Oh well, it's getting pretty late. I need to sleep.

"Work on your blog, and get real traffic."