So I’m not really huge on the internet, or internet-related tests and whatnot, but this made me pretty happy, as I am a huge fan of the ol’ Achewood.
Your result for The Achewood Character Personality Test…
Roast Beef
You’re Roast Beef! You’re brilliantly smart but cripplingly anxious and/or depressed, depending on the day, and as such, you’re the level head of your circle of friends, the one whose reservations keep people from trying to catch ninja stars with their teeth and whatnot. You can be prevailed upon to cut loose from time to time, at which times you enjoy dressing up like historical figures and freestyling about their characteristics. You’re a sharp, talented cat, and your recent successes getting out from under the thumb of your domineering grandmother and proposing to your significant other are admirable, but let’s face it — no dude who has a Nervousness Blanket to throw up under is gonna make it that far without some serious pharmaceuticals, am I right?
As mentioned on the previous entry, I’m hard at work getting the 2.5 version of Schrodinger’s Blog put together. A lot of cool features coming up, and also just some book-keeping/housework type of things too. It’s still a ways off though.
However, part of the process I did feel like sharing with everyone. I mentioned a while back getting prepared for a visual overhaul of the site. I even went so far as to prepare some material for that:
The plan for the overhaul was to simulate the look of a nuclear launch console. I based my design roughly off of this picture. However, the barrier I keep running into is my Adobe PS skills are only what they are. I’m no whizz at the thing, and I don’t really have any training/talent in artsy things.
You can see different manifestations I played with; the leftmost button is “pushed”, and lit up red. The second one I tried for a more realistic backlight, with a textured surface and a washed out yellow light color. The second two have a different orientation of the text, and are “unlit” or “unpushed” buttons. So. That was the first idea.
I showed this to Ethan though, and his comment was that he liked what I had now. And so I thought to myself, ‘I should just polish up the current design.’ What better to make something look fancy than adding brushed aluminum.
You can see my stab and making an aluminum textured surface on which to place the buttons. The leftmost is “pushed” with a red ring around the edge. This and the aluminum were attempts to make the style similar to a real elevator, which the design is patterned off of. In the end though, I dunno. I really like what I have now, and to change it just for the sake of seems silly.
Brak Blog had one major visual overhaul in its day, but that was when we went from Blogger to LandingClouds, and so it was out of necessity. This would just be “’cause,” and I’m not confident it would be a change for the better. (Though I do like the aluminum!)
So ultimately, I scrapped the idea to do any major graphics work, but I thought I’d share some of the failed drafts with you guys.
Not a whole lot else to mention, besides my thoughts on Thunderbird as an RSS reader. Long story short? It’s not bad. It’s way better than my current method, which was to use Firefox’s Live Bookmarks utility:
This is pretty useful to follow like, maybe one or two blogs or webcomics. The problem, at least for me, was that I started to want to keep track of too much stuff. That bar is only as wide as the browser, and then things trail off into side menus, and it’s not nearly as convenient.
Running it through Thunderbird isn’t bad though. Postings to an RSS feed are basically handled like an e-mail. Everyone does it differently, so a lot of times they look a little rough before you get to the content you need, but it works more or less like basic e-mail:
The one thing that helps is an add-on called ThunderBrowse. This allows the message pane (where the little dog is in the above picture) to function like an internet browser. So when your feeds come into the program, they look like little e-mails with links in them; ThunderBrowse allows you to click that link, and visit the page inside the e-mail client itself! Which is pretty cool.
I know maybe that sounds a little complicated, but the alternative is visiting the sites you see in the panel at left constantly, multiple times a day to see if they’ve updated, which had started to become a problem for me. Now, I just open up my e-mail, and it tells me exactly how many times each site has updated. However, if using Thunderbird seems to daunting (and I’ll be frank, the add-on is a little difficult to install), try Google Reader. Ethan uses that to sift through hundreds of updates daily, and he really likes it. Plus, it’s web-based so you can always read it, and it’s pretty simple to set up.
Regardless of which you pick, there’s a whole world of RSS out there. If you haven’t really made an effort to put some of it to use, I really recommend it. It makes your internet time a lot more efficient, even if that just means getting to your weekly webcomics that much quicker. If anyone’s got questions, I’d be happy to field them. I’m a huge RSS fan, and would love to get other people into it too. (In fact, one such planned update to the site is an index of everything that I get RSSed to my Thunderbird, as a sortof “next gen” version of the old concept of a “Recommended Links” page!)
Today I downloaded and installed Firefox 3.0.
It’s very exciting! Once again, the good folks at Mozilla have beat the pants off of Microsoft’s latest offering: IE 8 (still in Beta testing). Firefox 3 was released on… Tuesday, I believe. I downloaded it just a few days ago and I’m pretty impressed with it.
The design was polished up a little bit, and it runs a lot faster than it has in the past, which is nice. It probably runs even better on people with cutting-edge machines, but even on my little ol’ 2.8 ghz Pentium 4, it’s not terribly shabby. However, I had a few gripes that I wanted to tweak with it:
1.) Minimize to Tray Didn’t Work-
OK, so maybe I’m crazy. In fact, I’m fairly positive I’m nuts in my love (need?) of this tiny little extension. All it does is when you click the [X] box to close the window, instead of quitting the program, it goes to live in the little system tray with the clock!
See it there? Now it’s out of the task bar (the bit in the middle where minimized things go), but it isn’t off. My biggest gripe about Firefox is that it takes a while to load up, and this fixes that becuase I never have to shut it off, but I can get it out of the way! As you can see, I have the same extension installed for Thunderbird, and there’s even similar functionality built into iTunes!
The problem is, this little tool doesn’t work with Firefox 3 becuase for whatever reason, the developers haven’t updated it. In truth, it still works, as in functions, but the application won’t let you install it, because there’s a built-in limit to the highest version it could be installed on! This is put there so that they can maintain control over which versions you use it with, so that people don’t install it in unsupported versions and whine when it doesn’t function like it should.
However, that’s exactly what I wanted to do! Since this extension has such a small, simple function, I’m not really worried about it breaking, so the only problem was to remove the version limitation. This is amazingly easy.
Downlaod the .XPI file for Minimize to Tray. If you try to use Firefox to do this, it will not work, becuase Firefox recognizes the file type. It either tries to install it right away (on a compatible version) or will not give you access (on a non-compatible version). So guess what? Crack open IE7, and go to the add-on’s page, listed above. View->Page Source. Search that document for ‘,xpi’ to find the correct link location to the .XPI file. Feed that into the address bar of IE7, and it will ask you what to do then, becuase it doesn’t understand what the hell an .XPI file is! Tell it to save the file to your desktop.
Open the .xpi file with WinRar.
Edit the ‘instal.rdf’ file so that the 2.0.0.* line of code actually reads 3.0.0.*. Or you could be a little silly, like me, and have yours be compatible up through version 14 of Firefox. It doesn’t matter, so long as you feed it a number larger or equal to the version you want to install!
I usually only need this hack for Minimize to Tray, but theoretically you can use this for anything. However, do so at your own risk, becuase on more sophisticated add-ons you are less likely to be able to get away with using an antiquated program with newer version.
2.) Tab Mix Plus Didn’t Work-
One of the most popular add-ons for Firefox, somehow, didn’t get updated for the version switch. You can download a developer build from their website which works just fine. No clue as to why this isn’t the version available in the add-on repository…
3.) I Don’t Like That Stupid Star-
Supposedly the little star makes it easier to bookmark things. Personally, I’m not really huge on bookmarks any more. I use them not for things I frequently visit, but for sites I infrequently visit, but don’t want to forget about. Thus, having that little star in the bar all the time is a little irritating to me. It’s pretty easy to get rid of though, so that’s good.
Find your ‘chrome’ folder. If you just search your computer for the word ‘chrome’, eventually you’ll find it, as I can’t imagine anybody has too many things with such a name. It’s located in your root directory (the one with WINDOWS, Desktop, Documents and Settings; that junk). From there it’s: \UserName\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\crazy-alphanumberic-combo\chrome. Though that’s just where it is on mine; for more help, check out the Mozilla article on profiles. Suffice to say, that’s where your ‘chrome’ folder lives.
Open up the chrome folder. Right-click userChrome-example.css and open it with Notepad. Once you’re in there, paste the following:
When you’ve restarted Firefox, that stupid little button should be gone! Hooray!
4.) Secure Websites Aren’t Yellow Anymore-
I actually stumbled across this while researching something for this entry: they changed the code from FF2 that made the address bar yellow for a secure (encrypted) website. I actually kindof liked that, thinking back on it, and so I went ahead with the fix. As above, it’s just a simple edit to your Chrome file. Paste the following into your userChrome.css file:
5.) The Smart Location Bar Irritates Me-
I don’t like it. It’s big, and it’s ugly, and it uses a creepy algorithm that finds websites I looked at like… years ago… and slaps them up in this giant green nasty font. I’m sure it’s cool for some people, but if I want to search, I use Google. It’s my homepage. Done. I don’t use the browser itself to execute a search function. Thus, when I type in the address bar, I know exactly where I’m going, and these gigantic green suggestions do not help me in the slightest.
There’s two options for fixing this:
Edit the config file. Detailed instructions are available, but I just didn’t feel like it today. You can, if you’re ambitious and computer-savvy.
I opted to just download an extension that makes it function like the Firefox 2 bar did. Easy, clean, and more similar to what I know.
I’ve said it time and time again: “I’m like an elderly person. I like things they way I like them.” My browser is no exception; in fact it is the quintessential embodiment of this principal. So yeah, I spent the past two days whipping my browser back into shape, and at the end of it all, I’m really pleased about it.
A new feature I’m using is the “search for text when I type” feature. I don’t honestly know if it’s knew or not, but it is to me: Options->Advanced->General is where you can find this. On any given page full of text, if you’re not clicked inside a form (box for typing) and you start typing, it activates a tiny little QuickSearch bar to find what you typed. Click the page, and it disappears! I thought this was so cool, since I’d been using the old ‘CTRL+F’ shortcut to bring up the ‘Find’ toolbar for years now.
But that’s basically what I’ve got to say about Firefox 3. It’s open source and amazing. The browser I’ve come to love and take great, great pride in these past few years continues to improve and get better. The real beauty of it is that you can hack it to pieces and build it back up to make it JUST the way you want it, and I couldn’t be more pleased!
At the bottom here, a few more updates:
Sadly, there’ll be no radio show this summer! The equipment is all deconstructed and in the process of being moved, so I won’t be back on the air until August! Oh well. Maybe this give me time to finally get the archives up-to-date, and work on that much-lauded podcast. We shall see.
I will probably be working that into what I’m temporarily dubbing our 2.5 version.
Features, as mentioned before:
-Smaller-bandwidth navigation images (plus I need to get rid of the border that appears around them when clicked… thanks for that, Firefox 3)
-New banner set
-Feeds that display the date
-Radio page will have podcast capabilities (hopefully iTunes compatible)
-SnapShots? I still can’t decide on these things. I make up my mind to hate them, and then I come across some website where they’re really useful. Probably not, but maybe.
That should be about it. My other tech-related endeavor is getting Thunderbird set up as an RSS reader, a la Google Reader, which Ethan continually lauds. I want to see if open-source can compete with similar functionality. News on that later though.
[One final thing, becuase this just made me laugh so hard... Have you ever heard of the 'uncanny valley'?]
No, for real. I was home for three weeks. The first week was pretty crazy becuase Erin was graduating and I’d just gotten back and stuff. The third week was equally as nuts because I was getting ready to move back to Kirksville into the house, and I decided that’d be a good week to work too. (I really have no good excuse for the middle week…)
Contrary to what seemed to be my apparent demise at the close of Humans vs. Zombies, I managed to survive the semester. Just barely. Things got pretty rough. I referred to this as my semester of “lasts”, as I would be escaping German, Math, and Chemistry after I’d completed these final courses. They weren’t going down without a fight though. At present, I’ve still yet to check my grades. Given how battered I was at the end of the semester, I don’t really want to see them just yet.
In other news, I turned twenty! I did.
Instead of taking the time to wonder aloud as to how crazy the past five years have been, and wonder how crazy the next five will be, I’m going to recount a lighter aspect of birthdays: GIFTS.
One gift, actually, stood out from the rest in its grandeur. Yamato is a Japanese toy company that makes products from the Macross anime series. Undoubtedly, most of you haven’t heard of that do to a big licensing quagmire related to its release and syndication in the United States as something called “Robotech”. None of that’s really important though.
What is important is that it’s the best toy I’ve ever had.
Imagine a transformer, but then make it perfect.
I present to you the YF-19 Variable Fighter!
The first few are pictures of the ‘fighter’ mode, which is a typical plane. The last one is the robot form, called ‘battroid’.
I even bought some add-ons for it (more armor, rocket booster), but I currently lack pictures of those, so maybe later. Case in point, my toy-addiction has evolved to a new level. I was looking into perhaps purchasing him a friend, but the First National Bank for Tom’s Childish Obsessions/Hobbies is a little strapped at the moment, so this is a while off.
In other news directly after my birthday, Erin graduated from high school! Goodness! Go her, being all competent and whatnot. She even gave the super-important speech at the ceremony and did the best job I’ve ever seen one of those done! And this is the third year in a row I’ve been there. So that was really cool. She also had a giant party at the house, the day I got home from school, which was a little surreal.
But there was Jackstack Barbeque, so I got over it pretty quick.
The whole thing was just another item in the long (and growing ever longer) list of things that make me feel old. It’s already been two entire years since I sulked across that stage to get my empty diploma holder. They mailed the actual diploma to me later… though now that I think about it, I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen it myself. Huh. Hope I didn’t lose it…
On a final note, before heading back up to Kirksville to move into the house (which will be another entry unto itself, with some forthcoming photographic tributes to its state of disrepair), Ethan, Kathryn, Lizz and I all saw Death Cab for Cutie in concert at City Market!
The concert was really good. The venue, City Market, always leaves something to be desired… Given that it’s you and a zillion other people crammed into this out-door space at the end of May when it’s just starting to get up to that characteristically mid-western “hotter than hell” range. Ick. But I got a shirt, and despite a few close calls and head-kicks, we all maintained consciousness throughout the show. [For more details and the set-list, check out the Kansas City Star's blog post about the concert.]
Here at the bottom I guess I should mention, for posterity’s sake, that the past few days have been pretty hard for me. I’m going through some radical changes in my social life. Things that stayed the same for so long are now suddenly different. I suppose, in spite of everything, that I’m handling it OK.
I am just in awe, truthfully, that I’m even capable of feeling so much pain.
That’s really the only surprise of the whole ordeal…
Lest I get even more DeviantArt than I already have, I think I’ll stop there. I’ve sortof made it a policy to not discuss my intimate personal life on the Blog, and this is no cause to change that. Suffice to say that today’s song says pretty much all you’d need to know to get the general idea of what a mess my life’s been the past few days (and will presumably be to degrading extents in the foreseeable future)…
I was up early Tuesday morning working away at a test. If I know now what I knew then… I wouldn’t have bothered. I just figured that if the apocalypse turned out to be… not the apocalypse, I should still probably take a stab at maintaining my grades. As I was working, Nate came in, sporting a bandanna on his forehead. I’d momentarily forgotten he’d been slain that evening, following the mission.
Being undead apparently didn’t bestow upon Nate any new-found sense of chivalry or humor, becuase he spent the next 15 minutes talking trash about how bad I was gonna die the next day. About how I’d become his personal target, and that he was going have some of the best zombies out scouring campus for me. Then he sniffed the air near my head, and said he could smell my brains.
OK. Whatever. But after he left, I had to talk to Ian about what to do. If there was even a grain of truth in his words, I was in serious trouble. Still not confident in my skills to defend myself in a pinch, I was afraid of these people who would hunt me. Ian and I hatched a plan. We decided that I’d wake up at 5:30, go to Magruder, and then sleep on a couch in there until 9, when Ian would come wake me up for class. If I could just get to that building, I would be safe. All three of my classes were held in the building, so I wouldn’t have to leave if someone brought me food.
The plan was perfect. I set my alarm for 5:30 when I hopped into bed at 3:30. The only problem is, near as Ian and I can infer, I got up, switched off the alarm at 5:30, and got back into bed. Ian woke me up at 8:15, realizing what had happened. Quickly I suited up, aiming for stealth rather than intimidation today. The horde would not be impressed by any array of weapons at this point. They were hungry, and there were only twenty-some-odd of us left.
I snuck out early, creeping across the parking lot, only packing socks up my sleeves, and a 6-shot maverick stowed in the pockets of my cargo pants. I began walking up the street right in the middle, trying to distance myself from the sidewalks where it would be all to easy for a zombie to hide, and simply reach out and grab me by the ankle. Eventually, I made it to Magruder. As I stepped inside, I realized right then how far I’d come, and how little I had left to go. The nightmare would soon be over, for better or worse.
The day went by pretty fast I guess. Between every period I had to check up on the TrumanZombies.com website, and slowly watch as our numbers dwindled, and theirs grew. Cody had, the night before, requested information for when the humans would all be free to meet. The Final Mission time was set for 4:30, with a potential standoff to end everything occurring at 6 PM. Location: to be determined.
Ian brought me lunch, which was awesome. Some people came to visit me, tell me war stories, give me news about the outside world. It wasn’t a bad day, all in all. That afternoon, I began to check my e-mail compulsively. It was nearly 4, and Cody hadn’t given us a location. Finally, we were all directed to the BSU, at the edge of campus. I started to panic, becuase that was about as far from where I was as was possible. I quickly packed my things and moved out… noticing the zombies amassing in the very building from which I had taken refuge in. My flight from there was quick though, and without reservation. I was done hiding.
I took a long route, skirting campus, to get to the BSU. En route, I saw the military commander who’d helped us access the automatics walking towards Barnett with the case of syringes. My heart leaped: maybe we were finally going to escape this nightmare; maybe with those samples someone could find a cure! I continued on quickly to the BSU only to find it was locked when I arrived. I turned to hasten my retreat; this screamed ‘ambush’ and I wanted to get under cover quickly. As I did so, I saw a fellow human jog up to me. I began to explain to him that the doors we locked, but he already knew. He’d been spotting from a window up in the West Campus Suites from across the street. We quickly got inside of the building, and as more humans showed up, got them to make their way over as well.
Finally we met Greg and Kathleen. We’d learned from a security video that the military commander I’d just seen had actually set us up. He killed the tech who was our last hope of getting communications to the outside world. We understood in that instant that our fate had already been written, and that there was no escape from this hell now. Kathleen said she was able to determine that the commander had called for a helicopter to provide him an emergency extraction, and that he’d taken with him the samples. I felt like such a fool. I trusted this man without thinking, assuming he was working for our survival. If I’d stopped him right there, maybe things would have been different.
So we mobilized. I at least knew where he would be: Barnett Hall was the only building with enough space around it for a helicopter to land. On the way over, people were… excited. I didn’t understand it. Every step I took was one closer to my own death. A horde of potentially 100 Zombies would be waiting for us, hungry to stop us, and allow the commander to escape with the samples which he planned to spread throughout the Midwest. We pressed onward, taking a back road that eventually ended behind Barnett at a fence.
As we approached the fence, we saw that lurking behind the houses was the first wave of our attackers. The gathered at the open end of the street forming a line, picking their targets, and discussing strategy in whatever foul tongue the dead communicate in. The closed in, closer, closer. A few of us jumped the fence, and though safe, were unable to protect those remaining. We rushed them and quickly they backed off. We returned to the fence. More went over. A tipping point had been reached and the zombies rushed in. Trapped in a corner, I did what I had to. SNAP. One stunned. *slide-back-slide-forward* (this is how the gun reloads) SNAP. A second one down. Michael Justus is eying me and I wasn’t going out that easy. *slidebackslideforward* SNAP. I’d stunned him. Just like that.
Some random woman came over then, hollering for us to “get off her property.” I guess you can’t really say you live in a hick town until you’ve heard that at least once. The zombies scattered, stunned and confused at the sudden appearance of the woman. I jumped the fence and rejoined my squad. In the fray we only lost one man, Michael. We continued to our destination.
On the hill we saw a large cluster of zombies. A forward squad of humans went ahead and chased them back across the street to the creek. My eyes followed them, and were met with the sight of the full horde. I couldn’t believe it. It seemed like they’d mustered their entire force, just as we had. We were out-numbered 4-1. Greg and Kathleen found the position they needed to attack the helicopter, and told us it would be in range in 5 minutes. If we could just hold the hill for that time, Kathleen would blast the damn thing out of the sky, and the Midwest would be saved from the plague.
The zombies slowly began moving in. 4 minutes. Breaking into two main squads and forming a pincer attack, they were getting ready. 3 minutes. Every second they wasted organizing was like a tiny gift from the almighty. 2 minutes. Then I heard it. The sound of hundreds of feet stampeding to hasten our doom. Things went quick. They were closing in on my end of our loose circle around the launcher. We quickly confirmed that only one of us needed to survive to complete the mission. That was encouraging.
What was not encouraging was the 20 hungry faces I was staring down that were now moving with alarming pace. SNAP. I missed! The shot veered off! *slidebackslideforward* SNAP. I got one that time. *slidebackslideforward* SNAP. Got a second. I stepped back a few paces, but there were to many, moving too fast. 1 minute. *slidebackslideforward* SNAP. ANOTHER! *slidebackslideforward*
slam.
I fell to my knees. In the confusion of it all, I’d forgotten the skill that kept me alive this past week. Someone had gotten me from behind. The feeling was unreal. I had pockets full of clips waiting to be spent on zombies. I had comrades that needed avenging. I had a life left to live. No more. Soon, I would be one of them. As I struggled to come to grips with the events of the last 5 minutes, I heard ‘whoosh’ sound, and saw Kathleen’s missile sail up until the sky, connecting violently with the approaching helicopter.
It was done. The zombies had devoured most of us. One had run to take cover in Barnett. Another had just run. I can’t blame them. We all wanted to live though this. A strange sense of euphoria spread over me though. Maybe it was the neurotoxins… or maybe, just maybe, it was the knowledge that my skills and sacrifice had bought us the previous seconds needed to save the greater Midwest from the nightmare that had been our lives this past week.
I struggled home, walking with the horde. Pulling myself up the stairs and into my room, I did my best to summarize the events of today as best I could. With that done, I searched the room, and found what I was looking for. It’s sitting here on my desk, as I type this. Loaded, cocked, and ready to go.
There’s maybe ten minutes left before it happens, before I turn- oh wait. There’s Ian. I’m glad he’s back.
I don’t know if I would have been able to it myself.
We assembled in the middle of Magruder, and were briefed that the Zombies had stolen some of CELO’s transmission equipment deconstructed it, and hid it throughout campus. We had to retrieve the broken pieces, and once they were reassembled, hold the area for transmission.
The first component went fine. We broke into three squads. Mine went to Ryle, picked up our component, and made our way back. Soon after we returned, the 2nd group did too. We waited and worried. The third group had been assigned the West Campus Suites, at which we’d received intel that a horde was gathering. However, soon enough, they emerged triumphantly around the bend, shouting to us in their excitement. They’d taken on that horde and not lost a single person!
Then came the hard part: holding the parking lot between Violette and Magruder for nearly 20 minutes. At first, it was fine. We just hung out there. A few zombies tested our perimeter, but more or less we held. Little by little though, they began to amass. There were maybe 7 or 8 on the south end of the parking lot, using the cars for cover, trying to catch us off guard, and more or less distract us. To our north, maybe 120 meters away, the remainder were all there. Just waiting.
Someone pointed out that the zombies’ hand would be forced: after being stunned, they would need to wait 15 minutes to rush again, meaning they would only have enough time for one big rush. If we could hold that off, it would be a victory for us. People took up positions. Sock-lobbers were assigned gunners to cover them, and people with automatics began to plan flanking maneuvers.
Across the way, someone snapped a cellphone shut, and held up their arm in signal. Then it began. Not a charge, or a rush, but a slow march. At a designated point though, they all broke into a run. A few slipped through, sliding on the still-damp grass, only to get peppered with darts as they entered the human ranks. Most of them were held back. I myself got one or two people. Pulling the trigger was getting easier. I didn’t have time to reflect on the morbidity of this, becuase suddenly a victory cry rang out.
“We got Mohr!”
And got him they did. In his brave attempt to his the zombies in their charge’s weak flank, he’d left the safety of the human perimeter. For all his gun’s speed and ammo stock though… he still missed one, and that’s how we lost him. It was a real blow to human morale to see one of our bravest leaders shouting about his insatiable need for brains. Many people cried out in anguish.
There was no time to grieve though. Several zombies still remained, and they began to regroup. We played the game of them coming slightly into the perimeter, just daring a foolish human to chase them into the labyrinth of automobiles. Soon though, they gave up, and we held the lot. The mission was complete.
I headed back to the SUB with what remained of the Bannabats, the local West Side squad. They’d taken some heavy losses that day, including their leader. I bid them farewell as I sat down to rest in the SUB and get some food before the transitional Senate meeting.
It was pretty fun fooling some zombies into thinking I’d be easy prey after my meal by just waltzing by them towards the exit; only to spin around, go up three flights of stairs, and not re-emerge until three hours later, after the meeting. HA!
Monday
My day today has been very odd indeed. The previous night I was up until 4 AM working on various homework things, take-home tests, etc. This morning I Angela took my test in to ODE. I skipped for two reasons: 1) I was exhausted after spending all night finishing it, and 2) I knew John Mohr would be waiting for me, and this his new-found-undead-ness would make the return journey all too difficult. Plus, there was a German exam to study for.
So I didn’t go to Math for the first time this year. Instead I slept another hour, showered, studied, and took off for Baldwin. After that class, I had my most dangerous treck: Baldwin to Magruder. My judgment of this route was immediately vindicated when Shane came up from behind me. I turned my gun fast enough, and he back off. As I tried to advance towards my destination though, he persisted.
Annoyed, I steadied my hand and stunned him, giving me the 15 minutes I needed to get to class safely. I tried to be stealthy the remainder of the trip, and arrived without further incident.
After class, Ian and I took the long way back from class, which was fortunately also without incident. I had a quick lunch, and worked a bit on the entry previous to this one before setting out. If I could just make it to this last class, my chances of survival would get better. I’d set up a time for a rendezvous to the mission location following my class, so once I got to the building, I allowed myself to relax, just a little bit.
Nate forced us to hang back. I desperately wanted to join the other humans in Ophelia Parish, get the briefing, and show them that I was there to support them.But we stayed. In vain we strained our ears to hear what the zombies we planning, but it was no use. The only useful thing we could discern is where they were heading. Soon after they began to break up, we received a phone call from the other humans, informing us that our mission was to retrieve a mod from Pershing.
To those humans all the way in OP, this mission seemed like suicide. They were outnumbered two to one, and had a long, long road ahead of them. We however, had a pretty easy road ahead of us. We once we got the news we bolted from Magruder across the street to Pershing. It only took us about three minutes once we were inside the building to track down the moderator, and soon Ben joined us too. Kathleen then informed us we needed to escort her back to Baldwin where she would make contact with a tech, thus completing our mission.
And so we ran. Kathleen was in the middle, with Ben, Nate, Chris, and myself each taking a corner to defend. We made it to Baldwin without even so much as a sighting of a single zombie. With the mission complete, we were then left with a pretty easy choice: cover our individual escapes while the horse was distracted, or find the humans and attempt to bail them out. Nate pulled out his phone and confirmed that the humans were pinned down inside Ryle, with the zombies showing no indication of relenting.
So we left Kathleen in Baldwin, and began the long trek to our entrance point to the fray outside Ryle. We’d barely made it a few paces outside the building when we ran into a group of four or five zombies. Finally, my time had come. This wasn’t a one-man ambush by Shane or Joey. This wasn’t me ducking into a building to avoid Rocco en route to the SUB. This was an attack. We each called a mark and chased after them. Like a fool, I hesitated, thinking it would be better to stick together as a unit, rather than risk further losses by going alone.
Soon though, I realized my feelings were not shared, and so I began chasing down my mark. I finally had a clean shot as she tried to slip into the SUB, but I hadn’t been leading my target, and she was moving, so the dart just missed. Quickly I called Nate to see what had happened to the others. When I met back up with them, I saw we’d lost Chris Owens. Ben chided Chris for not using a Nerf gun, but relying only on socks. I thought that was a little cold.
So we continued. As we neared our destination, Nate’s phone rang. The humans at Ryle weren’t willing to wait any longer for the meager reenforcement we would provide; they were rushing. Nate ordered us to double-time it, and we ran the rest of the way. As we hit the fringe of the battle, we ran into two more zombies. Nate and Ben took point, while I kept an eye on them at the rear. They then darted into the maze of the apartment complex. I ran on ahead.
As we rounded the corner, it was only then that I realized the true carnage with which we’d left our brethren to deal with. Darts littered the grass. Stunned zombies were corralled in a corner, with the live ones darting here and there. The human remnant was holding though. Suddenly, out of the apartment complex sprang one of the zombies that had been on our tail. He and I circled for a bit, he made to rush, and I fired. Another hit… this time.
We quickly dispatched of the bulk of the remaining zombies, which wasn’t much, and then started organizing the humans into escape squads based on dorm. I ended up with Zack. He and I were the only C-Hall people there, and so we began the long road home. As we walked, I told him how terrible I felt leaving the humans to fend for themselves while the four of us took all the glory.
Zack responded, “The minute we heard the Nightcrawlers were in position, we knew what our job was. ” This eased my mind greatly, that the remainder of the humans knew the mission was important above all, and gladly accepted their role, despite it being the far more dangerous one. We ran into a bit of trouble at the SUB, finding Hogey waiting for us at the front door, and a zombie that un-stunned just as we headed outside.
Eventually we just went back to back, and slowly walked across the street, guns drawn. Zack had Hogey in his sights, and I was covering two in the rear. Once we’d all collectively stopped traffic and made it across the street, a skirmish ensued. We took two down, leaving only the smallest. Zack went back for his ammo, feeling relatively safe at this point. predictably, he was charged as he stooped to pick up his dart. He raised his gun to stun her, and MISSED. At that range, she was too close; he panicked and ran.
I gave chase, and between the two of us we brought her down. It was close though; closer than I think either of us would have preferred. I hunkered down in C-Hall for the rest of the night… all I could do was await the dawn of the next day, one that would decide my fate forever.
