Changing the tubes

I'm in the process of changing blog providers (LAST TIME I SWEAR). My new website should be up in a day or two at alexbarnett.com.

Annual Ninja Parade

I love the Onion.


Ninja Parade Slips Through Town Unnoticed Once Again

Halloween and DDR

I should probably write a little something about the DDR Club Halloween party. Overall it went pretty well. We didn't have as many people dress up as last year, but it was still fun. As usual, we had roughly 3 tons of candy and snacks to go through, along with a nice copy of Guitar Hero 3 (shh...don't tell anyone). As for the costumes, we had Zero Suit Samus, the Burger King, some ninjas (one with a cat tail and a real sword 0.0), a Final Fantasy Black Mage, a pirate, a wench, and a handful of others.

Oh, and of course yours truly as the legendary Rick Astley.
I know, you want it.

Holiday plans

Woohoo...being an adult is so much fun...really, I'm totally serious. I mean, I love having a job that requires me to be there during the holidays. You know that whopping three weeks off of school I get for Christmas? Guess how many days I get off of work?

Three. I get to drive home on Christmas eve and then drive back the day after Christmas. Woo. That means for the other 18 days I'm sitting alone in my apartment working my way through my ever growing Gamefly queue. I don't get any time off for New Year's eve either. If anybody even bothers to throw a party, I'll be able to join at 11 PM. At least I get a couple of hours.

Also, for the first time ever, I'm not going home for Thanksgiving. I'll be joining Steph's family out in Iowa. Again, I only get three days. Drive out, Thanksgiving, drive back and hop on a train in Chicago.

Good times.

Gaming Solution

I've had my Wii for months now and I haven't really gotten a whole lot of use out of it (mostly because the current game lineup is total crap). That's going to change next month when half a dozen good games all come out at the same time. Of course, at $50 per game, that's $300 of good gaming that I can't afford.

The solution? I signed up for Gamefly's basic service (1 game out at a time). Now I have 17 games in my queue (with Super Paper Mario in the mail), and because of some deal I signed up for with one of their affiliates, it only costs me $7/month. I figure that if I actually play the games through, that'll equal 2-3 games per month. I save a lot of money and if I happen to get bored with their Wii games, I still have their vast collection of PS2 games to browse.

Ryan's had Netflix for months. I wish I would have thought of this earlier.

Oh yeah, and if you ever feel like joining, let me know. If I refer 5 people, I get a free Nintendo DS.

Exponent Letter

Sweatshop protesters should alter strategy

Publication Date: 10/25/07

To the sweatshop protesters: Have you considered the implications of your actions? Let's say that your crusade actually works and Purdue pulls its contract from the sweatshops. Then what? What happens to the employees of that sweatshop? Most likely, they will be laid off. How will they support themselves or their families without an income? After all, a lousy income is better than no income at all. Without their sweatshop jobs, they might have to turn to prostitution, begging or crime to feed their families.

While I respect your stand for human rights, you have to understand that people in other countries do not have the same rights that we do. They don't have the same labor laws, and they definitely don't have the same welfare system. People out of work either find new jobs or starve on the streets, and if they were working in a sweatshop before, they will most likely not have the skill set for anything other than sweatshop work.

By protesting sweatshops, you're hurting the very people you are trying to help.

Alex Barnett

Senior, College of Technology

Alarms and Headaches

Once again I find myself going through caffeine withdrawal. If you've never gone through it, or haven't heard me complaining about it, caffeine withdrawal symptoms include fatigue, irritability, and splitting headaches on one side of your head. So it definitely didn't help when, near the end of my last class today, all of the lights went out and 2 high-pitched, very loud sirens started going off. It looks like several buildings on campus abruptly lost power and then started screaming with all of their alarms. Nobody knows why yet, but there were a lot of emergency vehicles on campus when I left.

Now I'm treating my withdrawal symptoms with the best medicine available: more caffeine. Meh.