Another crazy year comes to an end

2014 was surely a year to remember for me, and a lot of other people in the world.

Camera charger conundrum

Finally, an NHL Winter Classic hosted by my team

The NHL Winter Classic, an outdoor hockey game that was first played in 2008 in Buffalo, New York, is finally going to be hosted by my team, the Washington Capitals in Washington, DC. The Capitals previously appeared in the 2011 Winter Classic in Pittsburgh, where they defeated the Penguins 3-1. I won't really care about the outcome of the actual game, especially since the Capitals have won it before. The away team does have a history of winning this game. I'm just happy that Washington will finally be in the spotlight in an outdoor NHL game, since in their first Winter Classic it was all about Pittsburgh, a party we would end up spoiling. It would be even more incredible if my Capitals won a second outdoor game, this time against the Chicago Blackhawks. But overall, I'm going to enjoy the atmosphere and the honor of having attended two Winter Classic games.

NFL regular season over, playoff field set

The NFL regular season, with the exception of the AFC North matchup between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Pittsburgh Steelers, has ended and all twelve playoff spots have been claimed.

Tired after Christmas

Yesterday, after all of my Christmas fun, I was very tired. I slept until 10 this morning, which actually isn't too far off from when I usually wake up.

An excellent Christmas

Today was my 20th Christmas and I have yet to be disappointed by any one of them. I always feel the holiday magic and today I certainly spent the day well. I woke up at my dad's house, ate pancakes and opened some presents. My favorite ones were a wildlife blanket with some sort of bear on it, an old Manhattan map and a plasma light. I also got candy in my stocking and a couple of trinkets. Then it was on to my mom's house and my mom had planned to drag me and my two brothers to church so that's what we did. It had been a while since I went there and in the meantime they had done some renovations. I was moved by a Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer poem that one of the church people said, but otherwise I was apathetic about the service.When we left we were driving through a nearby  neighborhood and a couple of houses had huge blow-up ornaments. One of them even had Dora, SpongeBob and Yo Gabba Gabba and I had to laugh.


When we got home our mom made us get firewood so we could have a fire in the fireplace. Then we got to open more presents, a couple from our mom and some that we got for each other. Soon, we broke out some snacks and Christmas music.

No shortage of Christmas cookies

My dad has plenty of Christmas cookies in his house to mark the occasion. My mom's house has some good treats too, but my dad and his lady friend went all out with the cookies, to which I have gladly helped myself.

 These cookies are in some cool Santa bags.

 Some of these chocolate chip cookies crumbled into pieces.

These mini ones are from one of the Jewish bakeries in the northwest Baltimore area.

Last preparations for Christmas

As today was Christmas Eve, I did some last-minute things to prepare for tomorrow. I had a few presents to wrap, but my mom kept being nosy and asking them who I bought those things for, a question I refused to answer. After putting the presents under the tree I listened to a bunch of Christmas songs to really get into the holiday spirit. In the early afternoon I went over to my dad's house and noticed a lot more presents under his tree. Christmas mornings at his house aren't really as exciting but I know I'll still have a good time opening presents. I hope all will go well tomorrow.

Deadly tornado strikes Mississippi during Southern severe weather outbreak

A severe weather outbreak in the Southeast produced several tornadoes in Louisiana and Mississippi on Tuesday. One tornado in Columbia, Mississippi resulted in the deaths of at least two people. Columbia, which is situated between the larger cities of Hattiesburg and state capital Jackson, suffered significant damage from the tornado, which was estimated by one storm chaser to be about an EF3 on the Enhanced Fujita scale. Other cities including New Orleans, Birmingham and Atlanta also took hits from the strong storms. There was also flooding along the Gulf Coast, particularly in the Mobile, Alabama and Pensacola, Florida areas as well as other portions of Mississippi. This event came just two days before Christmas, a rare time for thunderstorm and tornadic activity in much of the country.

"Thursday Night Football: Saturday Edition" annoys fans

Many football fans have derided TV network NBC showing two "Thursday Night Football" games on a Saturday. The Saturday NFL games were the result of the end of the college football regular season. College football usually has Saturday games, the day before the majority of NFL games every week.

First day of winter

Today is the first day of winter and the solstice will take place at 6:03 pm Eastern time. Although it will probably be the beginning of a long cold winter, it also means the days will start getting longer again. Also, Christmas is just four days away and everyone is in the holiday spirit. I really hope I have a much better winter than I did last year. Overall I'm really looking forward to Christmas and the whole winter of 2014/15.

Instagram deletes all fake accounts

Instagram has removed all spam and fake accounts from their website, leaving many celebrities with a huge loss in followers. Turns out spammers, trolls and bots really like to follow celebrities on social media, which isn't a surprise in today's internet climate. On Instagram, certain pictures (especially beautiful women) are a dead giveaway to a spam or fake account. I have myself been a victim of some fake followers, but they all disappeared from my Instagram account before the so-called "Instagram Purge," meaning either Instagram deleted those accounts too, they deleted their accounts themselves or they just decided to unfollow me. The number of purged accounts shockingly reached well into the millions. Hopefully this is an eye-opener to the hidden dangers of social media.

No snow for the rest of December?

Back on Thanksgiving eve, the east coast had its first winter storm of the season and first in eight months. Since it was even earlier than last year's maiden snowstorm on December 8, I thought we were in for another long winter. But since then our only other snow has been less than an inch last week, and it melted quickly. There was some snow in the forecast around December 22, and even briefly on Christmas morning, but now they're calling for just a chance of rain on Monday and Wednesday (Christmas Eve). There are currently no predictions for snow here between Christmas and New Year's. We had multiple snowstorms last December but didn't get our worst ones of the season until January and February. So maybe we're just having a slower start to our winter this year. But frankly, I'd like to see a couple more real snowstorms, because it's not winter without one, although I also don't want a repeat of last winter.

McDonald's in Japan running out of french fries

Get this: Several McDonald's fast food restaurants in Japan are running out of potatoes to make french fries. They have been forced to ration fries to customers by only offering small size fries with every meal. It is unclear what exactly has caused the shortage. Maybe it's high customer demand or just a shortage of raw materials. But for a country like Japan, they're taking it pretty seriously. Meanwhile, my homeland of 'Murica appears to still have plenty of ingredients for our McDonald's restaurants, to the relief of our fast food-obsessed population.

Where are all the Christmas lights?

Every year during the Christmas season, one of the things I enjoy seeing is all of the beautifully decorated houses with their bright, shiny, colorful lights. But this year I haven't seen as many houses with lights. Either they're waiting until a few days before Christmas day or they just decided to be less decorative this year. Most years, we're usually more modest with our decorations than a lot of our neighbors, but this year you could say we're the one's who are going all out. I do think we have slightly more of our lights inside, on the railings and our Christmas tree, than outside. Lately we've only had outside lights on our porch and around the door, and not at the top of our house all the way across the roof. But the point is, the holiday feeling just isn't complete with every house decked out in lights to some extent.

Real Racing 3 produces strange error code

The mobile game Real Racing 3 has generated a strange series of false suspensions that is apparently the result of a recent update that introduced three special Ferrari series to the game. The error code was given as 10049, which is not mentioned in game distributor Firemonkeys' page with information about RR3 suspensions. The game can suspend users for misusing game currency and cheating, playing unfairly or otherwise tampering with the game, but these suspensions are almost certainly the result of an error that many players are begging to see fixed, or else they'll be wrongly suspended for a week. Hopefully whoever is in charge of these aspects of the game are sorting it out.

Update, 12/15: All suspensions have been lifted.

A historic date

Today is December 13, 2014 or 12-13-14, a rare sequential date on the calendar. It will be the last date of its kind for 89 years, until 2103. Most of us will probably be dead by then.

Making a pizza

My mom and I made a pizza today as part of all of our baking. We used a special kind of pizza dough and a pizza stone. The pizza was half cheese and half mushroom. Previously, I had made two smaller pizzas on my own, but this was like a "real" pizza. Also, back in January I was just making pizza bagels so it's nice that I'm finally making actual pizzas. This pizza was mostly good but could have used a little more work.

 Our dough rolling system, with flour all over it

 The rolled-out pizza dough.

 Fresh basil

 Sauce with Italian seasoning (in a liquid measuring cup)

 Putting on the cheese.

 Preparing to cook the pizza.

A finished slice of mushroom pizza.

Birthday and Christmas baking

I helped my mom with some baking today (on top of some other chores, making for a busy afternoon/early evening). My mom was making a chocolate birthday cake for her guy friend's birthday tomorrow (Saturday). We're going to have a little party and eat shrimp (which we do for almost every birthday and holiday) and a bunch of other junk.

While my mom was making the cake behind my back, she was also helping me make pumpkin loaves. I believe I used the same or almost the same recipe that is used for pumpkin roll, one of my favorite desserts ever, because of the cream cheese filling. In fact, this is what I thought we were making at first, but then my mom put the batter into six small loaf pans to make quick bread-type things. But I still got my annual pumpkin roll a couple of weeks ago during Thanksgiving week at my dad's house.

Along with the pumpkin loaves and birthday cake, my mom and I also made a homemade pizza, which I am covering in a separate post because it was a process in itself.

Pumpkin loves on cooling rack

The unfrosted chocolate cake

this stuff is awesome lol

Christmas treats

One of my favorite things of any holiday is the junk food. But that especially goes for Christmas. There's the candy canes and chocolate Santas and cookies and cakes and even Christmas-themed donuts. So it's no surprise that I like to stuff myself during the holidays. Just today I bought a box of rainbow cherry-flavored candy canes (my favorite) and a caramel-filled chocolate Santa Claus (I had a marshmallow-filled one last week).

Is Vine the new Instagram?

Vine is a social media site that displays short videos uploaded by users that play in endless loops. Like other social media sites these days, it allows users to add hashtags, continuing the trend Twitter started, and has endless scrolling, a simple like/favorite system and other generic stuff. But Vine is especially similar to Instagram, which is essentially the special effects still photo counterpart, and which established itself before Vine. Both websites have the same basic layout, which is a series of posts stacked alongside each other, which descriptions and hashtags below them. Vine's popularity is growing, though, and it could be soon regarded as "the next Instagram." But Instagram isn't going to fade anytime soon, so it looks like for now Vine will have to settle as second to Instagram.

More proof my laptop and Sony Vegas hate me

My laptop has seriously been annoying me for the past few months, and the broken keyboard is the latest thing. Now Sony Vegas has been crashing my laptop while I'm trying to render videos. I've had this issue before but usually it fixes itself after I restart my laptop. But I guess this time was a little different.

I was making a NASCAR video for my second channel with several video clips and it was 21 minutes long. I knew it would take a few hours to render, especially in HD. But I was not expecting my laptop to crash mid-render. When that happened, I decided to try a lower resolution, but that time it crashed my laptop a little further into the rendering. Then I resolved to split the video into two parts and place the second half into another project window. The first half rendered in 1080p high definition with no problems. But when the second half was rendering my laptop crashed again, so I had to split that part in half too. Finally, I was able to render those two project files without issue. I then combined all three parts in Windows Movie Maker and uploaded it to YouTube.

I'm pretty sure most of the issues on my laptop are my fault for screwing around so much. The funny thing is, this latest set of problems weren't present before I broke my laptop's keyboard while trying to fix two non-functional keys, causing me to break out an old desktop keyboard which I am typing this on. I had to do some disk checks and two startup repairs right after that happened but now I at least have a functional keyboard. But I don't think a broken keyboard is supposed to cause a video editor to crash your laptop. Who knows what's really going on, though?

AFC North race a virtual dead heat

The four teams in the AFC North of the NFL all have almost identical records after Week 14 of the season, making for a close race to the playoffs in the division. The Cincinnati Bengals just barely sit on top of the division at 8-4-1. while the Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Ravens are both at 8-5 after winning and the Cleveland Browns are at 7-6, having lost two straight. As of now, the Bengals appear to be favored to win another division title, but any of these teams could still pull off a playoff berth at this point. On a side note, my Washington Redskins continue their slump with a 24-0 loss to the St. Louis Rams, who also shut out the Oakland Raiders 52-0 last week.

I-95 Baltimore express lanes finally open

 The express toll lanes on Interstate 95 north of Baltimore, Maryland, part of what I call my "home stretch" of that highway, have finally opened to traffic after many years of planning and construction. The lanes will be free to drivers for a week, and I wonder if I can find a way to sneak a test drive onto them this week before they start charging. But after the free trial, it will still only cost $1.75 one-way for most vehicles, much less than other current tolls around here.

The express lanes are located along about eight miles of I-95 and the north end of I-895 from the Moravia Road interchanges in east Baltimore to just north of the Maryland Route 43 exit at White Marsh. There are rumors that someday they will be extended into my home turf of Harford County, which would tie in with a proposed widening of I-95 to four lanes from Maryland Route 24 in Harford to the Delaware state line.

I first heard about the express toll lanes project around April of 2006, when I started seeing signs about it along I-95 north of White Marsh. In 2007 construction started on the project, which involved the construction of a third carriageway, and around 2011 traffic from whatever direction was moved to that carriageway. The old carriageway was then turned into the express lanes, but it took a while to do the work on them. Finally, they have been cleared to open. In the meantime, other construction projects in the region have been carried out, such as the Intercounty Connector in Montgomery and Prince Goerge's counties, and the extension of the I-95 Virginia HOV lanes into Stafford County. But this is the one project I'm glad to see done after years of simply hearing about it.

My fall semester went by fast

In my fall semester of my sophomore year of college, I have taken an art class, which was "Fundamentals of 2-D Design." We have done a variety of art projects like drawings, paintings and collages, as well as some notes and paragraphs. I only had it once a week for four hours, and I think that's the reason it feels like the semester flew by. My first class was back on September 4, and our very first assignment was a line variation worksheet where we had to use just four lines for each example. I've had a really fun time learning new things about both traditional and digital art. I even used a Mac computer for the first time and also learned and used Photoshop. Next semester one of the classes I'm taking is a digital media class, which I'm looking forward to since I like uploading stuff onto DeviantArt from Paint and Paint.NET, which I could use some work on.

Arena sports have some surprisingly good teams right now

The two major arena sports, the NBA (basketball) and NHL (hockey) both have some interesting teams at the top of the standings right now. The Toronto Raptors of the NBA are the best in their league right now, alongside teams like the Washington Wizards.

2014 Atlantic hurricane season proves mostly quiet

The Atlantic hurricane season officially ended on Sunday, although there is still a small possibility for one more named storm to develop in the last month of the year. But that is highly unlikely with the below-average activity that has occurred in the Atlantic basin this year. During the official hurricane season, June 1 to November 30, just eight named storms developed in the basin, the last of which, Hanna, dissipated more than a month ago. Only one storm had a big impact, and that was category 4 Hurricane Gonzalo, which struck Bermuda in October. Also, minor Hurricane Arthur impacted the Outer Banks of North Carolina in early July, although there was no major damage. Most of the Atlantic storms this year followed a north-to-east path up the Atlantic Ocean parallel to the U.S. east coast. Two storms, Dolly and Hanna, formed in the Gulf of Mexico and brought rain to Mexico and Central America.

Last year, the Atlantic had a just about average hurricane season. The three seasons before that were all very active, with eighteen tropical storms each and powerful storms such as Igor, Irene and Sandy. The similarly below-average 2006 and 2009 seasons could be comparable to this year.