Over the weekend, I secretly tripped to Toronto, Ontario, without the knowledge of anyone except for some friends.  It was a grand experience, and obviously I survived the trip, because here I am now, writing a short bloggity blog about my adventure.

Darren and I decided to leave late on Wednesday night. I tried to put my own suitcase into his car, thus throwing my back out of place and delaying out trip by half an hour.  Eventually we got on the road and reached Mubix’s house to let him borrow a camera for Defcon.

Eventually we got to Jenn’s house on Thursday afternoon, just in time for some delicious Italian eats at Il Paesano.  Afterwards, we hung out and cleaned up a bit back at her place, then headed downtown for the big Second City show called Barack To The Future. The show was hilarious, and they served delicious beverages and appetizers!

Down the street from Second City was a nice little bar called Gabby’s, where I had many beers and delicious Caesar’s.  It was here that I made sure to Twitter my friend and forum mod, Weiman, as well as Spec Ops Kerrigan- two guys from the Pure Pwnage forums.

We all hung out and had drinks for a few hours before eventually heading back to Jenn’s for much needed sleep.

On Friday, we woke up for lunch with some IPTV folk, and chilled at their workplace for a few hours. I was sooo happy to finally meet these three people who have done so much for the IPTV world. We got to talk about everything from our show at Hak5 to their shows as well. It was quite the experience, and I was lucky enough to bring an adorable squishy cow home.

After lunch, Jenn took Darren and I to the Eaton Centre in Toronto, where I found a cute miniature plushie green Yoshi and Darren bought matching Yoshi house slippers. I LOVED the Eaton Centre.  Holy crap, it’s the biggest mall I’ve ever been in. I think.

After the Eaton Centre, we joined up with Pronobozo and we took off to a Sushi joint for dinner. Sushi was delicious as usual. I wanted to join up with some friends from Pure Pwnage, so I got ahold of them and we walked to their hotel. About 10 people met us outside - this including Myren, Evan, Weiman, Dr. Toker, Gamer Chick, Aeros, Corpus, IW4, Shorteh, along with a few others… who am I forgetting? We all walked to a bar that said we had too many people in our group… So sadly, we gave up and split up. They headed to New Gen, and we headed to a bar called Einstein’s.

Einstein’s wasn’t the best bar as far as service goes, but damn, their drinks were strong!  Darren, Jenn, Pronobozo, and I all had drinks and played pool together.  Jenn and I kicked the boys asses in pool, and the boys rickrolled the bar by playing Rick Astley on the jukebox.  Eventually Nav, a new friend, showed up and I gave her some pointers on pool (so well, in fact, that she kicked my ass!). After some beers, a punch, and meeting some random TO’s, we went back to Ponzo’s for sleep, only to wake up with a hangover the next day.

I’ve never had such a bad hangover.  I felt sick throughout the whole premiere, but I tried my best to hide it and ignore the pain, because I wanted to have fun!

Darren, Ponzo, and I got to the theatre, cut the line, and gave out some free schwag from Hak5. We also got some short clips of the fans for a (hopefully) segment on the show. I was able to chat up some of the Pure Pwnage crew and cast, as well as a TON of random forum members and totally awesome PP fans. Everyone was SOOO nice and welcoming!!!

The show was awesome. Linda Gallant sang a few songs, the cast was introduced, and we watched Ep. 16, 17, and 18. This time, the eps weren’t in black and white, and there was no delay. The episodes were very funny, and totally worth the trip. I played some Tetris and got pwned by someone in teh audience. Guess it just wasn’t my day! The only thing I forgot to do was go by the n00bstore and pick up some Pure Pwnage schwag to wear on Hak5.

After the show, the two boys and I went to Labrynth bar and food for some lunch/dinner before the afterparty. We grabbed our foodz and headed back to Pauper’s Pub, where the afterparty was said to start. The afterparty was insane and fun. I met up with so many old friends, and made a ton of new ones. We all drank and had a wonderful time. The guys from PlayerFIVE.com bought me a beer, and Geoff bought me a Caesar and a shot of something… On the taxi to Pauper’s Pub, I had lost my camera, so during the whole afterparty I took pix with Shorteh’s camera (thank you!) and asked others to snap TONs of photos so I could save them when I got home.

After the afterparty and a lovely dinner with some of the PP ppl, Darren and I headed to our hotel for the night…

Apparently a propane tank blew up that night but we didn’t hear or see a thing. It looked like a frackin Atomic Bomb though, from the videos I saw.

We joined Geoff and Myren on Sunday morning for a delicious breakfast at another new place called Over Easy.  After breakfast and fun talks about exciting things happening with our different shows, Darren and I went to a game store called A&C Games. Just down the road on Spadina, I found a store that selled NOTHING BUT manga and anime merchandise! HOLY CRAP!!!!

I spent so much money at Anime Extreme. I found Sailor Moon posters, various keychains, a t-shirt, some Pocky, and a Mario yellow star plushie. I probably spent way too much at this store, but it was so worth it.

We met up with Pronobozo again at a bar called Sneaky Dee’s which is one of my favorites. Their caesar drinks are terrific and they always play good music! I wasn’t really feeling like a bar on Sunday night, so we went over to Evan’s to chill with him and Weiman.  Weiman pwned me at tennis, then I pwned him at bowling on the Wii. Evan showed us Skrie’s mod that he’s been working on, and OMG I can’t wait til it’s done.

Darren and I left Evan’s place and headed back to the hotel… but we passed a pub called Hoops and decided to get a pint before bed.

On Monday, we woke up early to leave Toronto.  I bought some Timbits from Tim Hortons (lol, Tim’s Bits), and we checked out a lighting store in Toronto, looking for new lights for Hak5. After not finding anything perfect for our show, we headed home.

We bought some syrup, Canadian candy, and Canadian beer at the Duty Free before leaving the country.

And I miss Toronto Canada already.

Six days, encounting…

Identi.ca….?  I mean, I know twitter is pretty sad and never works… but Identi.ca is almost a copy of it!

The page looks different, yes, but there are a LOT of comparisons I can make.  Wait, let me start over. Identi.ca is another microblogging concept for your online use.  You can update identi.ca from the web, or from an IM account, but I haven’t found anyway to update it from your phone or other portable device. All updates you make can be 140 characters or less, just like Twitter. One cool thing about identi.ca is you can update it from Ping.fm.  But ARGH!!!  I can’t make my own profile customizable?!  Why not?

Identi.ca is still in the early stages of creation. Many things will be added “soon”, according to the Identi.ca FAQ.  But, as with all new beta websites, soon could be next week or next year.  Maybe Identi.ca will grow on me, I guess time will tell.

While using Stumble Upon during one of my boring moments, I ran across a really cool site called Musicovery.  It’s basically another radio site, with a twist.  You have a cute little dashboard embedded in the page.  On this dashboard you can choose the genre, decade, and mood of the music you want to listen to.  To try musicovery out, you don’t have to sign up or anything!  You can just start clicking around your browser for a different song.

If you do decide to sign up for an account, you can ban crappy songs and favorite the best songs..  Musicovery is full of eye candy and incredibly easy to use.

I just joined a few new social networks and whatnot, and this is what I thought of them.

You can now find me at Pownce.com.  Pownce is a lot like twitter… as in you basically update your status throughout the day and people can follow you.  You can follow these people back or leave them as a friend.  I like that in pownce you can add embedded pictures or even video to your post.  You don’t have to click a link to see a video someone wants you to watch.  I also like the layout of the page.  Pownce is easy to understand and easy to sign up for.  You can choose a theme for your page, but you cannot customize it.

Here’s the drawback.  If you want a customizable page, you have to pay $20 a year for the customizable theme and 250 Mb file size you can embed on a status update.  Regular gets 100 Mb upload.  Another thing that irks me is it’s damn slow.  The page is slow.  Updates take a long time to load on the page.

Ping.fm is brilliant!  As far as I know, there isn’t a profile page or friends to be added.  You simply use it to update your social networks.  Ping.fm lets you update to the following:

• Bebo
• Blogger
• Brightkite
• Facebook
• FriendFeed
• hi5
• Identi.ca
• Jaiku
• LinkedIn
• LiveJournal
• Mashable
• MySpace
• Plaxo Pulse
• Plurk
• Pownce
• Tumblr
• Twitter
• Xanga

It’s great!  That’s all there is to it.  You sign up, tell it what networks you use, and start posting.

The other network I joined was Stumble Upon.  You click a Stumble button in your toolbar and you are redirected to a site within your interests.  When you sign up for StumbleUpon, you get the choice to customize your profile to a different color, and you can pick tons and tons of interests.  Everytime you stumble, you can choose whether you like or dislike a site by pressing the thumbs up or thumbs down icons.

Last, but not least is Social Browse.   After you download the add-on in firefox for social browse, you browse the internet like you usually do.  Anytime you run across a site you’d like to share with friends, you click the social browse button on your toolbar.  Now, that link is available on your profile page.  The nifty thing is, any time you run across a page one of your friends linked to, their icon appears right next to that link, showing you that someone wanted to let their friends know about that page.  Darren gives an in depth discription about social browse here.

I just got back from my annual family beach trip to North Carolina, where we go to deep sea fish, surf, tan, drink, and swim.  It’s always a blast, and I love it there.  Topsail Island has never been a huge tourist spot, so it’s usually just locals and a bunch of families from around North Carolina.  The beaches are beautiful, the sand dunes sport hidden sand dollars and conc shells, and the beach houses are always decorated incredibly cute. <3

I went searching online for the history of this island, because I once found something similar to an arrowhead, and there are these strange lookout towers all around the island.  I also wondered, where did Topsail Island get it’s name?

Well, I found the answers:

Lying on the eastern coastline of North Carolina, perfectly set within thirty minutes in either direction to Jacksonville and Wilmington, it’s been said that Topsail achieved it’s name from a rather unique source, pirates. Blackbeard himself was rumored to roam the island, making his way to Ocracoke. As ships would pass offshore, the tall pirate ship’s masts could be seen in the distance, thus the name of Top-sail, (pronounced Top-sul by most). Of course, this is part of the mysterious legend of the island.

When the high sails could be seen waving in the distance, oncoming ships quickly turned around to flee from a possible confrontation. Not many wanted to come face-to-face with savage pirates, especially if they thought it was Blackbeard’s flagship, the Queen Anne’s Revenge.

…

Another significant piece of history for Topsail Island was the Tucscarora Indians. The evidence of prehistoric Indian villages and artifacts date back thousands of years. In the 1700s, they were known to have made hunting trips to Topsail Island. You can still find arrowheads made by the Tucscarora Indians all over the island.

…

The U.S. Navy picked Topsail, particularly the Topsail Beach area, as their site for Operation Bumblebee. The Holly Ridge area housed Camp Davis, which literally led to a somewhat short-lived boomtown scenario. During Operation Bumblebee, nearly 200 experimental missiles were launched down the island resulting in the ramjet engine, which eventually allowed aircraft to push past the speed of sound.

Incidentally, Operation Bumblebee got it’s name from just that, the flight of the bumblebee. According to the aerodynamic experts, because of it’s structure, the bumblebee should not be able to fly. Of course, the bumblebee doesn’t know this and flies anyway. Such was the case of the experimental missiles.

There are many observation towers, which were used to track the missiles during flight. These are the small, three story block structures you see found scattered around the island. Some have been refurbished and one has even been added to a home in the Topsail Beach area. That one in particular was kept authentic with little remodeling in order to keep the integrity of the past.

I find all this rather interesting, specially since I’ve spent around 20 weeks throughout the years at this awesome place.

If you’ve ever moved across the country, you know what I’m talking about.  Moving is a huge stress.  Not only do you have to change your address for EVERYTHING (i.e., your bills, the postal service, even your job so you can file your taxes next year…), but you also have to pay lots of money for gas, try to fit all your belongings into a car, and say goodbye to all your close friends.  At least, thats what I had to do, and is it worth it?  Oh yea, totally

I just moved to Virginia, USA.  And I love it.  The weather is hot, it’s sunny all the time, and they dont get a lot of rain.  Of course, I haven’t sat through my first hurricane yet…  Everyone is very friendly, and there are a LOT less bible beaters on the east coast than my hometown in Missouri, USA.  It’s a bit of a culture shock, but since I’ve been to North Carolina to visit the family every summer, it’s not too hard to get used to.

Anyone watch Diggnation?  Revision3?  Darren and I just got back from a trip to New York City.  NYC is so expensive!  Gas is almost $4.50  up there, and the cost of a shitty hotel is at least $100/ night.  The show was hilarious.  Darren pushed me into going on stage to be a shot girl for Kevin and Alex..  Everyone there was very nice and welcoming to our little crew.  Needless to say, I can’t wait to visit the Rev3 crew

Oh, one last thing.  BARACK THE VOTE!

インターステラ5555 is an animated movie that goes along with the Daft Punk album Discovery.  From start to finish, there’s no dialog, few sound effects, and tons and tons of hot spicy Daft Punk dance mixes to keep you bobbing your head for an hour straight.  Since the animator Matsumoto of Galaxy Express 999 fame created this movie along with the production being overlooked by the Daft Punk band, needless to say it’s an amazing feat.  Interstella 5555 came out in 2003 and is definetly one of my favorite music videos :D  Go wiki it and read more, if you like anime or Daft Punk, you’ll like this film.

In other news, I GRADUATED!!!!!!! I finally graduated college and I’m moving in with my boyfriend.  Wow!!!  A year ago, I wouldn’t have thought I’d be in the shoes I’m in now.  This is a new chapter in my life and I’m so excited to share it with you all

I’m graduating college on Friday, and the closer it gets, the more I keep thinking about the past four years.

So much has changed.

I’m a completely different person than I was four years ago. I’ve learned how to protect myself from theiving roommates, I’ve learned that the internet is full of fraud, and I’ve learned that I LOVE technology. Of course, I knew this to begin with, but over the past four years I’m learning much more about myself than I’d ever thought possible. I’ve learned that I have more friends online than I do in real life. TV is a black hole that turns you into a potato, while IPTV gives you so much knowledge and creativity.

As I graduate my four years of college, I’ve started thinking to myself, ‘did I do everything I wanted to?’ Definetly not. I worked my ass off straight through. I’ve become a solid assistant manager at my job that I just quit (Cuz i’m moving!!), and I’ve learned that I love hiring and training! I wish I would’ve gotten the chance to meet people, join clubs, go to more events…

My major was a joke. Really! When I was a freshmen, I was pushed into graduating in four years to help me from being in debt after graduation. I think choosing a major your freshmen year is too soon. I was young, I had no clue what I wanted to do, and I don’t think I chose the right major. Sadly, I was four years too late.

So now I’m considering maybe taking a year off to save up, and go back to school in something that I love. Or maybe I’ll just become a famous IPTV star and live off the income. LOL

I want to learn more about computers. I want to help people build their computers. I want to test video games and do reviews. I want a job surrounded by tech. I know how weird it is for a girl to say that but, you know what? I don’t care what other people think of me. I am so perfectly happy when I’m playing a game or working on something tech related that I can’t imagine doing anything else as a career.

When I was in high school, I wanted to become an actress. I still have that dream. Now, I want to geek out. So whats the solution to this? Who knows? It’s never too late to figure it all out.

Life; It’s so complicated.

I don’t know whether net neutrality is getting serious right now or not, but I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about it.  It’s kind of confusing to me…  From what I understand, net neutrality basically means consumers (thats me and you) are free to use the internet as we wish through whatever service provider we decide to use.  If we go for the same package, we get the same speed for the same webpages, no matter whether we use it for BitTorrent, youtube, or just email.  It’s freedom at it’s best.

Those that are against neutrality are those big communication companies who have tons of supporters and people that give them big money.  Those people that give them lots of money get fast websites, fast connections… fast everything.  Those that don’t give them lots of money get slow connections and websites.

Now, seeing that I’m a ultra geek who likes to watch videos, download tons of stuff, write blogs (duh) and whatnot, obviously I’m for net neutrality and internet freedom.  I don’t want to have to pay some big company who already has too much money, some of my cash that I need to save because Im a poor ass college student.  I don’t want my favorite podcasters having to pay a larger fee for their internet connection so they can keep their current bandwidths.

The internet started free, and it should remain free (once you’ve payed your monthly bill, of course).

Check out Amber Mac’s video blog about her view on net neutrality in Canada.

And here’s 90 day Tania and her friends talking about net neutrality in Europe.