Friday, June 30, 2006
Talking 360:Haven't done a whole lot except for work and playing the usual Halo 2 everynight...well, almost every night. I recently signed up for the 360 Voice. Basically it's a blog for your Xbox 360 and catalogs all the Xbox 360 games you played that day, along with the points you earned. One thing it doesn't catalog are any games from the original Xbox, so that means all my Halo 2 play time isn't taken into account...which is almost everyday. Also, I think all the entires in there are like a day behind, and I don't know where I can change the settings for that. The time on my 360 console is correct, so I don't know. Oh well...You can find my Xbox 360 blog HERE
Another recent event was my participation in a mentoring program for some Japanese middle school students that came over for a week's stay for some classes and sight-seeing. I know what you're thinking...there's not a whole lot to see in Nebraska, but in a way there is. We have one of the top 5 zoo's in the country (located in Omaha, Nebraska), the College World Series is held in Omaha as well, and we have tons of interesting (or boring - depending on your tastes) museums full of really neat paleontological, archaeological, historical, and wacky things. But maybe that's just my opinion, and I'm probably a little biased because that's the type of stuff I work with everyday. Museums can be boring as a kid (or adult - :P), so it's important to provide hands-on or really fun activities for them to do there, otherwise it's just another art museum where you get to look at pretty (or ugly) things.
So, other than that, Nebraska is pretty much like any other state in the country with malls, movie theatres, tons of restaurants (Omaha has the most restaurants per capita in the United States by the way), and other random things to do that cost time and money.
I did a few other cool things at work besides making site maps, forms, and tons of other random paperwork. We finally got to drive out to a few of the sites to examine them. An interesting thing happened when we were checking out one of the sites that was the remains of a relocated cemetery (as in this was the original). They had to move them because all the reservoir water was wearing away the soil from around the area, turning them into cliff banks. Well, this cemetery was relocated just in time; otherwise, the occupants would have been re-buried in another fashion... The head archaeologist was telling me how everyone was accounted for when they relocated the bodies when I saw something in the ground that looked like a skull cap. My heart skipped a beat and I reached down to examine the area. I bushed away the dirt to reveal one half of a bivalve shell. Phew... I also found a lot of ceramics (pottery) at the site, but we didn't bother to collect them since they had so many anyway. You could just walk down the road and see tons of debris from stone tool manufacture and pieces of pottery everywhere. There was so much, they didn't even know what to do with it all. But since I found this pottery piece inside the relocated cemetery site, that meant the people who buried them there had stumbled upon a pre-historic Native American site and didn't even know it!
The dam water has "helped" out the archaeologists by exposing a ton of land to find artifacts, but at the same time, it also threatens them. Not only have human remains and associated artifacts been found, mammoths and cave bears have also made their appearances in the cliff faces.
Another cool and tedious thing I got to do was re-organize the artifacts from one of the Native American burial sites. I had to separate the bones from the many various artifacts that came out of the bags. None of the bones or artifacts were cleaned, so my desk got rather messy. I got comments out of my co-workers that walked by such as: "Stop playing in the dirt," and the like. I think they're just jealous because they have to do all the boring stuff like mapping out dams and plans to re-route water and land. The artifacts didn't really need to be cleaned because as soon as they are done being examined by a specialist, they will be re-patriated to the specifications of the tribe. At first the site was believed to have been one burial, but as work continued, it turned out to a collective burial. The bodies had to be relocated because they were in danger of being destroyed when the government decided to put an aquifer right in their path. Too bad the people buried didn't get to have a say in all this...
And I see that my blog has hit the 10,000 visitor mark...HAHA, SUCKERS! :-P
Thursday, June 15, 2006
Working For "The Man":Well, working for "The Man" hasn't been too tough...yet. However, getting my fingerprints taken at the police station was rather unnerving... I guess all those murders, kidnappings, and burglaries I wanted to do won't work out as smoothly as I hoped. ;)
I haven't done any field work as of yet, but for now I'm getting acquainted with mapping programs. I'm currently working with one program that is basically Photoshop on steroids because of all the data input that goes into the mapping.
So, me being a nerdy gamer, I have a plan to use the mapping stats option from my Halo 2 stats to map out where I frequently become victimized/defeated by another player on a particular map. That way, I can see how I can improve my ninja stealth tactics while playing. The mapping options for the stats online already include where you kill an opponent, where you were killed by an opponent, the distance, and with what weapon...which is awesome (You have to log in to see the mapping stats). I just want to take it to the next step and see if I can gather the data and stats from a particular map and then map out the specific areas of defeat to create one map with all the information. The problem is that the maps have no specific measurement to them, nor am I able to find them. Also, I think I might have to write a program to make the process a little easier, so I'll have to convince my boyfriend to help out.
In DS Lite news, I bought Brain Age a couple of days ago and have been playing ever since. I used to hate sudoku because of its difficultly sometimes, but now I love it even more. The training games are pretty fun as well, and the game does a pretty good job of making you really anxious to see your results. My brain age when I first tried it out was a whopping 53. Currently I've brought it down to 34.
Well that's about it. If you have Brain Age as well, post your current age...
Monday, June 12, 2006
Movin' On Up:Well, sorry for the long gap between posts, I finally moved into my new apartment. I'm going to start my summer job tomorrow morning and I guess I'm pretty excited. My official job title is "Archaeological Technician," but basically that means I get to be the assistant to the head archaeologist at the Bureau of Reclamation.
In other gaming news, I am now the new owner of a Nintendo DS Lite. I was shopping with my boyfriend around the Wal-Mart by my new apartment when I came upon a wonderous sight...new DS Lites lined up in the entertainment section! The lady working there said she could sell them to me at midnight (which was about in 10 minutes from the time I discovered them), so I went back after grabbing some groceries and grabbed one, along with the New Super Mario Bros. I recently found out there is a Mall area with a Best Buy in this town. I guess I could have gotten it there, but for now, Wal-Mart saves the day.
Previously I had pondered the thought of buying a Nintendo DS while I was doing my study abroad in Japan, but when I found out about the updates to the Lite, I decided to wait it out and see what it had to offer, and I'm glad I did.
Today I went back to the same Wal-Mart to buy a case and other items for my new DS Lite, along with some other kitchen utensils I forgot to purchase for my new apartment.
Now I'm off to fill out the mountains of paperwork for my new government job...including fingerprint paperwork when I arrive at my new job tomorrow. Silly government...sigh.
The Dego Diva:
Date Of Birth: May 24th, 1984
Location: Wouldn't You Like To Know
Occupation: Student
Masters: Forensic Anthropology
Major: Anthropology
Minors: Art History & Japanese
Primary Hobby/Intrest: Video Gaming
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