Day 1:  Traveling and Late Night Eats

So I borrowed my dad’s car because my car had a side-view mirror broken.  So I had to go all the way back east to New Jersey and then start heading west and north to Rochester.  Added 2 hours to my drive =_=.

Ran into tons of traffic at the beginning of the trip because it was rush hour.  Sucked.

Apparently you drive through Russia on your way to Rochester, NY.  Or so says the GPS.  After this, didn’t really take anymore pictures because it was dark out and driving while picture taking is dangerous >_>.

So upon arriving, I think the only thing on my mind was getting some proper nourishment.  I had eaten dinner prior to leaving, but being that the drive was over 5 hours long, I was hungry.  What better way to satisfy my late night hunger with some innutritious Denny’s?

Chicken finger burrito.  ‘nough said.

The final activity of the night.  Record Danny, Sherman (danny’s housemate), and myself try to name all 150 of the original pokemon.  Needless to say, on later inspection; we learned we failed miserably.

Day 2: Dibella’s and RIT

So the next morning, I awoke because of a ring at the doorbell.  Apparently Jehovah’s Witnesses were wandering the neighborhood.  Sherman’s brother answered and I could barely stifle my laughter from the other room as they tried to convince him to see the path to god.

Needless to say, upon waking up, I quickly got comfortable since it was still pretty early.  Browsed the internet for a while until I got tired of waiting for Danny to wake up (I woke him up about 2.5 hours after I woke up).  We decided to head out shortly after.

Before leaving, I snapped a shot of the place Danny lives while at RIT.  It’s so much nicer than my current lodgings.

The first order of business was food.  So Danny took me to what is known is the best sub place in Rochester: Dibella’s.

The place was arranged pretty well – they had a system where they could shuffle customers to the counter to order quickly and then away to pick it up later.  It also had a nice vintage feel to it, which I enjoyed while eating my sandwich.

Here’s the remaining half of my capicola sub.  It was very tasty.  Thanks for treating me Danny.

After lunch, Danny brought me to RIT.  All of the buildings are pretty boring to look at since the entire school is actually pretty modern.  I think it’s only like 50-60 years old.

The hallways kind of reminded me of high school for some reason.  Narrow and long.

RIT boasts the largest video gaming club in the US.  Trademark of a nerdy school.

Inside of every building were places to eat or get snacks.  These places are even open on weekends.  Lehigh should get more places open on weekends and more food areas in general.  I mean, literally EVERY building had at least one place to buy food – ridiculous.

On-campus computer store.  Handy in a pinch I guess.

Rawr.

There’s nice shrubbery around all the buildings I guess.  Nowhere near as aesthetically nice as Lehigh, but it was nice to have everything FLAT.

Some hardcore editing equipment for the video majors I assume.

I do give RIT credit though.  There were a few nice park areas and greenery around.  Definitely fall now – it finally hit me as I realized there were tons of leaves on the ground here.

This is where Danny attends classes.

And with Danny’s lead, we dared to enter the abyss.

Was instantly greeted with comfy-looking chairs and a carpeted hallway.  Packard Lab seems so far away…(the building I go to most of my classes in at Lehigh).

A server room that’s apparently simulating black holes and whatnot.  Has a giant fan keeping it cool, along with a thermometer giving the ambient room temperature.  It was kind of awkward how most of the rooms had class windows that looked into the hallway instead of walls.  There were also tons of computer rooms as well as classrooms in this building, but that’s about it.  Typical of a college building right?

After touring that building, we decided to head back.  It was already pretty late – as you can see, there’s tons of cars missing from when we first arrived.  From here on out, we returned back to Danny’s place to fail miserably at making an intro-video for chenzen.  So much wasted time…Oh well – after that, just played some Street Fighter 4 (SF4) and went to sleep.

Day 3: Xacti and Rochester

So apparently the day I left, I didn’t take many pictures.  It’s probably because all I did was play more SF4 and eat some Chinese food with Danny.

This is Danny’s Xacti.  It takes up to 2 hours of 720p HD video @ 30fps.  As I mentioned before, we were trying to do a collab intro Vlog for chenzen, but failed miserably.  We came up with good ideas after the fact of course.  The camera seems pretty nice.  Compact and handy.

Look!  It’s Rochester!  It didn’t really give me much of an impression as a city though…

Well, we ended up at the Chinese restaurant which served up some good noodles.  Unfortunately I didn’t take any pictures of the food or the place.  I have no idea why, but this is the only picture from the chinese place, so yeah.  I think it’s cause I had just realized how dumb we were for making such a lame video for chenzen that we weren’t gonna use.

Anyway, after this, I basically got back to Danny’s place, packed up, and headed home.  Overall, I’d say I had a lot of fun though.  It was a nice trip, albeit a bit long, but nothing impossible.  On a good day, I can get to Rochester in about 4 hours and 40 minutes.  I got to relax a bit and chill with Danny and Sherman, so yeah – good times.  I hope to take more trips like this in the future.

That’s all for now!  Later

So Danny and I have been working basically non-stop on ChenZen the past week or so getting the site up, writing posts, publicizing, talking to people, and trying to stabilize our server space, among many other things as well.  So I officially declare that every Saturday, starting from this Saturday, to be “material gathering day.”  What this means, is that instead of posting everything we find immediately, like we usually do, we’ll gather as much content as possible to help smooth along the rest of the week.  Of course, if something huge is happening, we’ll try to keep you up to date, however, you will definitely notice that Saturdays will be much slower.

Anyway, so why am I posting all of these cute sleeping animals?  Well, when I’m not updaing this blog, playing games, watching anime, reading manga, checking updates, or sleeping, I’m usually…wait, no – that’s basically the story of my life.  I guess you can throw in work, school, friends, and the occasional outing, but other than that I don’t do much of anything.  This has inspired me to ask though, what each one of you do with your free time.  Everyone has different hobbies and whatever, so I’m kind of curious as to what they are.

Recently I’ve actually been trying into photography a lot more – a lot has to do with this blog and keeping up with photo articles, but it mostly stemmed from an interest I’ve had long ago.  Now I finally have an excuse to develop this hobby more and pursue it.  I currently have a [Canon Powershot SX100 IS], which isn’t a bad point and shoot camera, but I’ve been hungering for something better.  Looking at budget/beginner DSLR cameras, I’ve found that the hardest decision is between the [Canon EOS Digital Rebel T1i] and the [Nikon D5000].  I was also considering the [Olympus Pen E-P1] for its superior HD video capabilities, but threw out that idea since many reviews say that it’s lacking as a camera.  Right now, leaning towards the D5000, but we’ll see – probably won’t be buying it until the holidays anyway.

On a last note: Who thinks squirrels are cute?  I want a show of hands after you tell me what kind of hobbies you have.

Following Valve’s classless update for Team Fortress 2, Valve continues to offer value with this weekend’s killer Steam deal.  Everything Half-Life is 66 PERCENT off this weekend folks.

To celebrate, I am randomly selecting 2 people from the comments for a FREE copy of Half-Life Complete paid by ChenZen.

Winners will be announced later this weekend.

Update: Two Winners have been selected to receive HL Complete (jung_chan and meowN).

But it doesn’t stop there, we will also be giving 4 5 other people a pack or game of their choice from the following list:

Half-Life 1 Anthology (Pack)
Half-Life Episode Pack
Half-Life
Half-Life: Opposing Force
Half-Life: Blue Shift
Half-Life: Source
Half-Life Deathmatch: Source
Half-Life 2
Half-Life 2: Episode One
Half-Life 2: Episode Two
Half-Life 2: Lost Coast
Half-Life 2: Deathmatch

Mails sent out, please reply promptly before sale ends!

Half-Life Complete Pack:
jung_chan (Redeemed)
meowN (Redeemed)

A game of their choice from the list:
Pearly (no response yet)
gumpest (Redeemed)
rekenner (no response yet)
Huntacular (Redeemed)
shopingcarthero (Redeemed)

Please get in contact with us via webmaster@chenzen.org

Some people did not redeem, email us at webmaster@chenzen.org to get a game of your choice from the list!

Hurry before it hits 12:00PM EST. STEAM SALE OVER, sorry for the people that didn’t redeem them O_O.

Steam Store [Valve]