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Sunday, February 27th - Saturday, March 5th |
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February
27th ;). Holly had to meet Nat in town at 1pm, but...the bus didn't show, so we had to walk to town. Thankfully, it was a sunny day, and it was a good end to a good weekend - going for a nice relaxing walk with her. I enjoyed it alot =P. Okay, so we did end up being an hour late, but that's Holly's fault. Ahem. Wandered around town for a little while - tried getting another Cream Egg McFlurry, but NO, the eejits that are MaccyD's who produce notsobeefburgers and sawdust nuggets were sold out. Had to settle for a dairy milk one. Bastards. So yeah, not soon after, Holly went home with Nat. Things seem good between us, and I don't want them to really change - except for the better of course. I'm seeing her again on Tuesday. *yay* =P I'll keep this short because I haven't done too much worth writing about. Once I got back, I got on with my project. Yep, still motivated, still keen. Now I've got the user interface pretty much cracked, my next goal is to bolt the terrain generator in. I can't generate the map when the form opens, because it requires user input. Instead, I ended up using the paint() method to paint a blue square the same size of the map, so that it represents a blank world, ready to be created by the random generator. But yeah, I've got a problem. When you click on the other tab, the blue rectangle disappears. Not good considering users are going to be flicking between the two regularly. So I guess I need a way to keep it there, regardless. I'm trying to find how to register events when the user clicks on the first tab, but I've found nothing yet. I'm gunna get up early tomorrow morning and work, rather than go into college. Not missing anything 'cos it's a free, but I'll work better at home. I do have the map generating at the click of a button, but I've got to figure out how to add the painting code into the class file. I'm not sure another class file is necessary.. Hmmm! My other goal for this week is to get the world timer going. I haven't the faintest how to do it, so I guess it'll take me a bit. I do know it's going to require threading, but beyond that, nada clue. Erk. Help anyone?! Night Chris. | ||||||||||
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February 28th Mood: Decent Ahh you know it's true. While I may be too chicken to ask Jenny for my results from the Professional Issues exam and coursework, I did unexpectedly find out my grade for Jeff's AI assignment. 80% = A+ 85% = A++ So that makes 90%...A+++. Result. So yeah, I did well on it. Jeff was really impressed with both mine and Dans. He even took it into work to show it off. Good huh? lol, well it means that my overall module grade for the AI module is...81% - equivalent to an A+. Result! In other grades, Jenny's marked the PI exam. Dan found out his by asking her, but I'm too scared to ask her. I'll ask her on Wednesday maybe, depends on brave I'm feeling. I guess I shouldn't worry too much, because Dan got 60%, which is good considering the exam. However, I've been saying all along I'd have done better than him on this module...but now, I'm not so sure. I guess boasting about it somewhat has made me question things. Erk. Hope I'm okay. *touches wood* I got up early..ish...to work on the blue rectangle problem that kept disappearing when you switched panes. After about an hours worth of reading up examples and understanding this new stuff, I got it cracked. Result. I even managed to get the terrain being displayed when the user generated the map later in the day. I managed that because Steve got laryngitis and cancelled the class. I won't complain too much because not only did I finish bolting the map generator into my existing work, but I also figured out how to get my program clock working. It was a brain wave that hit me out of the blue. Basically, I'm going to have a thread (a process on a computer) that counts upwards. After one second, a day has passed, after 30 days, a month has passed, and the day counter is reset to 1. Once 10 months have past (yes I know there's 12 in a year, but this isn't a real life simulation, and the focus is on animal behaviour, not if I can get a calender working!), a year has passed. So basically: if(monthCounter = 10 and dayCounter = 30) yearCounter =
yearCounter + 1 And that's it. Simple, huh? And to think I'd set a week aside for me to figure out how it works lol. From there, I made a seperate program that runs that code. Got it working pretty quickly on the command line. So after that, I managed to get the program to display it graphically rather than as text. Great. However, before I can bolt it into the program, I need to get it so that the user can play and pause the counter. Easier said than done when using threads, because the people who make the programming language have phased out the .suspend() method! I can see why they've done that, but it's made it alot more difficult than it should be. I could use the .sleep() method, but that only works when I know how long to stop for. If the user wants to pause the program indefinitely, it can't suddenly start up again when it feels like it! I do have one other idea, using the .wait() and .notify(), although when I tried it, it threw errors at me (not literally, thankfully). In Jeff's class, I did find out that I need to use a special keyword - synchronized - before I can use it. So that *may* be the reason why it wasn't working. I'm going to give it a go later, so I gues I'll find out sooner or later. If I really can't get it working, I'll just have to leave it out. There's not much online in the way of help - everythings always for a predetermined amount of time. Bastards! But we'll see. If possible, I'd also like to allow the user to specify the speed at which the clock runs at. I know how to do it - it's relatively straight forward (I just send the thread to sleep) - but it's whether I've got the time or not. I need the pause ability more than a speed function. Other than that, I guess it's onto animation. I might make a prototype using a red 3x3 pixel square randomly moving around the world, and then slowly add movement rules. Before then, I might reconsider my map. I think it's too small to really work. I've zoomed in 8 times using MS Paint, and it looks alright, much better, and allows much more movement for the animals themselves. I guess it would also allow me to give even more detail to the maps themselves. It's just figuring out how to do the damned thing in the first place! I guess I could use a window, with scrollbars, and maybe a mini map? Your guess is as good as mine right now. Jeff's class was a little bit of a waste of time otherwise, because we just went through some notes half-heartedly and discussed the possibility of finishing the class in May - or at least taking the exam then. It's a good thing really, it means there's less of a rush towards the end when I've got other assignments and such to worry about, so I'm game. Grrr. Sister's pissing me off AGAIN. Why does she have to ruin my good mood every night? Not only did she come off 15 minutes into my time (it might seem unimportant, but I've things to do - uni work, this site etc.), while she just chats to people for several hours, but she's been pestering me all night to send a text. I know I come off late myself, but mine's normally work related these days. Now I tried sending a text on her behalf. Site error - try again in 10 minutes. So I waited. Site error - unable to connect to the database. I got the error message three times, and so I thought, "Sod it - least I tried". I explained it to her, and rather than say thanks, she just bothered me more. "Try again! Try O2!" I told her my O2 account doesn't work (which is the truth) - "try it anyway!". Oh look - it didn't work. "Try it again!". Now, if it was urgent or something, I wouldn't have minded as much. But the text? She was saying to meet at 1:15pm on WEDNESDAY. So the rush? None. She just didn't want to talk to them on the phone. Why? Apparently she doesn't do phones, but that doesn't stop her talking for an hour or two a week on the phone to her friend drowning out my music, does it! Grrr. She's just been hacking me off lately. She's going back to how she was. She had calmed down and started acting more normal, but lately, she's just been getting worse again. For example, a few weeks ago, her and some friends hid a religious statue from St. Mary's. I mean, okay, yeah it's a practical joke, but it took threats for her to put it back. She didn't care about the potential consequences or punishments, she just found it funny. She and her friends showed it off! They tried putting it back, but it had gone missing. Last week it turns out that the tutors had moved it to get their own back on them, make them worry etc. Now it's a good job they had a sense of humour, but when they were let off practically scott-free, my sister was laughing! WTF? Play jokes, sure, but it's just an example of how she just doesn't care. She doesn't seem to understand things either - always pestering parents for money. Hell, I feel bad asking for dinner money (I know I don't have to eat out, but yeah), while my sister asks for money for everything - clothes she doesn't need, mobile phone credit etc. When my parents said she had to pay rent from September, she kicked up a big fuss. It's what I had to do. My parents will be down money, so you got to contribute. Her solution? Move out. So she won't be able to afford £30 (if that) a week, yet she can afford to live elsewhere? Not a clue. Can you tell she's pissed me off lately? One last thing - I've got another amusing story about a debate (don't I sound like Cliff!) I'm having on the LPU. It's in a thread asking whether weed should be legalised. Now, I don't know myself. I mean, other than the health issues, I can't see any major problems. This guy objected to the legalisation because it's addictive. Now, it's not guaranteed that this is true. Some studies say it is, other say it's not. I know people that smoke it that aren't addicted. Yes, I probably know one or two that are addicted, but that's not the best reasoning to keep something illegal. I pointed out that most things are potentially addictive - gambling, alcohol, cigarettes, food, the Internet and so on. Basically saying, by his reasoning, we shouldn't be allowed to do much. He replied: "Duh! Obese people aren't addicted to food! You can't get addicted to food! It's a genetic problem." Uhh..what? Never said that. Also, sometimes it's genetic, sometimes it's poor diet. There's lots of reasons why people can be obese, but people addicted to food are not necessarily obese. He said the same thing again - that you can't get addicted to food. So I pointed out some support groups for people who are addicted to food. He ignored it, and repeated his comment: "Stop saying obese people are addicted to food! You CANNOT get addicted to food!" He wasn't getting the message. He started saying how everyone who eats must be an addict by that reasoning (I don't know where he got that from either). He then said you can't be an addict, because you need to eat to survive. Uhh...yeah. There's a difference between eating out of need and eating out of addiction. Again, he wouldn't agree. He said people smoke weed to escape reality, to make themselves feel better. So I mentioned comfort eating. He ignored it completely. It's funny when you people selectively reply to posts - you can tell they've not thought things through. The whole infatuation (pun intended) with obese people not being addicted to food went on and on, despite everyone agreeing with him. "We know it's not, but it can still happen." Uhh..wha? Then he just made things worse. "i would say that addictive drugs are more wide-spread than internet in the world..." - that's a direct quote. So I went on InternetStats, just to prove him wrong. There's almost 900 million 'net users world wide, so he thinks there's at least 900 million drug users in the world. Wow, he really thinks high (pun intended) of the world, doesn't he? To really prove my point, I went out and found the statistics for the number of Canadians that have tried weed one or more times in 2004 compared to the number of Internet users. It was 12% for drug users, and 64% for 'net users. His reply? "Well, in the Amazon - drugs are more popular! Do all 20 million of them use the net?" He went on and had a dig at Canadians as well. Shame he said 'in the world' rather than a specific country. So I took pleasure from pointing that out. I also told him he keeps missing my point. I'm looking forward to his reply. Someone who made me laugh even more is a hardcore Christian. Now, okay, if you like your religion, that's fine with me. As long as you don't try converting me to your religion, there's no problem. Thing is, when you make daft comments, you just ASK for a debate. So this hardcore guy, in a thread regarding the existance of UFO's says he doesn't believe in them because the bible doesn't mention them! lol. The bible doesn't mention gorilla's either - doesn't mean they don't exist, or is it like someone else said on the boards, lies made up by scientists! Someone asked about dinosaurs, and like I've mentioned in my blog before, he says that they're mentioned (the only reference in Job 38), and they breathe fire, so they're the same as dragons. And the bible mentions unicorns as well, apparently. Amazing. I pointed out that if there were dinosaurs, what did the carnivores - like the T-Rex do? Go around eating Jewish people? He said he wasn't going to answer because it was diverging from the thread's topic. He also said he hates debates (although he posted several times in the debating forum) and hates the website. Yet came on almost daily for that specific thread. Go figure! Ahem. Looking forward to seeing Holly tomorrow - she'll pick me up again. Always does. She's good like that :) Night. Chris. | ||||||||||
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March 1st Mood: Gah Another funny mood. I don't know what's up this time. I'm just a bit blah again. Don't really have any reason to be. I mean, apart from being a little anxious over my two grades for Professional Issues, I'm doing great in college - better than ever. Things are going great with Holly. Five weeks today in fact. A good start. I'm a little bothered over my money, but Easter is at the end of the month, so I shall be getting my final (!!!) installment of my loan in a few weeks. It might be the whole thing with 'what next?'. I really need to sort myself out really. Blah. I do have a few ideas, but nothing certain. I guess I have to get into the real world. The working world. I'm not ready!!! =x Meh. Today wasn't so bad. I didn't really do too much last night in terms of work. I had a little go, but nothing really worth mentioning. I still need to attempt using the keyword synchronized in a method. However, I think I'm going to change my approach to the problem. I'm thinking of using my games programming book as a reference, while I make a button that makes thread A wait, and starts thread B. Once the button is clicked again, it notifies thread A to continue, and waits thread B. That way it's getting pausing to work, using a simple example from the programming book. From there, I can build my program clock around it. Well, that's the plan anyway. I guess there's only one way to find out. I'm going to try get it working tonight, so that I can bolt in the program clock tomorrow morning before my afternoon class with Violeta for Thinking Machines (basically, AI theory). It should be decent enough, and I don't think I'll have too many problems with it. I just really want to get cracking with my project. I've decided to add a third goal to aim for this weekend - random movement. I know I discussed it..yesterday I think, but now it's an official goal. I'm going to get a red square to randomly move around, and see if what it looks like. Hell, that might only be a days task. From there, I can start adding rules and such - so that the square can only move on grass, and then I can try creating an agent who just has movement protocols. From there, I can increase the complexity of the animal, and start adding things in - feeding, hunting, resting etc. So yeah, I think I can pull this off with style. I just gotta be careful not to neglect the paperwork - it's just as important. It's just boring at times. I might try finishing the design section for next Monday. It's possible, and I could get Violeta and Steve to look at it - get some feedback etc. I need to work more closely with Violeta, because then I'll get it to her style and expectations - something that could really effect my grade. You only have to look at the feasibility studies. My presentation and my writing style was better than Terrys. We both had similar content, but mine had a few extra points here and there. Yet we got the same grade. I'm not too fussed, but considering he had a major help from Violeta, while I did my personally, it's kinda unfair. Again, he's practically done his project - which is just configuring complicated software and running a program on it! Slightly less difficult than my own. I've already learnt a fair bit from the programming, and there's very little to show! Figures, eh? I know even now that Terry will get the highest grade for the project, despite his being the easiest and involving the least amount of work of all the projects. Oh well, as long as I get a grade worth this effort, I won't complain. Much =P So yeah, today wasn't so bad. Me and Holly just wandered over to the music dept. to meet Kay. Ran into Townie Nat who told me there's rumours going around saying Holly and I had split up? o_O? I dunno - doesn't really bother me, but it's kinda lame don't you think? *shrug* whatever floats your boat Wandered around town, doing the usual town laps and Hampson endulging. Nothing really exciting to report, although I won't be seeing Holly for long on Saturday because she's going out of town for the day. Ah well, I guess it means I can do my work over the weekend - get cracking with my project etc. Fun. Not gunna complain really - it'll make her happy =) I'm off now - need my sleep! Night. Chris.
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March 2nd Grrrr - stupid effing double buffers. I'll explain what they are in a minute, but they were supposed to solve the problem I have with my program. Like you know, I'd managed to get the program clock working with the rest of my program, but the screen kept flickering, which is an obvious problem. So, I first tried avoiding removing everything, and then replacing it. Flickerage. I then tried clipping the refresh area, so it would only refresh the parts that needed to be changed. Well, it stopped the flickering, but it wouldn't let me use the menus and such. My final option was to use buffering, which is basically drawing the image off-screen, and putting the whole thing on screen at once, rather than do it directly onscreen. Although though it does take up more memory space, it was supposed to solve the problem. It didn't. In fact, it made things worse. It stopped the flickering alright, but it also stopped displaying the buttons, menus and so on. Not the best thing, eh? Grrr...just found another problem with my program. The clock still runs when you click onto the next tab, which results in the map being displayed on the next tab, because of the repaint() method. Grrr. I just tried pausing the thread when you clicked off. It half-worked, but it takes 1 second for the calendar to stop, but by that time, the next tab is displayed. Basically it's still showing the map on the next thread. I may have to scrap the tab idea, and have the statistics summary as a different window or something ¬.¬. Blah, I'll have to take a look at some point. Grrr, it's really pissing me off. I want to get going with the animal programming. This is the second to last objective I've got to achieve before I can do that, but it's a bit of a major problem. Basically, I'm going to have to find an alternative solution to the flickering problem (possibly by using a seperate container for the map) or put up with the flickering. I'm also going to have to sort the timer problem. It's taking a second to pause, which isn't really a long time, but it does effect the program. Perhaps I can reduce the wait time. It would increase the speed at which the program clock moves at, but it might fix the display problem. Blehgie. The rest of the day wasn't particularly exciting. Got into town about 11, met up with Terry and Dan in the common room and just chatted to them til Violetas class. At the same time, I worked on a genetic algorithm for the animals. I've got it down in pseudocode now, which is good. It's not particularly complicated or even that impressive, but it is a genetic algorithm at the end of the day. It randomly selects different characteristics of each parent and then the child inherits them. Groovy. Something even groovier (yes, groovier - I'm Austin Powers), is the fact I found out my grades for Professional Issues - my weakest module of this year. I was a little apprehensive, but I asked just to put me out my misery. I got 65% on my exam - that's a good grade considering the difficulty of the exam. Terry got 70%. So he beat me on that one. On the assignment, I got 72%. Result! And I even beat Terry! By a percent, but still, I beat him. Mwahah. He was suprised by that. I guess I was too. But I'm still doing good. I'm still on target for my 1.1. However, unless I get this project sorted, that might change O_X. Violeta's class wasn't so bad, it just dragged a little. I got up in the middle of the night, so I wasn't really with it. I think she could tell. Then again, in a few weeks, I'll be finished with classes altogether. Bugger. Not ready for it. As for the rest of the night...well, I just did more work on the project. After a while, I got really .. frustrated .. with it, and just ended up writing part of the Implementation section. At least then they'll see the effort and problems I had with it. Well, they better had do! Night. Chris. | ||||||||||
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March
3rd Didn't go out. Didn't do anything interesting. Just...did uni work. Well, in the afternoon I did. Since I'm still hacked off with the fact my program's still flickering, I just worked on the paperwork side. It's a change, and I've wrote up a fair amount of the implementation section. Obviously, I can only write so much, but besides the program clock, I'm upto date. It's writing much better than the design section, so I doubt I'll have to edit and re-write as much. Thankfully. Other than that, I did practically nothing. Just went on the LPU and kinda lived there. Yikes. I feel bad really, although this is the first evening were I've not worked on the program. So I guess I'm being a little unfair on myself. Ah well, guess I just want to get cracking. I did discuss my problem with someone else, but he doesn't seem to be too aware of java related things, so I'm not sure if he'll help or not. Well, it can't do any harm, right? Wow, I've ran out of things to say three paragraphs into my blog. Well, I guess you shouldn't mind too much considering the length of some of the other entries I've wrote this week, even if they have been all work related. Uhh...so yeah. I had a bit of a discussion with the owner of www.linkin-park.ru. He's got alot of illegal mp3s on there, and I was saying he should take them off. He was refusing, saying he doesn't have to etc, and that copyrights don't apply. Shame really, they do because of the Berne Convention. He picked the wrong time to argue copyrighting issues with me, especially since it's just after I've wrote a report on copyrighting itself. But yeah, he kept making stupid statements like Britians becoming Communist (go figure), that we should close the Internet because people are abusing it, and just daft statements. So yeah, he eventually shut up because he just couldn't argue. He had no ground. My arguement wasn't perfect, but it was better than his. B] LMAO! Spam gets funnier by the day! I got some at my Yahoo account advertising JEWISH PERSONALS! lol. And with that, I bid you adieu! Night. Chris. | ||||||||||
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March
4th Mood: Decent Hmmm. I'm in a decent, but somewhat quiet mood. I got up in the early afternoon to do a bit of work before I went out to meet my mum after work for the weekly shop. Did some more work, basically concentrating on some diagrams explaining how genetic algorithms work for my design section. I've pretty much finished that now, so I can put that in there as well. The diagrams are really making it look good. It's pretty looking and colourful! Guaranteed to look good =P. I just need to work on the quality of the writing, because right now, it's poor. I can do better than that, and I will. I'll finish it first, and finalise what it is and isn't going to do and then I can get it really tight with good flow. God I sound like a rapper. Speaking of the project, I brought up the presentation of the project to Terry over dinner on Wednesday. Javad (one of the uni teachers), wants it in a generic format, with no colours, glued spine format. Yeah, exactly - lame. Me and Terry want to do what we did last year, colours, sexy folders and lots of pictures. After all, there is alot of difference between mere text and fully formatted, colourful reports. It starts it off with a positive feel, which increases the marks, even if it is more expensive to print. So my project is gunna be colourful and sexy. Just you see. While I was working on my project, Rach IM'd me. She was saying how she was bored and randomly read my account of Download (which is STILL missing it's final installment - oops) and how it upset her. D'oh. I didn't mean for it to do that. It was more me venting about things. I wrote it soon after I'd got back, so I was in a bit of a state. But yeah, she apologised for acting how she did, and started making herself feel worse. Of course I was confused, and so re-read my writing. >.< It wasn't exactly flattering. We had a bit of a chat about it, but it kinda brought me down. I didn't want to upset people. Hence me being in a quiet mood. I guess it stuck with me for the rest of the day. I didn't do much on the evening. No work. 30 minutes on the LPU. And that's it. I wasn't in the mood to talk to anyone, so I came offline. BEFORE MIDNIGHT! Yes, I was feeling fine =P. I wasn't quite tired, so I watched Shaun of Dead. What a quality movie. A piece of fried gold for a movie. It's daft, yet gory and fun at the same time. I wish they'd do the same to other horror genres - slasher for example. That could be quite good. I know it would be verging on Scary Movie territory, but it would be funnier, because it's meant to be realistic. Scary Movie doesn't take itself seriously, and just screws around. It's humour is all stoner-humour. Nothing wrong with that, but variation is good. Other than that, I had a quiet night. Night. Chris.
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March
5th I knew it was too good to be true. While it's better than what I first thought, it still sucks monkey (okay, it's worse than that, but I'm restraining myself here). The day went pretty well until that point. Hell, my blog for today was going to be merely a screen shot of my program saying "WOOT!" because I've made progress. I managed to get a lion image moving around the screen. Okay, the flicker is still present, but it's a start, right? But no. Things never go to plan. I got ready and went out to meet Holly and the others at the Napier. Everyone was kinda quiet, but I thought nothing of it. Holly tells me she's something to tell me later. Thing is, Kay and Kirsty beat her to it. "She's leaving me" was what made me realise what was happening. >.< I sorta choked. I didn't know how to react. Means I'd basically lost her. I knew it was a possibility, but not for over a year. But nope. Easter. Okay so it's not certain, but it probably will knowing my luck. EVERYTIME I get happy for extended periods of time, it fucks up. Every single time. I'm just sick of it. I really am. It kinda ruined my night - for obvious reasons. Wasn't really in the mood. Hell, I wasn't going to come out, but since Holly was, I thought I might as well. Few extra hours with her and all that. But yeah, I'd lost her. Lots of forced smilies and a few tears. In public. Not done that in a long, long time. We're talking when I was a kid before then. God, how embarrassing, although I think only Danny saw. I wasn't balling, I did manage to keep it together for the most part. Joanna also checked up on me. She could tell something was wrong, but I just said I'm fine. I told my sister, and she was totally indifferent. I don't get it. I mean, she knows how much Holly means to me, yet she was all "oh well". She even thinks Holly is the best girlfriend I've had. So that didn't help matters. I mean, I'm happy she's going to be with her mother and everything again, but I'm selfish! I and others need her too! So yeah, bad me. Just when things were going great, and I'd found someone I can trust and love (yes, you read right >.<), they have to change. Figures. I know I'm not the only one that's going to miss her. Me and Kay were the ones most effected by it, but because we're some of the people closer to her. Blah. Just before the end of the night, Holly dragged me outside and we talked. Turns out I'd got it wrong slightly. She's moving to Chorley. So she's still moving. Probably still at Easter, just not as far. *sigh*. We talked, and she seemed fine with us being together. So I guess I've not lost her. It is workable. I'm willing to, and she seems to be the same. Guess I just know when I'm onto a good thing. Guess fate does too. Dammit. I've been looking into transport options. An hours travelling and £6.50 via train. Takes the pisht. I'm willing to spend it, and I'm willing to travel it, but she's not further than Manchester. Manchester is in fact CHEAPER to get to than Chorley. Wtf? I HATE the rail system at times. I still have to look at buses, although I don't think there are many and I can imagine it's going to be a few quid anyway. I'll shut up, there's more than just me involved with this decision, and I'm just being unfair. But one thing's for sure, she's still got me. Just got to keep reminding myself it'll make her happy. That's what stopped me from really going OTT tonight. ERKERKERKERKERKERKERKERKERK. Night. Chris. | ||||||||||
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