Well after three days of nine-hour volunteering, I will take the time to put together some up-to-date information on how the reusing experiment is going. I wanted to make blocks of bottles in order to easily lay them together, assemble, and store. Since I am a college student and I do not have the foresight to know how duct tape will work, I automatically assume it will hold together anything I use it on, so why stop myself now?

As with many college students, much downtime is spent gaming. And by our previous posts, you know we have old consoles. Though highly nostalgic and awesome, they are not the best gaming devices for long periods of time, save for Super Smash Bros. Then a buddy of mine introduced me to League of Legends (LoL), a game based off of a Warcraft III map (DOTA, DotA, dota, whatever). It is completely free to play if you choose so, yet you are able to buy champions and starter packs as you wish. Now for a short story about tonight's game:

So I have a Level 30 LoL account and I was trying to get my buddy used to the game. He has played a couple dozen matches at his low-level Elo (ranking system), so I wanted him to get used playing versus better opponents. So we duo-queue and team up with a Xin Zhao who warns us that he becomes legendary if the other team is not fed (given a lot of gold by kills). First warning. If you ever see a player type that, they are some God-blessed newbs.

So the game starts out fine. I play as Vladimir, a great tanky-spellcaster full of harassment, damage, escape, and fully capable of making enemies frustrated (fun, right?) My buddy plays as Ashe, a great carry and decent tower killer. Xin Zhao starts off with an attack speed item. I do not know why we continued playing at that point. I mean, who does not start with boots + 3 pots in a 3v3? Not even a Doran's?

I get First Blood (of course) and proceed to dominate top lane, outlaning Poppy, and successfully ganking bottom a couple times. Then Xin gets cocky. He goes off on his own, dies several times in between getting assists from my ganks. Eye for an eye right? Nope, he continues to go off soloing the enemy team. And you know what? He isn't even mad or cautious or trolling. A guy who legitimately thinks he can take on 3 at once 30 minutes into the game. Then he stops moving at the turret we were defending. Then he disconnects. Two choices arrive: surrender, or attempt to win. As Vladimir, surrendering isn't an option. Buddy and I actually Ace them at one point, push a little, get pushed back. But versus a Poppy, Leona, and a Rammus, our poor turret didn't stand a chance.


Why Xin, why? We could have won if you just defended turrets while Ashe and I murdered!

And that is one option for spending some downtime in college. The end. Also, here are the champions I can play if you want to friend me, ecstaSTEVE. Not great with Anivia, but Alistar...oh man.

Similar to the article we made on installing and playing Oregon Trail, you can now introduce your family to the nostalgic floppy-disk game Number Munchers! The only computer game your first grade teacher let you play. Play different modes of math problems, like fractions, multiples, addition, etc. All you have to do to win is press space bar and "eat" the numbers, whilst avoiding the evil Troggles. They kill you like no tomorrow and give you more numbers to eat before passing the level. Damn Troggles.

Know your folder location and then type:

MOUNT C C:\*your folder*   --- example: I type "MOUNT C C:\GAMES\NUMBER-MUNCHERS

Once the local directory is mounted, in two different commands you type:

C:

NM.EXE

That's it brah. Start playing and enjoy. Just remember to set your directory appropriately and lookup the file name of the application itself, though I am fairly sure it's "nm.exe" for most downloads.

FYI - it's not actually a bad game to freshen up for the GREs, as standardized testing standards are lower than ever!

No, we aren't talking about this plastic ship, that is waaaayyyy too complex. Nope, the idea here is to make a raft, or possibly a couch, out of old plastic bottles and containers with nothing more than duct tape, maybe some wire, and rubber cement. This is a bit of a long-term project, so for now I'll just show you how I began the project.

First, you have to get a boatload of bottles. This can probably be done in a day if you walk around town. Or, if you are like my family, you consume so many bottles you have a separate trash collection can called "recyclables," but is in fact simply used to store post-consumption waste. Clean them out and get ready to seal them off. If you don't feel like cleaning, you can still make a raft...a raft of uncleanliness!

I use rubber cement on the bottle threads and then twist it shut. Rubber cement has got to be the best glue for most of CDT's projects. I use it for all purposes, not just projects. Pens are so hard to hold onto, so just apply a little to your digits and profit!  That bowl of Cheetos just will not stay on your belly? Apply a little to your pectorals and profit! Hungry, and there is just nothing that can satisfy your desire for an amorphous, flammable liquid? Stop. Do not taste it, not without a little salt first.

Sometimes you will not have the caps, because let's face it: remembering is hard. If it was easy, I'd remember some allusion to something historical and make it sound witty in this sentence. Therefore, I found the best way of sealing off topless bottles is to get some duct tape, tear off a strip, and then seal up with hot glue. Seal the glue all around the bottle top's edge making sure it is waterproof. Or not, and let your raft sink, it's not like I care.

One attempt today is to figure out how to seal together several bottles to make pieces I will use to assemble the raft. I need to make larger pieces of similar sizes to get some consistency in the assembly, otherwise it just takes too much time taping each piece together individually. Let's see how it goes. Cheers, and good luck.