Matter, Energy, and Life of Michaela A. Castello.

Category: Life

Short (and long) reads extracted from my personal life.

  • The Last Diamond?

    In the United States, an album must sell ten million copies (10x Platinum) to be certified Diamond. Given my interest in today’s music industry, I did a bit of research. The most recent Diamond certified album that I could find was Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, a double album by OutKast that shipped 5 million copies after…

  • Down with MMOs

    Age of Conan, the latest in the parade of Massively-Multiplayer Online Gaming scams, released yesterday. Almost immediately a number of my friends happily boarded the train where you not only have to buy a ticket to get on, but also must continue slipping bills to the conductor to prevent him from throwing you off somewhere…

  • Holy Cow—Another Winner from Valve?

    I’m not the biggest follower of gaming news—usually I just hear about things from Kyle, Penny Arcade, or a rare late night web surf. As a result I just found out about Left 4 Dead today, a new multiplayer FPS game from Valve. I watched the interview video and I’m really impressed. I can definitely…

  • This Is Just Cool

    I love innovation, and I love art. Innovative art is simply excellent.

  • Hissy Fit

    Tess, my desktop computer, decided to throw a complete hissy fit yesterday. She’d been PMSing for the past several weeks, giving me random BSODs and refusing to boot into Windows properly post-catastrophe. Yesterday after one of these episodes she outright refused to turn on, prompting me to go on a mad scramble to purchase a…

  • Grid 16

    This is by far one of the most interesting and fun flash-based games I have played in a long time. Check out Grid 16. There are 16 mini-games, all requiring the arrow keys to control, and your job is to figure out how to play them while staying alive. Die in a game and it’s…

  • Moving Forward

    What happens to a dream deferred?Does it dry uplike a raisin in the sun?Or fester like a soreAnd then run?Does it stink like rotten meat?Or crust and sugar overlike a syrupy sweet?Maybe it just sagslike a heavy load. Or does it explode? Langston Hughes

  • SGA Presidential Debates Online

    I am running for President of the UMBC Student Government Association along with Sonia Siddiqui (who is in fact quite awesome). The other day we have the opportunity to debate with the other candidate, which was kindly recorded by UMBCtv and posted online. I encourage you to check out the video and let us know…