Friday, February 27, 2009

Ruckus is No More

I don't know how many of you knew about Ruckus, but I loved it. It was a ad-supported site where college students had access to legally download over 3 million songs and all for free! It was great, especially for poor college students, and greatly decreased illegal file sharing. The only thing is that the songs were DRM protected, so you could not transfer them off your computer and on to your iPod or other portable music player. While this was kind of sad, it was still nice to get this free music. That is, until the unexpected happened.

A friend of mine was telling me about this group that she really liked, but I had not heard of them. Naturally I thought, "Hey, I'll just look them up on Ruckus." Unfortunately when I went to the site, it said that the service will no longer be provided. I was shocked. I didn't see this coming. It happened without any warning at all. I checked to see if my music that I already downloaded still worked. Some of it did, and some of it didn't. With this service, you had to renew your license to each song each month. All you had to do was sign into your account, and it would automatically renew them. Once the site shut down, you could no longer sign into your account. This means that once the license is up, the songs can no longer be played.

This all happened about a month ago, so the rest of my songs will expire on March 3rd. This makes for a very sad day. I have kept a list of the songs that I have now, so hopefully I will be able to find them somewhere else. Maybe I'll just break down and buy the CDs on ebay, Amazon, or another site where I can get them cheaply. If anyone knows of another site where you can download free and legal music, I would greatly appreciate it if you let me know about it.

Monday, February 23, 2009

Camping Adventures


Well, I did it. I survived the pregame campout. It was actually a lot warmer than I thought it would be, at least in the tent. We had all planned on freezing, so we brought as many layers and blankets as we could. It turns out we only needed about half of them. I got so warm walking over to Mackey that I had to take off a layer once I got there. I think two of the biggest reasons we stayed so warm were that we had a layer of sleeping bags underneath our own to cushion the ground and keep the cold cement away from our bodies and the fact that we had four people sleeping in a three man tent.

We also got some free food perks for our dedication. About one o'clock in the morning, the blow horn siren went off. At first I thought we were having a roll call to make sure that all the groups still had their representative and tickets there. Instead, they told us that it was not a roll call, and Regions Bank across the street was giving out free hot chocolate and popcorn. Of course we were going to take advantage of this opportunity. Another girl and I stayed in the tent while the others went to get food. When they came back, they also had Jimmy John's sandwiches with them. We then all decided that we loved Regions Bank and were all going to switch our money to there, ok maybe not.

The campers got another surprise for breakfast. The basketball team came out with boxes of donuts for everyone. Unfortunately, I had been relieved from my shift and had not come back yet when this happened. At least some of my group got to enjoy it though. Maybe I will be luckier this weekend when we camp for the Purdue vs. Ohio State game.

You may ask how much sleep we actually got with all the excitement going on. The next morning, my friends all said that they slept for most of the night. The only time they really woke up was for the roll call at 3 a.m., but they were still half asleep for that. I was up for most of the night though. The people next to us decided to camp out without a tent, and talk all night. I'm pretty sure they had been drinking, but their stories were pretty funny to listen to.

Once I finally got to sleep, I was woken up by a strange sound. At first, I wasn't sure what it was, but then I figured out what it was. It was rain. Immediately, I thought about our neighbors who were camping without a tent. Then I remembered them asking someone to find them a tent and hearing a bunch of crinkly noises over there earlier. They must have gotten one. The next morning when we looked over there we saw that they had a little one person tent set up, and I'm glad that they did. It would have been awful to sit outside all night in the cold rain.

After my night shift, I went back to my room to get ready. Since I had more time than I needed, I decided to lay down on my couch for a little bit. Since I was suffering from lack of sleep, I dozed off. I was so tired that my dad called me eight times, and I missed every single one of them! Luckily I woke up in time to make it back for the game. That would have been awful if I slept through it. I just had to really hurry to get ready.

My friend also texted me while I was sleeping. She said that while they were taking down the tent, it started to rain/sleet/snow, and they had gotten soaked. I asked if she wanted me to bring her some dry clothes, but she had already gotten a hold of her roommate to bring them some. The Mackey security was also really nice and let everyone inside for awhile to keep them out of the weather.

Overall, I think we all had a lot of fun on our "camping" trip even with the not so desirable weather and lack of sleep. One girl from our group even won the Fazoli's Dance for Your Dinner competition during halftime. I don't know about the rest of them, but I know I can't wait to do it again this weekend!