End of Semester

As the Christmas season descends upon us yet again, I just want to touch base with everyone since I have been busy with school and other things to fire off this little post here. Earlier this month, I have completed my first semester as a college student at HCCC. And as it turns out, I did really good. I ended the semester with two A’s and two B’s. So my GPA to date is currently standing at 3.49. Not bad for an old guy who’s been out of school for fourteen years now, eh?

So basically, I am free until January 23, which is the start of the second semester. I am still set to the four class roster that I had last semester, but I actually have classes on all five days. I have two on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday but only one class on Wednesday. I am gonna be taking Audio Production, Advertising, and Computer Applications as well as a gym class so I can gain access to the Fitness Center up there.

I am rapidly trying to get back in shape considering that I missed about a whole month because I got a cold back in October that lasted about a couple of weeks. So I am basically trying to get back into the game here, especially with the new year right around the corner. Gotta get back in shape.

And it also looks like I might be getting a laptop just in time for next semester. It should also help me out when it comes time to get back to my Internet activities, most notably my YouTubing. I am hoping that I can get new equipment and hopefully get back to making videos possibly by early 2012. I have a whole slew of ideas and I am just waiting to try them all out.

Since I probably won’t be back online until Tuesday, I just want to take the opportunity right now to wish everyone a Merry Christmas.

Constant Whitewater

Okay, I am going to start this off by saying that I can’t believe that it’s October already. Wow, 2010 is now less than three months away. It’s like, where did 2009 go? I missed about two months of blogging mainly because of the fact that I have so much going on in my life right now, both online as well as off.

In many ways, while I got a sudden spike of creativity as far as my YouTube career goes. In the last two months alone, I put my channel through so many changes, mainly taking down some videos that either didn’t attract too many comments or videos I felt could be done better, such as the video I shot at Ilion Little Theater back in March and the Walk in the Park video. I originally intended for the latter video to be my first HD video. I have since reposted both.

Also I figured I try my hand at news reporting by doing a series of news videos that I called “The Black Cat Weekly,” but that turned out to be a disaster. First off, it got more and more difficult to get news stories that I could do a video about, not to mention that the videos brought the haters out in record droves. I didn’t expect to be that badly received as far as that goes. However, I have decided to adopt other YouTuber’s methods and attack the haters in reply comments, because it’s pretty fun to do because they’re a group of losers who either don’t do videos and are only on there to cause trouble or they’re a group who have only a handful of videos and have very few or no friends or subscribers.

Now don’t take this the wrong way. Just because I stopped doing the news videos doesn’t mean I’m gonna stop making videos or give up on YouTube like very few people do. I’m too well established on YouTube for that. Plus there are other factors than that at work. I have been meeting more and more people online, not to mention people sending me IM requests and app invites on Facebook to keep up with them all. It’s like constant whitewater for me. It does get overwhelming after a while.

In some ways, YouTube and Twitter have led to me not being able to blog so much, mainly because it is starting to get easier for me to make videos and Twitter is basically the in thing for bloggers, not to mention some personal things I am going through right now. So I have to get back into the habit of blogging again because that was how I got started on the web.

But on the bright side, October is a pretty big month for me, most notably the fact that at the end of the month is my three-year anniversary on YouTube. Clearly something to look forward to. But for now, I just wanted to touch base with everyone to show that I am still committed to this blog.

Blackcatloner Forever

I’ve spent some time trying to come up with a story to mark the 100th blog on this site, “The Adventures of Blackcatloner” and I decided that I would salvage this story from my old blog site on the soon to be extinct Yahoo 360. This story answers the question in which how I came up with my prestigious and rather unique username, Blackcatloner. Well anyway here goes.

Prior to the fall of 2005, I had been surfing the web primarily to check out upcoming movies and other things. In 2005, when I became involved in the Gillette case, I asked the public library in Herkimer if I could set up an email address there because I did not have a computer or Internet access at that time. I decided to set up my email account with Yahoo because it was free to set up an email address. When it came time to select my Yahoo name, I was a little confused. I wanted something that was dark and mysterious mainly because of the fact that I am dark and mysterious. Then I remembered that one of my favorite groups was the 80’s band the Stray Cats. That mixed with the fact that I had two black cats and the fact that I have been a loner pretty much all of my life got the wheels set in motion. As soon as I knew it, I typed in “blackcatloner.” The reason I had to type it in as one word was the fact that email addresses could not be broken up into three separate words unless separated by an underscore.

At that time I was only creating an email address for a project but little did I realize that I was creating a whole new identity for myself. And the rest is history.

Then three months after opening my email address, I started my career as a blogger on Yahoo 360 with the site that was originally called “The World of Blackcatloner” but I later called it “Ultimate Blackcatloner.” While I was blogging, I became integrated into the whole Internet social networking scene which at that time included Myyearbook, Myspace and some other sites, and it’s led to some pretty wild and exciting adventures and of course chances are I posted them online. The more I blogged and integrated myself into the social networking scene the more my popularity increased. In time I would add making videos on YouTube and even furthering my adventures on Twitter to my resume.

I have no regrets about my time on the Internet. My time on the Internet has been a very pleasant one. As long as it continues to be fun, I will be around for a very long time. There’s still so many more adventures from my past, present and future to be had so I can post them up on either here, YouTube, or Twitter. Not bad for someone who is truly “one lone cat against a big bad world.”

And so ladies and gentlemen, there you have it. My 100th blog on this site is now officially in the books. I hope you had a great time reading it as I had writing it. It’s never the end. It’s only the beginning.

Haters

There is still quite a bit going on in my life lately. Even as I write this, I am operating on only a few hours sleep. Usually during the summer season, I find it really difficult to get back to sleep, especially on Sunday afternoons. That, and the fact that Arthur picks the worst times to be affectionate. I haven’t been able to get back to sleep today, but the fall is coming. Pretty soon, it will be much easier for me to sleep.

Now on to another topic. I am kind of bummed out today and this time it is something other than my ever-growing disenchantment toward my job at Wally World. Today, I found out that one of my most loyal subscribers on YouTube decided to delete her account on account of being harrassed by “haters.” This is nothing new to YouTubers and it doesn’t seem likely to end anytime soon. I have seen videos from users saying that they were leaving because of comments left by haters.

As a person gets more popular on YouTube, the more likely they are to encounter haters. They are usually people who don’t have videos up but exist only to harrass others who are being creative and contributing to the Internet. In fact, the very definition of a hater is that a hater is a person who tries to bring down a person because they are jealous of another person’s success in terms of creativity. I have encountered a few myself on YouTube and got one hateful comment during my first outing on BlogTV back in July. The thing is that it is easier to deal with haters online than it is off. All you need to do is first block the user who sent it and then delete the comment. Other people use the haters as fuel to keep going and some even abuse the hater right back.

While I am sorry to see my friend leave YouTube, I am going to continue making videos. I’m on YouTube to stay and I ain’t never leaving.

April Fools

I just had an April Fools prank pulled on me on YouTube. I clicked on what I thought was a video from the popular YouTube star, “Hot For Words,” but instead the link took me to a music video I hadn’t seen since I was a kid. The video was the classic 80’s Rick Astley tune, “Never Gonna Give You Up.” It was a really good prank on YouTube’s part, given that today is April Fool’s Day.

In just a few hours, I will be headed back to work after my mini-vacation. Of course, I am not looking forward to it. It is dwelling like a pit in the bottom of my stomach. But it was a very good few days off. Now I have got to figure out when to take my next day off or even my vacation.

I do have some bad news. This is the last blog that I will be putting on this site.

Just kidding. April Fools. Ha, ha.