Archive - November 2003

You know it's Christmas shopping season when you find news stories like this one:

According to the report, the woman "had a seizure after she was knocked down and would likely remain hospitalized through the weekend." But here's the kicker: "[T]he store apologized and offered to put a DVD player on hold for her." I'd think that buying her a DVD player would be the least they could do. But after all, it is Wal-Mart.

Today I scheduled a band practice at my house - the first since November 2, which is an unusually long time for us to go without practices. I got tired of calling everyone when usually only one person (or no one) shows up. Hopefully today's practice won't be a repeat of that scenario. (That reminds me: Name the Band.)

Almost two months ago I promised that the Minor Scale Chart Thing, which I created in August, would get its own link on the WoS sidebar. Well, now it's there. Enjoy, fellow musicians!

Today we practiced again for the Youth Group Christmas skit... at 9 o'clock in the morning. I can only assume that this was because Wendy, the head of the group, was going to be busy throughout the rest of the day (although there's also that chance that she's just crazy). It was a dress rehearsal, so I threw together quickly my outfit before leaving (why would I get my costume together in advance when I could do it at the last minute?). For this skit I'm supposed to be a reporter out in the field, so a tie is part of my costume. The thing is, I can't tie a tie, and none of the other guys there could either. So one of the girls did it for me. (Embarrassment City, next left.) Oh, and I want to give a shout-out to Amanda because she asked me to. Hi Amanda, you're famous!

Reading genealogy-related articles at MSN.com gave me the urge to e-mail my sort-of-long-lost third cousin living in California. As you may recall but probably don't, he stumbled upon me in August (see my entry from August 11). I haven't heard from him since shortly after that. Here's what I sent him:

Have you ever wanted to kill a Canadian? The folks at Time for Canadian Change don't recommend you do that, but that's not to say that they like Canadians. It seems that they're so fed up with Canadian coins being mistakenly passed for American ones that they want to collect $2000 (USD 1540.12) worth of Canadian change and send it back to where it belongs. With only $23.62 collected since August 1 (that's USD 18.19), it seems easier to trek by foot across the Great White North than to attempt such an ambitious (not to mention weird) goal.

It doesn't really seem like yesterday was Thanksgiving at all. We ate dinner outside, but since we never have to worry about excessively cold weather or snow, it was all right. It was your traditional Thanksgiving dinner: turkey, mashed potatoes, corn, stuffing, and all the other stuff. There was also this spicy type of corn pudding that I really didn't like. Needless to say, I had leftovers for lunch today. I also had some potato chips a little later. After eating them, I felt sick to my stomach; I figured they must have gone bad because I couldn't remember anyone in the house eating potato chips recently. Then I looked at the date on the bag: November 11. I'm feeling fine now, thanks for asking.

Against my better judgements I have decided to keep working on The Bill Factor Project. My better judgements think it's a stupid idea and that I should just give it up now. Darn you, better judgements, always getting in the way.

Surely you've received in your e-mail inbox the collection of "cow jokes" that humorously illustrates economic systems and stuff. It turns out that Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia, has a great collection of the jokes and a brief history of them. (See the entry.) Here I'll list some of my favorites:

Well, today is Thanksgiving in the United States. Some people refer to it as "Turkey Day," after the bird that adorns mililons of Americans' dinner plates on this day. I find it kind of ironic that people forget what Thanksgiving is about; the holiday's name says it all. Thanksgiving is not about eating turkey, or being with family, or Christmas. Thanksgiving is about thanksgiving. Most Americans take all that they have for granted, which is why we forget what it's all about. Count your blessings today. You'll really be suprised at what you could be living miserably without.

Announcing The World of Stuff's latest upcoming addition, The Bill Factor Project! The Bill Factor Project will work like this:

1. Get out a banknote.
2. Prime factorize the serial number.
3. Write the prime factors beside the serial number.
4. Spend the bill.
5. Repeat Steps 1-4.

Thanksgiving is tomorrow and I haven't even given it much thought at all. Seven people are coming over for dinner, and my parents are wondering how everyone's going to fit. I think we'll be able to pull it off, but it might be a little cramped.

We have school today but, as usual, my old school doesn't. I miss having the day before Thanksgiving off. Apparently some people feel more strongly about it than I do; my friend polled people around school, and 40% said they were going to skip school today.

Today during last period, Personal Fitness, I had a new teacher (this fact isn't very important yet). My sister came in the gym while we were practicing playing volleyball and said that they were having a party thingy in the cafeteria for people with straight A's. My sister's friend, who's in my class, tagged along also even though she didn't meet this requirement. We went into the cafeteria to find 50ish people, maybe less. In an all-magnet school of 800+ students, having only 50 people with straight A's is a concern. Anyway, I helped myself to a couple of pieces of pizza (which I couldn't finish) and a Cherry Coke. I, like everyone else, got an award/certificate thingy for making the A Honor Roll. While I consider my school to be better than my old school in most respects, I noticed something on my certificate that wasn't on the ones I would get at my old school: printer bands.

I came back to the gym after the last bell had rung. As I was getting my stuff, I asked the teacher if I had missed anything important. She said no, and gave me extra credit (presumably for making the A Honor Roll; I don't think she otherwise would have liked me missing a half an hour of class!).

Today was the first practice for the Youth Group skit called Seasons Beatings - Live from Downtown. It's bascially about a reporter who asks random people on the street about how Christmas brings joy to their lives, and they verbally and physically abuse him. I reprise my role (from the original performance of the play last year) as the reporter. In fact, most of the other characters are also being played by the original people. There's this one part where I have to ad lib a raving rant. I have to work on that a little, but I think it'll turn out well.

Have you always wanted a fancy title added to your name? How about becoming a legally ordained minister and making people call you Reverend? The Universal Life Church will let you do just that... online! The ULC runs basically around the doctrine "Do only that which is right," and their online ordination process is just as lax. They don't ask you your religion, and you don't even have to align yourself with a new faith. All you have to do is provide your name, address, phone number, and e-mail, which they promise not to do much with. The ordination isn't a joke; you become licensed to do weddings, funerals, and the like in the name of the Church. So... ya gonna go ahead with it, Reverend?

During spring break of 1999 or 2000, my sister and I had a day off from school, and my dad had a day off from work. So we decided to go out for a little drive. We wanted to go out to the sort-of-nearby Everglades, but the only road out that way was jammed due to Willie Nelson playing a concert in the area. So instead of going west, we decided to head southward. We got a little out of hand and, by midday, ended up in Key Largo, about 170 km away. My sister and I pleaded our dad to go all the way to Key West, which was another 170 km, and so we did. By nightfall we were at the southernmost city in the continental USA. It was quite a bit of fun and my first of three trips (so far) to the quirky city of Key West.

The other day my dad got his film developed from taking pictures at the Youth Group mass. He had something else to show me. Lo and behold, on that roll there were pictures of us in Key Largo. Why he hadn't used a roll's worth of film in that camera for 3 or 4 years is well beyond me.

I've added a whole bunch of links to the Links page. Why I didn't add them originally is also beyond me; I like them just as much as the sites I already had listed. Anyway, check out all the new links!

Coming soon: something big. Stay tuned. Also, I'll be adding more stuff to the Name the Band page; maybe it'll be enough to get you to actually name the band!

Why must everyone start getting all Christmassy halfway through November? We got our first Christmas card a few days ago - my mom, who, like everyone, rushes to beat everyone else, hadn't even sent ours yet. Also, my parents started playing Christmas music on Spinner (which, as another fatality of the hands of huge media conglomerates, is shortly to lose its individual identity and become Radio@Netscape Plus).

Christmas music is okay when it's near Christmas. Last year my parents played a single radio station constantly because it was playing Christmas music from December 1 to December 25. Twenty-five days of the same songs over and over and over and over again almost made me go crazy. Seriously. It's always the same ones like "Jingle Bell Rock," various versions of "Frosty" and "Rudolph," "Feliz Navidad," stuff by Perry Como and Bing Crosby, "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," the occasional Andy Williams number, "Jingle Bells," Carpenters tunes, "Wonderful Christmastime," and "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" (although I can't say I loathe those last two, being a Beatles fan). But anyway, all that Christmas music drove me up the wall, and it's coming even earlier this year.

Everyone, say it with me: Christmas is December 25. Christmas does not begin in the middle of November.

Today my church's group hosted the 10:30 mass by doing the readings and singing and stuff. When I joined the youth group two years ago due to my friends being in it, it was a small, unorganized, and unnamed group (we just called it "Youth Group," and still do). Since then it has grown and grown until the point that it split into two groups: one for 6th to 8th graders and one for 9th to 12th graders. So, for the first time, my youth group, the 9-12 one, has a name: Faith Alive. Today we...

Backtrack a second. In the dark days of Youth Group (oh, about a year or so ago), I was asked to design a logo for the group that was to be used on our T-shirts. I did so; it originally had the cross but not the "Jesus fish." When I presented it to the head honcho, she told me to add a cross. I told her that the letter "T" was a cross viewed at an angle (and prided myself in this artistic achievement). Not to appear abashed, she told me to add a Jesus fish, and even though I thought it would look bad, I added it anyway and sent it off to her. I never saw it again, except for (the only) two issues of the Youth Group newsletter that came out earlier this year. The reason that the logo showed up there was because my friend, not the head honcho, was in charge of the newsletter, and I asked him to put it in.

Okay, back to the main story. Today we wore our new "Faith Alive" shirts. They are red, and you can't escape by turning them backwards because they say the same thing on both sides. I was embarrassed even being seen in it, even with my other youth group friends right there. After the service, my dad shocked my sister and me by deciding that it would look really nice if my sister, my mom (who is part of the youth group) and I were wearing our shirts for the family Christmas card photo. Even though he didn't have a T-shirt like ours, we sat on a bench near the church and had the pictures taken by my aunt who was visiting from out of town. I tried to hide the shirt, but to no avail.

Oh, and don't forget: Name the Band!

Tomorrow marks the 40th anniversary of what they call "that fateful day in Dallas." On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed while riding in a motorcade through Dallas, Texas. The killer or killers are unknown, and exactly who they were (or might have been) is an extremely debatable subject.

I don't worship Kennedy like some people do, and I don't think that I should because I don't know why I should. But earlier this year I became interested in his assassination. The events immediately before, during, and after the fatal shot are probably the most analyzed 20 seconds of history. There are myraid theories surrounding who killed him and where the shots came from. I won't go into them here. That's why it interests me, really. Between many of the witnesses there were conflicting stories, shady characters, and bizarre happenings.

Be sure to check out The Kennedy Asssassination Home Page for a lot of interesting stuff, and a webcam of Dealey Plaza, the area where Kennedy was shot. Also notable are various home videos of the assassination, and a clip from the most famous film, taken by Abraham Zapruder.

One of NASA's latest ambitious projects is to crash a spacecraft into a comet. Yeah, you read that right. They're going to crash a craft called Deep Impact into Comet Tempel 1 to see what happens. The cool thing is that NASA is allowing you to send your name to the comet. All you have to do is enter your name here! In January 2004, the page will stop taking names and they will be put onto a disc that will be sent with the craft.

Oh, and don't forget: Name the Band!

Right now I'm experiencing a sort of blogger's block. At this point, most bloggers would a) go on a hiatus indefinitely, b) start anew at another .org domain, or c) start working on a new layout by deciding which dull, muted color combinations make text hardest to read. But not me. I'm just going to keep on going, but maybe not as often. If my life ever gets exciting, I'll have a lot to say.

Can you tell I've been reading a lot by Douglas Adams recently?

Last month I bought a collection of all six books of his inaccurately-named Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy. Right now I'm up to the fourth book, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish. I thought the first book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was the best. The first one is always the best, you know. It went down from there, and Life, the Universe, and Everything (the third book) was probably the most boring I've read so far. I like Fish because it starts out very mysteriously, as protagonist Arthur Dent finds himself back on Earth, which he thought had been destroyed, after spending seemingly eight years in space. I think I'll post full reviews when I finish reading all of them.

I haven't been getting very many suggestions for band names at all. Check out the Name the Band page, if you haven't already, for information on how to submit some names! Please, people, I'm sure you can think of something!

Yesterday my dad and I went to a coin show at a local mall. Well, it turns out there was no coin show there. My dad had read the ad in the paper wrong; it was today only. So we went back today. There was some cool stuff there, but nothing really out of the ordinary. The typical monthly coin shows they have there include not only coins, but stamps, paper money (my own semi-passion), stock certificates, and checks. Heck, I even saw a few stacks of comic books.

I wanted to buy a North Africa note, and I did see a few. North Africa notes were U.S. Silver Certificates printed with a yellow (instead of blue) seal, and they were used in northern Africa during World War II. In the unlikely but possible event that the enemy stormed in and stole the troops' money, the U.S. government could declare all bills with a yellow seal to be null and void. Luckily this never happened. They did the same thing for bills issued in Hawaii, only those bills have brown seals. I already have a Hawaii bill, but not a North Africa. I saw a booth that was selling them (relatively) cheap, but when I went back to find it later, I couldn't.

I like anagrams. Anagrams are words, phrases, or sentences that are composed by rearranging the letters of other words, phrases, or sentences. For example, if you rearrange the letters of "George W. Bush" you get "He bugs Gore." There are lots of other good ones, to wit:

I could go on and on, but I won't. Anyway, I decided to download a free trial of Anagram Genius, a program that helps you make anagrams out of stuff (or does it by itself if you want it to). Its website touts the trial version as "free and fully functional!" and having "no time limit - the software will never expire!" I was apparently too stupid to realize that there had to be some other limiting factor. I downloaded the program, tried it out, and found it. It will only allow you to make 10 searches before it effectively locks up. What's worse, the average user probably spends those 10 searches trying to figure out just how to work the darn program; the layout isn't exactly simple or pretty. Anyway, the real fully functional version is US $40. Bleah! If I ever get the urge to create rude, funny, or self-serving anagrams, I think I'll just stick to an online anagram generator.

Bored? I can help! The text of this entry is fully editable in Internet Explorer 5.5 and greater. Don't believe me, IE5.5+ users? Select any text inside this box and hit the Backspace key. Or type in your own text. Butchering my sentences guarantees hours of entertainment. (Sorry to everyone else whose browser doesn't support this; in your defense, IE5.5+ users can't click on the links in this entry.)

You now have a chance at choosing a new name for my band! Check out the new Name the Band page for details. No purchase necessary. Void where prohibited.

I finally got my report card today. Turns out my GPA is 4.25, which sits fine with me. :)

In the next few days I'm going to be starting a contest to find a new name for the band that I'm in. More details later.

The other day I quietly reenabled the discussion board. I've made negotiations with the hooligans (read: my sister and her friend) who made me shut it down last time; they've promised to clean up their act. So far, so good.

Over the past few days I've been thinking of the crazy idea of saving up for a car. Last week I didn't even want to learn to drive. But now I sort of do. If I did get a car, I'd want a Volkswagen. I've been in love with them ever since my dad bought a run-down Beetle for $200 and restored it into a daily driver. We had that car for a few good years, and it was great fun to ride in. Every time we went out, we saw people punching each other.

But seriously, I really liked that Beetle. When I was in the second grade I even wrote a report about Beetles, which included photos of our own car and drawings of the Volkswagen logo. I still have it to this day. Including all misspellings, factual errors, and things that make me go "What was that supposed to mean?", here's the text of the report.

Not bad for a second-grader, I say.

If I get a car in the next few years, I don't think I want a Beetle; they're far too recognizable. I'm a nonconformist among nonconformists, so I want a car that looks good and makes people say, "That looks good! What the heck is it?" Then I could watch the look on their face as I say "It's a Volkswagen." I think my top choice is a Type 14 Karmann Ghia coupe (as opposed to a Type 34, which is ugly). But depending on the circumstances, I might go for one of the Type 3 sedans, or maybe even the ugly duckling of air-cooled VWs, a Type 4. Still though, it's a long way till I turn 16. Actually, it's not, but I want to pretend it is.

Last week during lunch, Josh, who sits next to me in one of my classes, balled up a piece of paper and tried to throw it at me. I ignored it at first, but then laughed; he missed. He invited me over to the bench he was sitting at. So, I decided to sit with him and his friends Donald and Dexter. I was familiar with them too. Now I guess I have some people to sit with at lunch.

DVDs are more popular than they've ever been before, but how much do you know about this fascinating format? The DVD FAQ will answer questions you didn't even know you had, like "What are regional codes for?", "Why is DVD packaging different from that of CDs?", "How does DVD compare with laserdisc?" and "What does DVD stand for?" Plus there's a whole lot of technical information that I didn't bother to read. Still, it's pretty interesting stuff.

Introducing The Typed on Dvorak Web Campaign! Yes, I've started a web campaign to promote the Dvorak keyboard. TWoS is the only member site right now, but hopefully more people will join soon.

In other news, I decided to rescue Make Your Own Spam Bait and remove the All Your Base Are Belong to Us page. Why? Although MYOSB isn't a well-organized page, the idea has potential. On the other hand, no visitor to the site ever understood AYBABTU or the Photoshopped images contained therein.

In other other news, I rewrote parts of the About the Site page and added a section called "Things You Don't Care About."

While watching Edward Scissorhands today, my sister pointed out that the movie is the only one by 20th Century Fox to feature a variation of the logo; it's snowing on the familiar huge "20th Century Fox"... monolith... thing. Doing a web search, I found that there have been other variations in the recent past, including Ice Age, in which the logo is also being snowed upon (but I think that was only in the theatrical trailer). There are also others mostly having to do with color and design, including Minority Report (spooky black and white), Planet of the Apes (stars in the background instead of clouds), and Daredevil (cool outline effect). Obviously I have way too much time on my hands to care about this. But so does whoever maintains this page, which is where I found out all of that stuff.

Yesterday TWoS and The Dvorak Keyboard and You got another freak rush of hits, although this one was much smaller than the last. I can't figure out where the majority of them are coming from. It appears that a bunch of people came here within the same few hours and poked around quite a bit. Very odd.

Yesterday's post about Notepad has already been quoted in a bulletin board discussion about text editors and such. That was fast.

You don't need a program like Frontpage or Dreamweaver to make great web pages. Nope, you don't need expensive, complicated, and slow programs that add lots of tags that you don't need and change your HTML code while you're not looking. If you have Windows, odds are you already have the best program for creating web pages: Notepad. Yeah, that Notepad. Notepad is fast, easy to use, and hardly takes up any space on your computer. WYSIWYG editors like Frontpage provide all sorts of templates and things; you don't do any of the work, which leads to limited control over your pages' look and feel. With Notepad, you can do anything. Also, using Notepad shows that you're a real webmaster and that you actually know what you're doing. If you make your web pages with Notepad, join the Made with Notepad Campaign. I did!

Today I used a Macintosh computer for the first time. People say they're good. I sat down. I didn't know how to do anything. I asked the guy next to me. He helped me. I typed stuff. I didn't know how to use the key with that little spiraly thingy on it. My Windows brain kept telling me to right-click. I don't like Macs.

Yesterday TWoS got a record number of hits: 80 unique visitors in a single day, many of them within just a few hours. Only 12 of the hits could be traced from links on other sites. That means either a) 68 people, by coincidence, happened to type in the URL of the site within minutes of each other, or 2) something weird is going on. The Dvorak Keyboard and You got 30 unique hits, which isn't a record amount but still a whole lot.

Pretty soon I'll be removing the All Your Base Are Belong to Us and Make Your Own Spam Bait pages, due to lack of interest and that they're both pretty stupid pages. Don't ask me how the work on the metric system page is coming along. I sort of stopped working on it.

Today Sean, the lead guitarist in our band, informed me that our name, The Atomics, is already taken. I'm going to try to get everybody together on-line tonight so we can discuss if we should change our name, and if so, what it should be. I think we should keep the name anyway, but I'll have to see what the others say. I have a feeling they'll want to change it. We've gone through name changes quite a bit in the past; first we were The Rowchez (pronounced like "roaches"), then The Moondogs, then The Rowchez, then The Electric Shoes, then The Rowchez (I'm not kidding!), and finally The Atomics.

Today in Personal Fitness we started our team sports for the quarter. The substitute teacher had us go into the gym for a long game of soccer. Yeah. On the basketball court. I'm not known for my athletic ability, so naturally I made a fool of myself quite a few times. There are also some hazards and obstacles when playing soccer on a basketball court, like hoops, seats, and the ventilation system. Anyway, I eventually sort of got into the game, and was sort of playing (just not very well). I'm not going to like the next nine weeks of Personal Fitness.

The World of Stuff has been getting a lot of hits today, but not on any of the pages that you see here. Yesterday I volunteered to host a "Move Status" page for Where's George? while their server is being moved. WG is a rather popular site, and the link to the Move Status page is posted there, and a record amount of bandwidth has been consumed today, so you technically could say that The World of Stuff is getting a lot of hits.

I updated the rules of Tredici again. This time I've included a way of grouping into teams, which allows more than four people to play. In the future, I plan to add to the site some tips, tricks, and other sorts of strategies. Later (that is, once Tredici gets off the ground), I'll add a list off places the game has been played. Maybe after that (that is, never), I'll add a list of clubs and stuff where you can play Tredici with other enthusiasts. But there aren't any enthusiasts right now, except for me and a few of my friends. So go ahead! Grab some friends/family/coworkers/random people off the street and play Tredici! I bet you'll love it.

I'm actually sort of afraid to admit this, but the other day I downloaded the song "Polkamon" by Weird Al Yankovic. I'm a fan of Weird Al, and when I heard the song in the movie Pokémon 2000 several years ago, I liked it. Basically he just names Pokémon to a polka beat. I don't like Pokémon anymore, but the music is still good. :)

You know that link over to the left that says "The Official Tredici Home Page," right? Yeah, I've glanced at it, you say. Well, check it out if you haven't! And even if you have, check it out again! Tredici is a card game I invented earlier this year. My friends love it (to a degree). The game involves collecting all the cards of one suit before the other players. Yesterday I modified the official rules to make them easier to understand (aside from that, I changed the direction of gameplay; it is now clockwise like most other Western games).

Currently I'm working on a variation of the game for more than four players. If you've read the rules and think you can help out, e-mail me: . Actually I haven't started working on it. I'm still trying to solve the problem of how to play with, say, six players when there are only four suits to choose from. I think I could make it go up to seven players, but not more than that.

I've been checking out other invented card games, like Wyoming Cowboy, but I'm usually not able to play them as I have no one to play them with. The Card Games Web Site has a large section featuring invented games, but the site hasn't been updated since January 2002. I'm trying to look for other pages devoted to invented card games submitted by users (so I can submit Tredici), but I haven't found any. I'm also looking to have Tredici published in a book and/or have a Tredici computer game made. Anybody want to give a hand?

Due to abuses of the discussion board, I've indefinitely disabled further posting. If the offenders promise to clean up their act, I will reopen the board.

The jack o'lantern. Ha! Get it?

Halloween was pretty cool. My sister wanted the jack o'lantern to resemble Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean. She provided a very complicated stencil (Adobe Acrobat Reader required), and guess who had to help carve the great orange gourd? Yeah, that's right! Me! It took me almost an hour to poke the holes in the design, and my dad another hour to actually do the carving. "It's so easy," she said when we scoffed at the design. She doesn't know the value of easy.

I went out with some of my friends for Halloween. I'm not much for planning ahead, so I only had a few hours to decide what to be. At the very last minute, I decided it would be best to be a nerd. (I know, you're supposed to dress up as something you're not, but hey...) I wore a collared shirt (which I was still wearing from work that morning) under an itchy sweater, brown slacks, my best shoes, and fake glasses. The sad part is that all of that stuff was in my closet.

I've deleted all annoying posts on the discussion board made by my sister and her friend. They're mad and say that they won't ever come back to the board or TWoS. That suits me fine. They can vandalize someone else's board if they want to.

You've seen lots of sites listing mistakes in movies, haven't you? Well, Movie Mistakes is one of them. Most notable about this site is the absence of entries typed by some moron with caps lock stuck on their keyboard and spelling and grammar so bad it would make their English teacher roll in her grave. The site features only entries typed with proper spelling, grammar, style, punctuation, etc. Oh, and they have some cool lists of movie mistakes too. I submitted one for A Hard Day's Night and it appeared on the site within an hour or two. Pretty impressive for a site run by one guy. Check out the goofs for your favorite movies and the features you get with paid membership, such as screenshots and exact timings of goofs.