2003: The Year in Review

I can't believe 2003 is over. The year's gone by faster than... something that's fast. It's been a fairly good year. Not as good as 2002, mind you, but still a good year. It's also been an important year. But I'll stop babbling and let this recap of 2003 do the work:

• January 3-4 - I go to a school campout with some of my friends.
• January 23 - The day of the eagerly-awaited eighth-grade class trip to Disney World. It's a blast!
• January 30 - My band (called The Rowchez at this time) play at the school talent show for the second and last year.
• February - I realize the need to have all my web pages under one roof, and so, work on The World of Stuff begins.
• March 1 - My band plays a gig at our school's Spring Festival. We only know two songs and, after playing the second one, we are asked by the audience to play more. Colossal embarrassment ensues.
• March 2 - Another gig at the Spring Festival. Backstage before the gig, we decide to change our name to The Atomics. We also quickly pick up a third song to please the waiting audience. We haven't had any gigs since this one.
• March 7 - A member of my church youth group dies. He was 13 years old and had suffered heart problems throughout his life. I didn't know him very well, but I did know him.
• March 17-19 - I develop the card game Tredici.
• March 25 - I buy my third guitar, an Epiphone Dot.
• April 6 - The World of Stuff opens on my Angelfire webspace.
• April 16-17 - My parents and I take a brief trip to Key West.
• April 18 - My friend/bandmate Sean and I tour the local newspaper's production facility.
• April 19 - Day cruise with the family.
• May 9-10 - I spend the night at my friend's house for his birthday. Good times.
• May 21 - The day of the even-more-eagerly-awaited eighth-grade class trip to Islands of Adventure. It's also a blast!
• May 23 - Sports Day at school. The student body gets split up into teams which are lead by the eighth graders. The teams compete in various activities that would be a stretch to call sports. Sports Day is the last day of school for the eighth grade, so it is our last day of school.
• May 26 - Now that the school year is effectively over, my mom throws out the lunchbox I had been using since August 25, 1997. I beg and plead her not to. After all, there's nothing a little JB Weld couldn't fix.
• May 28 - I start watching The Brendan Leonard Show and immediately become a fan.
• May 29 - The eighth grade banquet: a fun dinner and party to bring to a close the many years our class had spent together. Some people had been going to that same school for as long as 11 years.
• May 30 - The big day: eighth grade graduation. This brings to a close my nine years at St. Elizabeth of Hungary Catholic School.
• May 31 - I go to a post-graduation pool party was held at my friend's house. I always forget that there's a 31st day in May... it just doesn't sound right.
• June-July - Two family vacations, both within the boundaries of Florida as usual.
• July 11 - Party for my (and my sister's) 14th birthday.
• July 17 - The World of Stuff moves off Angelfire and onto theworldofstuff.com, with hosting by NearlyFreeSpeech.NET.
• August - My friend celebrates his birthday over a month late.
• August 10 - My third cousin finds me, thanks to the World Wide Web.
• August 13 - I celebrate Left-Hander's Day by making my sister be left-handed.
• August 26 - Doomsday (known conventionally as "the first day of high school").
• August 27 - South Florida Sun-Sentinel reporter Liz Doup requests an interview for a story about blogs.
• August 29 - Said interview takes place by phone.
• September 2 - A Sun-Sentinel photographer comes over to get a photo of me for the article.
• September 4 - First school pep rally. Fun.
• September 11 - Two years after September 11. Also September 11 itself.
• September 13 - I get my fourth guitar - a 12-string acoustic.
• September 16 - The Sun-Sentinel article runs. A drop in the number of hits for this day is hopefully unrelated.
• September 23 - Youth group ice skating outing. The tight skates blister and scrape my feet, thus limiting my enjoyment.
• October 3 - The first (and only?) season of The Brendan Leonard Show ends, and the show goes off the air. Meanwhile, I propose that fans of the show send the network a spatula.
• October 10 - I begin my first job: entering names and contact information in a clothier's contact list. And while I'm boring you, a clothier is someone who sells clothes.
• October 12 - TWoS goes metric.
• October 18 - I watch my friend star in a children's theater production of West Side Story.
• October 31 - Halloween! Using stuff I found in my closet, I decide to be a nerd.
• November 4 - My band discovers that our name, The Atomics, is already taken.
• November 13 - I get my first high school report card and learn that my GPA is 4.25.
• November 14 - After unsuccessfully racking our brains, the Name the Band contest is launched.
• November 27 - On Thanksgiving I announce the coming of The Bill Factor Project, a new page for The World of Stuff.
• December 4 - I win four tickets to a hockey game. But since I already have plans, I decide to give them to a friend.
• December 20 - I attend a Christmas party at a friend's house.
• December 25 - Christmas. Enough said.
• December 27 - I go to a post-Christmas party. To go with the "wacky tacky" theme, I wear my old school uniform.
• December 30 - Name the Band ends. The jury's still out on which name to pick.

We still haven't made a pick for a band name. We'll each look over the (very short) list of submissions and pick our favorites. In other news, The Bill Factor Project is coming tomorrow. As a recap, TBFP is a silly little activity which involves prime factorizing the serial numbers of money and writing the factors on the bills.

Well, that's it. So long, 2003, and tell 1998 I said hi. Now I've gotta start practicing those 4's.

Distant relatives

I don't remember who, but someone told me that a distant relative on my dad's side is a children's author in Croatia (an Eastern European country). Today while websurfing randomly, I made a startling discovery. I believe I have found this relative.

"How do you know?", you ask. Well, I'm almost certain that she is related, and here's why. A nationwide search for my last name, Kalilich, yields about 3 hits; all are family members. My family is most likely the only Kalilich family in the United States. A Croatia-wide search for the original Croatian-language spelling, Kalilić, yields 3 hits. All are in or near the city of Split, which is where my dad's dad came from. I would not be surprised if the few Kaliliches and Kalilićes of the world are closely related.

The Kalilić I have found is named Dunja Kalilić. All web pages mentioning her name are in Croatian, and unfortunately, online Croatian-to-English translation isn't very good. From what I can piece together are these facts:

• She's a she (as I have found, Dunja is a feminine name).
• She was born on July 8, 1947, making her 56 years old.
• She lived in Split, and later moved to Zagreb (the Croatian capital). After that she moved to Key West, Florida, and then to Cleveland, Ohio. Finally, she moved back to Croatia. She may also have lived in Italy during her time abroad.
• She has written at least 12 books, mostly children's titles. A few of them can be bought online, such as "Priče Iz Čarobnog Lonca" ("Tales from the Magic [Something]").
• One of her books, published in 1988, was called "Amerika u Floridi" (mostly likely something about America and Florida. I believe this strengthens my case - there are 5 Kaliliches, including me, living in Florida.)

Unfortunately, that's all I think I know, and some of that is probably incorrect. If you can read Croatian (or know someone who can) it would be a great help. I'd like someone to translate for me a bio of Dunja and a listing of her books. Maybe someone could take a step further and get her phone number or address. I'd like to get in touch with her, but I think I've done about all I can.

Name the Band is finally coming to an end. Soon we will review a listing of all submitted names and pick the one we like the best. If we can't agree on one, we will come up with our own. Thanks to "all" the "great many people" who "racked their brains" to "help us out."

Blocking bots with .htaccess

Today I realized that I should do something about the potentially large number of web-crawling robots, or bots, that could hit this site to oblivion. The spambots wouldn't find a single mailto: link here anyway (my e-mail address is always contained in an image), but I wouldn't want them to waste my bandwidth looking for some. Other annoying bots will download entire sites or check them for copyright abuse or plagiarism. I don't want such bots hitting my site.

Luckily, there is a way to keep these bots out of your site: it's called robots.txt. The robots.txt file, when placed on your domain, will serve as a warning to all bots that hit your site. It can tell certain bots not to go to this file or certain bots to leave that directory alone. All you have to do is add a few lines to tell the robots what they can and can't do.

I really had you going there, didn't I?

Of course robots.txt will work, but only for robots that choose to follow it. All the major search engines' robots respect robots.txt as a courtesy, but then there are the not-so-nice bots like e-mail address harvesters. Check out TWoS's robots.txt, for example. Basically, it tells all bots to stay out of the directories /etc (which I use for testing), /kristen (which contains stuff I host for my sister), and /wg (which has some stuff that isn't really important). If a robot looks at robots.txt but doesn't obey it, it can jump directly to where you don't want it to go - kind of like a little kid that does the opposite of what you tell him.

I decided to pursue a stricter method. This one would actually block bots from the site using the .htaccess file. .htaccess is pretty complicated to explain, but basically it's a magical little file that can do almost anything. You can use it to prevent hotlinking, specify 404 error pages, password-protect directories, and even block AOL users (if you happened to be on a cruel streak). Above all, it's not visible from the web, so people can't look into it and steal your secrets.

My .htaccess singles out bots by name and sends them to a blank page. No matter what page on theworldofstuff.com that the bot hits, it will always be taken to the blank page. The code looks a little something like this:

The beauty of this method is that, as an example, "BadBot.*" will match both "BadBot" and "Badbot 2.0." The "NC" flag makes the search case-insensitive. So, in this example, any program claiming to be BadBot, TrademarkFreak, or SuperRoboEmailSucker will always be redirected to emptywebsite.com. (Of course, these programs can lie, but there's only so much that can be done about that.)

Originally I wanted all requests by bots to result in a 403 error, but I quickly realized that I shouldn't waste the bandwidth with that. After all, who's going to read it? Besides, my 403 page is 10 KB in size. Multiply that by thousands of hits from a stubborn bot and that spells trouble. I also thought about sending the bots to the website of an individual or group I hate, such as peta.org, but the owner of such a site could find out about it and (theoretically) do the same thing to me. So, I elected to make bots go to Empty Web Site. I don't think the guy who runs that site has to worry much about bandwidth. :)

In case I've gotten you curious as to how to block AOL users, these lines in your .htaccess file might do the trick:

These bills can finally hang

You can see my reflection in the frame.

For Christmas last year I got an uncut sheet of $1 bills from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, the federal agency that prints U.S. currency. (All of you who thought that the Mint prints bills please stay after class to write "I will learn about my country" 50 times on the blackboard.) The thing was, I didn't have a frame to hang them on my wall. So for one year the sheet of 16 bills was curled up in its little tube on my dresser. This year I finally got a frame for them. The frame is quite dumpy, really; the wood-and-chain top looks like it would belong in Captain Ahab's quarters, while the clear bottom says The Museum of Modern Art. Even though it's trashy and overpriced, it's surprisingly easy to put the bills in if you can get a hand. Still, there's nothing like waking up in the morning to find an uncut sheet of money greeting you on the wall.

Some other gifts I got included Paul Brians' Common Errors in English Usage, mentioned in a recent post, and Weezer's eponymous album. The latter was given to me by my friend/bandmate Sean, who, knowing I had all of the Beatles' albums, decided to find something else I might like. Thanks Sean!

Merry Christmas

Yesterday we went to the Christmas eve service to see the annual Christmas pageant (if you could call it that). This year it was much shorter than usual. Axed were the songs appearing at relevant times (such as "O Little Town of Bethlehem" as Joseph and Mary go to Bethlehem). The parts of the innkeepers, who individually turn Mary and Joseph down, were reduced to a single passing mention by the narrator. There were no speaking roles except the narrator, of course, and the coveted position of The Angel Who Talks. There were no wise men, either, and the drummer boy (who's not in the Biblical account, but his part is generally considered the "cutest" part of the pageant) was gone too.

There was one king, but no one was really sure if he was supposed to be King Herod or one of the three kings or just some random king who happened to be there. He was the king mentioned in the song "Do You See What I See," which was played at the end of the extremely short pageant. I think the failure of the pageant is due to the new director, who doesn't seem to get along very well with the old one.

Some of the things I got for Christmas were: two Beatles t-shirts, two Beatles calendars (both the same), four Beatles books, and the Beatles' new CD (anyone noticing a pattern here?). I also got a Gibson t-shirt, an Epiphone t-shirt, a deck of cards, and ten crisp, brand-new, freshly printed $2 bills.

We had breakfast this morning at my grandmother's house, and tonight we will be hosting the Christmas feast. All in all, it's great to be with my family on Christmas, blah blah blah, other corny stuff. Merry Christmas, everybody!

A very interesting e-mail

Out from yesterday's mailbag came a message regarding the Dvorak keyboard...

I replied thus:

Today, Where's George?, my favorite web site, celebrates its 5th birthday. To celebrate, the site has been completely revamped and given a new look. Check it out if you've never been there. Where's George? tracks the travels of US currency by using serial numbers and other identifying factors.

Have you ever seen a Picassoesque guitar with two sound holes and four necks? How about a really big saxophone or an orchestra of gas tanks? Oddmusic.com has a gallery of unusual musical instruments such as these. Many of the instruments also have sound clips you can listen to.

Does that passage look familiar? Yes, no, maybe? If you said maybe, you're correct. The famous passage that begins with the words "Lorem ipsum" has been an industry standard "dummy text" since someone used it to show off a typeface back in the 1500s. It has since been used not only to demonstrate fonts, but also to serve as a filler text in, for example, web page templates. Why on earth would you use nonsense text to demonstrate a web page template? For one thing, it's a fact that if you put in real text, people will concentrate on that more than the layout itself. When you put in unreadable text, people tune it out and focus on the overall layout of the page, which is the goal. Same thing goes with sampling fonts. You're more likely to notice the features of the typeface if you can't read what it actually spells out.

What language, if any, is "Lorem ipsum" written in? If you said it kind of looks like Latin, you're right. The beginning of the text is taken from passage written by Cicero in 45 BC. Whoever first used the text butchered Cicero's original Latin to make it into nonsense and used said nonsense to demonstrate a typeface. Thus the world of design received a nonsensical, meaningless passage with a lovely, classical feel to it.

If you want your own randomly generated passages of Lorem Ipsum-style text, head on over to lipsum.com.

Almost Christmas already?!

I can't believe it's almost Christmas already. I'm not even in much of a Christmassy mood. My uncle's family came into town yesterday and we had dinner with them. It was nice. It's also nice not having to go to school (or my one-day-a-week job) for a whole two weeks.

Everyone's seen those signs posted everywhere that advertise "Work from Home" or "Lose Weight Fast" scams. Did you know that one company is responsible for 95% of them? Rob Cockerman of found out that and more, which he documents in a special investigative report.

The Dallas-based organization Citizens Against Ugly Street Spam (CAUSS) points out that these signs are illegally placed and advocates the removal of them. It's easy to join the group - all you have to do is start removing the "street spam" in your neighborhood. As a "sign shark," you make the community a better place by removing illegal (not to mention annoying) signs on public property. (In most areas these signs are classified as litter or abandoned property.) For signs placed high on poles, a "sharking stick" - a long pole with a hook at the end - can take care of the job. Some sharks simply cut out the signs' contact information to let street spammers know that their signs are unwelcome.

That sounds like such a cool thing to do that I might actually try it.

Christmas party

Today is a Christmas party at my friend Mark's house. It's going to be a potluck, which is good because I'm hungry. There are going to be a lot of people there, so I guess that means it's going to be fun. Quoth the invtation: "Mark and Kim have asked that I let all of Santa's little elves know that there will be a HUGE game of manhunt planned for the occasion." I don't know if gifts will be exchanged, but I figured they will, so I went out last night and bought gifts for a few of my friends. That was the extent of my Christmas shopping.

Here's a detail from a new WoS wallpaper called "The Universe of Stuff," which spoofs the famous Universal Pictures logo. You can get it in sizes 800x600 or 1024x768 on the Downloads page.

The break begins

Today is the first day of winter break, and man, do I need it. I'm sick of having to wake up so early and remember to put on my lanyard* and tie my shoes really tight. I have several sets of wardrobes: school wardrobe (plain shirts), dress/work wardrobe (fancier stuff), and weekend wardrobe (stuff I'd be too embarrassed to wear at school - mostly Beatles shirts). Wearing the plain shirts is boring, but I have little other choice, so I can't complain. Yesterday, in the last period of the day, my friend and I stood next to the door, ready to ram it down when the bell rang. When it finally did, we pushed out of there and into temporary freedom.

*I'm not going to have to remember my lanyard (or my ID badge, for that matter) when I get back to school on January 5. All the lanyards and ID badges were collected yesterday, as I mentioned earlier. I have no idea why they would need our ID badges just to give us new lanyards for them. I have a feeling that the whole thing is a cover-up for some kind of safety issue or health hazard.** If they wanted to give us new lanyards, they wouldn't take back our old ones.

**An important life lesson: every shortcoming of a school can be blamed on safety issues.

During Personal Fitness yesterday, we had to run out on the track. On the outside of the track are a few school buses that just seem to sit there. As we started running, Richie, one of the guys in the class, snuck into the open doors of one of the buses and hid inside. After everyone else had finished running, we went into the gym, forgetting about him. I was in there practicing volleyball moves with Donald and Tomás. Donald, with his fists of steel, knocked the ball into the stands for the millionth time in a row. The two of them went into the back room of the gym to get to the stairs to get to the stands to get the ball. I forgot about them for a little while, but then I realized they had been gone a long time. I went into the back of the gym to go get the ball myself when I saw Donald and Tomás there. When I asked what had taken them so long to get the ball, they told me they had snuck back to the bus to hide out with Richie but got caught along the way. Richie, who had now been sitting in the bus for over a half an hour, was removed. After everyone was back to their proper place, the teacher called us for an emergency roll call to make sure no one else was on the loose. It was good to end the year at school with some comic relief.

Return of the Sanity

Now that the last Lord of the Rings movie is out, everyone will see it and talk about it for a few months and it will come out on DVD and all the madness will finally... all... be... OVER!!! No more this and that and the other thing about the imaginary people and places and the imaginary battle sequences. Instead people will actually talk about the real world, with real things and tangible objects - maybe even politics, too! It won't happen right away, of course. But eventually, after not long, everything will be back to normal and we will all GET ON WITH OUR LIVES!!!!! Hahahahhahahaha!!!

And now back to our regularly scheduled post.

Today at school, the principal came over on the P.A. system pretending to be Santa Claus. He told us that for the holidays we were going to get brand new Pompano Beach High School lanyards for our ID badges. What's wrong with the ones we already have, I wonder? They're lightweight and durable - perfect for everyday wear. Plus, they don't say anything on them. These new lanyards, I assume, are going to have the school's name on them, which means they're going to be those really thick, heavy ones with the text sewn in. That's not something I want to wear every day. Plus, "Santa" said that we were going to have to give our old lanyards back. I wonder why. Safety hazard, perhaps? Oh well, I guess I can't fight it. They're not my tax dollars, anyway... they're yours.

Today is the 100th anniversary of the first powered flight. It was a fantastic achievement that marked a milestone in the history of man. But no, instead, the front page of today's paper is an article about The Lord of the Rings - a milestone in the history of imaginary creatures.

A-caroling we go...

Today my church youth group went Christmas caroling. I wasn't keen on it at first; after all, we had just gone caroling only a year ago! Anyway, I decided that I couldn't back out of it. We first visited a few people in the nursing home next door to the church. Then we split into groups and caroled to elderly parishioners across town. The people were very, very nice. Some of them demonstrated their honed senses of humor. "I was born during the Depression," one man said. "My father had five children, three of them are here. He didn't have a lot of money, so he would give us these to have fun with." He took out a toilet paper roll and started to sing into it.

After that, we all got back together to carol at a local center for sufferers of Alzheimer's disease. I didn't particularly like that place. As a member of my old school's National Junior Honor Society chapter, I had to go there every other week with my fellow NJHS members. We painted stuff and made crafts with them, and we played games with them, but they never wanted to do anything. It ended up that we were painting and making crafts and playing games all by ourselves. In any case, caroling was mostly enjoyable.

After that, we brainstormed ideas for the youth group's post-Christmas party. The moms in charge wanted us to think of a theme. Some of the ones we considered were "Spongebob Squarepants," "Tree-Hugging Hippies," "Leap Year," "Arbor Day," "Jolly Old England," "Pirates of the Caribbean," and "The Middle Ages." The one that won out, however, was "Wacky Tacky Christmas."

We also concocted a suprise for some of our younger youth group members (namely, the sixth-graders). We're going to plan an elaborate outdoor scavenger hunt for them and pass out sheets with cryptic clues. Then, while they're busy not realizing that nothing is hidden anywhere, we'll go inside and produce our stash of shaving cream. Then we'll silently creep back outside and, when they least expect it - wham!

I really have been working on The Bill Factor Project, which will allow you to prime factorize the serial numbers of paper money. Honestly. I just did some major formatting work today. (Gotta make it look snazzy, you know; that's what keeps them coming back!) The Bill Factor Project will begin January 1.

The Waterford News for Kids

In 2000 my sister and I, with my neighborhood friend Kevin, made a community newsletter for the few kids in the area. Because our neighborhood was (and still is) called Waterford Homes, we decided to call it the Waterford News for Kids. It contained news, cartoons, and (at my insistence) weather forecasts. Actually, all credit for the newsletter goes to Kevin. I just butted in on his newsletter and acquired a controlling interest in it. In any case, the newsletter ended shortly thereafter when Kevin moved to Honduras for a year. In September 2002 he was back, and we planned to bring back the newsletter. We decided for that issue to write fictitious news stories, which was something we had never done before. For your entertainment, here they are, from that never-published issue:

For my own sake I'm not going to tell you who wrote which. All I can say is that I wish I had written the third one. I'd have to say that one is the funniest.

Remember back in October when I, in a fit of boredom, made a Christmas layout for the site? I decided to put the layout up today. Actually, it's not a completely different layout per se; it's just a variation on the WoS logo. In that case, I decided to put the logo up today. Even though I'm not one to commercialize Christmas, I couldn't resist. I guess that makes me a bad person. Oh well. Merry Christmas anyway.

Art class

Today in art class (properly known as Drawing I), we had to draw a classmate's profile and turn it into an abstract portrait à la Paul Klee. Most people were just sketching from the tops of their minds, but I decided to actually draw a real person. I had my friend Josh sit still (which can be hard for him at times) while I sketched his profile. I liked the sketch so much that I decided to trace it and abstractize (make abstract... whatever...) the traced version so I could keep the original.

He looks as if he's about to laugh because he just flicked a tiny ball of paper at someone on the other side of the room. It's an entirely plausible explanation; after all, he does that all the time.

The language of instant messaging

Classmate Evan rants on an abomination to the English language.

Here's my take: It appears that people just started typing that way because either a) they think it's cool to mutilate the English language, and/or 2) they couldn't type and needed to conserve keystrokes. I'm going to focus on the latter here. When we first got into instant messaging, we really, really couldn't type. Sure, we marvelled at the wonder of instant text-based communication by rapidly sending nonsense like "as;ldhfls;fdl;kaj" to each other back and forth, but we eventually graduated from that level of communication (well, most of us, anyway). The thing that was holding us back was that we couldn't type fast. Most of us took the route of abbreviating the heck out of every word longer than one letter. Some (such as I) were content with typing slowly. Still others actually learned to touch-type properly (I eventually did this, and I don't regret choosing the Dvorak keyboard).

So, the majority chatted and chatted and chatted with each other about everything or nothing in particular. The constant chatting left the lazy abbreviations engraved into the stone of their brains. And now when they write notes to each other in class, they do it in IM shorthand. And when they join a discussion group, they get flamed for typing like a 15-year-old, and the flames come along with mutterings about the inadequacy of our public school system and so on, and they are otherwise ignored because they type like a total newbie/AOLer. Even school announcements written by my upperclassmen use "2" instead of "too" or "to." They probably don't know when to use which. Lazy, lazy, lazy.

I JUST FOUND THIS COL LINK!1!1 LOL THIS SIET WIL TURN ORDINARY 3NGLISH T3XT IN2 GARBAEG TAHT LOKS LIEK IT WAS WRITEN BY A 12-Y3AR-OLD AOLAR111!!!!! WTF ITS P3RFECT FOR THOS3 WHO WANT 2 TRY 2 COMUNICAET WIT THERE LAS INTELIEGNT FREINDS111! If you are lucky enough to be above that level of communication and can type a complete, typo-free, grammatically correct sentence, I applaud you.

You can now search within The World of Stuff, thanks to Google. The search box can be found on each page with the WoS header, just below The Links to the Left (tm). Sorry, but you can't search through only blog entries right now (or ever).

Hi Donald!

First off, I'd like to explain the unusual title of this entry. Donald is a guy I know who wants me to prove that this is my web site. Donny, consider it proven.

Yesterday I got my interim report. My grades are as follows: Business Systems and Technology, B; Drawing I, B+; and Algebra I Honors and Personal Fitness, A. I had been baffled as to why I got a B in Business Systems. Today I realized it was because I got a 23% on a recent test - I had previously received the test back and put it away without looking at the grade. I really need to study for those tests more. I figure to get my grade up to an A-, I'll probably need to ace the next test (assuming that there is one) and the final exam. Even then, it might not be enough, but I'm hopeful.

The youth group Christmas skit was performed on Saturday and Sunday. A general rule of thumb regarding performing skits is that the first performance is always the best, and then all sorts of stuff ruins the second one. Such was the case with said skit. The Saturday performance went along fine, except that my friend who played the drunk guy was told to spill his "liquor" (actually Coke in a Jack Daniels bottle) on my suit, and he did. That was nothing compared with Sunday. Sunday there was all this stuff on the stage, including a guy dressed up as Santa Claus who wouldn't get off. Then there were microphone problems, and it all just caused a lack of effort among everyone. Hopefully the skit will be better next year. Or we'll do a different skit.

Confused about "lie" and "lay"? Don't know whether to say "If I was" or "If I were"? Want to challenge someone who compliments on your "Web sight"? Paul Brians is your man. Brians, a professor of English at Washington State University, maintains a list of common errors in English called Common Errors in English. This site is an invaluable tool when writing (or nitpicking). Also helpful is the list of non-errors, which things that people often point out as errors but are actually not. Some of these "non-errors" include, believe it or not, ending sentences with prepositions, splitting infinitives, and using "lend" as a verb and never "loan." The other non-errors on the list will surprise you just as much as they surprised me.

A book by Prof. Brians, entitled Common Errors in English Usage, is now on my Christmas wishlist.

Is nothing sacred?

Slowly but surely, my web-based e-mail service has been robbing features from my free account and placing them exclusively in several paid versions. You'd think that with all the ads they have, they would make some money, but I guess not. So what do they do? They take away your conveniences that you enjoy and make you pay to get them back. The particular robbery that's pushing me over the edge is that of the red- and green-lists of e-mail addresses - the lists of e-mail address you do and do not accept messages from. Other features that have been stolen in the past are vacation reply, automatic spam filters, automatic deletion, automatic filing, and (I think) POP access. So I think I'm going to finally upgrade my account and use the copy of Microsoft Outlook on my computer.

Which leads me to the ever popular "Nothing's free on the Internet anymore" rant. Actually, I'm going to spare it because I'm sure you've heard it enough. Now all I need is a good spam filter for Outlook 2002 and I'll be set. But of course, all the good spam filters either cost money or give you ads or plug their product with every outgoing e-mail.

I've solved the problem with the hockey tickets by giving them to my friend Sean as a Christmas gift. Sean is a member of my band and a regular at the WoS discussion board.

Today is the Youth Group skit. My friend Mark is playing a drunk guy, which means he's going to be stumbling, shouting, and ad-libbing lines. I'm hoping he doesn't make me (and everyone backstage) laugh.

Hockey tickets

Today in my last class of the day, the teacher called me up to the front of the class, handed me an envelope, and said "Congratulations." I was confused until I found that I won four tickets to a hockey game (Florida Panthers vs. Atlanta Thrashers) on Saturday. They chose randomly from all the A Honor Roll students, and I won. I didn't even know there was a drawing. I thought that was pretty cool, even though I don't particularly like hockey. Also, they're pretty far seats (see an approximate view), but I can't complain. Here comes the dilemma (there's always a dilemma when you win tickets to a sporting event, right?): I'm spending that night with my friends Mark and Nick. I figured I could take them along as part of the fun, but Nick would rather stay at Mark's house. So the new dilemma is: what should I do with the tickets? I really have no other choice than to give them away, but to whom?

Decisions, decisions... and so little time to make them.

Yearbook

The yearbook is on sale at school. I found that kind of weird, because my old school always had the yearbook out during the last weeks of the school year; that way they could put in pictures of events occurring throughout the year. What's more, the yearbook was always free, and they always automatically gave you one, no questions asked. The eighth graders, enjoying their last year at the school, have their names engraved in gold lettering on the cover. Of course, my name was spelled wrong, but I've come to expect that.

I haven't actually shelled out the $45 for the yearbook yet, although I brought the money to school yesterday. The thing is, they're selling the yearbooks in a particular classroom (presumably an empty one) during lunch, so you have to spend your precious time. That and I'm half-expecting to walk into a classroom full of older students staring at me and saying "Lunch ended 20 minutes ago." (This semester I have C Lunch, the last lunch period and the one that everyone forgets about. A lot of the elections and events and stuff are supposed to occur during all the lunch periods but only happen to take place during A and B Lunches.)

I got an e-mail back from my third cousin Michael today (see the message I sent him). Here's what he said:

He added in another e-mail:

This was my reply:

I hastily added in another e-mail that I liked his band name ideas: Foolcircle and Superfiend. I'll have to see what the others think of them.

Christmas tree

Yesterday we went out and got a Christmas tree. I protested; it's much too early to even think about Christmas. Anyway, we got the tree, and it turns out it has practically no needles on it. You can see right through it as if it were a week after Christmas and all the needles had fallen off and you were ready to take it out to the curb. Oh well. I guess you can't stop millions of people from starting Christmas a month early.

The Name the Band page has been revamped. I've added more information in the individual bios and another picture of us. Also (this is important) I've set a deadline for submissions. Submissions must be received before December 31, 2003. We've been waiting for you long enough as it is, so this should give you plenty of time. What are you waiting for?! Read this, and post name suggestions!!!