The new building: it's not quite just about almost entirely finished

My school's new building (in May 2003 at left, and early this year at right) is finally virtually complete. I've talked about this building a little bit before, most notably back in August, before the school year began. It's a gigantic three-story building into which all the classrooms and the cafeteria will move next week (during spring break). Only three buildings from the current complex will remain in use: A Building, which is used as a pre-school by the city, the ancient "big gym," (it's the second largest in the school district, I hear), and the newer "mini gym." The rest of our quasi-hallowed halls will be - you'll love this - demolished to make a parking lot for the new school. Talk about large-scale remodeling! The new building, as I'm sure it will be called for as long as the walls are bright white and smelling of paint, will become the school's new home when we come back from spring break on April 13. Thus we will shake off the old (and relatively small) 1952 buildings with the pink paint that peels off to reveal yellow underneath, and embrace a new school filled with "Tech-no-lo-gy"™.

Now I feel like reminiscing. It was, oh, about 1999 or 2000, maybe even 1998, and I was at summer camp in A Building. Being the greedy kids we were, we and our camp counselor (who was a real kid at heart) decided to make money selling chocolate covered coconut chunks. All we had to do was get some coconuts that grew around the campus, bust them open (which took a lot of effort), cut them up, cover them in Magic Shell, and sell them. As it was summer vacation, the rest of the buildings in the complex were abandoned (either it was just summer vacation or this event occurred during the school's 15-year closure that began in 1985). Any road, we were wandering around familiar and unfamiliar areas near our dear A Building, getting tall people on ladders to obtain coconuts from the palm trees that dotted the place. On one occasion we found ourselves walking down an alien hallway to find a strange outdoor centerpiece among all the mysterious buildings. There was a great brick circle that contained benches around it, and an area off to the side where, presumably, people could hang out in the shade and announcements could be posted. It was so mysterious and kind of amazing.

Then in, say, 2003 or so, I returned to this strange meeting place... to eat my lunch. Yes, I eat in the nice little area outside the cafeteria every day. I'm really going to miss eating lunch outside, because the new building has a so-called food court, as if we were going to school at a mall or something.

Which leads me to the new cafeteria. I think one of the main points that brought freshmen into the school for this academic year was the statement that this new building (set to be finished in October 2003) would contain a food court, presumably like the ones in shopping malls. Bzzt! Wrong! This "food court" is actually nothing more than a bunch of different places to buy cafeteria food. The "restaurants" have cheesy names and Microsoft Word-designed logos. One will serve the regular entree mandated(?) by the school district. Another place will sell subs, and another Mexican food. There are, like, three pizza places for some insane reason. But I think all of them will be run by lunch ladies, and no, there will be no Subway.

One think I can't help thinking about, though, is the risk of fire. Seeing as the new building has a lot of "Tech-no-lo-gy"™, there's bound to be some faulty wiring or something somewhere. And bad wiring leads to electrical fires, of course. And what happens when a gigantic three-story building full of teenagers and irritable adults catches fire? Sheer chaos and pandemonium, of course. I just hope I'm on the ground floor when if it happens.

All the students will be touring the new building tomorrow. You can take a tour yourself by checking out this photo gallery on the school's painfully slow web site.

Witness the power of images by themselves. The Untitled Project is a gallery of urban photographs digitally stripped of all typography. It's available on the Web and in book form.

Sign of Good Taste

Before conjuring up the inspiration for the Driveway-A-Thon yesterday, my friends and I went the local grocery store. (This was after dinner and before we got to my house, if you're keeping track.) While we were roaming around the store at night and generally causing a ruckus, I remembered seeing Coca-Cola in glass bottles being stocked several visits ago. And as I'm one who will do anything to establish himself as apart from the ordinary, I asked my friend Kevin if he knew where they were. He proceeded to show me a little alcove in the soda aisle. Hiding in the back of the shelf, next to about three glass six-packs of Diet Coke and behind a mammoth package of regular Coke in 355 mL cans, was a single six-pack of Coca-Cola in glass bottles.

This prompted an interesting conversation with Kevin; I told him I had never had Coke from a glass bottle before, and he was somewhat shocked. In his family's native Honduras, he told me, Coke is more often found in glass. He also said that when you open the bottle, you have to wipe the rim before you drink it because sometimes it's rusty.

But I digress. Needless to say, I sprang for the bottles. I had the first one today, after rummaging through some drawers trying to find the elusive bottle opener. I found it pretty quickly, considering I didn't know what it looked like. The only rust I encountered on the rim of the bottle was probably a product of the bottle opener, which was kind of old. Glass bottles are nice, really. Because I'm not much of a soda drinker, the occasional Coke is more manageable in a 237 mL than a 355 mL can. Maybe it's just me, but the drink tastes a bit smoother in the glass bottles, which is good because I hate soda when it has the potency of a firecracker (like Coke does in cans).

The more marked difference between Coke in cans and Coke in bottles is the price. You have your 237 mL glass bottles at a unit price of USD 0.665, and then there are the much more common 355 mL cans found in vending machines everywhere at a cost of no less than USD 0.50. That makes for a rate of USD 0.0028 per mL for the glass bottles, and USD 0.0014 per mL for the cans, which means the bottles cost twice as much. But does the aesthetic value of drinking Coke from a glass bottle outweigh the monotony of drinking from a can? To quote a 1946 Coke ad slogan: Yes.

I have yet to find this site useful, but at FindSounds, you can search the Web for sounds. The site allows searching for AIFF, AU, and WAVE files - mono or stereo, or both, if you like - at various resolutions, sample rates, and file sizes. Each search result comes with a visual depiction of the sound file.

Driveway-A-Thon

Tonight, after a dinner at Clamsters (a nearby bar/restaurant joint), my sister, our friends, and I decided to hang out in my driveway. I can't exactly remember why we didn't want to go inside, but I guess we wanted to savor the great outdoors or something. After teasing several conversation subjects, I thought a bit about why we were sitting and chatting in a driveway at night. Why not see who could last in a driveway the longest?

It sounded like an ingenious idea, and surprisingly, everyone liked it. The plan is that we'll have a contest - we chose Driveway-A-Thon 2004 as the name. We'll all hang out on the driveway for as long as possible. We will be able to bring anything we want, such as TVs, books, music, or computers, but we can't leave the driveway except for a five-minute break every three hours. During the night (if we last that long) we'll sleep in the garage. Whoever lasts the longest without cracking might win something besides bragging rights - but that has yet to be agreed upon.

Only a few things can cause the Driveway-A-Thon to be postponed: a hurricane or severe thunderstorm warning issued by the National Weather Service, or temperatures in excess of 100°F. So if severe weather conditions aren't a threat, it'll be driveway all the way starting on Saturday, June 26, 2004, at 9:00 in the morning.

I think we should get corporate sponsors, and maybe the TV stations and newspapers should come too. The things you think of while sitting on a driveway with your friends at night...

Here's quite a bit of information on airport identifier codes, including why ORD stands for O'Hare International Airport. There's a perfectly logical explanation.

Knock knock...

I should be at work right now.

Some of you old folks may remember that I got an office job last October. Every week when I go to work (I have no school on Fridays, so I might as well make money, right?) my mom takes me to the door and I say goodbye and walk into the exciting world of work. On the occasions that the door is locked, I just knock and someone comes to open it.

No one came to open it today. There's always a bunch of people there at 7:45 when I come in, so someone should have gotten the door. But no one was there. I figured they must all have been intensely listening to their semiweekly phone linkup with other faraway offices. As the front door is glass, I saw that the lights were on inside. Not that that meant they had to be there, of course. But you know.

My mom and I decided to call inside, and so I left a message for my boss. After five whole minutes of waiting outside the door, we decided to leave. I felt bad about skipping work, especially if it turned out that everybody was there, but I've never skipped work before so I think they'll forgive me. Also, I haven't gotten paid in six weeks. But never mind that, it's just an uneasy transition between getting paid in cash under the table and receiving an official company paycheck.

Maybe they all went out of town and forgot to tell me. (No, seriously, it could happen.)

Nine cities have bid to host the 2012 Summer Olympics. They are Havana, Istanbul, Leipzig, London, Madrid, Moscow, New York, Paris, and Rio de Janeiro. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) will narrow it down to a "short list" on May 18 of this year and will choose a winner on July 6, 2005.

And just to keep you on track, the 2004 Summer Olympics will be held in Athens, the 2006 Winter Olympics will be in Turin, the 2008 Summer Olympics will be in Beijing, and the 2010 Winter Olympics will be co-hosted in Vancouver and Whistler.

Exams over

My mid-term exams ended yesterday. The first two were the day before yesterday, and the second two were yesterday. Here's how they went down:

• English: I had to write an essay comparing Albert Camus's "The Myth of Sisyphus" to "Pushing Ahead," a newspaper article (published circa 2000) about Ted Bridis, a Vietnam War veteran who lost both his legs and his right arm but decided to live a normal life anyway. The second part of the exam was to write some different types of sentences and label their parts. I finished about a second before the bell rang. Really.
• Science: The first part was 75 multiple choice questions. The second part was a worksheet that looked somewhat familiar. The third part was the kicker: we had to make a brochure about Florida. I guess the science connection (if there was one) was that we had to describe the climate, topography, etc., etc. The teacher gave us a sheet of paper folded into thirds and some cheap crayons. I drew a pretty nice orange on the front, using the techniques I had learned in Drawing class last semester.
• Spanish: I was really jumpy whilst taking the Spanish exam. I could actually see my shirt vibrating due to my heart pounding. I have no idea why I was so nervous; I knew the test was going to be fácil, and it was. Maybe it was because I knew it was going to be very long: 150 (count 'em) multiple choice questions, plus a writing question. Or maybe I was just nervous about my next exam, the last one.
• Global Studies: This was the exam I had been preparing for since last weekend. See, it wasn't a test proper, but rather, the grade was for a report and presentation on a European country (which I've mentioned before). When I went up to give my presentation, good old Mr. Firestone said (before I opened my mouth), "Okay, you got an A, sit down." I'm not that good of a student! My presentation (featuring an old-fashioned posterboard, much like the sizeable portion of the class who also decided not to use PowerPoint) went pretty well, seeing as I read a lot of it from a copy of my report. My delivery wasn't perfect, though; plowing through my essay to cover the main points, I said that wine was grown along the coast. Duh, me: grapes are grown, but wine is not. Oh well, I think I did better than most of my classmates.

Yesterday a photographer came over to my house to shoot me for the upcoming City Link Magazine article on blogs. He was a really cool guy and he had a really cool digital camera. (I kind of like photography, but I don't know if I could make a living out of it.) When we were making arrangements on the phone a few days ago, the only details he gave about the shot was that it shouldn't be near the computer; that would just be "too obvious." Ironically, that was exactly where the photographer for the Sun-Sentinel article chose to have me pose.

After coming into my room and briefly going over my interests, he decided to try two different shots of me. The first was of me (who else?) sitting on my bed and playing my 12-string acoustic guitar that I got last year. The other photo, to be used as a second shot, was of me peeking over one of my dad's gigantic computer books. I'm not big on "Upgrading and Repairing PCs," as the title says, but the other books my dad has are about things like "Using MS-DOS 6.2" and "Windows 98 and the Internet" - dated stuff.

Anyway, the photo shoot, if you could call it that, was quick and painless. Oh, and the article is set to run on April 14, I believe.

It's about time someone came up with this: it's a spam origin locator tool that allows you to trace the approximate geographical origin of any e-mail (in spite of what the name implies). Perhaps it could be helpful in stalking spammers?

On being a hyphenated American

Over the last few hours I've been working on my country project for Mr. Firestone's class. Last week each member of the class picked a European country to write a report and present a presentation on. The project will count for our mid-term grade, in lieu of test (thankfully). I had the last pick, which I was furious about until I was told that the order of pickage was from the student with the lowest average to the highest. But being prepared for the unluckiness that I knew would plague me, I made a list of 10 countries I would like to choose, so if someone chose one of them before it was my turn, I would still have nine left. By the time it was my turn, I had only two countries left on the list: Croatia and Liechtenstein. And knowing that Liechtenstein is very small, I figured the teacher would bar it from being chosen, like he did for Monaco, Vatican City, San Marino, and Andorra. So I went ahead and chose Croatia because my grandfather was from there.

While researching this project I've found out a lot of information about Croatia - mostly statistics and the like. But I've also become aware of Croatia's language and cuisine and the fact that several famous (or semi-famous) people claim Croatian heritage, such as actors John Malkovich and Eric Bana and Maglite founder Anthony Maglica. I, being a white male Christian American, do not particularly identify myself with any minority (except maybe the unorganized minority of left-handers), but now that I know a little more about where no more than 25% of me is from, I can see why minorities are proud to be hyphenated Americans. You're like in this little group with your fellow minority members, and you get to have cool bumper stickers and speak your own language and go to your own stores and eat your own food and fly your own flag and get into college just for being you and basically harass the majority any time they exclude you. I can see why they like it. But as for me, I'd rather be a true American - not entirely without ethnic pride, mind you, but with a greater concern for America as a whole. After all, we're all in America together, so we might as well act like it.

Tredici's one-year anniversary has passed without incident. I promised that I'd redesign the aforelinked web site by the anniversary on March 19, but I just didn't get around to starting it. I've been busy thinking about working on the aforementioned project (and actually working on it a little). After mid-term exams are over on Thursday, I'll have time to loosen up and maybe start working on the redesign. If not then, then definitely by spring break, which is, for all intents and purposes, the 2nd day of April till the 12th.

Have you always wanted to have your own blog just like The World of Stuff but never have the time to write stuff? Say no more! This blog drone generator can handle all the work for you. Just enter a topic phrase, and the site will go through real blogs to assemble a long, dull piece that might have something to do with your subject. Works in English and Polish.

Been busy

I've been pretty busy lately. This week I had to write an essay on Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, and I have a very important report on Croatia that I have to finish (and start) by next Thursday.

On St. Patrick's Day, I pledged not to wear green. Unsurprisingly, I was pinched, as is the custom with people who decide to be different and not wear green. But I was only pinched once, and I pinched the pincher because he wasn't wearing green either. Then I felt better.

Dihydrogen monoxide: it's a colorless, tasteless fluid. Accidental inhalation is fatal. It's a major component of acid rain and is associated with violent weather such as hurricanes and tornadoes. It contributes to soil erosion. It's present in Styrofoam, soft drinks, oven cleaners, pesticides, and some explosives. Athletes take it to improve performance. It was used for torture during World War II. Learn more about the dangers of dihydrogen monoxide here.

A city in California recently planned to ban Styrofoam cups upon discovering that dihydrogen monoxide was used in their production. So, if this chemical is everywhere, why didn't anybody know about it until now? Actually, you may know it by the name of "water." Yes, dihydrogen monoxide is H₂O. Two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen, remember? Apparently, it took those city officials a while to get that.

Pi Day

The number pi (3.14159265...) has been the subject of mathematical scrutiny for thousands of years. As the relationship between a circle's circumference and diameter, the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Chinese came up with their approximations of pi, all of which were close within a decimal place or two. According to the Bible passage quoted above, pi = 3. We know much pi better now; it has been calculated to over 200 billion decimal places. And seeing that pi is an irrational number (that is, one that neither terminates nor repeats), we're likely to push that number further until new supercomputers are no longer being made (or until we get bored with doing it... whichever comes first).

The 14th day of March is often considered "Pi Day" because the date in mm-dd format is 3-14. Since today is Pi Day, here are some pi-related links:

• The Pi-Search Page - Allows you to search for a string of digits within the first 100 million digits of pi. Try your phone number or your birthday.
• A History of Pi - A history of how pi has been calculated over the ages.
• First 1,000 Digits of Pi - There in all its glory.
• The Ridiculously Enhanced Pi Page - Interesting pi-related links.

Finally, an answer to a nagging question: we've found its value to billions of decimal places, but how accurate does pi need to be? Only 47 decimal places of pi would be sufficiently precise to inscribe a circle around the visible universe that doesn't deviate from perfect circularity by more than the distance across a single proton. There you have it. (And there's that number 47 popping up again... but that's another story.)

News Headline!

Found in a drawer in my room, I wrote the following "news report" when I was in the 4th or 5th grade, around 5 years ago. It centers around The Elusive Brian, a not-too-intelligent character that was (partially) the product of my and my friends' imaginations. The piece, composed on a typewriter I happened to have in my room, is reproduced here with all glaring spelling and grammatical errors intact and relevant informational links added.

Yesterday I went with a bunch of my friends to see Secret Window, starring Johnny Depp. It was good. Not really good, but okay good. (I'm not very good at reviewing movies.)

Speaking of Windows, herein lies a rant. Until today, I had one file in my Windows XP box in which I kept all my digital camera photos taken since I got the gadget in 2002. Today I decided to break up the photos into subfolders for pictures taken in 2002, 2003, and 2004. That way, waiting for the folder to load wouldn't be as painful... right? So, I moved the photos to their respective subfolders to find that some of them were out of order, and I realized it right away. They weren't arranged by the "Picture Taken On" date that was part of each photo's properties - they were arranged alphabetically, I think. I looked at each picture's properties to find the correct dates, and lo and behold, it was like that particular attribute never even existed. I tried sorting them by "Date Modified," which almost worked but fell short of my goal to get the photos in the order I had taken them. See, back when I was still trying to use my blasted camera, I failed to set the date after putting in the batteries, so some images' "Date Modified" is the impossible default of January 1, 2000. This makes sorting by Date Modified inaccurate as the first images become a collage of the several occasions on which I forgot to set the date. Going through photos taken on different dates, the Date Modified can be either the date I transferred the photos to the computer or the date that the photo was taken. "Date Created" doesn't work nicely either. After messing with this and that, I can't find any other way to restore them to their original order other than dragging the images around manually, which I'm not too keen on doing but will probably end up doing anyway. I hate, hate, hate Windows.

Rant not over. This isn't the first time I've had trouble with the photos. A few months back, I painstakingly went through each image and provided a detailed description in the "Comments" section of the properties, including who took the picture, who was in it, and what was going on. Recently they were all wiped out, and helpful information like exposure time and whether the flash was on were gone too. Curse you, Windows!!

More Mr. Firestone

On Wednesday, school was almost out when Mr. Firestone asked me what my site's URL was. He then proceeded to go to this site on his laptop and summoned me over to ask some questions about it. He thought the situation spotlighted in my recent post Soy americano was strange (as did I), and he apparently found the informational links embedded in entries such as Change for a million? interesting. Then he asked to see what I had written about him, and I directed him to my entry from January 23. I felt somewhat uneasy listening to him read aloud the things I had written about him. I didn't say anything bad about him, mind you, but my Global Studies grade is in his hands, and it's extremely difficult to pass his class with an A.

Yesterday I decided to wear a Beatles T-shirt to school. In Mr. Firestone's class there was an open class discussion (read: multi-sided teacher-endorsed cross-classroom argument) about something regarding my friend Bryce and llamas, when Bryce noticed I was wearing a Beatles shirt and said that the Beatles weren't very good. From there, things in my memory are just a blur. Along one row there was a chorus of comments like "The Beatles were good!", and from there everyone was stating their own musical opinions with lines like "You like so-and-so? They suck!", and eventually Mr. Firestone was arguing with a punk about whether or not punk rock died in the 80's, the former arguing that it did and that that didn't really matter at all because only the British could do it anyway.

Kids, there are three subjects that you should never bring up in a conversation, and they are religion, politics, and music.

Doesn't every TV show always seem like every other one? Here's a collection of oft-used characters, plot devices, and other TV clichés.

Change for a million?

It's official: the human race as we know it is spiraling downward to an end.

A woman tried to spend one of those novelty $1,000,000 bills at a Wal-Mart in Georgia. She was arrested and is facing a count of forgery. (The details)

Soy americano

An interesting exchange in today's Spanish class started with one of my friend's loud, sickly-sounding coughs.

Sometimes the teacher likes to talk to me, probably because I sit near her desk.

Do I not look American or something? I don't even have an accent (besides an American one, of course). The teacher must have had me confused with someone who has culture.

Last month I got a $1 bill autographed by the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, whose signature traditionally appears engraved on the note. (The current Secretary is John W. Snow.) It turns out they'll give you an autographed bill if you just ask nicely. Well, the first Snow-autographed $1 bill to be sold on eBay went for a whopping $36 last week, and I'm sure that that price will go up in the future. I'm not planning to sell mine, though; it's a permanent piece in my currency collection and I'm proud to have it.

Tredici news and views

It's been almost a year since I invented the card game Tredici. And still, I'm lucky if the Tredici web site gets one hit a day. I think one of the main reasons that Tredici is not even mildly popular is that its site is really lame. It looks like I threw it together in a half an hour, and I probably did. Even the name of the site (The Official Tredici Home Page) sounds so 1997. On the other hand, a card game like Wyoming Cowboy (go ahead, click the link) has such a cool web site that it makes me want to learn the game (even though it sounds fiendishly complicated). It even has its own domain name to boot! Now, I'm not going to waste money on a domain name for the Tredici Home Page, but I will spruce it up in time for Tredici's one-year anniversary of completion on March 19.

Following that thread, I really miss playing Tredici with my chums. I never get to see some of them now that we go to different schools. I remember the day after I had finished the rules to the game. It was a Thursday, and we were going on a religious retreat at a church near my house (we went to a Catholic school, ye know). I came in (late, even though I had gone by foot) to find my friends all playing Tredici - this game that had only been a shadow of an idea in my head on Monday. They loved it, if I recall correctly. But that was about as popular as Tredici ever got. We did play it after that, but eventually Nick, my friend who usually had the cards and was therefore entitled to choose what games we should play, grew tired of the game and refused to let his cards be used for it. (I think it was just because I made it up.) In spite of that, some of the guys and I still play whenever we occasionally meet (usually at our church's youth group meetings).

But like I said, those moments are rare now. I still love Tredici, and I'd be willing to pay someone to write a graphic-based Tredici computer game. Not that I have a whole lot of money, but if some ambitious programmer liked the game a lot, they'd be willing to do it for cheap. Maybe.

(Read the rules of Tredici if you're curious.)

Many cities and towns claim to be a "Capital of the World" of a certain subject or other item. Allentown, Pennsylvania, claims to be the Truck Capital of the World. Albertville, Alabama proclaims itself the Fire Hydrant Capital of the World. You may wish to visit the Carpet Capital of the World (Dalton, Georgia), the Polar Bear Capital of the World (Churchill, Manitoba), the Fried Chicken Capital of the World (Pittsburg, Kansas), or the Reading Capital of the World (Tifton, Georgia). And then both New York and Paris claim themselves to be the Capital of the World. (List of Self-Proclaimed Capitals of the World.)

Ten years of spam

Ten years ago today, the first modern spam was sent. It was not sent to a particular person, but rather, it was posted to many of the Usenet newsgroups that existed at the time. Quite ironically, it was sent by a law firm, and the subject matter was green card lotteries. As spam was a new issue, the outrage caused by the several postings of this message was relatively huge. The firm was not even sorry but proud of their accomplishment. The spamming we know of today had begun. These days, over half of all e-mails sent are spam. (The phrase "first modern spam" might have bemused you. Well, the message of March 5, 1994 was not the first spam ever. That distinction may go to a message sent in 1978!)

Speaking of really old stuff, a list of the 100 oldest currently registered .com domains is worth a look. Some familiar names such as Xerox, IBM, and AT&T make the upper reaches of the list, but the number one oldest .com is symbolics.com, registered on March 15, 1985 - 5 years before the World Wide Web was invented, and 10 years before it really took off.

Sick of all the depressing news reports in the media? Read some good news for a change.

March forth

My fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Amato, talked of a joke that only works on one day of the year - today, the fourth of March.

Ask someone, "What's today's date?"

Then they say, "March fourth."

And then you march forth...

Here's an interesting list of Latin phrases and words used in English. Even though Latin is a dead language, it has had a profound impact on English. How often do you hear carpe diem, caveat emptor, de facto, et cetera, magnum opus, memento, non sequitir, per capita, or post mortem? All of them came from Latin, as you probably could have guessed. And there's many more where those came from.

Because newer is not always better: OldVersion.com hundreds of old versions of popular programs. Why would anyone want to download an older version? Well, maybe you want your favorite programs without the spyware that plagues so many of them these days. Or maybe the newest version of your favorite program is not supported by your ancient computer. Or, maybe downloading AOL 1.0 sparks a trip down memory lane, hearkening back good times from the days of, I don't know, maybe Commodore computers. Or Usenet.

Minor inconvenience (heh heh)

Due to an error on my part, the World of Stuff home page was replaced with a buggy version of the Other Stuff page for nearly 24 hours. I'm not exactly sure how I was dumb enough to do it (and not to notice), but I did somehow. Scorn me under your breath.

Today, Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) testing continued from yesterday. This time the subject was math. Easy stuff. Maybe a little too easy? It seems that the state no longer cares if you use your brain. They give you a little calculator and a "cheat sheet" of important formulae and like ilk. All you have to do is know how to solve the problems. Actual adding, subtracting, dividing, and multiplying skills are virtually ignored. I can see that in 50 years, if you took away everyone's calculators and gave them pencils, they wouldn't even know which end to write with.

But maybe it's not as easy as I think it is. According to murmurs around school, some parents want to make an end of the FCAT, saying their kids are suicidal over it. (A lot does ride on the line... like promotion to the next grade.) Some of them even want to make Governor Jeb Bush take the test he has so much faith in. If he passes, they say, the FCAT should be kept; but if he fails, the test should be done away with.

At least, that's what the murmurs say, anyway.

Check out a live webcam in my hometown of Deerfield Beach, Florida. This particular camera is on the pier that overlooks the Atlantic Ocean, offering a great view of the sun, surf, and sand.

We have met the enemy, and it is the FCAT

Today I took the first part of the FCAT, the state standardized test. Having never been to a public school until this year, I had never taken it before. But that's not to say that I didn't know what to expect; my private school administered the Iowa Tests every year. I had been told by those who had taken both that the FCAT is much easier than the Iowa Tests, which were pretty easy themselves. How hard could it be?

To some, the FCAT is nothing but an enemy, a foe, a dragon that must be slain after sharpening the sword of knowledge. But the ever-immortal dragon comes back year after year, seemingly without end. This test determines whether or not you get promoted to the next grade come August.

The FCAT is not only important on an individual basis, but to each school as a whole. A school's FCAT scores influence whether it is rated as an A, B, C, D, or F school. My Pompano Beach High is currently an A school - but barely, they reluctantly point out. And currently, the school is one of only two in the district on a four-day week. If the FCAT grades slip, we could lose our precious four-day week next year like the other school.

I thought it was pretty easy, but there's more of the test to come.

One hundred years ago today, children's author Dr. Seuss was born. Who doesn't remember reading his wonderful rhymes coupled with imaginative imagery? Everyone has a favorite Dr. Seuss book. I was particularly fond of On Beyond Zebra, in which the reader learns about the part of the alphabet that comes after Z. Kids weren't the only ones who enjoyed his books; in 1984, The Butter Battle Book, a satire of the arms race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, enjoyed a stint on the adults' bestseller list. Seuss, whose real name was Theodor Geisel, died in 1991. After his death, the Dr. Seuss National Memorial was built in his native Springfield, Massachusetts.

February 29, 2004: A Photo Essay is up.