Archive - August 2004

Copies of my school's yearbook (of the 2003-04 school year) arrived yesterday. Yessireebob, the 2004 Beanpicker contains over 150 pages (some in full color!) of memories of my freshman year of high school. The reason they were so late is that the yearbook committee wanted to include photos of the graduation, prom, etc., etc. My teacher Mr. Frey, who is in charge of the yearbook, said that if they wanted to get it in by the end of the year (June), it would have to be finished by the end of February, eliminating the aforementioned events and details on spring sports. Though I think it's better this way, I feel compelled to ask myself why exactly I bought a yearbook in the first place. I do want a copy to cherish, but I'm not overgiddy about having it. Part of the reason might be that no one signed it. In lieu of signing yearbooks at the end of last year, they passed out packets of almost blank paper ("Autographs") for your friends to sign. I think I got a record low of signatures, but I do like the ones I got.

Oh, the yearbook itself. The cover of this Beanpicker is plain, and the title is "Moving on Up." Extremely generic, but I guess they all are. Most of my elementary/junior high school's yearbook titles are just as nondescript:

• "We Are Family" (1995)
• "35 Years of Excellence" (1996)
• "We're Number One" (1997)
• "Leaving Our Mark!" (1998)
• "Seasons of Change" (1999)
• "Celebrate 2000" (2000)
• "In Our Wildest Dreams" (2001)
• "United" (2002) (the 9/11-themed yearbook)
• "The Dawn of a New Horizon" (2003)

I still don't think my yearbook picture is very good, but I doubt I'll be able to do any better this year. More importantly, I now have a slightly out-of-date handbook of who's who at school. Yes, I'm that bad with names and faces. Now when somebody talks about so-and-so, I can look up his/her/its picture if he/she/it went to the school last year. It's pretty interesting putting names to faces that I've seen around and pictures of people I know that were taken just before I met them. Looking through the yearbook, I've found people I used to know from way back whom I never ran into at all last year!

I'm sort of surprised to find myself in another picture in the yearbook; you know, one of those snapshots around school that they provide silly captions for. It was a picture from my science class last year. We were making some kind of Gak-like substance to form a model of the layers of the earth. In the photo, I'm mixing the ingredients (it's a rather tedious process) and the teacher is saying something to the person next to me. They spelled my first name wrong in the caption ("Jordan" instead of Jordon), but with my actual picture it's correct (yesss). Funny that my difficult last name is spelled right consistently, but it's my first name that gets everybody.

Today in my Programming class, we were making all sorts of text boxes and buttons when the teacher called my name out of the blue. "Nice site," he said. I was so dumbfounded that I didn't know what to say. Nice site? What? He explained that the other day he was typing out an e-mail, and when he went to paste something, my URL was inexplicably on the clipboard. I've visited this site on the school's computers before, but certainly never on the teacher's computer. Freaky. Just freaky.

Often the best part of a book is the opening sentence, or the hook. At openinghooks.us there's a list of memorable opening hooks. They range from the classic ("Call me Ishmael," "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...") to the more obscure, but most are certainly interesting. See also what makes a good hook, and feel free to add your own favorites to the database.

Yesterday my church's high school youth group held a barbecue to kick off its year. My band, Vine Ripe Tomatoes, was asked to play at the event (above; I'm second from left). This came as no surprise because each of us is or has been a member of the youth group. On Saturday we met at my house to practice. We decided we'd play the White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army." We had planned to do it for our previous gig back in February, but we didn't. So Sunday was the first time we ever played that song for an audience.

I'd have to say our rendition of the song was pretty good, considering we sort of polished it in one day. Okay, it was still pretty rough when we did it, but the overall sound was good. The other songs we did - "Yellow Submarine," "Dizzy Miss Lizzy," and "Birthday," all by the Beatles - were all right too. The drummer sort of stopped early during "Lizzy," truncating the song to an uncomfortably short length. I can't blame him, though, because in all our obsession of pinning down "Army," it was "Lizzy" that we paid the least attention to. And besides, he's new to the band. Speakinawhich, I think our new lineup - with five guys instead of four - is probably better. Sure, it might take longer for us to get a song down, but when (if) we do, it will have a fuller sound, and that's really what we need.

I thought it was interesting that we played this gig on August 29, the date in 1966 when the Beatles played their very last concert. Our previous gig was on February 7, the date in 1964 when they famously arrived in America for the first time. We like the Beatles, you know. It's a weird coincidence.

The other day I upgraded my version of Windows XP to Windows XP Service Pack 2. The version of Internet Explorer that comes with it blocks pop-up ads, which is pretty cool. Also, something about firewalls. Other than that, I haven't really noticed much of a difference. Oh yeah, when you boot XP, it just says "Windows XP" instead of making the distinction between the Home and Professional editions. Also, the fine print on that screen has changed from "Copyright © 1985-2002 Microsoft Corporation" to "Copyright © Microsoft Corporation." Or something like that. The dates are gone, that's all I remember.

I've been trying out the Firefox browser over the past few days. The few people who use it say it's better than Internet Explorer, but they're full of it. One of the big things I've heard about it is "tabbed browsing," where you can switch between web pages using tabs in a single window. It's a novel concept, but it's certainly not necessary. And in case you didn't know, Firefox is basically Netscape on steroids. And it renders The World of Stuff to make it look like crud. Don't waste your time with it.

My poor computer is running out of room for stuff. It's starting to get a little sluggish, so some things are going to have to go (it's either that or get a new hard drive). I'm thinking I should get rid of old stuff like about 800 Pokémon pictures or countless old MS Paint drawings. And maybe I could burn old digital camera photographs to CDs. What I should probably do first, though, is uninstall programs that I'm never going to use, like Anagram Genius, GetItBack, and Firefox.

I've had a lot of stuff going on over the past few days. Tuesday night was the school's open house for the parents to meet the teachers. I went along for some reason. That, along with a glut of homework, prevented me from even getting on the computer that night. I promised that I would join my church's youth group band, so I practiced with them on Wednesday night. That ate up that night. On Thursday I had a psychology test, and I only might have been exaggerating when I said it was the hardest test I had ever taken in my life. Mr. Firestone is evil (and he admits that if you try to accuse him of it). He can't give an easy test. They have to be hard. Even if I had studied... more... I wouldn't have been able to finish it during the class period. I actually had time to post last night, but I didn't feel like it. I also was thinking about going to my school's first football game of the season, but I didn't do that either. They lost anyway.

Recently BugMeNot.com, a site that has login information for sites that require free registration, was down for several days. The explanation they offered after they went back up was that "our stinkin' host pulled the plug on us without notice (pretty obvious they were pressured somehow)." Naturally, anyone hosting such stuff would be pressured by the thousands of webmasters who require registration to view part or all of their sites, usually to collect demographic information and spam, spam, spam.

Anyway, BugMeNot's solution was to move to NearlyFreeSpeech.NET, a highly affordable host which also happens to host a particular site called The World of Stuff. Coincidentally, before BugMeNot's move, I sent them an animated button (which can be seen here; it's the one by "Jordan") to help further their cause of a free-registration-free Internet (along with which I sent a link to this site). Could they, when they were in a jam to find a new host, have possibly been enlightened by following the voluntary links to NearlyFreeSpeech.NET that abound around here? It's a possibility. I don't really want to bug them about it, so I'll just smugly consider myself the guy who saved BugMeNot.

I wrote about BugMeNot on April 30 when it had user names and passwords for 725 sites. That number has since shot up to 23,396 as I type this.

I think most people at Pompano Beach High School don't bother to poke around the school web site, but I do. There's an interesting page about the history of the school. PBHS was founded in 1928, making it the second oldest high school in the county. It closed during the 1984-1985 school year (my uncle belonged to the infamous class of '85). When it reopened in 1997, it became an all-magnet school (basically a school specialized in a particular curriculum - ours is "International Business and Technology" or something).

I'm sure few of my classmates know that our once great Golden Tornado band played at Richard Nixon's inauguration and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. I'm also sure they don't know that our teams were called the Beanpickers until 1958. (The yearbook was called the Beanpicker from its inception in 1942 up until 1985. I wonder if they still call it that? I doubt it, but I haven't received my yearbook from last year yet. It's coming this week.) In addition, the school used to have a monument to the graduates who served in the Second World War, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. One alumna who achieved greatness was swimmer Pamela Kruse, who won a silver medal in the women's 800-meter freestyle at the 1968 Olympics. I think there was a picture of her in one of the old buildings.

Indeed, there's a lot to be known about this school. It's steeped in history which has largely been thrown away and forgotten due to a 12-year closure and the recent demolition of most of the 1952 buildings, which we had classes in until April of this year. The most interesting thing I've learned was that the school's motto is "Non summis sed ascendentes" - Latin for "Not at the summit, but ascending." If this doesn't describe Pompano Beach High School perfectly, I don't know what does.

BlogPulse tracks trends in the blogosphere. Kind of neat.

This site has maps that show which countries AltaVista, the Associated Press, the BBC, BlogPulse, CNN, Google News, the New York Post, the New York Times, Reuters, and the Washington Post are tending to pay attention to today. There are also tables comparing each country's "Global Attention Profile" to its population and gross domestic product (GDP).

My church's high school youth group spent several weeks putting together a video to explain what we've done recently and what we're planning on doing in the future. The theme is a news show where the different announcements are news stories. The video was played last night at the first meeting of the year. I ended up in almost all of the scenes, because somebody wanted an strong announcer voice, or a reporter, or a guitarist, or because there was no one else to play a particular part. (I was only planning on being in one skit!)

At last night's meeting, I managed to bootleg a few scenes using my digital camera. At the beginning of the tape was supposed to be an interview about a religious retreat called Antioch. (I wrote part of the script, which can be seen in the hands of the "interviewer" and "interviewee.") No proper take was recorded, and the skit was not incorporated into the "news" segments. If you're very bored and have a fast Internet connection, watch some of the outtakes (MPEG, 2:07, ~44 MB). Though you won't see me, it is I letting out the shrill "Eeee! Eeee!" at 0:40. The video will remain here for a few days.

It's 1961, and at St. Paul's School, a prep boarding school in New Hampshire, the top rock band is the Electras. In fact, the seven-man outfit (including a maraca player!) has just cut a record. Where are they headed next?

Well, here in 2004 you might have heard of bass guitarist John F. Kerry. He's running for President of the United States!

That's according to this site, which has fairly convincing proof - a photograph, autographed by Kerry and others, of the band. The site is selling copies of their album, which has been rereleased on CD. You can also buy it at Tower Records on Broadway and 66th in Manhattan. Be sure to listen to the sound clips; they're not that bad.

"You know," my sister told me a few days ago, "I actually like watching the Olympics."

"Hah!" I said. "They're boring. Besides, everyone knows the Olympics were made up to boost NBC's ratings."

The International Olympic Committee has a ridiculous policy regarding links to the Athens 2004 web site:

Oops! My bad!

Now what happens if (when) you violate the terms? The policy doesn't say. Will they tell your ISP on you? Will they send you to jail? What would the charges be? Will they ban you from the Olympics? Will they ban you from watching the Olympics?

In another move that proves the IOC doesn't get it, they have banned Olympians, coaches, and officials, from writing firsthand accounts for Web sites until the Games conclude on August 29. (The sole exception is for those who post on sites that were not specifically set up for the Olympics.) Worse yet, the picture, video, audio, they might record in Athens may never be posted without the IOC's prior permission.

The Olympics: money first, and common sense somewhere down the list.

Someone named Tara Bauer in Wisconsin has claimed that this web site is hers. Her MSN profile says "Take a look at my personal Web site"; the sentence contains a link here. It's publicity, but not favorable publicity. I've shot her a short e-mail telling her to stop. I'm sure the link is a mistake because she couldn't have typed it out herself; the rest of her profile is written in all lower case or sPaZz CaPs. She probably meant to add it as her favorite site, but the template only allowed for a personal homepage link. Or something.

Regarding my last post, my mom told me not to curse in my blog again - I had used the dreaded "H" word. I think that an isolated incident of a fairly mild oath such as the "H" word is acceptable. It certainly is so on TV sitcoms, and I watch those all the time. Should I stop watching sitcoms, or TV altogether? (After all, worse things have been said and done in the "vast wasteland.") That would be ridiculous. You can't stop an "H" word here and there.

Now, a theological discussion of sorts; therefore, "H" word filter = off. Why is it often considered unacceptable for people influenced by Christian values to say the word "hell"? Because hell is to be feared. However, God should also be feared, and Christians certainly do say His name. If I were discussing heaven and hell with the rest of my church's youth group, which is entirely possible and has happened before, we would actually say "hell," but we probably wouldn't if we weren't at a formal meeting. How do you reckon those out? The situation would have been different if I had used the word literally and in a rude manner, e.g. "Go to the 'H' word." But I didn't. I didn't mean it that way, and I didn't mean it in any way that would have offended God or the FCC or the minds of millions of young children.

In conclusion, stuff happens. I will not say the feared "H" word again here, but only because my mom said so, and I don't want to incur her wrath. Have a squeaky clean day!

The first day of my sophomore year wasn't that bad. The second day of school was even better.

My first class is Business Computer Programming I (I call it "Programming" to save precious breath). I think I'm going to like it a lot. The teacher, Mr. Mumtaz, is Turkish. I've known that he tends to use "Mumtaztic" as an adjective. (For example, his "Virtual Classroom" is a "Mumtaztic web page with Mumtaztic stuff.") Not only is he a computer guru, but he also plays chess. He seems to be all right. Cool teacher + no homework + no books + free time on the computers at the end of class + the satisfaction of creating your own programs = good. The remainder of the week we'll do flowcharting, and next week we'll actually be doing stuff with Visual Basic .NET.

Next is Biology ("Bio"). My teacher, Mr. Frey, seems to be pretty good. He certainly speaks loudly, so I'll be sure to stay alert in his class. But the thing is, I hate science and I hate doing lab experiments. If he gets me to like them (or at least understand them or do them right), I will be able to say he is a truly good teacher. (But I still might not like all the work I have to do.)

Then I have lunch ("lunch"). I don't really like lunch right now because a lot of the people I used to hang out with go to lunch at a different time. But at least I have my sister and a couple of my friends. The lines are longer now because there are more students and the same number of lunch periods. Luckily, I think I'll be able to make it in line early most of the time.

I'm glad Mr. Firestone's my teacher for Psychology ("Firestone"). At first I thought Psychology would be interesting, then I wasn't sure, but now I think it will be interesting except for the massive assignments he will assign - such as something involving nine weeks and a 25-page list of books. Maybe I should have picked TV Production.

Last but not least, Geometry Honors ("aargh!") makes me feel uneasy. The teacher, Ms. Cale, is the young, naive type - the kind that is easily manipulated. Not that I would use this to my advantage, of course. She seems to be nice enough to make sure that you know what she's teaching. As I said in my last post, I don't entirely think I belong in Geometry Honors. However, I can blame that on going to a private school up to the eighth grade. When you go to a public high school, you are supposed to have gone to a public junior high (er, "middle school") where you earned credits for Algebra if you were smart. Then in high school you could jump right into Geometry and be in whatever the hell comes after that in your sophomore year. But me, I'm stuck in Geometry, even though I'm just as good at math as them. I think half the kids in my class are freshmen; they look younger than me, anyway. A few I recognize as sophomores, but they're mostly not very bright. I could take Algebra II next semester (instead of next year), but that means I would have to bump a class and take it online, which is a pain. So I guess Geometry is just where I really belong.

This may not be useful to you, but it is at least slightly interesting to me. It's a map of recent lightning strikes in south Florida, which is where I live. It shows both cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-ground strokes. The map is updated every 15 minutes, and it generally shows the last 20 minutes of activity. Supposedly, Florida receives more lightning strikes than anywhere in the world.

School reopens tomorrow. You may have noticed that I haven't been fretting about school starting as much as I did last year. Last year I didn't really know what I was getting into, and that can always be scary. I only had a few friends, and not many of my best. I didn't know where anything was or how anything worked. But this year will be better. I have a lot of friends (or at least people I know kind of well). I know where everything is. To boot, I will have elevated status.

The only things to worry about are the teachers and the work. Actually, maybe just the work. Every year, your teachers tell you that the next year is going to be harder/tougher/more difficult/just plain "different." But here's the biggest thing to remember: it's not different. Nothing ever became terribly difficult like they said. I expect that my sophomore year will not be different in that respect. If it is, and if they actually do get significantly tougher, I will be mortally surprised. So that leaves the teachers themselves. I suspect that a few of them will be mean, at least at first. But you never know.

In other news, I finally finished my summer reading project today. It wasn't that hard, really. The book was short, and the quotes were easy to analyze. It was all good. It just took me the entire summer vacation to do it. All I really have to do now is empty my backpack (it's still packed from last year) and fill it with the very basics that you need for the first day of school: paper, folders, pencils, and pens. I have all of those.

Here's my schedule for the coming semester (if you'll recall, each class is 110 minutes long):

1. Business Computer Programming I
2. Biology I Honors
3. Psychology I
4. Geometry Honors

I picked Programming because the only other real choice was Web Design, I think, and as you can see, I pretty much know everything that they teach in that class, except Flash (but who needs it?) and Dreamweaver (but who needs it?). The school board must have some kind of deal with Macromedia.

I might not like biology, considering that I hate biology. But if I have a good teacher, which is possible, it'll be all right.

Psychology should be pretty cool. My dad took it when he went to my school and he says it's pretty fun. I think I'm going to have good ol' Mr. Firestone for that class. I hope and pray that I do. He's a good teacher when it comes to geography; it'll be interesting to see how he handles the subject of psychology.

Don't talk to me about math. I get good grades in it, but that's because everyone else is in college-level math, and I'm in rock-level math. I think it stems from not having gone to a public school before last year. I had to start high school with Algebra I, and that means Geometry this year. Some people I know have done it already, because they already went to public schools and had received formal credit for Algebra I there. Don't talk to me about math.

Lunch will be either before or during third period. I hope it's before, because I don't want to have to wait long to eat, and taking a break in the middle of a class to eat lunch is just insane. Speaking of bureaucrats, the school day starts and ends ten minutes later this year. That means it will start at 7:05 and end at 3:15. Furthermore, I should go to bed ten minutes later and wake up ten minutes later, and balance will be restored to the world. I don't really care about that, but I do care that the occasional half days will now fall on Thursdays, meaning even less school (as my school has all Fridays off). Or does it? This school year starts two weeks earlier but ends only one week earlier. I don't know if the half days make up for that extra week or not, or if there's extra vacation. I'm confused now. Thank you, bureaucrats.

You know, I think this is going to be The Year. During this year, which I have formally dubbed The Year, I will try to

• be more outgoing. My freshman year, which was very hard on me, made me more quiet and introverted. I will participate more in class and socialize with more people.
• learn to drive. I'm old enough now to get my learner's permit, so I might as well jump on the bandwagon (station wagon?).
• umm...
• win the girl of my dreams. Haha, yeah right.
• let me think, here...
• maintain my good grades? Okay, that's it.

Come June 2, the last day of school, I'll take a look at this poor excuse for a list and see which points I'll have accomplished.

In conclusion, I'm not really nervous about school starting. I mean, I'm not really nervous like I was last year. I'm sure everything will be okay after the first week or so. And I'll let you, the reader, know how it goes.

Wikipedia has a list of notable tropical cyclones. "Tropical cyclone" is just a generic name for a hurricane/typhoon/whatever. Here are some interesting tidbits:

The World Meteorological Organization retires names of hurricanes that are particularly notorious. However, Tropical Storm Allison of 2001 caused such severe flood damage that its name was retired, even though it never strengthened to a hurricane.

The Atlantic hurricane season lasts from June 1 to November 30, when the conditions are right for hurricanes to form. However, Tropical Storm Ana formed in April 2003, making it one of the few Atlantic storms ever to have formed that early in the year. In addition, two tropical storms (Odette and Peter) formed in December of that year.

In March of this year, the first South Atlantic hurricane in recorded history hit Brazil. Tropical cyclones in the South Atlantic are extraordinarily rare; there have only been two others (in 1991 and January 2004), and those didn't reach hurricane strength or make landfall. As a result, the storm did not have an official name, but it was informally dubbed Catarina after the Brazilian state that it impacted the hardest. (And, for the record, many Brazilians refuse to believe that the storm was a hurricane because they pride their country in being hurricane-free.)

All these once-in-a-lifetime weather events, and no one bothered to tell me.

I'm back from Ohio. Here's how my trip went.

On Saturday, August 7, my aunt, my dad, and my grandmother went to Ft. Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport. During one of the many steps that must be taken before boarding a plane, I saw a sign that said that "making any jokes or statements regarding bombs" was prohibited. Now, I know the Constitutional provision of free speech does not work everywhere, but that seems just a tad extreme. For example, you couldn't say

or

or

And of course, there was much taking off of shoes. Thank you, Richard Reid.

The flight was okay. I had never been on an airplane before, but from what I understood, the flight was a smooth and easy one. It did appear that way. We flew into Pittsburgh International Airport and rented an SUV. For some reason, it was registered in New York. My dad, who did all the driving, used the New York license plates as an excuse to pull some stunts in traffic. We drove to Cleveland from the airport. We got a couple of rooms at a cheap hotel. The place smelled like smoke, so our clothes ended up smelling like smoke too.

Then we went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. They have this public art project, GuitarMania II, going on, so inside and outside the place were giant guitars. I wrote about one of them, the Cheatar, a couple months ago. Well, here's my picture with the Cheatar in the lobby:

We actually went past the lobby on Monday. The Rock Hall is pretty neat. Naturally, I have never really appreciated (or heard of) some of the acts featured, but the Beatles stuff made the visit worthwhile. They had a bunch of things that belonged to John Lennon, including his Sgt. Pepper jacket, his Help! coat, some other jacket, his 1964 Rickenbacker 325 guitar (or one like it), a pair of his glasses, some of his early drawings, and his handwritten lyrics of "In My Life," "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," and other songs. Other than John stuff, they had a jacket worn by Ringo Starr, and maybe something owned by George Harrison, but I can't remember what. A guitar, methinks. Though Paul McCartney is an individual inductee, I didn't see anything of his.

At the gift shop, which was an FYE in disguise, they had vinyl records for sale, so I bought a shiny new copy of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in its original format. I know I probably won't play it, but what the heck. I mean, it's neat to have. I know in my last post I vowed not to give my money to the major record labels, so I'll offset that purchase with an equivalent donation to Downhill Battle.

Other than that, we did some things like eating at restaurants and visiting friends and relatives. Gosh, I have a lot of relatives. I never realized that until now. I'm sure I have even more than the ones I saw.

On Thursday we drove back to Pittsburgh and stayed at my great aunt's house. Upon hearing that I bought a Beatles LP, she gave me the ones she had: The Beatles (the "White Album"), Abbey Road, Hey Jude, and The Beatles 1967-1970 (the "Blue Album"). They're in pretty good shape, it seems. Plus, Hey Jude (which is called The Beatles Again on early discs such as mine) is a compilation that has never been issued on CD. Cool. Plus plus, the Blue Album comes with a sort of promotional sheet that contains the track listings of the Red and Blue Albums on one side, and a catalog of Beatles and solo Beatle albums, singles, cassettes, and 8-tracks on the other. I wonder if it's worth anything. Some of the discs I've peeked at have some sort of dead larvae stuck to them. If I intend to play them, those will have to go. I could use my parents' turntable or get my own. I'd prefer the latter.

Friday night we flew back down, but we were a few minutes late because we had to avoid Hurricane Charley. Luckily, ol' Chuck spared my area, so all was well. And here I am.

Facts: the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which represents the five (soon to be four) major record labels and their subsidiaries in the United States, conspires to fix CD prices, drives families into bankruptcy by suing children, gives artists and bands a tiny percentage of profits, lies about its member labels, keeps non-RIAA music off the airwaves by paying middlemen to bribe radio stations, actually bribes members of Congress to win their favor, and generally holds a virtual monopoly on the recording industry.

Opinion: the RIAA must go.

And now there's Downhill Battle, "a non-profit organization working to end the major label monopoly and build a better, fairer music industry." They've been around for a year or so now. Their Reasons to Get Rid of the Major Labels are a must-read. They also have printable flyers, stickers, and other goodies to help people get out the message that the RIAA must get what it deserves. I was thinking about getting the "Peer-to-Peer Kills Pay-for-Play" t-shirt.

Speaking of which, you're probably wondering if I download music. According to my web host, I may not "upload, publish, or otherwise make available any Content that is unlawful or tortious under the laws of the United States of America" or "any Content that you do not have the legal right to make available, or Content that infringes upon the legal intellectual property rights of others." In other words, though I can't post MP3s of songs on this site, I would be able to say that I do such illegal things like downloading copyrighted music online. However, that would only be a gigantic arrow directing the RIAA's lawyers to me. So, I will neither confirm nor deny that allegation. You can think whatever you want.

Besides posting flyers and downloading music (which I am not telling you to do, of course), you can always do your part in bringing down the RIAA by simply refusing to buy music released by its member labels. Since their listing of members is erroneous and incomplete, you can use the fabulous RIAA Radar service to determine whether a CD is issued by an RIAA label or not. I can proudly say that I haven't sunk my money into the RIAA for years. Futhermore, if I should receive any RIAA CDs as gifts in the future, I will have them returned. I would rather buy independent music or no music at all. Plus, there's a benefit to boycotting the RIAA rather than downloading their music: it's actually legal!

By the way, I probably wouldn't wear said t-shirt to school because it promotes illegal activity. And that would get me busted, I'm sure. (But if I happened to be sitting in the principal's office, I would also tip him off to the kids who bring cigarettes to school, etc., etc.) Over time and lots of struggle, I hope that methods of fighting against the RIAA will be legitimized (or at least be considered to be). It's time to show the record industry who's boss.

Lots of companies have weird names: Kodak, Nabisco, Red Hat, Motorola, Yahoo!, and Casio, to name a few. These companies (might have) stood apart from the competition because of their interesting names. Now their monikers are largely entrenched in our society to the point that we forget that they're so weird. I mean, come on, "Motorola"? What comes to mind to me is "payola." Who would, upon hearing the name for the first time, would associate it with products like cell phones? The truth is, many companies have diversified but have kept their name, making their origins all the more interesting. "Motorola" is actually a very dated reference to the then-cutting-edge technology at the time of the company's founding: the company was founded to make radios for cars, and the Victrola phonograph was popular at the time. "Motorola" seemed a perfect name for car radios.

Check out a list of how some companies got their names and be sure to find which company's name means "Heaven blesses hard work" in Japanese.

According to Guinness: in 1668, Col. Robert Walpole borrowed a biography of the Archbishop of Bremen from the library of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge University. In 1956, Sir John Plumb found the book in another library and returned it to the college - 288 years overdue.

No fine was charged.

In the year or so that I've been blogging, I've received few e-mails from readers like you. And I want to change that. I want to know what you think. So, I ask you, whether you're a regular or a first-time reader, to take a couple minutes and answer the questions of this reader survey. E-mail them to me at .

But wait, you ask. Why not just use a form? Posting online forms is just asking for trouble. Think solicitations for pharmaceuticals, etc. It's not that I couldn't put a form together, of course. I certainly could and I do have the resources. But also, when you put up a form, it attracts clueless idiots who don't even know why they're at your site and they fill out your form thinking you'll be able to give them financial advice or whatever they stumbled into your site for. Even if your site explicitly states that it's a blog or whatever it is. Then when you snap back at them for filling out your form with useless information supposed to fire your imagination, they snap back that it was an accident, but you know inside that they're just plain stupid. (Can you tell I've worked with forms before?)

Anyway, here are the questions. You needn't include them with your e-mail as long as you number the answers. The ones marked with an asterisk (*) are required. Well, maybe not required, but strongly suggested. I can't make you answer everything, y'know.

Please e-mail your answers by 23:59 UTC on August 31, 2004. Understand that by sending the answered form, you give me the right to post your comments/information in a future entry and steal your girlfriend. No purchase necessary. Void where prohibited.

While going through some old files recently, I found this short story that I wrote on February 12, 2001, probably as an assignment on what I would do if I had $1,000,000.

On August 8, 1969, at approximately 11:35 A.M., The Beatles walked across Abbey Road at its intersection with Grove End Road in St. John's Wood, London. Near the intersection was EMI Studios, London (later renamed Abbey Road Studios), where they had recorded nearly all of their songs since being signed in 1962. Their traversal of the crosswalk was became one of the most famous images of rock and roll history when it was pictured on the cover of their final album, Abbey Road. Thirty-five years later, Beatles fans still replicate the crossing of the street. So if you see someone kicking off their shoes to cross a street today, you'll know why.

Of course, no discussion about Abbey Road can be complete without mentioning the "Paul Is Dead" rumor. So there you go.

Two years ago today, I boldly made the switch to the Dvorak keyboard layout. There isn't much new to be said about Dvorak, and there isn't much new to describe how I feel about the slow, archaic, and counterintuitive QWERTY keyboard that you most likely type with. So, I'll let my August 6, 2003 post do some of the talking. I do have one new thing to say about typing with the Dvorak keyboard. I think I'm still as fast now as I was then - in the 60-70 WPM range. I'd like to go faster, but I think I've plateaued. But I guess it wouldn't hurt to try some online typing tests to see if I can't raise my speed.

Tomorrow I've leaving for Ohio with my dad, grandmother, and aunt to see some relatives. The plane will go to Pittsburgh, and we'll drive the rest of the way. If you know me, then you know that I've never been on an airplane in my whole complete full entire life. So I'm pretty excited, of course. I see no reason to be afraid of flying, like some people. You're more likely to die in a car crash anyway, and everyone runs that risk that every week. Besides, now that security has been stepped up, I can hopefully be ensured of a pain-in-the-neck but safe flight. And I'll finally have my own ridiculous airport security story to boot!

I hope this trip is enjoyable. I wouldn't call it exactly a vacation, because the objective is to see old relatives, some of whom I've never met. However, I think I have managed to slip in some fun by agreeing to go along. We might go to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, so I'll be able to see the Cheatar. However, I probably won't be able to snap a photo of it because photography is only allowed in the lobby. And I don't know what other fun stuff we might do (if any).

With that, I'm off. (I need to pack!) I'll be back on Friday the 13th, one week from today. The next few entries will be automagically posted by PLAPS.

So says the web site of the Institute for Naming Children Humanely (INCH). It's about time someone thought of this to stand up for all the people with weird names and to prevent parents from adding to their numbers. Well, they don't stand up for people with weird names, but they acknowledge that the names are weird. In fact, they make mention of the most common version of my name by saying:

Off the top of my head, no, I don't. (Oh. I looked it up. Thanks, mom and dad.) But my name isn't Jordan, anyway. It's Jordon. To the people (person?) at INCH, that's another no-no: it falls in the Let Me Spell That for You category. You can imagine how horrid it is, of course, especially if you also fall in this category. People are almost always misspelling your name, even if you explicitly spell it for them. (Also goes for people with Scrabble Draw names.)

So, my name, Jordon, falls into three of INCH's 13 categories of bad names: How About Another Last Name? (I, in fact, was named after a family), Unfortunate Connotation (jordan = chamber pot), and Let Me Spell That for You (the deviation from the usual spelling).

INCH definitely has some tight standards for what names are good and which aren't. I guess they want everyone to be named John, and... umm... John? Actually, they have indices of male and female names that show which ones they consider acceptable or unacceptable and why. However, I would take the lists (and the whole site) with a grain of salt approximately the size of Portugal. I would say Spain, but you have to remember that names are labels that will stick with people throughout their lives (unless they change them, of course).

From what I can tell, Jacob Berendes is a musician. That's all he's really willing to divulge, apart from this list of 100 amazing facts about him.

Last summer, all incoming Pompano Beach High students had to read "Fahrenheit 451." (Even the staff, they said. Ha hah, yeah right.) We then had to select 25 quotations from the book and analyze them. I think it's for them to see how smart you are. And so they can say that summer vacation is good for something besides giving teachers a break. Well, now that school's out and summer's here in the Northern Hemisphere, they've assigned another book: "Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson" by one Mitch Albom.

On the lame cover of my copy of the umpteenth printing, it's hailed as "The Runaway Bestseller That Changed Millions of Lives." Okay, well, I've never heard of it, and I was around in 1997 when it came out. Sure, I didn't read the New York Times Book Review at the age of eight, but I think I would have heard of it if it changed the life of every single person who bought it. Anyway, it's about this guy (the author) visiting his old professor (Morrie) who spews out wisdom and advice as he dies a slow and painful death. And, uh, that's pretty much it. He says stuff about life and then finally croaks. Don't worry, I can reveal that detail. It's central to the plot of the book.

I've started to gather up quotations to use for my report thingy. I've got two. Only 23 more to go. Assuming I spend my next vacation relaxing instead of worrying about that assignment, I have about five more days to do it. Then school starts. (August 16! Nooo!) But I really need to work on it before I leave on Saturday. The book is from the library, and it's now overdue. (But by paying the petty fine I'll be supporting my local library and thus making the community a better place. After all, I haven't had to pay taxes yet.)

By the way, how do you properly render a book title in writing? With "quotation marks"? Italics? Underlining? _Lame Usenet underlining_? I was taught to use quotation marks, but they just look annoying around the title of a book. I'd think you'd use them for something short like a poem, but a full-fledged book should deserve at least italics. Nevertheless, I will stick with what I was forced to do.

So far, this year has been abundant with sightings of crazy quadrupeds. Here's a gallery of some recently photographed mystery creatures. They may be foxes or dogs, or weird hybrids of them. The blue thing pictured at the bottom may be a kind of deer. On the other hand, there are plenty of individual critters whom many people have claimed to have seen. We all know about Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, but what about the Florida Skunk Ape? According to that site of Skunk Ape sightings, there are quite a few in my area. (There are probably quite a few in every area.) The Skunk Ape appears to be some kind of big elusive primate. It's kind of weird thinking that there might be an overgrown monkey in my backyard. Now every time I turn my head I expect to see it. Maybe that's why there are so many sightings in the first place - people's imaginations get the best of them.

Last night I got a haircut. I hate having my hair cut, especially when it gets cut wrong, and that's all the time. It's much too short. The lady took too much off the sides. It's going to take forever to grow back, and till then I'll look like a moron. Maybe I should have said something, but it's too late now, isn't it? I liked my hair the way it was, like in the photo in my last post. But I "had" to get it cut so I look presentable for the relatives when I leave to visit them on Saturday.

Then, with even less warning, I got dragged to go shoe shopping. It was so the relatives don't think I'm a vagrant. I hate buying shoes. I just want to wear my old ones. They're not in top shape, but they fit and they feel good. Better yet, I want to wear my older ones. I still have those, and they fit nicely too. Anyway, I wanted to get these particular shoes I used to wear, but they didn't have them, so I left with no new shoes. It was a small but decisive victory for me.

If these old relatives, some of whom I've never met, judge me by my hair and my shoes, I don't want to be related to them at all.

This is a fabulous, fantastic idea: The Everyman Photo Contest. It's an amateur photo contest with no entrance fee and not-very-big cash prizes. Each entrant can submit two photos. There are six categories: black and white, landscape/nature, people/portrait, travel/architecture, macro/abstract, and From the Attic. Troy DeArmitt, the creator of the contest, explains that "the FROM THE ATTIC bonus category includes photos taken more than 25 years ago. think pictures of your dad in the war, your family on vacation in orlando in 65, your grandparents as children on the steps of their neighborhood general store." In addition to first, second, and third place, the Buddy James Best Title Award will be awarded to one photo in each category. (The award is named for a previous winner who chose an interesting title for a photo he submitted.) With each entry you are supposed to provide your occupation ("i just thought it would be a neat touch to note what industries are represented"). It's an amateur contest, so if you state your occupation as graphic designer, you are disqualified. I think that's pretty cool, even if a little unfair.

By the October 4 deadline I expect to have at least two worthy shots to submit to the contest. I think a few pictures I took on vacation were pretty good, but I'll have to play with the camera some more. If I get into a jam trying to decide, I'll get some second opinions. After all, I've got just as much of a chance as any other amateur photographer, so I might as well send my best.

Be sure to see the winning images from 2001, 2002, 2003. Remember, they're all by amateur photographers.

I returned from my North Carolina vacation yesterday. Boy, it's great to be back.

Our "cabin" or "cottage" was in Linville Land Harbor, a large development between Linville and Pineola. The place wasn't exactly what we thought it would be. There were rather large and fancy mountain houses all around, but we had to make do with a modular-type building. The place is called Chipmunk Hill as it probably functioned as a chipmunk's home at one time. (Remember when looking for cabins that "cozy" is just a nice way of saying "small.")

We got in on the night of Saturday, July 24. We were pretty beat so we just sort of unpacked and slept. My mom kept some of her clothes in a dresser that was in the kitchen. She slept in the living room with my sister. I slept in a small bedroom with my dad. My grandmother and her husband slept in the master bedroom. The master bathroom was pretty nice. It had a hot tub thingy in lieu of a shower. The other bathroom, especially its shower, was a joke. If you were tall, claustrophobic, or obese, you would not be able to use it.

On Sunday morning we took a walk around our area of the development and roamed around a meadow that was across the street from us. There were wild berries and things. And a trailer. Somebody left a trailer there. My grandmother's husband was in awe that someone could just leave something like that lying around. It certainly wasn't Florida up there, everyone kept saying. In the afternoon we went to Linville Caverns, which weren't as spectacular as Pennsylvania's Laurel Caverns, the only other caves I've been to. I couldn't get very good pictures anyway. Getting good cave pictures is hard without a tripod and some bright lighting. (I took my new camera just about everywhere.) The place was still cool, though. There were all these formations that looked like different things, like a tobacco leaves, a husband and wife, and a ham. The tour guide showed us one formation that didn't really look like anything, but she said that visitors and employees had all taken a crack at guessing. I said it looked like a rock.

On Monday we wanted to go to Grandfather Mountain, the highest peak in the area, but the guy at the gate said it was too foggy to really see anything, so we put that aside. Instead we went to Linville Falls, near the town of Linville Falls (they are so clever up there). There were several overlooks which required hiking to get to. I think they were worth the view, though. I got some pretty decent pictures, but I'm still getting hang of working with the camera (like holding it steady - I tell myself "No one hand shots!" but I do them anyway). We went to three overlooks, and we didn't know it at the time, but there was at least one more.

On Tuesday we went to Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Sure, we stayed near the Tennessee border, but Gatlinburg was not near us. It's a touristy town. Think Key West with mountains, I guess. And fewer historic buildings. I was sour because I didn't think we should have driven three hours each way just to do some touristy stuff that we could do in a million other cities that were closer by. (That still doesn't make much sense to me.) Anyway, it was raining when we were there. (It rained pretty much every day of our trip.) Upon arrival, we walked in the bombarding rain past several fine eating establishments to eat lunch at Shoney's. In my mind, Shoney's has always been equated with breakfast, and frankly, I think they should stick to what they're good at. Their chicken fettuccine left much to be desired. But on the way to the restaurant, I accidentally stepped on the back of a girl's sandal, and, well... the sandal didn't move along with her. I picked it up and apologized, and she didn't seem too shaken. I think she was about my age, but I don't remember what she looked like. (But imagine meeting someone that way! Sounds like the setup of a tacky made-for-TV movie.) After lunch we went around town and rode the Gatlinburg Skylift, a semi-scenic trip to the top of a mountain. I'd recommend it if the whole place didn't smell like the bathrooms. Then we went on the Ober Gatlinburg tram, another view. The latter passed over mountain homes, which must be kind of weird if you live in one. At the top was a big tourist trap place, and we didn't spend long there. Instead we went down and - yep, you guessed it - I took pictures.

On Wednesday, the only sunny day, we rode the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad, a scenic ride between Dillsboro and Bryson City, NC. It was another long, boring drive to get to Dillsboro. At the train station there was this whole Thomas the Tank Engine fest going on, meaning little kids galore were strewn about the place. When Thomas finally rolled in, all the kids were gone, so it was more peaceful and less migraineful. (Okay, they weren't that bad. I was only annoyed because we were mulling around them.) Anyway, our train left and we got to see scenic things, like a river, fields, trees, people's backyards... it wasn't that great. Nothing you couldn't see from a car, you know. The towns were pretty nice, though. The round trip took about four hours.

Thursday we didn't do a whole lot. We had heard of this little town nearby called Little Switzerland. Some of us were expecting a tourist town with people in Swiss garb running around and little chalets with fondue and stuff. I, however, was expecting an ordinary town that happened to be named after a country. Turns out I was right. There's nothing Swiss in Little Switzerland except maybe the hotel. In fact, there's really nothing in town at all. The entire downtown consists of the post office, a soap store, a bookstore, a general store, and a restaurant. The hotel is near the strip. The bookstore was about stuffed to the brim with literature - so stuffed that it was hard to get around. In the back room there was this old book from 1753. It was your standard 1700's book with the long title and everything - something about "the Happineſs of Men." After opening the book it felt like I had inhaled some ancient disease like smallpox or something. There was pretty general stuff at the general store. I got my Coke in glass bottles fix there (and I paid for it with a $2 bill, no less). Sort of surprisingly, it was the only place on the whole trip where I could find Coke in glass. No, wait. I saw a bottle at a store in Gatlinburg. Still sealed, it was one of those commemorative bottles they (used to?) have. It was for some auto race, and it was from '86, I think. Good year, '86. I also saw a commemorative bottle for the 1984 Olympics at a store in Dillsboro. But I didn't see any other glass Cokes that you would actually want to drink rather than collect.

On Friday, our last full day, we went back to Grandfather Mountain. Unfortunately, it was about as foggy as it was before, but we shelled out the admission anyway. No visit to western North Carolina is complete without visiting Grandfather. There was still quite a bit to see indoors, such as a museum of rocks and stuff. I think their gift shop was the Ninth or Tenth Wonder of the World. It had Grandfather Mountain everything. Okay, maybe not everything, but a lot of stuff. There was also a sort of a zoo that had bears, otters, eagles, cougars, and deer. But the highlight of any trip to Grandfather is driving to the summit and crossing the Mile High Swinging Bridge. At 5,305 ft., it's just a hair over a mile above sea level. It was so incredibly foggy that we couldn't see one end of the 228-foot bridge from the other. My dad got great cell phone reception up there, though. And here's the obligatory photo:

The next morning we left for my aunt's house near High Springs, Florida. We spent the night there and then sped off home in the - yep - rain.

As a sort of a footnote, my Italian greyhound, Speck, was boarded at his vet whilst we were gone. When we got him today, he had ribs and other bones sticking out all over the place. The people there maintain that he ate, but it looks like he didn't. At home he attacked his bowl (after we put food in it, that is). The poor thing. I don't know if it's their fault or not, but we're not boarding him there again. If you don't want the same thing to happen to your beloved pet, avoid Quiet Waters Animal Hospital in Deerfield Beach, Florida.

And as a sort of another footnote, the people in North and South Carolina really do have them crazy Southern accents. I'm glad I live in Florida and not a Southern state.