Math encounter

Aargh. Every week I'm being driven into the ground by work, work, work. It just won't let up. Most of the work is in psychology, in which I'm supposed to work on a mid-term paper, and in biology, for which I have yet another weekend project to do. Geometry gives less homework, and programming gives none. It must be something about those -ologies. I can't wait till the next day off school... November 11. Like limits on class sizes, there ought to be limits on homework sizes. Here goes another weekend down the drain.

What's happened this past week? On Tuesday (I'm pretty sure), my geometry teacher, Ms. Cale, asked to see me after class. If you'll recall, on my first day of geometry I felt that the class was too easy (haha) and expressed a desire to jump to Algebra II, the next step in the great hierarchy of math classes, next semester (rather than taking it next year). After my mom discussed this with a guidance counselor (?), Ms. Cale called her to say that she would support my taking Algebra II next semester so that I could end up taking calculus in high school. So as I sat there at my desk, I figured it must have had something to do with that.

And I was right. There were a few other people who stayed after class (something about grades or something), so I occupied myself with looking out the third-floor window to see people moving about the school below: some people talking to others, some by themselves; some walking home, others on their way to a bus or a car. Anyway, once the other people were gone, I approached the teacher's desk while she had turned around to enter something on her computer.

"Miss Cale?"

She jumped.

I cause this to happen far too often.

She said that I scared her and that she had been meaning to talk to me for a while. She stood up so we were face to face and rocketed straight into lecture mode; that she had been meaning to talk to me for a while was evident. She prefaced her speech by recognizing that I was "by far" the best student, and then went on to the vast topic of colleges. (Ms. Cale, seeming fresh out of school herself, clearly recognizes the importance of a good college education; she has quite a few brochures available for us to read and has been talking about taking us on a field trip to the University of Florida, a number of hours away.) She said that while some of my classmates were community college material, I could be good for a Top 50 or maybe even a Top 25 college. (She added that the only Top 50 college in this state is UF, and it's at the bottom of the list.) She brought her point home by saying that I am as good as the people who will be applying for those colleges, except that they'll be ahead of me in math, so I should take an extra math class to catch back up to them.

I barely said a word while she was talking, preferring instead to act like a brick wall. I wasn't trying to ignore her; she was just delivering what was pretty much a one-way conversation. When it had ended, I said that taking another math class would be a good idea, thanked her, and left. I do think it's a good idea. But I'll have to bump off a class somehow, and that might mean having to take said class online, and I know for sure you can take Health online, and supposedly it's better than taking it at school. So I might do that, but I'll have to consider my options and talk to my guidance counselor... whoever that is.

Speaking of mathematics, you can use statistics to give yourself an edge in the game Monopoly. There are a plethora of numbers at this site: Probabilities in the Game of Monopoly. It contains more statistics about properties, utilities, railroads, jail, and mortgages than any person should want to know.

Hurricane's a-goin'

Hurricane Jeanne has just swept through South Florida, and I'm glad to see it gone so quickly (compared to the recent Hurricane Frances, which took its sweet time). As with Frances, we slept through the worst and woke up to a (relatively) beautiful Sunday morning. While the tail end of Frances lingered for a day or two, Jeanne seems to be completely gone now, and it's as bright and sunny as ever. It's like what my mom says: "Welcome to Florida. If you don't like the weather, wait a few minutes."

Though Jeanne was slightly stronger than Frances in terms of wind speeds, this hurricane doesn't seem to have caused nearly as much damage. That could be because a) Frances moved much more slowly and/or b) the weak trees and structures had already been destroyed by Frances. The only damage I've really seen have been tree branches down here and there (compare to Frances, which ruined about every other tree in sight). Power outages have not been as widespread, and thank God, my house didn't lose electricity or any other utilities.

I'm sure you non-Floridians are laughing your little heads off and poking fun at us down here. After all, this is the fifth tropical cyclone to hit us in under two months. But you know, every place has its natural hazards. We here in Florida don't have to worry about blizzards, tornadoes, wildfires, or earthquakes. But hopefully, as the hurricane season starts to die down, this will be the last tropical encounter we'll have in a long time.

I don't know how true this is, but an online costume store claims to have surveyed mask manufacturers and stores and has found a correlation between the sales of U.S. Presidential candidate masks and the winner of each Presidential election - or, in short, that whichever candidate's masks are more popular, that guy wins. To me it seems like a strange notion because I'd think you would buy a goofy mask of a candidate if you didn't like him. Then again, I don't know why people buy those masks at all. But anyway, the site has George W. Bush in the lead with 56% of sales, followed by John Kerry with the balance. Why don't you see for yourself?

A more scientific method is also putting Bush in the lead. But of course, everyone knows that the outcome of the election is decided by the Washington Redskins football team.

Fox on my box

On Friday the 17th, I decided to try Mozilla Firefox as my primary browser for a week. I do believe that that week is up, so here's my analysis.

First of all, the two browsers I'm comparing are Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 2 (the very latest version) and Mozilla Firefox 0.9.3 (not the very latest). The newest version of Firefox is the 1.0 Preview Release. My dad, who installed the browser, was wary of downloading any preview release of anything lest a bug cause the computer to crash. Moving right along...

Firefox was pretty easy about importing stuff from IE. I managed to import my favorites (in Firefox they're called bookmarks) using a handy wizard. Importing my saved passwords and favorites at the same time resulted in an error. I ended up not importing my passwords anyway because I remember them all.

Firefox's default look consists of the a Navigation Toolbar and a Bookmarks Toolbar. The former consists of a few buttons (viz. Back, Forward, Reload [Refresh in IE], Stop, and Home), the location bar (address bar in IE) and a search bar. The Navigation Toolbar is highly customizable, but I like it just the way it is. The Bookmarks Toolbar has links to a few default bookmarks about Mozilla and Firefox and stuff. I chose to hide that bar to make more room on the screen. I'd never use it anyway.

About that search bar: it's a compelling reason to switch to Firefox from IE. Some would refer to it as the Google Toolbar, but it isn't per se because it's only a text field that allows you to launch a Google search. It doesn't do by itself the fancy things that the real Google Toolbar does. But this search bar beats the Google Toolbar in several respects. There is one default search engine (Google, obviously) but you can add many more, and they don't have to be other search engines like AltaVista or Yahoo. This site, handily linked under the Google option as "More engines..." has a ton of other resources. I've added IMDb, the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, and Wikipedia. So I can search any of those sites from my browser, and I could add more sites if I wanted to. The search bar also allows you to search within the current page. And typing "dict" and then a word in the location bar will give the word's definition from dictionary.com. Let's see you do that, IE.

Firefox does appear to load pages faster than Internet Explorer, and I like that. Tabbed browsing helps speed things up, and it's a great alternative to opening a new window with each page. All you have to do is switch between tabs. You can open links in a new tab, so you can go back to a page whence you came without waiting for it to load again. Firefox displays each page's favicon (if it has one) upon loading, whereas IE only displays the favicon if you bookmark (favoritize?) the page (and even then, it tends to lose it often). Additionally, if you have more than one tab open, each site's favicon appears the site's tab.

Firefox is good with bookmarks too. As I said, you can import your bookmarks from IE (and probably some other browsers). The bookmark folders are extremely customizable; they're enough for anyone's needs. You can put separators between folders, add descriptions to folders and bookmarks, and sort bookmarks by name, URL, keywords, descriptions, date added, and other criteria. You can have Firefox monitor particular bookmarked pages and notify you when they're updated. You can also open all the bookmarks in a folder in different tabs simultaneously (though doing this with many bookmarks crashes the browser). I find this feature handy when I'm checking some of the blogs I read. They all load at the same time, and then I can jump from one right to another.

Both Firefox and IE6 SP2 block pop-up windows about equally well; I've subjected both of them to the tests found at PopupTest.com. IE allows you to see the window if you want, but Firefox doesn't. However, while IE displays a big yellow information box that's about as annoying as the pop-up itself along the top of the screen, Firefox simply shows a little icon in the status bar to indicate that it has vanquished yet another foe for you. Neither will block pop-up windows that you click to open, as some overzealous pop-up killers seem to do.

Firefox is also good on security and customizability. You can set seemingly endless options regarding cookies and such. Firefox does not support ActiveX, the technology in Internet Explorer that leads to some of its many security flaws. You can also easily turn off JavaScript, Java, and - yes - images. Or you can block images from a particular site if you so desire. There's also this thing called a Download Manager that shows you what you've downloaded. Speaking of downloads, you can also specify a folder where you want all downloads to be saved so it doesn't have to ask you each time.

In short, I've found Firefox to be the better browser. It's faster, safer, and makes web browsing more enjoyable. I'm still in the process of getting used to it, but I'm sure that once it's finally ingrained in my head, I won't think of going back to IE. My sister, however, is a different story, but I'll convince her yet. Maybe.

Though this post pushes the last post about Hurricane Frances off the main page, a new tropical threat is looming. Hurricane Jeanne is poised to make landfall here in Florida tomorrow, but we should be beginning to feel its effects this afternoon. Good thing we haven't taken all the hurricane panels down from the last one. I hope this one isn't as bad, or at least that we don't lose electricity again.

According to the Famous People Height List, I'm about as tall as George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Jim Carrey, Elvis Presley, and Prince William. Which celebrities do you share your height with?

Picture Day and Freedom Week

Preface: Sorry I haven't posted for a while. I've been very busy, mostly with homework. Do they have to give so much? Last weekend was a four-day weekend (Thursday-Sunday) and I was doing a significant chunk of work every day (and even Wednesday night). I hope I don't get as much homework next semester, but seeing as I'll have English, Spanish, History, and (everyone's favorite) Health, I probably will be just as bogged down, or if not, even harder stressed. So I guess you shouldn't expect regular posting again till, say, June. But on the brighter side... there is no brighter side. I'm going to be working my tail off every day till Christmas, probably. I think the final exams will be before winter break this time instead of after. I hope so, anyway. If not, I'll have probably run back to my room after I open my presents so I can finish some massive Psychology assignment before dinner. It wouldn't surprise me, really. I get the most homework in Biology and Psychology, actually. My Programming and Geometry teachers are rather easy on me. Actually, I never have Programming homework at all. But anyway...

School has been just dandy, I guess. Picture day was Tuesday, and the annual picture taking wasn't exceptional in itself. In the line, though, I did spot a friend I hadn't seen for several years. I didn't even know till I got last year's yearbook a few weeks ago that we went to the same school. When I saw him Tuesday, I hardly recognized him, and he didn't recognize me. I decided not to say anything even though I was 90% convinced it was him. He used to be pretty skinny and now he's tall and bulky, so he probably doesn't want anything to do with me if he remembers me at all.

Earlier Tuesday, I had a substitute teacher in my Biology class. He was a short guy with a comb-over and his name was Mr. Grossman. You've got to love substitute teachers like that, and I figured that the moment he walked into the room. Sure enough, he had brought his portable DVD player and was willing to hook it up to the classroom TV and play something while we did some work. It turned out that he played Ed Sullivan Presents the Beatles, a DVD set that includes the Beatles' four live appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, along with the rest of the acts and all the original commercials. He admitted to being a Beatles fan and said that he was 15 when they made their first Ed Sullivan appearance in 1964 (it's a rather good way to force an age out of an older person). I thought that was pretty cool. He subbed again yesterday and played Westworld.

Somebody up in the ranks at school decided that this past week was "Freedom Week." So, during each morning's announcements, they had somebody read a short selection from the Declaration of Independence. I have no idea why, because in America you need a reason such as a holiday to be patriotic.

The school administration celebrated Freedom Week by not letting anyone during my lunch period eat outside on Tuesday because some people had been making a mess. So I had to go inside to eat, which wasn't exactly possible because the cafeteria can't come close to holding all of the people that have that lunch period. I ate while standing up. Meanwhile, one of my friends got yelled at for having a bottle of water outside. And they had guards or whatever stationed at the cafeteria door so you wouldn't smuggle food out. I saw them giving this one guy a hard time for having a milk carton that he hadn't opened yet.

On Wednesday, in the spirit of the inalienable rights granted to all American citizens, the administration confiscated (read: took by force without compensation) a number of jelly bracelets - those little colored bracelets that some girls like to wear. Ignoring the more obvious question, why would they wear these things? Because, the staff says, they obviously have a hidden sexual meaning. Why else would girls wear them? Of course, every single girl who wears them is saying that she's easy. Every last one, without exception, is like that. Even my sister's best friend, who, the staff might say, was "playing dumb" by asking why they had to take her bracelets away. (I believe "You know what they mean!" were the exact words.) All those girls who wear them, they're all fast and easy, whether they realize it or not. Each and every solitary one. That's according to the staff, anyway. So what should the administration do? Of course, ban the little things! Then, even if students had been using the bracelets to carry encoded meanings, they certainly wouldn't find some other way to say them, right? Absolutely!

Looking at that problem in a non-sarcastic light, jelly bracelets are rarely used other than to look fashionable or purty. The administration had gotten control of a rumor, bought it, and caused a panic. Let's see here... isn't that exactly what they get us in trouble for doing? Those little things really make me mad. They'll let you wear a headscarf or a yarmulke (freedom of religion) or a T-shirt with a desecrated image of the American flag (freedom of speech), but you can't wear a bracelet because it obviously screams SEX! Gotta love the public school system.

On a satirical note, experts have concluded that the U.S. Constitution is a fake.

The Dalai Lama

Yesterday I went to see hear the Dalai Lama give a talk about "World Peace Through Inner Peace." Before His Holiness made his entrance, a string quartet made up of 15- to 17-year-olds played a lovely selection from Vivaldi's Four Seasons. After some delay, the man himself made and entrance, and then these little kids dressed in different sorts of ethnic garb gave him flowers or something. As they came up to the stage, the quartet played the Beatles' "Let It Be." Then one of the little girls sang John Lennon's song "Imagine." (These folks have good taste.) I couldn't really understand what the Dalai Lama was saying most of the time, owing to his heavy accent and the reverberation of the arena. What I did catch had stuff to do with peace and things like that. Toward the end, he had an assistant read him questions that must have been sent to him by some people.

"What is the meaning of life?" he read. The audience laughed.

"I don't know," the Dalai Lama said. I've been told he has quite a sense of humor. He laughs at his own jokes. I couldn't understand most of them, but he had a funny laugh.

The last question read, "What advice would you have for the next President?"

To the audience he said, "That's something I'll leave up to you."

Here's an interesting way to compare translations of the Bible: the Online Parallel Bible. Each page shows a single verse in 8 different translations. It also contains links to additional translations of the chapter. Here's an example. And here's a very short verse and a very long verse.

Hello, Dalai!

I had a change of heart about going on my church youth group's trip to see the Dalai Lama. So I'm going after all. Why? Well, what do I have to lose? I think I may gain valuable insight on the world, or some psychedelic thing like that. The subject of his talk will be "World Peace Through Inner Peace." Sounds interesting. I have a friend (Mandi, are you listening?) who used to be a Buddhist. Naturally, she's going too and she's more thrilled about it than I am. But that's not to say that I'm not excited. It's not every day you get to listen to the teachings of a universally recognized religious leader. (Now our Pope could learn something from him...) My geometry teacher will also be there; she mentioned it in class on Wednesday, and that reminded me that I wanted to change my mind about going. Funny, isn't it? I wonder if I'll bump into her (the venue is enormous, but you never know).

His Holiness's talk is today, and somehow my youth group got a suite at the arena. I guess there's a group discount or something because I don't think we coughed up that much money. After the talk, we're going to have pizza and discuss the wise words of His Holiness. It should be very interesting (and maybe "something to tell your grandchildren," as my teacher said).

For my Psychology class I'm supposed to put together a booklet outlining the goals I have for the future. The thing is, I really don't have any. Or at least, I thought I didn't until I started making the booklet. I found that I do have some goals, like maintaining good grades and driving a car, but those goals will probably not earn me points for creativity. I don't have any true personal goals relating to any of my interests. I'll never make money doing any of the things I like. That's why I have no goals. It's because I don't like the right things. I can't be a web designer. Do you know how insane I've become after slaving over a new layout for this site (which, by the way, I'm still working on)? I could never piece together anything with databases or interactive shopping carts. So web design is out of the question. And then there's music. Music for me is not a personal goal because I'm a lousy guitarist and I accept that. Rather, to me music is a goal for my friends and me - our band. That's pretty much ruled out in this project because it's about personal goals. So, in conclusion, don't ask me what I want to be when I grow up, because I don't know. And people without career plans become waitresses... or waiters.

Wikipedia has an extensive list of fictional U.S. Presidents. Writers of fiction may choose to invent a President for their work to prevent a real President (current or former) from being insulted, to avoid having their stories become dated over time, for dramatic license, or to provide literary flexibility. That's what it says there, anyway. Me, I just think it's funny to analyze a fictitious President to see which real one the writer was hinting at.

For the record, dear reader, this is how I write when I really need to get to sleep. If you look at the timestamp, you may notice that I don't often post entries at this UTC time; it's Saturday at 10:55 P.M. local time, and tonight that's too late for me. And that sentence was too long. Anyway, my next post will be well-written but hurriedly put together in order to quickly bump this unusually badly-written one off the limelight of the top spot.

Browsin' with the Fox

A couple of weeks ago I downloaded the critically acclaimed browser Firefox. The open-source Netscape-based browser is rapidly growing in popularity and beginning to pose a threat to Microsoft Internet Explorer, which recently suffered its biggest loss of market share in eight years.

At first I dismissed Firefox as being "basically Netscape on steroids." But today I decided to give the Fox a second chance. Inspired by some guy, I will use Firefox as my main browser for a week. Although in the end he compared and contrasted it with the Opera browser, I will put it up against IE, my browser of choice. My experience has been generally good so far, but I don't want to give away too much that I could save for next week's review. (Imagine! Me reviewing software!)

That reminds me that I'm making some good progress on redesigning The World of Stuff. Every time I add or change something, I test the page in both IE and Firefox just to make sure they display it the same way. Naturally, they each handle things a little differently, but in most cases I've tried to make it so that they look and feel the same. Why, you ask, do I suddenly care so much about cross-browser compatibility? Because with Firefox, I see the light! Firefox is rather strict when it comes to interpreting the code on web pages. I don't think it'll make too many allowances if you mess something up on a page. That's why it renders this site so horridly. I guess IE guess fixes those errors while Firefox promotes doing it right by showing you that you messed up.

According to newromesucks.com, the tiny village of New Rome, Ohio (population 60), was for many years simply a traffic trap to raise money for its corrupt government. Many stories told by people who drove through this 300-m-long municipality just west of Columbus involve being stopped for no reason, being fined excessively for petty violations, and subsequently getting arrested at work - outside the village limits. Recently, the plea of thousands of motorists finally made it to the courts, which also found that the village government had not followed state election requirements since 1988 and failed to file a tax budget. So on July 30, New Rome was ordered dissolved by the county. The village government, which had been making millions of dollars from tickets annually, had 30 days to appeal the decision but did not. So on September 10, what was formerly New Rome became part of the surrounding township. How are those victimized by New Rome dealing with their victory? Originally, a party was planned, but instead they're holding a mock funeral tomorrow.

See also summersvillepolice.com, a similar page exposing the corrupt police department of Summersville, West Virginia.

Because I care

I received a rather disconcerting e-mail from a reader the other day. It read, in part:

I replied that I do care about how my pages look, it's just that I'm not the best web designer in the world. And I let him in on something that I'll now let you in on: I am actually working on redesigning the site. I think this layout is pretty cool, but it's slow to load and doesn't really work right in some browsers. And it could be better. I don't know if what I come up with will look better than the present layout, but I will try to make sure that it's faster and more functional. And, of course, there will be the almost obligatory humorous bit, similar to the random "Hello" message you see up at the top there. I can't say when I'll be finished with the new design because it will probably take forever... forever... forever... Seriously, though, I'm working on it slowly but surely.

Celebrity Death Beeper e-mails you when a celebrity or sports figure dies. Who's Alive and Who's Dead contains extensive listings of, well, which celebrities are alive and which are dead. In bad taste? I think not; they're actually quite useful resources.

Phone call

A few days ago (last Friday, to be exact), the phone kept ringing. I know not to bother with answering it when the caller ID displays no number, because it's probably a telemarketer. But the caller ID indicated that the phone belonged to the county school board, which could only mean one thing: a call from school. I'm no dummy; I let the answering machine get it each time. I figured that if they had anything important to say, they would leave a message. They didn't and tried to call back a few times.

A few days later my mom told me she got a call from my sister's and my geometry teacher, Ms. Cale. Ms. Cale said that we were doing well in her class and that she was pleased to make a good call amidst all the bad ones. She also said that she would support me taking another math class next semester to sort of catch up to where I should be in the grand hierarchy of math classes. That way, I think she said, I could take calculus in high school. I didn't know they taught calculus in high school, but what do I know?

Obviously, I got back from my church youth group's Universal Studios trip. The majority of the youth group (myself included) defected from the "official" trip, which involved riding a charter bus. Instead, we got together and rode in vans and SUVs, thus sparing ourselves the bus fee. We spent Saturday evening with the rest of the youth group in the park, and while they rode back home in the wee hours, we spent the night at a nearby (read: across the street) hotel. We left in the afternoon and got home later in the afternoon (we're only three hours away).

It being a night event, I didn't manage to take many pictures before the sun went down, but after dark I took some great time exposures. In fact, one of them is so great that I plan on submitting it to the Everyman Photo Contest. I'm not going to post it right now as I'm paranoid about one of you submitting it as your own or other breaches of copyright. Well, maybe it's not that good, but it is pretty good, if I do say so myself.

Everyone's read at least one of those "You Know You're From... When..." lists. I find them pretty funny even if I don't exactly understand the culture of the region being knocked. But there's at least one I can understand:

Having read that list, I can safely draw the conclusion that all "You Know You're From..." lists rely on generalizations about the city or state, and that most of them don't apply to individuals anyway. (But actually, the freaks can be quite a problem. A heck of a lot of those weird news stories come from Florida.)

That list came from here, where you can find a slew of others and some ethnicity lists.

What's today?

It's September 11. Last year I shared my recollections of the terrorist attacks. On the Internet you can find 9/11 commentary left and right (pardon the pun), so if you're looking for that, you won't find it here. There is one thing I'd like to talk about, though, and that's the commemoration of September 11, now almost a holy day in its own right (but I'll discuss that aspect later).

Specifically, calendar manufacturers have been in disagreement over what to call this now sacred day. One of my calendars says "World Trade Center Memorial Day." I think that name is disrespectful to the often overlooked people who died in Arlington and Shanksville. Another calendar in the house says "Patriot Day." To what "patriots" are we referring here? I'm thinking it's about the flag-waving car-window-painting loonies who had their months of fun. Yet another calendar has no text, only a red, white, and blue ribbon. Seriously, people need to get over the ribbon thing. Pink, brown, yellow, orange, and blue - a ribbon is an unbearable cliché.

It may surprise you that September 11 is officially known as Patriot Day, according to 36 U.S.C. §144 (amended by Public Law 107-89, December 18, 2001). However, I don't think/hope that this term will be widely accepted. It's just too vague. Everyone in the free world knows the horror of what happened on September 11, 2001, and it's not like making it an official observance is going to change much. That's why I like my other calendar, which does not give September 11 a special name.

Later today my church's youth group is going to Universal Studios Florida for an event called Rock the Universe. It involves live contemporary Christian music, like Walt Disney World's Night of Joy (which we went to two years ago). But I'm sure everyone wants to go for the rides. I know I do. I haven't been to Universal since I was seven or eight or something, and I can hardly remember what they have there.

My friend's mom expressed concern that the event was being held on September 11. Apparently you can't have fun on that date any more. But I'm sure that's an excuse for them to boost the patriotism and such (even though I don't recall any instances of blatant patriotism at 2002's Night of Joy). This being an election year, I wonder if there'll be any right-wing rallies or such. You just never know.

The youth group members (like myself) who elected not to take a bus are spending the night at a hotel, and we'll return home tomorrow.

And speaking of elections, running for President of the United States is easier than you think. How to Run for President briefly outlines the candidacy process for Washington DC, Virginia, and Maryland. Winning, however, is a different story.

New York auf Deutsch

A year or two ago, my grandparents went to New York City and bought my sister and me those souvenir booklets that show all the things there are to see and do. They didn't realize it, but the one they gave me was in German. It's interesting trying to learn about New York and the German language at the same time.

On the cover is a twilight view of Manhattan, prominently featuring das World Trade Center and die Brooklyn Bridge. In a section about das Empire State Building, it states that "im Jahre 1945 flog ein Armeeflugzeug vom Typ B-25 in das 79.Stockwerk, tötete 14 Menschen und verursachte einen Schaden von $1 Mio." Betcha didn't know that. One caption reads, "Die Freiheitsstatue ist im wahrsten Sinne eine große Dame - mit einem Mund, der 1m mißt und einer Taille von 11m Umfang." Fascinating. Of course, it's also fun to read about things I actually care about in a language that's nearly as insane as English. For example: "Das 'Dakota', Appartement-Gebäude, ehemals Wohnsitz won John Lennon, an der 72. Straße West, gegenüber von Central Park."

Okay, it's funnier to read than to write about, but it's still funny.

What's a Wrapsack? It's reusable, environmentally-friendly gift wrap that comes in 26 designs, according to the manufacturer. Paperless, reusable gift wrap sounds like a good idea, but I don't think the site really says what they are made of. I would guess that it's some sort of sacklike material, maybe like those stretchy book covers. In any case, each Wrapsack comes with a unique ID number that you can use to track the sack online after you give it away (not unlike Where's George?, which tracks the travels of U.S. currency by serial number; in fact, for a limited time, "Georgers" such as myself can get a 10% discount on Wrapsacks). The official Wrapsack site says that "Even an empty wrapsack is a gift. Fill it and you're giving two gifts." While I do agree that they could be gifts, they'd make really lousy ones:

"Oh, you shouldn't have! I wonder what's inside..."

"That's it, that's the whole thing..."

Reader survey results

About a month ago I asked you to fill out a reader survey to let me know how I could improve this site. I received three responses. Not bad, methinks.

One question I asked was "Are the links I post funny/informative?" Tom in Amherst, New York, wrote, "They are very informative. It's one of the things I like best."

Another question was "What do you think of the design?" My neighborhood friend Kevin, who gave his location as "around the block," said, "the design is fine i like the language greeter." He meant the random "Hello!" message at the top of the page. Only a few of them are in other languages, though. Scott in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, whose journal I read, said, "It's nice, overall, except that I'm not a fan of graphic rollover links. (the same could be done in css wthought loading images.)" Actually, the images on the sidebar don't change when you mouseOver them - the background color behind them (and partially sticking out on the left) changes. However, it's probably a bad idea to use JavaScript anyway. Tom replied, "Not bad. I am not crazy about the links (italic rollover)."

A very stupid question was "Would you buy items from a WoS store? If so, what items would you like to see?" Tom and Scott both said "Probably not" ("I'm a cheapskate," Scott added). Kevin responded thus: "no, i wouldn't. are you actually gonna open up a store? woah, ...jordon inc. paris london tokyo new york barcelona, oh man, so cool." Kevin can be kind of weird, but we love him anyway.

Just for kicks, I asked "If you were stuck on a deserted island and you could only bring one web site with you, would it be this one?" I liked Tom's answer: "No, sorry. If I could bring 5, I would." The other answers were also nos.

Eventually I'd like to

• redesign the site so that it's faster, cross-browser compatible, standards-compliant, and better looking.
• expand The Dvorak Keyboard and You and break it into several pages.
• add more coins to flipacoin.net like I said I would.
• keep on entertaining and informing you! (You knew I'd say that, didn't you?)

Of those, the first is going to be a doozy. As you can see, I can't design a fast, cross-browser compatible, standards-compliant, and good looking site to save my life, because this site is not fast, cross-... well, you get the idea.

Who says north has to be at the top of maps? Nobody. In fact, different cultures align(ed) their maps toward different directions. Ancient Arabia and China put south at the top. In Biblical times and in medieval Europe, east was at the top. In Australia and New Zealand, south-up maps are becoming more popular, as evidenced by The Upsidedown Map Page. The author describes his first encounters with "upside-down" maps and has some links to sites that sell them. Of course, "upside-down" is an arbitrary term because "up" is arbitrary as well! If I really wanted to, I would probably buy a south-up map, just because I'm weird like that. But of course, "weird" also is an arbitrary term.

Frances came!

Hurricane Frances (last post) has come and gone. It started to rain and get windier on Friday after I wrote the aforementioned post, but there was nothing serious. That night my grandmother came to stay at our house. The eye of the storm still hadn't made landfall in the U.S., but people had become well prepared for this threatening hurricane. Saturday morning's Sun-Sentinel went to press early and arrived Friday night.

On Saturday morning, at approximately 9:34 A.M. local time, the power went out at home. Immediately, candles were lit, despite warnings from the news stations that candles start fires. We got the generator going, so we could run a few necessities such as the refrigerator, some lights, and the TV. However, we didn't run it constantly lest we run out of gasoline. (And besides, we couldn't power the stove, the microwave, the hot water heater, or the air conditioning with it anyway.) As a result, the food in the refrigerator probably spoiled despite our efforts. It was a bit boring during the hours without electricity, but I could handle it because I've developed a high tolerance for boredom. We usually listened to the radio when we didn't have the generator on. The radio stations were simulcasting the local TV stations, which had all switched to all-Frances mode since Friday. (I felt sorry for the poor anchors and meteorologists who had to say the same old stuff to the masses as the hurricane stalled and stubbornly inched stateside.)

The eye finally made landfall about 100 km north of Deerfield Beach at about 1:00 A.M. local time on Sunday. Our fair city, along with much of the coast, endured hurricane-force winds (greater than 119 km/h) overnight. By the time we woke up, it was essentially over. There were some minor showers here and there throughout the day, but slow Frances had finally moved on. It seems that the major destruction caused by this hurricane was the uprooted trees literally everywhere. Branches were pulled off trees, leaves were scattered all over the place, but everywhere trees were pulled out of the ground ("like carrots in - a carrot patch," a WFOR reporter told The Weather Channel). This was evident especially close to home (and I mean especially!). On Saturday, this was the view outside my house. Notice the tree in the foreground (in my front yard), and the larger tree behind it (across the street).

And Sunday morning, when the worst was over, we awoke to this:

A very large branch, apparently from a tree on the side of my house, was somehow blown in front of the doorstep. (Had the family minivan been parked in the driveway, that would have been the branch's final destination.) The tree in the front yard lost a few branches, and the tree across the street lost a significant number of branches, but fortunately, none hit the houses on either side of it.

After 48 hours with no electricity, you start to go mad. And that's what I did on Monday morning. There was no school on Monday because it happened to be a national holiday. I couldn't take it anymore. I was so bored I started babbling. My sister and I played some cards, and then my dad took my sister's place. My mom was reading aloud the morning paper, which noted that there were widespread power outages, especially here in Deerfield Beach. It was while those words echoed through the room that the electricity came back on. The time was 12:20 P.M. - approximately 50 hours and 46 minutes after we had lost power. I leapt for joy; I hadn't been that happy since a few weeks ago when I found out I didn't have English this semester. There's no school today (yesss!) because there's a lot of work to be done in the way of fixing utilities and clearing out trees. Things are starting to return to normal, and the local TV stations are back to their normal programs. (But speaking of which, my cable is still out, and I can't even get the local TV stations because I don't know where we put the antenna.)

Now that Hurricane Frances is far away, we have other things to worry about... like Hurricane Ivan, which may hit us on Friday. Of course, it's much too early to tell, but a Florida landfall is possible.

Tara Bauer is still at it. She's a girl, probably about my age, who claims in her MSN profile that The World of Stuff is her web site. I first noticed this claim a few weeks ago and sent her a cease-and-desist e-mail, but I received no response. She's changed her MSN screen name since then, so she must be an active web surfer, and therefore she must have received (and ignored) my message. I don't really care anymore, though, because only she looks foolish when her friends click the link and then read that this is the personal web site of Jordon Kalilich. And besides, it's still publicity. Strange publicity, but publicity nonetheless.

Frances is still coming...

Hurricane Frances, as detailed in the last post, has still not struck. We're ready over here: our hurricane panels are all up and we have some water, flashlights, battery-powered TVs, all that. Actually, I don't know about flashlights, but we sure do have a heck of a lot of candles. My parents are practically obsessed with them. If the power goes out, we'll probably have enough candles to last two years.

The hurricane has decided to take its merry little time and slow from 23 km/h to 14 km/h: a virtual crawl. It hasn't actually struck yet per se, but they're saying it we should start feeling the effects later today and tonight. The eye, around which is the worst part of the storm, isn't expected to make landfall till Saturday night or even Monday morning, in the best case scenario. The best case scenario is that it will veer northward and pretty much miss us. I don't think that would be pretty good, because then we'd have prepared for heck and got nothing. We've done all this work, so we might as well make it worthwhile.

The storm has also weakened a little, but that doesn't mean that it couldn't restrengthen before it hits. They're expecting that it'll continue to be really slow for a while, so flooding will be inevitable. We're not really in an area prone to flooding, though. Again, they're saying the hurricane might not even hit my area hard at all.

The Edsel. Betamax. New Coke. Pets.com. For each successful product or service out there, there are a million failures. Wikipedia has a list of major flops covering those duds and many more.

Frances is coming...

For the past few days I had been vaguely aware of a hurricane out in the Atlantic that was looking pretty bad. Yesterday, the school was abuzz with news about Hurricane Frances, coming this way. In fact, when I walked into my first hour (at 7 A.M.), the TV was tuned to a local news station which was giving the obligatory update on status of the storm. When someone in my next class found that they were announcing updates every hour on the hour, she told the teacher to turn on the TV, and he did. Some of the teachers were saying that our school would serve as a hurricane shelter, but the principal made an announcement at the end of the day saying that it would not. I think there was talk that the schools would be closed on Friday. Not that this would affect us, of course; our particular school's week runs Monday through Thursday 'cause we're that smart. Still, the very thought of having today off did not cross my mind.

When my sister and I got home yesterday, we turned the TV on almost immediately. Then the unusual part happened: we turned it to the news. Just about every news station was giving the old map with obligatory information like the hurricane is moving at this many miles an hour and the pressure is so many millibars and it's this number of miles south-southeast of someplace. Our neighborhood friend Kevin was with us at this point because he was waiting outside when we got home for some reason which I still can't quite understand. Anyway, we were watching one of the channels when the topic of school closures came up. In the magical winters of that mystical land known as Up North, you people have your snow days when the weather gets too bad. In Florida we have hurricane days. We usually get them in twos, two every few years when a hurricane hits. (Mere tropical storms, which have winds up to 117 km/h, don't necessarily close schools. I went to school in 1998's Mitch after it had beaten some Central American nations into the ground and been downgraded to tropical storm status.)

Anyway, exactly what hadn't crossed my mind at all became reality: it was announced that schools in the county would be closed Thursday and Friday. And there was much rejoicing. As I was in disbelief, I did some checking of other news sources (and the school board's web site itself), which all agreed. So I have no school today. I'll probably spend the day preparing; specifically, helping to set up the hurricane shutters. Other than that, we're pretty much ready, I think. All the furniture from the back patio has been moved into this room here. However, it's not really bothering me because a large table turned on its side is blocking my view of all of it. Maybe tomorrow I'll get some semi-good hurricane photos. Kevin says his photography teacher is giving an A for the quarter to any student who gets a good hurricane shot and waiving liability for what might happen should someone try for that A.

It's possible (though not likely) that my area will receive a direct hit from Hurricane Frances. However, even a slightly indirect hit, which will probably happen, should be bad. According to Florida Hurricanes and Tropical Storms, Second Edition, the eye of 1992's infamous Hurricane Andrew made landfall just south of Miami, and even though Miami is light-years away from northern Broward County (where I live), gusts of 161 km/h were recorded here. With that in mind, things probably will be bad. It's been concluded that Andrew had sustained winds of 266 km/h. Frances currently has winds of 225 km/h. It's currently about 1,006 km away, and it's moving at a speed of 23 km/h. I might be able (willing) to post once more before the storm hits, but within 24 hours we could be feeling its effects here.

Yesterday I found that I did well on my psychology test that I thought I wouldn't do well on. On the multiple choice/fill-in-the-blanks/true-or-false section of the test I got a 92%, which was brought up to 100% because I had the highest grade. (The one great thing about Mr. Firestone: he curves tests grades.) On the essays I got an 85% because I didn't exactly... do... one of the ones we had to do. But I did do a little bit of the extra credit essay, so that got me some points back. I have a 95.8% average in the class, which I guess is good compared to everyone else.

The Internet is a child of the 60's. In fact, it turns 35 years old today. The global network of interconnected computers started out as a network between two bulky computers less than 5 m away from each other at UCLA. On September 2, 1969, the computers exchanged data for the first time, and the world would never be the same. CNN has the story.

The Dalai Lama live! One night only!

My church's youth group is planning an outing to see - of all people - the Dalai Lama when he comes to the Office Depot Center on September 19.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama is a Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader. It will probably surprise you to hear that a Catholic group is going out of its way to hear a Buddhist speak, but it's surprising to me that I am not surprised. The leader of the youth group (not a youth) studied Buddhism for a time and currently practices what she calles "Zen Christianity." I don't know what that's supposed to mean, but she does things like yoga, wrestling, karate, kickboxing... Just kidding. She doesn't wrestle.

Now, a part of me says that as a Catholic, I should think that Buddhism is bunk. And I do think that. The whole idea of nirvana and stuff seems crazy to me. But on the other hand, going to this thing would make me seem like I have an open mind. I really don't know if I do have one. I think I'll go along. Might as well.

Phrasebooks have long been used by tourists in foreign countries. Here's a list of strange phrases from real phrasebooks. Learn to say "Why are you laughing?" in Portuguese, "I will X-ray your teeth" in Polish, "Cricket is a silly game" in Welsh, and - yes - "Don't shoot!" in Chechen. I kid you not.

Here I kid you. It's an imaginary phrasebook for French, Spanish, and German. Phrases include "How much is that in real money?", "How do I get Letterman?", and "Waiter, there's a fly in my soup."