Archive - December 2004

Over the past few days I've heard a lot of hoopla about events of this past year, looking back, etc., etc. All that is pretty boring. I've also heard of people making predictions for the New Year. These invariably seem to be fraught with wishful thinking. Instead, I'll do as I did last year: review my past year.

2004 seems to have been a very short year, which is funny because it was a leap year and thus actually longer than 2003. It went by faster, though. But I'll stop babbling and let this recap of my first full year of blogging do the work.

• January 1 - The Bill Factor Project comes to The World of Stuff.
• January 4 - TWoS gets an RSS feed.
• January 12 - I send a dollar bill to be autographed by the Secretary of the Treasury. (Thanks to Paul for tipping me off that the "autograph" was done by a machine.)
• January 23 - "Exams are done, the semester is over, and it's official: I have blown away 12.5% of my high school career."
• February 7 - On the fortieth anniversary of the Beatles' first visit to America, my then-unnamed band plays a gig at our old school's fair.
• February 13 - The dollar bill comes back. (Such an exciting life is mine...)
• February 14 - First and last performance of Romeo and Juliet: A Sock Puppet Adaptation.
• February 24 - I am interviewed for an article about blogs in City Link Magazine.
• February 27 - I go to see The Passion of the Christ.
• February 29 - I document the leap day photographically (the photos are no longer on the site, so don't look for them).
• March 3 - I complete my first FCAT.
• March 8 - My Spanish teacher mistakes me for a foreign exchange student -- that's how quiet I am! (I still tell people the story.)
• March 26 - Photo session for the City Link article.
• March 28 - The idea for a Driveway-A-Thon is hatched (my God, I've been so naive this past year).
• April 1 - My classmates and I see our fancy new school building for the first time. It's not an April Fool's joke!
• April 2 - My church's youth group puts on the third annual Living Stations of the Cross. "It's essentially a Passion play with no dialogue."
• April 3 - New page: Courtesy Autographs on US Currency.
• April 6 - TWoS turns one.
• April 13 - First day of school in the new building. I promptly break in a booth in the cafeteria.
• April 14 - City Link article published (full text).
• April 24 - Wedding #3 for my grandmother.
• May 15 - Hank, creator of Where's George?, pays a visit.
• May 21-22 - Lock-in!
• May 26 - My Spanish class takes a field trip to a Mexican/Spanish restaurant.
• June 3 - I am cordially invited to the seventh annual Nerdies.
• June 10 - Last day of school.
• June 13 - I unveil PLAPS.
• June 21 - I begin a stint playing guitar at a summer camp.
• June 26 - The Driveway-A-Thon: before and after.
• June 27 - My parakeet gets a better home.
• July 1-5 - Vacation #1: not far away, a typical family hangout.
• July 9 - At my party, the new name of our band -- Vine Ripe Tomatoes -- and the new lineup is approved by all.
• July 11 - I buy a new camera that doesn't stink!
• July 18 - First ride in my dad's boat.
• July 24 - It's been five years since making my first web site.
• July 24-August 1 - Vacation #2: North Carolina.
• August 7-13 - Vacation #3: Ohio/Pennsylvania.
• August 9 - TWoS reader survey is announced.
• August 16 - First day of school. "You know, I think this is going to be The Year."
• August 29 - First gig (and only so far) with the name Vine Ripe Tomatoes.
• August 30 - "... Firefox is basically Netscape on steroids."
• September 3-4 - Slow, slow Hurricane Frances strikes.
• September 8 - Results of the reader survey are posted.
• September 11-12 - I go with the youth group to Universal Studios.
• September 19 - I go (also with the youth group) to hear the Dalai Lama.
• September 24 - "... I decided to try Mozilla Firefox as my primary browser for a week .... I won't think of going back to IE."
• September 25-26 - Hurricane Jeanne follows in Frances's footsteps.
• October 5 - I goof with Google.
• October 11 - My programming teacher makes me play my guitar in class.
• October 13 - I take the PSAT.
• October 16 - TWoS is redesigned.
• October 30 - Masquerade ball (or Halloween party).
• November 3 - Google sends me free stuff in response to sending in their test.
• November 4 - Ask Jordon begins.
• November 10 - First remote post (not from my home computer).
• November 11 - I adopt Mozilla Thunderbird as my e-mail client.
• November 21 - I go horseback riding with the youth group.
• November 30 - I get a TV-B-Gone.
• December 11 & 12 - Christmas parties.
• December 25 - Christmas, of course.
• December 27 - I send out a bunch of requests for courtesy autographs.
• December 29 - My friend's family offers to take my sister and me to Honduras the next time they go.

Well, that's it. Before we know it, 2004 will be auld lang syne. Now out with the old...

Last night I was finishing dinner when the phone rang. My sister picked it up. It was our friend Kevin, and he invited us to a movie that was starting in twenty minutes. So we went. The movie we went to see was Spanglish, and it was an okay (but long) romance/comedy/drama. But this isn't about the movie. It's about what happened when Kevin's mom drove us back home.

Somehow we got onto the subject of Honduras, the Central American country that one side of Kevin's family is from. He visits there a lot and even went to school there for a year. Kevin's grandmother, who was also in the car, said that my sister and I should go there sometime. Kevin's mother then said that their family would be welcome to take us whenever they go again. I don't know what we'd do there, I think help people (it's a poor country). It might still be fun, though. I'd like to see an exotic locale. Mexico and the Bahamas are the only other countries I've been to, and those were very brief trips. I don't know how long a Honduras trip would be (Kevin usually spends a good deal of his summers there).

So tonight my sister and I pitched the idea to our parents. I think we caught them in the wrong mood. They laughed it off. We should have brought it up at the dinner table, when everyone is quiet and reflective. We had just had dinner at my grandmother's.

Well, I hope they give it some thought, because it could be a learning experience and other educational stuff like that. And it might actually be fun doing whatever it is they do when they're in Honduras.

If you could dig a whole straight through the earth, the spot you'd end up in is called the antipode. It's the place on the earth on the opposite end of where you started; no point on land or sea is farther away (if you don't take elevation into account). Americans commonly believe that their kids try to dig to China, but in fact, almost all of the United States is antipodal to the Indian Ocean, and there isn't a whole lot of land out there. Here's an antipode map for relatively easy finding of the point antipodal to your locale. The page also includes a table of some antipodal cities (it's a short list, as 80% of land is antipodal to ocean). If you're in Auckland, you might want to hold off on calling your friend in Seville because he's about as far away as is earthly possible (imagine the phone bill!). Likewise, Timbuktu is especially remote if you're in Fiji (and vice versa).

That reminds me of a snippet I read in a relatively recent issue of National Geographic. Muslims must pray facing the Kaaba in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. So some guy drew a map of the earth with Mecca as one of the poles. The continents and such are laid out in the familiar way, but the lines of longitude and latitude are drawn in respect to the pole of Mecca, making them appear all distorted and stuff. The lines of longitude show the direction in which you're supposed to face. For example, if you looked at a regular map, you might think that a Muslim in the United States should face southeast toward Mecca, but northeast is actually closer. The antipode of Mecca lies in the South Pacific Ocean. At that spot, it's theoretically permissible to face any direction, though I don't think that would be allowed in practice. It's all very interesting nonetheless.

Yesterday I sent out letters to big-time company directors, the president of an Ivy League university, and a nice (or so I'm told) retired lady who lives in Ohio. Why do such a thing? Answer: all of them were at one time either the Treasurer of the United States or the Secretary of the Treasury, and I want their autographs.

I've you've been here a little while, you've probably noticed the courtesy autographs page. Well, that's what this is all about. See, it recently came to my attention that you can get a Treasurer or Secretary's autograph after they're out of office. After all, most of them go on to work in financial and/or governmental jobs. So I've been meaning to send out these letters for a little while. The thing is, the autograph needs to be on a dollar bill. And not just any bill -- it has to be one that has the person's signature printed on it already. So obtaining the right bills in decent condition set me back a number of weeks and bucks, though I couldn't have pulled it off without a friend who got the bills for me on eBay. And then there's getting envelopes and stamps and all that -- gotta include a self-addressed stamped envelope, you know, or else it just wouldn't be good form.

But I did all that, more or less. So what will hopefully be the first round of letters has been sent out, and I think I can expect a few of my bills back as early as next week. After that, I have a few more bills to obtain and some more people to get to, and I should then be able to have a respectable collection. I'll keep you posted; I can tell you're on the edge of your seats.

It's time once again to hit the Ask Jordon mailbag. It's a very small bag.

Shohreh Hamshahri: Would you like to speak Arabic? Or any other language maybe?

The idea of learning another language has always intrigued me, especially because it's so incredibly hard to do. I took Spanish at my old school from second to eighth grade (it was a required class, but that didn't mean they had to be any good at teaching it). I've finally started to really learn it in high school, but since we're on the semester system, I'm a bit rusty; I haven't had the class since June. But alas, I'll be back to it in January. I also had a brief stint in trying to teach myself Esperanto, but it's not the most useful language. I've never really thought of Arabic, but it's too late now. Fifteen is too old an age to master a foreign language, even if I had the motivation.

What is chiasmus? It's a literary device; specifically, "a reversal in the order of words in two otherwise parallel phrases." Think "Ask not what your country can do for you..." The site has information on the different types of chiasmus, and there's even a book for sale: "Never Let a Fool Kiss You or a Kiss Fool You." I don't have the book, but the site is an entertaining read.

Christmas Christmas Christmas.

Last night we went to the Christmas Eve mass -- with pageant -- put on by the school kids. Well, it's not actually put on by them, like they chose to do it... actually, I think they did volunteer for the pageant, but they got assigned their parts. That's how it was back in my day, anyhow. They have this new creepy lady who runs the show now. This whole pageant (not very long) takes place where the Gospel reading would be (after all, it is a Gospel story).

Here's how the Christmas pageant ought to (and used to) be. You start with your narrator, played by a kid who can read. He reads from Luke 2:1-20 or thereabouts while Mary and Joseph wander around Bethlehem (i.e., the front of the church) asking each innkeeper for a place to stay. When they knock on each innkeeper's door, the drummer (we don't have just an organ, you know) slams his snare in synchronicity. Eventually they come to the stable (in front of the altar) with the wooden cows and sheep nearby, and Mary has her child (i.e., she takes him out from behind the manger). Then, in the fields, a bunch of angels come out of nowhere (having been hidden behind the altar since the beginning of the mass, making their entrance unforgettable), with one of them carrying a big old star on a pole. The "talking angel" tells the shepherds about the newborn Jesus, so they make the five-second journey to see him. That's where the narrator's part ends, because the rest of details of the pageant are in Matthew's more dramatic retelling (or elsewhere). It's just then that the three magi (or kings, as the song goes) traverse from afar with their gifts. And last but not in Scripture, the Little Drummer Boy makes his way down the aisle. And the whole thing is interwoven by relevant carols (or popular songs).

This year's Christmas pageant, run by this frightening lady, goes like this. Mary and Joseph pace around getting a shake of the head from the innkeepers (all of whom are brothers in real life... awww, how lame). So, they get to the stable, have kid, etc. Angel (singular noun) talks to shepherds (and forgets her line: "Glory to God in the highest..."). Someone (not an angel) holds the star appropriately. Shepherds come. Magi come. No songs, except maybe one at the end. That's it.

The Christmas play used to be something not to be ashamed of. I was a shepherd one year and a magus ("king") another. I got to hold real burning incense. Well, it was in an ashtray, but you know.

Anyway, this morning I got some pretty good stuff; candy, guitar polish, no killer totally amazing awesome present to dominate all the rest. On my Christmas list I had jokingly written down real estate, so my parents jokingly bought me a piece of sod. We had a late breakfast at my grandmother's and then prepared an early dinner when we got back home. We had relatives, friends, and turkey for dinner. And there was more gift exchanging. I got the Beatles' Capitol Albums Vol. 1 box set. Since it's basically a set of reissued records, each CD comes in a miniature record sleeve and has a mockup of the original record label emblazoned on it. I haven't listened to all the tracks yet, but I'm disappointed by the sound quality.

Well, it's been a good Christmas. Now I probably need to watch TV and then sleep, because I've been reading my shiny new copy of In His Own Write, so it's not only causing me to absorb its style but I'm also tired.

The toaster oven died this morning. It was a Christmas gift last year, and thus the one-year warranty had just expired. Since my mom needed to use it to make stuffing for tomorrow night's dinner, we had to go out and buy a new one. I didn't want to go into the store; the place was a zoo. So I opted to stay in the car and listen to the radio as the anchor was saying how Christmas Eve is typically a slow day for retailers and that they're trying to think of ways to draw in last-minute shoppers. Ha! Procrastination (and in our case, necessity) will do it just nicely, thank you.

Read how Christmas is celebrated around the world.

Band Aid Dilemma: okay, so you want to help refugees in Sudan, but hate Band Aid 20's recording of "Do They Know It's Christmas?" All you have to do is buy as many copies of the single as you can and destroy them in various ways.

And now, a poem by Edgar Allan Poe.

Today I went Christmas caroling with my church's youth group, as I had done last year. It began with a service at a nursing home that we had done a service at before. It was a pretty dumpy place and they hadn't heard of a thing called air conditioning. It was sad seeing all the helpless old people just sort of sitting there. I bet many of the ones we saw last year were not present this year, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, we then went down the halls singing Christmas carols, and then did the same at this lady's house. I don't know what she has, but she's got a service dog (I don't think she's blind, so it wouldn't really be a seeing eye dog) and is in a wheelchair and can't seem to speak. She wanted us to sing "Go Tell It on the Mountain" (sound) for her. Our group was so big that some of the people were singing it one way, others were singing it another way, and the rest were just confused. We also had this problem with "Away in a Manger" (sound). Apparently there's more than one melody for those lyrics.

After lunch at CiCi's Pizza, we did another old folks' home that was also a rehab place, so not everyone there was really old. It was laid out similarly but was much nicer than the first. And that was that, and I'm hoarse.

I wish we'd have gone to more people's houses; it's much more interesting. To wit, a never-before-posted anecdote. I'm pretty sure it was during last year's caroling expedition that we went to an old guy's house with the intention to sing him some songs. A younger man opened the door to tell us that the old man was in bed sick and dying. We prayed for him and went on our way. Also, when we sang "We Three Kings" (sound) for some guy over the age of 100, he said it was the most beautiful thing he had heard in his life. That was touching, but it was last year. This year it wasn't as fun.

Bobby: What do you think of your life?

Deep. Where do I begin?

Last year, for about two weeks, I had a P.E. coach who said, "Life is not fair, but life is good." (He proved to us the former but not the latter. Those were hard afternoons.) My great-aunt says, "If life was fair, I wouldn't have had six kids." Maybe life isn't fair, but I think life is like a fair. Even though it's somewhat overrated and a big waste of money, you may just like it anyway. Some parts are dull or will make you throw up, but if you keep riding the rides you like all day long, you'll miss out on some new things to try, some of which you just might like. You'll meet scary people and run into some friends. And the food isn't too bad either, even though it's not good for you.

But about my life in particular. The current state of affairs is not that bad. I have friends from my old school that I keep up with; some of them are in my band. We haven't practiced for a while, but this time of year is especially busy. I don't expect we'll ever play a really good gig at a good place because we wouldn't play the type of music that the people who run really good places want to lure people in with. I sometimes think about playing by myself, but no one wants to hear the songs I would play, and I'm not very good anyway, and it would be very boring without my friends.

At school I hang out with some people my sister has befriended. A few of my own friends hang out together, but they're in the school band and they hang out with other band people and talk band things. I DO NOT WANT TO JOIN THE BAND. (Just thought I'd make that clear.) I hope to hang out with them more next semester. It depends on what classes and lunch period I have.

My grades have been good. I took my final exams on Tuesday and Wednesday, and I think they turned out well. I got a 96% on my Programming exam; I know that much already. The teacher said he wants me to participate in a programming competition, but I'm not so sure I want to do that. I would be with two other people, presumably the best students in Programming II and Programming III. There's no way I would be able to deal with them. In Programming II, you make games. Games!

I hope to meet someone nice next semester. I've never had a girlfriend. I don't discuss things like this much (see next paragraph), but I've met at least one girl who'd be perfect if she didn't go out with stupid jocks all the time. I do know that love stinks -- my friend Sean can attest to that -- but it'll take rejection to make me believe it. Is it better to have loved and been rejected than never to have been in love at all? (William Shakespeare, eat thy heart out.)

My parents can be overbearing. While I was writing this I got dragged to get a haircut. I thought my hair looked just fine, but my dad said it wasn't neat enough. Things like that bug me. It also bugs me that they read this blog so much. Everyone needs an outlet to express himself honestly, without people figuratively standing over his shoulder telling him not to say "hell." How am I supposed to vent what's on my mind when I have to filter out the things I don't want them to hear and they don't want me to say? (Don't take that the wrong way, mom and dad.)

And that's all I really want to say. My life could be worse. I'm surrounded by good people and I usually try to do the right thing. I may not have a handle on my social skills (to the point at which an informal "What's up?" leads to an awkward situation), but I try to keep living each day.

It's quite disturbing when you realize that your favorite celebrity isn't normal like everyone else; instead they're Canadian. No offense to you Canucks out there, but it's creepy when there's a group of people (the English-speaking ones, anyway) who are almost exactly like Americans but do things in just a slightly different way. It's sort of like realizing that you're the only one in your family who's left-handed. You start to think of everyone else differently and wonder...

That said, prepare to be shocked as the list of Well Known People Who Happen to Be Canadian reveals its utterly horrifying contents to you, shattering all you thought you knew about all sorts of famous people. And just when you thought it was safe to pick new favorite celebrities, it's More People Who Happen to Be Canadian!

I took the following pictures on Sunday at the 42nd Annual Holiday Boat Parade in Pompano Beach -- allegedly the oldest boat parade in America. It's certainly not the grandest (that honor could go to the nearby Winterfest boat parade, which overshadows Pompano's every year and claims to be the world's most watched).

I took some shorter exposures, but they weren't nearly as interesting.

As you may not recall, I took the PSAT, the SAT's little brother, in October. I finally got my scores back yesterday. On a scale of 20 to 80, reading: 64 (97th percentile among other sophomores), math: 64 (95th percentile), writing: 77 (99th percentile). I've been told that on the old SAT, these scores would have equated to a 1280 (with 1600 being perfect). I'm not sure how well I'd do on the new SAT, which includes writing, but I assume that I'd do better on it. Also, my scores put me in the 97th percentile among college-bound juniors, which is pretty neat to know. The PSAT is cool because you get your test booklet back and it tells you what questions you got right and wrong and how you can improve. 5 cool points to the PSAT.

Let's do it like we used to. Ask Jordon, that is.

Tom: Name one song that you are ashamed to admit that you like? To be fair, mine is "Somewhere over the Rainbow".

You got it, Tom? I actually had to peruse my music collection to find a song I'd be ashamed to admit to liking, but I didn't have to peruse for long before I hit "MacArthur Park" by Richard Harris (a.k.a. Dumbledore). I guess since everyone is supposed to hate that song, that constitutes a confession.

Manuel: Would you recommend seeing that movie [A Series of Unfortunate Events, mentioned in passing in the last post?]

Yes, I would. And not just for Emily Browning (whose one fansite is currently crushed). If you like Jim Carrey, you'll enjoy it. Despite what the trailers would have you think, Carrey gets a chance to play not one but three wacky personae. The movie is very clever (I've heard movies being called "smart" way too many times) and manages to balance the dark and the fun rather well. And if you like Dustin Hoffman, he makes a cameo late in the film.

Back in the day (we're talking Shakespeare's day, here), people used to spell words however they wanted -- the Bard himself even did it. Then, in 1755, Dr. Samuel Johnson standardized English spelling, and somehow everybody decided to stick with him. Two hundred forty-nine years later, we're still spelling words ambiguously, making English a very difficult language to master. I've covered spelling reform before, but an Englishman named Richard Lawrence has another idea: to bring back freespeling. His idea is that if peepul cud spel words more fonetikly, theyd eventualy take the place of the curent spelings. If you ask me, this method luks rather inelegant wen ritin, even tho it may be a gud idea. Id prefur having sum kind of internashunal body with representatives from major Inglish-speking cuntrees making the speling desishuns. In my opinyin, its betur than having evrywun spel words there own way. Inglish needs a guverning body.

Let's see, what's happened since my last post? I'll try my best to recall it because my parents are blasting annoying Christmas songs. I can't think with them playing, much less work on my Psychology paper.

Wednesday, Wednesday... I did nothing on Wednesday. Actually, only in my fourth and last class of the day, Geometry.. In each of the preceding hours, each of the teachers pretty much gave a free day.

It must have been Wednesday night when my friend Alex called. He usually calls me when he's requested a song on the local oldies station, and I never get the chance to hear it. That's sometimes because I don't actually try to catch it, but other times I sincerely miss it. So he tells me to put on the radio, and I do. I figure I'm going to have to listen for a while, as I always have to do when I decide to listen to his request. So I decide to do my homework while listening to the radio. I leave my room for a second to get my stuff, and when I come back I hear the tail end of his phone conversation with the DJ. When Alex calls back, I tell him I didn't hear the whole thing. He tells me he had this nice long conversation with the DJ; he's practically friends with the guy because he calls in to the station every night. He says the DJ compliments him on what a great student he is, because he knows Alex is studying for his exams.

So Alex tells me to call in to the station and talk up Alex to the DJ (saying how great of a student he is and how he helps out in his community and other rubbish) and make a request: "What a Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong. So I call in, seeing I have no choice. I tell the DJ that I'm Alex's friend, and he talks Alex up to me: "Alex, man, I love that kid. He's such a good example of a hard-working student... let me tell you, there's nothing more important than a good education... you can always call me for advice... I give the best advice, I just don't follow it... etc., etc." It took only a few minutes for him to air our conversation and the song, which was a pleasant surprise.

(I had once requested a song before, to the same station. It was when George Harrison died and they were playing all Beatles songs. I requested "Magical Mystery Tour," and when the guy on the other end asked why, I gave him the truth -- "All my friends love that song." I think the response was something along the lines of "Oookay?" I listened for eight hours straight and didn't hear the song. So as you can see, I was pleased to hear my song come on so quickly.)

On Thursday I dissected frogs in Biology. I liked it. I had never dissected a frog before, but I did a worm in sixth or seventh grade. And my erstwhile science teacher brought in a dead fish to cut up one time. In a later class, one of my friends came to school sick because he had to make up a test. Still, not smart. I tried to avoid him, but it was hard. I had to move my seat away from him. I was lucky not to catch the bug everyone's been getting.

Also on Thursday, principal filming began and wrapped for my World of Stuff Christmas video. I'll talk about that later.

On Friday my sales assistant came into work sick, presumably so she could get paid. Still, not smart. I tried to avoid her, but it was hard. The one task I had for the day was to do some things on her computer in her office. I was lucky not to catch the bug everyone's been getting.

Friday night I had a gift exchange with my sister and a few of our friends. First we met at the supermarket, where we bought subs. Then we walked back to my house, which seems so much farther when it's cold and rainy. We should have known it would rain, because it was cold and rainy all day. We ate and exchanged gifts on my back porch as planned, but I had to go inside after that because I wasn't feeling so well. After walking in the cold rain, you wouldn't either. I was lucky not to... well, you get the idea. While I was inside, I tried requesting a song and I got through to the DJ, but he didn't play my request.

Today I woke up bright and early (heh) to finish off a community service project I've been helping with. It basically consisted of collecting basic necessities and giving them to specific groups of homeless and poor folks. I agreed to finish off and distribute the bags for the homeless women's place, and then I thought I could go home to work on my psychology paper, which is what I wanted to do when I got home. But no, they needed help with the poor illegal immigrants' stuff too, and if I went home to work on my psychology paper which counts as my final exam grade and is maybe halfway done and is due in four days, I would be selfish. So I did that, and I didn't really have time to work on that before I had to go on an outing that I had been looking forward to.

My (fourth hour) Geometry teacher, Miss Cale, is really nice to her students. She had been talking about taking us to Boomers, a local arcade place, for free miniature golf. My sister and I wanted to go, so we went this afternoon. We had expected a bunch of our classmates to be there, but there were only a few people. Miss Cale is an avid miniature golfer. She probably won the game, and not only because she missed about half of it going to the neighboring movie theater to buy advance tickets for the movie we planned to see. But not counting her, I probably won. I was pretty good, if I do say so myself. It doesn't really matter because even though we kept score, we didn't add them up to see who had the best.

After that, we went to the mall to have dinner. The Saturday before Christmas (yikes!) is one of the busiest shopping days of the year, and we could believe it. People were parking in the grass. At a shopping mall. Anyway, we had a bite in the food court. I ate at Flamers, and the food was actually pretty good this time. I mean, I'd eat there again.

We went back to the movie theater, which was next to Boomers. Miss Cale went back to the mall to help one of the kids find his wallet, and by the time she got back, the movie was halfway over, so she just didn't go into the theater; she read a book instead. The movie we saw was Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. The theater was packed, so we had to sit way up in the second row and I just couldn't help but get a fantastic view of Emily Browning's lips. That Jim Carrey guy was good too. What a series of events I've experienced over the past few days.

Anyway, about that video. I finished editing it and put it up on Friday. I regret that it only plays with Windows Media Player, which means you need to have Windows to use it. I apologize. You're really not missing much anyway. That's what I get for being too cheap to use anything other than Windows's movie software. Anyway, to those who can watch my Christmas greeting, I hope you enjoy it. It's actually my first foray into filmmaking.

I'd heard about this before, but it seems to have come a long way since then: reading records by scanning the grooves. The sound files this method produces are stunningly clear -- not quite up to par, but give the method time yet.

And now, sleep awaits. And my paper. There's tomorrow for that.

I'm in Programming class right now, where I'll have spent much of my free time today.

A few weeks ago, Mr. King, an assistant principal, came into this class and explained that the school was starting an emergency alert program for things like gas leaks, bomb threats, and other regular happenings at a typical high school. There are five codes: Code Red (full lockdown), Code Yellow (full lockdown with limited movement), Code Orange (evacuation), Code Black (bomb threat), and Code Green (everything's OK for now).

He explained what we should and shouldn't do during each of the four dangerous ones, how the bells would sound to indicate them, where we should go in case of an evacuation, and all kinds of insane stuff. Ironically, all this hullabaloo about safety only made me feel less safe. It suddenly made the threat of violence very real, and that disturbed me. Ignorance really is bliss, and honestly I'd rather be ignorant than paranoid.

He also said there would be an evacuation drill this month. It was later announced that the drill would be yesterday, and so it came to pass that during second hour, the bells rang non-stop (the way an evacuation, or a "Code Orange" is called). There was this mass exodus of the entire school from the building to the bleachers on the football field. They said that the press might be there to cover this non-event (my term), but I didn't see anyone of that ilk.

One fact that was (literally) hard to escape was that the entire evacuation was being filmed -- not by a news crew (as there were none), but by students and faculty, most likely for use on the school's morning news show. Like any of us wants to see ourselves filing out of a building and filing back. But every time I saw a video camera, I waved at it just for kicks.

I did see people on the field pretending to be dead or something so that they could be brought into a real ambulance by real paramedics. There was also a real fire truck; I don't know what it was doing there. There was also a police car or two. All for this pretend gas leak. I felt sorry for the poor people who were breathing their last breaths or being engulfed by flames because the paramedics were on a high school football field showing some onlooking Health students how it's done.

Up on the bleachers (my class occupied the top rows), there really wasn't much to do except wait around. Some people were playing cards. I was glad it wasn't cold like it was on Monday and would be today (6.7 °C on the way to school this morning). The whole ordeal lasted about an hour.

So now we've practiced an evacuation. The semester ends next week, so if there's a gas leak in second block today, tomorrow, Monday, or Tuesday, we'll be safe and know exactly what to do.

I've got an awful lot of things to do today and over the weekend, including but not limited to: a Geometry project (due tomorrow), a Psychology paper (due in a week), Christmas shopping (due the 25th), work, and a community service project. As a result, I won't have time to post much for the next few days. Now I've nearly been hit by a red ball that people are throwing around the classroom, so I'm out.

The Christmas layout is up! Hope you like it.

On Saturday night I went to my company Christmas party. There were a lot of people I didn't know -- mostly because my cow-orkers brought their families, but also because there are so many people who are never in the office during the same four hours a week that I am. I got to hang out with my old friends Sean and Briana (now my boss's kids), and that was a plus. I played a little Cutthroat (with five people instead of three, so I was out before long) and Ping-Pong (but the table was outside and the wind was messing around). The food was good too. I had a good time.

After I got home from the party, I went to sleep and had these dreams (in no particular order because I can't remember what order they were in):

• I had my old parakeet, Pastel, except I didn't have his cage; he was just sort of clinging to the wall. I had him perch on my finger and I started singing (a la Mary Poppins) but Pastel had other things on his mind. He tried to go out the door (we were standing by my bedroom door, which was open) but I held him back as tight as I could. I thought this was unusual because he never really flew much. He slipped out of my grip and tried to perch in a large hole in the doorframe. But instead he fell through the hole and landed on the tile of hallway outside my door, dead on impact. I ran outside and told everyone the bad news. The outside was of my grandmother's townhouse, and the everyone was my aunt and the music director from church, relaxing in lawn chairs. They each had had something unfortunate happen that they were complaining about too.
• I was in a department store with my sister and there were several TVs around -- all of them off. I thought of how I should have brought my TV-B-Gone and imagined using it.
• I was riding in someone's car or truck, and it was 10:30 at night but the sun was just going down.
• I was in someone's car or truck going down some roads, and I saw addresses that had looked familiar from work (I organize people's contacts, so I see a lot of addresses). They were things like gas stations and I think mailboxes beside the road.
• A naked-in-public dream. Place: a rather large bathroom. It didn't start that way at first, but all of a sudden I was elsewhere in the room without my bathing suit and scuba mask. So I sort of hid and asked a friend to go get my clothes.
• A group of people, myself included, were told of this potentially horrible, horrible animated movie about this dumb guy that thankfully was never made -- it was from the 70s or thereabouts. We were in this field at night and we saw at the other end a giant old billboard for the movie, and we saw some cops(?) hooking up smoke machines behind the sign, so naturally, we ran away. We were inside somewhere now and there was this wide opening as if doors should have gone there, but instead was just the blackness of space. As I leapt off, I fell -- and fell and fell and fell at a seemingly incredible speed. I justified this by thinking that I had fallen through each dimension as I had gone down, which somehow made the fall more unbearably painful. It was kind of frightening. Of course, you don't fall in space, but this was a dream.

Then last night I went to the youth group's Christmas party. The food wasn't very good. A lot of it was cold when it should have been warm and vice versa. The highlight of the party was playing games in the style of "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" We played Party Quirks, in which one person basically has to guess the other people's, well, quirks, but the people who wrote the quirks didn't make them quirky -- they were dumb things like an artist, a ballerina, a teacher, things you could identify very, very easily. Had whoever decided those quirks been true to the show, they would have been along the lines of a bomb squad member who has received a tip that there are bombs in people's pants, a chatty manicurist possessed by a Scottish demon, slow-motion sports bloopers, a giraffe being hit by a tranquilizer dart. I'm thinking we could go somewhere with the comedy stuff, though. Maybe do a youth group comedy night. Some of the other games were pretty good.

Can you contrive to feel self-conscious if left alone for long enough with a Swiss cheese plant? There's help for you! Resources for Shy People. Includes interesting articles, a shy dating site(?!) and information about a shyness chat room ("please do not tell non-shy / non-shy friendly people about [it]").

Yesterday at work I was invited to the company Christmas party. I was kind of surprised that they would invite me at the last minute (the party is tonight), but when I got home there was a message on the answering machine from my boss's wife, Mrs. Rose, inviting me as well. She said she'd mailed me an invitation but wrote the wrong ZIP code on the envelope. She admitted that this was pretty funny; the Roses used to live next door to us, and my sister and I were friends with their kids. Then they moved, and we visited them at their new house a few times but sort of fell out of touch. That was how I got my job in the first place: they read the Sun-Sentinel article which featured me and this site and offered me a job.

So anyway, it should be pretty interesting, seeing as the party will be at the Roses' ultra-cool two-story house that once had a room featured in some magazine. I'll probably be forced to socialize with the grown-ups, but at least I won't be the only young'un who's there. Briana, my sister's erstwhile neighborhood friend, works in the office too, and her younger brother Sean will probably be around, so I can hang out with them. (I've seen him at work too, along with Mrs. Rose. It's a family affair, I guess.) There's also a girl Briana's age who used to go to my old school (we weren't friends or anything, but you knew everyone at that school).

And tomorrow I'm going to the youth group Christmas party, which sounds like it's going to be a foodfest. Among the dishes that will be brought are ham, potatoes, corn, clam chowder, cookies, cakes, hot chocolate, a cheese ball(?!) and now brownies, thanks to my mom.

I have a Psychology paper due Wednesday the 22nd; it will count as my final exam grade. Just so everyone knows, I am working on it and I did only start yesterday. If you're wondering, it's about dissociate fugue. What's that? I'm glad you asked. Over the course of my research I've come across every single web site that mentions it. Here's a pretty good one. My thesis is that if the fugue state recurs and a distinct identity is formed, the fugue identity is the same as in the last occurrence. I may have to draw conclusions myself because I can't find a simple yes or no. Nonetheless, I chug on with my research.

A guide on how to be cheap: SNEAKYCHEAP!, to be exact. Ideas range from the perfectly normal (eating the free food at an art opening) to the immoral and illegal (writing the wrong room number on the hotel bar tab). Some might be fun to try (putting the correct address on the return address of an envelope so it gets sent "back" for lack of postage; returning a book after you have read it).

Several months ago, I think, it was announced that my teacher Mr. Firestone was organizing a trip to a local Jewish community center for an informational field trip about the Holocaust. Mr. Firestone, a Jew himself, is passionate about teaching others about the atrocity lest history will repeat itself.

At first showed interest in going along, but I didn't know how many Gentiles would be going, and I didn't want to be the only one. As the date of the trip slowly drew near, I sort of forgot about it. In the end, my sister went on the trip, which was Wednesday. I think it was just so she could skip pretty much a whole day of school. But she says she liked it.

Now I have to fend off questions from just about everyone I know: "How was the trip?" (How many people found out I was thinking about going?!) "Why didn't you go?" (Well, now you can go to my site and read why!) The next time I consider going on such a field trip, I'm just going to do it -- or, if I don't, I won't tell anyone I was thinking about it. As one of my friends (Lauren, I think) recently quipped: "People annoy me. I never want to be a person."

The World of Stuff page The Dvorak Keyboard and You was linked to in a pro-Dvorak opinion piece dated today on the web sites of the Australian newspapers, the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. The commentary, titled "Wrist Pain? Try the Dvorak Keyboard," deluged my page with hits last night (which was today Down Under) and this morning. I don't know how long these links will last, but here's the article on The Age's site and on the Sydney Morning Herald's (they're the same on both sites, so pick one).

aasskk jjoorrddoonn

billy: what is the only thing i'll ever pass?

I've quipped it before and I'll quip it again. The answer, of course, is gas. See you on Monday if you're not faking sick (again). :)

sean: what was that word you came up with in 8th grade to describe the taste of an unripe banana?

Whew... I had to dig back to find this one, 'cause I couldn't remember. Turns out it was from seventh grade, which was earlier than I thought too. Anyway, the word was xqwjerxyvlkm (roughly, eks-kwuh-JERK-see-vull-kum). Good thing I never delete anything, or we never would have known it again. And actually, I originally defined it as "the taste of an underripe banana." For some reason I usually say "underripe" rather than "unripe."

Sara: how much would a 1950's 5 dollar bill that says ''Will pay to the bearer on demand five dollars''?

The value depends on several factors, one of which is the series of the bill. Saying 1950s is generally not enough because some Series are rarer than others. If the seal and serial numbers are red, then it's a United States Note (this is spelled out at the top of the bill) and could be of Series 1953, 1953A, 1953B, or 1953C. If they're blue, then it's a Silver Certificate (again, it's stated there) and could be 1953, 1953A, or 1953B. If they're green like bills today, then it's a Federal Reserve Note and the Series could be 1950, 1950A, 1950B, 1950C, 1950D, or 1950E. (But note that some of the higher-lettered series were actually printed in the 1960s even though they carry a '50s date.)

The condition of the bill also really counts. Here's a good guide to grading paper money if you're not familiar with how to describe the condition of a bill in collectors' terms.

I don't actually have a currency price guide, but there are lots of sites on the web where you can ask experienced collectors (or people with price guides) about the values of bills as long as you provide them with enough information. Including the note type (U.S. Note, Silver Cert, FRN) denomination ($5), Series, and condition should be enough for them to give you a number.

I'm posting from Programming class again. Man, I'm going to miss this class when it's over.

The KEO satellite project plans to launch a time capsule which will remain in orbit around Earth for approximately 50,000 years before falling back to the surface. Enclosed in the radiation/space-junk/just-about-everything-resistant capsule will be a diamond that contains a drop of human blood and samples of sea water, soil, and air. Also included will be photographs, an encyclopedia of our current knowledge, and messages from the people of today's Earth.

In case you're wondering, any human can submit a message to be included in the time capsule (the deadline is December 31). Write as much as you want; there's enough room for everyone in the world to write four pages. All the messages will be included unedited on radiation-resistant DVDs. There will also be instructions on how to build a DVD player. The satellite is due to be launched in 2006.

I've been thinking about including a message to the Earthlings of A.D. 52,006, but it would have to be serious, and I can't think of anything particularly profound to say. I might muster what I can, though. Afer all, we'll have changed a lot in 50,000 years, if indeed we still exist.

Wikipedia has a category about forms of water. From frost to hot springs, from ponds to oceans, you'll find rain, snow, hail, sleet, and more.

Click2Disasters is a site where you can find extensive information about several disasters throughout history, from Pompeii to 9/11. Cheesy name, good content.

Scientists recently decoded the first confirmed alien transmission from outer space. It said:

Okay, this is farcical, but if there was such a message, it would explain a lot about some people here on Earth.

Has anyone else ever noticed that almost all Chinese/Japanese/Korean people on TV (especially the commercials) are female? I'm serious. Check it out next time you flip on the tube. I just can't quite figure out why, and it's been perplexing me to no end.

News.com.com.com.com is reporting about a major problem in today's companies: no one can put together a coherent sentence, even some of the CEOs. I like the title of the article: What Corporate America Can't Build: A Sentence. It's worth a read.

The name says it all: uglychristmaslights.com. Every neighborhood has that one house, or maybe two. This year there's really only one in my neighborhood, and it's on my street. Luckily, I can't easily see it from my house. People who like to bother people who don't like ugly Christmas lights think that they hate Christmas. That is often not true. They just hate that their neighbors choose to celebrate the holiday with little regard for things like taste. If there's a house or two in your neighborhood that really get your goat, you can submit photos to the site.

Does floating high up in the sky with helium-balloons sound ridiculous? It's not impossible, as this page on cluster ballooning proves. The site states that there are "a half a dozen pilots worldwide," but if I had my way there would be 58.333...% of a dozen. Check out the neat pictures.

In my last post I forgot to answer Ask Jordon!

Tom: What were the top 3 items on your letter to Santa?

I'm a big boy now, so Santa is for babies. My parents insisted that I ask for things for Christmas, so these are the first three things I wrote on my list:

1. The Beatles - The Capitol Albums Vol. 1 box set
2. One (1) Beatles t-shirt
3. D'Addario electric guitar strings - extra light

Aside from the facetious items (my two front teeth, a pony, etc.), which I did not include here, almost everything I've asked for has to do with music. I guess people are right when they think of me as the guy who likes music.

annonamus: are you still doing link exchanges?

Why yes, Anonymous, I am. I feel they're a good way to promote traffic for both pages involved. I wouldn't mind trading links with you, even though I'm pretty sure I know who you are, and if I'm right, then I already have your link here.

Yesterday I went to see The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie with some of my friends. It's a great film (I actually laughed out loud) but you have to like the show to enjoy it.

Just tonight I went with some friends to a pizza place by my house. Besides the fiasco at school the other day, this outing was the first field test of my TV-B-Gone Universal Remote Control. There were two TVs in the restaurant -- a large one that was on, and a smaller one that was off. I wasn't facing either of them. I tried several times to turn on the smaller one (it turns TVs on, too) but to no avail. It would have been really awkward holding this device at a TV in public for 65 whole seconds (the time it takes to send out all 209 "power" signals one by one), so I didn't wait for that long.

One time I was trying to turn on the small TV, but after a few seconds I decided to point it at the large TV to turn that one off. As I was doing that, the small TV turned on even though I wasn't pointing the remote at it. The folks in the kitchen and behind the counter could probably see me so they must have turned it on to make me think it was working. My friend Kevin was facing the TVs and he was really itching to use the TV-B-Gone, so he discreetly pointed it at the large TV. After about a minute, one of those messages popped up on it like he had wanted to adjust the contrast or set the sleep timer or something -- I don't know exactly what it said. But it went away after a few seconds, and that was that. I think I've found a TV that the TV-B-Gone can't control.

I had the Fettucine Alfredo. It was okay.

Dale Lightfoot's Cultural Landscapes Around the World shows, well, stuff around the world. Especially interesting are Global Cola Wars and Stop Signs from Around the World.

Yesterday and today the freshmen and sophomores at school took the BAT -- Battery Assessment Test or something like that. It's a test of reading and math issued by the school board to make sure that you're still smart enough for your age. Reading comprehension was yesterday. I did all right on that, but some of the passages were confusing. The math test today was longer, but it was very easy, considering they give you a calculator, a cheat sheet of formulas and conversions, and more time than you know what to do with. I was so seriously bored after each section of each test that I actually thought about reading a book. But you're actually not allowed to do that. You have to sit there and do nothing.

And as the end of the allotted time drew near, I looked around the classroom to find that everyone -- except maybe for three people besides myself -- was finished and asleep. All of them. It was then that I took notice of others' sleeping styles. When I try to sleep in class (which is only when it's allowed and I'm extremely bored or tired, i.e., never), I just bury my face in my arms. I tried to do this, but to no avail. Maybe some other way is the right one for me, I thought. My friend Ed, one of the greatest sleepers I know, often extends one arm out and rests the side of his head on it. Another popular style was the single-arm-folded style, in which you rest your head on one arm that's bent at a 90-degree angle -- like my method, except mine uses two arms. I tried that one. It hurt. I also tried the seldom used sitting-up-looking-down for a little while. That didn't get my anywhere either.

I learned a few things from this experience:

1. No sleeping style is for everyone. You have to see what works best for you.
2. No matter how hard I try, I can't sleep during the day.
3. The Broward County School Board needs to give less time for BAT testing.
4. I should care more about the test itself.

A novel concept for a web page: the Random Hall Bathroom Server shows which bathrooms are occupied and which are vacant in a dorm at MIT. It also tells how long the occupied rooms have been occupied and how long the vacant rooms have been vacant. An invasion of privacy? Not really. It only indicates whether the bathroom is occupied or vacant, not who's in there, what they're doing, their credit card number, etc. The page auto-refreshes every minute.

Whether you like it or not, it's Ask Jordon!

Tom: If money was not an object, whould you buy a ticket on SpaceShipOne?

I'd make sure it's absolutely safe first. After that, sure, why not? It'd be neat to get it out of the way while private space travel is a new and exciting field (and before the government slaps regulations on it).

I got my TV-B-Gone in the mail yesterday. It took a while to fulfill the order (high demand), but since I sort of forgot about it, it wasn't so bad.

I can now turn on or off just about any TV! It worked on all the TVs in my house -- and at school too. I used it to turn on and off the TV in one of my classes and nobody noticed. Then I told a friend who shall remain nameless about the device, and he asked if he could use it in one of his classes, and I said yes as long as he didn't keep using it over and over again. I should have known that he would choose to drive the teacher mad. He's not seeing my TV-B-Gone again. Then someone else, who shall also remain nameless, borrowed it from him. I got it back at the end of the day. Now it seems that just about everyone I know knows that I own this gadget, so I probably won't be able bring to school again without getting caught.

My TV-B-Gone will still be useful in public places like restaurants (where its inventor was inspired) and bowling alleys (some of them have actual TVs, you know). Not that I go bowling much. Come to think of it, I don't even go out much at all. But I'll still have a laugh when I do.

Well, I didn't win this photo contest I entered. Shocker.

Mark's Guide to Whose Line Is It Anyway? and IdiotSite.com: both great fansites about a great show. 'Nuff said.