Saying hello to SAM

Yesterday while on Skype (see my previous post about Skype) I decided to change my status to “Skype Me.” This would allow any Skype user to find me when searching for users. I hoped that some interesting people would run into me. Instead I got a dull conference call, a prank call, and some guy in Colorado who had a slow connection and I think couldn’t speak English. I wanted to talk to people, but not these! What was I to do?!

I decided to download SAM, an answering machine program for Skype. I figured that a lot of people use an answering machine to screen calls, so if I’m accepting random calls, I might as well do the same thing. It seems like a good program, but the thing is, I haven’t gotten a single call since installing the program yesterday. I’m sure, though, that it’ll prove useful eventually.

How common are your first and last names? Find out at Name Statistics. It tells me that “Jordon is the #1088 most common male name. 0.004% of men in the US are named Jordon. Around 4900 US men are named Jordon!” My last name has only a few bearers in this country, so it didn’t turn up any hard numbers. Even I myself find it hard to believe, but I’m one of those people who have a last name as their first name. It turns out that Jordon is not much more common of a last name: “Jordon is the #2539 most common last name. 0.005% of last names in the US are Jordon. Around 12500 US last names are Jordon!” (Thanks Todd for the link.)

Explosions in space make noise. Bullets always ricochet. Whenever there’s a canyon or a mountain, a red-tailed hawk can be heard. Read more Film Sound Cliches.

Rainy day entry #68 and 414

Perhaps the final word of commentary on the aftermath of last week’s school variety show, in which I played the guitar with a friend. As I’ve said, people criticized me for allegedly standing unmoving and emotionless throughout the whole song (I won’t deny I stood still, but I smiled the whole time.) For some reason these accusations continued until yesterday.

My classmates were insisting that I wasn’t smiling at all, and I told them about how my family can’t even tell when I’m smiling. Then my teacher handed back a test I had gotten a good grade on. On it, she wrote “Great Performance @ Variety Show =) It is nice to see you smile =)”. I said, “See, somebody knew I was smiling.” I told her about it and she seemed to have no idea what I was talking about. It must have been sarcasm, and very strange sarcasm at that, because I know she wouldn’t pull my leg like that. What am I, anyway?

Don’t Ask Sherwin-Williams, Ask Jordon!

Jo Anne: I need a gift for a funeral director

How about a lovely miniature coffin paperweight? Uh, you let me know if you find one. Oh wait, here’s one. Kinda weird.

Kate: What is your favorite cheese?

Tough question. I’ve been known to consume American, but I think it’s pretty nasty. I hear it’s made of cheese by-product. I’m also a big Swiss eater, but there’s something about the taste of it that’s kind of funny. Monterey Jack is good on crackers. Well, I like all of those on crackers. I hate brie, New York Sharp is too sharp, and I used to like Velveeta (is that actually cheese?) but now I think it’s icky. I guess I don’t really have a favorite.

Apparently using a service called BlogBinders, you can publish your blog as a book. It takes posts from your blog, and you get control over the cover designs, fonts, etc. Best of all, each book can be made to order, I think. Sounds interesting. This blog, having 414 entries (this being the 414th, if I’ve counted correctly), would probably fill a hefty volume, as my posts have generally gotten longer over the months and years.

It seems that the service only works with certain blogging applications; that way it knows which information to suck off your site. If that’s the case, then only the latest 68 posts (all since the beginning of the year) would be applicable for publication, as those are the only ones I have on WordPress. If I were to have absolute control, I’d include earlier posts, and I’d strip them of external links and remarks about the site itself so they would be purely autobiographical. Since the narrative of this blog really began when I was panicking about starting high school, I’d probably have a longtime friend write a foreword explaining how quaint our old school was.

It’s an interesting idea, but I don’t know if there would be any demand for such a book. Looking back at old posts, I don’t even think I’d buy it.

The top 64%

Today I received an e-mail in regards to the math competition that was on Saturday. They’ve updated the web site to include the answers to the problems and the rankings of the competitors. It turns out 57 people went. I was ranked 36th out of them — not too bad, I guess. My companion Mark did much worse — 52nd — but I would attribute that to my having had an extra math class rather than the fact that he hardly tried at all.

Yesterday was the first day back to school since the variety show on Thursday night. Everyone — friends, teachers, and that’s it — said that my act was good. But the few people who could bear to tell the truth pointed out that I stood as stiff and emotionless as a stiff, emotionless person while I was on stage. I didn’t want to be the focus of attention because I wasn’t singing. And I did crack a grin throughout (well, I think so, anyway — my own family can’t even recognize when I’m smiling). What was I supposed to do, light my guitar on fire and smash it around? So I don’t have the best stage presence. I would have been more active if I had sung.

Yesterday I made my first real conversation on Skype, the free PC/phone service which I’ve mentioned recently. It was with a British guy who has a site (looking at the site, it seems like he’s blogged about it too). We mostly talked politics — not my favorite subject, but I’ve got some things to say — and I was surprised to hear that he was more interested in American politics than that of his own kingdom. I’ll have to chat with him again. As I wrote this, I talked to my friend Gilbert, whom I just coaxed into downloading the software, so that makes two. If you’re a Skype user, my Skype name is fanofthefabfour.

The world’s thinnest building is the Sam Kee Building in Vancouver, British Columbia. It’s 1.5 m deep, which boggles the mind. Wonder how (or if) business does in there?

Competitions lost

Yesterday I went to a math competition with my friend Mark and our geometry teacher from last semester, Miss Cale. Since it was called Math Day, they just had to make it the whole day. I didn’t have a watch, but it lasted from about 9:00 to 4:00.

I had to get up early. I wanted to get up at 7:10, but I accidentally set the alarm clock for 6:50 and just about jumped out of my skin when it went off. I had a good breakfast of two Pop-Tarts. (Hey, it’s more than some people eat.) Then Mark’s mom picked me up and we were on our way to FAU, not too far away, for the competition.

We had a hard time finding the right building to go to. There weren’t many people there because we had gotten there so early. A light breakfast was served, but I didn’t have anything. I guess I just wasn’t hungry. After a while, Miss Cale arrived. We had a problem getting Mark into the competition because he failed to register on time. They squeezed him in somehow, so all was good and we entered the auditorium-classroom where we were to watch a video about careers in math and then take the test.

The test was two hours and 24 questions long. The first few questions were fairly easy (that is, I could do them), and taking Algebra II this semester helped on some of them. The rest were really difficult. I tried to do almost all of them, but I ended up guessing on a lot. By the time I was done I had the most massive headache of my life.

After I finished the test, I met with Miss Cale and Mark, who had finished way before me. We talked math some, discussing problems Mark and I had smuggled out of the room via our brains and scratch paper. Mark said that he was done within 10 minutes because he didn’t try to answer a lot of the questions. Then he had doodled for a while.

After a lot of discussion about some of the problems, we meandered on over to the FAU cafeteria, where I ate a breakfasty meal. I so rarely get to enjoy a good breakfast that I thought I’d take it instead of lunch. The topic of conversation moved off math and we talked about normal things. It was cool being able to have a conversation with Mark, who can tell a great story, and Miss Cale, who is really nice. She, after all, was the one who invited us to be in the competition. (She had even said she wouldn’t bother going if Mark couldn’t make it.)

We were talking about the rest of the day’s schedule when we realized how boring the next few hours were going to be. It was going to be people talking about how great math is, and why you should have a career in math. Miss Cale had an idea. FAU is a stone’s throw away from Boomers, an arcade that has two miniature golf courses. Since she’s a miniature golf junkie, we decided to ditch Math Day for a few hours to pass the time. It actually wasn’t the first time I’ve been miniature golfing with her.

We played one of the courses and then went backwards through the other. Mark won, but Miss Cale said that he cheated, so I won. Later we got back to the university in time for the awards. I think all of the winners were from the same school. The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners all got every question right, so they were ranked by how soon they finished. I was hoping for the $500 first prize (pretty much the only reason I went to the competition), but at least I got a free t-shirt and some promotional material from FAU.

When we were talking about colleges, Mark mentioned that he wanted to go to FAU. Miss Cale told him to go for better things; it’s practically a community college, she said. I must say it didn’t seem too good, but what do I know?

After the competition I went to Mark’s house for a card tournament. We stayed up late to play poker and blackjack with (*gasp*) real money. I’m surprised Mark’s mom would allow it. Mark’s friend Matt ended up winning something like $78, but he was nice about it and gave everyone their money back when we decided it was over. Had he kept his money, I would only be left with $5.50 out of my original $20.

NameVoyager is a Java applet that allows you to see how popular various first names have been over the past century. It’s fun to plug in your parents’ names to see how much they’ve slipped over the past few decades (or try your own if you want to feel old).