Boithday

I’ll be turning 16 on July 13. So will my sister, in fact. We’re twins.

Usually we have a dance party during which there is no dancing. I believe the last four parties were of this sort. So of course, it’s getting old. Besides, each party is always a disaster because they’re so boring. Last year’s was the worst because we got to show people from our new school how boring we were.

I take that back, partially. Some people hate our parties, but others enjoy them.

By this time we would have already planned a party, but we’ve made no plans. My sister thought taking her friends out to dinner would be a superb idea, and I guess it would be good. I went along with that until my sister pointed out to me that I myself could do whatever I want for my birthday.

Now I don’t believe that birthday parties should be grandiose unless they’re your first (zeroth) or last. I don’t really care if it’s your “sweet sixteen” or “sour seventeen” or “fairly good-tasting fifteen.” Eighteenth or twenty-first, maybe. Maybe. Because for those you can celebrate with some consensual and/or mildly intoxicating fun. But don’t give me that “you’re only sixteen once” garbage. You get to be 16 for a whole year. I would now like to point out that I have no convention for spelling or not spelling numbers.

But anyway, I will be turning 16. What should I do?

I’m thinking about inviting my closest friends to dinner or something, like my sister. That is kind of lame, but I can’t think of anything better that I would want to do. I’m trying to think of how other people have celebrated their birthdays. I’ve taken friends to the movies a few times, but those parties were of the cake-and-ice-cream variety. I am indeed the kind of person who enjoys sitting around and not saying anything, but going to the movies isn’t as much of a treat as it was when I was seven or eight.

What does a 16-year-old do for his birthday? Any suggestions? The comment board is open.

Well, speaking of movies, I saw War of the Worlds. I thought it was good. Disaster movies are usually panned for their bad dialogue, but Spielberg, Cruise, et al. frequently let the action speak for itself. And interestingly, no one (so far as I can remember) referred to the aliens as aliens, or in fact anything besides “them.” It goes on for a little long (116 minutes), but that adds to the realism (if you can call an alien movie realistic). The film contains a tremendous amount of action and peril occurring over several days, and when I walked out of the theater, I felt that several days had elapsed.

It’s commonly known that it’s impossible to fold a piece of paper (or anything) more than eight times (though other sources give five, six, or seven). But in 2002, high-school student Britney Gallivan figured out mathematically why it’s so darn hard to fold anything so many times, and proceeded to fold a sheet of gold foil — and then a sheet of paper — twelve times.

So, I bet you’re wondering what this mathematical geniustrix what a piece of paper folded eleven times looks like.

Beauty and brains!

Cell phone madness

Ah, cell phones! I bet you can’t live without yours. But you know what? I can.

What’s my secret, you ask. Well, I’ll tell you. It’s because my parents won’t let me have one.

Why? I don’t know, it’s a mystery. But they each have their own. They say I could have one if I paid for it myself, but I’m broke. I guess if I could, I would have one now.

The truth is, I have never had a cell phone and they don’t interest me terribly much. But a cell phone is a status symbol. The rich people have fancy ones, the middle-class people have all the others (and that’s about the extent of it).

But it’s all so complicated. When buying a cell phone and the associated service, there are so many options to choose from. Camera? A must for many, but why me? I have a real camera that does a better job. Games? Who needs them? And what about voice recognition? Text messaging? Video phone? Flip phone? What about plans? We’re talking minutes, coverage areas, roaming, whatever. Oy!

I thought about getting a “pay-as-you-go” cell phone, which might be a good idea if I had more money. I think it’s good for people who don’t talk much. Sure, it’s probably more expensive per minute. (I think it might even be cheaper to find a payphone.) And then there’s the phone itself. It doesn’t have to be expensive, it pretty much just has to function as a telephone. I think overall it would be a good idea.

Hey, my birthday is coming up. Just thought I’d mention that. Yep.

I guarantee you that sometime before the end of the decade someone will just assume I have a cell phone and ask me what my number is. What will I say? Sorry, I don’t have one because I’m a conscientious objector? Maybe they’ll think I believe that cell phones, like radios and dancing, are the Devil.

If you don’t remember All Your Base Are Belong to Us, this will make no sense to you. It’s the infamous Zero Wing intro sequence set to Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” I present to you the All Your Base Rhapsody (Flash with sound, obviously).

Vacation photos

I did it. I’m one of them.

I got a LiveJournal.

No, you don’t need or want to see it. I don’t intend to blog there; I created the account only so I could read people’s friends-only journals. It should serve its purpose well, and that is that. Just thought you should know.

And now, some pictures from last week’s vacation in the Florida Keys.

On the way there. (We didn’t see any crocs, though.)

This is how shallow the water was just outside our vacation house. We had a heck of a time getting the boats out through it.

The end of U.S. 1 in Key West. Mile marker 0 — the point from which everywhere in the Keys is measured — is at the corner of Fleming and Whitehead Streets. That grossed my sister out.

Why did the chickens cross Whitehead Street? Because they’re a protected species in Key West.

Me in a good latitude at the southernmost point in the continental United States. I have a sneaking suspicion that the spit of land in the distance is the real spot, but the Navy probably won’t let me drop by to have a look. Key West is in a strategic location, y’know.

Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus! Satire or just a big joke? You decide. Either way, it’s funny.

Fun in the sun

It’s-a-me, reporting live from my family vacation in the Florida Keys.

On Tuesday we went out boating again, but I didn’t go fishing this time. On the Florida Bay side, the water is very shallow, and we got stuck in it. The Atlantic Ocean side is much deeper.

Later we took Speck (our dog) to this marina where they charge you to go out on the dock and see the tarpons that hang out there. They had small fish you could feed them with also. I thought it was interesting that if you throw the fish out as far as you can, the tarpons will gather to where it’s going to land. I didn’t know they could look up. I guess it makes sense, though. While we were there, these Japanese tourists — it looked like a mother and her teenage son and daughter — were getting a big kick out of the tarpons, as we stereotypically imagine Japanese tourists. The mother lay on the dock, tarpons behind her, so the others could get a picture.

After that we went to this beach called Anne’s Beach. (I don’t know who Anne is.) It was really shallow there, and you could walk a pretty good distance into the water. Since I wasn’t prepared to go swimming (and didn’t want to), I stayed on the shore with the dog. And who should be there also but the Japanese tourists. They had the older woman take a picture with Speck. I should have asked them to e-mail it to me. It was too funny.

On Wednesday we went to Key West. This is what I had been looking forward to. It seemed like it was going to rain, but it stopped before we got there. It remained overcast and cool for the rest of the day, which was fine by me. It’s better than getting sunburned.

We pretty much visited the two spots I have to see every time I go to Key West. The first is the end of U.S. 1, which stretches 3,846 km up the Eastern Seaboard to the U.S.-Canadian border. Probably the most famous end of any U.S. highway, it’s a sign/road geek’s dream.

The second, located just down the street, is the marker marking the Southernmost Point in the Continental United States. You know how, during discussions of the Cuban Missile Crisis, etc., the oft-repeated fact the United States is only 145 km from Cuba at its closest is often repeated. Well, this is the spot they’re talking about, so if Castro ever decides to nuke America, this popular tourist destination is going first.

It isn’t really the southernmost point (the house next to the marker is a good contender, and so is the naval base on the other side), but, looking at maps, I guess it is the southernmost point on public land (if the White Street Pier doesn’t count as land). It sits in a corner where the road turns 90 degrees. Just behind the monument is the ocean. When I was there a few years ago, there was a lot more space around the marker, but now the road cuts closer. On the plus side, the road consists of brick at the turn and there are little bench-type things all around. Tourists are always lined up to take their pictures with the giant nun-buoy-shaped marker, so being able to sit down is a good idea.

We didn’t do much other than walk around town. On our walk, we saw the many free-roaming chickens for which Key West is famous. They’re a protected species in town, being the descendants of cockfighters from back in the day. It’s hard to walk around the old part of town without hearing a rooster crowing.

We tried to watch the famous Key West sunset in Mallory Square, but it was still cloudy and there was a big old island full of rich people’s houses in the way. That has to be new; I don’t remember it being there before. I hope you can still see the sunset sometime during the year.

Yesterday I didn’t do much. It was finally clear outside, meaning it was too hot. On the plus side, I got to see the stars of the night sky. It’s hard to believe how many more I could see here than at home. A distant cloud flashing heat lightning every second provided illumination. I tried to take a 30-second exposure (the longest my camera can handle) of the brightly flashing cloud, but it was still too dark.

Today, our last full day, we went to Theater of the Sea. Opened in 1946, it’s a sort of proto-SeaWorld. Actually, it’s more like Miami Seaquarium, which I’ve been to. But I digress. At Theater of the Sea you can see dolphins, sea lions, sharks, birds, and myriad varieties of fish. So it’s basically an aquarium with a few avian extras. We spent a few hours there, and it was quite a bit of fun.

So we have to leave tomorrow morning by ten o’clock if we want to make it back to reality without being charged extra. Somebody be prepared to poke me awake.

Rants, links, life, etc.

So I can kind of relax while I’m on vacation, I had Todd from the one and only chewbonkers.com take the reins for today’s post. I will return on Saturday, June 25.

My Share of Rants:
Astrology books. Bought one today, and I regret it. Not only do they blab nonsense all over the place, they repeat it. That’s right, repeat it.

“Leo’s have a great sense of humour and are very theatrical.”

“Capricorn’s are most liked for their great amount of humour and are always basking in the spotlight.”
___________________
My Share of Links:
Hey, think twice before you make that Windows XP password. They can be bypassed.

Hey, and you can check out too how Windows has sucked before now!

Do you want to live at this hotel?
___________________
My Share of Life:
I have decided that I need to be more flexible, strong, and more energetic. I had already tried to do my “FBI health checklist“, but I need to move it up a notch. I’ve decided that I’m going to skip, run, bike, stretch, situp, pushup, and dumbell lift for 40 minutes each day together. Now that better work.
___________________
How to make people think you’re busy and famous online when you’re not:

1) Take a couple weeks to respond to emails
2) State on your site that you get hundreds and hundreds of emails a day and it may take awhile to reply.
3) Make strict requirements about the content of the email and say that if they don’t follow them, the people who sort your mail will delete them.
4) On instant messages, don’t give instant replies. Wait a few minutes, then say you were busy with many other messages.
5) Say you require email notification that they are adding you on an instant messenger, or you will be screened out.
6) Say comments are closed for some posts because it is a ‘controversial’ post, and your many visitors may get outraged.
7) Have a forum on your site.
8) Have auto repliers for your email, saying that you have received it, and “please don’t send it again.”
9) Have an elaborate FAQ section and tell people to read it first before they email you.
10) Say your IP sometimes crashes you have so many instant messages, so please hold back your excitement.
11) Post model like pictures of you and say autographs by snailmail are still available.

Have fun. Hope you enjoyed my post.

A fatal exception…

This post has been prewritten so I can kind of relax while I’m on vacation. I will return on Saturday, June 25.

Last week my friend Kevin and his French foreign exchange buddy, Quentin, stopped by my house to borrow my bike (hey, I never use it). As I got the bike out and showed a confused Kevin how to use the brakes (“Pedal backwards, see?”), I couldn’t understand why Quentin was smirking so. Surely my street bike isn’t that wimpy compared to everyone else’s mountain bikes.

But I finally realized that he was laughing at my shirt — I was wearing the Blue Screen of Death t-shirt that I once briefly mentioned I’d buy. Not long after that February 2004 post, I received mine in the mail, and have worn it since. I get reactions whenever I wear it, and they are always strong. Most are of praise (I’ve heard the word “genius” from several Linux enthusiasts) and the remainder are of vast confusion.

Anyway, that a French kid finds my shirt funny shows that a hatred of Microsoft transcends national boundaries.

Speaking of transcending national boundaries, I’ve been finally been able to practice my meagre Esperanto knowledge with some people. One person lives near me. Besides learning Esperanto, he was born on July 13, is left-handed, and uses the Dvorak keyboard. It’s kind of like finding out you have an evil twin, except I’m not sure which one of us is evil.

Uncyclopedia is an encyclopedia of misinformation. Just like the (usually) factual Wikipedia (and running on the same software), you can edit any page whether you register or not. Don’t worry about your facts being incorrect. The more outrageous they are, the funnier. Just have a read if you don’t believe me. It’s weird. Very weird.

Fishin’ expedition

Here I am (still) in the Florida Keys, ladies and gentlemen. (Speaking of which… do any women/girls/babes go to this site? Seems like most of my readers are male.) Anyway, we haven’t really done much other than the standard relaxing (i.e., doing nothing). Most of our goings-out have been to fish, and yes, I went along too. On Sunday, for the first time in ages, I went fishing.

Now normally I detest fishing, but it’s a lot more fun when you catch things. (As a young lad I would fish on the dock at the family vacation spot. So many people fished there that our piscine friends got wise and evidently went anorexic to save themselves.) That said, I actually caught a few small fish. Now I don’t know my fish, so I can’t tell you what they were. I was told they were some variety of snapper. I do not know which. If I caught them more than once, they couldn’t have been that interesting.

Yesterday I went fishing again. We went out farther this time, and we didn’t catch as much. This was on the Atlantic side, which the house faces and has canal access to. So we went under a nearby bridge to the Bay of Florida side and started fishing there. Dark clouds were on the horizon, but I didn’t think much of them until it started to drizzle lightly. Otherwise it was hot and humid; standard Florida weather. This didn’t hinder our fishing much.

All of a sudden, a freezing wind blew. The temperature sank instantly. It started to rain a little harder, and the skies grew dark. So we packed up and left immediately. Of course, we had to go back under the bridge and far out enough on the Atlantic side that we could go in without running aground. I don’t think I’d ever gone so fast in a boat. We managed to make it back without being totally wet. Then I had a late lunch.

It seems like it’ll be the same today: more fishing. Maybe I won’t go this time. After all, chances are good that it’s going to rain every day until we leave on Saturday. It’s June in Florida, what else can you expect? All I can say is that it doesn’t hinder our eventual excursion to Key West. That’s what I’m really looking forward to.

Great Circle Mapper for showing the shortest distance between two points (usually airports). Pretty interesting.

Sean’s Really Cool Post (Ft. A Bio and Other Stuff!)

So I can kind of relax while I’m on vacation, I had my friend Sean take the reins for today’s post. I will return on Saturday, June 25.

Hi. I’m Sean Hanrahan. Most of you probably don’t know me, and, if this is true, consider yourself lucky. I’m 15, I go to St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, and I’m one of the many guitar players in our band. My favorite bands are Sum 41, Less Than Jake, Green Day, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Dropkick Murphys, The Beatles, The Used, Face To Face, Led Zeppelin, Rancid, Blink-182, The Clash, Foo Fighters, Unwritten Law, and Weezer. My other interests include skateboarding, making videos, music, blah, blah, blah, you get the idea. It’s proabably the same stuff most everone else my age says.

So let’s see… I need to do something cool for my blog entry, so i’ve decided to add a very moving rendition I have made of myself.

The Vans Warped Tour is fast approaching, so if you haven’t already, you better check it out here: “Vans Warped Tour 2005.” Also coming up is the release of many good albums. Recently released were the Foo Fighters’ new double album “In Your Honor,” The Unseen’s “State of Discontent,”and Weezer’s “Make Believe,” none of which I own, but I’ve heard they are good. Important upcoming releases are Dropkick Murphys’ “The Warrior’s Code” (June 21), the Transplants’ “Haunted Cities” (June 21), Pennywise’s “The Fuse” (I’m not sure when it comes out), and CKY’s “An Answer Can Be Found” (June 28).

Well, that’s about all i can think of talking about. I’m done. Later.

Kokomo

And while that song runs through my head incessantly, here I am (with my family) on vacation in the Village of Islamorada (Lower Matecumbe Key, to be specific — the town spans several of the Florida Keys). Some touristy brochure I found said that “Islamorada” means “island home” in Spanish, but that’s bull. Even someone with an elementary knowledge of Spanish could tell you that it means “purple island.” Other brochures agree.

Anyway, we’re here in Purple Island, pretty much relaxing. The vacation home we’re staying in is fairly nice; it’s two stories, but the first story (which is where I’m situated at the moment) is a joke. The good stuff, including the bigger kitchen, the bigger living room, more bedrooms, a balcony, and the bigger TV, is upstairs. If you want to have a virtual look-see, the house has its own domain name: islamoradavacationhome.com.

We haven’t done much since arriving here midday yesterday. My uncle and my grandparents brought their boats, so we went out on those (the house is on a canal that leads into the ocean). There’s a lighthouse in view in the distance. I’m hoping we can go out there so I can get some good pictures. I stupid, stupid, stupidly forgot my USB cable, so my pictures have to stay on my camera till I get home. Oh well. I guess that ensures that only the best 81 pictures come home.

Interestingly to those who do not know it, the Keys are connected by a single road, U.S. 1. Since there aren’t any major roads that intersect with U.S. 1 here (being an island chain and all), the mile markers on the highway are used as landmarks (Mile 0 being at the end of the Keys in Key West). Because most tourist attractions and businesses are along the main highway, this, along with an “Oceanside”/”Bayside” indication, is sufficient to serve as an address in the Keys. On the billboards, instead of an address or intersection, you’ll see “Mile Marker 88, Bayside” or “Mile Marker 72.5, Oceanside.”

And no, I haven’t found Kokomo yet, but there’s a whole mess of islands down here. When you think of the Florida Keys, you think of all these islands all nice in a line, connected by a road, but there are more keys than those. Many are north of here, in the bay that the main chain creates. When you’ve got a bunch of islands, you tend to run out of good ideas for names. As a result, a lot of dots on the map will have names like Carl Ross Key, the Bob Allen Keys, End Key, Dead Terrapin Key, West Key (not to be confused with Key West), No Name Key, Lignumvitae Key (“lignum vitae” means “wood of life” in Latin), Frank Key, Murray Key, Joe Kemp Key, Bradley Key (makes you wonder if people name the islands after themselves), and (I wish I were kidding) the adjacent islands of Johnson Key and Dildo Key.

Foogle is not Google, and it is not Froogle. At Foogle, which is not affiliated with the latter two, you can ask a question, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll get an answer. At least it’s free, unlike Google Answers.

The Keys to fun

Tomorrow I embark on a family vacation to Islamorada, in the Florida Keys. I’ve been kind of travel-weary since the last trip, but hopefully the place we’re staying at will be more homely and less hotelly. I’ll probably post a bit from there, mainly writing about what’s going on. But I might also have a few surprises up my sleeve. Just you wait and see.

This week the main form of entertainment has been the remodeling of sorts that’s going on mainly on the back patio. We’re doing away with the old chattahoochee (or “epoxy rock” if you don’t like it) and covering it with one of those rather festive concrete patterns that looks like what would happen if you tried to use cross-sections of large rocks to make tiles.

They started on Monday by pressure-cleaning the old chattahoochee. The next day they began covering it with cement, and yesterday they etched the “grout” patterns and started coloring them in. The final color of the new floor should be several shades of brown… how nice and different. I was expecting something a little more exciting, like maybe white with highlights of purple, turquoise, coral, or fireorange at the very least. I made up that last one.

I’ll post before and after pictures if I can find any good before pictures. On Monday I was going to take some before pictures deliberately for the purpose of comparing them to the finished product, but the guys doing the work beat me to the patio by about a minute.

The other day I mentioned a new site about the Dvorak keyboard that had hit the web. The site is called The Dvorak Zine and it presents just that: a comic-book-type zine intended to inform about the Dvorak keyboard. If you’ve never heard of Dvorak, check it out. Even if you have, it’s still entertaining.

On a related note, I’ve finally done something I should have done a long time ago: I’ve fit The Dvorak Keyboard and You into the design of the rest of the site.