Getting better

Holy upgrades, Batman!

A week ago, I asked a girl out for the first time in my life. We were supposed to go to a school football game last Friday (how romantic, right?), but it got cancelled due to a hurricane.

Then, she offered her backup plan was to invite me to her house this Friday to watch movies with her and her friend. Not bad, I thought. Not bad at all.

So today I called her to get her address so I would know where I would be going (that is, where my parents would be me, if they were to let me go, as I hadn’t asked them yet). She said they were doing something to her house or something, so presumably I presume she’d be staying at a hotel, where I would hang out with her by the pool (as she specifically mentioned).

Now, I don’t really know if this is technically a date, but I intended it to be, and I hope she knows that. But it’s really cool. The only problem is, the last time I lay on a beach, people tried to push me back into the water before I dried out. Oh well, I guess I’m okay. We’re all beautiful, right?

The only other problem is, her dad is still considering it. I hope he approves. I’d give him 56 cool points.

Answering Ask Jordon.

Gary : I have a $20 bill 2004 series that has an elk and some kinda of indian symbol on the back. looks to be in the print .

They must be stamps. People tend to stamp the backs of higher bills for some reason (perhaps as some sort of counterfeit testing method).

Samantha: What are three advantages and the disadvantages about using the qwerty keyboard?

Compared to the Dvorak layout, there are several disadvantages:

1. Not designed for keyboarding
2. Hurts your fingers after moderate use
3. Difficult to learn

Advantages:

1. Universally used and supported

I can’t think of any more advantages, actually.

Well, if the years seem to be going by faster than ever, it is just you. In fact, this year will be longer than the past few. That’s because a leap second is being added to 2005! (Hey, I thought it was interesting.)

One decade

Being only 16 years old, I don’t have much of a sense of time. People say, “Oh, 20 years ago I bought those pants,” but for me that doesn’t really mean anything. Twenty years — even ten — can be a long time.

It just so happens that ten years ago today, on August 28, 1995, I met Casey, a friend of mine and a regular reader of this here blog. I’ve been more or less in touch with her ever since, making our friendship (one of) the longest I’ve ever had. (Although I met Reid 11 years ago and we’re still friends, I rarely get to see or talk to him).

This day was also notable because it was the day we started The Money Club. The whole thing was about making money. Yes, we were greedy little bastards. Casey claimed that she opened a bank account for TMC, and that at one point it had $300 (or maybe $1,200 or something like that). It’s strange that we never talked about what we wanted to do with the money; we just wanted to have it. But when we weren’t trying to sell random stuff, we pretty much would get together during recess and recruit members. We would meet at one of several trees (one of which we christened by breaking a bottle over it — Casey still has a picture of the bottle). Eventually we took it a little too far and got busted for selling stolen school supplies. The Money Club disbanded on December 17, 1997.

My sister and Casey were close friends for a long time, but they fell out earlier this year. I guess it just goes to show that if you’re not that close to someone, you can be their friend forever. Come to think of it, I do have a lot of acquaintances. But anyway, Casey, thanks for a decade of friendship (awww).

Hurricane Katrina, now well past us, is threatening low-lying New Orleans and is currently one of the strongest hurricanes ever recorded. That is, if it were to make landfall right now, it would take 2nd place for lowest barometric pressure of a hurricane upon US landfall. How ironic that it passed here with hardly a hitch (relatively speaking). Meanwhile, we do have school tomorrow, even though power hasn’t been restored to all of the county schools. That sucks.

If you’ve read my blog for a long time, you know that I usually have nothing more than a sentence to say about any movie I see. That’s why I appreciate this site: The Four Word Film Review. Read witty descriptions of your favorite movies in four words or fewer.

Speaking of movies, do you ever wonder what those gravel-voiced movie announcers do in their spare time? Here’s a video featuring 5 of America’s top voice-over artists in one car (WMV, sound, plays automatically). Be sure to watch for the guy who does the Disney commercials. This video reminds me of a spot I saw on TV (The Disney Channel, no less) where they talked to a very familiar-sounding voice-over guy.

Well, I think I know what I want to be when I grow up. Imagine having your voice known to everyone in the country while still being able to go out for a bite to eat. Plus, you’ve got a great party trick up your sleeve: you can deliver some smooth, dramatic pick-up lines. (“Prepare yourself for… my apartment. Opens this Friday. Rated R.”)

Clearing up

Hurricane Katrina has passed more quickly than expected but with more damage than expected. True, things aren’t bad, but for being “only” a Category 1 hurricane, there was quite a bit of havoc. Luckily, the storm veered south before making landfall, so we didn’t get it as bad as was predicted. The power blinked a few times yesterday, but it never went off for more than a few seconds. All in all we lost electricity for a total of several minutes. (But not knowing when it’s going to come back on, you immediately go crazy.) And now the cleanup begins.

We didn’t even bother to put up the hurricane panels, so that’s a lot of work saved. I think the rest is a matter of cleaning the pool (lots of leaves blew in) and getting the patio furniture out again. But my parents also have non-hurricane house plans, such as getting rid of the carpet in the living room and moving the computer somewhere to the other side of this room so they can paint this wall. I think they want to make it some kind of red. If anyone wants to trade houses, please let me know.

(I often take time writing my posts. Since I wrote the above paragraph, we moved the carpet out of the living room and placed it outside, where my dad cut it into strips. It started to rain again as we rolled them up and put them into the garage. My dad had counted 46 stains on the underside of the carpet, all due to the dog.)

A few hours ago I saw the blue sky for the first time since the storm. It’s good to know it’s still there. Things are pretty much back to normal, I’d say.

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Speaking of which, things seem to be better with Nacole and me (if I can dare to mention both of us in a single sentence) with regards to our date (?). As you may recall, we were supposed to meet at the school football game today, but because it’s cancelled, she offered for me to go to her house and watch movies with her and her friend. That should be pretty cool. I’ll get to meet her old man, I guess, and give him a good first impression.

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I’ve had some bizarre dreams lately. A few nights ago I dreamed that I was being pursued by the East German police. I had to hide behind a parked car, but they were shooting both above it and below it, so I had to stick to the back pretty tight. Last night (as the storm was passing) I dreamed that our next tropical threat would be Tropical Storm Lester, which was then near Mexico. It was a convincingly real dream, but apparently the next storm will be named Lee, and it has not formed yet.

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More than 90% of violent crimes are committed within 24 hours of consuming this substance. Newborn babies can choke on it. Fully half of all children who grow up in households that use this substance score below average on standardized tests.

It’s bread. Read more amazing facts about why bread is dangerous.

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If you find my lack of segues between topics particularly jarring, I hope the addition of content-separating asterisks will help. If you have another suggestion of a character — such as dashes, etc. — let me know somehow.

Hurricane miscellany

Well, here we are, awaiting the worst of Hurricane Katrina.

They had said that Tropical Storm Katrina would strengthen into a hurricane, and it did. It’s a weak one, but hurricane nonetheless. There is very real possibility that it will make landfall right here. In fact, according to the latest advisory, “the center of Tropical Storm Katrina was located … about 15 miles east-northeast of Fort Lauderdale Florida and about 25 miles east-southeast of Boca Raton Florida.” What’s between Boca and Fort Lauderdale? Pompano Beach, Lighthouse Point, and good old Deerfield Beach. (At least we live fairly inland, though.)

But let it be known that landfall, by definition, is when the center of the storm reaches land. We’re getting the storm already, but apparently not the worst of it. Also, nothing sets apart a tropical depression, a tropical storm, or a hurricane other than sustained wind speeds. When a tropical storm’s sustained winds reach the magic number of 74 M.P.H., it is considered a hurricane. Don’t ask me why. (Although high wind speeds are generally associated with being well organized, or vice versa.)

Which reminds me: it looks like this storm isn’t strong enough to have a distinct eyewall, which is a shame, because I’ve always wanted to be in the eye of a hurricane. They say it’s oddly serene, and that it smells vaguely funny. Maybe the next time we get a direct hit…

This has been an unusually active hurricane season, as you may have noticed. Yesterday was the anniversary of Hurricane Andrew, the first storm of the 1992 season. (For those who don’t know, Andrew wreaked havoc on the Miami area and is considered the stick by which all other hurricanes are now measured.) Katrina. And today we have the 11th named storm of the season on our hands. I don’t think anyone ever expected such a busy season. Only 21 names are allotted for hurricane use each year, but we’ve never run out of them. According to Wikipedia, the letters of the Greek alphabet would be used after the last name, for example, during this season, Alpha would follow Wilma. But this has never happened.

Hurricanes have existed for years, and even before satellite imagery, people have always been able to tell a hurricane from any other type of storm.

How to tell if a hurricane is coming:

• Falling barometric pressure.
• Skies are entirely gray.
• On and off periods of rain.
• Wind picking up and swiftly moving low, gray clouds.
• Bottled water disappearing from Publix.
• Windows being boarded up.
• They’re saying so on TV.
• People are leaving like crazy and taking all the gas with them.

Well, wish me luck as we ride out the storm. If you live near me, wish yourself luck as well. And I wish you luck also.

The electricity has been blinking quite a bit over the past two hours. If I don’t post tomorrow, we’ve probably lost power.

Go figure

It’s plagued me for years. It’s caused me a great deal of stress. I’ve written songs about it. Hungarian teenagers have made fun of me for it. But now, for the first time, things are different… in a way.

A few months ago I met this girl named Nacole. She’s nice. On Monday evening I got the idea to ask her out to Friday’s school football game. (“What a dumb idea,” you say to yourself. Well, as it happens, that was my parents’ first date and obviously things turned out well for them.)

Tuesday morning, first thing, I approached her as she was at the water fountain. I felt weak as I spoke, but I didn’t falter. And she said yes. My first date! (Yeah, remember the excitement you felt when you were 13… but I’m 16.) However, I wasn’t off the hook yet. She said her father would have to approve.

Today I was on pins and needles as I asked her “Are we still on for Friday?” (as I’ve always wanted to say). She said that her dad was still considering it. So I would have to wait until tomorrow. Well, I was going to have to wait, but all of a sudden this Tropical Storm Katrina has come out of nowhere heading straight toward us, canceling school tomorrow and the game on Friday (we have no school on Fridays anyway).

So, I guess I’ll have to think of something else… like maybe a real date or something. We’ll have to see how things turn out.

Also, I hope this tropical storm passes with little damage. A repeat of last year’s hurricanes would be devastating. Even though this storm is weaker than last year’s Frances and Jeanne, we’re probably going to receive a direct hit (unlike those storms). Again, we’ll have to see how things turn out.

Romance, hurricanes… both natural forces that are almost always destructive but mystifyingly beautiful.

Hearing things

Rather recently I mentioned a site called Overheard in the Office, which posts strange things people hear at work. Yesterday I sent an e-mail to the owner of the site with a suggestion.

The reply:

And my reply to him:

So, considering I haven’t messed up my chances by making him mad, we should see Overheard in School sometime. I think I’ll live vicariously through the site, should it come to exist. I’d like to see it become popular in schools around the world. But my biggest triumph would be to have it banned on the school computers, an honor that this site has not even achieved. I guess we’ll have to stay tuned…

What do you eat for breakfast? This may sound like an odd question, but as they say, breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

In recent history, I ate Toaster Scrambles for several long periods. That is, until I got so sick of them that I was almost throwing up. Until I could choose a good cereal, I ate Pop-Tarts. I finally settled on Frosted Flakes, but it takes me forever to eat them and they’ve gotten kind of boring. Yesterday I had a Nutri-Grain bar, and I thought that was good, so maybe I’ll have one with my cereal from now on.

But what do you eat for breakfast (if anything)? Do you drink coffee, milk, alcohol? Are you satisfied with your choices of breakfast? What would you do to make your breakfast better? Please post a comment and let the rest of us know.

So goes this site featuring social customs and cultural differences of the United States. I know everyone hates us, but I had no idea that (according to the “Stereotypes” page) they think we’re drunkards and racists; that we’re extravagant, wasteful, boastful, arrogant, generous, ignorant of other countries and cultures, informal, insensitive, lazy, loud, obnoxious, promiscuous, rich, rude, snobbish, stingy, and disrespectful of authority; or that we think we know everything and think every country should imitate the US.

This is a good read for my fellow Americans to see how the world sees us.

Fresh prints

I didn’t think my digital camera was very good for making regular-sized photo prints, even though I had seen a few that we had once gotten printed. But yesterday my dad went to Costco‘s web site to upload photos from our June vacation (better late than never, right?). Besides the fact that it took about 30 minutes to upload a batch 12 photos (they’re about 1.5 MB each, after all), having your photos developed (well, printed) this way is kinda neat. And now an excuse to use unordered lists.

Pros of having photos printed at a drug/warehouse store:

• Can place them side-by-side in albums with your film photos
• Paper prints less likely to be deleted than digital files
• Could be cheaper than printing them yourself

And the cons:

• Standard digital pictures don’t fit on standard photo paper; they have to be cropped
• If the pictures are too good, they’ll think they were done by a professional and will refuse to print them for you and probably call Homeland Security or the cops for copyright infringement
• They will see your pictures, so you might want to print that “special” photo set at home

Up next, a very special Ask Jordon.

GlennfB1@AOL.com: Are you aware that ALL present models of APPLE computers have the Dvorak keyboard layout loaded on? Join the SECOND crusade-switch to Mac computers.

Yes, and I’m quite aware that all of the past versions of Windows for at least 10 years have also had the Dvorak keyboard layout loaded on. The Second Crusade lasted from 1147 to 1149, and hopefully no one will die if they refuse to get a Mac.

GlennfB1@AOL.com: Are you aware that high quality stick-on key labels for Dvorak are sold by Hooleon Cp.Cottonwood, AZ 86326

My page The Dvorak Keyboard and You has a link to their site.

What do the major media companies own? Well, since they’re major, and they’re media, and they’re companies, they own a lot of things. See Who Owns What.

Title

Oh, another weekend is biting the dust (yummy). And as I sit here, my umpteen-hundredth week without a date, I wonder why I’m in this situation which many would find regrettable. I was pondering things last night, as I am apt to do. I think it’s boiled down to this: there are girls I would certainly go out with, but the one (or maybe two) who impassionate me the most are way out of my league. Compared to her/them, others don’t compare. So any other girl who might strike my fancy just wouldn’t be good enough.

You don’t have to be head over heels to ask a girl out, I’ve been told. But then what’s the point? It would only lead to… a lack of dating. But maybe feelings could be hurt also. So, in short, maybe I’m not seeing anyone because I don’t want to cause any pain. People suffer enough already, so why let a giant weirdo with bad hair add to that? I mean, I’m not feeling particularly depressed today, I’m just being realistic. From what I’ve seen, 99% of relationships — whether a one-night stand or a marriage of 50 years — end badly. The other 1% end in death.

Maybe it’s the insecurity talking. After all, if I could find love, I’m sure I’d have a brighter outlook on life. Go read some scientific journals, I’m sure they’ve said that. In conclusion, I don’t even know why I’m saying this.

Ask Jordon:

Person: I’ve been getting online and acting like made up people. It’s an addiction! How do I make it stop?

I don’t see anything wrong with it, really. It’s funny.

sean: now that you have the new Weezer cd, what do you think of their new stuff compared to their old stuff?

I think their old stuff is better, but I’ll need some more time to listen before I finalize that opinion.

It’s a 4-Block World for one Tom McMahon, who uses 2×2 grids to compare things. Interesting stuff.

From the song files of Jordon Kalilich

As a guitarist, I have the sheet music, chords, tabs (notation indicating how to play which strings in a song), and/or lyrics to many songs that strike my fancy. For the past four years they’ve occupied a folder in a binder. But there’s so many of them now that I finally decided to do something about it. I bought some alphabetical dividers (which also include “Mc” as if Irish/Scottish people deserve to have their own separate letter) and spent some time this weekend (about an hour and a half) hole-punching them all to fit in another binder.

I’m truly ashamed of my musical tastes. Even though I’m something of a musician, music is a topic I often avoid even with my friends (except for the friends in my band). Sure, other people like groups like the Beatles, but things like that are almost always secondary to whatever current genre into which they pigeonhole themselves. To me there’s virtually no now, it’s all then. A rare look into the personal song files of Jordon Kalilich will show you what I mean.

These 63 songs were found in the pocket of said binder (actually, two of them I added since I started the transition to a new binder yesterday). Some are sheet music from my days of learning to play the guitar (though I never had to get up and pluck the notes from reading the sheet; they were just for reference). Some are songs that people wanted my band to play for this or that reason (though we never did things that way). Some were figured out by me and typed out or scribbled down. But the vast majority are tabs, chords, and/or lyrics to favorite songs, printed directly from those fantastic Internets. Behold the list.

“Act Naturally” (The Beatles)
“Ain’t She Sweet” (The Beatles)
“American Pie” (Don McLean)
“Any Time at All” (The Beatles)
“Ask Me Why” (The Beatles)
“Baby’s in Black” (The Beatles)
“The Ballad of John and Yoko” (The Beatles)
“Black Is Black” (Los Bravos)
“Blueberry Hill” (Fats Domino)
“Bohemian Rhapsody” (Queen)
“Buddy Holly” (Weezer)
“Calling All Angels” (Train)
“Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” (Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons)
“Crimson and Clover” (Tommy James and the Shondells)
“Do You Want to Know a Secret” (The Beatles)
“Don’t Be Cruel” (Elvis Presley)
“Free As a Bird” (The Beatles)
“Glad All Over” (Dave Clark Five)
“Good Morning Good Morning” (The Beatles)
“Happy Together” (The Turtles)
“A Hard Day’s Night” (The Beatles)
“House of the Rising Sun” (traditional)
“I Feel Fine” (The Beatles)
“I Want to Hold Your Hand” (The Beatles)
“If I Needed Someone” (The Beatles)
“In the Garage” (Weezer)
“In the Midnight Hour” (Wilson Pickett)
“It’s Not Unusual” (Tom Jones)
“Legitimate Business” (Tripleside)
“Let It Be” (The Beatles)
“Light My Fire” (The Doors)
“Love Me Tender” (Elvis Presley)
“MacArthur Park” (Richard Harris)
“Mack the Knife” (Bobby Darin)
“Margaritaville” (Jimmy Buffett)
“Mrs. Robinson” (Simon and Garfunkel)
“Mull of Kintyre” (Wings)
“My Special Angel” (The Vogues)
“No Time” (The Guess Who)
“Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” (The Beatles)
“O Little Town of Bethlehem” (traditional)
“Poor Side of Town” (Johnny Rivers)
“Put Your Hand in the Hand” (Ocean)
“Satisfaction” (The Rolling Stones)
“School Day” (Chuck Berry)
“She’d Rather Be with Me” (The Turtles)
“Sleepwalk” (Santo and Johnny)
“Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” (The Platters)
“Someday We’ll Be Together” (Diana Ross and the Supremes)
“Something About the Way You Look Tonight” (Elton John)
“Stairway to Heaven” (Led Zeppelin)
“Sunshine Superman” (Donovan)
“There! I’ve Said It Again” (Bobby Vinton)
“These Eyes” (The Guess Who)
“Unchained Melody” (The Righteous Brothers)
“What a Wonderful World” (Louis Armstrong)
“Woman” (John Lennon)
“Woman” (Peter and Gordon)
“Wonderful Tonight” (Eric Clapton)
“A World Without Love” (Peter and Gordon)
“Yer Blues” (The Beatles)
“You’ll Never Walk Alone” (Gerry and the Pacemakers)
“Young Girl” (Gary Puckett and the Union Gap)

Hmm, I’ve been neglecting Ask Jordon.

joe: How do you feel about the current US foreign policy regarding Latin America and South America in the globalized markets of today?

Rephrase your question without buzzwords and maybe I’ll try to understand it.

Robert Howe: When was it possible to go back to the original keyboard layout?

After I learned the Dvorak keyboard, I completely forgot the other standard QWERTY layout. Because I had to use it at school, I had to relearn it almost immediately after gaining proficiency in Dvorak (during summer vacation). The time I spent relearning QWERTY was spent solely at school, so it took a while… maybe a few months, but I don’t really know.

Weather coolness! First, use Weather Bonk to find local temperatures in your area (thanks in part to Google Maps). It’s interesting to note how different the temperatures in a single area can be. Maybe they’re not all fixed according to observation standards.

Second, the (U.S.) National Weather Service provides “experimental” RSS and XML feeds of weather observations. Here’s the list of feeds for Florida; you can select your own state in the drop-down menu on the page. Seeing as the Weather Service ceased accepting comments on this service before I began working on this site, I can only guess that the “experiment” has been a success.

Drink up!

The song “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke” (or whatever it’s called) is on the TV airwaves again in a new commercial, although it’s been made more cool with the addition of young, hip people who rap and stuff.

This got me thinking about the line “I’d like to buy the world a Coke.” What if I could buy the world a Coke? We can take this one of two ways. First, we can say that I’ll buy a can of Coke for everyone in the entire world. As I write this, the Census Bureau estimates that’s 6,461,035,458 people. Now I don’t buy Coke by the can in stores, but let’s say I had a vending machine that dispensed billions of Cokes. I am familiar with one vending machine that sells them for US$0.60 apiece (I know, it was only $0.50 back in my day). Some simple math tells us that it would set me back $3,876,621,274.80 to perform this service for the world.

Now, who would be able to do such a thing? Thanks to Wikipedia’s list of billionaires, we know that the world’s 148 richest people could shell out the $3.8 billion required. If they were really cheap, they could split it between them and spend only $26,193,386.99 apiece. And when you think about it, that really isn’t too much, is it?

Second, we could take it more literally. We could buy the world (one entity) a Coke (one Coke). Now let’s be generous — I can afford this one — and say we’re buying a 2-liter bottle of the stuff. I don’t really know how much a 2-liter costs either, but I’ve seen 2-liter bottles of Pepsi for sale for $0.99, so maybe someone, somewhere, sells Coke at the same price. So, if I split the 2-liter bottle among the world’s 6,461,035,458 people, they’ll each get 0.00000000031 L, which isn’t very much (about 0.3 nL — nanoliters, of course), and is probably in fact to small to be seen by the human eye. That works out to a cost of about $0.00000000015 per person. Or I could just shell it out myself.

Man, I need a life.

The other day I started feeling sick. You know that terrible feeling when a real bad one’s coming on. Yesterday it was a nose game. Today it’s got my throat and my voice has been weakening all day. I’m actually kind of excited, because I’ve never lost my voice before, and it would give me an excuse not to talk to anyone. Saying more than a few words ends up hurting my throat, but being able to do Bill Clinton impressions makes it worthwhile.

Vertical… farming? Traditional farming takes up a lot of land, so apparently some people think that skyscraper-style farms would be a good idea. And maybe they would be. It’s important, they say, for us to eschew “horizontal farming” methods. “If we do not, then in just another 50 years, 3 billion people will surely go hungry, and the world will be a very unpleasant place in which to live.” (As if it isn’t already.)