The last days of summer

Today is the last day of summer vacation. It seems like it’s been so long. The family vacation, which was at the beginning of summer, seems like it was ages ago, but as I recall dozens of memories of checking up on my various groups of friends before school starting and letting my dog outside after getting home, those things seem like they could have been last week. I guess school is my place. But how have I made use of these last few days of freedom, you ask? I shall tell.

The night before last, I went ice skating with my sister and some friends and some friends’ friends. I thought it was an unlikely way to bring summer vacation to an end; after all, the last time we went, it was Christmastime. But when there’s an ice skating rink nearby, I guess any day can be an ice skating day.

The biggest hassle when it comes to ice skating is finding the right size skates. It’s not like anybody has their own (except all of the good skaters who whiz past you backwards on the ice), so you have to go to the counter and ask for whatever size you need. I remember from last time that my skates were too tight, and I had blisters and other types of sores for weeks. Remembering that, I asked for a larger size, which was way too big. The next size smaller was a little big but much more comfortable, so I went with that.

It wasn’t long before I was going around the ice at a reasonable pace. Okay, it was. I still don’t know how to stop, you see. No matter how much Kevin tried to show me, the best I could manage was a sudden 180º and a frantic wobble of the legs. Luckily, I resorted to using my own tried-and-true technique that I like to call “running into the nearest wall.” No skill required!

Of course, safety was also a concern. After all, I didn’t want to come into school on Monday with a broken arm or anything, so I had to take precautions. I managed to reduce my risk of injury 50% by staying off the ice half the time. Besides that, my feet quickly started to hurt, probably because I was trying to balance my entire weight on two metal blades. I didn’t want so much as a blister, so I would just sit in the penalty box and various other places with access to the ice. It happened that whenever I sat down, everybody else joined me, even if they seemed to be more confident skaters.

I didn’t know some of the people who were there as they were friends of friends. There was this one girl who seemed nice… a little too nice. Her name was Ashley, as I was told when I was introduced to her but later forgot and had to ask someone else. Whenever I was sitting alone resting my feet, she would pass by and smile. We made some nice conversation. She asked how fast I could go, and I showed her that I couldn’t go very fast. Then I asked her the same question, and she zoomed ahead of me. That was when the conversation ended.

When the ice was getting rough and the place was going to close, we decided to hit an Arby’s for some food. I wasn’t very hungry, but when you’re one of nine teenagers on a Friday night, at least one is going to be hungry. When we got to the restaurant, which wasn’t very far away, we saw to our dismay that the dining room was closed. The drive-thru, however, was open, so we walked through there. (Kevin had done it with my sister and me before, so I knew it was possible.) I think we did look pretty ridiculous, though, especially to the people in cars who were waiting behind us.

After that disappointment, some people decided to leave the group and head home. The rest went to Wendy’s to get… more food. When we were there, I saw TJ from school (not that TJ) just standing around. I talked to him for a moment before my entourage pulled me back to them. You couldn’t go inside there either; only the drive-thru was open. “Eat great, even late” my foot. We drove-thru this second time, though. I didn’t get any food there either.

Then another person left, so it was just me, Kevin, my sister, and Ashley. We had a little more time to kill, so my sister and I went with Kevin, and Ashley took her own car. As we were sitting in the two cars deciding where to go, I was sitting in the passenger side of Kevin’s car, with Ashley’s car next to me. I heard a kissing-type noise from her direction, and when I looked, she was rolling up the window, laughing, and looking at me. I’m not even sure what happened or why, but all I could do was smile back.

We ended up going to some stretch of beach behind a condo. Even though it was kind of late, there was just enough light to see, thanks to the glow the city, the lighthouse, and the nearly full moon. We sat on some chairs by the crashing waves; I sat and talked with Ashley, and Kevin with my sister. It was very nice to get to know someone I had just met. (I don’t meet people all the time, you know.) And when it was time to go, I asked her for her MySpace URL. Could this be the 2006 equivalent of asking for one’s phone number? Maybe not. Could something come of this? Maybe she was just being her normal, friendly self, and I’m overreacting. We’ll see.

Yesterday I joined my sister’s friend (and I guess my friend too) in celebrating her 18th birthday. Nathalie will be 18 tomorrow, actually, but we went out for lunch at Olive Garden yesterday to celebrate. Then we went to the mall, then dropped Lisa off at work, and then wondered what to do next. It was extremely hot and I was getting weary of being out, so I suggested that we go home for a swim. That really hit the spot. Then we had dinner and nearly finished a game of Monopoly. It was an eventful afternoon and night.

Today we’ll probably hang out with Kevin some more. Anything to keep my mind of the school year. Actually, it helps if I think it’s going to be fun. Crazy as it sounds, I can almost do it. I do know one thing: senior year is going to be a heck of a year.

The World Wide Web turns 15 years old this month. The Beeb gives us a timeline (Flash) of major events in its history.

The Time Fountain uses a strobe light to make droplets of water appear to be float in midair and even defy gravity. Of course, it’s all an optical illusion, but wouldn’t you like one of those in your home?

Three years ago: “After all, we have in our ranks some of the greatest people of all time, such as Leonardo da Vinci, Mark Twain, Julius Caesar, Alan Thicke…”

The return of the return of the Vazquez

Ms. Vazquez, one of my favorite teachers, has come back from Puerto Rico. While it’s true that she came back for a visit before, she’s apparently making this stay somewhat more permanent. I had gotten word that she was returning to teaching, this time at a middle school somewhere relatively nearby. And what better way to chat with your favorite teacher and her favorite students than to go out to dinner?

She invited the Five, which is Luke’s term for the little clique we had going in European History class, which Ms. Vazquez encouraged us to join (and taught for a few months before she “retired” to Puerto Rico). The Five consist of me, Luke, Brian, Megan, and Michelle. Then there’s TJ, who’s like the “fifth Beatle” of the Five. He’s the sixth Five…r. (Seriously, I always wanted to be in a group of friends that had its own name. Now the dream is a reality!)

Luke said to meet at the school (why? why?) at 5:30 yesterday, so I arrived promptly. The sight of the building, to which I will have to return starting Monday, nearly made me sick, but that’s neither here nor there. After a few minutes of waiting with my dad, who drove me, Luke and TJ came into view. Apparently they had been waiting nearby, but we hadn’t seen them. I got out of the car to talk to them, and Luke gave me a belated birthday gift. The three of us wondered where the others — especially Ms. Vazquez, who came up with the idea — were. Between the three of us there was one cell phone, and none of us had had the foresight to carry any numbers that might be important that night. What to do, what to do?

Finally, I decided to call my house, where my sister could go onto the computer and get Michelle’s number for me. (An e-mail client’s address book is a handy thing if and only if said e-mail client doesn’t allow code to be executed without the user’s permission.) Once she told me the number, I was able to call Michelle’s house to ask her where the heck she was. Unfortunately, she wasn’t home, but whoever answered the phone (her brother, I think) gave me the cell number of her boyfriend, Aaron, who was with Michelle at the time. Then when I called that number, I talked to Aaron, who said that he was with Michelle and Megan and that they were on their way. I asked Aaron to ask Michelle for Ms. Vazquez’s number, which only Luke could call. Ms. Vazquez told him that she had been at the school at 5:30, which was clearly not when we were supposed to meet, and that she would be on her way once again. Whew.

Amid all this, Luke remembered that he hadn’t been able to get in touch with Brian at all, and that he lived only a few blocks from the school. So we asked my dad, who was still there, to drive us to his house. Brian’s mother said that he had been sleeping all day, so she woke him up and he was ready to go shortly. (Man, that would be crazy if that happened to me. Just sleeping all day would be crazy for me.) In a freaky but good coincidence, we, Ms. Vazquez, and Megan, Michelle, and Aaron all arrived at the school at about the same time. It was nice seeing Ms. Vazquez again. It was like she had never left. There were no hellos or other formalities. She was just her, and we were us.

We decided to go to Big Louie’s, an Italian restaurant that’s next to a certain bowling establishment. Being in two cars, we figured that one would lead the other. Ms. Vazquez didn’t really know where she was driving us, and she kept asking if it was some place that she had just been to earlier in the evening. We arrived there soon and lo — she said it was. How about that.

We got inside, and our waitress remembered Ms. Vazquez, if we needed proof that she was right. We got to talking about all sorts of things, including school, movies, and lots of other topics that I don’t feel I need to share specifically. On the subject of colleges, Ms. Vazquez asked me which ones I was thinking about going to and, like many people, begged me to go out of this crummy state that no one likes.* Not to disappoint her, I told her I was thinking of going to Yale, which I guess is true. I told her about the Yale seminar I attended not so long ago. She suggested that I check out NYU, which she said was good, even though she didn’t go there herself.

I didn’t get pizza like everyone else because I had been eating a lot of leftover pizza over the past few days. I got pasta instead. I didn’t eat much of it, so when we were getting ready to leave, I had it boxed. Ms. Vazquez paid for our food and only required that we throw in some money for a tip. Then she drove us back to Brian’s house, where Luke promised that we would see a cool hamster. After saying goodbye to Ms. Vazquez, we checked out Brian’s hamster, which I guess was fairly cool. Then everybody — me, Luke, Michelle, Megan, Aaron, and TJ — went into his small, small room and hung out. And that’s how it went down.

Oh, there was one more thing. TJ realized that parking his car in the school parking lot was not a good idea. When we passed by on the way to Brian’s house, he saw that they had locked the gates. So he called his parents to pick him up at the school. When my dad came to pick me up from Brian’s house, I asked him if he could take TJ back to the school, and so we got there at the same time as TJ’s parents, which was also freaky but good. And that’s how it went down.

Marvel at Vincent Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night”… in Lego bricks. The only colors used were black, white, yellow, red, green, and blue. The result looks very cool, and I bet that even though it’s time-consuming, it’s also simple enough to be fun. If I were to do something similar, what image would I use? Maybe something like this.

Or maybe something a little simpler. But seriously, if you stand far enough away, it really looks real. John Lennon’s jacket even looks fluorescent yellow-green. Squinting might help also.

I’ve mentioned the Wilhelm scream, a stock sound effect used in dozens of popular films. Now, thanks to the miracle of YouTube (and possibly copyright infringement), here’s a video compilation of the Wilhelm’s appearances in movies new and old.

One year ago: “Instead of boring things like diseases, crossing rivers, etc., we want to throw in hazards such as uprisings, ninjas, and just about any other outrageous thing you could think of.”
Two years ago: “No fine was charged.”
Three years ago: “Yeah, it looked just plain icky on 1024×768. Luckily, all is well now.”

*I don’t think it’s crummy, personally, although it is a bit boring. And it’s true that nobody likes it here and that everybody wants to get out.

School supplies

I spent Sunday and Monday helping out for a backpack drive at church. After all, school is about to start for a lot of children who can’t afford school supplies, so I thought I’d lend a hand to my friend’s mom, who organized the whole thing.

On Sunday we assembled all of the donations: backpacks with school supplies in them. But it wasn’t that simple, of course. We had to take out the supplies and redistribute them evenly. After carrying dozens of heavy backpacks across the church/school grounds, it was much more exciting, even though it was a bit more time-consuming. Actually, I really don’t remember much of what we did on Sunday because it was all overshadowed by Monday.

My sister and I got up bright and early to dedicate a full day to the cause on Monday, along with our friend Kim. Well, I didn’t expect it to be more than most of a day, but it was actually closer to a full day, as I should have expected. We started out by going to some stores and buying supplies that we needed: particularly, large quantities of paper, markers, and notebooks for low, low prices.

Then, we were on our way to Starbucks to get some cool drinks when Kim’s mom saw a homeless woman that she knew. She stopped the car by the side of the road (actually a pretty busy highway) and talked to the woman, who was standing on the sidewalk. She stepped forward from the sidewalk so that she could be at the passenger-side window. Kim’s mom introduced her to us, and she seemed nice. Kim’s mom just wanted to say hello, but apparently the homeless woman really wanted someone to talk to. Kim’s mom said that we were going to be on our way, and that she would only drive off after she had seen her walk back up to the sidewalk (she didn’t want her to get hit by a car, after all). She was telling the homeless woman to watch her step as she was walking slowly backward, but she tripped over the curb and fell onto the sidewalk.

We got out of the car, which was still parked in one of the lanes, and we now had an unfortunate reason for it to be there. Kim’s mom made sure that the homeless woman was comfortable while Kim called an ambulance. Immediately, drivers passing by offered help. One offered his cell phone in case we needed it, another gave a mostly-unused bottle of water, and another was a paramedic who offered her services. Luckily, her help wasn’t needed because Kim’s mom is a nurse herself. A few minutes later, the ambulance was bumbling around a nearby parking lot, so I went and signaled them to go over to the scene of the accident.

They came onto the scene and prepared themselves to take the woman away. She was howling in pain. It was incredibly sad. She told Kim’s mom to take her shopping cart full of possessions to her favorite pastor at another nearby church. The cart was big and smelly, but we managed to get it in there and take it to the church as it started to rain. As the door of the rectory opened, a woman looked at us three teenagers and asked if any of us knew anything about computers. My sister and Kim pointed back to me, so the woman led me to her old computer where her old word processor was having a problem. Parts of the background were black, and against the black text they were unreadable. Luckily it wasn’t something I couldn’t fix. I’d never even used this program and I could figure it out.

Then we were on our way to Starbucks as promised. I didn’t get anything as I had been to Starbucks the past two days. So we got back to the church with our school supplies, and there we met some more energetic volunteers. It was all a matter of separating backpacks, separating school supplies, and then putting the right amount of school supplies in the right number of backpacks. It really was tedious work, and I grew tired. Plus, there were a few more trips to stores, including one where we filled 3 shopping carts with over $500 in merchandise.

Like I said, it was wearing me down. So we finally popped over to Wendy’s to have a late lunch. I ate too much, as usual, and so I still felt tired as we worked for a few more hours putting things in backpacks and finally loading some of the backpacks in Kim’s mom’s van. It was the late afternoon when we finally finished. I’d spent 14 hours of the last two days sorting through pencils, erasers, pens, protractors, compasses, paper, folders, binders, calculators, rulers, crayons, markers, pencil cases, and of course, backpacks. The only thing I could possibly do after such long, eventful days was relax.

What would it look like if the dance scenes from Back to the Future and Back to the Future Part II were synchronized? Watch Back to the Future: The Enchantment Under the Sea Dance Revisited (Google Video) and find out. It’s pretty cool.

Brooke Greenberg of Reiserstown, Maryland, looks and acts like a normal baby, but she’s actually 13 years old. Here’s some TV news coverage of her and her family. (I should add that although she seems to have puzzled scientists by defying the aging process, she’s not particularly healthy.)

Two years ago: “Would you buy items from a WoS store? If so, what items would you like to see?”
Three years ago: “All day Wednesday, she’s going to see how a lefty lives in a right-handed world.”

That’s how you get your ducks in a row

If there’s one great thing about my neighborhood, it’s that the local fauna never cease to amaze. Yesterday morning we were greeted by these visitors on the driveway:

Ducks are a regular sight because there are a bunch that live in the canal across the street. Occasionally they wander into our yard, but as soon as you get near them, they head in the opposite direction. So it’s rare to see a mother and eight ducklings just hanging out and not scrambling away (as fast as ducks can scramble, anyway). A couple of them even sat down. I think they were expecting to be fed, but we didn’t feed them.

My mom pointed out that they were “teenage” ducks — neither newly hatched nor fully grown — and that they looked awkward with their fully-grown feet and not-yet-fully-grown bodies (kind of like human teenagers?). But look at those feet.

After a little while of marveling at the ducks, we decided to make it clear to them that they should go back where they came from. So the ducklings gathered themselves…

…and set off with mother in the lead, as ducks tend to do.

Of course, I’m only assuming that the parent of these ducks was a female, but it could have just as easily been a male. I see nothing wrong with fathers assuming motherly duties. Who am I to uphold outdated ideas of how families have to be run? After all, parents should share those nice little opportunities, don’t you think?

Anyway, after crossing the street, the ducks looked around for food in the grass or something.

Due to the new school year approaching, I set a rigid schedule to get used to going to bed earlier. Last night was my first night going to bed at 11:00, and at that time I was actually pretty tired, so I hit the hay. I lay in bed for a while, but it was very hot, I couldn’t get comfortable, and random thoughts were bouncing around in my head, no matter how hard I tried to suppress them. Did I mention that it was hot? I threw my sheets to the side, took off my shirt and shorts, and turned up the fan, and it was still uncomfortably hot. Later, the air conditioning turned on, and it was still hot.

Every once in a while I would check the clock because it was still very easy to open my eyes. An hour passed. Two hours. Now, I’ve had some sleepless nights before, but this made no sense. I should have been asleep anyway. I tried everything I could think of to doze off: taking deep breaths, getting a drink of water, trying to clear my mind. I even put away my alarm clock because the incessant ticking was making me crazy. Immediately after doing that, I felt much more calm and relaxed, but nothing came out of it. I tried focusing on certain sounds, such as a sprinkler or distant thunder that came and went, but to no avail.

After a while it was past 2:00 in the morning. The whole thing was growing more ridiculous with each tick of my farther away, less annoying clock. I was pretty tired — maybe even tired enough to go to sleep — but I was being held up at the gates of dreamland. I finally resorted to going out into the living room and watching TV. I knew it would only make me more awake, but it would sure beat lying around and doing nothing. Just then, there was more thunder and lightning, and since I realized the risks (?) of watching TV during a thunderstorm, I decided to go back to bed.

The rain came for a while. I hoped that the sound would lull me to sleep, but the rain went away quickly. I don’t know what I did to make myself finally go to sleep, but eventually I found that I had woken up. It must have taken me about four hours to get to sleep, and I got less than five hours of sleep. Surprisingly, I haven’t been too terribly tired today, but come on: four hours to get to sleep? What caused that?

For this last week of summer vacation, I’m implementing a new rule: go to sleep only when you’re really tired.

It’s pretty weird that I should have to post a link to this kind of video, but it’s very useful: Busted: The Citizens’ Guide to Surviving Police Encounters. Basically, it describes some police encounter situations (such as getting pulled over) and shows you how to defend your legal rights that police officers may trick you into giving up. The laws mentioned apply to the United States, but it may be useful elsewhere. This is a video that everyone should watch; you’ll definitely learn a thing or two, and it could keep you from getting arrested. (Disclaimer: Don’t do illegal things.)

See what songs are starting to play on radio stations across the US at the oddly-named but easy-to-remember Yes.com (Flash). It doesn’t seem to be working at the moment, but little dots and song titles should appear and disappear on the map.

Two years ago: “Two years ago today, I boldly made the switch to the Dvorak keyboard layout.”
Three years ago: “So, how am I doing after a year of Dvorak touch typing?”

The World of Work

As summer vacation draws to a slow, painful close, I can’t help but think back on all the things I’ve done this summer. Then I realized: I forgot to get a job. Oops!

Some people might argue that you shouldn’t get a job if you’re a student. They might say that your job is simply to be a student. That might be true, but I’m still waiting for payday. On the other hand, lots of young high-school persons like myself engage in work-related activities whilst juggling schoolwork, sports, social gatherings, parenthood, and what have you. Is that any way to go? Sure, being chronically busy is a great way to wear down your body’s fight-or-flight response, but there’s an upside to having a job in high school, and that, my friends, is work experience.

Let’s say I’m an employer. I want to hire people who will make my company (and, by extension, me) the most money. Why should I take a risk on someone who’s never punched a clock when there’s a pool of better-prepared young’uns vying for the same position? I, a greedy employer, am going to pick the ones who have had jobs before and know what they’re doing. Thus, the latecomer to the working world gets kicked out into the cold, making it even harder for him slash her to get a start. Hey, that’s capitalism… maybe?

Now I’m going to take the other side of the argument. Let’s say I’m a teenager who doesn’t currently have a job and hasn’t had one in a long time. (That’s right: I did have one in the past, and that fact sort of breaks my previous argument.) Now, let’s say my senior year of high school is rapidly approaching. This should be easy. I’m sitting around, wondering about whether I should get a job… well, you get the idea. But for the hypothetical me, this is the last time in my life I’ll really be able to lounge around without a job (until I’m old, at least), so why shouldn’t I enjoy it? Well, that’s all there is to that argument. The end.

It really is a tough decision, and I’m not sure which course of action (or inaction) to take. If I decide not to get a job, then I’m doing a great job right now as I’m being lazy. But if I decide that I really want a job, my choices are limited. It has to be within walking/biking distance — there is no room for compromise here because I, who am just learning to drive, can’t rely on my parents to take me to work if I’m working, say, after school. Oh, that’s another thing. I must never work after school. That knocks down a bunch of potential jobs right there, but luckily, my school never has classes on Fridays, so there’s a day freed up for potential work.

Well, there’s a shopping establishment a few blocks away from my house, and tomorrow is Saturday, when I have even more free time than usual. It couldn’t hurt to stroll around and look, I guess. It’s better than complaining.

Watch The Slowest Man on Earth (YouTube video) take 45 minutes to traverse halfway across the frame.

Not everybody can be popular, but thanks to Popularity Dialer, you can arrange to be called so that you’ll at least seem to be popular.

One year ago: “What if you take a robot home from the bar? What if a robot runs for President?”
Two years ago: “Don’t worry, I can reveal that detail. It’s central to the plot of the book.”
Three years ago: “In other news, I’ve been flooded with about 0 e-mails with entries for the WoS Slogan Contest!”

Scheduled…?

Yesterday I found out my schedule for next year. A few months ago, I picked these classes:

• Programming III
• English IV Honors
• American Government/Economics Honors
• Anatomy and Physiology Honors
• AP Calculus
• AP Spanish

AP Calculus and AP Spanish are supposed to take up two periods (one each semester), so that gives me a full eight classes. Toward the end of the last school year, I found out that I would be taking AP Calculus AB the first semester and AP Calculus BC the second semester. Ugh. And let’s not even think of Spanish. I just chose it because I wanted to take another AP class. It never occurred to me that only native speakers take that class for an easy A.

Anyway, let’s look at my first semester schedule:

1. American Government/Economics Honors
2. AP Calculus AB
3. English IV Honors
4. Anatomy and Physiology Honors

It looks A-OK. But here’s my schedule for the second semester:

1. Spanish IV
2. AP Calculus BC
3. Physics I Honors
4. Programming II

First of all, I somehow got Spanish IV, which is half of the AP Spanish class. The other half of the class, which should have been in the first semester, is nowhere to be found. Does this mean that I’m only taking the class in the second semester? I can’t say for sure, but it looks like I won’t be taking Spanish in the first semester, which is a tremendous relief. Now it should be (somewhat) easier for me to get switched out of Spanish. What would a good alternative be? I don’t know! But even if they don’t let me switch out, I’d much rather take the class for half the year, if that’s even allowed. It’s all so confusing. I might even have to talk to one of the guidance counselors or something.

Second, It looks like I got put into Physics. I don’t really like the idea (there’s a reason I didn’t choose physics, after all), but I’ll manage.

Finally, my schedule says that I’m taking Programming II again. It seems likely that they mean Programming III, because last year, Programming II, III, and IV were all in the same classroom at the same time, and the class had about twelve people in all. I’m hoping that they meant Programming III, because I really don’t want two scheduling fiascos.

I’ll just have to tell myself that it’s going to be okay and that lots of other people have gotten crazy schedules that they need to get changed.

It’s a little-known fact that “The Flintstones” was originally sponsored by Winston cigarettes — well, it was little known until this video appeared on YouTube.

Here’s another then-and-now photo essay. This time the subject is Paris. (See also: New York.)

One year ago: “Well, I’m back.”
Two years ago: “Boy, it’s great to be back.”