6,500,000,000 vs. 1

Today was another exciting day of FCAT testing. Since we seniors don't have to take the FCAT, we get to do nothing, except that the school doesn't like that, so they're trying to keep us busy during the mornings while some of the other students are testing. Today we were supposed to go to the auditorum for a trivia game in the style of "1 vs. 100," a show I'd never heard of until last week.

We went into the auditorum early, and there was a representative from a technical school there to talk about the future and stuff. (Technology is always changing, you guys. In the future, we'll all use technology.) I thought that maybe we had been duped into listening to a college presentation. It seems like I've heard hundreds over the past few years, the next most recent one being a few weeks ago in Mr. Mumtaz's class (which I'm in twice a day -- fun). They get really tiring after a while. This lady didn't even talk about the college. She just went through a PowerPoint presentation about how technology is the future.

After that, we were split into groups to play 1 vs. 100 (actually, since this was about half of a senior class, it was 1 vs. 25). There were enough people in the auditorium that few people noticed that I didn't get up to play even though my group was called. I didn't feel like it, and gift cards and snacks weren't good enough prizes to sway me. My stock excuse, in case I got caught, was that I had a headache. After a while, I did get one because it was so boring watching people get mostly easy trivia questions wrong, and the hosts (assistant-principal-types) were talking really close to the microphone. Eventually, I got restless.

Next, they kept us in the auditorium for a senior meeting. One of the big points of discussion was that some people are missing too many minutes of school. Not days. They count by minutes now. 2,400 minutes in 9 weeks (or is it 18 weeks? I don't remember) is all they'll tolerate, it seems. If you miss 2,510 minutes, you can't go to Grad Bash (Universal Studios' version of Grad Nite), and if you paid for it already, they'll keep the money anyway. 2,620 minutes, and you can't go to prom. If you miss 2,730 minutes of school, you can't go to the graduation ceremony (although they'll still give you your real diploma along with everyone else).

I got my guitar back yesterday. We took it in last Monday, and they actually gave the call saying it was fixed on Friday, right when they were closing for the weekend. So I had to wait all weekend for the guitar, but that was okay. I was just glad that it was fixed. Not only did it produce sound again, but it was also restrung and given a good cleaning up that it's never had before. It looks and sounds like new. I had some fun playing it last night.

Really creepy: Food Network Subliminal Advertising. I heard on the news that the network has since apologized for this and said it was an error.

Here are twin galleries of photos. One set was taken in various locations around San Jose, California, in 1975, and the other set was taken of the same locations in 2006. It's interesting to see them side by side.