An apology

On September 17, a UF student named Andrew Meyer spoke out of turn and caused a disruption at a town hall forum with Sen. John Kerry. He resisted removal by UFPD officers and was Tasered into submission. The subsequent investigation found that the police officers were involved were justified in their actions. Meyer has been disciplined and has just issued several statements of apology. I feel that I owe an apology as well.

I saw a video of the Tasering incident on the evening of the 17th, a few hours after it occurred. I was sickened to see a college student like myself screaming in pain, to the horror of the rest of the audience, for apparently exercising his right to ask the Senator some hard-hitting questions. The footage frightened me to the point that I could hardly sleep. I knew I had to do something because I did not feel safe on the campus of UF.

The next day, I joined a few hundred concerned students in a march that went to UFPD headquarters and the hall where the president of the university was to give a press conference on the incident. It was then that I first heard differing opinions: Meyer was a jerk; he broke the rules; he got what he deserved. Those opinions, I believed, didn’t stand a chance vis-à-vis the right of free speech. During the protests, I made the difficult decision to skip a history class. I figured that my professor would sympathize with my attempts at citizenship.

When he told me he didn’t, I was fazed. And over the days that followed, the facts — the backstory — came in. Meyer had long proclaimed his love for attention. When the cameras were off, the officers alleged, he was cooperative and even friendly. I was fazed. Battles ensued on the local editorial pages: I read letters saying that the officers were right to arrest someone disrupting a public event. They were right to Tase him because he had become a trespasser when he refused to leave.

As a consequence, they said, his speech was not free, in the same vein as threatening to kill someone or yelling fire in a crowded theater. And now, the officers involved in Tasering and arresting Meyer have been exonerated. Since the hoopla has apparently died down, Meyer has found it to be a good time to apologize for his actions. So have I.

I was wrong. I was wrong for being led by my emotions while failing to consider the facts and the law. I apologize to everyone that my actions have affected: my parents, my professor, the friends who have had to deal with me. They were right. The person who erased “I Support Andrew Meyer, Not Police Brutality” from the whiteboard on my door was right. I should have remembered that free speech is not black and white in the same way that the world is not black and white. Under the influence of emotion — the enemy of reason — I failed to see this, and for that, I am sorry. I feel like a fool.

I hope that I’ve learned something and become a better person from this experience, so that when the police really do overstep their authority, I’ll know to be there, marching on the front lines.

Inertia is a property of matter

Snippets from an IM conversation with my friend Sean on Thursday:

Jordon: today and tomorrow are when the honors students register for their honors courses
Jordon: you register online, it goes from 9-5 each day, and you can only register for one class per day
Jordon: so at 9:00 this morning everyone on my floor was going crazy because they couldn’t register for their class
Sean: that sucks
Jordon: I was trying too because they get filled up pretty quickly, but I couldn’t do it, and I was going to be late for class, so I hurried halfway across campus (a 20 minute walk) to my class where I was going to have a quiz
Jordon: on the way, I realized that the guy who sits next to me always has his computer, so I figured by then it would be working, so that made me go even faster
Jordon: so I get to the class (on the third floor), panting and out of breath, asking to use someone’s computer, and everyone’s like staring at me
Jordon: and I’m like, “honors registration, man… it’s crazy”
Jordon: so I use that guy’s computer, and I’m able to register for my class, so mission accomplished
Jordon: I just got an e-mail apologizing for the delay

I’m pretty excited today: not only about today’s Florida-Georgia Game, but also about Bill Nye coming to speak next Tuesday. I used to watch Bill Nye the Science Guy all the time when I was a little kid. He made science fun! If you don’t believe me, here’s a clip. And who could forget the theme song? My sister and some of my friends are also planning on going. And why wouldn’t they? Science rules!

Here are The 10 Strangest (Real) Things in Space. They’re all real.

And here are the 30 Strangest Deaths in History. Who’s the authority who decides what the strangest things are, anyway? I should come up with a list of the strangest things so other blogs can link to it.

Delicioused

My inbox was busy today. Earlier this afternoon, I got a notice from my web host saying that the balance in my account was down to $1. I didn’t think much of it; I get charged for bandwidth and storage (usually around 10¢ per day), and then I make another deposit, and the cycle continues. I also got a large number of e-mails (3) about The Dvorak Keyboard and You, but I didn’t think much of that either. After coming home from dinner this evening, I put two and two together. I had another e-mail from my web host in my inbox: my balance had gone down to 50¢ in less than 5 hours. I was being Slashdotted. Or Dugg. Or attacked. Or something.

Immediately, I checked my bandwidth and storage stats. Today’s bandwidth use was about 10 times the average, and my storage was also climbing high. I combed through the latest access logs, and it didn’t take me long before I saw that lots of hits were coming to The Dvorak Keyboard and You from del.icio.us and reddit, two very popular web sites. The page has also been mentioned on a thread on Fark. It seems that there have been so many hits that my access log was causing the drastic increase in storage.

I had to act, and fast. It sounds cheesy, but it’s true. I made an emergency payment which should be enough. I could have bought bandwidth in bulk, but I don’t think the influx of hits will last long enough to warrant that. I just needed to keep my balance from hitting $0, at which time the site would be disabled. We wouldn’t want that to happen, now would we? I’d get even more e-mails about the site being down, and I’d be like, “I know, guys.” Unless, by chance, I didn’t happen to check my e-mail after dinner tonight, in which case I’d be in for a nasty surprise come morning.

As of this writing, The Dvorak Keyboard and You is #12 on the front page of del.icio.us, #31 on reddit, which puts it on page 2, and #2 in reddit’s programming category. And the question is: why? The Dvorak Keyboard and You has long been bookmarked by del.icio.us readers, and only now is it enjoying its fifteen minutes. That’s just the way the web works, I guess. The wisdom of crowds.

So, to you new readers that I’ve tried to lure in from the Dvorak page… welcome… if there are any of you, that is. (If you just found my site from the Dvorak page, post a comment and say hello!) I usually don’t blog about my site very much, although I do have a category for it. Usually I talk about my life, and people think it’s cool and/or entertaining, so they stick around. Okay, now what’s something interesting that’s happened to me in the past few days? Well, I was planning on asking a girl out on what would be my first date. Yeah, say what you want; everyone else has. (Actually, they haven’t.) Stay tuned as this story unfolds.

Then I usually have a few links that I think are interesting. Here’s the first one: Wikipedia’s list of film sequels by box-office improvement. Apparently a lot of sequels actually make more money than their predecessors.

Fine Art Taco Photography. And you thought this site was weird.

Regular readers: Am I crazy for assuming that so many new visitors are going to be reading this? What if they’re not? That could be kind of embarrassing, but I can’t say it hasn’t happened before.

Pun or song lyric

Version 7.10 of Ubuntu, my operating system of choice, came out on Thursday, so guess who upgraded right away. That’s right: me. It’s free of charge, so all I had to do was let the upgrade process work its magic. Sometimes magic takes a while, especially when web servers are bogged down with traffic and Internet connections are inexplicably slow. (20 KB/s? What the heck?) But I’d say it was worth it.

Ubuntu, like most Linux distributions, has repositories of software packages for easy downloading and installation of programs and other tools. Upgrading the operating system usually means upgrading your programs too. So I’m enjoying new versions of Thunderbird (e-mail), Pidgin (instant messaging), the GIMP (image editing), OpenOffice.org (office suite), and more. Plus, there’s a more stable version of Compiz (one that doesn’t seem to make my computer crash*) with all the Compiz Fusion extras. (I only hate eye candy when I can’t have any. Check out this video to see what Compiz is all about.)

Besides adjusting to new versions of programs, the only real issue I had was with fonts in Firefox. The same fonts were showing up, but they looked very different. I don’t know much about fontography, but I found out that it had to do with the hinting of the fonts. So I changed Ubuntu’s font hinting settings, and everything is good again.

I’ve been pretty lazy this weekend, but time has been going by fast. Today I watched the Gators beat Kentucky. (I enjoy football, okay, guys?) Tomorrow I’ll be doing research in the library with my America in the Fifties professor and most of the class. It should be fun. Since the class only has about 12 people, we’re pretty good buds. At least, I like to think so. I don’t know many of their names, but since when did that matter? One guy (who looks like a John or a Chuck but isn’t) has said that he uses Ubuntu, and that’s cool. He said he switched to Linux because he hated Windows Vista. I have him beat; I switched because I hated Windows XP. (Though my friend Luke switched because he hated Windows 98 — granted, it circa 2003 at the time.)

Incidentally, I used Windows from version 3.1 right up to the beginning of this year. In this space I would reminisce if I felt like it. Instead, I’ll just do it mentally. You can too! Fill the rest of this space with your own memories of your old computers.
 
 
 

Ah, the memories. Done? Good. Me too. Oh, I was just thinking… remember that idea for a World of Stuff store? I have a pretty lame idea for a shirt, but I know that hardcore WoS fans would buy it. And I’m sure that if I came up with some funny things to put on shirts, people would maybe buy them. Of course, I’d be using something like CafePress, and all of my earnings would go toward running the site.

Wikipedia has an article on deliberately fictitious entries in encyclopedias and other reference works.

Saturday, December 8 is Pretend to Be a Time Traveler Day!

* Although, while I was gone from my computer today, it rebooted. I can’t pin this down on any specific program because the system logs reveal nothing about it.

A major problem

It’s October, and that apparently means that it’s time to start registering for spring classes! I absolutely detest having to pick classes, and doing so in college is at least as bad as in high school. You still have to plan with the end in mind, but now the end is up to you. Plus, I need to change my major from computer engineering to computer science. Early on in the semester, I asked people how I could change my major.

Q: How do I change my major?
A: Don’t worry about it.

“Don’t worry about it” is an all-encompassing answer that means, “It’s too complicated for me to explain,” “I don’t want to have to think about it,” or “I don’t know.” I guess I should have changed my major earlier, because now I have to deal with all that in addition to the schedule frenzy. And, oh — it is a frenzy. Or, at least, it will be. I have to talk to an engineering advisor as well as an honors advisor, so one or both of them should be able to help. On the agenda today:

1. Walk-in appointment with honors advisor to ask: Do I talk to an honors or engineering advisor first if I want to change my major? Do I need to have an idea of what classes I should take before I talk with either of them? How do I know when I should actually register for my classes?
2. Have a late lunch.
3. Hopefully meet with an engineering advisor, which they’re making me do before I can register for classes.
4. Schedule an appointment for an honors advisor visit.
5. Study for the calculus and chemistry tests I have tomorrow.
6. Chemistry test review session tonight.
7. Eat some more? And then study? And sleep?

Yeah. Busy times.

It’s time for yet a second edition of From Canada with Love, where my friend Natasha (and sometimes I) answer your love-related questions.

Natasha answers:

WikiScanner traces anonymous Wikipedia edits to the businesses, schools, and organizations from which they originated. Here are some not-so-nice things that UF students had to say about FSU. Also watch for companies removing parts of articles that make them look bad!

Bizarre? Embarrassing? Scary? Watch this MS-DOS 5 Upgrade Video and see what you think of it.

Bus

I’m at home yet another weekend. I took the bus this time. Well, not the bus. A bus. There are multiple bus services that take students between our middle-of-nowhere college town and various stops in South Florida. The ticket price of $45 is pretty reasonable considering the distance and the fact that it’s a round trip. To my surprise, we got back to South Florida with little delay. I hope things go as well tomorrow evening, when we go back to Gainesville. I have class early on Monday, so I need to get enough sleep.

Some people say you should stop complaining about not having a girlfriend or boyfriend and do something about it. It is not that easy. I don’t know about those people. Confidence is key. I forget where I heard that. I think I read it somewhere. But it seems true. If I were some girl, I probably wouldn’t date me because I’d be like, “Like, OMG, he’s so self-hating, even though he’s, like, totally hawt.” (Sometimes I feel totally hawt.) So I guess it works like this: self-confidence begets love. Love begets… oh, you guessed it. It’s a vicious cycle. In order to break in, it seems, I’ll have to conjure up some confidence out of thin air. There’s a word for that, I think. It’s called optimism.

In a completely unrelated note, I’ve realized how much I need to exercise. Without getting too much into the details, let me just say that the sight of my shirtless torso is enough to scare girls away. I wish I were kidding, but I am not. The last time our hero attempted some upper-body exercise, he overdid it and couldn’t move his arms for a while. And that’s been pretty sufficient to scare him (me) away from moving a muscle for the past two years. Just thinking about doing a push-up makes me hurt. Meanwhile, my roommate and our suitemate in the next room are, how you say, physically fit. The disparity is concerning.

Here’s a list of celebrities who have attempted suicide (but failed).

Check out these French prints from 1910 showing what life might be like in the year 2000.

All Linux, all the time

The other day I got a notice from the university’s housing department saying that they’d be doing maintenance to the network in my dorm on Tuesday morning. The notice also said that there would be computer network guys in my dorm’s lobby to help with people’s connection issues. I knew I’d lose my Internet connection, so it was no surprise yesterday that I couldn’t get online. I went downstairs with my laptop to ask for help, fully expecting a sigh from the guys at the table because I use neither Windows nor Mac OS, but Linux — Ubuntu, to be exact.

One of the guys gave the standard comment to the other: “This one’s all you, Jim/Bob/Steve/Larry.” So Jim/Bob/Steve/Larry, the resident Linux guy, had a look at my computer and started poking around. He had a laptop of his own on his desk, and I could see that it was running Linux: it was a stereotypical setup featuring KDE, tiny fonts, a space-themed background, and about 17 command line windows open. I think he said it was Sabayon Linux. Anyway, he spent five to ten minutes editing some files only to get errors connecting to the Internet. He wasn’t aware of the differences between Ubuntu and Sabayon, but he asked for my number and said he’d call me when he found out.

The problem isn’t really connecting to the Internet, it’s setting up an Ethernet connection that requires a user name and password. That is possible with Linux, but it’s apparently not as straightforward. What I want to know is why we have to enter a user name and password to connect to the Internet in our own dorms. Is someone thief going to come in, plug his computer into the Ethernet network, and steal the university’s precious bits? I doubt it. (In the meantime, the Linux guy turned off authentication in my room, so I don’t need a user name or password to connect. That’s how they “solved” my problem initially, and it had been doing me fine until yesterday. Seriously, guys. Why do we need to do this in the first place?)

In more optimistic news, the next version of Ubuntu, 7.10 (codenamed Gutsy Gibbon), is coming out next Thursday, and, as always, it will be free (zero cost) for everyone. There’s a bunch of new features that will make it easier to use, so bookmark Ubuntu’s official site and return after next Thursday to download the operating system for free.

I’ve been using Linux for almost 8 months now, so I feel that I’m qualified to write an article about it à la The Dvorak Keyboard and You. Of course, I don’t pretend to know everything about Linux, so I’m going to have a friend look it over and give me his thoughts. There are tons of sites that introduce people to Linux, but we could use one more. Most of my friends have never heard of Linux, after all, so I hope that a page about Linux on this site will allow my friends and others to give it some thought.

See what’s all the rage on Wikipedia with wikirage.

15 Stunning Images Using Blur to Portray Movement.

Home, home again

In school politics, the Gator Party swept this week’s elections, winning 44 of the 47 seats that were up for grabs. Someone told me they usually win more, which just goes to show the kind of influence they have. They have a lot of money, I think it’s because the fraternities endorse them. They’re probably good chums, the Gator Party and the frats. That’s a great reason to vote against them. But anyway, the Progress Party candidate running to represent my dorm won, so did vote for a winner.

The referendum-type things were a little more disappointing. One question asked whether a non-profit, student-run café should be built on campus. The other asked whether the university should build a homeless shelter. The café was approved, and the homeless shelter was rejected. Methinks those results paint a sad picture of UF’s student body. While I can’t speak for everybody, it seems that in general, they care more about their caffeinated drinks than about the destitute people living around them.

Anyway, my sister and I have come home for the weekend, but my parents are away because it’s their anniversary. We’ve been hanging out with friends, which is cool, but I’m really looking forward to watching the UF-LSU game tonight on our ginormous TV. The kickoff is in a few minutes.

Here’s an individually wrapped edition of Ask Jordon.

Peter: How do I keep up my motivation to blog, especially when I’m very busy in life?

I love to inform and entertain. I have a readership that likes to find out what’s new in my life, so I write for them. If too many days have gone by, I feel that I need to blog if only “for the record.” Sometimes, when I’m letting off steam, I write for myself. Even if I don’t intend to let off steam, I still end up feeling better now that I’ve gotten my feelings into words and shared them with other people. If you have one dedicated reader, you have an audience to write for. And hey, I’m a dedicated reader of your blog. I noticed you haven’t written anything in a while. What do you have to say about that? Write about it in your blog. That should get the ball rolling again.

Here are some of The World’s Ugliest Cars (although, to be fair, many of them are simply listed because they were pieces of junk).

For those of you interested in moving to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, read 20 Reasons Not to Move to Dubai.

Election daze

Student Government elections were yesterday and today. Exciting. I didn’t really know much about the elections until recently… like, yesterday, maybe. Apparently there are these two parties, the Gator Party and the Progress Party, and they were running candidates for the Student Senate or something like that. Anyway, people from each party have been making sure you go out and vote for them. They’ve been bothering me since yesterday, so I voted today. It wasn’t just so they’d leave me alone, but because I wanted to have a say in the democratic process and other things like that.

It wasn’t as easy of a choice as I thought because it wasn’t like the two parties were for or against things. They just had their own different ideas. But the Gator Party wants to produce “tangible benefits for students” (as my dorm’s incumbent SG representative said to me in a harangue that was given in one breath) or “do stuff” (as my friend Luke said when I showed him their platform). The Progress Party seems more concerned with fixing Student Government so that it can “do stuff” in the future. They had less money and less of a visible presence than the Gator Party. I voted for them.

There were also referendum-type questions on the ballot. One asked whether a non-profit, student-run café should be built on campus, and the other asked whether the university should build a homeless shelter. Well, here’s an idea that I should have thought of earlier. We should have a homeless-run café on campus. That should give them a livelihood (or at least something to do). Or maybe a café where people who can’t pay can work instead. That’s another way to put both ideas into use (not that they’re incompatible with each other, of course, but it might be more economical to put them together). Also note that I am only kidding. I voted against the café and for the homeless shelter.

Do you hear that? It sounds like Ask Jordon!

Fabi: This isn’t a question, but you should definitely check this out https://payperpost.com/

This may or may not be the same Fabiola I went to high school with. It probably isn’t, despite what the IP address indicates. But anyway, Fabs, I’ve heard of the whole “get paid to blog” thing before. J-Walk of the J-Walk Blog partakes in it once in a while, with fair warning to readers (“I was paid to write the following” or something similar). In any case, it’s tantamount to selling out, even if you don’t believe what you’re writing. I think ads on the Internet are obnoxious, but none are worse than ads that replace content. If I got a few bucks to fill up a post with a review of some amazing web site, I’d have a few bucks, but not much dignity. I’d have sold out, you see. If ever I try to make money from this site, it will be in a more tasteful way.

natasha!: do you know anything about the string theory? if so, could you possibly explain it for me? (the wikipedia explaination is confusing). <3 lotsa love.

Unfortunately, I don’t know anything about string theory. I had a physics teacher in high school who called it nonsense. Apparently it’s very controversial, as most new ideas are. Maybe a reader can help us out. (Brian.)

The 2008 election is a little over a year away, but the primaries are sooner. Here’s a handy table to see where the candidates stand on many issues.

Find your birthday star, a star that’s as many light-years away as you are years old. In other words, the star’s light that reaches Earth was emitted when you were born, and when you’re looking at it in the sky, you’re essentially seeing it as it was at that time.

How to save a life

I tabled for Get Carded last week. They’re the student group that signs people up to be organ donors. (Incidentally, manning tables is apparently so common among student organizations that it deserves its own verb. That’s really all Get Carded does, anyway.) Although sitting at a table for two hours and getting people to sign organ donors doesn’t sound like much fun, I have to say it was. While I was there, we got about 20 people to sign up and save lives. One of them was me.

I think some people might have been deterred by the idea of signing up to be an organ donor. They probably think that there’s a lot of icky paperwork (or worse, costs) involved. Not so. All you have to do is sign a card and carry it around with you. It carries the same force as being designated as an organ donor on your driver’s license (although you should specify it next time you renew your license because then you’ll be in the organ donor database). If you’re a Floridian, check out Get Carded’s web site and print an organ donor card. If not, find out about similar groups in your state or country. Because you never know: tomorrow you might be dead, and your organs will go to waste.

College meal plans are supposed to be convenient. But if you don’t know what you’re dealing with, they might not be. My plan for this semester is 150 meals and $300 in “Flex Bucks.” Too bad I didn’t know the specifics. It turns out that meal-plan meals are served at one of two cafeteria-style dining halls on campus, and Flex Bucks are accepted at the restaurants. So I have four months to eat at a cafeteria 150 times with only $300 for other eatery options. After a month, I had 140 meals remaining and $138 in Flex Bucks, so it was time to switch gears. I’ve found that the dining hall is a convenient solution to the Breakfast Problem* on certain days of the week. Also, it took me about a month to find out that there was a second dining hall only half as far away from my dorm as the one I had been going to. Combine those facts with a steady supply of non-perishable foods in a cardboard box in my closet, and I’ve got a recipe for success… and a cheesy metaphor.

How does your height compare with averages from around the world?

HEERS AN ENGLISH 2 LOLCAT TRANZLATOR
IZ PRITEE AWSUM

* The Breakfast Problem is, quite simply, the problem of what to eat for breakfast. Do you eat the same thing for breakfast every weekday? I do. Then I get sick of it after a while and move on to something else. But a good breakfast is hard to find. It has to be easy to store and prepare, ostensibly healthy, and, above all, delicious. For those seeking closure to this ongoing story: since finding out about my shocking meal and Flex Buck balances, I’m down to 140 meals and $112 in Flex Bucks. That means I hopefully won’t run out of the Bucks any time soon. And if I do, there’s always cash.