The weeks ahead

Well, that was fast. My first semester in college is winding down, but I’m not off the hook just yet. I probably won’t have much time to post for a while because of things coming up.

• Friday, Nov. 30 – Last calculus test
• Sunday, Dec. 2 – Present draft of research paper for America in the Fifties
• Tuesday, Dec. 4 – Final paper due
• Tuesday, Dec. 4 (or thereabouts) – Some extra presentations for America in the Fifties that I probably should have done earlier in the semester
• Tuesday, Dec. 4 – Last social geography exam
• Saturday, Dec. 8 – Chemistry final exam
• Thursday, Dec. 13 – Calculus final exam

I’m in for a few busy days coming up, but after that, it shouldn’t be bad. And then I’ll be home for the holidays.

Read about Nature’s Great Survivors: Water Bears. (They’re microscopic, so they’re not really bears.)

15 Ways to Reclaim 2 Precious Hours Every Day. I’d read it, but I’m too busy right now. (No joke!)

And here’s a fascinating article from Wired about a record-breaking road trip from New York to L.A.: The Pedal-to-the-Metal, Totally Illegal, Cross-Country Sprint for Glory.

Give old Jordon a buzz

So, yeah, it’s November 24, and it’s night. If anyone asks me where I was on the night of November 24, I was here at home. I came home for Thanksgiving. Actually, I went to my grandparents’ house for Thanksgiving, and now I’m at home. Tomorrow I’ll be going back to school. Oh well…

I have a research paper to write, but I haven’t touched it since I left for the long weekend. Maybe tomorrow? Ha ha, that’s a good one. Next week I will crack down, though. I will do some intense research-paper-writing, so don’t expect some long or well-thought-out posts. And after that: final exams. Oh yes, college is fun sometimes.

One thing to distract me from that is VoIP, which means “Using your computer to talk to people like you’re on the phone.” For those who have been following the saga, I originally used Skype, until concerns about the Linux version drove me to free alternatives such as WengoPhone, which uses open standards (as opposed to Skype’s closed network that no one else can use). But I have just one gripe with WengoPhone: it doesn’t work. It kept crashing, and after I upgraded, the latest version won’t even connect. So I’ve gotten into Ekiga, which uses the same protocol (SIP) as WengoPhone and a host of other programs. I’ve got my SIP (and H.323) addresses on the About Me page now, along with a status indicator (which I’ve also zealously placed on every single page), so do give me a buzz and say hello.

Check out 10 uncracked codes. Can you crack them? Probably not!

Seems like everybody’s remaking their logo these days. Here are, according to somebody, The Best and Worst Logo Remakes of the Century (so far).

Have a look at some Maps of Europe by linguistic groups, population density, smoking bans, eye color, and more.

O RLY?

Last Thursday I picked out my schedule for next semester. Unfortunately, I was one of the last people to be able to register, so I didn’t have many choices. That explains why I’ll be taking physics at 8:30 in the morning. (Still, it’s better than the 7:25 chemistry class I have this semester.) All in all, it looks like I’ll have some longer days next semester but also some short days. My Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays will be long and busy. Thursdays won’t be so bad, and on Tuesdays I won’t have class. That’ll be my catch-up day, I guess. Well, hopefully, I won’t fall behind in the first place.

But anyway, I’ll be taking physics (with lab), biology, some computer programming class that I think will be easy, and a class on differential equations. Diff. E.Q. is my honors course (required for me to stay in the honors program), so I actually got to select it early. I hope I do well in it. I guess it should be easier than Calculus III, but we’ll see, won’t we?

On Saturday was the football game I’ve been looking forward to the most even though was one of the least important games of the season. For the first time, the Florida Gators played the Owls of Florida Atlantic University. FAU is near where I live, so a lot of my friends go there. Kelli and Cristi came up here for the game (we got to hang out together afterward), and Nick and Mark came because they’re part of the FAU band. I was glad I got a better seat than I had at the last game I went to. My sister and I sat 15 rows up from the 3-yard line. (It really was better than last time. Trust me.) As everyone pretty much expected, the game was a blowout, with the Gators beating the Owls 59-20. Andre Caldwell and Heisman Trophy front-runner Tim Tebow broke some records. But unfortunately, Florida’s now out of the race for the conference championship. Oh well. I just hope we beat archrival Florida State this Saturday.

Our friend Alberto Gonzales came to speak yesterday. I didn’t go — I find the guy detestable, and so do a lot of other people, apparently. As I suspected, there were some incidents. Protesters were arrested for getting onstage. Two of them covered their faces with hoods and wore makeshift orange jumpsuits that said “Civil Liberties” on them. According to a local newspaper, as they were being arrested, Gonzales said, “Our young men and women fight overseas to preserve this kind of freedom of speech.” But you know he was thinking about holding them for years without charges and regularly torturing them. That’s what he would do if he hadn’t resigned in disgrace.

I’m done with classes for the week. I’ll be at my grandparents’ house for Thanksgiving, and then I’ll mosey on down home for the rest of the weekend. The Thanksgiving four-day weekend begins… Thursday, on Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, most schools don’t seem to take the day before Thanksgiving off to allow people to go home to their families. But almost all the professors here have canceled their classes for tomorrow. Mine have, so I’m off the hook. I even had a lecture canceled today because so few people were there.

Check out this illusion involving a rubber hand. Apparently it’s possible to trick your brain into thinking that a fake hand is your own.

Here are some breathtaking pictures of the Thousand Islands that straddle the New York-Ontario border. Seriously. I don’t have any breath anymore.

It turns out that your appendix might be useful after all. But don’t worry: if you’ve had it taken out, that’s fine too.

Store!

On Monday night, I went to see Less Than Jake play a show on Flavet Field, which is a short walk from my dorm. I’m not that big into ska, but my friend Sean is, so he came all the way up from UCF to see them for the seventh time. Since Less Than Jake was the headliner, I first listened to the opening acts, which were The Expendables, Reel Big Fish, and Pepper. Of those three, I had only heard of Reel Big Fish, but they all put on a good show. Between the second and third acts, I got hungry and went to the dining hall for a bite to eat. I didn’t miss much, though.

But yeah, Less Than Jake was a real crowd-pleaser. Sean was up in the front the whole time, and he almost got to go onstage. They were picking out a random single guy and girl from the audience. They asked the guy and the girl to make out while they were playing a song, and the two strangers obliged. Then the girl pulled another girl onto the stage and they started making out. Such is the power that ska has over people. I must say, it does get the toes a-tappin’. I really had a good time, even though I didn’t skank. I’d probably see Less Than Jake again.

Speaking of bands that I really don’t know that well: about a year ago, a waitress at Chili’s said I looked like Gerard Way from My Chemical Romance… “when he had dark hair.” Not like I was familiar with the guy anyway. And what’s stranger is that a few other people I met also thought I looked like him. Have a look for yourself:

The other day, I was walking back to my dorm from class when a guy on a bike stopped beside me and said I looked like Adam Jones of Tool. He said that with my long hair and everything, I could pass for the guy’s brother. I didn’t know who Adam Jones was, but I mentioned that some people thought I looked like the guy from My Chemical Romance. He didn’t know who Gerard Way was either. But I do kind of look like Adam Jones:

(Oh yeah, and there’s a picture of me on the About Me page.)

The people have spoken! Just in time for the holidays, you can get World of Stuff gear at the World of Stuff Store. Available for purchase are T-shirts, tank tops, and sweatshirts with the “Property of” design I posted recently, but if people will actually buy this stuff, maybe I’ll think of some other things to add.

And for your information, here’s how the store works. It’s run by CafePress. You order through them, and they fill the order — I have nothing to do with it except that I get a cut of the profit. All the money I make will go toward running the web site. So check out the World of Stuff Store and see what I currently have to offer.

Here are 20 weird English words with their definitions. I had heard of about three of them. Number 7 should be “limerence.”

Shovelglove, Part II

When you call someone, isn’t it considered polite for them to, say… call you back?

I count this as number four. Time to move on. What does the world have against Jordon Kalilich?

Just before I left home on Monday, I decided on a whim to take up the shovelglove again. I briefly took up this form of sledgehammer exercise two years ago but stopped after I overexerted myself. Since then I’ve been lazy/trying to forget it/afraid of exercising. But for some reason, I remembered it and decided to give it another try.

I brought my 4-kg sledgehammer and have started doing some movements with it in the morning. A 14-minute session is recommended, but I think I’ll work up to it this time. Last time, I tried to do the whole 14 minutes too soon, and I couldn’t move my arms for a few days. I’m doing the same movements I did last time: shoveling, churning butter, chopping wood, and flipping the lever. I think I’ll try the Ab Killer as well.

Do check out my online HabitCal (habit calendar) on which I’ll mark my successes and failures. (The color code is: green = success, red = failure, yellow = exempt day.) Right now I’ll count doing the movements as a success, but when I can do the full 14 minutes, I’ll be tougher with the definition.

I am Jordon. People ask me things. I answer them.

Michael : I would like to know the truth about the Beatles 1964 coin that is resurficeing,. Who made it, Why and Who were they given to. I Thank you, Mike

Hm. I know about the Beatles, and I know about coins, but I don’t know about Beatle coins. A quick Google search suggests that some bronze coins were made to commemorate a visit they made to the United States in 1964. Since I didn’t bother to go past page one of the Google search results, I don’t know who would have issued them, and it’s possible that some or all of them were made years after the fact.

Tim: How much does it need to go to Ameryca one time?

Tim, thankses, to ask to me over a travel towards the Ameryca. It is a beautiful station of job, that the sure one is that estimated. The Ameryca, For Your Information must once be a lot. I hope that you he find it valid.

Here’s a fine example of stop-motion animation with real people: Tony vs. Paul.

20 Things You Didn’t Know About… Nothing.

Here’s a list of most common nicknames for first names based on 1990 US Census data.

How many words?

I’m home again for the long weekend. Ubuntu has been giving me problems. I thought Compiz was stable on this computer, but it’s actually less stable than Beryl was on Feisty. If I had wanted my computer to freeze and shut down at random times, I would have stuck with Windows 98. So I’ve switched back to Metacity, the default window manager. The screen brightness changes when I don’t want it to and doesn’t change when I want it to — unless I adjust it myself. Plus, I once again have to enter a password to use the Wi-Fi at home; the fix I used before is now ineffective. Other than that, everything is fine. (If you didn’t get that, here’s a summary: the computer’s slightly wonky but mostly hunky-dory.)

I’ve often wondered how many words I’ve written in this here bliggity-blog. Of course, I could copy and paste the text of every post into a word processor and have it determine the total, but that’s not how I roll. No, instead I decided to write a quick JavaScript script that would count the words in the 869 entries I’ve written before this one. It’s not a perfect script, of course; I think it tends to overestimate slightly. But its result is telling: the previous 869 posts contain about 470,264 words. Remember that time I tried to write a novel? How about that other time I tried to write a novel? If this blog were published, it would be the length of about 9 novels. Whoa. How many volumes could you split that into? Samuel Pepys, eat your heart out.

A few weeks ago I was tossing around the idea of selling World of Stuff t-shirts through a site like CafePress. I even made a mock-up design. Imagine this emblazoned across your chest:

Apparently, the design can only be as wide as 10 in. So on a large t-shirt, it would be rather small (some might say discreet). On smaller shirts, however, it would look just right. The solution is obvious: I have to get lots of girls to buy and wear these shirts. If I decide to sell them.

Okay, let’s have a poll. Would you buy this shirt?

Are you a web lingo expert? Apparently I’m not. I only got 70% of the questions right. I think some of those abbreviations have never been used by anyone ever.

A collection of your favorite Internet phenomena set to an infectious tune: The Internet Stars Are Viral.

Here are some fascinating facts about food coloring!

The moon tree

Sometimes the most ordinary things have remarkable secrets waiting to be told. Yesterday, I was reading the Gainesville Sun online when I came across this article.

Since my dorm is located at that intersection, my curiosity was piqued.

After class yesterday, I made my way back to that intersection as always. I had turned to Wikipedia to find out what a sycamore actually looks like. (I’m from South Florida, where there are no deciduous forests like you have.) And there I saw it: a tree I had passed numerous times before, one that I would see whenever I was on the bus. I stopped for a moment to examine it from across the street. An ordinary tree.

I turned and saw that someone was behind me on the sidewalk, so I started walking again. And as I did so, I turned my eyes up to the endless blue sky.

My sister and I went to see Bill Nye (the Science Guy) speak yesterday. I’d been pumped about it for a while. I think it was actually the first celebrity speaking engagement (Bill Nye is a celebrity to me) at UF since the incident at the John Kerry forum in September. So then they announced that there would be a short Q&A session after Bill Nye’s lecture, I was a little worried.

It turned out that there was nothing to worry about. Bill Nye gave a talk on sundials, space exploration, global climate change, and alternative energy sources, all in his usual humorous style. He seems to have taken up saying hip phrases like “crazy” (as an adjective), “Uh… chyah,” and “Are you high?” And people went crazy for him. There were girls shouting, “I love you, Bill Nye!” In fact, so many people were there that they couldn’t all fit in the theater. Some people had to watch him on a screen outside.

The questions and answer session was pretty uneventful, although I did learn some things. Bill Nye had a hard time hearing people ask questions in the microphones because the speakers weren’t facing him. When someone asked about the technological singularity, he didn’t seem to know about it. But I did find out that his favorite movie is Singin’ in the Rain.

So Bill Nye was a big success here at UF. But I’m not so sure about the speaker who’s coming in two weeks. When the guy in charge of booking speakers announced to the eagerly waiting Bill Nye fans that our friend Alberto Gonzales would be giving a talk, a wave of boos came from the audience. I booed. It felt so right. I don’t plan on going to see him, but I wonder if anything crazy’s going to happen when he comes.

Speaking of space, here’s an article about microorganisms in space. The story begins with Laika, who became the first dog in space 50 years ago.

If you find yourself standing on a street corner in the city of Winslow, Arizona, when a woman driving a Ford pickup truck happens to decrease speed so she can ogle you, you might be in an Eagles song. Standin’ on the Corner Park commemorates that city’s namecheck in the song “Take It Easy.”

Okay, don’t say you haven’t imagined the scene before. In your mind, what color is the truck?

Red? Same here. Even that web page agrees.

Word up to all my Humies

The weekend was nice. I “chillaxed” and “took it easy,” as they say.

Friday was Gator Growl, the homecoming pep rally. I didn’t go. It’s apparently known for humorous, pre-recorded skits. Apparently one of them poked fun at those of us living in Hume Hall. Do “Humies” really prefer video games to sex? That’s an unfair characterization.

I managed to get a ticket to the homecoming game after 25 minutes on the phone. It turns out that my seat (Section 23, Row 43) was way in the back of the lower level of seats behind one of the goal posts, so the section above me was giving me shade. It was good that I didn’t get sunburned or even hot, but it was bad that I felt like I was watching the game through a letterbox. Plus, I was behind the handicapped section. The handicapped section! Way to sort out your priorities, ticket office. But I did have a full view down the field if I stood up, so I stood for much of the game. I also tried looking into the camera when the ball was kicked into the goal post. It was fun seeing a live college football game even if I couldn’t see the yellow first down line or watch the commentators show pictures of the quarterback when he was 10 years old. I was just glad that we won the game, beating Vanderbilt 49-22.

Sometimes I get annoyed by really trivial things. Some people are apparently getting bored of the same smileys or emoticons day in and day out, so they’ve come up with some creative extensions, some of which I find annoying. I swear I’ve seen all of these in the wild.

<3 – A heart. This one is pretty common and not annoying. But it leads to…
<3333 – Many hearts. I assume they’re stacked one on top of the other or something.
E> – A heart that goes the other way. Also, it’s apparently been retouched with the Sharpen Tool.
XD – Your eyes are closed and your mouth is wide open, so you’re presumably laughing. Hard to read as anything other than “X.D.”
XDDDD – You have multiple mouths (or 56,797 in hex).
:] – You are a happy robot.
[: – You are an upside-down robot.
:B – You’re a hillbilly?
>< ;; – I don’t know.
:< – You’re a cat. An indoor cat that eats Fancy Feast.
;_; – You’re crying because you can’t torrent your fansubbed anime episodes.
:3 – You have a cleft palate.

A guy decided to listen to Abba’s song “Dancing Queen” non-stop during a multi-hour, solo road trip. Here’s a video of the highlights.

There are “plenty” of examples of quotation mark abuse at The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks.

Check out Verizon’s style book for deploying the “Can you hear me now?” guy. It’s pretty detailed.

Halloween and homecoming

So yesterday was Halloween. Halloween is fun if you’re a little kid because you dress up in a costume and get free candy. Halloween is also fun if you’re a college student because you party. But that’s not generally true. I mean, I didn’t party. I don’t like to party — I don’t, I don’t like to party. So I didn’t do much last night other than try to forget how much money I owe. But in the afternoon, my sister and I went to see The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3-D. Wait, didn’t I do that last year? The answer is yes. It was so cool that I wanted to see it again. It is pretty amazing that they can convert 2-D films to 3-D. In fact, I first heard about the technology a while a back when Guess Who showed interest in using it on his old films. That’s right: George Lucas.

As is the way of these things, the festivities leading up to the holiday were probably better than the holiday itself. Every year, each floor in Hume Hall makes a haunted house for local kids to enjoy (?). My side of the floor wasn’t really interested, so the other side used their common room (and their hallways) for the haunted house. We decided on the theme “Haunted Hospital.” I checked it out on Tuesday, and it was really cool. It wasn’t like people jumping out and shouting at you, but it was like people lying around on stretchers and bleeding. It was cooler than I made it sound. I would be scared if I were a little kid. The only other haunted house I checked out was a haunted summer camp where people come out of nowhere with giant guns or something. I think it was voted the scariest. Why do we put so much effort into frightening children, anyway?

Today, as my friend Ashley and I were walking back to our dorm from the library, we ended up walking next to a family. There was a mom and a dad talking, and a boy and a girl not much younger than we (or us). I couldn’t help but hear that they were talking about the honors program. Then, since we were right there, the dad asked me and Ashley if we lived in Hume Hall, the honors dorm. We said yes. They were from Atlanta, and the dad introduced everyone to us. I don’t remember their names, except that the wife’s was Nikki (or however you want to spell it). They had just come from a campus tour and wanted to check out Hume, where the dad had lived in 35 years ago. We explained how Hume had recently been demolished and rebuilt, so everything was nice and shiny. They asked if they could possibly have a look at our floor and were very grateful that we obliged. They asked to see my room, and when I said they probably wouldn’t want to, they assumed it was because it was messy. It is, but the real reason was because of the posters we have (my roommate has) on the wall. Anyway, they looked in Ashley’s room, asked some questions about the honors program and meal plans and the like, and made their way out. They were very nice.

I’m done with class for the week. Oh yes, it’s like high school again. (My high school had no classes on Fridays, a fact I took for granted so quickly that I don’t think I even mentioned it here very much.) There are no classes tomorrow because it’s homecoming. Gator Growl, The World’s Largest Student-Run Pep Rally, will be tomorrow, and I’m not going because I really don’t care about seeing a guy from MADtv and a group that claims to be Lynyrd Skynyrd, but the guy who always shouts “Free Bird” will be happy. No, instead, I’m going to try to get tickets to the homecoming game. I haven’t been to a football game yet, so I need to fix that. I do enjoy football, you guys. Since I have to reserve a ticket by phone, it’ll probably take quite a bit of calling. I hear the phone lines get jammed right away.

A guy decided to listen to Abba’s song “Dancing Queen” non-stop during a multi-hour, solo road trip. Here’s a video of the highlights.

There are “plenty” of examples of quotation mark abuse at The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks.