2007: The Year in Review

Another year has slipped away. And this was a big one. Between graduating from high school and starting college in a faraway city, I’ve faced things I’ve never had to face before. And, by all accounts, I’ve managed pretty okay. But that’s not all that happened in 2007. Let’s take a look back and see just how wild and crazy this year has been.

• January 3 – I get Christmas gifts from my pen pal Natasha in the mail.
• January 9 – I become a TA for Mr. Mumtaz’s Web Design II class.
• January 23 – My transition to Linux begins as my dad and I try unsuccessfully to install Ubuntu on a spare PC.
• January 24 – The first printing of The Easiest Best Thing Is Be Kind, edited by my friend Luke and containing a poem by me, is delivered.
• January 28 – I accompany Luke, Michelle, and Megan at a rally against the genocide in Darfur.
• February 4 – Beowulf 2: This Time It’s Personal, starring Nick, Mark, Justin, and me, is released on the Internet.
• February 10 – I go to the St. Elizabeth Spring Festival.
• February 14 – I switch from Windows to Ubuntu.
• February 28 – I go on a completely pointless school field trip to a prescription filling facility and an outdoor mall.
• March 6 – Having been assigned by an assistant principal to produce fire exit maps of the school gym and auditorium, Joe and I present our work.
• March 8 – The fire alarm goes off at school.
• March 23-25 – Vacation at my great-aunt’s condo in Fort Pierce.
• March 27-28 – Two bomb threats at school in as many days.
• April 6 – The World of Stuff is four.
• April 11 – First edition of From Canada with Love.
• April 18 – I become an emo kid for a day.
• April 21-22 – Grad Bash at Universal Studios.
• May 5 – I help bring my school to second place at the annual computer programming competition.
• May 9 – I take the AP Calculus BC exam and get a 5 (the best possible score).
• May 17 – I accompany members of my programming class in making a disastrous technology-related presentation to half the school.
• May 17 – I take home an $800 scholarship from the senior class award ceremony. (The streakers at the concurrent football game were Andrew and Tyler, who had slipped out from onstage at the award ceremony only to return unnoticed!)
• May 18 – A third drive-in outing with Andrew, Tyler, and pals.
• May 22 – Food fight on the second-to-last day of school.
• May 23 – Last day of high school.
• May 24 – At the senior breakfast, I find out that I’m the salutatorian of my class.
• May 25 – Prom night!
• May 29 – I graduate from high school.
• June 4-9 – Cruise to the Cayman Islands and Jamaica. Yeah mon!
• June 13 – Luke, Brian, Michelle, and I meet with our former history teacher, Ms. Vazquez, two days before she moves to Texas.
• June 16 – My graduation party.
• June 19 – I help welcome a friend arriving home from a year in Italy.
• June 27 – I get a laptop (christened daytripper at Luke’s suggestion) with Ubuntu pre-installed.
• July 5-6 – My sister and I attend Preview, the freshman orientation at University of Florida.
• July 9 – I join the 2000s and get a Facebook.
• July 13 – My 18th birthday.
• July 21-23 – I read the last Harry Potter book.
• July 29 – TWoS’s first ever contest begins.
• August 11 – The Change Contest ends. I guess I’ll contact the runner-up about that guest post…
• August 15 – Fun trip with friends to South Beach!
• August 17 – Last day of work.
• August 18 – I move into my dorm at UF.
• August 23 – First day of college classes.
• August 31-September 3 – First weekend home from college.
• September 5 – I join a club on campus: Get Carded.
• September 17 – A fellow UF student speaking out at a John Kerry forum colloquially entreats not to be stunned with an electroshock weapon. I am disturbed by the video.
• September 18-19 – I attend two protests against the tasering, skipping a class for the first one. (Later, in a sudden outbreak of common sense, I apologize for giving a care.)
• September 26 – My sister and I go to a new chiropractor for the first time.
• October 3 – I vote in the Student Government elections.
• October 24 – The Dvorak Keyboard and You makes the front page of del.icio.us and the second page of Reddit.
• October 25 – Honors registration, man… it’s crazy.
• October 31 – I enjoy Halloween by going to see The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3-D and checking out some haunted houses in my dorm.
• November 3 – I go to UF’s homecoming game against Vanderbilt. We win!
• November 6 – I see childhood hero Bill Nye (the Science Guy).
• November 12 – I go to a concert on campus, which my friend Sean goes from his own college to see.
• November 13 – Two years after quitting, I start shovelglove exercises again.
• November 16 – The WoS Store opens.
• November 17 – Some friends from FAU come up to UF for the first meeting between our football teams. Then we hang out.
• November 30 – My aunt takes my sister and me to a restaurant and art galleries in downtown Gainesville.
• December 5 – Last day of classes for the fall semester.
• December 8 – To celebrate our RA’s graduation, a bunch of us from the floor take her to her favorite restaurant.
• December 14 – Finished with my exams and a final paper, I head home.
• December 18 – It’s official: I have a 4.0!
• December 25 – Christmas.
• December 27 – Fun trip with friends to Key West!

Where do I see myself at the end of 2008? I’m glad you asked. I don’t really know, actually. I don’t things could change as drastically as they have in 2007. I’ll still be in college, hopefully, and I’ll probably be working on that computer science major. I hope to be in a relationship, or at least to have been in a relationship. Actually, just to be dating would be nice. We’ll just have to see, I guess.

Just one link today: Top Ten Astronomy Pictures of 2007.

With that, I wish you a great ’08. See you next year!

Key West

My sister and her friend Lisa had been planning to go to the beach in Key Largo. They set the date for Thursday, December 27, and asked if I wanted to go. I said heck yes I would and asked Justin to come along too. Lisa brought her friend Allie. I think her name is actually Allison, and I’m not sure how she would spell Ali/Ally/Allie/Alley?, but I’ll call her Allie. It sounds good, but it’s probably wrong.

So, it was just the five of us. Lisa drove. And drove and drove. It’s a long drive to the Keys, but eventually we were in Key Largo, the first key. We were also hungry. We decided to stop at a Japanese place called Sushi Nami. It looked kind of deserted, but certain people in our party were really desperate to have sushi. They regretted it when they realized that their sushi wasn’t very good. My sushi (and the rest of my food) was fine. I got a lot of it for a pretty reasonable price.

We decided to go further and look for a beach. Eventually we got to Anne’s Beach, where Japanese tourists took a picture of my dog on my last Florida Keys trip. The water was still really shallow like last time, and the surface was covered in sea grass. That was a no go. So we kept going.

Update (Fri Dec 28, 2007 22:04 EST): As requested by reader Kirsten, here’s a photo I took while we were on the road.

I had figured there’d be a 50-50 chance that we’d go all the way, and now that we had failed to have any sort of enjoyment at a beach, there was one thing left to do: keep pushing along. We decided it would be a waste if we didn’t go to Key West, so after a few hours of driving through, by, and between islands, we found ourselves on Whitehead Street at the marker for the Southernmost Point in the Continental United States.

Throngs of tourists were lined up to take their picture at the buoy-shaped marker, so we decided to take pictures with the holiday displays that were set up nearby. I now have pictures of my friends with the Southernmost Christmas Tree in the Continental United States and the Southernmost Menorah in the Continental United States. After that, we moseyed down Duval Street until we got to a place that had henna tattoos. Allie got one. Was it a Chinese character on her lower back? Yes.

By that time, we had missed the opportunity to watch the sunset in Mallory Square (a popular pastime probably only for tourists), but we were hungry again. We eventually found a sports bar and grill called Jack Flats (509½ Duval St.). It wasn’t very crowded, but that’s because we were there early. The food was great. We did a little more looking around at stores and left Key West at 8:30. The drive back was pretty dark quiet. It didn’t seem to take as long to go through all the islands in reverse. The traffic was better. I could see more stars.

About four hours later, I was home and tired. Even though we probably spent about 10 minutes at beaches of any sort, it was a big day and a fun trip. It was my fifth trip to Key West. I hope to go back there soon.

Today was less eventful (and it seems like it’s been much shorter). I went with Nick and TJ (not that TJ) to the Pompano Beach golf course. They were going to practice their driving because they’re going to play some holes tomorrow. I had never golfed before, so I had to learn how to swing a golf club and everything. Since Nick and TJ didn’t have left-handed equipment, I had to do it right-handed. I wasn’t able to hit the balls very far, and they usually stuck pretty close to the ground if they didn’t roll the whole way. In short, I was pretty bad, but I’d try it again with better equipment.

I’ve been involved in distributed computing projects (think SETI@home) before, but I haven’t participated in any lately. My friend Luke made me aware of World Community Grid, a collection of projects that runs on the BOINC framework. It turns out that you can use the BOINC client to participate in any project that uses the BOINC infrastructure. I’ve just signed up with World Community Grid for now; it should be enough to keep me busy because it consists of several sub-projects. I’ve joined a few of them, so now my computer has been assigned to crunch one unit for FightAIDS@Home and one for Help Conquer Cancer.

The BOINC client is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS. Conveniently for Linux users, it’s in the repositories of some distributions. In Ubuntu, it’s located in the Universe repository as boinc-manager and boinc-client. Awesomely, the client is free software.

Find out about the Real ID Act, the national ID law that was signed into law by President Bush in 2005.

The University of California marching band recently did a halftime show featuring songs from video games. The video is the best six and a half minutes you will have today.

Christmas

It’s Christmas again.

I did go to church with my family yesterday, and I didn’t feel that bad, but I won’t make a habit of it. I gave gifts to my friends that I saw there. The Christmas pageant, as it were, was pretty short. Some of the kids in it were way too young; they didn’t seem to know what they were doing. One girl who had a reading still had a Homestar Runner accent. “A weading fwum the lettow of Paul to…” Just no. Did she even know what she was saying? The Cowinthians wouldn’t have taken her seriously. Sewiously.

I got mostly guitar-related gifts: strings, cables, and a practice amp that’s small enough for me to take to my dorm. It packs a punch, though. But what else would you expect from a Vox? Okay, maybe I only like Vox amps because the Beatles used them, but my friend Sean had a Vox mini-amp that I liked. Other than that, I’m a Fender amp guy.

For the second year, my pen pal Natasha and I exchanged gifts for Christmas. I got her a plush gator that says “Go Gators” and plays UF’s fight song. I also included a video greeting where I showed her my dorm and the alligator in the pond across the street. This afternoon I called Natasha to wish her a merry Christmas and see if she got my gift to her. (She did, and her gift to me should be coming any day now.) I love to hear her voice. We both agreed that we need to talk on the phone more often. I’ll hold up my end of the bargain, long-distance charges be damned. Ooh, I said damn. Maybe I’ll get a phone card. That probably would have been good to ask for for Christmas. Oh well. I got money that I can buy phone cards with.

And now, a not particularly holiday edition of Ask Jordon.

Justin: Did I ever explain to you my theory on the communist santa?

I think so, but I don’t really remember. Let’s see what I can make up: He wears red. He distributes toys equally to practically everyone. People are urged not to question him. He doesn’t live in the West. And what else? I bet he has pretty tight control over the elves.

Justin: Also, do you think there may be an “Answer Jordon” component in the future?

I did have Jordon Asks YOU!! about a year ago, but I haven’t done anything with it since then. It’s probably because I gave a schedule to work with (ask a question every Saturday), and anyone who reads this blog knows that I don’t adhere to schedules when blogging. (Remember the monthly interview series that only lasted one month?)

In Soviet Russia, Santa writes letters to YOU!!

New at The World of Stuff: Do you use Wikipedia? How about Creative Commons? Or Linux? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you should consider giving a monetary donation to the organizations involved. I came to that conclusion yesterday, and to make it easy for people to donate to free content projects, I’ve created this page with Donation Information for Free Content Projects. As a student without a credit card, I’d like to know which free software projects I can send a check to. Hence the list. I hope you or somebody finds it useful.

Classical music is everywhere these days. We hear the same classical pieces all the time as they’ve become associated with a particular aspect of popular culture. Enter Kickass Classical, a list with information about popular classical tunes. Incidentally, I found this site when I was trying to find the name of the repetitive, escalating piece they use in movie trailers to indicate mounting chaos. I couldn’t find it there, but I bet somebody knows the name of it.

If you grew up in the ’90s, here’s a present for you: a memorable sketch from All That.

Here are some vintage Images from the Tobacco Industry Campaign to Hide the Hazards of Smoking. Did you know that more doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette?

The day before Christmas

It’s Christmas Eve, and you know what that means. Tomorrow’s Christmas. It’s a time when a lot of people go to church who otherwise wouldn’t. As an atheist, I have to make this decision. Should I go because it’s a family tradition, or should I not go because it would be dishonest on my part? Or: should I be a pushover or a jerk? About.com has this to say:

The people at church are pretty nice to me, and I would enjoy hearing the music and seeing the kids put on the Christmas pageant (if it doesn’t get severely abridged like it did last year). If I go, I will feel really awkward like I did last year. I wanted to shrink away to nothing. I saw people I used to see all the time and expected them to say, “And where have you been?” If I don’t go, I’ll still feel really awkward because I did go last year. It’s a no-win situation for me. But I guess I’ll go along to watch because I feel as though I need some good humiliation now and then. It’s the Catholic in me.

The Christmas season is a time that reminds us to be generous. To that end, I’ve decided to make some small donations to non-profit organizations that are responsible for providing the world with free knowledge and software. Actually, I forgot to bring my checkbook home, so it’ll have to wait till I get back to school. But I plan to donate to Wikimedia and the Free Software Foundation. I’d donate to Ubuntu, but they don’t seem to take donations by check. Does anyone have any other ideas?

So I took this elaborate personality test. Here are the results if you want to read them, but I thought I’d make a note of the recommendations it had for me:

• Appreciate that your skill set can be useful in many ways; your attention to detail and your familiarity with the inner-workings of things are valuable assets.
• Try looking beyond the earthly qualities of things in order to expand your perspective, without losing your grounding in reality.
• Because other people would benefit immensely from your understanding and insight, you should try to be more outgoing in social situations, even when they make you uncomfortable. Others will want to hear what you have to say!

A guy spent 30 minutes watching CNN Headline News and decided to make a pie chart with a breakdown of the content. Not much of it was actually news.

Read ultra-condensed versions of classic books: Book-A-Minute Classics. There are also similar collections for sci-fi/fantasy, children’s books, and movies.

Some taste-testing experiments demonstrate the subjectivity of wine. In one test, the same wine was put into both a cheap-looking bottle and a fancier bottle. Wine critics thought the expensive-looking wine tasted much better. In another test, critics praised a red wine for its fruitiness even though it was actually a white wine dyed red.

Epic heroes

My calculus professor wasn’t very timely in grading my class’s final exams, so for a little while I had to wait after all my other grades had come in. Now I know I got an A in the class. I didn’t do as well on the final as I wanted to, but I somehow got an A anyway. That means I have a 4.0 GPA right now. Needless to say, I’m very glad and surprised. I didn’t think I’d do that well in my first semester of college.

I’ve been planning to visit my old high school for a while, and yesterday I actually went there with Justin. We got there an hour after school ended. The Green Team, a popular club, was having a party because it was the last day before winter break. You should have seen the welcome we got from some peolpe. I mean, seriously. We were greeted like heroes. I spent most of the time catching up with them. Besides Class of ’08 people, Ruan, who graduated with me and Justin, was visiting too. Everyone I talked to told me how much they liked both Beowulf movies that Justin, Mark, Nick, and I made. Since our English teacher now shows them to her class every semester, they’ve attained cult status in Pompano Beach High School. Beowulf 3 is coming… someday!

Anyway, some people who were planning on going to see Sweeney Todd invited Justin and me to come along, so that’s where I’ll be later tonight. It should be fun.

You have to watch (or read a transcript of) this Democracy Now! interview with a Yemeni man who was kidnapped by the CIA, held without charges, and tortured.

Malcolm Nance knows waterboarding is torture because he’s done it — and he’s had it done to him.

Home for the holidays

For a while there, I was in transit, but now I’m home. Home for the holidays. I got home on Saturday, and I’ve been settling back in. We got a Christmas tree the other day after going to about four places looking for the perfect one. This one is so tall that it almost touches the ceiling. We haven’t put the star or angel on top yet. Soon enough…

Yesterday I went to the mall with Nick, Mike, and Mike’s girlfriend Ashley. They’ve been together for over a year now. Down the hall in my dorm there’s a girl named Ashley who has a boyfriend named Michael. FULL CIRCLE??

Anyway, I haven’t really thought about Christmas shopping that much. I did send a gift to Natasha (a.k.a. Jordon’s Canadian Friend), though. But now that there are two Poor College Students™ in the family, we’ve decided it’s going to be a rather giftless Christmas. Which is fine. I’ve been telling them for years that I really don’t want that much, and only now is it okay. As for the rest of my friends, I have gifts that I’m going to make. If I told you what they were, it would spoil the surprise. Although I already kind of blew it for Nick because he was asking me what he should buy me for Christmas, and I wasn’t really sure.

Last night was the Pompano Beach boat parade. There weren’t very many boats this year, probably because it was cold and windy. It was still nice, though. My family has been going to the boat parade every year since time immemorial. It’s nice to do all these things that I thought I’d never do again because I’d be going to college.

And this evening, my final grades for the semester were posted. I got A’s in all of my classes — I actually got an A in America in the Fifties, the class I had to write a long paper for — except that I got a “GRADE NOT REPORTED” in Calculus III. The prof is probably still grading the exams. We only took them on Thursday, and it takes him a while just to grade the regular tests. I hope I don’t have to go through some sort of rigamarole because my teacher didn’t submit the grades on time. I really want to know how I did, and I can’t be held in suspense for too long. I’ll get all stressed out. Calc III counts the most toward my GPA.

Take the Fake or Photo quiz to see if you can tell photographs from computer-generated images. I only got half of them right.

Watch a map showing anonymous edits to Wikipedia in almost real time with WikipediaVision.

Find out what people are saying about their neighbors at RottenNeighbor.com.

In transit

Yesterday was my final final exam of my inital semester of college. Calculus III, it was. I can hear you groaning. I felt the same way. I probably should have studied more, but I think I did okay. I needed to get 76% on the final to get an A in the class, and I should have enough partial credit from the tough questions to make that happen. Thank goodness for partial credit. Also thank goodness for the professor not caring whether you get the actual answer, just that you know how to set up the problem.

A lot of people left the dorm yesterday. My suitemates all did, so I was by myself last night. I cleaned up and got things presentable so I could check out in the morning. It took me about an hour to clean up, put the fridge in the bathroom, take out the garbage, and all of that. I spent most of the time rounding up stuff to bring home for the vacation.

This morning I had my 150th and last dining hall meal of the semester. I was worried that the 150-meal plan wouldn’t be enough, but oh, it was. I’ve been having to eat there three meals a day most days. After that, I was pretty much ready to go, and that’s when Shannon, the RA, did a little “knock knock knock knock-knock, knock knock” on my door.

She’s graduating this semester — tomorrow, actually — and then she’s going back to Chicago, where you would guess she’s from if you heard her accent. Next fall, she hopes to go to law school. So as she made sure I had unplugged everything and cleaned up, I told her how much I was going to miss her and wished her good luck in law school and told her to stop by for a visit now and then. “Oh, pesh,” she said. I assume it’s Midwestern for “shucks.” She said the same thing to my roommate when he said the same things I said to her today yesterday.

Anyway, she was a good RA. I never saw her around much, which is a testament to her goodness. (I wouldn’t want a nosy RA or anything.) She was nice, though, and she was cool to what was going on in good old Udall House (Hume East, second floor, near side). In fact, some people decided to take her out to Dragonfly, her favorite restaurant in the whole wide world, last Saturday night. I had just been there a week before. But this was Heisman Trophy night, and we had to get back home to see whether our Tim Tebow would win. In any case, we did have plenty of time to eat sushi (and have lots of fried ice cream for dessert). Shannon really appreciated it.

So my grandparents picked me up and now I’m at their house till tomorrow morning, when my parents will pick me up from here. I was going to use my own computer, but the neighbor’s Wi-Fi is now password-protected, so that’s out. So I’m using my grandparents’ computer: IE7 on Vista with AOL dial-up. Barf. What’s more, my e-mail seems to be down. There are no instant messaging programs on this computer, and I think the connection’s too slow for online applications.

My personal e-mail account better not have died for good. I just paid $20 for another year of service. I’d better not think about it any more.

Almost done

So, Tim Tebow won the Heisman Trophy. How about that? America’s best college football player is right here at the University of Florida. And I seem to been bitten by the Tebow bug. How about that? I even changed The World of Stuff’s logo subtly:

For those of you wondering whether I changed the site’s name to The Woroned of Fivetuff, Tim Tebow’s jersey number is 15. Now you know.

I finally finished my paper for America in the Fifties today. Coincidentally, it was due today. Anyway, it’s a relief to have it done. The only thing I have left to worry about is my calculus exam on Thursday. And selling my textbooks. And buying ones for next semester. And deciding where I should live next year. And…

It’s been almost a week since classes ended, and it’s been fun not having to wake up early. Yesterday my suitemates had a barbecue out behind the dorm. You can’t really have a barbecue on a Monday night, normally. After that, we went in and watched TV in the common room. We ended up settling on a show about gangs in LA. We joked about forming our own gang called the East Side Deuces (Hume East 2nd floor 4 lyfe, y’all.) Surprisingly, a Google search for “East Side Deuces” yields two hits.

Then my roommate made the mistake of trying to drink a can of Diet Dr Pepper that someone had left out with a sign that said “Free!” “That’s odd,” I said, “the can design doesn’t look like that anymore.” I checked the expiration date. The soda was three years old. Crazy times…

A few months ago, I mentioned that the state of Florida was having a contest to replace its state song, which has a catchy tune but is pretty racist in its lyrics. Today, the three finalists went up for voting by the public. Here’s what I thought of each one.

• “Florida (Where the Sawgrass Meets the Sky)” – The lyrics are pretty nice, but the song seems overproduced. It sounds more like a pop song than it should. The vocal range for these submissions was supposed to be pretty narrow, but I can’t imagine trying to sing this one.
• “Florida, My Home” – Pretty boring and includes references to a god. Why trade one offensive song for another? The new song should be inclusive to all Floridians.
• “My Florida Home” – Even though the lyrics are a little vague, I thought this one sounded the most like a state song should. I like how it features the word “home” prominently in the lyrics.

The voting continues till January 9.

I Am a Host at the Olive Garden is a series of comics a guy drew while he was a host at the Olive Garden. They’re about being a host at the Olive Garden.

Check out The History of Lolcats, a documentary by Ben Burrns. Having recently seen part of “Eyes on the Prize,” I can’t help but notice how Dr. Flufflesworth, D.F.A., sounds like that guy with the eye patch.

Tebowmania

I had my first final exam today. In the morning. At 7:30. Yuck.

I had never seen so many people out and about on campus at 7:00 in the morning on a Saturday, but lots of people are in this chemistry class, and I’m sure there were some other exams at that time also. My studying paid off, largely due to the help of a study guide posted online by one of the professors — a list of exactly as many topics as there were questions on the exam. Sure enough, the exam followed the topics on the list in order. (Do you really think I otherwise would have memorized the integrated first-order rate equation?) I did well enough to get an A in the class. I’ve also gotten A’s in Social Geography and chem lab. Next: a history paper (due Tuesday) and a calculus final (Thursday).

This past week, on a cold Tuesday night, I went with my suitemates Adam and Cameron to the intramural flag football championship game, held in The Swamp. During the game, my eyes drifted toward the south side of the stadium, where Heisman Trophy winners Steve Spurrier (1966) and Danny Wuerffel (1996) are honored. Next to Wuerffel’s jersey and name, someone had placed hand-drawn posters of a makeshift jersey with the number 15 and the name Tim Tebow.

Tebow is the man here at the University of Florida. He’s as charismatic as he is physically imposing. (I’ve seen the guy. He’s big.) Women want to be with him. Men want to be him. What’s more, the sophomore quarterback has been very successful this season, and by all accounts, he’s one of the best players in college football. I went to the game during which he became the first quarterback in NCAA history to throw for 20 touchdowns and rush for as many in a single season. Perhaps his defining moment of the season came in the last game of the season against Florida State, where he broke his non-throwing hand scoring a touchdown in the third quarter and continued to play through the end of the game.

And now Tebow is the front-runner for the Heisman Trophy, considered the highest honor in college football. The award is presented tonight, and he was invited to the ceremony. A majority of Heisman voters polled have said they’re voting for him. The only thing he has going against him is that he’s a sophomore, and almost all Heisman winners in the past have been seniors — the rest have been juniors. But maybe today in New York, Tim Tebow will break tradition. It wouldn’t be the first time.

I can’t even imagine how crazy everyone around here would get if he won. I bet they’d throw him a parade. Everyone’s wild about the guy as it is. They’ll probably love him even more even if he doesn’t win. That’s Tebowmania.

It’s time to answer some Ask Jordon questions.

teddy: what would you do if you were the las person on earth?

Isn’t there a movie coming out that has something to do with that theme? Wouldn’t it be more likely, as the movie seems to suggest, that even if you think you are the las(t) person on Earth, you’re probably not? How would you know? Or are we just talking about a sort of “I haven’t seen anyone around for years, so I think everyone in the area is dead”-type feeling? Would it really make a difference if there are still a few people left on the other side of the globe? How about this: what if I and someone else were the last people on Earth? That would be a more interesting question.

Eric the Red: What falls from the sky in the poster for “Woman is the Nigger of the World”? Are they bullets? Lipstick tubes? Phalli? (see Shaved Fish cover)

Haven’t seen it. My knowledge of the Beatles effectively ends at 1970. I do know that “Woman Is the Nigger of the World” is a song by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. (I DONT ADVOCATE CALLING PEOPLE NAMES OK) Can I have a high-res version of the Shaved Fish cover for a very good look? And is that really the plural of “phallus”? Also, why didn’t your browser send a user-agent string when submitting the Ask Jordon form? Are you my friend Luke? All evidence points to it.

Sasha: Will I get lucky tonight?

Why are you asking me? Do I look like a Magic 8-Ball? Is there anything I can do to help you out? Are you a guy or a girl?

The Open Font Library is a project that collects freely usable fonts.

“What happens when you mail a letter to someone, but instead of putting a 39 cent stamp from the post office, you just tape on some loose change adding up to 39 cents?” Find out.

What would Earth be like if we had no moon?

A day in the life

Fall classes ended today. Tomorrow and Friday are reading days (studying days), and then it’s finals week. In fact, I got a package a few days ago from Romina, who I used to work with for the last two months or so before I had to quit my job, which is really something. What’s really something else is that I only worked one day a week, so I really didn’t know her all that well. But she was fresh out of college, and she wanted to make sure I (and my sister, who also worked there) would do well and have fun. Hence the package that came the other day with pens, giant notecards, Post-It notes, a highlighter, a marker, cough drops, Advil, some food, etc. It was really nice, and I thanked all my old friends from the office for putting it together.

I really can’t believe the fall semester has gone by just like that. I thought it would drag along like my first semester of high school. But nope. Does this mean that the second semester will go by even faster? And the next faster than that? Is this how life ends up passing you by? Because things just go by so fast? I’ve tried to make the most of my time, and I think I’m getting better at it in some ways. But I won’t worry about it too much right now. I have exams to study for plus a paper to finish, and I’m looking forward to sleeping in.

As a high school student, I probably thought about what being in college would be like. Actually, I probably didn’t because I didn’t want to think about college. (In fact, when I was in eighth grade, I couldn’t even bring myself to hear it mentioned.) But I’m sure some of my younger readers are wondering what the daily life of a typical college student is like. So I’ll tell you. It’s quite simple, really. Let’s take a typical… Tuesday… from my schedule. And let’s run with it.

At 9:20, I would wake up (courtesy of my cell phone’s alarm clock feature), do 14 minutes of shovelgloving, get changed, eat some breakfast (banana bread made and mailed by my mom), brush my teeth and all that stuff, and get out the door. I’d usually be out by 10:00. My roommate would still be asleep, for which I envy him. (I particularly liked Tuesdays because I could sleep in the most. On MWF I’d wake up at 6:20, and on R — Thursday — I’d wake up at 8:20.)

I’d set out on foot to the chemistry building and get there around 10:20 or so. The class would start at 10:40, but I like to be at least 10 minutes early to class, and earlier if there’s a quiz I needed to study for, as I often did. This was my chemistry discussion class, where I’d be quizzed on topics from the lecture on MWF. The quizzes were pretty easy. They were given by a teacher’s aide (or teaching assistant, or however you can expand “TA”) who would go through the problems on the quiz before we took it.

After that single period (50 minutes), I’d go back to the dorm for a little downtime (oxymoronically, on the Internet) until about 1:10 P.M. or so, when I’d head to the dining hall (cafeteria) for lunch. They have some pretty good food there sometimes. It’s hit or miss. But I have a meal plan that consists of 150 prepaid dining hall meals as well as $300 to spend at other campus eating locations, including a Taco Bell (a criterion, incidentally, that helped UF secure the number two spot in CollegeHumor’s annual Power Rankings of colleges and universities this year).

After that, I’d have one period of America in the Fifties — a class of about 12 people with lectures and the occasional class discussion — and then, immediately after, a two-period lecture for Social Geography. The professor for that one was cool because he wouldn’t lecture for the whole two periods. He would wrap up about half an hour early, leaving me done for the day at around 4:30.

So I’d mosey back to my dorm room, chillax some more, do my online chemistry homework that would be due most Tuesdays, maybe hang out in the common room where people would be studying or playing cards, go back to the dining hall with some people for dinner, and sleep… only to do it again the next day. On Tuesdays I’d have to go to sleep pretty early because of how early I had to wake up on Wednesdays. But it was all good.

So that’s what a day in the life of this new college student has been like this semester. In about a month, I’ll be getting ready to get into a new routine.

If you’re using Ubuntu 7.04 (“Feisty Fawn”) or 7.10 (“Gutsy Gibbon”) on a laptop, be sure to check out this fix for an unexpected behavior that may be shortening the life of your hard drive. It worked for me.

The North Alabama Freethought Association is organizing Operation Foxhole Atheists, a project that’s sending care packages to atheist soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Here are 21 facts you probably didn’t know about the Internet.

In a recent edition of Ask Jordon, I was asked if I knew anything about string theory. Turns out Discover Magazine recently held a contest to find the best two-minute video that explains string theory. The winner was called String Ducky, and it actually helped me understand the theory.