Category - Blogging

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.

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.

All right, I'll admit it: I wear clothes. Inevitably, those clothes get dirty. Ordinarily, it's simple to wash them, dry them, and go on your way. But things aren't very ordinary right now. I've been in college for a few weeks, and after taking my laundry back home to be washed, I came to the realization that I'd eventually have to do it myself. The realization came on Saturday when a simple squeeze of a ketchup packet went awry. It went awry on my pants.

After leaving detergent to soak on the stain for a few days, I finally had some time to do some laundry today. I wouldn't have even known where my dorm's laundry room was if I hadn't passed it while exiting the building when the fire alarm went off. When I got there with my laundry, some detergent, and my homework, I realized that I needed quarters. So I had to go all the way back to the dorm for quarters. I left my keys in there, so when I got back to the laundry room, I couldn't open the door. So I had to go back to my room with all my stuff again. The third time was the charm.

The washers and dryers were pretty simple to use, so that was good. The atmosphere was pretty conducive to doing homework (even though I'm apparently one of the slowest homework-doers in the world). And the ketchup stain on my shorts went away completely. I couldn't even identify the pair of shorts that had been stained. (I wear jean shorts all the time. I have hundreds or thousands of pairs.) Holy stain-fighting action, Batman! This laundry detergent stuff really works. And that's why I think doing laundry will be a (mostly) pleasant experience in the future.

Apparently, someone recently noted how nice it is that I never seem to be lonely. I'm an introvert by nature. I like people, but in smaller doses. I like being alone sometimes. I'm not always lonely when I'm alone, and I'm not always alone when I'm lonely. I've been feeling somewhat lonely in spite of having people to hang out with. I can be with someone, but it's not the same as being with someone. I'm in need of a special kind of company, the kind that... oh, I know what you're thinking. Jordon tried to talk to a girl -- again -- and she didn't give him the time of day -- again! If that was your guess, you're correct.

Okay, I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a good looking guy. The face is "eh" at best. No muscles or anything. Lousy sideburns too. (Do the ladies even dig those?) But what do I give off besides being terribly physically unattractive? Or is it just my luck that every girl I want to get to know better is preoccupied with some other guy? What the hell?

Darn it, the Beatles, you've said it for me again. And with that, I'd like to turn our attention to Thoughts of a crazy RedHead, a blog that consists of the thoughts of a 20-something woman in New York City. I've been reading it for a while because it's interesting to climb into the mind of an average (?) woman, and that's exactly what blogs allow for. What's also interesting about this blog is that I'm on "Red"'s blogroll. That's how I found out about her blog, in fact. I wonder why she finds my blog interesting when her blogroll is otherwise populated with names like "Charming but Single," "Persona of a Princess," "New York Moments," "Tired of Men," and "Bridget Jones Has Nothing On Me." If I had to guess, I'd say that she probably feels the same way about me: that it's interesting to see the way a high-schooler-turned-college-student-type-guy thinks. I've tried e-mailing her, but I've gotten no response. Maybe, if she reads this, she can leave a comment here.

Take that: Errors in the Encyclopædia Britannica that have been corrected in Wikipedia.

DRM is bad. The term DRM (digital rights management) refers to access control and copy protection technologies that make it difficult or impossible to make legal copies of digital media. Of course, it's legal (in the US) for you to make copies of music or movies that you own for your personal use; that means it's perfectly fine to convert your LPs to MP3s and put them onto CDs (or MP3 players). DRM gets in the way. Most of the songs that you download from online music stores like iTunes have DRM technology that prevents you from making legal copies of the music you've bought, a right to which you are legally entitled.

Enter eMusic, the #2 online music retailer. eMusic sells high-quality MP3s without DRM. Of course, the major labels don't like it, but in spite of that, the site has thrived, selling music from independent labels. And just because it's not on one of the Big Four record labels doesn't mean that you won't like it. Some of your favorite artists might have albums on eMusic, and the genres are in no way limited to what you'd consider "indie music." I don't know how I got into all of this, but it probably happened the other day when I suddenly decided not to like such dumb music and maybe discover other things.

I asked my friend Luke if he knew anything about eMusic, and it turns out he's a subscriber who can't get enough of their selection of jam bands. There's something for everyone. So I'm ready to sign up for the free trial, and therein lies the rub. You need a credit or debit card to sign up so they know what to charge if you don't cancel before the free trial ends. Since certain people aren't being cooperative, all I have to go by is my debit card that I don't have yet for my new bank account that has no money in it. So it looks like I'm going to have to wait, but I hope it'll be worth it.

I was browsing through some old photos when I found these photos of gas station signs, taken around Pompano Beach, Florida, on Sunday, May 4, 2003. Check out those prices.

Only four years later, prices have broken $3. Another great reason not to have a car.

I got an e-mail the other day from the creator of a new site called We101, which indexes blogs by city (USA only). I decided to add my site to the listing, and I encourage others to do the same. (Most major cities in the US are listed; mine wasn't, so I chose the city closest to me.) There aren't many sites there yet, but it could quickly grow into something useful.

Old Vinyl is a blog that features MP3s and cover art from hopefully out-of-print LPs. There's probably nothing you'd want, but they're interesting to look through.

So The World of Stuff is four years old today. It's pretty odd when I think about it. If TWoS had been in high school when it started, it would have graduated right now. What started as a disorganized collection of random web pages has become a disorganized collection of random web pages with a blog and some readers. Note that I haven't truly been blogging for four years; that would come later when I realized that I would need to have something that would keep people coming back. I guess it's worked, because I've had a small but growing and fairly devoted following, and for your continued readership and support, I thank you.

It's been a good year for TWoS. I've taken up writing Greasemonkey user scripts, shown you how to find the day of the week of a given date, re-released a video and brought you two new ones, and allowed you to give some Russian flavor to your text. It's not much, all in all, but I think it's quality stuff. I'm especially proud of the videos. I should add that Beowulf and Beowulf 2 come to you via the cooperation of my friends. Beowulf 3 is coming soon.

But remember, readers, that none of this would be possible without you because then I would have done all this work for nothing, and that would make me go insane. Something else that almost makes me go insane is trying to figure out exactly how many readers I have. Certain web-based feed aggregators will tell you how many people are subscribing to your feeds when they request them. Of course, it's impossible to gauge readership accurately by this method, because not everybody uses a web-based aggregator to read blogs -- I don't -- but the information is enticing nonetheless. For example, I know that this site has 5 readers using Google Reader, 5 reading with Bloglines, 1 with NewsGator, and 1 with Rojo. So, the question remains... who are you? If you rarely or never post comments, I'd like you to post a comment introducing yourself. It's just one of those things that a blogger likes to know, especially a small-time blogger like me.

I've enjoyed maintaining The World of Stuff for the past four years, and I hope to do so for many more. Viva la Stuff!

Mid-term exams were this week. I think I got an A on all of them except for Calculus. I'm not so sure about that one. The test was pretty hard, so a B sounds reasonable. That's not so important, though. What's more important is the grade for the quarter. I had had a B for most (if not all) of this quarter until this week, when a last-minute test and the grading of a huge assignment (which I did well on) caused my class grade to swell from an 86 to a 91. In a class where my grades often fluctuate (usually in a downward direction) by fractions of a percent, it was a surprising change. I ended up with an A after all.

Speaking of things that have to do with that, I got an e-mail from UF (the college I'm going to go to) about my application to their Honors Program. I had applied without really knowing what was involved, but I figured... well, I really don't know what I was thinking. I was invited to apply because not everyone can apply. And yesterday I got an e-mail saying that I got in. Still, I want to know: What's the catch? I know I'll have to take at least one honors class per semester and maybe I can live in the honors dorm, but what's the catch? I thought I heard that you have to do a research paper every month or something. Can anyone tell me the sucky things you have to do in the UF Honors Program, if there are any? Surely there must be some.

The non-lurkers of this blog might have already realized that the quesca (QUEstion Spam programs Can't Answer) that has appeared in the comment form for over two years is now gone. That's because I've found out about more ingenious solutions that don't require people to consciously prove that they aren't robots. The not-so-secret secret lies in the differences in which people and programs look at the comment form.

First of all, a program will look at a form and, if it has input fields with promising names, fill it out. A handy trick is to change at least one of the names and make sure that filling out that field is required. I changed name of the field "author" to "personWhosWritingThis" -- it makes sense to a human but is probably meaningless to spambots who are looking for commonly used names like "author." Having changed that field's name, I created a new field called "author" which you won't see (except in the unlikely case that your browser doesn't recognize CSS). You won't see it, but the robots will because it's as clear as day in the code. So when the form is processed, it will check to see if the "author" field was filled out. If it was, the submission is blocked and no comment is posted.

Secondly, spambots tend to post comments more quickly than actual human beings, so if you set a speed limit for posting comments, you can catch submissions that are coming in at an inhuman rate. In the comment form, there is now a hidden field (not hidden with CSS like the previous example, but actually input type="hidden") that contains the Unix timestamp from the time the page loaded. When the form is submitted, the time is checked again. If the comment form submission comes only a few seconds after the page loaded, we can be fairly sure that it was a spambot at work. Again, the would-be commenter is greeted with an error message, and their comment is not processed. But just in case it was a real person, the error message tells non-robots to go back and submit the form again after a few moments.

Odds are, you won't encounter either of these checks, and that's just the idea. Together, they keep the spam at bay just as well as the quesca did, but with an added bonus of convenience for human readers. Having to prove that you're human whenever you submit a form is a constant reminder that our future in the War on Spam is bleak. It will probably be a never-ending battle, but at least I have the upper hand this time. (And if you're interested in learning how to do this for your own blog, this article has more detailed instructions. Or, if you want, I could show you my code.)

It seems that not many people understand DRM. Here's How to Explain DRM to Your Dad.

On Google Video: Some guys from the British TV show Top Gear go to America and infuriate some rednecks.

The Ask Jordon mailbag has been getting heavy over the past few weeks, so let's bust it open and see what we've got. It's time for an Ask Jordon Extravaganza.

Johnathan: Why did britney Spears shave her head bald?

This question arrived a few weeks ago, almost immediately after the big story broke. In fact, I got this e-mail even before my sister, who actually cares about what happens to famous people, found out that Britney Spears had shorn her locks. But, to answer your question, Jonathan, I'd say the answer is either "For attention" or "Who cares?"

Natasha Dean: Will i ever go out with jordan thundow

Another interesting one, considering this site already has a Natasha/Jordon thing going on. Nevertheless, this user comes from the UK, so it's not my friend Natasha in some clever disguise.

Well, other Natasha, I don't know this Jordan Thundow you speak of, so I can't say for sure, but if you want a guy to go out with you, my best advice is to be direct. The reason my best advice sounds really bad and vague is because I have no experience in this field. Anyway, glad I could help. Next.

Wilhelm T. Grate: What can you tell me about paint thinner and thinning paint and whatnot?

Well, my friend Luke, I know very little about thinning paint. I assume you'd want to thin paint in order to chip it off or something, and in order to do that, it would be good to use paint thinner because you can be fairly certain that it is actually for thinning paint. Paint thinner is highly flammable, and it probably smells bad. That's all I can tell you.

Peter: Three questions. Get ready. PS: This is not a question.

Okay.

Peter: Will you continue blogging when you're in college?

As far as I can tell, yes. Just as I blogged to inform and entertain readers about the strange new experiences of high school almost four years ago, I think it'll be fun and interesting to keep it up as I undertake the biggest thing that will ever have happened to me in my whole entire life.

Peter: C^i vi povias korekti la mia mala demando en Esperanto?

Jes, certe. Oni dirus "Ĉu vi povas ĝustigi mian malbonan demandon en Esperanto?" Vidu, ke mi uzis la akuzativon. Estas ofta eraro forlasi ĝin, sed ne forgesu. Fakte, post iom da tempo, vi verŝajne memoros bone, kaj ne plaĉos al vi la sono de ĝia misuzo.

Peter: Can you tell me what the other question I was going to ask you, because I forgot?

No, I don't know what it was. Do you remember it now?

Wilhelm T. Grate: Is the Game of Life an application of fuzzy logic or just regular logic?

Well, Luke, it seems to be smooth rather than fuzzy, so I'd say it's just regular type. Incidentally, Xlife blows my implementation of Life out of the water.

Political interference in science is not a good thing. Here's an A to Z guide of examples of this phenomenon.

One of those cheesy articles that might actually be helpful: 10 Things You Shouldn't Buy New.

Today I went to a rally concerning the ongoing genocide in Darfur. I joined Luke, Michelle, and Megan to sell copies of The Easiest Best Thing Is Be Kind, an anthology of poetry and prose related to the ongoing events. Luke collected new and used works from his counterculture heroes and some friends (myself included).

The event was held at a temple/synagogue-type place, apparently right in the sanctuary. There appeared to be some detachable wall-type things to enlarge the room, and so when "Deadheads for Darfur" set up their booth, they (we) were all the way in the back corner. Well, all the booths were in the back, but we were next to the pizza booth. At our own booth, besides copies of the book, there was a posterboard with information on the Darfur conflict, and there were also paper dolls for kids (and bored teenagers like us) to cut out and color for an Illinois schoolteacher's project to amass 400,000 of the little guys in order to pressure Barack Obama into making a stand. Whew.

Anyway, there was a range of speakers there, mostly from other houses of worship, mostly from churches. But they all talked about how we should really do something about Darfur. There were choirs, guitarists, lecturers, people playing videos, and more. There was even a visit from our friend, newly elected Congressman Ron Klein. We had last seen him a few months ago at a rally where he was campaigning to get elected. After that rally, Luke asked him the hard-hitting questions about Darfur, so this rally seemed like a good time for him to follow up.

Luke went to one of the wings to keep an eye on the Congressman as he sat next to the lectern. But when he wasn't looking, Klein followed a cameraman out a side door. When we told Luke about it, he went to pursue the politician right away. After all, he probably wasn't leaving. Judging by the person he was accompanying, he was probably doing an interview. And that's what Luke found him getting ready to do. He presented Klein with a free copy of the book, with his home address written on a piece of paper inside. Pretty creepy? Oh yeah. Most people just write their Congressman a letter. But will it be effective? Probably more so than usual.

As for the book itself: Even though there were a lot of people at the event, we only managed to sell 10 copies, one of which was bought by my mom. Hopefully Luke (and the rest of us, if he wants our help) can sell the other 90 or so at school. And of course, you can always buy a copy in paperback ($10 US) or hardcover ($20) online. One hundred percent of the proceeds go to the Save Darfur Coalition in Washington, DC. I'm hoping that a little plug on my site will draw more attention to the book and the cause that it represents. The header graphic will be seen by tens of thousands of people and web-crawling robots over the next month or however long I decide to keep it up.

This is probably the weirdest blog in history: Running from Camera. At first glance, it seems to be a bunch of photos of someone running from a camera. But according to the site, "the rules are simple: I put the self-timer on 2 seconds, push the button and try to get as far from the camera as I can."

Here's a movie you almost certainly haven't seen. In fact, it might just be the lowest-grossing movie of all time. Last February, Zzyzx Road was released in a single theater in Dallas, Texas, for six days, during which it made back $30 of its $2,000,000 budget.

2006 is almost over. It went by astonishingly fast. I can't even believe it. It makes me feel like I'm getting old. I remember a few years ago -- 2004, I guess -- thinking about future years. 2005 was "next year," so there was a lot to look forward to. In 2007, I would graduate high school. And 2006? Ah, it was just some year in between.

It turns out, though, that 2006 has been a pretty big year for me, as you'll see. I've learned not to take years for granted. They can really change you. Or, rather, you can really change yourself during them. Anyway, it's time for my annual Year in Review -- a sort of "In Case You Missed It" for the whole year. You know, in case you missed... the whole year. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it as much as I've spent time compiling it.

• January 1 - TWoS gets a new layout.
• January 8 - Day trip to Miami.
• January 12 - I come out of the atheist closet.
• January 23 - I'm not a Bloggie finalist!
• January 28 - I take the SAT.
• February 2 - I ask out a girl.
• February 3 - The Festival!
• February 10 - She says no.
• February 20 - I try again.
• February 23 - Kevin takes my sister and me to a Spanish-language music award show.
• February 28 - She says no again.
• March 12-20 - My family temporarily moves out while the tile in the house is redone.
• March 15 - The infamous Boys State interview.
• March 31 - I get to meet Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood.
• April 5 - Mrs. Vazquez, one of my favorite teachers, returns for a visit.
• April 6 - TWoS is three.
• April 26 - I write an article for the Pompano Pulse.
• May 5 - I take the AP European History exam...
• May 6 - ...and a second SAT.
• May 9 - I'm told that I'm in the running for the National Merit Scholarship. (Whatever happened to that, anyway?)
• May 19 - Another drive-in outing with my friend Andrew.
• May 20 - Improbable Mission, a sort of successor to my old band, first meets. (Whatever happened to that, anyway?)
• May 25 - Last day of school!
• May 27-June 4 - Vacation at my aunt's house. Excursions include St. Augustine and Tallahassee. Next, we go to that condo place we always go to. I take lots of pretty pictures.
• June 7 - Another fun trip to Miami.
• June 14 - I get my senior picture taken. Yes, at school, during the summer. Blech.
• June 29 - I go to a Program on Yale. Haha. Yale.
• July 7 - Learner's permit.
• July 8 - My friend Nick and I see Ringo Starr in concert.
• July 11 - Birthday party-type thing.
• July 13 - Birthday-type thing!
• July 14 - I see my friend Reid star in The Pirates of Penzance.
• July 18 - One Day in the Desert: Special Director's Cut released.
• July 27 - Fun times with Sean and Mike on Lake Ida.
• August 6-7 - Volunteer work.
• August 9 - Night out with the Five and Mrs. Vazquez.
• August 11 - I've got Gaim.
• August 14 - Last first day of school.
• August 24-27 - Beowulf: The Movie shot (and hastily edited in time for its "premiere" in English class on August 28).
• August 26 - I agree to star in a youth group production of The Year Without a Santa Claus. Rehearsals begin shortly thereafter, and they continue for months and months and months.
• August 29 - Natasha introduces herself, and we remain in contact.
• August 29 - I get my old job offered back to me.
• September 1-3 - My family visits my aunt again so we can take a tour of UF.
• September 8 - My first day back on the job.
• September 16 - I take the ACT.
• October 2-5 - My last homecoming week...
• October 6 - ...and the last homecoming game.
• October 7 - Not to mention my last homecoming dance (and the only one I went to).
• October 11 - I talk to Natasha on the phone for the first time.
• October 20 - I see The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3-D. Yep, still awesome.
• November 4 - I attend a political rally at which Bill Clinton makes a speech. I also take lots of pictures.
• November 23 - I'm sick on Thanksgiving (and before, and after).
• November 24 - Trip to the zoo.
• November 27 - I go on a school field trip to Bodies: The Exhibition.
• December 1 - I see my friends Gilbert and Justin in our school play.
• December 8 - We perform a dress rehearsal of The Year Without a Santa Claus for a small group of small kids.
• December 8 - I get accepted to UF, one of the two colleges I applied to.
• December 9 - Most of Beowulf 2 shot.
• December 17 - The day of the show.
• December 25 - Christmas. Among the loot: my first cell phone. Don't laugh.
• December 30 - For the first time, Jordon Asks YOU!!

The BBC presents 100 Things We Didn't Know Last Year. Some of them you probably did know, but others are new discoveries of the year.

And here are, according to someone, the Top Ten Astronomy Images of 2006. They're pretty spectacular.

See you in 2007!

One year ago: "It hardly seems like it had a chance to breathe, and now it's on its way out the door."
Two years ago: "It went by faster, though."
Three years ago: "The year's gone by faster than... something that's fast."

Well, Thanksgiving is around the corner, and you know what that means: It's time to feed the homeless! I got roped into doing some volunteer work today. I really didn't want to wake up at 6:15 on a Saturday to do it. You have no idea. It's 5:30 on school days and 6:30 for work. And even when I can stay up late, I always wake up early. Saturdays are mine... unless I have to help distribute frozen turkeys in the tri-county area. I really didn't want to do it. That makes me a bad person.

Anyway, KFC donated 200 frozen turkeys to the cause, so the first thing we had to do was go and get them. They were conveniently located in a small warehouse in West Palm Beach, so we had to go up there and get them. From then we moved to points south, distributing turkeys here and there, and also picking up some boxes of food and stuff that had been made specifically for certain needy families. Then those boxes had to be delivered to Miami, so by that time, I actually felt like going along. After all, I had never been to West Palm Beach and Miami in the same day before.

After that, I hung out with Mark for a bit. He gave me back some of the CDs that I lent him from our band practice of April 18, 2004. I'd been getting on him about it for months now. Nine hundred and forty-four (944) days later, he gives two out of three back, which I'd say is not bad for him. Incidentally, my CDs were held captive for 500 days longer than the Iran hostage crisis. However, while all of the American hostages returned alive, two out of three of my CDs emerged unscathed.

Well, besides Thanksgiving, the other noteworthy things that happen in mid-to-late November are my friend Michelle's birthday and the Leonid meteor shower. I've never seen the Leonids (or any meteor shower, for that matter), although I have tried. Five years ago, I went camping with my friend Sean around Leonid time, and I was hoping to catch a glimpse of the meteors, but I couldn't. I think it was too cloudy, and I was too tired, and the smoke from the campfire was making me sneeze too much. It was probably too cold also.

It's also cold tonight, but the sky is as clear as a bell (except for all the light pollution, but whatever). The meteor shower is supposed to peak later tonight, so maybe I'll actually see some. I'm glad that the Leonids aren't peaking on a school night this year. You won't escape me this year, Leonids! Actually, you probably will, considering how much light pollution there is in my general area, but... we'll see, won't we? I'll probably come back inside frustrating and freezing, but Leonids, I will see you. Well, I'll try, anyway. Okay, that's enough.

A little Ask Jordon never hurt anybody.

Peter: Do you realize that, according to Alexa, your traffic is falling somewhat rapidly? Why do you think this happened, and what could you do to stop it?

Yes, I did realize that, actually, but it doesn't worry me that much. The only reason I can think of that makes sense is that I haven't been posting as much as I could be (though I am posting as much as I can, if that makes sense). Or maybe it's just that people who download the Alexa toolbar are increasingly tending not to be the sort of people who visit my site. Who knows?

If I wanted to gain more traffic, which I suppose I do (even though I don't care about it as much as I used to), I would probably try increasing my links to other sites and maybe write a post that would make the front pages of Slashdot, Digg, Fark, Metafilter, and all the sites of that sort. I tend to link to a lot of top lists of things that are ranked by certain people who seem to know what they're talking about. In fact, checking my list of sites that I plan to link to in forthcoming posts, 3 of the 14 pages are countdowns of some kind. Maybe I could write the Top Ten Reasons People Should Visit The World of Stuff. That'll get 'em.

Check out The Illustrated Beowulf, a condensed version of the timeless Old English epic, featuring Bill Clinton as Beowulf, Danish Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen and Pope John Paul II as Hrothgar, and Cookie Monster as Grendel, among others. But, as always, be sure to watch Beowulf: The Movie, starring my friends and me.

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One year ago: "By the way, I don't want to die alone."
Two years ago: "What might be even more crazy than Mr. McDonald having been a Major League Baseball player is that no one ever bothered to tell me."