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.

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.”

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!

Delicioused

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pun or song lyric

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All Linux, all the time

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

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

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

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

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

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

15 Stunning Images Using Blur to Portray Movement.

We have a winner

The Change Contest is over. I know you’re eager to find out who won. But first…

My going-away party was last night. Hardly anyone I invited actually showed up (thanks to those who did), but there were a lot of people overall. The party was also for my sister, who’s going to college, and my grandparents, who are moving. The place was packed. There was lots of food, and there still is. Everybody had a good time. There was so much going on that it couldn’t all be contained indoors, so a lot of the party moved outside, where there were all sorts of tables and chairs. Some people stayed inside to watch the football game. Luke tried to play leapfrog with a frog. We talked about plans to go to Miami on Wednesday (everyone is invited, even you). As the night grew late, Luke found out about the Driveway-A-Thon and insisted that another driveway endurance contest be held. He, Justin, TJ, and I participtaed. Luke won, staying on the driveway continuously for exactly 3 minutes.

Today I went to the grocery store to turn my change into cash. Yes, I know the bank does this, but I can’t get to the bank without a car, and I’d probably have to roll all that change, which I’d really rather not do. Plus, I already did this, so it’s too late for you to criticize me. Anyway, I got to the machine and was amazed by how simple the process was. I had expected to be standing there for hours placing each coin in a slot one by one. No. You just dump ‘em in. It only took a few seconds to do that. Then the machine counts. It’s really noisy, but it only takes a few moments. Once it determines how much you’ve got, it gives you a receipt that you can redeem for cash. There’s an 8% service charge, but it’s better than the 8.9% charge that the other grocery store’s machine imposes.

I had my own guess for this contest, and it was based on the amount I had counted when the jar was a little more than halfway full. It was a long time ago, but I remember that the amount then was around $50. So I figured that with the jar mostly full, the amount of money inside would be about $75.

The actual amount of change in the jar was $77.14. Congratulations to Mark Myers, whose guess of $78.87 was off by only $1.73! He gets to write a post about whatever he likes, if he wants to. (And if he doesn’t, then I suppose the runner-up can have the honors.)

In second place was Todd, who guessed $2.86 too high, followed by Natasha, whose guess was $3.04 low. Not bad for people who don’t use US currency. (They’re both Canadian.) Of the 14 valid guesses, the average amount guessed was $64.23, and the median guess was $68.23. Gilbert’s guess of $15 was less than 20% of the actual amount. The highest guess, Daniel’s $100.44, was more than 130% of the actual amount.

Thanks to everyone for participating in the contest. It’s been a lot of fun. Plus, I now have an extra $70!

I knew that Weezer had two eponymous (self-titled) albums, but I didn’t know that there were so many other artists with multiple self-titled albums.

Domain hacks, like blo.gs and del.icio.us, are cool. Here’s a search utility for domain hacks. There are two for “theworldofstuff”: theworldof.st/uff/ and theworl.do/fstuff/. It looks like those domain names are available, too.

Change Contest

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been keeping change in a plastic container in my room, hoping that someday, I’d have enough to exchange it for real money. Now, the jar is almost full, and since I’m about to go to college, I need the cash more than ever. Before I exchange my hoard of coins for paper money, I want to make things fun. So here’s a contest for you all:

The challenge: Guess how much money, in US dollars, is in the jar pictured above.

The prize: The person with the closest guess gets to write a post here at The World of Stuff.

The deadline: You have until Saturday, August 11, 2007, 23:59 UTC-5 (World of Stuff time), to post a comment on this entry with your guess. After that, I will count the change and determine the winner.

Rules and stuff:

• Limit one guess per person, please.
• You must include a valid e-mail address with your comment. Guesses provided without an e-mail address will be deleted. No exceptions.
• If there are any non-US coins in there, they won’t be counted.
• My relatives are not eligible. Sorry, but that’s standard procedure.
• In the event of a tie, everyone who ties will get to write a post.

Extra information: The jar weighs about 8 lbs. It’s heavy.

Post your guesses here. Good luck!

Sea cruise

I got back from my cruise on Saturday. It was really great. I went with my sister, her friend Lisa, my parents, and my grandparents. The ship departed from Miami on Monday, and we spent much of that day getting used to things. It wasn’t so bad because it was my second time on that ship (the Carnival Imagination) and my parents’ third.

For those who have never been on a cruise, a cruise ship is basically like a floating hotel or palace. The Imagination has two dining rooms, a casual restaurant, a library, a disco, a casino, a theater, a sushi bar, an Internet café, a regular café, a swimming pool, hot tubs, bars, a lounge, and more. In short, there is no lack of things to do unless you’ve already eaten, don’t feel like reading a book, are too young to gamble or drink, hate swimming, or don’t want to pay for the Internet access. Failing that, there are new hit movies on the TV in your room.

Many people say that the best part of the cruise is not the destination — it’s the food. Your food is included with the price of your ticket, so with a few exceptions, you can pig out as much as you want. At the fancy dining rooms, you can order whatever is on the menu, and if you don’t like it, you can send it back and have something else, which is good because lots of fancy restaurants serve disgusting things that common people don’t like. But I saw it as a chance to try interesting things. I tried filet mignon, veal, duckling, and escargot, all of which were delicious. (I’m not a picky eater.)

The second day was a “fun day at sea” because we hadn’t yet gotten to Grand Cayman, the first destination. The ship would have to pass around exotic, forbidden Cuba first. And on Tuesday morning, the misty mountains of that Caribbean island were in view in the distance. It really was a great sight to see. Later in the day, I found out that my sister and her friend love taking naps. Since I shared a room with them, that meant that I would either have to go to bed too or just wander around unable to return to the room. I rarely nap, but I decided to rest anyway. The days are long on a cruise ship, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

On Wednesday we arrived in George Town, the capital of the Cayman Islands. We had decided first to tour “Stingray City,” a shallow area of water near the island where stingrays can be found. Apparently stingrays are pretty gentle and docile because it was possible to touch them and even pick them up… not that I did. I wasn’t sure which parts I could touch and which parts would cause the stingray to attack me if I touched them. Even so, it was interesting to swim with them, and it was an odd sensation to feel them brushing past my legs.

Next we snorkeled in an area not far away. I’d never really snorkeled before (unless snorkeling in my pool counts), so that was fun. We got to see a lot of coral, but it was basically like looking inside a pretty lame fish tank. I forgot that I have a hard time swimming, and my goggles kept fogging up also. Plus, the seas started kicking up a bit, which made conditions unfavorable for hugging the surface of the water for air. So after a while, I returned to our boat. It was still a nice experience.

When we got back on land, our tour bus, driving on the left side of the road, took us to George Town, where we walked around and saw the touristy and not-so-touristy places. As you might expect, there were a lot of banks. I took a picture of the Legislative Assembly building (which was right next to a touristy bar) and later uploaded it to Wikipedia. Turns out the article for the Legislative Assembly had a request for images.

Anyway, the next day we were in Ocho Rios, Jamaica. From the window in our room we could see the mountains that overlook the town. We started our tour of Jamaica by going to Coyaba River Garden, which was, as its name implies, a garden. There were lots of interesting plants, and you could even drink the water from the river (actually more like a stream) that passed through. It was pretty good. Our tour bus (which also drove on the left side of the road) took us to a gated-in shopping center, which was less seedy than the non-gated-in shopping centers outside. A bunch of people wanted to braid my hair for money. It is pretty long, but I didn’t have it done. That would be ridiculous.

Next, we went up into the mountains to Dunn’s River Falls. It’s a waterfall, but it’s not like straight up-and-down because you can climb it. (It’s more like a giant staircase, actually.) But before you can climb it, you have to go to the bottom. There’s a boardwalk that runs along the side, through the forest. At the bottom, you find yourself on the beach. The waterfall actually leads to the beach, which makes for a fantastic sight among the yellow sand, bright blue waters, and green foliage on either side. It was the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. The climb was a bit difficult at times, but I made it all the way up without getting hurt.

After leaving Jamaica, the ship made its way back to Miami, and we enjoyed another “fun day at sea” on Friday. On Saturday morning, the ship was back in its home port, and we went through the debarkation process, which is even more annoying than embarkation. But overall, I had a great time, and if I could do it again, I definitely would. This was a graduation gift for my sister and me, and it was really a good one. But it’s not over yet; I’ll always have the memories. Aww, how cheesy.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank my friend Luke, who posted Tuesday‘s and Thursday‘s posts for me in my absence. My blogging software was having issues that wouldn’t let me post entries in advance, and he made it happen manually. Thanks, Luke!

Thanks to the wonders of DVD technology, you can now read the full text of a letter shown briefly on screen in a 1958 episode of Leave It to Beaver. It’s mostly filler like “This paragraph has absolutely nothing to do with anything.”

What if you could walk in a straight line around the world? Use this Google Maps mashup to choose a starting point and a direction and find out where you’d go.

The days we will remember best

Graduation practice was yesterday at 8:00 in the morning, and when the principal said 8:00, he meant it. He was upset to see that hardly anybody was in this community college auditorium at the stroke of 8:00, but most people were there within a little while, including Mike, who gave me, Yamilee, and my sister a ride.

We practiced the processional, the recessional, and all the other -cessionals. The main issue was finding the order in which we would enter and exit the building. The top 10% of the class were seated in the front row, and the rest were behind us in alphabetical order. After that, they went over the procedures like walking across the stage to get the diploma (actually the diploma holder because they won’t give you your diploma till you give your gown back). They also made efforts to pronounce everyone’s name correctly.

At the end of the practice, they gave out our yearbooks, which I thought was unusual. In years past, they’ve sent the yearbook to the presses in the summer so that end-of-year events like prom and graduation could be included. The yearbook would then be distributed at the beginning of the next year. I guess they realize that it would be hard for some people to go back to the school to pick up their yearbook if they’re far away in college. I guess it doesn’t matter that that stuff isn’t in the book. The yearbook is bigger than ever this year, and it’s in full color for the first time. That almost makes up for the title: “Tornado Nights: The Ballad of the Golden Tornadoes.”

After the practice, I had to stay to practice my salutatorian speech. Rebeca, the valedictorian, had told me that she hadn’t finished her speech, so she went to the school to meet with an English teacher to help her write it. Meanwhile, back in this college auditorium, the speech teacher revised the class president’s speech, removing references to east Asian immigrants and streaking. (I have no idea what the contexts were.) The principal told her that mentioning east Asian immigrants specifically would be pretty divisive for the audience, and he didn’t want to bear the brunt of complaints. Later, he told me that my speech was good. When I delivered it to the empty auditorium, I had it down pretty well.

After that, I went to Clamsters for lunch with Nick, Mark, my sister, and some other people. Then we hung out at Mike’s to play airsoft with Mike’s brothers’ guns. After a while, we had to get back home. We had to be back at the auditorium at 5:45 P.M. for graduation, and I did not want to be late.

We got back to the auditorium in time, and while my sister and I went into the back to meet with our classmates, my parents and grandparents (along with some of my sister’s friends) took their seats. I assume that we had to be there at 5:45 so that even the people who were late would still be early; after all, the ceremony was supposed to start at 7:00. But it gave me a lot of time to meet with people and say hello. Since everyone was wearing a gold cap and gown, it was a little hard on the eyes.

Then we had to stand outside and line up for the processional. We were lined up there for what seemed like a really long time. At this time I could see that many of the teachers were there. They were wearing robes with their colleges’ colors, and the length of their sleeves indicated their degree. As I was standing there, I couldn’t remember the last time I had been that nervous. Mr. Oistacher, a teacher I didn’t know very well, told me that UF, my future college, was a great school. The small talk comforted me a little.

We went in, and the valedictorian and I took our seats onstage. After the class president spoke and some important guests were introduced, an assistant principal introduced me. She mentioned The World of Stuff (I told you everyone knew about it) and the Beowulf movies. Anyway, I went up and delivered my speech. I didn’t do so badly. The lights were really bright, though. Next the valedictorian spoke, and her speech was really good. When it came time for us to get our diplomas, we walked offstage. Some guys from the JROTC assisted the valedictorian and class president down the steps. Then a JROTC girl walked me down. It was kind of unexpected.

Then we went outside so that we could go onstage from the side. Since I was #2 in the class (that’s what the salutatorian is), I graduated second. I got to walk across and shake hands with some people I didn’t know. And then there was the picture with the principal handing me my diploma case. After that, I went back to my seat in the front and stood until everyone in the row was there. Then we could sit and watch everyone graduate. There were a lot of people I didn’t know at all and had never seen in my life, but many of them I did know. Also, my hat was getting wobbly by that time.

Once everyone had walked the stage, the class president asked everyone to turn their tassels from the left to the right, which is apparently a traditional thing. Then, just before we exited, a couple of girls went up and sang the alma mater. Even though this came as a surprise to many people who didn’t know we had an alma mater, and even though some of the lyrics were butchered in the program, and even though nobody really knew the tune except the people who were singing, we sang together anyway.

After exiting, I had to say goodbye and congratulations to as many people as I could recognize. I even saw someone I never would have expected to see: Ms. Bruton, whose Business Systems & Technology class I had first block on the first day of freshman year. She left the school a few years ago, which is why it was surprising to see her. I was so surprised that I can’t even remember if I saw her first or if she saw me. I was all, “Ms. Bruton??” It’s hard to believe that she was there in the beginning and also at the very end.

I handed in my gown and got to receive my actual diploma. Dr. Shipe gave it to me, and he knew who I was even though I’ve never had his class. I got to talk with some other people after that, including some underclassmen and graduates from last year who were nice enough to come. Then we went home.