Written: August 19, 2008 at 7:12PM EST
Well, yesterday was the official start of my life as a college student. Before I get ahead of myself, I’m not going to a fancy four-year college… yet. Instead I opted to enter a community college instead. (I don’t wanna hear it, Chris. :-O) Anyways, I had been dreading the eighteenth for what was close to six months. I enjoyed the security of high school. I knew what was there and I was accustomed to the rules and restrictions associated with it.
Yesterday, my “safety blanket” was yanked away and I entered my first college classes. While to many this may not seem like much of a step, going to a community college; but for me it was. Upon entering, the atmosphere was so different from that of High School. People who actually wanted to be there and teachers who seemed to like their jobs was quite a shock for me to see. Scurrying up the 2 flights of stairs, but not before accidentally looking for my class on what was actually floor 1.5 (odd numbering, eh?). Finally I found my room and to my amazement, there weren’t any of those horrible desk-chair atrocities which my high school made us sit in for 8 hours.
My morning, which I guess isn’t technically a morning as it started at noon, consisted of College Comp 1 and American History 1. I hate to repeat myself (Ha!), but I actually liked the teachers straight away and the energy a teacher who enjoys his or her job makes an amazing difference. Even though the class consisted of reading over the syllabus, the fifty-minute class flew by. Something not even the best high school teacher was able to accomplish as these two teachers had done.
Following American History, I returned home and fell asleep on the floor for a about an hour. This was due simply to exhaustion (I stayed up most of the night before, and I feared sleeping on a bed, I wouldn’t be able to yank myself out of bed to get to my last class at 6pm.) Despite the location of the nap, I woke up and was able to get to my six o’clock class, Pre-calculus.
To tell you the truth, I still have absolutely no idea what the hell calculus is. Hopefully I’ll learn that, but until then, I guess I’ll be attempting math which I understand little about. 
Back to my day, I arrived at the class and was awestruck at its size. The class contained a shocking nine people, including myself. Sitting through a pseudo-lecture (we really didn’t learn much new stuff, but rather the teacher talked about the course, how he forgot the syllabus, and how numbers fall into certain groups…), I took about six pages of notes, but I didn’t really mind it. When we actually start doing bookwork, that may change, but for now I’m good with the class.
Following the dismissal of the class at eight o’clock, I found a warning pamphlet on my car… (I forgot to register it… oops :X) and I returned home. By the time the class was over I had a splitting headache. Perhaps it was the lack of sleep, the lack of eating anything, or a combination of the two, but the twenty-five minute ride home was horrible. I just wanted to go home and sleep. Needless to say, once I did get home, I crashed and sleep through until about five am this morning.
Today was actually quite simple, I went to work from noon until five; but I really ended up staying until about six, working with a customer. Then, I had to rush to my Intro to Education class, and made it exactly at six o’clock. Come to find out, the teacher was in Florida, so her husband gave us our syllabus and then we were free to go.
So, that about wraps up my first day(s) of college. I have a psychology class on Thursday, but aside from that, its just a matter of getting back into the routine of classes and homework. So far, I don’t think I’ll much trouble getting back into the swing of things.
Written: April 6, 2008 at 12:28AM EST
I am still alive! As its 4:20 and my eyes kinda hurt, I’ll keep it short. A few months ago my family moved into a house that was nearly twice as large as the one we previously lived in. Being the tightwads that we are, we didn’t get a moving truck and instead made countless trips back and forth between the two houses (which luckily were only a mile-or-so away).
It was a long and tedious task, but finally we finished. Weeks slowly went by then my mom (and a few other members of my family who will remain unnamed) decided they were homesick. So lucky me, I got to move everything back to the first house. Nothing better than a rousing game of musical houses.
So following the move, a series of mishaps involving various shitty telecommunication companies, a set of demon children and pit bulls and a depressing bout of unemployment, things have finally begun to slow down… but for how long?
Written: January 30, 2008 at 8:41PM EST
Today was the first day of the new semester and to put it simply, it sucked. What I thought was going to be the best semester of my entire high school career turned out to be the shittiest. First off, the classes themselves. My schedule consists of
Math III - 12 years of math concepts crammed into 20 weeks
ACE English - College Composition I
PIG and ECON - Government brainwashing
British Literature - need I say more?
First off, math three was filled to the brim. Every seat, even the broken one in the back of the room was filled up. To top that off, the class was in the smallest math room in the school and the desks were crammed together. That many idiots that close together is hazardous to ones health… or at least ones sanity.
Next was ACE English. I actually don’t really have too much to say about that. 10 absences and I forfeit college credits—kinda puts a damper on my cruise in May… Oh and the, “You guys are the cream of the crop, but don’t expect higher than a C” is always a nice way to start a class.
PIG was erm… different to say the least Insane teacher + morons = a memorable class 
Brit Lit. The teacher… don’t even get me started. The kids… even worse. God I don’t think i can survive it. Now I have to do math homework then I’m going to bed. I’m mentally exhausted and I don’t know how much more of this I can take. 
Written: December 1, 2007 at 4:35PM EST
Let me be the first to say, I have had a gmail account since Summer 2004. I fell in love with the service right from the start. The amount of space, the ease of use, and the entire thing overall. I have spread the word and now many of my friends use the program as well.
The creation of the google talk program seemed like a plus to me, albeit not entirely useful. Still I use it for communicating with google fanboys. Integration to the service however seemed like overkill. It just slowed down the service too much. I clicked the link and made it vanish, and it actually made quite a bit of difference.
Then, as the years went by and the service became more and more popular, downtimes became common. I stayed confident that it would only be temporary, and for quite some time, it wasn’t looking that way. But, to my amazement as well as to my friends, the downtimes became less and less common.
Then you went and redeveloped gmail from the ground up. Supposedly, they have “spent a lot of time profiling all parts of the application, shaving milliseconds off wherever we can, and figuring out workarounds for some pretty deep-rooted issues with the current browser implementations. Some of the most common actions should be faster now.” To this I have one simple remark.
“HAH!”
I have yet to see any positive changes in speed in the service. In fact, loading times have seemed to double (even triple on some days). I will admit that I do have a lot of mail, but according to google, I should “never need to delete another message.” Basically they’re contradicting themselves.
The part I find most interesting is the fact that gmail is able to crash my browser. When loading the mailbox, trying to send a new message, or even “search[ing] to find the exact message you want, no matter when it was sent or received.” It’s getting to the point where it’s impossible to even read my mail!
Now, before I get chewed out, let me state the following. I have indeed tried disabling/uninstalling all my firefox addons. Each and every one, whether it was deleted or not made no difference whatsoever. Secondly, I have tried using different browsers, and that didn’t even seem to help.
From what I’ve read, I’m not the only one having problems with the service crashing browsers. It just seems ridiculous that a service should overload a browser as to crash it. And besides that, I don’t even really see that many differences between this version and the older version (aside from the old one working). It’s quite frustrating really.
Now, I’m going to get people telling me to “click the link and switch to the ‘old version’.” Sadly, I can’t even do that. As soon as I log in, I get the “Loading” button (nothing else), on the page. Then the browser freezes up and crashes. I have no opportunity to even click the link. Then the part which really annoys me, if I do get a chance to click the link, it won’t save between logins! You should be able to change that in your preferences.
Bookmarking the “old version” shouldn’t be required. Call it lazy, call it whining, call it whatever, you shouldn’t have to do that just to use a webmail program. I don’t use bookmarks as it is, I find it just as easy to type http://gmail.com into the address bar and click enter, so I’ll be damned to bookmark a page in gmail just to get it to work.
And so I will conclude with just a simple message. This of course can apply to anyone who has a well-used service/program. Let the users decide to implement the change instead of doing it for them. Google and Microsoft have that in common. Force them to use buggy software, and they just may not return— you’re share of the market means nothing if your users lose faith.
Written: October 30, 2007 at 10:33PM EST
To all those at Horseheads who had their articles published, IT IS NOT MY FAULT. I fought to keep them off and lost. Have a problem, bring it up to Mrs. Williams in room 209. As of now, its not my problem.
I QUIT!
.
Written: September 11, 2007 at 5:18PM EST
Well, lets see today started off as a normal day… and apparently ended as a normal one as well. Nothing interesting on the news, same-old boring announcements. Just another blah day…
OH WAIT! Would you look at that! It’s 9/11. Its a wonder it took me until noon to even figure out it was the 11th. I have to say the coverage and remembrance for those who died that day is a disgrace. I find that for a country of people who cry “We will never forget!” and sport the “I am Patriot… Are you?” bumper stickers and tags, can’t even stop for a moment of silence for that tragic day.
Keep in mind, I was only in sixth grade when the attacks occurred, but I remember it so well. Sitting in English class and the teacher turning on the TV and seeing the towers fall. It was a hard day for a lot of people. In fact, for weeks following, news of “The WTC Incident” changed to “An Act of Terror” to “The War on Terror” and then finally to “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” It upset people to the point that Starbucks had to change and ad champagne because it “offended” people. Of course, at the time this was completely understandable.
For years following the attacks, many spent the day in mourning the lost, others gave just a moment of silence. Documentaries and recorded news-reels filled the day. Today however, not a thing could be seen. Local channels hadn’t aired coverage, no announcement at school, nothing even remotely resembling September 11th of the last 5 years. It’s quite sad really-that a country hell-bent on patriotism and avenging those lost can’t even stop for a moment to give their condolences lost and look to the future.
Written: October 14, 2006 at 4:14AM EST
I’m not generally superstitious, but today was HORRIBLE!
First off, I woke up late, so I was rushing around this morning. After rushing to get ready, I ran to the bus (and almost missed it). I arrived at school and went to spanish, it went fairly well, but I kept making stupid mistakes. On to notetaking, I realized I forgot my stuff for the class, and of course the day I forget it, we need it. Luckily, my friend Megan let me use her book and Mrs. Sisti (my teacher), didn’t freak out at the fact that I forgot my stuff.
Next I had lunch/Activity. I helped Megan make some Halloween Party invitations in MS Word and when I went to get a pen, it exploded. The ink was really sticky, and when soap was added, it turned purple and would NOT come out!
English followed and he decided to give us a pop-quiz on vocabulary words. Instead of it being normal “give the definition” style, it was write a sentence using it exactly as it is given. The words we had were…
Literal
Figurative
Denotate
Connotate
Potentate
I was able to get literal and figurative, but I completely drew a blank of Denotate, Connotate, and Potentate, and because there were only 5 words, each was 20%, always good to miss 60% on a quiz!
Finally it was time for art, so close to the end of the day! For about a week and a half I have been working on a charcoal still life. Today I was working on it and I messed it up. The shading was really bad and the teacher wasn’t too happy =\
When school was finally over, I rushed outside, caught the bus and came home. I then heated up my leftover rice and fell asleep and woke up at around 8 to say goodbye to my grandma and aunt - as they are going to Myrtle Beach.
—-
Sorry if this post seems kinda mopey, but today sucked… seems to be a pattern lately… Oh Well
Written: August 18, 2006 at 6:05PM EST
A few months ago, I decided to try http://www.despair.nu. After a few months of commenting on sites that take hours to load, and text thats extremely small, I have come to the conclusion is sucks. I will now give you my reasons.
1. Your’re forced to comment every 2 days. After you comment, others don’t, which basically defeats the purpose of the site.
2. You get comments that don’t relate to the post at all. For example, from my “Nerd-like Rantings” post, I recieved this comment, which barely relates to my post.
I hate plugins. I just don’t bother with them really 0____o
Stupid Despair tells me to comment you when you have a blog that is seriously hard to comment on! Meh.
To be honest, I don’t give a shit if its hard to comment on. I see that because I don’t “whine about my hair style and “Gasp” I think So and so likes me” it magically makes my posts hard to comment on. I mean, I’ll be honest, some of my posts aren’t exactly easy to comment on, but if you can’t think of anything, comment on another post, or don’t comment at all. It’s that simple.
3. People come, read 1 entry, comment and leave. What is the point of this? You put a lot of time and energy into making a site, then people come and spend 3 minutes skimming an entry, leaving a shitty comment and leaving, never to look back.
Now is the time where I could go into how sites your suppossed to comment usually include a HUGE header image (for example, on one site, the image was 900 X 612px and the site took 8 minutes to load. Its a bit much, and I only stayed because I was required to by the commenting site.
The site itself is run fine. Albeit the moderators don’t exactly moderate all the time, but its expected with 300 active sites. The idea though is kinda iffy. Force people to comment in hopes that others will stay. This like many ideas may seem (or have seemed) good on paper, but in real life it doesn’t work.
*I apologize if I offended anyone with this rant, but its all true.
Written:
Ok, this post is mainly for the nerds among us. (Normal people, feel free to leave).
Anyways, have you ever noticed how fast the web changes? Like a few weeks ago, I attempted to install guestblock, because it seemed cool and some other sites had it on. So after messing around with it for a couple hours, I gave up and deleted it. Come to find out a few weeks later, while searching through my hosts help section, they said how to install the PEAR application I needed. Excited, I go to find the script, and its GONE! In a matter of weeks, a seemingly popular site disappeared off the face of the earth.
Then today, I decided to install a poll script for wordpress. After searching through WP-PLUGINS, there were 2 scripts. I downloaded one, and it gave me tons of errors. Then I downloaded democracy, the other poll plugin, and its admin panel didn’t work! Come on, 2 scripts and neither work! So, I’ve given up.
Thats about it for my nerd rant…. and now to some happier, but still nerd-like news.
Starlet FINALLY changed her layout. Its not long pink with a flower-looking thing anymore!!!!
And finally, If you’re bored and looking for somthing to do, be sure to check out SILLYISH and JEMJABELLA, 2 very interesting sites (for the nerds and nerds at heart!)
Written: August 14, 2006 at 7:00PM EST
Yesterday, I was down in my sisters room and she was messing with a picture in MS Paint. I downloaded the gimp for her and she’s been messing with it ever since. A few weeks ago, my mom was telling me how my 12 year old cousin had a myspace along with the other freaks you could call members of my family. While I was down there, I had her look up the profiles. First we went searched for my cousins profile and nothing turned up. In the process we found my cousin Shane’s profile.
Its horrible! A prime example of why myspace is bad. Terrible designs mixed with background music. I do love hearing glorious songs with people screaming about how no one likes them and they want to die.
EDIT: I worded this original segment completely wrong. I have nothing against any bands or layouts supporting bands. Its just that they way some are done isn’t quite aesthetically pleaseing to me (For example the background repeats strangely). And I don’t care for music from sites blaring above my own. I don’t mind music on sites as long as I (the user) can control when it starts and stops!
So from there, I found my cousin’s profile. Keep in mind shes about 12. A few months ago Shane sent her some perverted comments on myspace, and her mother flipped. So what is she doing on myspace?!? While I was at her profile, I also learned a few other things. Mainly being that she is now
*16 years old… Good to know
*Full and beautiful … Ha ha, yeah right
So much more I could go on about, but I won’t.
And then the best part in the whole entire world! Shane’s fathers new baby Holden Dwaine Hartman has a myspace. So see, its clearly fine to have a myspace if your under 13. Screw the rules, who cares!
See “His” profile here.
EDIT: Wow, a 99 year old baby!
What the hell is wrong with people! Why would you publicly post pictures of your 9 month old baby along with your general location. And its these same people who wonder why the hell little kids are so easily found by predators.
To be perfectly honest, I don’t care for myspace, but I don’t hate it. I’m sure the target audience it was made for loves it, but there shouldn’t be 12 year olds on there. Where are the parents when these kids are doing this… oh wait, I know, they’re too busy with their own profiles.
Edit: Is it just me, or do a lot of the kids/teenagers on the site seem like the ones you want to beat the crap out of?