Zhanga: February 2005
Entries have their own pages now. Click the date to see the entry by itself with its comments.
Monday, February 28, 2005 (3 comments)
I remember when I was at Homegroup one day a long time ago, back when I was as atheist as I am now. Some girl (I almost still remember who she is) was talking about how parents really suck, but then later as you grow up, they start becoming really cool.
I think my mom has hit that stage. It's so funny thinking about how until last year, she has stuck with the "NO DATING UNTIL YOU'RE TWENTY!!!!!!!!!" rule. I think that part of her brain short circuited and got wired backwards.
She makes fun of people now, too. It's great. It's so amusing to hear how she hates my friends. It really is interesting how she sees certain things in people after just meeting them once. I guess moms really do know everything, huh?
MIT Thursday! Sweeeeeeeettt!!
If Dutter has to go on a stupid CIA mission instead of DC in May... I will be SO mad. In fact, I may even create a Dutter-teleportation jamming device to prevent her from leaving. Yeah, take that, super physics person.
11:22PM
Sunday, February 27, 2005 (3 comments)
This Asian guy on some team yesterday came up to us after the final round, and he said that he could see that Gene and I are Chinese. Then he asked where Yujing is from, and told us that he thought Yujing was Vietnamese.
I'm tired, I'm annoyed at the wetness around me, and I have to fill out a financial aid form.
How am I supposed to know when I became a resident, to the day? By the way, the GT forms are due March 1, so better get working if you forgot.
I have no real content for today's post. But Bill's always funny. So... two days ago, I get on my computer at night and see this (and only this) on my screen:
ChinkBoi101: what are some good britney spears songs
Why does he always try to be like me? I wouldn't mind if it were anyone else. In fact, I'd be flattered. But why him!?
And the answer to his question... well... there aren't really any good ones. Well, unless you count the remixes, but those aren't by her.
Then today he tried to send me a Michael Jackson song for me to post on my site so that he can link to it from his Xanga.
Let it be known (FLEENOR ALERT! EXPLETIVE!) that I do not listen to Michael Jackson. Bill is going above and beyond mere imitation.
8:57PM
Saturday, February 26, 2005 (1 comment)
Last night was interesting. I was summoned during Lilly's party by my mom because my house was flooded.
Yeah, the water heater exploded and jizzed all over the floor. The entire basement was flooded and the deepest part was maybe three inches deep.
Good thing my carpet soaked up a couple hundred gallons and kept my computers from dying.
My carpet's still not dry. And I don't even know why the dumb thing broke in the first place. Good thing I was out and my mom was out when it died so that it had a couple hours to flood.
Therefore, it's all Lilly's fault that my house is flooded because had I been home, my house would not have been flooded. >:o
Yujing says it's all Germany's fault. I think he's a little demented. Too much Coke maybe.
I had like four Cokes today. It seemed to be a little self-destructive in the next to last round when I started getting everything wrong, causing us to get destroyed by Parkview. Then I drank another one and we proceeded to beat them by a little bit in the last round.
Washington, DC, here we come!
Ronjon said some really stupid things but I forgot most of them. I was too wasted on the Coke.
He did see some cows madly making love on the side of the road.
It's time to go to his house. I'll write more later.
8:11PM
State is today.
I'm cold.
And wet.
If we don't win I'm going to be colder and wetter.
6:50AM
Tuesday, February 22, 2005 (10 comments)
Today was a nice, long practice for this Saturday. Ready to own.
One part of the plan screwed up, though. Dutter is going to be a funeral that day.
This leaves good old Pepple as our coach. There's nothing wrong with her, of course, and she's still the nicest woman alive. But can you imagine what the team would talk about while she's around?
- We would have to quit making fun of God and Jesus and whatever.
- We would have to quit making fun of Yujing.
- We would have to quit making white peolpe jokes.
- We would have to quit making Indian jokes.
- We would have to quit making Chinese jokes.
- We would have to quit being racist, period. (This is going to suck.)
- We would have to avoid talking about how stupid NHS is.
- We would have to be politically correct about everything.
- Worst of all, we would have to miss every question about evolution or risk facing the wrath of an angry Pepple.
In short, we will be having a pair of very silent two hour car trips. We'll still be bored to death at the tournament, because besides racist remarks, what is there to talk about?
[generic Dr. Camp complaint]
[generic "I hate life" complaint]
And, being too lazy to rewrite this into a paragraph, I paste this:
HolyCao86: ok so you know what i find to be really funny?
HolyCao86: bill calling all of us gay
icydog1: seriously
icydog1: every time i post a comment on his xanga talking about him being
gay because he liked my butt, he deletes it
icydog1: lol
icydog1: 3 times so far
HolyCao86: say that on your zhanga
Don't you hate it when you're doing nothing in particular (or perhaps writing in a Zhanga and listening to music) and then your right ear shuts off? I abruptly lost all hearing in my right ear about a minute ago, and all I heard was ringing. It's gradually fading back in now. Weird.
7:29PM
Monday, February 21, 2005 (4 comments)
I looked outside. Near my front door, there was an area of pinestraw that turned white. At first, I thought that it was just night so I wasn't seeing properly. Then I thought... what? did the hail freeze that part of my yard? Then I turned on my flashlight.
A fifty square foot region of ground was littered with hailstones averaging about 1/4" in diameter. It was completely covered, with several layers of hailstones making a mat about an inch thick. That's a LOT of hail in such a small area, especially near Atlanta where we don't ever get hail.
Comment reply time.
CiCi, Gene, Ed: Unfortunately, I have gotten steadily lazier and lazier over... I don't know, the past year? And my posts have been sucking. This weekend I didn't want to do book cards though, and that seems to be the most likely reason that I wrote a lot here. Don't expect this to continue =( I'm just too lazy. Sorry.
Bill: First of all, I didn't cheat on the nerd quiz. If you don't think I'm a nerd, then you are an A-1 idiot. Anyways, it gets boring "saying shit" about you after a while. No one, including me, wants to read about you.
Tricia: Yeah, I called. You were supposed to whore me. Forgot?
11:45PM
Oh my entityinwhichIdontbelieve.
I just got bombed like bin Laden in Tora Bora.
The biggest hail I have ever seen before today has been less than 4 mm across. Take a look at this mother of a hailstone:
The hailstone melted a little bit before I could get the picture, so it was about as big as the cap when I picked it up. And I picked it up quite a while after it hit the ground. So the hailstone was about the same diameter as the bottle cap, which is 3 cm across. 1.2 inches!
That's >400 times more massive than a 4 mm one. Imagine that bopping you on the head. Ouch. Actually, not ouch, because you wouldn't be able to talk.
I wonder what the terminal velocity is on those things. You did expect me to say that, didn't you? I bet you expected this, too:
If we assume 120 mph (the approximate velocity of a freely falling human) for the hailstone, then the pressure as it lands on my head is about 3 x 107 Pa (4000 psi), or about 300 times more than atmospheric pressure. Ow. Can you say hole in head?
I'm a nerd.
I did a word count on yesterday's post and came up with 1,327 words. Yup, like the good old days.
I read a bash quote that went something like this:
<some guy> name one thing that your windows pc can do that my mac cant
<some other guy> right click
Suck it, Mac owners.
Now I will complain about the Patriot Act. So I didn't think it'd affect me... right? Because I'm not Middle Eastern, of course. Well, I got this email:
Pursuant to section 326 of the USA PATRIOT Act, the U.S. Department of the Treasury
and the Securities and Exchange Commission require PayPal Funds to obtain, verify, and record the
following information for each investor in the PayPal Money Market Fund:
- Name
- Address
- Date of Birth (for individuals)
- Tax Identification number (Social Security number for individuals, or employer identification
number for businesses)
I hate Bush so much. Why don't you be just a little more nosy? That damned Patriot Act is the stupidest piece of anticonstitutional legislation that I've ever heard of.
Now for entertainment:
Tricia: i thought of a girl
Tricia: who would turn a guy gay
[...]
icydog1: hm
icydog1: you?
Tricia: excuse meeee
icydog1: =)
icydog1: i'm just kidding haha
Tricia: then i guess ur calling urself GAY
icydog1: oh
icydog1: doh
[...]
icydog1: dr camp
Tricia: NOOO
Tricia: its a girl
icydog1: LOL
Tricia: LOL
Tricia: omg i didn't even realizethat
7:46PM
Sunday, February 20, 2005 (8 comments)
I heard rumors that the laptops being issued to teachers and students in the future will be iBooks. There are many, many things wrong with this.
First of all, I'm surely not the only one who disagrees with this laptop idea completely, whether or not they are iBooks. Whoever came up with this idea clearly hasn't been inside today's classroom. At any given time, a whopping third of the class might be paying attention. A third of the class will not have their laptops, will have broken laptops, will be out of batteries, etc. The last third will be playing games or doing other unproductive things. What a worthless idea.
Oh! But of course, there will be content control! You won't be able to play games during class! You will be limited to doing your work! There will be bulletproof restrictions!
Wanna bet? Restrictions, my ass.
They clearly haven't learned the 10 Immutable Laws of Security, especially the first three. I can't make any hard promises about iBooks because I'm not familiar with Macs, but if I were given a Windows laptop with any kind of restrictions, those restrictions would be my bitches by the end of day 3. The iBook really shouldn't take much longer. Maybe three weeks at most.
Perhaps I should talking about the past and present before thinking about the dismal future. According to the local expert on teleportation, the Walton science department has 48 laptops. They're the Pentium III's that won't work. Anyone who has tried using them (we "used" them in APES) knows how bad the network connectivity is, even though the computers themselves are quite fast. But a fast machine that doesn't let you log on is worse than no machine at all it results in negative productivity because you sit there waiting when you could instead be doing work by traditional methods.
Using Apple computers isn't going to help with this network situation. The network infrastructure at Walton isn't going to improve just because we're getting new laptops. In fact, it will get a lot worse. When you have thousands of computers attempting to connect wirelessly... ugh. It's going to be ugly. Mark my words. Teachers will be telling students, "Ok, you log on. When you're on, tell Susie to log on." I'll eat my words and a nine volt battery if I'm wrong.
So back to the subject of iBooks. Besides general arguments that could be applied to any kind of laptop, I have issues with iBooks specifically.
A brochure produced by Cobb County states that the cost of each iBook, as calculated by a four-year lease, will be $271.26. However, the next sentence said that the cost per student will be an estimated $350 annually. ANNUALLY! That's $1400, not $270, over four years. That's quite a discrepancy, I'd say.
Then I looked on the website [link removed: site no longer exists], which stated that the $271.26 is itself an annual figure. Interesting. So basically, they were being intentionally deceptive on the brochure. Anyways, $1085 to use a laptop for four years, plus $315 of unknown costs? Come on, Cobb County. You can do better than that.
They say [link removed: site no longer exists] that the entire cost will fall below the $59 million budget. Then they say elsewhere [link removed: site no longer exists] that the total cost will be $69.9 million. On another part of the Cobb County site, they say 63,000 laptops will be purchased. At $350 a year for four years, that's $88.2 million, not including additional costs (for example, servers). What the hell is going on here?
I'm sure Cobb County can find better deals on PCs. There are so many more vendors of Wintel (Windows/Intel) machines that prices are naturally lower. In addition, if you need a part, you actually have a choice of where to get it from, rather than trying to choose between Apple and Apple and Apple... and Apple. I won't even start talking about software costs.
Actually, speaking of software... this is also from the site:
Each will come fully-loaded with Mac OS X, Microsoft Office, wireless Internet connection and iLife, Apples music, photo, & movie suite. Its the most powerful learning tool theyve ever laid eyes on.
Please explain to me how the music, photo, & movie suite will help us powerfully learn. Any explanation would be appreciated. And... iLife? Are you kidding me? That name reminds me of "AP Life."
Apparently "Apple will provide a total of seven support personnel" (also from the site). Great! Seven people to support 63,000 users in Cobb County. That seems like a good ratio to me.
Let me quote something else [link removed: site no longer exists]:
Technology guru Walt Mossberg recently wrote, "The Mac is also packed with extras that Windows lacks. It has a suite of easy, free, multimedia programs that can't be matched on Windows at any price. It has a better free browser and e-mail program than Windows. It can read and create PDF files without requiring the purchase of any extra software. Apple upgrades its operating system far more often than Microsoft does...And Apple is the only computer company whose business is focused on consumers and small businesses."
Now, I haven't done any research on this guy, but from what he's said, he hasn't earned the "technology guru" title that he's given. I like how he calls everything free. Did he forget that to get the Apple computer to begin with, you have to pay WAY more than a comparable PC? What about the fact that Apple has a monopoly over everything Apple-related? Even Microsoft doesn't come close. That drives prices of anything that goes with Apple computers way up. Software, hardware, repairs... blah blah blah.
You can get free multimedia programs for Windows. You can get free browsers (ahem, Firefox), free email clients, free PDF readers and creators (yes, you can create PDFs for free), etc. And on top of that, you have a choice of what browser you want to use, what email client, what PDF reader/creator, and so on, which is a luxury you don't have with the Apple platform. And that last sentence, "the only computer company whose business is focused on consumers and small businesses," is total crap. I mean, how can you lie so blatantly and then get quoted for that? (Just as a counterexample, consider Micro Center.)
In case you're wondering, all the software I was referring to can be legally acquired for free. Obviously, you can pirate even more "free" software, but that's not what I'm talking about.
Cobb claims that there has never been a "successful virus" written for OS X. Well, in the words of Dutter, "That's because no one CARES enough to write a virus for it!" Why write a virus to target a platform that no one uses?
I don't even want to go into the fact that no one knows how to use a Mac. I agree that it is easy to learn as a beginner (though not any easier than Windows). But it certainly isn't easy to master. I'll bet that less than five people (and I'm not one of them) at our school know anything about UNIX, the operating system that OS X is built upon. I'm guessing that a maximum of one "media specialist" has any idea what UNIX is. I can see them saying "Hmmm... a type of cheese...? Oh oh oh, wait I know, it's a group of men who got their balls chopped off."
People ask me why I care, since I'm a senior. These people have forgotten that I have a sister. But if Cobb County is going to continue being stupid, I am getting my sister out of here.
This is so stupid.
UGH!
5:52PM
Thursday, February 17, 2005 (1 comment)
I was looking through my logs yesterday. It turns out that if you search for taiwanese penis on Yahoo, my site comes up third. Why would anyone ever search for that? Weird Taiwanese people.
The Yahoo summaries for results #1 and 4 are rather entertaining. I've pasted them exactly as I saw them:
1. MSNBC - Thar she
blows! Dead whale explodes
... Dead whale explodes. Taiwanese street, shops showered after gases built up inside ... attention
of locals because of its large penis, measured at some five feet, the Taipei Times ...
4. Today's Issue [link no longer works]
... Taiwanese men with Chinese women. Overheard at the clinic. Men and the dreaded Orgasm Headache.
More men than women addicted to exercise. Sex, penis ... if you have a small penis ...
Read the last paragraph of the MSNBC article. (Note the choice of the word experience.) Since I've never known a gay mainlander, I have to conclude that Taiwan is China's national gay collection center.
7:10PM
Wednesday, February 16, 2005 (6 comments)
I love bash.org:
The day Microshaft makes something that doesn't suck is the day they make a vacuum.
To the person who has posted comments as Tim, Gene, and Bill -- I know who you are. So it's time to stop.
Yesterday's Science Bowl practice was interesting. Especially with Eva's mouth being too full and something about her goodies. Hmmmm....
Camp told me yesterday that I need to stop with the negativity. She seemed really mad that my title page for the research paper just said "Title Page" on it. I told her that her complaining (I should have said "griping") is funny because someone like Fleenor would have said something about creativity rather than disrespect.
I mean, what did she want? "The Effect of Successively Failed Negotiations Over the Past Two Decades on the Lack of Progress of the Tri-State Water Wars"?
Did anyone else think it was really funny when she told us that she looked at the GT newspaper and thought it had horrible grammar? And that she would edit things for grammar? Maybe it was just me, but I had to restrain my laughter. I guess the grammar on her tests have been getting better, if not the content. A step at a time?
I love it when I walk into biology and realize that there is a test over some material that I slept through. I also love it when I convince Ms. McWilliams to give me a free homework grade, but then she stands there counting my zeroes for this unit... one... two... three... four... five. Great.
I'm really hungry today. I don't know why I'm so hungry. I've been munching on stuff all afternoon and I'm still really hungry.
Oh.
It just hit me as I was typing that.
I didn't eat lunch. NO WONDER.
I am so stupid. Stupid AMC.
3:39PM
Monday, February 14, 2005 (2 comments)
Did Bill just call himself a "famous intellectual"?
I finished reading A Civil Action a week after I started. That was a waste of time. I mean, it was a good book and I enjoyed reading it, but what did I get from it? Not much...
Then Camp gives a stupid assignment that basically forces me to reread the book (I don't think anyone else read it yet). Ass. I don't think she read the book, either. Based on what she said during class, she has no idea what it's about.
Today was that gay math tournament. Why did I go? Not that I have anything else to do on Valentine's Day, but still, that really blew. I was the only senior who stayed for the candy round. So I had to be the stupid oralist, the one who explains how to do problems. Because my English (I swear, I just typed Engrish) is really good and on top of that, I have beautiful handwriting.
I was supposed to read the packet (a >100 page textbook) a couple of days before. Well, that didn't happen, so I read it while talking on the phone during the car ride there. Then after getting to the school, I sat down and slept for an hour before being woken up so I could give my presentation. That was fun. I filled up about two of the ten minutes.
I am never doing that again. It would have been ok, but one of the judges was Ms. McWilliams. I am never going to BS stuff on the board to her at a competition again. At least I got a ribbon for it. And it's better than BSing on the board during class, I guess.
Dutter didn't seem to care when I said I couldn't go to Science Olympiad. I guess she already gave up. Maybe she was just being nice because all the red and pink today made her happy.
Why did my last sunflower seed have no seed in it?
Happy Valentine's Day!
9:22PM
Friday, February 11, 2005 (4 comments)
Does anyone else find this extremely funny? This is a diagram out of the APES book.
I like how there is an empty shell of a house with two rows of deformed bricks at the top. The label, "Super insulation," cracks me up.
So speaking of that class... yeah, today's test was fun. There were only about three problems I was sure on, and one of them was math. And guess what? She threw it out because she didn't know how to do it. (And the answer choices were all incorrect.)
Dutter's going to be really happy when she hears that I can't go to the Science Olympiad competition on the 5th. I hadn't even thought about this. I have to go to the MIT tournament that weekend, and the tickets are already bought. The rest of you better step it up and take over for me. I think I was doing six events. My partner for at least one of them was Dragos's ghost, meaning some events now have no one assigned to them.
I wish Dutter were my grandmother. Why isn't she? See, if Dutter were my granny, then that psycho bitch next door wouldn't dare mess with my mom. Just imagine what might happen. Her husband (who isn't any better) would wake up to find a puddle of human downstairs the next morning.
Bill came up to me during lunch today and, without so much as a warning, immediately began talking nonsense:
Bill: "Where's your hat?"
Me: "Huh?"
Bill: "Why aren't you wearing your hat?"
Me: "What hat?"
Bill: "Don't you have a hat?"
Me: "Yeah... so...?"
I still don't get why he randomly came up to me and asked where my hat was. What a random thing to ask about.
Then again, does he ever make sense?
Bill and Eva should get together. They'd be so busy annoying each other that no one else would have to suffer. That's what I call positive externalities! (I think I just heard Coach Williams go crazy.)
Actually, that'd be pretty funny. Bill would be ironing the shirts and cleaning the toilets and making food. Meanwhile, Eva would be yelling "BIIIIITCH!" and telling him how he ironed the shirt inside-out, used laundry detergent in the toilet, and put tablespoons instead of teaspoons of salt in the food.
And then poor Bill would have to get reconstructive surgery because his face will be slapped in. Even after she breaks his legs, he'd still be rolling to the grocery store every week to buy eggs. Poor guy. I can see it already. He'll make the headlines one day for being the victim of the worst case of domestic abuse in history.
I better be on the jury.
8:19PM
Wednesday, February 9, 2005 (4 comments)
I should just make short posts about Bill every day. It seems like people care a lot more about what I have to say about him than about anything else.
So...
Yesterday, I was reading A Civil Action (aka sleeping). Then Bill called me and told me to buy some food for him and bring it to him in the orchestra room. He even offered to pay for the food.
You'll never be able to afford the remove-David's-anger-caused-by-waking-him-up fee, Bill.
Then I made a tactical error by asking, "Do I look like your bitch?"
And then Eva called me to wake me up again. You can imagine what I wanted to do to her after that. Something like wring her neck around a clump of barbed wire teeming with tetanus bacteria.
5:44PM
Monday, February 7, 2005 (12 comments)
Why did Bill tell me he'll see me at Princeton... if I make it? I asked him why he'll see me there, and he said because it's his second choice. Yesterday he told me I give new meaning to the word "arrogant."
Anyways, I got another fun spam. I think that this is really awful. It starts with the Jesus thing:
Calvary Greetings to you in the marvellous and wonderful name of our precious Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,
Then it moves on to the cancer thing:
I am Mrs.Charity Doran,a widow to Late Mr.Mathew Doran of Angola. I am 38years old and am suffering from cancer of the lungs. As i am seeing i may not live more than two months that was what my doctor has told me .
Then it talks about how her husband was rich.. etc. Then the get rich thing:
I am willing to donate the sum of US$18.000,000.00(Eighteen Million USD)to YOU PROVIDED THAT YOU ARE A CHILD OF GOD for the development of evangelism and also as aids for the less privileged and the orphans.
Everyone's seen this kind of scam. But do they really have to do the God thing and use the thing about cancer? That's awful.
I want to tell some more Bill stories, but I'm too lazy to do anything but read and sleep. I think that means no more typing.
7:29PM
Sunday, February 6, 2005 (2 comments)
It was fun getting up ridiculously early (like 7:20 AM!) yesterday for science bowl. Dragos ended up not being able to play because we forgot to get some email to Dutter. Since when did Dutter play by the rules? That's a new one.
Anyways, we basically slaughtered everyone, and the second team finished third place. Then again, there were only seven teams from four schools. The next three weeks will be the most intense preparation that we've ever gone through. Just to beat Parkview...
My Princeton interview was at 2 PM, so I rushed there. As soon as my interview was over at 3, I got into the car to go home and fell asleep. As soon as I got home, I went to bed, and I woke up at midnight to let Dragos in because he was staying here. Then I went back to sleep an hour later and woke up at 10:30 AM. That was a very refreshing rest. I'm still sick, though.
I have no homework! This is so awesome.
Nyu nyu nyu nyu nyu.....
3:21PM
Friday, February 4, 2005 (6 comments)
Yesterday was lots of sex and dripping on my carpet. My vacuum cleaner is going to short-circuit when it slurps that up.
You know you loved that wording.
Today was party day with fobs. Sucks for the one or two of you who actually went to school. Gene and Fox came along and for some reason Mr. Parker counted and went, "Perfect!" after counting everyone. Weird. Charles overheard them saying that there were two extras while we were at the mall, but they never did anything about it.
Silly white people.
On a brighter note, I am extremely sick and felt like dying this morning. Science Bowl is going to be really fun...
8:27PM
Wednesday, February 2, 2005 (5 comments)
To avoid confusion, here are details about Thursday night.
This is not an open invitation. You are invited if and only if you meet one of these requirements:
- You are one of the exchange students.
- You are hosting one of the exchange students.
- I have explicitly invited you.
You must also meet all of the following requirements*:
- You're Chinese by blood.
- You speak Chinese.
- You won't clog my toilet.
*You are exempted from these if you fall off of cliffs, think that heat is warm air, and tell people that amphibians have scales.
If you have to ask whether you can come, then the answer is no.
The reason I don't want too many people over is that there will already be too many people here. There's going to be like 20 in this house, which doesn't really have that much space to start with. So any extras are just going to create more chaos. I don't like big groups of people, anyways.
Bring a blanket or sleeping bag or something similar for you and your guest. I don't have many of these here. If you're a hot girl who will sleep with me, then you don't need to bring anything. Including clothes.
We will be going to my house after dinner with the fobs, and leaving in the morning to go shopping or whatever. It's going to be fun.
Bring a ping pong paddle if you don't like mine but want to play.
I think that's all.
4:23PM
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