Adventures in Online Shopping

I ordered three tee-shirts online last Thursday. One from amazon.com, two from thinkgeek.com.

The one from Amazon was a Myst t-shirt, a picture of Myst Island. I ordered with 3-7 day shipping, so it came in early if you count only business days. The thing was, it was a size too small. So I've gotta ship it back to get the correct size.

The two from thinkgeek.com were funny programming/sql type-shirts. They came in a few days late (i ordered 2-day shipping), but they were the right size.

I guess you can never be certain about what you get when you order stuff online. Oh well.

At least now my wardrobe is slightly larger.

Binder Idea

I'm sitting in my room, assembling all of the school supplies I bought today (8 binders, 3 packs of 3 sets of dividers, a spiral notebook and a composition book) into binders for each course to be put in each bookbag based on A-day or B-day. I just had a (brilliant?) thought.

I'm always in trouble while looking down into my bookbag, trying to figure out which binder is which, needing to get one out for class. So I'm thinking: why isn't there some sort of way to label binders from the top? Some kind of flap or something at the top of the binder that you can write on so you can tell what the binder is when looking at it from top-down. I might just jury-rig some sort of system like that during the year.

Long Day

I have a tidbit about today that deserves a new post. (Wow. Ms. Anliker really did affect me.)

Some classes seem much longer than others. Last year, Ms. Franklin's class seemed to take much, much longer than all of my other classes.

All of my classes today seemed incredibly long, and it ended up confusing me. I was thinking for a couple of minutes during theatre about how I was gonna go get on my bus and turn in my new schedule change form, before I realized that Ms. Petta's class was only my third of the day. During C&E, it felt like I had my first physics class yesterday rather than this morning.

School is really getting to my head.

Day 1 and Day 2

I guess I should start off with yesterday. It was pretty good. My day started off with Ms. Justice, who I've heard many bad things about, but she seems pretty decent. I then have Ms. Haney for Networking, who is really nice. I then have Ms. Fielding for math. It seems like her grading system will be a pain in the butt. At least I can get loads of extra credit from the math competitions. My last class of the day was Ms. Moore for chemistry, who is also pretty nice. I don't have too much to elaborate on as it was a pretty good, average-looking day.

Today started off with Mr. Fisher for Physics. I'm completely sure he has both ADD and ADHD. His class will be nuts. He's very unclear on due dates, and we have these contract things that will be hard to get organized and even harder to write down in my agenda. I then had Ms. Harsen for English. Finally, an average, decent English teacher. I'll get back to the results of my schedule change next paragraph, but my last class of the day was Civics & Economics with Ms. Vrettos. It's too early to tell too much about her, but it seems she is a stickler for notebooks.

I finally got the schedule change request form back, and it went through. The good news is that I'm out of Jazz Ensemble. The bad news is that I'm directly into Theatre with Ms. Petta. (Too bad I don't have it with Clare.) It doesn't seem like it would (note the tense) be a lot of fun in her class. She's a cross between very strict and slightly wacky. I've already submitted another schedule change request form, this one to get out of Theatre and into a computer course. The reason that I put down on the form? "Another course would be more challenging, and more useful to me later in life."

We'll see if this all works out. If nothing changes, I should be ok. (If all goes as I want it to, it should be great.)

Imminent Doom

I went to school today with my mom, and submitted a schedule change form. If all goes well, all the paperwork will have gone through by homeroom Thursday.

If I get my usual luck, I'll have my first French class Thursday morning, get my schedule jumbled, and have to go to the same intro class on Friday afternoon.

Screwed?

My mom called the school, and talked to Ms. Wright, the band teacher.

I can't take jass ensemble. My choices were to do percussion in symphonic band (bleagh. auxillary purcussion.), or get a schedule change.

Now, I have the problems of getting a decent replacement course, and the possiblitiy of a fruit basket upset (to use an Anlikerism)

Solved?

Perhaps Keenspace is not evil after all... (heh... sorry bout the implication Clare...)

I checked back on the webcomic Clare and her brother Will have posted online, and now I can see the comics instead of the alt text! w00t!

The Mediocres

Two random things.

Just because I feel like blogging right about now.

I've gotten wayy to good at online poker. (I play at triplejack.com, for fun (no, i'm not actually winning real money)) I've turned $1000 of starting chips (2 $500 buy-ins) into $250,000, and I'm ranked about 20th on the site.

I find i funny that now that Roshan and Lucas have started blogging, they're getting a whole bunch of other people to do it. Peter and Ted both have their own blogs. I'm not sure if Tong-Tong got his blog before or after Lucas/Roshan. I've been blogging for at least more than a year, and everyone thinks Roshan and Lucas are the first among us to do so. (Check my archives on LiveJournal!)

2005-2006 Class Schedule

My schedule finally came in.

A Day:
1. French III IB - Justice
3. Networking I - Haney
5. Math Methods IB - Fielding
7. Chemestry I IB - Moore

B Day:
2. Physics I IB - Fisher
4. English II IB - Harsen
6. Jass Ensemble - Wright
8. Civics & Economics - Vrettos

I kinda screwed myself over in once class. I signed up for Jass Ensemble, and the class (supposedly) requires an audition. I didn't do an audition. (When I turned my blue card in, I thought I could figure out how to do it. I couldn't.) I'm probably gonna call the school before school starts to ask about it. Suggestions of what to do, anyone?

I can't tell to much about my teachers, becuase I haven't met most of them yet. Ms. Justice substituted for our french teacher once, and she seems all right, but many people don't seem to like her. I've met Ms. Haney at a LAN Party before, and she seems nice. (Also, my brother had her, and didn't complain.) I think Mr. Fisher is (used to be?) my homeroom teacher, and if he is, he seems all right.

Anyone care to compare schedules/give impressions of teachers/tell me where the heck the A building is (A4, where Jass Ensemble is)?

Spammed?

So, I head back into my room after a spending a fair amount of time downstairs. (I forget what i was doing before my story, but it doesn't matter.) I see a piece of paper lying on my desk; it's a printout of an e-mail. My dad printed out an e-mail that one of his friends forwarded to him, apparently, and wanted me to see it.

So, of course, I read it. It's some warning about how you should add all your cell phone numbers to the national "do not call" list, because the cell phone companies are about to release the cell phone numbers of all of their users to a directory where anyone can see them, and all of the advertizing agencies are gonna call you on your cell phone. Calls you get charged for.

Hpmh. My dad buys into everything of this sort that his friends send him. What do I do? I fact-check it on teh google. And what do I find? An article, citing that e-mail along with a few others, saying that that is yet another internet hoax. There is a little truth to it: the phone companies are trying to have a 411-style directory, where people can pay to look up the cell phone numbers of people they know. But is my cell phone number gonna be given to a telemarketer? Nope.

Tsk tsk. My dad always seems to waste my time with making me read the horrible jokes his friends forward to them, and now he just leaves internet hoaxes lying around my room. You'd think he'd have some common sense.

Power Outages

We lost power again this morning. That makes the third time this week (when we were gone, yesterday morning, this morning).

Who knows what's going on.

When not using IE + nothing sucks

Clare and siblings have supposedly finally set up their webcomic on keenspace. Except for one problem, on my end. Keenspace is being a complete bitch to me. (excuse my language. no other way to express it.) First off, nothing shows up, which i figure out is becuause of settings that need to be changed for keenspace on Norton's firewall software. Easy enough; i've done it before. (But you'd think they'd be smart enough to build a system that didn't require that. It's been only the second time I've had to make that change, and the first site had an excuse for doing it.)

So I change the settings, and everything shows up but the comics themselves. And i get aggrivated, and start posting to my blog. Before I remember to check IE to see if it's a compatabiltiy problem that's the culprit. Which I shall check now.

*insert Jeopardy music*

ohhhhkay now. I'm getting the alt text in firefox, and the box-with-red-x in IE. so it's not compatability that's the problem. But oh well. I get the feeling it's not me and my system that's the problem, so it'll probably get cleared up eventually.

*shifting gears to more general rant*

I am completely sick of web designers not creating pages geared toward any sort of web standards. You want to use tables? Fine. That'll create lots of problems on your end eventually, but that doesn't really apply to me. I'm just completely sick of sites creating stuff that assumes that the whole audience is using IE. And even some big corporate sites don't support, or semi-support any other browsers (think: Yahoo). Look at magicthegathering.com in FireFox for a prime example of why IE-only based design sucks. IT'S NOT THAT FREAKING HARD, PEOPLE! Designers should stop ignoring FF, Safari, Mozilla, etc. (especially now that FF has 5% of the browser market), and start ignoring IE v5.0 (whereas IE v6.0 can be changed from quirks mode to compliance mode with a correct doctype declaration).

I am completely sick of sites that use PDF where HTML/CSS/Whatever would do just fine. PDF is for print. And only print. I don't wanna go on and on on this, so here's an article on why PDF used for web pages is just wrong.

I am completely sick of sites that require the use of IE to access them. This is quickly disappearing. Thank god.

I am completely sick of sites that use those ads that use flash/etc. to animate and cover up the information that you want to make you pay attention to them. (I forget what they are called.) They are just as bad as popups, and need much more extreme precautions to block. (Think FireFox extension goodness hooray for the mozilla foundation w00t.) Now, I don't have anything against ads on web pages. (Remind me sometime to blog about why I think adblockers are bad.)

I am completely sick of sites that are just one freaking huge advertisement to try to get me to buy x book or y software when what I really want is information.

I am completely sick of having to rant on and on about websites that suck.

Power Loss

I wake up this morning, and the power is out.

Sheesh. The power goes out at least once every few months for us. You'd think they'd be able to build a better system.

autumn woes

I'm gonna have to get used to having more people read my blog/journal/whatever you wanna call it. (I used to be able to post anything that I wanted, and be guarenteed a maximum of one person woulda saw it. Heck, I could even make posts only I could see.)

I'm somewhere between worried and gloomy right now. Summers end's always seem to make me feel like that. A summer has gone, a new school year is coming. I don't know my class assignments yet, and they've been on my mind for the past couple of weeks. And there's the pain of having spent another summer (this time only mostly) wasting my time on things like television.

I haven't got my class assignments yet. (Has anyone? Please comment.) They may have come in while we were gone, in which case they are in the mail that my neighbor has been collecting for us while we vacationed. And I have so many things to worry about. There's always the matters of if I get any classes with friends, and who I share lunch periods with. But this time, I'm especially worried about the teachers I'm going to get. I've heard bad things about a few of the teachers I could possibly get. And it's important that I get teachers who like me if I'm going to apply to NCSSM, unless I want Ms. Anliker, Ms. Franklin, and Ms. Gibson writing letters of reccomendation for me. (Ms. Gibson writing a letter of reccomendation = decent. Ms Franklin writing a letter = so-so. Ms Anliker writing a letter = not so great. But not too bad. I gotta remember that she has a blog, too. (if only i could find it))

Oh yeah. And I still have that summer reading to worry about. (All I have finished while on my trip was the 60-page, half-of-the-book introduction to the Epic of Gilgamesh)

So, long story short, I feel really crummy right about now.

State of my Weekend Address

My family went relative-visiting/vacationing/roadtrip-esque ing this weekend. We went to go see my (great-) Aunt Wood on Saturday, we went to Atlantic Beach on Sunday, and we visited my Aunt Alice on Monday. (Das be a lot of drivings.)

Visiting Aunt Wood was nice. She asked me to fix all of the digital clocks in her house (which were hence there isn't too much to talk about.

Atlantic Beach was nice enough. The weather wasn't as hot there as it was in Wilson the following day. My dad made us visit Fort Macon on before we got to the hotel, which was really boring. Sunday didn't turn out to be the best day to visit the beach, though, as most of the places we were thinking about eating at for lunch were closed. (For all who are curious, we ended up eating lunch at the Beaufort Grocery Co., where i had a portabello mushroom sub sandwich. Yummy.) We met these nice locals at lunch, who gave us a tip for where to go to dinner on a Sunday.

Monday was, for lack of a better word, crappy. (Excuse my language.) Breakfast made me sick, and it pretty much lasted for the entire day. We spent the night at Aunt Alice's house, where I watched the movie Kiss of the Dragon on tv. And then we drove home today.

I probably would have rather stayed at home this past weekend instead of gone on the trip. Oh well.

I'm thinking class assignments may have come in while I was gone, which would have been collected with the rest of the mail by my neighbor. Stay tuned for further details!

AP Poll on Bush's Approval Ratings

Lucas might not want to read the following post. (This marks the first political-related post of my new blog. w00t!)

As I was listening to Rush Limbaugh in the car (it was the station my mom had the radio set at), Rush made an interesting comment that I wanted to mention.

The latest Associated Press poll on Bush's job performance gave him an (astonishingly low) 42% job approval rating. This doesn't really matter to Bush so much because he is not running again, but 42% is crazy low.

But lets dig a little deeper into the poll, shall we?

Among surveyed Republicans in the AP poll, 90% gave Bush approval. Among surveyed Democrats, 80% disapproved of Bush.

This means that all of the independants surveyed must have disapproved of Bush to get the 42% approval rating, if the percentages of the political parties surveyed equal what they actually are. And that's just not realistic.

In actuality, there was an uneven split among people surveyed. As opposed to the actual (nearly) 50-50 democrat-republican split, 49% of people surveyed were democrats, and 39% were republicans (with independants/other parties filling up the gap).

...and the democrats say that the mainstream media is unbiased...

Winn-Dixie Nostalgia

There is this Winn-Dixie near my house that is going out of business. And I'm sad. Which is weird.

It's not like we go there anymore. There's a Bi-Lo, Food Lion, and Harris Teeter that are all closer and easier to get to.

It's just that I have memories of the Winn-Dixie as a small child, when that was the only grocery store around. I'll miss it, even though we rarely go there anymore.

Is it bad for me to feel nostalgic about a grocery store?

20gb gone to waste.

You know how small my music collection is? Currently 686.2MB. That's small. That's less than 1/30 of my iPod's space. Roshan has freaking gigs of music, and he's not the person with the most music that I know.

I have freaking $12 credit on iTunes that has been sitting there for ages, and I dunno what to use it on.

On a related note, Drew has these Porcupine Tree ablums on his computer that I desperately want, but he won't let me rip to my computer. The plan is to wait until he stops liking the music...

The problem about finding music that I like it that I don't know what I like.

Summers Lost

Amazing how much time you can burn playing online poker for fun.

I gotta start doing constructive stuff, like learning website design (which has a hard learning curve) or doing my summer reading project, but how can that stuff compete with lazy stuff like surfing the web or watching tv?

Something's gotta break sometime.

And now for something completely different. My family is taking a vacation/family visit from Saturday to Tuesday. We're going to my Aunt Wood's house on Saturday, Atlantic Beach (i think that's what it's called) on Sunday, and my Aunt Alice's house on Monday. That makes time for me to do my summer reading, I guess. If only I had a laptop to take with me... (insert jealous glare at Roach)

I shoulda bought a book or two today at the mall. Heck, I'll ask/bribe my dad to take me to the bookstore tomorrow.

I have moved!

Well, this is my first (real) post. I've had a blog on LiveJournal for over a year now, but my friend Roshan has finally convinced me to switch over to blogger.

It'll probably take me a while to get used to this, but having much more control over my blog will be nice.

Get the archives!

Get the archives of Matthew's blog at http://www.livejournal.com/users/dragonridr/ !