On my way out

I have awoken, am eating yogurt, and am about to head out.
I have not been this excited in a long time.

Bond approaches

My plan for this evening is to do a bit of work, until about 7:30 or 8:00, nap until just before 11, and then get up and go to the movie. I am VERY excited. I am picking up two friends on the way, and we are meeting at least one other person there, possibly more. It is going to be a great night.
I also had the chance to do something that I’ve been hoping to do for a while. I received a chain letter via email from a family friend, successfully looked it up and confirmed its falsehood via Snopes, and sent the link back to my friend. Snopes is a wonderful rumor-tracking website, useful for such things as chain letters and various online hoaxes. They maintain a database with user-submitted rumor reports, descriptions of what you, the user, are likely to see, and its status: confirmed true, false, unknown, etc., along with supporting facts and arguments. It is very informative, and some of the stuff on there is just plain hilarious; you don’t realize exactly how ridiculous this stuff is until you see it debunked.

Anticipation

I am here and we have our seats.

Veterans' Day

Joe Biden said something in the vice-presidential debate that I though was very interesting and it wasn’t a political attack or a policy statement. Here is the excerpt:

I have never since that moment in my first year questioned the motive of another member of the Congress or Senate with whom I’ve disagreed. I’ve questioned their judgment.

On this day above all others, what he said rings true to me. I think that the thing that’s taken the hardest beating and that’s been the most excommunicated from Washington politics is the respect for other peoples’ motives. Certainly that is no more important today than any other day, but it is certainly more poignant. We all can and should have a uniform respect for our veterans’ and soldiers’ service, regardless of our party affiliations and political views.
I think this is historically the essence of American patriotism; the idea that differing opinions are not the same as conflicting motives. Now, more than ever, I am proud to be an American.

Quantum of Solace

I am going to the midnight showing of the new James Bond movie on Thursday night (technically Friday morning) at 12:01 AM with a friend from school. I am PUMPED! Apparently it is the shortest Bond film ever, which is pretty cool. I really like Daniel Craig, the new actor, and I like the direction they went with the last film. From what I hear, this one’s similar.
Craig really plays Bond like a character, rather than just trying to be more manly than Sean Connery (which is not possible) like every other actor before him did. This makes the movies a lot more interesting, and very refreshing, especially when you are, like myself, a total Bond fanatic (I had seen every movie by the time I was 12).

Manhunt

Some friends and I played manhunt at school this morning. It was a ton of fun, but I ended up twisting my ankle, which rather hurts now. On the bright side, I have tomorrow off from school. On the other hand, I live next to a graveyard, and they fire off a cannon at six in the morning. I am going to attempt to sleep through it. I suppose we will see if that actually works. I also have a doctor’s appointment at ten, I may be working in the afternoon, and I have a rehearsal in the evening, so tomorrow’s not much of a break at all. But it’s better than nothing.

New things

I’ve just finished writing a new contact form for the site. Up until now, I’ve been using a WordPress plugin to generate the form, but I got tired of not having enough control over it. It seems to work fine, and looks rather similar to the one I had before.
I also bought a snazzy new Apple Aluminum keyboard and a Bluetooth mouse, taking advantage of my employee discount today at work. They not only look cool, but work much better. Typing is so much easier now, and I have cleared up a significant amount of space – my old mouse was a Microsoft wireless, and it had a big clunky receiver plugged in. Bluetooth is far superior.
Bedtime.

NASA progress

I think my proposal will be directed to the NASA Ames Research Center, as they handle the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and solar system exploration. The proposal has to be delivered via snail mail, so it will take me some time to draft a letter to send them. It also has to include detailed cost data and the like. I think I will do some research on the space shuttle and how cargo is stored and deployed so my letter at least appears well thought-out, even if it is a complete practical joke.
I am very excited to see what NASA does in response. As far as I can tell, I am not doing anything illegal, but they probably won’t be very happy.

Back at work

Today was my first day back at work since the beginning of school. I have been way to busy with college stuff to get there since then. It was excellent to be back.
I also learned that the store has changed its Sunday hours. Rather than being open from eleven to four, we are now open from twelve to four. Extra sleep!

Uberpwny

We just observed a miniature pony in someone’s backyard on the way to school. We discussed the possibility of getting one. My sister wanted to trade our chickens for one (it is no secret that she rather dislikes them), but my father and I wanted to just get one. Or a goat. Except that a goat would just eat our yard, and house, probably.

Exquisite Corpse adjustment

I’ve made a minor change to the script that powers the Exquisite Corpse page, because I’ve noticed a tendency for people to end a lot of poems at once. This is wonderful, except it means that there aren’t always that many poems running, which can tend to slow stuff down since people start getting their own lines back very quickly. Therefore, I’ve modified it so that when you submit a line or end a poem, you are then only prompted with the “start a new poem” form. It’s not meant to entirely prevent people from immediately contributing to another poem; you can just click on the link in the sidebar again to completely refresh the page. It’s just to encourage you to start new poems as well. Hopefully if there are more poems running at once, the general activity will be higher.
Please feel free to let me know what you think of this feature, as I’m trying to make this page as simple and effective as possible.

Stay up late

I was up rather late last night watching election results. Suffice it to say, I am exhausted, and glad to be done with this entire process. This comic came to mind.

Impending exhaustion

I had a very tiring day today, and I am heading to bed early. I have a meeting tomorrow with my guidance / college counselor.
I haven’t minded dealing with and thinking about my application recently, because it’s already submitted. I’m actually excited to talk about it tomorrow morning, especially because I recently realized that I will hear back from Brown in only about five weeks.

One last day

I have not been blogging a lot recently because a lot of my time has been taken up with political work, which I don’t feel it’s appropriate to write about here. I will say, though, that regardless of my political views, I am glad that the election is going to be over. Two years is a long time.

Never again

I have finished my final standardized test. I will NEVER take the SAT or ACT again.
I have a bunch of homework to do this afternoon before heading up to Will’s for the rest of the weekend. I am excited to have some time off from my normal, hectic, college-laden life.
In completely random news, WordPress 2.7 is now available. WordPress is a popular blog and Content Management System; I use it for this site. The new version is still in beta, and there doesn’t appear to be a MU (multi-user) version yet. Since I use MU on this site, I am probably going to have to wait about another month, when the development team predicts it will be out of beta, but I’m very excited.
This season’s Mock Trial case comes out on Monday, which means that our school’s team (of which I am a member) is getting ready to kick into gear. We have a lot of work to do, and I am very glad I have college stuff out of the way before this all starts.

Last time

I am on my way to the SAT Subject Tests for the last time. I am taking Math 2, Physics, and Literature.

That Was Halloween

Today was Octoberfest, my school’s annual Halloween/fall/random celebration. Everyone (who is not lame) dresses up in their Halloween costume, and we have no classes in the afternoon, an outdoor open, mic, and other such activities. I was Inigo Montoya, from The Princess Bride.
This is the first year I can remember that Halloween has not been on a school night. And wouldn’t you know it, I’m taking the SATs tomorrow morning, so there will be very little trick-or-treating. I am probably going to go to sleep at about 9:00.

Running late

I am on my way to school, having just finished a battery of Pulmonary Function Tests at the hospital. I was supposed to be done by 8:30, but I beat the receptionist there (I arrived at 7:06 for a 7:15 appointment), and the Respiratory Therapist who was doing my tests had some computer trouble, so we had to wait for another CRT to come down and fix it.
For all of the tests, I sat in a chair in a glass case and breathed into a valve while wearing a nose clips. For some of them, I had to squeeze my cheeks with my hands to prevent them from holding any air. Most of the time, the door of the case was open, and I was just using the equipment inside, but for one test, the door was sealed and it took all sorts of temperature readings and such.
I managed to make it out of the lab with the nose clip, which I am sure I can find some sort of interesting use for.

Liftoff!

I SUBMITTED MY APPLICATION! WAHOO!

Counting down

I met with my guidance counselor this morning, and I have just a few miscellaneous changes to make to my college application before submitting it. I am literally counting the minutes until I am done.