January 2003 Archives

Alright, so yesterday my Dad is doing my taxes, and at the end of it all he says I'm only getting 400 dollars back. I was entirely under the impression I'd be receiving something like ... oh, I dunno ... A THOUSAND ... because he had told me I get all my taxes back as a minor. Well, one, supposedly all my taxes back means just income tax (not social security and medicade) so scratch off the other five hundred. Plus, of the five hundred in income tax I paid I only get 400 ... if my dad hadn't gotten my hopes up, I wouldn't be so broke right now.

Yesterday I had no homework except to study for the physics test, so I spent three hours shooting pictures with an 100 watt clamp light and my brother. The pictures were spectacular through the viewfinder, but not nearly as good with photo paper. Jim and I were setting up amazing scenes, yet I dunno ... I think my light meter on my new Nikon is tweaked wrong. 400 speed is not giving me ISO 400 negatives! More like shooting 200 speed film at 400. So I'm gonna try setting my meter to 200 next time I put a roll into it. That's incredibly frustrating though, because if I ever buy film that's not 400, I'm going to have to guess again at how tweaked my camera is. BLAST.

Today I failed the physics test. Not surprisingly, I knew it would happen, but I didn't study yesterday because of the aforesaid photo experiment. Random. Anyway, I spent soooooo long copying down the chapter summaries, and I have NO IDEA why (Diya told me to, actually) instead of looking at sample problems. Putting my name on the test, I still hadn't seen one sample problem, and all I had on me was a cheat sheet with chapter summaries and forumlas that I'd never used before. DUMB OF ME. I should have just studied my way, not diya's. Oh well.

It's 11:30, and I've been working on that BIG PROJECT mentioned in my profile ever since Tyler left. I've shown a few people, but not everyone can know yet. Because there has to be SOME level of surprise when I (and maybe others) bring it to school when it's ready. IT's 11:30, and I've still my math homework to do, but I'm tired as balls and I want to go to sleep, so instead I sit on here and post. Dirty monkeys. I've an inclass writing to do tomorrow in English and I'm gonna bomb miserably simply because I'm terrible at AP writings, especially in class ones.

At the moment of posting this, it seems irishcarbomb/farris is in the lead with 10 while schauer and evangelist are close by tied with 9. Nobody wants me to seperate these posts to a new site, and only two people want me to make my blog entries fake but funny. Like today I had a dream about .... fill in something funny.

Spork.

So, I just finished reading Tess of the d'Urbervilles. I'm seriously dissapointed with that book.

First, Hardy is a terrible writer. He is so repetive and overly descriptive it's nauseating!

Summary: There was a village called Marlott and it was secluded. THERE.

Secondly, Angel is an idiot. Normally, I'd never say something like what I'm about to say, but when Josie Swindler set the precedent by saying Gatsbuy is hot and she'd marry him, I now feel no qualms. Tess is hot! That's obvious! And also, she was raped, it was not her fault. So why then did he do what he did to her? I'll tell you why, because of the third reason I hate the book.

Thirdly, why all the bloody suffering! (note: not literally bloody, I just couldn't find an adequate replacement for an expletive here ... although technically it's bloody if you take into account the repeated imagery). And consequently, reason four.

Fourthly, and finally, the book was depressing and it combined with my heartbroken Creative Writing class (the vast majority of them, including the teacher) has nearly SHATTERED my total sense of romance and true love and something about oxygen! (::cough:: movie allusion ::cough::). All I know is that somebody better make me watch a chick flick soon so I can not only regain some sense of hope, but redirect all my anger at the pathetic and feeble attempt at film making.

For lack of an ending, I'll mention that I've two new colleges on my acceptance list. Thank you University of Colorado at Boulder and University of Cincinnati for being so kind. Sadly, when Illinois sent theirs, I decided I probably won't go to these two schools seeing as they're my backups.

Spork.

Sunday night I went to Paul's house for the superbowl. The entire first half was spent in an flowery inflatable chair next to the ping pong table while paul and marc hit back and forth and we all talked dirt on people at school. As usual, Marc bitched about politics. Then right before half time we went back to the TV and got our first update on the game (we hadn't exactly been watching, seeing as ping pong and trash talk is very time consuming). Then Marc left, Paul and I finally ate, and then I went home.

Today, I got up and was extremely dizzy! Like insanely, yet I still got ready for school because there was a photo critique today. I got to school at 6:50 to finish my photos for the critique, then somehow toughed it through math and english, and then photography we had first lunch. So, By this point, it is 10:50, AND THE WORLD AS I KNEW IT, STILL HAD NOT STOPPED SPINNING I WAS STILL THAT DIZZY. I kept getting light headed, and since finally my bad classes were over and it was lunch time, I SLEPT! I woke up on instinct ten seconds before the bell for class. It was brilliant. And actually, I felt much better after that!

We were given a new roll to shoot for wednesday (UGH!) and so fourth block Sarah Moore, Paul, J Hill, Lindsey Strobo, Ashley and myself all went outside and shot some pictures for that roll. I kept trying to get paul and jon to kiss, or bite each other's ears, or make SOME sort of contact but the homophobes wouldn't. Although, I did bite Jon's nose, and I think Sarah got it on film. Brilliant. I can't wait to see that one. Almost as good as Jon giving me a pat down in front of the police car in Anchorage last year. Then, afterschool, I develop those shots, and realize they BLOW CHUNKS, but head to highland coffee to meet Isabel, Marjorie, Parke, Brett, Joanna, and even Noah for a little picture adventure all over. I shot 32 shots I think, and I can't wait to see some of them. Although, I think the problem I had with the twenty shot outside with Sarah and Hilliard et al, I had with these 32 shot in the mystical lands of the highlands, and that is THE LIGHT SUCKED! Totally overcast. But oh well, we had a lot of fun and Marjorie got us kicked out of an antique shop. What an ass (the guy, not Marjorie).

Then Joanna came back to my house and we had hot chocolate and gumbo soup (which wasn't spicy to our Asian tongues but would have been to lowly white pasty americans). Joanna had fun looking through my mom's in style magezine, and then I took her home. And here I am contemplating how the hell Joe Millionaire kicked off Mojo and NOT Melissa! And Clone High was only kind of funny, I think the show's got the idea, but let's not have Andy Dick and MTV do it. Daily Show was good though. And now, I retire at one in the morning.

Site News:
Looks like there's a one to one ratio of female viewers to male viewers after I snag three for myself .... NICE :-P.

So, real fast, I did some stuff to the server. First, those who know me on AOL Instant Messanger have discovered the fruits of my external profile (well, external in the sense that it connects externally to retrieve it but actually displays it internally in AIM). Well, I set up that program as a server service so that now it should always run ... yay firedaemon.

Also, fixed my internet connection sharing problem! All because of this. Jeez, two problems in one week because of SQL Server 2000 and its damn service packs!

Death Socks

Now with downloadable video! And author bios! And an FAQ! And new and improved Apparel!!!! HOORAY!

Today (which according the clock is actually yesterday) I got up and took my dog to the vet, then tried to fix the server.

Josie calls and asks for the English homework, and while I'm on the phone with her my mom picks up and says "John, you've got some mail here." So I talk for another ten minutes, then hang up and go upstairs, and she hands me an envelope from Illinois University at Urbana-Champaign. I'm like "whoa, this is pretty thick" and she's like "read the front." It said "Get Ready for 2003." Immediately I'm thinking "holy cow! I'm in!" but when I opened up it's like "Sorry" ... no, just kidding, it was like "Congratulations on your admission to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for the fall 2003 semester!" And yeah, you can guess, I get excited and say "I'm going to college!" and what have you. It was good news, and they're fifth in the nation for computer engineering (my major) according to US News and World Report. Yesterday a Gold Key, today college. It's been a good two days.

EXCEPT I'M SICK! But yeah, so then I work on the server and can't figure out why DNS and internet sharing won't work. If I reset the thing, then it would work temporarily for about ten minutes and then mess up again. And WHEN it was in the mess up stage, I'd get on the server and it'd be running horribly slow. So finally, I still can't fix it, and I check McAfee.com and lo and behold dead front SQLSlammer, a new virus. Low risk, thank god, and NO PAYLOAD. PHEW. But it basically uses all available system resources to scour the net for more people to infect. It affects anything Pre-Service Pack 3, and unfortunately I was running Service Pack 2. SP3 just recently came out. So the only thing I had to do was install SP3 for SQL Server 2000 and restart the server, and now everything is ship shape again. Hurray. Sorry for the down time.

So I am sick, and took some nyquil, and this took a while to write, so now I'm going ot bed.

Spork.

I've been having server troubles, which will be detailed in my next post. You can almost consider this post an appendage to the previous which is an appendage to the one before it.

Web Blog attempt number two.

Yesterday, I woke up at five and I was FUCKING FREEZING! I had sheets (flannel) and TWO! count them, TWO! comforters on top of that, and yet I was freezing. And my face, the only part of my body uncovered, was three times as cold! And consequently, I had a cold ... and a terrible sore throat. It blew chunks. (not literally, that would be a stomach virus, not a cold) Well, I thought "maybe I just won't go to school" and then i remembered I had to go to school for both Wok'n'stix and so I could put these up in the art annex.

Get to school, and decide to go in early to fill out my mid year grade reports so I could give them to Lampton. So I decide to go to Curtis's room, and two art teachers tried to stop me from going upstairs till I told them I was going to Curtis's room, and then they were all hush hush about it and let me sneak upstairs. Kind of like "don't let anyone know." I love VA, by the way. Anyway, get into his room and lo and behold, Scholastics stuff had come in! Curtis opens it up in front me, we scroll down, and duPont Manual has like a bunch of names! Hurray! And that's JUST for photography. Well, Brett got a piece, update: Marian got a piece, Dylan got a piece, Joanna got two (go Joanna!), Sarah Moore THREE (that's awesome) and I got one. It was standing alone as Mr. Curtis decided to call it. Then he checks to see which are gold keys, and my piece is the only one in the group.

I didn't find out till later what that means, but basically now they mail it on to Nationals and it's put into the competition there. All the pieces chosen, not just my Gold Key, will be on display in the Kentucky Center for the Arts from February 2nd to the 9th and there will be an awards ceremony there Tuesday the 4th at 6PM. Here's my thoughts: It sucks that Marjorie didnt' get anything in, her stuff is great and I know she really wanted it, probably more so than anyone in the class and I think she deserved it more than me. Actually, I don't think I deserved a Gold Key at all. I think it's awesome Joanna got two pieces and Sarah three, and I really wish I weren't the only Gold Key. Cause again, I don't deserve it, and I really feel like I'm such an imposter in that class. Last year I might have been able to take pictures, but this year I can't. Just look at my room roll! it sucks (I'll scan later). Anyway, I have to do something about that.

So yeah, all day was religion day, cause Foster's class we talked about abortion and I was all on top of that piece. And then Humanities we presented our roman catholicism project. Yes, that is definitely Grant wearing a poster board pope hat, and HE MADE IT (his picture too, I just put on my server in case he tried to take it down cause I'm linking him :-P). Physics, we all lied and said we didn't have our books so we went and hung out in the photo room.

Then wok'n'stix with Marc, Diya, Paul, Joanna, me ... and Mark Popham! Mark and Marc didn't get along very well, I think Mark is too eccentric for Marc, ah well. Mark can be very funny, and this was not an exception, except (heh) he would be like REALLY funny, and then immediately really stupid (sorry Mark). But we still love him (Diya, Jo, and I at least) but I think Marc was a little annoyed.

Well, all day I had tried to get people to go to Paoli with me, and that didn't work, so I tried getting people to go to Karina Strange's play (Durang Durang). Of course, everybody is a loser, and didn't want to go. Instead of seeing a play, something nobody ever does, they wanted to go see a movie, something they do every weekend. So I went alone (even paul balied, but he had a good reason which I can't disclose here). It was really good, and really funny. Karina had the opening monologue/soliloquy ... not sure what you call it. And it was DAMNED FUNNY! People walked in late, and she stopped and said "oh! come on in, please, please, have a seat ... take off your coats, I was talking about theatre and drama ... TAKE YOUR TIME, please, do sit down now" it was GREAT. And actually, the late stragglers sat behind me and this one guy was totally third wheeling it and was a TOTAL ASSHOLE (during intermission talking to the couple). He tried talking like he'd read the Trojan Wars, the one about the women who stop having sex to end the wars, and he was totally obnoxious and kepts trying to sound smart, but it just didn't work when the whole time he's saying "dude man, this shit was funny."

Afterwards, Karina and I got some food at KT's where we sat down, ordered, then Mr. Good and some other Communications teacher sat down right in front of me (Karina had her back to them) and it took me a while to realize they were teachers, then I asked Karina, so she went to the bathroom as an excuse to look at them on the way back. It was funny, because it was totally a teacher date! It made me giggle on the inside. So yeah, then Karina bought my whole meal and hers (30 dollars after tip) cause I'm a moocher, although countlessly refused to let her pay but she kept insisting till I finally broke down and let her. Overall, a really fun time, Karina is so fun(ny).

So yeah, came home and the server was broke.

The end.

Consider this an appendage to the previous post

First: Notes on a native son ... no, that's not it ... notes on why I don't like web blogs

It seems ... kind of creepy. Everybody would end up knowing about me. Knowing my life. Today, Marc said to Mark (can you distinguish the two?) "I know you have great books, I read the site." Two complete strangers to each other (or at least stranger in the sense of face to face interaction) and the one knows all about the other. That's scary to me. I don't want random person saying "hey! you the guy that ::instert something personal::."

When I tried the little web blog experiment, briefly, I was posting about the same old thing because on the surface, that's what was going on. But my two close friends (Guess who? Marc and Joanna) knew that underneath I was troubled with my relationship at the time. And on to point number two, web blogs seem kind of childish. I dind't want to sit there and write over and over about how the relationship was horrible and pointless. Because not only was that personal but

Mainly because knowing about that would involve knowing some pathetic, ridiculous, and absolutely true things about myself that I’d rather not admit to right now.

err, to make the quote fit ... rather not admit to right then. And plus, what if she had read the stuff? Anyway, it just seems like something that needed to be shared between me and possibly close friends, but not the world.

So I was thinking, though, I guess I'll give the blog one more try, and just try my best to be entertaining. We won't get uber personal, but I'll certainly provide some general background stuff like "today was different from any normal day because: blah." That way, I don't necessarily post all the time, but if Jie Ma does something crazy like blow an iguana ........ I'll be here :-P.

What exactly are people looking for in a website? What would it take to get people to actually read this biatch? Possibly even comment? It seems that ... friends of mine, and people I don't know, read all the links on joanna's site ... from frank guan to mark popham to random guy ben. My site never really pops up on the list, more than likely because ... well, this site is not interesting.

Is it perhaps that I'm not interesting? I mean, I spend hours coding this pretty kickass web script suite that has incredible administrative capabilities, can post anywhere, edit anywhere, and it's all off my own server. Yet nobody gives a shit cause nobody sees it. I offer the script to others, and they take far better advantage of it. It's probably more functional than livejournal EXCEPT for that I need to fix the anonymous html privelages.

But once again, who cares? Do I really need to incessantly talk about some girl equivalent of Matt Schauer or post about how fucked up and emo I am or how I really can't stop my crying, or all my dreams, or about ben folds, or crushes, or hot girls, or hot guys, or whatever?! I tried that, and I failed, cause my life just ISN'T THAT INTERESTING. It was the same post over and over "went here, went there, blahbedy blah." I guess it's just too bad I'm not emotionally unstable, maybe that would fix everything. It really is too bad that I'm normal, or maybe ... just maybe then ... people would read this.

I dunno, give me ideas. Discussion never works, it's always only temporary spurts of viewers arguing and then it's over.

Spork.

oldie but goodie

Death Socks

Now you can buy death socks apparel!!! All profits go towards production. (ya'know...pyrotechniques...yeah...we're blowing stuff up...) And, uh, wenching...

Nominees for greatest song ever!

I say we must choose the greatest song ever. Not your favorite, but songs that are arguably THE BEST IN THE WORLD-EVER.

I nominate: Rock the Kasbah, by The Clash

Dear me, if anyone listens to guster, or even if they don't, go visit guster.com and check out the picture on the front page ... in case they eventually take it down, the picture is also found here on my server.

Happy 3rd birthday to TheSpork.com!!!!

Que the techno music: "Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear thespork.com, happy birthday to you ... you look like a monkey, and you smell like one too!"

So yeah, uhh, actually, the 13th was TheSpork.com's 3 year anniversary, except I kinda wasn't paying attention until today. But we're only a week late, and that's ok.

So what are we going to do to celebrate? I suggest everyone goes back and reads from entry one all the way to this entry in memory of the site. And we can all comment beneath posts we like. Unsure how you'll know if someone has posted? The link above that says "newest comments" of course. If you still havent started using this tool of mass destruction than now's your chance. Oh, that, and at the bottom it says "archive" ... that's where you'll go to read old entries and to comment. And back when I added comments, I added to the archive a little number NEXT to the posts that indicates the number of comments. Have fun. And party hardy, cause it's our third birthday.

Pop quiz, when's Spork's birthday?

Death Socks: The Motion Picture
Coming soon, and by soon, i mean probably in a long time.

Death Socks

SIGN OUR GUEST BOOK!
please...it's fun...please?

I'm having some caching problems, in which if i click comments for a post, then click the back button, it displays a cache of my page ... from about three days ago ... I wonder why this is randomly happening, I've never had this problem. Anyone else having this problem? let me know in the comments

PS - My response.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANTLY!!!!!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANTLY!!!!!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANTLY!!!!!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANTLY!!!!!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANTLY!!!!!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANTLY!!!!!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANTLY!!!!!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANTLY!!!!!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANTLY!!!!!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRANTLY!!!!!

1. you know, on saturday, there were a total of 5 girls who stopped by to sell girl scout cookies. and this happened in a span of an hour! i never opened the door. i feel kind of bad though, because the first time, i peeked out a side window to see who it was, and her mother saw me. the second time, i was playing piano really loudly, and when the door bell rang, i stopped and ran to the kitchen. yep, not obvious.

- jo [chocolate good.]

Well done mr. penguino.

1) are the thin mints frozen first? If so, they'd kick major ass. They'd be indestructible ... otherwise, somoas might have a chance.

2) I'd say hooks --> it'd take a really long time, cause the flesh of the eyeball would tear, so it'd be like removing all the chocolate from a dunkaroos cartoon with a toothpick ... except worse. alright, here's a better analogy ... try removing a hangnail with only a toothpick ...

3) scissors ... cause I'm sharp as a knife

FINE. If spork won't post a topic, I will. It's my 3 question survey of pimptitude:

1) If Somoas and Thin Mints (the girl scout cookies) got in a fight, who would win?
2) Which of the following sounds more terrible/painful:
a)Having your eyes scooped out with a rusty spoon
b)Having your eyes pulled out with fish hooks
3) Are you a rock,paper,or scissor kind of person?

have fun with your ansers, and bonues points to anyone who can do it with out the letter "e": and no using l3375p33k!!

hi, i was wondering if anyone knew about the FAFSA. like, should my parents do their tax returns before we start filling it out? and after you've filled it out, what do you do with it? send one to every school? and scholarships? a lot of those say to fill out the FAFSA, but what do i do with it? thanks.

- jo [needs money]

Well, three of the eight college applications are sent and on their way. One by mail, two electronically. I'm sending another tomorrow after I finish it. Northwestern gave me some trouble, though. I just finished submitting their application with only an hour and fifteen minutes to spare. PHEW, too close for my comfort! They've an ASP.NET site and randomly it stopped working .... guess it says something about microsoft. But I finally got it in.

Hopefully I won't get the same from UVA tomorrow. After them, I've a whole week to get in Notre Dame, and then another week for Colorado (which is basically done because I'm deboing the essay from Illinois (already sent)), WashU, and NYU.

WOOHOO, and I'm wondering if there's a chance anybody will take me.

Spork.