Sunday, January 29, 2006

Happy New Year!

Chinese new year, that is.
Today marks the start of year 4703...the year of the dog.

The AVHSD honor band concert was on Friday night. It went surprisingly well...we actually sounded halfway decent. I was pretty pleased. My solos came out decent and everyone as a whole did great. They were long rehearsals, but they paid off. The back of my head even made the paper, I'd post a pic, but my scanner is being rather uncooperative.

Face transplant? Umm...no thanks.

Finally! A DIY T-shirt folding machine. Pretty awesome stuff...I gotta make one of those.

Band goes to Disneyland on Tuesday, so I'm looking forward to that (and missing school!). But meanwhile, I'm off to make my t-shirt folding machine.

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Minor Scales, Ska, Cats and More...

Life's trudging on as usual. Same old stuff at school...no new bomb threats to report on. I'm practicing my guts out on my melodic minor scales for All State...I have to have them memorized for a live audition. Ugh.

The honor band concert is Friday. We're playing some pretty cool pieces, so hopefully it turns out well. We have yet to actually "rehearse" as a full band, so who knows.

I'm in a ska band! The legendary Chase Wells invited Casey and myself to join his garage/ska band. I'm on sax/clarinet (maybe even flute...who knows), Casey's on trumpet, Chase on bagpipes (yes, pipes in ska...pretty awesome if you ask me) and we have a keyboard, lead guitar, bass, and set. It's pretty cool, but we're just starting. If you know any low wind players who are interested, we need 'em.

Check out the 101 dumbest moments in business. It's a list of the stupidest things companies have done throughout 2005; some are pretty funny to look back on.

Did you see Kobe's 81 point game?! As much as I dislike the guy, I have to hand it to him...that's pretty dang good.

Finally, proof that cats are more fun than dogs. Sorry Emma, but cats rule!

Monday, January 16, 2006

Windows WMF Backdoor?

Did Microsoft intentionally place a backdoor in Windows Metafile to gain access to machines? Security expert Steve Gibson thinks so. Recently this "vulnerability" has been getting a lot of press, so people have started looking into it. Some think it's more than just a programming error, but an intentional backdoor. Take a listen, and see what you think.

We went to Vegas this weekend to see my sister and uncle, as well as take home Princess the dog. The visit was short, but good and the food was awesome. I finally got to eat at the HofbrÀuhaus, which was really cool. The dog has a nice new home (not ours...my family+dog=I don't think so).

If you wanted more info on MacWorld, TWiT did a nice podcast covering most of it. Check it out.

I haven't actually tried it yet, but this little app looks to be pretty cool. It's a space simulator, and from what I hear, it’s another hour killer like Google Earth (new version available).

Back to school tomorrow...hopefully I won't get blown up.

Friday, January 13, 2006

More Threats Plague QHHS

We made the news again...

Rumors of Friday the 13th violence spread like wildfire around school. Apparently there was supposed to be pipe bombs set up at various locations, but it turns out that was a hoax. The only "bang" heard at lunch was a M80 (nothing too unusual for the 100 quad at lunch). I would say that only about 60% of the school had the guts to show up today, in my Photoshop class there were only 13 people (out of 35). All this while everybody’s still freaked out over last month's little episode.

And on it goes...

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Back to it...

School started again on Monday. I have absolutely no idea how a three week break flew by so fast. Oh well...at least it was a good one.

Everything at school is pretty much the same. Back to old studying schedules and procrastination habits. At least math appears to be slightly easier (as I begin pounding on the nearest wooden object). We actually have a "real" PE teacher this semester. At least I got to enjoy one year of PE McQ style, but so far this new "real" teacher is placing herself in the same PE teaching league as McQ.

As noted by my last post, I made All State! I was the only one from QHHS this year, and possibly the first ever. It'll be tough, but I'm looking forward to it.

MacWorld Expo began yesterday with Job's announcement of the new MacBook (could they think of a stupider name?) and iMac with the new Intel Core Duo (talk about stupid names) chip. Pretty exciting for all those Mac freaks out there. CES was also last week, but apparently that was kind of a flop this year.

Links of the week:
-DIY lockpick...truly geek style made from an old toothbrush
-Update your XP look & feel...pretty smooth, I like it so far
-Glad I'm not at the U of Alabama...a glitch sent an email the every student telling them they were dropped
-And of course: 25 reasons to switch to Linux

Saturday, January 07, 2006

Monday, January 02, 2006

I'm Back

No broken bones!
All limbs are fully attached, unlike this time last year.

Colorado was great. Between the cabin, snow, movies, reading, skiing, burning food, and 8x8's from in-n-out, it was truly an awesome trip. As requested, I posted some pics from the trip on my newly created Flickr. Check them out...some are self explanatory, others not so much.

By the time your reading this, there's probably a totally different feel to the blog. I found a new template, wrote in some changes (talk about an html headache), and whala: a new feel. Hope you like.

That's it for now...I'm gonna go enjoy the rest of my winter break doing my favorite activity:
absolutely nothing.

Sunday, January 01, 2006