Brettia

This will be my 30th entry. That’s a lot. Twenty-five thousand words is enough to fill a small book, too. I added a small block that displays the site statistics using a PHP script I whipped up in about half an hour. It’s really amazing that only a year ago I struggled with simple control structures (functions that say if “this”, then do “that”) and I now am so proficient that I can do ten times that level of programming in so little time.

It seems Mr. Larsen (the parent of a friend who knows Mr. Trapani, the technology guru at my school) read my cry for help (I didn’t have an email address or phone number and was unable to contact him otherwise). I first met Mr. Trapani on Tuesday when I was called out of geometry. He’s a really nice guy, just a bit weird at times (he said he has ADHD or something like that). So we talked a bit, and then I helped some kid pry a VHS tape out of a VCR.

Wednesday I came in early in the morning to talk to him, and he got me out of my 6th period class (Spanish), so that I could be in his web development class for a day. I was promptly put to work plagiarizing (or just “copying”) another high school’s post-graduation bulletin for use on the CSHS website for the counseling department, and that was fun (in a nerdy sort of way). I also met another web developer, Eric Kearns who seems like an awesome person, though he’s a bit overworked. (Mr. Trapani runs a tight ship.)

So I worked on the post-grad thing yesterday afternoon and again this morning, and probably again tomorrow morning, if I can get in there early enough. I don’t know what I’ll be doing once that’s done, hopefully some scripting work (Mr. Trapani has plans for some kind of “e-learning portal” where students and parents can review grades and communicate with teachers). All I can say is that this is certainly a good step toward being part of a collaborative project, rather than just doing my own stuff. Trapani also said he’d talk to my PE teacher, Mrs. Young, about getting me out of class 2-3 days a week to work on things. I also have some high school credit that I got after my first Europe trip (though I don’t know how much) which might become helpful next semester.

Though the good certainly outweighs the bad, I noticed some things about the way the website is run that I was not so happy with.
First, it’s running on Microsoft IIS server software or something like that, not my native Apache. I’m not complaining about the fact that I’ve never used IIS, just that Apache is much more stable and compliant with plugins like PHP, not to mention the fact that it’s open source, free, and not a Microsoft product.

Second, the students that I saw working on it were all using FrontPage to edit web pages and such. Again, not what I would use, for the sole reason that I taught myself how to hard code websites, so I need something like Notepad or an equivalent. (My favorite is Crimson Editor.) I actually do have a copy of FrontPage 2002 that I got for Christmas last year, but it collects dust because I never use it. I’m actually thinking of donating it to Mr. Trapani’s tech lab, providing that he needs it. Really, the bottom line with FrontPage is that it works fine for static HTML, but it isn’t the most standards-compliant, and I don’t believe it generates XHTML code, which is the stricter and newest version of HTML. Also, the very worst part, FrontPage is yet another Microsoft product, meaning that it favors other Microsoft products, such as ASP, PHP’s chief competitor.

Finally, no one seemed to be educated in server-side scripting, meaning that I might end up as the lone programmer. It is quite possible that I just haven’t met anyone who knows PHP yet, but I was quite alarmed when, in the web development class, Mr. Trapani showed some students an article or website or something that was about ASP (!!!), and they all responded as if ASP (and PHP) were only for smart people. In other words, none of them knew either language. Not good, because I’ll have no one to work with, but also somewhat good, since I won’t have to try to cooperate with another programmer (and we programmers can be quite sticky about such things as naming conventions and syntax).

So here’s a quick list of things I’ll need to try and change (I can work in just about any environment, but I think an Apache configuration would be best.)

To Do List - CSHS Website

• Move from an IIS (or other) server to an Apache server (on Linux?) with MySQL and PHP installed
• Change site from static HTML to dynamic PHP files served through a Smarty templating system.
• Figure out how to connect between PHP and Integrade Pro, the grading program, so that grades can be exported to the e-learning site (via email?).
• Implement news posting and user system. (Forum?)
• Stream daily video news announcements.

This obviously is a pretty ambitious plan, and there’s little chance of getting everything accomplished anytime soon. I’m not sure how attached Mr. Trapani is to using Microsoft products, so I might have to convert him to open-source. That will make things easier.

Anyway, that’s enough about that. Tomorrow night I go to my friend Dylan’s house for a Halloween party. We’re going to have an Almond Joy war, among other things. Also, I went over to Sonoran Trails after school with Jim and Dylan to see some of my old middle school teachers. There’s nothing to say about that except that all the kids are really short.

That’s about it, I think. I’m still no closer to getting Photoshop or the Macromedia Suite after spending $7 to pay my iTunes bill and $25 on books from Barnes and Noble.com. I really needed something new to read.

I’m sorry this entry sucked. It was pretty much just a compilation of stuff about Mr. Trapani and the school website. It could have been better. I could have flamed the current school configuration a lot more (sorry, Mr. T.), but I tried to restrain my fingers. They’re tired enough, anyway, after typing 7,000 keys for this entry.

Eggplant.

Note: Written Yesterday, Posted Today Because of Server Problems
Two entries in a row…interesting. I just felt like it today, since Brettia is slow and I don’t really feel like working on the projects I need to do. This’ll be my 29th entry in three months of blogging, a personal record for journaling. I’ve tried several times over the years to keep a journal, but this is by far my most successful attempt. I have typed almost 25,000 words or 138,000 characters, a large amount, but not as many as the classic “Second Algebra War,” found on the Old Brettia Forum, which was a huge document of over 150,000 words and several months of work. It is long enough that it could be published as a medium-sized book.

Anyway, I’m really writing this because of this kid I know in my social studies class named Anthony Fibneres (spl???). I call him Anthony Foo, or just Foo, for short. He thinks he’s a gangster in “da hood,” and he does all that stupid rapping with his pencil while yapping about his four watches. Worse, he’s even lardier than I am; at least I don’t look like a mini sumo wrestler (though that’s a matter of opinion). To really make this whole thing suck royally, Fogey (Mr. Fogelson) put him right next to me, so he cheats off my papers and stuff all the time and gets stupidly angry when I cover my answers. What do you expect, Foo? You want me to just tell you everything so you can go back to “da hood” with your “bruthas” and “siddas”? By the way, the other reason that I’ve nicknamed him Foo is that he calls people that all the time. (”Wha chu tawkin’ ’bout, foo’?”) I usually can’t understand what he’s muttering at me, so I just let him yap.

Something is horribly wrong. I’ve actually been bored lately, meaning I haven’t had any projects or posts or codes or anything else to do. I feel like I’m wasting my time by being idle, since I’ll wish that I’d used it more wisely later. But what else is there? My friends are all as socially inept as I, though they don’t like to admit it. We go to each other’s houses and stuff, but even that has become boring lately. Right now I can’t even type because my palms are heating the plastic on the keyboard after several hours of furious coding.

You know what would be cool? If I could build websites at school as part of a class. That would be fun. And I could do it, too, if it weren’t for PE and BMT. First, I have to take PE, since it’s required to graduate (for this year, at least). The thing is, it blocks a slot in my schedule, a slot that could be better used for more technologically-oriented classes. Second, the stupid administration forces students to take BMT (Business Management and Technology) before they can take Web Development or get A+ Certified. I’m SURE I don’t need any of the skills provided by BMT, just from reading the course description. I have four years of CNBC under my belt for the business management half, as well as a good knowledge of economics and such. I also have seven years of computing under Windows, six months of computing under Linux, two years of HTML/CSS, one year of PHP, nine months of MySQL, eight months of graphics editing, and three months of blogging to shore up the technology part of the course.

What’s worse, there’s a kid in my English class (a good friend of mine, actually), who is in the Web Development class and the BMT class at the same time (I couldn’t do this next year because of Spanish 5/6). Mrs. Kulinski (the English teacher) is going to allow his class to build a class website for her. I offered my skills, but she just said that I could look it over when it was done and make suggestions. That feels horribly unfair (not Kulinski’s fault, however), since I have far more experience than most of the Web Development kids (take a look at the crap last year’s class put together here) and could prove to be a valuable asset in that department. (I’m not trying to bash the Web Development people here, I’m just mad at having to miss out on some good dev experience.) I really don’t want to have to wait until next year or the year after to get started in Web Development, which is just more frustrating.

Really, the biggest hurdle here is BMT. The kid in my English class, Joey DiMarco, said he tried to test out of it but wasn’t allowed to. I’m going to try next year, and they’ll face the wrath of the walrus if they don’t let me. I’m mad at seeing my skills wasted on loner projects like the ones I’ve been doing; I really need a decent team to work with to get anything really good done. *Screams out window in frustration.* Why is there nothing at CSHS for me? Why? An HTML club, a digital art club, a computer club, anything! It’s all dance and cheerleading and sports. And most of the other clubs have already started with barely any notice to the rest of the school.

My only hope is to go to Mr. Trapani, the technology guru, who supposedly has access to lots of cool tech toys that I can play with. I have one connection, the father of a friend, who has said he might be able to hook me up, but I haven’t really heard from him since and I don’t want to just walk into Trapani’s room and say “I’m here, give me something fulfilling to do.”
It’s 9:13 and I should go to bed. Aye, it’s early, but I really spew beef if I don’t get at least seven hours of sleep each night. Besides, my keyboard is melting. My hands are playing hot potato with it. Ouch.

Eggplant.

Whee! I’m a bloggin’! Yeah. I know I need to blog, since it’s been well over the customary seven-day period. (Ten days, right now.) I’m still going for Photoshop CS, in case you were wondering (I know you weren’t), which is a cool $270, and I have $105 so far. Subtract about $5 in charges incurred from Apple iTunes Music Store downloads, and you have a good $100. Technically, PCS isn’t out yet, but I can preorder it. I’ll probably wait to see if the general web development community likes it before spending so much money, so I’m not really in a rush to accumulate my $270. Patience, young Padawan. Soon what you desire will be yours. Only a little bit longer.

In other news, I had to present this project for Spanish today, which really sucked, because we had to (God forbid!) speak in Spanish! Actually, I got an 89% on the speaking portion and an estimated 97% on the PowerPoint presentation portion, for a nice 93% average, which is low according to my academic standards, but not too bad. It seems that in high school you have to present things a lot more often, and I haven’t had a single project I haven’t had to present except in English class. I’m not the world’s best public speaker, but I’m better than some. It’s that nerdy shyness that makes it hard. And then that doubles when you have to speak in a different language to a group of kids who are all 1-2 years older than you (I’m a level ahead in my Spanish class).

The project itself was an organizational nightmare; we (my group) were all trying to go to each other’s houses and stuff and it didn’t really work out. We ended up just corresponding though e-mail and AIM, though one of the group members didn’t do anything at all. I somehow was spared having to do the bulk of the work this time, like I usually do. Poor Ellie Conser and Raquel Parks, both pretty nice, decent people, got crushed by the load and were saved by me because of my impeccable grammar (English and Spanish) and my crack technological skillz. Okay, that was a bit immodest, but I did help out a lot in the end. Most of the time it was kind of funny because Ellie was getting a bit intense whenever we were under the gun to finish something. Her eyes flare and you have the sudden thought that it might be a good idea to stay away from her for a while.

Lately I’ve been plagued with questions about religion. I’m no longer sure if I want to be Christian or not, or if I want to have any religion at all. My friend Jim is a Buddhist, and he seems to like it okay, and my friend Dylan announces he’s an atheist every ten minutes, just in case I forget. Tyler, the other writer for the blog, is quite unhappy with his overly religious parents that ship him off to religious education classes one night a week. (These are only one set of his parents; the other ones seem to not care much about church.)

So if my friends are grudgingly Catholic, atheist, and Buddhist, then what am I? Currently I’m Methodist, which I feel is the best flavor of Christianity because it isn’t so ritualistic and strict. Plus we Methodists don’t have priests or popes or cardinals, meaning there aren’t middle-aged men raping little boys in our organization.

Really, I don’t care much for Methodism, or Christianity, but it seems to be the best thing for me that I have found so far. I don’t know what the parental reaction would be if I announced I no longer want to be a Christian, so I just keep it to myself, go to church every Sunday like the little fat sheep I am, and get presents on Christmas, that holiday that used to be Christ’s birthday but is now every child in the world’s second birthday, with the exception of those poor souls who were born on Christmas and must wait a whole year before getting anything new. That would suck royally.

Anyway, I’ve thought about atheism, which would be the easiest to fulfill, since I wouldn’t have to do anything, but it seems kind of empty. My idea of a good religion is one that promotes philosophical beliefs and the meaning of life, rather than emphasizing some benevolent, all-powerful creator and the afterlife. Christianity is so geared toward going to Heaven that it seems like there is nothing else to it.

[WARNING: Possible Book Spoilers Ahead] I read a book recently called The Da Vinci Code, which is about a college professor who is called to investigate the murder of the curator of the Louvre museum in Paris, who is actually a member of a secret society called the Priory of Sion who are charged with guarding the Holy Grail and revealing it when the time is right. Contrary to popular belief, the Holy Grail is not a cup, but rather Mary Magdalene, that little known Biblical character who was actually Jesus’ wife. She bore him a son, meaning that he had a bloodline, meaning that there are descendants of him. The college professor is chased by the police, who think that he is the murderer and are trying to trap him at the scene, and he is helped by a cryptographer, none other than the granddaughter of the curator.

The book goes through several cities, unveiling a huge conspiracy started thousands of years ago by the early Catholic Church, when it rewrote parts of the New Testament in order to secure its position in the world (if Jesus had a bloodline, then he was an ordinary man, rather than the all-powerful virgin the Bible declared him to be). The Holy Grail, Mary Magdalene, is actually her remains and several chests of documents proving the New Testament incorrect that were once guarded by the famous Knights Templar from the Crusades. You should read the book to get the whole story, but my point here is that Christianity is built on a foundation of lies and deceit such as this.

I’m not saying that The Da Vinci Code is correct (though it could be, since many of the facts presented in it are the truth, and I’ve been to many of the places described in the setting, and can affirm their reality), but that perhaps we aren’t getting the true story in the Bible. Also, the Catholic Church, and Christians in general, always come up with some other explanation or reason for something when they are proved wrong. What happened when Darwin put forth his theory of evolution (which is bolstered with more evidence every day)? The Church was quite unhappy, and in fact Darwin’s wife feared that he would go to Hell for trying to prove the “holy” Bible incorrect. But now that we are almost sure that Darwin was right, the particular part of the Bible that was disproved isn’t spoken of anymore.

So now you know my reasons for being unhappy with Christianity. Buddhism, on the other hand, is full of philosophical jargon and such, full of fulfilling thoughts about nature and the world, and has no all-powerful god. (Though Buddha is called a kind of god or holy man, depending on the sect of Buddhism you join.) So perhaps I’ll consider it. More likely, I’ll go on with my empty faith routine, and hope that one day Pastor Doug will say something at church to enlighten me to the point where I feel driven to “serve God.”
I think my mom knows about my unenthusiasm about our religion already because she brought back a book from a positive thinking seminar in Texas called The Power of Positive Thinking for Teens. I read part of it to humor her, thinking it might be somehow worthwhile, but put it down immediately when I found that all it was about was “trusting God to see you through your problems.” This was incredibly deceptive, since the book says nothing about religion for the first ten pages, nor does it look religious in any way. Just another reason not to judge a book by its cover, I guess.

This brings to light another thing about Christianity: it’s too happy and trusting. They want you to think that everything bad is just God’s will, and that everything good is a reward for doing God’s will. Thought: What if everything bad happened just because it did, or because of a previous action, and everything good happened because you worked your ass off for it? I don’t want to attribute all my successes to someone else! Where’s the logic in that? And has God ever proven that He’s there? No! Have my prayers ever been answered? No! And if He’s such a good, benevolent God, then why does He let people kill each other in their constant arguments and wars over Him? Does He just watch over us all as we starve and die and kill and rape, laughing at our stupidity?

Now, any pastor or devout Christian would give me the classic Christian response to the above paragraph, telling me how God did this and that for us, all the while avoiding every question I asked in the interest of drafting me into the religion of lies. I don’t mean to be harsh; I have as much respect for Christians as I do for anyone, but I just can’t believe in it because it sounds so stupid and ludicrous. I read another book a long time ago about a radical Christian group who thinks the world will end and only they will be saved, so they pick up their families and move to some remote hilltop. Then there’s a huge gunfight against the other people who want to be saved as well, and lots of innocent women and children die. How is that Christian? You’d think God would have mercy on us all and just disappear rather than exist and continue to torment us by causing wars and fights in His name.

I dunno. I just don’t get it, I guess, but I’m tired of those “classic Christian responses” that don’t help at all. Maybe I’ll figure it out someday, but I have a feeling the answer to Christianity won’t make me want to join the ranks.

You’ve checked Organon hourly in the past few days, but have been disappointed to see that I have not blogged. Now I have.

I still ponder the question of money, and, if I am ever endowed with any sum of it, what I will do with it. The computer has now been put on hold, mainly because the prospect of raising $2,500 on about $10/week in earnings will take about five years. So I will end up having to rely on my parents for most of the money, providing that they will even agree to financing such a large purchase in the first place.

I’ll keep my sights set on a gleaming new Alienware Area 51, but until then, I’m shooting for Adobe Photoshop CS and Macromedia Studio MX 2004. I found out I can get Photoshop for about $270 and Studio MX for about $240 (or $190, depending on if I want Flash MX Pro or not) with a student discount available from Creation Engine. Sure, $510 is a lot of money, but it’s also a lot less than $2,500. I think that if I put one of the two programs on my list of Christmas goodies then I have a good chance of getting it, too, so that will cut the cost significantly. In a perfect world I would forsake all other Christmas gifts (who wants clothes, anyway?) and ask for just the two programs and nothing else, but my parents like making me open ten million dollar-store presents, for some reason, as if that would make me happier when I see that my beloved Photoshop is missing from the pile of gifts.

Now that I’ve rambled about my sinful desire for Photoshop and Studio MX, I might as well tell you what they are, in case you aren’t as technologically savvy as I. First, Photoshop is a digital imaging program, for making web graphics, animated GIFs, touching up digital or scanned photos, and a myriad of other graphics-oriented purposes. It is the industry-standard for graphics editing, therefore that gives Adobe a right to overcharge for it (I guess), so the regular price is $650. The second chunk of bytes I want is Studio MX, which is actually a suite of programs that all have to do with web development and graphics. It comes with Flash MX (which makes all those nice movies and animations like Happy Tree Friends), Fireworks MX, for graphics and animations, Dreamweaver MX, the industry-standard for (X)HTML editing (now with PHP support, w00t!), and FreeHand MX, for laying out projects, or something like that (useless to me). Even though I’ll probably only use Fireworks and Flash, it’s actually cheaper to get all four together than it is to get the two separate. What can I say?

This all seems fine and good, but then all happiness grinds to a halt. I looked at the system requirements on the manufacturer’s websites for the products I want, and guess what? My system is no longer “good enough” to run them. This is not such a big deal, since I’ve used 30-day trial versions of all the programs I will purchase in the future and all of them ran fine, though somewhat sluggishly. (All programs are somewhat sluggish on the hunk of junk whose keys I currently warm.)

Why must I choose between great software and great hardware? Why can’t I have both? Why can’t I have them now, rather than in four or six or eight months? Why? (I must sound like that spoiled chick on “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”)

At least if I grow up to be a paper pusher instead of a billionare software developer, I’ll know what to blame my failure on. Great. My heart swells with hope.
For those of you readers (I have about as many readers as I have megabytes of video card RAM: 4) who don’t know HTML, or even the syntax and structure behind it, you now know. The above statement, wrapped in nonexistent tags, is a perfect example. I’ve been meaning to write a HTML tutorial covering the basics and the problems I once faced, but that has been put off until February 30th. Generally, HTML is a system of directives called tags, which start and end with ‘< ' and '>‘. I won’t explain all the tags, since you can find a decent reference at W3Schools, but I will only say that it is not nearly as hard to code HTML pages as you may think. I can’t teach it to you, since I believe that learning by yourself with trial and error and experimentation will have a greater reward.

There’s a saying that goes: “You can give a man a fish and you’ve fed him for a day (for me, more like an hour), but you can teach him to fish and you’ve fed him for his life.” I see sense in that, but am sadly too lazy to teach you to fish and would rather give you a herring and send you on your way. So go to W3Schools, or perhaps get 1st Page 2000 (free), a decent but old HTML editor (supposedly the developer has returned from death and is busy coding the next version now). It’s a pretty good one to start with if you’re a noobie.

Noobie. That term used to apply to me. I am amazed when I look back and realize how much I know now compared to how much I knew back in 2001, when I first started my Internet journey. Those were dark times, when I was mired deep in the curse of dial-up and I could only manage a small webpage hosted on Tripod’s free servers. (Note how everything I use is free because I am such a poor kid. Scratch that, I am not poor, the budget is just not written by me, therefore I cannot control where money goes, therefore none goes to technology. Any IT director would be horrified.)

So it will soon be a year of PHP and two and a half years of HTML. And about six months of graphics editing and advanced CSS, plus another nine of SQL, and two of building websites for other people, and twelve more of running a forum. That’s a lot of months, though much of the time overlaps. I haven’t said much about it, but I’m skilled in Windows as well, and I’m working on Linux (though I deleted RedHat today in favor of Slackware, then deleted that to go back to RedHat. I love open source.) I can never be as good at this as some people I know, like Paul S. Owen, lead developer of phpBB, or Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel (borrowing from Unix, perhaps [<- inserted to keep SCO happy]), or, God forbid, Bill Gates, who is a great man, though everyone hates him for his severe case of richness.

Yeef. (Yawns.) I’m tired, and it’s only 7:00. I don’t sleep enough, or something, but who wants to spend any more of their life in their bed then they have to? Unless that bed also contains a scantily-clad swimsuit model, but that’s another story…

Eggplants.

“Blarg.” My quote of the day. A quote spawned from a mixture of boredom, procrastination, and general unhappiness. For today was not a good day, but it could have been much worse.

It did not even begin like normal weekend days (my school district had today off even though it’s a Monday because of a Jewish holiday), for I dragged myself out of bed at 7:15, three hours earlier than I might have on Saturday. I had originally looked forward to a laid-back, lazy, easy day, but alas, my hopes were dashed when my dad announced the bane of tired teenagers: an SSV. SSV, or super stupid vacation, is an acronym that strikes fear in the hearts of many. This particular time, my brother and I were to be carted away to the Capitol Museum to “view” the Declaration of Independence. I was spared as my dad was unable to get away from work and other odd errands he had to do and could not take us.

The period of rejoicing was short-lived. The Project (so horrible it must be capitalized) had been assigned in health class a week ago. I had left it undone until now. And my procrastination came back to bite me in the ass, as it always does. (Moral of this, young children, do your work after it is assigned, rather than before it is due.)

I slaved and struggled over a hot keyboard, my poor fingers growing numb with exhaustion. My keycount rose another 100,000 keystrokes, both from talking to friends on AIM and from working on the Project. And at 6:14 Pacific Standard Time, the ordeal was finally over. I had completed, and vanquished, the Project.

Now I see how much of an overachiever I really am. Everyone else will bring tiny diagrams on sheets of computer paper, while I broke out the 22″ x 28″ piece of foamboard and crammed it with a nice picture of a molecule and lots of text and facts. It took as many staples as it did hours. (About fifty.) No, perhaps I only worked for a total of two or three hours, since I was distracted by AIM and Brettia. And then it was the Project, which fights the doer, not wanting to be finished.

With the project out of the way I set out to do the rest of my homework, which was not much. Leave it to Mr. LaBelle to assign a project on a three-day weekend when I have virtually no other homework. Damn him.

The thing is, he assigned it long ago, and I was too stupid to start until Sunday night. Damn me. Sometimes I really hate my ways. Procrastination, eating, inactivity, arrogance. I didn’t always procrastinate, either. I used to be a good little boy, but then I met the friends I have now and they changed me. Or at least I try to blame it on them. It’s really Brettia that took away so much of time, since I was always either coding it or modding it or writing it. I used to get home, do my homework at 4:00, and read or go to a friend’s house. Now I get home, surf the Internet, post, and blog until 6:00, do some homework while posting and blogging after 6:00, and finish my homework with minutes to spare before I go to bed. I’ve become a bad kid.

Not only that, but I’m a bad, fat, nerdy, lazy, arrogant kid. I eat too much, and cannot help it. (My parents always told me to eat everything on my plate, so, being the obedient idiot, I did.)
I’m a nerd/geek, and I’ll admit it. Who cares, anyway? I could do other things, but I don’t. Nothing else better has come. And you must admit, the geeks always end up on top in the world, and then all the jocks and populars that used to mock them are forced to admire them. The Internet is a fine example. Geeks invented it, and then everyone else found it convenient and made the geeks rich. So it’s not all bad.

Lazy is probably the wrong word for me. I work hard, too hard, most of the time, I just never do anything else. So perhaps workaholic is more fitting. I need to get out more. Habits come easily, but never leave.

Arrogant? Brett, arrogant? But he’s the quiet smart kid! How is he arrogant? Perhaps my mind magnifies my faults, perhaps it lessens them, but I have an acute perception of when I have done something wrong, and I always remember the act. I remember several times when I acted arrogant, selfish, etc., but I guess no one is perfect. I’m probably better than most at keeping the worse part of me at bay.

Blarg. Again that phrase comes up. It doesn’t mean anything, except that I have nothing better to say. And I don’t.