Brettia

Above is a preview screenshot of Organon 2, with a pretty new layout and blogging engine by yours truly. I am so cool.

Normally I wouldn’t blog three days in a row, nor would I post such a short entry, but I am furious right now. Whoever built this website should die. The link takes you to the page you would see if you tried to go to proffs.nu using Netscape Navigator 4.x, Netscape 6/7, Mozilla 1.x, MozillaFirebird 0.x, and all other browsers using the Gecko architecture, which is just about everything except for Internet Explorer.

This is infuriating for several reasons. First, it takes some shots at the open-source community (indirectly, of course) that are unfair and ungrateful. Second, the author of the notice puts forth comments like this:
“We have done so to remind you that your current browser is unable to make this web site look the way it should.”
Comment: Wrong. Internet Explorer is unable to make websites look the way they should. IE forces web designers to design specifically for that platform, so layouts that look fine in IE are broken in Mozilla and Opera. It is actually possible to design pages that look fine in both IE6 and Moz/Opera, because I have done so with Organon and most other websites I have built.

“Use the browser Microsoft Internet Explorer. Either version 5.0 or a later version. Good idea. It’s probably included in your operating system.”
Comment: Wrong again. Not a good idea. Not “included in your operating system.” Microsoft doesn’t “include” software, it forces it down customers’ throats. Also, IE is plagued with security issues and other problems. It doesn’t have a download manager. It displays valid websites incorrectly. It has a poor implementation of PNG alpha transparency. I could go on and on, but these are the ones that matter most.

“Write to the makers of your current browser and ask them why it does not show web pages the same way Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0+ does. Since more than 90% of all users are using Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0+, one would think that the propeller heads who make your current browser would take that into consideration. In particular, you could ask them why scripting and cascading style sheets, the two most important technologies for web designers, are treated so differently in their browser compared to Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0+. If they answer, they may claim that they are on a mission from God or that their browser is more compliant with the recommendations of an organisation called the World Wide Web Consortium (rather impressive name or what?) Then you should ask them what they think is most important. Hundreds of millions of people using Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0+ or some mumbo jumbo organisation.”
Comment(s): The author assumes that people use IE because it displays pages “correctly.” This is far from the case, as stated in previous comments. People use IE because they don’t know that any alternatives exist.
On scripting, the author says that other browsers display things differently than IE. First, “scripting” could refer to many different kinds of scripting, such as server-side scripting like PHP and Perl. The browser in use has no impact on the result of server-side scripting. The author was probably referring to JavaScript, a form of client-side scripting like Flash ActionScript. While useful in many situations, JavaScript should be used sparingly because some people might not have the Java plug-in needed to view such script effects.

Oh, and CSS is a W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) specification, so by slamming the W3C the author is slamming the very technique that they use. In fact, HTML, XHTML, XML, XSLT, SOAP, and a myriad of other languages and specifications are all W3C managed and manufactured, and Internet Explorer probably wouldn’t support half of the W3C specs that it does if the W3C hadn’t pressured Microsoft a bit. Finally, the reason CSS is quirky in Internet Explorer, especially with padding and such, is because IE doesn’t support it the way it should, and probably never will since Microsoft has all but ceased development on it (except for the weekly security patch that can, ironically, only be downloaded through WindowsUpdate, which requires Internet Explorer to use ActiveX controls (the main reason for most of the security problems) to scan your machine for necessary updates). If WindowsUpdate can use ActiveX to scan your machine, think of what other, more damaging things it might do.

My rant for the week. Must get back to studying for finals.

UPDATE:
It seems proffs.nu saw sense and took down that page. They still have a redirect in place for non-Internet Explorer browsers, though.

Hey, it’s my second entry in as many days. Perhaps I’m a better blogger than I thought. And I am pushing 40,000 words, so…half a book? As if any of this is really worth publishing. Maybe in the future when people are trying to look back and see what people thought in the past. Still, I’m no Anne Frank. (For many reasons, this is a good thing, such as the events that occur on pages 130 and 142 of her diary.)

The real reason I’m writing now is that a great weight has been lifted from my shoulders. Today was the day I set aside for the completion of a project for English. This project, a model of a theme in the play, “The Glass Menagerie,” was one of the hardest I have ever attempted to accomplish.

First of all, the play was nothing special. It was about a dysfunctional family in the 1930s, and how they all conspired against each other to make their lives miserable inadvertently. Second, my teacher, Mrs. Kulinski, had to go to meetings all day on Thursday and Friday, so we had a horrible substitute who knew nothing about what she was doing and was unable to operate the telephone-controlled VCR. I also got pulled out of class (thankfully!) by Mr. Trapani that period to help him with…something. I don’t remember what it was anymore. So I missed most of the movie, anyway. Then on Friday I put on my sweet, goody-goody smile and was able to get the substitute to let me borrow a “Menagerie” book and read the end. Like I said, it sucked.

Friday was spent doing an incredibly time-consuming study guide, which I was able to complete by working on it in math, social studies, biology, and Spanish. It’s amazing that my grades are so high with the amount of times I completely ignore my teachers each day. Last week was all about preparing for finals, anyway, so it wasn’t anything major to miss. I just did the worksheets and study guides and found a book to keep me occupied. I was able to get through two just by reading during my spare time during school and on the bus last week. Not bad.

Back to the story about the project. Anyway, Mrs. Kulinski was gone, and I didn’t really understand what I was supposed to do. I could have e-mailed her, but I didn’t…for some reason. (Thought: How could I have forgotten to e-mail her?) So I was confused, and I started working at about 2:00 today. I finished at 7:30. Five hours, once you take out dinner. Ouch. And all throughout that time I was worrying about whether or not it fit in with what my teacher wanted, which was kind of vague. At the end, I think I actually got it right. Sure, the workmanship is nothing to be proud of, but I think it represents what I want it to represent. Hopefully it will be better that most other people’s projects.

Did I do anything else today? No. No, because I had that stupid useless project to do. I’m not as angry about it as I was. I need to work on my church’s website, which has been in limbo since sometime in October. I just don’t have time anymore.

Again, it’s ironic that I should become so busy right after complaining that I had nothing to do. Now, though, it’s all downhill until Christmas break, and I’m thankful for it. For me, finals are easy. I have an uncanny ability to retain useless information, therefore I can remember everything I learn in school. I’m even better at remembering things when there is some kind of defect associated with it. I might remember a quote if I find a typo in it, or I might remember a theorem if I used it on a proof and got the question wrong. Things like that. Imperfections and flaws. I’m lucky that humans aren’t perfect.

I’m lucky for other reasons, too. Sometimes I wonder if I have God (or Buddha, or Mohammad) on my side. Things just work out, sometimes, when it looks like I’m doomed to fail. It’s usually just little things, like once in second grade when the whole class was talking (myself included) and the teacher told us all to pull a card (card-pulling was the discipline system) except for me. I should have said I was talking too. But I didn’t. I take advantage of stuff like that.

Then again, maybe I make my own luck. I’m a good student, most of the time, academically and behaviorally. Perhaps teachers cut kids a break if they have a history of being good and quiet in class. Maybe they understand that even the good kids make a mistake every once in a while. I think that must be it. And I attribute things to luck that were really my own doing. Is that some kind of extreme modesty? Maybe. I think I just lose sight of what I have accomplished since I am forever thinking ahead to the next task.

That brings me to another thing: when is it the right time to stop? How do I know when I’ve worked enough, when I should just enjoy life and get out of the house and do what I want? Will that time ever come? Most Americans already work until they’re at least 62 1/2, so that they can retire with government benefits. After 57 years of school, college, and work, can those retirees now enjoy life? No, because they’re old and can’t do most of the things they would have done if they were younger. Retirees go from being a slave to their job to a slave to their age.

It’s funny how we say that we abolished slavery after the Civil War, when slavery is still around today. Except now, we have something stronger than the tyrannical slavery that was practiced in the 18th and 19th centuries. We have social slavery. Is it not true that people are slaves to their own lives? Is it not true that people are forced to do what they should do, not what they really want to do? People are slaves to their jobs because they need money. They are slaves to money because they need it to buy food and material items to help them flaunt their wealth and “live better.”
Because society as a whole seems to be focused on accumulating possessions and wealth, we are, in turn, each slaves to each other. This is no longer social contract theory, where everyone must give up certain rights to society as a whole. This is fascist contract theory, where everyone must give up all their rights to society as a whole, whether they want to or not. People who try to break out of the rigid social system end up publicly humiliated or in jail. Now, public humiliation really doesn’t sound that bad, if it means freedom from the shackles of society. But in truth, public humiliation is society’s greatest weapon. The brave extremists who do risk this punishment are the Michael Jacksons of the world.

No, I don’t think Michael Jackson is innocent. Nor do I think what he did to all those little kids was right. But I question the authority that made his acts of homosexuality “wrong.” I’m not gay myself, but I’m no homophobe. Let people do what they want. The only reason people are so vehemently against such things as gay marriages is that they don’t want to be labeled gay themselves. And they don’t want to be labeled gay because they fear that they will be oppressed and ridiculed like so many gays are. For this same reason, many homosexuals won’t admit their sexual preference, even to those closest to them. It all comes down to the fact that they are crushed by the overwhelming threat of humiliation by society. Like I said, the most powerful weapon of our culture.

I don’t approve of homosexuality. But I don’t really want to get into that. I do, however, applaud those who go against the flow, against the trend, to stand up for what they believe is right. These are the people that have made our society what it is today, molding and shaping it into its current form. Arguably, our culture is in dire need of improvement right now. But at least the brave ones who stood and fought, from the Revolutionaries to today’s Greenpeace and PETA, made a difference. As a final question, I ask: What point is there in living if you make no difference in the world during your lifetime?

Hello. Today I made a decision. Today is the beginning of my path to righteousness, to feeling content with myself. I am a big keed. And for a while, it was okay. I didn’t feel hindered by it, nor did I really care. But now…I sometimes wish I was build like a normal kid my age, even if it mean some decrease in height. I’d even go so far as giving up my academic skill if it meant I could be marginally skilled athletically. Alright, maybe not.

These days, it no longer matters what you look like. You can be purple-skinned, ungendered, and four-armed, and, if you’ve got some semblance of intelligence, you can get somewhere in the world. It was only two hundred years ago that being like that would get you locked up in an insane asylum where mad scientists performed prefrontal lobotomies on you.

I guess I’m kind of avoiding the point here. Americans, as we all know, are becoming fatter. Children and adults. There may even be a time when more people are overweight than are normal-sized. We know that diets are not the answer, since they are not sustainable over time. (This doesn’t mean people should stuff themselves, however.) Exercise helps, but it requires time, a precious commodity that most people don’t have much of. But no matter what, it requires a change in lifestyle. And people hate change.

My friends could tell you that I’m not really that fat. Or so Dylan claims. Perhaps I’m blessed, or perhaps I’ve just mastered the methods of keeping it from showing, but people really don’t seem to notice that much. Maybe they notice more than I think. But it isn’t about what everyone else thinks. It’s about what I think. And I have grown to hate the lard.

The lard is my name for my gross obesity. It grew out of the dark days known now as 7th grade, when Johns-EE still terrorized the halls of our school. (He still teaches at STMS, but we’re not there anymore, thankfully.) But someday, the word will no longer have meaning, at least not when applied to me. Because then I won’t be lard-EE.

Deciding to slim down and be more physically fit is nothing new for me. Usually my feeble tries last about a week, and then I’m back to my old habits. Hopefully this time it will be different, even with the temptations of Christmas looming ahead. We’ll see.

I’ve thought up a kind of plan for doing this. Here:
The Plan
2 x 10 push-ups nightly, increasing by five each week
2 x 20 sit-ups nightly, increasing by five each week
No snacks. Some kind of breakfast
Max. of 2 20 oz Vanilla Pepsis weekly, decreasing over time
One serving of everything at dinner (no refills)

This probably looks like a diet. It isn’t. A diet is normally where a person eats less that the average person would. I eat far more than the average person already, so all I am doing is returning to the level that I should be at. I’ve been drinking a lot more water, too, which is good, hopefully to replace the caffeine and lower my intake of soda and such. And the exercise is light, but I want to get to the point where I do a fair amount of exercise daily, rather than the minimum P.E. requirement. I don’t want to start with anything overly strenuous or inconvenient, though, for fear of giving up early.

The key ingredient that I haven’t yet mentioned is will. I have to really want it. I have to grow to see food for what it really is: food, and not something to hoard or inflate myself with. It won’t be easy, but perhaps it will be successful.

And now onward to everything else I have to say:
I have an English project due Monday. I have no idea what to do. There’s a good chance I’ll get a bad grade on it, if I can think up anything to turn in at all. I dunno. It would be better to do it and get marked off ten or fifteen points rather than not do it and lose fifty. My grade in that class is pretty strong; it can handle it.

In other classes, we’ve been doing study guides and such to review for the final. Most of them are easy and boring, but I’m surprised at how much I don’t remember sometimes. Fogelson is doing a Jeopardy on Monday, which I will kick ass at, as always. In biology, we’re doing nothing, as usual. I’d be happy with never taking another science class again. By the way, I chose my classes for next year, and I think chemistry will be much better than biology.

Class - Reason
Honors English 10 - I might get stuck with Thorpe, who is widely thought to be either a drug addict or a witch, though I don’t really know her. I took this just because I didn’t want an English class stuffed with jerk children.
Honors Algebra 3-4 - I’ll probably have Delgrosso, an all-around nice guy, as far as I know. I already took geometry, so this is next in line.
AP European History - I’m still wishing I’d taken AP World History, even after all the despairing over the possible homework load. I’ll have Fogelson for AP Euro, which is good.
Honors Chemistry - This one was really from peer pressure from my friends. I don’t really want to take it. But at least we’ll all be in it together.
Web Development - Technically I don’t have the credentials to be enrolled in this class. But I know counselors, I know Mr. Trapani. He needs me enough to pull strings, hopefully.
Spanish 5-6 - The next level. My friend Jim is taking French, to my dismay. Somehow I don’t think he’ll last long. Tyler and I are the language people of our group, and we’re both in Spanish (though he is a level below me because he didn’t take it in middle school both years).

More Honors and AP than Freshman year, which is good, because I feel kind of underchallenged right now. It’s my own fault, I know. I won’t make the mistake again. I really wish I could do the classes of my own choosing without needing to think about what I need to graduate or what universities want me to have.

My Dream Schedule
Creative Writing/Advanced Creative Writing
AP European History
Philosophy I-II
Spanish 5-6
Web Development
Networking
That would be cool, as unrealistic as it is. I have to have one English class, and I’d need a math class too. Requirements are stupid; they’re only there to keep the idiots from making dumb mistakes. People don’t realize that they limit the possibilities of creative or intelligent children. But without them, the idiot group would take recreational basketball all day.
There should be a test that decides whether you are responsible enough to have complete control over your class choices and schedule or not. But that will never happen, because the soccer moms will riot in the streets, screaming that a system like that would be unfair to their “special” children. (Camera focuses on children of soccer moms smoking marijuana and having premarital sex in the background while their parents are occupied with “fighting for their education.”)

The truth is, most kids just don’t care about their high school education. Rather than letting parents step in, I say we let the dumbasses run wild while the good children take the classes that they think will help them most in whatever career they have chosen. Then, when the dumbasses see reason and realize that they will need a job to support the eleven children they’ve each fathered, they can work for the smart kids. That’s fair, isn’t it? I think so.

It’s funny how Arizona has tried to reform their education system in recent years. AIMS testing, more schools, more money, but less teachers. Yes, that makes sense. And while we’re at it, let’s hand out more pink slips while signing a bill to begin building a $400 million football stadium for a team that sucks. That’s $400 million of taxpayer funds being wasted on the Cardinals. Send them to Alberquerque, or Las Vegas, or Podunk, Idaho, for all I care. No one goes to their games to watch them, anyway. They go to watch the opposing team.

And back to the $400 million dollar question: why do we have a $1 billion budget deficit? Hmm…I wonder. If we’ve spent half a billion dollars on a new stadium, and another $200 million on a hockey arena, and another $50 million on rubberizing two-year-old freeways that should have been rubberized in the first place, and $50 million more on widening those newly-rubberized freeways that were too narrow to begin with…that’s $700 million already. I wish I could vote.

You know what today is. That’s right, Wednesday. Brett’s Good Day, right? Well, close. It obviously needs to be December 3rd for it to be a truly Good Day. Today all four of us (me, Jim, Tyler, and Dylan) got an infusion of Vanilla-y Goodness (Pepsi Vanilla). Tomorrow will be another Vanilla-y Day because I received a $1.25 shipping and handling fee for delivery of my Christmas list to my parents. Actually, I wrote $1.25 on the back and took the five quarters gleaming up at me from my mom’s dresser. It’ll make me much happier than it would have made her.

On Christmas lists, mine barely counted as a list. The only two things I really wanted totaled $75: a new portable CD player and some iTunes (Music Store) credit. I really like downloading songs from the thing, and then I can burn them to CD and play them as much as I want. Also, less important items included an Ethernet router (to connect my PS2 to the Internet), Dr. Pepper, and Final Fantasy X-2. I was surprised to find that there really wasn’t anything that I wanted after stripping out the new computer.

On computers, I think I’ll be able to get one by my birthday in June. Sure, this sounds like a long time, but with $20/week in chores wages, $100 in U.S. Savings Bonds which I might not be able to spend, $100 for taking care of someone’s house (to be paid in January), and about $150 in birthday money, I should have about $1200. Enough to pay my good friend Chris McBeth (husband of my former math teacher, we went to Europe together) to build me one, or enough to provide collateral to convince my parents to pay part of the fees so that I can pay them back in installments or something. I’m not sure if I can wait, but I’ll try.

Also, I’ve scrapped the whole idea of getting the Macromedia Suite or Photoshop CS. First, Tyler might be able to get me Photoshop 7 through slightly illegal means. Second, I got Paint Shop Pro 8 at a steal of a price ($40) on the Friday after Thanksgiving. PSP was rated top affordable graphics editor by PC World, and I agree. I’ve tried the trial versions of just about every other editor, but none really compared to PSP. Of course, Photoshop has many tools that are more advanced, but I can live with 7 instead of CS. That should work for all I need it to.

Eventually I’ll post an update on my pursuit of an uncorrupted, untarnished, honest religion, with some comments on an email my friend Keegan sent me a long time ago that I keep forgetting to write about. I suppose he probably thinks I hate him or something, since I continue to ignore that email and things he sends me on Brettia.

I need to die now.

Eggplant.

I might have forgotten to mention in my last entry that my computer fan stopped working after the little triple-bypass PCI surgery it had on Sunday. The fan is an integral part of any computer, as important as sweat glands in humans. It keeps things cool, in more ways than one. And so I’ve had to do my homework and coding while listening intently to make sure the fan didn’t stop suddenly. Until now. For the new fan has arrived, four days ahead of schedule. And it whirrs nicely.

So after that was done and I had watched That ’70s Show, it was time for homework. And so much homework. Well, not really. All I had to do was compose about eight lines of a script for a skit in Spanish. Someday I’ll force my Spanish teacher to compose eight lines for a database abstraction layer in PHP. We’ll see who really has the gift of tongues. Slave labor rocks.

And so does music. I haven’t yet shared that I love music about as much as anything. Except rap. In my opinion, rap is nothing more than some jumbled words about sex and drugs strung together and spoken by some white freak who wishes he were black. And because of that white freak, whose name commonly starts with ‘E’, all the white kids in the world want to be black too. As if skin color makes a difference. Then there are the black rappers, who are admired and continue the trend toward skin color conversion. This is just weird. This is Michael Jackson. Let’s not go there.

You may be wondering what happened to my once-eloquent speech. It died. I just read another blog by some guy or another, and he types in lower case sentence fragments. My English teacher would be appalled. It was quite entertaining though, because he talks about weird things like the monkeys that invaded his house and his love for parades and how he wants to get a screenshot of the infamous Paris Hilton sex tape that isn’t pornographic. “Is that even possible?” asks his imaginary buddy.

Only one thing to say about a blogger like him: weird keed. People like that shouldn’t blog. But if that rule were enforced, I wouldn’t be blogging either.

That last sentence could have been the end of this entry. But no, I chose to continue, losing all the drama of that conclusion. I’m like that. Anyway, today was a good day, and it was proclaimed by the great Gimnacio (Jim) that today is Brett’s Good Day, a day that comes only on Wednesday, December 3rd. Third days of other months are good too, especially if they’re Wednesdays, and December 3rd is sacred. But when it is Wednesday, December 3rd, then, the planets have truly aligned. For today I scored the first goal in a floor hockey game.

You scored a goal? you ask. That’s it? You don’t know how rare it is for me to score a point in any sport, except maybe basketball. And this wasn’t just any first goal, this was a Perfect goal. (Note how Perfect is capitalized for emphasis.) It went like this:
The puck was about three feet in front of the opposing goal. Five people dived upon it, hacking and slashing with their sticks. It was getting bloody, when, lo and behold! The puck escaped the brawl and scooted lazily toward me! I raised my stick high, and hit hard, sending the puck through a gap, straight into the goal! And it went directly in! Dead center! And so, today became a good day. And I found a PE sport that I could enjoy.

The actual proclamation came at lunch, when poor Tyler was attempting to goad the temperamental soda machine located near the Bench of Elevated Seating into giving him a Pepsi Vanilla. Angered when it said placidly, “Try Another Selection,” Tyler was forced to settle for a lousy Sierra Mist.
Then I said the Perfect quote. It went, “‘Try Another Selection’ doesn’t mean push another button. It means, ‘Find another machine, because you put your dollar in a crappy one, you dumbass!’”
This Perfect quote was said with such force and seriousness that it became funny. It’s not so funny now, but that’s how things always are. You can make anyone laugh if the joke is said at the right time, in the right context. I got lucky again.

And today would have been more Perfect, except that I stayed after for a Literary Magazine meeting and was dismayed to see that all we were doing was take a yearbook picture. So I went over to Sonoran Trails (my old middle school), and got some Europe pictures from my old math teacher, Mrs. McBeth. Then I went to the library and reminisced with Mrs. Buck for a while, returning to CSHS at about 3:45.

Another lucky thing happened at this point. The library (at CSHS) actually had TWO (count ‘em, two!) reasonably interesting books! I checked them out quickly, fearing some predator would usurp my newfound treasures. And I was pleased. The world was right.

Eggplant.