Blogging has passed beyond a simple chore to a necessity; it has been three weeks since my last entry. I’m shocked at my laziness. How could I wait so long? When so much has been happening? I shake my head in disapproval.
But now that I have been thoroughly chastised, I may as well catch you up on everything since I last blogged on December 21st. Actually, my last real entry was before even that far-off date, since the December 21st update was only a quick announcement of my intentions to move the blog to my own weblog suite, dubbed “Bloop,” a combination of the word “blog” and the acronym, “OOP”, which stands for Object-Oriented Programming, a method I attempted to employ in the the coding of the suite. It’s not really done, but I aim to put it online within a week or two, perhaps sooner, if DNS resolves quickly.
I recently upgraded my MediaCatch web hosting account to a reseller plan for the tiny price of $50; I can now host multiple domains. With this development, I have decided to open up my own web design company. This won’t be anything full time, but I’ll gladly accept any client that asks, up to seven for now, since that is the limit of my hosting (and probably the limit of my ability to manage). I must admit I’m no Daz when it comes to graphics and web design, but I do it pretty well. At least my designs are better than those of others I know.
My real reason for the web design company is for the server-side work, or PHP. I’ve noticed with this latest project that my skills in programming have improved hugely compared to the way they were only a few months ago, and it seems I will soon have a complete grasp of the OOP standard and its merits. So perhaps I’ll get a chance to hone my skills and make a little money on the side.
As for money, I’ve hoarded over $300 toward my long-desired dream PC, though it’s beginning to look like whatever I get won’t be exactly that. I’m contemplating building my own, as I have many times in the past. This would be the cheapest route, but I’d be depending on my own skills in hardware assembly, and truthfully, they aren’t the greatest. The most I’ve done is upgrade my current PC’s memory and video card. I also had to replace the fan, which barely counts. Then again, many people haven’t even opened the case, and still more think that their computer is made by Microsoft without realizing that the manufacturer of the hardware and the manufacturer of the software are completely different companies. Further more, most PC manufacturers don’t even make the components; they just buy components from other companies and put them all together in a box. This is why it is so easy (supposedly) for regular nerds to build their own PCs, and is also the reason that homegrown PCs are sometimes better than top-of-the-line models made by vendors like Dell and HP.
Anyway, that is one route I might take. I still have my eye on the Alienware, but since I am only one-eighth of the way there, I don’t have much hope of ever getting one. I recently found a company whose prices are even higher than Alienware’s, VoodooPC. I won’t even link to their website, it is so painfully pricey. A PC equivalent to Alienware in speed and other specifications is about $3,500. Ouch.
So I remain undecided on the whole computer thing. All I know is that I need the money before I can buy anything, another reason for the design business. I’m afraid, however, that I’ll finally get an Alienware or even a nice Sony Vaio and realize that it’s not such a big deal after all. That would be horribly disappointing, but it could happen. I wouldn’t want to waste thousands on something I find I don’t much care for.
Moving on, I didn’t do anything incredibly spectacular for Christmas. My family opened presents on the 24th so that we could drive to Colorado the next day. All I got of importance was a CD player, Final Fantasy X-2 (which isn’t really that good), and SOCOM II (which IS good). I had no books for the twelve-hour drive from Phoenix to Buena Vista (pronounced with a Midwestern accent: BOO-NA-VISS-TAA), so I was forced to re-read my copy of the fifth Harry Potter book. I caught a few things I didn’t notice before, but it was otherwise less-than-fulfilling. I did finish it, though, amazingly enough. (It’s 800 pages long.)
Christmas in Colorado was somewhat more fun than I expected. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but I’ve already been there four or more times, most of those times for Christmas, so the novelty of being there has more than gone. Pretty much all we did was eat, either at my grandparents’ house or at a pizza restaurant in the town of Salida (we went there five times in one day, once). We also watched a few movies, one of which was O Brother Where Art Thou, a recent remake of The Odyssey that most people didn’t care for. But, since it’s set in the Deep South during the early 1900s and is filled with hick humor and countrified jokes, it is the signature film of the Ricketts clan. (Ricketts is my mother’s maiden name.) We’re supposed to be watching that same movie this semester in Honors English to coincide with our Odyssey unit. Weird how those thing happen.
My mom, dad, and younger brother went skiing one day, while I stayed back, preferring the cheap shops of Salida to humiliating myself by strapping my feet to two planks and sliding down a hillside. My grandma, uncle, and aunt were with me, and they went to a consignment store looking for deals, pulling me along. I was pleasantly surprised to find two books, The Final Chronicles of Nostradamus and Timeline that I hadn’t yet read among the store’s vast collection of diet and health books. Funny that people only seem to give those kind of books away: it must mean that none of the diets work.
I found more books, this time, the first three novels in a series of a dozen or so, at a little new and used bookstore in “downtown” Salida. The total price of all five of the books I purchased that day: $7.50. Yeah, it was really that cheap. So much for Barnes and Noble.
You may have noticed that I am now nearing one million keystrokes. That rocks. The WhatPulse client also counts mouse clicks, too, of which I have 25,000. I do a lot more typing than I do clicking. Right now I’m ranked 943rd, after a long lapse in my amount of typing during the Christmas break. Speaking of which, I returned home with only four days left in my vacation, a time of New Year’s partying and getting ready for the new school year. If only I’d had another week…
I went to school Monday after barely catching the bus. PE sucked; all these new kids, mostly jerk children who had previously been in health, arrived in my class, so now I have more people to put up with. My friend Jim and I both agree that PE is a useless class that should be made optional so that kids can use the extra period to take a class that they actually want to attend. It’s not the physical exertion; I really don’t mind that much. It’s more the fact that I have to be in a class with people I don’t think much of, which can make it hard to concentrate on self improvement. Frankly, I’m beginning to dread it. And the threat of running six minutes daily (that’s a lot for an out-of-shape walrus like myself) to prepare for the mile run only makes matters worse. At least I have Jim. I don’t know what I’d do without someone else to bear the horribleness with me.
After PE came English, which almost sucked as much. I had expected a bit of a break, kind of a “get-back-in-your-groove” week, but instead we were assigned a new book, The Odyssey, which I mentioned earlier. It’s not an easy read, and we have to get through two books (chapters) per night, as well. After that was geometry, a welcome respite in a day of horror and pain. All we did was shade diagrams of squares (we’re starting rotations and translations and such).
Lunch was good, as usual, and many conversations were spoken under the Tree of Conversation, on the Bench of Elevated Seating, near the Pipe of Convergence, also near the Bathroom of Lunchtime Smoking. Afterward was social studies; all we did was read and outline a chapter. Then there was biology, my least favorite of all my classes, PE excepted (I won’t give PE the distinction of even being a class). We’re starting chemistry, which is okay. It’s not something you fall asleep in, especially when the class’ only new student, a jerk child who transferred from another period, Zach Pelfrey, is constantly making jokes and being generally loud. At least he can manage to be funny, unlike most of the other goons in my non-honors classes.
And finally, there was Spanish, which was okay, but less fun than normal. We started the -ar preterite tense, which is abnormally easy, though Nasr doesn’t make it out to be that way. I’ve already started using -er and -ir preterite in most of my work, as well. The only thing to watch out for is those annoying stem-changes, where the spelling of a verb changes to reflect its pronounciation. Overall, I think Spanish is much better than English, both in structure and in speech. Americans seem to scorn Spanish because of its association with “those dirty Mexicans” whom we are all told to hate. (For what reason, I’d like to know.) We should change our national language to Spanish and our national music to rap just to spite racists. (I don’t really like rap, though.)
It was nice when Monday was over. I could look forward to a long lay-in the next morning, since I had an orthodontic appointment at 9:15, meaning no school in the morning for me. I didn’t even get up until 7:30, a whole hour later than normal. Whoa! The appointment was to get my braces off, which just rocks the house. I no longer have a mouth of metal. My teeth are white (mostly) and shiny. Oh yeah.
Except that I have to wear horrible plastic retainers for three days. Then I can just wear them at night, which is good. Jim said that he still wears his sometimes, even though he got his braces off several years ago. I guess you just have to wear them forever, since your teeth will move without them. It would suck to have to repeat three years of braces because of a lack of wearing a retainer. And my retainer(s) is (are) more advanced and better than most people’s. They gave me clear Invisalign type things. The only question I have is why I couldn’t just wear them from the beginning and gradually change my teeth. Why use metal if you can use clear, unnoticable, plastic? Oh well, it’s all over now, and I only have a day left of wearing the retainers 24 hours a day.
Nothing else of note has happened since. I did have to face PE again, in which I did some half-hearted pushups and shot some baskets. It really sucks now that we have double the kids in that class. I was much happier last semester when there were only a few, but now there’s Mr. Labelle’s class, and he insists on combining us together all the time, so we end up claustrophobically crammed into the same gym. Dah naa naa naa naa, it sucks, it sucks! I dunno, it’s not really that bad, I just hate it when they change a good thing, and that seems to have happened a lot this semester. I’m counting down the days.
It’s 6:00 now, and I should be getting to my neglected mound of homework, but I’m sure there’s something else to say first…
Oh yeah, a long time ago I did a long commentary on religion, especially Catholicism, after reading the book, the Da Vinci Code. Then I got an email soon afterward from my friend Keegan, who made some good points on how Catholicism differs from other Christian religions. I regret the error of placing all Christian religions in one category.
Anyway, Keegan told me a little about his religion, LDS (or Mormon, as some would say, though that name isn’t preferred by members of the LDS church), and how he had had the existence of God proven to him not once, but twice, with two different experiences. I won’t describe them, as I don’t know if he’d want them published, but I can say that the stories he told in his email did affect my thoughts on religion. I still don’t believe in God, I’m sorry to say. (Actually, this is the first time I’ve said outright that I no longer am a believer.) Perhaps this decision will be my downfall when the Apocalypse comes and I am struck down by the “wrath of God”. Maybe I’ll change my mind later. But this is what I think right now:
There is no God. No supreme being(s), no almighty creator of the world. My reasons for this vary, but one is that many civilizations have had gods in the past, and none of their deities turned out to be the God. Therefore, couldn’t the God Christians now worship be just another of those non-existent beings that have been thought up throughout history? Is that not possible?
I have a cynical mind, one that depends on facts and tends to find ways to contradict them. I am unable to believe something solely on faith, with absolutely no proof other than a giant book that was supposedly ordained by God as his own will and word, but was actually written by other people, who were purportedly blessed by God and understood him. Then there’s the fact that the Bible was corrupted by the Catholic Church over many centuries, prompting later factions such as the Protestants and Latter-Day Saints to come up with their own books to supplement the Bible, such as the Book of Common Prayer and the Book of Mormon. This is great, but these books were written by humans as well, which as is proven by the Catholic Church, does not guarantee their purity. I don’t mean to slam the Anglicans and Mormons, here, I’m just saying that human nature is against them.
And therein lies the problem. Humans are not perfect, and humans tend to try to use things of great influence for their own gain, the same way the medieval Catholic Church influenced the views of worshippers, even managing to start wars “in God’s name”. And because of this imperfection, the Bible must also be flawed, because, though it is approved of by God, it was not his writing. Right?
Human nature also prompted the beginning of religion in the first place. Long ago, people needed someone to blame for their troubles, so they thought up the idea of gods. This is shown in The Odyssey where the Greeks are forever saying that their mishaps occur because of forgotten sacrifices and other religious mistakes that are easily forgiven. Now that humans have reached a level of technological expertise that we can control most things around us, there is no longer a need to blame someone, because our civilization is as near to Utopia is it has ever been. A good reason for the decline of religion in modern times. It has lost its usefulness, and therefore its power.
These are just some ideas I’m throwing out. Again, if you happen to be offended by this, I’m happy to claim the right of freedom of speech. You should also be happy to claim the right of freedom of religion, meaning that you can worship God whether I think its right or not. So we can both be happy.
Eggplant.