| < September 2003 | Matthew Loar > Blog | November 2003 > |
Somehow, I doubt the accuracy of this result.
Fight Club!
What movie Do you Belong in?(many different outcomes!)
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This sucks. Halloween is on a Friday, but I have to take the SAT II Saturday morning. Oh well. I'm going to find SOMETHING to do.
Key Club is seriously sucking. I'd do something about it, but this is the worst time ever, since it's the end of the quarter. I'll get stuff done next weekend, when we have 4 days. I've decided that it's going to take some more executive decisionmaking, though. There's not enough time to leave everything to the board. I also have to work on the online resources...
I still have to finish my English and Econ essays. Make that "start." Sigh...
Bonnie came to ask me for help with Econ at lunch today. Coolness.
Just one more day, and then I can blow everything off. Who cares about the SAT
II, anyway?
I have to get some junk done and then get to bed, so here is the recap of my day:
Forgot the Food Drive envelope at home. Oops.
Did fun chem lab with CBL. Go, technology!
Pretty sure I got correct answer to Calc test take-home problem. Mrs. Butler said that the tests were good, so I am hopeful.
Rest of day pretty routine.
Got envelope and did food drive. (Crap, I still have to email an announcement to Mr. V. It doesn't matter, he said he wouldn't be able to get it in until Friday anyway.) Meeting tomorrow. Lots of people, a number of cans, good times! Even Chris came to help out. Rock on, Chris!
Matt Cuellar paid me a surprise visit today. Man, has he changed. We agreed we must get together sometime and get Chinese food.
Had interview with MIT guy. It went pretty well.
Now I have to get junk done, especially get started on English and Econ papers due Friday. The latter I have to fortunate coincidence to have to collaborate with Bonnie on. Actually, Bonnie and I are in the same group for the former as well. Weirdness, but GOOD weirdness.
Well, that ends the recap. Tune in tomorrow for another dose of masochism.
Post-Hypnotized Peter
What Office Space character are you?
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But instead, I'm taking Quizilla quizzes.
cuddle and a kiss on the forehead - you like to be
close to your special someone and feel warm,
comfortable, and needed
What Sign of Affection Are You?
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I just applied to two colleges in the span of an hour. MIT will follow shortly.
CD burner broken after Mom killed circuit on Thurs. Replaced with old CD-ROM from Uncle Paul, now it won't play half of my CDs.
Somehow, I had one of the most productive days of my life today, but didn't make a dent in my To-Do list or homework.
Man, I'm getting tired. It's a good thing that it's Daylight Savings tonight,
I need the extra hour.
Well, I felt smart because I just got my SAT scores, and I got a 1500: 740 math and 760 verbal.
Then I felt dumb because it took me until now to realize that "Evil Olive" is a palindrome.
BTW, check out the Evil Olive site, relaunched pro bono at SamAMac: Evil0livE Fan Site
I'll be back to gloat some more tomorrow.
Revelation: the derivative of a circle's area is its circumference. Spooky,
eh?
We beat York! Their team was entirely freshmen. How about them apples? Then we lost to Lyons Township, but that's no surprise. We managed to keep the spread to 300 points.
I made an appointment with the new MIT guy. Yay!
Had to cancel the Key Club meeting this Thursday because of a faculty meeting. The irony of this is that Allison called me just last night about the PCM she was planning for Thursday. I told I could meet with her at 3:50 at Glenbard West, and hung up. Then I realized that I had the club meeting on Thursday, so I had to call her back. Now I'm debating whether or not to try to set it back up since I don't have a club meeting anymore. I wonder if Chris would drive me there. He did think she was hot. I'll ask him tomorrow at our "emergency" board meeting. Joy.
I have to do calculus now. Then I need to work on my MIT app. Then I need to work on my English creative writing assignment. We have to tell a part of the Beowulf epic from the perspective of one of the minor characters. I chose Wealtheow because I enjoy a challenge. Well, a writing challenge, anyway. I happen to hate math challenges.
OK, off I go.
Oh yeah, we're watching With Honors in College Bound English. Cool.
Rock on! My mom called MIT today and they gave me this other guy, who lives in Wheaton. Kildeer, Wheaton...Kildeer, Wheaton... Anyway, I just tried to call him but he wasn't home. But whoever the nice lady who answered the phone was, she took my name and number and said he'd call me. Yay!!!
A strange thing happened at school today. I didn't get any homework. At least nothing due tomorrow. I'm not going to squander the time though, I have plenty to do. It's just a shame this couldn't have happened tomorrow, when I have a scholastic bowl meet. Glenbard West. We play York and Lyons Township. According to Mrs. Joyce, Lyons (the conference dominator) fears us. We so rock.
Got the tape of the board meeting in English today. It was kind of funny. First a messenger walks in with a stack of papers (invitations from Mrs. Constien for all the National Merit people to meet for a picture). Then, before Mr. Blair has a chance to distribute them, another messenger walks in with the tape. Mr. Blair lamented that nobody ever sends him money.
Well, I'm off to get many important things accomplished.
I'm not going to think about my grades at this point, because today is too
good to be depressed over something as trivial as grades.
Ol' Ryan is actually earning his keep (almost).
Still haven't gotten my MIT interview set up. MIT site says I should set it up by the 20th, which is Monday, but I'm still screwed.
I hate calculus.
Mr. V is still trying to steal my job. He doesn't realize he's not qualified for my job. I still think I did a good job of showing him that he needs to chill out.
Tomorrow is Friday. Yay. Had pretty much nothing but calculus tonight, which
means that my calc is still nowhere near done. Shucks.
Mr. Gerut sent in the MIT evaluation already! Yay!
Want to get a quick entry in before I go back to my homework.
Today we got out at 11:20. Chris and I went to Lumes for brunch, then dropped off those cards we made at Key Club weeks ago. Then we went to his house and did the chemistry, but all of that wonderful extra time was squandered playing Madden on his Xbox. Oh well.
I'm almost done with my Grendel Major Works Data Sheet. Have to meet with Mr. Blair on Friday.
I shall also have to have a conversation with Mr. Verthein. His micromanagement is not helping.
And no Mary, though I'm sorry to say it, I don't have a girlfriend. I have started talking to a certain somebody more often, though.
Well, back to the psycho monster book.
Saw the doc. He says I need to get more sleep. Well, duh.
Many thanks to Mary for (indirectly) pointing me here: Why I Will Never Have A Girlfriend. See, Jen? Statistics is useful.
Have an Econ commodity report due tomorrow, so I'd better get started. Ciao!
The latest of Chicken Little's escapades: Parents sue school over Wi-Fi.
In other news, I'm an AP Scholar. Whoop-de-do!
The meeting went OK, I guess. We actually had some new members there for Key Club 101, at least. Mr. Verthein is still loading things upon me. I guess that he felt that this meeting was a little disorganized. I'm going to see if this is a good opportunity to push parliamentary procedure. I'd love to actually use it, and our club might just be big enough for it to be appropriate.
I didn't spend much time in class today, since it was Centurion Picture Day. Mom suggested that I wear my Harvard shirt, and "Harvard" became the photographer's name for me.
Well, I have to go to a doctor's appointment (Yay). More updates later!
P.S. If you tried to read my blog today and got a picture of a lobster
instead, I have no idea what happened.
Actually, I have to analyze the statement, "One evil deed missed is a loss for all eternity." Here's what I've written so far:
Frankly, I don't know what the hell Grendel is talking about when he says this whole "One evil deed missed is a loss for all eternity." Call me naive, but I usually dismiss the actions of sociopathic monsters as a product of a diseased mind. I don't think that you could deny that Grendel is seriously insane. He argues with himself, something that I do, but only after years of taking stupid classes like this one drove me to madness.
EPIPHANY: I just realized why this book sucks. It's written by an American!!! And here I was thinking that I couldn't stand Brit Lit either. Emily Brontë is still a terrible author, though.
And from now on, I'm not reading any book endorsed by The New York Times.
In writing this, I'm wasting more time and sleep, but I don't care.
What the heck is going on. According to Chris (and by a conversation I had with Mr V. last week, a credible report), Mr. Verthein said that he could drive himself to the Kiwanis meeting tomorrow. Excuse me, but isn't that a REALLY big problem a couple years ago? And after he and Ms. Engel hassle us with all of those stupid permission forms. Which brings me to a related topic. I just remembered a couple days ago reading something about liability insurance provided by International, and I looked up and printed out the details in hopes that I can get the administration to consent to a blanket permission form for activities or something, especially since we seem to be the ONLY club que importa un pepino.
Also, Mr. Blair apparently has a very short memory. He has now effectively buried us in work again, giving us two more Major Works Data Sheets, one due Thursday! Plus, I spent all evening finishing that stupid book Grendel so that I can write a two-paragraph journal on a line at the end that doesn't make any sense whatsoever. The whole book is "how can I defy every notion about how to write a coherent piece of literature?" The book is pointless and stupid.
Speaking of structure, Mrs. Brown after telling us that structure wasn't important for people writing responses to actual college essay topics instead of one of her topics, gave me 0/10 for the "Conclusion" line on the rubric because I didn't have a conclusion paragraph. Who the heck uses this stupid "Introduction paragraph, 3 body paragraphs, conclusion paragraph" tripe anymore? For crying out loud, they pound that stupid formula into your brain in 5th grade, then they tell you that you have to make it "flow" using these things called "transitions," that don't actually make it flow; they just fill it with awkward, superfluous adverbs. And when you try to write for flow so that a reader might actually get something out of it, they tell you it's wrong. If the reader has such a short memory that he can't remember what I said in paragraph one, he can go back and read it again himself. I'm going to continue with my thoughts, thank you very much.
Calculus is absolutely stupid. She gives us like 20 problems for each section, and two days (if even) to do them. This is not conducive to learning. This is conducive to people scribbling answers (who cares if they're right? she doesn't check that, just whether they're done or not) and people "collaborating." Actually, the better form of collaboration she encourages, saying that we should have "calculus parties." Yet another thing to do in our "copious free time" (a phrase that Mr. Blair uses so often, it has become clichÃ(C)). Actually, I think some people in our class did have a calculus party, but I wasn't invited. That's OK. Pete and I have each other to copy off of, at lunch.
4th hour lunch sucks. It lends itself to leaving things to the day of, instead of getting a head start after they're assigned.
It's not that I'm taking too many APs. Two of them I could pass in my sleep (which, coincidentally, are the ones I DON'T sleep in). Chem is OK, since she gives us plenty of time to do the homework, and lab report due dates are extremely flexible. Tests are murder, though. No, my life has become what it is because of two classes, the ones which I most need to get into a good school.
I think I've run out of things to complain about. Oh, right, except this excerpt from the imood.com site. This is why I, along with most other people of my general nerdiness quotient, think AOL is an evil institution that needs to DIE:
If you use AOL: Make sure that your email options are set to "receive mail
from internet". If you have it set so you can't accept mail from the internet,
you will not be able to receive any mail from us which could cause problems in
the future. Also remember that your email address is YOURSCREENNAME@aol.com
and not just YOURSCREENNAME.
Darn it! SimpleHost's free service is down. I'm wondering if it's been discontinued. Nice of them to warn me if it did. What sucks, though, is that the upload mechanism was such a pain that I just used their editor to work on the Italian Ghetto site. Now that it's down, I don't have all of the updated files. Darn! I had wanted to redesign the site anyway, but now I don't have all of the stuff I've done already.
On a related note, Go Daddy Software has ended their sale on .us domains. What do you think, should it be italianghetto.com or italianghetto.us? They also redesigned their site to make the requisite Hot Blonde Chick even more prominent. Seriously, any site that has geeks as its target market has a Hot Blonde Chick on the front page (okay, sometimes it's not a blonde, but there is ALWAYS a chick).
Darn. I hope I can get to those files.
Simplehost is down. I think it has anticipated Mrs. Joyce. See, I put up a link to the Econ quizzes on the publisher's site on Italian Ghetto, and now everybody goes there. Well today, Mrs. Joyce said she was going to the site to see it for herself, and I was forced to wonder what she would think when she sees the picture of Chris looking like a stoner (or so many people have told me, including Chris himself, I think).
I have all sorts of junk to do tonight. Got to pull up all of those wonderful B's!
Well, dinnertime. ¡Hasta luego!
The Cubbies just won the division series! Woohoo!!!
BTW, WB won at Homecoming against York, 31-7. Rock on!
Doing calc and a million other things which will conspire to depress me and my grades.
Yesterday my siblings came to the house and we worked on renovating the kitchen. Now it's all yellow. Dad's already tearing up the floor.
They nearly finished the street last week, so hopefully it will be done by next weekend, if I survive to see next weekend. Woohoo! Three-day weekend! Unfortunately, I have to take the SAT Saturday morning and miss RTC, then Kyle's birthday party, then I have to interview with this guy from Olin on Sunday. Fun times ahead! Thankfully, Mary has volunteered to call that MIT guy. Thank you, Mary!
I just remembered that whole Kiwanis liability insurance thing. I'm wondering if we could somehow use it to wiggle out of these silly permission forms, since the administration doesn't seem to care about any of the other don't -have-blanket-liability-insurance-through-Kiwanis-International clubs doing whatever they want.
Have to walk to NHS tomorrow. Joy!
Oh yeah, guess who was Homecoming King? I'll give you a hint: after being crowned, he did the chicken walk at the behest of the football team.
I have to leave! There's something wrong with my duck!
Well, I only spent about 2 hours tonight working on a single SQL query for the Key Club database. I don't mind, though. Well, I'm going to hurriedly finish my chemistry (due tomorrow? who knows?) and then off to bed (well, a little Sir Arthur Conan Doyle will likely precede that, but yeah). Actually, I was immensely happy because last night I came upon a vocab word in my recreational reading and I was like, "Yes! It's all worth it now!" I do like vocab, though. It's fun to use words like eleemosynary (if you can spell them without spellcheck, that is!). I have to stop hanging out with Chris so much. I'm starting to use his little mispronunciations without realizing it.
Oh, here's a little tidbit. I tried to call the MIT alum to schedule and interview, but I got some very thrilled person on the phone who said he wouldn't be home until "at least 8" and that she didn't think that he did interviews anymore. Yay for me. Now I don't want to call back, but I can't just not call back, either. This sucks.
Well, we'll see if I can survive another week of this.
Your Big Five Results: I'm a O16-C52-E9-A50-N94 Big Five!!
Today was an OK day. Nothing much happened till lunch, when I got up and sang "Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter." It wasn't quite as well-received as "I'm Into Something Good," but it was OK. Chris shouted "YOU SUCK!!!" really loud, and then one of the lunchroom supervisors bawled him out. It was great.
Key Club went all right. There's so much to do, but the committees are working
pretty well. I like Mr. Verthein's suggestion of breaking into committees
every week, it seems like that would be a good idea. At least he seems like
he's letting me do my job more. I was afraid for a while that he would take
over everything. I've never been a very authoritarian person, and he seemed
all to eager to take over, but I'm probably reading too much into it. All I
know is that this meeting went better, and based on how many people wanted to
talk to me at the same time, I'm in control.
The Morality Test: Results: "Check out my Morality! 47% liberal, 53%
conservative"
Wow. I can't believe that it's October already. I also can't believe that they'll be mailing my progress report, chock full of B's, tomorrow. Yay.
Today went pretty well, with the exception of the evil Calculus test. Even that wasn't too horrible. I'll probably still end up with a low grade on it, though. But I'm managing...
Auto went all right. Mr. Elliott started the hour by pointing out that I was 88's Best, making a speech about how he likes it when people of my aptitude take his class, and then having the class applaud me. Auto doesn't suck so much anymore.
I realized at the end of the day that I really didn't have much homework tonight, which is good, because I have stuff to catch up on, not to mention Key Club. I think I might go to the powder puff game or watch the Cubs game, though.
I gave one of my MIT teacher evaluation forms to Mrs. Marcyniuk. I have to give the other to a math or science teacher: I'm thinking Mr. Gerut. At least I'm planning ahead on this, at least.
Lastly, I want to encourage you all to comment on my blog. I haven't received
any since the 25th, and I'm going through withdrawal or something. Also, check
out the Italian Ghetto.
My life is rated PG.
Today kinda sucked. OK, it really didn't suck, but it wasn't very good, either. I mean, on a scale of 1 to 10...
Got my National Merit app turned in, along with my MIT form for Mrs. Piña. Got to get my brag sheet in, and distribute my teacher recommendations. Got my Senior Interview done at the same time, so I should be getting a copy of my transcript to finish filling these forms out in the mail.
Getting a 76% in chemistry. By her new grading scale, that's a B.
Auto kinda sucks.
I have a lot of Key Club junk to do, in addition to all of the other random junk I have to do.
Yeah.
| < September 2003 | Matthew Loar > Blog | November 2003 > |