6 posts tagged “teen life”

Hmmm, I knew there was a lot of socialist-types in Europe that believe that all human information should be free, but not like this...

Has you may know from my previous blog entries, in my US History class, we had to make a powerpoint with music in it. (See my struggles below with mine and DRM, which, according to a keen reader, apperantly aren't due to the DRM) Today, we presented these powerpoints, and the best one was done by a foreign exchange student.

I won't name him, but his powerpoint was good, and his piece of music was "Over The Rainbow". You know, not the Judy Garland one, but that other one sung by a man. The one that everybody knows, but can't recall it. They play in TV shows during funerals, but no one really knows. When everybody questioned the student about who did it, he said "Louis Armstrong". Everybody was pretty excited. A few kids yelled out getting it off Limewire. Even I, was enchanted about the song, and I planned to get it on iTunes. I look on the student's folder, and sure enough, the .mp3 is labeled "Over The Rainbow - Louis Armstrong.mp3".

So, I get home, and do a quick search on iTunes. "Over The Rainbow". Nothing by ol' Louie Armstrong. "Louis Armstrong". No Rainbow here. I'm confused, but then, it hits me. I boot up Frostwire, the open-source version of Limewire, and do a search for "over the rainbow louis armstrong" and sure enough, there it is. Lots of copies.

I go back to iTunes and put in a search for Over The Rainbow again. The most popular version is by a Hawaiian singer named Israel Kamakawiwo'ole. I use the preview feature and guess what... apparently, some years after his death, Louis Armstrong renamed himself Israel, and moved to Hawaii, gained 750 pounds (I.K. has he's known by his fans, was morbidly obese. He, himself died in '97, heart attack). </sarcasm>

This is not uncommon. When Napster was everywhere, and before we knew P2P sharing was a crime, I downloaded "Closing Time" by Green Day, only to find later that song was produced by Semisonic, not Green Day. There has been a few other songs like this, where on P2P sites are mislabeled.

So, I've caught the student in a crime. What do I do? Nothing. I won't even tell the teacher. Not only will this make me look like a super nerd and narc, the .mp3 was used for education purposes, which is under Fair Use. Not to mention, I think 95% of my US History class used pirated .mp3's for their presentations. Some, had the songs stream off of internet radio sites. Others, like me, brought in legal .mp3's.

So, I guess I'm left with a smug smile. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to listen to my legally purchased iTunes .mp4 verison of Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's "Over The Rainbow"....

I'm under the weather today kids, so my blog entry will be a bit subdued to say the least.

Today, the Apple iPod turned five, which may seem a few years longer than you remember, which is about right for me to. The iPod was introduced in 2001, to some critism, it only worked on Macs, only had a Firewire connection and had only had 10 hours of playback. Despite these, it was a technical marvel, a very very small hard drive.

Slowly over time, small improvements brought iPod to the front of the MP3 player field, a very simple control interface, and the great iTunes application, and the move to allow use on Windows. No MP3 device had really taken over the market.

I own an iPod and love it.

Meh, this entry is so bad. I shouldn't even post it. The fact of the matter is, I'm kind of blogged out. I've been blogging some in-dept posts for what, three days straight, and I feel am burned out on blogging. Personally, I don't know how I can keep this up. I'm not really 16 anymore... (Yeah, like 17 is too old to blog :) )

Well, I'm sure I'll find a way to keep this up. Later.

Well, for the past 17 years, I've been blissfully unemployeed, living off handouts of cash from my parents, grandparents, and other family members. However, since my 15th birthday, my parents have been getting more and more strict, saying "Get your own job," or something to that effect. Yikes. Back in the day when I collected comic books, I had to save up my lunch money all week just to get enough cash to make my monthly run to the comic store to pick up my latest issue of Ultimate Spider-Man.

Well, I've finally decided I've got to take the plunge and get a job, so a few week ago, I put on my brave face and my stern voice and went into Kmart and caught myself an application, and went back, carefully filled it out, then turned it back in. I waited two weeks, and finally, called Kmart at 3:03 in the afternoon and I was told the "hiring lady" had left. I called a few more times, but apperantly, the lady leaves before I get out of school (just like my teachers... :) ) so I gave up on Kmart, I'm looking at a Pick & Save (Wisconsin grocery store) and a Blockbuster, both on my way home from school, and both supposedly cool places to work from friends who work their or previously worked there.

Anyway, the point of my store is what fine item I'll chose to buy with my $6.50 an hour pay check (minimum wage in Cheeseland is 6.50, nice eh?). The one item that convinced me to take the plunge and get a job was a Xbox 360, and the game Dead Rising particular. I'm a huge fan of my orginal Xbox, and I love everthing zombie. But, I've been thinking, and I was instead going to build my own computer, then an Apple MacBook, but now I've decided.

I'm going to get a... Dell Desktop. Thats right, possibly the oddest thing I'd ever choose, but here's why. While I've always wanted to build my own PC, its just more expensive than Dell's production line machines, even one cutomized to my tastes (high mid-range gaming stuff, and a TV tuner so I can have a cheap TiVo/DVR) comes in at just under $1500, while a similar system, built from parts at newegg.com comes in at just over $2200.

Why not an Xbox 360? Well, it would be stupid to just buy it for one game, and besides Dead Rising was critically acclaimed when it first came out, but now, my friends are frusterated with it, and are getting pissed. Why not an Apple MacBook? While its true, I am a huge Apple fanboy (who doesn't even own a Mac), I really want to play games like Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 (plus one more game that is my secret gaming fetish, I'll reveal it in an upcoming blog, stay tuned). My PC runs both of those games, but either at poor visual settings, or poor framerates, or maybe both, but my customized Dell I've picked out (its what I'm calling high mid-range. Its not a screaming new 7950GX2 card, but its not a 6200GS, either), will play most current games without trouble.

So, I'm losing some major nerd street cred here by picking a Dell Desktop over a Xbox 360 (minus points from the gamer crowd) and a MacBook (minus points from the Apple crowd), but maybe those items will be after my Dell. I'll post more stuff about this future Dell rig after I get my job and get closer and closer to getting enough money for it.

Later, guys.

What do you do to get rid of a cold or flu? 
Submitted by ashenflowers.

My steps to recovering from a cold or flu.

1. Take the day off from work or school. Maybe two days to be safe. ;)
2. Make a nice 'lil spot on your sofa or couch with some comfortable blankets. Have some light snacks and beverages of choice handy.
3. Take it easy and watch TV, surf the net, listen to podcasts, or blog about being sick for the whole day.
4. Ummmm... this flu might be a bad one. Better book that third day. ;)

Well, in case you don't live in the United States, or live in a hole, the past few weeks the news has been covering the recent wave of school shootings. One of them has been in my home state of Wisconsin, and in fact, at the two other high schools in my city, there was a bomb threat, and a kid threatened to kill the varsity football team.

Basically, our school has become like Fort Knox. Almost all the doors are now locked, and teachers have to wearing their ID badges all the time in the open. All visitors have to have a visitor pass. When the Coke man came to refill the vending machines, the vice prinicipal went up to him and gave him a hard time. The same guy has came to our school to give us our sugar water goodness for all three years I've been going to this school, and the VP still had to go give him a hard time.

And its effected my daily routine, too. Usually after lunch, I walked out the doors and walked around the outside of the school, since going through the maze of corridors was slower, but now that they've locked all (but a few) of the doors, I've got to go through the mess of lockers to get to my next class.

They've even told us that if you are outside and knock on the door for somebody else to get in, you'll be arrested for trying to 'break' into the school, which is kind of bullshit. If you open the door to let somebody else in, you will get in serious trouble (not arrested, though).

Do I feel safer? Did I feel unsafe in the first place? No. The fact of the matter is, if somebody wanted to go into the school and kill us all, they could. They could shoot out the glass panels of the doors and get in, they could drive a truck through the doors if they really wanted to. They could place a bomb and blow up the doors. So, we really aren't perfectly safe. Now, I guess you could argue that locking the doors would slow down any possible attackers, and I suppose that is a vaild point... but still I think its worthless.

Now, did I feel unsafe in the first place? Not from possible 'shooters'. If they wanted to make school a safe place, why don't they do more to stop the bullying that goes on in the hallways? Why don't they stop the harrsement of kids? In my English class on Thursday, a student called another student "gay" loudly in front of the whole class. The teacher was sitting at her computer (probably surfing her Yahoo! e-mail) and all she did was say "Hey guys, cut it out." Yeah, ok. The kids continued badgering each other and the teacher continued checking to see if her S.O. had replied to their date on Friday (ok, a bit of extrapolation there).

So, even though I think locking the doors is a dumb idea, it is one of the few things they can do to make the school seem safer. I mean, what CAN you do to protect from a possible 'shooter'? A school in Texas is training the kids to attack any possible 'shooters' and while it seems outrageous, it is may be the ONLY way to proactively stop such a thing.

But still, the possibility of a school shooter is very unlikely, I've never worried about it, and never will.

Before I let you go, there is one more thing I'd like to address... blaming violent video games. Now, I'm a big video game player, and I am strongly against blaming video games. I know the Columbine... perps played Doom and even made videos talking about it ("This shotgun is straight outta Doom!" comes to mind), but this is my opinion on it. A psycopath will go crazy no matter what. We don't need to ban video games, or heavy metal music. Will playing Half-Life 2 make him go over the edge and finally decide to bring that gun to school? No, not really in my humble opinion.

Well, this has been a long read, and I'll let you rest for a bit. :) I was going to talk aobut the movie Elephant, which is about school shootings and was HBO last night. I could go for another 4 paragraphs about THAT but I'll save that for another time. :)