Heading down to NJ. Ttyl.

I’m walking to Harvard Sq. And on the way some guy is cruising down Mass Ave. On a segway. Man they are so cool….

I was speaking with a college professor this morning waiting for the Jeopardy thing this morning, and a recent story on Slashdot reminded me of the conversation and something I have been thinking alot about lately.

Why the fuck are elementary schools still teaching “Cursive” or “Script” or whatever that style of penmanship is called these days? I think the year or two of class devoted to this remnant of the past would be much, much better placed towards teaching kids to type. Call it a personal failure, but I couldn’t write a single word in cursive today at 26 years of age? Why, you may ask? Because that skill hasn’t been called on since like 6th grade, all my teachers preferred typed coursework. In fact, this skill, that my elementary curricula devoted so much time to, has never been called upon outside of the academic environment.

This woman that I spoke with this morning told me that her little boy got a 100% on a spelling/vocabulary quiz the other day, but the teacher deducted 5% off the grade due to poor penmanship. What do we currently do? We teach children a form of penmanship for the first few years of their education, then we teach them another one out of tradition. Where is typing class? Generally a middle-school ELECTIVE! I vote for making cursive an elective and teach the kids a useful skill earlier on: Typing. Even a hard-core computer geek such as myself didn’t learn to touch-type until 5th or 6th grade (on an electric typewriter, no less). To me this is a major failure of the American educational system’s ability to adapt to changing times.

Update: Apparently I forgot the structure of the school system, yes it has been so long. I didn’t learn to touch type until High School, which would have been 9th or 10th grade. I’m a dumbass.

Car Talk’s guide to The Ultimate Gay and Lesbian Cars.

So I didn’t make it to the second round of qualifications for Jeopardy. The test was 50 questions, and I was pretty confident about the ones I answered, but there were about 7 that I simply didn’t even know enough to make an educated guess about. They don’t tell you your score, but you needed 35 to move on, and out of 150ish people only 4 or 5 got to move on. But I got a Jeopardy pen, and I will be back next year.. :P

Waiting for SOMEONE from Jeopardy to show up… So far only one other potential is here… ‘sposed to start @ 9am

Today is Jeopardy Audition day! Wheeee…

Don’t worry, it’s not your fault, but sometimes the little people do things that piss me off. As supreme overlord of the galaxy, nee universe, I understand that your feeble minds sometimes are unable to grasp my wants and desires. It is this motivation that drove me to create a list of some of the things which make me crazy:

• People who like wolves, including people who wear those godawful hick wolf t-shirts. But people who use a picture of wolves as the background of their webpage? I hate them alot.
• Furries. ‘Nuff Said.
• Perpetually depressed people. Sure, you might be clinical, and if I know you, I might even feel a pang of concern, but it doesn’t change the fact that my insticts tell me that you need to cheer the fuck up.
• Anime. You can animate it, but it is still kiddie porn.
• Kids on LiveJournal who take a picture of someone, themselves, some famous star, etc. and overwrite the picture with some saying, lyric, or empassioned message. 20x multiplier if the image is animated. 10x multiplier if the person’s name is xxx<insert something here>xxx. Here. are. some. examples.
• The word blog. I fucking hate that word. If you speak it to me, 10x multiplier. It’s a billion times worse spoken vs. written
• People who are good at Fighting Video Games. I suck at them, you should too.
• Religious Zealots. This is an inclusive list, starting at Door-to-Door Jehovah’s to Osama Bin Laden. If you quietly believe in your religion, good on ya. If you occasionally mention to me the merits of you religion, that’s ok too. If you go out of your way to convince me of the one true path? You get spaced.
• Anti-abortion activists. Sure you have free speech, but if you’re an idiot you shouldn’t get to use it. If I had the necessary “baby-carrying” equipment, and accidentally conceived a baby, I don’t think I would choose to have an abortion. Note the emphasis. That doesn’t mean I should impose my views and beliefs on others. 100x multiplier if you get in peoples faces at clinics. 10000x multiplier if you get in fights with escorts, etc. Infinite multiplier if you are violent.
• People who smell without excuse. You’re a runner, or a participant in a sport, or someone wholly unlike me who actually exerts physical effort. You have a funk. That’s A-OK, assuming that at some point in the near future you take a shower/bath to eliminate said funk. You’re someone like me (you know, computer nerd) who simply doesn’t bathe because they are “working on more important things”? Bullshit. Take a fucking bath. Here’s a hint: We are here to breed, and if you don’t take a shower, the only woman you will be breeding with is Marge the Trash Heap.
• People who keep strange pets, then complain that they can’t find anyone to take care of them when they want to get away.
• Smokers. I used to say that people who smoke in the privacy of their own home didn’t bother me, but then I moved into this apartment building, and I can smell smoke in the halls, and sometimes smoke smell from an adjacent apartment blows in through my open window. I therefore revise my opinion, and people who smoke in the privacy of their own wet blanket don’t bother me.

That’s all for now. I’m sure I will come up with more later.

linked to this site which lets you create your own propaganda posters:

I received " Dancing Barefoot", the first book by Wil Wheaton in the mailbox today, apparently I got in on the first printing. Now, I rarely am able to read more than one book at a time, probably a remnant of some undiagnosed case of ADD, but after reading the first few pages of this book I set aside my current reading (Sklansky and Malmuth’s “Hold ’em Poker for Advanced Players”) and dove in. Here I am, a few hours later, very happy with my decision.

I was never a huge Star Trek fan. I’ve never been to a convention, I only own one of the films on DVD, and don’t even have a Trek season pass on my Tivo. But I watched TNG as a kid, and always thought Wesley was pretty cool. After reading this book, however, I realized that while I thought Wesley was cool, Wil is someone I would actually like to hang out with. His short “Houses in Motion” reminded me of the passing of my Grandmother (I think it was the artificial Christmas Tree that pushed me over the edge). Perhaps it was because I hadn’t ever had a good cry over the death of my grandma, but reading this story got me misty.

This is a great book, and a quick read too. I am looking forward to Wil’s “first” book, “Just a Geek”. While I wouldn’t advise Wil to give up acting, I would definitely encourage him to keep up with the writing, he seems to have genuine talent.