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No HCC English! Seriously, that has to be the most boring class I have ever taken in my entire life.

Get this, Microsoft admits that since their browser (Internet Explorer) sucks and is insecure...

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"Do not click any hyperlinks that you do not trust. Type them in the Address bar yourself."

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Some of the stuff they suggest to avoid malicious hyperlinks is pretty lame. It's like saying, "The brand of engine in your car has a flaw where it may randomly catch fire. You should push your car instead of driving it to avoid potential hazards. No, we're not going to fix the flaw." Here's what Microsoft should have suggested in their Knowledge Base Article to protect yourself from the inherent flaws of Internet Explorer: Switch to Mozilla.

So next week I'm headed to Austin for the TCEA Robotics competition. I get to miss school on Wednesday and Thursday, which works out so that I only have to go to English on Monday. Basically we used Lego Mindstorms, BricxCC, and Not Quite C to program a little robot to follow a black path to a Coke can, pick it up, and return it to where it came from.

Today I also had a pretty hard Physics 2 test; or at least I thought it was hard. On the last problem I had to solve for the index of refraction of some rod, and I kept playing around with different equations until I got a reasonable sounding answer of 1.50. Apparently that was the correct answer. I'm sure I missed some other stuff though, so there goes my 100 test average. I actually spent like three hours last night studying with Ryan McQuiston, Chris Yohe, and Travis Abadie to prepare for this.

Quotable Quote:

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"If you ever see windows drawn on someone's paper, you know what happened." -Yohe

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So apparently there's a new virus out there, referred to as MyDoom / Novarg. Basically computers are infected either by downloading an e-mail attachment from a spoofed address (meaning it appears to come from someone you know) or by downloading it off Kazaa. As far as Kazaa, stick to the MP3 and/or video files and you should be okay. The best advice I can give as far as e-mail is to never open attachments unless you're expecting one. Know what you're downloading before you download anything. However, nobody I know should really be affected by this.

In other news, Mike Rowe has settled with Microsoft. He ended up getting an X-Box and some other goodies out of the deal. Unfortunately I made yet another dumb mistake on my ACSL written test. I simplified a boolean expression so that only one variable mattered, and I quickly wrote down all the ordered triples that fit not A. However, in my speediness, I failed to realize that there was no C in the original expression and that it was only asking for ordered pairs. So I'll be stuck with an 18/20 assuming my program works perfectly.

Okay, so now, after a five hour nap, I need to write my essay for the Turing Scholars program (I decided to write about music piracy), write about my Computer Science background, and then study for a government test spanning 56 pages from the book.

Computer club went to compete at Cy-Creek yesterday, and overall it had to be the worst contest I've ever been to. Let's just say that it was really messed up. Anyway, that said, be sure to check out the top Simpsons sports moments of all time. Ah... good memories. Also, check out this flash video parody of Hey Ya with Saddam as Outkast.

TheMooingPig135: i hate bool!, bool should die and burn eternally
We've got ACSL tomorrow, and of course there's going to be boolean algebra. I only got a 9 last time, which I'm pretty angry about, so I hope to get a perfect 10 this time. Hopefully Zhi will mess up on the boolean algebra since it's supposedly his weakness. Heh. The top five people will get to go to Chicago this year, and I'll be pretty embarrassed if I'm not one of those five.

Well I really have to figure out what to write for this stupid essay for the Turing Scholars program at UT. "Explain a belief you accepted at some time in your life but recently rejected on the basis of a rational process. You might choose your former belief in the existence of Santa Claus, for example, but you should remember that the rejection you discuss must have been made on a rational basis." It's stupid because I haven't rejected any beliefs recently. Unfortunately, the deadline is February 1st, so I gotta think of something soon. There a few things that seem really easy to write about, but that might make me sound really really evil and anti-religious. On a brighter note, I get to miss two days of school in the first week of February to go to a robotics competition in Austin. It'll be pretty fun, but the make up work for two days of absences is going to suck.

Ugh. Dumb, careless errors are the worst kind, especially when they cost you first place at contests. I won second place at Elkins High School for Computer Science today, but I only lost by two points. Apparently on the Scantron I marked two answers for the same question number and accidently skipped another one, costing me the victory. Hopefully I'll get all the stupid mistakes out of my system by the time UIL comes around. On a better note, all three of the CS guys (Terry, Nitin, and myself) placed in the top ten, and we won overall, beating Cy Falls by only a few points. Nitin ended up taking home four trophies (Overall Science, Physics, Math, Computer Science). Anyway, we'll be competing next week in a programming contest at Cy Creek.

Mozilla 1.6 has finally been released. I guess I can't really give a great reason to switch browsers from Internet Explorer, though it does have built in pop-up blocking which is a plus. It's got a few other nice quirks that I.E. lacks such as tabbed browsing (so you don't have to have so many damned windows open), image blocking (for annoying ads), and quick searching. If you hate Internet Explorer, which you should, give Mozilla a try sometime.

Is it just me, or do Jeff Fisher (during the game against the Patriots) and Saddam Hussein look alike?



Well anyway, I went to a programming contest at Jersey Village High School yesterday and we only got 5th. We also celebrated my mom's birthday at Pino's later that night. As for the past week, nothing exciting has really happened, though I have 3 new teachers this semester. AP Government seems like it's going to be pretty hard. The practice AP test we took asked a lot of irrelevant and obscure questions that don't sound really important as far as knowing how the US government works. Anyway, I guess that's about all I have to say right now. I'll be busy the next few weekends. I've got two more contests in January and I still need to write an essay and apply for the Turing Scholars program at UT.

Tommy hooked me up with Arash's Xbox LAN party today. Apparently people who live by Highway 6 are zoned for Taylor, which I didn't know. Of course, the only game we played was Halo, utilizing 4 Xboxes and LAN cables running across the entire house, which reminded me of my own home, except with XBoxes instead of computers. There were up to 13 players at one point, so it was pretty sweet. I knew maybe half the people there, including Tommy, Zhi, James, Arash, Chris Corbett, Chris Lang, Alvin, Eric, Little Wang, and probably a few other people. However, someone decided to play CTF on High 'Em High... with sniper rifles as starting weapons. That game lasted forever. I felt "1337" when Arash said, "Who was Church? He seems pretty good for a newbie!" in his crazy, aggravated Irani voice. Of course, I have Halo PC, but I've only played it on the Xbox like twice. The assault rifle and melee attacks seems so much more effective in the original version. The plasma pistol, however, always sucked. My best game was during the last one, a team slayer on Wizard. I managed to get 2nd place in points and our team won. And of course the most exciting game was a King of the Hill on Derelict, where the other team was shouting, "5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1" *KABOOM* "AHHHHHHH!" and then our team came in and held the hill for the last 10 seconds for the comeback win with the final times 10:00 to 9:58. It was a sweet party; I think I'll try to join in again for the next one.

Hmmm, today I received some invitation to a National Youth Leadership Forum on Technology in Silicon Valley during the summer. However, I'm confused because the letter states that it's for sophomores and juniors. It would sure be fun to go to Silicon Valley though. The letter came in a really formal looking envelope and all. Anyway, I played tennis today with Terry, Tommy, Zhi, and James, which was pretty fun. Terry totally dominated although somehow Zhi beat him. Anyway, Foxtrot is definitely one of the best comics out there; it always addresses current events and what not. Explain to me again how light scares away Ring Wraiths?

Thankfully I slept in yesterday, otherwise I'd be even more tired right now. I just spent last night celebrating the new year with my friends in the IMCM as usual. We did some fun stuff; you can read a brief summary at IMCM Online. I guess other than wishing a happy new year to everyone, I don't have too much to say at the moment. However, I got a few nifty links to share. For starters, the picture featuring everyone's favorite Asian athelete, Yao Ming, shows him compared to the NBA's shortest player, Earl Boykins. You can read the full caption at Yahoo! News. This short news story involves a woman having a heart attack in a plane full of doctors, which I think is pretty cool and funny at the same time. Last, but not least, Travis informed me of this link of a movie with some awesoma powa Japanese Yo-Yo competitors (currently broken).