Unlike Bagel over at RationReality, my blog absence isn’t the result of sickness and depression, but of a rather sinister combination of finals, moving, and lack of an Internet connection. That last bit may cause some people to call me a liar and accuse me of avoiding my blog because I’m in a creative slump and couldn’t come up with a blog post if I was being held hostage in front of a computer and told that for every minute I stalled an innocent kitten would be denied fame on ICHC. Those people are wrong. In reality, I’m leeching wireless off of some poor schlob who couldn’t be bothered to change the default name of their wireless network, much less put a password on it. It’s a poor connection, and I’m busy with packing and moving, so I’m only connecting for long enough to post this and browse through Reddit for some laughs.
I suppose it’d be useful to explain why I don’t have an Internet connection. My family is in the process of moving into a house closer to town (okay, in town). Unfortunately, utilities like television, phone, and Internet service aren’t due to be hooked up until the 20th. Until then, I’ll be spending my time watching Farscape on my laptop and playing Mass Effect. Well, during the time that isn’t spent packing up my entire life and moving it to a smaller house. Fun.
And the month isn’t even half over. In about a week, I’ll be starting my summer job with the county (working for Parks and Rec). Exciting, huh? Yeah, not really. I’m going to be one busy guy, but I’ll be sure to make time for a rant every so often. After all, this isn’t the Mad Silence of a Raving Genius, is it?
I guess it’s true you learn something new every day. I’ve known about the movement known as Straight Edge for a long time, but I never would have guessed there’s a violent side to it. There was a documentary about Straight Edge on the National Geographic channel, so I decided to watch. Almost instantly, I regretted it because of the nonsense spouted off by the narrator about how kids growing up in America have to deal with constant peer pressure to smoke, drink, or do drugs. And then the Straight Edge interviewees went further about how they needed to join some group to resist that peer pressure. I mean, seriously. If you have a hard time saying “no”, you’ve got some serious will power issues.
In all my years of school, I have never been pressured to do anything I didn’t want to do. No one offered me a cigarette. No one pushed a beer into my hands. No one ever gave me a joint. I mean, I knew what my peers did. Heck, some of them were (are) stupid enough to post pictures on MySpace. But no one pressured me to do that stuff. And even had someone done so, it would not have been that hard to say “No thanks”. If I can do it to Mexican dudes hawking hammocks in Juarez, I can do it to a teenager with a cigarette.
Because of that, I find it silly that people need to join a group in order to resist peer pressure. Sure, it may be that bad some times, but I highly doubt that peer pressure is as bad as some people make it out to be. But the worse thing about Straight Edge (in my opinion) is their disapproval of alcohol, tobacco, and drugs. I can understand abstaining. Heck, I don’t smoke, and I probably won’t drink much after I turn 21, but I’m not going to push that on other people. But at least most Straight Edgers don’t that that to the extreme and beat up or even kill people who they disagree with. It’s kind of ironic, isn’t it? A gang that doesn’t drink, smoke, or get high. I guess you don’t really need to do that stuff to be violent.
So, apparently, a group of third graders at Georgia school got upset with a teacher and plotted to knock her out, tie her up, and stab her with a steak knife. No, really. They actually brought supplies (a paperweight to knock her out, handcuffs and tape to bind her hands) and assigned different duties (one student would have covered the windows, another would have cleaned up afterwards). Nobody knows if they really intended to harm the teacher, but it’s kind of scary that they even got this far. Luckily, they were outed before they implemented their plan. It makes me wonder what would have happened, though. Third graders can be persistent buggers, and I don’t know if I’d be able to withstand 9 of them attacking me with blunt objects.
But it certainly shows a lot about kids in the 8 to 10 age range when you look at their motive: they were angry with the teacher for scolding one of them for standing on a chair. Wow.
College is fun. You can go along for a couple of years thinking you’re going to do one thing, and then you can suddenly change your mind and throw everyone for a loop (including yourself)! Great fun. Anyways, for most of my college life thus far, I was under the impression I was going to be a programmer. I didn’t really want to be one, but somehow, most of my classes ended up being of the programming persuasion. I blame it on the broad yet oddly limited major I was going after. After a rather dismal experience in the latest programming class (seriously, why they chose Java is beyond me; everyone who’s anyone uses C++…or C#…or…something else…hell, I don’t know), I decided to re-evaluate where I was going and change my major. Good thing I hadn’t yet applied for that godforsaken major, even if I do have a rather useless business statistics class in my schedule.
You may be asking, “What major are you going for now, Cody?” Actually, you’re probably asking, “Why do you think I care, Cody?” but I’m going to pretend that you’re not really asking that. Anyways, I’ve (kind of…sort of…perhaps maybe…) settled on a history major. Yes, history. Boring? Perhaps. Lame? Perhaps. Good paying? Uh, I’ll get back to you on that. It definitely seems to be something I like, though, as I’ve done the best in the history classes I’ve been taking. Maybe it’s the fact that it’s so much easier to BS a history paper than it is to BS a program. You can make things up and sound smart all you want, but if the program doesn’t compile, you suck. I mean, I suck. Whatever.
So, in case you were wondering, yes, this is a personal post. No, there’s not going to be a rant about the unfairness of grading a person down simply because they didn’t show up for four out of every five class meetings (I mean, come on, that’s so fascist and communist and stuff), and no, I’m not going to tie this in to anything remotely meaningful. It’s just me, my feelings, and you, my faithful readers. Please don’t leave me. I swear, I didn’t have anything else to write about…damn fillers.
I never thought I’d be around to hear that the football team of my old school (Burlington-Edison High School) would make it to the state championship game. I mean, the last time they won a state title was back in 1986, before I was even born (and long before I came to Burlington). But now? Now the team is one win away from being state champions. Amazing. And not just a little annoying that they get a bunch of good players after I graduate and go to a school that used to have a good football team (I say this in the nicest way possible: the current Husky football squad sucks, and yes, that includes Jake Locker).
Anyways, I also never thought I’d be writing a personal post again, but I don’t really have much to rant about. Bagel from RationReality wrote me an email about something I could write about, but I didn’t get back to her in time so I must now live the rest of my life regretting my inability to check my email more than twice a day. (“I coulda been a contender! …er, blogger!”)
More on the home front: know how my last post was about building a Linux distro from scratch? Well, scratch it. I don’t know what I was doing wrong, but I’ve been given more grief from that project than all my other Linux-related sojourns combined. I blame the instruction manual, which assumes too much. I can understand the assumption that the reader knows the basics of navigating in a Linux console (copying, removing, etc.) but I don’t get the assumption that the reader knows what file the manual is talking about when it refers to it by a vague name. If any of my readers has dabbled in Linux From Scratch, leave me a comment to ask me just what part of the manual I’m referring to. I’d ask about the problem in some Linux forums, but I don’t wish to be told to RTFM. I did RTFM and it didn’t help me, so STFU. Now that is a retort worthy of a nerd such as I.