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Sometimes I wonder why these guys are even at it. Where’s the creativity? Where’s the content? Where are they?
Mike’s site used to look like it had promise. Rating others’ websites — that was a novel idea. Problem is, he never updated it regularly, and he never met the timeframe for updates he published there. And then there’s that reduced links page on there. He’s shriveled that page to four banners, only two of which are actually linked.
And then there’s the unoriginality part. He just copy-pasted the fire idea from Bill.
Wait, everyone’s been doing that: copying from everyone else. Case in point: Josh is stealing everyone’s images. And so has Alex.
Refreshingly, Pat came up with some new ideas — long needed.
Visiting those links, have you also figured out that hardly anyone has an original title? (Well, some pride themselves on that fact.) Bill has Bill’s Web Site, Josh has Josh’s Site of Completely Random Stuff — Created by Josh (even though I urged him to call it JPen’s Random Stuff), Mike has Mie’s [sic] Site of Links, Alex has (gasp) Home Page of Me, and Pat has Pat’s Stuff. You’d think they’re all using some 3-step make-your-site-in-seconds service.
I’d have to commend the following for actually taking some time to think up titles, though: Brad, Scott, Wireless (also run by Mike), Jeremy, and Webber. But I do have to admit that Josh actually spent some time on his title — spent time making it as bland as possible — he even solicited comments about it at school!
I guess you want me to cut to the chase, huh? You see, in the old days, people set up websites because they actually had a good reason to. Maybe they wanted a website for their software. Maybe they needed a job and wanted to post a résumé on there. Maybe they were a real leftist and wanted to make a political point. Or maybe they had some family photos to share. But these guys, they just make a site for the sake of it. And since they can’t think of anything to put on it, they just play monkey-see-monkey-do and tout randomness or fire.
Wait! I’m not done yet. What’s with everyone being on GeoCities all of a sudden? It’s free? Well, so are Tripod, Angelfire, FortuneCity, Netscape MyWebpage, Netfirms, and Portland (!). And some of them are even bannerless, give you more webspace, have a short URL like myplace.a-good-host.com, and give you e–mail addresses. Still think you want GeoCities? Hmph.
(And I chose the title because of this, just out of perverseness. ☻)
By now, you have probably noticed that I have completely redesigned this website. You can now think of MingerWeb as four separate websites: Minh’s Notes, which you are viewing right now; Học với Tôi, where you can learn Vietnamese; Blusopht, where my software projects will abide; and the familiar MingerWeb to tie it all together, like Netscape Network or TerraLycos, except all under one domain. In addition, there’s a LinkBlog for the obvious purpose.
I did this to give my website more flexibility. The old Projects section was outgrowing itself, Vietnamese would benefit more from a separate site, and Minh’s Notes wasn’t the best front page for a website.
This is still a work in progress; Blusopht isn’t even up yet. If you have any questions, comments, compliments, complaints, or congratulations, just comment to this entry. Thanks.
A couple reasons not to use Micro$haft Internal €xploder, and a good reason to use Mozilla Phoenix instead. Download Phoenix today!
Oh, no. Another one has joined the ring of obscure GeoCities members. Doesn’t anyone know how bad GeoCities is? (Maybe I should take this time to mention the LinkBlog that’s going to appear once I completely redesign this website.)
(sigh) I’m blogging from Fort Worth, Texas. I guess that means I’m going to miss that forcasted white Christmas in Cincinnati. I heard that there’s going to be five inches of snow! Oh, just my luck.
Well, well, well. Wireless: The Band is better than Outsmarting the Donkey! Want proof? Here’s proof! What do you think of that, Andy?
Want more? If you Google for "wireless the band", you’ll find that their official site is the first one listed. If you Google for "outsmarting the donkey", not only is it the sixth one listed, but it’s also right under my link to Wireless! How’s that for better?!
This is the first in a series of attacks, aimed at promoting Wireless: The Band — the much better band.
Yep. I did it again:
Almost Christmas Break! But, will you miss your friends? Of course! That’s why MingerWeb features a commenting system. Post a little message for everyonme to read. So come to MingerWeb today, tomorrow, and… every day. Because MingerWeb is updated daily!
mxn.netfirms.com
I’ve got more planned for after Christmas Break. Just you wait and see, fellow classmates.
First of all, let me congratulate you for taking the time to read the entire article.
The top story for today’s issue was about the new facilities planned for our school. Coming from a humble grade school, I often find it hard to believe the amount of building projects St. X undertakes so often.
I find this story quite accurate, except for one thing: the story states that the new theater will be connected to the main building, and that it will be situated between the music and religion departments:
The location of the new theater has been determined. It will sit between he music department and the development offices. A hallway will be extended from the music department to the theater, and a covered walkway from the Religion wing will also connect this new addition to the school. …
Tuesday, I learned from Mr. Hussong informed me of these plans, but he noted that the theater was to be free-standing. (Mr. Hussong is an English teacher, who had information about a faculty meeting discussing the new plans.) Of course the plans could have changed since then and now, but I suppose that the Blueprint article had been written earlier this week, anyhow.
I took a look at the site that the Blueprint said was proposed, and found that it would not be possible easily create a free-standing theater in that position. So I don’t exactly know who to believe. But I do know not to believe the large photograph of the proposed site on the front page. Because it showed the courtyard between the cafeteria and chapel, which definitely would not be the site of the new theater. I classify this as “the bad”.
The Blueprint today published an article about upcoming budget cuts. This is the first in a series. I’m glad that the newpaper has this type of article; the student body should know about these things. I classify this as “the good”.
Well, well, well. It’s about time that we start talking about double standards. Look, it’s true that every school is guilty about being both arrogant in some respects and about being just plain wrong. But we can improve. Just because everyone else has the same shortcomings (more or less), that doesn’t mean that we can’t improve. If we don’t take the time to challenge commonplace feelings of arrogance and homophobia (it’s still present, believe me), then we are no better than the others. Moreover, we are even worse, because, although we realize our problems, we refuse to correct them.
That’s all I have to say about the matter.
Finally, someone understands:
The student body tried to outsource the blame — The topic of arrogance caused quite a bit of discussion in most cases, but this mainly involved trying to absolve ourselves of responsibility for the city-wide perceptions of St. X students as overly proud. Some cried, “The other schools are just as arrogant!” Other [sic] claimed, “Their parents brainwash their them to hate St. X!” Nevertheless, we ourselves are still accountable for those perceptions. …
As I was saying about double-standards…
Well, I’ll have to say, this this the single most incriminating piece of evidence against Elder that I have seen yet. Towards the end of the article, the author even notes that Elder High School has not yet allowed the archdiosican organization CRYSM to meet on its grounds, although most other GCL schools have.
Interesting.
Wow. I’m scared. And I’m sure many others are, too. Mrs. Conlon is known for being shrewd and intimidating, and her new position will not bode well for websurfers within the St. X community. We’ll wait and see. I sure hope this won’t be part of “the ugly”.
Uh-oh. The average number of pounds of food collected per sophomore homeroom was triple-six. Do the math. Yep, that’s a part of “the ugly”.
C’mon. We don’t need PDAs, we need laptops! Just kidding.
I view these gadgets as nothing more than gimmicks to attract more students. And St. X will already have a worse overflow of students next year than they do this year. That could get “ugly”.
“Men and Women for and with Others”? What kind of motto is that?
Heh. I almost laughed at the cartoon portraying former Sen. Lott in a big white hood, explaining his segregationist remarks. Clever. There goes PC.
Mixers = Sin? Well, I’ve never been to a mixer before. (Shame on me, I guess.) So, no comment.
Kudos to Josh for doing by e-mail what I had only the courage to do by blog. It was long overdue.
Wow. Have you ever seen Rasso teach Gym? Well, congratulations, Mr. Rasso.
They didn’t mention Quiz Team? Sure, Brad, Quiz Team’s a sport.
And need I mention the Backside?
Pat’s going to take up the quotemaking business while Harjus is busy:
If you’re walking on sunshine, make sure you have shoes on.
More to come later tonight…
Today, right before English class, someone put up the URL for his website on the chalkboard. That prompted a shameless plug on my part: I went up and wrote a little advertisement for this website:
Visit MingerWeb today!
mxn.netfirms.com
Updated daily!
That sparked a whole lot of shameless plugging from the entire class. And not everyone was putting up the address to their site, either.
Then the original plugger thought he was clever, and put something along the lines of “Be quiet! MZ is where it’s all at!” Right underneath my plug. Then he saw the part of my advertisment that said “Updated daily!” He sighed. No one can match the power of the blog!
I’ve got another plug ready for tomorrow. Just wait.
Harjus is going into retail:
Come get your ripe, delicious, boneless bananas — only 39¢/lb.
Available only at participating stores, I suppose.
The St. X Quiz Team defeated LaSalle on two levels today:
Well, that’s Academic Sports in a Minute. For Minh’s Notes, I’m Minh himself.
Well, I was in Chemistry class this morning, you see, and our teacher once again went over the properties of the three states of matter. (snore) Someone mentioned that plasma was the fourth state of matter, which I agree with. Then I remembered: Bose-Einstein Condensate. It’s a newly (1995) created state of matter, created by lowering the temperature of a gas (Rubidium) to such coldness (0.000 000 001 K) that all kinetic motion stops, and all the atoms of this substance just piles up and collapses into the same exact area. Plus, every atom of every element in this substance becomes identical. Wierd, huh? And confusing, too. Anyhow, it’s so neat that the scientists who created it received the Nobel Prize in Physics for it.
[Update] There are actually more than five states of matter.
Okay, the wise guy who posted that last comment, please step forward. No, I won’t ban your IP address, but I think flogging may be in order. Have a nice day. And, uh, please try to refrain from double-posting. We’d love to hear your whole life story and all – twice – but we’ve got better things to do, you know.
Please e-mail Crimestoppers if you have any information. (And that really wasn’t Crimestoppers.)
- ethernet
- [ˈɛðɚnɛt] n. An apparatus used to catch the Etherbunny. [2002; introduced by legendary quotemaster Harjus Sethi, E ethernet]
Wow. Harjus always manages to mix geek-lingo with… well, Etherbunny!
Just wanted to chime in today so that today’s date would show up. (Go and look now.)
Brad has decided to take down both his Survivor Online website and his [pitiful excuse for a] comic. But I’ve already decided to take down links to the two, so… move along now. Nothing to see here.
An update to an earlier post:
That’s all for now. Results weekly, bulletins immediately, right here on MingerWeb. (All you folks out there who watch Dan Rather are supposed to laugh right now.)
Yesterday evening, the St. X Quiz Team played Elder on all three levels. Here are the results:
Now, the Junior Varsity match was a real struggle. It was me, James Ficker, and a junior, against threefour Elder juniors. Why did our team have only three playing? Some players were on Kairos retreat, and some others… just didn’t show up.
We were just ahead of the Elder team during the first few rounds, but then it started to get tight. We began to tie, and then the tie continued. We managed to pull slightly ahead, but it was a little scary. Even the usually game-deciding Alphabet Round didn’t put anyone it a real lead — both teams got 12 points out of a possible 20.
The lightning round was nothing short of brutal. We maintained a 2–3 point lead over the other team, but they were always inching towards us. At a few points, they nearly tied with us. Then, there was the deciding question: Elder had to receive a point for this question, or we would surely win. They didn’t get the point. We eeked by with a one point lead, finishing the game at 45–44.
And did I mention that the other team was intimidating? Not only did they outnumber us by juniors, but they were all wearing their famous purple. (I was wearing green plaid.) That was, by far, the closest and most exciting quiz team match in my time with the team.
I answered around 5–10 individual questions correctly, but I could’ve answered more had I not hesitated. (That’s always been my problem.) I got questions about Christchurch and the ohm correct.
Does anyone still care about Composer, the editor part of Mozilla? Apparently so. There have been many suggestions for making Composer better, but few have been looked at, because Composer is just the outcast, the lonely one, the poor, ignored child of the Mozilla application suite. I’d really like to see Composer become more of a word processor that uses XHTML as its format. That way, it could serve to make both word processing documents and webpages. Hm. Maybe the developers of Phoenix will relent and make a Phoenicized Composer. Maybe it could be named after the Greek mythological character who spread knowledge or created philosophy, since Phoenix is named after a mythological creature.
Like anyone in the Mozilla community will actually read this blog, anyhow. (sigh)
Mozilla.org today released version 0.5. This version has some new features — scrollbars and statusbars use the Windows interface look, and pages load even faster than before — but there are also a few new bugs — mostly dealing with the display of menus. I’m liking Phoenix more and more, but I’m going to be a little disappointed once 0.6 comes out, because they’re going to change the name. Phoenix Technologies thinks they own the word Phoenix, to make a long story short. Well, download it now for Windows or Linux. You don’t know what you’ve been missing!
Last week, we had a five-day Thanksgiving weekend. Today, it snowed. Around 2½″ of snow, and nearly every district in the Tri-State area closed. Even Loveland (my ride to school) and St. X (my school), both staunch supporters of having school as much as possible, closed. That’s gotta be a first. And I would’ve already had tomorrow off school, “in honor of Saint Francis Xavier”. So this is a four-day weekend, on top of last weekend. My point? Will I ever get back to school? ☻
The St. X Quiz Team played Roger Bacon yesterday. Here are the results:
I’ve heard that we play Elder next week.
I think Harjus is getting a little direction in life. ;^)
Two wrongs don’t make a right, but three wrongs make a left.
Wow.
