My Blog

July 14th,2002

Well, this is my first blog entry.

I hope to keep this up to date, but I can become distracted from things like this very easily, so keep your fingers crossed.

In this long stretch between the 4th of July and the next holiday, there really isn't much to be excited about. No firecrackers, no drunks riding around the town in pickup trucks, nothing.The only drunk I know of was on the 4th of July:

Here in my town, there is a very low crime rate.

In fact, the crime rate is so low, we have an annual shooting. On the 4th some drunk was shooting a gun in the air in some idiotic fashion that I'm sure seemed very patriotic to him at the time, and he happened to hit someone. Gee, maybe, just maybe, if you fire a gun into the air, you might hit someone on the way back down! Go figure! The crime rate in our city is so low, that the girl who got shot got the cover of our newspaper, and she didn't even die! Of course, even an annual accidental shooting seems exciting compared to this real police log report:

On Wednesday, police patroling in the

Albertsons parking lot area spotted a blackbird that seemed to be injured. Police apprehended the bird, eventually catching it and sending it to an animal care facility where it will hopefully recover from what appears to be a broken leg.

How boring does a town have to be to list a couple of cops chasing a bird around a grocery store parking lot? I don't even want to start talking about how small this town is... but I will anyway. Our town is so small, that when a police cruiser has to go in to get repairs, half of the force is immobilized. Not like we need a ton of cops, though. They'd probably cause more trouble than they stop.

On a considerably darker note than some girl getting shot, we had to put our family dog down last week.

I was at the movies with a friend at the time. My parents said it was easier to not have to see him go. I still wish I had gotten to see him one last time, though...

July 17th, 2002

Great news!

For me, anyway. Too bad for you! Anyway, me and my family are going down to southern cali on friday. We'll stay at the Hilton in Whittier. For those of you that don't live in the coolest state in the country, Whittier is right near Los Angeles. We'll be going to see the Dodgers play the Giants in Dodger Stadium (since my entire family are Giants fans, this should be quite interesting), and then we swing over to Anaheim to watch the Angels play the Mariners. We might also go to Alvaro Street (in some place down there), which is basically a replication of a street in Mexico. It has old fashioned taco-rias and saloons and things like that. It sounds like fun. We leave early Friday morning. When I get back, I expect to find some votes in the poll, and messeges in the guestbook. Don't let me down, you guys. Seeya!

July 24th, 2002

I'm back!

I know all 3 of you semi-loyal readers have been following my entries very closely, so here's the latest update: Los Angeles sucks. I don't know about any of you, but I prefer to not be able to see the air I breath. When you have to swerve to avoid hitting the air when you're driving down the freeway, you know you have an air pollution problem. It was nice, however, to see the Angels and the Mariners play. I never get to see American League teams play. I only see the Giants versus another team I've seen 7 billion times (like the Mets). The Angels game was great; in case you don't follow baseball, Garrett Anderson of the Angels hit a homerun to give his team the lead. Some guy for the Mariners promptly hit a homerun to tie the score the very next inning. The inning after that, Troy Glaus of the Angels hit another homerun to put the Angels ahead (again). And then (and I'm not making this up) for the very last out, one of the Mariners hit a drive out to center field that was caught at the fence. What a great game... Oh yeah, I almost forgot: the Dodgers and the Giants went to the 12th tied at 2 until a dramatic single brought in a run with a play at home plate... but that just seemed a little boring compared to the homerun-fest. Until next time, this is Andy saying "Get off my property!"

July 27th, 2002

Hi again. Nothing exciting going on, just reading the latest edition of Smart Computing. This issue is all about viruses, and the many, many ways they can destroy your computer and scare the crap out of you. This issue also discusses the matter of children's security online. It makes it seem like all kids want to do is look at porn and things like that... Okay, so most kids only want to look at porn, but still, it seems like the steps that adults are taking to keep kids safe on the web are getting kind of weird. For example, there was mention of the government making a part of the web just for kids, that would have no explicit content whatsoever. The only problem with that is that no self-respecting kid would be caught dead on a .kid (what they plan to call it) site. It's the same thing as having your friends walk in on you watching the Disney channel. I'm sure it seems like a good idea to the adults, but they are only fooling themselves. When you tell anyone (especially a kid/teenager) to not do something, or to not go somewhere, that's the first thing they do when you walk out of the room. Oh well.. maybe someday someone will come up with someway to trick kids into staying in a certain area. Wait! I've got it! You know how all website addresses end with .com, .gov, .net, or something similar? Just make a kids area called .porn! They'll flock in by the thousands!

August 12th, 2002

I'm back! And you thinking you got rid of me! Just kidding. Sorry I haven't updated lately. I've been really busy. I've been taking care of the neighbor's beagle, Baxter. He's been a handful, and between him all the barbecues and beach parties, I haven't had time to do much real work lately. Poor me, huh?

Anyway, I have more good news. For me. I'm flying down to southern Cali again on Sunday with my Mom. We're going down to surprise my Grandma on her 75th birthday. Of course, my Mom is completely petrified of flying, so that makes it a little less nice. She'll drive down there, which is hundreds of times riskier that flying without a thought. Strange, isn't it?
Actually, I have some good news for you, too. I plan on changing the animation on the front page and adding another icon next to the "Blog" hyperlink. Bet you wish you got to go to southern Cali too, don't you? Until next time, this is Andy saying "Ha Ha!!" :-)

PS- I've had a few people suggest to me that I put the latest blog entry on top, and the older ones on the bottom; I agree: that probably would have been a good idea in the beginning, but it would be a lot of work, and require a lot of time. I'm a busy man, and I don't have all the time in the world. I mean, I have to.... um...eat! And....er....sleep.... I guess..

August 15th, 2002

Sunday is drawing nearer, and I think that my Mom is just getting paler and paler thinking about getting on that airplane. Well, she'll have to get over it, because we're going down there come hell or high water.

On a lighter note, I've decided to volunteer in a computer workshop for the YMCA. It's a workshop sponsored by Intel, the microprocessor producer that makes the Pentium series. I'll be working there as a mentor for the kids, some of whom are considerably older than me. Whatever. I'll still get to help people with computers, which, as you know if you've been following this site, is one of my favorite things. I'm looking at the list for all of the software on the computers in that workshop, and it's huge! They have 3D rendering programs, image editing, music recording and altering, programming, web authoring tools, desktop publishing, everything! I'll never be able to learn all of those. Hopefully I'll just help people when their computer freaks out. The woman who works there (Mandy) is completely overwhelmed by all the people in the room asking for help. I have a very free schedule, so I plan to help out a lot more than the recommended 2 hours a week.

On the application for volunteer work that I got from Mandy, it says I have to list 4 references, to vouch for my character, I assume. I called one of my friends families and asked if I could use them as references. They said that it would be fine, but now I'm afraid that I've got their son in trouble. Now they'll probably want him to do some kind of volunteer work as well. Darn. I'll have no problem getting the references. I already called 5 people and e-mailed one other, so I'll be fine. Yawwwwwwwwwn.... I'm so tired. Don't know why. I sit on my butt all day. Later. I'm going to bed.....

August 27th, 2002

Sorry I haven't been updating lately. I've been really busy. I'm actually writing this update from the Intel Computer Clubhouse where I volunteer. It's a cleaning day, so we get the whole place to ourselves, and I figured it would be a good time to sneak in an update.

So we got back from Southern cali about a week ago. It was nice, but the plane ride was a little bumpy. Not too bad, though. My mom was scared to death, but I was... okay, I was a little nervous too, but it was actually pretty turbulent. Maybe it was like that before and I just never noticed. Whatever. Really not much going on. My friend Sean's site is coming along nicely. Go check it out. He used frontpage to make his site, but I won't hold that against him. It's a pretty good job. He actually uses humor in his site. Paa! Humor. Who needs it? Just kidding. He has a knack for it, though. Seriously, if you're still reading this you probably aren't at his site. I wasn't playing with you the first time, fool! Get your butt over there!

September 4th, 2002,

Well, it's back to school time. And I have mixed feelings. Let me tell you why: I like being the top dogs of the school, but my teachers personalities are as follows:
Newbie
Nice
Crazy
Crazy
Boring
Crazy
but what are you gonna do? I guess school is okay, as far as school goes. Next semester, I'll be the editor-in-chief of the school paper in journalism. For now I get to do Leadership, which means I get to set up Friday activities and things like that for the school. It also means me and the rest of my class get to set up and run the dances. It should be interesting.

Trivia question for the month: who said this: "if God didn't want us to kill our problems away, he wouldn't have given us guns and stuff"? If you don't know, you seriously haven't been following my directions for the past few entries. You need to check out my friend Sean's site for the answer. I'll give you a hint: flash. Good luck,and if you e-mail me with the correct answer, I'll probably fall asleep or something similiar. Thanks, and good luck!!!