Misdirection

Now that drama is over, I find myself with a lot more time. And I can't decide whether it's a good thing or a bad thing. I remember, a year ago, when I started this blog, I was having a similar dilemma. Is it better to work away, feeling pressured and stressed, or have too much time to yourself and feel unproductive?

For the past month or so, I've been living through the first of these options. A lot of work and a lot of stress. Most of that was because of the play. I can't quite express how big of a commitment it was. Everyday, after school, for two and a half hours, and then things got ridiculous later on. We spent twelve hours one Sunday rehearsing 'til ten 'o clock. I spent half of my nights up late doing homework.

The end of drama apparently coincided with a light homework week, because I've been finding myself completely free after school. I find things to do, but I get the feeling that I am indeed unproductive. And the problem about this sort of thing is that I always get into bad habits this way, making heavy homework quite a bit more difficult for me.

But I have to admit I'm enjoying this lifestyle currently. I don't know what it is, but I seem to like not having direction. I'm a kid. I love wandering around, exploring, just doing things for the sake of doing them. It feels great to me. It's complex.

It's what also gets me in trouble though. For example, I have time after school, which I would usually spend in the computer lab, playing games off the shared drive. But, I was recently called into the office because of computer violations. I thought the accusations were a bit exaggerated, but that wasn't my decision, and my computer rights are now restricted to fifth period, my computer class. But if I behave, they'll probably give me my rights at the semester. So I'll have to watch my step....

I guess I'm just enjoying my free time now, whether or not I'm doing anything useful with it. Although I did recently finish arranging Viva La Vida for the band! We're playing it this coming Friday at the football game. And afterwards, there's another Soc-hop! This has happened before, and I love doing it. I get to play keyboard and then go to a dance. It's awesome.

P.S. For anybody who knows me, I recently got a Facebook... Go ahead and add me as a friend if you like.

I'm 15!

This Friday the 13th, I turned 15. I'm quite proud to be this old and I had a really great time these past couple of days. It splits into two days really.

The first day was the day before my birthday, I got up and went to swim team as usual, and went to Troy's house afterwards. Following that, we took our bikes and went all over downtown - to the library, to book stores, the movies; in fact I didn't even go home except to ask Mom whether or not I could stay the night at Troy's, and I did. Basically what I'm getting to is that this was like an all-day party for me, and I was sure grateful for it.

I skipped swim team and slept in til I had to go home. And of course then we had a little birthday party there too. We ordered lunch from Flying Pie Pizzeria and had ice cream cake (yes this was lunch). After the food I was handed a huge box in wrapping paper. I ripped it open to find a notation software called Sibelius 5 and an incredibly cool keyboard compatible with the software. So I was set to write music!

Not yet though. Unsurprisingly, the software won't install because we don't have Mac OS X 10.4. So now we have two options-let all the money we spent on this gift to go to waste, or spend an extra $130 on upgrading our computer. Technology kind of cornered us into a spend more money or lose situation. Oh well.

If indeed we get this software to work and I can start writing music, it will allow me to do alot. I can start writing original pieces for the school band to play next year, and music for my own band. But it'll take a bit to get it up no matter how it goes.

Banned

To add injury to insult, my account at school has now been banned. I am basically now entirely cut off from the school's computer. There's now only one of two ways for me to use the computers at school: use my little brothers account or borrow a friend's account here at school.

And why, you might ask yet again, would someone like me be banned? Well I got hacked. I should have seen it coming, I suppose. After all, my password for my school account is alcatraz014. Call me Captain Obvious.

Of course, it takes more than that.

Most BK students know all this, but for anyone who's not, let me give you an overview. Here at the school, everyone signed in on a BK account has access to the "G Drive". The G drive is a public drive that anyone can put data on. Documents. Pictures. Programs. It's the last in that list that got me in trouble. There's been a game on the G drive called Unreal Tournament. Ever since it was on there, there's been a constant war between the students and the administrators. The administrators keep deleting it and the students keep putting it back on, trying to hide it from the teachers.

These students don't usually make it far before their school account is banned. And that's exactly what happened. Whoever hacked me put Unreal back on under my account. And now I'm paying the consequences.

To make matters worse, I've got another Saturday School this weekend.

Someone stop technology. I'd like to get off.

An apology

Sorry, guys, I've been really busy this week and can't get on the computer for a while. But I'll write down a topic as a draft for each day so when I get time, I can publish a bunch of posts for the days I've missed. I'm also compiling a huge list of email addresses so I can send my web address out to a bunch of people. I'll have to write a really good post that day. Anyhow, I should have some posts up this weekend, so be sure to look on Sunday.

"I like to hold the microphone like this-see I pinch the cord and then I let it go and you hear a bunch of jokes at once." - Mitch Hedburg (comedian)