Sugar plum fairy, sugar plum fairy #

The package finally came to day, just as it was scheduled to. What package, you ask? Why, the introductory materials for my course at Stanford, of course. What course at Standford, you ask? Why, the online course for an Introduction to C Programming, of course. Technically, my term doesn't start until July 1st, but why delay when I can have this all banged out in a couple of days? I mean, by now, I'm well into Week 5 of the course. I've been submitting the source code assignments to my instructor (Shilpa Thakkar) and I just heard back from her. All of the code I had submitted got a response of "good work!", except the first one, which got "good wrok!" and another which got "well done!". I'm not kidding. Those were the exact spellings and capitalizations. And after all that, I then proceeded to get an e-mail from her saying that I was not on her class list (or whatever she called it) and asking me when my term started. Now, in and of itself, that's a very legitimate question. But wouldn't you haved looked and asked it before checking and replying to all the other e-mails? (Of course, I should probably stop complaining, before she banishes me to the land of people who start online courses early and forbids me to continue....)

But that's just the first part of this post. The other part of this post has to do with the fact that I shall be starting work once again this Thursday. Working in the same office that I did last year. Now, for those of you who are unaware, I quit that job. But, my dad has reassured me that I will not be sitting there answering phones all day, which, as you should know, is one of my nightmare jobs. I hate talking on phones. Apparently, Jamie has plenty of back-burner jobs lined up for me. Which, I hope, is a good thing. Let's just hope it has nothing to do with printing and folding any mailings. Because that is really, really, really boring.

And that about sums it up for now. I'm waiting on a response from Ms. Thakkar regarding my starting early (and getting over one-third through the course). Have a good night.

The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off #

I recently finished watching this documentary (which apparently won the International Emmy Award for Best Documentary in 2004) on TLC about Jonny Kennedy, a 36-year-old man who suffered from Dystrophic Epidermolysis Bullosa. The documentary was very moving, and the poor guy had a wonderful sense of humor through all of it. He'd had the genetic disorder all his life and it seems he decided to document his preparation for death after he was finally diagnosed with skin cancer and given a year to live. He shopped for his coffin, had it custom-designed, and asked various people to speak at his funeral. He also tried to raise money for the foundation that he was involved with (DebRA) by doing various interviews and gatherings (and even jumping out of an airplane). Unfortunately (or fortunately, for him), he died during filming in 2003. If you're looking for a charity to donate to, I'd say this is a pretty viable choice.

But that's not the reason I made this post. The reason I made this post was because it seems that the American... err, United Statian... public is really mentally deficient. Jonny was an Englishman and the entire documentary (I think) was filmed in England. And, being an Englishman, Jonny spoke with an English accent (which, judging by the similarity of it to Paul McCartney's accent, I would say is Liverpudlian, though that make be completely wrong). Now, last I checked, most (or, at least, many) of the people in the United Sates speak English. But the whole documentary had subtitles! Are people watching this moving actually too dense that they can't distinguish their own language? Aside from the (stereotypical) English phrases, such as, "Jolly good", there really wasn't anything that wasn't understandable. There wasn't even any mention of a "lorry" or a "lift". It was all made up of English words that are common in all English-speaking places. Please, someone tell me that they are underestimating the United States population and that people can actually understand speech with an English accent.

People's comprehension of language disappoints me more and more every day. (Oh, and, if need be, replace all mention of an "English" accent with a "British" accent, if that is the proper term. I'm never sure anymore....)

There are places I'll remember all my life... #

Welcome to my new blog. Since I decided to discontinue my old one, I feel like I have no place to put things of importance. However, this new blog hopes to be less of the personal stuff and more about the ranting. There are a few things on the agenda, mostly language- and technology-related, but I felt I'd start things off right with a post devoted entirely to the new blog.

As you have probably guessed, the title is inspired by the Beatles song. I chose it for a few reasons. For one, it goes along the lines that I accidentally started with my first blog, "A Day in the Life of a Teenage Programmer". That parallel to a Beatles song was not originally intended, though it seemed to be more and more relevant. Another reason was for the subtitle, "I've loved them all" (which is part of the URL, and if it's not already in the header, I hope to get it there soon). I chose that part because it was recently said to me that I "have no beef with anybody", which is, for the most part, true. I mean, I hate the entire human race as a whole, but there are few individuals that I have negative thoughts about.

So, yeah, that's about it. Welcome to the new home of my thoughts. (Well, I guess it's more of the new vacation home of my thoughts....)