Saturday, 9th of September, 2000
Wow, this HP49 is kinda hard to use. It's nothing like TI calculators, of course. I'll have to spend some time playing with it. But overall, it's much more powerful. I find it interesting how there are multiple different ways to access a certain function, which is confusing as of now. And the way the menus are cascading, in a sense will also take some getting used to. Reverse Polish input isn't hard at all, I'm alreadying finding how fast it is.
Friday, 8th of September, 2000
My HP49 came in today! Woohoo! This thing is so tight! It'll do anything! Everything is built-in. It's even got a clock and calendar with alarm functions!
The letter from the St. Louis Youth Symphony came in today. I had made it in. This is going to be an exciting experience!
Thursday, 7th of September, 2000
Wednesday, 6th of September, 2000
Well, I had my other set of classes today. Mrs. Noland is really really cool. I like her humour, and I think AP English is going to be fun. German III/IV/V is very interesting, it's going to be quite an interesting year, especially with block. Apparantly, the foreign language department also made consessions in terms of the block schedule, and they're supposed to get a 30 minute chunk of Academic Lab on first priority. Great. We've got so many consessions going on @ once, it's impossible to accomplish it in a 75-minute period. (Yes, 75 minutes because 10 minutes are chopped off @ each end for people to check out and back into their Academic Lab.) What idiocy.
I was at Borders bookstore today in Clayton, and I was looking for some books for AP English, and I got some really awesome service. There was a lady that helped me find each book that I needed, helping me for like 15 minutes. She even called up Barnes and Nobles (!!!) to see if it was available there when it wasn't here.
Tuesday, 5th of September, 2000
Today was the first day of school. What chaos. Apparantly, they never solved the AP-Physics/Orchestra scheduling conflict. Great. Owell, Mr. Heger said he'd deal with it, so that's very nice. Otherwise, I really didn't have any classes today... I'm going to be in the Newspaper Editing class for real now, and that started today. Academic Lab is going to be an utter disaster the way it's set up. Since 1000 students will be trying to use the Library and computer labs at the same time, it will be on a lottery system. Students have to sign up on a sheet a couple days in advance to get into the library. This is insane. Block and Academic Lab is a great idea, but setting it up this way is not really optimizing the system. Owell, like I care, I've got other free periods.
Monday, 4th of September, 2000
Ok, so I went to CompUSA, cause I saw a deal on their website about a 50-pack of Ultima Kodak CD-R for $20, but a $20 mail-in rebate. Cool! So I bought that. Kodak uses the Phthalocyanine dye, so it should be pretty reliable. And while I was at it, I bought Paint Shop Pro 6, cause there is a $30 mail-in rebate on it, and if you buy it now, you get a free upgrade to PSP7. So essentially, I'm getting PSP7 for $50. Cool! Oh wait. $30 rebate is only for upgrade users. Owell, $80 for PSP7 is still not bad. It's worth it, I made this entire site using the demo version of PSP6, and PSP7 looks even tighter. Dang, it's nice having the manuals and stuff too. I need to buy software more often.
Sunday, 3rd of September, 2000
I went to a recital played by my violin teacher's son. He's really good, and played very nice pieces. He even played a really long and hard piece that was written for him for his birthday last year, and dedicated to him. Wow.