Saturday, 11th of November, 2000
We had a reading rehearsal of the All-Suburban Orchestra this morning. I'm concertmaster this year. It went pretty well, and we're playing interesting music, some Sinfonia 3 by C. P. Bach, the fourth movement to Mendelssohn's 12th Symphony, Kreisler's Passicaglia, and a fun arrangement of It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing.
Well, I decided to try a CD-RW brand better than InfoDisc (I got like 4 out of 10 that were totally unusable on the last batch) I went to the store and bought 5 Memorex CD-RW for $10. So far, I'm half-happy with it, it's definately superior to InfoDisc though. There was ONE Infodisc disc that was just superior to all the others (my CD player could read it), but it seems the Memorex will do audio CDs, but without anti-skip...
So I had to deal with no anti-skip in the car. I found that my lap is the best anti-shock protection mechanism. No skips, even at very fast highway speeds and going over potholes. You bet I was surprised. I might just not use anti-skip from now on.
Friday, 10th of November, 2000
Today was a staff development day, so I didn't have classes. I got the day off! I took the opportunity to get some chores done... oil change and exhaust work on the Cavalier, haircut, and some other miscellaneous things. This is good.
We have a Vice President who won't accept defeat. Al Gore is demanding recounts, and even HAND recounts of votes! Sure, that's really accurate... (sarc) Surely, this system will be abolished by the next election, but this is really messed up. Nixon and Gerald Ford both soaked up really close races without any question, they didn't call for recounts, if that means anything.
Thursday, 9th of November, 2000
It rained pretty much all day today, I had lots of fun with the slick roads. Actually, at an industrial park, I made a U-turn, and decided to sink the front end of my car into a huge hole of water, and the hot engine block met the water, and steam shot out from under the hood. It was really funny, cause steam was shooting out for a few seconds afterwards, creating a nice effect.
Wednesday, 8th of November, 2000
Well, it was obviously a very long election night, at first, they gave Florida, with 25 electoral votes, to Gore, then they retracted that and gave it to George W. Bush at about 2:00AM, and that put him just over the 270 electoral votes needed to win. Well, all the news networks announced him the winner, Gore even called him to congratulate him, but then at 3:00AM, the race became too close to call again. Gore called him to retract his congratulations! But by then, all the international leaders have already called up Bush. Interesting... well, Bush ended up winning by like 1700 votes in Florda (!!!), and the vote was so close that the Democrats called for a recount. So, that's been going on all day and probably all night. Wow, this election is quite interesting.
Tuesday, 7th of November, 2000
Today's election was quite a day. At first, we had Republicans Jim Talent for governor and John Ashcroft for senator just barely ahead in Missouri, but as the day wound down to Wednesday morning, both Talent and Ashcroft lost. We elected a dead man to the Senate! People voted for Mel Carnahan, knowing that our Democratic governor will appoint Mel's wife to the Senate. I think people like the idea of having a lay person in the Senate. Also, I think tons of people cast sympathy votes. Hmmm. There are also some interesting controversies over the legitimacy of some votes, since the votes were SO close, any little error can count. The turnout in the state was insane, 70%. That was because of the fear that the races in Missouri will be close, so everyone went in and voted. Well, the vote is still close. With the high turnout, though, the lines at the polls were insanely long. Average wait to get into a booth was about 1.5 hours. That's crazy. Well, anyways, the City of St. Louis argued some people were not able to vote because of that, and decided to extend poll hours to 10:00PM, 3 hours later than usual. The City of St. Louis is predominantly Democrat, if that means anything. The courts closed the polls down at 7:40 anyways. But, yeah, much has to happen in the future to ensure less wishy-washiness in elections. Usually, it's not a big deal, but with a race this close, it probably won't happen again. My parents told me about how some people just showed a driver's license, and that was all that was needed. There really wasn't any check to see if people were registered. Well, it is true that voting should be a very easy process, but really, this paperwork process has got to improve, or you end up with a lot of controversial races.
Monday, 6th of November, 2000
Serves me right for turning in my form 2 weeks late... I had an All-Suburban audition time of, get this, 21:25. Owell, it was cool. I saw some really good people there from Parkway (apparantly, their teacher talked them into auditioning), so this year's orchestra should be very good. Looking forward to it.
Sunday, 5th of November, 2000
Man, cones are so much fun. I got the inspiration from Need for Speed 5: Porsche Unleased. In the Factory Driver mode, you can do slalom and skidpad tests in courses with cones and stuff, it's really fun. Well, I decided to extend that, and I got some paper cups and broke out the radio-controlled car. It's so much fun spinning that thing around those paper cups, and trying to get the best time. Hmmm, maybe I should get real cones and an empty parking lot...