김연아 Kim Yu-na won gold in women’s figure skating with a short program score of 78.50 and a free skate score of 150.06 for a total score of 228.56. She set new world records in each of these categories, beating her previous world record total of 210.03 by 18 points. She also beat Mao Asada by 23 points, which is huge, considering that the difference between second place Asada and third place Rochette was about 3 points.

Anyways, a lot of articles say that her score was “so great that it was almost as high as a men’s score”, and that it would’ve placed her ninth in the men’s competition—which sounds really shitty.

Few articles clarify that the men’s free skate is 30 seconds longer and that they’re allowed one more jump in their programs.

So yeah, Jeré Longman of The New York Times and E.M. Swift of Sports Illustrated—you’re retards.

If desktop backgrounds in the future showed HD webcams of public places, like city sidewalks, streets, subways

And people at home could get paid a portion of the fine for catching infringements

The ultimate low-cost, all-seeing police state

Scaaary shit

If you say “I’m not gonna lie…” does that mean you’re a chronic liar but made an exception just this once?

And if you say “I’m not gonna lie…” multiple times a day, does that mean you’re a chronic liar struggling with breaking the addiction?

I was thinking about sleeping (as I often do) and about the amount of time spent awake or asleep. And I thought about how we’re not really conscious of the time spent sleeping. For example, during a long road trip or flight, a person might fall asleep and wake up at their destination, and feel as if no time passed in between. I thought about how the hours spent awake, or conscious, would add up for a person who slept a lot versus a person who slept very little.

Me: I wonder
Me: about how some people sleep a lot during the school year
Me: and others don’t
Me: So I guess some people kind of…take longer to finish the school year
Me: like in terms of the time spent conscious
Me: Isn’t that weird?
Somebody: ?
Somebody: not really
Somebody: hahah
Somebody: it’s still the same amount of school hours
Me: DUDE
Me: I did the math though
Me: Like
Me: If somebody woke up at 6 and went to school, and went to sleep at 4 everyday
Me: During school days, they would only be conscious, or awake 1800 hours a school year
Me: and if somebody woke up at 6 and stayed up until 1, they would be awake 3420 hours a school year
Me: 1.9 times as much time being awake!
Me: So it would feel like the school year is twice as long!
Me: So maybe if I sleep more, this year will seem over sooner
Somebody: O.O”
Somebody: SOMEONE HAS TOO MUCH TIME
Somebody: LOL WTF

So I did some math to find out the number of hours a person would be conscious if they slept a little or a lot. If a person wakes up at 6AM and goes to school, and was somehow able to sleep at 4PM, they would spend only 10 hours awake each day. Since Washington state requires 180 school days per year, the person would spend a total of 1800 hours conscious during school days over the school year.

Now if a person wakes up at 6AM and goes to school, but slept at 1PM each night, they would spent 19 hours awake each day. And multiplied by the 180 school days, the person would spent a total of 3420 hours conscious during school days over the school year.

Obviously going to sleep at 4PM is pretty extreme, but just for comparison, the person who slept at 1PM every school night would spent 1.9 times more hours conscious. The person who slept at 1PM would spend 67.5 more days of time (24 hour periods) awake. So depending on your point of view (kind of like half-full versus half-empty) the person who slept at 1AM would gain 67.5 more days of time to do stuff, or the person who sleeps at 4PM would lose 67.5 days of time to do stuff. I guess this just kind of confirms that the person who sleeps at 4PM everyday wouldn’t have a life.

So going back to the idea of falling asleep during a road trip or flight, to a person who sleeps at 4PM everyday the year would seemingly go by twice as fast! And to the person who sleeps at 1AM, the year would seem to take twice as long. I guess this isn’t really a breakthrough, but I thought it was interesting how in the long run, over peoples’ lifetimes, different people might live to the same age, but one person might spend much more time conscious to do things.

And just for fun because I feel like it, I’ll put some numbers up about the time spent “conscious” for different hours of sleep. Again, this is based on a 180-day school year and only totals the hours per school day.

• 10 hours of sleep = 2520 hours awake = 105 days awake (24 hour periods)
• 9 hours of sleep = 2700 hours awake = 112.5 days awake (24 hour periods)
• 8 hours of sleep = 2880 hours awake = 120 days awake (24 hour periods)
• 7 hours of sleep = 3060 hours awake = 127.5 days awake (24 hour periods)
• 6 hours of sleep = 3240 hours awake = 135 days awake (24 hour periods)
• 5 hours of sleep = 3420 hours awake = 142.5 days awake (24 hour periods)
• 4 hours of sleep = 3600 hours awake = 150 days awake (24 hour periods)
• 3 hours of sleep = you are going to die early

Yup. So there’s my first post in a while. I kind of decided to not write about things that are already written about for awhile, like Apple and the election. I wonder if anybody’s ever really thought of sleep this way, and I’m sure people have, but I guess I was one of the few that was interested (or bored) enough to find the numbers. Anyways, I hope it made sense.

Oh, and I saw on the news that a teacher at the middle school I went to FREAKING KILLED A MAN. Except it was a hunting accident, not a deliberate murder. But still, pretty crazy.

I was driving (while supervised by a licensed driver with at least five years of driving experience) on I-205 South near Johnson Creek Boulevard, on the way to Clackamas Town Center. I drive with a permit that I’ve had for 6 months and 7 days, which means I could’ve had my license 7 days ago. But because of the cost of insurance and stuff, I won’t be getting a license until around the time my permit expires next March. Anyways, the speed limit there is 55 but I was in the far left lane keeping pace with the cars in front of me at around 60. I passed a police car on the side of the road with its lights on, and slowed down a bit, but not really, because I wasn’t speeding to begin with. Then, half a mile later when I checked the rear-view mirror I saw something like this:

A police car in my rear-view mirror, close on my tail, with its lights on and sirens blaring. The picture shows a side mirror, because it’s just a random picture I found on Flickr. I’m pretty sure most people, when they see a police car in their rear-view mirror with its lights and sirens on don’t think to pull out a camera to take pictures. I’m pretty sure that most people, like myself think something along the lines of “Oh shit, I am so screwed.” After that initial thought, I asked myself if I was really speeding. I stick to 5 over the speed limit, and I was keeping pace with the cars around me at about 63. I knew I wasn’t speeding, but the police car on my tail said otherwise. A lot of other thoughts went through my head including,

1) My parents are going to freaking kill me.

2) Tickets are freaking expensive.

3) If I get a ticket, my insurance will cost even more.

4) I can’t get a license within 6 months of getting a traffic ticket. Ok, I didn’t really remember that rule exactly, but I still thought,

5) I am so freaking screwed.

Looking in the rear-view mirror again, I saw the police officer in the car doing a weird jerky-neck, seizure movement. I didn’t know if that was a signal for something, but since he was right behind me with his lights and sirens on, I assumed he wanted me to pull over, so I signaled and started to pull over, not knowing what to expect.

And he passed me.

Pause.

Blink.

Relief!

I merged back onto the road and saw the police car a while later, pulling over a car that had been driving in front of me. Obviously, I was relieved that I wasn’t pulled over, but I was still pretty mad that my emotions just got played and that my life flashed. My mom was actually calm the whole time, even while the blood was draining from my face while I was shitting my pants. This actually isn’t the first time I thought I was getting pulled over either. Once, on McGillvray on the way to school, there was another police officer with its sirens and lights on right behind me, that also just wanted to pass me. Too many false alarms.

On a different note, I was kind of mad when my parents told me that I would have to wait until my permit expired before I could get a license. I realize a lot of kids jump to get their permits the day they turn 15 and-a-half or to get their licenses the day they turn 16. But I know that the cost of a car, maintaining a car, buying gas, and insurance are all really expensive, and that I don’t have a job to earn the money myself. I realize that the benefits of having a car don’t outweigh the cost of having one yet. I was kind of disappointed about having to wait longer, but now that I think about it, I feel a bit stupid for being mad at all. So I decided that I won’t be a little bitch about getting my license. I can wait.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted anything. But since I have some time right now I suppose I’ll write something short.

School started a while ago. What seems like a long while ago now. I’m taking AP Calculus, AP Language and Composition, AP Psychology, AP US History, Honors Chemistry, and third year Spanish. In no particular order, so creepers can’t follow me around school. Actually, they’re ordered alphabetically. All my classes are definitely worthwhile, though not necessarily enjoyable. They’re all somewhere from between pretty interesting to just tolerable. In April and May though, I expect things’ll get busier. A lot busier. But afterwards, that leaves 4 classes that’ll be much easier through the end of the year so that I’ll be able to focus on only two finals. Chemistry is challenging and I’ve heard that the final is pretty hard. First and second year Spanish were really easy but this year is más difícil.

The debate was on last night. I only watched about the first 20 minutes of the debate. Nothing really caught my attention except that when asked to prioritize three key issues, McCain gave the oh-so-political response that he could address all three at the same time. Who are you kidding? On the other hand, Obama was able to number off his priorities in order, even though he risks turning off potential voters who have different orders of priority. Any high-schooler, college student, or adult should be able to number off priorities. If a Presidential candidate can’t give a straight answer of his top priorities, then he definitely cannot be trusted to prioritize the needs of the American people.

On the other hand, I’m not sure I agree with Obama on some issues, but I’ll do more research to have a solid stance. Obviously, supporting Obama is now the “cool” thing to do. But if you can’t reasonably back up why you support Obama, then you’re obviously swayed by peer pressure. That doesn’t make you a Democratic elephant, it makes you a herded sheep or cow. I’m getting a button that says “Sandwich Artists for Obama” but whether I decide to use it or not, I’ll have to decide. I was disappointed though that there’s a “Pirates for Obama” but no “Ninjas for Obama”.

I haven’t really written a long, informative post in a long time, and I expect that it’ll be a long time before that happens again. Nothing’s really stirred my interest that hasn’t already been written about by somebody else. On the other hand, I could write more personal blogs. I got positive feedback about my last post which was encouraging. I’m surprised it turned out the way it did. At first I just wanted to rant, but then saw that I could fill it with a bit more substance. Nobody wants to hear a long, senseless complaint anyways.

Oh, I’m also reading Brisingr, third in Paolini’s Inheritance triology. I think it would be pretty cool to talk in an ancient language and kill a rabbit and make it cook itself. Take that, PETA.

I’ve been listening to Kanye West a lot. I’ve decided that his best album is his debut, “College Dropout”. His use of samples is catchy while his lyrics are more socially conscious. His narrative style is personal, especially the closing track, “Last Call”. His 2nd album, “Late Registration” is good, I guess, but not as interesting to listen to more than a couple times. “Graduation” is catchy and interesting to listen to but definitely lacking in socially conscious lyrics. “Feelin’ like Katrina with no FEMA” is hardly socially conscious. But it’s still interesting to listen to, so I place it at 2nd. His next album, “808s and Heartbreak” is supposedly done and to be released in November. His first single, already released is “Love Lockdown”. In my opinion, it’s not very good. The music video flatly sucks. With his use of auto-tune singing instead of rapping, I wonder if the album will be worth listening to at all. Hopefully, my doubts will be put to rest.

I bought more RAM for my laptop. 4GB to be exact. Though my 32-bit version of Vista might not recognize all of it. But it’ll definitely be an improvement over the 1GB I’m using right now.

I actually had more to write about than I thought I would. But now I’m leaving. Time to add the ridiculous amount of tags I can use for all the topics I covered. More tags equals more views, I hope. How do I say bye to an internet audience/readership? Good question. Answer? I don’t.

“One of our most popular features is our stats system. It’s designed to give you up-to-the-minute stats on how many people are visiting your blog, where they’re coming from, which posts are most popular, and which search engine terms are sending people to your blog.”

From The Features You’ll Love

Again, the main selling-point that made me choose WordPress over Blogger was the integrated stats system. I would feel kind of stupid starting a blog on Blogger without having any idea about whether or not anybody was even reading my writing. Also in addition,

1) WordPress is just plain sexy. Not just plain sexy either, but wonderfully, extravagantly sexy. Look at the features page and tell me that’s not beautiful. Now for comparison, look at Blogger’s features page. Enough said.

2) Google owns (literally, not like “pwns”) Blogger. Google already dominates the search engine market share and owns freaking YouTube. Time to give somebody else a chance.

3) It’s easy to find other people’s blogs that share the same interests at you. Compare the homepage of WordPress with that of Blogger. Try not to puke at Blogger. WordPress also has a better sense of community. Actually, I don’t know that Blogger has any sense of community at all.

4) WordPress is a way sexier name. WordPress also has a way sexier logo. Look at Blogger‘s logo. What’s that supposed to be? It looks like a freaking cyclops or an oven mitt.

5) I like numbered lists by the way.

So if you’re thinking about starting a blog, choose WordPress over Blogger. Anyways, back to my main topic. WordPress not only shows you the number of views you receive, but the links that people clicked to reach your blog. Not only that, but it also shows you which search terms people used to find your blog. Is that freaking cool or what? It’s kind of like stalking yourself in a way.

So among the search terms that people might use to end up at my blog, I was both surprised and amused by this,

Among those, all but 11 of the times that people searched “usain bolt yams” to find my blog were yesterday.

So I wondered why such a disproportionate number of people searched “usain bolt yams” to end up at my blog. I tried it myself and found the answer. I’m the only blog that matches those search terms on WordPress. I’m also the 4th entry that comes up on Google. Weird, I had no idea that so many people would be curious about Usain Bolt’s yams. I guess it just goes to show that 0.000000000000000000001% of the people on the internet is still a lot.

Actually, this still doesn’t explain why so many people would use those search terms in one day. Weird. Anyways, I’m done with this post. Thanks again to you if you’ve been reading my page. Because of you, my blog was among the fastest growing blogs on WordPress today. It was even number 8 at one point.

Hopefully the ego boost doesn’t make my head explode.

[Update] If you search Usain Bolt dope on Google, I’m the first entry.

From the beginning, I chose WordPress over Blogger because it shows the number of views you get day by day and other cool stats like that. After my first post about Usain Bolt I watched my number of views in one day peak at 163. I thought it was pretty cool that more than a hundred people across the internet read some of my writing. Every day since then though, my number of views has been slowly dropping until yesterday it bottomed out at 25. So last night I thought I better write some good posts so I can get more views again. Writing about Usain Bolt was really good timing because I wrote my post the day after his 200 final, when people were searching about him. With the same thinking, I wrote about Joe Biden as Obama’s VP pick the night the news leaked. I guess Joe Biden isn’t nearly as “sexy news” as Usain Bolt because my post about him only has 21 views.

So fast-forwarding to the present moment, I woke up this morning (with great effort) and got on WordPress. Scrolling down to see my stats, I saw,

So imagine my surprise. Next, while browsing the front page, I found the Blogs of the Day page, which I didn’t even know was there. Scrolling down, I found my blog at number 24. Pretty cool. Since this morning, it even went up to 17.

I guess this shows how big the internet really is, that my post about Usain Bolt and yams can interest people across the internet.

I need to wrap up this post because I need to go, but if you’re at your computer reading this or any of my other posts, thanks. I’ll try to return the favor by writing more (hopefully) interesting and relevant things.

http://my.spill.com/profiles/blog/show?id=947994%3ABlogPost%3A355506

“She is the hottest woman in the world, but she wears glasses because she is also the smartest woman in the world.”

“GENERAL: No one’s ever hacked the internet before.

BRUCE: Well there’s a first for everything.

GENERAL: Okay, I like it. But which of the internets do we hack?

BRUCE: All of them.”

“JOKER unleashes an all-out barrage of missiles, like the biggest fucking missiles you will ever see.”

Ahaha, who finds the time to write this kind of stuff? Then again, who takes the time to post this kind of stuff. Hmm…