Well Here We Are Again

Lots has happened for OKS since I last wrote. The things that have happened have been good and bad, but where we are at now is a place I am content with.

Comcast began blocking port 25 TCP, and that was very greedy of them. They want my family to, during this economic downturn, pay more for that, and that just ain’t happening.  However, those nice people at Google gave me a good deal, and now I am using Google Apps for mail at no charge. Aren’t they nice?

On brighter news, the OKS Minecraft server has become a beautiful place. It isn’t exactly stock, but people like it. The latest and coolest addition is the Dynamic Map. The Dynamic Map lets you see what is on the server right now. As the world updates, the Dynamic Map does as well. Hence the name, Dynamic. Right now, an Amazon EC2 instance is hard at work preparing a new static map render, and when it completes, the link will be shown here on this page.

UPDATE: The render that was taking place is long since done, and it is available at http://ec2.theoks.tk/mczoomable_new/.

Thanks, and have fun!

Half-Life 2 for days…

So, my gamerscore on Xbox LIVE got reset, as it was indeed modded. So, I started to collect my achievements again. I started off by playing Half-Life 2 over again. It was fun. I paused in the middle to play Portal, which took 70 minutes, including me pausing to talk to some friends. That was especially fun, especially when pulling the cameras off.

So, when I turned off my Xbox 360, then turned it back off, it said that I had none of the Orange Box achievements I had collected. Such BS.

However, I had fun playing Half-Life 2 again, as well as Portal. I started Half-Life 2: Episode One, and got out of the Citadel, but stopped to play some Halo: Reach with my friend Brant, and later, Lane joined us, while we were attempting to complete a weekly challenge.

So this weekend was turbo fun, and now people can be less mad about me not writing a blog post. Great job.

So have fun, and stay alive until Mid-Winter Break.. 😉

Snow Fun Time!!

Here in the Puget Sound, we’re having a stormy winter. We’ve gotten about 6 inches of snow, and we’re remaining below freezing all day.

My school district has cancelled school for today, and many students believe that we will not have school tomorrow either, as many of the roads are covered in thick ice, and since the temperatures are remaining low, standing water from melted ice is just gonna freeze back up.

On a slightly related note, I have finished watching all of Stargate SG-1. This puts me at having watched over 81% of all Stargate (if movies are counted as two episodes)

I will be completely caught up by the time Stargate Universe Season 2.5 comes around, so then I will just wait like everyone else for new episodes.

Day of Trip

I’m waiting for the school announcements to end, or mention the competition I’m going to. Oh look, they didn’t mention it. I’m still excited for the competition.

We got a loaner trailer for our stuff, while our own trailer is finished being made and decorated. We were packing it last night, and we must finish that today.

I’ll post from Portland.

Class curves? Get rid of them!

I don’t know about you, but in our school, if everyone does bad, the grades of everyone are adjusted. I can understand that the teachers want students to do better in school, but this is NOT the way to do it.

Class curves are intended to raise students’ grades above the fail line. Many students see this as a way of slacking off. We’re not talking about just one student slacking off, we’re talking about hundreds of students failing the class and hoping for a bailout from students. Class curves inspire students to slack off, not do better in school. Here’s why:

The moment that students hear that the class has a curve, many of them are inspired to slack off. They know that, even if they do bad, their grades will automatically improve by a few percent and not look as bad. Everyone starts failing, and then the teacher doesn’t want students to fail, so a curve is introduced to bump up everyone’s grades.

I like to compare this with lowering the standard. Allowing students with a D average to pass. Admitting students with a 2.0 GPA to get in college. We’re lowering the standard by arbitrarily raising everyone’s grades. Get rid of this!

In the library completely out.

Yep. I’ve been at my school library all day. It sucks. My legs are sour, I can’t stand it. Oh well. 10 more minutes until freedom.

First it was a test, and now our entire class is in the library.

At the beginning I thought this was going to be fun. But no… The only time we stepped out of the library was to get lunch.

Anyways, I’m about to fall asleep and I can’t wait to get out.