Why? Because I’m letting the guys record an episode of PreviewCast without me there to make them behave. They’re recording as I type.

Meanwhile, I just got an e-mail with pictures of a lot of weird/funny/huh? signs; Merlin is showing himself; I’m trying to pick a law of life to essay about; and the guys are probably making fun of me deciding to run for the biggest responsibility of my life. And with everyone spewing their whole life story on Twitter, it’s just getting weird.

I have very very low expectations for PreviewCast #025…

Not that anyone would care or anything…

Last week it was the music labels, this week it was teacher unions. Apple cofounder and CEO Steve Jobs on Friday spared no words in criticizing the state of public schools and the teacher unions, saying that schools were never likely to improve until principals could fire bad teachers.

This makes me absolutely furious, and you’ll hear my rant about this today on PreviewCast. I can’t stand this.

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I’m considering the idea of removing my big thing in my signature that says “I no longer develop or support my MODs” and getting back into it. The development pace may be slower than it was a year or two ago, but I’m actually interested in getting back into my MODs. Quick Search could use some tuning up (maybe), I have an optimization in mind for Registration Stopper, ACP User Registration could potentially use a refresh, and I’ve got a number of ideas for a new version of Advanced Version Check. And maybe one or two new MODs this summer?

I’ve been thinking about it. Even recently, saying that I don’t support MODs has been kind of a bogus claim, as I’ve recently started helping users out.

The downside here would be that I would probably need to go about finding myself a webhost so that I can install test boards, host zip files (can’t be done here at WP.com), etc. if I was to start doing releases again. Still, it’s an idea…

For a good number of us, tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. I don’t know if that’s a holiday outside of the United States, I know that it is here. Larry doesn’t think too much of it (though I don’t know if that’s changed or not), and I don’t really care about it either, except for the free chocolates.

Anyway, January ended with me finally getting my braces taken off. YYESSS. After having them on since November 1, 2004, they finally came off. I mean, do you know how long I had them on? I had them on when I was still in middle school. When I had them put on, the iPod shuffle didn’t exist. The iPod photo had just been introduced. iTunes had just crossed about 200 million songs. I had not even met Larry or Skoker or any of them yet. The webmacster87.info domain name had not been launched yet. Podcasting didn’t exist yet (though it was about to). Hurricane Katrina happened since I got braces on. I could go on and on and on…

But I won’t. Needless to say, I was excited, until I found out that I now have to wear this thing called a positioner. It’s like a mouthguard-type thing that I have to wear at home and while I’m asleep. The worst part is that it completely cuts off all air access through my mouth, save for three itty-bitty airholes that really don’t help much. Most of the breathing has to be done through my nose. It’s not fun.

Unfortunately, for whatever reason, I’ve been having sniffles/stuffed nose pretty constantly since around January 24th or so. It plagued me during my trip to LA, and has been giving me problems since, so although my orthodontist wants me to wear it, it’s been kinda hard because if I can’t breathe through my nose, then I can’t get sufficient air in my lungs and then I suffocate. Tough.

My nose took its peak on Groundhog’s Day, and it effectively ruined that day’s episode of phpBB Weekly. I spent that evening and about half of Saturday in bed under the weather, but got over it. Good, because that let me peacefully watch the Super Bowl game and keep Twitter busy with all my constant updates!

Last week was CRAZY. I’ve said that I do a lot, but usually it’s okay because it spreads out through the month. But February is notorious for being the worst month of the year in my life, and so everything in my life fell last week. Monday I went to a PTA Council meeting, which was okay, and fun, because Meadow Heights school provided a full Chinese food dinner for everyone to celebrate Chinese New Year. And it was all my favorite Chinese food too: potstickers, Chinese chicken salad, spring rolls, chow mein, fortune cookies, and other things that I can’t remember.

Wednesday was busy becase after school was literally bam-bam-bam-bam-bam. Right after school, I took a webinar on the PTA’s new Online Membership Data Reporting thing, then went over to a lady’s house to pick up supplies for Thursday (to talk about), and then had a 17th District board meeting which went kind of late.

Thursday, February 8th, 2007 is going to be a candidate for my most stressful day of the year! I was up at 3:30 AM (after less than 5 and a half hours of sleep) to catch up on homework and prepare stuff for my school’s annual Aragon Expo. Every year, on a Thursday in February, my school holds an evening event for incoming freshmen and their parents, where they see a big presentation in the main gym, and then afterwards walk over to the small gym where the clubs have set up a big expo with tables and demonstrations and selling things and all that jazz. As president of the Peace Club, I was in charge of getting a heck of a lot of stuff together and set up.
As it turned out, I didn’t get any homework done that morning, and spent the first few periods thinking about everything that I’d forgotten to get done! Of course, customary to my motto that technology never works when you need it the most, my printer had failed to work at all that morning, so one of the things on my mind was how on earth will I get anything printed. Also, Tuesday and Wednesday had been the CAHSEE exam, so on Thursday, I was seeing many of my classes for the first time since Monday.
But the school day finally ended, and so the first thing to do was to find a color printer on campus I could use. Well, that wasn’t as easy as I thought, apparently most of the printers on campus are black and white because the school district is too poor to afford color! So I ended up running around campus a few times until I found one in the office and successfully bribed Ms. Kardosh to let me borrow her computer.

It was during that time that I broke my right big toe. It was raining Thursday afternoon, and I had to run outside to room P1 (the one portable classroom still remaining in our school after the construction ended), to see if there was a color printer in there. It was locked, so I hurriedly went back to get into the hall. Unfortunately, the entryways to the halls are unnecessarily smooth, and it was wet out, so I slipped on it. I was close enough to the door to catch myself before I went over backwards, but my right foot kept on going and rammed right into the door.
I didn’t know if it was broken or sprained or what, and I was personally hoping it was stubbed. I felt it for a bit, then hobbled over to the office to get some ice while I found the aforementioned color printer. After about 10 minutes of ice, I swallowed the pain and went on about my business. This was shortly after 4:00 at this point.

So I was there the rest of the afternoon/night, everything got setup okay, and the expo was a success. Great. I got picked up by my dad shortly after 9:00, got in the car, and my toe was still hurting. At this point, I had decided that if my toe was still hurting 5 hours after the accident, then I probably hadn’t stubbed it. So we got home that night and called Kaiser’s advise nurses, they asked me to look at it, decided it might have been a sprain, told me to take some Advil, and gave me an appointment at 10:45 Friday morning. Personally, I was selfishly relieved, because that meant an excuse to get some extra sleep–I’d been up for almost 19 hours at this point!

On Friday, I slept until about 9:30, then got a litle breakfast and my mom drove me up to the doctor. My mom remembered to take something to do, meaning we went through really quickly so that she never got a chance to do any of it! The X-rays showed that I had actually cracked a small bone in my big toe, rendering it the official title of “broken.” There actually isn’t a cast for this sort of break, so what I get to do is have my big toe be “buddy-taped” to the toe next to it–my second toe acts like a makeshift “splint”. And I get one of those shoes that folks with broken feet wear to keep them from bending their toes, and an excuse from PE for 3-4 weeks. Considering that we just started our self-defense/wrestling unit in PE and I’m really not wild about that (correction: I’m scared for my life!!!), I was just fine with missing PE for awhile.

So I got back from the doctors, spent some time on the computer, did phpBB Weekly, but then after that was over I started feeling kind of funny. So for whatever reason, my mom took my temperature, and congratulations! I just registered my first fever in over three years. Uh huh. (Not even once during my over one month of sickness during February 2005 did I have a fever.) The appearance of symptoms including headache, stomachache (though I never vomited), sore throat, etc. delivered the diagnosis of the flu. Great.

I spent Saturday and Sunday in bed with a fever that peaked at 102˚ on Sunday afternoon. I was also in bed for most of yesterday, although the fever subsided by then, and I was considering going to school today, except when I got up this morning, I still didn’t feel totally up to going anywhere (though I felt better a few hours later), so no, I didn’t go to school today.

The rest of my family is having it bad now. My brother was up at 1 AM, 3 AM, and 4 AM this morning vomiting (and I hear he had one or two more cases later this morning), and has been home today on a 101˚ fever. My mom’s not feeling too hot either, with the cough and the sore throat. I’m assuming she probably got it from me.

I didn’t go to school, but I did go over to the 17th District PTA’s Founder’s Day Luncheon today, primarily because I was on the agenda to speak today about Student Involvement. Seeing as partaking in the buffet actually cured my stomachache and led me to feel full, I decided that I’m probably all better now. Well, I’ve still got some stuff in my nose, but whatever.

However, I was today surprised and honored to win a PTA Honorary Service Award from 17th District. (It’s a PTA tradition to keep the awards a big secret from the winners until it’s awarded.) Colleen You, the immediate past president at the district, presented me with the award, and then Jerry Hill, a member of the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors, presented me with a Certificate of Commendation signed by all five of the Board of Supervisors for my work in PTA. What an exciting surprise! I guess 2007 is going to be an awarding year for me.

So what lies ahead? Well, I’ve missed 3 days of school, and I was already slightly behind. So, tomorrow I’m on my way back to school, and the nightmare of make-up work is going to begin haunting me. Gulp. I’ve got a couple of heart-shaped boxes of chocolates on hand to use as bribes for my teachers. Also, I’m really looking forward to have a 4-DAY WEEKEND!!! coming up (no school Friday the 16th or Monday the 19th) to hopefully use as catch-up time. Here’s hoping.

So, that’s the first half of February–it’s been quite a month already, and it’s not even half over. Here’s hoping the next half is a LOT calmer. *fingers crossed*

I know I try to keep away from blogging about Will it Blend episodes, because I would be constantly blogging it, but I’ve got to link you to their latest episode where Tom blends up an annoying dancing Valentine’s gift. I don’t know about you, but I was immensely satisfied to see that singing annoying thing being shredded into mulch, and this episode was one of the best productions Will it Blend has done to date. And I’m sure that folks like Larry will enjoy seeing Valentines being blended up in front of their eyes.

Head on over and check out the video!

Well, they picked one of Coke’s ads as the top spot. I don’t know, for me it was between the talking lions and the connectile dysfunction. Whatever, these were some of yesterday’s best during the ad breaks.

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Why? I kept my Twitter continuously up-to-date during today’s Super Bowl game, with the latest scores, the latest commercials, and my opinions. And I ended up making over 150 updates today for the game alone! Wow…

Anyway, if any of my friends wouldn’t mind letting me know what their Twitter name is (if they have one), I’d love to expand my Friends list beyond Larry, Robert, and Leo Laporte. Thanks!

Just wanted to wish everyone a Happy Groundhog’s Day, my favorite holiday of the year! (I don’t know why, it just is.)
Sorry it’s been a long time with no post, but I’ve been very busy this week and have had lots of homework. I owe you guys a Los Angeles update, I know! Stay tuned. But for today, have a GREAT Groundhog’s Day!