Well, today was the LAST DAY OF SCHOOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That’s right, I actually am excited for the end of the school year for like the first time in my life. Excited? Heck, I haven’t stopped eating deep-fried pickle hearts since I came home 6 hours ago!

It’s not that I don’t like school, I actually love it, but this past school year has been one which has really put a stress on my stresses and my sanity. Well, actually, freshman year also did, but the fact that I completely cracked under the stress and insanity in March 2006 was entirely my fault for putting too many commitments on my shoulders.
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Dear Douglas,

Your .Mac membership will expire on June 27, 2007 PDT. Set your .Mac membership to renew now so you can enjoy uninterrupted service.

As you know, we’ve been enhancing .Mac to make your connected life even easier. .Mac makes it easy to share what you create with iLife ‘06 and publish with iWeb—Photocasts, blogs, podcasts, and other web pages. Your .Mac account includes 1 GB of combined iDisk and email storage, with options to upgrade to more. Your iDisk is accessible directly from the Mac OS X Finder and from a browser on any Internet-connected Mac or Windows PC. Backup 3 makes safeguarding your valuable files easy and convenient with features including one-step backup of photos, movies, and music. .Mac Groups lets you bring the groups you belong to online to share messages, calendars, group files, and web pages. And .Mac provides a steady stream of discounts and member benefits on Mac-related software and services. Be assured, there’s more to come in the year ahead.

Remember, .Mac costs only 99.95 USD. Renew your account now.

This is the form letter that I got today from .Mac, in which they beg me to give them another $100 for the next year. I find it interesting how they talk about their enhancing .Mac. In the last year, about the only thing that they’ve changed on .Mac is the new version of their webmail! I have serious doubts about them having “more to come” in the year ahead.

Apple is going to have to do a lot more than that to convince me to give up $100/year for the ripoff that is .Mac.

This week is the last week of school. Monday (tomorrow) is no school for Memorial Day, Tuesday-Thursday are all minimum days for finals, and Friday is the first day of summer; school doesn’t start again until August 14th.
This means that I will now have ample time to devote to my podcasts. phpBB Weekly #017 was live yesterday and was just this morning added to the phpBB Weekly blog. PreviewCast #032 was just recorded this afternoon with myself and Robert Preston, and will be released either tomorrow or Tuesday.

The purpose of this post is to summarize the results of my last two posts. It’s official: I will be launching for myself a video podcast which I will be doing this summer (unsure yet if it will continue into fall). The name that I’ve decided on? Ring a Bell. Shut up, I like it. It will be making its podcast debut this week, and we’ll see how often I update it. I intend to do it in the style of The Merlin Show!: just short, sweet episodes that I will frequently post at my own schedule (hopefully rather frequently) to just talk about anything. Stay tuned for more info on it this week…

And finally, I get to make the announcement that I am starting work on Webmacster87.info 5. I’ve kinda lost track of my versioning of this site, but here it is if I recall correctly:
–First Webmacster87.info (March-June 2005): Run as a forum on phpBB2 (+Categories Hierarchy). Pathetic!
–Webmacster87.info 2 (June-July 2005): Run under WordPress 1.5, had some kind of notebook-like theme
–Webmacster87.info 2.5 (July-November 2005): New theme with a black background and red “glow-effect” boxes
–Webmacster87.info 3 (1 week in January 2006): WordPress 2.0, All-black K2 scheme, only thing that showed up here was Macworld 2006 Pictures
–Webmacster87.info 4 (April-August 2006): WordPress 2.0, Kubrick theme w/ the Tiger W logo; went down after Skoker traitored all his users of their web hosting
–Webmacster87@WordPress.com (October-December 2006): Restarted blog on WordPress.com, now using the K2 theme with same logo/color scheme
–Webmacster87.info 4.5 (January-April 2007): Same blog on WordPress.com, but using WP.com’s domain mapping feature to return the blog to be called/accessed by Webmacster87.info
–Webmacster87.info 4.6 (April-May 2007): Moved blog off of WordPress.com onto new hosting running WordPress 2.1–same posts, same design, same features.

Well, coming soon will be the next version of my website, which I’m dubbing Webmacster87.info 5. It will include a brand new theme, a new header design that macattacks10 is so graciously working on for me, and a number of new features. I won’t devulge much about the new theme at this time beyond that it’s going to be 3 columns. I think you’ll like it though.
So here’s to finals, to the end of the school year, and to the beginning of an exciting summer!

Why? Because I’m kinda getting fed up with K2. I mean, it’s a good theme and all that, but my main issues with it include 1) that it’s not that stable, 2) that it’s overused by everyone, 3) a BIG complaint that it seems to be declaring war on WordPress widgets, and for someone who a) loves widgets and b) wants to update to WordPress 2.2, it’s marking an obstacle, and 4) I’ve had pretty much the same design on here since March 2006.

Now that’s not to say that the design is no good. I still really enjoy the Tiger-ized W which is the work of macattacks10, but I’d like a suggestion for a new theme which may or may not include the current design, and one that I do consider to be full-featured and WP 2.2-ready and not overused by half of the sites out there, or else can be easily customized to have a unique feel to it. Suggestions?

I’ve been considering the idea of launching a summertime video blog complement to Webmacster87.info. Larry did one of these some time back, but it would be mostly a sort of video podcast done by myself on my iSight camera. However, it would probably be a bit more topical than Larry’s, and might include some reviews, screenshots (if I can get my hands on a copy of iShowU), etc. Maybe a better example would be The Merlin Show!, except that the thirty theoretically productive frames per second would be reduced to whatever iMovie decided to churn out.

Anyway, just an idea. Let me know what you think.

Check out this eCard.

There’s only two weeks left until finals start. In that time, I will have a Spanish oral final (on Tuesday), a History project (due Monday or early next week, I might have an extension), a read-at-home English novel + project (due two weeks from today), and an AP Stats project (final presentation due May 30th). And that’s only the stuff going on for me that’s homework related.

Yep, it’s going to be quite awhile until summer arrives…

Yep, it’s time once again for the California State PTA Convention, this year in beautiful Sacramento, California! Seasoned Webmacster87.info readers obviously know about my deep involvement in the PTA, and therefore also know that every April/May I go to the State PTA’s Convention to hang out with a bunch of people who are as crazy/compassionate as I am about PTA!

No really, Convention is a lot of fun.

So what’s my not-so-detailed-that-you-could-track-me-down-and-molest-me itinerary? Well, tomorrow, immediately after school (actually, after 6th period, I’m skipping 7th), I’ll be going right over to the Millbrae BART station, and then taking that to Richmond. At Richmond, I’ll transfer to the Amtrak Capitol Corridor train which will go to Sacramento. I’ll then get picked up by one of the 17th District people already over there to check in at our hotel. (We’re at the Sheraton Grand Hotel!)

Thursday morning, I’m up bright and early to go to the Convention Center for Registration. I’ll probably then take that early opportunity to browse through the PTA Store. The Bylaws Hearing is at 9-10 AM, the Resolutions Hearing (there’s 5 of them this year!!!) is 11 AM-1 PM, and the Student orientation is 1 PM-4 PM. I’ll probably need to squeeze a lunch in there somewhere (something I forgot to do last year). Then, 4-7 PM will be the first General Meeting. At 8 PM, 17th District will be having dinner at the Pyramid Alehouse.

Friday morning at 7 AM will be the Resolutions Hearing (yes, I do actually get up early to go to those), followed by the first two conference workshops, which will be “New Unit Presidents Part 1 - Resources” and “Students & Legislation - Youth Can Make the Difference”. Then will be lunch, and I might or might not go through the Exhibit Hall (there’s lots of food there!) during this time. 2 PM is the second General Meeting, and at 7:30 PM, 17th District will be having dinner at the Lucca restaurant.

Saturday is an early morning starting at 6 AM for the Healthy Lifestyles Walk for Kids, which will go on for about half an hour or until I decide to stop walking. When I’m through with that, I may go to the 7 AM Resolutions Hearing (might be a bit late for that). Then, Saturday’s two workshops are “Building a Youth Movement in Your Community” and “New Unit Presidents Part 2 - Doing the Job”. Then will be lunch again. If I didn’t go to the exhibit hall on Friday, I’ll go Saturday. Then, once again, 2 PM is the 3rd general meeting, and then 7:30-11 PM (don’t know if I’ll last that long) will be the State’s “VIVA PTA!” party (with a Cinco de Mayo theme).

And then Sunday morning will involve packing up and then going to the 4th General Meeting at 9 AM. Afterwards, Kathryn Cross (our 17th District president) will probably get me into the State board’s wrap-up lunch, and then she’s going to drive us all back home.

Like last year, I will have my computer and my camera with me, but because internet access is a whopping $10/day, I probably will not have any internet access during my stay (which is fine with me). I do look forward to having a great time. There’s going to be 5 resolutions this year, and for the first time in State’s 110-year history, someone is going to be running from the floor for President-Elect! Should be fun…

Wish me luck in getting my homework done! See everyone again Sunday afternoon/evening.

Here’s a blast from a past episode of The Screensavers, where Wolfram Research hot-shot Theo Gray shows how to make ice cream with liquid nitrogen. Put on a jacket and enjoy this video!