It’s interesting for me to recall my first significant appearance on the internet, but it was exactly five years ago this month, and it was in a very interesting situation. Webmacster87.info did not exist yet, my awareness of phpBB didn’t exist yet, I actually had not even touched IM services yet. However, the past way to share this would be to look at what was happening again.

The month was May 2003, and I was in sixth grade. The big story of the time was that some guy from the Bay Area named Stephen Joseph had sued Kraft/Nabisco because their Oreo cookies contained deadly trans fats, and that they were being marketed towards and sold to children, and furthermore, the public had no awareness of how bad trans fats were. Well, within a week, the suit was retracted, because it had garnered so much press that the claim of the public having no awareness of how bad trans fats are was no longer valid. Nevertheless, that suit did help to raise awareness of the dangers of partially hydrogenated oils, and helped Oreo, Crisco, McDonalds, and many others go trans-fat free, as well as convincing the FDA to add Trans Fat to the nutrition label in 2006.

But what did this have to do with me? Well, at the time that this made the news, in my English class (although at middle school, it was called “Language Arts & Reading”), we ended up being assigned a research paper based on it. We were instructed to do some research on the news and the issues and then write a short essay where we conveyed our opinion on the issue. Now, I personally went about this on the premise that what this Stephen Joseph guy was crazy by wanting to take Oreo cookies out of schools. But, as I went onto his website, Ban Trans Fats, and looked at other things about the case, my mind was changed for me and I found myself completely in favor of banning trans fats.

Not only did I complete my essay and turn it in, but for whatever reason that I do not recall, I had e-mailed Stephen Joseph and sent him a copy of what I wrote. He wrote back with high praise for it, to the point where he wanted to know if he (with my parents’ permission) could post it on his website. He gave it its own dedicated page, where it still is today. And so, when I had the opportunity to share what I wrote with the rest of my class that day five years ago, I had something to brag about.

Looking back, I obviously have somewhat higher standards of writing today than I did then, but that really represents my first free-style persuasive essay (as in the kind where I don’t have to follow “rules” and all that junk), and nowadays, I’m starting to receive awards for some of my written opinions. Plus, it represents my very first little slice of online fame–quite interesting to think about considering how much my life is dependent on the internet today.

Tags: 2003, English, essay, history, internet, memories, middle school, Oreos, Personal, Stephen Joseph, trans fats, Writing

Happy May Day! I’m reporting in stationed from Long Beach, with today being the first day of the 2008 California State PTA Convention (which I blogged about a few days ago). I’m also right in the middle of AP exams review here too, so I’m quite busy right now. But of course, I’ve got time to take a look back on the very busy month of April.
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Well, here I go again. You probably don’t even really care much about all my travel itineraries, but I find that it satisfies myself to spend the time writing them up anyways. (If it turns out that you actually like my travel itineraries, let me know in the comments.) However, this week will be the California State PTA Convention again, my fourth one in a row. The difference about this year’s (other than the fact that it’s in Long Beach) is that as a student representative on the State PTA Board of Managers, I now get to be a part of running the thing, which therefore makes me more committed during the Convention and means that I have to show up two days earlier. Want to see what I mean? Here we go…
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Tags: California State PTA, Convention, events, itinerary, Long Beach, meetings, PTA, SAT, Subject Tests, trip, workshops

I was at a rally in Sacramento (California’s state capitol) today with the California State PTA, who was there protesting the proposed budget cuts to public education. They have a press release detailing the event. I was one of the speakers of the rally, and thought that I’d share what I said here.
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Tags: budget, California State PTA, capitol, event, governor, protest, PTA, Schwarzenegger, speech

Hello everyone,

This is just to let you know that I will be having little-to-no activity on my blog over the next few weeks, as I have a very busy couple of weeks coming up, between preparing for two AP tests (along with associated practice tests) and SAT Subject Tests, missing 4-5 days of school for a State PTA Convention that I’m working at, etc. Therefore I will be forcefully diverting my attention away from blogging and many of my frequent internet activities until things calm down for a little bit. I appreciate your understanding.

Tags: announcement, AP exams, Blogging, busy, Convention, hiatus, PTA, SAT, SAT Subject Tests, School, tests

Junior year is the year of the standardized test. It’s the year of PSAT, ACT, SAT, AP, and many other jumbled non-acronymic letters that float around there, and I’ve had (and still have yet) to go through every single one of them. I took the PSAT last October, the SAT on March 1st, and the ACT today. I have SAT Subject Tests coming on May 3rd and another SAT run-through this fall. I took one AP test last year and have two more coming up in May, as well as one more during senior year.

However, there’s definitely one thing about all this that I’ve learned that I would have flat out refused to accept this time a year ago. Doing well on one of these tests doesn’t just depend on you knowing the academics, it requires you to learn how to take the test. Doesn’t that kind of sound like those video games where the only way to win is to buy the book that tells you how to win? Yeah, it’s kind of like that.
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Tags: ACT, Advanced Placement, AP US History, article, colleges, Kaplan, preparation, PSAT, SAT, standardized, testing, The Princeton Review, thoughts, tips

The announcement almost two weeks ago that PreviewCast was being discontinued was a surprise to some, and not so much of a surprise for others. My PreviewCasted Frustrations, which were posted here on Webmacster87.info just a week prior to the closing episode #052, kind of marked the inevitable. For the record, though, I had tried quite a bit during the rest of the week to organize another PreviewCast episode, in the hopes that it might continue, but those efforts failed to the point when I realized on March 30th that PreviewCast had essentially run completely out of steam and that it was time to mark the end of that program.

None of us really wanted it to end, because we’ve all loved PreviewCast, which is probably why it didn’t end many months ago. As I lamented in my PreviewCasted Frustrations post, once August 2007 came around, PreviewCast, which had been going full steam ahead, stopped short in its tracks. We tried a number of times to rejuvenate the show, and a couple of times managed to get an episode together, but for me (the main organizer of PreviewCast), it was as hard as trying to get two magnets to stick to each other the wrong way. We’ve all been busy, myself included, and many of the PreviewCasters pretty much lost interest. Larry, my co-host, has done the smart thing and started spending more time with his life and less time online, which unfortunately meant that he hasn’t been around much anymore to be on this show that he was the co-host for. Essentially, we could not continue to produce the show due to the inability to have more than one of us around to produce a show with.
I decided on that Sunday that I could no longer spend my energies trying to revive PreviewCast in vain.

Nevertheless, I am still hoping to be able to bring around some kind of successor to PreviewCast soon. Not right away, granted, because I’ve got a lot of stuff on my plate right now (and probably shouldn’t even be spending the time to write this blog post), but I still kind of have an itch to be able to reincarnate PreviewCast into somewhat of a new offering, that might be a bit more reliable and a bit more polished than PreviewCast, and perhaps some new talent behind it, but still maintain its roots as a technology/teen-oriented/rather random podcast. I’m still in discussions with some people about this, and so I don’t want to reveal anything before anyone (including myself) is fully committed to it, as things can still quickly change. However, I do want to say that for those of you who were PreviewCast fans, you’ll want to stay tuned, because I’m hoping to be able to announce a new successor to PreviewCast soon.

Until then, I’ll just have to keep blogging.

Tags: future, past, Podcasts, PreviewCast, production, reflection, successor, tech, teens

It’s April, and for California public schools, that means STAR Testing time. This thing called “Standardized Testing And Reporting” means nothing more than two weeks of craziness as different grades are given tests in different subjects requiring a bunch of confusing schedule changes even though there’s still six weeks of classes left in the year. Crazy? You bet. Welcome to California.

Tomorrow (4/8) will be the California Language Arts Standards Test, which mostly boils down to reading stuff and answering questions about it, and then correcting badly written “student drafts.” Wednesday (4/9) will be the California Mathematics Standards Test, which is a bunch of math problems written by people who obviously AREN’T mathematicians or people having ANYTHING to do with math because of the idiotic way that at least 10-25% of their questions are written. (As someone who excels in math, when I say that the questions are worded stupidly, I know what I’m talking about.) Thursday will be the California Social Studies Standards Test (aka U.S. History), which probably is the most topical of all the tests on the plate. And then, finally, next Tuesday (4/16) will be the final STAR test: the California Science Standards Test, which is again mostly a drill & grill of science subjects. Woop dee do. And then, I get a super-late start on Wednesday (4/17) because that’s a Sophomores-only test.

The crazy thing about these tests is twofold. First of all, they really don’t say much about me, but about my school. As in, if there aren’t enough kids proficient in these tests (or even if not enough kids are there for these tests), the school gets burned on this magic number called the API. But worse, by the year 2014, if 100% of all students in the school aren’t proficient, then the school gets marked for Program Improvement (PI), a very scary thing which eventually spells doom for the future of public schools. And can you realistically expect that 100% of all students will be proficient? No. Ladies and gentlemen, say hello to the #1 flaw of No Child Left Behind.

The second problem is that as an assessment of my personal academic performance, these tests STINK! Math is my best subject, I got a 710 on the Math section of the SAT, and yet on the STAR tests, Math has been my lowest score for the past four years. Why? I can tell you why–all those math questions are worded so darned strangely that a good portion of them are near impossible to figure out what they’re trying to get across! I swear, there is something VERY WRONG with those tests.

Luckily, next Tuesday, I will be able to celebrate. As an eleventh grader. this is the LAST YEAR I HAVE TO TAKE THE STAR TESTS!!! After taking these tests yearly for the last ten years, I will be done with these wastes of partially-recycled paper forever! And yes, I am excited about that, and not just so that I’ll be able to get even with those rub-their-nose-in-your-face seniors who get to sleep in for five days while the rest of us are stuck with the tests.

So, here we go with a few strange days at school…

Tags: California, education, rant, schedules, School, standards, STAR, tests

Whew! The month of March is over! On the one hand, I feel as though it’s gone by quite quickly, while on the other hand, I’m busy marveling at just how much stuff happened this past month, and just how busy I have been. As this exhaustive Best Of will show, I’ve been quite busy.
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Tags: Best Of, life, March, Podcasts, Spring Break, tests

It’s junior year in high school and graduation is *gulp* starting to appear just over the horizon. That means two things for the spring of junior year: tests and college research. I already took the SAT a few weeks ago, and I’m scheduled for the ACT in a few weeks and the SAT Subject Tests in a little over a month, plus I’ll likely retake the SAT in the fall.

As for college research, I’ve been doing that too recently, and am slowly but surely compiling together a list of places that I might be interested in spending four years of my life at. I won’t go into much more detail about this at this point, but you’ll likely be seeing me blog plenty more times about what’s happening with my continuing college search.

However, this week is Spring Break, and thus is the classic week for taking the opportunity to visit and tour college campuses. And since I live in the Bay Area (and cannot stop bragging about it), there’s a bunch of great colleges within driving distance of my house. So this week, I’ll be visiting a couple of colleges in the area, not necessarily because I’m interested in going there (some of them I am taking a good look at, while others are definitely not on my list), but to get the feel of going on a college campus and seeing what there is to see.

Today, I’m going to be visiting UC Berkeley, followed by Santa Clara University tomorrow, University of San Francisco on Wednesday, and Stanford University on Thursday (saving the best for last).

So that’s the majority of my Spring Break this week, which should be interesting…

Tags: Bay Area, colleges, Personal, Spring Break, tests, travelling, visits