www.BrettDaniel.com

Oh no!!!

Almost five hours of sleep... mid-afternoon... 1:00 to 6:00... want to guess why? Boring school day? No. Alien sleep rays? Wrong again. Road trip? Good guess but no. You had to wake up at 5:50 this morning so you could undergo minor surgery to remove a IV port implanted under the skin in your chest to make it easier to deliver chemotherapy drugs to destroy a bone tumor on the left side of your right ankle, which had caused you to miss a total of about a month and a half of school between your junior and senior years? Wellllll.... That's a good guess... but you're wrong again. The tumor was on my left ankle.

Because I'm taking journalism/photography next semester, my grandmother sent me my late grandfather's camera yesterday. I haven't gotten a chance to try it out yet (a lack of film will do that to you), but it looks pretty nice. Having it will serve a dual purpose for me. Obviously I'll use it for j/p, but it will also give me some subject matter to post both here and on my graphics page.

I just posted the following picture on my friend r0se's site.

1. ...like it and laugh.
2. ...get mad and erase it.
3. ...get even with a picture of me.
4. both "A" and "C"

I just found out yesterday that Excite, my cable internet provider, may have to shut down, thus rendering me internet- and email-less. I really hope I stay connected.

Due to a lack of anything particularly interesting happening today, I might as well post my class schedule for next semester. It's pretty similar to this semester's but with a few changes.

1. Journalism/Photography: I'm really looking forward to this class.
2. AP Physics: Nothing new here
3. French III: I hate this class with a passion. I don't know how I'm going to survive another semester.
4. Speech: A necessary evil needed to graduate.
5. AP Calculus BC: Again, nothing new here.
6. Engineering II: We may be building battlebots next semester!
7. Study Hall: Last period study hall. It doesn't get any better than that.

I don't feel like writing much about it, but today I went on an engineering field trip to a technology competition. I was in the "Package Design & Development" group first and a technology quiz tournament second. My teams got firsts in both events.

Right now I'm watching a very interesting show on PBS called "2001: HAL's Legacy." It's talking about the similarities between HAL 9000 and modern day artificial intelligence. If you have the chance to see a repeat sometime, I highly recommend it.

Update: After a quick search on Google, I found the websites for the PBS special and the book it was based on.

Just recently I discovered the magic of internet radio. The past couple of days I've had music on almost continually while I do my daily stuff. My favorite stations include: Radiostorm.com (rock), Rantradio (electronic), Squid Radio (acid jazz), and Smoothjazz.com (duh). Finally, an alternative to the ridiculous pop drivel on regular radio.

I can tell you're dying to know how the Government presentation went. My feeling are split down the middle. On one hand, the presentation itself went pretty well. Everyone had done their job and we moved smoothly from one part to the next. I was especially pleased with the reaction to finishing song. On the other hand, during their speeches, my partners said some stuff that we hadn't talked about and that seemed to contradict the main premise of our party. We went from appearing to be a moderate party based on balance to a fanatical fascist/communist/totalitarian regime bent on burning and pillaging. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a little, but nonetheless my group got torn apart by the audience questions. I'm not too worried about it, though. Every group will have to answer some difficult questions. All in all, I'm pretty sure we did okay.

Ways to tell if you spend too much time on the computer: You can tell when new mail a://wes just by the sound of the hard drive. (Just happened)

Tomorrow's the big day. My group is all set to present our Government project: Brittany and I wrote a jingle; I finished the party website; Jimmy made stickers; Steve made fliers; everyone wrote short speeches on the planks; I wrote a long one for the conclusion; and I picked out a spiffy red, white, and blue tie to wear. Now it's all up to Mr. Galbert to give us a good grade. (hopefully)

I almost forgot to mention that my friend r0se has added me as a poster on her site. Check it out.

Tonight was nothing if not interesting. It started out at Charlie's house, then from there we went to the girls' basketball game at the high school where we met up with a bunch of other people. After staying for the last quarter of the game (our school lost), we went over to a restaraunt on the lake near my house. Charlie's dad, who is one of the top three guitarists I know, played a very good jazz set pretty much exclusively for us. The restaraunt was almost empty because it was storming outside. Eventually, the storm abated, and we made our way to Charlie's house where we hung out for a while before everyone collectively decided to drive over to another friend's house. Since I didn't know the person, I decided to just head home.

I just got back from working on the government project, and I must say I've feeling better about presenting it Monday. I think the highlights will be the party website I'm currently working on and the jingle that Brittany and I are going to put together tomorrow. Because of that and Charlie's joyride that evening, I'm going to attempt to get some homework done tonight. Yeah, I know I'm the epitome of coolness doing homework on a Friday night.