yeah, this site is over. go here: http://seebojump.blogspot.com. If you're not automatically redirected in 5 seconds, click above.

Sibo's Microcosm

Sunday, June 29, 2003

arg

"Sorry but Free Hosting is no longer a service with Drift2 Hosting."- http://www.geocities.com/greogryp/

this seems cool

http://ionichost.com

er

blogspot is not that hot either

drift2.com sucks

it reallyd oes

Friday, June 27, 2003

select Googlisms for "Harry Potter"

harry potter is teaching your children satanism and witchcraft
harry potter is it
harry potter is coming
harry potter is good for christianity
harry potter is hairy dwarf in unauthorized
harry potter is evil
harry potter is echt supercool club
harry potter is black magick witchcraft
harry potter is nothing compared to the rings
harry potter is 'bad for fat kids'
harry potter is simply one in a long line of hollywood vehicles intended to lure our impressionable children into believing that secular apparitions
harry potter is "sick" and "bad"
harry potter is not the chronicles of narnia
harry potter is actually sexist
harry potter is not the antichrist
harry potter is chinese
harry potter is hairy dwarf in unauthorized chinese book
harry potter is evil harry potter kills all pokemon and also killed
harry potter is george
harry potter is making something god says is an abomination into “child’s play
harry potter is 'fattist' says charity
harry potter is george w bush
harry potter is sibo lin's hold (108/131)

full list

moo

"Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" is available in PDF format on the Kazaa network. But because I only use Kazaa for strictly legal purposes, I did not download it. I am currently hold 108 out of 131 at the EVPL. I hope a lot of people from #1-107 decide to just buy the book and cancel their holds.

permalinks

i think they work now

more bloggage

I've been working on the template for an updates page to integrate into Phuc's http://slampoets.arecool.net. You can find the new updates page here. Tell me what you think

Thursday, June 26, 2003

Calc II problem
integrate this: (eeex * eex * ex) dx

not just another pretty pattern

INJUSTICE
According to CBBC (affiliated with the BBC), Cho Chang won't be making an appearance in the film version of the Prisoner of Azkaban.

What the heck is this? Not one single Asian at Hogwarts! Where's the affirmative action?

another online quiz
I found this on Cara Wilson's blog:

Which Evansville Diva Are You!

I'm not going to say who I got

Harry Potter is the Anti-Christ?
read more

spam in my inbox
Looking for something to do this summer? Visit UE!

Wednesday, June 25, 2003

we are all children
"I might be a little old now. I'm 23, I've got to really focus on things that are really going to enrich my life."- Venus Williams, who was reading a "Harry Potter" book when she won Wimbledon two years ago, saying she might pass on the latest book about the boy wizard. (from Yahoo)

those EUers
Most Euros in Germany Carry Cocaine Traces

"Nine out of 10 banknotes show clearly measurable amounts of cocaine," Fritz Soergel from the Institute for Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Research in Nuremberg told Reuters on Wednesday. Some 600 euro notes were examined in the study.


But I'm sure most dollars in the US have traces of other, more exotic drugs

on my playlist
Cake- Comfort Eagle

We are building a religion
We are building it bigger
We are widening the corridors
And adding more lanes

We are building a religion
A limited edition
We are now accepting callers
for the pendant key chains

Tuesday, June 24, 2003

computer technology debates
Phuc's sister is giving her only-a-year-old computer to Phuc (good), and buying a laptop instead (questionable). I personally always wanted a new desktop when I got to college, but I've re-examined the issue.

Laptop vs. Desktop
Yale analysis for college students
Mac user's opinion
technology journalist's story
Bottom line: Laptops have mobility (both a positive and a negative--easy to bring around campus, easy target for thieves) and a "chic" factor (but who cares about that). Desktops have power and lower costs. For power users, a desktop is the way to go. If portability is a must for some reason, then laptops would be preferred--but seriously, who actually takes their computers to class with the intention of typing notes? The main disadvantage of a desktop for college students is that moving a traditional desktop system requires a lot of effort, as it is much bulkier than any notebook. In order to cut down on the size of a desktop, consumers should consider using a LCD flat-panel screen instead of the usual CRT monitor.

LCD vs CRT monitors
If price weren't a factor, I'd probably get a LCD. Perhaps the price of expensive-to-manufacture LCDs will drop in the next year before I go to college (cross my fingers).

Interesting note: a good desktop with a LCD monitor costs roughly the same as a good notebook alone costs

Which system/monitor do you prefer?

what campaign finance law?
Desipte efforts to limit private donations to political parties, private funds will cover the bulk of party conventions (yes, I just cited USA Today. Forgive me). Why does this matter? Because most corporate donators to political parties are not seeking to improve the competitiveness of a pluralistic democracy. Evidence seems to point the opposite way. "In 2000, major convention supporters included AT&T and Microsoft, which each gave $2 million to help pay for communications and computers." Hm...those companies don't try to buy officeholders at all.

Monday, June 23, 2003

kayaking downstream
So all of yesterday I was kayaking at Land Between the Lakes. Everyone I knew had already gone to LBL several times for youth groups, middle school field trips, or family vacations, but this was my first experience with nature in Kentucky. We were going kayaking under the guidance of the Kentucky Kayak Kountry.

Yeah, that's "KKK" for short.

So you'll forgive me if I was reserved toward the guides initially. It didn't help that the head guide, who also owned KKK, referred to himself as "Kayak" Jack. No kidding. Strangely enough, kayaking was great! Sure, I would have liked to have not worn my tennis shoes, which immediately became saturated with water (not white water, or clear water, but muddy, brownish water). But the point of kayaking is trying to stay IN the kayak and out of the water, so I guess I don't have anyone to blame for my dumps. KKK also had a mudslide, cave, and zipline to enjoy along the kayaking trip. I didn't participate in the mudslide, which looked awfully painful. The cave was pretty unspectacular, but it was a nice place to rest while we lunched. The zipline however, was great.

It was my first zipline experience, but you just hang onto two straps, which let you slide down on a rope which extends over the water. You let go of the straps halfway over the water as you're accelerating, and fall into the water. Well, if you chickened out, I guess you could hold onto the straps and not jump into the water. But the end result would be the same: across the water, the line was attached to a tree. So fall into the water, or hit a tree and bounce into the water. I chose the former, and it was not a bad choice if I say so myself.

The kayaking itself was good fun, and not too strenuous. We were going 13 miles downstream. Most of that trip did not require paddling because a decent current swept us along.

Upon returning to the KKK store, where our adventure began, the owner of the shop next door, "Grandma's Homemade Fudge," accosted me, "Do you recognize me?" Strangely enough, she did. In fact, as we were starting our daylong adventure that morning, I thought I saw my fifth grade homeroom teacher from West Terrace in the parking lot of Kentucky Kayak Kountry. But I thought, "An Evansvillian, this far into Kentucky? No way." But indeed, there was Ms. Reynolds, undeniably right before me! She invited us into her shop to give us a few fudge samples (the fudge was so good we ended up buying a pound), and I learned that she was Kayak Jack's wife. Wow. Crazy.

And then Kayak Jack gave me my Rubber Ducky award (for the person who dumps into the water first), a mug.

Sometimes the current carries you into strange places, huh?

Saturday, June 21, 2003

update on "Order of the Phoenix"
The Evansville-Vanderburg Public Library system has 42 copies of "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix"!

And 118 holds on the first copy returned!

cat meets fan
Kyle Swickard sent me this great video. cat meets fan

speech and debate nationals results
Congrats to everyone who competed. Representing Indiana were Kobi Libii from Ft. Wayne-Snider with 4th in Original Oratory, Elton Oliver from Chesterton with 3rd in Impromptu, and Jodie Carlberg/Plimpton with 6th in Duo Interp. UTNIFers in finals included Josh Bone, David Tannenwald, and Amaris Singer with 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, respectively, in International Extemp, and Ron Kendler, NATIONAL CHAMPION in Impromptu. Wow, good job Ron.

I'm still interested to see who all I knew made it into break rounds of some event. My source--http://www.victorybriefs.net/vbd/000205.html--only has listings of the finalists.

"Order of the Phoenix" quasi-spoiler
According to Conan O'Brien on tonight's show: Apparently, in this book, Harry Potter develops hormones.

Friday, June 20, 2003

chatterbox up
my latest upgrade: the chatterbox on the left sidebar. It's a lot like a Zonkboard (which I used on Signature Monitor) but is a lot cleaner. You can use it as a guestbook or all purpose commenting system. Zonk.

my first posted "essay"
If you click on the "Essays" link on the left menu bar, you'll notice the essays section is up, and I have one essay already: Finding the volume of a mouhefanggai. I was inspired by a Calc II problem Shanky presented me. I know you are intrigued...go read it!

Thursday, June 19, 2003

EVSC's deal with Coca Cola

Excerpted from The Evansville Courier and Press:

EVANSVILLE (AP) -- Indiana's third-largest school district plans to use the money from a nearly $2.5 million soft-drink contract to help pay for stipends to coaches and others who sponsor extracurricular activities.

Money from the five-year contract with Coca-Cola guarantees that sports, drama, band, orchestra and school clubs will continue in the Evansville-Vanderburgh schools, district officials said.


If the EVSC can keep its extracurriculars going, I guess they must sacrifice Ski (owned by Double Cola). And I prefer Pepsi, the drink, over Coca-Cola, but which company signed Mya to a commerical?

'nuf said.

The Fountainhead
Anyone have some good ideas on how to get through "The Fountainhead" without falling dead asleep?

My best luck so far as been to read this parody of The Fountainhead.

more Potter on my mind
Confession: I read Harry Potter

In fact, I just finished the fourth book at 3 AM this morning. I know you're laughing--I used to snicker at the "Pot-Heads" who would stand in line for the midnight showings of the Harry Potter movies in a lavish Quidditch outfit or wizard robes. Actually, I still do. But at least now, I've developed a healthy appreciation for Rowling's best-selling series. If you have not read any Harry Potter yet, I recommend checking out the first four books from the library. It makes a great summer break filler. Trust me--the only reading I normally enjoy comes from The Guardian and The Economist.

For those of you who have already exhausted the Harry Potter books, no doubt you're eagerly anticipating the release of the 5th book tomorrow night. In case you need your fix of Harry Potter before then, I was recently informed of a whole new universe of Harry Potter fiction: fan fiction. Fan fiction is fictional stories written by fans of a certain item of pop culture, about that item. For instance, several Harry Potter fanfic writers have been expanding on the inevitability of a Harry/Hermione romance. Or is it a Ron/Hermione hate/love relationship? Snape/Hagrid??!!??

Ok, so I haven't read the Snape/Hagrid story, and I don't plan on it, but some of this fanfic is extraordinary. For instance, even those who don't like Harry Potter may like "A Certain Point of View" by B. Bennett, with its Star Wars sub-theme threaded throughout the short story. I end this post with a short excerpt from "A Certain Point of View":

Hermione shushed him. "Ooo, watch. This is one of my favorite parts."

All four stared at the screen.

"Hey, she kissed him!" Ron exclaimed. "What'd she do that for?"

Hermione tucked her legs beneath her. "It was a good luck kiss, before the swing over that chasm." Hermione sighed. "Wasn't that heroic? Luke's so brave."

Ron feigned a shudder. "Sorry, there's something about those two. They shouldn't be kissing."


*I credit the majority of links in this post to Tara Zuber, who plans to buy and read Harry Potter tomorrow night*

Wednesday, June 18, 2003

"friends forever!"
At the end of every school year, we clutter each other's yearbooks with one-liners like "Stay cool!" and "Keep in touch!"--basically some positive statement ending in an exlamation point. The problem is that this yearbook filler loses its effect once the umpteenth person uses it to sign their place in your memories. And sometimes, this apathy about maintaining our current relationships leads to lost friends in the future.

Not "lost friends" as in fighting with one's friends. Much worse: "lost friends" as in slowly loosing touch with people you once had the best times of your life with. My best friend throughout middle school was Frank Wu. He was a grade ahead of me and lived on the opposite side of town, but we both attended the Tri-State Chinese Cultural Association's Chinese school on Saturdays. Afterwards, often we'd hang out at his house and play basketball, video games, or some other activity I still enjoy doing today. I miss Frank. He moved to California 5 years ago. I've tried a few times to find him on the Internet, but Google returns 3,790 results for "Frank Wu" (in quotation marks!).

So this post is dedicated to never loosing close friends again. And if Frank, Andrew Cheaney, John Hawkins, or Martin Georgiev ever read this, email me and let's catch up on old times, ok?

early July slam at the Wadi Cafe
zildjangirl: Poetry slam July 5th at 7:30 pm

Open topic still

Speech and Debate Nationals!
According to my Nirav, no one from Sig made it to break rounds in their primary events. Amy will probably try to compete in impromptu, and Rachael has a poetry program ready to go (Nirav has to return to Evansville to attend summer classes).

Good luck to Amy, Rachael, and the other Evansville people still left in the tournament!

On a side note, I find it very interesting that Victory Brief's assessment of Nationals summarizes with

In other words, watch out for MN, IN, CA, TX, and MO. In particular, it's almost guaranteed each year for there to be a National Champ from Eagan HS, or Apple Valley HS, or one of the Evansville schools, or Bellarmine! Talk about dynasties!


Indiana? A speech and debate powerhouse? Well last year, Indiana had several top OO, FX, and Poetry competitors (and the champion in each of those events!) but those results will be hard to duplicate, and it's very presumptuous to assume that a champion will come from "one of the Evansville schools," as several of the top schools in Indiana are now situated in Northern Indiana.

Tuesday, June 17, 2003

for my own purpose
I searched for WEEKS trying to get the right driver to my sister's PCTel AMR modem, and finally found it here. Before, I could make the modem work but it would disable the speakers. Haha. Wooo.

Forget Pokemon

...Harry Potter is the new craze.

The hottest property in publishing just got hotter. Days before the latest Harry Potter book is to go on sale, a raider drove off with a lorry-load of about 8,000 copies of the book in Merseyside. Police valued the stolen copies of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix at about £130,000


full story

AIM

Super Hero E2002: I'm dling the Anne [of Green Gables] soundtracks
SeeBol: who would want that
Super Hero E2002: uhhhhh tons of ppl
Super Hero E2002: I know canadian ppl
Super Hero E2002: and of course me


Um....this "Anne of Green Gables" is pretty scary. Check her out. Not in that way.

Saturday, June 14, 2003

Dr. Suess and Iraq....

what more could you want?

Friday, June 13, 2003

NEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am moving this site to http://sibo.drift2.com. Find me there!

Thursday, June 12, 2003

not Republican and proud

I'm not Democratic either.

SeeBol: o are you GOP
Phoenixdelaluna: remind me what that means again
SeeBol: grand ol' party
SeeBol: republican
Phoenixdelaluna: parents is republican
SeeBol: Phoenixdelaluna: parents is republican
SeeBol: Phoenixdelaluna: parents is republican
SeeBol: Phoenixdelaluna: parents is republican
SeeBol: Phoenixdelaluna: parents is republican
Phoenixdelaluna: why do you keep doing that?

Sunday, June 08, 2003

educated rap

The 1500 on the SAT
is not enough
gotta get a perfect
to make my college application look buff

This past week has been a
travesty of summer break
Most people are lethargic and sleep in
But I had to stay wide awake

Cuz' I had to study
and memorize words so long
that when I rap with these words
you can't sing along!

A toady is not an amphibian at all but a yes man
A toady is perfidious, mendacious, and profligate

I love to masticate. MasTIcate, which means I ate.

Hey, I got an idea,
We ain't nothing but mammals
so let's masticate like the simians do it on the discovery channel

And afterwards we may give out flatulence
which will be noisome and malodorous
but it's all good, as long as it's just the two of us

And afterwards we can abscond
and our odor can make a man wan

a wan man can't tan, so he has to resort to chicanery and
spray on a tan

I know you can't understand a word I'm saying
but don't be diffident, try to understand the missive
that I'm conveying

if a wan man can't tan, and he cheats to get a tan, he loses.

so don't cheat for the SAT.
study.
learn lots of new words.
and give your own educated rap.

Friday, June 06, 2003

this is like one of mr. thread's tests

the SAT is tomorrow. wish me luck.

policy kritik

SeeBol: i think the midwest should protest the resolution
SeeBol: i mean, there aren't any oceans here!
Dizidaze: good idea
Dizidaze: there are crazy peopel EVERYWHERE
Dizidaze: but yeah, ocean water DOES NOT affect us
Dizidaze: AT ALL


From Russian relations, privacy, and WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION to mental health and now ocean policy. I'm going to do Congress as a primary.

Wednesday, June 04, 2003

more SAT word power

dogma- set of religious beliefs enforced in an authoritarian way
prediliction- a predisposition toward something
evansescence- the process of disappearing, like vapor
irreproachable- perfect in intention
impetuous- rash, passionate
semaphore- a system of signalling with flags and arms and lights
footloose- free to roam, with no restrictions
impute- to assign causality
kernel- the central part of something

erg

Agassi lost. Ferrero vs Costa and Vernerak vs Coria in semifinals.

Serena vs Henin and Clijsters vs Petrova in womens.

Monday, June 02, 2003

french open stuff

"As far as I'm concerned anyone that speaks Spanish or Portuguese are good wins." - Andre Agassi

Venus Williams is out! wooo!

Clijsters and Agassi to win the whole thing.

frisbee golf

no one knows about it in Evansville!

BrightEyEs13086: but who plays frisbee on a golf course?
SeeBol: no one
SeeBol: people play frisbee golf on a frisbee golf course
BrightEyEs13086: wow it's actually a game?
BrightEyEs13086: wtf
SeeBol: hahaha what did you think it was
BrightEyEs13086: i thought you guys had too much time
BrightEyEs13086: shit...i thought you guys were just being creative


Indeed, there is a frisbee golf course at USI on the cross country course, behind the softball field off the main road. Frisbees are for sale at USI's Rec center and Dick's Sporting Goods by Target Greatland on the east side of town.