Ask Away

Greetings:

I'm here to answer your questions... next week, I hope.

Send me your questions, and I will try to answer them.

That is all.

Sincerely,



Me.

NaNoWriMo 2010

Seasons Greetings:

Yeah, no Kirby blog. Windows can be rather stupid.

Anyway, I wanted to tell you a little bit about about my writing adventure in November.

For those out of the loop, November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. The goal is to write 50,000 words in 30 days. It's pretty intense to say the least.

Surprisingly enough, I wrote a fantasy this time around. In "Rift," earth had been given magic by otherworldly, benevolent beings. However, when these creatures got killed off by another race, earth started going bonkers.

Of course, having rushed it so much, it came out pretty bad. My current plan is to return to it sometime in the future and re-write it as a graphic novel. Not being an artist, I'd have to hire someone to do the art for me.

I didn't finish my novel but I got pretty close. I stopped a week early because I couldn't decide on an ending.

I want to learn from my mistakes before continuing "Rift." Maybe I'll sign up for a creative writing class next semester.

Merry Christmas,



Me.

Compost Happens

Greetings:

Due to forces beyond my control, I will be unable to blog for the rest of the month. I apologize for this in advanced.

That being said, I already have the next couple of blogs planned out:

• Humor found in the Bible
• Kirby's Epic Yarn Vs the rest of the franchise (an analysis, not a review)
• What did I do for NaNoWriMo?

Sincerely,

Me.

Teachers Good and Bad: Part 1/2

Happy Halloween:

Before I get started on the real post, I’d like to briefly warn you of the dangers of FireSheep. Rather, I’ll have someone else do it for me. Click anywhere on this paragraph for more information.

Also, next Sunday is the end of Daylights Savings Time. Time falls back an hour. Congrats on getting the extra hour of sleep, everybody.

Finally, tomorrow is the first day of NaNoWriMo. I… don’t know if I’m going to do it or not. I’ll give you more details this November if I do this. Again, click on this paragraph if you don’t know what I’m talking about.

Anyway, I had to drop a class a few days ago. It was a late-start online class history class. I was looking forward to it, too, since I feel I don’t know as much about the topic as I should.

There were a number of factors that worked into why I dropped the class, but the biggest thing was how poorly the first assignment was written.

I don’t want to get too much into complaining about it, especially since I only had the class for a half-week before I opted out. It just felt like the teacher didn’t prepare his lesson on time. There were multiple versions of the same lesson and some contradictions between the first assignment and the syllabus. It was very confusing.

That being said, it gave me the idea to write about teachers this time around. Specifically, I want to go on a little bit about things that they do that I find notable—both good and bad.

Seeing that I want to finish this before the night is out, I’m going to divide this post in half. Today will be about the bad; next week will be the good.

Humiliating Students.

There is a time and place for everything. Sometimes, I’ll admit, it’s actually appropriate to point out a specific student is nodding off during class and whatnot.

However, there’s a fine line where it goes from being a reasonable punishment to being needlessly nasty. 

For example, I once saw a student being called out of the lunch line because she wasn’t conforming to the proper dress code. That was reasonable, I guess, but then the supervisor started derailing her in front of everyone. 

By the time I was called out of line right to stand right next to her to be shown as an example of someone who was dressed properly... Well, let’s just say that I felt the point was already made long before.

Mind you, this was a school official, not a teacher. However, I’ve seen similar things done in the classroom, too.

Teachers: You can punish us, but just don’t take revenge on us. It's unprofessional and petty.

Lying to Students.

Oy vey, this is a big one. Why do some teachers feel that lying to their students is the only way to keep them motivated?

During my first week at Job Corps, my class was told by a teacher that we’d get in “serious trouble” if we didn’t complete two essays by the end of the week.

I was busy at that time and was only able to finish one of the two. It was a month later when I realized that I hadn't received any punishment outside of a harsh look from the teacher.

It makes me wonder how many former grade school students are unable to find work nowadays because pulling Susana’s hair went on their “Permanent Record.”

Not Researching.

This is similar to the last one except it’s caused by laziness. As my dad sometimes says, “If it ain't on the page, it ain't on the stage.” Don't teach us students things that you aren't sure are true.

Say what you will about Wikipedia, but I like the website's policy when it comes to citations. Every word is supposed to be linked to a refutable source and phrases such as, “many scientists think…” are typically banned as ‘weasel words.’

I was very young at the time, but I remember a Sunday School teacher who claimed that it was a sin to get angry. One student mentioned reasonable instances where he would get angry; someone beating him up, someone shooting his dad, or some jerk busting down a bathroom door while he was on the toilet. “Nope,” the teacher said, “Jesus was never angry so we should never be angry.”

The following passage rang through my mind:

"12 And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves,  

13 And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves." 

Matthew 21:12-13

Even as young as I was, I knew never to go to that church again. 

Sincerely,

Me.

Irrelevant Fear

Greetings:

Halloween is just around the corner and, although it’s a week early, I’ll be writing a bit about one of my fears today.

Specifically, I fear irrelevancy. Not achieving anything in life. Not mattering 20-30 years after I’m gone.  

This has been haunting me for the past few months.

“Do I matter?” It’s something that I’ve prayed a lot lately. Thankfully, my answer came in today’s church service. I’ll share that answer with you.

The guest speaker read from the book of Jeremiah.

The Children of Israel had already been captured and taken into captivity. Jeremiah was telling them to settle down and get used to their new lives; they wouldn’t be headed back home for a long while.

Meanwhile, false prophets were preaching a feel-good message about how things would be normal and that they would all be back home soon enough.

The speaker related this to her own life story. She expected to do huge things with her life. Society promised that she would be able to do anything she wanted once college was done.

Then, life happened. She now had the full time job of being a Mom in a small Californian city.

We may want to be big but, sometimes, God humbles us and gives us a smaller task in a more mundane corner of the world. It might not seem like much to us, but still it means the world to God when we accept His will for our lives.

"Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content."

Philippians 4:11

Sincerely,

Me

Birthday Love on Facebook

Greetings:

Many people wished me a Happy Birthday today. Here's the list of them. Quynh and Melissa also wished me birthday joy via Facebook Messenger. Sierra, Marcus and Grandma also gave me written notes.

Marcus
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

Manny
Happy Birthday J.-....

Kenneth
"Rah-Rah!" Bravo!
We sure had a nice party!
Sorry all of you could not attend!
Lot's of left over food! And Cake! And Ice Cream!
It was nice!

Charlene
I wasn't online all day to say happy birthday.. so here I am.. Happy birthday! I hope it was good. =]

Krystine

happy birthday!!!!

Sierra
happy day before your birthday!!!!!!!! :D see you soon!!!! ♥ I'm coming over tonight :) to look for wrinkles!!!!!!!

Yoshie
Happy birthday!

Shianne
happy birthday

Phuong
happy birthday 21. Big party huh?

Dena
Have a FANTASTIC birthday J.! Doing anything fun? How is your mom?

Troy
Happy BIRTHDAY!!! YAY im the first to wish u happy birthday hahah!!! ....id leave u a wall post but U DISABLED IT ..so i have to tell happy bday in a comment

David
Happy Birthday J.!

Jennifer S. 
Happy Birthday!!!

Jennifer N.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY J.!!!!!! Hope you have a fantastic day!!!!!

Jim
Happy Birthday!!

Karla
Happy birth day!!!!!!! I hope u have a great day :D

Andrea
Have a great day, J., with love from the B. Crew.

Nancy
Happy Bday J.!!!! :)

Allison
Happy Burfday Jor-Jor!!! I love you! Hope its a great day!

Jeffrey
Happy birthday J...have a good one

Sierra
happy birthday, KIRBY!!!!! :-D i will be on the lookout for overalls :D i love you!!! ♥

Kusikoya Saune
HAPPY 21st BIRTHDAY J.!!!!!!!:D
Hope your days filled with lots of happiness!!!!

Jessica
happy birthday

Dennis
HAPPY BIRTHDAY J.!!!

Amanda
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! :D ♥

Shaquay
happy birthday J.

Ariel
happy birthday!!

Bridgette
Happy Birthday J.

Joshua
Happy Birthday J....hope it was a good one.

Day
happy bert day

Lamotta
Happy bday foo. I know we lost connect, but im always around to hang.if we are not busy. congrats

Joy
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!! YAY!!!! :)

Diana
Hope you have had a really great birthday today.

Diana
Happy Birthday, J., You rock.

Diana
Birthday fun. Have a great one.

Carlos
Happy Birthday J. I hope you like your cake XD

Sincerely,

Me

21st Birthday

Greetings:

It's my birthday today. I'm now 21 years old. We celebrated a day early. Along with the typical cake and ice cream dinner, I was given the following gifts.

• Two t-shirts
• Markers
• Socks
• Two large sketch pads
• One small sketch pad
• A watter bottle
• Glow sticks
• A regular calendar
• A page-a-day calendar
• C.S. Lewis' Prelanda (Book)
• Colone
• A hat
• A fake mustache
• $20 bucks
• A mini-pinata
• A rubber band ball
• I Am Legend (Book)

Thank you to everyone to help make my day and year happy. I'm glad I survived for this long. Life may be stupid at times, but it rarely fails to be interesting.

Salutations,

Me

PS: I'm going to start including easter eggs in my posts. For example, you might find a link hidden within the text if you click randomly. There will be at least one in every post.

Also, the color of my blog's title will change according to the mood of my post recent post. It's currently green because this post relates to my increasing age and thereby growth.