The Story of a Shared Gmail Chat...

{3:17 PM John: We have not lost our power yet, but it has been flickering. Glad to hear yours is back. Kristie

3:18 PM me: I hope yours stays on. Do you have a generator?

 John: yup

3:19 PM me: That's good, we don't but our neighbor does. Right now I'm watching my Harvard computer lectures.

3:20 PM John: Good you can get school done when the power's on!

3:21 PM I did my BB work this morning which is good.

  Edit: BB computer work

 me: Actually, I downloaded the lectures to the laptop, so as long as I have battery left I can watch the lectures, which is nice.

3:22 PM I'm glad you were able to work on the Bible bee

  What computer work?

 John: Yeah. Battery on my laptop stinks. It has like a 6 minute life.

  Oh, I am typing all my cross references into quizlet

3:23 PM me: I added a external battery pack to this laptop, so I get a lifetime in the hours, which is great.

  Have you tried Anki? That's what I have to use for latin.

3:26 PM By the way, if you discharge a laptop battery below 40% it damages it.

 John: Translation please...

 me: for...?

3:27 PM John: last thing you typed.

  x-(

3:28 PM me: Most laptops have a battery status indicator. If is says 40% battery remaining (or less) than you are damaging the battery.

  Is that any help?

3:29 PM John: anki looks like it might be good, but since I already have typed 700 some crs into quizlet I think I'll stick to that.

  okay. that's what I thought you meant. So you should plug your computer in if it is at 40%?

 me: O.K. I like it because it's cross-platform, and you can share quiz sets

  yes

3:30 PM John: got to go. by

  cross-platform? shared across computers

 me: O.K., bye

 John: that was Mark

  ~Amy

 me: Who am I typing to ???

 John: Jessie

3:31 PM me: I'm starting to wonder here...

 John: nonono

  Kristie. truly

  Amy is telling you silly things.

  DONT LISTEN TO HER!!!!!!

  just we have 3 computers with gmail up and I'm trying to control Mark ~Amy

 me: O.K....

 John: I should get back to work now.

  Kristie

3:32 PM me: Me too, 73.

 John: FEAZLE DORP

  I enjoyed having this chat session. signed Kristie

  KRISTIE'S THE PROBLEM

  ~Amy

  Every weird thing stated is Mark aka Feazle dorp

  Its Amy

3:33 PM believe me

  Mark, quit!!!

  BY ~Mark

  Finally Marks off!!!

3:34 PM He is so annoying

 me: O.K., this was the most interesting chat I've had in a long time.

 John: that was Mark too.

 me: That's what I thought

 John: I am not off!!!!!

3:35 PM me: By the way, if you have three people typing to me, I have three people (Beth, Ethan and me watching this :D)

 John: next time dont fix Mark's copter. he keeps flying it into my head! x-(

3:36 PM me: So sorry, I taught him how to fix it on Sunday!

3:37 PM John: HEY I never flew it into your head!!!

 me: Wait.. is that how it got broken?

 John: as you can see, Mark easily gets bottled energy that he exudes on his sisters as they peacefully are walking through life.

  I didnt!!1

3:38 PM me: Oh yes, we don't have anything like that around here! ;)

3:39 PM John: That;s because Ethan's hair was sticking up last night!

  I might call Beth soon - Mark

  DONT LISTEN TO MARK

 me: You know he's watching this, right?

3:40 PM John: That is so off topic.

  ugh, Mark is making this all up himself. If you want to get any school done you might want to just close gmail completely except that you might find this too amusing. ~ actual Amy

  THAT IS NOT OFF TOPIC

 me: Who is off topic?!!!

 John: HER

  HIM

  Mark and Ethan of course.

  Kristie

  HER

  HEr

  HER

  Her

3:41 PM NOT ME

  Obviously the all caps things are Mark.

  her

  her

  her

  not me

  that is actual real live Amy

3:42 PM me: This has afforded quite a bit of amusement, but I really have to finish my Harvard computer class (next class: how to hack Google chat! ;), so goodbye.

 John: bye. Kristie

  BYYYYYYYYYYYYY

  Kristie's off

#include

{ 

Printf("

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Anyway, let that serve as an example to you!

By the way, a couple of notes: I changed all the names. I did some minor spelling/format corrections (I left 

most of it as typed), and, I was just kidding about the hacking as you can see from the ;). (Though I am taking CS50)

Also, the responses don't always line up with the questions, because I can only type so fast.

Enjoy!

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return 0;

}

Oops, sorry, too much C programming ;P

Writing assignment May 9, 2012

Imaginary complaint letter...

24816 Numeric road,
Numberville AX, 32641

May 09, 2012

Hard Drives inc.

28256 Alpha road,

Silicon City AX, 51210

To whom it may concern:


The hard drive I bought from your company has ruined my entire computer. It was a very good computer too, its only faults were that it had a small case and your hard drive! My computer used to work fine, but it was running out of hard drive space, so naturally I bought a new one. As I said, my computer case is rather small, and so, being rather tight on space I installed it right next to my graphics card, being sure to mount it on the side with the fan, not the other side with the exposed circuit board. After all, I wanted to be sure that if it touched anything it wouldn't short anything out. Anyway, only a week later, I was playing BF3 on maximum settings, and my graphics card burned out. It literally blew a cloud of smoke out the back and stopped working! At that point, I didn't think to attribute it to the hard drive. If I had, I could have saved a lot of trouble. So, naturally, if my graphics card broke, I needed to update it, after all, it was somewhat outdated anyway, being already six months old. The new card, however, was much larger, requiring me to move the hard drive to install the graphics card. Since the hard drive didn't fit in its old location, I moved it to right next to the northbridge part of my motherboard, you know, the section (not the CPU) with the fan. Well, as I was running out of space and mounting options in my case, I strapped it to this heatsink/fan, figuring it could double as a standoff, so the hard drive wouldn't touch the motherboard and short anything out. (As you can see, I'm very conscious of safety precautions.) Well, only three days later, I was re-encoding a blu-ray video, and the motherboard died! I sent it back, and that company told me that the entire northbridge had melted, and that it would be cheaper to replace the whole motherboard. O.K., new motherboard. This one however, doesn't have a good place to strap a hard drive to though, so I started looking around for another place to mount it. Then it hit me. Of course! the CPU cooler! It strapped on very nicely, and fit perfectly over the air intake side, just as if it had been made to fit there. There was a problem though. Two days later, I was playing Skyrim on ultra settings, and the computer blew the circuit breaker. I opened it up to see what was the matter, and was greeted by a horrific sight! The CPU cooler had melted into a puddle of molten metal that poured over the CPU, motherboard, and memory, shorting out and ruining them. I was starting to get suspicious, but the new hard drive had all my data, so what was I to do? Well, I bought a new motherboard, CPU, CPU cooler, and memory. (By the way, the CPU was only overclocked to 4.8 GHz.) After installing the new components, I realized that the new hard drive wouldn't fit on the new CPU cooler. I took me a while to find a place for it, but I finally found the perfect spot. I was looking inside my case, wondering what could possibly be removed to make space for the hard drive (I have a small case, remember?) Then I spotted it. The perfect place! Right where the case exhaust fan was. After all, everything that gets hot has its own fan, so why would I need another, right? I removed the fan, and mounted the hard drive in its place. That same day, I was playing Portal 2 on max settings, and I noticed that my screen was going dim. I unplugged and re-plugged the monitor, but I was starting to notice that other things were going dark too. Suddenly my fire alarm went off, and it was the kind that calls the fire department. I calmly waited for them to arrive so I could tell them it was a mistake. It was starting to get dark too, night must have been falling--it must have been much later than I had realized. When the fire department arrived, I went outside to meet them, and suddenly realized that it wasn't night; there was so much smoke billowing from the windows of my house that I had thought it was night, The firemen went into the house. When they came out, they reported that there was no fire, only smoke, seemingly caused by an overheating computer. Ahem. However, they had thoroughly soaked it, and it was not a threat anymore. So now I'm stuck with a hard drive that has all my personal data on it, that I don't dare to plug in. My next hard drive will not be from your company!


Signed, Joe Dumbo, PhD in breaking computers.

Essay 01

I now have to write essays to practice for the SAT on October 1st. Writing is not my strong point, but I am going to post my essays on here so that I will have a record of them in case I lose the papers. This one (and probably all of the others will be digitized as written, with all misspellings and punctuation errors. The only thing I can't transfer very well is my handwriting, unless I scan it, but I'm just going to type them for now.

Here is what I had to go off of:

Prompt:
"That which we obtain too easily, we esteem too lightly. It is dearness only which gives everything its value."
Thomas Paine

Assignment:
Do we value only what we struggle for? Plan your response, and then write an essay to explain your views on this issue. Be sure to support your position with specific points and examples. (You may use personal examples or examples from your reading, observations, or, knowledge of subjects such as history, literature, science.)

Here is what I was able to write in 25 minutes:

That which we obtain too easily we esteem too lightly. -Thomas Paine
In many cases this is true; take for example electricity. In many parts of the world there is no electrical supply available, and furthermore, it were, they would have no use for it, and quite probably not understand it. However, if they were to visit a modern city, and see what use we made of it, and we were to reciprocate by visiting a place without electricity, both parties would probably be shocked, it in different ways. There are many things that we take for granted, and yet if we lose something, say continuing on the topic of electricity, it suddenly becomes the center of our attention, when, while it is functioning normally we give no thought to it. Therefore it is obvious that we value more lightly those things which we have not experienced a loss of, or have not had to struggle to obtain. This is also demonstrated by many other things which, while commonplace here, might be unheard of in other places Take for example; cars. Many people here own cars, and do not give them a second thought, unless they cease to function normally. However, those same people might value them much more highly when the only available method of transportation was a horse, or even worse, on foot! All things considered, there is much to be said for the theory that "you must struggle for a goal to truly appriciate it" -John Sineder

Yes, I know, appriciate is spelled wrong, but I only had 22 seconds left, and I decided to skim over the whole for easily fixable problems. It's not as easy as it might seem, writing. It took 25 minutes to write this, and took up a page and two thirds, instead of the short text box on this blog. If I remember right, it was around 300 words. 

P.S. The John Sineder reference is made up. On the SAT they do not count facts against you (!?!?!) Really!