Oh, I rue the day my motherboard fritzed out on me, blanked out my screen, and wouldn't allow my computer, my custom-built, unusually stable, 1.1ghz GeForce4 computer to do anything but hum. Actually, that was yesterday, but this still royally sucks. I speak to you now through an ancient relic of my friend who moved across the country, a dusty old, clanky steel Dell case with a PII motherboard in it, and every piece of spare junk I could round up. There are spare parts in here that have been hit by luggage carts during flights to Maine. I mean, Maine. All this seemingly useless junk from a past life, which even brings me good memories (it's a geek thing) comes together to form something that actually works pretty well. In any case, I'll probably be updating this a lot until I can scrounge up the cash for a new motherboard, as I won't be able to do much serious gaming.

Other than the thought eating through my mind that my computer was broken, and that I'd have to work on this thing when I got home, today wasn't bad. As always, after a progress report day, most people silently turned them in, given up on forging a signature or not even bringing them home. That concept died out in junior high; the English teachers at Doerre were sentinels. In electronics today, we played some multiplayer games of Quake, and I swear, there's nothing like waking up, going to school, and getting your damn deathmatch on. I've got to say, none of those people have ever played any decent computer games before. N00bs. Programming today was the most boring thing in the history of the world, as usual. It consisted, once again, of us sitting at the computers, me playing some typing game, and the teacher droning on and on about her personal life. I can't stand it. She'll be talking about the computers of the 70's when she'll start rambling on and linking it somehow, any way possible to how she got her college degree, how she got married, etc.

Chemistry was a nice change today, as always. We took a quiz, I'm not completely sure if I passed, as I couldn't remember the values of beta particles and positrons. Got to try though. I've been talking with that girl I mentioned earlier, her name is Halley, and yes, I knew that before, I just couldn't spell it. She's really a very nice person, very polite, funny, has a really pleasant speaking voice. Nice to actually make a new friend... Today, as she left, she looked up at me for a few seconds when I stood up, like she was going to say something, it even looked like she was going to open her mouth to speak, but she just turned around and left. Kinda weird. I think I'll get her email address tomorrow.

Choir! Here, as we have been rehearsing this week, we rehearsed the Star-Spangled Banner. No, this isn't the little kiddie version you sometimes sing with the PA system in elementary school, it's a good bit more complex, split up into four harmonizing parts, stuff like that. Of course, this week has a special, patriotic theme, as all of you know what today is.

This brings me to why I haven't talked about English yet. Today, being the anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center, had an impact on most of my classes. English was the most patriotic of these, followed by choir, where people are in a decent enough mood to discuss events. We read all our writing assignments, in between clips of the teacher's slideshow presentation, which was a bunch of compiled photographs, news clips, and other tidbits of information. Some people said they didn't have theirs, some went up to the podium and read theirs without a shred of interest, as if the death of thousands is a statistic compared to the death of one. Sadly enough, sometimes it is. Some read it like they had been in a speech class before, like they knew what they were doing, and of course, they did; they sounded well-spoken, they looked at their audience, and possessed other qualities which actually get peoples' attention. One girl, however, knew the meaning of 9-11. I'm not sure what her personal experience was with this, as the story wasn't complete, but as she was telling of when she first heard of the towers in flames, this perky, annoying girl turned into a sensitive, heartbroken human being who nearly burst into tears before she was done. It makes me ashamed that I never knew the true meaning of the tragedy, never felt the real emotion of the loss of all these people. There was no personal happening related to me, no relative, no parents' friend, nothing. It may have well been a murder case in a third-world country to me. I have never been a patriotic person, but I have great respect for the victims of the 9-11 attacks, and for this country. It's just that I feel like the lucky one, and that I wish I could understand what happened, not on a global, a diplomatic, political, or ethical scale, but on a personal one. Tragedies are tragic, but we all learn something from them.
I'm done. More updates tomorrow, as I now have a working computer.