class rings

today we had a salesman come around and try to sell us class rings. my immediate thought was that I wouldn't be buying one, not much of a jewelry/fondly remember my high-school years person. the salesman, being fairly good, wooed into considering it. Upon searching the catalogue, I found that the vast majority of the rings were fairly expensive, in the range of two to six hundred dollars. You could choose what metal you wanted your ring to be made of (white lustrium, gold lustrium, platinum, white gold, gold). now, lustrium had a little ® next to it, so I decided to do some digging. One thing lead to another, and this is what I have:
The rings at our school are provided by Jostens. they provide class rings to thousands of schools throughout the country. because they no doubt serve millions of students, you know that your ring is customized and unique to you. they have five plants just to handle their printing (though they do some custom printing). they where founded in the 1800's and have been making rings for over 80 years. I then dug around Jostens trying to see what kind of corporation they where like. this is in no way exhaustive, and I didn't even look at environmental track record, but they make all of their products in the U.S, and they have a fairly good track record as far as compliance with labour laws are concerned.
anyway, about Lustrium. I found that Lustrium is an alloy of nickel and Chromium, and a small amount of gold if it is of the yellow variety. I looked up the going price of nickel these days, and If I did my calculations correctly (supposing that each ring is 24 pennyweights worth of metal), then the metal in each $70 ring costs about two cents. that might be wrong, and it doesn't count "craftsmanship", but that seems like a good profit margin to me. nickel allergy is also somewhat common in my family (maternal), so that seamed like a bad idea.
final thought, most all of the rings available are gaudy in my opinion. they are either huge, and overly crammed with information (11 letters for the mascot, a picture of a mascot, highsschool name including the word High-school, a four digit graduation year and another symbol of your choice (such as debate or basketball) does not go on a ring without looking cramped. If they stuck it in as a QR code, that would be cool, but in plain-text, not so much) for most of the male models, or tiny and lacy for some of the female ones. there were very few plain metal bands with some letters in them.

bottom line, still not buying a ring. I might try to make my own though, that could be a fun project.

more commercial.

the ad is here

I hate to link to KFC's web-a-ma-page, but I was to lazy to find the video elsewhere. anywho, A) disregard the massage and buy nothing from them, and B) notice the direction of the grill about halfway through. the lines run front to back, but the lines on the "food" run right to left (or left to right). this is proof that they don't toast their subs, all they do is pretend to heat them, and use artificial colors to simulate the browning.

next up:


doe they realy think that they can make sticking it to the man equal buying sprint stuff. sprint is a huge telecom, and the U.S. telecoms are probably the manliest men to be sticking it to.

maybe my little blog thing will become a advert critique site. who knows?

britian

brittish culture (kinda). learn, ye, and be enlightened!

happy net box

just tryin' out my new happy net box. feel free to browse the net through my webpage. there is no need to leave drivel ever! none! whatsoever! well, unless you want to see the right half of the web, then you'll have to go and download some sort of web browser, and install it on your hard drive, and learn how to operate it. that would take alot of work. so you should just stay here. besides it is only a matter of time before comcast starts to bandwidth throttle the right half of the web anyway. it's comcastic!

American society.

what does this say about american society?

arizona

My family and I went/are going to Arizona. I won’t have constant, in home Internet access, but there are plenty of coffee shops and the like, so I will try to keep everybody informed.

Day 0; travel.

Not much to say, it’s an airport. We flew out of SeaTac, and ultimately got to Tuscan.


Self-portrait in glass barrier. Like the hat?


This is a pictures of a large piece of art above the food court. Great example of both a three dimensional display and how pixels do not have to be a particular shape. This is a picture of a bird with its reflection. The image is made of thousands of fish hung from the ceiling.


Comparing prices between 15 minuets of Internet hookup in a “mobile office” and a shoeshine. I estimate that they cost about the same per minuet. Scary, no?

Day 1: did we leave Seattle?

Right, so if anyone has been paying attention to the Tuscan weather, it is gray, with rain, and chilly (about 50º F). It feels like we didn’t leave the northwest. Not much happened, we mostly recuperated from getting in from our flight at 1:00 in the mourning. Because of the weather, we mostly just stayed in side. Went to a restaurant. This was out back:

I am not sure what to make of this, but I am a little frightened of a restaurant that has. The fact I ate there doesn’t make it better. That being said, it did taste good.

Day 2; caves and more!
Weather update:



These was taken on highway tenen rout to the kartchner caves. Seriously, snow? What’s up with that?

Anyway, We went to the kartchner caves. Turns out that re reserved the tickets for two days from now, but we still managed to get in (yay!). while we waited, we went to tombstone. Lots of history, but it was all exploited for profit.


When the new meats the old, and decides to incorperate.

We then returned to the caves, and I was not allowed to take pictures as we can’t take anything in. find out more here .

Day 3:DeGrazia.
We went to see DeGrazia’s gallery in the sun. it is a museum of sorts. Hand made out of materials such as cactus parts and mud. It also has cement and the like. It is well worth seeing. Not much else happened.

meta.

*blows off dust.*

been a while. recently I have had to play in the band at basketball games in the pep band. this recently lead to my new idea: meta-chearleeding. you cheer the cheer leaders. just in case they should falter in the fan's time of need.
further, valentine's day is approaching. last year I gave out those chalky heart candies hot glued to plastic spoons. this year I am still working out what exactly I will do, but I do have one idea. and with this, I assign it to you. write a love poem. it must be designed to work for everyone, men and women, nothing specific enough to limit. people. sign it either from a secret admirer or someone else. leave it where people will find it, and then enjoy the chaos. post theme in the comments (or on your blog or wherever). good luck!


no real posts until the end of finals.

xmas post

Right, so this is my post-xmas assignment for you. There is a good chance that you got a cheque from your old second auntie for [insert holiday], here is what to do with it. We've all heard the stories of idiots at the checkout stand who refused to take a two dollar bill. These people are thankfully rare. Go find them. Your odds might be slightly better if you use the 1979-81 (and again in '99) Susan B. Anthony 1$ silver coin. Cash your check in two doller bills and/or suisie b's and see who rejects them. Confusing the Susan B. Anthonys with quarters does not count. This'le probably be limited to fry-cooks from the new "iGeneration (or whatever the hell we're calling it)", but you can still laugh at them! Kudos to anyone who gets this to happen, super Kudos for video of it on [insert video hosting web-a-ma-page]!

good luck and god's speed!

homework.

doin' homework (probably will be until winter break).

in the mean time, here is a wonderful alarmist piece about the cold war . very well done. listen and be amazed (or not. depends on weather or not you already knew about this).

S.A.D.

a problem faced by atheists/agnostics/people who just want to be fair in supporting all viewpoints is: what do you do with all of the "god" phrases. for example "oh my god" or "god damn you" or "god forbid...". one option is to not use them, but that is just plain boring and not fun. I vote that "god" gets replaced with "Secular Alternative Deity" or "SAD". "oh my S.A.D." "S.A.D. damn you" "S.A.D" forbid!" you get the idea.

if people have better ideas lets me know, and start using them!

Lord of the Flies

It's been a while since my last post, and I apologize. anywhey, here is a cop-out post that is a small piece of homework. In my english class, we hod to decide what each of four major Characters in William Golding's Lord of the Flies where most afraid of. this is my submission for jack:

Jack's deepest, darkest fear is fruit. On multiple occasions, Jack tries to hunt pigs rather than eat fruit. While this may make sense as a tactic later in the book because he has been on an island for a while, Jack starts talking of hunting in the very first chapter (p. 23). Jack also leads a preemptive strike against the terrible tyranny that is fruit by burning the forest, as he was in control of the placement of the fire, as is indicated when “jack clamored among them” (p. 38). As Jack has physically harmed fruit, and gone to great lengths to avoid consuming fruit, it is obvious that he must fear it.

alarm clock

I just fond the most awesome* alarm clock ever. the the thunderbolt . This bad boy/girl puts out about 126 decibels at a distance of 100 feet. a few caveats though: 1) you will violate a noise ordinance. (full stop) 2) depending on where you live and if that area still uses these, you may be committing worse felonies. 3) they are expensive, and rather high maintenance.

here is a recoding of one.

*when I say awesome, I mean having the power to invoke awe.

another thing to think about in the wonderful world of polotics.

I would like to share what I just found: the pirate party . I'll let you reed about it, but it sounds like a party who's ideals I can get behind.

new words

I just created the bust adjective ever. neoflangic. having the properties of a new flange. as in "the new garbage compactor has a neoflangic feel to it." now you try. create a new sentence with "neoflangic" in it.

on a different note, I i'll blog (on this blog) everyday. if nothing else, I will blog about why I can't blog.

i'm back...

from California. Went to an angels vs. mariners (baseball) game (we won), ate deep fried ice cream, and found a geocache (yay). I also started working on the adventures of galstad, but I still have much work to do before anything is net-worthey. I am working out much of the sock universe (presently genders, but social dynamics, education, religion etc. will come soon) I will post this on my (not yet created) drivel spin-off blog. now, say it with me; "hooray!!"

fight the power!

If your aren't outraged, you haven't bean paying attention.

name change.

For those who don't know, my name is Jason.

last year, I decided to spell it with an okina because I could.

I hove decided to change it again this year. like last year, I am polling people to see what they think about it. please comment here, and vote in the pole.

the options are:

1 Iason.

this is the greek spelling of Jason. from Iason and the argonauts.

2 Ia'son.

same, but with an okina in it.

3 J'son.

lacking the "a".

4 Ja'slon.

because every sci-fi thing ends in a consonant and then "lon".

set background to 6f0!

I have set my background to grue.
Please comment on it.

virtual pet rock.

I just aquired a new pet rock! this one is a virtual one! w00t! my life has bean enhanced so much, I feal so much more alive!
you should go and download one yourself! mine is named vladimir!

real quick 3

1) Participate in the general strike this coming september eleventh, if you live in the u.s. (The u.s. does not deserve capitals anymore.)

2) Be on the look out for Udumbara, they should/are showing up. Budhism is an awesome religion.