Sister Site!

The sister blog to this blog is http://blogging-4beginners.blogspot.com

Check it out! Its for bloggers, new and old, with a new tip posted every day!

NFL Picks for This Playoff Weekend

San Diego vs New England - San Diego
San Diego has been playing excellent football all year and with future Hall-of-Famer LT on the team, they will have no problem in defeating the Patriots.
Score: 24-17

Baltimore vs Indianapolis - Baltimore
Well, Peyton Manning will go without a Super Bowl ring this year too. Indy's defense and Peyton's problems will lead to a blowout.
Score: 27-13

Chicago vs Seattle - Seattle
This one is hard to call due to Rex Grossman and the Bears inability to play on certain days. Only four wins came against playoff teams during the regular season. For this reason, I chose Seattle.
Score: 31-21

New Orleans vs Philadelphia - Philadelphia
This is an easy pick. Philly has a new quarterback and an offense that is more balanced then the first time these two teams meant. The Eagles have been playing football better then any team in the NFC.
Score: 24-21

There ya go!

A Shameless Plug and Shameless Downloading

For those of you reading this, I have another blog, Blogging for Beginners, which is a site I update every day with one new Tip for new bloggers, or bloggers that want to learn something new to help their blogs succeed. Today is my last full day home, for tomorrow I work for 6 hours in the Deli, and I leave to go back to Rutgers on Sunday.

For fans of Pirating, I found a RapidShare blog with all the latest releases.

Check it Out

You'll also need a Hack to bypass the download restrictions

Swoop!

Some videos to ease the mind

Since I know I wrote a hell of a lot yesterday, I'll ease up on the writing today by putting up a video and some cool photos.

First, I know you've all waited your entire life to see this: A crazy rabbit attacking a snake.

Top 10 Funny Quotes: Seinfeld!

Every week I’ll do a Top 10 Quotes from a TV Show. This week its from one of the best: Seinfeld

These pretzels are making me thirsty. - Kramer

The sea was angry that day, my friends, like an old man trying to send back soup in a deli… - George

I was the best man at the wedding. If I’m the best man, why is she marrying him? - Jerry

What is a date really, but a job interview that lasts all night? The only difference is that in not many job interviews is there a chance you’ll wind up naked. - Jerry

You know you’re getting old when you get that one candle on the cake. It’s like, “See if you can blow this out.” - Jerry

See, the thing of it is, there’s a lot of ugly people out there walking around but they don’t know they’re ugly because nobody actually tells them. - Jerry

I will never understand why they cook on TV. I can’t smell it. Can’t eat it. Can’t taste it. The end of the show they hold it up to the camera, “Well, here it is. You can’t have any. Thanks for watching. Goodbye.” - Jerry

“I’ll sniff out a deal. I have a sixth sense.”
“Cheapness is not a sense.”
- George and Jerry

“I’m not ashamed of my body.”
“Exactly. That’s your problem. You should be.”
- Jerry and the Naked Guy

“I always get the feeling that when lesbians look at me, they’re thinking, “*That’s* why I’m not a heterosexual.”
- George

Myspace and School Districts

Should schools interfere with things that go on on Myspace? If a student makes a profile of a teacher, what right does the school have to discipline the student? What legal right does a school district have concerning things that are written or done on the internet, which is technically off school district property?

Even though Myspace, according to most teens, is so last year, (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/28/AR2006102800803.htm) I thought that this would still be a good discussion point. Last year, I made a Myspace Profile for one of my teachers along with a friend. We put a picture of her up, creating a fake profile with funny things, and basically everyone in the class got a huge laugh out of it. It was jokes about her hair, the way she spoke, and her hair style (it was short). We did this because she was a god awful teacher and we all hated her. It relieved some of the stress of the class. There were a few other Myspace teacher profiles that were worse then the one I created, so I didn’t bother with them. Come late November, I heard that school administrators and the security staff (two police officers and two former members of the FBI) had discovered the Myspace that I created and were taking students out of class and questioning them as to who created it. At the end of December, I was finally pulled out of a class and sat in a room alone after my cell phone had been taken away from me. I sat for about a half hour before a former FBI woman came in and sat down. For another 45 minutes I sat there, until another one came in and gave me a pad and paper and told me to write down everything I knew. HE said if I didn’t fess up, they would do an IP Search from the County prosecutor’s office ($2000) and I would have to foot the bill if it came back to me. I fessed up. The result for my helping them? Four days suspension. While some may think “Oh well,” the official reason I was suspended was for “sexual harassment” because under Lesbian as her sexual orientation. This punishment was handed down from an assistant principal that was, yes, homosexual.

So what jurisdiction does a school district have in cases such as these? The crime wasn’t on school property and the teacher did not press charges. This type of occurrence is going to occur more and more often in the future.

Technology, Schools, and Grades

At the high school that I graduated from last year, comes news that two students have been arrested for “computer theft after authorities said they hacked into the school computer system and improved grade records for four other students.” This was only the second year in which the computer system for inputting grades was used. In a time when young teens are very proficient in terms of technology, there has to be more security for a website that holds the grades of over 2000 students. Just think, if an 18-year old student could do it, think about the numerous parents who have the skill and ability to hack into the system. The grades were changed around June and only in September, after one student had gone to college, was the grade changing discovered.

In addition, I learned from friends that the librarian had given out the password to the grade system to several students who were close to her. One of those students, who goes to the University of Pennsylvania now, would log in at her home and view the grades of students “competing” with her to get into several colleges. Everyone knows that nothing (technologically speaking) will ever be hacker-free. People will always find a way. In this town, all a student would have to do is find out the ip-address of server and leave it up to his daddy to do the rest. I am sure that this is not the only place that this has happened. So what can be done? School districts all across the country will undoubtedly want to switch from an all paper-based grade system to just inputting grades into a computer. The grading system (I can’t remember the name of it) was slow and often crashed while teachers were inputting their grades (teachers would complain all the time about it). For something as important as grades, shouldn’t it have been tested more for security and performance purposes?

For those interested, here is the news story:

http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/16422760.htm

Hello World!

Welcome to my blog’s home. I’ve never blogged before, so for the first few days / weeks, you will see that one post may have nothing to do with other posts. Hopefully I’ll find a topic to write about. Right now, I’m on winter break. I’m a freshman at Rutgers University and when I’m not a student there, I can be found working in a deli. I’m from Cherry Hill, NJ which is situated next to Camden (still the most dangerous city in America in our hearts) and across the river from Philadelphia. Thats all!