It's 2008, a period in time where everyone has a Facebook, Wordpress blog, Twitter account, Flickr, del.icio.us, and more, all of which are meant to be "social" in that they bring people together. But, what about bringing those services together? Meet Flock, an internet browser that does more than just browse. With integration in majority of the major Web 2.0 services, Flock hopes to bring together both people and the services they use. Flock is interoperability at it's best.

While the current release of Flock, 1.2, holds it's own in the browser wars of today, I want to take a peek at the future, Flock 2.0. While Flock 2.0 may not be the official current public release, it shows the same promise that Firefox 3 did a few months ago. But, Flock is built based on Firefox, so Flock 2.0 is going to have all the awesome social features of Flock plus all the amazinf features that we have come to know and love from Firefox 3:

• The Awesome Bar
• MAJOR Performance gains
• Operating System integration
• Powerful "Favorites" management
• Security improvements
• And much more

With Firefox 3 set to be released tomorrow, expect the final version of Flock 2 within the next few months.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

I believe Evan Cordell had it right when he said "LSMSA keeps you so busy all the time that summer almost feels horrible - a huge vat of empty, stress-free time. Nice at first, yes, but after a while it feels irresponsible to not be doing anything." Sure, I haven't even begun to attend LSMSA, but spending just one weekend there has made it almost impossible for me to have a decent summer.

Last weekend, I spend Friday, Saturday, and half of Sunday at the school of my dreams, The Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts. I'll spare you the intro speech, just go to the site if you feel the insatiable urge to find out what makes LSMSA so amazing. Anyway, in those three days I spent in hyperactivity-a time when everything felt it was moving at the speed of light-I had some of the most amazing experiences of my life.

Day One

Arrive. Get the legendary brown-paper packet. Walk the parking lot for five minutes. Drop luggage off at the dorm. Write on a wall. Go to lunch. Feel like an idiot for not being able to find the cups. Eat. Meet a friend. Run madly about the gym. Throw a ball. Go to some informative sessions. Discuss a plane. Make more friends. Have dinner in the courtyard. Meet more people. Have a friend sit by you. Get eaten by fire ants. Sit in the second row. Listen to someone talk. Totally forget what you did for the rest of the day. Go back to the dorms. Meet your roommate. Sleep.

Day Two

Day two was a bit more exciting, and so shall my recollection of it. I'm going to skip the boring parts. So, anyway, I went to breakfast, which I managed to find the cups all on my own! And then feel like a fat ass for not putting any fruit on my plate. Oh well. We had to sit through another group session in the Aud, which was unbearable, just like the previous one. Afterwards, we got to meet with our Academic Advisors, the purpose of which we haven't exactly gotten down yet. My Advisor was Dr. Batman. HOW AWESOME OF A NAME IS THAT! If I recall correctly, he's a Physics instructor. Well, during this pleasant little meeting, we scheduled our classes for next year. Nothing too exciting here: Acc. College Algebra, Trig, Acc. Chem. III, Government, Beginning Tennis and Fencing, Programming in C++, Acting I and II, French Immersion II, Junior English, and I'm forgetting one more course. Overall, I am excited with the courses I have planned, even if they aren't the really impressive courses with really long names.

Then, it was lunch again. By this time, I had gotten the hang of the procedure one goes through at meal time. But, my Advising meeting had gone a bit longer than planned, so I decided to lounge outside in the courtyard instead of eating. You do not know how much pleasure I got from sitting outside in the sun during the school day, a hell of a lot more than what I got at EA, with it's disturbing lack of foliage. After lunch was the dreaded activity of Speed Meeting, which is like Speed Dating, but only more boring and more pointless. Needless to say, I did find a great multitude of people who have never watched "The Price is Right". (And I really don't believe the guy who thinks Bob Barker is a robot.) Afterwards, there was another Group Session in the Aud, which was followed by an amazing Improv session in which I believe no one was able to remain the gender they walked in as.

After the Improv, we had Dinner, and then marched up to Front Street. While an amazing journey, I was so preoccupied with the pain in my feet that resulted from wearing flip-flops that I didn't get any pictures in the Historic District. But, we did have fun in that nice, air-conditioned Toy Store! We then walked back, managing to make it back to the HSB without one hit-and-run by a college student.

Once back at the HSB, my group went our separate ways. My social extroverted tail went straight to the Student Activity Center for Karaoke. THREE HOURS OF NONSTOP KARAOKE. It was one of the most amazing conclusions to one of the most amazing days of my life. I walked back to Caddo and plugged in my nice noise-isolating headphones and vegged out to the smooth voice of Michael Buble and filled out my Roommate Questionnaire. I can only hope that I'm pared with someone who is at least a 5. (I'm a nice 7 on a scale of Extroverted-ness (Which, by the way, isn't really a word, but it still makes sense.)

Day Three

Got up, showered, ate, said good-byes and left.


All in all, it was an amazing weekend filled with amazing people, amazing events, and it all took place at the most amazing school in the state, LSMSA.

Click here to view all my pictures tagged with "lsmsa".

It is estimated that the American government spends about $10 billion ($10,000,000,000) a month on the war on Iraq. My question today is: What can we do with $10 billion?

• Provide government-provided meals to over 74 million people for one month, with three meals a day. (Considering the average school lunch being $1.50)
• Provide 83 billion single-dose (nevirapine) treatments for mother and baby, to prevent the transmission of HIV from mother to child.
• Provide antiretroviral (ARV) treatment for four months to two hundred million people living with HIV.
• Provide a year's worth of school materials and daily hot meals for 143 million children orphaned by AIDS

Sure, my maths may be off, and you can say I don't know squat about economics, and I'll admit, I don't. But I do know there are hundreds of better ways to spend $10 billion dollars of American tax payers money a month.

It makes you think, don't it?

This Tuesday, Kentucky and Oregon will have their Democratic primaries. With Obama only needing 14.5 delegates for a majority, these primaries could give them to him. On Saturday, I make about 50 calls to people in both Kentucky and Oregon to get them to get out and vote for Obama.

I received 25 numbers of voters in Kentucky, majority of them being female, to call. I was beginning to get worried when I was not getting answers, machine or otherwise. Then, I finally got in contact with someone. My heart was racing, and I frequently lost my breath while reading through my script. Unfortunately, I didn't give the caller time to respond, and was promptly hung up on. But, thankfully, this trend did not carry into my calls to Oregon.

While receiving a lot of voicemail's, I did manage to get in contact with a decent amount of people and notify them that their ballots were due by 8PM on Tuesday, May 20th. Quite a few people told me that they had already dropped off their ballots, and quite a few had voted for Obama. But, there was this one woman. She answered the phone with a baby screaming in the background. I asked for the name that my call-list had provided, who turned out to be the woman's husband. I then asked if he was available, which he was not, and I then asked if I could just have a volunteer call back. "Well, why don't you want to talk to me?" she asked. A bit taken aback, I then went through my script with her. At the end of my script, she then questioned me about my knowledge of Obama. While the purpose of the call was to notify them of the due date for their ballots, I felt the need to discuss Obama's policies with her.

She was a strong supporter of Hilary, as far as I could tell. While she identified "Undecided", her accusations of Obama leaned toward supporting Hilary. I did my best to answer her questions, but then she questioned my lack of support for Hilary. Well, it wasn't something I was prepared for. I never really thought about why I didn't support Hilary. I've always supported Obama, mainly because of his stance on issues important to me. But, I never stopped to consider why I didn't support Hilary. She didn't provide much convincing, but she did point out a few things that I had not known about Obama. Sure, none of these were major things, but her knowledge was admirable. She knew several cases where he had changed his stance, and she also knew quite a considerable amount of his bills. Though, she did not have much knowledge of the bills he passed while in the Illinois State Senate, many involving health care reform and the degradation of lobbyist influence in the State legislature. I was ill-informed about many of the things she presented, and I did my best to research them while on the phone, I do feel that I did not have much effect on her decision. I can only hope that the things I presented encourage her to research more into Obama, and lead her to make an informed, educated decision about who she chooses to vote for in the upcoming primary.

All in all, it was an amazing experience. I do hope that I can call-bank again for Obama in the near future.

For more information about Barack Obama, including the issues he supports, please visit barackobama.com.

In an effort to increase my writing ability, beginning today, I will be writing a blog everyday.

One of the many tips I give people who want to increase their ability to write is to write everyday. But, how hypocritical of me to not follow my own advice.

So, keep an eye out later on tonight for my first post.

Now, just to figure out what to write about . . .