Saturday, February 11, 2006

School and Geekiness

This post was originally posted at my Windows Live Spaces blog. [View original post]

MarkKB's Journal - 10 Feb 06

Meh... first blog post of the new year!
By the way, did you know that last year was:
  • Bill Gates' 50th birthday (Bill Gates was born on Oct 28th, 1955)
  • Microsoft's 30th birthday (Microsoft is co-founded and headed by Bill Gates, and was founded in 1975)
  • Microsoft Windows' 20th birthday (Windows 1.0 was first released on Nov 20th, 1985)
  • Microsoft Windows 95's 10th birthday (Windows 95 was the first version of Windows to feature the now famous "Start" button, "My Computer", "Network Neighbourhood" (now "My Network Places"), the "Recycle Bin", long file names, icons of the desktop, and a heap of other stuff, and was released on Aug 24th, 1995)

So... that's my geeky 'useless fact' tidbit for today...

So, yesterday was Year 10 'orientation day' i.e. we all got to find out what class we're in, what we're taking, ect, ect, and so forth. (Today is the Y9's OD...) I'm in the same class as last year, same teacher, same classmates... same school! (MHS has a 'school within a school' concept... why not just call them 'houses' and save the trouble? Classes are sorted into schools... so if you change classes, and your new class just happens to be in another school, you become part of that school. Schools are named after local beaches...We're Te Henga! Go green!)

The only problem with being in the same class is that the majority of the class are still girls (not that there's anything wrong with girls...) But last year there were at least 10 boys in a 30-pupil class... and somehow we've been whittled down to five! And to top it all off, we've had the extra addition of 3/4 girls! Ah well, I'll just have to live with it...

In other news, for the past week I've been using Windows Live Messenger 8. After months of anxious waiting, I've finally got an invite! I've been playing around with it and it is simply... wow-worthy. (For all those who have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about, WLM is the next version of MSN Messenger...) for more info, check out the WLM blog at http://spaces.msn.com/MessengerSays.

I've also been using Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview, and I must say it's a heap of a lot better than IE 6, though whether it's better than Firefox is hard for me to tell. It introduces a lot of features IE has been sorely needing for sooo long (and other browsers have had for ages), but also goes a step further... and not just with features. There are also notable security measures added, so stuff don't get through. To get the geeky gloss, take a peek at http://blogs.msdn.com/ie, or to download the thing, go to http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie7. Note that this is pre-release software, and as such neither me nor Microsoft can be held accountable for any terrors you may behold.

So... I guess that's it for this blog post... not to mention I've been working on programming and my website... and yes, I will upload it soon...

Quote of the post...

"Faith is taking the first step, even when you don't see the whole staircase." --Martin Luther King, Jr.

Signing off,
--MarkKB