Classes start tomorrow, but my schedule for this quarter is pretty easy on Tuesdays, so it’s going to be a gradual start for me. Here goes nothing!

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So I have several e-mail accounts for xatal.com, most of which forward e-mails right to my Gmail account, where I handle all of my e-mail.

Recently, I noticed that for some reason my disk space usage for e-mail was incredibly high when compared to everything else. I couldn’t figure out why until I took a look.

I realized that all of the e-mail that’s sent to a nonexistent account is still kept around. I also realized that I had a cron job (basically, a scheduled task) that was designed to run every ten minutes still set to on, and it’s been going for the last couple of years. Whoops.

Cleaning it out took quite a while.

Like anything else that a person works on for a long time, I have a hard time seeing fundamental flaws with things, since I’m so accustomed to seeing it. That’s why I’d love to have some opinions from readers and other bloggers about the designs.

All of these are beta designs. I just want a general idea of which one to focus on. For whichever design is chosen, I would definitely spruce it up more than it is — adding better graphics, better logos, and so forth. I just don’t want to pour a lot of time into something that might not even go through. I just want a starting point. The content is all sample content, things would change on a real design of course.

Also worth considering is the option of keeping the current design, or modifying it in some way.

Personally, I don’t have any preference to anything at this point. So without further ado…

Simply clicking on the title will open up the design in a new window.

Design #1: Black & Blue

Design #1

The first design is pretty simple, and has 3 columns. The middle column is perfect for listing posts, both the recent and most popular ones. The sidebar on the far right contains simple content.

I think the large titles look pretty nice, but I especially like the navigation bar.

The logo would definitely need some work, and that would be something that would come if this design ends up being chosen.

Design #2: Brown & Green

Design #2

I think brown usually looks good in web design, and green goes nicely with it. This one also has 3 columns, but the left one is larger and the other two are smaller and contain less extra information.

I actually like the logo on this one, but it can change if people think it’s trying a bit too hard.

I’m thinking of moving the RSS icon somewhere, but I’m not exactly sure where. Perhaps the top of a sidebar? I was considering putting the search box atop both sidebars. I’ve also considered jazzing up the background somehow — maybe something like the diagonal lines that we have now.

Design #3: Blue & Green Shapes

Design #3

Here I’m pretty fond of the designs that surround the actual text, they were a lot of fun to make.

This one also has 3 columns, but the first one separates the dates out to the side. I’m not sure if I would keep that or what I would do there.

I do like the other two columns on the right of it, I think they work well together, especially with the search box up top.

I know that graduation photo up top is a bit awkward. I aim to replace it with something a bit better.

This was the most recent one I’ve done, and I didn’t fine-tune this one as much yet. Obviously, if it’s chosen, it’ll be fine-tuned better than it is.

Your opinion?

So that’s what I’ve got so far :/

I’m open to any criticism/opinions/whatever. This is as much your site as it is mine, and I’d love to hear what everybody thinks.

I set up a poll to measure overall opinions. Check the design[s] that you like and submit it, if you could please. I enabled multiple responses, so if you’re partial to more than one response, that’s fine as well.

It’s been a great vacation though. I’ve managed to see almost all of my friends back home, and have spent plenty of time with everybody. I’ve been out and about enough, going to the Emerald Bowl, Sonoma State, and a Guitar Center in a nearby store. I have plans to go to a large mall a couple of hours away, and I may go to the snow over the weekend.

I’m still working on the redesign for the site. I’ve got two “beta” designs ready, and I’m working on a third. I’m going to post them in a day or two to get some feedback from everybody, and then go with whichever one is most popular. I’m not a designer, but I’m still trying to make something that I can be a bit proud of. I wish I knew how to use Adobe Illustrator better (read: at all)…

Anyway, I hope everybody has a wonderful New Years Eve! Don’t forget to add a leap second!

Right now, Sonoma is her top choice for a CSU, and since I’m always curious about schools I’ve never been to nor heard much about, I decided to take her to see it.

A large open grass area at SSU

It was a decent drive for us, only about two hours. We got a late start, though, and didn’t arrive at the school until about 4:30 PM, an hour before sunset.

I was surprised at how small the campus is compared to a UC. It was like walking around a large high school.

However, the campus was very well-kept, with lots of wide open grass areas and large beautiful trees. There was a nice small lake, with lots of nice seating around it. The town around the school seemed very accessible from the school as well. The architecture was interesting and blended in well with the landscape.

Even though Sonoma State is really close to the Bay Area (only about 45 minutes away from San Francisco), the school actually doesn’t feel like it at all — instead, it feels far more rural, with large green hills all around. Despite being named “Sonoma State”, the school is actually in Rohnert Park (right off of Highway 101), which is a good bit west of Sonoma.

All in all I liked the school a lot — the school is in a nice area, it’s well-kept, and seems to have a decent reputation. Does anybody go there that might have something to add about the school?

I’m not a big fan of college football, since UCSC doesn’t have its own team, but since Cal (UC Berkeley) was in it, I took some interest. My brother goes to Berkeley, which is the main reason why my family decided to go.

The game was against the Miami Hurricanes. At first I was a bit unsure of whether or not to root for Cal, considering that I don’t go there and they turned down my application, but in the end I decided to support them a little bit.

The UC Berkeley marching band spelling out Cal on the field

The game was at the AT&T Park, home of the San Francisco Giants. I was surprised that it wasn’t at Candlestick (home of the 49ers), since that’s an actual football stadium, but it worked out well. The ballpark is beautiful with a wonderful view of the bay. Of course, we were only one row away from being at the very top of the stadium, but that provided us with a great view.

It was a pretty close game. Cal had two big plays early on that put them up 14-0, and then Miami slowly chiseled away at that lead until the game was tied at 17. Cal couldn’t really get too much going offensively — they kept making blunders that would blow any momentum they had — and they were having a harder and harder time at stopping the Miami offense. However, Miami made a  mistake and fumbled the bowl deep in their own territory, and Cal recovered and scored a touchdown that put them ahead to win the game.

Seeing as the game was in San Francisco (right by Berkeley), I was pretty glad Cal won, considering that, had they lost, the backlash from the 40,000 Cal fans that were there would be pretty bad to be around.

All in all it was actually pretty fun, I had never been to a major football game before, let alone a bowl game. It makes me wish UCSC had a football team. :)

Carol of the Bells would have to be my favorite Christmas song

Yeah yeah yeah so I didn’t post yesterday. I’m sorry, the holiday festivities have been keeping me rather busier than I thought they would. :(

But since I do have a second to post tonight, I thought I’d take some time to wish everybody a merry Christmas (or whatever holiday you choose to celebrate)!

I’ll have more posts coming over the next few days, as well as some info about the possible redesign.

So, how has your holiday season been going?

Occasionally in high school, we would have opportunities to work on scholarship applications during classtime in a computer lab. Wherever I looked in the classroom, people were working on online scholarship applications, most found on the website FastWeb.

Although online scholarships are worth applying to, in actuality, they are not as effective uses of your time as a local scholarship.

The appeal of an online scholarship

Online scholarships are mostly very simple — enter in your basic information, maybe type up an essay, and hit “Submit”. They’re very simple and quick, and you can easily fill out three or four basic ones a day. Often you’ll need an essay, but most of the essays will be no longer than 500 words. You don’t usually need any letters of recommendation or copies of your high school transcripts. All you need is to provide your SAT/ACT scores, your GPA, and a few other basic details about yourself.

The simplicity of these scholarships makes them appealing — because you can apply so fast, you feel very accomplished for putting in little effort. When your mother asks if you started on any scholarships, you can smugly smile and say, “I applied to four today!”

The slim odds of an online scholarship

Local scholarship applications are usually trickier

However, even though these scholarships are quick and rather painless, you’re mostly wasting your time. You see, online scholarships are almost always open nationwide (or statewide). This means that countless high school students are applying to them. Of the thousands of high schools in the country, you can safely assume that at least two or three people from each school will apply to that scholarship (if not more). Therefore, you’re competing against thousands of  other students for that one single bit of money. The odds of you winning are incredibly slim — all it takes is one of those thousands of students to stand out more than you on paper to eliminate your chances of winning.

And chances are, if the scholarship application was very simple and didn’t ask for much extra (ie, letters of recommendation or essays), all it takes is one person with higher test scores or a higher GPA to eliminate you. And, since these scholarships are so simple, chances are that even more students apply to them.

Local scholarships provide much better odds.

Local scholarships are daunting at first because most of them require a lot more work on your part — letters of recommendation, copies of transcripts, more essays, and so forth. Sometimes you even have to go to more effort to turn them in!

However, this is where the appeal from local scholarships lies: people are lazy. Many don’t go through the hassle of a local scholarship, so very few apply to them. Often, local scholarships will have 30 or fewer people applying to them, which increases your odds of winning drastically.

In fact, many local scholarships can be won simply by filling the application out. I won a local scholarship last year because I was the only one who properly answered the essay prompt — nobody else who turned in an application properly addressed the question. One girl in my class even won a scholarship because she was the only one to turn in an application. It didn’t matter how well-written her essay was — she won by default!

If you find local scholarships that are specific to you (ethnicity, academic strengths, and so forth), your odds of winning are surprisingly high. I won three out of the five local scholarships I applied to, but zero out of about twenty online scholarships.

Don’t give up on online scholarships.

Even though your chances of winning an online scholarship are slim, they still are not a waste of time. The simple scholarships that don’t require much time are still worth applying to. You  may just win.

But your best luck with online scholarships will come from finding niche scholarships: ones that are specific to you or require something extra, such as reading a certain book or writing on an obscure topic. For the same reason as the local scholarships, your odds of winning these are much higher.

Even though online scholarships are appealing, in the end you’ll have a much better chance at earning free money through a local scholarship. Even though local scholarships are typically far more work, the payoff will come when you find out that you won. So make the best use of your time, and give yourself a better chance at paying for college!

I’m not exactly unhappy with the current style, but I would like a layout that grants me more space and is a little more flexible than the current layout.

I can’t say for sure if a new design is going to definitely come soon — I still have to come up with something — but it may be in the works.

If you have any suggestions or tips, I’d love to hear them.

Although every year of high school came with its own great teachers and bad teachers, when it came to my senior year, more of my teachers were laid-back when it came to students, yet still quality teachers.

By senior year, most of my teachers had the philosophy that we were adults, and therefore could do what we wanted provided we don’t disturb the class. This meant we were allowed to do several things that typically aren’t allowed in a high school setting:

• Use the bathroom when we needed to. We could just get up, grab the pass, and leave.
• Arrive late to class now and then. With an open campus lunch, this was a big deal. As long as it didn’t become a habit and didn’t disturb the class, there was no problem with it.
• We could readily negotiate tests, essays, and so forth. As long as we had good reasons, teachers were very flexible.

Teachers also began to talk to us like adults, making some classes more of a conversation than a lecture, which I actually found to be more educational than mindlessly copying notes from the overhead projector. The teachers were also typically some of the best the school had to offer.

Although I’m sure a lot of this comes from seniors being more mature, I’m wondering if some of it may also come from just the teachers I have. That’s why I ask for your opinion!

If you have any other comments about your teachers and freedoms in high school, I’m very interested in hearing from you!