Xatal

Reading about the recent shooting and lockdown in Toronto brought back my memories of a school lockdown, and I thought a few people might be interested in hearing what it’s like.

Shortly after the Virginia Tech shootings a year and a half ago, a man in our town went to church one night and confessed to the pastor that he had desires to shoot up a school.

Testing

During that time of the year, we were in the middle of our state testing. The next morning, as we were finishing up our first testing session of the day, we noticed that the proctor was closing all of the curtains, locking the door, and covering the door window. We had to wait until the end of the test to talk to her, but several students who finished early checked their cell phones.

Several had received messages from the school’s seniors (seniors were able to stay home and sleep in while the lower grades tested) who said the school had told them not to come, that there was a shooting threat.

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In my ongoing effort to organize this blog better, I’ve decided to add a Similar Posts section at the bottom of every post. My hope is that this, along with the list of most popular posts, can help readers to better find posts that they might be interested in.

Originally I was going to use the Similar Posts plugin and place the results in the sidebar, but the results really weren’t what I was looking for… in fact, they didn’t seem to be similar at all. I instead decided to use the WordPress Related Posts plugin, and the list seems much better.

Earlier, I made a post about the differences between the quarter and semester systems that are used to divide the academic year in college. I also wrote about the difference between UCs and CSUs.

However, I didn’t state which CSUs and UCs are on the quarter system and which are on the semester. Here’s the list of schools in both systems and what academic system they use. With the exception of CSU Stanislaus, all are on either the quarter or semester system.

Schools that use the quarter system are listed in green, and schools that use the semester system are listed in blue.

CSU Campuses:

• CSU Bakersfield: Quarter
• CSU Channel Islands: Semester
  
• CSU Chico: Semester
  
• CSU Dominguez Hills: Semester
• CSU East Bay: Quarter
• CSU Fresno: Semester
  
• CSU Fullerton: Semester
  
• Humboldt State University: Semester
• CSU Long Beach: Semester
  
• CSU Los Angeles: Quarter
• California State Maritime Academy: Semester
  
• CSU Monterey Bay: Semester
  
• CSU Northridge: Semester
  
• Cal Poly, Pomona: Quarter
• CSU Sacramento: Semester
  
• CSU San Bernardino: Quarter
• San Diego State University: Semester
  
• San Francisco State University: Semester
  
• San Jose State University: Semester
  
• Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo: Quarter
  
• CSU San Marcos: Semester
  
• Sonoma State University: Semester
• CSU Stanislaus: 4-1-4

UC Campuses:

• UC Berkeley: Semester
  
• UC Davis: Quarter
  
• UC Irvine: Quarter
  
• UC Los Angeles: Quarter
• UC Merced: Semester
  
• UC Riverside: Quarter
• UC San Diego: Quarter
• UC Santa Barbara: Quarter
  
• UC Santa Cruz: Quarter

Many high schools offer different foreign languages for students to take. Taking a foreign language looks great on college applications (especially if you stick with it), and it’s neat how many different choices high schools can give you, including Spanish, German, French, Punjabi, and even Japanese. Of course each school offers different languages, but usually you at least have a couple of options to pick from.

Currently, Spanish is pushed pretty heavily in schools. The Latino population in America is always on the rise, and so many believe that learning Spanish becomes far more beneficial than other languages. While it’s true that learning Spanish might some more perks, if your heart isn’t set on learning it, then choose another language that’s more suited to you.

An official in my local school district wanted to eliminate all non-Spanish programs at the high school. This caused an immediate uproar from the language department, as every teacher believed that all languages should hold value and be taught, not just one. I was pushed to learn Spanish at first, but after deciding to learn German, I found that German was where the better fit with me was. Spanish is great, but you definitely should not feel like you have to learn it. Learn it because you want to learn it.

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A little over a week ago, I finally found out about Fantastic Contraption, a very cool physics flash game.

A sample catapult I made

I posted about how addictive I thought it was, as well as showed some cool designs I had seen. Most of the time when I play I try to come up with different designs, but today I was hunting around trying to find some really unique solutions to the levels. Most of the levels are solved basically the same way by most people, so I tried to look for unique and innovative solutions. I found 50 cool new solutions, which I’ve put here.

I sorted them all by level and then each by how much I liked it, putting my favorites last. I’m a firm believer in saving the best for last. :]

I didn’t name these, I just cleaned up the name that they were given. None of these are mine except for “Push” under “Mission to Mars”.

Without further ado, here’s my list of favorites. Maybe some of these can give you cool ideas.

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Senior year in high school can definitely be a bit hectic. Even though you’re trying to enjoy your final year in high school, you also need to keep an eye on all kinds of deadlines to make sure you don’t fall behind and miss out!

Forgetting important dates in your senior year is easy

Senior year is a big year, and it flies by, believe me. If you want to make sure you leave high school with every loose end taken care of, it helps to have a nice guideline of what to do as your year goes by. While individual parts will come with their own specific dates, some senior events will remain constant year to year.

I’ve come up with this timeline, going by what events happened during my senior year in high school. Hopefully, this list will help you out a bit. Please let me know if there’s anything important I’ve forgotten.

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In order to cut down on teen drinking, Milford will begin breathalyzing students to make sure they are sober before they can enter school dances. Students who refuse to take the test will be suspended for 10 days.

Is breathalyzing students really necessary?

As far as I’m concerned, this is just another sad way to automatically assume that students are up to no good. What grade levels are going to be breathalyzed? Are middle school students going to have to pass a test? Usually it’s pretty clear if a student is intoxicated, there are a lot of obvious signs. Forcing every student to take a breathalyzer is insulting to the students who don’t drink (which makes up the majority).

What do you think? Is this going too far, or is this a necessary precaution?

I’ve decided to make a few changes to the sidebar. As of yesterday, Xatal now has 50 posts, so I think it’s finally reasonable to start highlighting the more popular ones. That way, anyone who is new and is interested in reading something else that’s interesting can find the best-liked posts.

From now on, there will be a nice list of the site’s ten most popular posts on the sidebar. They might be worth checking out, if you haven’t already. :)

I don’t feel that the sidebar should contain a bunch of content, so I decided to remove the archive links from the sidebar. Looking at my site stats, I noticed that the sidebar’s links to the archive were barely being used. The Archives link up top was being used far more, so I figure it won’t matter too much if I eliminate the archive links from the sidebar.