With school over and free time abound, I figured I would make some long overdue changes to my website. The look needed a little freshening and I wanted to expand my use of the MovableType content management system so that I could have more dynamic, interesing pages. However, in my frantic bout of deletion to make way for the new files, I deleted the MySQL database user I used to access MySQL databases. I had intended to clear everything out to make way for the new files, and after all, creating a new user requires one to click on a button. Not something terribly difficult. But I did not reckon with the somewhat archaic nature of MovableType.

Apparently, the MySQL database system changed the way it handled passwords in version 4.1.1. This alteration to MySQL entailed changes to any software wishing to work with MySQL. Unfortunately, MovableType still has not received the requisite upgrade. So, when I tried to set MovableType up on my new database - created with MySQL 4.1.1 - errors sprouted up everywhere; MovableType could not access its MySQL database.

Thus, my website is confined to this rather feeble WordPress-powered, one-entry blog, until my web host can change the MySQL password system back to the way it operated in version 4.1.

The school year is almost done,
I dare say it's been rather fun!

Final examinations, the palpable indication that summer is just days away, have once again descended upon high school students in many corners of the country. Today's pallet of pain consisted of a rather mild mix of poetry recitation and role-play.

The poetical appreciation presentations went off without a hitch; by some miracle my English class managed to plow through at least twenty in the space of an hour and a half. Having publicly appreciated a poet on Friday, I sat back and allowed my fellow students to beguile me with verse. Overall, the quality of the presentations was quite high. However, the compressed nature of the presentations detracted from the exercise; I would have enjoyed hearing more about some of the poets.

In government, the role-play examination seemed a little wonky. A lack of realism, comprised the most glaring problem. The first question, for example, which put the testee in the position of a newly elected president in the process of composing an inaugural address, had some glaring inaccuracies. The president does not use the inaugural address to speak about specific policies, as the question indicated with its more detailed instructions. Typically, the inaugural address outlines a handful of broad polices while inspiring listeners with stirring rhetoric. Of course, the State of the Union address does contain the president's specific suggestions for tackling specific problems. The final had noble intentions to be sure, but its execution left something to be desired.

Two down, four to go.

People who cannot understand why some students in the United States are falling behind students in Europe and Asia clearly have no idea what actually takes place in the classroom. Take the Moot Court Activity my government class has taken to engaging in. While some of the participants have stuck to the Constitutional question proposed by the case, the majority have spent far too much time discussing irrelevant information. Yesterday, it became necessary for me to reprimand the court when the chief justice decided to ask my co-counsel an entirely irrelevant question that dealt with the morality of prayer in schools. The Supreme Court does not deal with moral questions, it rules on questions of the Constitutional variety.

If these people cannot so much as stick to the Constitutional question, they should, at least, put forth their best effort to emulate the court procedure. The chief justice does not need need to object to interrupt one of the lawyers. Typically, the justices start speaking and the lawyer stops speaking. For that matter, the justices often interrupt each other.

Of course, objecting superfluously cannot begin to compare with the misuse of the word "incentive." Incertitude between, say, "all intensive purposes" and "all intents and purposes" (the former being the correct phrase), might garner more understanding and sympathy. But someone with a gun and in the process of robbing a house does not have incentive to kill. Intent, perhaps, but not incentive. Generally, I think of an incentive as, perhaps, a coupon for a free drink at Starbucks with the purchase of two pounds of coffee.

So maybe - just maybe - my class should pass that vague and extreme "increase in school funding bill." But that is yet another sorrowful tale.