Jasper Jones

My roommate bought a nice little laptop for use at school but I brought my desktop PC from home and we spent the day yesterday setting it up with a wireless network so Alex can get online with his laptop while I work on my PC. We’re sharing one good printer over the network, too. There’s no sense in both of us buying a printer, and we don’t really print much stuff except homework anyway.

Alex wants to put up a web site for his hobby, motorcycle racing. He keeps his bike out in L. A., but over the summer he was in enough races to earns good points and be contender in the west coast racing circuit. Since he won’t have to quit early to go back to school next year he expects to do even better when he can be there to finish out the entire race season.

We spent a little bit of time poking around on the internet looking for a good domain name for his web site, but didn’t find anything that really grabbed our attention. The good ones were already gone, of course.

We have to find a cheap web hosting site, too. Once we find the right domain name we have to transfer the name to a host so we can put up a template and start the site design. I’m piggybacking on my Dad’s web host account, so I’m not much help with that. Alex needs to find a host in his own name, so we started looking for a hosting site.

We’re using a site called web hosting choice that lists all the top web hosting sites and ranked them according to which ones are affordable, reliable, have excellent uptime and provide tech support. They have a chart that lists the top 10 sites and tells you how much they charge for a setup fee and their monthly charges for hosting services.

The site has links directly to each hosting site so you can sign up if you find one that you want. So now it’s up to Alex to read up on their plans and decide which one he wants. Since it is supposed to rain here all weekend and we’ll be stuck inside, I guess we’ll be designing his web site over the weekend and getting the first part of it set up on the internet.

Everyone in Florida has been on edge for several days awaiting the landfall of Tropical Storm/Hurricane Fay. The state got lucky last year with minimal hurricane damage and so far this year it has been light again. But Fay has been bearing down on both Florida coasts was a vengeance, and it did come across the bottom third of the state yesterday, bringing a lot of rain and wind. Experts predict that once Fay hits the Atlantic again she will regain her strength and swing back across the top third of the state in a boomerang effect.

According to the local weather forecast, the fringe effects of Fay will come all the way up here if she truly does boomerang back across Florida and bring us a few days of wind and rain. Probably cost us a weekend of really bad weather. Guess we can hunker down and crack the books, and maybe get online for some interactive gaming if we have to stay indoors all weekend.

Alex and I have the luxury of a blender in our dorm room and I have to say, other than my laptop I think it is the most appreciated electric appliance in our room these days.

I went to the grocery store over the weekend and bought a lot of fresh fruit, so we have been making fresh fruit smoothies and other blender drinks each night. Did you know that making orange juice from a can of frozen juice tastes different when you mix it up in the blender? Putting the air into the juice gives it a different texture and a different taste.

Last night I put big chunks of watermelon into the blender and added a little protein mix from GNC. The mix didn’t have much taste so we really were drinking watermelon and it was a refreshing chill after being out in the southern heat riding my bike yesterday. I’m planning on riding my bike for an hour or so each night while the weather is good. Not only is it good exercise, but it is a great way to meet new friends, too.

This probably sound silly but I have a little case of homesickness today. I’ve been back at school only 6 days and I’m thrilled to be rooming with my buddy Alex again. We have a dorm room filled with guy stuff and “boy toys” like my mom says. It’s got a comfortable bed, food, a wall of electronics and room to study. But you know, like they say in the Wizard of Oz movie, “There’s no place like home.”

One of the things I really miss is the quiet of my parents’ house. We live on a nice piece of property, back from the road, and at night all you hear is crickets, frogs, and this year, the desperate mating songs of the locusts. And every fifteen minutes, there is the reassuring chime of my mom’s grandfather clock. I never knew how much I would miss that chime until I got here at school and don’t hear it anymore.

I think everyone in my mom’s family owns grandfather clocks. It was a standard “must have” for each of her sisters back in the day when they first got married and bought their first homes. The tradition started when my mom’s grandmother came over from England and hand carried her own mantel clock. She still has it and it still chimes faithfully throughout the day.

My mom’s grandfather clock was made by one of the most famous clock makers in the world, Howard Miller. There are a couple of other famous clock makers, like Seth Thomas and Bulova, but my mom loves the Howard Miller clocks. She often tells me that my generation doesn’t appreciate the finer things in life and that when I get married that I need to have a grandfather clock in my home, too. she’s shown me the newer, contemporary styles that you can buy, and I think she’s right. That is one family tradition that I’d like to carry one, with my own sense of style, of course.

Setting up the dorm room over the weekend meant that i had to go to the grocery store and buy a few things. I like to have breakfast foods on hand so I can fix it here and get out of here faster in the mornings. Plus it’s cheaper to eat something here than to go to a fast food place or the cafeteria. If I eat out, I found it’s better to eat a lot at lunch because the restaurants charge less for the lunch menu and ofter you get as much food as the dinner menu.

I bought some sandwich things and fresh fruit, but I already realize my first mistake. I bought the store brand of bread because it was like half price from the cost of Wonder Bread. But I made a sandwich late last night and I have to admit that I miss my Wonder Bread. The store brand just isn’t as soft and as satisfying as the real Wonder Bread.