Dr. Mike's Steak Dinner

Yup, we seen the double standard before.  Some normal easy going college student with a sense of humor does something that gives the rest of us a chuckle and gets him his 15 minutes of fame.  Shortly there after, he gets arrested and is in deep doodoo.  Never mind that even the construction company he did damage against thought it was funny and got a laugh and free positive publicity out of it to the point they they refused to press changes and want him to do another one.  He'll soon be paying for his deeds and learning not to drop the soap.

But watch as a celebrity like Jessica Alba defaces property multiple times and she gets away with it with a quick signature on one of her checks.  I wonder how many minutes of work it'll take for her to make that money back.  Notice that this time around when the property owners shrug off pursuing the matter, the police back off as well.  Maybe Joseph Carnevale should have done a couple of "nude" scenes as well.  I would suggest Jessica Alba cover his legal fees but we all know that won't happen.

I have to admit that most mornings, in addition to checking my email, I check to see how much I earned in my Google Adsense account.  I must admit that I don't make a whole lot off of it but getting that check every couple of months is a big help.

Imagine my surprise this morning to find about $40 missing from my Google Adsense account's running total since my last payment.  In fact it actually brought me under the $100 requirement to receive a check from Google Adsense at the end of next month.  With ten days left until the end of the money, there's plenty of time to get back over that requirement but that's still a chunk of change.

I'd be lying to say I wasn't concerned.  I only find a few folks talking about the missing money from their Google Adsense accounts but it's a recent thread.  Most folks are reporting that the money is only disappearing for a couple of hours and reappearing a short time later.  There's no mention of a problem on the Google Adsense blog and no reports on the user side of the Google Adsense account

My forty bucks has been missing since I checked at about 7:30 am this morning.  That makes it about 5 hours for me.  How's everybody else doing with their account?  Find any cash missing?  Or did all the missing money show up in your account? (And are you going to keep it?)

Update: The money is back in my account.  I noticed also a large number of clicks added back into that total as well.  Hopefully this is the last of it. :)

Update #2: Gone again but today's clicks are in there.  Ain't this fun?

Long story why I haven't been around much.  I'll discuss it another day.

This video came across Twitter a few days ago.  I have to admit that I was a fairly big Magnum, P.I. fan growing up.  Whoever did this put a fair amount of time into pasting up the video and matching it to the original opening credits of that show.

You can watch Harrison Ford (aka Han Solo) play a decent Tom Selleck (otherwise known as Thomas Magnum) after the fold.

And remember, you can download the video on the YouTube Downloader (Yes, it works again.  Sorry about that.) as an *.mp4 file.  It's supposed to be available as an HD *.mp4 file but I can't get the link to work right.  Maybe it'll work for you.

Short and sweet: We now have a whois lookup client here.  Seems like many of the whois clients that I visit are blocked for one reason or another.  It's a pain having to pop open Putty and log into a server.  Well, now I have a webbased whois to look domains up.  Haven't tested it fully, and it was a bit of a pain to setup but it's so far running.

Any problems?  Please let me know via a comment on this post.  I'll make it pretty later on.

The basic program is Bill Weinman's BW Whois with a few modifications.  Much like how the Youtube downloader started out as.

I've been meaning to turn the tdjc.be domain into a tool site for myself and others.  I'm slowly getting there.  At least I got the whois lookup tool done. :)

I swear I try to write every day. I really do.  Sometimes it's really hard to find the time.  Have lots of topics though.

Anyway, I was reading in my old home town newspaper on their website that the local school board has voted 12 to 4 (with a handful of absentees) to require 20 hours of community service of all high school graduates, starting with the graduating class of 2013.  This is on top of 17.5 credit hours already required by the state of Maine. (That's the newest version of state by state requirements for high school graduation that I could find.  I'm sure there's something newer out there.  edit: 2006) This stems from an agreement of sorts between the Oxford Hills school district and the Maine's commissioner of education, Susan Gendron, to trade off community service for an over abundance of used snow days that could have pushed back that year's graduation date.

Now mind you I'm a bit of a fan when it comes to community service.  I do a fair amount of volunteerism myself. (Some days, it seems like that's all I do.) In fact I think it should be recommended to high school students that they should at least chip in and help.  I don't think it should be a requirement for graduation though.

• Who's going to determine what organizations will be allowed and if time served will be counted?  As noted in the article on the Advertiser-Democrat site, while the teachers are going to have first approval on what's allowed and what isn't, the final decision will come down to the high school principle and the director of guidance. I'm sure they're honorable folks and all that but who's to say what will be allowed and what won't be? I'm sure there won't be any issue with working 20 hours at your local church or library but what about 20 hours at your local Planed Parenthood? How about 20 hours for your non main stream presidential candidate?  Will those students who choose to spend their 20 hours helping out with Ralph Nader, if he ever runs again, find out afterwards that their time was wasted?
• Will there be enough volunteerism opportunities for everybody?  The Oxford Hills isn't that large of an area.  Last time I checked, the eight towns together made up about twenty thousand folks with a graduating class about just under 200 students. (It's been awhile so those numbers have probably changed by now, for better or worse) Are there enough places students can go and volunteer?  Also remember that not all high school students have access to cars so getting to and from opportunities may be an issue.  Not everybody is going to be able to shelve books at their town's library.
  
• Ability.  Let's be honest here.  Not everybody has the mindset to volunteer.  Sure, they may be gung ho going in but after 2 hours of ladling grits at six on a Sunday morning underneath an Interstate overpass isn't for everybody.  And shelving books at the library isn't for everybody either. 
• Time. Sure, twenty hours over a four year period doesn't seem to be a lot and I have to admit that I don't think it is either.  But what about those teenagers who are working forty hours a week during the school year trying to make money for their families?  Or two jobs during the summer?  Are they going to be able to find the time to do their time?
• Will it be worth it?  I have to wonder if students will get anything out of completing twenty hours of volunteerism.  As noted in the article, doing community service is usually done as a punishment instead of serving jail time.  Also, as noted in the article, colleges and universities look down on compulsory community service.  Will that reflect badly on graduates trying to get into a decent college?
• If it's so important, why isn't anyone behind it?  I know I keep going back to the article but you'll note that none of the board members spoke in favor for it.  Are they really behind it or just trying to appear to be politically correct?  Where were the community members speaking for it?  The students?  Seems like the only people behind it was Dr. Eastman, the district's superintendent, and Ted Moccia, the high school principal.
• One final thing: What happens if at the last minute it's discovered that a student doesn't have their twenty hours?  Is it a waste of four years?  If I was the parent and was presented with such an event, I'd been picking up my phone and calling my attorney.
  

What's your opinion?  I do want to point out that as far as I'm able to tell via a quick search, there is no state level requirement for such time.  The volunteerism, as well as the senior project that's also required, are above and beyond what's required by the state.  A state that requires only two years of mathematics to graduate while most others require three.  A state that only requires a number in the teens of credits while most other states are over twenty now.  I think there's a lot more things we need to be worrying about than having little Sue or little Tommy picking up leaves at the town beach.

Picture from here by the way.  Please excuse any typos up there.  Kind of rushed through this.