It snowed last week - quite a lot. In fact, the high school called snow a snow day each day last week. Combined with Christmas, this makes a huge winter vacation. My dad got a Tivo and it sure is cool. You no longer have to watch whatever happens to be on TV, you watch what you want to watch when you want to watch it.

I went down to Carson City yesterday to talk to an MIT interviewer. How did it go? We talked for over two and a half hours; I guess it went well, but who knows....

I put together a Slide Show of some of the pictures we took in Hawaii.

Now this is what I call a Hummer!

I sent in the University of California application earlier today. The essay I included was weird to write, and I'll probably post it up here if I get enough confidence (I don't know why I'm so hesitant - I usually don't mind putting up anything here)....we'll see....

Happy Thanksgiving:

My mom won a vacation to Hawaii from the Sierra Sun (the local paper) a couple of weeks ago. She has schelduled the flights and we're going over the Thanksgiving holiday.

Whoohoo! The first college application is in: Cal Poly. It was an easy one too because it didn't require an essay or teacher recommendation. It turns out the schools I'm applying to are: UCLA, USC, Stanford, Mit, Cal, Davis, and Cal Poly.

Well, I took a couple blood tests over the last month and they show I have "elevated LFTs (Liver Function Tests)" which aparently measure the number of liver enzymes in the blood. The liver enzymes get into the blood by liver cells that burst open (not good), spewing their contents into the surounding environment. The most common causes of this are Hepatitis and Cirrhosis of the liver and I'm scheduled to have a liver ultrasound in the comming days. However, I did some searching on the internet and found that Ampicillin (which I'm now taking for acne - we're using in biology for killing ecoli - doug's aparently allergic to it) can cause elevated LFTs, which may be a nice and easy solution.

Uh oh,
This was in the website logs:
"16 November 00:39 United States (cia.net)"

The CIA is visiting my site right after midnight! Bum bum bum..... sounds suspicious

Hey!
The SAT 1 scores from the last test date came in and here they are:

	Score	Percentile
Math	740	97
Verbal	660	91

I'm pretty excited because it's a pretty big jump from my previous scores (700,610) and it now makes the total a 1400

I put up a picture page with .Mac here: http://homepage.mac.com/bavetta/PhotoAlbum11.html of more drawing from Graphic Arts last quarter.

Here is a picture I drew in graphic arts last quarter.

The SAT I took yesterday was just ok. I think I did real well on the math, but stinko on the verbal.

OK, here's a joke from the fine people over at cartalk.com:

Tired of constantly being broke and stuck in an unhappy marriage, a young husband decided to solve both problems by taking out a large insurance policy on his wife, with himself as the beneficiary, and arranging to have her killed.

A "friend of a friend" put him in touch with a nefarious underworld figure who went by the name of "Artie." Artie explained to the husband that his going price for snuffing out a spouse was $5,000. The husband said he was willing to pay that amount but that he wouldn't have any cash on hand until he could collect his wife's insurance money.

Artie insisted on being paid something up front. The man opened up his wallet, displaying the single dollar bill that rested inside. Artie sighed, rolled his eyes, and reluctantly agreed to accept the dollar as down payment for the dirty deed.

A few days later, Artie followed the man's wife to the local Safeway grocery store. There, he surprised her in the produce department and proceeded to strangle her with his gloved hands.

As the poor unsuspecting woman drew her last breath and slumped to the floor the manager of the produce department stumbled unexpectedly onto the scene. Unwilling to leave any witnesses behind, Artie had no choice but to strangle the produce manager as well.

Unknown to Artie, the entire proceedings were captured by hidden camera and observed by the store's security guard, who immediately called the police. Artie was caught and arrested before he could leave the store. Under intense questioning at the police station, Artie revealed the sordid plan, including his financial arrangements with the hapless husband. And that is why, the next day in the newspaper, the headline declared: Arti Chokes Two For A Dollar At Safeway

Wow,
Just got my new SAT 2 scores in and here they are:

   
   

Math 2C	790	88 Percentile
Physics	720	74
Writing	640	61

I'm taking the SAT 1 again this comming Saturday.

We did the haunted house yesterday and the day before. The room I was in and worked on was the "swamp" room. It took a lot of setup, but it was fun to do. A week of setup taken completely apart in about an hour...

The main reason for this post is that I found this website: http://www.ultralounge.com
I bought a cd from them a Long time ago, but I didn't realize that they had so many to choose from. The one I got was "Bossa NovaVille" and it is filled with unbelivable elavator music.

Lots of stuff has been happening recently. Every afternoon this last week I helped (well, sort of - a lot of time was spent talking and unicycling) work on the Senior Homecoming float. We had a 50's Hollywood theme and ended up building a great - Huge, float. I'm now working Sundays instead of Saturdays for a varitey of reasons. Today I took the SAT 2 (Writing Physics and Math2C) in Reno at Wooster High School, came back to watch the float at the Halftime of the football game, then drove to Auburn and back to shuttle a car here. I started the Calc C internet course, but have not spent much time on it yet. My CD-RW/DVD drive in this laptop went dead, so I am eventualy going to get a replacement. College Application time is drawing near, and I don't quite know what to do.

Our Barbershop show is today. We did a rehearsal for a small audience yesterday, and it came off pretty well - minus the power outage.... Our high school group, "Easily Distracted," has a couple of songs that we put some coreography to. Besides our "Sierra Mountaineers" group there is a High School quartet from Santa Rosa, "Lock the Exits," that's going to sing for a while tonight. It should be fun.

Well, it's been a while. I haven't updated the webcam for a long time, and no new content to the site. School started a few weeks back. I'm teaching many people how to unicycle at school (or more precisely, letting them learn, for there is not a heck of a lot I can do to help them out. It's more of an experience thing.). I saw Bat Tumb yesterday - it was pretty darn funny. My car at lunch has started looking like a circus, with juggling balls, clubs, and unicycles. I've been keeping pretty darn busy after school doing this and that (yearbook, barbershop, etc.). My classes aren't too bad, although English is getting really, really boring.

The last week and a half I was in Montreal and Quebec Canada, eh. Many people spoke French and we saw many street entertainers who juggled, unicycled, and gave me some Ideas for things to do. We went whale watching and saw tons of whales, including Mink and Beluga whales.

WHAT! I just read a school notice in the mail and they say, "This year no Hats allowed indoors!" BOooOOOooooOOooOoooOooGUS!!!

Ha. I just picked up the phone, and the US Army was on the other end. They're really trying hard to recruit us high schoolers.

Back home safe and sound. One more Great band was 'Swing Crew' which mixed up a few kids songs in with some not so kids songs for a awesome preformance. Really funny, good music. I don't feel like typing much more right now, although there is more to say about the trip - so I might post some later.

Day 5 now. Two more left after today. My behind is even more sore than before and my legs are starting to get tired, but it's ok because it's a lot of fun. Every town we go through sets of banners and there are hundreds of stands selling food on either side of the road in the towns and between them. Fireworks again last night, and the town had 5 stages with a band on each within a 3 block sqare. Three kids are riding unicycles the entire way and that reminds me that I need to work on that skill some more when I get back. I am concidering buying a bass guitar...but that's just concidering at the moment. A lot of people on the ride are in terrible shape (some must weigh over 350 pounds - way over) and still get the ridding done - they just take very slow days. There are many tandems (we're ridding one as well) and just as many recumbents. More later-

lots of corn fields

It's the middle of day three and I need to be quick because there are about 10 angry people waiting to use this computer after me. Great fun here. There is live music everywhere: the best being Nuns on the Run and Sol Fa, but many other no namers. My butt is SORE and my legs are getting tired, but everyone says - ya, the usual. 20 more miles to go today and 4 days left. More to come--

The RAGBRAI 500 mile bike ride across Iowa has begun, or will begin soon. My dad and I drove about 1600 miles over the last three days and are now in Sioux Center, the starting town. The actual riding will begin tomorrow with a 60ish mile ride to the next town (We're in the public library right now, and I forget the next town, but all the info is availible at their website: http://www.ragbrai.org) I'll post more info if access is availible.

We drove around last night with the laptop computer and found 4 WiFi signals within 3 blocks, and we're out in some small farm town in the middle of nowhere! - amazing! Coundn't get internet access from them on the initial tries, but I feel if we spent more time fiddling we would have had a better chance. It was kind of suspicious, though, a dark car idling on some residential street with it's lights out...

When we arrived at the camp site last night, we were the ONLY ones there. Today there w'ill be thousands. I'm taping the whole thing and it will be a pretty funny sight.

A pretty funny thing happened on Sunday, I was just driving along and out of the blue my car started sputtering and choking and finally - kerplunk - it died. It turns out I just simply ran out of gas, but one thing bugs me - THERE WAS NO LOW GAS LIGHT! On every other jeep cherokee I lnow of there is a low gas light, and I thought I was still sittin' pretty, when I blew it. So, it may just be a bad light bulb, or maybe it doesn't even have a low gas light - I'll check it out tommorow.

Bum bum bum ba da bum bum de da de do bum....
And now for the Bavetta.com news,

The first meeting of 'Easily Distracted,' a barbershop quartet group consisting of Owen, Ben, Dick, Alex and myself - yes, that's a five person quartet - was conducted at the maestro's house.

I just called the AP people and found out I got a passing grade of a 3 (just passing) on the AP Calculus AB test that I royaly screwed up filling the answer key on - so I'm kind of supprised, I must have done pretty well on the multiple choice part. I'm planning on taking the Calc BC test next year - and I now know how NOT to fill out the essay portion of the answer key.

I found this site when cruising the web: Yatta! - Interesting....

Today is the fourth of July. That's big news to the people who didn't know that. Being in the month of July and this being the fourth consecutive day of it, that would make it the fourth of July. There have been three previous days we have encountered in this month. That is to say of this year - now there is a July in every year - and to my knowledge there has always been a fourth of July, in July, I mean.

I was in the Truckee Mountianair Barbershop singing float this morning and watched the crowds of people pass by on either side of us. It was fun. We sang the National Anthem, Happy Birthday (our worst song), Hello Mary Lou, Sitting on Top of the World, and Connie Island Baby.

I went to see my Great-Great-Aunt Agnes last Thursday and Friday - and boy is she amazing. She is 103 years old, and still takes care of the old-folks at the old-folks home. He tells jokes left and right, and is as sharp as a tack. I hope I got some of those genes somehow.

Fith day of summer today. I'm going to be working Sat/Sun throughout the summer, which I think is great - not too much, not too little. On Monday Dad and I went on a 30 mile bike ride near carson city on the tandem. I was expecting to feel sore the next day, but that never came, not even at all, strange - that's good news though, since I'm working up to do 100 mi a day next month. I'm now in the barbershop chorus that meets on Tuesdays at the high school. That's a lot of fun.

/whoops looks like I forgot to post this...

We put up the basketball hoop we took from the old LA house yesterday. I'm starting to get into basketball, and I bummed that it's the end of the basketball season. I spent a couple hours after school today shooting and dribbling. It's amazing how my skills improved over that period of time, and I really beleive that if anyone works at anything for a couple continuous hours they will get much better much faster, than working a half hour a day every day of the week. For instance, at the start of today my left hand dribbling was stinko - but by the end I was almost as confident as the right and I could also succesfully pass the ball between my legs with either hand - I'm working on jumping using the same technique, and by the end of the summer I want to be able to get over the rim - We'll see.

The new keyboard came in today - it popped right in and worked on the first bootup. Great! It was yearbook day today. I was partially responsible for handing out letters C-E, and got quite a few people to sign my book. The chorus had a concert yesterday. It went fairly well, but I felt partialy asleep when we were doing it for some reason.

School is winding down and Summer is drawing closer!

Well,
Someone spilt coffee on my laptop - Yikes! When I came home I found out about it and it had turned out that the thing had been sitting on with coffee still on it for a few hours - Not good. Thankfully, the keyboard is the only thing that doesn't work, for it could have been much worse. The spill was on the right side of the keyboard - under which is just a metal plate (the cover to the CD drive). Under the left side of the keyboard there are vents right down to the motherboard. I called up Apple, and they are sending out a new keyboard to the tune of $77.

Well, as of Teusday, I am now a licensed driver! I passed the driving exam with a 94. The test was suprisingly easy - I made a few turns, a few jokes, and got many blank stares from the examiner. I swear, they should get some more personable people to work at the DMV.

I hooked up a trolling boat motor to the rear bumper of the Jeep Cherokee today. I routed four wires up to the drivers seat so that you can control the speed and direction of the motor. I plan to attach a one foot diameter disc to it and paint a spiral on it (or something like that - whatever looks coolest spinning). But anyway, Phase 1 (Attach motor and route wires) is complete. Whoohoo!

I went down to Reno with Brian on Thursday, saw Spiderman (I thought it was corny) then met up with the rest of the gang and watched Star Wars. It was great, nice action sequences, great effects, but a little long on the love stuff.

Star Wars Episode 2 is comming in 2 days and I'm getting excited.

The pizza review ended up being a little contiversal. Some people thought (Peter) that we had to get waivers from the restaurants before we could air it. Mr Echols ended up 'ok'ing it, however, and it's going to be shown in the episode we shot 2 days ago, which should be in a couple weeks.
A short while ago, and during first period, we saw about 5 cop cars block off the street in front of the high school and then many armed officers surrounded the Mexican restaurant across the street from the school. The principal got on the new PA system (basically the speaker phone on the new phones they installed) and told everyone to stay in the classrooms. We eventually were moved from our front row seat of the action to the auditorium where they thought it was safer. it turned out that they cops got a call from someone who said they had a gun and threatened his wife. It all ended fairly quickly though, and we still had to go through the rest of the days classes.

I just added a random quote to the top of every page on Bavetta.com. You get a different quote every time you come.

So, I've been eating pizza. and eating quite a lot, I might add. I'm planning on putting together a small review of all of the pizza joints around here for the next reel review. Yea, I know, it's supposed to be a movie review show, but I figure something different would do the show good. Speaking of the Reel Review, the SAME episode has aired the last FOUR weeks due to repeated miscommunication, even though we've been producing many more shows. What's up with that?

It looks like my Thursdays (and eventually Mondays too) will be spent on the Yearbook team. They need some help, it looks like fun, I get English credits, and it probably looks good to colleges and scholarship people.

I got one of the $1,000 scholarships recently for getting a SAT 9 test score last year that was in the top 10% of the class. Tomorrow is the first day of testing for this year's test. There is a lot of stuff going on over the next few weeks: For me, Monday's are Sierra Chorus, Wednesday is the Reel Review (and a study session for AP US Hist additionally, the next few weeks), Thursday is the Web Club which I'm planning on going to this week, and Saturday is my work day at LTOL. That leaves Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays which, for someone that's a bum like me, is not very much.

I've noticed that when my iPod gets warm to hot it get's a dark rainbow color around the edge of the LCD screen, which is not a good thing. I looked the symptoms up on Apple's website and it looks like it's pretty common. I'm planning on sending it back in a few days so they can fix it.

Dad and I went skiing at Northstar today. A good 6 inches to a foot of snow came down overnight. Since it was so late in the season, there was hardly anyone there.

My iPod arrived today, and boy what a trip it had. If you were to belive FedEx shipment tracking, it says it was sent from Tiawan, arrived in Anchorage, Alaska, arrived in Indianapolis, Indiana, then left Alaska (what's up with that?), arrived in Oakland, CA was sent to Reno and then came here. Phew! About the iPod - It's real cool. Probably the best things about it are its capacity (10GB), size (about that of a deck of cards), and ease of navigation (a jog wheel gets most of the work done). It's really neat to have my MP3 collection on the go.

The movie shooting over the last weekend (see post 2 below) was pretty interesting. We mostly spent the time hauling people and things up and down a snowhill on a snowmobile, but it was pretty fun and we got to see some real film-makers in action. They has a nice camera, and some other gadgets, but many of the stuff they made, like a dolly with skateboard wheels, and interesting lighting arrangements. It sounds like we are going to get our names in the credits and get a copy of the movie.

I'm actually going to make a juggling how-to video over the next few weeks and try to sell it. It's going to be pretty cool - more than a just a juggling video.

I just came back from a meeting with Brian, Matt, and 3 filmakers who need our help tommorow and over the weekend shooting a short movie ("Christmas Tree Blues"). We got the locations and directions and it sounds like they have everything planned out. It also sounds like they have a nice 8mm camera, sound equipment, and quite a few people on the crew. We'll see tommorow...

I've been eyeing it for weeks and weeks, and I just sprang for an Apple iPod. It should be arriving in a week and I'll post a review later.
It has a 10GB hard drive and has my name and E-mail address engraved on the back.
Phew, I don't like spending money...

The school quarter ended so some of our classes changed today. I now have:

AP English
Chemistry
Foods (1)
Marine Bio.

I'm getting excited about that "Ragbrai' thing (see below) The Chorus (Monday nights at the high school) is getting a lot better, but I'm still working on my voice. Every week, another issue pops up - tone too high, to low, forgot the words, etc - but it's still fun.

So, my dad and I just signed up for 'RAGBRAI' the 500 mile bike ride accross Iowa over a week's time. We signed up as the "Bavetta.com Team", ha. It sounds like it's going to be a lot of fun.

My latest SAT results: Verbal: 610 Math: 680

My records so far stand with the previous test where I got: Verbal: 610 Math: 700

Wow...I don't think I did so well on the verbal part... But I did fairly well on the math. We'll just have to wait and see how the scores turn out.

I'm off to the SAT at Reed High School now...

Oh ya, yesterday we filmed Reel Review 4.5, because #4 never got aired due to many technical problems. This show went Much better and was problably our best show yet (which doesn't really mean much) :-)

Oompa Loompas

Everybody was Kung-Fu fighting! Wow, some animation: Check it out!

This looks like the start of a new project. I'm going to start building a Boom/Jib/Crane and if it turns out well we can use it for our channel 6 show, but much more likely if it doesn't turn out too good, it would have been fun to make it.

I think 802.11b (WiFi) is really cool. Really. We've had a Wireless Router for a while that talks with my iBook and I just didn't know if I posted anything about it. It's just great to be able to sit anywhere and be on the internet.

I found this article Here that describes a WiFi antenna made from a pringles can. Cool!

Reel Review # 4 today. The show seemed like it went real well, but we had MANY technical difficulties. We're going to try to fix them tommorow at lunch. We got the lighting down by sitting way forward on the stage and using a light from below us. Most other shows shot on that stage seem like there is so much light that the stage is all whited out and about to light on fire. We eliminated that and actually added some depth to the show.

Reel Review # 3 today. It seemed like we were a little too tired, and that this week's episode was probably not as good as last week's, but still much better than the week before. It wasn't too bad though. We are going to change the filming date next week from Thursday to Tuesday which will work better for some of the other people in the group. Brian wasn't in this episode at all, so Joe and I were the hosts.

Some very cool uniform shops:
http://www.bauniforms.com/restaurant_uniforms.html
http://www.s-huniform.com/
http://www.chefsemporium.net/chefcaps.html

Everything from Bill Nye the Science Guy style Lab-coats to chef uniforms to .......well check it out.

We filmed another 'Reel Review' today. I think it wen't a little better than last week, and that's good. Brian had to leave early, so Joe subbed for most of the show. It worked out pretty well, and if it keeps up with half Brian/half Joe that would probably do OK. I tried to get Mr. Brady go back and fix all of the bad cuts we had (of which there were many) but a few were kept in the final edition. Oh well, we're still working out the bugs. It seems like in a few weeks we're going to get pretty darn good at producing television shows without messing up and having to re-wind and re-do, which will probably be good experience if we want to make an actual Interesting show later.

Ha, I just watched our Reel Review show and we sure had a LOT of mistakes. I had never seen it because we just recorded it and Mr Brady took the tape. I sure think we should have just called that one a practice and done it for real the next week. Oh well.

The Reel Review, our film review show, is now airing on channel 6 four times a week. We're going to make a new episode every week.

The show times are:

Monday	8:00PM
Tuesday	8:00PM
Wednesday	7:00PM
Thursday	4:00PM

Watch it!
And check out: TheReelReview.IsCool.net

So I saw a barbershop quartet on channel 6 durring the band telathon, and they said if you'd like to be a part of a chorus come Monday at 6 to the high school. So I went. It was pretty fun and a good experience. I think I'm going to stick with it and do it every Monday now on out. We sung Battle Hym of the Republic, some black gospel song as well as some others. Some people are really into it, and then some people are there for fun, like myself. It turns out it's a Sierra College class (Music 48 I think it's called) Anyway, that's what happened today.

My SAT 2 scores came in and here's what I got:
Math IIC: 720
Physics: 650
Writing: 620

They say the precentile scores were 69, 52, and 56; I'm not sure why they're that low, considering they seem like pretty big numbers. So, once again, I'm not quite sure how the scores compare.

So, we filmed the first episode of 'The Reel Review' today. It was alright but there were a few bad cuts and missed/broken up lines and I think we should trash it, just call it another practice and do it for real next week. Tony is the only one who agrees with me though. Mr Echols says we can't plug our sponsor more than just once at the beginning and once at the end. We said their name about 10 times and incorperated it in our show a few ways. Oh well, ditch those ideas I guess. Anyho, it looks like this show thing is really starting to come together and it will end up being pretty cool.

The Action News was a report our group did for a Terrorism report in Modern World History. It's 2.3 MB so it'll take a little while for you people with slow connections.

I uploaded the wrong index page to my site so, that's why it was down earlier today. I'm feeling better but don't know if I am feeling well enough to go to my mom's superbowl extravaganza tommorow.

I'm sick, again. This is the 3rd time this winter I think. Man!

WOW it's cold! It's -15 F right now, or for you metric types -26 C.

I got a new Blues Traveler CD (Bridge) and I have been listening to it nonstop - I like it.

The SAT 2 was as I expected. Hard, but not too hard. I wrote a neat essay for the writing part, but I don't know how they are going to take it. The physics part was pretty hard, but I did fairly well.

Well, I am taking the SAT 2 in 2 days. The subjects I'm taking are English, Math IIc, and Physics. I have never taken a physics class and I just opened a physics book for the first time about an hour ago. We'll see how things go.

I just wrote a how-to use a Ti-83 and Ti-86 Calculator page (a lot of work) for extra credit in Calculus.

It's the start of the new quarter and my classes changed. Check out the school section to see my new lineup.

I'm franticaly studying AP History for the objective final tommorow. My main soure is the The Official AP History Cram Packet. The test is an actual AP objective section, so I hear. This song is fitting: Prayer to the God of Partial Credit by The Stanford Fleet Street Singers

I just developed the pictures from last year's CES exactly one year ago. Here is a picture of myself and Leo Laporte, host of The Screen Savers on TechTV:

I am sick

I'm getting sick

I missed first and second period today because I stayed home to watch Steve Jobes' keynote at Macworld. The main product announcement was the redesigned iMac. You can take a look at it here: http://www.apple.com It has the appearance of a desk lamp with a flat pannel screen instead of a light.

I'm thinking about getting a webcam motor mount that would enable website visitors to move the camera to see what they want to see. I think it would add a whole new demention to the website where you could actually move something. Since my dad has a static IP address, I figure I can use my moms old boat-anchor laptop (since it has usb ports) and connect it to dads router and, a little configuration later, Whala! bada-bing bada-boom. It would also increase webcam uptime because I would not have to move a camera from my moms to dads house and it would have a dedicated computer. This is the mount I'm looking at now: www.trackercam.com

So, I went skiing today with my dad and his freind from LA John. It rained. It rained again. And when we thought it could rain no more, it stopped; it started to snow. Now, we don't mind snow, but we were already wet, and dad's goggles were so fogged up he couldn't see 5 feet in front of him. All and all, it was not a super day. In other news, I just bought some Apple stock, we'll see how that turns out...

Happy 2000 Too!