Newfangledness

Check out the page's fancy new design. Well, not so fancy, but still. I spent a lot of time this weekend working with CSS and HTML instead of doing homework, and the end results are a couple of swanky new doodads. Actually just two new doodads, really, but they're pretty cool. Try resizing your browser window. Notice how the page will dynamically resize itself to fit? Isn't that awesome? The other spiffy new thing is the oversize letter that begins each post now. Notice that they aren't graphic files, those are actually just regular text, which means that they resize themselves appropriately if you make your default font size bigger or smaller (hit Ctrl-'+' or Ctrl-'-' in Firefox). Impressive, no? The only other things that are different are just small cosmetic tweaks.

The page resizing bit I did on my own, but for the oversize letters I am indebted to Eric Meyer's excellent site css/edge. And of course the basic page design is the Scribe template created by Todd Dominey, which I've tweaked to make it cooler. Yeah.

And now that I've had my two cups of French roast, it's time to try and decipher some German.

Update: 'Drop caps' is apparently the 'correct' name for the big letters. As if anyone cared about being correct. Also, they don't look right in IE because, SURPRISE, it doesn't follow the W3C stylesheet specs. So if you're using IE, don't be a fool. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click 'Get Firefox.'

I've been had

As it turns out, hiding in my room all day didn't work at all. I never even got around to hiding before I'd been hit, and hit hard. At bloody 7:40 in the morning, someone tries to call me not once, not twice, but three times. The third time I finally rolled out of bed and answered it. As you might expect, I'm not the most coherent person in the world right after I've been woken up, so bear that in mind. The conversation went roughly like this:

"Whaaa...?"

"Mr. Grady, this is Officer Smith with the police. We were investigating a noise complaint in the attic of your building yesterday, and when we went up there to look around we found some homemade alcohol and what appeared to be a still. Your name came up when we asked around about this, and we need you to come in for questioning."

Now, I don't want to admit anything here I might regret later, so let's just say that this accusation scared the crap out of me.

"I... uh... I have a class at 11...."
"I think this takes precedence over that."
"Okay...."
"Mr. Grady, are you also aware that today is April Fool's Day?"
".......shit."

Absolutely scared the crap out of me. So while I can neither confirm nor deny the reports of a still being formerly located in the attic, I can happily say that there is not one there currently.

Here's hoping you had a much quieter awakening.

The Best Prank Ever

The 1st of April is always a bad day for me. The problem is that I'm an extremely gullible person, a trait which I prefer to call trusting. But however you name it, the fact remains that, if you think of the most ridiculous, asinine thing that your friends have ever convinced you was true, then I have been tricked into believing something at least twice as ludicrous. I am also a coward, which is why April Fool's day sees me hiding in my room trying to avoid other people. However, rather than spend all this time unproductively, I figured the least I could do was bring you the story of the best prank that I have ever witnessed with my own two eyes. And the best part of the story of the best prank is that, incredibly, it didn't happen to me. No, don't stop reading! It's still a funny story, I promise...

So when I was in high school, we had an assistant vice principal of discipline, and his name was Mr. Masters. Mr. Masters looked just like Mario. From the Nintendo games. Short, pudgy, moustache, everything except the stylish red cap. Mr. Masters also had no sense of humor about this fact at all; mention Mario around him, even in good fun, and you would be immediately threatened with suspension, or even expulsion. God forbid they force us to not go to school. Anyhow.

Our school was made up of several building, and on what was probably the front of the building that contained the cafeteria, in big letters way up on the side, it said "Oak Ridge High School," 'cause that was the name of the school. And it had the school logo beside it.

One day, everyone shows up for school. Today, though, instead of saying "Oak Ridge High School," the side of the cafeteria proudly displays "Mario High School."

Turns out that a couple of guys had climbed to the top of the building the night before, rappelled down the side, and rearranged the letters (they built their own "M") to more appropriately represent the management. Within two hours, everyone at school knew who was responsible, including the administration. But they could never prove it, the perpetrators were never actually caught, and their names were immortalized for the rest of the year.

Don't believe that this actually happened? In your face, sucka: