When I first saw that I had Web design I and II, my first thought was how bad it was going to be.  For the first couple of weeks it was bad.  I could not learn that code and still don’t understand the HTML code like I should.  I had to come in for advisors and after school because I was so far behind.  After I figured the code out though, it was pretty fun and I could have more fun with my web sites that we had to make because I knew how to use all the tags andcodes.  After those first couple of weeks, it was a really fun class and I looked forward to finishing Web designI and taking  Web design II.

One of the most helpful things that we learned this semester was Dreamweaver.  I don’t know whether typing the code out was that hard or if Dreamweaver is just really easy, but it was a big relief to start the Dreamweaver chapters.  I am a really slow worker and I was still slow in Dreamweaver but I wasn’t as slow because it does all the code for you.  To me, it also makes the page look more professional.  When we had to type the code, all of my pages looked the same but when we learned Dreamweaver, I could change the look of the page more than I could when we did it the old fashion way.  Dreamweaver was one of the greatest inventions in the world.

This site talks about what is needed for a good web page and what you don’t need on your web page.  Like that site talks about, we learned stuff like not to make your background too wild to where it takes away from the message of the page.  Sometimes a basic website is the more beneficial than a crazy one with hundreds of different colors, things spinning, and things making noises.  I know that when I am on a web page and I am reading something, I don’t want destractions such as music or things moving.  If I wanted to listen to music, I would have gone to a music site.  If I wanted to see things spin, twist, rotate, flip, disappear, blink, or dance around the page, I wouldn’t get on the computer.  I would watch tv or something like that.

One of the last things that we learned in web page design was Photoshop.  This was helpful when we made layouts for our web pages.  You can do alot more things in Photoshop than you can in Dreamweaver or notepad when it comes to designing a layout for the page.  I think that you could do everything in Dreamweaver that you do in Photoshop it is just way easier to make it look like what you want it to in Photoshop and then slice it up and put in in Dreamweaver.  I am not the best at Photoshop but I like using that alot more than Dreamweaver and the regular notepad code stuff.  Here is a web site that offers tutorials that you can complete in Photoshop to make your own layout.

Web page design 1 and 2 was alot more fun than I expected it to be.  It was hard at times but if you know what you are doing and practice to where it is easy, it is really a lot of fun.  I learned a bunch of things that are helpful to know when making a website and working with photoshop.  I still don’t think i wan to be a web page designer when I grow up but I do think I like computers more than I did when I started this class.  I also see how much work goes into making good websites and so when I see one on the internet I can look at that page and I know what kind of work went into creating a page like that.

Personally, I think rap and hip-hop music is ridiculous.  Not only is the message bad to most of the ones today, you also can’t understand a word that comes out of their mouth.  Alot of people like this kind of music and can understand what they are saying.  I am more of a christian – country kind of guy and can do without that rap.  They do have christian rap which isn’t as bad, so I would listen to that before I would listen to that rap and hip-hop stuff that when you listen to the “edited” version, it doesn’t have any words to it because they are all censored for being too bad.

I think that it is blamed for having such a negative influence on today’s youth because the things it talks about in the songs.  There are songs everywhere from shooting people to doing drugs and anything in between.  When teens see rappers on tv smoking and doing drugs and other bad things, they think that it is cool.  It really makes me mad when people do illegal drugs just because they think it is cool.  I just want to hit them in the face and say “wake up!”  I mean it is almost like those people are in a dream and just do what they seeing people on tv do.  If they knew how stupid they looked to me, maybe they would stop be influenced wrongly from things they see on tv and start living their own life.

There aren’t a lot of web sites about rap music that you can learn more about rap music on.  Here are a couple that I did find that express their opinion about rap music and what it means to whoever wrote it. 

http://www.pureinsight.org/node/658
http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2007-04-23-rap-lyrics_N.htm

I know that on the second web site, it talks about cleaning up rap music and taking out the words that are bad for the clean versions.  I don’t think they should have to clean up any song or take a word out for being too offensive or wrong or nasty.  These words shouldn’t be in the song in the first place.  Some of the rap songs do sound good, but when I hear them start talking about the stuff they talk about, I just want to change it.  I think it is rediculous the things they rap about and the things they say.  I think it would be just as good without all that bad stuff.

As you can probably tell, I really don’t like rap and hip-hop music.  Even though I could probably do without it, I really don’t think it is as bad as I make it sound.  There are some songs that aren’t that bad that can influence teens in the right way, and there are even some that are pretty funny.  The ones that I don’t like are the ones that just have a bad message and cuss every other word.  These are the ones that are responsible for leading some teens down the wrong road.  Whether it is from tv or music like that, something is making teens want to do drugs and want to get drunk every weekend.  That is why I think if some of the rap music that is out there right now would be cleaned up just a little, there would be a big difference in  the number of teens that drink, and the number of teens that do drugs.

Driving is a big step in our lives and it can be a great thing to be able to do, but it can also be very dangerous if you don’t know what you are doing.  This is why if you aren’t old enough to drive by yourself then don’t drive.  There is a reason there is a law for teens not to be able to drive until they are 16.  It is because you are inexperienced and aren’t fully aware of all the hazards and rules of the road.  I just got my licsense and I know that I don’t know everything there is to know about driving but I just try to focus and always be thinking so I can prevent anything I can.

Another tip that I have heard that can make you a safe driver is to not drink and drive.  You shouldn’t drink at all and really drive while you are doing it.  If you are under 21 and are caught drinking and driving I think that you shouldn’t be allowed to drive for like 10 years.  It is rediculous that people drink and drive but when a teen does it, it just makes me mad.  I have never had alcohol but I had to take drivers ed this past summer and they had some glasses that made everything you looked at distorted and it was supposed to be like you were drunk.  I don’t know how realistic that was but I do know that I couldn’t drive a car if what I saw was anything like that. 

A pretty scary statisitic from
http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/duip/spotlite/teendrivers.htm 
is that car crashes is the leading cause of death in teens accounting for 36% of all teenage deaths.  Another is that teens account for 10% of this nations population and were responsible for 12% of all motor vehicle crash deaths.  It also says teens are more likely to speed than older adult drivers.  This is my next way to drive safer.  If you just slow down, the chances of wrecking are lower and the chances of dying in a wreck are much lower. 

According to  
http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/people/injury/airbags/buasbteens03/index.htm 
in a recent study, 18% of high school males said they rarely wore their seat belt and 10% of females said they rarely wore a seat belt.  This is something I don’t get.  Why wouldn’t you do something that could possibly save your life?  I know that I am in the 82% that said they do wear seat belts when they drive.  If putting on a seat belt will save my life then I am doing it every time I get in a car.  Not only am I putting one on, I am going to tell whoever is riding with me to put it on to.  You never know what will happen but I wouldn’t want to look back and think of what shouldn’t have happened if I had just told them to put on a seat belt. 

I know what cars can do and I know how dangerous they can be.  I just need to make sure I keep that in site every time I drive and not get lackadaisical behind the wheel.  When that happens, it is when bad things happen that you wish you could go back and change.  I have been blessed so far in my short driving career and haven’t been in a wreck yet.  God willing, I can keep it that way and be as safe as possible.  I will do whatever I can do to keep it that way by buckling up every time I drive, not drinking and driving, and by just going the speed limit.

If I could put five things in a time capsule that wouldn’t be opened until 2096, I would put first a picture of me doing something I like to do.  I would do this so whoever opens the capsule knows who I am, what I like to do, and what I looked like.  That picture of myself would probably be one of the most important things in the capsule because it would help those people to better understand what life was really like right now.  They say that trees and the beautiful outdoors that we enjoy today won’t be around forever because of pollution and stuff like that.  I don’t think that is true but if it is, I want the people of the future to know what that looks like.  That is why I would probably put in a picture of me fishing or hunting or something like that.

The next thing that I would put in a time capsule would be a bible.  Hopefully everyone in the future will have read the bible and heard that good word.  If they haven’t or if they have, I would want them to know that in our time we read it and it was one of the most important books in 2009.  Maybe it will be an important book to the people in 2096.  If it isn’t though and it is just pushed aside, I would want to be the person that shows it was a necessity now then and it needs to be in the future by putting it in a time capsule.  There would be no better way of showing that than by putting it in a time capsule for the people in the future to read.

I know that if I opened a time capsule and there was money in it I would be extremely happy.  That is why the next thing that I would put in a time capsule would be a some money.  It would probably be about $20 dollars or something like that.  It wouldn’t be too much or too little.  You never know who is going to open the capsule but hopefully it would be a person that could use the money and not some rich person.  The whole purpose of putting the money in there would be to help out the person that opens the time capsule and if a rich person opened it it would defeat that purpose.

The next thing that I would put in a time capsule would be a baseball and a baseball bat.  Baseball has changed a lot since my dad played so i’m sure it will have changed alot from 2009 to 2096.  I would want the people in the future to see what our balls were like and what our bats looked like and how much they have changed.  Also I would want them to know that I played baseball.  I think that would help them to know better the person that put the time machine in the ground.

The final thing that I would put in a time capsule would be a video camera with video in it.  On the video camera I would have a video of alot of things that would help the viewer watching it better understand what our world was like.  Pictures are great for some things but nothing depicts how real or exciting something is like a video of that moment.  You get to see how people act, their mannerisms, and even how they talk.  You can just relate to a video more than you can relate to a picture.  Here are some sites about time capsules:

http://amaesing.com/Timecapsules.htm
http://www.creativeyouthideas.com/blog/creative_teaching_ideas/new_years_time_capsule.html

Wildlife biologist

I love the outdoors.  I always have and always will.  There is just something about being in the woods or out on a lake that makes me want to stay there.  Before my family moved here from Marianna, Florida, we lived out in the country where we could go back into the woods anytime we wanted.  Now we live in a neighborhood but we are on a lake so thats good.  I say all this because I am always outside.  After high school I am going to college to try to be a wildlife biologist.  Just thinking about working in the outdoors and learing more about nature makes me want to pursue it more.

I have no idea what college I will go to but I will look into that more when it gets closer to that time.  Hopefully I will be good enough at baseball to be able to play in college.  That is what I would really like, play baseball while learning about wildlife and the outdoors.  It would be great.  I really don’t care how much the job pays, as long as I am enjoying what I am doing.  I think if I did anything else I wouldn’t enjoy working nearly as much.

I think that it is important to enjoy your job or whatever you are doing when you get older.  If you enjoy what you do you will be happier and it won’t seem as much like work.  I know that when I like school, I want to come and I do well in it.  When I don’t want to come, school is terrible and I do terrible because I don’t want to be here.  It is the same way with jobs.  If I am working as a trash man and enjoy doing it, that is what I am going to do as long as I have an interest in it.  If I never had an interest in it anyway, I shouldn’t have started it because I won’t stay in a place long if I don’t enjoy a being there.

I don’t know a whole lot about wildlife biology and what people do in that job but I do know that I like being around wildlife and it seems like something I would enjoy doing.  I looked at some web sites to try to learn more about this and these are some sites I went to:

http://www.wildlifebiology.com/Home/
http://www.usgs.gov/ohr/student/learn/jobs/job-wldlf.html
http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos047.htm

After reading about this occupation, I found out that more time in college is needed than I expected.  That is fine because it sounds like a pretty uninque job.  It sounds fun, and it sounds like you have to think alot.  So it sounds good to me.

I have learned alot about what I think I might do after high school now that I have been thinking about it this whole week.  I also have a new idea of what wildlife biology is and what it takes to become one.  Before this week, I figured that becoming a biologist would be easy and it wouldn’t take long.  It is just the opposite.  I think it is important that I learned this now instead of when I get in college so I can start preparing myself now.  I think that it is important for all teens my age to know what they are going to try to do after high school and college so when they do finish high school and get to college they aren’t lost as a goose and have no idea what to do.  That is why I think I want to be a wildlife biologist after college.

Stress

There is alot of stress on high school students.  From sports, hard classes, and relationships, stress can come from everywhere.  It can really be stressful if you play multiple sports and hard classes while trying to keep up relationships whether it is a girlfriend or just your regular friends.  Some people cannot handle the stress and have to quit doing one of those things.  I know that I am stressed out every day.  I try not to let it get to me and usually it doesn’t.  When it does though, I just want to go home and quit sometimes.  I just know that it will always get better and I don’t give up.

Last night I got in from baseball at 12 o’clock.  I didn’t end up going to bed until 1.  I woke up this morning and it felt like there were a ton of bricks on me because I was so tired and stress out because I had alot of homework that I didn’t do.  This is why alot of high school students are stressed out.  I know that there are people way worse off than me and I could barely get out of bed this morning!  I am not 100% stressed out but I am probably 50% tired and 50% stressed out.  To me this makes you feel just miserable.

According to www.medicinenet.com/stress/article.htm , the way we handle stress depends on our  nutritional status, overall health and fitness levels, emotional well-being, and the amount of sleep and rest we get.  The more healthy we are and the more sleep we get, the less stress will affect you.  I know that when I don’t get alot of sleep, it doesn’t take much to stress me out and put me in a bad mood.   http://www.emedicinehealth.com/stress/page3_em.htm says that some common symptoms are:

• Anxiousness
• Nervousness
• Distraction
• Excessive worry
• Internal pressure

These are just some of the minor symptoms of stress.  If you get too stressed out, the symptoms are much worse.

There are alot of ways out there to get rid of stress.  There are stress balls to squeeze.  There are stress candles that are supposed to relieve stress.  There are even stress relief games that relieve stress.  I don’t know about that, but I do know that when I get stressed out, I like to go fishing or do something relaxing.  Doing relaxing things when I am stressed makes me feel so much better.  If I don’t ever relax and I just keep working, working, and working, whether it is baseball or school, it all piles up on me and it is just hard to handle.  When I feel like this and I don’t feel like I can get away from the stress, I ask God to give me strength and open my eyes to see his way out for me.  This works every time even when fishing doesn’t.  I think that if all teens did this and relied on God and just slowed down to see the big picture, their stress will never seem to be too much for them to handle.

I don’t know we get this feeling of affluenza. I think it is pretty stupid to feel stressed out or unfulfilled just because you don’t have the money you would like to have at that time. I know that some people face financial struggles but some people are living comfortably and don’t have an excuse to have affluenza. I think we get too caught up in the American dream and forget about the simple and small things of life that you don’t have to pay thousands of dollars to do. I believe by doing the fun things that don’t cost any money and making people realize that you don’t need money to have a good time, you can “cure” affluenza.

Just like finding little things to do that can still be fun is, in my opinion, a cure for affluenza, when you help others and use your money unselfishly, this can be a cure also.  Not everybody can be the richest person in the world; there can only be one.  So step number one to curing affluenza should be to stop trying to be the richest person in the world.  You will only get stressed out end up working for nothing.  Instead we should still work hard and help those people that don’t have near the amount of money you have.  If we will just help the less fortunate with the money we do have.

Affluenza really hasn’t really occured in my family.  I am very glad it hasn’t and hope that my parents realize there are more important things in the world than money like the do now.  On the other hand, when it does happen, it can be sad and some times mean when the parents don’t even pay attention to their child and they are caught up in making money and chasing the American Dream.  I have never wittnessed this personally but on the movies I have seen some people that I would say have this “disease”.  Maybe as more people find out about Affluenza, the more people will realize that they don’t need to be have that condition.

Before this week, I had no idea the word affluenze even exisisted.  Now I know that it is a problem and a problem that is growing due to the economy being so down right now.  Since I wasn’t aware of Affluenza, I did a little research. These are the sites I went to:

http://www.findarticles.com
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/rachel_johnson/article1292588.ece
http://www.intentionproject.com/affluenza

By going to these sites, it helped me to get a better understanding of the word and get people’s opinion on how to make it go away.  I had always seen Affluenza around me but never knew what to call it. Now I know it is Affluenza and keep it from happening to me. 

School Uniforms

I think that school uniforms can be good or they can be bad. If we have a good attitude about it and believe that they aren’t as bad as they seem, they will be fine. On the other hand, if we do nothing but complain about them and only focus on how bad they are, everyone will be unhappy and they won’t fulfill their intended purpose. Personally, I don’t want uniforms but, I can see that it will solve a lot of problems. That is why I could go either way.

I believe that they could be good for the kids who don’t own the “in style” clothes. They could also be good for the people that have a hard time deciding about what they are going to wear the next day. A lot of times, what you wear can get in the way of learning. Really if you feel like everyone is thinking less of you because you don’t wear the cool kids clothes. This is where school uniforms can prove to be very beneficial to these kids. Some kids have just the opposite problem. They have so many clothes and so many choices, they don’t know what they should wear. For these people, they might like having this problem, but I think if they knew exactly what to wear every day because they had to, it makes that decision for them.

I believe that school uniforms can also be bad.  If a kid doesn’t like what he is wearing, he or she won’t do as well as they can in the classroom.  I know that when I get a new shirt or jacket, stuff like that, I want to wear it as soon as I can.  And I am excited to do so.  This makes me motivated to do my work in class.  I don’t know why but it just does.  Also, no matter what people make us wear to school, there will be some judgment passed between students whether it is about what kind of shoes he or she has or what kind of pants they have.  Uniforms will definitely help there to be not as much of that kind of picking on by other students, but uniforms won’t eliminate the problem completely.

People have different opinions about school uniforms.  According to www.articlesbase.com, school uniforms are professional and students tend to take school more seriously when they are dressed up than when you are in play clothes.  Personally, if I am wearing a suit or wearing nothing, it does make a difference.  I don’t know that I would take a more serious approach to my work, but I know that it would affect the outcome of my work.  According to www.kids.lovetoknow.com, making students wear these uniforms stifles their personality and shuts it down.  I agree that if I had to wear a uniform to school, I think I would kinda shut down also.

So as you can tell, I really am neutral when it comes to school uniforms.  If I had to choose a side though, I would definitely not want to wear uniforms.  I can see where it benefits people and where it can get on people’s nerves.  This is why I really don’t care if my school has to wear uniforms.  I do have to admit though, even though I would rather not wear school uniforms, it would be nice to get up in the mornings and know exactly what you are going to wear that day.