The Legend of Mr Peterson

January 5th, 2009 Benny Ling Posted in Blog, Misc, School No Comments »

So an email landed in my inbox the other day - that, in and of itself, is not entirely unusual.

However - this particular email contained the body of a “chain email”, those brutal emails you forward to everyone in your inbox. Thankfully, this particular email landed without being forwarded one a million times to millions of different people.

Anyway - in this particular email, there was a story, and it was named The Legend of Mr Peterson.

Note that this is a HIGHLY satirical look at the life of Mr Peterson. I repeat - HIGHLY satirical. Do not continue reading if you are easily offended, or if you are Mr Peterson. :D

Otherwise, take the time to read it. It’s not entirely accurate as I have personally me the man himself, but it’s pretty good. Thumbs up to Martin W who edited it somewhat, but for the record, principal is spelt p-r-i-n-c-i-p-a-l, not p-r-i-n-c-i-p-l-e! ARGH!

Years ago, there was a principal at Calvin Christian High School.

Some say he was a beast of a man, 10 feet tall and that he could lift a truck over his head with ease.
Others say that he was a small man, the equal of Einstein, who stayed enthralled in his books, learning everything there was to know.

But to everyone, he was known as Mr Peterson.

But then, slowly and surely, Mr Peterson left his office less and less.

Students slowly forgot what their principal looked like, and started to associate Mrs Laning with the role of Head of School, when she was, in fact, just the Dean of Students.

Then, one year, Mr Peterson stopped coming out of his office entirely.

All that could be seen was the outline of a body behind the blinds. No-one stayed long enough to see if the outline moved or if it was forever still.

Rumours began that Mrs Laning and Mr Young, had killed the favoured principal, and left his body there, to rot and be still, while they themselves would have absolute power.

Or, that he was there, waiting, in a state of frozen time, for when his school would need him next.

Years went by…

Students forgot his name, and saw Mrs Laning as the head of the school, the most powerful person within it’s boundries.

One night, students from Calvin wandered onto the grounds.
As they walked home from Channel Court they heard footsteps.
Looking around, they saw no-one, so they ignored the sound and continued to walk.

The footsteps grew louder, AND LOUDER!

The students looked around, there was no-one around but them.
They were alone, but there were still footsteps, rapidly approaching, hauntingly close.
One student, a grade 7 boy, screamed and ran home, yelling “GHOST!”.

The middle of the 3, a grade 9 girl, held onto the oldest, a grade 10 boy.

The footsteps came even closer.

Anxiously, they kept walking, beads of sweat appeared on their foreheads.
Their steps became brisker.
They approached the art room, intending to exit the school from the car park behind the tech block.

But as they stepped into the carpark, the foot steps stopped.
The boy looked around, the girl hid her head in his shoulder.

He looked behind them and when he turned his head back, there he was!
Mr Peterson, wearing his glasses, smiling at them.
He opened his mouth and from his lips, a pleasant voice escaped, “Good Evening”.

The girl screamed, and ran.

The boy smiled, confused, then blinked twice, thinking it was a trick of the mind.
He looked up and Mr Peterson wasn’t there!
He looked to his left, he looked to his right but Mr Peterson was no-where in sight.

And then from behind him, the voice came, “Who are you looking for?”

The boy ran home, flying into his room and jumping under the covers of his bed and held tight to his blanket.

The next day, all three students pulled out of Calvin.
They claimed they had seen a ghost, and were to afraid to come back.

No-one knows what is in Mr Peterson’s office.
No-one is brave enough to look.
Only Mrs Laning knows the answer.

They say, that during the warmer months, you can see the ghost of Mr Peterson wandering the grounds.
But he never will shake your hand…

Because GHOSTS DON’T SHAKE HANDS!!!!!!!

If you believe in the legend of Mr Peterson, pass this on.

And whatever you do, Don’t shake his hand!

Well - what do you think?

I’d credit the original author if I knew who he/she was - Martin W got it from his sister, who got it from some chain email.
If you know the original author, shout out in comments.

Otherwise - I hope you enjoyed this satirical look at the life of the man who runs Calvin.

Once again - this piece is meant as a comedy piece only, and does not, in any way, shape or form, indirectly or directly, implied or inferred, reflect the true nature of Mr Peterson and his work at Calvin Christian School.

Comments below.

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

Happy New Year

January 1st, 2009 Benny Ling Posted in Blog, Freshbytes, Misc No Comments »

From all two of us here at freshbytes, we hope you have an awesome new year.

Don’t get too drunk, though - then again, you’ve got a full day to sober up, so go for it, I say!!

Heh, anyways… 2008 has been a great first year for freshbytes. I don’t think I could be any happier with how we have gone this year. I’ll release some results of reader count, number of hits and so on in the new year if you’re interested, but really, I couldn’t be happier with how my very first website has gone. Sure, more hits would be nice, but we’re just talking about Tasmania here, you know? ;)
So, drink, have a good one, but most of all, be safe, and well see you in 2009.

Oh wait. It is 2009. I suppose that’s what you get for blogging on an iPhone… :P
Catcha round.

Freshbytes Admin,
Benny Ling & Chris Jacques.

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

TCE Results Reflections

December 28th, 2008 Benny Ling Posted in Blog No Comments »

I’m a little disappointed with my TCE results 2008. It’s entirely my fault, because I just managed to do really, really badly on my external exams, the mythical places where careers are made and extinguished…

In my case, the flames were pretty much put out permanently. Okay - so maybe it wasn’t quite that bad, but it was ridiculously worse than I was expecting.

After having a bit of a mull-over for a couple of days/weeks/months (years, even) I’ve come to the realisation that your TER/ENTER/UAI (Tertiary Entrance Rank [SA, TAS, NT], Equivalent National Tertiary Entrance Rank [Vic] Universities Admission Index [NSW]), while important to what courses you want to do at Uni, isn’t a definite sign of who you are, or what you want to be.

As a side note, Queensland also use something else, but it’s called the OP (Overall Position) and it’s really weird compared to the TER/ENTER/UAI. Instead of being a percentage-based score, the OP is a number from 1 to 25, where 1 is “You’re awesome at academics”, and 25 is “You’re not-so-awesome at academics”. Multiple inter- and intra- school scalings are taken into consideration, but in this blogger’s opinion, it Just Doesn’t WorkTM.

The TER isn’t a measure of how intelligent you are (that’s your IQ, folks), or how “street smart” you are. Far from it, it’s more a measure of how well you did compared to your peers. If you take that literally, it’s a measure of how you stack up against your fellow students - which is something that can be influenced by heaps and heaps of different factors like subject choices, aptitudes, and a whole lots of other stuff I won’t bother to name here.

I think my main cause of concern was that I wasn’t in the top 10% of the state. Yeah, that was probably it - NOT! I care not whether I was in the top 10% of the state or not. I’m heaps glad for those select few who are in the top 100, so congrats to Ellen and Elise, but really - that doesn’t matter.

I guess I’m just disappointed about my whole performance overall. I know I completely screwed up my exams, and that just really sucks!

If I tell you the truth (I do always try to), then I guess that arrogance played a part in this. Either I had the arrogance to think that I was going to do spectacularly in the exam (and I had reason to think so, with one B internally and the rest As), or I was just arrogant enough to think that I would do well without adequete study. Neither are particularly pleasant options, but hey, I guess that’s life…

Comments below.

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

Merry Christmas, All!

December 25th, 2008 Benny Ling Posted in Blog, Freshbytes, Misc No Comments »

So it’s Christmas once again… that time of year when we will never have a white Christmas, tans are in, and short shorts and mini’s are the flavour of the month…

Here at freshbytes, we thank you for an excellent 2008 and wish you nothing but the utmost joy as you celebrate this time of year with your friends and family.

Have a good one, and we’ll see you back in 2009 with even more awesome stuff planned!!

In the meantime, watch this Youtube of “Wizards in Winter” by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra - it features some mind-blowing Christmas lights, probably the best you’ll ever see this year.

It’s available in iTunes as a video if you want it, but otherwise it’s here for you to enjoy. Cheers!

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

Connect with Facebook Connect

December 22nd, 2008 Benny Ling Posted in Blog No Comments »

How exactly do you connect with Facebook Connect? Read on to find out!

So, you might have seen the huge “Login using Facebook” button on the sidebar. It’s right below the freshbytes logo, and when you click it, it logs you into this site with your Facebook profile. Don’t worry, I don’t automatically download all of your profile pics or anything freaky like that, nor can I change any of your settings, view anything you don’t want me to view, or invade your privacy in any way, it’s just an easier way for you to comment without having a login for freshbytes.

Facebook Connect Button

Simply put, if you have facebook, you can now post comments on this site without logging into this site.

In the interests of full disclosure, any comments you post to Facebook freshbytes will now be posted to your Facebook wall if you choose to login via the Facebook Connect button, as seen below:

Martin Wall

In my original testing of this new WordPress Plugin, I found it irritating that the profile page borked the layout of the site. However, this has now been fixed, and the profile page now shows in the correct location.

Yet the only annoying thing that remains is the fact that if you choose to logout of freshbytes (when you’re logged in via facebook connect) is that you also get logged out of facebook. It’s something I want to try and fix, as it’s completely not cool, but as of this moment, I really can’t be bothered diving into the code to get that done. If I have to deal with it, so do you. :D

At the end of the day, it’s completely up to you whether you use this plugin or not. Use it, don’t use it, hey, I don’t care.

It would be awesome if I could get some more people in the “Last Visitors” column, though.

Right, so I suppose you lot want some links, then…

Sociable! - The Social Media Blog » Facebook Connect Wordpress Plugin

Facebook Developers | Resources

Facebook Developers | Facebook Developers News

So that’s about it, then. Comments below.

UPDATE: Thanks for the proofread, Martin! Much appreciated.

AddThis Social Bookmark Button

TCE Results 2008

December 21st, 2008 Benny Ling Posted in Blog, Misc, School 3 Comments »

Bitter Disappointment should have been the title of this post, but since I used it up last week, I”m going for the more-neutral “TCE Results 2008″.

When the results arrived in the mail, I wasn’t planning on open them. I was far too scared to.

Anyway, I did, and the results were horrible! I was really, really not happy with my results.

With a TER of 88.9, I was 1.1 off what I needed. One point one!

After looking over the report, I realised that I had completely stuffed up my exams. Computer Science, in particular, was fairly horrible - I went from an EA (one B internally) to a maximum CA.

Thankfully, Maths Applied was just as expected. No nasty surprises here, and Physics was also better than expected (max CA).

Chemistry was just horrible as well - I managed to score a max SA. Yay! </sarcasm>

So, where to from here?

Well, my options are:

  • Repeat Year 12 (by doing Year 13). Obviously, this would suck the most. I love Calvin and all, (don’t get me wrong, Calvin is awesome) but really - I don’t want to be there for another year, especially if no-one else I know is there. The fact that none of my friends are there would help keep away distractions, however - but it would still suck immensely.
  • Do something else. This option also sucks. I hate engineering with a passion, and even though UTAS offered me a place, I’ll be dammed if I’m going to take it. No way.
  • Wait and see. Now this option I like. I won’t recieve offers from the mainland uni’s until early 2009 anyway, (round two offers for Adelaide and Victoria are the 5th of Feb 09), so I’ll just have to enjoy what time I have left.
  • Do something funky to get into the course I want. I haven’t fully explored this option yet, but apparently I can do a normal degree (science or something) at my Uni of choice for a year, and then transfer into the course I want in 2010. This would mean that I can essentially “waste” a year, and it would provide me with an oppurtunity to have a pseudo gap year, but really - dentistry is a five year course anyway! I don’t want to be like Dean, who managed to turn a three year course into a nine (?) year one!!

So yeah, at the moment I’m playing the waiting game - stuck in a sort of Facebook Limbo.

That’s enough about me, though. I’d love to hear how you went in TCE results 2008, so if you want the rest of the world to know as well, shout out in comments!

Points don’t matter. TER does, and that’s really all I care about!

AddThis Social Bookmark Button