The HCOS WeeklyThirteenth Edition

Meet Jennica Wlodarczyk

An Interviewby Jubilee Chiu

1. For those who may not know you, briefly tell us about yourself, and what your favourite trait is. My name is Jennica Wlodarczyk, but most people call me Jen or Jenn. I don’t really care how it’s spelled, so go ahead with whichev-er way! I have four little siblings, two older siblings, and I live with the four little ones and my parents. We’re quite a wonderful (albeit a little crazy) family. I love to write. I have one unedited novel to my name, and plan to write many more in the future. I also really love taking care of little kids. I’m sure that these two things will turn into careers someday. My favourite trait of all is trustworthiness.

2. Where do you live, and what do you like best about your city? I live in Kamloops, BC, and I’ve been living here for about eight years now. I really love the fact that even though we’re a fair-sized city, we’re small enough to retain more of a

town mentality. Most people are really friendly here, and even though the weather is a little too hot and we could have better shopping, I really do love it here.

3. What is your favourite thing about HCOS, and why? Oh man, where do I begin? I was flabber-gasted when I heard that I’d have a real teacher for each subject if I signed up with HCOS. I have never in my life had that before, and my teachers are all very awesome, funny, and helpful people. As a sec-ond and extremely important point, I’ve met half of the most im-portant people in my life through HCOS – and more specifically, the HCOS Weekly. I love my friends to bits, and I’m so thankful I chose this school so that I could have the chance to meet them.

4. What are your hobbies and in-terests? As I said before, I love writing and taking care of kids. I also love reading, dancing, watch-ing a few TV shows, Starbucks, lis-tening to music, talking to and hanging out with my friends, win-dow-shopping, spending way too much time in my IMT art course, and many other things that would take up this entire paper if I listed them all. Also, trying to sing in Ger-man is a very fun thing to do.

5. If you could have any super power, what would you choose and why? Now this is a really hard

one. I’d really love to be able to read minds, but that could get in-vasive or out of hand. I don’t think I’d be able to control it well enough. Flying would be cool, but that’s just flying. My choice would be telekinesis. It’d be really awe-some, like using the Force. And there would be so many ways to manipulate it… yeah, I think I’d like that.

6. What is your favourite subject (school/conversational topics)? My favourite school subjects are Humanities 10 and IMT World Art 10. I love the way that concepts are brought about in HUM, and the teachers are quite awesome and very relatable people. IMT Art is fun. Seriously, it’s just fun. Plus, the teachers are (again) very awe-some people, and since there are only two students in the class this semester (me and one other girl), it makes for a very easy, fun, and en-joyable class. Some of my favourite conversational topics are dreams, strange and out-of-the-box theo-ries and ideas, everyday life stuff, window-shopping, and twincep-tion.

7. I’m sure we all have many peeves, so tell us about one of yours! One of my biggest pet peeves is when someone tells you one thing and then later on you see them doing the exact opposite. Or when they say one thing one moment, but then say a totally dif-ferent thing the next. I don’t know about you, but I find that extreme-ly annoying.

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Underwater

Colonies

An articleby Adley Soames

There has been lots of talk about building underwater colonies in the ocean; all-in-all I think it’s a pretty sweet idea, but have hu-mans been beaten to it? Yes, we have. There is an animal called a Man o’ War that isn’t actually an animal at all. The Man o’ War re-sembles a jellyfish with a balloon on its head, however the Man o’ War is not an animal, it is an under-water colony of four different types of animals that all work together.

The different animals are: Pneu-matophore, this species creates a large balloon on the Man o’ Wars head which allows it to float; the balloon can be deflated in order to

Ask Dr. Wise

An Advice Articleby Kristina Fedorov

Dear Dr. Wise,I’m so bad at reading my bible/do-ing devotions... is there something wrong with me?Anonymous

Dear Anonymous,I wouldn’t be so quick to say there is something wrong with you, but maybe it’s wrong for you. Maybe the way you are trying to do it just isn’t the right way for you, maybe it’s the wrong time of day or the wrong way you are going about it. Try experimenting with different things, maybe starting with prayer instead of reading something… Even making guidelines or rules for yourself could help. I hope this helps!Dr. Wise

Hi Dr. Wise,I'm looking at buying an android phone, which phone would you recommend? I am personally look-ing at the Sony Xperia Z2.

Hi there!It looks like you have made a good choice. I can’t really recommend a phone for you since I don’t know that much about your situation… for example, how o"en will you use the phone? What will you be using it for? Etc. Think about those things and make sure that the phone you purchase matches your answers! I hope this helped,Dr. Wise

Note: To all the readers. I most sincerely apologize for not being on top of the last few questions. I shall be at it once again from now on. Signed, Dr. Wise.

8. How has God worked in your life this year? God has really helped me grow in confidence this year, even though we’ve only had about four months in it so far. I’m starting to notice more things about life that I haven’t seen be-fore, and grow in both my maturity and wisdom. This year is going to be great, and I can’t wait to see how much more I will have grown by the end of it!

9. In 5 years, where do you see yourself? In 2019. Hahaha I’m sor-ry, I know that was really bad. Well, I’ll be nearly out of university. I’ll have been published at least once by then. Maybe I’ll be with some-body? We’ll see. I’ll be older, hope-fully a bit taller, and my nephew will be nine years old. *Faints in shock, but then revives self be-cause I have two more questions to answer.*

10. You knew this one was coming! What is your favorite colour(s), and why? My favourite colours are green and black. Green seems to explain me. It can be calm or radiant, dark or light. It’s living and breathing, and always around you. It’s comforting and protective. I love it. Black is lovely because I think of it as a comfort-ing place of solace. It’s a place I can be alone, sort out my mind while thinking about nothing, and recharge my batteries. Yes, colours are places now. (Green is some-times a fantasy setting, by the way.)

11. It’s been a blast interviewing you, Jennica! To end this off, tell us about your role in The HCOS Weekly. What’s it like being part of the Team? Well, I contribute to the HCOS Weekly in a number of ways. I edit articles, write articles, occasionally submit poetry, inter-

view members of HCOS, occasion-ally review books, and occasionally format the paper. I really love be-ing a part of the Team. We have such great people working on and contributing to the paper every two weeks, and it’s an awesome and joyous thing to be working with them all. Shout-out to all of you wonderful people who help make this happen. Thanks for in-terviewing me, Jubs!

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Sharing is Caring

by Megan Ferguson

Mrs. Pippa Davies is wondering about how students share learn-ing resources and if they are inter-ested in having an open platform on the Ning to share resources! The answers below are just my opinion to some of her questions. She is looking for feedback from learners so please contact her with your brilliant ideas!

Q: How Do Students Find Re-sources?

A: In my experience, I usually have resources recommended to me by teachers or parents it usually is not from friends or fellow students.

Q: How do students share with other students if they find great learning resources? Or do they even share?

A: I think ‘word of mouth’ so to

Lacy Potato

Latkes

by Megan Ferguson

Ingredients

• 4 large potatoes, peeled (2 lb/1.25 kg)

• 1 large onions, quartered• 1 egg, lightly beaten• 1/4 cup (60 mL) all-purpose

flour• 3/4 tsp (4 mL) salt• 1/2 tsp (2 mL) baking powder• 1/4 tsp (1 mL) pepper• 2 cups (500 mL) vegetable oil

Preparation

Using a coarse grater, alternately s h r e d p o t a t o e s a n d o n i o n quarters. Place in colander or sieve; squeeze or press out as much liquid as possible and dis-card. In large bowl, stir together potato mixture, egg, flour, salt, baking powder and pepper.

In large skillet, pour in enough of the oil to come 1/2 inch (1 cm) up side of pan; heat over medium-

high heat. For each latke, spoon 1/4 cup (50 mL) potato mixture into oil, pressing down lightly with fork to flatten and leaving about 1 inch (2.5 cm) between latkes.

Fry, turning once, until golden brown, crispy on the outside and cooked through, 5 to 6 minutes. Transfer to paper towel-lined bak-ing sheet. (Make-ahead: Reduce fry-ing time by 30 seconds; transfer to racks. Let cool; cover lightly with pa-per towels. Set aside for up to 2 hours. Remove paper towels; place racks on baking sheet; bake in 350°F/180°C oven until crisp and hot, about 10 minutes.)

Recipe Courtesy of Canadian Living Magazine.

go underwater for a short amount of time when avoiding predators. Second are the Dactylozoids, they form the tentacles which sting prey, then carry the prey up to the Gastrozoids, who digest the prey. Lastly are the Gonozoids who are in charge of reproduction. All these zoids sound like a sci-fi show, don’t they?

So basically, there are four differ-ent kinds of animals that join to-gether to create one functional colony in the water. Thousands of creatures of four different species can work together in perfect har-mony without a leader.

For the sake of those who don’t give a Scottish banana, this next paragraph is not that important and can be skipped. Due to lack of mobility, Man O’ Wars tend to end up in large herds. It has been said that the finding of one Man O’ War will result in the finding of many. Sometimes these Men O’ War herds wash up onto beaches and the entire beach has to be shut down to prevent people from get-ting stung. Man O’ War stings are not deadly but they cause severe pain and leave red whip like welts

on the skin, which last about two or three days. Although Man O’ Wars can be found in any ocean, they tend to be found mostly in tropical areas, so we do not have to worry about Men O’ War herds in Canada.

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Canadian and

American Spelling

An articleby Jennica Wlodarczyk

I’m sure we’ve all heard at some point in time that Canadians and Americans spell certain words dif-f e r e n t l y . “ G r e y ”, “ c o l o u r ”, “harbour”, and “favourite” are a few of the most commonly-known differences. What I didn’t know un-til about seven minutes ago was that there were not just a slight handful of these words in existence – I found nearly one hundred of these words a"er a mild search. Since you probably didn’t even know most of these words had al-ternate Canadian and American spellings, here’s a list I drew up of some such words:

In Canada, it’s “analyse”, and in America it’s “analyze.”In Canada, it’s “cheque”, and in

speak is the biggest way that stu-dents share. Sometimes they can be shared on Ning but not general-ly.

Q: Are students interested in learning together and sharing in an open forum this way?

A: I think it would be a fantastic way for students to share with each other and I think other stu-dents would benefit greatly from all the information out there wait-ing to be shared! I can’t speak for other students, but I think lots of students would be interested.

*Note: PLEASE contact Mrs. Davies if you have suggestions or ideas re-garding an open platform for shar-ing resources on Ning or other sites!

The Pressure's On

An articleby Jaleesa Taylor

Just the other day, I was sitting on the floor in my room, knowing I should be doing school, not actual-ly doing school, and wondering why I wrote an article on how to stop procrastinating, when I am so obviously the queen of procrasti-nation (see Valentine’s Special Edi-tion). I am trying to be better, so that’s got to count for something. There goes any credibility I previ-ously had, so read my random and sometimes rambling thoughts at your own risk.

Anyways, along with thinking about my education, I was thinking about the power that people have over us. (See, there was something productive going on that day.)

Most of us have probably been in a

situation where we so desperately wanted to fit it, that we actually changed ourselves. Whether it’s going with the crowd and choosing cherry blast ice cream, when chocolate fudge was calling your name, or buying the same brand of clothing as everyone else, it doesn’t feel great to have other people’s decisions dictate yours.

What makes being included in a group so important, to the point of being willing to momentarily forget our ideals, values and who we real-ly are? Is five seconds of popularity wo r t h i t i f we’ re n o t e ve n ourselves? And when you really think about it, similarity isn’t nec-essarily something that we all want to strive for. (It would be kind of weird if everyone went around wearing the same clothes as, and singing and acting like Taylor Swi". Seriously, it would be like Hal-loween, minus the candy and the incessant doorbell ringing. Then again, there is the repetitive never, ever, ever, ever…..sorry Swi"ies, I had to.)

The thing is, we’ve all heard it be-fore. Whether it was from a pastor, teacher, or your mom, we’ve defi-nitely heard the spiel about how we’re unique and special in our own way. It’s easy to hear, but so much harder to actually believe. When you let those words truly penetrate your heart, you will come to the realization that God’s

opinion of us is the only thing that matters. He loves us just the way we are.

If I’ve learned anything through my peer pressure encounters, it’s that people will respect you when you stand by your beliefs. When you change back and forth between opinions, people will realize that you are easily manipulated. Other people only have power and con-trol over you, if you let them. If you make the personal decision to be strong and stand up to peer pres-sure, no one can make you do any-thing you don’t want to do. When you think about it in that sense, who wants to be like Taylor Swi", anyway? Er, depending on who you are, you may or may not want to answer that.

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The Heartbleed

Bug

A Virus Alertby Megan Ferguson

Now, I want to make clear this arti-cle was not meant to scare anyone. This article addresses the virus on internet called the Heartbleed Bug. A major new security vulnerability dubbed Heartbleed was disclosed Monday night with severe implica-tions for the entire Web. The bug can scrape a server's memory, where sensitive user data is stored, including private data such as usernames, passwords, and credit card numbers.

“The Heartbleed bug is a vulnera-bility in the OpenSSL cryptograph-ic library that allows stealing of in-formation normally protected by the SSL/TLS encryption used to se-

cure the Internet. OpenSSL is open-source so"ware that is wide-ly used to encrypt web communi-cations. SSL/TLS is what normally provides secure and private com-munication over the Internet via websites, email, IM, and VPNs. Ac-cording to CNET, an attacker can exploit Heartbleed to essentially “get copies of a server's digital keys then use that to impersonate servers or to decrypt communica-tions from the past or potentially the future, too. Heartbleed is being taken so ser iously because OpenSSL is widely used, essential-ly no servers locally encrypt their data the way LastPass does, and it’s been exploitable for some time.”

Now don’t be alarmed, Google, Youtube, Pinterest and various other sites have updated their so"-ware which means, if you change your password on those sites you are safe from the Heartbleed Bug. To avoid the Heartbleed Bug avoid logging into sites that have NOT updated their so"ware. Below is a link that clarifies sites that are safe or awaiting confirmation from the Heartbleed Bug.

http://www.cnet.com/how-to/which-sites-have-patched-the-heartbleed-bug/

America it’s “check.”In Canada, it’s “aeon”, and in Amer-ica it’s “eon.”In Canada, it’s “fuelled”, and in America it’s “fueled.”In Canada, it’s “meagre”, and in America it’s “meager.”In Canada, it’s “medallist”, and in America it’s “medalist.”In Canada, it’s “moustache”, and in America it’s “mustache.”In Canada, it’s “vigour”, and in America it’s “vigor.”In Canada, it’s “sulphur”, and in America it’s “sulfur.”

Crazy, right? I know that there are a lot of words I spell the American way without even realizing that we had Canadian spelling for them. I hope you found this as interesting as I did! Here is the link I found this information from, if you are inter-ested to look up other alternate s p e l l i n g s : h t t p : / /www.searchenginepeople.com/blog/canadian-american-spelling-differences-does-your-blog-speak-to-the-proper-market.html

The Verse of the

Week

by Megan Ferguson

The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail. –Isaiah 58:11 (NIV)

Is anyone else scared, no terrified about their future? Perhaps you are thinking of moving, or chang-ing schools, or perhaps your family is considering adoption? Or maybe finding the perfect career or lifestyle is stressing you out! With so many choices in careers and col-leges and schools and life in gener-al, it’s easy to get overwhelmed! I am stressed right now about find-ing the right graduation plan. But this verse just brings peace to me. It doesn’t matter how my future ends up because the Lord will guide me always. I will be prosper-ous no matter what I do! I may not be prosperous in the material of this world, but I can be prosperous in the things of God! It’s really re-

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Literal "Let It Go" - By Joshua Wlodarczyk

Super Comics

Weekly LOLlieving! I just wanted to remind ev-eryone, including myself that no matter what happens the Lord will guide you always! In other words, it’s gonna be OK.

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Mama Fury on Waking Up e

Avengers

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