David Michael Burrow
Frequently Asked Questions
- How smart are you? ... Why don't you go on Millionaire, Jeopardy, Win Ben Stein's Money, etc.?
Mr. Burrow is a very intelligent person. As a high school talented and gifted coordinator, he is well aware that he would qualify for "TAG" classification himself. His ACT score of 32 ranked him at the 99th percentile in 1979, and he has ranked in the 90s on other tests such as the Graduate Record Exam, the National Merit Test, the Iowa Tests of Educational Development, and the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills. He received one "B" in high school (in US history, his freshman year), for a cumulative grade point average in excess of 3.9. His undergraduate college grade point average was 3.73 (which earned him high honors), and he has a 4.0 in all his maters and post-graduate work.
As to the game show questions, he has tried numerous times to get on Millionaire (see the Television page). He did fine in the preliminary call-ins, but never managed to be lucky enough to be get a call-back in the random drawing for that purpose. The problem with Jeopardy and Ben Stein is that contestants have to pay their own way to Los Angeles to compete. Once they are there, there is no guarantee they will win anything other than "lovely parting gifts".
- So what's your IQ?
As Mr. Burrow teaches his Statistics students, IQ really isn't a particularly good measure of intelligence. That said, he has taken a variety of intelligence tests over the years, with results ranging from 125 to 145 (1.5 to 3 standard deviations above the mean). He generally does better on tests of verbal ability than those involving spatial relationships, and he is better at computational mathematics than logic puzzles.
- If you're so smart, why are you teaching in a Catholic school? Why don't you do something where you can earn real money?
Mr. Burrow likes his job. He likes teaching, and he likes the atmosphere at Garrigan. He enjoys working with his students, and over the years several of them have become like family to him. While he is deeply in debt and would certainly like to earn more money, he makes enough to get by.
- Why don't you say anything about your sex life on this website?
In, general Mr. Burrow's beliefs are very liberal, and he is tolerant of whatever other people might do. However, he is very conservative and private in his personal life. He doesn't believe there is any reason to make his personal life public. So however curious a visitor might be, it really isn't any of your business.
- So can you give us any juicy, intimate details about your personal life?
Yes, but it's really none of your business ... and if you have nothing better to do than check people's websites for such things, you've got a problem, don't you.
- Did you do this all yourself?
Yes.
- What software did you use to create the pages?
Most of the site was created and edited directly on the web through the GeoCities file manager. Each page was initially created in the GeoCities basic editor (which automatically generates the HTML for many of the tedious aspects of a page). It was then edited using raw HTML in the GeoCities advanced editor. Mr. Burrow taught himself HTML by simply looking at reference sites and incorporating ideas into his site.
More recent pages (particularly the more recent travelogues) were initially created as text documents in Microsoft Word. They were then edited in Front Page for best appearance on the web and then uploaded in their finished form.
- Where are all the photos from?
The vast majority of photos are from Mr. Burrow's personal collection, which includes thirteen albums full of pictures of family, friends, and vacations from the past thirty-nine years. The majority were scanned on a Hewlett-Packard scanner that is attached to the computer in Mr. Burrow's room at Bishop Garrigan High School. They were then run through the Microsoft Photo Editor to reduce their file sizes. The result is medium-quality JPEG images.
A few of the photos are borrowed from other sites on the web. In most cases, where the original source of these photos is known, it is credited in the caption. In other cases (such as with corporate and university logos), the source can be assumed to be the subject of the image. If the copyright holder of any of these images wishes them removed, they should contact Mr. Burrow.
- Why are the main pages of this site written in the third person?
Mr. Burrow did all the work for this site himself. That's why it's called an autobiography. He chose to write in the third person (using "he" and "Mr. Burrow", rather than "I") for two reasons. First, he feels many sites on the internet presume an overly friendly tone; he prefers a slightly aloof formality. Secondly, the third person structure seems more apporpriate to use with his students, who probably make up the majority of visitors to this site.
- What's the deal with all the MIDI songs?
Each page in this website has background music that is designed to set the mood of the page. These are all MIDI files, which should play easily in any modern browser. The songs were selected to reflect either the time period of a page or the place or thing that is the subject of the page. In many cases the reason a song was selected is explained by its download link at the bottom of the page. Well over 200 MIDI files are used for this purpose. The complete index is available on the Virtual Jukebox page. All of these songs were borrowed from other sites around the internet (many of which have links from the Virtual Jukebox page). If any copyright holder wishes a song to be removed, they should contact Mr. Burrow.
- What if I can't get the music to play?
It probably means you don't have the ability to play MIDI sounds. While MIDI is the oldest and most common digital sound standard, many computers still require a plug-in "player" to process it. MIDI players are built into the Windows Media Player in newer versions of MSIE and into WebTV, among other browsers.
- What if I don't want to hear the music?
The easiest option is to turn your speakers off. Alternatively, you can press "STOP" after the page has loaded. A third possibility is to go to "TOOLS" in Internet Explorer. Choose the advanced options tab, and turn off the option to "play sounds in web pages".
- What if I a picture won't load or loads slowly?
There's probably no much you can do about it. GeoCities, like most free servers, tends to be slow and overcrowded. Because of this large images, expecially, may not load during busy periods such as nights and weekends. There are size attributes included for all the large images, so if there is a loading problem, you should see a blank box that you can just ignore and go on with the text.
GeoCities also limits the amount of data that can be transferred from its free sites. If this site exceeds the pre-determined amount in any given hour, the account is frozen temporarily. Sometimes entire pages may not be accessible; other times, just images. With this problem, you can always return later, and the problem will be rectified.
- Is the site really copyrighted?
Yes and no. The © notation by the e-mail address at the bottom of each page is generated automatically by the GeoCities basic editor. (Actually the editor generates ©1997--even for pages created long after that year.) Technically any original work produced in the United States is protected by copyright, whether it is registered with the Library of Congress or not. The © symbol reflects this.
That said, virtually everything original on this site may be copied without offending the author. The nature of the internet makes it essentially a public domain, and nothing would be posted here that wasn't intended to be widely available.
It is important to note that all the sounds on this site (and a couple of the images) were copied from other places on the internet. There is a lot of debate about who owns the copyright of MIDI files--the artists who sequenced them (who most often choose to make their work available for free distribution) or the original composers of the music (who almost always feel they should receive a royalty for their work). The MIDI files here were copied from sites where they were freely available. They are provided here for non-commercial entertainment purposes only.
- Why do you have all the stupid ads?
Unfortunately that's the problem with a free website. GeoCities (a division of Yahoo!) inserts the ads, which should NOT be considered a direct part of this site. It wasn't so bad when there was simply a banner ad at the top of the page, but now GeoCities inserts its "ad square" (actually an enormous rectangular strip) that obscures the right side of every page. On some pages they also insert annoying "pop-under" ads. Some parts of the site are also stored on the Fortune City webserver, which is even more annoying. There they are as bad as a porn site--serving two pop-up boxes on exit.
You'll have to live with the ads, because the site will continue to be on free servers for the foreseeable future. You can press the minimize and cancel buttons on the ad square as soon as it appears, and in most cases pop-unders can be cancelled before their annoying "rich media" images load. To avoid all these features, turn off Java script in your browser.
By the way, in no way are any of the products, services, or websites featured in the ads endorsed by David Burrow.
- Is this part of the Bishop Garrigan High School website? ... the ILCC website?
No. This is a personal web page and have no direct association with Mr. Burrow's employers.
David Burrow on an Amtrak train in Oakland, California
Links to other sites on the Web
© 2004
davidmburrow@yahoo.com
The background music on this page is "Rock and Roll All Night," originally by KISS.
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