Gas Prices Lightening Your Wallet?

By Alex Blythe –

If your wallet isn’t paper thin by now, it will be very soon. Gas prices are rising all over the United States and will continue into the summer months.

By the time summer hits, gasoline could be up to $4.00 per gallon in some parts of the country, even more in others.

The former President of Shell Oil Company, John Hofmeister, thinks the price of gas will rise up to $5.00 by 2012, says The Huffington Post.

The high Oil prices around the country have been raising the gas prices, increasing it by 34 percent since May, also according to The Huffington Post.

According to Pennsylvaniagasprices.com the Sheetz and Turkey Hill convenience stores, located on Centerville Road, are both up to $3.73 a gallon. BJ’s Wholesale club in Centerville is at $3.69 a gallon and the Turkey Hill off of New Danville Pike and Marticville Road is up to a whopping $3.73 a gallon.

High Gas Prices. Photo courtesy of wjtv.com

“Before the rising gas prices I paid $33 (per tank) and now I pay $40.00. I try to fill up my tank once every two weeks if I can,” stated senior Katie Coons.

Senior Eric Clark now pays $45.00 for gas opposed to $30.00 before.

The new national average for unleaded gas is $3.77 per gallon, which rose 22 cents from a month ago. A year ago the price for unleaded gasoline was only $2.86, which is almost a whole dollar less, according to today.msnbc.msn.com. The cheapest gas in the country is in Tuscon, Arizona at a low $3.41 a gallon.

For the fifth straight week, gas sales have been down because of the rising prices. More and more people are taking other transportation or carpooling to avoid paying the high prices.

“It’s depressing,” expressed senior Abby Newport.

Before the gas prices skyrocketed, Newport paid $20.00 for gas. She now pays $35.00.

Gas prices haven’t been this high since 2008. According to cbsnews.com, in Los Angeles, California, the average prices are up to $4.14 per gallon.

The Giant Food Stores located around Lancaster County have “Gas Reward Points.” When you shop at Giant with your Bonuscard, each dollar you spend you earn one point. Once you reach 100 Bonuspoints, you earn 10 cents off a gallon of gas at any participating Giant to Go gas station. Giant to Go is located off Fruitville Pike and Richmond Drive. There are many other locations coming soon.

Turkey Hill Minit Markets also have a great deal going on. According to Turkeyhill.com, when you use your Turkey Hill rewards card, you earn points. When you earn 100 points, you get 10 cents off of a gallon of gas. Coffee, cappuccinos, slushies, fountain drinks, iced coffee and milkshakes are just some of the items that will earn you 10 points. Two points will be earned for every other selection for every dollar spent. For example, if you buy a bag of chips for $1.39, then the person will get two points; but if you buy a $2.11 pack of Chex Mix, then you would get four points.

According to Weismarkets.com, if you use your Weis Markets rewards card during your shopping experience, for every $50.00 you spend you will earn a 10 cent discount on any grocery or pharmacy item. You must spend $50.00 in order to get the 10 cents off a gallon. The gas points may be redeemed at any Weis Gas N’ Go location or at any participating Sheetz location.

Keep saving up money for gas, Penn Manor – you’re going to need it.

Chorus Finishes Final Prep for Hawaii

By Sarah Schaeffer and Jake Shiner –

Only eight days remain until 55 chorus students and seven adults board a plane to Hawaii.

The trip was open to any chorus student interested in attending. Chorus director Melissa Telesco said that she organized many fundraisers to help kids who had a serious interest in going, especially seniors as this is their final opportunity to take such a trip in their high school career.

The Chorus has been counting down for a long time, updating the board each day. Photo by Sarah Schaeffer

The fundraisers have been completed and all that is left to complete is packing and final organization.

“We’re still organizing tickets, shirts and luggage checks,” said head of the music department and chorus director Melissa Telesco.

“I’m packing the night before,” said two juniors, Ryan Dettrey and Mitch Wise.

“I haven’t even started [packing] yet!” said chorus student Brendan Kincade.

The group will be staying at a hotel on The Big Island, the main island of Hawaii.

The students have the chance to perform at the recognition of the 70th Anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, which took place on December 7, 1941. According to chorus student Jared Bonawitz, about 50 other choral groups are attending this event.

Telesco said Penn Manor had to apply to sing, but is unsure if any chorus groups were cut from the line up.

Apart from singing at the ceremony, the students will hike on Diamond Head, a volcano, and have lots of ‘beach time,’ said Telesco.

“For the week we’ll be going to a luau, the beach, a catamaran sail, hiking Diamond head, going to sing at Pearl Harbor and a whole lot more,” said Kincade.

There are a few worries that linger:

Ryan Dettrey looks forward to Hawaii and flying for the first time. Photo by Sarah Schaeffer

“[Hawaii] is five hours behind us here, so there will be some jet lag on the way back,” said Telesco.

“Boys can’t wear speeods,” said Kincade.

Despite these minor setbacks, students are looking forward to the week-long adventure.

“I’ve never been there before, it’s warm…” said Bonawitz.

“I’m excited. I’ve never been on a plane before. It’ll be fun to experience that for the first time with all my friends,” said Dettrey.

“It’s a whole week off with my friends from the music department…we’re going on vacation for a whole week in Hawaii,” said Wise.

“I’m looking forward to being across the ocean with all of my classmates. Also, the beautiful weather is going to be amazing,” said Kincade.

The group will meet at the school at 2:45 a.m. on Wednesday the 20 and return the following Wednesday.

 

The Yearbook Staff Strives to Keep Memories Alive

By Lauren Richards –

Hard work, commitment, talent…No we’re not talking about a sport, we’re talking about yearbook.

A lot of work goes into creating the yearbook for Penn Manor High School. Having a superior yearbook requires an experienced, talented staff. But what happens when year after year, the number of students in the yearbook staff dwindles? The lack of students joining yearbook is becoming a concern and this has the potential to jeopardize the quality of the yearbook.

“This semester we only have four people on staff,” said senior Lyta Ringo.

Ringo has been on the yearbook staff since her sophomore year. She said that the submission of the book this year was almost a month late.

Eric Bear, editor-in-chief of the yearbook for the current school year, admits he is worried about what will happen next year.

“As of right now, there are no seniors for next year,” Bear said.

It seems that one of the main reasons students aren’t interested in joining yearbook is because all of the work that it requires.

“It’s a lot of work and I don’t like working with computers,” senior Sam Adams said.

The list of programs you need knowledge of when working on putting together the yearbook is extensive. Bear said he frequently works with Microsoft Word, Excel, Adobe Photoshop CS5, Illustrator CS5, Apple  OS, Jostens Yearbook Avenue OS, Folios, COBS and even more.

Doug Anderson, teacher of the yearbook class, said that even the application process can be troubling for students. For the application students need letters of recommendation from teachers and they also have to write an essay.

Print screen of Eric Bear's computer while working on the yearbook.

Because of all the work they do, the yearbook staff has to be dedicated and willing to give up a lot of their own personal time.

“I think it’s hard work for the individuals involved, especially for students who take it extremely serious. There’s a lot of behind the scenes work,” Anderson said.

“It’s a lot of commitment. It’s a lot of personal time taken out. It takes a certain type of person to succeed on the yearbook staff,” Bear said.

Taylor Smith said, “I never did yearbook because it seemed like too much work.”

Ringo said that students who took yearbook in middle school had fun with it, but when they get to high school it’s stressful.

Luckily several qualified freshman are expecting to be joining the yearbook staff next year.

“There are more applicants for next year than there were last year. There were only three freshman last year,” Anderson said.

But that doesn’t completely make up for the fact that there’s going to be no experienced seniors like there are now. One has to wonder, what does this mean for the future of the yearbook?

“We had a lot of people fill out applications for yearbook next year, some got turned down. Hopefully it will be better,” Ringo said.

“The staff will be fine next year, but I think the book will be very plain-jane design wise, but not in a bad way,” Bear said.

So while Bear doesn’t think there’s much concern for next year, he admits that it will be tough for the staff to put in as much work as he has.

“To complete the amount of work I do takes the manpower of four people,” Bear said.

Bear also has another theory, other than the hard work, to explain why students haven’t been joining yearbook. He said that in the course selection book the class is labeled as Creative Publications, rather than yearbook. Bear thinks students get confused when they can’t find a class labeled as yearbook, and instead they join the club thinking they’ll get to do the same things they would in the class.

Bear admits that being on the yearbook staff, especially editor-in-chief, is a lot of work. However, he feels it is well worth it and thinks if people would join the staff they would learn to love it.

“Most people who start yearbook continue with it for the rest of high school. Once you start it you can’t stop, you become a yearbook junkie,” Bear said.

Amazon’s New Music Solution

Amazon's new music player, available on the Web and Android

By Nick Joniec –

How would unlimited music storage for purchased songs rival Apple iTunes? Amazon introduced their Cloud Player with five gigabytes of music storage for user’s to upload their own private music to the “cloud.”

The new music service is provided by Amazon’s Cloud Drive. The free Cloud Drive plan is a five gigabyte storage repository, that works the same as a flash drive or external hard drive; but it is web-based. Cloud Drive allows Amazon users to store their files and use them anywhere that has internet access.

Because of the web-hosted ability of Cloud Player, you can upload your music to the site and play back your music from most internet connected devices.

Currently, the Amazon MP3 application is native on the Android platform.The Amazon MP3 app has been updated to enable streaming, downloading and purchasing music for your Cloud Player.

For the users of Apple devices such as iPhones and iPods, there is no official support yet for Cloud Player. Workarounds such as logging in directly to the Cloud Drive web interface allow you to stream your content to your iDevice, are available.

As incentive for using Amazon’s MP3 service with Cloud Player, if users download music from the Amazon store, they get an extra 15GB of storage space.

That gives users twenty gigabytes of storage in the “cloud” for files and music. Twenty gigabytes can hold more than enough music for most people. It is roughly an equivalent of over five days of music.

Oh the Weather Outside is……Confusing.

By Matt Ulmer –

Monday sandals and short shorts, Tuesday umbrellas with a sweatshirt.

Students at Penn Manor are going back-and-forth between their winter and summer wardrobes. It’d be lovely to ensure students that they can set out their cargo shorts, tank tops and sandals for good, but the next 5-7 days may “wash away” that thought.

The inconsistent weather forecast for the next 5 days.

Last week  temperatures hit 79, and Wednesday snow appeared in some parts of the county.

This week is just as odd. Yesterday, Lancaster hit a seasonal high of 84 degrees. Today’s weather is roaming in the 50’s with high chances of rain leading into the night. Tomorrow is gonna seem like Deja Vu.

One Penn Manor substitute said, “variety is nice, be aware of anything.”

Most students and teachers in the building seem to have the opposite mindset.

Sophomore Kyle Musser said, “I’m annoyed by the weather” which is forcing him to wear sweatpants and a sweatshirt.

Millersville University Meteorologist Eric Horst has his own theory on the weather pattern. He believes it’s a pattern that has stayed consistent for the past 10 years, and always seems to fall around the end of March into the third week of April.

“This roller coaster ride will continue for the next two weeks until around Easter weekend,” explained Horst, indicating the April 23-24 weekend.

His predictions were enlightening with his promise of sunshine and high 60s for Thursday and Friday, but they were erased with his predictions of rainstorms for the weekend.

One thing is for sure, this week is probably the start of a more unsettled climate to come.

 

 

Winklevoss’s Dealt Setback on Facebook Lawsuit

By David Mohimani –

Friend request denied.

Camereon and Tyler Winnklevoss, the nemesis of Facebook’s founder, learned Monday that their settlement agreement from 2008 with will be upheld.

Even though they are not happy about it.  They want more.

Photo of Winklevoss's photo courtesy of Technicallypersonal.com

The twins, both Harvard graduates and Olympic rowers, filed a lawsuit against Zuckerburg back when Facebook was first starting,  accusing Zuckerburg  of stealing the idea from their website ConnectU.

In 2008, the Winklevoss boys agreed to a settlement of $20 million and gained ownership of $65 million in Facebook shares.

The Winklevoss’s however tried to renege on this agreement after Facebook was valued at a much higher appraisal than they or their lawyers anticpated at the time.

After an investment by Goldman Sachs last year of $500 million, the company was valued at $50 billion.

The attempt to reopen the settlement squelched by a San Francisco appellate court Monday.

The Court ruled that, “The courts might have obliged [with a continued lawsuit], had the Winklevosses not settled their dispute and signed a release of all claims against Facebook. For whatever reason, they now want to back out. We see no basis for allowing them to do so. At some point, litigation must come to an end. That point has now been reached,” the judge wrote.

For now the Winklevoss’s will have to row their way home.

 

Penn Points Travels across the Country

By Kendal Phillips –

Penn Points Newspaper is taking a field trip…to Anaheim, California.

Sarah Garner, Kendal Phillips, Jordann Stekervetz, Sarah Schaeffer, Crystal Bugner, Jake Shiner, Sam Valentin, and Blake Wales will be representing Penn Points at NSPA this year.

Anaheim California - Photo Credit: www.anaheim.world-guides.com

Every student in Penn Points club and the Journalism classes were given the option to attend the National Scholastic Press Association this year in California.  The cost was relatively high and the notice was short but those eight students made the effort to go.

Over 160 entries were submitted but only 17 were chosen in the online news category.  As more and more school newspapers go online, the competition in the online category is becoming more competitive.

Last year Penn Points was not only nominated for the Pacemaker Award at the NSPA conference in Portland, Oregon but was one of seven that won the Award. Throughout the year Penn Points continued winning awards.

Two out of the four final nominations in the Multimedia category were from Penn Points.  Sarah Schaeffer and Taylor Groff’s story on a Chinese student musician in Penn Manor won second place and Kendal Phillips and Taylor Groff’s story on the mosaic wall snagged honorable mention.

At NSPA the students will attend seminars and conferences to gain more information on how to successfully write for a newspaper.  Keynote speakers at the conference are Steve Lopez from the Los Angeles Times, Lisa Ling host of “Our America” and Laura Ling host and reporter on “E! Investigates.”

No matter how the competition turns out, the conference is expected to be a rewarding experience for the students attending.

The Office Welcomes Will Ferrell

By Spencer Barnett and Connor Hughes-

The announcement of Steve Carell leaving ‘The Office’ left many fans in a state of panic, but now there’s hope.

As of June of 2010, main character Michael Scott (Steve Carell) announced his retirement, NYDailyNews.com. Carell had been star for the past seven seasons of The Office with his corky personality and strange ways of managing a business. Now with the main character spot open, rumor has it that Will Ferrell may be the next one to fill Michael Scott’s shoes.

Steve Carell playing Michael Scott on "The Office". Photo from Squidoo.com

In an interview with the International Buisness Times, Carell spoke on his departure.

“I just think it’s time … I want to fulfill my contract. When I first signed on I had a contract for seven seasons, and this coming year is my seventh. I just thought it was time for my character to go.”

Steve Carell’s departure left Office addicts wondering who will take Carell’s place.  This may not be a permanent fixture, but it should fulfill the needs of some fans.  Ferrell will play a branch manager, Deangelo Vickers.

“[Deangelo Vickers] loves the American Southwest,” said Ferrell. “and he’s just kind of in his own way going to step into Michael Scott’s shoes and try to fill them.”

Ferrell and Carell often are a part of the same projects: Carell tried out for ‘Saturday Night Live,’ claiming he lost out to Farrell, and they starred together in 2005’s ‘Bewitched.’

Will Ferrell playing Ron Burgundy in "Anchorman". Photo from pagebandits.com

Ferrell’s addition to the show was announced on television in a promo for the show’s new episode, airing April 14th.  Michael Scott’s proposal to Holly and the announcement that they were moving to Colorado laid the groundwork for his exit.  Carell’s last episode will air on April 28th.

Rainn Wilson, who plays Dwight K. Schrute,  gave an inside look at how Ferrell got the part, and what viewers can expect, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly:

“He called us up.  He called the producers and said ‘I heard Steve’s leaving and I would like to be a part of his exit some how.  I’d like to be there for it.’ So they were like, ‘Hell yeah!’ I think it will be great because Will’s sense of humor is very much in line with our show’s sense of humor.”

Co-star John Krasinski doesn’t think that Ferrell can fill the shoes of the Emmy award-winning actor; in a recent interview with Parade Magazine, he said:

“”No one can replace [Carell]. That goes for him as an actor, because no one has the sense of humor he does, but also there’s no person who has his incredible positivity and professionalism, and just a really good heart. So we’re losing a friend first and foremost.”

Penn Manor is Fast and Furious

By Blake Wales –

For some people a car is a form of transportation from point A to point B but its a little more than that for some kids at Penn Manor.

Dillon and his Eclipse

These fast tuner cars, as seen in big movie hits such as The Fast and Furious series and even video games like Need for Speed and Forza Motor sports, but these kids are taking these dream car and trying to make them a reality.

Dillon Walker, a senior at Penn Manor, has really put hard work and time into his 2000 Mitsubishi Eclipse. He works all the time and he admits that most of it ends up going towards his car. He has done things such as putting on a new exhaust system, cold air intake, a new sound system and even a head unit. He has also done some external thing to his car as well, he put neons underneath and inside his car, and he has tinted his windows.

“Some kids take their cars way too seriously and spend too much,” Walker said. He feels that some kids think it is a competition at school to see who has the nicest car, but Dillon doesn’t feel that way. He does it just to get a reaction out of people and also because he really likes to make his car better than it was before.

Will and his Jetta GLI

Will Downs a junior at Penn Manor doesn’t have the same amount of money in his car as Dillon but it’s just as cool.

Will’s 2004 VolksWagen Jetta Gli has grey BBS wheels, a cold air intake, and even racing seats. But there are still things that he would still like to do. He wants to chip the engine to make it faster, re-tint  the windows to make them darker, lower his car even more than it is now. He also wants to put in new headlights and add in a diverter valve.

“Basically I like to do anything I can to my car,” Will said when commenting about the looks of his car. But Will doesn’t customize his car to get a reaction out of people like Dillon does, Will sees it more as a hobby and because he saw his older brother Sam always making his car better so he wanted to.

There are a lot of hobbies teens can put their hard-earned cash toward but it seems like their rides give these owners the most satisfaction.

Penn Manor Athletes Excel in their Sports

By Joey Jackson –

Penn Manor winter athletes excel in county, with 5 athletes being nominated to Lancaster Newspaper’s winter sports all-star edition.

Seniors; Coty Johnson, Bobby Rehm, Evan Singleton, and Jess Burkhart and junior Brendan Yarnell were mentioned in today’s paper.

Coty Johnson and Brendan Yarnell brought the bowling team 2 championships, as Coty Johnson was the L-L League singles champion and Brendan Yarnell was the District III singles champion.

Bobby Rehm wrestling in the 2010 AAA PIAA state tournament. Photo Courtesy pennlive.com

Bobbby Rehm finished his Penn Manor wrestling career with a record of 132-37 in the 125-lb weight class, and 49-3 coming in his senior season.  Bobby earned 3 championships this year, winning the L-L League, AAA Sectionals, and District III.  He finished 5th in the AAA PIAA State tournament.

Evan Singleton also had a good senior wrestling season, finishing the season with a record of 38-8 in the 285-lb weight class.

Jess Burkhart was the lone Penn Manor swimmer in today’s paper, Burkhart finished 6th in District III 50 meter freestyle  with a time of 24.61 seconds.

Dan Elliot was also nominated to the 1st team all-section 1 team.  Marc Summy had an honorable mention.