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Daily Stuff for 4-17-03

You know, they always say, when you come in second, you are the first one to lose. And that's what happened with our Scientific Visualization video, dammit! We had actually tied in terms of points with the first place team, and the judges wanted to break the tie, so they looked over our projects, and took ONE POINT off of our notebook for "messiness." IT'S THE VIDEO THAT'S IMPORTANT, NOT THE NOTEBOOK! WHO CARES ABOUT HOW WE MADE THE VIDEO? IT'S THE END RESULT THAT MATTERS! But no, the judges don't take that. They didn't like the fact that all our page protectors were different kinds, the notebook had no cover page, and it was in the wrong order. They're missing the forest for the trees. Argh, we're still going to nationals for it though, if nationals isn't too ridiculously expensive.

Sorry for going forever without an update! I've been away for a while with TSA and all kinds of catching up that I've had to do. But I'm getting my act back together now. The TSA competition rocked (if you can call it a competition). Maybe a better description is a 3 day party with some formal meetings. The Seven Springs Resort was awesome. They had a pool, arcade, bowling alley, hot tubs, the works. I'm glad we brought lots of our own sodas though, everything there that wasn't included in the trip cost was insanely expensive. A single can of soda cost 2 bucks! The food was great. Every meal was a full buffet, and breakfast was the best of all. All you can eat Belgian waffles, custom made eggs, and donuts. And sausage and fruit and danishes and all that other good stuff on the side.

I'll be long winded because I haven't updated in so long. When we got there, we were setting up the Dolby Digital speakers I had brought, along with my computer. I was staying in a room with Walter, and our room was becoming the whole center of the trip, as the computer network, games, projecter, and surround speakers were all located in there. That is, until we realized I had forgotten two rather critical things. First off, I forgot to remind Mr. Vernon to bring a monitor for my computer, which made it a bit difficult to use. But we had a projecter in the room so we hooked the computer up to that. Next, and this we couldn't find a solution to, I had forgotten the power cable for the speakers I had brought. Since Creative wants to make so much money, they had given it a non-standard cable that we could not take from anywhere but another Creative speaker set, and we weren't about to drive 4 hours and go get it. So, we had to use dinky speakers for the whole trip. ARGH!! As if that wasn't enough, Mr. Vernon barges in and takes the projecter away, claiming that "the bulb will burn out." Grrrr... All this did not go well with the fact that I was severly loaded with caffeine, so I turned into a bit of a nervous wreck for the first day.

After that, though, I didn't have any more caffeine, so I was pretty much fine. We played a lot of games of Starcraft, UT, and all kinds of other games of the wireless network we set up. Of course, I was the undefeated Starcraft champion. We were going to have a big Starcraft game the first night, but we realized that we had left the Starcraft CD in Alex's room, and we needed the CD to play, whereas he didn't. We planned to have Walter grab the CD on the way to Mr. Vernon's room, since it was past curfew, but Walter needed to give Vernon something. So we called Alex and told him to slide the CD out just a little bit. Instead, Alex just throws it out into the middle of the hall, and it lands right under Vernon's and another advisor's feet. They were already looking for a reason to bust us, and then Alex just drops it right under their feet! Needless to say, the games were cancelled for a day and a half until we could sneak and get the CD back.

As for the actual events I was in, well, I placed 3rd in Desktop Publishing, 3rd in Computer Systems Troubleshooting, and 2nd in Scientific Visualization (argh!). I also got 4th in CAD Animation, but you don't get trophies for 4th place. I screwed myself over a bit in that event, as I misread the instructions for the apartment I had to model as saying "do not add furnishings" when it actually said "do add furnishings." This is a rather bad thing to realize 20 minutes before you need to show the judges your animation. I could have still crushed the competition by opening up this massive archive of 3d Studio models and meshes I had on my computer, but I didn't want to be a cheap ass, so I took fourth place. These places are pretty good considering that there were 3000 kids at the conference, and about 30 - 40 were in each event (there were about 70 events). I would have done well in this lame report writing event I was in as well, except that the judges saw me making my notecards at the event, and I lost major points for that.

One thing that annoyed me especially was the fact that all my events happened to come on Thursday. This was the case with some of the other members of my group as well. We had to go to our events, all dressed up, while everyone else on the team was going bowling and having fun! ARGH! I'm going to upload some pictures from the competition once I decide to stop being lazy. Anyhow, Friday was just kind of my nothing day, because I just played Starcraft and swam and all that kind of crap all day until the dance that night. The dance was kind of lame. You could tell it was a TSA dance because all the guys wanted to seem like hotshot break dancers even though they all actually sucked at it. But I'm not much better, so who am I to be talking. They were selling these cool flashing star things, so I bought one of those. Then Saturday was the awards ceremony, and after that, onward to home.

And back to all the other crap I have to do now as makeup! ARGH! SOOO MUCH HOMEWORK!! I'm still working on it. And I also have to prepare for all these piano competitions now, so it might be a bit before another update again. I will upload pictures and all that good stuff as soon as I can, but until then, Elemental out.

~elemental~

10 Things In Golf That Sound Dirty
1. Look at the size of his putter.
2. Oh, dang, my shaft's all bent.
3. You really wacked the hell out of that sucker.
4. After 18 holes I can barely walk.
5. My hands are so sweaty I can't get a good grip.
6. Lift your head and spread your legs.
7. You have a nice stroke, but your follow through leaves a lot to be desired.
8. Just turn your back and drop it.
9. Hold up. I've got to wash my balls.
10. Damn, I missed the hole again.

Hitoshi

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.
Robert Frost (1874 - 1963)

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