Friday, January 28, 2005

Chedder Bob

Tennis is getting ready to start up and I have been seeing a bunch of teammates from when I was a freshman. I don't think I'll have enough time for tennis this year however because I have so much going on. It has been back to school and a new semester has started. I had all A's 1st semester, athough I had and A- in physics and calculas (which was bumped up from a B). Already I'm staying up late scrambling to finish my homework. Mainly the research papers and forms have been extremely time consuming and since they were due today, I stayed after school for over an hour trying to finish it up. I got as close to done as I'm ever going to be. I hadn't studied for spanish or physics, and I pulled a 24 out 25 in spanish. And Physics didn't seem too hard (hopefully I got a B). The church youth group website is almost fully up, and I've been working on getting Charter Business. Down at KAMSC there has been a bunch of free stuff to take, and Jordan found one of the apple II's that was signed by Woz. It is kinda funny about that. If stuff is still there monday I'll be taking some stuff...

Sunday, January 23, 2005

Free Weekend

It's not everyday that I get a free weekend, but it just so happened that I got a break off of school due to exams. Anyways, with my free time on Saturday I was planning to get together with my friends and doing some filming, but since we recieved so much snow, well, driving conditions were just bad. That didn't stop me from heading on up to Timber Ridge to go skiing. I hadn't been skiing for about 1 year. It was quite fun though. It didn't last long, since it was only 9F degrees, and with a bunch of wind, the weather was plain cold. I almost felt like I froze. That's besides the point though...Today I took a nice long 3 hour nap which felt soo good because of my average of 4 hours of sleep during the school week. So glad that we get one more day! I was waiting for a break from school work for a long time (Since my Christmas break was basically doing homework). I made another video blog of my random moments and I joined http://vidblogs.com which allows people to watch the videos that I create, and if you are one of those people please leave comments on them :)

Friday, January 21, 2005

Ray Bradbury Review

Ray Fahrenheit 451

My sophomore year of high school I had to read Fahrenheit 451 for english. We had to read a banned book, and since I didn't really want to read books that were soley based on drugs, sex, or excessive language, I choose Fahrenheit 451. I found it fairly intriguing, but since it was an assignment, I didn't see much in it (you know how that goes). This past day while shelving the science fiction books, I noticed a bunch of his books (even though Fahrenheit 451 is his only science fiction book, right after that I shelved the DVD of Fahrenheit 451. Since I have a break from school I decided to pick it up and watch it. Watching it about a year after reading has put a different view on it for me. I found it very ironic that Montag starts to believe that the books are the truth and life, which are claimed to bring about pain and disgust. As to the law in the book where the books where burned so that everyone could be happy and live a pleasing life with a life addicted to the tv on the wall (eh doesn't that sound familiar?). Of course it has a great deal about censorship. To me, the book over-exagerates by burning everything, limiting all knowledge except for what the "higher" authorities should give us. By this exaggeration, it attempts to say that we have to make precise precautions on what we do limit. Fahrenheit 451 has a very good and unique story and message. Ray Bradbury's excellent work with this books has striked an interest in me to read some of his other works (that I'm going to start working on). But that's enough for now, time for bed.

Thursday, January 20, 2005

Brownie Break

Finally exams are all over...Although Monday will probably the best day this week. The physics final was Tuesday, so David, Ben, Tom, and myself had a study group (Ryan came for a little bit). We had a little too much fun. Instead of studying, why not have a Rubik's cube competition? The Hutchison Open, the first (impromptu) competition for the Kamsc Rubik's Cube Clube [RCC]. Ben took an easy win. Hanley took second, and I wasn't too far behind (maybe I should have practiced a little bit more, then it would have been neck and neck between the two of us). Tom came in fourth, but had a second place in the last round. The four of us are the first 'ranking' members of the RCC. Next morning, I had to rush through my english exam and my spanish exam to get to physics due to the exam time overlaps. However, getting down to Kamsc I find out that our exam didn't start 'til 12, 30 minutes later than I expected. Oh-well, the physics exam went okay, not as well as I hoped but, alright none the less. Immediately afterwards, I did a retake on one of my math quizzes thanks to Mr. Milka. I got 50% the first time round because I didn't know how to do half the problems (actually I guessed on the optimization problems) and hopefully it will bring my grade up to and A or at least a B+. After school I slept and played Literati with my buddies of course. This morning (well I guess yesterday), I took my economics exam which I didn't study for and feel decent about it. Anyways, the best part now is that I don't have school until next Tuesday. I ate lunch at Pizza Hut, slept, finished the Hutchison Open video, and worked on the church youth group's website. I fooled around with my IIS server which is always fun to do. And now I'm going to bed...

Friday, January 14, 2005

What the Fog?

Two days ago there was so much fog it was nearly impossible to see. Standing from my drive way, I couldn't see anything past the "No Outlet" sign at the end of our street which isn't very far away. I couldn't even tell that there were trees just beyond that because it was so foggy. Besides the point, I'm finally getting time to write because of (you guessed it) school. Well actually I didn't study for my Computer Science exam. It wasn't to hard and I didn't recieve anything less than a B. Since it was a short exam, Hanley, Jordon, Ben, Tom, and myself played Scwabble on yahoo games (okay so it is really scrabble, but is called Literati on yahoo). I was in last the whole game and Hanley and Jordon where neck and neck about 20 to 30 points more than me. Shoutrouw announced that he needs to leave so we needed to finish up. I found out the white pieces were wilds and I put down a 7 letter word with a 3x the word multiplier, I pulled of a 65 point word and the game ended because I had won. I was suprised, extremely suprised because I didn't expect to do well (it probably will only happen once in my life time that I win scrabble). At home I studied and studied and studied for my math exam that I took to day. I also had to finish reading Scarlet Song. That book has one crazy ending let me warn you, but that book is soo much easier to read than Anna Karenina. I took an english quiz over the book and probably failed it, walked to Spanish, recieved a horrible grade on my entrevista (that I didn't prepare for) 25/30, and did absolutly nothing in Economics. Took the math exam and feel that I did fairly well except I didn't get 4 problems, (well there were only like 20 problems though). Hopfully no one else could do those 4 problems either (ya right). I'm done talking now, wait no, I took a nice long nap after school, now I'm done. Good night....

Monday, January 10, 2005

Another grade bites the dust

Over half my teachers were gone today. All of the teachers that I needed to ask questions of were the ones gone too. Spanish I have a bunch of questions on vocabulario de mi topicó, and math (majorly) specially since I found out we had a quiz today. I only new how to do one problem. I guessed on 2 others and left 3 blank because I had no suckalicious clue. Milka better be there tomorrow and hopefully I'll be able to retake that quiz or something because it was not explained to me but knowing Milka, my grade will suffer and probably go down the hole...The physics test didn't go too badly although I definitely didn't get an A or probably even a B on it. But hey, how suckalicious am I?

Saturday, January 08, 2005

Bpa

Missing a day of school to goto bed at 1am and wake up at 4:30 am I guess was worth it. I missed a physics test which I was kinda disappointed at missing, but that leaves me basically Sunday to study at least. With exams coming up it is going to be extremely busy. Anyways about the BPA competition. Driving to Grand Rapids was so hot on the bus with all the people packed in (Portage Central came on same bus as us). Getting there we were extremely rushed because I only had 40 minutes before my C++ event began. I ate a Krispy Kreme doughnut and was off. I was so confused on what exactly we were suppose to do, where to go, etc... but I got to the room fine, and found out that they where using Visual Studio .net, not 6.0, so luckily the kid next to me Steve, knew what he was doing and I copied him on setting up the project :) I then realized that I haven't programmed in C++ since, like sometime around Thanksgiving, or whenever the last Usaco competition was. We had 1 hour and 15 minutes to answer 30 multiple choice problems and program a simple program. The multiple choice was fine, the program, whoa, I should have practiced writing in C++ before I went. I kept on messing up all my syntax which caused me not to even finish the program. Thank goodness the person next to me didn't get his to print the right answer either (reassuring but still I felt like a complete idiot). After that, I took my info tech concepts test. It had most of the exact same questions as the practice. And if I had reviewed the practice, I could have aced it easily. But guess what I watched Who's Line is it anyways? instead [wliia?]. I ate lunch after it, and after lunch Jon and I had to give a presentation of the website. We didn't practice it at all, only kinda went over what we should talk about. It went very smooth though and I felt fairly good about it. Then I watched Napoleon dynamite. Somehow I must have just missed the plot because other then a couple lines, I didn't follow it or find it funny. They also threw a dance. Why? because the student population there was...ummm....fairly uneducated. It should get better as the ignorant people start to lose the competitions. Afterwards, there were the awards...oh wow, sitting, sitting, sitting....wait, "C++", my name is called for one of the finalists. Of course as I figured, a whopping 3rd place (it is practically an insult). And then I had to wait till the very very end for the website results. I predicted that it would be last and that we would come in second place. I was right about the event being last. Went up on stage, Thrid place announced, not us...second place announced, portage northern...bummer. I was right, but then again I realized that I did 90% all Sunday night and monday morning. Oh well, I still made it to states and the website will be totally tweaked and hopfully much better and I will try and practice some C++. Coming home I watched Oceans 11 and practically fell asleep. Upon arriving at my house I laid down for a nap, set my cell phone alarm for 9:50pm for wliia? and I woke up and 2am and then decided to just fall asleep again because I had to work all day starting at 8. bpa, what is it?, a competition that has a number of very stupid events, but then again it has some practical events, and you might as well not show up if you aren't dressed "properly". Hyden will tell you about that...I have to study...(as always)

Wednesday, January 05, 2005

Rob, You Rock My Socks!

Doing homework is a big pain and frustrating. This past week has been so hectic because of the Huskie Den website. Well not really the website, but Godaddy's fault for crashing and causing my url not to work properly and therefore my website was as good as none. After a day or so, I was finally able to get them to fix it. Might have gone quicker if I had of called godaddy instead of email but I still have a life (okay so I just had to work at the lib and do homework) but that didn't leave enough time to stay on the phone for tech support. I should talk about my Christmas break but I won't do that now because I'm getting to the good part. (yea there is some kind of good part in my life). School. Well, maybe not school itself but being there with all my buddies and joking around get's me through the day. Driving people to kamsc is probably one of the high points of they day. If I were to drive alone I probably would get all nervious about what's going on in my kamsc classes. With Hyden and Rupal (sometimes another) it's relaxing driving down to kamsc. This school year has been better than freshman and sophmore (except for doing the research paper, and Sinclair's math class last year), except for this year, I keep on staying up 'til 2am or another extremely late (or early depending which way you look at it). Now that i'm doing bad enough that the exams count, I need to get studying and doing homework because they are coming up next week. Looking forward to Friday at the BPA competition in Grand Rapids, I'm probably not going to do well but at least I'll have fun!

"Rob, you rock my socks!"
"Well then I'm glad your socks need 'a rockin'!"