Delay me a day and I'll take two Weeks

Although I suppose this is the first any of you have heard of any delay. To be honest, I was actually going to post this the Monday before Thanksgiving, but due to weather (which I shall get to later), I was forced to postpone it. Due to forgetfulness, I forgot to update earlier this week. Eventually, I decided I would just get it done today even though the quarter ends on Wednesday and it might make more sense to do it then. I couldn't wait though, I anticipate this being a longer post, so I'm going to refrain from talking about my classes in it. I will post next Wednesday or Thursday, after the quarter has finished. In that post, I'll talk about my final thoughts on classes I took. I'll get into the post now and hopefully that will leave me with more to say at the end, leaving for a less awkward signoff than usual.

Campus Life:
It's been going pretty well here. I've found places that I hang out regularly, so I've gotten pretty easy to find if one knows where to look. I've continued getting to know people around campus, though most of those people are on the frisbee team. I've hung out with my friend that is in the philosophy class with me more often. We went to a Vietnamese place recently (whoaaahh the picky eater ate there!) which was pretty good. Aside from that, I've been doing homework or exercising in my downtime after classes and before I leave each day.

I also found out that I am in an incredibly small major. There are about 8,000 people in the entire school. I attend Albers, the school of business and economics. I think business is the largest major in the whole university, but I'm not sure. It also happens to be paired with one of the smallest, economics. They list the school as Albers School of Business and Economics, but given the amount of econ majors there are (54), I'm surprised they even bother to mention economics when other majors get lumped into "School of Fine Arts" or "School of Science" and all that. Recently, an email was sent out to all econ majors. Usually when you get an email like that, it is sent to a group that might be named something like "Albers Econ Majors." In this case, there was no group. There are so few of us, they just list all our names when they need to email us. Despite that small number of econ majors, I somehow still get picked out as one by people that I meet. When people guess my major when they're first meeting me, most of the time they guess econ correctly. I don't understand why people go to that small of a major as their first guess for anyone, maybe I just have some strange mannerisms of an economist or something. It is an interesting phenomenon.

Frisbee:
Frisbee has been going both good and bad. I've been doing well at practice showing off my ability to play, which got me invited to one of the two tournaments we went to (the one that required an invitation). Two weekends before Thanksgiving, our team attended Sundodger. It was my first one, but I had played on the Burlington fields before back at Spring Reign, so it wasn't too unfamilliar. We even played our games on one of the fields we played on for Shorewood (I only remember because it was the one I had a great catch on). For Sundodger, it was open to any people on the team that wanted to come. We were able to get 24 guys on Saturday and 21 on Sunday as well as 10 girls both days for their own team. Of the guys team, half had never played in a tournament before (I counted Spring Reign even though it had been a long time) and almost just as many people had never played ultimate before the school year began. Unfortunately, we were pitted against U Montana (who were really good surprisingly), U Vic (there are no bad Canadian teams), and the UW A team. I ran into Steven who was playing for Eastern on Saturday, that was pretty cool. We lost all our games, but managed to do pretty well. After we played four games on Saturday, I came back to another game, but this time with UWB. We won that game, so it was a nice change of pace from losing. On Sunday, it was bracket play. We won our first game against University of the Pacific, then lost to Eastern. The Eastern game was really fun because it was so close and I was playing against people I had played with the night before (a lot of the guys on Eastern were staying with Zack and they came to play with UWB that night). After that, we had one more game that we decided would be for the people that didn't get to play much. Even though I had played a sufficient amount, me and one other guy that had played just as much decided to stay with the newer guys to help them out and get some experience. The captains and other guys that had gotten a lot of playtime went to cheer on the girls. We lost our game of course since it was the rookie game more or less, but it was good to get some practice for the newer guys.

The weekend after, we had our other tournament down in Eugene, Oregon called OMG. For that, the top 16 players from SU were invited (myself included obviously). Of those 16, only 11 of us wound up going, which was fine. We had to cram into one 12-seat van for a 5 hour ride though with 12 people (our coach came). In this tournament, there was a higher level of play and I was on the low end of the top 16, so I was not up at that level. Due to that intimidation, I made some mistakes, but generally had some good play. On the second day, the weather was bad and I was not playing well. On top of that, I had really hurt my knees and couldn't run hardly. We did win a game though and had a lot of other close losses, so it could have been better, but not a terrible weekend. On the Saturday night, the team had a party which was kind of interesting. I stuck around in the room, but did not consume alcohol due to my bet. I made the excuse that I was doing homework (which was not entirely false) and just generally observed what happened. One guy took up the challenge of doing a disc chug (four beers fit into a disc, you have to drink it as quickly as possible). He made it to the end, but barely. His puke unfortunately did not make it to the toilet. It was a fun weekend overall. I found my offense was rather lacking both weekends. I ended them with 0 interceptions, but a handfull of forced turnovers. I was proud of my defensive play however. I was especially happy that between 12 games in 2 weekends, there were only 5 instances where the person I was marking caught the disc for the point.

This week, practice started up again. I thought my knees healed, but that was incorrect, they are now just as bad again. I'm looking forward to having time off so I can let them heal up. We were practicing forehand throws only during scrimmage on Wednesday which was interesting because we were supposed to force forehand on everyone, but everyone kept forgetting that I was left handed. I made some pretty silly looking forehands trying to throw like that, but a lot of them worked. I had to literally hug my defender on one throw to get it around him the right way. I was intimidated by how poorly I performed during the first part of practice, but by the end, I was doing well again. I even ended the scrimmage with a hammer for the win, so that was pretty nice. Today, I was doing even better. I also found out that I have some sweet dance moves (referring to my flailing that I do when I am trying to fake out a defender).

Now let's move to something everyone understands!

Registration:

At SCC, registration was a simple process. One would simply get a schedule form, fill it out ahead of time, then wait in a 20 minute or so line on the day of registration in order to get into the classes they wanted. If one was not motivated to wait in line on the first day, they would risk not getting into maybe one or two of the classes. In short, it favored the motivated and I liked that. At Seattle U, it is done all online. Well, I should refine that, it's done all online if you happen to get selected to register on the first day. If you don't, then chances are one or more of you classes will be filled at which point you have to go in person to the office for your school and fill out a bunch of forms before embarking on a small fetchquest to get (a chance at getting) permission to enter that class. They claim registration goes in order of credits earned, but I have my doubts as it seemed people with similar standings to mine were registering days ahead of me. Perhaps they just really hate transfer students and that's why I got to register in one of the last couple time slots.

Not knowing the pain I was about to go through, I happily went to search for and register for my classes that I had selected earlier. Unfortunately, all three of the classes had been filled. Disappointed, I checked my three backups; all three of those were full too. Now concerned, I checked my two remaining double backup classes that I didn't think I would need to use. Both were full. After a large "FFFFFUUUUU," I sent out some emails to my advisor, the office of the registrar, and the professor of the micro class I really wanted to get into. Fortunately I emailed all three because each one only gave me a small piece of the puzzle. If I had only emailed one of them, who knows how lost I would have been. I was able to find out that basically, to get into my classes, I would need to embark on a huge fetch quest.

So the next day I was on campus (Friday unfortunately), I went to the office in the business and econ school which I am enrolled in. It didn't open for another half hour, so I had to kill some time to wait for it to open up. When it finally opened, the guy manning the front desk was kind of snarky, so I avoided asking him too many questions. I did manage to find that to get into the closed classes, one must fill out a closed class registration form. To add to the annoyance, each form only covers one class, so in my case, I had to fill out three. Even better, for each class I don't get into, it would be one more. With my enchanted papers that gave signatures meaning, I had to head out to find a place to print my education plan which details credits I've earned and credits I need. I decided first to head over to the school of Theology and Ministry for some information since one of the classes I needed was a Theology class. Upon arriving there, I met the man at the front desk.

Me: Hi, I'm trying to get into a closed Theology class. I'm an econ major, so do I get a form from my school or from here?

Guy: Well actually for that, you want a form from the school of Theology and Religious Studies.

Me: *Blank stare*

Guy: This is the school of Theology and Ministry

Me: *Continued blank stare*

Guy: It's in the 2nd floor of the Casey building.

Confused still, I headed off to the Casey building to get the information I so desperately sought. Upon arriving in that office, I was informed by a sign that they don't handle that type of problem there and that I would need to go downstairs to the department of Arts and Sciences. I went down there to see the people and they were about to send me to yet another place when they realized I was talking about a core class and they could help me there. I scheduled a walk in advising session and waited about five minutes. After five minutes had passed, I got called to the desk where they had just realized I was an Economics major and as such, I would need to go to Student Enrollment Services way across campus.

I headed off yet again in search of a simple answer. When I arrived at the entrance to the services area, I noticed they were closed and wouldn't open until right before my first class of the day. The office of the registrar was right down the hall, but I couldn't see anyone staffing that either, so I gave up on the whole thing. I decided to go back to Pigott (home of Albers, the school of business and economics) to print out my education plan and turn in the two forms that I knew I could turn in there. To print out the plan, I went to the computer lab for the first time. Upon entering for the first time, I was greeted by a familiar voice. It was my friend from econ and frisbee. I guess he works in the computer lab. He helped me figure out how to print (there are about 50 printers you have to choose from and the nomenclature is somewhat confusing). Each education plan is 4 pages long and I had to print three copies. At first, I felt guilty, but then I thought about the pain that this terrible registration process had caused me and that helped the guilt go away. With plans and forms finally in hand, I went to the front desk again to turn them in. The guy was much happier this time around (someone must have brought him some coffee or something). Since he was in a good mood, I decided to ask him about how to get into that pesky theology class. He told me that all I had to do was schedule a walk in advising session in which an advisor would help me register. Another great "FFFFFUUUUU" moment.

 

I got into the session pretty quickly (they really mean walk in). The advisor said I would not be able to get into the class I wanted and asked if I was interested in any other theology classes. I told her I was interested in the kind that were offered on the days I hope my other classes will be on. She managed to find me "Theology of Peace," not very interesting sounding and it's another 7:45 class that runs two hours, but it was offered on the days I needed, so I took it without a second thought.

 
Eventually, things sort of worked out. I was told it would take 3 weeks to process my applications, but it only wound up taking two, so that was nice. I was able to sort it all out without coming to school during the break. A spot actually opened up in the Theology class I wanted, but I decided Theology of Peace sounded better (the other one actually started to sound super lame). I got into one of my classes, but not Micro which I really wanted. Instead of filling out a form to get into a class I more urgently needed, I decided to just take a general elective so I'm going to take Law, Politics, and Society. It's required that you be a legal studies specialization for it, but I petitioned the teacher and told her about my plans for law school and she was totally fine with it. I have a feeling I'm going to like that class.


 
Other stuff:

I guess first off, I'll talk about my possible narcolepsy. I'm more suspicious that it is actually that now because I recently experienced a couple more of the "signs" that I had previously never though I had experienced. Once I experienced them again, I realized that I had indeed had that happen before. What I'm referencing here is a loss of ability to move. I wake up from sleeping and I still have some lingering sleep paralysis. In the most recent instance, it happened to my arm. It felt like it was asleep, but I wouldn't feel it tingle unless I moved it. I could not move the arm though unless I moved it using my other arm. Eventually I think I should go in for a sleep evaluation or something and try to discover a way to combat this. For now though, it's not causing a problem. In fact, I find the more often I fall asleep in a class, the better grade I get in that class. Perhaps there is some merit to the idea of listening to tapes while you sleep to gain information.


 
In videogames, I've been playing a lot more Starcraft 2 now. Keir and I are doing some 2v2s and it's going pretty well. We're improving to say the least. I haven't played much Trackmania lately due to my increased playing of SC2.


 
I also started using Goozex again. I randomly checked the other day and one of the games I had listed as an offer since the day I first joined was finally requested. In my excitement, I decided to trade away another few games. The next day before I was going to send them out, another game I had offered since my first day as a member got requested. In total, I have 7 games going out this weekend for a total of 1300 points. That means I'll be able to get a new game if I want. I plan to sit on the points for a bit though as I am still playing several games in my library and I anticipate getting a couple more soon. I'll let the values of games on Goozex go down so I can get more for my points.


 
The last thing on my list of things to get to is Thanksgiving. We went to Sunriver (Central Oregon) for the third year in a row with mom's family. Grandma did not come this year and one of my cousins and her husband did not either. The way over and back were slow going due to icy road conditions. On the way there, it was a good 8 hours of driving that I did because I don't trust the rest of my family to drive us safely through hazardous road conditions (I don't feel safe with them and bare in mind, I suspect I have narcolepsy!). We had a good few days there. Kathryn and I used icicles to unicorn our car (pictures to come) which got us many looks from people as we drove past. The day after Thanksgiving, some of us did the Turkey trot which is a 3 mile run. For the first time in my life in a timed race, I ran sub-10 minute miles. I finished the 3 miles in 27 minutes and got second place for my age group. I was pretty happy with that. I didn't get a ribbon though because I cheaped out and signed up to walk instead of run (it was less than half the price). I was the first walker to come across the finish line though and I'm sure I also beat about half the running crowd. I lost to my cousin who is good at running by only 5 minutes so I was pretty proud of that. That day, we also went sledding. My 2 year old second cousin got really into it and my cousin and I took some turns taking him down some of the less bumpy sled runs. He really enjoyed it. Coming back only took about 6 hours and it was significantly clearer than on the way there, which was nice. I still drove the entire way and it was nice because everyone was sleeping a lot of the way.


 
Ok that's pretty much everything I planned to cover here. I'm looking forward to seeing most or perhaps all of you this break. Unless your name is Keir, we have not talked as much as we should during this quarter, but that is partly/mostly my fault in many cases. Actually, if your name is Keir, we still have not talked enough. We should play SC2 right now. In case you're not getting it, that's what I'm going to go do right now. How was that for avoiding an awkward signoff? Fail.


 
Peace out.

Getting extra free time to make posts

Or at least I am today. My econ teacher failed to show up, so we got the day off. It is actually frustrating though and I'll get to it later when I mention my classes. On another note, whoaaahh it's November! Anyone out there doing No-Shave November? I won't be this year since I decided last year would be my last time ever. If you want to see the pictures, I'm happy to show you them, but I don't want to post them to the blog. To sum it up, I'm not confident in my ability to grow facial hair beyond what I currently have. My past couple of weeks have been pretty eventful and hopefully I'll be able to remember most of the things that have happened.

Classes:
Classes generally are not getting worse. The exception to that is Macro where the professor has gotten more frustrating to learn from as the quarter progresses. She has been teaching for that magic amount of time where she thinks her curriculum is flawless and she won't deviate from it at all. It's causing some problems for people in the class. She is also frequently tardy to class and is bad about procrastinating. Last Monday, we had our big midterm. Only 5 people had enough time to finish every question on the exam. She promised our tests back on Wednesday, failed to deliver, then promised them on Friday. On Friday, she blamed her not finished grading on "the bottom 25% of the quizzes where the answers were confusing to grade." She then did not show up today, which is why I'm making this post. I hope I did well on the exam because it almost sounds like she did not curve it. Perhaps she did though and someone just aced it. That's the thing about curving I suppose, it makes a huge bastard out of the top performer in the class.

Aside from that, I'm getting to know people more in my classes. I've been chatting before class (and making remarks during class) with the girl that sits on the other side of me now. The area where I sit in macro has become closer and all the people seem pretty cool. As for Philosophy, I made a new friend (my first facebook friend at SU!!!) and we hang out before class usually since we both have a half hour break. In math, I have made a friend I suppose because he always walks in when he sees me in an opera booth. He just strikes up a conversation no matter what I'm doing, sits down and does some reading for about 20 minutes, then awkwardly leaves. I don't know his name, but it's just kind of odd. He seems nice though. Philosophy and Math are going well, but I find myself falling asleep in them frequently, bringing me to my next point.

Possible Sleep Disorder:
Falling asleep has now become a regular problem for me. It began back in high school, must have gotten worse at SCC, and now is pretty bad. The thing was at SCC, I had Jazz Band during the time which I normally get sleepy, so I was kept awake pretty effectively by standing and playing an instrument. I do not have that luxury here and since all the classrooms are kept warm, it is hard for me to stay awake most of the time. Of course the professors are very nice about it (probably since I don't seem to snore (knock on wood)). One day in my math class, someone asked a question and then I fell asleep. I drifted in and out of sleep the entire two hours and woke up about 10 minutes before class ended. The professor was answering the question that was asked at the beginning of class. I leaned over to my friend next to me to ask what was going on and he just said "You picked a good day to sleep, he just spent two hours getting to an answer that took 5 minutes." Of course, not all the days are so lucky. I manage to wake myself up to scribble down notes I miss, but I don't really get the lecture part. Oddly enough, it seems that the more I fall asleep in a class, the better I am doing in it this quarter. Anyway, I looked up sleeping disorders on WebMD and after looking around a bit, I think the one I matched up with most was narcolepsy. It actually matched me pretty well, so now I'm wondering what's going on there. Of course if there were a cheap and relatively non-time consuming way to test myself for this, I would do it. For now though, it seems I would have to visit a sleep center, which is something I don't have an interest in doing. I'll just try to schedule my classes differently next quarter.

Jazz Band:
I should have put this in classes, but I forgot. It's going pretty well. I found out the instructor is actually kind of a big deal in the Seattle area, here is his wikipedia page(yeah, that big of a deal). He looks a little bit and sounds a lot of a bit like James Earl Jones, which is pretty awesome. Unfortunately there are still only two trumpets in the band, but I think we might eventually get a third or something. For now, the other guy is pretty cool.

Frisbee:
Frisbee is going quite well. I recently got invited to join the team at a second tournament that is the weekend after Sundodger. Sundodger is the one that everyone on the team is invited to, but the second one (OMG) is in Eugene, Oregon; for that they only take the top 16. Since I was invited, that means my effort in practices has been noticed, which was nice to see. Last Monday, we had a particularly interesting practice. It was raining really hard so at a point when the few of us that were there were completely soaked, we decided to do layout practices. It went pretty well. I didn't get any spectacular layouts (none for offense) because I was handling the whole time, but I did get a couple half-assed layout D's.

Life on Campus:
As I said earlier, I'm making a couple more friends here and there that I occasionally talk to. Aside from that though, I have found places to hide on campus where I can get homework done uninterrupted. There are small closets in the library on floors that are rarely visited by other people, so I like to hide in there when the opera seats are occupied or when I need to watch videos online for macro. Having time to get the homework done each day is nice because then I get to enjoy my days off more.

Life off Campus:
I've beaten the SC2 campaign on Brutal now, so in between working on remaining achievements, I find myself going into multiplayer more. Steven somehow has the infinite patience to teach me sotis when I'm online. Eventually I'll become halfway competent at it. I also have started doing 1v1s in hopes to beat Keir's bronze placement. I should be on track for that so far. I've only got two under my belt right now. I lost my first match to a gold guy who said that if I kept playing the way I did, I should at least make gold. He corrected me on a unit matchup that was the reason I lost, which was really cool of him. The second game was also against a gold player, but I stomped him (I was playing Terran that time though, it's hardly fair). I've also been playing Trackmania here and there and just beating times. Other things I do like horn lessons and visiting grandpa are the same as they've always been.

UWB frisbee has been going well too. We just had our last games of the regular season on Saturday in a double header. We won the first one, but lost the second one. More girls (and more people in general) have been coming to games, which has been really nice. Of course, none of them actually go to UWB, but I don't mind because they're all pretty nice and generally good at frisbee.

I think I generally covered everything there. I'm kind of hurriedly writing this during my break and I have to get going here to get to my next class, so if there is any confusion on what I wrote up there or if you just want to say hi, go ahead and message me, I'm always on gchat. Until later, peace out.

Campus Pics Below

Sorry about not posting on Wednesday or Monday, I forgot. It's been a busy week here and I'm trying to make sure I get big assignments out of the way so I can study for tests. On top of that, all my commitments are in full swing now and that has been keeping me busy. Since the time between now and my last post has been rather busy, I will try to hold myself to posting on November 1st so I can get in all my good stories. Now like I have said in the title, pictures of my life on campus follow this post, so enjoy. I'll post again next month.

The Square and Casey Building

 This is out in the middle-ish of campus. I like the look of it and so do a lot of other people (as evidenced by how many people usually sit there). There is nobody there in this picture because it was taken at 7:30am.

 This is inside the Casey Building which houses the Philosophy department. The ground floor is set up with a podium and a semicircle. No doubt many great philosophical discussions have occurred and will occur here.

This is the staircase in the middle of the building. I like it because it's right in the middle of the building and it gives a cool look to the interior. Unfortunately, there was little reason for me to come to this building as it is only an office building. I did enjoy the seldom used bathrooms though (now not needed thanks to one I found that I mention in the following post).

The hideaway at Lemineux Library

 They recently redid their library here at Seattle U making it very modern and very awesome at the same time. Up on the top floor is an area that is not frequently in use by anyone other than myself. It has days where it is fairly busy and I generally don't go up there, but when it is empty, it is a great place to get away.

 Fortunately, the only elevator that goes to this floor has regular issues, so until they fix it, there will be some days where the place is deserted (since you have to go up a lot of stairs to get up there). Out this window you can see Logan field (the softball half of it at least) where Throbot practices on Mondays and Fridays.

 I call this hangout spot "heaven" not because it has some divine property, but because it is the highest spot one can be on campus (without being allowed on the roof of the building).

The best part about this area? There is a huge single user bathroom on the floor. I don't know how to feel about how excited I got when I saw this, but you have to admit, a place on a college campus with a frequently vacant single user bathroom that anyone can use? That's pretty excellent.

Pigott and the Math/Science Building

 On the third floor of Pigott, they have these little balconies where you can sit around and work. They're separated from the adjacent hallway by a wall, but they are open to the main area of the building. Because of that, I refer to them as the opera seats as they are somewhat similar to those. This remains my favorite place to hang out on campus as once you enter one, it seems that people are reluctant to come in with you even though there is room for more than one person. Unfortunately, there are only three so it takes a bit of luck to get one in the afternoons. I am making these posts from one of these.

 This is a huge 2 story Chahule (sp?) piece in the main area of Pigott. To the left on the upper level are the opera seats I previously mentioned. Pigott is my home building and I must say, I lucked out. It is not as pretty as the Sullivan Building (law building), but it is definitely the best building on campus for places to sit undisturbed.

This is the Math/Sciences building. The hallway in this picture is actually underground and those skylights are just coming up from a garden that is on the 'roof' of the building. This building is always very quiet, I rarely see other people in it. I would spend more time there, but the seating situation is horrible. Yes there are plenty of benches, but they are not great when you want to be doing a lot of studying/homework and on top of that, they aren't comfortable.

Whoaahhh, I'm back baby!

Well if it isn't the ol' blog. I know you've been missing me around these parts, some of you readers have resorted to actually facebooking/IMing me no doubt desperately looking for updates on my life since I was not making posts to this blog. The truth is, I mean to post a couple of weeks ago. My classes only meet three times a week, so I wanted to have a couple weeks with them before I talked about them. When I was going to make that post though, I saw a sign for a club I wanted to join (more on that later) which caused delays to my posting because I really wanted to have tried each extracurricular activity I was planning on doing at least once. Now that I have done just that, it is time to fill you all in on what has been happening at the new school. Now in the interest of keeping this post as short as possible, I'm going to omit some anecdotes that I do want to eventually get to. I am going to post those at a later time (most likely Monday or Wednesday) and they will be accompanied by....PICTURES!!!! Also note that besides that post of a few pictures, I will not be updating with a wordy post until sometime in mid-November so if this post gets too long at any point, just pick it up at a later time. You will have plenty of time to finish reading it before the next big post I make. But I've rambled enough, time to get into the past few weeks. I guess I'll start with my classes.

Econ 310: Quantitative Methods and Applications: Monday & Wednesday 7:45am-9:50am:
Don't be fooled by the title, it's just another stats class. This was the class I referenced when I was talking about how transfer students got last picks for classes. The 7:45 start and the whole doing stats for 2 hours straight thing is pretty brutal actually, but he posts all his lecture notes online. I've found that to be very helpful as I have a terrible time staying awake for the full duration of that class. This is also the only class I really know anyone in. The first day we met, I walked into Piggott (the building where this class is located) and who should I see waiting around but the guy that I had all my business classes with at Shoreline CC. He was waiting around with another guy from there too, so the three of us hung out before class, then sat next to each other in class. They're cool guys, so it's nice to have them as some people I know here. As for the teacher, he is much better than my previous stats teacher (which isn't hard). He has a learning disability affecting his ability to spell (if there are a lot of repeated letters, he will have trouble spelling the word) which can get pretty annoying a lot of the time. I give him slack though because he is a nice guy and he usually keeps the class interesting which for stats is no small task.

Econ 330: International Economic Events and Business Decisions: Monday, Wednesday, & Friday 10:00am-11:25am:
This class is essentially intermediate macroeconomics while inserting some current events as well. I don't know how I let myself get into having another quarter where I take stats with macro, but I guess I'll just have to get through it again. It's not that they're hard classes, it's just that doing the work for each one is incredibly time consuming especially when I have to show my work. The professor in this class is interesting. She is actually from Transylvania where she apparently grew up a couple miles away from what is called Dracula castle. She has a pretty thick accent (sounds like a lady Chekov from Star Trek) and when she makes spelling errors, it is usually in a way that if you read what she wrote, it would sound like how she would say it. She has made some mistakes in asking questions, on assignments which has forced me to try to reason with her to get points back. On the last assignment, she wanted growth rates for the year I was born AND 2008 when what she meant was she wanted growth rates for the year I was born TO 2008. It took a lot of convincing to get her to realize that she asked the question incorrectly, but I eventually got through to her and won back the points I should have gotten. The people in the class are pretty nice. There's a pretty girl that sits next to me by choice (maybe because I look smart?) and one of my frisbee acquaintances sits right in front of me. I sit in the back which seems to be where most of the really businessy kids sit. Being an economicsy student, I am not one of them, I just sit amongst them.

Phil 210: Philosophy of the Human Person: Monday, Wednesday, & Friday 11:55am-1:20pm:
Again, thank the counselor that signed me up for my classes for that stupid little half hour break. I can't wait until I make my own schedule here, I rather dislike short and pointless breaks such as that. This class is one I thought I would like more than I do, but one that is still interesting nonetheless. The professor is Italian, born in Italy, and has only been here a few years (by far the shortest of my three professors). However, he has the best grammar and spelling ability of my three professors. Also, he sounds a lot like Borat, so his lectures are always pretty fun to listen to. Of all my professors, I think I like him the best. So far in the class, we've mostly just read a lot of Plato and Socrates, which is starting to wear thin on me as we get to the places where Socrates and I do not particularly agree on things, but we will soon be moving on to more contemporary philosophy after reading the allegory of the cave (how many more times must I read that?). The classroom for this is just big enough to hold all of us, so we all get to be friendly with each other. Everyone in the class is a transfer student too, so it's nice to have other people my age in the class. Seattle U requires a philosophy class as a general elective, so it's usually one you would take freshman year unless you're a transfer student.

Seattle U Ultimate Frisbee (Throwbot):
I'm not sure if there is actually a 'w' in Throwbot, I'll look into that again and get back to you if you're really curious. This is a legit university team, there is an all guys team and an all girls team. Originally, there were 80+ people interested and about 75% of them actually came out to practices. The numbers have gotten a bit smaller since the less committed were weeded out, but that is proving to be a good thing. We have about 20 guys that can really play, so that will be good for subbing when we go to tournaments. Jack's brother Jeff is on the team too, so that was nice to see a familiar face. There are also a couple other Shorewood kids on the team (that did not do ultimate at Shorewood, for shame!). The team is pretty big and there are only a handful of us that know how to play well. A few returning team players including the captains have complemented me on my throwing, so that felt pretty nice. Also due to my throwing performance during the practices, I seem to have secured my position as a handler. It's nice because this team runs a weird deformed ho-stack formation with 3 handlers that do little other than make short throws without really running at all and then four cutters that have to do a ton of running. Ability to throw FTW I guess! Practices are held Mondays and Fridays outside from 3pm-5pm rain or shine. On Wednesdays, we practice from 9pm-11pm(it's not too bad since I don't have class the following day) in the ASTRO GYM!!! It's actually less exciting than the name. It's a small probably repurposed basketball court that now has turf in it. It's way too small for a legit game of frisbee, but we still play 7 on 7. It just makes the matches way more intense. Also nice about the astro gym is it is inside which is unlike the environments I've played in before. There is no wind at all so the disc goes exactly where I want it to. It's weird having to remember not to compensate for wind and other factors.

Jazz Band:
This started out like my experience at SCC started out. Hopefully I enjoy this band as much as I did that band. Before I got to SU, I was sure I wanted to do the jazz band here. Once I arrived, I was overwhelmed with my new schedule and trying to learn all the new places and I decided not to do it. Then, a couple weeks later, I saw posters advertising that the band needed players, so I changed my mind. Note to all of you, I usually don't change my mind like that if I get asked the same question twice. Feel free to try, you might get lucky, but most of the time I will not be that easy. So I went to the informational meeting this Tuesday which turned out to be an audition which turned out to be a formality. I guess the instructor just wanted to interview each new member individually and see them play. I think he was overall satisfied with how I did. I owe Doug a big thanks for working on building sight reading skills with us in the band, that helped during the audition. The director didn't throw out Doug's name, but he did notice that I mentioned Shorewood and was quick to mention Harshman. I guess I can't ever separate myself from that name in the Seattle music scene. Oh well. The director is this big black guy with a deep Barry White-esque voice so I can already tell he is going to be great. I can't wait to start rehearsals next week.

Pep Band:
Just kidding, I'm actually not doing this one. Seattle U was trying a new thing with the pep band this year in an attempt to get it to exist again. They were having the band be made up of a mix of SU students as well as alumni and students from local high schools. Well stupid me, I forgot how almost nonexistent our music program is here. There were 3 SU students, no alumni, and about 50 high school kids all with that pep band nerd personality that can have a tendency to annoy the hell out of you. Fortunately, I had frisbee immediately following the meeting, so I ducked out early. They will not see me again. I remember that I never really liked pep band anyway. Besides, if I were to do this, I would be on campus from 7:30am-11:00pm on Wednesdays which is kind of excessive.

Well that's pretty much all I'm doing right now. It takes up a lot of time though, so it all seems like more. I haven't really spent much time socializing that much yet, but I don't reall plan to go and make friends outside of the few activities I'm doing because I'm here to get a job done. This is just a warm up for when I totally destroy my social life in a couple of years by going to law school.

Since I have that early class, I just carpool down here with dad since his office is a 15 minute walk from campus for me. I just meet him at his office after school and we get to take the carpool lanes back home. It's a pretty nice deal and it works out with all my activities plus working out and doing homework that I don't generally find myself lacking in things to do while I'm here. Now if you recall, I said earlier I was going to omit things from this post and put them into a later series of smaller posts. I was referring to this section, the "campus life" area. Expect more on that with some pictures on Monday or Wednesday. In the meantime, here are some things I've been up to outside of school.

UWB Tempest:
Steven and Chris and I are now regular players for that team. I like playing with the whole team because everyone there is really cool, even the new people they bring in. A couple of weeks ago, we had Orion's sisters in and still had to play a man down, but we almost won the game. It was pretty cool. The team is looking not to bad this year, the problem still remains that we need more girls. I'm working on becoming friends with the girls on SU frisbee which is proving difficult because they have enough for their own team and they don't usually play with the guys I play with (the ones that know how to play). After games now, Steven and Chris and Eric and Sai and I play some Munchkin and eat pizza which is a pretty good way to spend a Saturday in my correct opinion.

Paintball:
Well actually I only did this once, but I had a lot of fun doing it. Dad has a coworker that has been trying to get him to come play paintball for a while now. He and his family have a private paintball course on his brother's property. It's in this big woodsy area complete with a big swamp too. They've had it for a while too, so it's decked out nice with forts built into hillsides and bridges over some rough terrain making for a cool experience. We played four games while we were there for the day.

The first game was a straight up attack and defend game just to get warmed up. Unfortunately, the attackers more often than not are the winners for some strange reason. I was a defender. I was also the first person out. The first shot I ever got in paintball was a shot right into my balls from about 50 yards away through a six inch hole. It was a miracle shot and it hurt pretty bad. Fortunately, it took the fear away the rest of the day. The only shot that hurt as much as that one did was surprisingly one that hit me on the knuckle. I even got hit in the head and that one didn't hurt too bad.

The second game was one where both teams had to go to a place in the middle of the area with a booby trapped clue. The team had to then successfully get the clue in that highly contested area and use it to find a chest that was hidden out in the area somewhere. One of our stealth teams that was moving around to flank (we had two and I was in the other one) the center happened to run into the chest, so without needing the clue, they ran it back to the base and the rest of us slowly trickled back in once we died and respawned at our base. We had this one ninja guy on our team that just spent half the match in the trees sniping people or army crawling through the muck in his gilly suit. He also had a slingshot in case he wanted to be stealthy. All in all, he was a total badass. The crate never left our base and we wound up winning in the end after some pretty intense holdouts against big assaults from the other team.

In the third game, our team had to arm a bomb by 15 minutes into the game. The bomb was in this really open area right by the enemy base, so we had to get a guy in position to dive out to it and as he did that, all 7 of us in the immediate area opened up on the base, just getting shots out towards the enemy so they would have to keep their heads down. It worked and the bomb got armed. Then we had to hold position for 15 minutes and wait for it to go off. We were successful in that as well.

The last game was probably my favorite because by this point I was doing pretty well. There were 5 people that were related, so they were on one team against 15 of us. It was like an infection version of attack and defend where if you get hit as a defender, you go to attack. The attackers win by getting a guy across the zipline without being hit, so it gets easier the  fewer defenders there are and when there are none left, it's just a formality. I was one of only two people left defending at the end. Of course we were the only two that lost, but there was a badge of honor in that considering the attackers are destined to win no matter what. I even got a really great lucky blindfire shot where I was blindfiring where I knew this guy was. He had ducked though and I happened to hit a guy I didn't notice was on the zipline. Right place at the right time I guess. It was a pretty fun match and the guy that lasted that long with me and I were proud of ourselves.

Videogames:
Well I finished Fallout 3 so I've been getting back on the PC more. I also play this Trackmania game now that runs better than SC2 on my laptop and works better around the brief times I actually find myself with time to play videogames here on campus.

Ok well until Monday or Wednesday, then until mid November for my next big post (which should be smaller than this one), peace out.

New School Starts Tomorrow

Well tomorrow is the big day I attend my first classes at a University (well the first ones I signed up for at least). Today, after this post, I'm going to be posting pictures of summer to facebook, so expect to be tagged, unless you did not hang out with me this summer. Now that I think of it, that is very few of you. Oh well. Well anyway, my September has been pretty nice so far. A lot of my major time drains (not to say I didn't enjoy them, just that they sucked down a lot of my free time this summer) have "dried up" so to speak, leaving my schedule wide open. It did allow me to have some fun adventures however. First though, I'll get the usual things out of the way.

Gaming:
This past week though, I have been mainly playing 360. I got some new DLC for Mass Effect 2 and spent a lot of time playing that again on the hardest difficulty. I also got my two new games from goozex, Kane and Lynch as well as Fallout 3. I was really disappointed with Kane and Lynch, but the game was super short, so I guess that was nice. It's going right back through goozex once I get some envelopes to send it in. Right now, I'm into Fallout 3. It's really great because it handles just like Oblivion which I am very familiar with (the same company made them after all). It's pretty scary, but not as bad as Bioshock so far, so that is nice. Also, while I'm talking about goozex, I got a special game in the mail. I used goozex to track down a copy of Mission: Impossible on NES, a game I have been looking for since I discovered a functioning NES while cleaning out my grandpa's house. It had most of the collection I had when I had my own, but Mission: Impossible was one of the big names I remembered that I was having trouble finding. I have played it and I have no idea what is going on when I play. I couldn't be happier as that is about where I left off when the game left me so long ago.

As far as the PC goes, I've stayed off it except for business things (checking emails and things like that). I did get on last week between finishing Mass Effect 2 and starting Kane and Lynch. I decided to marathon an Imperial Campaign as Egypt in Rome: Total War. I played to get every single settlement and I was reminded why I never really do that in one sitting. It takes forever. I don't know how long it's been since I've played Starcraft 2, but I think I'm going to start again soon. I guess this is a sure sign I probably won't get addicted to it ever (if I can just randomly not play it for almost a month), but I'm going to start having a lot of free time if I'm on campus for several hours without homework 3 days a week, so I think I'll get back into it once the quarter starts up.

As for the other type of gaming (tabletop), I have not heard from my Warhammer friends since I last played with them in mid-August. They planned to have something last Wednesday, but I never heard from them. I know one guy's wife had a baby, Steve is starting school tomorrow as well, and I'm not sure what the others are up to. I think though that it is safe to assume I won't be hearing from them for at least another month. I did have fun playing and I would like to play since I invested a good chunk of time and a bit of money into it. I'm sure I'll play in the future sometime though, so I'm not too concerned. In the meantime, I'll enjoy the extra free time that it has left me.

Beach trip and other Grandpa related things:
I still hit up Costco about once a week with Grandpa. I'm kind of getting into that schedule of going once a week which is what I do when I'm in school. It's Tuesdays this year because it's one of the days I have off and it's the one I don't give horn lessons on. The weekend after I got Davis over to EWU, I went on a little weekend trip out to the beach with him, my aunt, and Kathryn and our cousins. It was pretty fun. On Saturday, Grandpa rode in the go-karts at Ocean Shores. Getting him out of the karts was much easier with 3 people. This past Sunday, we had his 87th birthday party as well as his 1 year anniversary of moving into his new place party. He clearly has made a bunch of friends in the place in that one year because the apartment was crowded with other residents. My cousins and Kathryn and I went out of the room (since it was so crowded) at one point to play the golf simulator down the hall. We were not hitting it very far and soon, this 80 year old guy walked in. My cousin hit the ball and the screen said it went 30 yards. The guy walked up to see if the sensor was messed up and he was like "oh, I'm not warmed up or anything" and he doubled my cousin's hit on his first swing. On his second, he tripled it.

Taking Davis to EWU:
The Tuesday after PAX, I went to Davis' house to load up as much stuff as we could in the truck before we set off the following morning. We left around 9:30 and after a rather uneventful drive, we got to his apartment at about 3:00. I got to meet his super conservative complex manager. After that, we began moving all the stuff into his place with the help of one of his neighbors at one point. I enjoyed the looks of confusions on people's faces when we would introduce ourselves (since our names are so similar) and then seeing the look of relief on their faces when I would tell them I was not going to be around more than a day. After getting his stuff more or less sorted out, we went up to EWU for a tour and for him to look into a couple things. We went all around the campus which was actually really nice. I took a lot of pictures for mom. I'll put some up in my album on facebook. Like I said, it was a very pretty campus and there are some really cool views in places. We went to go have dinner and get groceries after that, so we hit up Carls Jr. then this small grocery store Davis had heard about. After that, we went back up to the campus to hang out with one of Davis' friends. She was one of the ones that is really into DnD, so that was pretty cool. I got no sympathy for Dirk's death from her though. After that, it was late, so we went back to Davis' apartment and then we went to sleep.

The next day, we got up and hung out around the apartment for most of the morning. We went up to the campus for Davis to get something signed for work while I explored Tawanka commons at my mom's recommendation. After that, we came back to his place so I could pack up and leave. And thus began my amazing adventure. I headed up to Spokane because I knew of a Costco (that was a lot further from the freeway than I remembered). Upon getting the gas, I did a calculation and found the truck getting just under 22mpg. Pretty excellent for an 18 year old (almost 19 now) pickup. Now instead of going back on I-90, I kind of spontaneously decided that I wanted to epicly detour and check out Grand Coulee dam before going back to I-90. I wasn't thinking at the time, but it would have been better not to get back on I-90 after doing that, but I thought the dam was much further south than it was. It turns out, it is about the equivalent of detouring all the way down to the tri-cities from I-90. If I had known that, I might have stuck on highway 2 all the way back, but I did not. In the end, I am glad I did not because the drive was really spectacular and I do enjoy driving.

So until I got on I-90, I was just going 60 or whatever the speed limit was. I was not expected at home until late at night, so I was in no hurry to get anywhere. For the first leg, it was mostly just rolling hills and grain fields. Very pretty stuff. After about an hour and a half, I turned to take a 20 mile road up north to the dam. When I got there, I checked out the dam and enjoyed the scenery for a while before wondering what the best way to get home was. I had no signal, so I was flying blind this whole time. I decided I could probably take highway 2 back, but I knew I-90 much better, so I decided to find my way back to that. It was rather challenging because you change on and off and across about 4 different small highways before you finally start seeing signs for I-90. Fortunately, the sun was in the sky and as long as I could tell I was heading south and west, I was doing fine. As I drove, I eventually came by a place called dry falls. I quickly hit the brakes and pulled into the viewpoint parking lot because the sight was really amazing. I stuck around there for a few minutes before getting back in and going on my way. The rest of the drive to I-90 was really uneventful but pretty. I was going along a big river most of the way and there were cool land formations as well as settlements there. While I was driving along, I pondered ways to make a Mass Effect version of DnD work and I came up with some cool ideas, but nothing too serious as I was focusing mainly on this cool scenery going by. Eventually, I wound up on I-90 several hours behind schedule. I took it the rest of the way home, only stopping for about 20 minutes in the pass to wait for ROCK BLASTING!!1111 Unfortunately, I didn't get to see any actual blasts, but on the plus side I did not have to wait very long in the line. I finally got home at 10pm. Going on I-90 from Spokane to my house gets me home in 4-5 hours. I planned on this trip taking 5-6. It took 8 hours in total. For over 7 of those 8, I was behind the wheel driving the truck along. It may seem ridiculous, but I really had fun because I like driving, especially driving past new places. I think I'll take the same detour next time I wind up in Spokane (who knows when that will be though).

Well, that concludes my past few weeks. I guess now it is time to go post some pictures to facebook and then get to bed somewhat on time before school tomorrow. I'm attempting to change how much I sleep, but that will be addressed in the next post. Until the next post (which will be in October), peace out.

Preceeding PAX Pics

So the PAX pics are below in case you didn't notice. They are of course in backwards order, that's why we start with making the costumes we wore. Just as a reminder, you won't see a new post on the blog until the 20th or 21st (most likely the second date) and after that, I'm going to drop to posting every other week or less frequently depending on how busy of a life I lead. I don't know if it will matter, but I felt like I should tell you just in case you are still reading and/or checking this blog regularly. Enjoy the pictures. Don't forget, blogger is silly and you have to hit "Older Posts" at the bottom of the page now to view the next page of pictures.

Making sure the keyboard strap was long enough.

Getting the boxes painted.

Drilling holes in the keyboards.

Tools used to get the keyboards onto the straps that went around our necks.

Success! The keyboards are attached to the straps!

My first time sewing in quite a long time. This was the first one I did, the rest actually looked less chaotic. I should have taken pictures of Steven's straps, I did good on those.

Drawing the spiral on the front.

The outside.

The front.

Figuring out how high the straps need to be placed.

Making sure the packs fit.

It's looking ready now.

Finally complete after hours of work.

Getting the packs on.

The three of us suited up and ready to type some zombies straight to hell.

A second shot.

The picture of us that wound up on Sega's twitter feed.

Not on the twitter feed, but it was also taken by the Sega guys and put in their PAX blog post.

D&D bus.

Eric unsure how to pose with the D4.