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.