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.
Monday, November 01, 2010
Friday, October 22, 2010
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
The hideaway at Lemineux Library
Pigott and the Math/Science Building
Friday, October 15, 2010
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.
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.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
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.
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.
Monday, September 13, 2010
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.
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