I guess after not really procrastinating this last quarter, I was due. It's not like I haven't also been busy though, I have. Fortunately, even though this post covers a whole month, I will be able to keep it relatively short. You might not even be reading this post anyway, but if you are, thanks! I leave for Korea on the 16th of August and I plan to make one last post before I leave (probably on the 14th or 15th). When I'm in Korea, I'll try to get back to updating more often because I'm probably going to have a lot to talk about. I think I'll be able to hold myself to every other week. I'll repeat myself in the next post and I'll probably tell you all in person too just to make sure you know so you have a way to keep up with my shenanigans over there.
Turning 21:
I was excited to finally turn 21. The ability to drink and gamble is cool, but what I wanted the most was my new license picture and to remove my corrective lenses restriction. Thankfully, I got both of those done. On another cool note, I won the bet! I have proven (to myself at least) that not all kids drink illegally without their parents' knowledge (or some combination of those words) before they turn 21. I get nothing other than a sense of satisfaction from this in case you were wondering. I basically just stuck with this because I am stubborn as hell.
Starcraft:
I've been mostly playing 4v4s with Keir. Occasionally, Peter will get in on them with us which has also been really fun. We maintain a roughly 50% win record which is fine, but not as good as we want. It's difficult because my ranking is artificially high (I should be ranked lower, but the bnet ranking system is too generous). Hopefully for the next season, I will get ranked lower and we will have more success. A recent example of this ranking system comes from earlier tonight when I started doing 1v1s. I lost a game in less than 5 minutes (my computer froze and I disconnected T__T). When I got back on, I had been placed into gold (middle of the pack ranking). I should have been much lower. Oh well though, it seems I'm holding my own in that league so I'm happy for now.
Vacation:
My aunt and uncle were having their 35th anniversary recently. Last summer when my uncle did the marathon, he set in motion this grand plan to have them renew their vows in Maui this summer. It was not until long after this whole vacation was sorted out that I decided to go to Korea. Had it not been a function with the entire family, I might have tried to get out of it because I had(have) a lot of stuff to do before I leave in one month. It was nice to get to see everyone though. My little cousin has become obsessed with the Green Lantern and repeated the oath ad nauseum throughout the trip.
The first seven days of the trip were spent in the timeshare we have on the west side of Maui. Most of each day was spent just relaxing around the town, but there were some other cool events such as watching some family members get surfing lessons. There was not much to tell about that part of the week. The unfortunate part was I had the garbagiest Internet connection at the place. It would take an hour to load a youtube video with a length of four minutes. In fact, the entire time I was there, I could not stream games which was kind of frustrating because there was a lot of good Starcraft I wanted to watch. And it would have worked out especially well too because my parents did not adjust to Hawaii time very well and would go to bed around 9-10pm, leaving me to stay up (if I go to bed before midnight, I take at least an hour to fall asleep). In that time, I wound up just studying Korean as much as I could.
For the final few days, we moved to this house in the middle of the island. What we didn't know about the house was it was more rustic (well actually it was a palace as far as I was concerned) than they advertised. Many cockroach encounters happened which led to many freakouts by all the girls. For the guys, we just hung out all night drinking. My cousin's husband who is a hardcore drinker got Patron at the grocery store (he's kind of a Patron hipster, not liking how popular it has become (mostly because of the price)). The two of us along with dad and my uncle just stayed up late each night taking shots until we got bored and went to bed. Even on the night where I had 5 shots and 2 beers, I did not get drunk. I have now decided that it is definitely not economical to get me drunk and will probably not try anymore.
On the last full day, I finally got to do what I wanted to do which was hike the Haleakala crater. Dad and my uncle came with me. They forgot to bring warmer clothes (it gets cold up at 10,000ft), but we read the trail we were taking was only 9 miles, so we figured it would be about 3-4 hours and thus, coldness would not be a big problem. It turns out, we kept a much slower pace due to dad and my uncle and in addition to that, the trail was 14 miles instead of 9. At the end of the day, we wound up taking 6.5 hours to do the whole thing. The first four miles consisted of a 2,000ft descent and then it was flat for a while before a 3 mile 1,500ft ascent to the end of the trail. It was pretty amazing scenery (not that the other two noticed it, they were really tired). By the end of the hike, they just plopped down in the car and I had to drive home. The women had freaked out again because we took a lot longer than expected, but all was well. They had me to scout the trail and carry all the stuff we brought, so it worked out fine in the end. I would gladly do the hike again, but I'm pretty sure dad and my uncle are not up to doing that ever again.
So since I've been back, it has been just Starcraft and some Korea stuff. I anticipate my life being mostly that before I leave. I'll post again in about a month, so until then, peace out.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Monday, June 20, 2011
Guess I have nothing stopping me from updating.
Well it's been over a month. Oops, I guess I kinda forgot to post. I've been out of school for 10 days now (clock just hit midnight) and I suppose the first week and a half of break was spent just appreciating that nothing was on my plate. But I do want to keep record of all the important things that have happened to me in the last month. I can only hope I have not forgotten most of the stories. I'll get through school stuff first I suppose then get into other things.
Business Ethics:
This class turned out to be a good one in the end. I enjoyed the first half a lot more when were were talking about philosophies and cool things like that. Eventually, we went into globalization and environmental sustainability which was less exciting for me, but was still good. For the final essay, we were given a prompt for this case about Wal-Mart and we also had the option to do our essays on another topic if we so desired. I decided to do a report pointing out critiques and then ultimately defending Rawlsianism (a more logical version of Utilitarianism to keep it very simple (I discovered that I subscribed to Rawlsianism without even knowing it over the course of the quarter)). I think the professor was impressed at my choice which was cool because he would point me in the right direction for interesting essays and opinions on the topic. It was very helpful and I guess my report was well received because I got a good grade in the class. Also, he agreed to be a recommender/evaluator for my law school applications which was super excellent as well.
International Political Economy:
This class ended up like the one I had with this professor last quarter, I wound up enjoying the class. The individual research report was kind of a doozy though. We had to write a 4-5 page (double spaced thank goodness) research report on the topic of our choice that pertained to the international political economy (if it sounds really open ended, it was). I had a lot of trouble nailing down a topic at first, but eventually just chose to write about food security in Sub-Saharan Africa. I went a little gung-ho with the project and went well above and beyond the guidelines. While the project was really a glorified literature review, I actually did a legit research report complete with graphs and all that good stuff. In the end, my report wound up being barely contained within 6 pages (even after extending the margins to allow more text on the page). Oh and by the way. that was single spaced. So my report was over twice the length required. From my final grade in the class, it looks like I got a pretty bangin' score on it. In addition to that, I turned my project in first, 2 days early. I did it in order to win favor with this professor in the hopes that I could ask her to be a recommender for law school apps (she was my first choice for recommenders because she's pretty highly regarded in the department). To my great excitement, she said yes. That was the highlight of the week for me (and keep in mind, this was a week in which I relieved myself of having the stress of 3 projects, a final, the LSAT, and the same week in which I began summer vacation (it was that exciting)).
Economic Growth:
Well this class picked up once the first half was done. Eventually it became just a freetime on laptop while we learned about how to write research reports. During that time, my partner and I would work with our own data or if we were bored, just mess around on laptops for an hour before getting out. In the end, our report came out very well. I don't know when/if we hear whether he wants to work with us (or any papers this quarter) to try to get them published, but I don't particularly mind either. Both me and my partner are in Korea this fall, so we're going to be kind of busy if it comes up.
Frisbee:
I didn't go much after the last tournament that I went to. There was one more the team had, but it was on the same weekend as Kathryn's confirmation so I couldn't go. During some practices, some of the guys on the team made comments about how they wished I was there, but I think it was just polite talk after I made a good play during scrimmages. I do know that they could have at least used me there for the camping part of it. They had a lot of good horror stories about tent fails and stuff like that that might not have happened if anyone that knew how to camp were there (yes fellow Eagle Scouts and readers of this blog, I know enough about camping to get by...). It's too bad I'm going to miss the first half of the season next year, but I look forward to rejoining the team when I get back.
Confirmation:
Kathryn's confirmation was pretty nice. I got to catch up with Josh H. while I was there because his sister (who is a friend of Kathryn's and who he was sponsoring) was also doing it. It was just nice to have another person there with as cavalier an attitude about the whole thing as me. I realized that the service was the first one I had been to in that church since I had been confirmed in 2006 and the first time I had been to a church service since June of 2008 around the time my grandfather died. And I have no plans to return to church any time soon. My family likes to give you a free pass once you go through confirmation and since you're then an adult in the eyes of the church, you can make your own decisions. We get confirmed to appease the older, more devout members of the family, but they don't care if we don't go to church every Sunday (or at all) so we don't. Don't worry, the irony of getting confirmed in my family is not lost on me.
LSAT:
The class seemed to have helped me in the LSAT. I went into the test feeling pretty confident, having lifted my score up to levels that would work for applying to the UW. The test itself was rather good. To anyone reading, if you're going to take the LSAT in the Seattle area, do it at Seattle U. The conditions were top notch. I don't know how much else I can say about the test given that I signed a confidentiality agreement, but feel free to ask me in person about it and I definitely won't tell you ;).
Starcraft:
Keir and I have started playing Starcraft again. We're burning through the 4v4 ladder, but mostly getting burned. I've done some research and found out that people are having similar problems to us, less than strategic allies. We're trying to find ways to more or less carry our team when some moron decides to tech to battlecruisers that either never see the light of day or die within 30 seconds (highlight was the mothership that actually lasted 4 seconds before it died). So far, we have been unsuccessful, but we will keep trying. Also, I will soon be done with Guild Wars forever. I swear the more I play that game, the more I just want to play SC2. When I finish Guild Wars, it's onto 1v1s for me and I shall begin my progress towards my 750 Terran wins to get back the picture that was stolen from me after the beta (battlecruiser profile pic).
Other stuff:
Jack was in town recently which was fun. I missed having someone around who constantly reminds me that I need to get a haircut. But seriously, it was nice to see him, it had been too long. I enjoyed the few times I got to hang out with him and Davis. We also saw Rosa and Lucy one day which was fun. I got to show off my picky eating skills by finding a restaurant that was considered a good place to get seafood despite me not eating or liking seafood. In case any of the four of you were still wondering, I knew about that place because my mom's family always liked going there when they would come visit my parents in Magnolia. Soon after they moved and occasionally today, that side of the family suggests going there when they're in town. I usually approach it from the other side (since we live that way) and its really one of the only things I know about in that part of town. Along with Jack being in town, I mentioned this, but Davis was in town too. We got to do an SC marathon day with him and Keir which was pretty fun. We messed around in Bronze and got fewer wins than we should have, but that was still fine. Happy now-belated birthday by the way Davis if you find yourself reading this.
Now not much is going on. I'm eventually going to start the big load of work I have to do around this house, my aunt's house, and my grandpa's apartment sometime soon. Orion comes up this week actually, so I don't know what my full schedule will be. I'll try to work on days when he does if he does. For now, I'm staying up to watch a tournament (SC2 of course) and it starts soon, so I'd better get going. Until next time, peace out.
Business Ethics:
This class turned out to be a good one in the end. I enjoyed the first half a lot more when were were talking about philosophies and cool things like that. Eventually, we went into globalization and environmental sustainability which was less exciting for me, but was still good. For the final essay, we were given a prompt for this case about Wal-Mart and we also had the option to do our essays on another topic if we so desired. I decided to do a report pointing out critiques and then ultimately defending Rawlsianism (a more logical version of Utilitarianism to keep it very simple (I discovered that I subscribed to Rawlsianism without even knowing it over the course of the quarter)). I think the professor was impressed at my choice which was cool because he would point me in the right direction for interesting essays and opinions on the topic. It was very helpful and I guess my report was well received because I got a good grade in the class. Also, he agreed to be a recommender/evaluator for my law school applications which was super excellent as well.
International Political Economy:
This class ended up like the one I had with this professor last quarter, I wound up enjoying the class. The individual research report was kind of a doozy though. We had to write a 4-5 page (double spaced thank goodness) research report on the topic of our choice that pertained to the international political economy (if it sounds really open ended, it was). I had a lot of trouble nailing down a topic at first, but eventually just chose to write about food security in Sub-Saharan Africa. I went a little gung-ho with the project and went well above and beyond the guidelines. While the project was really a glorified literature review, I actually did a legit research report complete with graphs and all that good stuff. In the end, my report wound up being barely contained within 6 pages (even after extending the margins to allow more text on the page). Oh and by the way. that was single spaced. So my report was over twice the length required. From my final grade in the class, it looks like I got a pretty bangin' score on it. In addition to that, I turned my project in first, 2 days early. I did it in order to win favor with this professor in the hopes that I could ask her to be a recommender for law school apps (she was my first choice for recommenders because she's pretty highly regarded in the department). To my great excitement, she said yes. That was the highlight of the week for me (and keep in mind, this was a week in which I relieved myself of having the stress of 3 projects, a final, the LSAT, and the same week in which I began summer vacation (it was that exciting)).
Economic Growth:
Well this class picked up once the first half was done. Eventually it became just a freetime on laptop while we learned about how to write research reports. During that time, my partner and I would work with our own data or if we were bored, just mess around on laptops for an hour before getting out. In the end, our report came out very well. I don't know when/if we hear whether he wants to work with us (or any papers this quarter) to try to get them published, but I don't particularly mind either. Both me and my partner are in Korea this fall, so we're going to be kind of busy if it comes up.
Frisbee:
I didn't go much after the last tournament that I went to. There was one more the team had, but it was on the same weekend as Kathryn's confirmation so I couldn't go. During some practices, some of the guys on the team made comments about how they wished I was there, but I think it was just polite talk after I made a good play during scrimmages. I do know that they could have at least used me there for the camping part of it. They had a lot of good horror stories about tent fails and stuff like that that might not have happened if anyone that knew how to camp were there (yes fellow Eagle Scouts and readers of this blog, I know enough about camping to get by...). It's too bad I'm going to miss the first half of the season next year, but I look forward to rejoining the team when I get back.
Confirmation:
Kathryn's confirmation was pretty nice. I got to catch up with Josh H. while I was there because his sister (who is a friend of Kathryn's and who he was sponsoring) was also doing it. It was just nice to have another person there with as cavalier an attitude about the whole thing as me. I realized that the service was the first one I had been to in that church since I had been confirmed in 2006 and the first time I had been to a church service since June of 2008 around the time my grandfather died. And I have no plans to return to church any time soon. My family likes to give you a free pass once you go through confirmation and since you're then an adult in the eyes of the church, you can make your own decisions. We get confirmed to appease the older, more devout members of the family, but they don't care if we don't go to church every Sunday (or at all) so we don't. Don't worry, the irony of getting confirmed in my family is not lost on me.
LSAT:
The class seemed to have helped me in the LSAT. I went into the test feeling pretty confident, having lifted my score up to levels that would work for applying to the UW. The test itself was rather good. To anyone reading, if you're going to take the LSAT in the Seattle area, do it at Seattle U. The conditions were top notch. I don't know how much else I can say about the test given that I signed a confidentiality agreement, but feel free to ask me in person about it and I definitely won't tell you ;).
Starcraft:
Keir and I have started playing Starcraft again. We're burning through the 4v4 ladder, but mostly getting burned. I've done some research and found out that people are having similar problems to us, less than strategic allies. We're trying to find ways to more or less carry our team when some moron decides to tech to battlecruisers that either never see the light of day or die within 30 seconds (highlight was the mothership that actually lasted 4 seconds before it died). So far, we have been unsuccessful, but we will keep trying. Also, I will soon be done with Guild Wars forever. I swear the more I play that game, the more I just want to play SC2. When I finish Guild Wars, it's onto 1v1s for me and I shall begin my progress towards my 750 Terran wins to get back the picture that was stolen from me after the beta (battlecruiser profile pic).
Other stuff:
Jack was in town recently which was fun. I missed having someone around who constantly reminds me that I need to get a haircut. But seriously, it was nice to see him, it had been too long. I enjoyed the few times I got to hang out with him and Davis. We also saw Rosa and Lucy one day which was fun. I got to show off my picky eating skills by finding a restaurant that was considered a good place to get seafood despite me not eating or liking seafood. In case any of the four of you were still wondering, I knew about that place because my mom's family always liked going there when they would come visit my parents in Magnolia. Soon after they moved and occasionally today, that side of the family suggests going there when they're in town. I usually approach it from the other side (since we live that way) and its really one of the only things I know about in that part of town. Along with Jack being in town, I mentioned this, but Davis was in town too. We got to do an SC marathon day with him and Keir which was pretty fun. We messed around in Bronze and got fewer wins than we should have, but that was still fine. Happy now-belated birthday by the way Davis if you find yourself reading this.
Now not much is going on. I'm eventually going to start the big load of work I have to do around this house, my aunt's house, and my grandpa's apartment sometime soon. Orion comes up this week actually, so I don't know what my full schedule will be. I'll try to work on days when he does if he does. For now, I'm staying up to watch a tournament (SC2 of course) and it starts soon, so I'd better get going. Until next time, peace out.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Real post coming after school and the LSAT are done. I simply do not have enough time to sit down and make a full post between now and then. The LSAT is less than a week away (cue fearful whimpering noises) and my final final is on the 10th. In the meantime, enjoy some quotes!
Reading suggestions of things to bring to Korea:
Me: Oh, they suggest bringing contraceptives!
Mom: Yeah, you don’t need that. Just keep it zipped while you’re there.
Me: Well what’s odd about it here is they list it under “General” and not “Things you can buy there.”
Mom: Haha, that is pretty weird.
*Dad walks into room, other conversation ensues*
*Conversation gets to a point where mom says…*
Mom: I just hold my family to a higher standard.
Me: I’ll say, she won’t even let me bring condoms to South Korea!
Mom: You’re just there for four months, you can hold it!
Me: Interesting choice of words…
*… then assorted laughter*
Mom: I didn’t mean it like that!
Dad: Ok, I’m going to give you a quiz I heard about to see what you thought of us as parents.
Me: Uh, ok
Mom: Ken, don’t do it, he won’t give you a straight answer!
Dad: Oh don’t worry about it. Okay, so say you’re a little kid and your first pet, a goldfish, dies unexpectedly. Would we:
a. Go out for a jog
b. Tell you to suck it up and not be a crybaby
c. Go out and buy you 10 new goldfish to compensate
d. Sit down and have a good cry with you
Mom: And talk about it!
Me: Uh, probably either b or c
Dad: Oh come on! No!
Mom: See? I told you he wouldn’t give you a straight answer!
Me: What? You guys would totally go out and buy 10 more!
Mom: No, we’d sit and talk to you about it!
Me: He said cry with me about it! You wouldn’t cry with me! Why am I even crying? It’s a goldfish!
Mom: Oh you’re not getting the question!
Me: Well then maybe it’s a. You guys like going on walks. Maybe you would go on a walk
Mom: No, it meant running away from your problems!
Me: No, maybe it meant you were just absent-minded and liked walking!
Mom: What? No!
Me: And then when you have prom, I can supply you with booze!
Me (imitating mom voice): No, Kathryn, David won’t do it. I’ll supply you.
Mom: What? I wasn’t paying attention.
Kathryn: He was talking about how he can give me booze for prom parties.
Mom: David!
Me: What?
Mom: Well what if…
Me: What if what
Mom (slightly quieter but still quite audible): She might not get asked
Kathryn: MOM!
[We have no idea what she was thinking, but she wound up apologizing to Kathryn later. Epic absent-mindedness maybe?]
lastredcoat: grrr
i have diag tomorrow
Me: same
but im not staying up as late as you
lastredcoat: lol
L(
Me: what is that one
crying?
lastredcoat: yes
Me: ah
do it the azn way
T___T
lastredcoat: no
i am white
i have sideways faces
Me: haha
lastredcoat: not up and down ones
Talking about fantasy football last season:
lastredcoat: how the fuck did i not win the whole thing?
me: idk
didnt you lose to dad?
oh right
lastredcoat: :/
i was regular season winnraw
me: your quarterback got fucked up
and you had to roll with ben
lastredcoat: bennn
noooo
me: yeah you got majorly shafted
lastredcoat: so bad at fantasy
me: so unlucky
lastredcoat: o well
no fantasy baseball rite?
me: nope
i considered it
lastredcoat: lolzes
me: no fantasy nascar ever formed either : (
lastredcoat: damn
i would have drafted jimmey joe bob
me: that would have been good competition
in that none of us would have any idea who to pick
ah jimmey joe bob
he's pretty good
almost as good as lester johnson
or his brother/father carl johnson
lastredcoat: true
also remember the billie bobs
first family to have 4 generations in nascar at the same time
me: hahaha
odds are one of them will win the.....
[wikipedias nascar]
nextel cup
lastredcoat: lol
Reading suggestions of things to bring to Korea:
Me: Oh, they suggest bringing contraceptives!
Mom: Yeah, you don’t need that. Just keep it zipped while you’re there.
Me: Well what’s odd about it here is they list it under “General” and not “Things you can buy there.”
Mom: Haha, that is pretty weird.
*Dad walks into room, other conversation ensues*
*Conversation gets to a point where mom says…*
Mom: I just hold my family to a higher standard.
Me: I’ll say, she won’t even let me bring condoms to South Korea!
Mom: You’re just there for four months, you can hold it!
Me: Interesting choice of words…
*… then assorted laughter*
Mom: I didn’t mean it like that!
Dad: Ok, I’m going to give you a quiz I heard about to see what you thought of us as parents.
Me: Uh, ok
Mom: Ken, don’t do it, he won’t give you a straight answer!
Dad: Oh don’t worry about it. Okay, so say you’re a little kid and your first pet, a goldfish, dies unexpectedly. Would we:
a. Go out for a jog
b. Tell you to suck it up and not be a crybaby
c. Go out and buy you 10 new goldfish to compensate
d. Sit down and have a good cry with you
Mom: And talk about it!
Me: Uh, probably either b or c
Dad: Oh come on! No!
Mom: See? I told you he wouldn’t give you a straight answer!
Me: What? You guys would totally go out and buy 10 more!
Mom: No, we’d sit and talk to you about it!
Me: He said cry with me about it! You wouldn’t cry with me! Why am I even crying? It’s a goldfish!
Mom: Oh you’re not getting the question!
Me: Well then maybe it’s a. You guys like going on walks. Maybe you would go on a walk
Mom: No, it meant running away from your problems!
Me: No, maybe it meant you were just absent-minded and liked walking!
Mom: What? No!
Me: And then when you have prom, I can supply you with booze!
Me (imitating mom voice): No, Kathryn, David won’t do it. I’ll supply you.
Mom: What? I wasn’t paying attention.
Kathryn: He was talking about how he can give me booze for prom parties.
Mom: David!
Me: What?
Mom: Well what if…
Me: What if what
Mom (slightly quieter but still quite audible): She might not get asked
Kathryn: MOM!
[We have no idea what she was thinking, but she wound up apologizing to Kathryn later. Epic absent-mindedness maybe?]
lastredcoat: grrr
i have diag tomorrow
Me: same
but im not staying up as late as you
lastredcoat: lol
L(
Me: what is that one
crying?
lastredcoat: yes
Me: ah
do it the azn way
T___T
lastredcoat: no
i am white
i have sideways faces
Me: haha
lastredcoat: not up and down ones
Talking about fantasy football last season:
lastredcoat: how the fuck did i not win the whole thing?
me: idk
didnt you lose to dad?
oh right
lastredcoat: :/
i was regular season winnraw
me: your quarterback got fucked up
and you had to roll with ben
lastredcoat: bennn
noooo
me: yeah you got majorly shafted
lastredcoat: so bad at fantasy
me: so unlucky
lastredcoat: o well
no fantasy baseball rite?
me: nope
i considered it
lastredcoat: lolzes
me: no fantasy nascar ever formed either : (
lastredcoat: damn
i would have drafted jimmey joe bob
me: that would have been good competition
in that none of us would have any idea who to pick
ah jimmey joe bob
he's pretty good
almost as good as lester johnson
or his brother/father carl johnson
lastredcoat: true
also remember the billie bobs
first family to have 4 generations in nascar at the same time
me: hahaha
odds are one of them will win the.....
[wikipedias nascar]
nextel cup
lastredcoat: lol
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Happy Birthday Sunny!!!
If you don't know what I'm talking about in the title, it's probably for the best (though feel free to ask I suppose). This will be the first of hopefully two updates this month. Around the next time I would be thinking about posting, I will be freaking out about the LSAT and I might delay a post until after it depending on how I feel. In this post, I don't think I'm going to say much about my classes because all I would wind up saying is how each one of them is assigning me a project. Again, I'm working on studying for the LSAT, so having those projects is an added challenge. For my growth class, I have the group paper that involves a lot of econometrics and other fun mathy things like that. The idea on it is hopefully all the reports are able to be published with a little bit of work over the summer. In my IPE class, we have a theoretical paper coming up. It has to pertain to an issue in the international political economy and has to be written for an executive at an NGO. I don't think it will get read by one, but having to write for that audience is a new challenge. The third project is my least concern, it's a paper on any topic we want from business ethics. There's a standard prompt about Wal-Mart, but the professor encourages us to go ahead and do anything we want if we are not inspired by that. Being the moderate achiever I am, I have decided to do whatever I want which will be a bit more difficult, but more enjoyable for sure. And that is all I am going to say about my classes.
Frisbee:
There is only one tournament left this school year and since Kathryn had confirmation this weekend, I was unable to go to it. The past few weeks since the tournament, I haven't been going to frisbee very much. I've only really been able to make it on Sundays because on Fridays I have felt like I didn't need to go since I wasn't going to the tournament. On top of that, I decided that I was better off using those 3-4 hours (including driving times) to study for the LSAT and/or work on my projects. On Sundays, I've been going to pickup games at Magnuson park with Steven, Eric, and Chris because I prefer to play with them.
Confirmation:
Kathryn had her confirmation today. It was pretty meh. Aside from maybe some weddings here and there and funerals, I doubt I will find myself in a church again. The ceremony went pretty well. It was actually not such a bad process because Kathryn's friend who is Josh H.'s sister was also getting confirmed so when sponsors had to come, there was someone cool there to hang out with. It was also nice because we seemed to have equally cavalier attitudes about the whole process.
Guild Wars:
Jen (the guild leader (and my facebook friend!)) has been off doing alliance battles with her friend recently, so she hasn't been doing as many money earning DoA runs that have coincided with my schedule unfortunately. Still though, her or some other guildie has been online and talking with them while vanquishing has made the whole process a lot less painfully boring. Since I caught up on a youtube series, I've been doing homework and some Guild Wars stuff during my break between classes now. I'm earning a lot of money and I am quite certain I will be done with Guild Wars altogether before I turn 21. In other gaming news...
Starcraft!!:
I've gotten back into playing. The more I play SC2, the less I care about Guild Wars. But then I see that Hall of Monuments calculator and I have to finish it. I've been mostly getting in time with Keir, but having Steven involved also has been fun when we are able to do it. I missed SC during winter quarter, especially the part where Keir and I bicker incessantly during a match. We're not that great yet, but we took a lot of time off and what can I say, Guild Wars really does not hone your videogaming skills (though when I went back from SC2 to Guild Wars, I got a lot better). Last night, Steven and I were playing some games against computers, working on our 6-pools when Steven accidentally clicked on "Find Match" instead of "Coop vs. AI." Neither of us noticed during the loading that there were human players and it wasn't until our zerglings were attacking and we saw they were walled off that Steven realized they were humans. For people that don't know, 6-pool is pretty generally douchey and we felt pretty bad, but at the same time it was funny that the mistake happened and that we were able to beat them. After that game, to add to the moment, battle.net decided it we deserved to be placed into diamond. So that is the story of how Steven and I are in diamond for 2v2s (not that it's a terribly impressive achievement, just that we definitely didn't deserve it after 6-pooling). I can't wait until the summer when I have nothing but time for SC2 and I definitely hope I can get back into the culture before going over to Korea. I'm already getting into pro games again and I discovered they still do Broodwar matches, so I might start watching those again too when I get time.
Game Nights:
They have been going well. Eric recently got Settlers of Catan, so I expect that to be fun in the future when we continue to play it. In other games, Steven and I are often able to make deals by me giving him something in the board game in exchange for something in Guild Wars that I can use to fund my Hall of Monuments run. I try not to be ridiculous about it though, I want to put up a reasonable fight to win in the board games to make them more interesting, but if I have enough to spare, I find making those deals is very good. For example, we were playing Life and I had the high income. With that, I was clearly doing well, so I offered to pay Steven's college loans in exchange for Guild Wars money. I can't wait until we play Risk next. I'm going to be a super assassin.
D&D:
Our campaign is going along pretty well. We're only two sessions in so it's hard to tell what exactly the overarching story is yet, but I think we have an idea. Our spellsword is starting to learn how to play her character. I like to think Chris is learning his as well, but then he does things like shoot at a ghost with a crossbow unsuccessfully......twice. At least Steven and I are there with some good DPS although we are also the ones getting messed up a lot of the time too. I think the only real downside to Steven's character is his speed. Other than that, he is good at tanking and dealing out good damage.
That's all for now. I don't know if I forgot anything, but I should really finish this work. I'm reviewing papers for our group essay. I've actually been doing that throughout this post between writing sections. The papers are 30 page walls of text followed by 8 pages of regression data, so I've found it has been easier to take breaks between essays. For this project, I'm reviewing 10 this weekend and my partner is doing the same. I then have to review about 5-10 more for my IPE project that I'm doing alone. Bleh......how many weeks are left in the quarter? Ah well, once again, Happy Birthday to Sunny and until next time I post, peace out.
Frisbee:
There is only one tournament left this school year and since Kathryn had confirmation this weekend, I was unable to go to it. The past few weeks since the tournament, I haven't been going to frisbee very much. I've only really been able to make it on Sundays because on Fridays I have felt like I didn't need to go since I wasn't going to the tournament. On top of that, I decided that I was better off using those 3-4 hours (including driving times) to study for the LSAT and/or work on my projects. On Sundays, I've been going to pickup games at Magnuson park with Steven, Eric, and Chris because I prefer to play with them.
Confirmation:
Kathryn had her confirmation today. It was pretty meh. Aside from maybe some weddings here and there and funerals, I doubt I will find myself in a church again. The ceremony went pretty well. It was actually not such a bad process because Kathryn's friend who is Josh H.'s sister was also getting confirmed so when sponsors had to come, there was someone cool there to hang out with. It was also nice because we seemed to have equally cavalier attitudes about the whole process.
Guild Wars:
Jen (the guild leader (and my facebook friend!)) has been off doing alliance battles with her friend recently, so she hasn't been doing as many money earning DoA runs that have coincided with my schedule unfortunately. Still though, her or some other guildie has been online and talking with them while vanquishing has made the whole process a lot less painfully boring. Since I caught up on a youtube series, I've been doing homework and some Guild Wars stuff during my break between classes now. I'm earning a lot of money and I am quite certain I will be done with Guild Wars altogether before I turn 21. In other gaming news...
Starcraft!!:
I've gotten back into playing. The more I play SC2, the less I care about Guild Wars. But then I see that Hall of Monuments calculator and I have to finish it. I've been mostly getting in time with Keir, but having Steven involved also has been fun when we are able to do it. I missed SC during winter quarter, especially the part where Keir and I bicker incessantly during a match. We're not that great yet, but we took a lot of time off and what can I say, Guild Wars really does not hone your videogaming skills (though when I went back from SC2 to Guild Wars, I got a lot better). Last night, Steven and I were playing some games against computers, working on our 6-pools when Steven accidentally clicked on "Find Match" instead of "Coop vs. AI." Neither of us noticed during the loading that there were human players and it wasn't until our zerglings were attacking and we saw they were walled off that Steven realized they were humans. For people that don't know, 6-pool is pretty generally douchey and we felt pretty bad, but at the same time it was funny that the mistake happened and that we were able to beat them. After that game, to add to the moment, battle.net decided it we deserved to be placed into diamond. So that is the story of how Steven and I are in diamond for 2v2s (not that it's a terribly impressive achievement, just that we definitely didn't deserve it after 6-pooling). I can't wait until the summer when I have nothing but time for SC2 and I definitely hope I can get back into the culture before going over to Korea. I'm already getting into pro games again and I discovered they still do Broodwar matches, so I might start watching those again too when I get time.
Game Nights:
They have been going well. Eric recently got Settlers of Catan, so I expect that to be fun in the future when we continue to play it. In other games, Steven and I are often able to make deals by me giving him something in the board game in exchange for something in Guild Wars that I can use to fund my Hall of Monuments run. I try not to be ridiculous about it though, I want to put up a reasonable fight to win in the board games to make them more interesting, but if I have enough to spare, I find making those deals is very good. For example, we were playing Life and I had the high income. With that, I was clearly doing well, so I offered to pay Steven's college loans in exchange for Guild Wars money. I can't wait until we play Risk next. I'm going to be a super assassin.
D&D:
Our campaign is going along pretty well. We're only two sessions in so it's hard to tell what exactly the overarching story is yet, but I think we have an idea. Our spellsword is starting to learn how to play her character. I like to think Chris is learning his as well, but then he does things like shoot at a ghost with a crossbow unsuccessfully......twice. At least Steven and I are there with some good DPS although we are also the ones getting messed up a lot of the time too. I think the only real downside to Steven's character is his speed. Other than that, he is good at tanking and dealing out good damage.
That's all for now. I don't know if I forgot anything, but I should really finish this work. I'm reviewing papers for our group essay. I've actually been doing that throughout this post between writing sections. The papers are 30 page walls of text followed by 8 pages of regression data, so I've found it has been easier to take breaks between essays. For this project, I'm reviewing 10 this weekend and my partner is doing the same. I then have to review about 5-10 more for my IPE project that I'm doing alone. Bleh......how many weeks are left in the quarter? Ah well, once again, Happy Birthday to Sunny and until next time I post, peace out.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
I can't tell if this quarter is going to be really hard or really easy.
Considering I'm nearly halfway through, that's an interesting thing to have up in the air still. Some days, it seems like there is a huge amount of work coming down the pipeline for the remainder of the quarter. Other days, it seems like those projects coming up aren't such a big deal. Either way, I don't get too much free time anymore since I have now started devoting what was formerly free time to LSAT study. It's weird to actually be studying for somewhat of a "standardized" exam. I never studied for the SAT, WASL, anything like that, so it's strange to not be studying facts and equations for once. That being said, I should get into the progress on my classes. I have a bit more to say outside of classes this time around, so hopefully that will make this post a bit more interesting.
Business Ethics:
This class has turned out to be pretty cool. The professor is a really nice guy and I like that he actually makes you defend your point of view and reflect on why you feel that way about an issue. As we have gone through the quarter, he occasionally makes references either cultural or historical (or both) and generally, I'm the only one that gets them. There was the Ayn Rand example from my last post where I was the only one that had heard of her (although I was rather happy about that). I've since found out that there are some pretty hardcore conservatives and some libertarians even in that class, so I'm pretty shocked that they had not heard of Ayn Rand. It's just pretty sad. Recently, the professor referenced the HUAC. I knew what it was right off of that. When nobody else knew what it was, he said what the acronym stood for. Still, nobody knew what it was besides myself. When he finally explained what it did, about half the class seemed to realize what he was talking about. Its times like this that make me wonder what I could have done with my GPA if I had buckled down in high school if people like this are being passed through to college. And these are people that have been at the university their whole college career unlike myself. I guess at least I know I wasn't missing out on anything when I was at SCC.
Another fun thing in this class was that we were discussing Rawls and his theory of economic justice recently. For a critique to it, we also read an article by some Nozick guy who was a huge libertarian and basically stood against Rawls. Now the class on the whole is pretty liberal (as is the school). When the professor asked us all to raise our hands to take a side, he began with Rawls. I proudly raised my hand because his ideas made perfect sense. One girl in the front row sheepishly raised her hand to about her nose, then began to put it down quickly as she scanned the room. The professor then counted out the people supporting Rawls "One....two?...no? Only one?" I looked around the room and realized I was alone in my support of Rawls. Crazy. The professor decided that most of the class was probably undecided and went to see who supported Nozick. Aside from three people, EVERYONE ELSE IN THE CLASS RAISED THEIR HANDS. So basically, it was about 25 people against me when we went to defend our opinions. I think I earned some points with the professor for being able to defend the idea on my own against that many people. After that class, I think I should look into becoming a defense attorney after law school, it was pretty fun.
Break time:
Between that class and my next class, I have a huge break. I've started going back to the gym during it. I don't know if the gym usually is crowded during the day, but since I'm there at 10:00am, it's not an issue for me. The nice thing about getting there that early is volleyball is getting off practice, so I have to walk through them to get to where I'm going (very nice!) and there are a surprising amount of attractive girls working out when I'm there. There's generally always one on those machines that men agree is the most fun to watch (the leg spready one (I'm not a pervert, I swear!)) which is also nice (hmm, maybe I am...). I didn't know it could be done, but today, a girl actually used the leg spready machine AT me. As hard as it is to explain how someone can use an exercise machine AT someone else, you'll just have to trust me, such was the case. I wasn't sure on protocol whether I should follower her to the free weights when she got up and went to use them. I might have overcome my shyness (lololo yeah right) and gone to talk to her, but a more alpha-male-y guy went to go hit on her after she got up so I wound up not going over. Missed opportunity, she was actually pretty attractive too :/
After working out, I usually head back to a cubicle in the library and "do homework" which means I watch some videos then fall asleep for a couple hours before waking up for my next class.
International Political Economy:
It's going pretty well. A lot of the stuff we learn is foundational information for economics because of all the international studies majors, but she is able to mix in current events and the occasional new piece of information for us econ majors to keep it interesting.
Economic Growth:
I don't want to give the wrong impression, I like the professor and I like the class. That being said, the material of the first few weeks was terribly dry and given the time of day it was in, I had a lot of trouble staying awake. We recently had our midterm exam, so now the remainder of the quarter is spent on excel writing up our big research papers. My partner and I wound up choosing financial aid and its effectiveness. It's not the most original idea, but we are both really busy outside of class this quarter, so we wanted to pick something we know we could do and that we could possibly excel at.
Frisbee:
A few weekends ago, we had a tournament over in Cheney. Only 11 of us were able to go, so it was a pretty intense weekend in terms of our lack of subs. Despite the lack of players, it was pretty much the best group we could have asked for (only would have switched one guy out and one guy in(who was too sick to go)). We were actually going to have 13, but one guy had to stay in town for some reason and one guy got robbed the night before. It was funny to find that out because we all get the emails when something of a criminal nature happens near campus, so we had all heard about it, we just didn't know who it happened to. Also, the fact that it was that guy getting robbed helped explain why exactly he and his friends were smoking "cigars" (as the email claimed) at 1am. So for things like this, we usually rent a 12 passenger van from the school and one of the captains drives that. Unfortunately, he was sick and couldn't go, so the other captain was to drive. Now I don't want to be rude, but he is a terrible driver. Like comically bad. At least he knows it and doesn't mind us poking fun at him. In the email he sent the night before we left, he said "If anyone is certified by the school to drive, let me know since I'm probably not the safest option we have." I asked him how easy it was to get registered and as it turns out, it is very easy. Long story short, I wound up getting certified to drive by the school. On the way over to Cheney, he drove until Ellensburg because he didn't know that I enjoy driving or how good at driving I was. After I took the wheel halfway through the trip, I was the only one for the remainder of the weekend that was allowed to drive (it was a vast improvement haha). The motel we stayed at in Cheney was kind of sketchy (doesn't narrow it down, I know) and it was quite an interesting experience because we had 11 guys sharing 1 room with 2 beds. Needless to say it was pretty cramped. I did learn that I can dry my whole body with a washcloth though.
Oh hey shoutout to Davis here: Thanks for showing me around Eastern when I came last summer. I was the only person on the team that knew the area and it really helped to know where everything was. It was too bad we didn't get to meet up that weekend, but I don't know if the timing would have worked out anyway.
So the actual tournament went pretty well. We got put against the usual teams, UW B-team, WSU, Eastern, and then a team called 'Combo' that was made up of the best players at Eastern (since they had enough for two full teams) and some from Wilamette. Usually, we suck pretty bad at tournaments which is ok because this is a building year for our program. This time though, we had a pretty elite team with us. We beat UW in our first game and I think took them by surprise since they had rolled us in every prior meeting this year. After that game, we had a bye, so I went with two of the players who had forgotten their cleats and we went to Wal-Mart in Airway Heights (near Spokane) to get them a pair because they were slipping around in the first game. When we got back, it was just in time to start our second game. Our second game was one of the best games that whole weekend. Each team was guaranteed one game on the red turf at eastern's field. I had admired it back when I went with Davis in the summer and to get to play on it was really fun. We played Eastern's team on that field. Zack was on Combo as were all the Eastern players I knew, so this was just some rookie team. We almost bageled them, winning 13-1. It was a really cool experience playing on the red turf. For our third game, we played the combo team. This was the 'elite' game for the day since both our teams were 2-0 and at this point in the day were likely to be spots 1 and 2 in our division. We got off to a rough start then somehow found our rhythm and actually managed to beat combo in a pretty amazing game. I don't remember the score, but I know it got hard capped and we were only 1 or 2 points ahead when it happened. That was the highlight of the day (besides the red turf). Our last game of the day was against WSU. They brought their parents for some reason and their parents were super annoying. We had to ask them to stop yelling "travel" every time one of us caught the disc. We wound up losing that game, I don't know why. We should have won. At the end of the day though, Combo and us tied for first with records of 3-1. Since we beat combo though, that meant we got the official first place and the oh-so-sweet first round bye that came with it. We headed into Spokane for some Olive Garden, then went back to the motel after that. We wound up watching Return of the Jedi with me and one other player pretty much quoting the movie as it went (to the amusement of the other people for some reason).
On Sunday, we didn't do very well. We won our first game in a rematch against WSU. After that, we played Gonzaga who were pretty good. It got hard capped and we were down 3 or 4 points anyway, so it seems like they would have won. Overall, that means we got third place, but still, a rematch against combo in the finals on the red turf would have been amazing. It's too bad it never came to be. We left after our last game and just went straight home in one sitting since I was more than happy to do all that driving. After we got back, I was complemented a lot on my driving which was pretty cool and then I was told that either myself or the captain that couldn't come would be perma-drivers from here on out. That was also pretty cool. The other guy is a good driver as well, it's nice to be in company with him. Overall, this was one of those good team bonding experiences and it turned out to be fun because we had an elite group and did a lot better than we usually do.
Since the tournament, I haven't been coming to practice as much. There is one tournament left, but I can't go because I'm sponsoring Kathryn in confirmation (a couple of you just spit out your morning cup of coffee laughing at that sentence (trust me, the irony is not lost on our family)) and it happens to be that same weekend. It's all the same though, I've also been injured. I suffered a pretty crazy fall onto some non-padded ground on our indoor field (falling about 5 feet down right onto my ass) and my leg has been kinda messed up since then. It didn't hurt tonight when I went though, so I think taking the last week off really helped to heal.
Miscellany:
So yeah I'm sponsoring Kathryn in confirmation. It seems appropriate because she is just about as motivated to do it as I am. I can't wait until our whole family is confirmed, then we never need to go to church again (that is TOTALLY how it works ;)).
I've found that I am really retarded when it comes to women. For some reason, I just can't pick up on subtle social cues. For instance, I was leaving a building a couple of weeks ago to meet dad in a parking lot on campus. He had come to get me since it was suddenly hailing and lightning after a day of having been bright and sunny. I happened to leave the building at the same time as this moderately attractive girl (617 maybe?). As I held the door open for her (as I always do), she commented about the weather. I lingered outside for a bit as she started to put her jacket on and I talked with her about something. I forget what it was exactly, but it was most likely related to a joke about the weather. Then, I noticed dad in the parking lot and without thinking, I went away from her and straight to the car so as not to keep him waiting. I got about halfway there and suddenly came to my senses. As I looked back, the girl was still standing there, kind of with a dumbfounded look on her face. I'm not sure, but I think that leaving was probably the totally wrong choice to make there. Oh well.
In better news, I got accepted to study abroad in Korea!!! Now all that remains is to finalize paperwork and stuff like that. Pending plane tickets and visa approval though, it looks like I will be in Korea come August. Now, that means I'll be missing PAX, so if you're going, don't forget to get tickets. I feel like I should still remind everyone since I always do anyway. Have fun, take lots of pictures for me to look at.
Chris, Steven, and I joined up a DnD group with this girl Chris knows and her boyfriend who DMs. He's a good DM in that he knows the rules well and is helpful and makes well balanced campaigns, but even after one session with him, I think Steven and I have been able to appreciate how awesome Davis' DMing is much more (wow man, two shoutouts! This is what you get for talking to me while I'm writing a post I guess). I'm playing a monk in this campaign. I was going to be a druid, but I found out that they don't have tree form in 3.5, so I was like "screw that" and decided to be a monk since I felt like I never really got to appreciate the class. I must say, it's a pretty awesome one. It also helps that I got Dirk-like stat rolls (17, 16, 16, 12, 12, 11). My favorite moment from the first session was when the four of us were going to use ranged attacks. Steven fired his shortbow and missed. Chris shot his crossbow and did a little damage. The girl fired a spell for a little damage. I picked up a rock off the ground, threw it 50 feet and scored a kill in one hit. In that same battle, my character jumped through fire to punch a hobgoblin (my favorite enemy) in the face before throwing it into said fire. Oh, I also had the time to curb-stomp a werewolf from a tree. That was pretty cool. I think I can get used to this kind of monking.
Ok that's about it. Aside from this stuff, I've been doing videogames as usual and still hanging out on Saturdays which has been fun. This post is definitely long enough though, so I'll let you go. Peace out.
Business Ethics:
This class has turned out to be pretty cool. The professor is a really nice guy and I like that he actually makes you defend your point of view and reflect on why you feel that way about an issue. As we have gone through the quarter, he occasionally makes references either cultural or historical (or both) and generally, I'm the only one that gets them. There was the Ayn Rand example from my last post where I was the only one that had heard of her (although I was rather happy about that). I've since found out that there are some pretty hardcore conservatives and some libertarians even in that class, so I'm pretty shocked that they had not heard of Ayn Rand. It's just pretty sad. Recently, the professor referenced the HUAC. I knew what it was right off of that. When nobody else knew what it was, he said what the acronym stood for. Still, nobody knew what it was besides myself. When he finally explained what it did, about half the class seemed to realize what he was talking about. Its times like this that make me wonder what I could have done with my GPA if I had buckled down in high school if people like this are being passed through to college. And these are people that have been at the university their whole college career unlike myself. I guess at least I know I wasn't missing out on anything when I was at SCC.
Another fun thing in this class was that we were discussing Rawls and his theory of economic justice recently. For a critique to it, we also read an article by some Nozick guy who was a huge libertarian and basically stood against Rawls. Now the class on the whole is pretty liberal (as is the school). When the professor asked us all to raise our hands to take a side, he began with Rawls. I proudly raised my hand because his ideas made perfect sense. One girl in the front row sheepishly raised her hand to about her nose, then began to put it down quickly as she scanned the room. The professor then counted out the people supporting Rawls "One....two?...no? Only one?" I looked around the room and realized I was alone in my support of Rawls. Crazy. The professor decided that most of the class was probably undecided and went to see who supported Nozick. Aside from three people, EVERYONE ELSE IN THE CLASS RAISED THEIR HANDS. So basically, it was about 25 people against me when we went to defend our opinions. I think I earned some points with the professor for being able to defend the idea on my own against that many people. After that class, I think I should look into becoming a defense attorney after law school, it was pretty fun.
Break time:
Between that class and my next class, I have a huge break. I've started going back to the gym during it. I don't know if the gym usually is crowded during the day, but since I'm there at 10:00am, it's not an issue for me. The nice thing about getting there that early is volleyball is getting off practice, so I have to walk through them to get to where I'm going (very nice!) and there are a surprising amount of attractive girls working out when I'm there. There's generally always one on those machines that men agree is the most fun to watch (the leg spready one (I'm not a pervert, I swear!)) which is also nice (hmm, maybe I am...). I didn't know it could be done, but today, a girl actually used the leg spready machine AT me. As hard as it is to explain how someone can use an exercise machine AT someone else, you'll just have to trust me, such was the case. I wasn't sure on protocol whether I should follower her to the free weights when she got up and went to use them. I might have overcome my shyness (lololo yeah right) and gone to talk to her, but a more alpha-male-y guy went to go hit on her after she got up so I wound up not going over. Missed opportunity, she was actually pretty attractive too :/
After working out, I usually head back to a cubicle in the library and "do homework" which means I watch some videos then fall asleep for a couple hours before waking up for my next class.
International Political Economy:
It's going pretty well. A lot of the stuff we learn is foundational information for economics because of all the international studies majors, but she is able to mix in current events and the occasional new piece of information for us econ majors to keep it interesting.
Economic Growth:
I don't want to give the wrong impression, I like the professor and I like the class. That being said, the material of the first few weeks was terribly dry and given the time of day it was in, I had a lot of trouble staying awake. We recently had our midterm exam, so now the remainder of the quarter is spent on excel writing up our big research papers. My partner and I wound up choosing financial aid and its effectiveness. It's not the most original idea, but we are both really busy outside of class this quarter, so we wanted to pick something we know we could do and that we could possibly excel at.
Frisbee:
A few weekends ago, we had a tournament over in Cheney. Only 11 of us were able to go, so it was a pretty intense weekend in terms of our lack of subs. Despite the lack of players, it was pretty much the best group we could have asked for (only would have switched one guy out and one guy in(who was too sick to go)). We were actually going to have 13, but one guy had to stay in town for some reason and one guy got robbed the night before. It was funny to find that out because we all get the emails when something of a criminal nature happens near campus, so we had all heard about it, we just didn't know who it happened to. Also, the fact that it was that guy getting robbed helped explain why exactly he and his friends were smoking "cigars" (as the email claimed) at 1am. So for things like this, we usually rent a 12 passenger van from the school and one of the captains drives that. Unfortunately, he was sick and couldn't go, so the other captain was to drive. Now I don't want to be rude, but he is a terrible driver. Like comically bad. At least he knows it and doesn't mind us poking fun at him. In the email he sent the night before we left, he said "If anyone is certified by the school to drive, let me know since I'm probably not the safest option we have." I asked him how easy it was to get registered and as it turns out, it is very easy. Long story short, I wound up getting certified to drive by the school. On the way over to Cheney, he drove until Ellensburg because he didn't know that I enjoy driving or how good at driving I was. After I took the wheel halfway through the trip, I was the only one for the remainder of the weekend that was allowed to drive (it was a vast improvement haha). The motel we stayed at in Cheney was kind of sketchy (doesn't narrow it down, I know) and it was quite an interesting experience because we had 11 guys sharing 1 room with 2 beds. Needless to say it was pretty cramped. I did learn that I can dry my whole body with a washcloth though.
Oh hey shoutout to Davis here: Thanks for showing me around Eastern when I came last summer. I was the only person on the team that knew the area and it really helped to know where everything was. It was too bad we didn't get to meet up that weekend, but I don't know if the timing would have worked out anyway.
So the actual tournament went pretty well. We got put against the usual teams, UW B-team, WSU, Eastern, and then a team called 'Combo' that was made up of the best players at Eastern (since they had enough for two full teams) and some from Wilamette. Usually, we suck pretty bad at tournaments which is ok because this is a building year for our program. This time though, we had a pretty elite team with us. We beat UW in our first game and I think took them by surprise since they had rolled us in every prior meeting this year. After that game, we had a bye, so I went with two of the players who had forgotten their cleats and we went to Wal-Mart in Airway Heights (near Spokane) to get them a pair because they were slipping around in the first game. When we got back, it was just in time to start our second game. Our second game was one of the best games that whole weekend. Each team was guaranteed one game on the red turf at eastern's field. I had admired it back when I went with Davis in the summer and to get to play on it was really fun. We played Eastern's team on that field. Zack was on Combo as were all the Eastern players I knew, so this was just some rookie team. We almost bageled them, winning 13-1. It was a really cool experience playing on the red turf. For our third game, we played the combo team. This was the 'elite' game for the day since both our teams were 2-0 and at this point in the day were likely to be spots 1 and 2 in our division. We got off to a rough start then somehow found our rhythm and actually managed to beat combo in a pretty amazing game. I don't remember the score, but I know it got hard capped and we were only 1 or 2 points ahead when it happened. That was the highlight of the day (besides the red turf). Our last game of the day was against WSU. They brought their parents for some reason and their parents were super annoying. We had to ask them to stop yelling "travel" every time one of us caught the disc. We wound up losing that game, I don't know why. We should have won. At the end of the day though, Combo and us tied for first with records of 3-1. Since we beat combo though, that meant we got the official first place and the oh-so-sweet first round bye that came with it. We headed into Spokane for some Olive Garden, then went back to the motel after that. We wound up watching Return of the Jedi with me and one other player pretty much quoting the movie as it went (to the amusement of the other people for some reason).
On Sunday, we didn't do very well. We won our first game in a rematch against WSU. After that, we played Gonzaga who were pretty good. It got hard capped and we were down 3 or 4 points anyway, so it seems like they would have won. Overall, that means we got third place, but still, a rematch against combo in the finals on the red turf would have been amazing. It's too bad it never came to be. We left after our last game and just went straight home in one sitting since I was more than happy to do all that driving. After we got back, I was complemented a lot on my driving which was pretty cool and then I was told that either myself or the captain that couldn't come would be perma-drivers from here on out. That was also pretty cool. The other guy is a good driver as well, it's nice to be in company with him. Overall, this was one of those good team bonding experiences and it turned out to be fun because we had an elite group and did a lot better than we usually do.
Since the tournament, I haven't been coming to practice as much. There is one tournament left, but I can't go because I'm sponsoring Kathryn in confirmation (a couple of you just spit out your morning cup of coffee laughing at that sentence (trust me, the irony is not lost on our family)) and it happens to be that same weekend. It's all the same though, I've also been injured. I suffered a pretty crazy fall onto some non-padded ground on our indoor field (falling about 5 feet down right onto my ass) and my leg has been kinda messed up since then. It didn't hurt tonight when I went though, so I think taking the last week off really helped to heal.
Miscellany:
So yeah I'm sponsoring Kathryn in confirmation. It seems appropriate because she is just about as motivated to do it as I am. I can't wait until our whole family is confirmed, then we never need to go to church again (that is TOTALLY how it works ;)).
I've found that I am really retarded when it comes to women. For some reason, I just can't pick up on subtle social cues. For instance, I was leaving a building a couple of weeks ago to meet dad in a parking lot on campus. He had come to get me since it was suddenly hailing and lightning after a day of having been bright and sunny. I happened to leave the building at the same time as this moderately attractive girl (617 maybe?). As I held the door open for her (as I always do), she commented about the weather. I lingered outside for a bit as she started to put her jacket on and I talked with her about something. I forget what it was exactly, but it was most likely related to a joke about the weather. Then, I noticed dad in the parking lot and without thinking, I went away from her and straight to the car so as not to keep him waiting. I got about halfway there and suddenly came to my senses. As I looked back, the girl was still standing there, kind of with a dumbfounded look on her face. I'm not sure, but I think that leaving was probably the totally wrong choice to make there. Oh well.
In better news, I got accepted to study abroad in Korea!!! Now all that remains is to finalize paperwork and stuff like that. Pending plane tickets and visa approval though, it looks like I will be in Korea come August. Now, that means I'll be missing PAX, so if you're going, don't forget to get tickets. I feel like I should still remind everyone since I always do anyway. Have fun, take lots of pictures for me to look at.
Chris, Steven, and I joined up a DnD group with this girl Chris knows and her boyfriend who DMs. He's a good DM in that he knows the rules well and is helpful and makes well balanced campaigns, but even after one session with him, I think Steven and I have been able to appreciate how awesome Davis' DMing is much more (wow man, two shoutouts! This is what you get for talking to me while I'm writing a post I guess). I'm playing a monk in this campaign. I was going to be a druid, but I found out that they don't have tree form in 3.5, so I was like "screw that" and decided to be a monk since I felt like I never really got to appreciate the class. I must say, it's a pretty awesome one. It also helps that I got Dirk-like stat rolls (17, 16, 16, 12, 12, 11). My favorite moment from the first session was when the four of us were going to use ranged attacks. Steven fired his shortbow and missed. Chris shot his crossbow and did a little damage. The girl fired a spell for a little damage. I picked up a rock off the ground, threw it 50 feet and scored a kill in one hit. In that same battle, my character jumped through fire to punch a hobgoblin (my favorite enemy) in the face before throwing it into said fire. Oh, I also had the time to curb-stomp a werewolf from a tree. That was pretty cool. I think I can get used to this kind of monking.
Ok that's about it. Aside from this stuff, I've been doing videogames as usual and still hanging out on Saturdays which has been fun. This post is definitely long enough though, so I'll let you go. Peace out.
Thursday, April 07, 2011
After 6 years, my blog is still not dead!
Provided blogger stays online. And for the time being, it looks like it will be doing that for a long time. Before I get started, happy 21st Orion! Hopefully you sober up enough to read this post in a few days. In other news, not much is happening. I've been keeping busy, but finally found some time to sit down and make a post about the new quarter. I'm also going to squeeze in some stuff that I omitted from spring break because I didn't want the last post to run long. Turns out it might not have mattered, I don't know if anybody read it.
Spring Break:
I mostly spent my time earning money in Guild Wars with the new guild. I've been doing a nightly run with them and it's fun because a bunch of us just hop on vent and talk while we do the run. It makes the 90 minutes go by quicker. In fact, if this post shows that I posted it on April 7th, it's because I took a break in the middle of this post to do a run with them since they wanted me to come along. I did also get to see some people over break including the usual gang of suspects (Steven, Eric, and Chris) as well as Davis and Lucy at one point. In addition to that, I played games, worked on some single player Guild Wars stuff, and went to drill state. It was cool because they got first place in one of the events they did. I don't know, I'm not an expert on dance. I suppose it was good, but then again all the performances seemed good.
But now spring quarter has started and you no doubt want to hear about my classes!
Business Ethics (Mondays, Wednesdays 7:45am-9:50am):
I actually wound up in the wrong building the first day, but was able to find my way to the class on time. The nice thing about getting lost at 7:45 in the morning is nobody is really out on campus, so if you see people walking around, chances are they are going to the same place you are. This class is pretty cool. I like the teacher. He challenges people whenever they make a point, not to be a dick, but to make them think about why they take that point. We are in the middle of studying Utilitarianism currently, so I've been talking a lot. Most people in the class thought this was a totally crazy idea while about four of us actually bought into it. I was more than happy to argue in favor of it and I think I did a really good job of it actually. There was also one point a couple lectures ago where the professor brough up Ayn Rand. When he saw the confused look on everyone's faces, he asked if any of us had even heard of her. Myself and one other girl near me raised our hands. Now mind you, this was a class of nearly 30 people and only two of us had even heard of Ayn Rand. I suppose on one hand, that's a sad thing, but on the other hand, it's a very great thing.
After this class, I have a break until about 1:30. It is a great amount of time that I could be using to get ahead on readings, play games, read books, or do just about anything. So far, I've primarily used it to sleep, which has also turned out to be a good use of my time. It also prepares me for the afternoon onslaught of classes that I foolishly(well I guess I had no choice) scheduled in the late afternoon when I am extremely likely to fall asleep.
International Political Economy (Mondays, Wednesdays 1:30pm-3:35pm):
This is the class taught by my econ professor from last quarter. There are four of us in the entire class that are repeat students of hers, so I've become in kind of that inner circle of hers. Since she is a major player in the econ department, I'm trying to suck up to her more in order to get a letter of recommendation from her when I apply to law schools. If I get time, I might actually be volunteering to help her do some research eventually. The class itself is pretty basic. It has to be since it is also a class required by the international studies major. So what we are left with is a class that is challenging for them because they have no econ background and is *supposed* to be challenging for econ majors because we don't know much about political decisions. Fortunately for me, I am well versed in both since I've done a lot more law study than the average econ student, so I think this class will go well for me.
Economic Growth (Mondays, Wednesdays 3:45pm-5:50pm):
This course is basically what you would get if you took my final project in econ last quarter and made it into a class. I like that it is like that because it gives me a chance to redeem myself for a project on which I felt I could have done better. Two of my three team members are in this class, but I'm not working with them because my friend from SCC (who is also in my ethics class this quarter (we always wind up in the same place (we might even be both going to Korea at the same time))) is in that class and we're going to work together for the final project. For the final project, we're going to do a legitimate research paper, which will be pretty fun. As a bonus, the professor will pick the top two in the class and work with the authors for about a year and eventually will help them get the report ready to be published. We're definitely hoping we get to do that, but since we both lead busy lives, we won't be particularly sad if it doesn't happen.
Frisbee:
With it getting warmer, some people are coming back to practices. It's been a bit difficult because those people took three months off while the rest of us were hard at work so we've had to accomodate some of their sucking while we play. We have a tournament at Eastern coming up this weekend and we had to invite some of those people since we were short on guys to play (in my opinion, we should have invited the girls) so we'll see how that goes.
Gaming:
Going to Steven's on Saturdays has been fun. We were playing a lot of Minecraft for a while, but are now getting back into Brawl and Munchkin because there are just a lot of douchebags online in Minecraft. Last weekend, we took a bit of a break to try to teach Chris the names and looks of each member of SNSD (you know, the important things) which turned out to be a very funny use of time. We also got to hear Eric's Korean impression which brought me to tears. It was pretty damn funny.
LSAT:
Well I shouldn't really bring this up. It just popped into my head that I have my first practice test tomorrow. I'm hoping I beat Keir's first time score.
Study Abroad:
It looks like I have been accepted right now, but I don't want to speak too soon, so I'll let you know in the next post.
That's it for now, until the end of the month, peace out.
Spring Break:
I mostly spent my time earning money in Guild Wars with the new guild. I've been doing a nightly run with them and it's fun because a bunch of us just hop on vent and talk while we do the run. It makes the 90 minutes go by quicker. In fact, if this post shows that I posted it on April 7th, it's because I took a break in the middle of this post to do a run with them since they wanted me to come along. I did also get to see some people over break including the usual gang of suspects (Steven, Eric, and Chris) as well as Davis and Lucy at one point. In addition to that, I played games, worked on some single player Guild Wars stuff, and went to drill state. It was cool because they got first place in one of the events they did. I don't know, I'm not an expert on dance. I suppose it was good, but then again all the performances seemed good.
But now spring quarter has started and you no doubt want to hear about my classes!
Business Ethics (Mondays, Wednesdays 7:45am-9:50am):
I actually wound up in the wrong building the first day, but was able to find my way to the class on time. The nice thing about getting lost at 7:45 in the morning is nobody is really out on campus, so if you see people walking around, chances are they are going to the same place you are. This class is pretty cool. I like the teacher. He challenges people whenever they make a point, not to be a dick, but to make them think about why they take that point. We are in the middle of studying Utilitarianism currently, so I've been talking a lot. Most people in the class thought this was a totally crazy idea while about four of us actually bought into it. I was more than happy to argue in favor of it and I think I did a really good job of it actually. There was also one point a couple lectures ago where the professor brough up Ayn Rand. When he saw the confused look on everyone's faces, he asked if any of us had even heard of her. Myself and one other girl near me raised our hands. Now mind you, this was a class of nearly 30 people and only two of us had even heard of Ayn Rand. I suppose on one hand, that's a sad thing, but on the other hand, it's a very great thing.
After this class, I have a break until about 1:30. It is a great amount of time that I could be using to get ahead on readings, play games, read books, or do just about anything. So far, I've primarily used it to sleep, which has also turned out to be a good use of my time. It also prepares me for the afternoon onslaught of classes that I foolishly(well I guess I had no choice) scheduled in the late afternoon when I am extremely likely to fall asleep.
International Political Economy (Mondays, Wednesdays 1:30pm-3:35pm):
This is the class taught by my econ professor from last quarter. There are four of us in the entire class that are repeat students of hers, so I've become in kind of that inner circle of hers. Since she is a major player in the econ department, I'm trying to suck up to her more in order to get a letter of recommendation from her when I apply to law schools. If I get time, I might actually be volunteering to help her do some research eventually. The class itself is pretty basic. It has to be since it is also a class required by the international studies major. So what we are left with is a class that is challenging for them because they have no econ background and is *supposed* to be challenging for econ majors because we don't know much about political decisions. Fortunately for me, I am well versed in both since I've done a lot more law study than the average econ student, so I think this class will go well for me.
Economic Growth (Mondays, Wednesdays 3:45pm-5:50pm):
This course is basically what you would get if you took my final project in econ last quarter and made it into a class. I like that it is like that because it gives me a chance to redeem myself for a project on which I felt I could have done better. Two of my three team members are in this class, but I'm not working with them because my friend from SCC (who is also in my ethics class this quarter (we always wind up in the same place (we might even be both going to Korea at the same time))) is in that class and we're going to work together for the final project. For the final project, we're going to do a legitimate research paper, which will be pretty fun. As a bonus, the professor will pick the top two in the class and work with the authors for about a year and eventually will help them get the report ready to be published. We're definitely hoping we get to do that, but since we both lead busy lives, we won't be particularly sad if it doesn't happen.
Frisbee:
With it getting warmer, some people are coming back to practices. It's been a bit difficult because those people took three months off while the rest of us were hard at work so we've had to accomodate some of their sucking while we play. We have a tournament at Eastern coming up this weekend and we had to invite some of those people since we were short on guys to play (in my opinion, we should have invited the girls) so we'll see how that goes.
Gaming:
Going to Steven's on Saturdays has been fun. We were playing a lot of Minecraft for a while, but are now getting back into Brawl and Munchkin because there are just a lot of douchebags online in Minecraft. Last weekend, we took a bit of a break to try to teach Chris the names and looks of each member of SNSD (you know, the important things) which turned out to be a very funny use of time. We also got to hear Eric's Korean impression which brought me to tears. It was pretty damn funny.
LSAT:
Well I shouldn't really bring this up. It just popped into my head that I have my first practice test tomorrow. I'm hoping I beat Keir's first time score.
Study Abroad:
It looks like I have been accepted right now, but I don't want to speak too soon, so I'll let you know in the next post.
That's it for now, until the end of the month, peace out.
Friday, March 25, 2011
Why is Winter Quarter so Busy?
So I had planned on starting my two posts a month this month by updating in the first week of March, but obviously that did not happen. I was ready to make a post, then suddenly all the classes I was in upped their workloads and I was actually left with no time to sit down and make an update. Then last week, I put in a new quotes post (see below by the way if you haven't yet) and I wanted to have some space between posts. I do plan on making a post in the first half of April though (currently I am aiming for the 4th or whatever that Monday is) and from there, I will start doing posts twice a month. In this post, I'm going to probably skip over some minor things that happened because I want to keep the post to a normal length and frankly, those things weren't terribly important. Since the quarter ended, I will first start off on that though.
Theology of Peace: (This will be the longest section by a lot, I promise)
I'm actually really glad I wound up in this class. Since it was full, that means by me getting in, someone else did not. I hope that that person that I prevented from entering the class looked at alternative options to this class and got their theology credit that way. If that one person avoided the pain this class caused me, I am more than happy to have suffered through the whole quarter with it. I wanted to give it a shot, I really did. I was nice to the teacher, but she was just so disrespectful to all the students. She wouldn't let them argue points without claiming that they were "not interpreting what she meant correctly" or telling them they were being disrespectful (while she was interrupting them to tell them this). Fortunately, we get to rate teachers on their performances and I know a bunch of us did not give her very favorable reviews. I spent the last half of the quarter experimenting to see how little effort I could put in while still getting full credit. She even commented on what a good writer she thought I was, which clued me in to the fact that she clearly had no idea what she was talking about. I would not consider myself a good writer.
For the final project, we had to give informative speeches on a peacebuilding organization of our choice. We couldn't double up, but that wasn't a problem because I knew of a local one (World Concern) that fit the bill perfectly. Even better, I personally know the president (dad's best friend) and I decided it would be fun to go the extra mile for the project and interview the leader of the organization. As I thought, I wound up being the only person to do this. He also gave me several good anecdotes, which was really cool. In the end, I had about 20 minutes of material for my 5-7 minute speech. Of course, I got up there without rehearsing and without a script (because I tend to get distracted when I have/have done those things). During the speech, I was unable to see the clock, but the teacher was to let us know when we were running out of time. After what seemed like about four minutes into the speech, she started playing with her watch and standing up and generally being a distraction. At that point, I was concerned that I was actually a few minutes off and was out of time, so I had to actually stop my speech to point back at her and say "Am I out of time or what is going on back there?" She then proceeded to tell me I had a couple minutes left. I just looked at her with a look that I hope said "Then what the hell are you doing?" as I got back to finish my speech.
Students in the class rate the speeches and offer feedback on them through hading in slips of paper after each speech. It's hard to tell what exactly to work on because for mine, I ran the gambit from "not enough eye contact" to "excellent eye contact" and "too quiet" to "very easy to hear and understand." I guess it depends on where they were sitting. One guy commented on my monotone, which was funny and true. The one comment that really offended me was the one that said I was boring. It was the only comment like it in the whole class. Guess who it came from? THE FUCKING TEACHER! I was super pissed (which you can see since I just dropped a rare f-bomb on my blog) that the teacher herself said it was boring. I even asked my mom if that was feedback she would ever give someone and she said if she actually were to do that, it would be accompanied by a long list of ways to improve that. Mine did not, so again, I was really pissed at her for that. What was boring about my speech lady? I was the only person that didn't give just a historical rundown of the company. I told stories of real people receiving real help. Real experiences in actual countries and actual warzones all over the world. What was boring about my speech? Is it boring that I can talk about something without resorting to a video every 5 minutes? Seriously, we watched a video all but 3 days in that class. It was a total waste of my time and again, I really hope I helped somebody avoid that class. If not for the cool classmates, this would have been a totally intolerable experience. I did continue to spend time between classes hanging out with that girl from frisbee, but for those of you wondering how that progressed, it sounds like she has a boyfriend.
Financial Markets and Economic Development:
In stark contrast to the last class, THIS CLASS WAS SO AWESOME. I only got a B in it for the quarter, but I really learned a lot and I feel like I earned that B. The teacher was extremely helpful and I'm glad I have the opportunity to have a class with her next quarter. She was one of the best teachers I've had in my college experience thus far. That was another thing that helped me to get through theology was knowing I was coming to this class immediately after. Our final project in this class was a 20 minute presentation about an assigned topic. Of course, our group of four got the hardest one because of the lack of specificity. There were ones like, "Effects of Microfinance" or "Lessons from Crisis" that were pretty easy to follow. Our topic was "Finance in Development." Well there are hundreds of financial factors that can spur development, so in the end, we decided to just do some regressions based on a few factors we found interesting. Fortunately, my group was pretty good. We had this one guy that I had class with last quarter and also play frisbee with. He was a pretty good leader. Then there was this guy that is kind of like me, but much more pro at econ. He got a lot of good data for us. Then, there was this cute asian (I know, sorry for the redundancy there) girl who also got good information and helped keep us guys in line. After we started working as a group, she began to sit by me in class (by choice) which was actually pretty cool. Then there was me, I guess in addition to doing whatever was needed at the time, my special skill was tech support (which surprisingly came in handy very often). The presentation went pretty well, judging by my grade in the class, we aced it. Our presentation actually wound up being the longest at 30 minutes including the question and answer period, which was good because it meant people were really interested in it. I said a couple things that didn't make sense on accident, but was able to recover from it.
Law, Politics, and Society:
This class really had some great people in it. It was entertaining to watch them interact with each other all quarter and I was kind of sad on the last day to know I probably wouldn't have class with them again. It was like a nice TV show getting cancelled. The class went pretty well overall and I was happy with what I learned. I also found out that the professor of that class is one of the pre-law advisors at the school, so I got to meet with her about that, which was super helpful. I guess she thought I was a polisci minor, so when she found out I wasn't and that I was just taking the course as a general elective, she seemed kind of impressed.
Frisbee:
This went pretty well too. Last time the finals were approaching, the team kind of broke up for the remainder of the quarter since tournaments were done and it was cold outside. This quarter, we had a tournament the weekend before finals, so practices were getting more serious as we got to the end of the quarter. This wreaked havoc on my schedule, causing me to just miss a few practices rather than get behind on projects. Despite that, I was playing pretty well all quarter. I've cemented myself as a handler, but not because I can't run. I still get called upon to cut in some situations, but most often, I get to sit back and handle for the whole point. I like it that way. The tournament we had recently was PLU BBQ down in Tacoma/Puyallup area. We did pretty bad the first day, but I guess they won both their games on the second day. I did not go on Sunday because I was doing...
St. Patrick's Day Dash:
I beat Kathryn again and got first place in my family this year. Both Kathryn and I were able to run the whole thing without walking at all this year, so pretty good. I ran under 10 minute miles and got my new personal best time of 35 minutes and beat Kathryn by 5 minutes. We then got to hang around the finish line taking snacks and stuff while we waited for mom and dad. One of the things being given away was 5 hour energy, which I got three of. I tried one recently and other than feeling like I wanted to puke after tasting it, I did not feel a thing. No energy, no crash, I don't know what was up.
Gaming:
Guild Wars has been going well. I read an old blog post to see why I quit and I'm glad I gave it a second chance. When I stopped, it was just because I was getting really bored with it, now it is fun again. And with Steven to play with, it's more enjoyable. We recently found a great place to earn money, so we have been doing that. We both quit SOT and left it in Chris' capable hands for now. This new guild has about 80-90 people (15 of which are ever online) that do this run, so it's fun to just talk with them during runs and stuff. It also helps that they are good and can do a 2 hour run in about an hour and a half.
Steven, Eric, Chris, and I have also taken to playing Minecraft online which has been pretty fun. Going online and messing with servers or playing on pvp servers is quite fun actually and a great way to spend 5 hours without realizing it.
Studying Abroad:
So I don't know who I told about this. I am convinced I told someone, but so far, I have not found who that someone is. I am led to believe that I may have had a series of my dreams about mundane conversations (I hate getting those mixed with reality) since nobody seems to know I was even thinking about this. The truth is, since I went to the Netherlands, I have wanted to study abroad. Initially, I thought I would wind up there. At Seattle U, I began looking at options. NL was not one of them, but one that did strike me as interesting was South Korea. That has long been a language and culture I have wanted to learn about and the program looks really great for econ majors, so I'm trying to get into it (also, it is where Sunny and Starcraft live!!!). The problem right now is figuring out with my parents how I can help cover the cost. I'm thinking it won't be a problem because of all the money I saved by going to SCC (2 full years at SCC with overload every quarter is equal to the cost of only about 2 quarters with dorming and a meal plan at the UW). I'll keep you all posted on how this pans out. If it does work out, I won't be able to make it to PAX this year, but after last year, I think that is something I can live with. I'm not saying you guys sucked at it, just that it was getting way too crowded.
Ok well that's it for now. I'm in Yakima right now at the hotel where the drill team is staying. All the parents stay here too and they are all at the place where they perfrom right now just sitting around for 10 hours today. The team perfroms at 4:30 which is when our relatives from the tri-cities are coming up, so I'm planning on going up then. In the meantime, I'm going to just play some Guild Wars to pass the time. Until about a week and a half from now, peace out.
Theology of Peace: (This will be the longest section by a lot, I promise)
I'm actually really glad I wound up in this class. Since it was full, that means by me getting in, someone else did not. I hope that that person that I prevented from entering the class looked at alternative options to this class and got their theology credit that way. If that one person avoided the pain this class caused me, I am more than happy to have suffered through the whole quarter with it. I wanted to give it a shot, I really did. I was nice to the teacher, but she was just so disrespectful to all the students. She wouldn't let them argue points without claiming that they were "not interpreting what she meant correctly" or telling them they were being disrespectful (while she was interrupting them to tell them this). Fortunately, we get to rate teachers on their performances and I know a bunch of us did not give her very favorable reviews. I spent the last half of the quarter experimenting to see how little effort I could put in while still getting full credit. She even commented on what a good writer she thought I was, which clued me in to the fact that she clearly had no idea what she was talking about. I would not consider myself a good writer.
For the final project, we had to give informative speeches on a peacebuilding organization of our choice. We couldn't double up, but that wasn't a problem because I knew of a local one (World Concern) that fit the bill perfectly. Even better, I personally know the president (dad's best friend) and I decided it would be fun to go the extra mile for the project and interview the leader of the organization. As I thought, I wound up being the only person to do this. He also gave me several good anecdotes, which was really cool. In the end, I had about 20 minutes of material for my 5-7 minute speech. Of course, I got up there without rehearsing and without a script (because I tend to get distracted when I have/have done those things). During the speech, I was unable to see the clock, but the teacher was to let us know when we were running out of time. After what seemed like about four minutes into the speech, she started playing with her watch and standing up and generally being a distraction. At that point, I was concerned that I was actually a few minutes off and was out of time, so I had to actually stop my speech to point back at her and say "Am I out of time or what is going on back there?" She then proceeded to tell me I had a couple minutes left. I just looked at her with a look that I hope said "Then what the hell are you doing?" as I got back to finish my speech.
Students in the class rate the speeches and offer feedback on them through hading in slips of paper after each speech. It's hard to tell what exactly to work on because for mine, I ran the gambit from "not enough eye contact" to "excellent eye contact" and "too quiet" to "very easy to hear and understand." I guess it depends on where they were sitting. One guy commented on my monotone, which was funny and true. The one comment that really offended me was the one that said I was boring. It was the only comment like it in the whole class. Guess who it came from? THE FUCKING TEACHER! I was super pissed (which you can see since I just dropped a rare f-bomb on my blog) that the teacher herself said it was boring. I even asked my mom if that was feedback she would ever give someone and she said if she actually were to do that, it would be accompanied by a long list of ways to improve that. Mine did not, so again, I was really pissed at her for that. What was boring about my speech lady? I was the only person that didn't give just a historical rundown of the company. I told stories of real people receiving real help. Real experiences in actual countries and actual warzones all over the world. What was boring about my speech? Is it boring that I can talk about something without resorting to a video every 5 minutes? Seriously, we watched a video all but 3 days in that class. It was a total waste of my time and again, I really hope I helped somebody avoid that class. If not for the cool classmates, this would have been a totally intolerable experience. I did continue to spend time between classes hanging out with that girl from frisbee, but for those of you wondering how that progressed, it sounds like she has a boyfriend.
Financial Markets and Economic Development:
In stark contrast to the last class, THIS CLASS WAS SO AWESOME. I only got a B in it for the quarter, but I really learned a lot and I feel like I earned that B. The teacher was extremely helpful and I'm glad I have the opportunity to have a class with her next quarter. She was one of the best teachers I've had in my college experience thus far. That was another thing that helped me to get through theology was knowing I was coming to this class immediately after. Our final project in this class was a 20 minute presentation about an assigned topic. Of course, our group of four got the hardest one because of the lack of specificity. There were ones like, "Effects of Microfinance" or "Lessons from Crisis" that were pretty easy to follow. Our topic was "Finance in Development." Well there are hundreds of financial factors that can spur development, so in the end, we decided to just do some regressions based on a few factors we found interesting. Fortunately, my group was pretty good. We had this one guy that I had class with last quarter and also play frisbee with. He was a pretty good leader. Then there was this guy that is kind of like me, but much more pro at econ. He got a lot of good data for us. Then, there was this cute asian (I know, sorry for the redundancy there) girl who also got good information and helped keep us guys in line. After we started working as a group, she began to sit by me in class (by choice) which was actually pretty cool. Then there was me, I guess in addition to doing whatever was needed at the time, my special skill was tech support (which surprisingly came in handy very often). The presentation went pretty well, judging by my grade in the class, we aced it. Our presentation actually wound up being the longest at 30 minutes including the question and answer period, which was good because it meant people were really interested in it. I said a couple things that didn't make sense on accident, but was able to recover from it.
Law, Politics, and Society:
This class really had some great people in it. It was entertaining to watch them interact with each other all quarter and I was kind of sad on the last day to know I probably wouldn't have class with them again. It was like a nice TV show getting cancelled. The class went pretty well overall and I was happy with what I learned. I also found out that the professor of that class is one of the pre-law advisors at the school, so I got to meet with her about that, which was super helpful. I guess she thought I was a polisci minor, so when she found out I wasn't and that I was just taking the course as a general elective, she seemed kind of impressed.
Frisbee:
This went pretty well too. Last time the finals were approaching, the team kind of broke up for the remainder of the quarter since tournaments were done and it was cold outside. This quarter, we had a tournament the weekend before finals, so practices were getting more serious as we got to the end of the quarter. This wreaked havoc on my schedule, causing me to just miss a few practices rather than get behind on projects. Despite that, I was playing pretty well all quarter. I've cemented myself as a handler, but not because I can't run. I still get called upon to cut in some situations, but most often, I get to sit back and handle for the whole point. I like it that way. The tournament we had recently was PLU BBQ down in Tacoma/Puyallup area. We did pretty bad the first day, but I guess they won both their games on the second day. I did not go on Sunday because I was doing...
St. Patrick's Day Dash:
I beat Kathryn again and got first place in my family this year. Both Kathryn and I were able to run the whole thing without walking at all this year, so pretty good. I ran under 10 minute miles and got my new personal best time of 35 minutes and beat Kathryn by 5 minutes. We then got to hang around the finish line taking snacks and stuff while we waited for mom and dad. One of the things being given away was 5 hour energy, which I got three of. I tried one recently and other than feeling like I wanted to puke after tasting it, I did not feel a thing. No energy, no crash, I don't know what was up.
Gaming:
Guild Wars has been going well. I read an old blog post to see why I quit and I'm glad I gave it a second chance. When I stopped, it was just because I was getting really bored with it, now it is fun again. And with Steven to play with, it's more enjoyable. We recently found a great place to earn money, so we have been doing that. We both quit SOT and left it in Chris' capable hands for now. This new guild has about 80-90 people (15 of which are ever online) that do this run, so it's fun to just talk with them during runs and stuff. It also helps that they are good and can do a 2 hour run in about an hour and a half.
Steven, Eric, Chris, and I have also taken to playing Minecraft online which has been pretty fun. Going online and messing with servers or playing on pvp servers is quite fun actually and a great way to spend 5 hours without realizing it.
Studying Abroad:
So I don't know who I told about this. I am convinced I told someone, but so far, I have not found who that someone is. I am led to believe that I may have had a series of my dreams about mundane conversations (I hate getting those mixed with reality) since nobody seems to know I was even thinking about this. The truth is, since I went to the Netherlands, I have wanted to study abroad. Initially, I thought I would wind up there. At Seattle U, I began looking at options. NL was not one of them, but one that did strike me as interesting was South Korea. That has long been a language and culture I have wanted to learn about and the program looks really great for econ majors, so I'm trying to get into it (also, it is where Sunny and Starcraft live!!!). The problem right now is figuring out with my parents how I can help cover the cost. I'm thinking it won't be a problem because of all the money I saved by going to SCC (2 full years at SCC with overload every quarter is equal to the cost of only about 2 quarters with dorming and a meal plan at the UW). I'll keep you all posted on how this pans out. If it does work out, I won't be able to make it to PAX this year, but after last year, I think that is something I can live with. I'm not saying you guys sucked at it, just that it was getting way too crowded.
Ok well that's it for now. I'm in Yakima right now at the hotel where the drill team is staying. All the parents stay here too and they are all at the place where they perfrom right now just sitting around for 10 hours today. The team perfroms at 4:30 which is when our relatives from the tri-cities are coming up, so I'm planning on going up then. In the meantime, I'm going to just play some Guild Wars to pass the time. Until about a week and a half from now, peace out.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
I'm sure by now that everyone has heard of the terrible tragedy that has unfolded, now starting to cause panic and confusion in America. Of course, I'm talking about the new song "Friday" by whoever the hell Rebecca Black (aka R.B.?) is. I first heard the video on Monday night and was immediately taken with its ridiculousness. For about an hour, I riffed on this song with Davis, Keir, and Sai. It was definitely the best study break I had all weekend. Here is the conversation. Sorry, I had to split it into two separate pictures. This was the only way I could get it to zoom to a readable size.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Ok I think I've finally figured out a way.
I think I've finally figured out my new posting schedule. I'm going to try to do this at least once a month now. Whenever I do get around to updating, I'll set a status in gchat to let everyone know. Also, I will try to stick to a fairly regular schedule, updating around the end of a month. I will always make at least one post a month. In addition, if interesting things continue to happen, I might start doing this more often (like twice a month). That ties in well to what I wanted to get to next, I apologize in advance for what I anticipate will be quite a long post. I'll try to keep it reasonable. At the very least, remember you have at least 2-3 weeks to read this, so don't feel like you need to do it all in one sitting. I've ramble enough here, so I think I'll just get going on the post.
First off, check out this article. What the heck, Marvel? First you kill Captain America and now Fire Man (The Human Torch)? I get it, you hate me! And what' worse, they're replacing him in the Fantastic Four with Spiderman of all people. With every new comic they produce, they find new ways to disappoint me.
Theology of Peace:
So in news of classes, my opinions of classes have changed since last time. Especially for this class and my macro class. In the case of this class, it really seems like a class designed for people that haven't figured out their lives yet. Everyone in the class (save for myself and a couple other cool guys) are very emotional people and it can get kind of frustrating for the three of us since we are guided by logic. Another issue I have with the class is it needs a name change. It should be called Theology, then Peace because we are not learning about theology and peace together; we are separating the two. The professor was in El Salvador during the civil war they had in the '80s, so she has some interesting stories, but that's as cool as it gets. In many other ways, she will preach something one minute and do the opposite the next. For example, she recently brought up "violent" turns of phrase such as "Bite the hand that feeds you" and other things like that that suggest violence. She then proceeded to suggest that we not use them. Just today, she used another phrase, "Throw the baby out with the bathwater"(yes it's a real turn of phrase). But the point is, did she not realize what she just told us earlier in the quarter? In addition to that, it's ridiculous to assume that someone is using a "violent" turn of phrase in a malicious way in my opinion. She has actually missed a few classes because she has had surgery for her hand earlier in the quarter, so she had a friend of hers fill in. He is a lot peppier than her and it's nice to start the day with him. He's also an expert on the El Salvador Civil War, which is what we've been learning about. That has been cool to have his knowledge about that since it's a fairly interesting topic.
One day in the class, the professor was setting up (or at least trying to) a video for us to watch and was having trouble. She called for a techno genius to come up and help her. Now, I know enough about technology to know that I would not consider myself a genius in that field, but I have learned that tech genius level for her falls well within my abilities. One other guy came up to help her though before I volunteered. I decided to keep an eye on the situation anyway. She was trying to load a DVD into the DVD player, but kept putting it into the PC and couldn't understand why the DVD wasn't playing (the projector was on the DVD player input. The guy helping her couldn't figure it out either, so finally I leaned back to tell her "If you want it to play from the DVD player, you have to put the disc in the DVD player." She took it out of the computer and put it in the DVD player and it worked. She asked me how I knew which one was the DVD player and I responded "PCs typically don't have VHS slots."
In general, the class is pretty light. I can't tell if it's either graded easily or if I'm getting good at faking the emotions I need. Either way, I've put as much thought as I think I need to into papers and essays so far and I'm doing exceptional in the class, so I see no incentive to stop doing it there. Fortunately also, videogames have only come up once the entire quarter. I didn't say anything in their defense because the girl talking about them had a valid point. She wanted to know whether people playing FPS games would still play if they actually felt the pain of being shot. I suppose she's correct, they would probably not. The girl I like from frisbee still sits next to me in the class, so that is nice. Between this class getting out and my next class (and hers which starts at the same time) we will go to the building where our classes are and talk or something for the 10-15 minutes between classes. Sometimes it is longer, but only if the theology class ends early. Talking with her has been pretty nice, even though it seems we are both as awkward as each other (or maybe I'm just so awkward I bring people down to my level (I like to think that is not the case)) which is something Davis seemed to find great humour in. She hasn't shown up to frisbee practice as much this quarter as she did last quarter, but when she does, it's pretty cool to have someone else to talk to besides the usual guys that I see every time.
I realized recently that the makeup of my school friends is very different from what it was in high school or even what it was last year and the year before. The last couple of years were kind of a stepping stone, with me hanging out with more girls than I did in highschool. Currently, if I am not alone or in a class, I am hanging out with a girl. Outside of frisbee, all the friends that I consider hanging out with regularly are girls. Uh oh, am I becoming the gay friend? Curse you, friend zone!!! One day, I shall break you!
Financial Systems and Economic Development:
I finally learned the name of the course! I was wrong about this professor, I have taken quite a liking to her. She is very tough, but once you have a few classes with you, you learn she is actually very funny. She has kind of a deadpan sense of humour; she will say very funny things and never crack a smile, always acting very serious. I've only seen her smile twice this quarter. One of those times was in class (she was pumping us up for a test and said something that made herself laugh (and by laugh, I mean chuckle before catching herself and going back to serious mode)) and the other time was when she probably didn't even notice I saw her. Speaking of being observant like that, I have noticed she is as observant as I am. She picks up private conversations from halfway across the room (my curse of selective hearing and the reason I read people's lips when there is a lot of background noise). She also has a photographic memory which is something people have thought I had in the past, but I know I do not. She does have a very great memory though. It's pretty neat.
The thing I like best about this class is that she expects a lot of all the students, but at the same time, it has never been more clear what is expected of me. She is really into transparency and she will give you the reason for why she does everything and explains how every aspect of the class is going to work. I'm glad this class falls in 10:00-noon time area because I don't have much trouble staying awake then for some reason. Coupled with the fact that I am terrified of what she might do if I fall asleep (I'm being dramatic, she is very subtle about waking me up the couple times it has happened), I have little problem staying awake in the class.
From that class, I have a break before my next one. I typically head to the library at that point and hit up a cubicle to get work done or watch minecraft videos before the next class.
Law, Politics, and Society:
This class has been pretty smooth. The people in the class are nice as is the professor. There is one lady though that has a hearing disability that was either not properly treated for the first 3 weeks of the quarter or has gotten rapidly worse since the start of the quarter. She's been finding more and more intrusive ways to require assistance. None of them have directly affected me though, so I don't particularly mind. She often has ASL translators come in, which has actually been nice for me too because those people like to really mouth the words, so that helps my comprehension go up because I like to read lips in addition to hearing. I also am interested in ASL (not learning, just viewing), so that has been fun to watch too. Recently, she also brought in a lady that had some contraption that copied down the entire lecture word for word as it was spoken onto a computer screen that she could read. It was pretty neat and I don't understand how it works. Now the problems with her are that she frequently comes in late, we're talking half an hour, not some petty lateness. She also has displaced people recently with her new equipment which kind of sucks because those people had their seats claimed for the first 6 weeks of the quarter and all of a sudden, they were taken when the lady was doing fine in her other seats. Again though, none of this directly affects me, so I don't personally feel anything against her.
I think the professor of this class has taken a liking to me because I tend to say smart things or perhaps it's because I think like a lawyer. Perhaps it's both, but she seems to have been supportive of my answers that I've given to questions lately, which is always nice.
From that class, I've typically been going back to the cubicles until I leave. Recently, I decided to get back into going to the gym. The new years resolutions people finally wore off around midterms, so there has been room to move in there again. Unfortunately, the gym is going to be closed for the next couple of weeks due to construction. They're renovating it for next fall, so they are screwing around with the standing structure in the meantime.
As for frisbee, that is going well too. I don't know if I mentioned this before, but for a long time, everyone thought I was a freshman. It took some time, but I think almost everyone on the team now knows that I am actually a junior transfer student and that is why I haven't been around the past couple of years. It seems like there are only about 3 or 4 of us regulars that are juniors (myself, the two captains, and one other guy). There are two regulars that are seniors, one regular that is a second year law student, and the rest are freshmen. I also recently found out that I'm the only legitimate lefty on the team. The other left handed guy (who people often mistake for me because we look similar (except I have facial hair) turns out to be right handed in real life, he just throws lefty for some reason. Oh well, we can't all be born great. I admire his dedication to try to make himself better.
I can't quite tell how valuable I am to the team right now. I haven't felt confident since that tournament in Oregon in November where it felt like I had to be babysat on the field. I'm sure it wasn't seen like that, but I was pretty unimpressed with my level of play. Since then, I've received feedback on my play ranging from light suggestions of how to do something better to being considered someone that looks like he knows what he's doing. I don't know for sure where I stand, but I feel pretty confident about my standing I guess. We had a scrimmage a couple weeks ago and I was picked fourth, which was pretty surprising for me. I was picked over players I thought were better than me, so that was a confidence booster.
In another quite note about frisbee, I finally got new cleats. My old ones were from the last two years of playing with the lazerbeams, so they were at least 5 years old. They had gotten to the point where the top of the shoe was detatching from the soles, so by the end of their lives, I had duct taped around them to prevent them not only from leaking (the grass we played on was frequently wet, making for uncomfortable playing once my socks got wet), but also to just hold them together. I went out and got new cleats recently though and I'm really liking them. They're football cleats (couldn't find any lacrosse ones) and they're called "Land Sharks." After I saw that name, I knew I had to get it because of the meaning of that term in a frisbee context (hit up urbandictionary if you're curious).
Around the house and at the rest of the family's houses, it seems like nobody can keep their stuff straight without me. My mom got mad at our internet recently and reset the router. That was a fun time spent getting it back up. At least our new password isn't 20 characters long though. I was glad about that. I'm not really complaining about having to do more work here, quite the opposite. Being needed more by the family makes me feel more vindicated for remaining at home while I'm pursuing my undergraduate degree (besides the convenience and cost saved by staying at home). I am planning on moving out though after I graduate, so heads up to all of you. Maybe by then, Keir will come here for law school (hint hint). Either way, that decision is a ways off at this point.
I still go to Steven's every Saturday where he and I play Munchkin (and now some Wii as well) with Chris and Eric. A few weeks ago, Steven was looking at the Guild Wars 2 page because he was reminiscing about his time spent playing an MMO. We joked with him a bit and I reiterated the point that I would only get GW2 if Steven got and if he would play with me because I didn't want to spend that much time playing alone or playing catchup, especially with SC2 being out. Anyway long story short, a couple days later, he emailed me saying he reinstalled it. I did as well and now we've been getting back into it since seeing how close we were to completing our hall of monuments for Guild Wars 2. We've decided we want to try to get to 50/50 (he is close than I am) and/or the God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals title. As far as gaming goes, that is mainly what I've been doing since the end of January. This time around, Guild Wars is better. Steven and I play together and we don't pull ludicrous hours anymore. We get bored with it for the night at more normal rates, so it keeps us from going crazy with it again. Once Chris gets his laptop back though, I think we'll wind up doing a bit more Minecraft as well again because there are some modes we want to try out.
Ok well I hope I didn't forget anything in there. I'll try to get the word out in my status on gchat tomorrow (or later today, it's Friday as I'm posting this (I know I'm late, sorry -_-)). I might try to post before the end of the quarter, but it does end in exactly one month, so we'll see. If you feel like you want to know something more about anything that's going on, feel free to chat me up sometime. I'm generally not doing anything important. At least not so important I can't set it down for a bit. Anyway, until later, peace out.
First off, check out this article. What the heck, Marvel? First you kill Captain America and now Fire Man (The Human Torch)? I get it, you hate me! And what' worse, they're replacing him in the Fantastic Four with Spiderman of all people. With every new comic they produce, they find new ways to disappoint me.
Theology of Peace:
So in news of classes, my opinions of classes have changed since last time. Especially for this class and my macro class. In the case of this class, it really seems like a class designed for people that haven't figured out their lives yet. Everyone in the class (save for myself and a couple other cool guys) are very emotional people and it can get kind of frustrating for the three of us since we are guided by logic. Another issue I have with the class is it needs a name change. It should be called Theology, then Peace because we are not learning about theology and peace together; we are separating the two. The professor was in El Salvador during the civil war they had in the '80s, so she has some interesting stories, but that's as cool as it gets. In many other ways, she will preach something one minute and do the opposite the next. For example, she recently brought up "violent" turns of phrase such as "Bite the hand that feeds you" and other things like that that suggest violence. She then proceeded to suggest that we not use them. Just today, she used another phrase, "Throw the baby out with the bathwater"(yes it's a real turn of phrase). But the point is, did she not realize what she just told us earlier in the quarter? In addition to that, it's ridiculous to assume that someone is using a "violent" turn of phrase in a malicious way in my opinion. She has actually missed a few classes because she has had surgery for her hand earlier in the quarter, so she had a friend of hers fill in. He is a lot peppier than her and it's nice to start the day with him. He's also an expert on the El Salvador Civil War, which is what we've been learning about. That has been cool to have his knowledge about that since it's a fairly interesting topic.
One day in the class, the professor was setting up (or at least trying to) a video for us to watch and was having trouble. She called for a techno genius to come up and help her. Now, I know enough about technology to know that I would not consider myself a genius in that field, but I have learned that tech genius level for her falls well within my abilities. One other guy came up to help her though before I volunteered. I decided to keep an eye on the situation anyway. She was trying to load a DVD into the DVD player, but kept putting it into the PC and couldn't understand why the DVD wasn't playing (the projector was on the DVD player input. The guy helping her couldn't figure it out either, so finally I leaned back to tell her "If you want it to play from the DVD player, you have to put the disc in the DVD player." She took it out of the computer and put it in the DVD player and it worked. She asked me how I knew which one was the DVD player and I responded "PCs typically don't have VHS slots."
In general, the class is pretty light. I can't tell if it's either graded easily or if I'm getting good at faking the emotions I need. Either way, I've put as much thought as I think I need to into papers and essays so far and I'm doing exceptional in the class, so I see no incentive to stop doing it there. Fortunately also, videogames have only come up once the entire quarter. I didn't say anything in their defense because the girl talking about them had a valid point. She wanted to know whether people playing FPS games would still play if they actually felt the pain of being shot. I suppose she's correct, they would probably not. The girl I like from frisbee still sits next to me in the class, so that is nice. Between this class getting out and my next class (and hers which starts at the same time) we will go to the building where our classes are and talk or something for the 10-15 minutes between classes. Sometimes it is longer, but only if the theology class ends early. Talking with her has been pretty nice, even though it seems we are both as awkward as each other (or maybe I'm just so awkward I bring people down to my level (I like to think that is not the case)) which is something Davis seemed to find great humour in. She hasn't shown up to frisbee practice as much this quarter as she did last quarter, but when she does, it's pretty cool to have someone else to talk to besides the usual guys that I see every time.
I realized recently that the makeup of my school friends is very different from what it was in high school or even what it was last year and the year before. The last couple of years were kind of a stepping stone, with me hanging out with more girls than I did in highschool. Currently, if I am not alone or in a class, I am hanging out with a girl. Outside of frisbee, all the friends that I consider hanging out with regularly are girls. Uh oh, am I becoming the gay friend? Curse you, friend zone!!! One day, I shall break you!
Financial Systems and Economic Development:
I finally learned the name of the course! I was wrong about this professor, I have taken quite a liking to her. She is very tough, but once you have a few classes with you, you learn she is actually very funny. She has kind of a deadpan sense of humour; she will say very funny things and never crack a smile, always acting very serious. I've only seen her smile twice this quarter. One of those times was in class (she was pumping us up for a test and said something that made herself laugh (and by laugh, I mean chuckle before catching herself and going back to serious mode)) and the other time was when she probably didn't even notice I saw her. Speaking of being observant like that, I have noticed she is as observant as I am. She picks up private conversations from halfway across the room (my curse of selective hearing and the reason I read people's lips when there is a lot of background noise). She also has a photographic memory which is something people have thought I had in the past, but I know I do not. She does have a very great memory though. It's pretty neat.
The thing I like best about this class is that she expects a lot of all the students, but at the same time, it has never been more clear what is expected of me. She is really into transparency and she will give you the reason for why she does everything and explains how every aspect of the class is going to work. I'm glad this class falls in 10:00-noon time area because I don't have much trouble staying awake then for some reason. Coupled with the fact that I am terrified of what she might do if I fall asleep (I'm being dramatic, she is very subtle about waking me up the couple times it has happened), I have little problem staying awake in the class.
From that class, I have a break before my next one. I typically head to the library at that point and hit up a cubicle to get work done or watch minecraft videos before the next class.
Law, Politics, and Society:
This class has been pretty smooth. The people in the class are nice as is the professor. There is one lady though that has a hearing disability that was either not properly treated for the first 3 weeks of the quarter or has gotten rapidly worse since the start of the quarter. She's been finding more and more intrusive ways to require assistance. None of them have directly affected me though, so I don't particularly mind. She often has ASL translators come in, which has actually been nice for me too because those people like to really mouth the words, so that helps my comprehension go up because I like to read lips in addition to hearing. I also am interested in ASL (not learning, just viewing), so that has been fun to watch too. Recently, she also brought in a lady that had some contraption that copied down the entire lecture word for word as it was spoken onto a computer screen that she could read. It was pretty neat and I don't understand how it works. Now the problems with her are that she frequently comes in late, we're talking half an hour, not some petty lateness. She also has displaced people recently with her new equipment which kind of sucks because those people had their seats claimed for the first 6 weeks of the quarter and all of a sudden, they were taken when the lady was doing fine in her other seats. Again though, none of this directly affects me, so I don't personally feel anything against her.
I think the professor of this class has taken a liking to me because I tend to say smart things or perhaps it's because I think like a lawyer. Perhaps it's both, but she seems to have been supportive of my answers that I've given to questions lately, which is always nice.
From that class, I've typically been going back to the cubicles until I leave. Recently, I decided to get back into going to the gym. The new years resolutions people finally wore off around midterms, so there has been room to move in there again. Unfortunately, the gym is going to be closed for the next couple of weeks due to construction. They're renovating it for next fall, so they are screwing around with the standing structure in the meantime.
As for frisbee, that is going well too. I don't know if I mentioned this before, but for a long time, everyone thought I was a freshman. It took some time, but I think almost everyone on the team now knows that I am actually a junior transfer student and that is why I haven't been around the past couple of years. It seems like there are only about 3 or 4 of us regulars that are juniors (myself, the two captains, and one other guy). There are two regulars that are seniors, one regular that is a second year law student, and the rest are freshmen. I also recently found out that I'm the only legitimate lefty on the team. The other left handed guy (who people often mistake for me because we look similar (except I have facial hair) turns out to be right handed in real life, he just throws lefty for some reason. Oh well, we can't all be born great. I admire his dedication to try to make himself better.
I can't quite tell how valuable I am to the team right now. I haven't felt confident since that tournament in Oregon in November where it felt like I had to be babysat on the field. I'm sure it wasn't seen like that, but I was pretty unimpressed with my level of play. Since then, I've received feedback on my play ranging from light suggestions of how to do something better to being considered someone that looks like he knows what he's doing. I don't know for sure where I stand, but I feel pretty confident about my standing I guess. We had a scrimmage a couple weeks ago and I was picked fourth, which was pretty surprising for me. I was picked over players I thought were better than me, so that was a confidence booster.
In another quite note about frisbee, I finally got new cleats. My old ones were from the last two years of playing with the lazerbeams, so they were at least 5 years old. They had gotten to the point where the top of the shoe was detatching from the soles, so by the end of their lives, I had duct taped around them to prevent them not only from leaking (the grass we played on was frequently wet, making for uncomfortable playing once my socks got wet), but also to just hold them together. I went out and got new cleats recently though and I'm really liking them. They're football cleats (couldn't find any lacrosse ones) and they're called "Land Sharks." After I saw that name, I knew I had to get it because of the meaning of that term in a frisbee context (hit up urbandictionary if you're curious).
Around the house and at the rest of the family's houses, it seems like nobody can keep their stuff straight without me. My mom got mad at our internet recently and reset the router. That was a fun time spent getting it back up. At least our new password isn't 20 characters long though. I was glad about that. I'm not really complaining about having to do more work here, quite the opposite. Being needed more by the family makes me feel more vindicated for remaining at home while I'm pursuing my undergraduate degree (besides the convenience and cost saved by staying at home). I am planning on moving out though after I graduate, so heads up to all of you. Maybe by then, Keir will come here for law school (hint hint). Either way, that decision is a ways off at this point.
I still go to Steven's every Saturday where he and I play Munchkin (and now some Wii as well) with Chris and Eric. A few weeks ago, Steven was looking at the Guild Wars 2 page because he was reminiscing about his time spent playing an MMO. We joked with him a bit and I reiterated the point that I would only get GW2 if Steven got and if he would play with me because I didn't want to spend that much time playing alone or playing catchup, especially with SC2 being out. Anyway long story short, a couple days later, he emailed me saying he reinstalled it. I did as well and now we've been getting back into it since seeing how close we were to completing our hall of monuments for Guild Wars 2. We've decided we want to try to get to 50/50 (he is close than I am) and/or the God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals title. As far as gaming goes, that is mainly what I've been doing since the end of January. This time around, Guild Wars is better. Steven and I play together and we don't pull ludicrous hours anymore. We get bored with it for the night at more normal rates, so it keeps us from going crazy with it again. Once Chris gets his laptop back though, I think we'll wind up doing a bit more Minecraft as well again because there are some modes we want to try out.
Ok well I hope I didn't forget anything in there. I'll try to get the word out in my status on gchat tomorrow (or later today, it's Friday as I'm posting this (I know I'm late, sorry -_-)). I might try to post before the end of the quarter, but it does end in exactly one month, so we'll see. If you feel like you want to know something more about anything that's going on, feel free to chat me up sometime. I'm generally not doing anything important. At least not so important I can't set it down for a bit. Anyway, until later, peace out.
Tuesday, February 08, 2011
Well I got my prediction right for the Superbowl, so I guess going 6 for 11 isn't so bad in the end. This was a pretty great season for football, getting to see some new teams making the playoffs and generally seeing a more competitive scene with all the teams performing what some critics considered to be rather mediocrely. I like when teams aren't undefeated going into week 11 and I really like when the last two weeks of the season still matter. I hope next season is just as good. Fantasy football starts in late August, so try to drum up some support if you can.
And now to make a longshot prediction for next season. I'm going to abandon the Texans for this time (sad, I know) given how the second half of their season went. I'm not going to say to watch the NFC West for the Rams or the Seahawks either, though I think both will have winning records next season. The team I am picking to do much better than they have in recent times next season is...........The Browns! Hopefully I am right and Colt McCoy uses his superpowers to turn that team into a playoff contender. Perhaps he will even lead them to their first ever Superbowl (though I doubt they'll have that dramatic of a change in one season). I do think they will do much better than this season though, even though they are in a tough defensive division with the Ravens and the Steelers.
I'll make a regular post on Thursday. Feel free to bug me relentlessly if I forget.
And now to make a longshot prediction for next season. I'm going to abandon the Texans for this time (sad, I know) given how the second half of their season went. I'm not going to say to watch the NFC West for the Rams or the Seahawks either, though I think both will have winning records next season. The team I am picking to do much better than they have in recent times next season is...........The Browns! Hopefully I am right and Colt McCoy uses his superpowers to turn that team into a playoff contender. Perhaps he will even lead them to their first ever Superbowl (though I doubt they'll have that dramatic of a change in one season). I do think they will do much better than this season though, even though they are in a tough defensive division with the Ravens and the Steelers.
I'll make a regular post on Thursday. Feel free to bug me relentlessly if I forget.
Tuesday, February 01, 2011
Well looks like I'm still no better at predicting football than your average coin. Good thing I didn't pick the pro bowl too because I would have lost that. I figured the AFC would just start the entire Patriots team, but they did not, so maybe that's why they lost. Anyway, it's time to pick the superbowl champion!
Packers vs. Steelers: Packers by 10 points:
The Steelers are hot, they've been hot, they'll be hot for a few years to come. They have the playoff experience that Aaron Rodgers and the Packers don't have. The Packers have shown this season though and especially in the playoffs that they are an offensive force to be reckoned with and their defense is also excellent. While the Steelers will stop a large chunk of the points that could be scored by the Packers, it won't be enough. The Packers utilize every chance they get to score, so the Steelers will need to step it up on offense to match that, which is something I am still waiting for them to really do this season (at least not when they're playing the Browns). Packers win, I go 6 of 11 and feel slightly less ashamed at how my postseason picks went. Don't let me down Packers!
Packers vs. Steelers: Packers by 10 points:
The Steelers are hot, they've been hot, they'll be hot for a few years to come. They have the playoff experience that Aaron Rodgers and the Packers don't have. The Packers have shown this season though and especially in the playoffs that they are an offensive force to be reckoned with and their defense is also excellent. While the Steelers will stop a large chunk of the points that could be scored by the Packers, it won't be enough. The Packers utilize every chance they get to score, so the Steelers will need to step it up on offense to match that, which is something I am still waiting for them to really do this season (at least not when they're playing the Browns). Packers win, I go 6 of 11 and feel slightly less ashamed at how my postseason picks went. Don't let me down Packers!
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Well I'm very happy that the Patriots were eliminated, but I'm disappointed the Jets had to win. I also was hoping the Steelers wouldn't make it, but oh well. I'm not doing so well this year, currently I sit at 4 of 8 correct picks. That means I've been no better at selecting winners this season than your average coin. On the plus side, a lot of announcers have made the same mistakes I have, so that makes me feel better haha. Only down to two games this week, then off to the pro bowl and the superbowl.
Packers at Bears: Packers by 14 points:
The Bears put up a worthy effort against the Seahawks and crushed the worst team to ever get into the playoffs. Enough about that though, the garbage time really showed the Bears' weaknesses to the other teams. The Bears played seemingly well until the fourth quarter, before that holding Seattle to just 3 points. In the fourth quarter, the Bears started slacking a bit, allowing 21 points in a single quarter from the Seahawks. Aaron Rodgers is a huge football nerd and does his homework. He is going to be watching that quarter over and over and he'll know exactly where to get the ball by knowing what Bears defenders are weak in what areas. On top of that, the Packers are really hot, they beat the number 1 seed after all. I'll be rooting for the Packers in this game and in the Superbowl, regardless of who wins the AFC game (I don't particularly like the Steelers (sick of seeing them win Superbowls) and I REALLY don't like the Jets (sick of seeing them...period)).
Jets at Steelers: Jets by 3 points:
Both number 6 seeds beat the number 1 seeds last week in big surprise games. I think that we'll actually see both 6 seeds in the superbowl for once. I'll be rooting for the Steelers in this game because I hate them less, but I think after what we saw last week with the Jets beating clearly the best team in the league this past season, there is something to fear from them there.
Packers at Bears: Packers by 14 points:
The Bears put up a worthy effort against the Seahawks and crushed the worst team to ever get into the playoffs. Enough about that though, the garbage time really showed the Bears' weaknesses to the other teams. The Bears played seemingly well until the fourth quarter, before that holding Seattle to just 3 points. In the fourth quarter, the Bears started slacking a bit, allowing 21 points in a single quarter from the Seahawks. Aaron Rodgers is a huge football nerd and does his homework. He is going to be watching that quarter over and over and he'll know exactly where to get the ball by knowing what Bears defenders are weak in what areas. On top of that, the Packers are really hot, they beat the number 1 seed after all. I'll be rooting for the Packers in this game and in the Superbowl, regardless of who wins the AFC game (I don't particularly like the Steelers (sick of seeing them win Superbowls) and I REALLY don't like the Jets (sick of seeing them...period)).
Jets at Steelers: Jets by 3 points:
Both number 6 seeds beat the number 1 seeds last week in big surprise games. I think that we'll actually see both 6 seeds in the superbowl for once. I'll be rooting for the Steelers in this game because I hate them less, but I think after what we saw last week with the Jets beating clearly the best team in the league this past season, there is something to fear from them there.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Ok well one week in and already I can't get another pick wrong if I want to beat my record (8 of 11 correct). I was surprised by the Packers and stunned by the Seahawks. The fact that that has happened has made picking winners this season near impossible for even professionals, let alone myself. I'll do my best though and hopefully I get them right. Before I get started on the picks, I want to post about that game.
It was by far my favorite Seahawks game that I have ever been to (previously, it was the game vs. Dallas a couple years ago where Tony Romo screwed up the snap, costing his team the win). Usually, the 12th man is super loud before the game and then as the game progresses, gets quieter to loud levels of other stadiums. This game, everyone was excited. We were in the playoffs and happy to be there even though we had a losing record. It maintained the loud volume THE ENTIRE GAME. Almost everyone was on their feet the entire time. Whenever our team was on defense, the stands were loud. I couldn't hear a person 3 feet away from me. We were even so loud, we were reported to have caused a seismic tremor when Marshawn Lynch ran that beautiful ninja touchdown. The atmosphere was amazing and the stands remained full the whole game. It was nice to see players on the team getting pumped up and it was refreshing to not see Drew Brees walk out like the god he is made out to be. The Seahawks defense made him look like any other mortal. That being said, time to get my picks on.
Ravens at Steelers: Ravens by 3 points:
I'm picking some upsets this week hoping that I get some right. The Steelers have faced Baltimore twice this season since they're both in the same division. The two teams split the season, each one winning on their away game surprisingly enough. The teams seem to be evenly matched this year, but I give the edge to Baltimore because I think they want it more and they are going to be capable of doing it. Plus, they're on the road so if the past season taught us anything, that means they're going to win.
Packers at Falcons: Packers by 7 points:
Yeah, I'm going with another upset here. I wasn't sure about the Packers, but after seeing them play last week, I think they can do it. Matt Ryan is a great quarterback with a great record (especially at home (only 2 losses in I think 22 games)), but Aaron Rodgers is also great. Their records this season are actually pretty similar. The Falcons were 13-3 while the Packers were 10-6. That may seem different to you, but consider that Matt Ryan played every game for the Falcons. Aaron Rodgers missed a couple. In those he missed, there were some bad losses. In the end, only four of the Packers' losses this season came while Aaron Rodgers was playing more than 5 minutes. I think that even though this is at home, the Packers are going to be a contender for the Superbowl and they'll come through the Falcons (and hopefully Seattle) to do it.
Seahawks at Bears: Bears by less than 5 points:
I just can't do it. I can't pick the Seahawks. I sure don't mind being proven wrong by them though. I think that both teams are actually pretty evenly matched, but I don't know if Hasselbeck has it in him to play as well in an away game as he did last week at home. Once again though, I would like to point out that I'm calling this game close. I did this last week too because I want to acknowledge that the Seahawks really do have a fighting chance in this as I thought they did last week. I was surprised when they acted on that fighting chance last week and won, but I don't know if they can do it again, even though they beat the bears once this season. If the Seahawks win, I probably won't pick them over Green Bay, but boy would I like to see that as well. I think the game will be very close, but in the end, I'll be rooting for the Seahawks, even at the expense of my record.
Jets at Patriots: Patriots by 10 points:
Can't both of these teams lose? They are my least favorite teams in all of football. I always hate when they play each other because it means one of them will have to win. I don't know what I want to see more, a loss for my least favorite team the Patriots, or the smug grin to be wiped off Rex Ryan's face with another 45-3 blowing out of the Jets like in week 13. In the end, it doesn't matter because I will be unhappy that either team is making it into the AFC Championship game and I will be rooting for the winner of the Steelers/Ravens game, though I hope it's the Ravens because God am I sick of seeing the AFC only offer up 3 different teams (Steelers, Patriots, and Colts(well not so sick of them :] )) to the Superbowl year after year. The Patriots are on fire though and it seems a safe call to pick them.
Ok well that's it for this week. Hopefully I'm right on all my picks but the Seahawks game. Here's hoping for an upset and a return to Qwest field (only if the Packers win, otherwise we head to Georgia for yet another postseason rematch).
It was by far my favorite Seahawks game that I have ever been to (previously, it was the game vs. Dallas a couple years ago where Tony Romo screwed up the snap, costing his team the win). Usually, the 12th man is super loud before the game and then as the game progresses, gets quieter to loud levels of other stadiums. This game, everyone was excited. We were in the playoffs and happy to be there even though we had a losing record. It maintained the loud volume THE ENTIRE GAME. Almost everyone was on their feet the entire time. Whenever our team was on defense, the stands were loud. I couldn't hear a person 3 feet away from me. We were even so loud, we were reported to have caused a seismic tremor when Marshawn Lynch ran that beautiful ninja touchdown. The atmosphere was amazing and the stands remained full the whole game. It was nice to see players on the team getting pumped up and it was refreshing to not see Drew Brees walk out like the god he is made out to be. The Seahawks defense made him look like any other mortal. That being said, time to get my picks on.
Ravens at Steelers: Ravens by 3 points:
I'm picking some upsets this week hoping that I get some right. The Steelers have faced Baltimore twice this season since they're both in the same division. The two teams split the season, each one winning on their away game surprisingly enough. The teams seem to be evenly matched this year, but I give the edge to Baltimore because I think they want it more and they are going to be capable of doing it. Plus, they're on the road so if the past season taught us anything, that means they're going to win.
Packers at Falcons: Packers by 7 points:
Yeah, I'm going with another upset here. I wasn't sure about the Packers, but after seeing them play last week, I think they can do it. Matt Ryan is a great quarterback with a great record (especially at home (only 2 losses in I think 22 games)), but Aaron Rodgers is also great. Their records this season are actually pretty similar. The Falcons were 13-3 while the Packers were 10-6. That may seem different to you, but consider that Matt Ryan played every game for the Falcons. Aaron Rodgers missed a couple. In those he missed, there were some bad losses. In the end, only four of the Packers' losses this season came while Aaron Rodgers was playing more than 5 minutes. I think that even though this is at home, the Packers are going to be a contender for the Superbowl and they'll come through the Falcons (and hopefully Seattle) to do it.
Seahawks at Bears: Bears by less than 5 points:
I just can't do it. I can't pick the Seahawks. I sure don't mind being proven wrong by them though. I think that both teams are actually pretty evenly matched, but I don't know if Hasselbeck has it in him to play as well in an away game as he did last week at home. Once again though, I would like to point out that I'm calling this game close. I did this last week too because I want to acknowledge that the Seahawks really do have a fighting chance in this as I thought they did last week. I was surprised when they acted on that fighting chance last week and won, but I don't know if they can do it again, even though they beat the bears once this season. If the Seahawks win, I probably won't pick them over Green Bay, but boy would I like to see that as well. I think the game will be very close, but in the end, I'll be rooting for the Seahawks, even at the expense of my record.
Jets at Patriots: Patriots by 10 points:
Can't both of these teams lose? They are my least favorite teams in all of football. I always hate when they play each other because it means one of them will have to win. I don't know what I want to see more, a loss for my least favorite team the Patriots, or the smug grin to be wiped off Rex Ryan's face with another 45-3 blowing out of the Jets like in week 13. In the end, it doesn't matter because I will be unhappy that either team is making it into the AFC Championship game and I will be rooting for the winner of the Steelers/Ravens game, though I hope it's the Ravens because God am I sick of seeing the AFC only offer up 3 different teams (Steelers, Patriots, and Colts(well not so sick of them :] )) to the Superbowl year after year. The Patriots are on fire though and it seems a safe call to pick them.
Ok well that's it for this week. Hopefully I'm right on all my picks but the Seahawks game. Here's hoping for an upset and a return to Qwest field (only if the Packers win, otherwise we head to Georgia for yet another postseason rematch).
Thursday, January 06, 2011
New Post for the New Year
Well hi. Hopefully you won't hold it against me that I failed to make an end of the quarter post after the fall quarter ended. I'm no longer good at keeping to a blogging schedule (though I think I will be now since I'm getting back into doing football posts weekly). I have a bit to cover in this post, mainly the end of the quarter as well as winter break and the start of this quarter, so I'll get started right away.
Last quarter ended on a high note what with me pwning the crap out of my three finals and performing well in frisbee again, recovering from my bad showing at the OMG tournament in late November. In Philosophy, we spent the last day just reviewing the whole course before starting our final essays. During the class, I got in a philosophical debate with the professor. We share the same views, but he took the other side and we were going back and forth for a couple minutes before remembering there was a class going on, so he had to end it with a nice "I'm excited to read your paper now." I had half written it already and had not gone in that direction, but I was more than happy to completely change it on the hope that I might get a better grade. It worked out well and he really liked it and offered some counterarguments to the ones I laid down in the essay. My favorite part about the essay was that I was able to incorporate Mass Effect into it. I was really proud of that. As for Macro and Stats, well those were just boring tests. Nothing too exciting to tell other than I must have totally rocked them because my grades came out nicely. That was probably going to be one of the hardest quarters I will have here at SU and I got a 3.43 out of it, which is heartbreakingly close to the 3.5 I want and need. I need that 3.5 cumulative by the end of the year so I can keep my Xavier scholarship (of as I refer to it, the Charles Xavier Scholarship (people give me weird looks when I call it that though, but I will not stop)). The scholarship gives me $10,000 off of the cost per year which is really nice because it makes it so the cost of attending this school is only about $2,000 more than the UW and since the classes are smaller here than they are there, I think it's definitely worth it.
Some sad news out of last quarter is that the Jazz Band folded. I guess the enrollment wasn't at total full capacity, so the school cancelled the program before our winter concert. It's especially too bad since I planned my Tuesday and Thursday oriented quarter currently around the time this class went on. We might start a small group to just jam, but I don't know if that's ever going to materialize. The class will be reevaluated next year and I will definitely be there for it. I was enjoying this band, finding that I was actually practicing pretty often (which explains why I was doing so well in the songs). With the free time that I won't spend practicing now, I might go back to the flute or bass (probably the flute for now) and try to learn one or both of those. I like being able to play as many different instruments as I can.
After the quarter ended, I was glad to sleep in (until 9:30!) the next few days, making up for totally screwing up my circadian rhythm throughout the quarter. I spent the first couple weeks of the break mainly just playing Oblivion and putting in a little Starcraft here and there when Keir was available. I wound up getting all my skills to level 100 in Oblivion. If you've played an Elder Scrolls game before, you know exactly how ridiculous it was of me to do that. If you've only played Morrowind, they don't let you train infinitely in Oblivion, so I had to do it the hard way. I spent the middle of the break playing Starcraft with Keir a lot. Christmas was pretty nice, I got a cool letter opener dagger looking thing from my Grandma (she likes to send random gifts) and a Hungarian winter military hat which was also cool. Another good thing I got was a lego Winnebago (a reference to scouting days (Black mountain and the idiot video in case Davis is wondering)). Mom also found a Colt McCoy jersey and she got that for me, which was pretty awesome. Now my man crush on him can be shown off to the world!
Davis came over after Christmas and we wound up using one of the Starcraft trial codes I had. We hopped online with Keir and played for the 7 hour duration of the code. It was actually really fun and I think we had a winning record by quite a bit at the end of the day. We got put into bronze (Davis hadn't played before), so Keir and I got to cheese occasionally which was really fun. Mass battlecruisers ftw. I got my Yamato achievement in that game. Orion also came back that week and the four of us along with Eric played some Munchkin one night. I guess Orion hadn't played before, but he picked it up quick which was really cool. On Davis' last night on the west side, the four of us decided to get Taco Bell and take it to the bridge again because as I said "It's been too long since I've had diarrhea and have been cold" (I hate to quote myself, but Davis did quote me so I feel like it's more ok (still feel like a douche though)). I also quote myself because that was about the experience I had. Maybe without the violent diarrhea though, but it was sub-freezing (and three out of four of us were wearing shorts like bosses!). While we were on the bridge, some rando walked by and said something to the effect of "Interesting place to hang out." It was a good sendoff I think and hopefully someday we do it again (see, already I have the happy memory of doing it because all I remember is leaving).
After that point, I've been mostly doing my usual things which consist of spending extensive time with Grandpa and playing videogames (not at the same time, Grandpa's not into CoD or Halo......yet). Steven recently convinced me to get Minecraft so I did. It's totally worth it. It's like all the fun parts of the Sims. The possibilities are really awesome and I don't see myself getting tired of it for some time. The day after I got it, I played for 12 hours. The day after that, 10 hours. The day after that, 8 hours. The day after that, Steven and I decided to try a multiplayer server. Since we went and did that, I became unaddicted to Minecraft. The multiplayer was so fun that it made the singleplayer seem like there was little point. I still enjoy it, but I only play for a couple hours at a time, less than I would spend playing Starcraft in one sitting anyway. Now Steven, Chris, and I have a cool server that we play on and that has been really fun. We're getting past the need to have all three on at any given time, so each time we sign on, somebody has improved our shelter in some new way. I'm going to post some videos eventually of what I have done and perhaps of what we have done as well. I'll keep you posted there.
Now the quarter has started and it seems I have a new problem on my hands. Where my last quarter classes were really math heavy, this quarter's classes are really writing intensive. In addition, there is a lot of reading assigned. I got assigned ~100 pages of reading from a Tuesday to a Thursday. I can keep up, but there is going to be a lot of reading and analyzing here. I must say I greatly prefer the math heavy stuff to this. I have to get good at the writing though if I'm going to be a lawyer. It also helps that I do this blog because I get practice and can see how well/poorly I write when I look back. Here are my classes:
Theology of Peace (7:45am-9:50am Tuesday & Thursday):
This is going to be an interesting class. I mean that because it seems like it is really geared towards watching disturbing clips of war and being in touch with your emotions. The professor lived in El Salvador in the '80s though, so she has an expertise in war-torn countries and stuff of that nature. In the first class, we watched some commercial about a person that wanted to grow up, but they were killed. The commercial only showed pairs of shoes though, no specific person. Being the souless robot I am, I didn't really take note of anything other than "damn the song they are playing is annoying." After it ended, I looked around and people around me were just sad looking and it was pretty depressing. They were taking notes about their feelings (as per instructions) and were writing paragraphs of information. I said everything that came to mind which was only really "That was an effective commercial." I've trained myself to avoid strong emotions (due to my aspirations in the legal field and my general stoic nature), so I think I'm going to have to fake a lot of emotional responses in this class to get by, but this is definitely one that I can BS my way through this quarter. The students seem pretty nice. As a bonus, this girl I like on the frisbee team happens to be in the class, so we sit next to each other. Today in the class, we watched a music video by Jackson Browne. The professor was asking if anyone had heard of him. Thinking "Well he was a big player in classic rock history," I proudly raised my hand. In the class of 27, NOBODY ELSE DID. That was kind of funny and disturbing to learn that. After hearing him sing though, the girl from frisbee recognized his voice because her father used to listen to him. I'm only 20, but I somehow manage to date myself all the time.
Financial Markets and Economic Development (10:00am-12:05pm Tuesday & Thursday):
I took this class because I thought it was going to be focusing on macro and I figured I could always use more practice on that side of economics. I wasn't totally wrong actually, but it's also going to have a big focus on microfinance which is something I don't have much experience in. What's more, the teacher is a real hard-ass. She seems at times like it's just a ruse, but from what I hear, she is actually pretty strict. She called "people" out on sleeping when I suspect it was just me the other day. She then proceeded to ask students for suggestions on how to stay awake. I couldn't help but feel it was a bit directed at me since I had had a sleep attack at that point. It's always a bit insulting to hear people suggest ways to stay awake because when I get tired, my brain is going at the same rate, realizing I'm tired, but I can't will my limbs to move or do anything and I have to accept that it's going to happen. Hell, I can even fall asleep while sitting upright, taking notes and not even feeling tired. Next thing I know, it's about 10 minutes later and evidently I fell asleep. I cleared it up with her though during the break. I told her it's why I sit in the back (it's colder back there and this way I don't call attention to myself if it happens) and I gave her permission to throw a koosh ball at me (hopefully I don't regret that). She was nice about it though, so hopefully it doesn't happen and the whole thing winds up being a non-issue. It didn't really happen in my macro class in this timeslot last quarter, so maybe I'll get lucky again. I'm not posting from class right now, she's down in Denver at some conference being interviewed for something so there was no class today.
Law, Politics, and Society (1:30pm-3:35pm Tuesday & Thursday):
I'm taking this as a general elective actually. It's really a 300 level polisci class, so there were prerequisites. The professor waived them for me though when I told her my plans, which was super nice. She seems to be living up to that so far. The class looks like it will be pretty cool.
Frisbee (2-4 Sundays, 3-5 Mondays, 8:30-10:30 Wednesdays, and 3-5 Fridays):
Not really a class I know, but something I am doing. We added a Sunday practice since people weren't making the Monday ones. The fate of the Monday practices is up in the air currently. They may become conditioning days or we may just drop them altogether. Either way, I won't be attending. Getting down to SU and back is a pain in the ass and since the practices are all on days when I don't have to go down there for class, I'm only going to make the other three. Having to fight rush hour on my own is bad enough once a week and I decided Fridays are the better day on which to do that. I think we're doing winter quarter this quarter, so that will be pretty cool.
Okay so my quarter is pretty busy. Tuesdays and Thursdays are pretty hellish, but I think the four day weekends will really make it worth it. I like it this way where I block the days off together because it lets me rest up and be ready for the week. It may increase the size of homework, but I have time to do that while I play Minecraft now, so no worries there.
I'll maybe do a big post like this again this month, but it would be at the end, so I don't know. Happy new year to all and hope you have good new quarters/semesters.
Peace out.
Last quarter ended on a high note what with me pwning the crap out of my three finals and performing well in frisbee again, recovering from my bad showing at the OMG tournament in late November. In Philosophy, we spent the last day just reviewing the whole course before starting our final essays. During the class, I got in a philosophical debate with the professor. We share the same views, but he took the other side and we were going back and forth for a couple minutes before remembering there was a class going on, so he had to end it with a nice "I'm excited to read your paper now." I had half written it already and had not gone in that direction, but I was more than happy to completely change it on the hope that I might get a better grade. It worked out well and he really liked it and offered some counterarguments to the ones I laid down in the essay. My favorite part about the essay was that I was able to incorporate Mass Effect into it. I was really proud of that. As for Macro and Stats, well those were just boring tests. Nothing too exciting to tell other than I must have totally rocked them because my grades came out nicely. That was probably going to be one of the hardest quarters I will have here at SU and I got a 3.43 out of it, which is heartbreakingly close to the 3.5 I want and need. I need that 3.5 cumulative by the end of the year so I can keep my Xavier scholarship (of as I refer to it, the Charles Xavier Scholarship (people give me weird looks when I call it that though, but I will not stop)). The scholarship gives me $10,000 off of the cost per year which is really nice because it makes it so the cost of attending this school is only about $2,000 more than the UW and since the classes are smaller here than they are there, I think it's definitely worth it.
Some sad news out of last quarter is that the Jazz Band folded. I guess the enrollment wasn't at total full capacity, so the school cancelled the program before our winter concert. It's especially too bad since I planned my Tuesday and Thursday oriented quarter currently around the time this class went on. We might start a small group to just jam, but I don't know if that's ever going to materialize. The class will be reevaluated next year and I will definitely be there for it. I was enjoying this band, finding that I was actually practicing pretty often (which explains why I was doing so well in the songs). With the free time that I won't spend practicing now, I might go back to the flute or bass (probably the flute for now) and try to learn one or both of those. I like being able to play as many different instruments as I can.
After the quarter ended, I was glad to sleep in (until 9:30!) the next few days, making up for totally screwing up my circadian rhythm throughout the quarter. I spent the first couple weeks of the break mainly just playing Oblivion and putting in a little Starcraft here and there when Keir was available. I wound up getting all my skills to level 100 in Oblivion. If you've played an Elder Scrolls game before, you know exactly how ridiculous it was of me to do that. If you've only played Morrowind, they don't let you train infinitely in Oblivion, so I had to do it the hard way. I spent the middle of the break playing Starcraft with Keir a lot. Christmas was pretty nice, I got a cool letter opener dagger looking thing from my Grandma (she likes to send random gifts) and a Hungarian winter military hat which was also cool. Another good thing I got was a lego Winnebago (a reference to scouting days (Black mountain and the idiot video in case Davis is wondering)). Mom also found a Colt McCoy jersey and she got that for me, which was pretty awesome. Now my man crush on him can be shown off to the world!
Davis came over after Christmas and we wound up using one of the Starcraft trial codes I had. We hopped online with Keir and played for the 7 hour duration of the code. It was actually really fun and I think we had a winning record by quite a bit at the end of the day. We got put into bronze (Davis hadn't played before), so Keir and I got to cheese occasionally which was really fun. Mass battlecruisers ftw. I got my Yamato achievement in that game. Orion also came back that week and the four of us along with Eric played some Munchkin one night. I guess Orion hadn't played before, but he picked it up quick which was really cool. On Davis' last night on the west side, the four of us decided to get Taco Bell and take it to the bridge again because as I said "It's been too long since I've had diarrhea and have been cold" (I hate to quote myself, but Davis did quote me so I feel like it's more ok (still feel like a douche though)). I also quote myself because that was about the experience I had. Maybe without the violent diarrhea though, but it was sub-freezing (and three out of four of us were wearing shorts like bosses!). While we were on the bridge, some rando walked by and said something to the effect of "Interesting place to hang out." It was a good sendoff I think and hopefully someday we do it again (see, already I have the happy memory of doing it because all I remember is leaving).
After that point, I've been mostly doing my usual things which consist of spending extensive time with Grandpa and playing videogames (not at the same time, Grandpa's not into CoD or Halo......yet). Steven recently convinced me to get Minecraft so I did. It's totally worth it. It's like all the fun parts of the Sims. The possibilities are really awesome and I don't see myself getting tired of it for some time. The day after I got it, I played for 12 hours. The day after that, 10 hours. The day after that, 8 hours. The day after that, Steven and I decided to try a multiplayer server. Since we went and did that, I became unaddicted to Minecraft. The multiplayer was so fun that it made the singleplayer seem like there was little point. I still enjoy it, but I only play for a couple hours at a time, less than I would spend playing Starcraft in one sitting anyway. Now Steven, Chris, and I have a cool server that we play on and that has been really fun. We're getting past the need to have all three on at any given time, so each time we sign on, somebody has improved our shelter in some new way. I'm going to post some videos eventually of what I have done and perhaps of what we have done as well. I'll keep you posted there.
Now the quarter has started and it seems I have a new problem on my hands. Where my last quarter classes were really math heavy, this quarter's classes are really writing intensive. In addition, there is a lot of reading assigned. I got assigned ~100 pages of reading from a Tuesday to a Thursday. I can keep up, but there is going to be a lot of reading and analyzing here. I must say I greatly prefer the math heavy stuff to this. I have to get good at the writing though if I'm going to be a lawyer. It also helps that I do this blog because I get practice and can see how well/poorly I write when I look back. Here are my classes:
Theology of Peace (7:45am-9:50am Tuesday & Thursday):
This is going to be an interesting class. I mean that because it seems like it is really geared towards watching disturbing clips of war and being in touch with your emotions. The professor lived in El Salvador in the '80s though, so she has an expertise in war-torn countries and stuff of that nature. In the first class, we watched some commercial about a person that wanted to grow up, but they were killed. The commercial only showed pairs of shoes though, no specific person. Being the souless robot I am, I didn't really take note of anything other than "damn the song they are playing is annoying." After it ended, I looked around and people around me were just sad looking and it was pretty depressing. They were taking notes about their feelings (as per instructions) and were writing paragraphs of information. I said everything that came to mind which was only really "That was an effective commercial." I've trained myself to avoid strong emotions (due to my aspirations in the legal field and my general stoic nature), so I think I'm going to have to fake a lot of emotional responses in this class to get by, but this is definitely one that I can BS my way through this quarter. The students seem pretty nice. As a bonus, this girl I like on the frisbee team happens to be in the class, so we sit next to each other. Today in the class, we watched a music video by Jackson Browne. The professor was asking if anyone had heard of him. Thinking "Well he was a big player in classic rock history," I proudly raised my hand. In the class of 27, NOBODY ELSE DID. That was kind of funny and disturbing to learn that. After hearing him sing though, the girl from frisbee recognized his voice because her father used to listen to him. I'm only 20, but I somehow manage to date myself all the time.
Financial Markets and Economic Development (10:00am-12:05pm Tuesday & Thursday):
I took this class because I thought it was going to be focusing on macro and I figured I could always use more practice on that side of economics. I wasn't totally wrong actually, but it's also going to have a big focus on microfinance which is something I don't have much experience in. What's more, the teacher is a real hard-ass. She seems at times like it's just a ruse, but from what I hear, she is actually pretty strict. She called "people" out on sleeping when I suspect it was just me the other day. She then proceeded to ask students for suggestions on how to stay awake. I couldn't help but feel it was a bit directed at me since I had had a sleep attack at that point. It's always a bit insulting to hear people suggest ways to stay awake because when I get tired, my brain is going at the same rate, realizing I'm tired, but I can't will my limbs to move or do anything and I have to accept that it's going to happen. Hell, I can even fall asleep while sitting upright, taking notes and not even feeling tired. Next thing I know, it's about 10 minutes later and evidently I fell asleep. I cleared it up with her though during the break. I told her it's why I sit in the back (it's colder back there and this way I don't call attention to myself if it happens) and I gave her permission to throw a koosh ball at me (hopefully I don't regret that). She was nice about it though, so hopefully it doesn't happen and the whole thing winds up being a non-issue. It didn't really happen in my macro class in this timeslot last quarter, so maybe I'll get lucky again. I'm not posting from class right now, she's down in Denver at some conference being interviewed for something so there was no class today.
Law, Politics, and Society (1:30pm-3:35pm Tuesday & Thursday):
I'm taking this as a general elective actually. It's really a 300 level polisci class, so there were prerequisites. The professor waived them for me though when I told her my plans, which was super nice. She seems to be living up to that so far. The class looks like it will be pretty cool.
Frisbee (2-4 Sundays, 3-5 Mondays, 8:30-10:30 Wednesdays, and 3-5 Fridays):
Not really a class I know, but something I am doing. We added a Sunday practice since people weren't making the Monday ones. The fate of the Monday practices is up in the air currently. They may become conditioning days or we may just drop them altogether. Either way, I won't be attending. Getting down to SU and back is a pain in the ass and since the practices are all on days when I don't have to go down there for class, I'm only going to make the other three. Having to fight rush hour on my own is bad enough once a week and I decided Fridays are the better day on which to do that. I think we're doing winter quarter this quarter, so that will be pretty cool.
Okay so my quarter is pretty busy. Tuesdays and Thursdays are pretty hellish, but I think the four day weekends will really make it worth it. I like it this way where I block the days off together because it lets me rest up and be ready for the week. It may increase the size of homework, but I have time to do that while I play Minecraft now, so no worries there.
I'll maybe do a big post like this again this month, but it would be at the end, so I don't know. Happy new year to all and hope you have good new quarters/semesters.
Peace out.
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