The flight from Portland to Chicago was killer. I had Warcraft III to hold me over for the first hour or two but my laptop battery died and I had to suffer through the rest of the flight. What was really stupid is that the pilot missed the runway (that 4000 ft long strip of concrete that’s so hard to see) and we had to waste another thirty minutes circling back for another attempt. When we reached O’Hare International Airport we ate lunch and then hopped on another plane to Boston. The flight back is going to be even worse: Boston to San Francisco to Portland. The entire team is here though, safe and sound.
Keep reading…
Posted on June 18, 2007 in Life
First day back to school from the band trip to California and I already want to go back on vacation. Everything is spiraling out of control. I only missed two days of school and some how I have fallen so far behind…
Totally worth it though. Went to Knott’s Berry Farm and rode roller coasters all Friday and then went to Disneyland Saturday night and Sunday. I rode pretty much all of the rides at Knott’s Berry Farm at least once except for the Jaguar which looked liked an elongated version of the roller coaster at Oaks Park—lame. I didn’t get a chance to ride the Xcelerator because the brakes were having problems at the time. The best ride there had to be the blazing fast Silver Bullet or the rickety wooden GhostRider.
Disneyland… Yeah, you can’t not like Disneyland. The rides aren’t as thrilling as the ones at Knott’s Berry Farm, but the something about that place makes it impossible not to feel at least a little uplifted. My group and I booked it to Space Mountain as soon as we were let go; waving at the rest of our band behind us in line felt good. I managed to ride all the big rides at Disneyland at least once and Splash Mountain twice. Indiana Jones is arguably the best one there, but the line for it was enormous. It probably would have been an hour wait if we didn’t have fast passes to it and even then, we had to walk a long way.
And now I’m back in boring old Gresham. I wish I was still on vacation.
Posted on May 29, 2007 in Life
I competed in the Oregon SkillsUSA web design competition last Saturday. My teammate, Sadie, and I competed against five other teams from other high schools in Oregon. We were all given a fictitious website proposal and had four hours to complete the task. After the competition I had lunch and sat around a couple hours for the awards ceremony (bored out of my mind.) We ended up taking first place and are eligible to represent Oregon at the national competition. However, busy schedules may prevent us from competing at nationals and we’ll probably end up giving the opportunity to second place.
The website we created was done using Dreamweaver, Photoshop, and Fireworks. It’s valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional and CSS. The design is pretty simple and generic, but it worked. I’m not sure if I can post it online for everyone’s viewing pleasure… I’ll have to look into that.
I got a lot of congratulations, handshakes, and pats on the back from friends today. How they all knew about the victory was beyond me until I saw the big banner hanging above the tech lab entrance say congratulations; that was really encouraging. It’s nice to get recognized every once in a while for stuff you’ve done. It’s unfortunate that we probably won’t go to nationals, but it happens. It was a great experience and hey, there’s always next year. 
Posted on April 16, 2007 in Code, Life, School
Today was rather interesting… I found out that I received the highest score in the school in the national math contest I participated in a few months ago. I didn’t expect to do very well seeing as how I bombed it the last two years, but I guess all that karma is starting to paying off. What’s really weird is that I did not prepare for the exam at all and didn’t even remember it until I heard the announcement over the intercom when I walked into school that morning. I forgot to bring my calculator too; I had to use one of those dinky scientific calculators that can’t do graphs.
So what’s next? I have no idea. My friend (who has the second highest score) told me that he had heard I received the highest score during band and I went to see if it was true. I went to my math teacher and looked at the paper with the top three highest scorers and saw my name and left. I think that the top three scorers move onto the next round or something…
Posted on March 22, 2007 in Life, School
