First topic: Aaron’s bass.

For Science Olympiad, Aaron got to do the Sound of Music contest, where you have to bring in a homemade instrument. So Dad made this washtub bass for him to play.

However, only the strings could be from a real instrument, so Dad had to take off the actual bass tuning machines he had installed and replace them with something quite literally made of nuts and bolts. Then, since Dad couldn’t figure out how to read our electronic tuner, I spent hours and hours telling him “higher” or “lower.” Of course, whenever I did, he had to get two giant vice grips to make any adjustment.

This made for a much more interesting story when it happened, which was around the last week of March. Anyway, enjoy the pictures. The second is the top side of the tuning…mechanism, and the third is the bottom.

Next story: quizbowl, specifically the state quizbowl championship.
This was amazingly awesome, because we kicked so much ass. We were almost completely undefeatable. We had 500 or 600 points on almost every round, including the ones against Knoxville West and Ezell-Harding, the two teams I was most afraid of. The only round we lost was to Rossview. It was one of those annoying things where we were more or less neck in neck the whole time. The problem with playing Rossview is that we both know the same information.

Anyway, we won 1st place overall by a landslide. I’m pretty sure that we could have put our buzzers down for the last round, or at least part of it, and still won. Just for extra fun, Dallas, Will, and I all made the State All-Star Team, a purely honorary list of 8 players in the state, voted on by the coaches. We each got our own little trophies for that, in addition to the giant one we got for winning.

Next story: I have a job
I started working at a web development company called GoDesign. As I explained to Connie, they’re “like sitemason, only they work in the languages I know.” Working at Sitemason (or Monster Labs) was lots of fun, but their major products were all written in Perl, and I’ve never been quite able to get Perl.

Not only that, but I’ve got a big project. I don’t want to say what it is, because someone else could probably go and get it on the market before me, but it should be cool, and it should have a pretty large market.

Other cool things about working there: they do all their project management online, so I do all of my work from home whenever I want. Also, they have a few designers in house, which means I don’t have to do any design work (and trust me—that’s a blessing for anyone that has to use my apps).

The head programmer at GoDesign sent me an e-mail about a month ago about a PHP Users Group meeting, so I went to it. It was really cool to talk to other developers; I honestly had no idea there was so much serious development going on in Tennessee. Also, Chris Shiflett, who’s a big security guy in the PHP world, was at the meeting, so we got to talk about some security stuff that’s definitely influenced the way I develop (i.e., I think about security now, instead of ignoring it). The other cool thing was that I had more experience than the other people there with both WordPress and Ruby on Rails, so I was able to contribute to the conversation. Made me feel all special and stuff.

Next story: TJCL Convention
It was generally awesome, like always. And like always, I pretended to be a state officer even though I’m not. I didn’t pay for food all weekend, and I stayed at Rossview until midnight with the other officers to help with the ribbons and such. Also, MLK won Role Call this year. Avram and I did a knockoff of Lazy Sunday that we wrote an hour before the General Assembly. Yeah, it was that bad. But we did win.

Next story: MassJCL Convention
Connie invited me to go to the MassJCL Convention, which was lots of fun. Getting there was interesting—my first flight left at about 6:00 AM, so I had to get up around 4:00. I did make it though, and the first thing I had to do was a colloquium on technology in JCL. Let’s just say it was about as well attended as my OhioJCL colloquium on Nationals. That is to say the guy that was supposed to be helping me was there. And a few other officers came for moral support. I had the colloquium again two hours later. This time two webmasters showed up. They, however, knew what they were doing, so the basic-level presentation I had prepared wasn’t very useful. So we spent a while fixing up their website.

The other interesting event was that night. The four male officers (including me) played Risk after lights out. Actually, it was Risk: Lord of the Rings edition. I’d never played before, but the dice liked me, so I was actually doing quite well. After 2 or 3 rounds, though, we gave up, because it was like 1:00 AM.

And that was the month of April.

Now for May.

The day after I got back from MassJCL was our final in math. I actually don’t know how I did, because I never got in touch with Professor Hughes. In actuality, though, it doesn’t matter. Since I’m not earning credit, my hypothetical grade doesn’t really count for much. I’m going to just have to hope that I can test out of the class.

That next Thursday (we’re on May 4, by the way) was the AP Literature and Composition test. The multiple choice was easy; the free response sucked. That’s really about all there is to it.

Next major event: AP Microeconomics test
It was easy. Most of economics is easy; you just have to think about it the right way. I spent a good portion of the free response time drawing out the database schema for that super-secret web application I mentioned earlier.

There was one redeeming thing about the test, though. One of the questions asked you to explain why something is. Since I was bored and had plenty of time, I wrote my answer in the style of a mathematical proof—complete with a QED box at the end.

Well, there was one other thing between my two AP tests: on May 7, I turned 18. That, combined with the fact that I’m about to graduate from high school, has led to a large influx of stuff from parents and grandparents and the like. Of particular note, so far I’ve received a MacBook Pro (well, it’s still in the mail), a Canon PowerShot A620 digital camera (not as fun as Mom’s, but it does its job), and this, from my uncle.

Finally, my one other graduation present is a trip to Italy. Originally, Phillip, some other kids, and I were going to go to China this summer, but that never really happened, so Dad and I are going to Italy. It’s a 12 day trip; we leave Friday afternoon. Then, we come back June 1st through Chicago, where I stay for another 3 days because it’s the NAQT National Championship, a quizbowl tournament. This is seriously going to probably be the best two weeks of…well, at least my pre-college life.

This is made interesting, though, because I managed to place myself as a finalist in the Google Da Vinci Code Quest contest thing. I got a cryptex replica in the mail today as one of the first 10,000 people to finish all 21 of their challenges. When does the final challenge start? May 19th. Luckily, it just has to be finished within 48 hours, and it’s based on shortest time, not first done. My plan? Use our 8 hour layover at the London Gatwick Airport.

By the way, the cryptex is about 4 or 5 inches long. The code for it was on the back of the box it came in—that’s “grail” if you didn’t notice from the picture. There is no vinegar inside to dissolve the paper—they shipped it, remember. And finally, it’s not unusually well made—only the last two letters really matter. Keep in mind, though, 10,000 of these were sent out. They weren’t going to be top quality.

And that’s my life. Maybe I’ll do more regular updates now. I’ll try to handwrite entries while I’m in Italy at the very least. Speaking of which, assume that I will be totally incommunicado between May 19th and June 5th.

So, Day I is Thursday, but I’m going to include through when I went to sleep, which was around 5:00 or 5:30 AM.

Flights were uneventful, although lunch in La Guardia sucked. I payed like $10 for a wrap, and after like 10 or 12 minutes (and only with prompting), the woman at the counter tells me they don’t have the one I ordered. So I change, and another 10 or 12 minutes later, they give me my food. Except it’s not what I changed to. I scurry back through security and over to a seat at the gate to inhale my sandwich and potato chips.

I was a little confused at Logan Airport (which is Boston, if you didn’t know), because I didn’t realize that a bus ride was required to go from Terminal B (where my flight came in) to Terminal E (where the bus to MIT was). Luckily I caught on, and showed up at campus…

…only to find out that I wasn’t in the computer as attending. Turns out that some of the early submissions to the CPW registration form weren’t logged in the computer. And I submitted pretty early.

However, there were a bunch more hosts than there were prefrosh, so there were hosts on standby. I got matched up with a Course VIer in Next House, Kevin Wang, who was apparently one of the original MIT Bloggers.

For a quick deviation on Next House (I’m going to do one dorm deviation per day, based on when I got an actual tour of the dorms in question)…

Next House was not a bad place. The dorms were nice, the views were good. However, Next House is a really, really long way away from the main part of campus. In fact, I checked a map, and I’m pretty sure that Next House is as far as housing gets from the Infinite Corridor without crossing the Charles River.

My other issue with Next was that it was kind of quiet. There were lots of little study/hang-out lounge-type areas, but I almost never saw anyone out there. Generally if I saw people they were just tooling on their own in their room. Which is probably what I’ll do most of the time anyway, but I think I’d rather have a dorm that at least tries to push me outside of that.

I should note that Kevin was very helpful and not at all quiet, and many people in the dorm may not be. The truth of the matter is that I tended to pick bad times to show up (like either noon or 5:00 in the morning). However, distance does not change with time (which is probably fortunate).

After dropping off my stuff and doing some brief planning, I headed out to Random Hall for lasagna. I ate lasagna and talked to MegaHAL for a little while before heading to the Green Building.

Because, let’s face it, what’s cooler than a stolen cannon reappearing on the other side of the country?

Then I scurried down to the welcoming ceremony. Many people gave speeches and a few even sang. After an attempted icebreaker activity which really failed entirely, we were led off to the CPW Festival, where there was lots of free food and a few free t-shirts.

Around the time of the ceremony, I met up with Anneke, an NJCL friend from Boston, and her friend, Lauren. One of the things we did was a Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? game sponsored by Model UN. It was very basic geography. By sheer luck (and good timing with a buzzer—they were playing Jeopardy! style, where you can’t buzz in until the end of the question), I managed to make it to the finals, where I had to point at the countries the host named with a laser pointer. Of course, crossing the border of the country counted as “pointing,” so I just pointed at the continent and waved. I managed to get enough to go for the price stash, so I now have a DVD of X2. After having our share of chocolate, bubble tea, and liquid nitrogen ice cream, we headed for some frat parties, which I honestly thought were rather boring, mostly because I don’t dance (I’m white, male, and Jewish—three strikes) and don’t play pool.

Around midnight, I headed back for the Student Center, where ESP was sponsoring a series of interesting/amusing lectures. My favorites were the ones on black holes (the 7 ways black holes can kill you) and zombology.

After the zombie lecture, I couldn’t bring myself to stay up any longer, so I staggered (not really) back to Next and went to sleep.

And now for your other story:

During Spring Break, Mom took my car to the mechanic to get the oil changed. The plan was for her to drop me at class (because, let’s face it, Vandy classes are like a juggernaut: you just can’t stop them). However, the shop called back and said it was ready, so Mom, in all her wisdom, decided that we were going to go retrieve the car now. Never mind that class started in 15 minutes. I could afford to be late, after all.

So I get the car and speed (not in the literal sense) back to Vandy, where I nab the first parking spot I can find. I then go to class. Without putting money in the meter.

There was a $20 ticket waiting for me when I got back. Mom was kind of ticked, but she called Vandy Parking, and the excused it. So there’s your story about how I didn’t have to pay Vandy any money.

And one last brief piece of quizbowl news: Jae, Peter, Dallas, Will, and I are all committed to going to Chicago for the NAQT National Tournament, which will be awesome. So not only will we have a full team, but we’ll have our usual full team too. Which means we’ll have a chance.

The quick summary was that CPW was awesome.

The slightly less quick summary of awesome events is: the Caltech Cannon, Tactics of Zombie Survival, Eric Lander, Stata Center, Free Course VI (EECS) t-shirts, Meet the Bloggers, campus tours with some guy whose whole name I couldn’t catch (Jack something?), Wall Street Trading Game, a capella concert, crowd surfing beavers, and Capture the Flag in the Infinite Basement.

There you go. You can read the long summary when I’m not completely loaded down with homework I missed / didn’t do.

I still have a separate list of things to discuss. It will be done…I promise…no, really.

On a final note, though, right before I left CPW, I gave MIT the papers accepting their offer of admission.

I’m posting this largely because I’m excited, but also because I’ve gotten 30 hits to the site since I linked to it on MIT Admission Officer Matt’s blog.

In other news, Mrs. Whittaker let me borrow one of her better brushes (the ones we got turned out to be pretty bad), some rice paper, an ink stick, and an ink stone. Xue also loaned me some liquid ink, which is good, because I couldn’t figure out how to get good ink out of the ink stick. I spent the two hours before decisions came out practicing my 横 (horizontal) stroke. I can mostly end it well, but the beginning of the stroke still gives me problems. Mrs. Whittaker ran off some sheets in Chinese that have an outline of a good stroke with the path of the brush on the inside, so I made a practice sheet of about 40 strokes per page and just traced the stroke over and over again.

Deal with it.

First item of business (now almost a month old) is Science Bowl. After throwing two teams together of quizbowl nerds and science geek seniors, we spent two days a week this semester practicing old rounds. With a definite feeling of impending doom, we headed off to Pellissippi State Technical College for the state tournament. To compensate for Lucas quitting, we adjusted the teams to try and make my team (which, by a freak accident of paperwork, was MLK II) as strong as possible.

To our surprise, not one, but both of our teams totally owned that tournament. We were two of the six undefeated teams at the end of the morning preliminaries. In the playoffs, we pulled off such feats as beating both of the Oak Ridge teams, who won the championship last year. After winning the first two games in the playoffs, my team had a bye, so we watched the other team play McCallie, a prep school in Chattanooga whom we had beaten in the preliminary rounds. They however lost, which meant that we got to play McCallie. Although we had the upper hand on the easier questions because of our speed and quizbowl experience, the further into the tournament we got, the harder the questions got. We lost to them also, going into the losers bracket of the double elimination tournament.

At this point, MLK I was in position to play for 3rd and 4th place. They beat Oak Ridge II again, meaning that they got to play us. We beat them, although I’m not entirely sure if we actually beat them or if they let it happen. Then, we advanced on to play McCallie yet again for the championship. Although we held our own for a while, they had a depth of knowledge that we just couldn’t match. We ended up taking home 2nd and 3rd place, which is really quite respectable, given that we were a new team.

The other cool thing about Science Bowl is that it’s funded by the Department of Energy. So, unlike most tournaments which our trying to make money, this one was trying to shower it on us. The trophies were a good 3 feet tall, and every player got a bag full of science toys—3-D puzzles and the like. In fact, DoE even covered transportation and lodging. All we had to pay for was dinner on the way there.

Moving on to more old stuff: our internet connection. For a while we’d been experiencing a problem where our cable modem would reboot itself every 10 or 15 minutes, leaving us without an internet connection for about 30 seconds. Yes, I know, big frickin’ deal, but it’s annoying. We had the Comcast people come out, take a look, and supposedly fix the problem, only to have it start again the next day. Finally, I convinced Dad that it was probably our cable modem, not the line, and he finally caved and bought a new one.

This calls for a story of its own. Comcast people are really idiots. It’s not enough to hook up the cable modem to the cable line. They have to match the modem with your account, presumably to make sure you’re not stealing bandwidth and all that good stuff. So after hooking up the modem, we call Comcast and give them the serial number and MAC address of the modem. They then put us on hold for quite literally 20 minutes while they go and do their magic. I honestly don’t know what anybody could possibly do with a serial number and a MAC address that would take 20 minutes. Dad’s theory?

“Oh, she’s gone to get a cup of coffee.”

Whatever. I’m done with homework and want an internet connection.

“Dad, it’s been 15 minutes.”

“They must’ve had to make another pot.”

After we got the new modem installed, we didn’t have any problems with spontaneous disconnections, but I did have a problem where it seemed like packets were getting dropped. I’d load a webpage and sit there for a minute and nothing would happen. I’d try again, and it loaded without trouble. I’m thinking that somehow my BitTorrent connection (whose bandwidth usage was supposed to be limited both ways) was saturating my connection. Once I finished downloading my stuff with it, I killed it, and the problem went away. My computer really is just stupid.

Close your eyes, and imagine that I can do transitions. You do not notice the lack of writing skills as I move from topic to completely unrelated topic. It appears seamless. The connection between Comcast and school is undeniable.

So the past two weeks have officially been building up to Spring Break. And by building up, I mean we haven’t done anything. Rather, I don’t suppose we haven’t done anything; rather, I just am very good at not doing anything. In economics, for example, I generally do my homework within the first 5 minutes of class, and nap for the rest (or do Sudoku puzzles). In English, we’ve been reading poetry again. Like I told Ms. Howell, “It’s like AP Latin, only you don’t have to translate!” Chinese, on the other hand, has been rather annoying, because we just finished up with the chapter on shopping. There was lots and lots of vocabulary, because the lesson covered clothing, colors, and money (formal and informal terms). More on recent developments in Chinese later.

Of particular note was the fact that Vanderbilt was on Spring Break last week, meaning that Xue and I spent 3rd period all week sleeping on Mrs. Broyles’s awesome couch. I also went to orchestra every day, which was good, since Friday was Concert Festival, the annual event where MLK gets straight Superior ratings because our music programs are just awesome.

Speaking of schools, I got a very pleasant surprise last Thursday: a letter from Stanford. I was really taken completely by surprise; I had heard of other people getting early notices, but that was only from Vanderbilt, and they were only sending them out to minority students. The bad news is that Stanford’s Admit Weekend is the same weekend as TJCL State Convention. And I really don’t care how idiotic people think I am, I’m definitely going to TJCL. In any case, MIT is putting their decisions online Saturday, so hopefully it’ll be a moot point.

Interestingly, I’m not as nervous about MIT now than I was for EA decisions. I honestly don’t know why.

I thought about putting a really bad transition about college and coffee here, but I decided to spare your eyes the pain.

As some of you know, we have had an automatic espresso machine at our house. My parents got it for themselves for their 25th anniversary. It’s one of the really automatic ones, as in it held its own beans and one button did everything from grind to espresso. However, Mom was talking to tech support for some reason, and they told her that they were taking the machines of our model back for a one-time only repair. Mom was of course skeptical, but it turns out that they discovered a flaw in the wiring. They had submitted it to one of those consumer agencies, but couldn’t call it a recall until whatever agency it was said so. In order to get a head start on the influx of faulty machines, they started taking them back for “one-time repairs.” However, they also offered the option of upgrading the machine to a more recent model. Mom finally went for it.

So now we have our new espresso machine that’s even more one-button than before. It has three presets for coffee, and two of those have an automatic doubler function (i.e. one button for a single shot, another for a double). But wait, there’s more! It also comes with an attachment for the steamer that automatically froths or steams the milk, which it siphons in from a cup sitting next to the machine. The timing on the steamer can be programmed as well, meaning that the end result is a two-button cappuccino. It’s really nifty. And since I’m a good blogger and support companies that I like, it’s the Capresso S8 (the link is to the S9—they only have the S7 and the S9 on the website).

On the night of Friday the 3rd I got an IM from Scott St. Marie, Ohio JCL President, inviting me to their convention, which was March 10-12. That was sort of a surprise. Thanks to the magic of e-mail, I had all the necessary approvals and plane tickets by that Wednesday.

The convention was a lot of fun. I spent most of the time with the OJCL officers, many of whom I already knew from Nationals, and with the OSCLers, whom I also knew from Nationals. Actually, since the OJCL officers were mostly seniors, they were good friends with the OSCLers, so we didn’t really fraternize with the OJCLers that much. I helped put out a OJCL Convention Ear, which, for those who haven’t been to Nationals, is the mid-convention satirical publication typically put out by the SCLers. We were originally going to do an issue of the Torch, but the OJCL Editor decided he didn’t want the Torch associated with the complete mockery we made of the JCL. Good times, good times.

We also played several games of Mafia, which gets much more interesting the later at night it is. The best game was when our god stacked the deck to make sure the mafia would win.

Next random transition (I’ll just say it for you—if I’d just update more often, each topic could get its own post and I wouldn’t have to come up with bad transitions)…

On Tuesday Béla Fleck and the Flecktones played Live in Studio C, a show at our NPR station that features local artists. Since Mom spends way too much time answering phones during their fund drives, she has connections with most of the people at WPLN, so we got to go and watch. We basically got a private performance. Really, really awesome. Based on the songs they played, their new CD should be rather awesome as well. Again, link happiness is a donation of PageRank to things of awesomeness.

Last but not least, I said I’d come back to Chinese. Since we finished Lesson 9 on Wednesday, we’re spending the rest of the week doing Chinese calligraphy. Calligraphy, as in with a brush and everything. And, since our wellness teacher is out of town for the rest of the week, Xue and I are skipping 1st period to go and get more practice. Today I spent most of 1st period trying to get the horizontal and vertical strokes down. By the end of 2nd period, I was doing a little better with the feel and flow of things, although the only character that I managed to write to my satisfaction was 人, or rén, which means person. I tried to add an extra horizontal stroke for 大 (dà, big—think of a person standing with their arms spread to show just how big something is—that’s the picture) and completely screwed everything up. Mrs. Whittaker is letting us buy the brushes we use afterwards if we want, and Xue said she could give me some ink, so I think I’ve found a new hobby for Spring Break. It’ll be much more productive than sleeping, in any case, and Mrs. Whittaker says that calligraphy is like meditation if it’s done right.

I’ll post pictures if I ever manage to write anything worth seeing. That being said, don’t count on seeing any pictures anytime soon.

And now, since it’s the day before Spring Break and I have no homework, I’m off to bed.

Grades are difficult to comment on without saying anything incriminating (of myself and the teacher), so I’m going to avoid them for the most part. Just know that being a second-semester senior at MLK is awesome, especially when one has mostly easy classes.

The class particularly worthy of commentary is US History. After doing no work for the first half of the grading period and almost failing, I pulled the grade up to a pride-worthy 96. You may wonder how I accomplished such a feat. Well, I talked a lot in class, earning me the student teacher’s scorn (with the odd request to shut up) and lots and lots of class participation extra credit points. Also, we had three tests, each of which is worth the same as almost all the points from the first half of the six weeks, and I basically kicked their butts one at a time.

We also had another test in economics today. I thought it was pretty easy for the most part. Actually, it was all pretty easy. I mean, you know a test is to long when you get to the fifth question whose answer is some variation of “diminishing marginal returns.”

We’re reading The Importance of Being Earnest in English. I finished reading it today in class. It’s really quite humorous. However, I would encourage those that have read the whole play to draw out the family tree of the main characters once they’re finished—the relationship between Ernest and Gwendolyn proves to be an interesting one. And for the sake of those that haven’t read the play, I will say nothing else.

For a difference of only 30 calories, a Java Chip Frappuccino tastes a whole lot better than the White Chocolate Mocha one. Actually, I really find it hard to believe that the difference is that low. And that they have the same amount of sugar. Obviously, the point of getting a frappuccino from Starbucks isn’t to taste the coffee, because actual Starbucks coffee is pretty lousy, but to get an overdosage of sugar. That’s why the Java Chip Frappuccino is the best one, and why the White Chocolate Mocha really fails as a frappuccino.

Yes, I’m very opinionated when it comes to frappuccinos.

Now, I shall attempt to discuss this weekend.

I was invited, as an admitted student, to a preview weekend for WPI. We were going to leave on Saturday after the quizbowl tournament, but the tournament was cancelled due to snow, so Dad and I changed flights and left earlier.

We flew into Providence via Charlotte on two puddle jumpers. There wasn’t a jetway for either; the back of the door formed the stairs into the plane. This was a new experience for me, as we always fly Southwest, and they only use 737s.

The drive from Providence to Worcester should be about 40 minutes. Of course, we got lost almost any time we had to make a turn, so it took us closer to an hour. The main problem was that there was one point when we were supposed to get off of a highway, go through a few local roads, and then get back on a different highway. However, due to some (well, actually, quite a bit of) construction, the two highways had actually been joined together.

I spent most of the drive working on LJXP. Once we got there, we decided to go see Firewall, the new Harrison Ford movie and the only thing that looked worth seeing. It wasn’t worth seeing. It’s like Indiana Jones, only Indiana is about 20 or 30 years older, he has a computer instead of a whip, and the explosions seem even more unnecessary than usual. It just really wasn’t very good.

Once we got back to the hotel, I kept working on LJXP until I had version 1.4 hammered out. Of course, we ended up getting stuck at the Providence airport for 3 hours on the way back, so between the drive back to Providence and the time at the airport, I finished version 1.5. Actually, since I didn’t have any internet access, I had to convince the plugin that I was running a LJ server locally. It makes it very simple to do work on LJXP in the future when I don’t have internet access.

I slept rather poorly at the hotel, and then headed over to WPI for the typical welcoming. We then had a student panel to discuss WPI’s project system, and all of the panel members were far more excited than is natural. Next, we were split into smaller groups where we ate lunch (WPI actually has pretty decent food) and did some icebreaker sort of things. (They figured that since we were all admitted, we might as well start to get to know each other.)

After that was over, those that hadn’t been on a tour before were offered a chance to tour the campus. We were put into a rather large group, but the tour guide was quite good (“The idea is that you change one atom and you can re-patent the drug. In return for saving them millions of dollars, the drug companies will in turn give you millions of dollars”). He was also very frank about what he thought of WPI, which was good, although most of his complaints were rather superficial.

Finally, I was matched up with my host for the night. Because I know my parents read this, it’s probably not a good idea to say anything else.

The next morning, after breakfast, I went to a philosophy class with my host and his friend. I think it was Intro to Ethics. They were discussing Hegel, but all I remember is concluding that philosophy remains a big load of bull.

The second class I went to was with my host’s friend; a Scheme (programming language) class. There I learned that Scheme only barely gives you more tools than Assembly, and that apparently all Scheme variables are really pointers in disguise. I’d probably have actually done better if I had been to all of the classes instead of just lecture 22.

The major thing I observed about WPI was that students seemed to be taking the easy way out. It was something of a point of pride that it was possible to get decent grades, travel places, but all while doing very little work. In particular, I thought their handling of failing grades was rather odd: failures aren’t recorded on the transcript.

Basically, WPI remains a safety school. I could go there if I wasn’t given any other option, but I wouldn’t choose it over any of my other schools.

For example (This will be enhanced over the usual post by incorporating some of the standard sentence patterns we’re using in Class. It will also be translated in a moment. Please excuse the mess I make of the Chinese language—my main issue right now is a complete inability to translate compound sentences),

今天我六点起床。洗澡以后，我吃早饭，到学校去。因为明天我睡觉很晚，今天我很累。

第一节课是健康课。我做第六节课的功课。
第二节课是中文课。因为昨天是情人节，所以老师给了我们巧克力。老师今天给我们生词，汉字的小考。考试以后，我们练习新课文。我们念“李友的一篇日记”。
第三和四节课在Vanderbilt。我们学k-forms in Rⁿ。老师两个星期以来没给我们功课。
第五节课是历史课。我们今天有帝国主义考试。我觉得考得不错。
第六节课是经济课。老师也给我们小考。因为我做了功课，小考很容易。
第七节课是英语课。Carla给同学们饭。吃以后，我们念Macbeth.我不喜欢Hamlet，但是我很喜欢Macbeth,因为董很容易。

Ok. That’s enough of that. I expect several angry Chinese-speakers to be banging down my door momentarily for the brutal slaughtering of their language. Actually, that proved to be somewhat more difficult than I expected, but a lot of the issue was vocabulary.

Translation:
Today I woke up at 6. After showering, I ate breakfast and went to school. Since I stayed up late last night, I was tired today.

First period is Wellness. I finished my homework for sixth period.
Second period is Chinese. Because yesterday was Valentine’s Day, our teacher gave us chocolate. Today we had a quiz over new vocabulary and Chinese characters. After the quiz, we studied a new text. We read “Li You’s Diary Entry.”
Third and fourth periods are at Vanderbilt. We studied k-forms in Rⁿ. Our teacher hasn’t given us any homework for a couple of weeks.
Fifth period is history. Today we had a test on Imperialism. I don’t think I did badly.
Sixth period is economics. We had a quiz on our homework. It was easy because I did my homework.
Seventh period is English. Carla brought us food. After we finished eating, we read Macbeth. I didn’t like Hamlet, but I really like Macbeth.

See? It’s just like one of my normal posts!

In hindsight, actually, it’s less that the quote represents my feelings, and more that I liked the quote and it was the most pertinent one I could find on short notice.

I have been censored, and it’s not a pleasant feeling.

As per my personalized gag order, my parents have informed me that I’m not allowed to discuss the issue in question. However, if you follow the blog observantly, you will have noticed that which has come and gone.

However, I am allowed to rant and rave about how censorship is hurting America. Although, past what’s been said, there’s not much to say.

To make this truly worth its entry in the Dear Diary category, here’s a summary of what’s happened of late.

Phillip’s birthday party was on Friday. After some time playing around with iBooks, we went and stuffed ourselves with very tasty Chinese food. Next, we watched Ong-bak, a Thai martial arts movie that supposedly has no stunt doubles or wires. It was really pretty fun to watch, although I have no idea what the plot was—we fast-forwarded through anything that wasn’t a fight or chase scene. Next, we similarly speed-watched Tom Yum Goong, which we referred to Ong-bak II, although it’s not. The fight sequences in both were really fun to watch, although I liked Ong-bak better than the other one.

Saturday, Sunday, and the better part of Monday were all spent working on the essays for the Presidential Scholars Program. I’m almost completely finished at this point, and I’m particularly proud of my long response—I think I managed to pull off some stylistic flair that’s usually absent from my writing. It’s either that or complete bull; I’m personally rooting for the former.

Libby, Aileen, and I recruited Ms. McFadden to play spades with us today during lunch. She didn’t know the rules for spades, but she was obviously well versed in cards; she picked up on the rules pretty quickly. Even with some initial misunderstandings about the rules, she and Aileen beat Libby and I by braking my nil on the last trick.

I’ve mentioned before that we’re reading Macbeth earlier. I’m really enjoying it. I think that, of the great Shakespearean plays, Macbeth is the most accessible. It’s short, the plot is clear, the language isn’t very obtuse, and the characters are just amusing. Especially when you have some of the people in my class reading the parts out loud.

Quizbowl this weekend is really going to be something of a pain. Thanks to a combination of Mock Trial and Science Olympiad, we’ve lost almost all of our quizbowl squad, including Will, Dallas, Peter, and Jae. Instead, I’m going to be stuck with middle schoolers and Todd. It would seem that a proper rematch between us and Rossview won’t happen until State.

To apply to be a Presidential Scholar, one must fill out all of the usual information about extracurriculars and community service, and have your school send in a form about you. Then you have to write six essays, with the shortest being about 425 words long (with the note “Please be concise”). For the most part, they are similar to questions on typical college and scholarship applications, but I can’t use any of my other writings because of the length.

The highlight, though, has to be the actual “Candidate’s Essay” (the others are apparently only considered “short answer” questions). It has a character limit of 10,600 characters. If you do the math, that works out to about 3 pages of single-spaced text.

Luckily, upon looking at the paper form, I discovered that they only have just under two pages of space, so my essay probably won’t be that long.

In any case, I think the term white elephant applies.

First, we went to a quizbowl tournament last Saturday, which we won. We drove almost everyone else into the ground, which for the most part wasn’t surprising, since Rossview and Knoxville West weren’t there.

My throat’s been kind of sore lately (nothing major, just a cold sort of thing), and I didn’t want to strain it, lest I lose my voice in the middle of a match or something equally scarring, so I let Dallas be captain for the first four games. However, I decided after the fourth game that my power hunger and ego were affecting my ability to play, so I took the captainship back. Interestingly, I did actually play better (my performance for those first four rounds was rather mediocre).

The one highlight of the day was getting to play Ezell-Harding in the semi-finals. So far, we’ve only played them three times: once at this tournament last year, once at State, and on Saturday. We lost to them at State, and we beat them last year, but the questions were really screwy, so I didn’t count it as being worth anything.

This year, though, the questions were much better, and we beat them by a solid margin – 300 to 200, give or take. We all played very well—there was even a question involving Wikipedia. Disambiguation was the answer, so you can guess how the question ran.

All in all, it was a good tournament, and I had a lot of really awesome buzzes (thanks to remembering stuff from science bowl and quizbowl practice earlier in the week) and got the winning tossup in the finals round, which made me happy. Actually, it wasn’t really the “winning tossup”—it was the one that ensured the opposing team couldn’t tie the game, but let’s not mince words.

Next topic: Mid-state JCL Convention

I had a good time. Since I only sort of know Latin at this point, I don’t take many tests, so I snuck out early and helped get the grading machine working, and spent most of the day helping the machine grade tests, with the exception of when I was moderating certamen.

So, before I go back to ranting about how graphic arts are hurting America, I’ll talk about certamen. Evan Latt and I moderated Latin I (or Novice) certamen (which is, by the way, Latin quizbowl, for the uninitiated). It was largely uneventful, as most Latin I’s don’t know enough to make any borderline answers or protest anything. Also we had Upper Level (Latin III+) observers for most of the questions, who handled the answers that weren’t on our sheet, since neither of us really still remember Latin.

The one interesting episode was when the buzzer set broke in the middle of the finals round. After someone buzzed in on a tossup, it just died. Luckily, they got the question, or we really would have been in trouble. We moved into the room where Upper Level finals had just finished, so any momentum was destroyed, but it all worked out in the end.

Now, back to grading. This year, for the first time in 3 or 4 years, MLK didn’t win the overall sweepstakes; Hume-Fogg did, beating us by about 1,000 to about 700. But there’s more to this story than meets the eye.

Since I spent all day in the grading room, I started keeping my eye on the sweepstakes totals after all the academic tests were scanned. I saw how mixing the Latin V’s in with the Latin IV’s (which was supposed to have happened beforehand) brought MLK’s total down and Hume-Fogg’s up. I saw how fixing a majorly screwed up reading comprehension key did the reverse.

And then I saw how entering the graphics arts results gave Hume-Fogg 400 of their 1,000 points.

So Hume-Fogg beat us in the overall sweepstakes. But I’m OK with that. After all, MLK and Hume-Fogg are academic magnets. And we beat Hume-Fogg in academics. I say let Hume-Fogg have their moment of glory and their trophy that’s an inch taller than ours. Because we beat them where it really counts.

Besides, they had twice as many people as we did.

And now for a demonstration of my total inability to transition…

Tiresias, the server this site is hosted on, experienced a hard drive failure on Tuesday. This in and of itself is not a big deal; site5 just needed a few hours to transfer all the data onto a new hard drive. After that, they rebooted the server and everything was sunshine and daisies. For about 30 minutes.

Then, all of a sudden, I couldn’t contact Tiresias at all. It didn’t respond to HTTP, pings, anything. But only if it came from my IP address.

Long story short, it was all very annoying, and I was in tears that I couldn’t check my e-mail or my website, and actually, I think it was all karma again, since I had just subscribed to the wp-hackers mailing list, which got something like 120 messages while I was gone. After several exchanges with site5 tech support that were getting nowhere, the server suddenly appeared again, and there was much rejoicing.

So, I was originally going to call this post Website Withdrawals, but I didn’t, because this next story makes for a much better title.

Our math class just gets more and more amusing. I think it’s because we’re doing lots of manifold related stuff, which is one of Professor Hughes’s areas of focus, so he has a bunch of jokes, like the parallelepiped.

So today, we were discussing line integrals over vector fields, and he was making sure we understood what vector fields were. I shall come as close to a quote as possible (I’m working from memory here).

You all know the Beatles, right? Well, you know they had a song called Strawberry Fields. If you think about a strawberry field, it’s a field, and at every point, there’s a strawberry.

He goes on to also invoke the analogy of a corn field, but, he noted, not a corn field like the one in Kansas where it’s flat and all the stalks point straight up; we wanted one that was kind of hilly so the corn stalks were pointing in different directions—that’s a vector field.