*pop pop pop pop pop*
Jun. 8th, 2004 07:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sniffnoyWelcome to another several-days-delayed ultra-long multipart entry about many different things!
Part I. ARML.
Day 1.
We set off for ARML after IGS with not only the usual members of the math team, but also - no, not the unusual members of the math team, since many of those *are* the usual members of the math team - but also several people not from our school but on our team anyway. Of course there was Jason, who *is* a regular member of our math team despite going to Newark Academy, but I mean those people who aren't regular members of the math team either. Such as this Kevin guy who was with us at HMMT as well and now was being placed on μ A. (The teams this year went μ A, μ B, α, θ, Prefrosh.) And such as Anton, yes, Anton from PROMYS, come all the way up from Princeton.[3]
Um... gee. I forget what the point to that section was. I wrote down that I was going to write it, though, so...
Anyway on the way there, at one point, Chris remarks that we are 1/4 of the way through the Pennsylvania leg of our journey. Immediately everyone around him is confused, some hearing him correctly, others thinking he said that we are 1/4 of the way through our entire trip, others thinking he said that we are 1/4 of the way through Pennsylvania. The fact that Penn State is pretty much exactly halfway through Pennsylvania didn't help much. Anyway, finally some people tried to explain it as follows:
Anna: If we lived on the border of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, we'd be 1/4 of the way there.
Me: No, because if we lived on the border of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, we'd be closer.
Marshall: If we lived on the border of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, we'd be living in the middle of a river!
Yay us.
Now, registration this year, instead of at Findlay Commons like normal, was at Pollock Commons, and this was where we arrived. Immediately I started a game of Munchkin but after only a few turns they kicked us out! That's right, nobody was allowed to be in that area of Pollock except for those actually registering. And there really wasn't anywhere else in Pollock. The effect was awful. Instead of the normal "hang around Findlay and find people to play", the result was "everybody gets scattered, nobody knows where to find anybody, and games have a hard time finding players". Bleh.
So, after dropping off our stuff in our rooms[0], we just hung around outside the dorms. Some people from BCA had already started throwing a Frisbee around, and before long an actual game of Ultimate, freshmen and John Ahn vs everyone else, started. I played at first but soon got tired.
I asked Dr. Nevard - for no better reason than that he was passing by - if he knew where people could be found. He said there were in fact people in Pollock Commons. I went there, only to find that they were there only because they were registering. When I got back, the Frisbee game had broken up.
So I just hung around outside with Chris and Anna and Emily while we tried to decide whether we were going to go eat, going to go get ice cream (well really that's eating too, but YKWIM), or going to go to Findlay Commons to see if by any chance there were people there. Eventually we decided to go eat, though apparently we were waiting for Ben and Jacob.[5] We waited for Ben but not Jacob. Then we went to a scary place called "downtown"[4] where we found a noodle shop where we waited a long time for lots of food and we ate there. Yeah. Actually we ate outside, so we ordered everything "to go", except Ben didn't, so he snuck out with their bowl and then returned it later. Then we returned.
When we got back, we heard that there actually *was* pizza this year and that it was currently at Pollock. That's where we went. I began to start a game of Munchkin, but then I heard a game of Mafia was starting right outside, so I went there.
Now, you know, normally, during Mafia, I am very quiet. This is because I am not that good on the whole and therefore have little to say. However, during these games, it seemed I was one of the best players there (*wince*), and so I actually talked quite a bit. Everyone there was from our team except Shiyang, who someone mistook for Hyungmin. Maybe it's just me, but Shiyang does not look at all like Hyungmin. Hyungmin wasn't even there, IIRC. Yah, so Shiyang and Anton are surely considerably better than me, but most of the others weren't...
We played a few rounds, in the last one actually picking up some other people from another team, and then it just kind of dissolved. Out of a lack of anything better to do, I headed back to the dorm. In the lounge there Chris, Marsh- er, Morris - and I played SoC. Chris actually got a road of length 15. I won in the end. We saw Dan Rubin walk into the room sometime around then, but he didn't actually approach us.
There were actually girls in the dorm, though there weren't supposed to be. Anyway after that we ran into Eric Frackleton and he said he knew of a Mafia game going on upstairs, but that it was a weird Mafia game. He had this weird Rubik's puzzle with him, which consisted of two Rubik's Cubes fused together in a really weird way. On the way to the game, he dropped his 4x4x4 and it broke. Eventually he fixed it, I think.
The Mafia game was, in fact, weird. They didn't care about parity; they started with a night kill no matter what. But they had plenty other things to screw up the parity anyway. We had an Inspector, a Doctor, a Hippie, an Android, a Godfather, a Saboteur, and a Pimp. I will not bother to explain all those here. Anyway two rounds after we joined it ended, and Morris, Anton and I were going back to our rooms, when Morris realized he had left his jacket downstairs. Since none of us were supposed to go anywhere alone, we all went, and then stopped by the vending machines on the way back. (I was hungry, and I suppose the others were too.) Morris got his snack and left. While I was trying to decide what to get, a teacher comes by and tells us that it's 00:15 (we were supposed to be in our rooms by 00:00) and that we're being looked for. Anton goes to the elevator while I hurriedly get M&Ms. It gets stuck, though, so I buy another. I then rush to the elevator and make it in time. The teacher asks us where Marshall is, and we say we don't know, we last saw him by the vending machine, he's probably in his room. (I think he turned out to be.) Anyway it's not until after I've already started eating them that I realize that eating 2 packs of M&Ms right before bed is *not* the best way to fall asleep. I don't. As well as the sugar, the M&Ms give me heartburn, and, after taking 3 antacids (which my mom had supplied me with) with little effect, I eventually decide to just throw up. This took place probably over the course of 1 or 2 hours. Then again, everything seems longer when you're lying awake in bed.
Day 2.
First, of course, were Team and Power. We were in the Boucke building, which I did not know how to spell until I arrived there. It took a while for everyone to get there.
...yeah, that's really all I have to say about those rounds.
Individual... we were on the ground floor this year instead of in the balcony. I really messed up. I only got a 1. I misread the first question, just totally failed to get the second, and made the worst epsilon of my life on the continued fraction one. Other than that must have just been calculation errors (or running out of time on the last two), I suppose. Morris got a 0. One question (the only one I got right, actually) was to find Σ[j=0 to 2004](i2004-F_j). Now, presumably to make sure everyone had the same offsets, the question actually defined the Fibonacci sequence before. But Marshall totall missed that it said Fj[6], and thought it just said j. I wonder what he thought the definition of the Fibonaccis was for? :P
Lunch! There was some guy performing magic tricks during lunch, but I missed the whole thing, because I wasn't sitting nearby and I didn't want to move while I was still eating. By the time I finished eating, lunch was over. Gah.
Relays... we screwed up on relays. My relay team was me passing to Fan passing to Tom. We got both at the 6-minute mark. The rest of our team didn't do much better, it seems.
The Super Relay! Not so great a story as last year. In fact not even a single coherent story. I was next to Fan, who was in the center. On my other side was Ben, and on his other side was Jacob. On Fan's other side was Tom. Now beforehand I agreed with Ben, if I got a new answer from him, before calculating my new result, I should send a stop signal to Fan, to make sure he doesn't hand in something wrong. Now all I need are the lowest 2 distinct prime factors of TNYWR. Ben passes me 126 - that's 2 and 3. I calculate 3/2π, pass that to Fan. Then Ben passes me 108. I pass "no" to Fan. But wait, that's also 2 and 3! I repass 3/2π. *Then* Ben passes me 981 - that's 3 and 109! I pass Fan, "Maybe 3/2π". I calculate some horrible thing over 2π, and pass Fan "otherwise (horrible thing)". He rips it up. Ben repasses 108, so I pass "probably 3/2π". Finally Ben passes me 108 again, and I just pass 3/2π, and Fan hands in his answer.
Now Ben needed to find the kth number of a sequence where k=TNYWR, and apparently at some point Jacob passed him -7/4.
The correct answer for Ben was actually 819; for me it was actually 21. Now you see, Fan needed to calculate &sqrt;(a²+b²). Tom passed him 28, so with a pass of 21 that would be 3-4-5, 35. Now Tom apparently suggested to him that he ignore my bizarre answer and just guess that it was 21, 28, 35, but he didn't; he actually used my 3/2π. Actually had I been given 819 I would have probably miscalculated 21/π - there should never have been a π in my answer. You see, you had to find the volume of a cylinder, with its height and circumference both integral, then multiply by π. So h*π(C/2π)²*π, and you get no πs in the answer. But somehow I calculated the area of a circle as r². Yes, really. No, I don't know how either.
On μ B, Chris was in the center. He got the 21, but nothing from the other side[8], so he did guess 21, 28, 35, making μ B one of only 4 teams to get the Super Relay.
Giving out the awards, they actually at first gave the 3rd place award to the wrong person. Anyway μ A came in 8th and won the site award. Yaaaaay.
Now for the trip back. We played that game where you give one letter of a word, and people have to ask questions, and you say "No it's not a..." - you know which game I'm talking about. I hope. Anyway when I thought of one people kept trying to get me to say "No it's not sperm." It originally started with the question "Is it a collection of small particles and place where kids have fun?" The intended word was "sandbox", but someone came up with "sperm" as a possible perverted answer... I maintain that sperm is not a place. :P After that they kept trying to do that, though the third letter was 'i' rather than 'e' so then it stopped.
At one point Chris asked Anna, "Is it a market condition?" Totally not knowing what to say, she suggested, "Stark?". <bad pun alert>We didn't accept that - clearly there's no such thing as the stark market.</bad pun alert>
We actually didn't stop for dinner. We were supposed to, and everyone wanted to (except for Kevin, who wanted to get home ASAP), but apparently at some point the 1st bus started to pull of the highway to go eat and our bus driver just went around them... and the 1st bus just said "fine we won't eat then". Bleh.
Part II. History.
So I read all of The Five People You Meet in Heaven before eating breakfast on Sudnay and wrote the entire essay before lunch. Really awful book. I'll not get into it.
Now, yesterday, mom finally finds out I can't find Robert[9], she says I *have* to have a watch for the test tomorrow after what happened last time. I tell her that's not necessary, they've finally fixed the clocks.[10] She says I can't rely on that, I have to have a watch. We almost go out and buy a new watch, but instead I use my old spelling bee watch. Of course really I just use the fixed clock. :P The test itself wasn't that bad. Unlike last time, I actually finished.
Now, after the tournament today, Mr. Demeter comes up to me and asks me if I've lost a watch. I say yes I have! He says he put it by my locker. Turns out it's actually the spelling bee watch. :P Oh well.
Mr. Sokolewicz actually wasn't there today, so I didn't get my paper back. However, I left my jacket in history, and during lunch, I went to get it back. The room was empty but the door was unlocked. So I figured, why not find my paper? There was no sortion to the cabinet, so it took me a bit, but I found it.
I got a *61*.
A *61*.
Now it's pretty clear I did not deserve anything nearly as low as a 61. This is quite possibly the best paper I have ever written for school, there is no way it could possibly merit less than a B. Not after I got As on my big Bath essays last year. But of course we all know Mr. Sokolewicz:
1. Grades nearly purely on format
2. Takes off way more points than he should
3. Is an idiot (he actually read, not the important part but the setup part he forced us to write, and made a comment to the effect that it contradicted my hypothesis... which clearly it did not...)
4. (well this I didn't know) Clearly has no understanding of the MLA format he told us to use.
Well I didn't tell my mom but tomorrow I'll actually get my paper back and I'll show this to her and I am going to protest back every single point I can. You'll recall that I really, *really* need this grade.
Part III. The Intramural QuizBowl Tournament.
I don't think I've actually mentioned this before. Some teams played on Monday, some today. Playoffs are supposed to be on Thursday but apparently might be moved to Monday. We actually got 6 teams for both days including a teacher team. Some of the teams actually include freshmen and sophomores from the actual QB team. :P The seniors and the junior[11] were all moderating.
Since we only have one buzzer system, in the rooms without it, we just used slapping the table. I was with Stefan. He read and timed and I watched the hands and kept score.
The first day
The teacher team consisted of Mr. Montone, Dr. Guderian, Mr. Dr. Crane, and someone I didn't recognize - Ms. Halligan, I was told? (Dr. Ostfeld couldn't make it.) Dr. Guderian is actually really good.
One bonus question asked the team to name a certain symphony by Mozart (I think) with an astronomical nickname. Er, to give the nickname, that is. I hear Vadim say to the rest of his team: "A Space Odyssey!" I laugh. They say it anyway. "Vadim, if your answer makes the moderator *laugh*, that probably means it's not right."
One 30-20-10 bonus the teachers got, or, rather, failed to get, had an answer of "Tiamat". After giving two mythologial clues (just to brag, I had it after the first :) ), the final clue was that it had the same name as... and then it went on to describe a monster from D&D. They didn't get it. :)
In the first round we had to give a team -5 for answering without being recognized. Normally we didn't care about this, but in that case it really was an ambiguous slap, so I really had to say which one I saw as first.
The same thing happened in the second round. The third round was when I was moderating for the teachers; they actually got a -5 for conferring at one point. :D They still won by a lot, though. :P
I made a note to myself to write about eating at McDonalds that night, but it doesn't really seem significant.
The second day
Somebody, Czolacz I think, asks me before who I think is going to win[12]. I guess the team containing QB freshmen (RJ, George, Caroline, Molly...)[13], the team containing QB sophomores (James, Andrew, Emi...), and the big junior team. Of those, only the first was actually right. So much for our sophomores. :P
I was with Jon Chu this time, and so I have come to the conclusion that Jon Chu should not be allowed to moderate. At first he read and timed while I slap-watched and kept score, but it soon came to my attention that he was generally failing to keep anything resembling time. And so we switched. I'd actually never read before, but I did pretty well, though my throat got sore after a while. I read for the rest of the first round and all of the second, but on the very last tossup of the second, there was an ambiguous slap. I asked Jon Chu who slapped first - and he said he hadn't been paying attention, and so we threw the question out (we couldn't do writing down - someone had already blurted it out. Really we should have given them -5, but we were throwing the question out, so...) And so, for the 3rd round, we swapped again. This time he did a better job of keeping time. Then Czolacz came in and kept time for us so all Jon Chu had to do was read, which he can at least do understandably. :P
Me: Hey Mr. Sayres, what's this thing do?
Hyungmin: Don't turn it on.
Mr. Sayres: It kills you.
Hyungmin: Turn it on!
Part IV. Random happenings.
Apparently some people insisted we watch a movie in AP chem, so we watched Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train.
Yasha was missing yesterday in math, though he was there earlier in school. He wasn't cutting, though.
SiHyung: Does he have a sport?
Vlad: He has pinkeye. Unless pinkeye is a sport...
And now... the bad news... gasp in horror...
Avi is going to PROMYS.
*shudder*
That's it for now, thankfully. Man that took a long time to write.
-Sniffnoy
[0]I actually, as always, carried all my stuff in my backpack, but it had trouble closing with all the stuff in it...
[3]Anton actually ended up as my roommate, for the record.
[4]Did you know that the town Penn State is in is actually named "State College"?
[5]We also ran into Steve, from PROMYS, sometime during this time. His team had actually been there since the day before.
[6]Actually it said aj, but that's besides the point.
[8]Unless it was the other way around.
[9]For those of you who recall not, Robert is my watch.
[10]Installed new clocks, rather. They've put clocks in the hallways, too.
[11]Not a typo. This is why we really need to recruit new people.
[12]That is, who is going to advance to the playoffs, not who is going to win when we'rewatching moderating.
[13]Actually Rhiannon was also there but on a different team and she was the only QB freshman on her team.
--
"Remember, kids. With great power comes great opportunity to *abuse*
that power."
-Black Mage, 8-bit Theatre
Part I. ARML.
Day 1.
We set off for ARML after IGS with not only the usual members of the math team, but also - no, not the unusual members of the math team, since many of those *are* the usual members of the math team - but also several people not from our school but on our team anyway. Of course there was Jason, who *is* a regular member of our math team despite going to Newark Academy, but I mean those people who aren't regular members of the math team either. Such as this Kevin guy who was with us at HMMT as well and now was being placed on μ A. (The teams this year went μ A, μ B, α, θ, Prefrosh.) And such as Anton, yes, Anton from PROMYS, come all the way up from Princeton.[3]
Um... gee. I forget what the point to that section was. I wrote down that I was going to write it, though, so...
Anyway on the way there, at one point, Chris remarks that we are 1/4 of the way through the Pennsylvania leg of our journey. Immediately everyone around him is confused, some hearing him correctly, others thinking he said that we are 1/4 of the way through our entire trip, others thinking he said that we are 1/4 of the way through Pennsylvania. The fact that Penn State is pretty much exactly halfway through Pennsylvania didn't help much. Anyway, finally some people tried to explain it as follows:
Anna: If we lived on the border of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, we'd be 1/4 of the way there.
Me: No, because if we lived on the border of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, we'd be closer.
Marshall: If we lived on the border of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, we'd be living in the middle of a river!
Yay us.
Now, registration this year, instead of at Findlay Commons like normal, was at Pollock Commons, and this was where we arrived. Immediately I started a game of Munchkin but after only a few turns they kicked us out! That's right, nobody was allowed to be in that area of Pollock except for those actually registering. And there really wasn't anywhere else in Pollock. The effect was awful. Instead of the normal "hang around Findlay and find people to play", the result was "everybody gets scattered, nobody knows where to find anybody, and games have a hard time finding players". Bleh.
So, after dropping off our stuff in our rooms[0], we just hung around outside the dorms. Some people from BCA had already started throwing a Frisbee around, and before long an actual game of Ultimate, freshmen and John Ahn vs everyone else, started. I played at first but soon got tired.
I asked Dr. Nevard - for no better reason than that he was passing by - if he knew where people could be found. He said there were in fact people in Pollock Commons. I went there, only to find that they were there only because they were registering. When I got back, the Frisbee game had broken up.
So I just hung around outside with Chris and Anna and Emily while we tried to decide whether we were going to go eat, going to go get ice cream (well really that's eating too, but YKWIM), or going to go to Findlay Commons to see if by any chance there were people there. Eventually we decided to go eat, though apparently we were waiting for Ben and Jacob.[5] We waited for Ben but not Jacob. Then we went to a scary place called "downtown"[4] where we found a noodle shop where we waited a long time for lots of food and we ate there. Yeah. Actually we ate outside, so we ordered everything "to go", except Ben didn't, so he snuck out with their bowl and then returned it later. Then we returned.
When we got back, we heard that there actually *was* pizza this year and that it was currently at Pollock. That's where we went. I began to start a game of Munchkin, but then I heard a game of Mafia was starting right outside, so I went there.
Now, you know, normally, during Mafia, I am very quiet. This is because I am not that good on the whole and therefore have little to say. However, during these games, it seemed I was one of the best players there (*wince*), and so I actually talked quite a bit. Everyone there was from our team except Shiyang, who someone mistook for Hyungmin. Maybe it's just me, but Shiyang does not look at all like Hyungmin. Hyungmin wasn't even there, IIRC. Yah, so Shiyang and Anton are surely considerably better than me, but most of the others weren't...
We played a few rounds, in the last one actually picking up some other people from another team, and then it just kind of dissolved. Out of a lack of anything better to do, I headed back to the dorm. In the lounge there Chris, Marsh- er, Morris - and I played SoC. Chris actually got a road of length 15. I won in the end. We saw Dan Rubin walk into the room sometime around then, but he didn't actually approach us.
There were actually girls in the dorm, though there weren't supposed to be. Anyway after that we ran into Eric Frackleton and he said he knew of a Mafia game going on upstairs, but that it was a weird Mafia game. He had this weird Rubik's puzzle with him, which consisted of two Rubik's Cubes fused together in a really weird way. On the way to the game, he dropped his 4x4x4 and it broke. Eventually he fixed it, I think.
The Mafia game was, in fact, weird. They didn't care about parity; they started with a night kill no matter what. But they had plenty other things to screw up the parity anyway. We had an Inspector, a Doctor, a Hippie, an Android, a Godfather, a Saboteur, and a Pimp. I will not bother to explain all those here. Anyway two rounds after we joined it ended, and Morris, Anton and I were going back to our rooms, when Morris realized he had left his jacket downstairs. Since none of us were supposed to go anywhere alone, we all went, and then stopped by the vending machines on the way back. (I was hungry, and I suppose the others were too.) Morris got his snack and left. While I was trying to decide what to get, a teacher comes by and tells us that it's 00:15 (we were supposed to be in our rooms by 00:00) and that we're being looked for. Anton goes to the elevator while I hurriedly get M&Ms. It gets stuck, though, so I buy another. I then rush to the elevator and make it in time. The teacher asks us where Marshall is, and we say we don't know, we last saw him by the vending machine, he's probably in his room. (I think he turned out to be.) Anyway it's not until after I've already started eating them that I realize that eating 2 packs of M&Ms right before bed is *not* the best way to fall asleep. I don't. As well as the sugar, the M&Ms give me heartburn, and, after taking 3 antacids (which my mom had supplied me with) with little effect, I eventually decide to just throw up. This took place probably over the course of 1 or 2 hours. Then again, everything seems longer when you're lying awake in bed.
Day 2.
First, of course, were Team and Power. We were in the Boucke building, which I did not know how to spell until I arrived there. It took a while for everyone to get there.
...yeah, that's really all I have to say about those rounds.
Individual... we were on the ground floor this year instead of in the balcony. I really messed up. I only got a 1. I misread the first question, just totally failed to get the second, and made the worst epsilon of my life on the continued fraction one. Other than that must have just been calculation errors (or running out of time on the last two), I suppose. Morris got a 0. One question (the only one I got right, actually) was to find Σ[j=0 to 2004](i2004-F_j). Now, presumably to make sure everyone had the same offsets, the question actually defined the Fibonacci sequence before. But Marshall totall missed that it said Fj[6], and thought it just said j. I wonder what he thought the definition of the Fibonaccis was for? :P
Lunch! There was some guy performing magic tricks during lunch, but I missed the whole thing, because I wasn't sitting nearby and I didn't want to move while I was still eating. By the time I finished eating, lunch was over. Gah.
Relays... we screwed up on relays. My relay team was me passing to Fan passing to Tom. We got both at the 6-minute mark. The rest of our team didn't do much better, it seems.
The Super Relay! Not so great a story as last year. In fact not even a single coherent story. I was next to Fan, who was in the center. On my other side was Ben, and on his other side was Jacob. On Fan's other side was Tom. Now beforehand I agreed with Ben, if I got a new answer from him, before calculating my new result, I should send a stop signal to Fan, to make sure he doesn't hand in something wrong. Now all I need are the lowest 2 distinct prime factors of TNYWR. Ben passes me 126 - that's 2 and 3. I calculate 3/2π, pass that to Fan. Then Ben passes me 108. I pass "no" to Fan. But wait, that's also 2 and 3! I repass 3/2π. *Then* Ben passes me 981 - that's 3 and 109! I pass Fan, "Maybe 3/2π". I calculate some horrible thing over 2π, and pass Fan "otherwise (horrible thing)". He rips it up. Ben repasses 108, so I pass "probably 3/2π". Finally Ben passes me 108 again, and I just pass 3/2π, and Fan hands in his answer.
Now Ben needed to find the kth number of a sequence where k=TNYWR, and apparently at some point Jacob passed him -7/4.
The correct answer for Ben was actually 819; for me it was actually 21. Now you see, Fan needed to calculate &sqrt;(a²+b²). Tom passed him 28, so with a pass of 21 that would be 3-4-5, 35. Now Tom apparently suggested to him that he ignore my bizarre answer and just guess that it was 21, 28, 35, but he didn't; he actually used my 3/2π. Actually had I been given 819 I would have probably miscalculated 21/π - there should never have been a π in my answer. You see, you had to find the volume of a cylinder, with its height and circumference both integral, then multiply by π. So h*π(C/2π)²*π, and you get no πs in the answer. But somehow I calculated the area of a circle as r². Yes, really. No, I don't know how either.
On μ B, Chris was in the center. He got the 21, but nothing from the other side[8], so he did guess 21, 28, 35, making μ B one of only 4 teams to get the Super Relay.
Giving out the awards, they actually at first gave the 3rd place award to the wrong person. Anyway μ A came in 8th and won the site award. Yaaaaay.
Now for the trip back. We played that game where you give one letter of a word, and people have to ask questions, and you say "No it's not a..." - you know which game I'm talking about. I hope. Anyway when I thought of one people kept trying to get me to say "No it's not sperm." It originally started with the question "Is it a collection of small particles and place where kids have fun?" The intended word was "sandbox", but someone came up with "sperm" as a possible perverted answer... I maintain that sperm is not a place. :P After that they kept trying to do that, though the third letter was 'i' rather than 'e' so then it stopped.
At one point Chris asked Anna, "Is it a market condition?" Totally not knowing what to say, she suggested, "Stark?". <bad pun alert>We didn't accept that - clearly there's no such thing as the stark market.</bad pun alert>
We actually didn't stop for dinner. We were supposed to, and everyone wanted to (except for Kevin, who wanted to get home ASAP), but apparently at some point the 1st bus started to pull of the highway to go eat and our bus driver just went around them... and the 1st bus just said "fine we won't eat then". Bleh.
Part II. History.
So I read all of The Five People You Meet in Heaven before eating breakfast on Sudnay and wrote the entire essay before lunch. Really awful book. I'll not get into it.
Now, yesterday, mom finally finds out I can't find Robert[9], she says I *have* to have a watch for the test tomorrow after what happened last time. I tell her that's not necessary, they've finally fixed the clocks.[10] She says I can't rely on that, I have to have a watch. We almost go out and buy a new watch, but instead I use my old spelling bee watch. Of course really I just use the fixed clock. :P The test itself wasn't that bad. Unlike last time, I actually finished.
Now, after the tournament today, Mr. Demeter comes up to me and asks me if I've lost a watch. I say yes I have! He says he put it by my locker. Turns out it's actually the spelling bee watch. :P Oh well.
Mr. Sokolewicz actually wasn't there today, so I didn't get my paper back. However, I left my jacket in history, and during lunch, I went to get it back. The room was empty but the door was unlocked. So I figured, why not find my paper? There was no sortion to the cabinet, so it took me a bit, but I found it.
I got a *61*.
A *61*.
Now it's pretty clear I did not deserve anything nearly as low as a 61. This is quite possibly the best paper I have ever written for school, there is no way it could possibly merit less than a B. Not after I got As on my big Bath essays last year. But of course we all know Mr. Sokolewicz:
1. Grades nearly purely on format
2. Takes off way more points than he should
3. Is an idiot (he actually read, not the important part but the setup part he forced us to write, and made a comment to the effect that it contradicted my hypothesis... which clearly it did not...)
4. (well this I didn't know) Clearly has no understanding of the MLA format he told us to use.
Well I didn't tell my mom but tomorrow I'll actually get my paper back and I'll show this to her and I am going to protest back every single point I can. You'll recall that I really, *really* need this grade.
Part III. The Intramural QuizBowl Tournament.
I don't think I've actually mentioned this before. Some teams played on Monday, some today. Playoffs are supposed to be on Thursday but apparently might be moved to Monday. We actually got 6 teams for both days including a teacher team. Some of the teams actually include freshmen and sophomores from the actual QB team. :P The seniors and the junior[11] were all moderating.
Since we only have one buzzer system, in the rooms without it, we just used slapping the table. I was with Stefan. He read and timed and I watched the hands and kept score.
The first day
The teacher team consisted of Mr. Montone, Dr. Guderian, Mr. Dr. Crane, and someone I didn't recognize - Ms. Halligan, I was told? (Dr. Ostfeld couldn't make it.) Dr. Guderian is actually really good.
One bonus question asked the team to name a certain symphony by Mozart (I think) with an astronomical nickname. Er, to give the nickname, that is. I hear Vadim say to the rest of his team: "A Space Odyssey!" I laugh. They say it anyway. "Vadim, if your answer makes the moderator *laugh*, that probably means it's not right."
One 30-20-10 bonus the teachers got, or, rather, failed to get, had an answer of "Tiamat". After giving two mythologial clues (just to brag, I had it after the first :) ), the final clue was that it had the same name as... and then it went on to describe a monster from D&D. They didn't get it. :)
In the first round we had to give a team -5 for answering without being recognized. Normally we didn't care about this, but in that case it really was an ambiguous slap, so I really had to say which one I saw as first.
The same thing happened in the second round. The third round was when I was moderating for the teachers; they actually got a -5 for conferring at one point. :D They still won by a lot, though. :P
I made a note to myself to write about eating at McDonalds that night, but it doesn't really seem significant.
The second day
Somebody, Czolacz I think, asks me before who I think is going to win[12]. I guess the team containing QB freshmen (RJ, George, Caroline, Molly...)[13], the team containing QB sophomores (James, Andrew, Emi...), and the big junior team. Of those, only the first was actually right. So much for our sophomores. :P
I was with Jon Chu this time, and so I have come to the conclusion that Jon Chu should not be allowed to moderate. At first he read and timed while I slap-watched and kept score, but it soon came to my attention that he was generally failing to keep anything resembling time. And so we switched. I'd actually never read before, but I did pretty well, though my throat got sore after a while. I read for the rest of the first round and all of the second, but on the very last tossup of the second, there was an ambiguous slap. I asked Jon Chu who slapped first - and he said he hadn't been paying attention, and so we threw the question out (we couldn't do writing down - someone had already blurted it out. Really we should have given them -5, but we were throwing the question out, so...) And so, for the 3rd round, we swapped again. This time he did a better job of keeping time. Then Czolacz came in and kept time for us so all Jon Chu had to do was read, which he can at least do understandably. :P
Me: Hey Mr. Sayres, what's this thing do?
Hyungmin: Don't turn it on.
Mr. Sayres: It kills you.
Hyungmin: Turn it on!
Part IV. Random happenings.
Apparently some people insisted we watch a movie in AP chem, so we watched Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train.
Yasha was missing yesterday in math, though he was there earlier in school. He wasn't cutting, though.
SiHyung: Does he have a sport?
Vlad: He has pinkeye. Unless pinkeye is a sport...
And now... the bad news... gasp in horror...
Avi is going to PROMYS.
*shudder*
That's it for now, thankfully. Man that took a long time to write.
-Sniffnoy
[0]I actually, as always, carried all my stuff in my backpack, but it had trouble closing with all the stuff in it...
[3]Anton actually ended up as my roommate, for the record.
[4]Did you know that the town Penn State is in is actually named "State College"?
[5]We also ran into Steve, from PROMYS, sometime during this time. His team had actually been there since the day before.
[6]Actually it said aj, but that's besides the point.
[8]Unless it was the other way around.
[9]For those of you who recall not, Robert is my watch.
[10]Installed new clocks, rather. They've put clocks in the hallways, too.
[11]Not a typo. This is why we really need to recruit new people.
[12]That is, who is going to advance to the playoffs, not who is going to win when we're
[13]Actually Rhiannon was also there but on a different team and she was the only QB freshman on her team.
--
"Remember, kids. With great power comes great opportunity to *abuse*
that power."
-Black Mage, 8-bit Theatre
no subject
Date: 2004-06-09 01:58 am (UTC)