Another New Policy

Another *New Policy*... Comment moderation is hereby and hereafter not going to be used on this blog. Word verification will be used instead, to keep down my non-existent-but-probably-waiting-in-the-wings spam. Thank-you.

Why'd ya have to go and make things so complicated?

Ahhh... big sigh of relief. Half of my pre-college stress is OVVVVEEEERR!!!!! BOOYAH! I got my scholarship competition over with today, and while I probably wasn't the brightest crayon in the Presidential Scholarship box, I at least have $4200 which is somewhere around 2/3 of tuition, so I'm good. I'll probably get a little more than that, although I'm not counting on a full ride since I'm not a minority from la Ciudad de Motors. We had to write an essay, and I chose the death-penalty question. I think I did ok, although in retrospect I realize I didn't come back to the original issue in my conclusion. My content was pretty good though. The interviews also went pretty good, I think. I found out that they will pay me to proofread and critique people's writing... *Evil laugh* I probably will never be a really good writer, I mean REALLY good, but I can tell what is good writing and what is not. I've got an eye for it too. When I read books I notice when they forget their end quotes. Drives me nuts. So I came out of the whole shebang a lot more optimistic about college, $3000 richer, and a new appreciation for Italian dressing. And soooo much less stress. I am not going to do one more scholarship essay until next year. So there.

Things I'd Like To Say

This is a great blog post on a Christian view of Brokeback Mountain/Homosexuality. I love it when people say what you would like to be said. It saves you from having to say it yourself, which results in a much shorter post.

Return to Normal...

Finally... January is once again January, and not some late-February nightmare. It's been melty for a few weeks now, and it is weather I absolutely hate. That early-spring weather, when everything is brown, muddy, squashed and ugly. You can't snowboard, and it's a long time before any sane person thinks of tubing and skiing or hauling out the trampoline. We have an unprecedented 6 crocuses popping up already, deceived by the mild weather, and doomed to frost-burned leaves for their stupidity seeing as last night we got a nice 6 inch dump of snow. Of course, it didn't happen during school, and it's already getting melty again, but we sure had a glorious day of snowboarding. It was an early Saturday for me, up at eight, but there was a lovely sunrise, especially with all the snow.
We got to Artillery around 9, and arrived just in time to walk in with the Marines and the ski teams. It was cool but kind of weird having the Marines there. A lot of them were just learning, and it was surreal hearing announcements like "All Marines who would like a lesson, please report to the small hill, your instructors are waiting for you." and "Gunner Sgt. Somebody, please report to the main office." I did my bit to support the troops- I showed a struggling soldier an easier way to walk with one foot strapped in your snowboard.
Our group ended up being Manuel, Dorito, Crispy, TB, Rinita and myself, and later we had a rendevous with JR. Because of the big snow, there was a lot of powder, the most I've ever been priveledged to board on actually. About two runs in we suffered our first casualty, a "skis meet spine" incident that sent Dorito home early. This put a dent in the day somewhat, and I believe we are still waiting for a day when he goes home with body AND snowboard in one piece. Anyways, Manuel and Crispy had a jolly ole time running around shirtless and talking in accents. I must confess to taking part in the accents a little.
It was Rinita's second time out, and I am happy to say that she's getting a lot better. Next time you'll have it! Learning to snowboard takes three trips to the hill, it's one of Murphy's Laws. One to learn the art of falling on the posterior, one to learn the art of falling on the cranium, and one to learn the art of snowboarding.
I tried a couple jumps, but with all the confusion I never got around to trying a 180 like I promised myself. I did learn, however, that something must be done about the lump in my boot. My right boot has this strange bulge in the liner that rubs against that bumpy bone on your ankle. This makes walking, turning and, eventually, so much as standing on the foot a painful experience. The closest comparison would be constantly tapping a fresh bruise. I also lost all my calluses since we last had snow, so that didn't help any. I'm a bit of a pansy about stuff like that, so I probably did more than my share of complaining.
TB was nursing a sprained and re-sprained ankle, which she said did ok, so that's all good. She also found a pair of gloves that stay dry. They were only $5, but I will still vouch for my "mitten exteriors, glove interiors" as being the best option.
Anyways, we wrapped it up around four, and I actually got some reading done. The Flying Carpet, by Richard Halliburton. Old fashioned, but rather interesting, especially since it's a true story. It's a sort of journal of a man and his friend who just take of in his plane one day, and go wherever their whims lead. Something that isn't feasible today, unfortunately. Red tape... everywhere there is red tape. Phooey on civilization.

Brother Blog

This post is to announce the start of my brother Dren's blog. When I get a chance I shall put it on my favorite blogs list, but until then, this is the link. We also are considering a blog on the infamous Clyde, but I believe that shall be taken down, so read the single post while you can! Dren's blog is advertised as "Mixture of words of wisdom, crazy adventures of friends and me, and random humor" A bit of false advertising on the "wisdom" part, but understated on the "crazy adventures" part, so it balances, I suppose. Things just seem to happen to that boy. Anyways, grammatical errors aside he can be pretty funny in a sugar-high sort of way so it's a fun read.

Speaking of which

These are the pics I made last year in my Graphic Design class at TCTC... If these don't look that great to you, bear in mind I made them at 7 in the morning, never a time of great alertness for me.

This is half of a rollover button. It was supposed to be a butterfly, but the wings just aren't quite right. I was using a tutorial and everything, but oh well.
This is a collage I made for Coogi, my Dutch penpal.
This was the last piece I made that semester, and the biggest thing I accomplished was getting the guy who sat next to me to talk to me. I sat next to him for a whole semester and he didn't say anything to me, outside of the odd "Hi" or "Excuse me". He asked me how I got the light to "come out at you"... Flabbergasted, I explained about radial zoom and blurs...
This is just a posterization of a pic of one of our band members that I thought came out really cool.

This was a rollover button for my final website. The deal was you would put your mouse over the first image, and *poof* goes the snowglobe. I probably spent more time on this than any other picture I made. The tutorial was written for people w/ a lot more skills than me. :P

This was my original layout, supposed to be a bulliten board sort of thing, but just didn't work out. I went with a much simpler plain black model.

This was going to be the websites splash page... The tack and notepaper was going to be a recurring theme.

Speaking of Which

This is a collage I did featuring Olympic Champion Alexei Yagudin.
And one of his mentoree, Brian Joubert, who is always blurry in his photos.

This is half of a rollover button I made for my website. I had to hand draw that feather, which got rather aggravating. Another button, for the friends page.

Our class had a band, so one day we went down to Skills' auditorium and they had a bit of a jam. For five minutes they actually had something going too. Then we came back and had to get into groups and make a band website. This was my group's layout. I messed up a bit in the chrome around the speaker, I could make it a lot smoother now.

This cute little thing is not only cute, but functional and educational as well. It is a "creative color wheel." One of my earlier works.

Mindless drivel is the world's greatest blood pressure reducer.

Ahh... Freedom. Long weekend, pizza fresh out of the oven, watching Red Green and using absolutely ZERO brain muscles. Lovely.

Mindless drivel is the world

Ode to Anger

I would be feeling just about as low as I've ever been right now, if I wasn't too busy battling exams to have emotions. Two people I was really starting to like a lot and get comfortable with walked out of my life forever this week. No more humor from Knave, and AE is another fond memory. I don't have time to mourn- any other time I would be crying as I write this.
I was up until 12:30 last night, and it was straight studying from 4:30. The worst is yet to come. Bible is a half-a-binder plus notes nightmare. I get about 5 pages of typed notes per QUIZ. This is oooh... lets see... 8 quizzes counting the quizzes on daily devotions. 40 pages. Plus the exam is going to be all essay questions he said. That's really not fair, because I won't have any fingers left to take my Government exam with. It takes a while to regrow appendages, but I guess school doesn't realize that.
I also recieved my very first official school discipline today- 3 tardies from Artie. I know that it's fair and square, but I wish he would have realized that Powerschool is a place to let students know if they have tardies, and I wish Mr. Buzz would change the break bells to something that can be heard over a dull roar. I never hear any bells until the minute bell, and nobody else does either. If they give me a discipline essay I will bring these points up. I'm barely even mad though, which will alert Brooke and Devious to the fact that I really am out of it. Last time this almost happened I freaked.
I have discovered a pretty good temporary cure: take a spoonful of cold hot fudge every ten minutes until crisis is over. But I must bring this little pity-party of mine to a close, as I've got things to do, specifically re-learn Indirect and Direct Objects in Spanish, and commit to memory each and every stem-changer verb, in past and present tense, along w/ indivdual spelling exceptions. I take this challenge on armed with Trident Cinnamon Gum and Keola Beamer. Will I have the victory? El tiempo voy a decir. Feel free to do your own venting in a comment- I notice the numbers have been dwindling.

Why the Bad Boys are the Good Boys...

First off, let me direct you to a very funny blog I happened to spot on the "Recently Updated" thing... The Dormitory Boys are two Chinese guys lipsynching popular songs. They have got the moves down, let me tell you. And quite the fan base.

And now for the subject at hand. The Detroit Pistons whipped San Antonio at home the other day, by a healthy, dominating 15 points. Incidentally, they beat them by 15 points on Christmas as well. This was a very important game for them, as it was more or less a foreshadowing of what would happen in the Playoffs should the two teams meet again.
Good Signs:

• Sheed was hot, but kept himself under control. No techs, and he didn't foul out.
• Wallace is back to double didget rebounds.
• It was a low-scoring game, which means that the Pistons more or less had their own way. Their style of play focuses on defense, so if they have 100 point games, it means they had to adjust their normal style of play, which isn't good.
• They out rebounded the Spurs something like 57-32, which meant that they were really being aggressive, and staying focused.
• They bet them at home, incedentally for the first time since 1997.
• This makes two straight wins, which is a major mental victory for the Pistons as far as the playoffs.

Not the longest list I've ever made, but it does show that this was a real good thing for the Pistons. And if you haven't guessed yet (which means you never will and so I will have to tell you or leave you ignorant) I'm a huge fan of the Pistons (The Bad Boys and the present team). I'm not into the technical aspect of sports that much, so I inherit a lot of knowledge from my dad, who is really insightful on a lot of things. He's the one who explained to me about the Pistons defensive style of play for instance. I think that back in his younger days he was more into the Pistons than I am now. He doesn't waste money, and he hates crowds but he went to games and bought shirts and yearbooks and stuff. That was back in the Bad Boys days.

What is the main reason we like this team? Because they are a team. They play team ball. Name the one main talent on the Pistons. Go ahead, try. Having trouble? That's my point. The team isn't good because of one player, like Shaquille O'Neal or Michael Jordan. The players would have a hard time carrying a team individually. But put them together, and then you have a legendary team. The players are friends- none of this Kobe/Shaq. soap opera crap. They work hard. Look at Ben Wallace, look at Chauncey, who doesn't stop practicing free throws until he can get ten straight in a row. The team has heart- look at Rasheed. However, you can take any player out, and the team can still win games. That's how basketball should be.

I guess my favorite player on this team is Ben Wallace. For his work ethic, his cool hair, his blocks... He's just a great guy, on and off the court.

My next favorite is actually Carlos Arroyo. He has got some really tricky ball handling. It doesn't show up in the stats, but he has helped the Pistons a bunch, from what I've seen. Steals, saves... He's good. They should give him more time. They should give all the bench more time, because if they want to be playoff contenders, they need to have a deeper bench. They might not have Lindsey at 100% for the playoffs, and they need the bench to be able to step up. The starters are really good, but if one or two pick up injuries that keeps them out of the playoffs, the Pistons are done for with the bench they have now. McDyess is good, and so is Arroyo, but Evans, Maxiell, Delfino and espcially Dorko need more experience in actual games. Darco Millicic I do not like, simply because he is a lazy player. Sure, he only gets put in if they are up by 100 with one minute to go, but he could give it an effort. No followthrough, doesn't try for the rebounds, doesn't play hard defense. Just sad. I like this picture though, a huge contrast...

Anyways, I'll get off my soapbox, but not before putting in a plug for the Bad Boys. They could beat the pants off any team in the NBA today, even our Pistons... This post is already far too long, but I'll be back with more of my sports opinions on the Pistons and figure skating- the only two sports besides soccer I pay attention to.