Nitwitted blatherings of a marginally preposterous specimen

Attention all bandwagon Rutgers fans

Sat, 27 Oct 2007 22:01:45 GMT

Just some general rules on how to properly conduct yourself at a football game.

1. Don't yell "overrated" at the opposing team if the game hasn't even started yet. You will look like a fool if your team ends up losing.

2. Once the players get out of the huddle, don't cheer if your team is on offense. They need to hear what the quarterback is saying. It's kind of important.

3. Yelling "Fuck you [opposing team]!" just makes you look classless. Don't do it.

4. Don't harass the other fans. Again, it makes you look classless.

5. Get creative with your signs. Writing "As we say in da club 'Ay Ray Ray'" on a sheet just makes you look dumb. Seriously, it's not clever or funny.

6. Never, ever boo your own team. Don't be so quick to jump ship. Stay loyal.

7. Refrain from vandalizing cars and/or stealing property in the parking lots before, during, and after the game. It's illegal, and it's wrong.

8. Fighting in the stands, especially with fellow fans, makes you and your team look very, very bad.

9. Show a little faith. So what if your team loses a game or two? Who cares if your team is down by 10 points after the first half? You never know when things will change for the better.

10. Stop cheering/shouting/yelling/talking when the band/Glee Club plays/sings The Star Spangled Banner and On the Banks of the Old Raritan. Show a little respect.

All I can say right now is...

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 01:54:27 GMT

HOLYSHITWTFHOUSE.

"I love you."

*fangirlish squeee of delight and ho!yayness*

The Sheer Ghetto-ness of NBTHS

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 01:44:53 GMT

I love it. I really do.

In one day, we had the door handle fall off the door in my English room...in the wing that was just opened last year. It's true. Mohit was opening the door to come to class, and the door handle fell off. He walked in with it in his hand and asked our teacher "Mr. Beaumont, does your door knob usually fall off?"

Oh! And the best part of the day was the big fight in the Commons. Two girls were fighting over who-knows-what (probably a boy or something), and Girl 1 ended up pulling a knife on Girl 2.

Fun stuff, lemme tell you.

And that was basically the only excitement of my day.

THE GOVERNMENT IS TRACKING US!11!!11!!

Sun, 30 Sep 2007 19:07:22 GMT

I forgot to mention in yesterday's post about the crazy conspiracy theorist that kept coming over to our booth at Heritage Day. Boy, was she a doozy...

According to her, the new driver's licenses all have special chips in them to track us. And all the "big" companies like J&J and BMS that all appear to be competitors are all "in bed with each other," hiring "kids like us" (i.e. kids that are interested in science, technology, engineering, robotics, etc.) to do "special jobs" for the government.

She wrote down titles of a few books to read and what pages to read from them. We were also told not to order them online because zomg!!111!!1 the government keeps a list of all the people who read them!11!!11!!

Now, I'm not saying that our government isn't up to some fishy things, but I mean...really. She's talking to a bunch of teenagers on the high school robotics team just trying to get some publicity by running a demo.

She was pretty damn creepy, if you ask me.

It's been a looong week....

Sun, 30 Sep 2007 02:07:27 GMT

We had a robot demo at the Liberty Science Center for GadgetOff on Friday. It was...bizarre.

This is from my ChiefDelphi post made when we returned to the school.

Today, Friday, September 28, 2007, team 25 and 4 other teams (395, 555, 1089, 1626) participated in GadgetOff at the Liberty Science Center. This involved our team of 4 members to take a bus to the science center for the event.

As we loaded up the bus with our supplies, we put our battery cart, driver bag (tethers, zip ties, radio, etc.), toolbox, and robot cart into the bottom storage compartment of the bus. After loading up the rest of our gear, we headed off to the event.

About 30 miles from North Brunswick Township High School, our home base, we heard a strange noise. We originally believed it to be the large trucks driving alongside of us. After the noise persisted, however, we took a look out the window.

To our astonishment, the bottom compartment door had opened and our battery cart was dragging alongside the bus at about 70 MPH (the fastest known speed of a battery cart ever). When the door opened, some of the battery wires had caught onto the door latch. We immediately yelled for the bus driver to pull over, but we were in the middle lane of the New Jersey Turnpike.

As we pulled over, the battery cart broke free from the control of the bus and the back wheel ran over it. Looking out the rear window, we witnessed the cart literally explode before our eyes, scattering chargers, batteries and assorted wires all over the road. The shrapnel flew everywhere and nearly everything was destroyed by oncoming traffic.

Our mentor, Mr. Cokeley, and the bus driver got out of the bus and trekked back down the highway to find any remaining equipment. They returned with one battery and parts of a few chargers. We were able to make a charger out of salvageable parts using wire cutters and electrical tape.

Upon searching the bottom compartment, we realized the driver bag had also been thrown from the bus.

We were able to make it through the event by using batteries loaned to us from team 1089, as well as our one remaining battery. We used a tether for the beginning of the event and then operated for a short time with a radio also loaned to us by team 1089.

Here are some pictures of the aftermath. I do not have any of the battery cart actually dragging alongside the bus, as that was not my top priority at the time.

Cokeley and the Bus Driver
Remaining Battery and Charger (we were afraid they would explode, so we put them far away from everyone)
The Compartment in Question
All That Remained
The Remaining Battery (1)
The Remaining Battery (2)
Battery On the Side of the Road

Needless to say, it was interesting.

And today, we had another demo at the town's Heritage Day, which involved the turret from our 2006 robot breaking. Oh, and a billion kids nearly breaking a joystick that didn't even control anything.

I'm completely wiped out from the past two days.

Stehst du auf starke Männer?

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 23:11:28 GMT

Yep, that was the question that just absolutely ruined my day.

One of our vocabulary phrases we learned in German today was "Sie steht auf starke Männer," meaning "She likes strong men." Of course, Herr Schwab decides to go around the room and ask all the girls "Stehst du auf starke Männer?" which means "Do you like strong men?"

I knew it was coming. I tried to prepare myself to a) either just say "Nein, ich steht auf starke Frauen" or say something like "Nein, ich bin lesbich." You know, just come out right there.

Naturally, I froze. He got to me and asked the question, and I simply answered "Nein." Then he asks, "Stehst du auf starke Männer oder intelligent Männer?" At this point, I was just hoping that I could find some way to get the hell out of that class.

I was completely frozen by that point. I just wanted to sink down in my chair and cry and hide from the class. Finally, my friend Meghan (nearly everyone in that class knows I'm gay), leans over and is just like "Say 'sure' or something..." So I sit there like an idiot who doesn't know what the question means and I say "...okay."

Then the teacher moved on with the rest of the class. But it bothered me for the entire day.

Why am I so ashamed of being gay? Why did I just come out right there and say it?

Ugh.

Life...

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 01:54:25 GMT

Yeah, nothing too interesting happening around here lately. Had the "audition" for first violins. I did fine on that. Surprise, surprise. Orchestra's been going well so far. I realize that I'm playing with much more confidence than last year. Perhaps the fact that almost everyone in there is quite good at what they do is encouraging me to raise my game a bit. Whatever it is, it's working.

Been dealing with the froshers a lot in robotics. It seems that they need to email me for every little damn question. Though, I guess I was like that once, too. Right now, I'm trying to get them all set for building the trophies for Brunswick Eruption (by "building," I mean "buying and staining wooden bases, gluing the tikis to them, and then putting the 'plaque' on them").

School's been pretty good. I'm feeling fairly confident about most of my classes, with the exception of Honors Math Analysis. Seriously, math summer assignments agree with me about as well as dairy does. Our last test was a combination of some summer assignment stuff and some new stuff. The new stuff? I did pretty much perfect on. The other stuff? Yeah, that's where I lost about 97% of my points.

Other than that, not too much going on right now. Trying to keep myself organized and prepared for when the more hectic stuff comes (you know--the time of the year when you seem to have 5 tests every day, 4 hours of homework a night, in addition to robotics meetings, orchestra rehearsals, and everything else).

It's 10:30 on a Friday night...

Sat, 22 Sep 2007 02:36:47 GMT

...and what am I doing? I'm about to go to bed.

Yeah, I'm cool like that.

I am incredibly tired. It's hard to believe that it was the actual first full week of school for the year. So far, so good, though.

Homework

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 00:54:14 GMT

I'm really, really trying hard to keep up with doing my homework this year. So far, so good. Hell, I even put a few minutes into studying for my math test.

I really screwed up my first two years in high school. I nearly failed Honors English freshman year due to a 14% homework average. I almost didn't meet the requirements for Honors US History I by having a 40% homework average in World History II.

I'm feeling pretty confident about it all. I think having the study hall counts, and the fact that there is the incentive that if I get straight A's plus an A on the midterm in any of my classes, I don't have to take the final. I was able to pull that off for AP CompSci last year, and it was certainly nice to be exempt. Just one less thing to worry about.

Doing my homework will probably also help to bring up my test grades (from the mid-B/low A range to perhaps all A's?).

Despite knowing that AP Chem is a tough class, I'm feeling really confident about knowing the material. Even with the more challenging problems, if I take a moment to just step back and look at what exactly they're looking for and what information I have, rather than diving right into it, I can usually find my way out of it all.

Overall, I'm hoping this is going to be a good year.

Oh, and did I mention I passed that driving test?

O wrklch?

Thu, 20 Sep 2007 01:48:33 GMT

Ja wrklch!

(Translation: "O rly?" "Ja rly!")

Today was most fun. Wednesdays usually are. We had our first full robotics meeting with all the new freshman. Our numbers are up around 80, but at least 30 will drop off by November, and probably another 10-15 by the time kick off rolls around. We usually lose a few to the winter sports.

We went out for our after after meeting dinner meeting at Quizno's, as we did far too much last year (I've been dying for some La Casa De Tortilla lately...).

Overall a good day. And I did my homework. I'm really trying to actually do it at least 98% of the time, unlike last year. So far, so good!

Deutschlehrer fun!

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 21:35:42 GMT

(That's "German teacher" fun, for my non-German-speaking friends)

It's been incredibly frustrating to have had so many changes in German teachers since 7th grade (Mitchell, Decker, Horton, back to Mitchell, Heimlich, Schwab), but the new guy isn't bad. I mean, sure, he can be pretty darn creepy at times, but he's a good teacher.

Oh, and did I mention he has Walker, Texas Ranger auf Deutsch?!

Yeah, it's pretty sweet. I've been watching this one episode ("Das Ultimatum"), and Chuck Norris is 10x as awesome in German as he is in English.

We're definitely not learning as much grammar as we did with Mitchell or Heimlich, but we're certainly learning tons of vocabulary to which we can apply our knowledge of German grammar.

Driving Test

Sun, 16 Sep 2007 19:05:57 GMT

Well, the written one, at least. I won't be taking the on-the-road test until about another year or so. My driving lessons have been scheduled to begin on September 28, but I still have to take the written test. Because I failed the first time. And so did everyone else with Form 1. Fortunately, from what I've heard, the one given at the DMV and/or the driving school itself is much easier for some reason.

I'm supposed to be studying for it as I write this, but I really wanted to fix my header situation (with my old layout, LJ would cut off the top half, put it at the bottom, and then put a blue bar in its place at the top). Damn CSS.

I took the practice test on the Safety First website and only scored a 34/50 (that's 68%, for those of you who are too lazy to multiply by two). Obviously, this needs to be improved. I'm blaming the fact that I haven't looked at the driver's manual in, oh, I don't know...maybe 6 or 7 months?

I'm still getting back into the swing of things in terms of blogging and such, so my updates might be a little, well, strange.

w00t

Sun, 16 Sep 2007 04:32:00 GMT

I'm back on LJ. New account. Very happy about that. I've really missed blogging. I started my old one with the intentions of really keeping up with it, but then it just became memes upon memes upon memes. So I'm really going to try and stick with this one. Wish me luck.

I'll be posting some *real* posts tomorrow or so. Just hang in there!