Warning, Geeky Post

Soooo, I'm sitting in Stats and my friend is flipping frantically through his physics book.

[ME] "What's up? Looking for something?"
[HIM] "I can't find this conversion rate!"
[3RD PERSON] "What are you trying to convert?"
[HIM] "I'm trying to convert Joules to feet"

. . . .

I apologize to any of you who may not be as unit savvy as I, but the laughter that erupted from this particular conversation was quite amazing. To this day we tease him about his conversion mishap. If you don't understand this and don't think it's funny, um, allow me to explain. A Joule is a measure of work, energy, that kind of thing. Feet is, well, a distance. Converting Joules to feet is like physics class alchemy, or squaring the circle, or getting an A in english, it just doesn't work! So yes, that's the geeky post of the day, hope you enjoyed it!

Bird

Sorry, no posts for a while, but this is worth it. I came home from school today and I went up to the garage. I noticed a bird hopping around my dog's food bowl, so I walked up to it to check it out. I know not all of you out their are aspiring ornithologists like myself, but the bird is known as an Oregon Junco. It's basically a brown bird with a black head. Well, it was hop-hop-hopping and I approached it. It eyed me and ran into the garage. I followed it and then it jumped through the door into our second garage. Again, I followed, and then it made it's final escape outside. I continured to follow and sure enough, it was back at the bowl. I went inside and chatted with my dad. He said that it had been attacking the bowl all day because it could see his reflection in it. I found this entertaining. I went outside to check it out and the bird was gone. . . or so I thought. It turns out that he had actually just moved on to bigger and greater things, the jeep! He was attacking the windshield and the review mirror with fervor. This was just too much, a bird attacking his reflection in shiny objects for the entire day!? So, photo op! I ran inside and got the camera and took his picture a couple of times. Here ya go, this is the Junco and his attempt at his reflection's life. Also, I uploaded a movie of his attack so that it can be viewed by everybody on the internet. Here's the link: http://jzzsxm.googlepages.com/BirdReflection.MOV Please enjoy! Thanks for reading!

Regional Math Tournament

Aloha mis amigos. Long time no habla. Well, I'm sorry about that, I've been busy with homework and such and this is the first time I've been awake enough to blog. I'll try to be more regular. I want to talk about. . . . MATH! (what a shocker) Thursday, April 13, 2006 was the Regional Math Tournament. Essentially, two people from each math level comepete from each school against other schools. I represented half of my school's precalc team. I think a total of about 8 of us went, all geeks. I was one of the geekier ones, but we'll look past that.
There are several events at the tournament, namely "The Qualifier", "25-Minus", "Group Problem Solving", "Estimation", and "THE RELAY" (caps for emphasis (if you didn't know that then leave (seriously (go)))). Let me walk you through it. First off was the State Qualifying exam. 15 questions, 1 hour. It wasn't hard at all, but due to several ridiculously stupid errors, I didn't score so hot. I got a 12 I think, they never told us, but I think it was a 12. After that was 25-minus. Basically, all the teams in a particular level sit in a room together, but you sit separately from your teammate. You are shown a problem on an overhead and a time limit. You have that amount of time to solve the problem and write it down. Times range from 45 seconds to a minute and a half. You are then shown the answers and the people that got them right raise their hands. They subtract the number of people who answered correctly from 25 and then give that many points to the teams that answered. In other words, being the only person to answer a question is good. We were all ready, psyched, ready to win it for the team, when the first problem came up. Now, what you are about to see is not the actual problem, but it will give you a rough idea. . . .



Yeah, scary. The atmosphere in the room was almost laughable. Here we were, brightest and best, and we just sat there. Some laughed. Most just sat. I tried my hardest, reducing and reducing, reducing and reducing, and ended up with some random equation with about 5 terms on top and 4 terms on the bottom. Then she showed the answer. It looked something like



There was definitely some laughter when THAT showed up on the board. Everybody that had tried sheepishly crumpled up their papers and looked around to make sure nobody had seen what they had gotten for an answer. The lady asked how many people got it right. Nobody raised their hands. Total Failure -1, Best and Brightest -0. Next problem. Imagine the last problem, but with another term added to the top and bottom. again, laughter and failure. The answer was just as stupid and the emberassment mounted. Nowe we're desparate, we want points!!! The proctor is shocked, can't believe that we haven't answered a question yet. Finally, answerable questions started appearing. My partner was smoking everybody. I answered I think 4 of them, but she definitely stole the show. So yeah, 25-minus was ok. Third event, group problem solving. This was kind of entertaining. 3 problems, 30 minutes. We looked at them and found that the las problem would be easy. We quickly knocked out the last problem and started working on the second one. The question?



Simple enough. Solve for x in terms of a, substitute it in for x in the second equation, and bingo, problem solved. Well, it got ugly. Solving for a resulted in



Ok, not so bad, quadratic equation. Until, you plug it into the second part of the equation. Then you get . Then we had a debate. Plus. . . .or minus? Such a simple question that could result in much more work than necessary if the wrong choice is chosen. We decided to do both. My partner did plus, I did minus. So, here's the equation we worked:



We just kept multiplying it out and eventually we got to, um, well, it was big. Like, really big. We decided that was the wrong route to take, so we looked at the question again. "Well, couldn't we just leave it? Use this last equation we had?" The problem didn't say to expand it all the way out, just write it in terms of A. So, we left it. On to the first problem. It said to imagine a parallelogram and gave the lengths of the sides. "Solve for the diagonals". Um, uh-oh. We couldn't, and it said that the answers were integers, so we improvised. We drew a parallelogram to scale and measured the angles. Ta-da! 9 and 15. We were done, and not confident. We knew that we had the last one right, but that was it.

The next event was the relay. Basically, teams lined up on one side of the gym, math problems on the other. One at a time members from each team would run over, solve a problem and run back. I'll avoid the gory details and suffice it to say, our school dominated. uber winning-ness. Now, lets talk about estimation. Throughout the day there was a big bowl of marshmallows (big and small). The challenge was to guess the amount of marshmallows. The winner gets a graphing calculator. Well, ha! I failed that one. I guessed 900. My partner wrote, on the little paper you write your guess one, "Let a = my guess. Define "a" such that it equals the amount of marshmallows in the bowl. QED". Personally, I think that should have won, but no.

The awards were next. I got third in the qualifying exam, enough for a ribbon but not enough for state. The first shocker was team problem solving. My partner and I had given up, but all of a sudden WHOA! We won! haha, kurazy! Either we guessed really well, or other people had no idea what was going on! w00t, that was exciting. My partner won 25-minus. Then, estimation. I was wrong, oh so wrong. The answer was 1,438. The winner, however, went to our school. Her guess? (You won't believe this. . . ) 1,444. She was off by 6! Amazing, she won a TI-84 silver. Then she won another TI-84 silver in another category! TWO CALCULATORS! She'll be selling them to wal-mart. Our school ended up winning overall, so that was good. I ended up with a bunch of ribbons and all was good. Hope you enjoyed the story! Ciao!

Bathroom Texting

Every once in a while something comes along that just BLOWS MY MIND! I was surfing the interweb today when I ended up at the Random Hall Bathroom server, which is basically a read out of which bathrooms are occupied and which bathrooms are vacant at MIT's Random Hall. Well, there appeared to be a new link, so I clicked it, and what followed was absolutely amazing.

meet the FOO BATHROOM DISPLAY

These guys installed a little screen across from the toilet that has a HAL light on it. Essentially, somebody goes onto the website and can see if somebody is in the bathroom. If they are, the person online can type a short message and pick a tone and then send it. The display in the bathroom beeps the selected tone and displays the message to the person that's, um, taking care of business. Here's the link so that you too can participate in the texting!

http://graviton.mit.edu/foo/

Unfortunately Blogger is being stupid and not letting me upload pictures right now, so I will later, but visit the site.

Bus Bounce

I have to ride the bus home from school from time to time, and it's always an interesting experience. Let me begin by saying that I have the worst bus driver ever. He yells at you for touching the windows and always drives up on the curbs. Let's talk about dem curbs for a sec. I was sitting in the back seat of the bus on the right side. A friend of mine was sitting in front of me and two of my other friends were sitting across the aisle. Well, all of a sudden, curb. Have you ever seen that video of the bus that goes out of control and the kid that gets launched into the air? Well, that's what happened to me and the kid in front of me. Technically we didn't go straight up, but we were lifted off our seats and flung into the aisle. No joke, none of that weak centrifugal force crap, we were thrown, flung, into the aisle. Ow, I slammed against my backpack and was sprawled out. My friend had hit his head on the edge of the seat across from him. Then, what goes up must come down, the bus came off the curb. We got lifted again and flung into the seat across from us, into the laps of my other friends. Ok, ow. Not fun, it was like getting tossed around by a bull. We managed to pull ourselves up and get back into our seats. My friend was hurting, having hit his head, but I was seeing red spots. Like, seriously, like a laser pointer, flashing around. THAT was bizzare. It went away eventually, but holy cow. What a terrible bus driver. Nobody else fell, of course, just us. We got laughed at. NOT OUR FAULT! WE CAN'T FIGHT GRAVITY AND FORCE! Have any interesting bus stories? Please comment, I'd love to read them! Ciao.

Lasers, Mirrors, Water, and Pure & Unfiltered Hatred

Before Spring Break we got a neat project assigned in Physics called a "Laser Race". Essentially, there is a course and a bunch of obstacles. The laser starts from a fixed position and you have to use mirrors and refraction tanks to guide the laser around the obstacles, perhaps hitting a bonus or two, and eventually hit a target. Depending on how close you get to the center, that's the grade you get. You have to use two mirrors and one refraction tank, but you can add up to two mirrors for 5 extra credit points each and 1 refraction tank for ten extra credit points. Anyways, we had to work in groups of 2, my partner was Jake. We laid out our course during class and then when I went on my trip over break Jake did all the calculations and set-up. "Hold on" you say, "What's a refraction tank?!?!?" Well, let me tell ya, it's more difficult to work with than a mirror. Here's how it works. . .it's a dish shaped in a half circle filled with water. When a laser enters the flat side at an angle it bends through the water, coming out at a different angle. There's a calculation for finding the angle it enters and the angle it leaves. Here's a little graphical representation: You know angle "i" but you need to find angle "r", here's the equation. There's a reason I'm telling you all of this, and here's that reason: We screwed up. Our first problem is that our original setup used 5 mirrors, one more than we were allowed. The second problem is that Jake inverted the equation he did Sin[r] over Sin[i]. So, basically, our course was hosed and the coolest part is that we didn't discover this until the lunch period before the laser shoot. That gave us about 12 minutes to either

1. Fix our course
2. Make a new one

Well, we tried to fix our course but soon decided that that wasn't feasible within the time constraints, so we had to devise a new course. Well, the mirror part was easy, just slap on a bunch of 45º mirrors and the laser should just make right angles straight across the course. Nothing fancy, no bonuses, save for using an extra mirror. But, here was the major problem. We had to include a refraction tank. As you can see, adding a refraction tank actually took math and figuring, both of which we didn't have time for because we had about 5 minutes at this point. We sat there, very close to defeat, no idea what to do, we had to add a refraction tank but it would send the laser off in some weird angle that we didn't have time to calculate. Suddenly Jake got an idea. Couldn't we arrange two tanks in such a way that they cancel out the refraction effects, thereby eliminating the need for math? Aha! We figured it out! Simply take two refraction tanks and place the flat ends together, creating a circle. That way the laser should pass straight through the center of the circle and the refraction of the two tanks would cancel each other out. Yay! We had a plan that would work! Here's the course we decided on, the brown blocks are the obstacles and the laser originates in the upper left. The blue things are the mirrors and the two half circle tanks are near the end, in case chance refraction occured it wouldn't have a lot of time to get off course before hitting the target. Well, we got to class and were super excited to have such a simple course that should be deadly accurate. Also, we were quite proud of ourselves for figuring out how to cancel out the refraction tanks, even roping in the 10 extra points for using an extra tank. Well, it was our turn, and we had 5 minutes to set up. We quickly set up the mirrors, no problem, just 45º on graph paper. I set up the tanks, aligned them so the laser would hit exactly in the center, and then we were good to go. We have to do the setup with the laser turned off and then we have one shot to just turn it on and see what happens. We were set in a minute flat. We switched on the laser and BOOM! Perfect hit! Cue me and Jake high-fiving and w00ting and generally being merry. 100 points + 10 for the refraction tank + 5 for the mirror = 115 points out of 100. Well, Jake and I were happy and spent the rest of the class period just kinda hanging out. Well, at the end of class, our teacher anounced the top three teams. We weren't one of them. Uh-oh. Teacher then reports "The rest of the groups need to redo their laser shoots because, well, you all missed the target or had some issues". Oh no you didn't! He did NOT just give us a zero on our shoot! You can bet that we complained. Apparently he was upset that we had cancelled our refraction tanks, not demonstrating true refraction. NOT COOL! He made us have to come in after school some time and make it up. NOT COOL! We got 115 points and didn't break a single rule! Grrrrrr! Well, today we redid our shoot and still used the refraction tanks to cancel each other, but now it looked more like this: I actually did calculations to make the tanks work. We hit the 100 using the same amounts of mirrors and tanks, but he only gave us a 90. That would be a 25 point deduction. NOT COOL! Grrrrrr, hence the unfiltered hatred part of the title.

Sorry?

Hello blog readers of mine. I am currently undergoing some of the hardest schooling ever, and due to this I may not be updating my blog as often as I would like. I have started another blog about my spring break but it's not finished yet, feel free to read it though . . . . http://snivelytrip.blogspot.com Remember, you have to start at the bottom and work your way up. It's dumb, I know, I'll be fixing it, but like I said, not a lot of time/desire to do it right now. Here's a preview of some posts I plan on making when I have the time/desire, just to give you a heads up:

• Lasers, Mirrors, Water, and Pure & Unfiltered Hatred
• The Bus-Bounce
• Regional Math Tournament
• Construction Career Day
• Naps

I look forward to typing most of these, so they will come eventually, please be patient and enjoy reading the rest of my blog, leave a comment here or there, I promise that I read them all. Ciao!

I Blew Up A Peep

Yes, I was bored. I had a peep. I had a microwave. I had an idea. You now have a picture of the outcome.

I'll Be Gone This Week

Ahoy, it's Friday evening and I'll be gone all Spring Break so don't expect any blog entries. I'm going to Massachusetts, New York, Virginia, Maryland, Connecticut, and all sorts of other places. The main reason for the visit is for college visitations. We're hitting MIT the first day but since they aren't offering tours I get to just wander around and explore for myself. I'm really excited for that! Then we're going to Johns Hopkins for an interview for my application, and then finally we're going to Cornell for a tour. To finish off the trip we're touring Washington DC on, get this, Segway scooters at night. An evening, lighted tour of all the monuments on Segway scooters. In New York my goal is to a) Find the cash cab and b) Visit all the places from Seinfeld. In Maryland I'm gonna visit Camden Yards because the Orioles rock!, and in Massachusetts it's really only about MIT! I'll fill you in on how the trip goes when I get back. . . .see yall later! I'll take tons of pictures and get some posted. Ciao!

Licking my head?!?!?!?

Yesterday was the second installment of the district qualifying rounds for state but this time it was all debate. It was definitely an experience, and most of the experience had nothing to do with the debates I did. I have a couple of stories, so I'll tell them one at a time.

1. DEBATE OUTCOMES: I do Lincoln-Douglas debate, which is a one on one debate over a resolution (topic) that is predecided. You research and write an affirmative and negation case and have to debate both sides at the tournament. At this tournament three people were elegible to qualify for state competition. The reason 3 were able to qualify is because 6 people were debating LD, but there's trickery behind that. Of the 6 debating, three were just there as "sacrificial lambs", destined to lose in order to send more people to state. I was one of those lambs. I can debate and can hold my own fairly well, but I don't particularly enjoy debate as much as some, I'd rather go for the indirect competition like sock monkey speech than go head to head with somebody else. Anywho, I was approached and asked to do this on Tuesday. Yes, I had 2 days to write my cases, including research. After a lot of help from the other debators on my team (thanks) I had two fairly decent cases. So, now for the debates. One girl that was competing had qualified for Nationals in debate, so it was a given that we were going to lose to her and it was a fight for 2nd and 3rd. So, we debated. My first round seemed to go well, I felt confident and it wasn't a massacre or anything, I thought I made the better arguments. That's the same as my third round, I was pretty sure that I had that one in the bag because I pretty much ripped apart my oponent's case. The second round however, can be best described as "Hello, my name is Michael, and I've been raped by a five foot nothing cute blonde girl that is going to Nationals and, although nice looking, is as vicious as a shark and will eat you alive, then pick her teeth with your bones. How are you?" Yeah, it was ugly, she dissected my entire case and turned all my contentions before explaining rather efficently how all of my contentions actually supported her case and that my case was, essentially, a steaming pile of cow dung. I left that round feeling, well, like a steaming pile of cow dung. There were only three rounds, so at awards I found out that I had come in 4th of six and was an alternate for state. Of course, all three people that did qualify will be going, so I won't be pulling my alternate duty. Here's the weird part, ready? I lost my first and third rounds. I, actually, got smoked my first and third rounds. The second round, the raped by the shark round, I won. WHAT'S WRONG WITH ME?!?!?! The sacrificial lamb loses to two random people and then is the only person that beats the national qualifier? Sigh, I just don't understand these things. Oh well, it works out well for me, because now I don't have to debate at state (which I didn't want to do in the first place), I get a certificate, and I beat a national qualifier, so I'm happy. Yay for weird coincidences.
2. UNO!: So, on the way to the tournament we stopped at the grocery store for food but instead of food, I bought UNO! OMG, what a great game! It is the official speech and debate team game now. 7 people all huddled around playing Uno and insulting each other so as to warm up for their next round is really fun! I've never heard more creative bad mouthing and more delibrate backstabbing! "Ooooo! Draw 4 B_t_h_s! What now?!?!? Uh oh! Stack that you J_w, draw eight! Oh yeah?!?!? I made my own card so now you draw 20 you M_T_E_ F_C_E_!" Keep in mind, I wasn't the one cussing like a sailor, but it was funny. The debate crowd can get lively.
3. HEAD LICKING: All right, this is a weird one, so get ready. I was sitting there and a girl named Sasha came up and rubbed the back of my head. I have short hair so the hair on the back of my head feels cool when rubbed, so it wasn't a surprise when she rubbed my head. A lot of people do it. Anyways, she says "Sorry, I had to feel your head, it feels really cool." I politely agree and let her know it's ok and that a lot of people do it. Here is the really quite creepy part. She says, to my utter shock "You know what feels really good, both for both of us? If somebody has a cowlick there on the back of their head and you lick it. It feels really cool both for the person licking and the person being licked, but I won't lick you because I don't know you. . ." [pause, I just kinda sit there, stunned]. "Um, yeah" I say, finding words, "you don't know me so that wouldn't really be a good idea." That's it, that's all I could say. WTF do you say to that? She was practically asking if she could lick the back of my head! After she left, I whipped around and asked my girlfriend (who was sitting there the whole time) "Um, that was weird, wasn't it?" "Yes" "Normal people don't do that, right?" "No" "Did she seriously want to lick the back of my head? How would she ever know how that would feel? Does she lick peoples' heads?" "Um, weird" "Wow". Yeah, it was definitely strange and I'm not sure I'll ever let anybody lick the back of my head, but if anybody has experienced this type of activity then I'd like to hear from you and know if it actually does feel cool, because I probably will never experience it.

Yep, there it is, debate for me. I am done debating for the year, so now all focus is on sock monkey. That should be fun. Ok, that's all for now, thanks for reading!