the eXternal mind

Please excuse me from all of my grammar and spelling mistakes. I was pretty tired when I wrote this.

4/12/03 – Saturday 12:40PM (Central Time)

Morning started out as usual. I got the floor last night but for some strange reason I shut off the alarm today. It was probably because everyone was just too lazy to get up and shut it off. I was till pretty darned tired but got up anyway, brushed my teeth, dressed, etc. Everyone was awake except Jeff. The weird thing is, he has an active unconscious mind. Normal people are easy to wake but not Jeff. For instance, I tried poking him, hitting him, and none of that worked! I tried pulling his pillow away from him but in his sleep, hi arms reached out and grabbed the pillow back! I even tried to pressure point him and it didn’t work (Jeff said that he felt it but didn’t really registered it in his mind). Finally, Steve Ma came in and kicked him in the ribs to wake him up.

Breakfast was the same and just as crappy but I didn’t get ripped off on the bacon. On the contrary, I was duped on potato hashes (today, they actually had something new!).

From there was a quick hike to the stadium. Today we didn’t have to scout since there was a next to nothing chance that our team will be picked in an alliance. Matches were boring as usual. I constantly fought to stay awake. It was a good thing that there was a picture break so our team went outside and got our picture taken. It was really bright and hot outside. (Geez, I need caffeine right now…and lots of it) I’m zoning out as I am writing this. My eyes start to droop and my head dips. It just happened again.) We took the pictures and went to lunch. They had only one selection: A hamburger, chips, and a drink. I went to sit with my team members to eat. One of them gave me their lunch to hold for a bit. For run, I took a bite out of my burger and switched it with Steve’s. When he showed up, I gave him the bitten one but he didn’t notice until 2 mins later when Pat and I were cracking up. I switched back with him.

After lunch, we went back to the stands. Another team took our spot so we moved somewhere else. Matches still went on and things were very, very boring. I fell “asleep” every 3 minutes. It was horrible. Then I happened to notice that animation awards were being displayed on the center screen. The inventor, rising star, and the main animation award was being given out. The inventor award was fair. The rising star award, that we had a shot at, was given to a pretty crappy animation. The real visualization award was given to a team that had video footage as 75% of their animation. Euge and I were a bit perturbed at the judge’s decision because we did not totally agree that the animation that won was the best of all submitted animations. The rookie animation had these FIRST symbols that hopped around to get to the top of the stairs. Their mapping and texture were bad. Their sounds were cheap too. The real winning animation was really bad because they didn’t have any “real” animation. The only computer animation they had was a robot which was imported from the CAD dudes. Euge was all pissed. I was ok, since I’m usually emotionless. I didn’t expect our animation to win, but I believe that there were better animations that should have won. For instance, team 114’s animation was amazing and should have won the visualization award. The rookie one was OK, it had an ok theme but wasn’t a very, very good animation.

The matches went on; I was falling asleep and was pretty much dying from fighting it. Finally, I said, “That’s it!” and got up to walk around since that was the only way I could stay awake. I also wanted to look for members of team 166 since I believed that Penguin and Cami were here. Euge went with me so I ended up walk racing him around the stadium. Of course I won but Euge tried to cheat by running at the end. He went back to his seat, and I continued my search. I walked like 100ft, and found team 151 Nashua members. I hung around there trying to find any leads to team 166 which I presumed to be sitting nearby. I looked around and there was only one lady with a team 166 t-shirt (Chop Shop). I was just about to ask a student from 151 where 166 was when they all just cleared out of the stands. I was like, “What?!” Just when I was about to do something, they all leave. Just look at my luck!

The final rounds were going on and Miss Daisy (Wissahickon) won their division but lost the finals. Since it was pretty much futile finding team 166 now, I went back to my seat and sat with my team for the awards and final rounds. I don’t quite remember who won the finals but I wasn’t any team that I was really concerned about. My team didn’t win any awards even though we had hoped to win some of the “Engineering” awards like Delphi’s driving tomorrow’s tech. award. We also wanted to win the chairman’s award but we didn’t. I wasn’t quite surprised that we didn’t win. Even though we could have won this year, I knew we weren’t good enough like some of the other teams. Hey, at least I have 2 more years to get the animation and chairman’s right. I have some ideas of my own to make our team better.

After that, there was a speech given by Chuck Yeager. He was the first pilot that broke the sound barrier in the X-1 plane. He was a cool and simple guy. What was funny though was that he spoke a lot about himself and kind of basically forgot about speaking for FIRST. One could tell that he was very enthusiastic about FIRST though. He was like a warmonger. He spoke about how us kids could be the next engineers making war weapons and he basically summed up everyone’s thoughts, “Too bad you can’t hang bombs on the back [of the robots] and blow the other guy up!”

Next, this NASA lady talked and gave this long speech that was a bit funny. The beginning of the speech was good but then she just got too repetitive. The more she talked, the worse it became. But I applauded her for doing it. (FIRST presented an award to NASA in honor of the Columbia crew)

Then Dean Kamen gave out the homework assignment. He spoke so long that I forgot everything he said. Then…the end commenced. Confetti and balloons dropped from the top while everyone was clapping. I tried to grab some of the falling confetti as they fell. I caught some, but I also missed others. Balloons were popping all around. The sky was amazing as it was filled with the confetti. Then they shot off some fireworks indoors. Finally, we all left. As I was leaving, I felt very content and tranquil. It was like a weight being lifted off my shoulders even though I never really had to do anything. Suddenly, this screeching lady’s voice shrilled through the air and completely removed any form of peacefulness I had. I was like: “Damn you” and thought it was pretty funny (because it’s like anime).

So now it was back to the hotel and then to Six Flags. There was going to be a team dinner there. In the parking lot walking to Six Flags, Mr. Delaney wrestled Joe Troy Sr. Two people in this car they wrestled in front of called the cops! They stopped fighting and we all waved at them and left. I bet they were stunned.

(Oh yeah, we left without Euge because he was sooooooo slow! I mean, come on! We were leaving and he turns on his laptop. We weren’t sure where he was, but I found him later in the park.)

I followed Steve, Franco, Jeff, Ms. Hale, and Mr. Delaney. We were going to get dinner first so we went around to find the place to eat dinner. We talked around for like 15 minutes looking for it and Ms. Hale was a bit mad at how the part was so confusing and we walked all around looking for it. (I was kind of sorry that this was the real last day that I would be here. I haven’t found Penguin or Cami yet and that was disappointing. I figured that I might be able to find them in the park as a last ditch attempt so I kept my eyes open for them.) Right before we reached it, there was this really long walkway. We had just passed Joe, Joel, Laura, and their friends so I waved. Then Jeff McCarrin run up to me and said that someone wanted to see me. I was a bit confused since I thought it was weird that Joe or someone would have something to say to me. I took like two steps and then all of a sudden 3 girls appeared on my left side with Jeff pointing at them. Things went by in a whirl but I believe that this one girl in the front with glasses and tied back brown hair said, “Guess who?” My brain just froze even though without thought; I knew exactly who she was. Heck, I was looking for her for the past 2 days! Still, I was a bit surprised, but I quickly regained my composure in less than a second. I’m not sure exactly what I said (I’m writing this part on the day after everything happened. On 4/13/03 at 4:53 PM) but it was something like: “Hi Allison or Penguin Masaki.” Or “Allison or Penguin Masaki.” She nodded and I introduced myself even though it was not necessary at all. I suppose it was a bit awkward at first. Ok, so I meet someone. What do/should I say? Mr. Delaney and Ms. Hale were ahead. Penguin asked if I wanted to hang around with them in the park. I was kind of glad that she asked because I wouldn’t have “invited” myself into their group. I accepted, but I said that I had to eat dinner first. It was all right with Penguin and she said that they would wait for me. I caught up with my group and everyone gave this guy a stub from the six flags ticket to get into the food place. The food there was pretty crappy. The best they had were hot dogs and chicken breasts. The line I was in didn’t have chicken so I just got a hot dog, some pickles, and a bag of chips. I went to get a drink too. It was one of those self-serve soda dispensing things. I didn’t want soda to stink on my teeth so I opted for lemonade. So did Franco. He filled up his cup first, and sipped a bit. It turned out to be water! Meanwhile, I was filling my cup with “lemonade.” Franco’s warning came too late. I was tuck with really bad tasting water. We sat down and I finished up my hot dog and chips quickly. They everyone left the place. I convinced Delaney and company to exit by the entrance since Penguin and her friends were waiting there. They were sitting on this short wall of the walkway and didn’t see me coming so I waved and got their attention. He apologized, but for what? I guess since we were actually meeting in person, everyone was all trying to be careful and polite. I mean, it’s kind of like a judgment; you could leave a good impression or a bad impression on them. Then I looked over at Delaney and group and found them, I believe, in utter disbelief. For those who are reading this and do not really “know” me, I must explain. I shell give the short, short, short, version. First, I’m a fairly non-social character. I don’t talk very much because most of the time, I have nothing to say. Around my best friends I can talk about this or joke about that because we share the same interests. In school and in daily life, I almost never talk to girls ever. I’m not exactly sure why. It could be my shyness or it could just be that I have nothing to say to them. In any case, I can never seem to strike up a conversation with any girl (except Mare who basically forces me to talk). Around school, my interaction with girls is like 1%. Also, who I am, and the character I am isn’t the kind of open person who just goes around and flirts with every girl I see. So everyone knows me like that, and I know myself like that too. Getting back to the story, my friends and teachers were shocked! Oh my god, Mike is actually talking with a girl that “he doesn’t know?!” What’s this world coming to?! So I walked over to them and tried to explain how I knew Penguin. It was futile. It was too funny for them, and they couldn’t accept the “she’s just a friend” excuse. So I asked Delaney if I could break off from the group and go by myself. He was like smirking at me as he said yes. I was going to explain again when everyone was like pushing me in Penguin’s direction saying, “Leave! Leave!” So I just stared walking away from my group with Penguin and her group following. I was told later by Franco that they all clapped after I left. Geez ^^;.

So first of all, I don’t’ have a map, and second of all, I don’t know where the heck I’m going. So what does the genius mikeXstudios’ do? Simple, just wander around aimlessly. I walked like 20 meters and just figured heck, this wasn’t going to work at all. Following me around was a very, very bad idea. So I let the Penguin group lead and I followed them around. I asked who Penguin’s friends were and got the answer Rachel and Rebecca. The only problem was that I have this tendency to walk “fast” which is really how I normally walk. So even though I was following the group, I constantly found myself in front of them. So then everyone just followed me which as I said before was a very, very, bad thing. I forgot a lot of the exactly conversations that went on. (I am writing this part on 4/14/03 Monday) Penguin and I started off chatting about the site, the message board, and the internet. I told her that Spook said hi. We gravitated towards the wooden white roller coaster ride because neither the Penguin group nor I went on it yet. Here is a great example of why never to follow me: I thought I found the entrance to the wooden roller coaster, so I ran up the ramp. The Penguin group followed. The only problem was that we were trying to enter through the exit! Wow, that was embarrassing ^^; especially since the entrance was right next to it and had a big sign.

In line, we chatted about animation. I believe it was Rebecca who brought up the point and asked me what I thought about the winning animation. I told her that I didn’t’ think of it too well and thought that there were better teams that deserved to win. Penguin lamented how we met so late. I agreed. She said that she was stalking the pit area of my team all Friday trying to find me. Unfortunately, I was up it the stands doing scouting so I couldn’t’ meet her then. I was stalking her team’s (151) pit area on Thursday trying to find a connection to team 166. However, I couldn’t find any team 166 members because penguin said that her team did not arrive until Friday. Well, Rebecca was a pretty seasoned animation on team 166. I didn’t see their animation yet, but I suspect that it was very good. She said that the new animators on the team would not listen to her because they thought they knew what they were doing. She explained to the animators not to use any character animation, outdoor scenes, or crowds. I nodded because I knew all too well what she was talking about. The animation on my team (including me) used a character in the animation and many outdoor scenes. This made the animation very difficult to look real. Then, I jokingly recounted how the old man of animation (Ted B.) said how one of his animations took 45 minutes to render each frame. That’s impossible I thought, but Rachel comes out and said normally that was nothing. They had scenes in their animation that took hours for a single frame. I almost fell down literally! Geez! How could someone have a scene so powerful and complicated?! Wow, team 166’s animation team was like 10 times l33ter than the animation team that I’m on (which basically consisted of me and my friend Euge). So we finally got to ride the coaster and it was pretty cool. I related my NASA incident to Penguin (who sat next to me) but was cut off as the roller coaster took its dive. I was screaming a string of curses out. It’s fun! I always scream curses on roller coaster rides :). After the coaster ride, we walked around some more and talked a bit. I told her how I was starting to watch Kenshin now and she gave me a high five! Kenshin is awesome! It was also discussed how Ariane (one of Penguin’s friends) was the guru at Kenshin. I was dodging people all over. (Penguin addition) Penguin asked if she should apologize for her incessant ramblings now or later, but I said that I didn’t mind, because I wasn’t good at bringing up conversation topics anyway. Penguin wanted to find Perky. They talked about Perky quite a bit and after hearing all of these strange things about Perky, I started to wonder who she was. I asked Penguin and she responded with one word: “Cami” and suddenly, everything made perfect sense! Ha, ha, ha! No wonder! It ONLY could have been Cami! (That’s a compliment too!) There was alto this really annoying kid who wanted hugs. I really think he was a pervert who just wanted to hug girls. The Penguin group rejected his hug attempt (I later found out that she kicked him in the shin ^^;) so he started to get a little pissed. Later, we saw him again and he was trying to get hugs again! Rebecca hugged him probably just to shut him up, but he wanted hugs from the whole group. We reused politely at first and then started to get more straightforward as the kid started to get heated up. It took a bit of restraint not to kill him on the spot. What’s with these girly guys who want hugs? Are they deprived or something? We talked around trying to find Cami but she was no where to be found. The Penguin group was complaining how I walked pretty fast, so I tried to slow down except that once I did, I had to walk fast again to catch up with them.

Then the Penguin group found the “Hyper” boys, kids from an engineering team called Hyper. They were looking for Cami too. I struck up a conversation with one of the kids there. I asked him how his team did in the competition, where he was from, and I told him about our robot. The Penguin group left with the Hyperboys to the hotel to find Cami. It just happened that Euge was walking by so I yanked him out to follow me. I introduced Euge to Penguin and then we all parted. Euge and I went to find an arcade or something and Euge was like, “Who were they? Is she your girlfriend? And etc.” He was kind of laughing at me too but we are good friends so it was friendly laughter. We argue, though, about almost everything. For instance on Friday, we argued until 3AM about humanity. I only got about 3 hours of sleep that night, and I was all screwed up on Saturday. So Euge being the serious-funny guy was saying some funny stuff about how he was going to “get a girl” in the park. Just about then, the Penguin group showed up again minus Rebecca, I think. Euge disappeared somehow. It was around 10:20PM then and we were going to go on the freefall tower ride, but we realized that the park was closing. So we navigated to the entrance after finding two dead ends! I still couldn’t believe how Penguin could have survived a 1 month ban from the internet. I’m dying and it has been just 4 days! I told her about the April Fools gig I pull on Tenchi in Tokyo and how the layout still wasn’t finished yet. She offered to help, and I was delighted since I could use some help on the page. Then she mentioned how we didn’t argue about web design, so I had to bring up the Tables vs. Frames argument :).

Walking back to the hotel, the Penguin and her friend was recounting how this crazy Mexican guy was stalking them last night in the parking lot. They found their mentor on their team and followed him. On the way back, I found Delaney~person again and he started to crack some bad jokes again…only he didn’t realize that Penguin and her group was walking right next to him! He asked what team they were on, and I said, “Team 166 Blueprints,” but was cut off as Penguin added that they were got their team name changed (to Chop Shop). The look on Delaney’s face was priceless as he just suddenly realized what had happened and quickly shut up J.

I followed Penguin and her friend to their room which was in like the third wing of the hotel. I never knew there was a third wing of the hotel! I was like: “What’s this?!” They seemed to have pretty good rooms even though Penguin didn’t think so. That whole section f the hotel was filled with Nashua team 151 members. That’s a lot of team members ^^;.

We were just about to turn this corner when Penguin stopped. She found Cami coming around the corner with her gang. Cami was this fairly short girl with short blond hair who was pretty hyper. She asked Penguin if she wanted to go with her group to do something (I forgot what), but I think Penguin was trying to hint that there was someone else here (me). I was standing to the side viewing all of this in a bit of amusement. I think Cami looked over in my direction, looked back at Penguin, looked back at me with a puzzled face, and then realized. The confused expression on her face for a split second was priceless J. So I introduced myself and shook hands. I forget how, but Cami all of a sudden had a box of Chicken Fingers and something else and was asking everything if they wanted any. Almost everyone declined. Suddenly, Cami just ran up and punched someone. She also fell down and sprawled on the floor. Penguin decided to leave and led the way to the pool.

At the pool, we grabbed some seats from MOE and sat around this table chatting. We talked a bit about FIRST and robotics. MOE and the kids in the pool were making lots of noise so we decided to go somewhere else. That somewhere else was the other pool (in my section of the hotel). To get there, we crossed by the auditorium/dance room where a prom was being held. So many robotics kids were crossing back and forth there that I bet they were pissed :). So I was trying to dodge these slow moving couples when Penguin and her friend took another path and managed to get far in front of me. “Wow, they’re good,” I thought J. Penguin was mocking me and asked if they were too fast for me. I was crying and begged them to slow down ^^.

We got to the other pool but it was just as noisy. Penguin really did know her way around this place so she went to the gazebo where it was very quiet and we all sat down and chatted again. I said a few things but not much being the not-very-social person I am. Penguin and her friend were chatting about something and it was interesting to listen to them. They forced me to say something so I related my UPS event story where those drones “lost” my address. Then Penguin’s friend Rachel told her UPS story of how she got all of these riding accessories that she didn’t order. She had a hobby of horseback riding and started to use riding terms. Penguin and I were like “Uh….say that in English?” There seemed to be good horseback riding during the summer in NH. Penguin lived only like a block away from Dean Kamen’s shack. Dude, I would knock up for him every day! She has a mall within walking distance of her house too! The bad thing in NH is that it is COLD like all the time! There was just a big snowstorm there last week. There are almost no sidewalks in NH or something like that. Kids get bused to school. I told them about Upper Darby and joked about Philadelphia and how everyone was gangsta. It was funny. SO we got to politics and how NH was like conservative. Then it moved to a quick discussion on war. The word oil was mentioned and I took that chance to discuss the amazing new development of a process that can convert anything into oil. I was just getting worked up to give a one hour lecture about it when these other kids, oh so conveniently, showed up, interrupted my amazing lecture, and wanted to get married in the gazebo. They invited us, but we quickly but politely declined and rushed out of these. It was all planned I say! You see, Penguin really had a group of her friends on hold so that if I started to talk about something boring, they would show up and interrupt me. It’s all a conspiracy! Just when I was about to talk about science….

It was after 11:10 PM by now so I decided that it was time for me to leave. Besides, I didn’t want to bore them too much. So I said bye and wished them a good trip back to Manchester. I ran up to my room, walked in nonchalantly, and was hit with a couple of jokes again and questions. I went to take a shower and then brushed my teeth. Nothing really exciting happened after that so I went to sleep. I actually went to sleep somewhat early (think 11:45PM) today!

The experience of actually meeting Penguin and Cami was pretty special. Of course I only saw Cami for like 2 minutes so I can’t say anything much except that she has a lot of energy. Penguin was very cool, nice, and pleasant. Surprisingly, she talked a lot more than I would have expected and she was definitely not a shy person. She did actually carry a huge Physics textbook around, but I managed to avoid it a couple of times using my award-winning dodging skills. (Just kidding!) Penguin was a bit different than online. She wasn’t an overly dominating person ^^;. However, she was a very, very cool person, and I had fun meeting her (and her friends and Cami)!

~mikeXstudios

Here is Penguin’s version of the story:

Want my version of the story? Like I said, it is kinda “souped up” a little. I added in a couple of lines that people didn’t really say, for humor’s sake, but all the stuff I actually *did* is entirely accurate. I did tell you how long I stalked you for…

(Copied and pasted from the original story I told to Iggy!) — Warning, it’s long.

laPinguina30: Anyway, would you like to hear the full Mike story?
igsel nyo: Yesyes, I would!
laPinguina30: Okie, let’s see here.
laPinguina30: Waaaay back about two months ago, remember how we got left in charge cuz Mike was finishing his animation?
igsel nyo: Yep, sure do!
igsel nyo: I think that’s when the whole CraFlap thing started ^_^
laPinguina30: Well, when he finished it, he uploaded a copy for me, cause I do animation too and he wanted me to tell him what I thought.
laPinguina30: Yes it was, dearie. =P
igsel nyo: Ooh, cool.
laPinguina30: So I watched the animation about sixty times. It was pretty. And I ended up getting two things stuck in my head: his team name, and sort-of-what his last name was.
laPinguina30: Luckily.
igsel nyo: sort-of?
laPinguina30: Yeah, I don’t remember exactly but I remembered it was Asian. ^^;
igsel nyo: Aha, tehe
laPinguina30: So, we got to Houston and on Friday I went to the pits and from remembering that his team was called the Royal Assault, I looked up the school name and team number…
laPinguina30: Then I walked around the pits for three hours (which were NOT in numerical order) and finally found pit number 357.
laPinguina30: So I saw that their shirts were purple with some yellowydesignything on them.
laPinguina30: Then I went back to the stadium and walked around till I found people in the same shirts, so I knew which division they were in.
laPinguina30: I watched bunches of matches in that division till I found out what their robot looked like.
igsel nyo: You’re a natural born stalker, it seems :p
laPinguina30: Then I didn’t remember what he looked like, so I went off to find Perky.
laPinguina30: I know, lol ^^;
igsel nyo: Yeah, I guess knowing what he looks like usually helps in finding people :p
laPinguina30: Right, right.
laPinguina30: So Perky told me what he looked like, but by then it was closing ceremonies already.
laPinguina30: This was the next day, btw.
igsel nyo: Aha.
laPinguina30: So at the team party at Six Flags Saturday night, I was hanging out with Rachel and Rebecca when I saw random people in his team shirt walking the other way.
laPinguina30: I ran up to one of them and asked “Hey, you’re from 357… there a kid named Mike on your team?”
laPinguina30: He was like “Uh, which Mike are you looking for?” and gave me two last names.
igsel nyo: Your research paid off!
laPinguina30: Eeeeexactly!
laPinguina30: So I told him which I was looking for and he said “Oh, he’s right up there, we’re going to eat now.” But we’d already used our food tickets, so I said “Could you run and catch him before he goes in the food place?”
laPinguina30: So he did, by yelling “Hey Mike, there’s this weird girl looking for you!” ^^;
igsel nyo: lol!
laPinguina30: Mike looked all confused, so I walked up and said “Heya, guess who?” and he was like “Uh…”
laPinguina30: So I said “Should I tell you my name in CraFlap?”
laPinguina30: And then he guessed.
igsel nyo: That’s so so so so incredibly awesome.
laPinguina30: His teammates were all like o.O
igsel nyo: Tehee, did he call you Penguin?
laPinguina30: Yeah.
laPinguina30: After he remembered my name.
igsel nyo: Ah, right. ^^
laPinguina30: Anyway, so he went to eat, we sat around for 20 minutes or so…
laPinguina30: And then he came out, ditched his group of kids, and followed me around for a while.
laPinguina30: We went on a roller coaster, where he was telling me stories about Pavo.
laPinguina30: And then… um… we went on another ride, but I don’t remember what……..
igsel nyo: hehee. The pavocoaster!
laPinguina30: lolol.
laPinguina30: Darnit, now I can’t remember what the other ride was.
laPinguina30: It was…. come on… aw.
laPinguina30: We were gonna go on the towerydroppy thing, but we didn’t. Actually, I think we spent a couple hours trying to find Perky. We didn’t go on another ride. Maybe. Crap, I don’t remember. ^^;
laPinguina30: So, before Rebecca called Anne and discovered that Perky and Anne were with the Hyper kids at the Radisson… stop me if I’m losing you ^^;
igsel nyo: Nono, I think I’m following along just fine :p
laPinguina30: Okay. I was worried there were too many names there.
laPinguina30: Anyway, so Mike didn’t have to leave till 10:30, which was when the park closed, so we walked for a while.
laPinguina30: Found the Hyper kids for some strange reason, apparently Anne and Perky were with the OTHER Hyper kids, or something or other.
laPinguina30: I met that Eugene kid, who was Mike’s friend on his anim team, who made like 3 posts on the board.
laPinguina30: He didn’t talk much.
laPinguina30: Then the park started closing, and we got lost!
igsel nyo: Eek, lost isn’t good!
laPinguina30: So we walked around the kiddie rides like six times before this security dude said I was going the wrong way.
laPinguina30: So we went the other way.
laPinguina30: And finally found the exit.
laPinguina30: Which was when I discovered Mike was wearing the same color wristband as me, meaning he was in our hotel.
laPinguina30: So we walked back to the hotel together.
laPinguina30: I tried to figure out how the hell all my stalking couldn’t have told me they were in OUR hotel all those days.
laPinguina30: ^^;
igsel nyo: Woo, that’s incredible luck!
laPinguina30: His curfew was at 11, so we hung out poolside and in the gazebo and aimlessly wandering for a while. I introduced him to Cami. ^_^
laPinguina30: He stayed out like 20 minutes longer than curfew… we didn’t have to be back till midnight
laPinguina30: And then he suddenly realized he had to go, and went away before I could give him a hug.
laPinguina30: I was sad.
igsel nyo: Aw.
igsel nyo: You’ll have to randomly manage to somehow meet him again sometime and correct the whole photo and hug thing! :p

*bow* Theeeee… end.

Please excuse me from all of my grammar and spelling mistakes. I was pretty tired when I wrote this.

4/10/03 – Thursday 11:00 AM (Central Time)

I am writing at the Robotics practice rounds now in the Reliant Stadium. I woke up at 6:15AM (Central) today, ate a Robotics “team” breakfast at 7:10AM, and left for the stadium around 8AM. Last night, we all went to sleep around 2:50AM (Eastern). Euge and Franco got the bends for the night while Jeff and I took the floor. We decided to switch who gets the beds each day. So I get the bed today.

This morning, while I was waiting around for people to get ready, I fired up Euge’s laptop and programmed a random dot screensaver. So I figured out the use of the rand() function with modulus (which limits the returned value to a certain range). Too bad he didn’t have wireless net access on his computer, but I don’t think that would have helped much since there were no wireless access points around the stadium.

Breakfast was next to nothing. Just like a spoonful of scrambled eggs, a biscuit, and a glass of OJ.

After that, we started to load our equipment into a tour bus. I grabbed a pretty heavy tool box and a heavy tool suitcase. Everything was still fine. The bus got to the stadium and we had to wait like 15 minutes before we could get off. There was a high line to the entrance and we dragged our stuff to the end of the line. Everything was till fine. I carried the two heavy tool boxes. What killed me was this: 1. It took 15 minutes to get to the entrance and I held the tools for like the whole time. I passed it off to Euge for like 5 minutes before he dumped it back on me because he couldn’t hold it either. So I had to take it again. Inside the stadium, I had to find my team’s pit among, like 200 other teams there. I followed Ms. Hale but I had to put down the stuff and rest because my muscles were fatiguing. So I walked all around the stadium looking for my team. I had to put the stuff down every 30 seconds because my muscles couldn’t take such prolonged strain. It was painful and difficult but finally, I found the pit and my muscles were all shot. I was a bit pissed off there. Everyone else took easy rolling things they could just drag along and I got stuck with the heavy carry stuff.

There was a lull after that where I didn’t do much at all. I just wandered around. There was team 151, the sister team to 166 blueprints. Two of the members on that team are active on my message board and site. It would have been cool to meet them, but I couldn’t find any trace of team 166. So Franco, Euge, and I decided to sit in the stands. Gee, not it’s 12:00PM. Just about 30 minutes ago there was this AWESOME animation playing on the big screen. They were playing every team’s animation without sound. The only thing I remembered from the animation was an awesome super-realistic NASA space shuttle and star wars II grade dunes background. I was awed by their stunning realism. It was a good as Blizzard’s Warcraft III animations. It had Star Wars II realism. Yes, it was that good. I was like: “Crap-DOS!” They also played our team’s animation. It was pretty good in our own sense. The cool thing was that they forgot to remove our credits in the end, so everyone had to watch it.

The robot didn’t perform too well in our practice rounds. At least it moved though. The first round, the robot tried to pick up an existing stack of crates, but it knocked it over instead. The moving was jerky and inaccurate. It’s like this: Imagine you are holding a 10 stack of English textbooks or paperback novels. You start running full force at something and suddenly stop. The books will keep moving and will tip. Same thing happened with the Robot. Since it was pretty tall, the top tips a bit when we move. Autonomous mode was very poor. It barely works. I don’t know why, but in the beginning, the robot takes like 30 seconds before it can move after autonomous mode. It is also pretty fragile.

Well, Euge was pestering me to eat lunch and I told him to go on ahead while I finish this up. Therefore, I must part.

Continued….

4/10/03 – Thursday 9:49 PM (Central Time)

Leaving off from when I was going to get lunch, I walked to the pit stadium. (There were two stadiums. One was the astrodome and the other was the stadium). We got these tags this morning that everyone had to wear on their wrists. They had these tabs on them that you had to rip off to get lunch. The pain about those tags was that once they were on, it wasn’t coming off again. It also scratched at times.

I was standing in this long line and the food options were Pizza or Chicken. I waited a bit and the line advanced a little. Then, some kids started to say that there were more lines further down. So a bunch of people including me broke off from the line and walked down. Then everyone turned back because it was all a bluff or something. I got back in my spot in the original line. It started to move again when everyone started to break off again. I was like: “Ha, I’m not falling for this again.” So I stayed in the line. Plus, everyone in front of me left so the line was much shorter. When it was almost my time to get food, they ran out of Pizzas. I was like: “Crap!” and left the line too in order to search for Pizzas. I walked a bit, saw the long pizza lines and gave up :). I got back in the original line and steeled for two small pieces of chicken, chips, and bottled water. I took this back to the stands and ate there. Eating chicken is messy.

The next like 3 hours were boring as heck. It was so boring; I don’t even remember what I was doing. I was just sitting around watching stuff. Then I went back to the pit and started to help out with the maintenance of the robot. I got to cut electrical tape. Then some people showed up and I talked to them about the animation. The engineers turned the robot on to test it but something went wrong and the tilting mechanism went out of control (just when I happened to be there). Later on, it was diagnosed that a switch was left on when it should have been disabled. So I just stood around and slowly slinked away.

Before that, I think I was hanging around the put and Mr. Delaney suggested that I speak to the Autodesk guys who were guru’s at the CAD and animation programs used for competition. I went over and this guy was an old bearded man who, as I pictured him, looked like one of those old sages who lived in solitude in a mountain for his whole life. He was the MAN of animation. When I arrived at his booth, there were these kids from team 74. They were a really good animation team who had more than 3 years of experience with 4 really experienced members at animation. They like crowded the whole place. I had to beat them all up to make them move. So after they left, I was the only person there. I had a small chat with the animation guy and I asked him about achieving realism in animation and he responded that first, to achieve realism one must fake it. One should study movies and paintings. Lighting is the most important part because it gives realism. He stressed lighting. The contrast of light and dark matters a lot. He pointed out how the seats in the stadium were shaded differently and such. Then I asked him about mapping. He said something like it is good to use UVW unwrap. I said why wasn’t it good to just break the object into different sections and map them separately without determining the coordinates of the map. He said for speed. Every time an object is broken into sub-objects, a new node is formed (whatever that is). Each new node slows down the animation. That is why professionals use the UVW unwrap. We talked more about lighting, about global lighting and such. Then I said bye, thanked him, and left. He was going to hold this presentation later in the day from 6-7PM. Prizes and stuff will be given out. It sounded like fun so I decided that I was going to go.

I did practically nothing for the next hour or so, but I got some buttons. Then everyone left except the adult leaders, Euge, and me. We accompanied them to get the Robot inspected. I had to carry the control box the whole time and towards the end of the 20 minute carry, I was getting a bit fatigued.

After inspection, Euge and I rushed over to the arena for the presentation by the old man of the mountain. First, it was this Scottish guy who talked about Inventor. He started to crack some not-so-funny jokes. Then it was the old man and he talked about photometric lights and stuff. He gave out 3dstudio max books for answering questions correctly. However, he only had 15. I was just about to answer a question right when Eugene beat me to the hand raise. He was called and answered it wrong! I knew the correct answer and could have won a book, but I didn’t. Neither did Euge though. T-shirts were “thrown” out to people in the end, but they didn’t have enough at all. They couldn’t throw either. Euge and I sat in the 4th row so the t-shirts didn’t even reach up here. Finally, a t-shirt was thrown in our direction and Euge and I caught it at the same time. It was a medium so I got it without complaints. Euge and I left the meeting kind of perturbed.

To add on to our problems, the adults left us and went back to the hotel or something. A call came for Euge. It was Delaney. After the call I asked for details but Euge told me that they were waiting for us in the front parking lot. So I walked there and then Euge said that he was just joking and Delaney told us to talk back to the hotel. I was like, “Geez, why didn’t you tell me this like 10 minutes ago when we could have walked directly to the hotel?!” But hey, it’s just Eugene so it’s understandable.

We didn’t have a good sense of direction so we were going to walk along the path that passed a Burger king. We called Delaney and then found out that we were going in the wrong direction! We looked behind us and our hotel was like right there! We were like, “Ha! Ha! Ha!” (add anime sweatdrop) and then tried to find our exit. The whole place was enclosed in fences and there was only like one exit that we found in due time. We got to the hotel 10 minutes later when everyone had already finished eating. Mr. Wilson paid for the meal and I thought it was very kind of him to do so. Euge and I made tacos to each and they were pretty darned good.

Wow, it is not 12:18 AM, and I am in my room. I took a shower and brushed my teeth already. About 2 hours ago we were watching TV (Shriek) when Steve Ma brought in this girl who was from a team in Texas. Everyone in the room had a good chat with her. She never saw a Tastycake® before! She doesn’t know what a Wawa® is! She keeps saying y’all but that’s all fine and good. She’s a true Texan!

(It was kind of funny since Steve Ma brought this girl into this other room and his friend’s were like: “Hey Steve, is she the California girl? Or the one from Maryland?” They made it seem like he had tons of girlfriends and he was like tying a noose around his neck J.)

Then Franco and Steve wrestled. Franco lifted me into the air and Jeff snapped a picture. Delaney and Hale came and had a good talk with us. Euge is watching some crazy French movie where this guy was struck and vaporized by lightning.

Around 9:30 PM, I called my sister who told me that NASA called back and gave me a number to call to get it fixed. So I guess I’ll have to call them tomorrow and get this stuff worked out!

So that ended my day! Gotta get some sleep for tomorrow.

~mikeXstudios