It's your responsibility to keep your baby from annoying others.

I say this because during assembly today, we had several African speakers for Francophone week. In the middle section near the back was a woman with her toddler and her baby. Her rather chatty baby. The kid wasn't exceptionally loud, but in the quiet theater, the noise carried quite well. The speakers were not all exceptional at English, and these repeated interruptions kept me from understanding them. Plus it was completely distracting. Not just for me, everybody in the theater kept looking back at her. You would think that the mother would get the message with hundreds of eyes upon her, especially after the baby screamed.

To her credit, she did seem to notice that her baby was annoying. But instead of taking the baby out of the theater, she simply told the baby to shush. This never worked, of course, but she kept at it. The Upper School Head was sitting next to her, but didn't say anything, which bugged me.

I love babies. Our 8^th grade English teacher had a baby, and had a lot of fun with her. But as much as I like babies, there are times when I don't want them around. Asking a person with a baby to keep the baby quiet is no different from asking people to turn their cell phones off. If they cannot handle it, they can easily leave. In this woman's case, she could have easily listened from outside the theater room. If she could not afford to leave the presentation, she should not have brought a baby.

For the past three days, my school's robotics team, the Flaming Chickens, has been busy competing at the FIRST Robotics Pacific Northwest Regional. To our great joy, our robot, "Fowler" (though we never called it that,) did exceptionally well. So well, in fact, that it managed a high score of 128 points in one match, and seeded 2^nd place in the qualifying match, the highest we have ever seeded and the FIRST time we made it into the Top Eight in our own right.*

We were asked to join the 1^st seed alliance by Team 948 (NRG), and we accepted. During the elimination rounds, we gradually fought our way up to the finals, where were solidly defeated by the Blue alliance. Although we were dissappointed, this is the farthest we have every come. Our rookie year we lost at quarterfinals, second year we lost at semifinals, this year we lose at finals, next year...?

Although not as satisfying as actually winning, we did get to run down to the field, high-five the judges and collect our two trophies. We also got silver medals.

After the winners got their medals (also silver), they all sat down and we waited while they announced the most important awards. I should point out that FIRST is about spreading the influence of science and engineering, and they give this more honor than simply winning the competition. For example, the Chairman's award, in their own words:

FIRST’s most prestigious award, it honors the team judged to have created the best partnership effort among team participants, and to have best exemplified the true meaning of FIRST. The award helps keep the central focus of the FIRST Robotics Competition on the goal of inspiring greater levels of respect and honor for science and technology.

As they described this award, I was pretty sure that we had not won it. After all, we didn't have a marketing department this year, our Chairman's award presentation had to be handled by members of our team who were already busy with getting the robot working. I also wasn't aware that we had accomplished much.

The announcer started discussing the winning team. When they mentioned that we had transformed our small Liberal arts school into one with an engineering program, I was pretty sure it wasn't us. However they made the comment, "This team won the Rookie Inspiration Award here in 2005," there was this moment where we were all counting off on our fingers, thinking, "wait, what year was that?"

"This years Chairman's Award goes to Team 1540, the Flaming Chickens"

YEAH!

We got to run through the stands, as the entire stadium cheered, and we high-fived everybody in our path. I ended up being first in line, so I got to recieve the first of the two hefty Chairman's Award trophies, and a gold medal. Returned to the stands and waited for the news to sink in. It still hasn't. We are going to Atlanta after all! DAMN!

After we returned to the pit area, we got a group photo with the trophies, and then went to pack up our robot to ship to the San Diego regional. We went to pack up our trophies, and discovered that the two trophies would not fit into the box we had brought for that purpose. What a tragedy.

Another awesome thing is that even though our alliance did not win, everyone of us won an award for something. Team 1778 won the Underwriters' Laboratories safety award, and Team 948 won some other award that I forgot already. However, our award is the only award that will get us to Nationals in Atlanta.

This will take a while to sink in...

* In our rookie year (2005), we seeded below the top eight. However, during the alliance selections, the top eight teams chose each other, and we got shifted up into the top eight.

Flushing. It requires one single friggin' press of the button. And yet, it would seem this simple step is rather difficult for many men. Anyway, I entered the men's room at the Memorial Coliseum during the second day of the Portland Robotics Regional, and to my general disgust every single one of the 12 or so urinals was unflushed.

Perhaps one man had forgotten and others had to out-slob him. Perhaps men are all just slobs. Whatever the cause, I have no interest in staring at everyone else's piss, and I went down the line, flushing every single one. Which probably didn't last for very long, because doubtless they'd get yellow soon after. Oh well.

I'd usually say yes to openness about sex, but this may be taking it a hair too far.

Original video here

Too bad this poem is way overdue, because it's way better than anything I have submitted in the pass.

Untitled

Take these my hand-knit gloves.
Take these my final words.
Draw in the autumn air,
Walk not but by the groves.

Know well the road ahead.
Know well the beds you sleep.
Draw in the winter air.
Forget the wounds you've bled.

See I, when you return.
See I, your cuts and sores.
Draw in the wet spring air.
For you my chest shall burn.

I know humor is subjective. That's life. But usually, my friends and I find the same things funny. That's why we're friends, afterall. But one thing seems to separate me from it seems everyone else on the planet: Charlie the Unicorn.

Everyone I know finds this video hilarious. Even Matt Dinniman, whose sense of humor I generally enjoy posted a link to it on his blog. I alone seem to think it stupid. I watch the video and think, "how the hell is this funny? Cute maybe, but hilarious? Surely you jest."

I'm not humorless, a lot of the videos I find on the web are hilarious, but this one? I'll be glad when people stop quoting it.

Something Art said in class made me think about how I first learned the word "fuck," and I have been at a loss for what to post so I'll write about this. I must have been about five or six at the time. I was very proud of how I could string together letters and make up words.

My personal schedule has been totally distorted. I have gotten used to the idea of school only lasting a few weeks before breaks. Why? Lets look at the past week:

Did you feel it? I felt it as I was leaving Catlin today. What is “it?” Summer. In February. In Portland.

Maybe it was because today was the first nice day we have had in a while. Maybe it was seeing this old Bingo game that I played on the last day of school last year. Maybe it was reading a ton of brochures on the upcoming summer activities. Maybe I'm going crazy. But for the first time in a long time, I truly felt that summer was right around the corner.

Yes, I have finally forked up the cash and got an domain name and hosting with MediaCatch.com. I think I am just going to leave my old blog entries over at mzstrat.blogspot.com, at least for now.