Monday, April 30, 2007
Thursday, April 26, 2007
My day at school
Well, today certainly was an exciting day at school, and I just so happened to have my camera! Here's the story. . .
My day started in Engineering. Basically, I showed up to class, said "HI!" to my partner, and then we grabbed our catapult and spent the next hour and a half shooting golf balls out at the baseball diamond. Long story short, it was a very good time. Here's our catapult, aka "The Scoop-a-pult"
We found a large brown foam thing that we used as a target, and we put it about 40 meters from our catapult. Try as we might, we COULD NOT get those golf balls to hit the brown thing. As you can see in this picture, they formed a perfect circle all the way around the brown thing, but not once did they hit it. Great accuracy, bad precision I guess.
My next class was band, which went swimmingly. I took a picture of my music, not much to tell after that:
Let's take a break now to talk about my school in general. This is my school:
This is my school's hallway:
Notice something? The squares on the ground match the wall they are closest to, and the lights on the ceiling are always above a square on the floor. Very feng shui, but then again, my school was built in the 70's.
My school has started to try to make me healthy by stocking the vending machines with health food. Not only that, they try to make me feel guilty about eating sugar by putting bags of gummi bears on the bottom row of the vending machine. . . . for $2.00. See!
And, let's see, what else? Oh, Sprague has murals all over the school. Here's a new one last year entitled "English Rocks"
Beautiful, eh? So, after band was lunch and then onto SKonline, which is basically a computer lab where you sit and take a course online that wouldn't fit into your schedule. It's a nice safety net for graduating seniors that need a credit in something, and I just so happened to need a credit in economics, so I'm taking sophomore economics online. w00t MIT! Here's our lab:
After that it was on to my next computer lab, CAD. In CAD I'm currently trying to draw a carousel horse. Not by my own will and volition, but because my teacher wanted to "Challenge me with something that isn't just geometric shapes", so I'm using Inventor to make a carousel horse. It's hard, very hard. You can see on the screen what I've got so far:
And since that was my last class of the day, school was over after that, until "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE" FIRE ALARM! Great, with 2 minutes left in the day the fire alarm goes off. I file out of the room, through the woodshop, and out to the back parking lot with everybody else, but am distracting by an interesting scene on the way out. The woodshop teacher is out in the parking lot yelling at 4 kids. Let me preface this by saying that the woods teacher is awesome. He was yelling "Which of you did it?! I want to know now! Who was it? Who saw something? You were all in there when it got pulled!" That's about all I heard before I was forced back away from the building for safety reasons (psh). He yelled at the kids some more before they all went into the woodshop to discuss things. As the door opened for them to enter you could see the cop standing there and a bunch of security. This was good. Time to get out the camera and start filming. Although the video isn't great, because of the distance, you can see that the woods teacher and the cop come out of the woodshop with a kid and then the cop takes the kid away. BUSTED! It was exciting, as you can tell by my friends' reactions on the movie.
After the alarm we went back to class and a friend and I were discussing why somebody would pull a fire alarm with two minutes left in the day. We were also wondering who it was. Now, I'll change the name for anonymity's sake, but this is what soon followed.
[Woods teacher walks in, overhearing our conversation, starts yelling]
"Well it was a sophomore if that tells you anything!"
[who?]
"Guess who! The biggest idiot in the school, stupid moron! Daniel Staks, biggest frickin' idiot I know. I hate that stupid kid, he's such a moron! What an idiot!"
His rant continued for quite some time, quite hilarious. I love watching teachers explode at students, it makes me warm and fuzzy inside.
Alright, well now I have to go off to a robot competition. I'll try to take some pictures, should be interesting. Hope you enjoyed my exciting day, I know I did!
My day started in Engineering. Basically, I showed up to class, said "HI!" to my partner, and then we grabbed our catapult and spent the next hour and a half shooting golf balls out at the baseball diamond. Long story short, it was a very good time. Here's our catapult, aka "The Scoop-a-pult"
We found a large brown foam thing that we used as a target, and we put it about 40 meters from our catapult. Try as we might, we COULD NOT get those golf balls to hit the brown thing. As you can see in this picture, they formed a perfect circle all the way around the brown thing, but not once did they hit it. Great accuracy, bad precision I guess.
My next class was band, which went swimmingly. I took a picture of my music, not much to tell after that:
Let's take a break now to talk about my school in general. This is my school:
This is my school's hallway:
Notice something? The squares on the ground match the wall they are closest to, and the lights on the ceiling are always above a square on the floor. Very feng shui, but then again, my school was built in the 70's.
My school has started to try to make me healthy by stocking the vending machines with health food. Not only that, they try to make me feel guilty about eating sugar by putting bags of gummi bears on the bottom row of the vending machine. . . . for $2.00. See!
And, let's see, what else? Oh, Sprague has murals all over the school. Here's a new one last year entitled "English Rocks"
Beautiful, eh? So, after band was lunch and then onto SKonline, which is basically a computer lab where you sit and take a course online that wouldn't fit into your schedule. It's a nice safety net for graduating seniors that need a credit in something, and I just so happened to need a credit in economics, so I'm taking sophomore economics online. w00t MIT! Here's our lab:
After that it was on to my next computer lab, CAD. In CAD I'm currently trying to draw a carousel horse. Not by my own will and volition, but because my teacher wanted to "Challenge me with something that isn't just geometric shapes", so I'm using Inventor to make a carousel horse. It's hard, very hard. You can see on the screen what I've got so far:
And since that was my last class of the day, school was over after that, until "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE" FIRE ALARM! Great, with 2 minutes left in the day the fire alarm goes off. I file out of the room, through the woodshop, and out to the back parking lot with everybody else, but am distracting by an interesting scene on the way out. The woodshop teacher is out in the parking lot yelling at 4 kids. Let me preface this by saying that the woods teacher is awesome. He was yelling "Which of you did it?! I want to know now! Who was it? Who saw something? You were all in there when it got pulled!" That's about all I heard before I was forced back away from the building for safety reasons (psh). He yelled at the kids some more before they all went into the woodshop to discuss things. As the door opened for them to enter you could see the cop standing there and a bunch of security. This was good. Time to get out the camera and start filming. Although the video isn't great, because of the distance, you can see that the woods teacher and the cop come out of the woodshop with a kid and then the cop takes the kid away. BUSTED! It was exciting, as you can tell by my friends' reactions on the movie.
After the alarm we went back to class and a friend and I were discussing why somebody would pull a fire alarm with two minutes left in the day. We were also wondering who it was. Now, I'll change the name for anonymity's sake, but this is what soon followed.
[Woods teacher walks in, overhearing our conversation, starts yelling]
"Well it was a sophomore if that tells you anything!"
[who?]
"Guess who! The biggest idiot in the school, stupid moron! Daniel Staks, biggest frickin' idiot I know. I hate that stupid kid, he's such a moron! What an idiot!"
His rant continued for quite some time, quite hilarious. I love watching teachers explode at students, it makes me warm and fuzzy inside.
Alright, well now I have to go off to a robot competition. I'll try to take some pictures, should be interesting. Hope you enjoyed my exciting day, I know I did!
Graduation Gift Requests
So, this entry is half a joke, half serious. I don't expect you to actually purchase these objects for me, but if you feel the obligations to befriend me, suck up to me, or just be nice and get me a present, these are some things you could consider. I'd love you forever, these are my favorite gifts!
Mario Kart RC Car
Mario Keychains
Remote Control R2D2
Super Mario Mushroom Chair
Super Mario Sound Blocks
Plush Emoticons
Mario Kart RC Car
Mario Keychains
Remote Control R2D2
Super Mario Mushroom Chair
Super Mario Sound Blocks
Plush Emoticons
Thinkgeek Advertising
Thinkgeek.com's new advertisement for their in-work target system.
Does that fridge come with a scope?
Does that fridge come with a scope?
Just hope this never happens to you
Man, this would stink!
Oh, and there's a little bit of frustrated swearing at the end, sorry about that!
Click if you can't view the YouTube video below:
Oh, and there's a little bit of frustrated swearing at the end, sorry about that!
Click if you can't view the YouTube video below:
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Bush and Blades
Good morning! I had an exciting night last night and I thought I'd share.
Actually, it was just your typical Saturday night for your average teenager. I went with a group of friends and listened to former first lady Barbara Bush speak at a fundraising reception and then saw Blades of Glory. Average, right?
Let's start from the beginning. 3 days ago in school I got called down to the office and told that I was going to listen to Barbara Bush speak about philanthropy. It was very sudden and really random, but they mentioned free food so I was all over it. Last night rolled around and I put my suit on and drove to the convention center. Sure enough, there were cops on every corner and 3 dark suburbans and a police car parked infront of the convention center. Yay for the secret service!
I checked in and hung out in the reception area, which is where I realized that I was very young compared to all of the adults. I was the only teenager because nobody else from school had shown up yet (I wasn't the only one invited, 25 kids from my school were). Eventually more people showed up and we were let into the main dining room, which was set up spectacularly.
They served us dinner next, and that was so good! Steak that you could cut with a butter knife and salmon that was very very good. Here's our table, 46, eating:
After listening to our Mayor and then Gerry Frank (he owns a great cake shop in town) the keynote speaker spoke, Barbara Bush. She was actually quite funny (even though she didn't write her own speech). Then came the dessert, baked Alaska. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!
The dinner concluded, Barbara left, and then all teh Sprague kids hung out for a while. We decided to get our picture taken together, group shot!
After that we decided to catch a movie, and Blades of Glory was the winner. Ray, Fabi, Sarah, and I all went together to see it and met Sarah and Fabi's boyfriends there, so Ray and I decided to be a couple for the night.
Ignore everything you have ever heard about Blades of Glory not being funny. IT WAS HYSTERICAL! I never stopped laughing, it was amazing. Some of the computer effects were a bit obvious, but it was made up for by the sheer funny of it all. I give it two thumbs up.
So that was my night, mingling with high society and meeting former first ladies before going and seeing Will Ferrel ice skate. Great night, lots of fun, just pure straight fun.
Actually, it was just your typical Saturday night for your average teenager. I went with a group of friends and listened to former first lady Barbara Bush speak at a fundraising reception and then saw Blades of Glory. Average, right?
Let's start from the beginning. 3 days ago in school I got called down to the office and told that I was going to listen to Barbara Bush speak about philanthropy. It was very sudden and really random, but they mentioned free food so I was all over it. Last night rolled around and I put my suit on and drove to the convention center. Sure enough, there were cops on every corner and 3 dark suburbans and a police car parked infront of the convention center. Yay for the secret service!
I checked in and hung out in the reception area, which is where I realized that I was very young compared to all of the adults. I was the only teenager because nobody else from school had shown up yet (I wasn't the only one invited, 25 kids from my school were). Eventually more people showed up and we were let into the main dining room, which was set up spectacularly.
They served us dinner next, and that was so good! Steak that you could cut with a butter knife and salmon that was very very good. Here's our table, 46, eating:
After listening to our Mayor and then Gerry Frank (he owns a great cake shop in town) the keynote speaker spoke, Barbara Bush. She was actually quite funny (even though she didn't write her own speech). Then came the dessert, baked Alaska. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!
The dinner concluded, Barbara left, and then all teh Sprague kids hung out for a while. We decided to get our picture taken together, group shot!
After that we decided to catch a movie, and Blades of Glory was the winner. Ray, Fabi, Sarah, and I all went together to see it and met Sarah and Fabi's boyfriends there, so Ray and I decided to be a couple for the night.
Ignore everything you have ever heard about Blades of Glory not being funny. IT WAS HYSTERICAL! I never stopped laughing, it was amazing. Some of the computer effects were a bit obvious, but it was made up for by the sheer funny of it all. I give it two thumbs up.
So that was my night, mingling with high society and meeting former first ladies before going and seeing Will Ferrel ice skate. Great night, lots of fun, just pure straight fun.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)