I did okay, i shot 381 the first day and 382 the second day, but it would have been a 386 on the second set if i hadn't choked on the last four shots, i just kind of stopped caring, and my back hurt so maybe next time. The guys team shot 1540 the first day and 1554 the second. Once the detailed score sheet is up on the web i will add a link if anybody cares. Ryan shot a 396 then a 398, so that was pretty cool. It sucks though, because i miss the match in Grass Valley in November because i have to get my wisdom teeth pulled.
I am taking the GRE the 11th of October, and the Fundamentals of Engineering Exam (8 hours, have to pass it to become an engineer, not that hard, just long, and it covers stuff i haven't done in three years) the 25th, so i have a few things to look forward to. Busy busy busy.
Well i woke up at 6 this morning, so no, i don't get nervous before matches. Well maybe not nervous, but i just can't sleep, kind of like before a big trip or a test or something, you are just anxious to get going. Everything is ready, but you can't start for another hour or two. Luckily i shoot early in the morning so i don't have to think about it all day and i have the rest of the day to go work on homeword and other fun stuff. As long as we all do okay (mainly me) we shouldn't have any problems with this match. The only thing is we are splitting into two teams, the guys versus the girls, so we need everybody (me) to step up so that the guys win. I am excited about school again, even though i haven't been doing well on my homeworks. I think that i am learning more this way though, obviously when i was getting perfect homework scores it wasn't really showing i understood the material last semester so hopefully this is a good sign and not just a sign that i am worse off than last year. Well, i gotta run to the match, wish me luck.
Well, i've been pretty busy with school. Vibrations and Controls are kickin my butt, and my senior design class is going to start ramping up. On the other hand though, microprocessor design is super cool because i am finally understanding how a computer really works, except assembly language is still a complete mystery. There are like two people who haven't taken the second semester programming class, and i am one of them. I read to and wrote from RAM the other night, and i made a neat little LED Display light up in a bunch of cool patterns. Last, WT is really awesome, because for the last two days we have been watching episodes from James Burke's "The Day the Universe Changed" in class, so i went to the library and started reading that and his other book "Connections" again. They have got to be the two best history/politics/culture/etc books that i have ever read. They tie together history how i think it really happened, and how it should be taught. History doesn't fit into these little chapters and sections with nice headings and everything didn't go along perfectly. Everybody should go pick them up and read them, and if you have already read them, then you should read them again.
Oh, funny story. In Controls this week i was sitting, listening to Dr. Snyder talk about why the feedback loop on the controller needed to be differentiating the response or some such nonsense, when all of the sudden he just stops and looks right at me, he gets all excited, and asks "Are you a buddhist?" I sat in a daze for a few moments and tried to first figure out if he was talking to me, and then second why he would ask me that. About halfway through responding that no i am not a buddhist, it dawned on me that i was wearing my cool shirt from Nepal with apparently buddhist writings on it (Nicole Busch told me what it meant once but i forgot). He then made some comment about just liking the shirt and everybody had a good laugh, but it really threw me off. Okay, so not really a funny story, but everybody had a good laugh, and i just hope that i am that excited about little things when i am old, like when he saw a nickle on the ground, shouted "oh, look, money" and ran over and picked it up and stood there like a little boy all proud of his find. The best part was when he started saying whatever was on my shirt later as he was writing on the board, really weird.
Mary and i had a great time at the air races, wait, i had a great time at the air races and mary just kind of pretended to have a great time, but that is okay. Rare Bear was back this year, and it sounded awesome. But Dago Red (sounded awesome too) went over 500mph for all six laps on friday and Rare Bear just couldn't keep up. That plane was just flying around the course. The best part i think was that i don't think anybody died or even really got hurt this year, which is awesome. I got to the see the stealth fighter fly around, an A-10, F-16, F-18, the T-6 race, the Jet race (which sucked, only two jets ended up racing) and the unlimited silver and gold races) I just really want to see a F-4u, a P-38, and a Spitfire at some point, even if they were just reproductions or something. Maybe next year.
On Saturday, Mary and i headed up the East Face of Rose. I think i have talked up starting at galena creek park so much that Mary just had to give it a try. Corrie (on the rifle team, kind of a hardcore climber/runner, kind of) said she thought it would be too hard for Mary and that whe would never do it cause it was too steep. But i knew Mary had what it takes, seeing as how it really is all in your head (if you think you will fail, you will fail, and vice versa, also, everybody is strong enough, you just have to stop your brain from telling you that you are tired, your muscles can always go further than your head). It was a beautiful day for it, and the temperature wasn't too bad, just a tad warm. We made pretty good time seeing as how there wasn't any snow in the way like the last time Pete and i went up. Mary was trying to fight it when we hit the steep parts, but eventually she realized that all she had to do was just let her body go up the mountain and stop thinking about it.
I hadn't realized how much i needed to get out in the mountains. The altitude felt great and now i can stop stairing out the window in WT at Rose and wishing i was there. The best part though was Mary. She started walking with a swagger and mentioning how "leet she was" (she thinks 5 leet, but i think pete would probably disagree with that, she still hasn't spent an afternoon trying to find her hiking partner at 11,000ft, thinking he fell off a rock and is slowly bleeding to death) We even went over how to properly tell someone you have hiked Rose from Galena Creek.
Stranger (mentioning they have hiked rose): Hiking up Mt. Rose is so great
Mary: Yeah it is, which way did you go up?
Stranger: On the normal trail, starting at the summit
Mary: Oh, that way is okay, (pause for emphasis) i guess
Stranger: What ever do you mean, which way do you go up?
Mary: Starting at Galena Creek Park
Stranger: You hiked all that way?
Mary: Oh yeah, no problem, that is the only way to go up it.
Stranger: You are absolutely amazing, i didn't think that was even possible
Mary: Its possible, anything is possible, sometimes you just have to work a whole lot harder than other times, and it is nice to test yourself everynow and then, see what you are made of, see how far you can go, see if you have the right stuff (queue music)
(well maybe this is just how i wish it would go)
All in all it was a great trip, and i love that it is only half an hour driving, and a couple hours of hiking.
Air Races these weekend, i think i am going to pee my pants
In a suprising turn of events, my four years dealing with the Presentation portion of Annual Formal Inspection for the Grizzlies Battalion back in high school actually came in handy. I assisted my boss with a presentation he gave by you guessed, clicking his slides and demonstrating the ArcGIS program that i use. Lets just say i was extremely cool under the pressure, considering that there were mayors, county commissioners, police and fire chiefs, representatives from homeland securty, the national guard, all manners of emergency response and preparedness, district attorneys, higway patrol, NDOT, etc. I don't think i am exaggerating when i say it was a big deal. I had to wear a security badge.
My boss is part of a group of people trying to get everyone in the northwest part of Nevada, and even some of Cali to start sharing their data. Right now everybody collects data differently, organizes it differently, and shares it differently. So on the maps, there is a big gap between Carson and Washoe. Everybody wants to be all secretive and not share, when they don't realize that everyone wins by working together. It is funny how people get so protective of things. So Sparks, the NSBDC, and Washoe County (Reno thought they were too good for the whole thing, and i don't think anybody likes their GIS guy) have been working on a pilot program and now the FEDS are mandating that Homeland Security start working on creating data repositories for homeland security data, so they finally found somebody to fund it, now all they need is the cooperation, so that is what the presentation was for, to show what they have done and to show what they could have if everybody comes on board. All in all it went very well, and i finally got paid to run a powerpoint. If you had told me in high school that ROTC was going to teach me something i would use in the real world later on, i would have laughed in your face, go figure.
I ate a lot of ribs and didn't do nearly enough homework, so i would say it was a successful labor day. I had a barbeque with Mary and her youth group on friday night. Mary and i worked on lining her fence with cinder blocks to stop molly from digging out. I went to Farad and went cliff jumping with Shad (he is back from med school for a week), Brooke (4 months pregnant), Blake, Kolby and her friend yesterday and ate a lot of food (i will put up pictures if they send them to me). It was a ton of fun actually, even though i am kind of scared of drowning and i am not a big fan of cliffs, or jumping off of them at least. The best part was this part where the river split in two and then came back together. If you jumped in right where they came back together it would kind of suck you under for a few seconds, just long enough so that you kind of start to panic, and then it would spit you out the other side. I got showed up by Kolby because i was too scared to jump off the big one, but maybe next time. I went clothes shopping on saturday and it wasn't nearly as bad as i expected it to be, probably because i had mary there to keep my happy and focused. I went to dinner with my family and it everything went just according to schedule for a Morton family dinner outing, good thing we took three cars. The kitchen is done finally. I switched to a new air rifle so hopefully this year i can finally beat mary's scores, but that might be a lot to ask for. Not much else going on. I probably forgot something, but what are you going to do.
Oh yeah, here are two really cool links that i got off boing boing: 1 & 2