OK - Atlanta! (The Full Story)

OK, so I figured that since this graphic design thing is taking longer than I thought it would (especially because I need to get the pictures of our trip from the other participents, and that takes a while), and because if I wait too long the news will turn stale, and because others on the net are spreading the news, and because the newspapers will be running the results soon, it's best if I just get it over with in text first, and release the graphical version later.  (  <--- That's a huge sentence, by the way) But where to begin, when there is so much to tell? First of all, Atlanta is hot and very humid.  We rode the plane from Las Vegas to Houston, and then to Atlanta.  We stepped off the plane and were hit by a massive roiling wall of moist, heated air. The first thing I noticed is how my normally slippery shoes caught and squeeked on any sort of hard floor, and throughout the trip I did.  Trip, that is.  We stayed at the Hyatt Regency, next to the Marriott Marquis, and ate often at the Corner Bakery Cafe across the street.  The hotels were grand, with a huge contemporary atrium and a pillar right in the middle that housed the elevators.  There were causeways that traveled from the elevator to the outside edge of the square where the rooms were.  Pretty cool.

We rode the public transportation system everywhere.  MARTA, as it's called, stands for the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, and it included both a subway train and a bus system.  We had cool RF ID cards, temporarily issued to us for a 4 day unlimited pass.  Using MARTA, we traveled to some of Atlanta's various attractions:

• The World of Coke, which detailed Coke's history, bottle making process, and exemplary taste.  Coke was invented and has its headquarters in Atlanta, which is why it was funny to see a company putting up a blow-up Pepsi bottle in a park near the World of Coke.  We got a picture with the Coke polar bear, and tasted nearly 70 different coke products from around the world, including good ol' favorites Sprite and Fanta, but also some exotic ones, like Beverly from Italy (don't try it), Sprite Ice, exotic Fanta flavors, and much more.  Of course, they give you a complementary bottle of Coke at the end, bottled on-site.
• The Georgia Aquarium, which was cool, but I've seen many aquariums before - just fishy!  They had a cool octopus, though.
• The CNN Center, with a behind-the-scenes tour.  We got to listen to the director order shots while they were producing the Clinton-Obama "come-together-and-let's-rule-the-world-by-changing-it-one-change-at-a-time-until-even-the-ducks-know-how-far-we've-come" speech.  The director was making fun of some of the people on the screen, unaware that we were listening.  "Look at that bozo in the middle!  Can you believe his hairdo?"  We then got to see the actual news room, which was pretty cool.  All in all it was a really fun place to visit.
• Martin Luther King Jr.'s grave and memorial museum place, which was awesome to visit.  We got to see his Nobel Peace Prize, his Presidential Medal of Freedom, and more.
• The Zoo Atlanta, where we saw huge elephants, a huge gorilla, naked mole rats, and pandas (and more).
• The Atlanta History Center, where we got to tour a huge mansion called the Swan House!

Alas, we never got to see stone mountain, an attraction we were told was well worth seeing.  And now, a funny story.  While waiting for a bus to the zoo, a wrinkled lady came up to us and beseeched us imploringly with a tale of woe.  She had a terminal illness, and was alone and friendless on the streets of Atlanta.  She was carrying a McDonald's cup full of water and capped by a plastic lid so taped up with Scoth-tap that she probably didn't even need any original lid left to hold the shape.  We wondered later where she got the tape - it seems that much tape would be much more difficult to come by than a new lid from any McDonalds.  Whenver she was agitated she would sqeeze the cup and water would leak out all over her person.  She seemed quite intelligent, though - she was on time to the bus stop, and was a good debater.  Mrs. Crane proved that with a half-hour argument with the lady on proper ways to seek aid.  Mrs. Crane articulated the true fact that we were approached on every single street corner by those wanting money.  She also suggested that there were proper avenues to pursue aid, and begging was not one of them.  The lady retorted with anecdotes of how one cannot know what anybody else is going through until they've walked five miles in their shoes.
Eventually both women got very frustrated, and the lady shouted, "Maam!  I don't want anything from you!  I just want to wish God bless you and leave!"
"OK, well God bless you!"  Mrs. Crane said, and then obviously pointed away from us, and turned away from the lady.  The lady stood there, almost in disbelief, and then stormed away.  That's not the end though;  the next day we were eating at the cafe across the street from our hotel when WE SAW THE LADY!  She was dressed nicely in tennis shoes and nice business attire, laughing with a friend and eating a delicious meal.  We all growled.  The lady looked over at us and recognized us, her eyes growing huge for a split second before she quickly turned away, gathered up her meal, and hurried out of there.

Almost done, keep going!

Now for the reason we went to Atlanta in the first place!  We gave our presentation on http://www.hhsfbla.org in the preliminaries, which we have done every year.  Later that night, tension mounted as we waited around the bulletin board that would soon hold the paper letting us know if we made it to the final round.  We did.  We were ecstatic.  We had made it to the final round last year, but not the first year.  This meant we had to give our presentation again to another set of judges.  We then heard nothing further until the closing award ceremonies.  The top 15 websites in the nation make it into the finals.  The top 10 make it up on stage.  The announcer announceds the top ten in random order at the ceremonies to call them up on stage.  When they called our names an electric shock ran through us.  I had been trying for three years now to make it up on that stage!

We took 10th place in the nation!

The first year was Bryan Poulsen and I.  The next was Chris LeBaron, Sarah Christiansen, and I.  This recent and last attempt was James Price, Trevor Adams, and I.  Each year a different team.  Each year was better than the last, culminating with the awesome feeling of being up on stage in front of 7,500 people accepting a national award that took so, so many hours and such hard work.  It is quite the feeling!

We seemed to have connected with the preliminary judges so much better than with the final judges.  I think that there is most definitely a weeding-out process occuring to reach the top fifteen and top ten, but I think that at this level of competition, in such a subjective process, the top websites are roughly on the same level, depending upon the whims of the judges to let them fall into place.  I think that if we had the preliminary judges for the finals, we would definitely have placed better, but I am so happy with a 10th place!  I mean, every state had their own competition to see who would compete at nationals.  The best from each state competed at nationals.

Pictures coming later, as our external hard drive just died.