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.

FBLA Nationals 2008 - Atlanta, Georgia

OK, it's finally time for the moment you've all (no doubt) been waiting for: a report on nationals!!
You know...actually, I just had a better idea.
I'm going to do it "graphic design" style, since that's all I do all day anyway.
But it might take a day or two.
So please be patient!  It should be pretty cool, though!

Still Alive, Just Very Busy

The title says it all! I haven't posted any real meat up here, and today I just got back from State Solo & Ensemble, and it's pretty late, and so I'm going to bed. I'm just letting everybody know I haven't forgotten and will hopefully post when things aren't so hectic.

Here's a question to keep you busy 'til next time:
Which would you rather be extremely large? Your ears or your nose?

Machines are toast at State Jazz

I guess the manufacturer is so certain of the machine's inefficacy or inability...

Perhaps the Busiest Week

Warning: Long Post Ahead

This last week has been...insane. I've been to four class periods the whole week - two on Monday and two on Friday. I've slept in my own bed once in the last seven days. Here's the story.

We'll start with Monday. At lunch-time FBLA left for our State Competition. We had a long six hour bus-ride up there, and then stayed up there until late at night Wednesday. We had lots of fun (I guess) in Ogden, where there is nothing to do. Especially by our convention center. However, here are the awards I remember:

• Josh M. - 3rd in Accounting I
• Sarah C. and Kassara S. - 3rd in *Desktop Publishing
• James P. - 6th in Cyber Security, 8th in Computer Problem Solving, 9th in Networking Concepts
  
• Kirsten W. - Was elected as a State Officer - Secretary
• Sean F. - 1st Place in Business Communication, 5th Place in Cyber Security, 6th Place in Business Calculations
• Sean F. and James P. - 1st Place in E-business
  

Remember that these awards are State-wide, and are not broken down into school sizes like sports are (5A, 3A, etc). We compete against the entire gamut of students.

*Desktop Publishing requires the submittal of a production test; our team had to create a logo, calendar, flyer, and other Desktop Publishing creations to be prejudged, then take an objective test at the State Leadership Conference (SLC)

Which means that James and I are going to Nationals, and there is a good chance that both Josh M. and the team of Sarah and Kassarah could be coming as well. Kirsten is also attending as a new state officer.

On Thursday the day was devoted to Sterling Scholar Region. Long and boring intervals were interspaced with brief moments of heart-attackish type adreneline rushes. We practiced the awards ceremony, broke for interviews, had lunch (hamburgers), had dinner, then had the awards ceremony. We had one Sterling Scholar Region Winner (Jordan H. in Mathematics) and about five runners up (I got runner up in General Scholarship). The winner of the General Scholarship competition had a 33 ACT score and had been out of the country for several weeks helping poor children in Cambodia or somewhere.

Friday was the day I went to school for half of the day again. The other half was spent decorating for Prom. At about 3:15 I left the Prom decoration event and went to the high school to travel on a bus back up north for the State Jazz Festival. Strangely enough I got the same bus driver I had for the FBLA trip, so I spent more than 25 hours in that exact bus. Big time waster. We played That's Cool by Shelly Berg, In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning, by I'm not sure, and Mongo's Mood, by I'm not sure (a different I'm not sure). We received a II, another II, and a II+. Pretty good considering this is the first time we've even qualified for State Jazz in approximately ten years.

We got back from our trip on Saturday at around 5:00 p.m., just in time to go home, get ready for Prom, then attend the Priesthood Session, then go pick up our dates (Jerry R. took Sarah C., and I took Whitney S.). We ate at Olive Garden, then attended the dance. Jerry and I were both at State Jazz, which means that we were not around on Saturday to do any sort of "day date" thing, so we are planning a cool date for next Saturday, which I'm looking forward to.

Prom was generally awesome. All three of the others in my group, including my date (Whitney, Jerry, and Sarah) were fun to be around. The only complaint I have is that the picture line was too long; we only were actually on the dance floor for about an hour and fifteen minutes. So I was pretty annoyed, and when I'm annoyed I'm edgy, and so I probably wasn't the most fun to be around in the line ;). We had a bunch of fun though. Swinging is always a fun dance style, even if your flower falls off. (That reminds me...a quick note...I learned how to make corsages from Jerry's sister, and we both made one for our dates; it's so cheap and easy I don't know why we don't do them all the time ourselves) I was elected as Prom King, a great honor that is nice to have and boosts self-esteem, but it was an award I would rather not have received (at least in front of everybody at the dance). I am not built for publicity and stuff, and then people come up to me in the hallway all the time and say stuff like, "Congratulations on being Prom King!" and some try to be sneaky and come up and say hi and then under their breath breathe, "Prom King," like I'm supposed to say, "Oh, thanks" rather sneakily and give them a big fake wink. I never know what to say when people say stuff like that. I thank them, but I'd much rather everybody forgot about the whole deal. This kind of stuff makes me uncomfortable. Natalie H. was the queen, Cody P. was the prince, and Tanya H. was the princess.

The best part of the logistical side of the dance was the music; because we picked all of the music beforehand ourselves, and because we spent the little extra money to hire a good DJ, the music was awesome.

We sold out of Prom tickets beforehand and then sold some more at the door. We sold about 175 tickets, which means about 350 people at the dance. After the dance we stayed to help clean up, because I'm on the Prom committee, and then we went to Tia B.'s house to eat crepes. We did get a picture of the Prom committee, but not of the royalty.

Sunday we left again, this time to watch general conference at my grandparents house in St. George (we don't have T.V.). Hectic. More posts coming soon.

Spring Break and All of It's Many Facets

So much to tell...

This week, the week of Spring Break, I have been very busy. I apologize to all of those who tried to talk to me or get a hold of me somehow (like the telephone or on chat or something), because I've just been gone from home most of the week. Here it goes.

Friday and Saturday have already been described - The track meet (see previous post). Sunday was Stake Conference, and it was a good one. I must also confess that I read the first Fablehaven book (Landon suggested it), and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Monday I was invited to go biking/rollerblading by Chantelle and a fairly large group of friends. We met at Whitney's house, then rollerblade-ed (everybody except me, that is, because I don't have any rollerblades) to Dairy Queen, got some lunch, then went back and tried out the Spendlove's tandem bicycle. I like it!

Also on Monday I had to plant two palm trees in our backyard while my family was gone to Abravenal Hall to hear Janessa play her violin in the Zion Youth Symphony Orchestra. The first one I planted by myself and the second one everybody helped with. After planting the second tree we drove to Toquerville to see who asked Chantelle to Prom, then ate an excellent dinner at the Gubler's house.

Tuesday was a day spent mostly reading. I was reading the second Fablehaven book. After I finished, I wanted to read the third one, but alas it was not to be. The third one is not out yet. In the evening I took my brothers and the Spendlove twins to my sister's concert for ZYSO (their farewell concert) at Pineview. A select group of ZYSOers headed to San Francisco, California that night, my sister included. She was very, very excited, and when she called to say hello on Wednesday, she remarked upon the magnificent view right outside of her window. She can see the bay and the bridge and a voodoo shop across the street.

Wednesday harbored a fun-filled day. My family (less Janessa and my dad, who is in Owotana, Michigan for a company training thing for the week) went an hiked Angel's Landing. We left our house at about 1:40 p.m., and by the time we picked up the boys from their sleepover in Toquerville and started up the trail it was 2:40 p.m. We got it done before dark, luckily. It was snowy and icey still up there (a little bit, at least), and it made the final part of the climb treacherous. I'm glad nobody was hurt. Afterwards we went into the restaurant that used to be the Bumbleberry...not for any of their food, but for the "famous" Bumbleberry pie. Unfortunately, the restuarant had been leased to new owners, and the new owners and their restaurant ("Wildcat Willies") had been open about a week and a half, with outrageous prices. So we left and went to a pizza/pasta place, which was very delicious. I'm glad we left Wildcat Willies. We came home and I had to pack until late at night for...

Thursday - our backpacking trip started. We left at 9:30 in the morning (that's a.m., for those of you excessively worried about political correctness, or excessively disinclined to 24-hour - sometimes called "military" - time). We (Jess, Ben, and I) drove in Ben's truck (rathered squished up, too) to the trailhead. Jess had a 35 pound pack, I had one just a little light, and Ben's was even lighter.

We started out by jumping a barbed-wire fence and then by crossing a stream. On the way back we saw that we needn't have jumped the fence; an opening was just 50 feet away. Crossing the stream became a regular occurance as we ventured further up the riverbed. We saw several likely campsites, but finally settled on a nice one about 4.2 miles up the river. We went a little further with no packs to find three pools that we thought were upriver a little bit, and find them we did. They were pretty cool.

Halfway up the trail Ben and I realized that we had forgotten silverware. I was very dissapointed in myself. It seemed like I had everything but silverware! I had extra clothes, and a pan or two that I never even used. I had three extra pairs of socks (in case we got wet crossing the stream, which we did - but I never used two of the pairs). I was prepared with soap and a pan scrubber and a collapsible water container and everything...but silverware. We had to improvise.

We set up camp at maybe 3:00 p.m., which allowed us a ton of time to do nothing. I carved a fork/spoon thing out of juniper wood. Juniper wood is not very good for whittling; It is so dry that every branch has a series of cracks running lenthwise through the wood, which is OK for making forks, but horrible at making spoons.

You can see my attempt here. It worked really well, though.

My food plan is laid out below:

Thursday:
Lunch coming in: Granola Bars, Nutri-grain bars, cheese cracker things (the ones with the little red stick), and a Cinnamon Toast Crunch breakfast bar.
Dinner: One package of Knorr Lipton Rice Sides (Chicken Broccoli flavor), one package of Garlic Instant Potatoes (We each had a different flavor of potatoes. I liked the garlic one - the others aren't so swell)
Various snacks of granola bars and nutrigrain bars, and even a piece of Ben's cow, George, who wasn't able to make it all the way up the trail without being salted and flavored nicely.

Friday:
Breakfast: Four packages of Instant Oatmeal in two batches. I had one batch a mixture of Blueberries and Cream and Peaches and Cream, and the other batch a mixture of two packages of Strawberries and Cream.

The rest of our snack food when we got to the car.

Friday is the day I got back from backpacking (that's today for me). We hiked a total of 9.19 miles. I put all of my stuff away and am now writing in this blog. My mother took my brothers and went to Bryce Canyon, which sounds like fun.

I will post more pictures in the next post from Picasa.

Some Chicago Pictures

I thought this was rather interesting. Good stuff to know.





















This is a cannonball tree at the Field Museum in Chicago. A real tree!





















Look...the kiosk at the top of the Hancock Observatory (or the Sears tower...can't remeber which one now) is running Windows 98!
They should seriously consider upgrading.











This was in a photo booth at the bottom of the Sears tower (or Hancock Observatory...can't remember which, now) Blue screen of death on a kiosk! Funny...