Kentucky's King of the Polls...or Not

Kentucky’s men’s basketball team has fought all year to maintain a perfect record and stay in the hunt for a number one seed come tournament time. They started fifth in the polls, and one by one, their higher-ranked foes fell, until there was only one – them. For the first time since 2003, Kentucky was ranked first.

And in the blink of an eye, it vanished. In a mere one and a half days, Kentucky went from numero uno to losing the basement team of the SEC in South Carolina. I guess we went in there over-glorified, thinking we were all high and mighty, and got punished as a result. Giving some credit where it’s due, Downey played a stellar game, and had he not been a beast that night, Kentucky would have most likely not lost.

Now people are trying to blame Obama for the loss. What the heck? All he did was talk to them over the phone. They just didn’t come to play against an overzealous SC team and paid the price. Maybe we’ll be able to learn from this setback before we play Tennessee (we beat 23^rd ranked Vanderbilt, woot woot!).

Dakota

Texting

So I just got texting for my phone. This has been a long time coming, but needless to say I am happy that I at least have it now. I know I should be thankful that I at least have it, but I have a phone that is no good for texting. Now in any other situation I would not be griping about this, but my mom told me and my sister that we wouldn’t ever be getting texting for our phones. So, I bought a phone that was cool in itself instead of a phone built for texting. My sister, however, got a phone with a keyboard on it. I of course gave her crap about it because she bought a texting phone (which is pointless if one does not have texting for it). But then mother decides we will get texting once dad pays the child support. We now have texting, and I light it up, don’t get me wrong, but I’m just a bit miffed that mom sort of jipped me out of a good texting phone because she didn’t think either my sister or I would be getting texting for them.

On the other hand, life is good. =)

Dakota

FPS

Apollo’s FPS and composition members from the academic team competed in the District Governor’s Cup competition and OCHS on Thursday. This blog will focus on the Future Problem Solving part of the competition.

Basically, we pretty much dominated. We got into the testing session and got down to business. In FPS, one strives to come up with sixteen challenges to a given situation, an underlying problem of this situation, sixteen solutions to this underlying problem, grade how well eight of these solutions would fare against a criteria of our choosing, and an action plan that best solves the underlying problem. This may seem like a lot, but let’s just say that we did it all, to near perfectness. I was amazed at how well we did. We just found out today that we are going on to regional (we either got first or second place, but since the actual competition was postponed due to the snowy weather, we won’t find out until the awards ceremony of the new date for that competition). Needless to say, I am thrilled and very excited to kick some tail at regional and move on to state!

Dakota

Dog Advice

I think that if a dog were to give me (or any other person) advice on any particular subject, it would probably tell me to chill out and relax a little bit more.

He would tell me that life is good when you don’t have to worry about anything, when you can just eat, sleep, and play with your owners. Why are you always running around all busy and under stress? What’s the rush? Just lay back and enjoy life; I’ve been doing it my whole life and its worked wonders for me.

I guess sometimes we as people get too caught up in the race to be everything that we can be and get everything we can obtain instead of living for ourselves and letting things roll every once in a while. These are the times when we would really like and need the guidance of a dog, one who has no cares and lives for himself, one who doesn’t buy into the hustle and bustle lifestyle. I think I might heed this advice on occasion. It sounds pretty nice. =P

Dakota

Rant Time - Nerd Style

I have this game called Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. It’s pretty much one of the best games made for the Xbox 360, ever. Well, this game’s freakin’ awesomeness is doubled when you couple it with online play. This is what this blog is mainly about.

I’m an average online player. I can hold my own against other players pretty well. I’m not great but I’m not bad. My kill to death ratio was about 1.1. Key word – was. Until, that is, two weekends ago. I had the crazy opportunity to go skiing with Nick at Paoli, so of course I took it! And it was great, as I stated in the blog about that trip. Little did I know that while I was having the most fun I’ve ever had in my life, my sister’s friend was ruining my reputation on CoDMW2. My sister had her friend (who I won’t name) over to my dad’s house that weekend. They decided they were going to play my online profile and add people to my friends list that I don’t even know. The friends I can handle; the actual playing I can’t. For lack of a better word, they sucked. Bad. When I returned to my dad’s house the following weekend, I found that my KD ratio had fallen about .2. To put that into perspective, they earned me 20 kills and about 300 deaths while they played.

This was, needless to say, very aggravating. I’ve sort of gotten over it as I’ve cut the deficit by about .07 and am only below 1 by about 150 kills. But still, you get the idea.

Dakota

Ski Trip

First off, let me thank Mr. Nick Miller for allowing me to go skiing with him. Okay, on with the proceedings.

This trip was amazing. Stated simply, I have found out that I enjoy skiing more than about every other activity I’ve ever done in my life. I don’t know if it’s the wind whipping your hair and clothes or the adrenaline rush you get when you realize you’re going a little bit too fast. Either way, skiing is absolutely incredible.

Granted, I went last year, but this year made me realize that the fun wasn’t just a onetime deal. I was actually thinking about trying out snowboarding, but Hannah and Nick talked me out of it. Again, thanks guys.

Anyway, we got there and I could tell I was already going to have more fun than the year before because it was a clear day. Last year it got really cold and snowy later in the day. Hannah had to take lessons so Nick and I tried out the bunny slopes to get warmed up. Once she was finished, we almost immediately started on the harder slopes, and eventually went down one I didn’t even know existed. It was by far the most fun.

Then Nick and I faced do or die time. Black diamond and the clock were staring us in the face. Were we men enough to try and conquer the hardest slope on the mountain? Oh heck yea. And it was kind of a letdown, because it wasn’t very difficult or fun at all, haha. Getting Hannah on it was harder than going down it, but I finally convinced her to after ages of persuasion.

I’m not very good at explaining great things without sounding stereotypical and otherwise boring, but this was pretty great, trust me.

Dakota

Snow Days Blog

Snow days are, in my opinion, one of the most controversial things that could happen to a school student in student years. They are good in many ways but bad in other ones.

Good – IT’S A SNOW DAY! You’re out of school! What could be better than that? The day is yours, you don’t have to do homework, and you’re not stuck in a seat for six hours.

Bad – IT’S A SNOW DAY! You’ve had no time to plan anything for the day, so you’re usually stuck at home doing nothing and being totally bored. Plus, if the schools deemed the roads too dangerous to travel, you’re parents usually do too and you can’t get out of the house.

Personally, it depends on what day of the week the snow day is and what time of the year. If it’s the beginning or the end of the week, it’s definitely cool with me because I get a long weekend. If it’s in the middle of the week, it’s not as great because you still have school afterwards to look forward too. Also, how much snow actually came is a big factor. If there’s barely any snow on the ground, then it’s pointless to even go outside because you can’t do anything with the snow. But if there is a bunch of snow, as there is now, you can do REALLY AWESOME stuff with it.

Dakota

Climate Effects Blog

I was thinking the other day about the way that climate may affect people’s way of life, their behaviors, their emotions, etc, and decided to blog about it. It has to have at least a little effect on these things, does it not?

I mean, in terms of way of life, people in Siberia are going to have very different recreational activities and careers than those, say, in Florida. People in Siberia most likely stay inside their houses most of their days as temperatures are very frequently twenty below and less. People in Florida can do many more things outside of the house because the temperatures are more favorable.

As for behaviors and emotions, it seems like climate would affect them as well. You can’t tell me that people who live in Seattle where it rains a lot and Texas where there is nothing but arid land have a different outlook on people and life than people who live in Jamaica or Brazil where everything is beautiful and the weather is constantly amazing.

Then it makes me wonder – if people had the choice to live anywhere in the world, wouldn’t the majority want to live in the places where climate is more fair and forgiving? I suppose this is true if one looks at population density; more people live in the tropics than the polar regions. Just a thought.

Dakota

Facebook - My Dearest Friend and Worst Enemy

Facebook holds a significant place in my heart (not really, but that’s how the cliché goes). It at least factors into my life pretty largely. I spend a lot of time on it, checking status updates, posting my own, chatting with friends; it’s a pretty nifty little website.

But it has taught me a very important lesson – do not get on Facebook if you want to get anything else done. I have learned the hard way that homework is neither doable nor feasible when I am on Facebook. I don’t know, it just doesn’t get done. When I am supposed to be doing my chores or doing my classwork, Facebook has a devilish way of stealing my precious time. For a good friend, he can be pretty sneaky and deceiving at times when I need him least…

“And I just can’t pull myself away!” These are good lyrics to describe my relationship with Facebook. He doesn’t really do any good for me, and usually detracts from my overall success, but he has grown on me and is now something I can’t live without!

Dakota

Stay off the Roads!

I am finally a legal solo driver! It’s amazing that it has finally happened. I can drive by myself anywhere I want to. The freedom is the greatest part. I don’t have to have my parents drive me everywhere; I can just go there myself!

The second time I took the driver’s test, I passed. The instructor wanted to fail me again for screwing up my parallel parking but because I had passed it the first time I took the test, she crossed out the failure (thank goodness).

The major downside to this solo driving is the solo payment of gas and insurance for my car. I am looking for and failing at finding a job to pay for these necessities. So for now my mom and dad are helping out with both, but I have to pay them back when I get the money to do so.

It’s also kind of aggravating that mom doesn’t want me to drive on icy roads – she’d rather drive me places in situations like this. I think that I would learn how to drive in bad road conditions best if I do it myself, don’t you agree?

And I realize now that this blog has no natural flow, and for this I am genuinely sorry, haha.

Dakota