Ah, last Wednesday marked the last project due date, and last Thursday marked the last major school event for a while. After one five-page paper, one Powerpoint presentation, one three-page book report, and one field trip to a test, I can finally rest easy. All these things happened within two weeks, if you take vacation out (which wasn’t really a vacation since I was doing something everyday and was away from home). Through these two weeks I stayed after school for an average of two extra hours every school day, working on each of them.

From what I can tell, it paid off. I got an A- on the Powerpoint (Google Docs is made of all kinds of awesome), highest in the class, but what worries me is the five-page paper. Written for English on whether Macbeth is a tragic hero as defined by Aristotle, I came a full two pages short of the given minimum. But you know, I really did give it my all. My writing style is concise above all, replacing two or more words with a single one if I possibly can. Explaining it here makes it sounds like I’m lazy, but I try not to be; I said everything I possibly could have said in that paper without resorting to unorginality. In fact, I took the route that was harder to prove; that Macbeth is a tragic hero. To be honest, I couldn’t care either way. I never got into Macbeth, which I blame on being absent during the start and key points of it. Ah well.

The field trip I went to last Thursday was to GE’s worldwide headquarters in Fairfield, CT for a “computer science competition”. As obscenely nerdy as that sounds, and as obscenely nerdy as some of those attending were, the only thing that I had to do was take a 50-question multiple choice test, while travel there and back and lunch took up most of the time. I graded myself immediately after it was over (since they don’t give actual results for a few weeks) and I got a 62-64%. Really, it was a test on how much you use Java, and wasn’t really as abstract or algorithm-heavy as previous years (which kinda screwed me over since I was studying their previous test as preparation). Also different was that they didn’t deduct points for wrong answers, which also kind of threw me off. But all in all it was a good experience, I did my best, and I learned things to try next year. I almost don’t want to think of next year, though…

While looking through the sample code for questions and decoding algorithms, I couldn’t have been happier. I truly enjoyed that aspect, and that further confirms my desire to be a computer scientist in the future. I want to get into the game industry and use that knowledge to someday possess a fraction of the followers people like Keiji Inafune or David Jaffe. Walking out of the awe-inspiring GE building, walking down those stairs the thought crossed my mind it would be pretty neat to be in charge of a building like that. So, now my plan is to put away some money in my 20s to open my own game development studio in my 30s. This depends on economic conditions and other factors, like if I even get into the games industry at all. Who knows, I could meet someone in college (another factor) who hooks me up to work at a good software production firm. It depends on a lot things, so I guess I’ll just have to trust that I’m being led down the best path the Lord has chosen for me.

The Dark Knight marches closer to release, with a trailer expected to be posted sometime tomorrow. It’s strange, last year after seeing Spider-Man 3, I told my sister’s boyfriend about The Dark Knight. I thought that it was lighyears away, and even in July when the first trailer hit, I thought it was way too soon. Then the full trailer came out, and I was beyond excited. Now, the movie is less than three months away. Although actually, this feels like a long time since “school” and “Summer” have such a pronounced division, it doesn’t feel like normal time applies to both. Or something.

I talked about putting this blog under PBA before, sometime in June probably, and I’m gearing up to do just that. It will be brought under PBA for one reason: Veda. “Veda” is the preliminary name for the administrative console that will be used to single-handedly post to each PBA site. I haven’t coded anything for it yet, but the hardest part will be going back and translating sixty-seven posts (that much?), most of which have bad code somewhere in them, into completely valid XHTML. I know for a fact updating in the future will be easier, but the “backwards compatibility” is what has me being trepidous. Validity and Veda are why Carol of the Bells is moving to PBA, however this means the design here should stay exactly the same. I won’t have the unlimited bandwidth or stability of Blogger, though, and that’s also making me a bit nervous… I’ve never attempted a move like this ever before. But before this, I have a lot of changes to make to Project Gforum and especially Temple of Andrex, which is why June is the current target.

I got Okami for the Wii last Friday and I have three and a half hours logged in. It’s a work of art but it still showcases a lot of last-gen flaws. Maybe I’ll post my review here on it when I’m done. At this point, I like Twilight Princess much better, but that could change depending on a lot of things. I still hope it sells well and it gets a sequel, though, which is why I’m going to keep the current banner for a bit longer.

Discounting my AP Computer Science test, the SAT/ACT, and finals, I’m free, finally. While those are indeed large exams brooding on the horizon, for now I’m finally free of the clusterfuck of responsibility I’ve been carrying for the past three weeks. With those tests, I can take them at my leisure. And hopefully I won’t screw up too bad, my future’s already looking bleak enough.
-Andrew