Post started: Saturday, May 20, 2006 6:17 PM. I'm back from playing ping-pong. So, continuing what I was saying about Six Flags, Jesse and I left the arcade store and found Parth and Glusman playing some boardwalk game. We went into Nathan's for some fries and chicken nuggets (OMGosh, I ate like 3 buckets of french fries, since Parth and Jesse both did not finish theirs, so they gave them to me. I've been eating sooo much lately, I think I've gained some pounds.). Afterwards, we were stuffed, so we needed to cool down and let our stomachs digest the food before we hit the roller coasters again. We played some boardwalk games again, and Parth got addicted to this one game. This was a game where there was a spinning coil, and you had to try and pass a loop through the entire coil down to the bottom without having the loop make contact with the coil. If the two of them did make contact, a buzzer went off. Each attempt was $2, and Parth must have spent at least $16 on the game in total. His closest attempt was within an inch of the bottom, but there was a very sharp 45° bend at the very end on which Parth died. There was one point when Parth ran out of money, so we walked away, but when we reached the next boardwalk game, parth discovered $5 more in his pocket, so he went back and played some more of that coil and loop game. Man... he was sooo addicted (but he never won). We hit some more roller coasters later on, meeting up with Lulu, Hilary, and Nacima, and we took the gondola across the park to the other side. There, we saw some MJS (Memorial Junior School) teachers, including Mr. Stark, Ms. West, and Mr. Anderson, along with some middle school children. Jackie Malzone recognized me and said hi. It was nearing 3:30 PM, so we only had time for perhaps one more roller coaster before we had to head back for the group meeting at 4:15 PM by the main fountain in the center of the park. We wanted to go on Nitro, but the wait turned out to be 90 minutes. Thus, we were debating whether to just go on one of the other roller coasters in the area, such as Batman and Robin or the Great American Scream Machine, or to go to Superman, which was on the other side of the park. We ended up taking the gondola back across the park to ride Superman, but when we reached its entrance, we found out that the wait time was also 90 minutes. Thus, we just headed towards the fountain to meet the rest of the FBLA group. However, Parth Parekh and I hit the arcades in the last half hour, and we DDRed 2 rounds (3 songs each, for a total of 6 songs). I died on So Deep the first time I played it because I hadn't figured out how to access the options menu. However, on the second time around, I had figured out how to reach the options menu (by holding down the enter button (rather than hitting the enter button twice, as it is in StepMania)), so I was able to select 1.5x arrow scrow speed, spacing the arrows further apart, enabling me to read the arrows more precisely and thus, allowing me to beat the song. I was very pleased ^___^. At the end, I had exactly $1.57 in spare change left, so I wanted to rid that. We visited many stores, but there was absolutely nothing in the park that cheap. Thus, Parth and I went into another arcade store, and we were able to rid my quarters playing the crane/claw game, where the giant claw on a crane is moved around, and the object is to try to pick up a prize inside the machine. Then we went inside another arcade store, where there were slot machines, and on my first attempt on one of the slot machines, I matched up three cherries and won about 10 tokens. Parth and I rushed to the prize counter attendant with our ten tokens, and we received two oddly-shaped Slinkies. I still had loose change in my pocket, but it was greatly reduced, so we headed back to meet the others. Even after we met the rest of the FBLA students, we still had time, and most of the students were inside a nearby restaurant anyways, so we headed into the restaurant as well, and I ended up buying myself a berry smoothie. Delicious! That was my day at Six Flags in a nutshell. On Tuesday, May 9, 2006, in my Language Arts II Honors class, five students - Mikaila Weaver, Greg LaLuna, Daniel Malzone, Alex Chiang, and I - performed our production of Our Town - Whippany. Our performance was highly successful and highly hilarious. It was so much fun practicing for this performance over the weekend, as four of us - all except Mikaila - did at Greg's house Saturday night, where Greg's brother, Steve, filled in for Mikaila's part of Sally White. What made the performance so funny was Alex's FOB (fresh off the boat) voice, since he was the "Asian mother" in our play. In my opinion, the scene we performed the best was the parent-teacher conference scene. You can find a copy of our master script (without the stage manager's lines before and after every scene) here. In other news, I also ordered some new Rubik's puzzles from rubiks.com. I ordered a new 5x5x5, 4x4x4, a 3x3x3 DIY (Do It Yourself) kit, and a Rubik's Magic. The 5x5x5 is fairly even-tensioned, so I have good expectations for it once it breaks in (Right now, it hurts my hands to do more than a couple solves.). The 4x4x4 turned out to be very uneven-tensioned, so I have low expectations for it, though overall, it's probably looser than the 5x5x5 right now. The 3x3x3 DIY kit, as most DIY kits do, turned out fantastic due to the fact it comes with screws and not rivets, as most store-purchased pre-assembled 3x3x3 cubes do. Thus, I was able to tweak the spring tension on every side so that all the sides are equally tight, which makes for smooth solving. I put the 3x3x3 tiles I won at the Rutgers Spring competition on my new DIY cube, and they look and feel sooo nice!!! The textured tile feeling is definitely quite unique, as everyone who has tried my new DIY cube has said. I also lubricated it with the rubiks.com lube that came with the kit (this time not accidentally pulling out the syringe's plunger and spilling all the lubricant over the table (it felt like lotion)), and I was able to break my 3x3x3 average record! I didn't open my Rubik's Magic until a couple days later, and after about thirty minutes of excessive playing with it, I snapped a string. I then proceeded to continue disassembling it, which took another half an hour, and it has lain (ooh, that's a word I don't get to use very often =]) on the window sill completely disassembled ever since :-(. In still other news, my brother came home from college on Sunday, May 7, 2006, and I found out that he will be staying home all summer (leaving for work every weekday morning)!!! ĦHuepa! We have been playing a lot of DDR and Tetris Attack. We also played tennis this morning from around 11 AM to 1:30 PM. In DDR news, I finally beat Cartoon Heroes on Heavy (9 feet)! That means I have beaten every 9-feet song I have on StepMania! Time to conquer the 10 feet songs? This past week, from Sunday, May 14, to today, Saturday, May 20, has been extremely long and hectic. Sunday was Mother's Day, so we went out to eat at East Star Buffet in Somerville, New Jersey. Oh my gosh, the unlimited sushi was sooo good. In the link I provided, look at the bottom center picture of SUSHI!!! The other food wasn't as good as Royal Buffet and Grill on Route 10 in East Hanover, but the sushi owned all (as far as my knowledge extends, thus far (reminds of TBPOYL(tf) (which is a marching band acronym for "The Best Performance Of Your Life (thus far)," which always seems to get into the Big Weekend Sheet before competitions)). Afterwards, we visited Montgomery gardens located in...I guess Montgomery, New Jersey. I'm not much of a flower-guy (though I love flowers in Mario games *wink wink*), so the most interesting part of the visit must have been climbing on top of piles of gravel and mounds of dirt. However, I did go around taking a look at some of the nonnative plants and gaping at the astronomical prices. I also got a kick out of a "persimmon tree," which to me looked nothing more than a bare, medium-sized twig planted in a big pot of dirt. There was also a cool bush-like plant that was shaped in a spiral. Perhaps the coolest plant in the garden was this plant called "lamb's ear." I reckon it literally felt as soft and smooth as a lamb's ear. It was so velvety and silky it felt fake! But it was real! Anyways, further highlights from the Montgomery gardens included buying a Nestea Ice Tea from a vending machine and playing Canal Control on my cell phone. It was Mother's Day, so it was okay that we spent half the day doing stuff that I really didn't want to do. Moving on, on Monday morning at 7:30 AM, I had a band leadership meeting in the auditorium with Mr. Sabatino and the rest of the leadership candidates. On Monday night, we had the underclassmen awards ceremony, at which several BEASTS joined the '800 Club,' included Alan, Lily, John, Ben, and Anna (Did I miss anyone?). Various other students received awards in academia, club-related activities, and sports. Congratulations to all the students invited and the teachers who also received awards and recognition. That night, I also had to do my first draft on my Lincoln paper for A.P. U.S. History I. Fortunately, I remembered to bring home the instructions sheet and my Lincoln on Democracy book (unlike for the The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner's Fierce Rebellion paper, for which for both the first and final drafts, I left the instructions sheet in school, and for the final draft, I left my first draft with all of Mr. Schwartz's comments on it in school as well (of course not having read them as well)). I pulled an all-nighter that night, only drifting off to sleep briefly between 1:30 AM and 3 AM. The following day, Tuesday, I attended cubing club (ĦHuepa!), at which I cleaned and lubricated both Lily's and Max's cubes. When I got home, I took a two-hour nap before heading back to WPHS for the M^3 (Multitudes of Musical Moments) concert, which whippanypark.org incorrected terms a "Graduation Concert" (well, I guess maybe it is, since it is the last concert for many seniors, except those who are also in jazz band.). During the concert, I screwed up several of my solos, squeaking on one and not coming in synchronized with the second clarinet on another one. Bleh. I got home dead tired and hit the sack very soon. Come Wednesday, I took the 2:55 PM bus from home (the first time in a long while) in order to take a three hour nap before heading off to jazz band from 7 PM to 9 PM. That night, I ended up staying awake until 2 AM doing a chemistry lab report. When I finished, I still had a prelab assignment to do for Thursday's new lab. However, I was too tired, so I went to sleep. I was able to complete the prelab assignment and make some final changes on the lab report in the morning before handing in both in second period lab. Thursday in general was a fun day because it was senior day, and I had "Dr." Angela Li as my chemistry teacher, "Professor" Billie Tadros as my language arts teacher, and "Mr." Travis Fedschun (spelling?) as my A.P. U.S. History teacher. After school, Mr. Sciaino helped me with a jazz band solo I had, and after that, I chilled out in the commons with all the AACC (Asian-American Cultural Club) students writing letters to the Support-A-Child children we are supporting. After most of them left on the 4:15 PM bus, Ken and I walked to his house, playing soccer with a Thomas the Tank Engine choo-choo train all the way from WPHS to his house. By the time we entered his driveway, much of the paint had been chipped off and the underside axles and wheels had mostly fallen off. I stayed at Ken's house to do some homework before joining his sister Lisa and some other WPHS students to rehearse our ISP (Independent Study Project). I am only accompanying on one song of the 17 original songs the ISP group is performing, so I left around 6:30 PM. When I got home, I ate some dinner, did some homework, brushed my teeth, and went to sleep (ooh...consonance between teeth and sleep (wow, talk about random sidetracks)) early. It's amazing how much of a post-effect an all-nighter can have on a person. It took me over four days to recover (yesterday, Friday, I went to sleep around 8:30 PM, waking up this morning at around 7:30 AM). Friday was the last of the week. By then, tennis season was over. We ended the season with a sub-500 record. We didn't qualify for states; our final match of the season was cancelled. Bad season. Oh well. On a higher note, I feel as though I've improved though :-). In chemistry, we got back several graded assignments, including two lab reports and one prelab assignment. Recently, I must say Ken and I have been getting pwned on labs. It's mostly careless mistakes, such as forgetting to answer a question asdfjlk;qweuropiasdfl;SDAFH$@*yasdfhj3w89ri and/or writing answers that are completely wrong. Friday was also senior skip day, so the hallways were pleasantly empty. I was able to stroll luxuriously through the hallways and get to class on time (not that I don't usually). Friday ended with chess club in Mr. Shoemaker's Room 103. I won one game against Alan and lost one game against him. In addition, I lost one game against Max Chang. It was bad chess day for me; however, that was balanced out by the fact that I got to eat three leftover donuts from a party Mr. Shoe had and being able to have a nice chat with Mr. Shoe about how this year's freshman Honors World History class is. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention I broke the strings on my racket last week, I think a day or two before the Six Flags trip because I had tossed a Gatorade bottle up in the air and wacked at it forcefully with my racket. I had my racket restrung at Sports Authority, and after an argument between the store manager and my dad, my dad ended up having to pay only 1 penny for the restringing, plus another 1 penny tax (lol, if it's 6% tax, isn't a 6% tax on 1 penny equal to 0.06 cents or $0.0006, which rounds to $0.00, meaning the tax should be non-existent?) I picked up my newly restrung tennis racket this morning before playing tennis with my brother. The following is a list of things that I am looking forward to in the upcoming weeks:
By the way, did that AACC badminton tournament ever happen? If so, when was it? If not, is it still going to happen? If the answer to the latter is yes, when? If the answer to the latter is no, why not? Well folks, it's time for my dinner. But anyways, I believe I'm all caught up in sharing my past couple of weeks with all y'all. Enjoy your lives, chaps! End post: Saturday, May 20, 2006 8:52 PM. Post started: Saturday, May 20, 2006 3:32 PM. So... I haven't posted in a while. I've been busy, lazy, and caught up with other activities. I guess there are some things I need to catch up on. I guess I'll just continue where I left off from last post. So at Janice Matlon's Sweet 16, I played some basketball with Alex Szajko, Greg Andre, and Chris Kuo. And we were shooting foul shots to decide who would start with control of the ball in our 2 on 2 game, and Chris Kuo kept missing his foul shots, so Greg Andre and I ended up starting with the ball. However, during the actual game, Chris Kuo sunk two three-pointers, and his team dominated in general. It was a lot of fun though. Later on, we watched Young Frankenstein in the basement. I had never seen the movie before, and it was in black and white, but it was hilarious. There were tons of sexual innuendos in it, and we were watching it all together (about 20 of us), and it was entertaining to hear Chris Kuo's reactions to the innuendos about 5 seconds after the rest of us had laughed and gotten the joke. We teased him about it, but his reactions got quicker as the movie progressed. All in all, it was a very fun party with excellent food. The following day, April 30, I attended Brianna Greenwald's Communion Party, skipping Chinese school to attend it. I had the impression that it was the actual communion ceremony, and not just the post-ceremonial party, so I went all dressed up in a suit with a tie, while there were others, like Greg Andre, who were wearing "Vote for Pedro" shirts and baggy pants. Anyways, it was no big deal because it's always better to be over-prepared than under-prepared *cough* doing my homework at home and not during the hall-passing time before the period an assignment is due for *cough*. We did many activities at the communion party. First of all, we ate, as is customary at any party. Like usual, the food was excellent, or perhaps I just have a very indiscriminate taste. It might be that since I eat about 99.9% of all foods known to man, basically anything and everything tastes good in my mouth. Also, I was hungry, and hunger is the best spice, so that further enhanced the food. After eating, we did a lot of dancing, including some group dancing (my favorite) of Cotton-Eyed Joe, the Cha-Cha (I'm not sure if this is really the name of the song, but there's a part in the song where it goes, "Cha-cha real smooth."), and the electric slide (which someone taught all of us how to do). In addition, we played musical chairs, in which some of the little kids played extremely fiercely in. Some of them completely overhauled kids out of chairs when someone else sat down first in the chair they were about to sit down in. Also, there were frequent sobbings when kids were eliminated, so the sophomores often gave up their chairs in order to keep the kids in the game. Finally, when I had to take a break from dancing, and/or a song was on that I did not wish to dance to (such as slow dancing songs), I had my newly stickered cube to play with. "On balance, (a Schwartz phrase)" a good party! The following week, on Thursday, I went to Six Flags for F.B.L.A. (Future Business Leaders of America). When we arrived, Parth Parekh and I immediately ran for Kingda Ka. The previous two times I had gone to Six Flags (over 9 months ago)...wait a second, I think I've only been to Six Flags once before the FBLA trip, and that was during summer 2005. Hmm... I might be mixing Six Flags Great Adventures in New Jersey with Dorney Park in Allentown, Pennsylvania, which I went to twice, once each summer I attended SIG (Summer Institute for the Gifted) at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. Anyways, after getting in line for Kingda Ka, Parth and I were able to get on in 15 minutes!!! Some friends I had talked to before the trip had said they had waited multiple hours before they were able to get on. Thus, Parth and I felt very blessed, and we were confident we were the first two Whippany Park students that day to ride Kingda Ka. The acceleration from 0 to 80 MPH in 3 seconds was crrrazy. During this acceleration leading up to the monstrous hill, there was a split-second inconsistency in the rate of acceleration, causing me to believe that the coaster might not make it over the hump, which would mean it would roll backwards down the hill and safely to a halt (just as I had read on a sign while waiting in line) and we would get to ride it again (or until it successfully made it over the hump). However, remarkably, we reached the peak of the hump, and I was able to take in the magnificent view of the surrounding forests and parking lots before we plummeted at an undefined slope towards the ground. As the view to the left and right of me was all blurry, all I saw was the ground straight in front of me getting ever closer. Riding Kingda Ka was an exhilirating experience. When Parth and I exited, we found Lulu Tsao, Hilary Shui, and Nacima Nahiam, so we more or less convinced all of them, except Nahiam, to ride Kingda Ka, and we got in line for Lulu's and Hilary's first ride and Parth and my second ride. While waiting in line, Lulu kept having second thoughts and kept asking, "Is it really safe?" while I did several cubing demonstrations. I even met Bob Burton's brother in the line! Afterwards, Lulu and Hilary were glad they chose to ride Kingda Ka, and Parth and I were blown away once again. The second time we went on it, the wait time was 30 minutes, still far short of the hours-long waits I had feared. Lulu, Hilary, Nacima, Parth, and I more or less travelled together for the rest of the day. We ate Dippin' Dots ice cream. At lunchtime, we split up because Parth and I wanted to play some arcades before eating. We met Jeffrey Glusman and Jesse Warner, and Jesse and I played DDR (Dance Dance Revolution), while Parth and Jeffrey did various other things (I think they were playing the boardwalk games outside). After playing one round of DDR in the un-air-conditioned arcade place, Jesse and I went outside and found Parth and Jeffrey playing a boardwalk game. And my brother wants to play ping-pong with me, so I'll finish my story later (Warning: Later could mean hours, days, or possibly, years later.). End post: Saturday, May 20, 2006 4:37 PM. Post started: Friday, May 5, 2006 10:43 PM. This post might bore some people because I'm feely a tad sleepy right now and am not sure what to write about. I doubt I'll be very enthusiastic about anything I say; I'll probably just tell it as it is. I really should be sleeping now in order to get my sleep back on track. My mother says the growth period for adolescent children is between 11 PM and 3 AM. Yeah, she's always quoting articles from the Chinese newspaper. She keeps telling me to go to sleep before 11 PM, and everytime she sees me awake past 11 PM, she'll say something like, "Didn't I tell you 11 PM to 3 AM is your growth period?" And then she'll remind me on how when I was younger, my physician predicted that I would grow to be taller than my brother, Raymond. However, as of now, I am 5' 9" and he is 6' 0", and I feel as if I've stopped growing, so I don't think there's much chance. Well, now that I think about it, three inches doesn't look that big. It's always weird when using standard units because I always have to think to myself, okay, 12 inches = 1 foot, so 5' 9" is 3 inches away from 5' 12", which is the same as 6' 0", so I'm really 3 inches away from 6 feet. Uh... yeah, whatever. Just a random moment of "thinking out loud." I will continue my story from last Saturday from after the cubing competition. I got home from the competition at around 5:30 PM, and Janice Matlon's Sweet Sixteen would be starting at 6 PM. I quickly scribbled a card (wow, that sounds really bad, but truly, I put some thought into it), while I watched the end of the Devils-Rangers game that sealed the post-season fate of the Rangers. The Devils would win 4-2, sweeping the Rangers 4-0. Yeah, that was another sidetrack. I'm a hockey fan, so I sometimes get carried away with the playoff fever of everyone fighting for arguably one of the hardest won trophies in sports - the Stanley Cup. Anyways, so Saturday was an ecstatic day for me all around. I went to the cubing competition, in which I won two events and placed 2nd in the three other events I competed in, and then when I got home, I was able to see my favorite sports team beat their arch-rivals. Finally, I was able to wrap up the day by going to a Sweet Sixteen. Janice Matlon's Sweet Sixteen was a very enjoyable experience. First off, her invitations were awesome. They were modeled our marching band BIG WEEKEND SHEETs. I thought that was very creative. To begin, I forgot to wear my Tommy tour shirt to the party, though I was wearing jeans (our alternate uniform is tour shirt + jeans). That was okay because not everybody invited was in band and had a tour shirt, and thus, many other people did not wear tour shirts as well. Plus, some people who did have tour shirts and read the invitation carefully chose not to wear them. There were Ruffles and tortilla chips, and salsa and sour cream (?) dips. Mrs. Matlon also cooked up a popcorn chicken appetizer for us, which was delicious. Sorry, I am getting too sleepy right now. I must collapse on the futon now. Well, actually, I'll probably sleep in the guest bed because that's a bit more comfy. I probably should set my alarm clock, just so I don't have to do it in the future when I move downstairs for the summer. Oh yeah, and I guess I'll use the computer my cousin built for me as my "summer" computer, keeping it downstairs in the guest room, while keeping my other computer upstairs in my room as my "winter" computer. Also, accessing Internet is faster on this downstairs computer because it is connected directly to the wireless router through an Ethernet connection, and the wireless router is connected directly to the cable modem. Anyways, I will finish my story up tomorrow. Good night! End post: Friday, May 5, 2006 11:51 PM. Post started: Monday, May 1, 2006 11:29 PM. Rebecca asked me to write an entry about my weekend, and I finally have the time to today. I have a light homework load, only having to do some A.P. U.S. reading in Lincoln on Democracy and study for algebra 2, which I usually do in computer math, a period before algebra (which I have last period (period 8)). But I haven't done my A.P. U.S. reading yet. Somehow, on the days when I have not so much homework, I always manage to procrastinate even longer. Sometimes if I have a ton of homework, I'll get it all done before I go to sleep. But when I have very little homework, those are times when I somehow manage to not complete it at home and have to do a hurried job in school the following morning. Anyways, my father took some pictures and videos at the Rutgers Spring competition 2006, which you can view on separate pages (so as not to lag up this page's loading time): Pictures - Page 1 Pictures - Page 2 Pictures - Page 3 3x3x3 BLD 3x3x3-18.06 3x3x3-17.58 I had a wonderful time at the competition on Saturday. I was glad that I did not receive any +2 second penalties in the 3x3x3 speedsolve, though I did receive one in the 3x3x3 one-handed event. At the beginning of the competition, I asked Bob Burton, the organizer, whether either of the two cubes I brought (my own and Andy Tien's) would be acceptable for use in the 3x3x3 blindfolded event. He said, "No," that they were too peeled. The WCA (World Cubing Association) is very strict now about having cubes that have uniform stickers for blindfolded solving, so as to reduce the risk of cheating by feeling the stickers to determine their colors. However, Bob said he would be giving all the competitors a set of 3x3x3 Cubesmith stickers for participation, so I would be able to resticker my cube. When I received my stickers, my father helped me resticker my cube while I did my first two 3x3x3 speedsolve first round solves using Andy Tien's cube. Those first two solves were 20.87 and 19.37. By the third solve, my dad had finished restickering my cube, and when I felt my cube, I could not believe it was the same cube! Little did I know how HUGE a difference stickers make! My cube used to jam all the time, but for some reason, having new stickers made the cube jam less and feel TWICE as smooth. Alan Jiang suggested today (or rather yesterday, since it's past midnight by now) that it may have something to do with the cube's karma.after receiving new stickers. Anyways, my third solve - the first with my "new" cube - turned out to be 16.71! Wow, these stickers really were magical! I think it may have something to do with the fact that now my cube feels smooth, rather than rough from all the peeling stickers. This may have lead to a psychological belief that the cube itself was also smoother, leading to smoother turning and a smoother result. On the other hand, my bigger cubes - my 4x4 and 5x5 - suck compared to other people's. As Bob was scrambling my 4x4, he complained that I really needed to get a better cube. After Craig Bouchard tried my 5x5, he wondered how in the world I managed to achieve a sub-3 minute solve on such a crappy cube. Considering I came in 2nd place for 4x4 and 5x5 with such lousy cubes, I believe I have great potential in these categories, if only I can get my hands on better quality 4x4s and 5x5s. During the intermission between 12:45 PM and 1:15 PM for lunch, Ian Winokur taught me how he does team blindfolded with people. After a short 5 minute lesson, we were able to successfully do a team blindfolded solve in less than 2 minutes. On the next couple of tries, we averaged arond 1 minutes and 15 seconds. Ian then told me that his best team blindfolded solve with Shotaro "Macky" Makisumi was around 53 seconds. With the motivation in my mind to try to beat Macky, our next team blindfolded solve turned out to be 45.54! Now I can say I beat the great Macky in something! Okay, okay, I know you're probably thinking what a sore winner I am, but I assure you it's all in good fun, or however the saying goes. Compare our times here. Ian had some interesting names for team blindfolded, such as kicker, Nathan'a A, Nathan's E, superman, double superman, hammerhead shark, and wheel. However, that just made it more fun and easier to remember. The competition itself was originally supposed to be held in a large auditorium, Room 123. But when I got there and peeked into the room, I found the auditorium completely packed with about 300 students all staring at an exam paper, supposedly an English exam or something. Thus, the competition was moved upstairs to room 206, which was just a classroom. The room was probably no larger than Mrs. Guzo's room. It was not crowded, but the competitive atmosphere was not as strong as it might have been if there was a stage with different lighting and such. Lacey Burton was the only female competitor, and she competed in the Magic and Master Magic events. It was either while Bob or Ian were doing some practice solves, during which one of them jammed pretty badly and got a bad time, that Lacey Burton gave some trash talk and said, "Even I can do better than that." Lo and behold, when the results of the Rubik's Magic came in, Lacey Burton was first. She pwned EVERYONE. Besides her, the only other female that was involved was Bob Burton's mom, who was the computer girl, entering all the times into the Excel spreadsheet. Peter Greenwood brought along a lot of puzzles, many of which I got try out. He had a Megaminx, which I was able to solve after he explained and showed to me how commutators work. I think I finally understand the concept! Thanks, Peter! Peter also had a 3x3x5, which can be solved just like a 3x3x3, though is very disorienting when it is scrambled, since it can look like this. I also got to try out Peter's Rubik's Snake, his Backspin, and his Barrel <EDIT>and his Pyraminx</EDIT>. Peter also had a Square-1 and a keychain Missing Link. I'm not sure if it was Peter's, but I also saw a Skewb at the competition. Man, I wish I had tried out some of those other puzzles! They all seem so cool! All in all, I did far better than I ever expected, breaking every previous personal best official record I set at Caltech Dallas Summer competition 2005. Some milestones for me are first EVER sub-4 minute 3x3x3 blindfolded solve, first EVER sub-1:30 4x4x4 speedsolve, first EVER sub-2 minute 5x5x5 speedsolve, first official sub-15 3x3x3 speedsolve, first official sub-18 3x3x3 speedsolve average, first official sub-40 3x3x3 OH (one-handed) solve, and first official sub-2 minute 4x4x4 average. I want to thank Bob Burton for a great competition, and here's hoping to more Rutgers cubing competitions and a lasting legacy of the Rutgers Cubing Club. Bruce Norskog also shot some footage at the competition, which can be seen using the following links:
Cory-4x4x4-1:29.85 Lacey-Master Magic Solve Anthony's Winning Blindfolded Solve Anthony's Sub-15 3x3x3 Solve In conclusion, the competition was a great success and a ton of fun. I'm looking forward to the next competition I'm planning to go to, the Trumbull Spring competition 2006 on May 27, 2006, in Trumbull, Connecticut. Hopefully, I'll improve some more until then. Wow, this description of my experience at the cubing competition took forever. And this wasn't all that happened Saturday. There was also Janice Matlon's Sweet Sixteen that night. Well, it's past 3:30 AM now, and I still have homework to do *COUGH* procrastination *COUGH*, so I'll write about that and Sunday another time. Ciao! End post: Tuesday, May 2, 2006 3:39 AM. P.S.: I'll also update my cubing records page soon, too. |
