Crunch Time!

Forget exam period. Forget summative period. Forget sight singing. The most stressful time ever is the second half of February.

As those of you on Google Chat have noticed, the OCESS mission launches in less than 10 days. Certain members who shall remain nameless have been less than productive in recent weeks, so the work has fallen upon fewer shoulders. I personally remain optimistic, but to quote Winston Churchill,

I would say... "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."
We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long nights of struggle and of suffering....
You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.

The same sentiment could well apply to the Reach team, for our tournament season begins Thursday. While we have been undefeated in city-level play for over two years, we are now Jamie-less, and nothing is certain. I hope that come Friday, I will again get to use mushroom clouds to represent what shall happen to our esteemed opponents.

And to this must be added the upcoming Musicfest, the workload of five plus three courses, and innumerable other stresses. Yet I remain confident based upon certain recent events that there is reason to continue on, and at the end of the day, I am ineffably happier as of this week.

Gott in Himmel, it's been a long time!

I don't think that anyone ever reads this, but I may as well have another go at it.
By my count, it's been nine months since I last posted here. So sue me. I had the understanding that no-one read this, so there was no point in posting. But maybe a soapbox is still useful even if no-one pays attention.

By way of brief summary:

• Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated (and non-existant)
  
• I am now in Grade 12
• I almost (but didn't) get the Blyth Scholarship to Cambridge.
• The Lisgar Trivia Team wreaked havoc upon its opposition at the Ottawa Quizbowl. It failed to do so at the tournament we hosted, but I wasn't there, so I deny all responsibility.
• I may or may not be too blind to be an Aerospace Engineer with the Canadian Forces

If anyone actually reads this (which I seriously doubt), many thanks. Please leave a comment so I have some record of your existence.

Miscellanea bis

1. Good luck to people writing AP exams. Especially the AP Stat people, who need all the luck they can get.
2. Good luck to the China group in 3D Graphic Arts. Maybe your DVD will just randomly start working tomorrow. Yeah. That's it. Random divine intervention.
   
3. Good luck to the other Ottawa teams in the Reach provincials (Gloucester and… um… I'll get back with the other one). Unless you happen to be playing against us. Then all the luck is ours. OURS! OUR PRECIOUS!

Very funny things:

1. Data vs. Control Panel: BSoD 1, Data 0.
2. German Forklift Instruction Video: Achtung! Contains a lot of (obviously and humourously fake) blood!
   

Righteous Smiteage et al. FTW!

Never-before-seen picture of what happened to our opposition at the city-level Reach tourney last Friday:
I recognize that some of said opposition might consider the above statement to be a slight exaggeration. In fact, I have received communications to that effect, and this is what happened to the senders of those communications:

Other members of our opposition have now learned the value of not being seen.

In all seriousness, however, I have not received communications from the members of the Reach teams we so righteously smote (have smitten?) because the odds of any of them having read this blog are nil. Apparently (Google Analytics FTW!) 65% of visitors to this blog arrived via Wikipedia (would the next person to arrive here via Wikipedia please explain to me why there's a link here on Wikipedia), 15% came from the Spacesim forums, 15% came from somewhere else on Blogger (that 15% was probably me), and the remaining 15% came direct (again, probably me, since I'm pretty sure that nobody's bookmarked this). This leaves 0% of visitors who come from random other websites, which makes sense, since AFAIK my Wikipedia userpage, the Sim forums, and Blogger are the only websites which link here.

Miscellanea

Item: 3-D Graphic Arts is teh major workload. James, Chris, Steven, and Olivier, if you're reading this (even though the odds of that are virtually nil) you should stop reading it and animate something. I don't care if it's a large brick wall—make it move!
Item: Whoever the adjudicator Senior Band got tonight was (I can't remember his name, although it was mentioned once or twice), he is teh roxxorz. You can tell me that two double golds doesn't add/multiply to make a quad gold, but I'm not listening. Thinking this way gives me mental ammunition for thinking that we're better than Canterbury et al.
Item: I claim a control point for the forces of Grammar and Syntax for convincing Bryce that it's pronounced 'vee-ah', not 'vee eye eh'.

Conspiracy

I've done it! I have irrefutable evidence of a Vatican-Opus Dei-Illuminati-CIA-Mafia-Communist-LBJ-Teamsters-Freemason-
Texan-Cabalist-Anarcho-Syndicalist-Bolshevik-Rosicrucian-Knights
Templar-NASA-Music Department conspiracy to prevent me from getting sleep! This conspiracy must exist, for how else would the decision to make tomorrow's band rehearsal have been made so soon after I mentioned in an earlier post how I needed sleep? Obviously Mr. Arrigo doesn't read this blog, so one of the many parties named in the above Hyphenated String of Doom™ must have acquired privileged information about my mental health and sold it for their advantage.

Anyone who suggests that TINC or that the 'conspiracy' is actually the product of the ravings of a tired mind is evidently a member of the VODICMCLBJTFTCASBRKTNASAMD conspiracy sent to silence my protests and prevent me from revealing their existence to the world.

Anyone who mentions that using a blog that exactly three people besides myself have been known to read is hardly the best way to reveal sensitive information to the world also belongs to the VODICMCLBJTFTCASBRKTNASAMD.

Sleep! Gimme! Graaw!

I need more sleep. Case in point:

"I think he's just both saying they're loud." ~ Me, at band this morning

On the other hand, it's not like sleep is especially appealing when compared to other late-night pursuits like Civ IV, perusing the Spacesim forums, and writing blog posts complaining about lack of sleep. It is appealing when compared to homework, however; it's a pity that, unlike sleep and other favoured activities, homework is not postponable or optional.

Case in point: right now, I'm studying for a Latin vocab test. This task is made harder because I'm not sure whether to study the short, end-of-chapter list or the long set of lists after each story, so, to be prudent, I'm studying both. I probably should have asked which to study, but, in my tired state, I failed to recall in class that I would be having this problem tonight. Oops. Also, I have no way of contacting either of my fellow students to see what they know. Oops.
If by some wonderful coincidence Bora or Colin happen to read this before the test, please please please would you tell me what I'm supposed to study?