Olympics, CS, Solo
So I’ve been a bit too busy to write, which basically means I was addictively watching the Olympics these past 2 weeks. Sure, a lot of the events aren’t worth watching, but there’s stuff to do in the breaks. I have other concerns, however.
I’m sure enough of my manhood that I can say that I like figure skating, mostly due to a family filled with females. The womens’ singles were this last week, and as exciting as it was, I was quite disappointed. The new scoring system is supposedly more foolproof, but I really think it’s killed a lot of it. I might be completely off, not knowing the details of the sport, but basically, the new system is designed to have more calculated, objective scoring than the old one, giving credit for specific moves and stuff in an effort to prevent the disaster of pairs at the last Olympics. Unfortunately, as I saw it, the athletes instead seemed a bit tense about getting all of those moves right and racking up the points with a lot of moves instead of just really cool skating. It’d be like if in band/orch/choir, the group was judged on how many notes they hit instead of how much music they made out of the music. But as I said, I’m a layman in the sport.
After the dinner concert last week, we finally got new music for the UIL season, including a really cool piece called “J’ai ete au bal” (accent aigu’s over the e’s in ete). When I got it, I looked at the front page, which covers 100 measures, and I had literally 10 notes on it. Typical, I though, flipping the page to probably the most insane tuba solo I have ever seen! It’s quite odd, because I felt quite a bit of pressure to do well. For Region Band, as important as it is, it really has been just, “whatever”, without a whole lot of stress, but having to play a solo in front of a room of your peers, and later, a panel of judges and parents, is beyond ‘nething else I’ve had to do. The first night, I looked over it and hacked through it, but the day after, there was definitely some insane practicing going on. It’s funny how it works, cuz when I play it in class and stuff, I play it, and then afterwards, go “f*ck” almost everytime, because it’s never nearly as good as it should be. People say, “good job” and whatever, but Jandaisms definitely win this time: “The only real judge is yourself”, because even if people think it sounds good, I know it should be a lot better. Guess it just means more practicing.
Frank and Fairley are absolutely insane (David, Willie, you guys are still awesome, but these guys are definitely making their move). So, without the mentioned two having ever met each other, we managed to score 87 points, a problem away from sweeping, and take 2nd place to the CyFalls team that has been on top for 3 years. We’ve gotten that close with, a basically, untested team. Those two are incredible.
Our pre-game was pretty interesting. We managed to take the grounds of the Prime Collective and update it into an updated system with Scanner, printf, and more shortcuts. We nailed a couple types of common problems to commit to memory (which most directly caused an instant solution to at least one 9pter), and just about prepared as much as a team could without ever really working together. In contest, we had an early scare, along with a slew of incorrects on easy problems, but thank goodness for Frank, who managed to cover my butt. General brilliance and good preparation covered up terrible organization, and it went really well. Good job, boys, I’m proud.