Incredible, that is the only word I have to describe what happened this weekend. As you know if you read two posts down I went to the RMC this past weekend. Now, what you may not have known, is that I went into that tournament with a severe case of pessimism. I figured I would go 1-5 again, and have my partner ready to fire me again, but strangely enough, I didn't. If you read all the way to the end of this you will be able to see what actually happened, but for now I will be giving a round analysis.
OK, thursday morning, start of the day, I'm scared to death, postings go up, and my partner tells me that we get a bye (meaning we get an automatic win and don't have to debate the first round). I'm slightly excited, but when I sit down to think about it I realize that it's kinda a bad thing. The way they do these tournaments is that starting on the third round they start to match you with people who have similar win/loss records, getting a win on the first round starts you off hitting hard teams.
Well the second round was fun. We were negative against a case that we had absolutely no evidence against. I gave the greatest speech of my life in that round (a completely evidence-free 2NC in which I started walking around the podium. Needless to say, we won that round, although it was close according to the judge.
Our third round (technically our 2nd actual round) was one that concerned me. I was slightly afraid that we would hit a nasty team and get trampled. Well, in a way, we did. We debated good friends of ours who had been to nationals before, and they knew our case because they had helped us with it. The judge for that round didn't really know what he was doing, so I can't really say if we should have lost or not. But whatever, we lost that round.
The fourth round (and the last round of the first day) was quite honestly my favorite round of the tournament. The judge was going all dreamy-eyed every time she heard me speak, and I got the other team to admit that uranium has a half-life of 10 years (it actually has a half-life of like 4.5 billion years). We won the round, and came out of it with some good friends.
The fifth round started bright and early on friday morning. We debated a team that we had known from camp, and one that was running a case that had not been updated for the riga summit (where a lot of things had been changed with NATO). We won it, I can't remember much more except that the judge was dressed as a civil war soldier for some reason.
The sixth round I was really scared. We debated one of the top teams in the entire region, and they basically chewed us apart as much as I can remember. Plus I debated badly since it was so late in the tournement. Anyway, the judge gave us the win for some odd reason.
So here we were at the time they anounced who went into the outrounds (the rounds that were win or stop debating for the rest of the tournement). Whoever went into there rounds got to go to regionals (another tournement that is by invitation only). I was nervous, and I didn't think we would do it (bear in mind that we don't know who wins rounds until the end of the tournement on saturday). To make a long story short, we broke, and so did the other utah team. We were set to debate them in Octo-Finals.
This was a sad time, only one of us would continue, and we both wanted (and wanted each other) to. This was also the first round we had where people were watching us, so I didn't do as well as I could because of nervousness. We had three judges this time, and after a round where I screwed up badly, we lost on a 2-1 decision.
The next morning we found out that the other utah team had won, we were ok with it, seeing as we really hadn't expected to make it this far, but I was slightly disapointed.
At the end we came out winning five rounds and only losing 2 out of the seven rounds we debated. We were 10th overall, and could have been better if we hadn't lost too the other Utah team.
Well, I'm just happy I broke to regionals. Expect to see another report after that.
Monday, March 26, 2007
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Friday, March 9, 2007
Getting Ready for RMC
As you all know, not only do I do computer graphics, practice karate, and play the viola, I also am a debater in the NCFCA league. I like it a lot, and it has helped me grow quite a bit. Coming up in a couple of weeks is the next tournament that I will be going to. The Rocky Mountain Classic. Held in Denver, and put on by the club SALT (Seriously Awesome club......), it will be a great amount of fun. However, it's still a debate tournament, which means I have to do a lot of preparing with my partner.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
World of Warcraft
Well, I havn't posted in a very long time, mostly due to life, school, life, getting a girl friend, life, school, you get the picture. But now I'm more or less planning on keeping to the straight and narrow path of blogging so to speak. And to kick it off I am posting about a new phase of my life, World of Warcraft.
I'm sure most of you know about world of warcraft. It's the multiplayer game set in the world of Azeroth, the land of the warcraft games. My friend brice recently convinced me to try it out, and ever since then I've been hooked. I'm planning to buy a subscription either tomorrow or over the weekend.
But anyway, I'm currently playing a level 16 Night Elf Hunter named NorinMHX and I just started a level 7 dwarf warior named Thrashimus. Overall I have to say that, while not being the absolute best MMO I have ever played, it comes pretty close. The graphics, while not flashy by todays standard are no slouch, and the sheer size of the game map that rivals Star Wars Galaxies in it's size makes me wonder how many poor people spent years to make it. As you travel around in the world (something that has earned this game the title World of Walkcraft, more on that later) I can't help but wonder "where are the freakin' transitions". Each "zone" of the map has a distinct weather, darkness, landscape, etc. In the 5 zones I have traveled I have walked across the border and gone from sunny daylight to dark twilight and back to sunny daylight in the space of a few minutes. Something to be desired there, but still nothing game breaking. The monsters seem varried, and the combat is a little more in depth than you traditional right click, wait, buff, wait, power, wait, loot, but still is nothing like Lineage 2 or ragonok in it's complexity. My biggest problem I have with the game is that there is no way of traveling except by walking or taking a ship until you discover flight paths (which you have to do in ever city before you can fly there), so you wind up walking... a lot.
Overall, good game, I look forward to getting to lvl 60 (maybe 70 if I get the pack). Buy this if you like these kind of games.
I'm sure most of you know about world of warcraft. It's the multiplayer game set in the world of Azeroth, the land of the warcraft games. My friend brice recently convinced me to try it out, and ever since then I've been hooked. I'm planning to buy a subscription either tomorrow or over the weekend.
But anyway, I'm currently playing a level 16 Night Elf Hunter named NorinMHX and I just started a level 7 dwarf warior named Thrashimus. Overall I have to say that, while not being the absolute best MMO I have ever played, it comes pretty close. The graphics, while not flashy by todays standard are no slouch, and the sheer size of the game map that rivals Star Wars Galaxies in it's size makes me wonder how many poor people spent years to make it. As you travel around in the world (something that has earned this game the title World of Walkcraft, more on that later) I can't help but wonder "where are the freakin' transitions". Each "zone" of the map has a distinct weather, darkness, landscape, etc. In the 5 zones I have traveled I have walked across the border and gone from sunny daylight to dark twilight and back to sunny daylight in the space of a few minutes. Something to be desired there, but still nothing game breaking. The monsters seem varried, and the combat is a little more in depth than you traditional right click, wait, buff, wait, power, wait, loot, but still is nothing like Lineage 2 or ragonok in it's complexity. My biggest problem I have with the game is that there is no way of traveling except by walking or taking a ship until you discover flight paths (which you have to do in ever city before you can fly there), so you wind up walking... a lot.
Overall, good game, I look forward to getting to lvl 60 (maybe 70 if I get the pack). Buy this if you like these kind of games.
Monday, January 1, 2007
Saddam's Hanging
Early Saturday morning Baghdad time former dictator of Iraq Saddam Hussein was executed by hanging for crimes against humanities. We all waited with baited breath in the hours leading up to the execution. Would he be executed now? Would a force intervene to stop him? Those questions were answered with a short drop and a sudden stop.
While we can all say that justice was served to the man who gassed thousands of his own people, authorized rape and murder. But we should all take a step back and look at the circumstances surounding his execution. Why was the U.S., a country in which murders can sit on death row for 20, 30 years before anything is actually done and a county in which justice must be served to its full capacity, so eager to execute Saddam, a deposed ruler of a country. In my mind, and the mind of many other people, the answer is very complex. But it also has a simple explanation, or as simple as is possible in cases like this. "Dead men tell no tales". Many of the top echelon of society would not want Saddam revealing in one of his appeals that he was actually financed by say the Bush family, or maybe the Clinton family. They would certainly not want to have to worry. And so the simplest solution would be to make sure he could never talk again.
Please pause and consider that possibility. Happy New Year. May God bless America.
While we can all say that justice was served to the man who gassed thousands of his own people, authorized rape and murder. But we should all take a step back and look at the circumstances surounding his execution. Why was the U.S., a country in which murders can sit on death row for 20, 30 years before anything is actually done and a county in which justice must be served to its full capacity, so eager to execute Saddam, a deposed ruler of a country. In my mind, and the mind of many other people, the answer is very complex. But it also has a simple explanation, or as simple as is possible in cases like this. "Dead men tell no tales". Many of the top echelon of society would not want Saddam revealing in one of his appeals that he was actually financed by say the Bush family, or maybe the Clinton family. They would certainly not want to have to worry. And so the simplest solution would be to make sure he could never talk again.
Please pause and consider that possibility. Happy New Year. May God bless America.
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Thursday, December 21, 2006
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