David's Blog

1/9/06 – “I hate it when people…”

I hate it when people do one of the following:

1. Lie
2. Cheat
3. Do drugs and/or alcohal

Lieing makes me very unhappy. If someone lies, it is a very long time until I begin to trust them again.

Cheating is something else I can’t stand. Honestly I used to cheat sometimes (last school year) on Spanish I quizzes. One day, I realized, “What good is this doing me? Why do I go home and waste time on video games or the computer? Why don’t I just study? What if my teacher found out?” So…now I despise cheating, and will be the first to let a teacher know it’s happening.

Lastly, I believe the number one dishonorable thing someone can do is get drunk. I have many reasons for think this, that I may share later. Also in line are drugs. I’d rather find happiness without enhancement. Someone that is anywhere near drugs or alcohal does not have my respect.

1/11/06 – Money

Money. Cold hard cash. I think money is okay, but I don’t love it. I don’t think money is evil…just the love of it. Without money, life would be much tougher. Just think, we would be bartering with goods. We wouldn’t be able to carry around wealth as easy.

1/13/06 – Freewrite

Today is Friday the 13th. An end to a very interesting week. I’ve been having issues with a friend, that just happens to sit next to me in this class. Also, the beginning of this week was pretty stressful becuase I wasn’t sure how well I did on my Algebra II compaction.

Last night the drumline performed at White Concert Hall, which was pretty awesome. There was three other drumlines there, and I think we did the best. Out Spirit Night routine has been neat to work on the year, considering I wrote 3/4 of it.

This weekend is a youth even at my church called Miqra (mee*kra) It’s an ervent where the bible is read all the way throuh, non-stop, in one hour shifts, over a span of 72 hours. It’s going to be quite awkward this year, because recently, I’ve been questioning my faith. This is the 5th annual Miqra.

Wow. Today has been another intersting day for me. With a few events in the past 24 hours that have really made me think…its all been kinda wierd.

As I’ve already been typing, both my mom and dad have been in, and I guess I’m just not in a very patient mood right now, but I’ve just been snapping at them. I need to figure out why.

Today seemed MUCH less lively than usual. It may of been because I’ve been thinking about some things, and nobody was making jokes? messing around? etc.? Today was like 5mph compared to the usual 70mph or something. *sigh* I guess there is one thing I definately need to get off my chest, and Amy has already been smart and gotten it over with, and she is doing great now.

I hate to write about this, without actually writing about it, but I just can’t…at least not for a while.

Well, I have youth symphony this evening, and a bit of homework, and then I’m going to bed! Because I’m outrageously tired.

This weekend has been very busy for me.

Friday night was spirit night, which was totally awesome. Three-forths of the stuff we played, was written by me, and everyone seemed to love it. Everyone acted like it was fun to play, so hopefully we’ll use some of it next year for marching band. I might be re-writing Cadence ‘99, the one we’ve been using for 6 years. It’s an awesome cadence, but its getting a bit old and outdated…maybe I can fix that.

After spirit night, I went to Amy’s and we watched Ice Age, because it was the shortest movie that I hadn’t seen, that she had at her house. I didn’t have much time at her place, so thats why we found a short one. It was super fun, as usual, and we mostly talked instead of watching the movie.

Saturday, after sleeping in, I went with my parents to go get a couple cakes, and run some other errands. I also spent last night writing some thank you’s and stuff. What are the cakes and thank yous for you ask? The main point of this post.

I don’t mean to brag or anything, but I thought everyone that doesn’t know, should know, that I’m an Eagle Scout, and today I had my ceremony, aknowledging that fact.  Now I know what all of you are thinking: “Boy scouts are f4gs, you’re g4y.” “All the stupid people are in scouts. Etc.” So yeah, I guess I’m those things, and wasted TEN YEARS of my life for this.

If you subtract out all the “not-so-cool” people in scouts, there are some worthwhile people, and fun times to be had. I, luckily, am in a troop full of some cool people. I would say that the “wierd person:cool person” ratio is 2:5. I don’t have anything against the wierd people. In fact, I feel a bit sorry for them, becuase people don’t think too highly of them, and they aren’t treated like they should be…and most people seem to think that scouts is just another reason to make fun of someone. I disagree.

My scouting experiance was pretty awesome. It was a TON of hard work. If you think we sat on our butts, had 100 words said to us, and signed a paper to earn rank, you are totally wrong. Various tasks included camping, leadership skills, various merits, following ideals (that would make the world a totally awesome place if everyone followed them), and tons of other things. I’ll tell you, I learned the following things (and more), that I can use later in life, that I wouldn’t of learned without scouting:

1. Wood Carving
2. Astronomy
3. Aviation
4. Cinematography
5. Dog Care
6. Emergency Preparedness
7. Electricity
8. First Aid
9. Journalism
10. Law
11. Music
12. Mammal Study
13. Personal Fitness
14. Personal Management (money/finances)
15. Rifle Shooting
16. Shotgun Shooting
17. Sculture
18. Coin Collecting
19. Swimming
20. Plus over a hundred others…some which I have earned, MANY that I haven’t.

I promise that you cannot find that kind of exposure to such a variety of skills and knowledge anywhere else, besides perhaps a university ($$$).

I could go on and on about this, but I would probably bore you, and if you are going to be somewhat convinced at all, you probably already are…and if not, you probably wouldn’t be if I kept going on. ALL IN ALL, scouting has done many things for me, that I couldn’t of gotten anywhere else.

Also, at my ceremony today I got more than 20 cards and gifts. I want to thank everyone who gave me something, and more formal thank you cards will be on there way. A VERY thought provoking gift was a journal I got from someone (you know who you are). Its like 200 lined, blank, pages, that I have no clue what to write on. Perhaps I should make a drum journal, or a personal journal (although thats what this is). Also, I realize that writing all this on this blog probably isn’t as permanent as ink on paper in a vault or something. The servers that this data is on could crash tonight, and my writings could be lost forever. I’m considering printing off all my posts every month or something, and putting them in a file in our safe here at home. I also already count on Cole to do database backups for me (*clears throat*). You better be doing these COLE!!!

So any comments are greatly appreciated, especially about that darned journal .

As always, thank you VERY much for reading…this has been a long one.

Sophmore Spring Semester ‘06
It felt very good not going to my “Intoduction to Operating Systems and Programming” class today.

This semester brings about the second half of my favorite year yet. Yes, this sophmore year of mine has been a insanely busy one. I had more work every month of last semester than I had all of my freshman year. This is mostly due to me taking AP World History and compacting Alebra, which I’ve already mentioned numerous times.

As I said, I didn’t have to go to a computer class today, which was absolutely wonderful. I also didn’t have to be Mrs. D’s class, which was my least favorite semester of English I’ve taken thus far. Also, after tomorrow (Friday) I won’t be worrying about Algebra 2 anymore. So to replace these three classes are:

1. Mrs. Beine’s Accelerated Literature – Looks like it sould be a fun class. Mrs. B already preached about responsibility, challenging activities, and the like…which really makes me happy. A teacher that can teach!
2. Independent Study – The class I can choose anything to learn about, as long as I’m driven to learn about it. I’ll most likely be pursuing music composition, or something else related to music and percussion. If my teacher doesn’t accept those choices, I’ll be forced to think of a few new topics…
3. Concert Choir – This is the “mid-priced 4-door family sedan” choir of SHHS, above the beginning class (which I don’t know the name of (becuase I didn’t take it)), but below Choraliers (the top notch, tryout only class). I guess I need to be talking to our teacher about what part I should sing, because I’m technically a baritone, but he has a bunch of basses, no baritone parts, and not enough tenors. Decisions, decisions.

Everyone better show up at the SHHS basketball game tomorrow night, because there is going to be some major rock-outage! Thundercussion (the drumline) is going to be performing at half time, and this years routine is just awesome. I’m not saying that becuase I wrote over half of it, but becuase it’s SO much bigger and better than last year. Last year we walked on, played a couple things we had been playing all year (cadences, drum feature from the marching show). This year I wrote three peices, and our drumline guy combined them with his arrangement of some song. So it has become 5-6 minute long percussive frenzy. DON’T MISS IT.

My resolutions are going well, thank you very much.

Thanks for reading!!

Heh, everytime I write, it’s kind of going against my resolution of staying away from the computer as much as possible…though I could consider blogging a necessity.

On New Years Day, right after I posted here, I took a 5 mile bike ride! Unbeleivable for my lazy self, I know! Also, I offered to clean my mom’s car, as a Christmas present, becuase it was insanely dirty. For some reason I get A LOT of enjoyment out of cleaning cars…? Just one of my ‘things’ I guess. After that I helped my brother with his side job…but umm, He told me not to tell anyone what it is, becuase he thinks it’s a sucky job. It does make him $40 everytime he does it though!

Mostly Monday was a slip against my resolution, becuase I spent half the day not doing anything, wasting time. But in the afternoon I made up for it, by going down to the church to make a ton of programs for Eagle Ceremony happening this coming Sunday. It’s a lot of work, copying like 200 sheets, folding them all in half, and stapling them together.

Tuesday (yesterday) was very busy. The first part of the day, I worked on getting Linux on my laptop (check out my other blog). After that I headed to Manning Music to buy some timpani mallets, then I went to Youth Symphony. It was pretty fun. Sometimes it’s absolutely unbearable, like when the director isn’t in a very good mood. But mostly it’s alright, and sometimes it’s great! After two hours of rehersal there, I ran out to the school, for a drumline practice. It was pretty nice to see everyone again, even though many of them don’t like me very much. I guess I just needed a dose of glares to have some fun? I don’t know. But, the people that I like, and are kind of friends…we were all in funny moods, and we had some good times working for the Spirit Night show, which by the way:

SPIRIT NIGHT IS FRIDAY. COME SEE THE DRUMLINE DURING THE BASKETBALL GAME HALFTIME!!! SHHS!!!!! ROCK OUT!

After drumline last night, I stuck around with my buddies Amy and Janae, to see the rest of the basketball game. That was totally fun. Though, I’m hoping Janae is okay, becuase she like tripped up the gym stairs, and hurt her ankle pretty bad.

This morning, I’ve rocked out on the drums, and am getting ready to go to a friend get-together, which should be awesome!!! Can’t wait!