"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

Theodore Roosevelt

Give me the beat boys and free my soul
I wanna get lost in your rock and roll
and drift away....

Sooooo yeah. Today is a very happy day in the history of James. The first tournament of the year was today. Dispite the fact that so many people left to go to college this past year, I was pleasently supprised at how much fun I had. So many people I rarely get to see were there, and it was basicly awesome. At 1-3, Jesse and I didnt do so well win-loss-wise but it was better than our first tournament last year (0-4). If we continue to win one more round per tournament than last year, this will be a year of total pwnage. But yeah, it does look like this year will be a fun one. I'm now very very glad I'm debating this year and not judging.

Oh,

and on top of all that, I just got an acceptance letter from William and Mary (which is now stuck to the wall in my room). YAY! Because I applied for early decision, I signed an agreement and am now legaly obligated to go there. but thats what I wanted so I'm happy. I guess one of the biggest reasons I'm happy is that I dont have to do any more college applications!! I actualy havent applied anywhere else yet, so this really saved me a lot of work and stress. Now I dont have to worry about college for the rest of the year!

aaaand I'm dead tired. ow. my brain hurts. maybe I should drink more red bull......

The following is a passage-based reading question.

So my SAT scores report finaly came in (after a few weeks of delays and wishing death upon whoever runs this process), and as I like to do with all my standardized tests, I calculated my own scores to doubble check. I looked up the method they say they use, and checked it with a bunch of difference sources. Its basicly the same as they do on the PSAT, but I was just making sure. So crunched the numbers for my scores.... I calculated the scores for each section 3 times to make sure I didnt mess up, and the results supprised me. My writing score was only 10 off, and my critical reading score was 10 or 20 off (depending on if they round up a .6), but my math score, which according to them was quite close to my critical reading score, was 50 below what my figures showed. also, this same method worked with my PSAT and I got the exact same scores they said I did.

Possible conclusions?

A. I messed up in my calculations (which I did 3 times each section and got the same answer each time)

B. Something was messed up with the computer that calculated my scores.

C. They lie about how they determine scores in order to keep their methods top secret.

D. Scores are really determined by a bunch of drunk leprechauns.

E. I'm just adding an E so that this looks more like an SAT question. Its like rope, you've always gotta have some rope.

Summer....

The quick version. because the long version would be a book

I spent almost 2 weeks in Peru for a church mission trip which went very well. We ran a vacation bible school at a church in Trujillo and a lot of the kids in the community came. I can’t remember exactly but I think we ended up having around 80. In the afternoons we would play soccer and people of pretty much all ages from around the area were always hanging out at the soccer field. Apparently most kids have little to do all day and pretty much just play soccer; and they get really really good at it too. We also had about a 20 hour layover in Lima so we got to go on a tour of the city which was really fun. Oh, and Peruvian food totally rocks.

Then came nationals, an awesome week with awesome friends. watching debates, hanging out, energy drinks, squirt guns, tornado warnings, making out with the dryers on campus... yeah, awesome week. I didn’t actually compete, but even so I had a blast.

And then about 14 hours after I got back from nationals, I left for Boys State. An interesting experience to say the least. We got to listen to a bunch of senators and people in the government talk about random politics and government related stuff. It was kindof interesting, but not extremely. I even shook Tim Kaine's hand only to find out 5 minutes later that he was sick. But yeah, I actually had a fairly good time despite the normal results of putting hundreds of typical highshool public schoolers together. I saw and heard of everything from shoplifting, to marijuana use. Some guy there was the son of a Virginia Supreme Court justice and he got thrown out the last night for streaking across campus. Oh, and I didn’t get to actually compete in moot court, but I helped out a bit when my dorm floor was working out arguments. The topic was something about marijuana and apparently everyone in the room had first had experience with it. But the sports in the afternoon were really fun, so were the naps, and I met a lot of really interesting people

CWSC (Christian Worldview Student Conference) came next if I recall correctly. This year was awesome and the lectures were excellent and pretty comprehensive. I also met a bunch of old friends and made a bunch of new ones. Oh, and Frisbee was revived. CWSC is usually my most Frisbee packed week of the year, and this year was awesome. btw I completely recommend CWSC to any high school or college student. Looking at the list of people subscribing to this blog, if you’re reading this you probably know 2 or 3 other people that have gone.

SI camp. Complete awesomeness. Total sweetness. I don’t know how it’s been in past years, but this year was phenomenal. I can’t even begin to describe everything that happened, but it was a crazy, really fun week. Living for a week under a fake name in an African country, conducting missions every evening... my agency didn’t have any one leader figure, we didn’t have any real form of organization. I still don’t know exactly how it worked out, but when it came to getting a mission done, everyone did their part flawlessly. Despite being late for breakfast twice and losing 20,000 points because of it, we took 1st place at the camp by about 15,000 points. During the first mission I was taken for interrogation, (thanks to Betsy blowing my cover) and the guy who arrested me took me down a hallway in founder’s hall and told me to wait. He then left me with this a second armed guy by the interrogation room door and then 5 minutes later the second guy walked into the room and left me completely alone in the hallway for about 10 minutes. at that point I made sure no one could see me, and I just walked off. I should have left the building immediately (I probably would have made an effective escape) but I decided to stop by the restroom and by the time I came out, they had started looking for me and they had a guy tail me through the safe zone in the building and arrest me again as soon as I got outside. so yeah, I was really close to actually evading interrogation, but oh well. Our agency didn’t get docked any points so apparently my elaborate pre-worked out explanation of why I left and what I was doing there was enough to satisfy them. It was like debate cross-examination on steroids. But yeah, it was fun. The last mission started out with mixing in at a nightclub and meeting a contact there, and something about a banquet meeting of oil company representatives in a 4 star hotel. as it turned out, we actually had to meet another contact at the banquet thing, locate a gun dealers room in the hotel, go up a few floors, meet the gun dealer, buy some guns (airsoft), take out and disarm a room full of terrorists, take them unnoticed to the elevator. Then someone met with another contact in the building and got a card that would allow us to use the elevator, then take the terrorists down to the basement and hand them over to blackwater. Then we had to diffuse a bomb (which consisted of a barrel with a ton of wires coming out of a panel on the side of it) in the basement using information that someone picked up from one of the contacts along the way. Yeah, that probably wasn’t the best description of the mission, but you get the idea. It was awesome. Oh, and the speaker that we heard from in the first half of the day was Brian Wright, who was a PHC alumni. He was hilarious, fun, and very very informative. We also played a lot of ultimate Frisbee in the free time. Hmmm, I think I went a bit past the short version of SI camp, but oh well, its typed so I might as well post it

then I had a 3 and a half week break because I decided I needed it and it would make my summer schedule way too busy (as if it wasn’t already) to go for two weeks to summit leadership camp in Colorado

Then Debate camp rolled around and I got to see all my Radix and region 9 friends that I had hardly seen all summer. Debate camp was fun and I think I might actually be a good bit interested in the topic now as a result of it. Strangely, nothing unusual or crazy happened, no mass quantities of caffeine were consumed (at most I had a cup or two of coffee for the day).but yeah, I can’t wait for the debate season to start and for the craziness that is region IX to begin.

other than that (a few random things), school has started, I can’t figure out if I like or hate geology, I played ultimate Frisbee on a Navy base with some nuclear physicists and engineers, my pencil sharpener is jammed, I leave for a 3 day church retreat in about 3 hours, I just got back into playing airsoft and one of my guns is in parts due to some malfunction, I started an online poker account and play for play money with people from around the world and I currently have $35,000 in play money that I have won, I am one cord short of being able to set up my Atari, I got a new phone to replace the one that got fried near the pool at nationals, and I just ate half a meatloaf while typing this.

So there, consider this xanga updated and consider yourselves enlightened