October 22, 2005

All-state

All-state auditions today. I'll be going in about 2 hours and 17 minutes from now...6 bass trombones for one spot, and 2 are supposed to be good. They're both seniors, so next year if not this year...

I always drink a half-liter of water right before I go in to audition, it keeps my mouth from getting dry like it does when I get nervous. Seems to work. If it's just the placebo effect, I don't want to know about it...
Posted by ultrarob at 16:31:29 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

October 09, 2005

A story about bias...

So our 'big' marching competition was last night, we thought we actually had a chance at doing good since we kick ass this year. In the day competition we kicked ass when we performed and all the directors were congratulating our directors on how we were going to beat Bellevue East, who's got first every year since forever. Then we won best drumline and drum major and it was obvious to everyone there we were going to win. They announce 'sixth place- [my school]' and everyone in the stands was very confused.

Turns out, the marching judge just happened to be from Bellevue East, and if he hadn't scored us 47 points out of 200 below every other judge, we would have gotten first place. He dropped our score about 4.5 points- from first to sixth.

You might think, oh, maybe you sucked at marching. At the night competition, we went against 11 of the best bands in the state and 1 of the best bands in the country, and won the marching caption. That means we have the best marching in the state, and the judge scored us the same as the 2A-1A bands.

At least we know we're the best, just sucks that nobody else does.
Posted by ultrarob at 16:50:26 | Permanent Link | Comments (2) |

October 02, 2005

Yeah, more or less kicked ass at our invitational. We weren't competing, but still did awesome. Slightly disappointed for not getting best individual marcher again, this time the winner gets a huge bag of candy. Tough to tell with 1 or 2 judges actually looking for that and 120+ marchers. Maybe next year...

I've been arguing for atheism at forums.govteen.com a whole lot lately. Mostly that forums is just 12 and 13 year olds with dumbass questions on sex and girls and crap and I would recommend staying as far away from the puberty forums as possible, but there is some really great discussion going on in the religion forum way down the page. Very good on both sides, for the most part. Christians outnumber atheists by a lot judging by the poll, but most Christians don't get involved in the debate. I'm going to look for some other teen forums and argue with them. If I can get one person to think about and reconsider their religion, find one person like myself, who was just going with the flow for 14 years, I will be very happy.

I don't even know why I or any atheist would want to convert people, there is really no reason to for an atheist, unlike for a Christian, but it's similar to why I would want to be moral and good without a reason like a Christian. It just seems like the right thing to do.
Posted by ultrarob at 06:58:04 | Permanent Link | Comments (1) |

October 01, 2005

Parents are gone again for the weekend, maybe I'll get something written.

Had marching band at the football game tonight, our invitational tomorrow night. I am so excited about valleyfest this year, the 'big' competition. I've heard rumors from reliable sources that we were the best band at the last competition, which is incredible, it means we beat valley, one of the best bands in the state. They really didn't do that good, though. Good timing since this is our head director's last year and it would be awesome to send him off with a top 5 placing at valleyfest.

Homecoming was fun, there were some awkward times since this was both of our first times going to a dance with a date even though she was a senior and we're both kind of introverted, but it turned out good in the end.
Posted by ultrarob at 07:19:40 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |