The Final Score

So today, on our first day, we got here and realized that our lawn was out of control...
The grass was no longer just your ordinary variety of graminoid.  It was taller than the smallest of my siblings and had weeds that were taller than xander... this was no normal lawn anymore.  This was
...
...
The Killer Lawn.


And kill the lawn did, on this first fateful day we spent all our daylight (and some of the night as well) trying to tame the grass.  It was a fierce battle that the lawn ultimately won casualties were high on both sides, but in this war of attrition the grass had the upper hand, there was simply too much of it.  Our ill fated first strike ended after only five minutes when the lawn mower was immobilized.  Yet we pressed on switching to weed whackers to tame this murderous beast.  After we ran out of the weed whacker cord for one of the weapons we realized that in the wake of our destruction lay a trail of grass that would only serve to fertilize the next wave of Man/Machine eating "usually herbaceous plants" (Wikipedia... note the USUALLY!).  So while a lone weed whacker forged ahead we began to rake up the limitless supply of freshly cut grass.  Unfortunately even this simple mop up operation was not casualty free and by the time darkness fell 7 rakes lay in waste on the battlefield.  We had accomplished approximately half our mission with only about 150-200 square yards remaining (Halfway).  Yet todays success had come at a heavy cost our second weed whacker's intake had been clogged by compacted grass dust/crud.  
With that we woefully retreated back into the house with numerous cuts scrapes and bruises. 

The Running Score:




Graminoid Interfector: 10
1 Lawn Mower
2 Weed whackerss
7 Rakes


The Family: 50%




Day 1 goes to the lawn....

Hudroy

So Hudroy is like my little gift from the internet gods.  Though last winter it was more of a curse but whatever.  Anyway Hudroy is my only connection to the outside world here in seattle.  We just arrive about an hour and 15 minutes ago and I've already completely switched over.  I'm now using the Seattle Phone, Switched my library card out for the Washington State card, but most importantly I have switched my laptop's preferred network to Hudroy.

In my wee little corner I'm sitting with my back literally up against a wall (ok not literally cause that would mean I'm ruining my mother's dear draperies, but up against the wall without touching it) and in this lonely crevice is the one place in our entire house that I can find wireless internet.

I've always wondered where this internet comes from because I've tried getting closer to both our neighbors' houses but no increase in signal strength.  I went across the street once but to no avail.  But I have a theory.  Thanks to AP Physics we can solve this! So normally EM waves travels straight out.  But because EM waves travels faster in warm air, the cool air serves to "Bend" the waves down and give me interwebs.

Anywho we just got a new piano and its way out of tune and the minions won't stop playing so I'm leaving my little corner before it looks like...

A day that will live in infamy

Today, 26 of July 2010-a date which will live in infamy-the United States of America was suddenly and crushingly defeated by starter and substitute forces of the national team of Ghana.

The United States was at an even score with that nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its Captain and its players looking toward the shoot outs in South Africa. Indeed, twenty six minutes after Ghanan futbol players had accomplished scoring a goal in the Royal Bafokeng Stadium, Rustenburg....

Ok so this wasn't really a surprise... nor a second pearl harbor. I've said it from the start the US really needs some solid defensive players. We are most solid in the midfield but especially after a tiring second half of regulation time, our passes were sloppy and we couldn't possess the ball. The tragedy is that Landon Donovan may be too old to play in the next world cup. Today's loss was a heartbreaking defeat, but as previously stated, it wasn't a surprise per se. The entire nation (that watches soccer) had allowed themselves to hope and after the number of upsets [the defending champions and runner ups were sent home in disgrace without qualifying for the round of sixteen] I know that at least I allowed myself to believe that perhaps this could be the year that the US could possibly do better than third place (the only time the US has ever placed at the World Cup was way back in 1930, there was no official game to decide third place, but the US was recognized as third due to performance).

Being eliminated back to back by Ghana has shocked the US soccer environment but perhaps with success in the next world cup the American soccer community can finally achieve some level of respect and expansion in the US. I hope that a new set of icons can rise in the next few years to lead us to something great.

Family Tree

So throughout the year my brother has been following in my footsteps and graduating 5th grade from Concord Elementary school. As a part of this, he had to complete a "Me Book" that has cute little pages like what your favorite memory is or what not. One thing that I had almost forgotten doing was the family tree. Mine of course is 10x better than the one he did.

Really it was exciting for me t see it because I had talked over last summer with a bunch of my cousins about starting an online-based interactive family tree. This is the first step toward that goal. I've decided that it shall be a Flash based applet and I'm going to complete it this summer. Family is the one thing you can't really change so I'd at least like to get this project started and posted as soon as possible. In the end I hope to have contact information and current locations listed so the final version will probably be password protected and will most likely be hosted on my website and not here. But don't fret! I'll be sure I include a somewhat final version here somewhere at some point.

I'd also like to include a version with close family friends of mine or something of the sort. Maybe a friend tree? That'd be interesting, of course that version wouldn't include contact information or anything like that. Unless people wanted it to. Hmmm I'll have to think about that one. Anyways yeah, I'd really like to include that at some point cause if you know me well enough I'll probably have told you that friends are the family that you get to choose. And that's true.

US vs Slovenia

WTF.... I've been reffing 17 and 19 year olds all week and none of them have played as poorly as the US did in the first 20 or so minutes. Slovenia's first goal should never have happened. That was truly sloppy defending, and while I won't name names... Howard was well positioned but being screened by Onyewu there wasn't much for him to do.

The rest of the first half was a decent match, the second goal was scored because the US just wasn't back in place after their near goal. After that things shaped up nicely and the US played a good game.

Beginning of the second half Donovan showed yet again that he is not overrated as a player nor leader for the US. After beating the defenders in the right corner he had no options left but to put the ball on net and he took a beautiful shot that Handanovič could only flinch at. Finally after Bradley's goal where he eliminated any theories of possible nepotism, we have the 85th minute Free kick that set it up outside the box. On the kick we have 3 fouls against the US in the box so I was expecting a Penalty Kick when Edu scored! Then i heard the whistle and thought oh brother this ref doesn't know when to call advantage. But then I realized it was going the other way. What just happened. I made a video so we could review the play a little bit.

I still see nothing, but I guess I'm just wrong. Like I said earlier I've been reffing all weekend, and in Blaine before my game in the tournament up there, we had the play up on a projector and were all trying to figure out what the call was. There were two Slovenians there and they both agreed that there was nothing there. Anyways its a pity that he won't say anything about the call to the public I don't know how much trouble he'd get in if he just admitted that it was a bad call, but it would certainly give me a lot of closure.

Graduation

So I decided I'd revive the whole blog thing. Summer is here, I'm done with school, so there might actually be something to blog about now. The weird thing is that next year I won't be here and I'm not quite sure how to handle that. Anywho as long as we're blogging we should talk about my phone: the SAMSUNG Impression.

Behold














Yeah, it's pretty cool, but the best part about it is that I can play gameboy on my phone now! I figured out how to put a gameboy emulator on the phone so I've been replaying through all of the old favorites like Pokemon Crystal and Legend of Zelda Link's Awakening. I'm bored now though so I think I'm done blogging for the time being but I really wanna make a music video but we'll see... Anywho I'll chronicle some of my adventures on here from time to time so look out for that. I think I'm going to try and post some videos of me playing some cool piano songs on youtube and if I do I'll link them here.

As a side note I'm going to be clearing most of the earlier posts so if you want any of that content, save it whilst it's there.