Saturday, 13th of November, 1999
I participated in the 29th Annual St. Louis high school mathematics contest, Excellence in Mathematics today. It's supposed to be a St. Louis competition, but this year saw the growth of teams coming from Kansas, other areas of Missouri, like Columbia, Jefferson City, and Wright City, and even Edwardsville, Illinois. So, the competition is getting fiercer. Well, our team got first place in the Junior Division, beating the all great and powerful Penbrooke Hill team from Kansas City. Even now that the so-considered star person on our team from last year left, we are still able to have strong positions in this math competition. I'm happy. Invidually, I got 3rd place of all the Juniors in the entire competition. I am very satisfied with my performace on this test. I made no major stupid errors, I got all the questions I answered right. I got one wrong, though, because I had misread the question, but the question actually asked for something harder than I thought, so I doubt I would have answered it right anyways. So, considering my past performance, I am extremely satisfied. So now I have this nice little trophey to add to my collection. What is interesting is that I didn't answer 4 questions on the test, because there is a guessing penalty, so I decided not to gamble with it. I was tempted to mark C for every one, however, when the test was almost over. After looking at the answer key, that would have given me 8 extra points, definately placing me at least 2nd, and probably 1st. Owell, not worth the risk, because the odds are like 55% vs 45%, and there is chance that I could lower my score, so, not worth the risk. I'm happy at my 3rd pace.
Friday, 12th of November, 1999
Wow, we the Ladue Strolling Strings have been invited to play at the Missouri state dinner at the Governor's Mansion on the 8th of December. We played in one 3 years ago, and it was very interesting, and this should be lots of fun.
The Strolling Strings played for a wedding reception at Old Warson Country Club today. Somehow they managed to get the permit to launch a very very nice long fireworks show. Wow, it was beautiful. Talk about having money.
I took a more scenic route to the performance today, and discovered that they have converted this huge park into this gigantic show of Christmas lights. Wow! Very beautiful and impressive.
Thursday, 11th of November, 1999
Here are some funny tech support calls:
tech: please put in a capital x, and a 3 right after that.
caller: is that a capital 3 or small 3?
caller: "..and then i could not restart my computer legally..."
tech: type in zero for me please
caller: the number or letter?
tech: ...zero...
caller: right, but the number or letter?
tech: ...the number please
tech: Does it say pentium there on the screen?
caller: Yes, it says pentium pro PROFESSOR.
caller: It has preformed an illegal preformance.
Wednesday, 10th of November, 1999
I think I have reached a point in my mathematical studies where I've hit kind of a brick wall. For once, now, I can actually take out one major that I would consider in college from my ever-growing list. I don't think I would enjoy a mathematics major. The Calculus class that I take at Washington University is interesting, but a lot of the concepts are very vague and abstract, which is really neat, but I really am not as interested in it as I am other things. So, math is cool until it gets to such abstractions. I think my interest in mathematics have always been in math applications, rather than abstract math itself.
Tuesday, 9th of November, 1999
Argh. There's a math contest this weekend, and it's during the exact same times as the first All Subruban Orchestra rehearsal. I'll have to see if I can miss that rehearsal, because there are tons of other events going on that weekend too causing people having to miss too.
Monday, 8th of November, 1999
Well, first day of the quarter at school. It's interesting, I've decided this school year that I will no longer use grades as a motivating factor for me to do anything in school anymore, and that I will do everything for the educational benefit. And the interesting result, as I look over my grades for this quarter, is that my grades are all higher, higher than before typically.