A long morning

I woke up pretty early this morning to start studying. I really got a lot done with my American history work, I have been reading the course and taking notes on what we are supposed to do. I need to get around a 90 on the test to get an A for the semester, but I also have some extra credit that I can do. So I have a good chance of getting an A and I am going to try hard to do so.

However I don’t want to focus all my energy in one class because Precalculus is the class that I have the lowest grade in. My current C needs to get up and a lot will depend on how I do on the final. I am going to ask my teacher how close I am to getting a B, because if I do then I will have something like a 3.5 gpa for the semester.

Some Studying

Well tonight I’m going to be studying for a while and I’m not sure if I am going to go to tennis tomorrow. I think I need to spend tomorrow morning preparing for finals, I have a lot to do for American History and Pre-calculus, and I am surprised at what I have to do for American film as well. I’ll certainly be very busy over the next few days and although I would really like to go to tennis tomorrow I don’t think it’s going to happen.

I want to get a little done with spanish and english as well tomorrow, although my test isn’t until thursday. I just want to clear up anything I don’t really have down, so I can do the time consuming memorization work on wednesday. Thinking of all this I really can’t wait until the week is all over and I can just relax.

Tennis Early Tomorrow

The regular tennis schedule resumes tomorrow, 6:30am warm-up and tennis until 10. Everyone enjoyed not having to wake up extremely early but now vacation is officially over and we are getting back to our normal schedule. Finals are this week so I’ll probably not be enjoying the evenings before the tests that much. I think I have a pretty good handle on some of my classes and I have been working this weekend on some Pre-calculus stuff that I need to remember for the test as well as some Spanish stuff. All my spanish review is memorization, so I just need to put the time in for that. Math is more understanding concepts, but also essentially just doing enough problems to memorize what you’re doing. I think my last final is on thursday, when I have Spanish, Marine Science, and British Literature. I may do one of these on friday so I don’t have such a big load of tests in one day and that would give me another night to study.

Too Cold

It was so cold this morning that our coach decided to have us play indoors. But this meant that it was 30-something players to two courts, and so we didn’t get much hitting in. Practice was only about an hour long which was also disappointing. I really hope the weather gets better soon because I haven’t been able to hit much lately and this hour of hitting with a million people on a court isn’t helping.

But we are back in the swing of things, it’s the second day of school and things are getting back to normal here as more people return from vacation. We have finals next week and I’m sure I will be studying a lot this weekend, especially for Pre-Calculus and British Literature. I think those are the two classes that will have the toughest finals, but I have been working a lot in math so I should be ready for the final.

Spanish Presentation

My Spanish Presentation went very well today and my teacher, Mr. Burgos, was pleased. I just used my notecards for guidance, unlike many people who read off them completely. Adept in PowerPoint presentation creation, I am able to make a presentation look sharp because of the small nuances about the program that many people do not know about. I remember being taught how to properly use Powerpoint in 10th grade, as well as Microsoft Word and Excel, and it’s pretty amazing what these programs are capable of. So many people just use them for the simple tasks that they are designed for, but there is much more to them and many ways to quickly create exactly what you want to do.

The days until break are winding down and I am definitely looking forward to break but I think the only thing I am worried about is not being able to play much tennis over break. I will definitely do a lot of cross-training type things, like running and skiing but I don’t want to be too rusty for when I come back.

Five Days Left

Until Winter break. I’m excited, the days are probably starting to go by slower but tonight I have to finish a spanish project, which might take a while. I think I have two tests this week, and the Spanish project, so a reasonable amount of work to finish up before break. This week is an A week meaning I will have three A-days, which isn’t great because I have Pre-calculus on A-days and that is my hardest class.

I don’t think we will be having a test in that class though so the rest of the week will simply be studying new material and not actually getting tested on it. This takes a bit of the stress off of math but I still need to get working on Spanish and history, because we are finishing the semester strong in these two classes. I’m not sure about marine science but I think that we will be doing some work in there. She has mentioned that we will be watching a movie on the last day before break however.

Planet Earth

I bought the video series Planet Earth at Wal-Mart, and have begun watching it. It’s pretty amazing what kind of footage they have come up with, they put an incredible amount of time into this and it really covers an enormous variety of animals. So far I’ve watched the first disk, which takes a look at arctic animals in an episode called “Pole to Pole”, another episode about mountain animals, and a deep ocean episode.

I think so far I like the Deep Ocean episode the best. What we’ve been learning about in Marine Science is some of the deep sea animals survive at ridiculous depths because of the vents on the ocean floor, that heat the water. Without this heat it would be freezing at this depth and inhabitable, but somehow life is able to survive.

I’ve learned that life will come about in places that it can, and animals have only the most primitive thought on their mind… survival. Humans mastered this difficult task, and now have the luxury of thinking about other comforts and entertainments.

Chip Reese Dies at Age 57

Probably one of the more shocking deaths I have ever heard, of simply because I knew so much about him.

http://msn.foxsports.com/other/story/7527824?MSNHPHMA

David “Chip” Reese was considered not only one of, but THE greatest cash game poker player of all-time, and with that, probably the overall best poker player of all-time. He has been playing long before most, and if someone as well-respected as Doyle Brunson can say that David was “the only player who I could never really get a handle on”, then he must have been quite good.

Reese played in the biggest cash games in Las Vegas, the “Big Game” in the Bellagio, stakes as high as $4,000/$8,000 limit, and I have heard of them rising to an unprecedented $100,000/$200,000.

Aside from his unbelievable poker wisdom and knack for the game, I admire him mainly for his disposition. I’ve played a reasonable amount of poker and I must say that it is a game that tests your patience and temper. Right when you think you can’t handle any more awful luck, fate may continue to deal you the worst of hands, and worst results. For someone who plays poker for a living for more than thirty years, and to have someone who has been alongside you for all this time to say,

“I knew him for 35 years, I never saw him get mad or raise his voice”

is more astonishing than any amount of success at the poker table than I have ever heard of.

Keeping your cool and being polite and mature at the table is much harder than it seems, almost daily you can see grown men crying like three-year-olds on ESPN over a game of cards. For this I respect and look up to Chip Reese’s legacy. He’s a man to look up to, regardless to whether you play poker or not.

On a lighter note, I found it humorous at how Doyle Brunson commented on their business together.

“Brunson and Reese eventually became business partners, investing in everything from oil wells and mining to TV stations and racehorses and becoming sports betting consultants.

None of the ventures was successful, Brunson said.

“We went to look for the Titanic. We went to look for Noah’s Ark. We were two of the biggest suckers whenever it came to business, but we both had poker to fall back on,” Brunson said. “Thank God we could play, so we always survived.”"

He was born a poker player, and on Wednesday, died a poker player.

Went to the Lab

In Marine Science today we went to the lab to dissect jellyfish and clams. To be honest it wasn’t that interesting, clams and jellyfish are not extremely fascinating in terms of their bodily organs. The jelly fish aren’t much more than what you would think, a round jelly-like organism with little orange-ish worm-like things inside that I believe are part of their stomach.

The clams don’t have too much going on inside of them but were quite hard to open. The muscles that clamp them together  do not loosen up even when they die, they still fasten the clam together until it is pried open by some outside force.

I think that later on in the year we are going to dissect larger more interesting water creatures, it’s going to be a whole different experience with animals that actually have blood. I’ve been thinking about certain careers having to do with animals and  wildlife and right now I just don’t think that this would fit me right. I’m fascinated by a variety of different things in nature but I think I would rather become a successful business man and go on a private safari to experience African lions in their natural habitat, rather than diligently recording the migration habits of an American snow goose for a five-figure salary.

Current Events Post

Well for a large part of class today I was in the computer lab having trouble getting vscampus working and the technician in there finally figured it out, but we were already halfway through the lesson. I saw that others in the class were doing their current events post on the discussion about the rights of privacy and if the government should be allowed to simply go into our computer files and listen in on our phone calls.

 I think that this is an interesting issue because it is difficult to decide where to draw the line. Of course it should be OK for them to see much of our information to confirm that we are not plotted terrorists, but I think that using this information for anything else should be prohibited. I think a system should be devised, or rules/guidelines set so that once a certain person is determined not a terrorist, or not a potential terrorist, their information be disgarded, or not looked into further. This way people don’t have police and other authorities meddling with their lives and privacy when they really haven’t done anything wrong.

The government should have some means of being able to find terrorists, and if looking at peoples information is deemed necessary, I believe it should be done. However creating problems for innocent people should be absolutely avoided and if the government wants to find terrorists by accessing these databases, they should agree to not use it for anything else besides the original intentions.