2005 Oregon State Championships, Day Three

Today was the last day of the State Championships. I swam the last leg of the 400 meter freestyle relay, the 100 meter free, the 200 meter free, and the first leg of our 200 freestyle relay. Our 400 free relay didn't do very well; we got the same time as before, 4:26. We still got 5th place though, and we beat Corvallis. I think my split was 1:03.84. Andrew got 1:02, which is really fast. In the 100 free, I got 1:03.17, making a 14 year-old Sectional time by .42 second. I got 8th place. Kate was happy, and she said I held my stroke together for the first 30 meters. Right at about the 30 meter point is where I swallowed water, so that's probably why my stroke started falling apart. The 200 fly was the event I've been waiting for. I got 2.41.53, which is a nine second improvement from my old time! But I have no idea how old my old time is, because I haven't swam a legal 200 fly in so long. A 14 year-old Sectional time is 2:47, so I got it by six seconds. Kate said it was good, but I went out just a little too fast, because I really died at the end. I was in Lane 4, and there was a Thunderbolt in Lane 5 right next to me. I really wanted to beat him just for the sake of beating a Thunderbolt. I was in front for the first 150, but then I swallowed a huge amount of water, and I had to breathe every stroke from then on, which made my arms die. I got 9th. Kate let me go first in in our 200 free relay so I could have another chance to try and get a faster time in my 50 free. My split was 23.67, and our time overall was 2:03.90 -- we beat our time by three seconds, and I think we got 9th. Unless our team moved up in the relays, we got 5th out of 53 teams. We even beat Corvallis, which has twice as many swimmers as we do. I think that's the highest the Bearcats have every gotten, at least as long as I've been on the team. Here are some pictures of me the photographers got yesterday at the beginning of the 100 fly and in the 200 free, respectively: Next week, I have the OBRA state championship cycling time trial. I'll have to train for it for a few days, so my dad made a deal with Kate: he'll destroy me in the mornings, then I'll recover in the evenings swimming with the Preps. The week after that, we'll go to Morton for Loggers Jubilee, and the week after that we're going to France. We'll be coming back September 30th, but I'll only miss about two weeks of swimming because of the break.

2005 Oregon State Championships, Day Two

I swam the 200 meter free, 50 meter free, and the freestyle leg of our 200 medley relay today. I got 2:19 in the 200 free, and my old time was 2:21, but Kate was mad because I negative split it. I was racing Brian Cha, and he beat me by 2 hundredths of a second! We're always annoyingly close. He says he got a 2:17 for his split in the relay though. I was two seconds off a 14 year-old Sectional time, and I got 11th place. Oh well, at least I beat my time. In the 50 free, I got 28.81, from a 29.18 (it might be 29.10; the heat sheet said 29.18, but I'm not sure if that's right). I got a 14 year-old Sectional time by 28 hundredths of a second and I was 5 hundredths of a second off Kyle's time! I also tied another guy. I had the 8th fastest time, but I got 9th, because Brian Cha and someone else tied in 7th just two tenths of a second ahead of me. Our relay didn't do very good -- we got 2:28. Kate was really happy with my split for the 50 free leg though; I got 29.9 from a push. Our team is in 6th so far. We have one more day to move up within the top three.

2005 Oregon State Championships, Day One

My events today were the 400 meter free, 100 meter fly, and we had a 400 medly relay. In the 400 free, I got 4:56.80, which is a seven second improvement from my old time, and one second off a 14 year-old Sectional time. Adam was racing in the lane right next to me, and I beat him by just 18 hundredths of a second! As Adam's dad said, "you can't even blink that fast". I took 11th place. In the 100 fly, I got 1:11.56 -- four seconds faster than my old time (and two seconds under my goal). It was also two tenths of a second off a 14 year-old sectional time. I got 7th, so I would have made finals, had there been any! Our 400 medley relay got 5:07.9. Adam was swimming backstroke, Nathanial was doing breast, Andrew was doing fly, and I was doing free. We were just trying to beat T-Hills, and we probably would have if it had been just a little longer. Tomorrow I'm swimming the 200 and 50 free. My best events. My warmup before the 100 fly. Behind the blocks right before my event. My dive for the 100 fly.

State Champs

Last night, everyone went to Corrine's house after evening practice to make state team t-shirts. The shirts were already made; we just decorated them with our names and whatever we wanted to put on them. I left mine at Corrine's house because it wasn't dry yet, and she's going to bring it to State tomorrow. She said she might put something on the back (ahh!). Today is the first day of State, but just the milers are swimming today. Warmups start at 7:15am tomorrow, and it's in Eugene so we'll have to leave at 5:30! I'll be swimming the 400 free and the 100 fly. I'm going to try and get a 1:13 in my 100 fly, and 5:00 in my 400 free (I should have had 5:00 in the 400 a long time ago, but I've been having problems lately). I'll post how I do tomorrow after the meet.

Auctions, Swimming and Web Design

Today was the first annual Bearcat Senior Auction. Meaning that we, the seniors, have been auctioned off as slaves! Adam and I are doing yardwork, garage work, and car detail (Andrew's doing some of it too). I'm also designing a small website for someone. The auction was to raise money for our senior jackets 'n' stuff, and it took place in the classroom at our pool, with Kate as the auctioneer. -- The 2005 OSI 11&Over State Championships are coming up in two days, and I can't wait! I'm not swimming on Thursday though, so for me it's three days. I'm swimming the 50 free, 100 free, 200 free, 400 free, 100 fly and 200 fly. Hey, I'm not a variety person. But the bad thing is, they had to change a few of the rules because so many people are entered: • There will be no finals. • Only one time trial per person. • There will be two people per lane for the mile. The last one doesn't matter to me all that much, since I'm not swimming the mile, but no finals? And one time trial per person?? If it's a problem of too many people entering, they should just make the qualifying times faster. At least it will be at a good pool, from what I hear. (The Amazon pool.) -- On my dad's site, well, it looked OK, but the coding was really ugly, and there was a bug where the last link (Sitemap) in the nav section showed up with less space than the other links in IE, but more space in other browsers. So Uncle Rick helped me solve the problem and clean up the code. It shows up better in other browsers now, and I learned a lot.

Boating + Relatives + Software Company

I went boating at Detroit Lake today with Adam, his dad, and Kyle. It was really fun -- but we had a few problems: we only brought two innertubes, and on our first round (with Adam and me), the corner of my tube somehow got under Adam's, then I hit a small wave, and I flipped. Nothing bad about that, except that when I flipped, the front of the tube got torn off, and the whole face was ripped up. So we had to go one at a time after that. Adam and I tried both riding on one tube at the same time, and it was... insane. We had to bail a few times; some of the waves were wicked. Kyle was riding sitting in the tube, and he was doing pretty well, but then he hit one huge wave while he was turning, and he flipped off the back of the tube. He kicked himself in the face with his knee, but he was OK. 'Twas the Sight of the Day. After awhile, the boat started having gas leak problems, and the motor kept dying. But the water was starting to get choppy at that time anyway, so it didn't matter too much, because we left a few minutes later. Uncle Rick is here today; he arrived yesterday afternoon. He's been helping me with some web design problems I'm having. Tito Carlo and Ahn are here too, but they're not spending the night. About the software company, well, Joseph thinks I'm insane, because I'm insisting that we make our software OS X themed, we write it on OS X-equipped computers, and we make it only for OS X. Which I am. I'm being very picky. ...But Delicious Library is only for OS X, and look how good it turned out!

Software Company Names

Well, Joseph and I are having trouble thinking of a name for our future software company (yes, we're going to start a software company). Somehow, all the names we think of happen to have the word "brain" in them... I like the name "Delicious Monster", but as you probably know, that would be quite impossible. Oh well, we still lots-o-time.

IE: The Worst Browser In Existence

My respect for IE, which was already at about -200%, has gone down even lower. I've "fixed" the problem with the transparent drop shadow of the book cover image on Tom Quinn's website. Actually, I didn't do anything. I refreshed the page in IE for the 50th time. That's it. Apparently (by default), IE uses its cache to "load" any and all data it's asked to, and refreshes the cache about once a week. Well, when I refreshed the page a few days ago, that must have been The Day IE Refreshes Its Cache. The image worked perfectly (of course, that was because it had The Javascript applied to it), with no modifications. So please, please get an intelligent browser.

Kate's First Annual Breakfast Club

Well, we all thought we were going to have a really hard practice today, and we've been dreading it for days. Instead, we came to Kate's First Annual Breakfast Club! The neighbors must have been wondering why Kate was having a party at 6:00 in the morning. Kirk (our dryland coach) came too, and he ran us up a huge hill that was probably 500 feet high, and really steep, then he left after he got his breakfast. Since the breakfast was supposed to be a surprise, I didn't know about it till we got to Kate's house and saw Kirk driving around. I feel asleep in the car as soon as we left the garage, so I didn't notice that we were taking a different way to "practice". There were pancakes, bacon, sausages, and eggs. I didn't eat much, because I had already had big breakfast before we left, thinking it would be a hard practice. We also watched a movie, which was (you guessed it) The Breakfast Club.

A Web Designer's Arch Enemy

The one thing that prevents me from putting perfect graphics on my websites is Internet Explorer, and yet 90% of the population use it. If it would just support PNG images, everything would be fine. Except for its bad HTML and CSS parsing. And its lack of JPG2000 support. And its slow connection speed. In fact, everything about it is bad. Even Mac IE 5.5 works better than MSIE 6. Microsoft promised to implement native PNG support over four years ago. But what do you expect from an operating system written entirely in C++? There is a petition going around requesting the MSIE development team to include native PNG support. If everyone downloaded Firefox or some other decent browser (that DOESN'T include Netscape), there would be no more problems. But no, people just have to use the Windows default browser. I haven't been able to add a drop shadow with alpha transparency to the book cover image on Tom Quinn's site because it would have to be PNG. I found a javascript that detects what browser you're using, and if it's MSIE, it deals out the PNGs as divs with a special script that forces IE to display alpha transparency. It worked on some smaller PNGs I tried, but it doesn't work with the larger book cover image for some reason, and I can't figure out why. The image just doesn't show up at all. There's nothing corrupted about it, and I made sure Photoshop isn't its default opener (IE doesn't like images that have Photoshop as the default opener). If anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them in the comments. Hopefully, Microsoft will realize that IE doesn't conform to web standards, and they'll take the time to fix it (preferably within the next 10 years).

Trip to the Beach + Back from Spain + Light-up Keyboard

Today we went to the beach. Not just any beach -- Bob Straub beach. It's near Pacific City. And this time, I made a sand fortress. It had a huge half-circle wall around it to protect it from the waves, a mote to slow down incoming water, a drainage ditch, a lake to drain the water into, and a pyramid-shaped two-level building in the middle. At 9:30pm, we went to pick up my dad at the Hertz rental place. He just got back from Spain. We're still driving; I'm writing this in the car. This is the first time I've gotten to use my light-up keyboard in a Dark Vehicle. It works really well. Sorry I haven't been able to blog for a few days -- I've been really busy learning C++ and Objective-C/Cocoa.

New PowerBook G4

My new PowerBook G4 15" arrived today! 1.5GHz and 512 MB DDR SDRAM -- way faster than my other 500MHz Titanium. It also has an 80GB hard drive, so I don't have to worry about running out of space for pictures when we go to France. iPhoto and Delicious Library are really fast on this. The keyboard lights up when it senses low light conditions, and the screen automatically adjusts its brightness depending on the ambient light. It also has built-in Bluetooth. And the two-finger scrolling feature on the trackpad is really nice.

La Quinta

Well, I'm at La Quinta hotel in Portland, 2 miles from PDX. My mom just got back from New Jersey last night, and this morning my dad left for Spain! Here's what his website says about it: June 8, 2005: I've been invited to attend the "Semana Negra Festival" in Gijon, Spain, on July 12 to 18, to launch the Spanish edition of "The Last King." This is one of Europe's biggest book fairs, with some 2 million visitors expected to attend. If you plan to be there, look me up. We're coming home sometime today. And I'll have to swim with the Senior 2's tonight and Sr. Preps for the rest of the week, because I can't make it any morning practices until my dad gets back cause Isa and Marie can't stay home alone.

Swim Meet in Eugene, Day 2

I had to get up at 5:00 today (actually, I got up at 5:35 because I didn't have the speaker plugged in properly on my iPod), even though the afternoon session wasn't supposed to start until 12:45, because I had to be dropped off at Andrew's house when my dad took Isa to the morning session (I was riding with Andrew), at 6:20. My mom is in New Jersey for a wedding right now, so that's why she wouldn't be able to take me to Andrew's house later. I swam the 200 free, 50 free, and 400 free today. In the 200 free, I got 2:22, which is a Sectional time by two seconds, but still a second off my best time. Kate said I need to go faster on my third 50. I got 29.49 in my 50 free. 39 hundredths of a second off my best time. It's bothering me that I'm 1 100th of a second off a 14 year-old Sectional time, and I just can't get it. Oh well, I'll get it at State. In the 400 free, I got 5:03.91, which is just under a second faster than my old time. I asked Kate how I should swim this, and she said to do the first 200 hard and the second 200 sprint. I did, but something happened on the second 100, I think I got scared or something, and I started losing speed in the middle. My splits were 1:11, 1:16, 1:19, and 1:15 (or something). Yikes. I was just having trouble at this meet. Plus, it's a bad pool. But hey, I don't think anyone else got DQ'd in two events on one day, so maybe I set a record! I can't wait till State! On another note, my new 15" PowerBook G4 1.5GHz that I ordered shipped today!

Swim Meet in Eugene, Day 1

Ahh! I got disqualified in two out of three events today! The meet was at Echo Hollow pool, and I swam the 200 back, 200 fly, and 800 free. I got DQ'd in the 200 backstroke for a non-continuous stroke on my first flipturn -- and it wasn't my fault. The flags were positioned inaccurately! Tori (Grimwood), got disqualified for the same thing, same wall, same turn. And Adam would have, but he just started his turn earlier so he wouldn't get DQ'ed. But I knocked eight seconds off my old time, and I got 2:51. Kate was really happy with my time, and she said that's the best she's ever seen me swim it. I got 2:51 in the 200 fly, and I got DQ'ed because my right leg was higher than my left leg in my kick! Kate liked my splits, although I was a second off my best time. I went out too fast, because everyone around me went out way too fast, and they (all but two of them), died at the end. I didn't see the the other peoples' times, but I saw Luke Pebley was 10 seconds off his best time (he got 3:02), even though he was more than a body-length ahead of me on the first 50. In the 800 free, I just did plain bad. I was nine seconds off my best time, with 10:37. I don't know what happened, but Adam (who was in the same heat as me) got 10:34, which is 18 seconds off his best time. I went out way too slow. Kate said that next time, she wants me to do it backwards, and start out sprinting and die right then instead of saving my energy. I have a problem in long distance where I always go out way too slow, and then end up sprinting at the end, but getting a bad time. I'm swimming all freestyle at the meet tomorrow, and I have to get up at 5:00 to go to Andrew's house at 6:15am (I'll explain later; I'm going to bed).

Thomas Quinn Books

I finished Thomas Quinn's site. His book, The Lion of St. Mark, came out on July 1st, and we wanted to have the site finished by then, but there were just a few delays. He was going to pay me $350, but he insisted that it was $400 and he gave me a $100 tip because he liked the site so much, so he ended up paying me $500. And now I can buy my new PowerBook G4!

Into the Mountains + Fireworks

I went with Eric and his dad on another Jeep adventure today, and this time it was near Thomas Creek. It was a lot dryer this time, and we were gone longer -- we ended up going over 100 miles. We got lost, even though we had three GPS's with us, because the Garmin iQue kept telling us to take some road, which eventually ended with a locked gate (all the gates were provided by Weyerhaeuser). We probably wouldn't have gotten lost if we had followed the track we came from on my GPS, but that's not what we did (it wouldn't have been an adventure if we had!). If you look at our track on the GPS, you can see all the times we turned around because of locked gates. Anyway, we got up to 3600 feet into the mountains, and there were some really cool views. There was also a really good GPS signal up there. We could see some town, I think it might have been Lyons. Here are some of the pictures: -- All the neighbors came over for our fireworks today, and they brought some too, so we had a lot. We were throwing the smaller ones in the lake after lighting them to make the water light up green and red. If you wonder why one of the fireworks is tilted in the pictures, that's because, uh... we felt like it!

Swim practice + Jeep excursion

We had a 3 hour swim practice in Corvallis today, and I think we swam 6900 meters (it wasn't focused on distance). One of our main sets was 6x50's drill @ 1:10, 3x200's @ 4:00, two times. You have to do one stroke for each time through. It wasn't too hard. The thing is, I was going to do fly for the first set and free for the second one, but after the first set, Kate liked my fly so much that she made me do fly again, so I ended up doing six 200's fly. But she said that was the best 200 fly she ever saw me do. You're probably wondering about the Jeep excursion now. Well, here it is: Eric and I went on a little Jeep ride with his dad around Silver Creek today. We were gone about three and a half hours. When we got onto the trail, we drove through every puddle and mud pit that was on our way (and even some that weren't on our way), and we got covered with mud, because we had the roof and windows down. I don't think there was a single road with a sign that said "no cars", "road ends", or "falling trees" that we didn't try to go through anyway. According to the GPS's, the highest we got in the mountains was about 2300 feet above sea level. Near the end, we wanted to go through one last puddle before hitting the road, so he floored it through the puddle and water came down on us from all directions, including above! The 3 GPS's that we brought were covered with water, our seats had puddles in them, our food was soaked, and we looked like we had just gotten out of a (muddy) bath. Luckily, two of the GPS's were waterproof. Mine is a Magellan eXplorist 300, Eric's is a Garmin Rhino, and Eric's dad's is a Garmin iQue. Sorry I don't have any pictures -- we forgot to bring the camera!

Shirts in Pool

We all wore our shirts in the pool today. Erica didn't bring a suit to practice because she couldn't find it, so Kate was going to make her swim in her clothes, which means everyone else has to have "an article of clothing" on too. So we used our shirts. Mine acted like a parachute, Adam's was a parachute, and Andrew's was made for a 5 year old. Andrew, Sammi and I had to do a 2000 for time today, because we didn't get a best time when we swam it two days ago. I got 24:25, which is 18 seconds faster than my best time, and Andrew got 24:34, which is 3 seconds faster than his old time. Sammi got pulled out by Kate about halfway through because she thought she wasn't doing well enough. We have swim practice in Corvallis from 7:00 to 10:00am tomorrow. Three hours -- I'm scared.