Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Invitationals Need Better Awards

WHAT IS IT?



Really it could be many things. A phone? An iPod? A camera? A small computer? A new age sex toy? Well all of those would be correct, well except for the sex toy. All that really matters is the fact that this is the gadget to have. I think that many people will agree that getting one will be the best thing you have ever gotten for only $499. The only downside is that it is only currently available for Cingular users, but I am sure it will be made available for other providers soon enough (I hope). All I know is that if it doesn't work with T-Mobile by the time I graduate, Cingular will have one more customer. Well if you do not know what "it" is by now you should probably go and kill yourself. Well if you chose to read on I guess it won't hurt to tell you, this is Apple's iPhone. For more information visit the official site.

Last weekend I went to help with the Chiles Invitational. From what I saw I would have to say that the competition was a success if you consider all the behind the scenes issues. Kevin, Wanda, and I were in charge of scoring the Statistics and Calculus team test. Things did not start off on a good note since the answers for number one on the Statistics test were clearly wrong. It claimed that the mean of 99, 95, 45, 100 ,and other numbers under 150, was 613. WTF!?! This was the only real problem we had with the Statistics test. On the calculus test I found two mistakes in the solutions. One I fixed during team round, the other I decided to let the dispute center handle (sorry but at the time I didn't think you would be so busy). Things started to become very hectic during the scoring process. Some printers, computers, and copy machines just choose the worst possible time to up and die. This on top of the large piles of disputes contributed to the late start of the awards ceremony. I really wish I could have seen what went on in the auditorium during that one hour period. When we finally did start there were some more problems, but they were nothing major. To begin with the power point used to display the names of the individual and school trophy winners was not set up to fit on the screen so some letters were not visible. This led to some funny names and misspellings, such as Errfield Beach (Deerfield Beach) and Veepstak (Sweepstakes). However the best part was when Kavita had to identify one of the winners by their ID number. Haha "will inmate number 2748351 please claim their trophy". Now the worst part was the trophies. You think by now Steve would now that kids don't care how much the trophy cost or how nice it is, all that matter is how big it is. Yes SIZE MATTERS!!! I have noticed a sad trend in trophies at invitationals and I hope that it will end in Gainesville, or before. The glass sweepstakes trophies were a nice idea but really this is not Hawaii or any place nice so don't try to skimp out of getting HUGE sweepstakes trophies.

More iPhone.


Funny computer virus.

1 comment:

Clara said...

trophies. ughhh.

a part of me died when i saw them. the other part of me died when i had to see the poor little kids' faces when i handed them out.