Yeah, well...errr...yeah, this is still going. Sorry it ran so long, otherwise I would have added on the part about the 10th. Oh well. Just read it anyway.
The next morning, I woke up at some ungodly hour (probably around 6 or so; man, we sure had to leave early) and showered. By the time I got out, my roomies were in the lobby chowing down on some very soggy La Quinta Inn muffins. But hey, they were better than nothing, I guess...but yeah, so after breakfast we all loaded onto that wonderful school bus of hours, checked out of our rooms, and started on our way to UAB to set up our projects and kick major tush.
Well, it turns out that the whole competition was held in a little hallway of the UAB department of education building; man, did it stink. I was thinking more of a gymnasium, with people walking around, viewing posters...but no, it was held in some ghetto hallway of a school building, and our school was just about the only one to show up. So anyway, we started setting up our posterboards and looking spiffy in our nice clothes.
To start the "competition" was a really dumb introduction-type thing, then a woman gave an enormously, tremendously, pain-stakingly long speech about technology in society today, or something...I don't even remember the topic, it was that bad. Then we took some bogus "computer science" test that had more to do with the ethical question of what you should do with a picture you find online than actual computer science problems and techniques (go figure). So that was that.
Finally, the time came for the actual presentation, which, as expected, went like complete bogusness for all involved. Our group went somewhere in the middle, and all in all the presentation was pretty boring. Our PowerPoint was one of the nicest ones, but our speech stank and even I didn't understand what in the world our program was supposed to do. Which is rather ironic, because I took it upon myself to write much of the code. Pretty stupid stuff, for sure.
After the presentation, we came outside back into the "display room" (a.k.a. the ghetto hallway) and waited for our judges to come around and ask us questions (by the way, the judges were two older gentlemen who seemed not to understand anything. Who knows where they get these people.) And waited. And waited. Finally the first guy came by. I'm not sure what medication he was taking, but he asked us questions completely irrelevant to our project. The surface temperature of Venus. Questions of quantum mechanics. Newton's laws of motion. Beats me why, but we just stood there acting stupid.
The other guy came a little bit later, but at least he asked us some things that mattered to our project, instead of random physics and astronomy nonsense. Phew. So anyway, after our little question sessions with the two judges were over, Rico, another group member, and I started heading out of the building on our way to meet a great man named Daniel (not Daniel of Daniel's Site fame) for a bite to eat. For once, things were going in a good direction.
After walking all the way to China (exaggeration, I know; I'm using a bit of hyperbole [ooh, English term; what now!]), we finally arrived at Daniel's doorstep. He lived in a very nice little apartment/house-type building, but when he came down he was wearing nearly nothing; quite disturbing, really. Well, we went to this excellent Thai food place, where Rico shoved some wasabi (spelling?) in my mouth after I asked what "that green stuff" was. I got all the leftovers to eat for dinner that night.
So, after coming back and sitting through a very long and boring awards ceremony, I got one of the top 15 scores on the written test, and my group got second place out of our division for our trashy project. Pretty nice, considering about two weeks later Mrs. Rountree informed me that they're giving us $50 just for second place. That $50 pretty much paid for the trip I'd just been on, though, so I ended up even in net profit. After the awards, we all stuffed onto the bus and came home.
I had to get a ride back to my house after getting some books out of Mrs. Rountree's room, since my parents weren't home and I didn't have a car at the school. Once inside my house, I put the Thai in the fridge (which had been smelling up the bus all the way home), changed clothes, put up all my stuff, and took a nice, peaceful rest in a very quiet (which is rare) house of my own. Then that night I watched Mr. Holland's Opus alone while eating the re-heated Thai food and drinking a beautifully cool Mountain Dew. The movie ended at about 2 (I'd borrowed it from the library), whence I went to sleep. And that was it.
Once again, thanks for showing up at the site to check this story out, and I hope that you have a wonderful day. Soon coming to a website other than this one..."¡March/campaign!" That's all I can say for now, but thanks again for reading this rather long story, and I hope that you have a great day.