Hayden’s Blog

I hate History. I avoid History. I do poorly in History.

sloik2004 School

Boy, a lot has happened since my last personal post here.

First of all, I joined the sailing team (somewhat inadvertantly, however). It’s probably a good decision in the long run, however. It gives me something to do, and my parents say it should help me get into colleges who aren’t just looking for someone who hangs out at his computer all day(/night). I’ve only done one regatta so far, which was kind of a bust due to no wind, but I hope to participate in more relatively soon.

Another recent event is a Tribes 2 mod that I’ve started, which I’m calling Krypton Construct. Krypton Construct began as a co-development project with another Tribes 2 player I met, named Netherdark. We named our lovely little Quantium Modification “Xenon Construct”. Netherdark and I had some conflicts, though. He wanted to strip everybody’s credits out of the mod, and I did not. So I broke off, took some stuff from Xenon mod, and started from scratch, using Construction 0.70a as a base for my mod. I named it Krypton Construct, and so far it’s going pretty well. Some features that set it apart from other mods are Permission Spheres, an advanced F2 menu with player preferences and an integrated save system, and Theorem, my lovely little bot who helps me administrate the server. Krypton has climbed the ranks of Construction Mods (if I do say so myself), and is up at the top with ACCM, ECM, and Metallic. I plan to make many more advances, and hopefully help it to become the best construction mod out there, but that is going to take quite a bit of work.

On another note, the Tribes 2 master servers are going to be shut down on November the 1st. That’s no good. Electricutioner, a coding mastermind, is developing a replacement for these vital servers that he says should be running well before November 1st. Once this occurs, we should have full community support, and free accounts for Tribes 2. This means that I can hand out copies of Tribes 2, free of charge, that people can play with no hassle. The popularity of Tribes 2 just might go up as a change… which would be great, because I never want that game to die. Hopefully this plan doesn’t backfire, but I have a high amount of confidence in Electricutioner, I think he can get this done quickly and intelligently.

I’m a Sophomore now. It’s no different than being a Freshman, except for the fact that I’m no longer hanging out in the basement for most of the day. I’m also taking Driver’s Ed this year, and I should be able to get my license right before the start of the Summer. Driving is pretty awesome, and easier than I thought it would be. I’m a bit ahead of the game, as I’m already driving on highways and such (even though we’re not at that point yet in the class room). The only problem I’m foreseeing is that once I get my license, I’ll be without a vehicle. I was considering purchasing a cheapo American-made car, but after talking to some family members and friends, I’ve decided that that’s not a good idea. Instead, I’m planning on getting a car of slightly higher quality. Now, my dad told me about his plans to eventually sell his BMW X5 and buy another newer X5… and a thought occured. If I earned enough money by the time he decides to sell his X5, maybe he’d sell the car to me. That would be the most awesome thing in the world, but based on my research, I’d have to get a pretty darn decent amount of money before he’d sell it to me. Like, at least $10,000.  That will take awhile. I’ll need quite a decent job to make that happen. Hopefully I can find a decent opportunity over the summer… but as of now, this idea is somewhat of a dream. Maybe I can do some freelance coding or some such….

In terms of school, things are a bit… weird. The Krypton Construction mod I’ve mentioned above is what my main focus is while I’m at home.  My main focus probably should be homework, but it isn’t, so my grades are… OK. They’re satisfactory for me, but apparently not my parents. I had a painful discussion with my Mom tonight after she saw my grades, which were all As, a couple Bs, and one B- in World Civ 2. She asked me if I needed to drop this class, which I took as an insult to my intelligence. This wasn’t even an honors course, and she was wondering if I could handle it. I’m still in rage over that whole argument, but I told her that the reason I was getting the poor grade in World Civ is because I hated history, which is the truth. I have always hated history. I think that in most cases it is a completely useless subject. What we ought to be learning instead is “modern politics” or some such. Something that will help kids actually understand the world’s current problems (of which is has plenty of). Doesn’t that sound like a better way to build our future contributers to society? Anywho, hopefully I can shift my focus a little bit more to my homework, because it’s kind of slipping, albiet only in World Civ.

Well, now, that was a long post. That felt good.

sloik2004 Events, Life, Projects, School

My grades are alright… Bs all around. Except for one class, World Civilizations, which I don’t really care for. I’m maintaining a C in that class. Which I find acceptable. My GPA is around 4.1, a number I’m told is pretty good. That’s acceptable to me. My parents seem to think that this is about the worst thing in the world. I get lectures almost every night about how I’m not going to be able to make it into any good schools, and how I have to start working harder to keep my grades up. Dinner has become a time to yell at Hayden because of his poor grades.

These grades are not poor! They are acceptable!

I know of many other kids in school who are happy with Cs in all of their classes. They don’t seem to be having any trouble when you look at them. I’m working plenty hard to maintain my Bs, and if there’s one class in the world that I’m not so good at, so be it. I’m not good at it. A C is acceptable for a class that you’re not good at.
I agree that my studying habits could be improved… but do they need to? I don’t want the kind of lifestyle where school is one’s only focus in life. That’s no fun, and fun is what makes life worth living.

sloik2004 Life, School

It was somewhat embarrassing, and very confusing.

My teacher was giving us a homework assignment that consisted of putting together a comic strip. He pointed out an example on the wall, and I got up to look at it. As I walked toward it, my vision started fading to black around the corners until I couldn’t see at all. This happened very fast. I heard the faint sound of scraping chairs on the ground, and opened my eyes, staring at the floor underneath me. My chest had landed on a chair next to my own desk, I was just kind of slumped on top of it horizontally. It felt like I just woken up from a very long nap. My teacher was leaning over next to me, asking if I was alright. I was feeling no pain, just a very dull numb feeling in parts of my body. He asked what happened, and I took a second to think about it. Then he asked if I had fainted. “I guess,” I said, looking at all of the students just staring at me.

The whole situation was explained to me by one of my classmates. Apparently I just started swaying, and fell right into the chair. My teacher commented that I was only out for maybe two or so seconds.
“If you weren’t unconscious, that would’ve hurt like hell,” said my classmate. Well, good.

So I spent the last ten minutes of class in the nurse’s office, getting my blood pressure checked. It was higher than normal, so I was advised to come and get it tested again tomorrow. I will.

sloik2004 Events, Life, School

School is interesting. Mostly because of my teachers.
Mr. Schuessler, my biology teacher, is a nice guy. He’d probably be toward the top of my “teachers I like” list. He’s got good policies. Some of the more interesting/unusual ones being
1.) You can listen to your iPod in class, but you can’t blame anybody if you miss something.
2.) Late homework can be turned in before Mr. Schuessler leaves for full credit.

Now a few days ago I had a half-completed homework assignment that I’d brought to biology class. It’s one of those “this takes a minute” homework assignments. So Mr. Schuessler was going around checking people’s assignments. When he got to mine, I asked.

If I get it to you by the end of class, could I get credit?

Nope, sorry bud.

Whenever in disbelief, I have the tendency to ask “really?” So I did. I received confirmation that he wasn’t lying. So that kind of made me angry that he didn’t follow one of the policies he declared at the beginning of the year….

My World Civilizations teacher probably ranks toward the top of the “teachers I don’t quite like” list. Earlier this year I had turned in the terms a bit late for one of our units. A few days ago I was the last one out of class. She stopped me, and asked

Hayden, you turned in your terms, right?

Yeah

I responded in a surprised tone, guessing that she had somehow lost them or something.

OK, just wanted to make sure, because you tend to turn them in late.

What? What kind of comment is that? I only turned in my terms late once in the entire year. I walked out of the door and laughed to myself at how offensive she tends to be.

Mrs. Micksch, did you get any complaints this week? OK, because you tend to offend people a lot.

sloik2004 School

Feeling mentally un-stable at the moment… Not the time to be making any important decisions or statements.

World Civilizations Honors is killing me. My mom says I’m avoiding it. She’s right, I am. There’s a project coming up that I’m scared of… This is the worst class I’ve ever had in my life. I really wished I had switched out of it while I had the chance… Life would be so much easier.

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sloik2004 Life, School

Finals,High School,World Civilizations,Grades

Well, I’ve just finished my first set of finals as a freshman, and the grades are in. I went to Edline not a minute ago and was horrified at the first grade that I looked at. Not that I wasn’t expecting what I was being shown, I was expecting that my World Civilizations Honors grade would be terrible. I did a horrible job studying simply because I did not know how how I’d go about preparing.

So after being thoroughly leveled by that sight, I moved on to the other grades, and became happier. I haven’t received my English grade yet, but I had recieved at least an A- in every other subject, increasing my average in every subject excluding World Civilizations. In fact, I did the best in the subject I thought I did the worst in, once again excluding World Civ.

Now that I’ve completed the finals, I have a clean slate (somewhat). This time I plan to kind of make a final study guide as I move through the content. This should solve that World Civ problem, I hope. I’ve always had trouble preparing for World Civ tests, there’s so much covered in so little time. When you begin to study, you realize that you just don’t have enough time to cover all of the content assigned. It’s a horrible feeling, I really wish I hadn’t taken that class. Next year I plan to take a much easier subject… hopefully that will work out. World Civ is the only thing dragging down my year.

sloik2004 Life, School

It’s been way too long since I’ve posted here. I need to do like a weekly posting or something….
So anyway, I’ve started High School. It’s not as different as I thought it would be, but it’s different in aspects I wouldn’t have expected. One thing that’s cool is that we get let out of PE pretty early, which is neat. Usually, we’re assigned a route of some sort (biking, running, etc), and once we complete it, we’re dismissed from class. My PE class is in the afternoon, so I can usually go back to the lunch room, buy some water, cool down, then head off to Biology. So that’s pretty neat. One difference that I did expect is the size of the place, and the amount of people there. I’ve found that it’s easier to adjust to a smaller amount of people than to adjust to a larger amount of people. In fact, I don’t think I’m completely adjusted yet, but I’ll get there. What’s good is that I like all of my teachers. None of them are mean, or too serious, in fact they’re all really good. I’m just glad I didn’t get that “one really mean teacher”.
Homework is definitely a big thing now. I’ve got lots, putting it simply. Usually I can just expect homework for every subject. So far it hasn’t been overwhelming, but sometimes my mind tricks me into thinking it is. It’s weird, I’ll just get really stressed out about how much homework I have, but then get it all done and feel fine. I guess it’s good that the feeling is fake, but I really can’t let that feeling become real. I need to get a system down. I’m just not good at putting aside time for homework. I’d like to get a nicer desk in my room, a good set of speakers, and just have a kind of “study time” where I can get everything done. My parents really encourage me to go to the library to get everything done, but the truth is that I like to get homework done privately, which is why study halls aren’t as effective as they could be. It’s not that they’re bad, it’s just that I like getting things done solo.
I’m holding A minuses in pretty much every subject now, so hopefully I can keep that up. I think that’s a good grade range, a good mix between fun and school. I really don’t want to spend all day doing school work, like I’ve heard stories about. That would suck. Free time is precious to me, which is why I avoid activities as much as possible. I need room to plan out my days as I live them. Perhaps it’s not a good system, but it’s how I work.

So last Saturday my dad and I purchased a PC that will be working as a LAN/WAN server. I’m so excited for this, I’ve been wanting a dedicated network machine for awhile now, and this one is perfect for the job. Once the thing gets here, I’ll probably throw Linux on it, get VNC running, configure Samba, NFS, FTP, and HTTP servers, and let it go. I’m planning to set up a system where my family can access their files from the internet, it just needs to be secure. Our gigabit network also ensures good speeds back and forth from the box. It will mostly serve as a place for videos, music, photos, disk images, and pretty much anything that we want to put on the central HD.
What’s also neat is that this PC has a decent amount of processing power and RAM. This means that not only will I be able to run file servers on it, but I could run game servers as well. I’m probably going to throw up a dedicated Tribes 2 server, because it seems like the Tribes 2 community could use a reliable one, plus Tribes 2 servers generally don’t use up too much CPU.

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sloik2004 Life, Projects, School

Well, the Spanish Final is over. It was horrible. I was so confused… I think I’m not going to do too good on it. I’ve missed so much that my other classmates have not because of Lake Bluff’s different Spanish program from where I moved from. It didn’t make it much better when I heard everyone talking about “how easy” it was after I left… it made me feel bad… it made me feel stupid.
That pretty much ends school, however. Now there’s just that leftover stuff like completing the 8th grade slide show. That’s taking a long time, just because I’m putting a lot of time into zooming effects, putting names on every picture, and having nice transitions between each picture. I really hope I can get it done in time… If I can’t, I guess I can split the work between somebody else…
The grammar final is tomorrow… I’m not too worried about that, although I’m probably going to spend some of my lunch time studying for it. I’m really not looking forward to graduation… it seems like too big of a deal for just graduating 8th grade. I have to wear a suit and tie and everything… which I’m not looking forward to. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever worn a suit and tie in my entire life.
In Social Studies we’re doing this thing where we’ve got to tell a cultural version of Cinderella to a seventh grade class during advisory using any method other than just reading the book. My group is doing Jeopardy, where we summarize the book quickly, one portion assigned to each person, and then ask questions to the class for rewards. We’ll see how that goes, but for right now it’s just another thing that I’m not looking forward to.

I’m so glad that I’m going to be done with all of this soon.

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sloik2004 Life, School

I really cannot wait for Summer. Like I think I said before, I’ve so much that I want to get done. Plus I’ll have time to spend with friends from Hudson. Not much I have to say now… I am pretty afraid of the Spanish final tomorrow, although once I’m done with that it’s pretty much the end of school. I’m guessing this week will pretty much be a hang out week, although I’ve been wrong about those before. The week after this week is fun week, including the 8th grade picnic, the Cub’s game, etc. So yeah, exciting. I think I might change my blog theme… that green one is a little too thin. It’s kind of cool when it makes my articles look long, though.

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sloik2004 Life, School