Sterling

So the Sterling Invitational Quiz was last weekend and since it’s been a week, I figure I should write about it. Several of you have already made several statements about me not posting, so hopefully this will quell any riots that may soon break out.

Sterling is an invitational bible quiz that’s been going on for many many years. I’m not sure exactly how long, but Karl (one of the other adult volunteers at the church I coach at) has been going for 29 years (back to when he was a quizzer). So it’s been going on for a long time. This was the second time I’ve attended. The first time (last year) I was a content judge in room 1. That was pretty fun, but a little stressful since I had to content the final round which consisted of the two best teams. Some of these kids really know their stuff, and you’d be amazed at how much they can say in 30 seconds.

This year I was a stats geak. Since the stats guys have figured out I’m a computer guy and that I know what I’m doing I’ve been sucked into their little group. Basically it consists of making sure all the computers are working since each quiz room has one, collecting stats inbetween rounds (basically you run around with a USB drive), and generating team and individual stats so that we know who goes where once the tournament starts. Generation of the stats is pretty straight forward. A lot of it is done via qmserver (the server application that links to quizmachine), but some of it has to be manually done. Sometime a name is wrong or a team name is wrong, and these things need to be corrected before stats can be verified as correct.

Basically I helped with running around and grabbing stats and fixing computer problems. I also helped generate some of the final team standings. Inbetween all of that I worked on a website for Q2008 which is coming up in July. Q2008 is the national quiz tournament that’s held every year and this year I’m responsible for the website. It’s a bit of an undertaking as they want quite a few things, but during the quiz I was able to work on getting some of the stats pieces working so that people who view the website can see where people or teams rank. It should be a pretty fun project, but it’s just a matter of finding time to work on it. Anyways, I had time to work on it during the day, so I got quite a bit done. Part of that involved talking with Barry (the writer of quizmachine) and figuring out the best way to do things.

I did get to watch some quizzing, though as Sara and Lena have both pointed out I didn’t watch K3 at all. The quizzing that I did watch was mostly in the afternoon (after the tournament seeding had been decided) and K3 didn’t make the tournament (I almost cried). In the morning I was busy doing stats stuff and in the afternoon I was trying to work on the website that I knew I wouldn’t have time work on any other time. I have yet to work on it since then. I probably could have made more of an effort to make sure I watched them, but I didn’t. I think I probably would have made them nervous anyways. :)

The trip itself was very fun. My team from Northside didn’t go (they would have gotten creamed), so I drove with the K3 gang. We played a bunch of Rook on the way there, at the hotel on Friday night and on the way back on Saturday. We also stopped at Culvers (I love Culvers) on the way home, so that was fun. It was a little extra driving as I had to drive to Kankakee to go with the gang instead of going straight west, but hanging out with them was way more fun than driving alone.

If you want to see some pictures from the trip you can go here. You’ll notice from the pictures that there’s no actual evidence that I was even there. Sara didn’t take any pictures either, so it’s doubtful my presence was documented at all.

Naperville Quiz

Yesterday was the February quiz at Naperville. It was a good time, albeit a little frustrating. My kids did OK. They took 11th out of 13 teams. That isn’t fabulous, but Agnes did quiz out without error in the tournament round. I was pretty excited about that. She almost did it in the last round of round robin quizzing, but missed question 20. I told her to take the jump to try it, but she didn’t know it. That was a distant memory when she quizzed out by question 10 in the tournament round. Of course that left LeeAnn sitting by herself for 10 questions, but what are you going to do?

We did have one really bad round. We quizzed New Lenox and Kankakee First in a three team round. Kankakee 1st took first at the quiz and New Lenox took second. So pretty much the entire quiz everyone was prejumping on questions. My girls are new to quizzing this year and they don’t know the material well enough to prejump, so they were kind of left out. I think there might have been two questions where noone jumped right away, but my girls didn’t know the answer, so they didn’t jump. I think we ended with a zero, so that was a little frustrating. Karl tried really hard to get them motivated on the way home. He told them if they studied really hard over the next few months they could get into the top 8 (we’ve never gotten better than 9th). I think they can do it too, but they just need to be motivated about it. Agnes could be really good if she wanted to. She’s only in 8th grade too, so I’ve got some time to work on her. I guess we’ll see how the next few months go.

I also got to quizmaster for a little bit. Scott and Sara had the top 12 quiz off against each other at the end of the day and I got to quizmaster the round. I think they were trying to get them to start thinking about regionals (where the top 6 go to represent our district). Barry had come up with some new rules (you have to prejump or the question is thrown out, you have to get one error, etc.) in order to get them thinking about competing at a higher level. It was a lot of fun. I really like coaching, but I also really like quizmastering, so the fact that I got to do both was pretty awesome.

Oh, I also had a fish eating penguin following me around all day. Even quizzing isn’t safe for me anymore.

It Never Ends

My todo list never ends. It just keeps growing. One thing done, two more to do. I’m never going to get through it all, and everytime I try to relax I’m constantly thinking about all the things I’m not doing. This causes me to either stress out about what I’m not doing or feel guilty that I’m not actually doing it. Either way it’s not a great feeling. Part of my problem is I never say no to anything, and when I do I feel guilty about it. I actually said no to a side project earlier this week (partly because I couldn’t get the project to compile) and mostly because it would have just added more stress to my life. Of course after I declined the project I felt really guilty for saying no. I’m not sure what that is. It’s like I constantly have to say yes to things when someone asks me to do something. It’s one of those weird personality traits that I need to work on. The other part of my problem is there’s just a ton I want to do. I work a lot, and I could work more, but when I’m not working I’m doing all sorts of extracurricular activities. And I love all of them. So yeah, it never ends, and I don’t think it ever will. So where does that leave me? Well, for starters this gets one thing off my list. :)

Where I’ve Been

So I’ve been on Hiatus for 62 days (as noted by the timestamp on Josh’s last and final communique with me). It’s been a long two months, and things don’t appear to be slowing down at all. Things have just been crazy (inside and outside of work). I had one project that was due right before Christmas. We ended up coming in late on it and that pretty much destroyed my Christmas / New Years time. I still did varying things, but I always had this project hanging over my head, so it was a bit of a downer. I also was managing several projects, including one fairly large one. Two huge projects caused lots of late nights. I even pulled one almost all nighter (I went to bed at 7AM, up at 8:30AM). Now both of those projects are pretty much done and several more have popped up. It’s a never ending cycle, which is good for business, but bad for my sanity.

I’ve also had several side projects outside of work, quizzing, german, and trying to hang out with my family. Writing on my blog has always been on the todo list, but the todo list is so long I find it hard to get motivated to do anything on it. Which pretty much sucks, but that’s where it’s at. I think I need a vacation. I’ve pondered taking another side project for an app involving quizzing, which would be fun, but I think it’s probably a bad idea. So many things have slipped through the cracks over the past two months that it would just add to the stress. It pretty much comes down to I need to learn how to say no. I can’t count the number of people I need to call, write, or communicate with. Thank goodness for IM during the day or I’ve have lost track with everyone.

So yeah, that’s where I’ve been. Hopefully now that I’ve done one post more will ensue quickly hereafter. I think my other problem with writing blog posts is I always want to write about everything, and that takes me 45 minute to an hour to come up with this long post. I sit down to start and I just don’t feel like I can spend the time. So maybe I’ll do shorter posts from now on, and just write about what I had for lunch, or about that crazy dream I had last night where I helped blow up my office building (bizarre I tell you).