The Countdown Begins...

Only 24 days and counting until summer...

Wow, this has been a pretty busy week. I don't think there was one day I got home before 8. It really starts picking up this time of year. Finals are fast approaching, but at least the year is almost over, as short as it seemed (to me at least).

There are a few New York pics up on my Flickr, but I have a 20mb upload limit, so I could only upload a few. If I'm feeling ambitious I'll get some more up on another host soon.

Last weekend I went to the LA Times Festival of Books with my sister and her husband. It was huge and pretty cool, but to really get anything out of it you need a plan (which we, of course, didn't have). I even got to meet Tim Meadows from SNL and *shivers*...Dr. Laura. As scary as that was, it was still kinda cool.

A guy in Florida is currently living with no heart. Pretty freaky, but true. It's even weirder that he's stable, alert, and talking.

It was bound to happen sometime...a bum got stuck in a garbage truck. Well, at least he wasn't arrested for randomly licking people's feet.

Apparently Steven Colbert was quite the Bush-bashing hit at the White House Correspondents' dinner last week. I still haven't had time to watch the whole thing, but Colbert, as always, is pretty hilarious.

That's all for now...I'm off to play with Google's new SketchUp.

Back from the Big Apple

New York was awesome! We had a great time. We did so much that it's hard to sum it up in one post, but I'll give it a try:

Day 1

Despite the 3am start, everybody seemed awake. We rode down to LAX, and took off in time. It was a pretty long flight, and painful descent, but we arrived about 4 in the afternoon. From there we went straight to Manhattan, ate some Papaya Dogs, and checked out the Empire State Building...the view is pretty awesome.

Day 2
We got an early start (after Robbie's 45 minute shower) and saw Ellis Island, Statue of Liberty and walked around the other major parts of NY (Wall street, Ground Zero, etc). We then went for a backstage tour of the State Theater in Lincoln Center and saw Don Giovanni...a very slumberous yet cool opera. Later that night (or the next morning) we were driving back around 2am and Mom (our bus driver Harriet) decided to stop for food. Harriet was by far the best and coolest bus driver I've ever had...not to mention that woman could drive New York style.

Day 3
We left early for Riverside Church to play at the festival. Symphonic band could have done better but we still got a silver so that's cool. Wind Ensemble kicked some butt, and we got a Gold 1st place, and an invite to Boston for next year...Boston Invitational, here we come! Percussion also did really good getting a gold. After that was the "dinner cruise" which was...interesting to say the least.

Day 4
It was pouring rain all day, but we still left early for Rockefeller Center and the other stuff around there. Since it was raining so hard, we had to make a stop at the hotel for a change, skipping Central Park. Later that afternoon we saw Drumstruck, which was cool...and loud. From there we had a MEGA sandwich at the Carnegie Deli and went to Time Square for a few hours before returning to the hotel.

Day 5

Despite the fact it was still pouring rain we left early. Rain or shine I wasn't missing the Today Show. At 9am, I made my national TV debut for a whole 3 seconds of fame. Despite the rain, it was really cool. If I ever get a hold of a copy, I'll be sure to post it. After that we made up for lost time the day before and went to Central Park for a while...it was really nice to see another side of NY. Then it was all over...to the airport, the flight to LAX, crashing once I got home, and STAR testing the next day.

All of us had an awesome time...NY 2006 was truly an unforgettable trip. More pics coming soon.

Off to New York!

New York...here we come!

I'll update when we get back on Tuesday...if your not going, see you then!

All State Music

A while back I promised I'd post some of the music I played at All State. The CD came a few days ago, and I finally got it online, so here you go:

1. George Washington Bridge- A long, very dissonant William Shuman piece.
2. Contre Qui Rose- Another Morton Lauridsen (remember O Magnum Mysterium?). Uses the same harmonics, which I personally think sound really beautiful.
3. Fanfare- The first of 4 movements we played from Shafer Mahoney's symphony for band.
4. Blue- The second movement...there's a lot of nice blues chords.
5. Clang- The "clanging" third movement.
6. March- A very Copland sounding finale to our part of the concert.

Also, there was a neat piece the middle band played that I liked. It's by a guy out of LA named John Mackey. It's really cool...check out the Redline Tango.

Happy Easter!

I hope everybody had a great Easter.

Only 3 days until New York. I'm really looking forward to it...I bet we'll have a blast. I'll try to update before we leave.

The CD from All State arrived in the mail. I want to post some of it here, except I need to find a free reliable host for it, which is proving to be a challenge. I'll play with it some more and hopefully have some of the music posted soon.

Matt is home and well as of Tuesday. The little tyke is looking good (even though I still haven't seen him in person...which is quite frustrating). Pending parental permission, I might post some updated pics soon.

Since the RIAA obviously has the intent of making everybody's life miserable, why don't they go after George Bush? Here is his iPod showing songs from the Beatles. Since no Beatles songs have been licensed on iTunes yet, they must have been ripped from a CD, which according the RIAA said was "illegal" to a federal agency last February.

We've seen Star Wars in ASCII, now it's time for the Incredibles. Pretty awesome...I just dream of having that much free time.

Lastly, I want to say that my grandma passed away to join God and her husband in heaven yesterday afternoon. She was a wonderful woman who lived a full and great life. I really admired her ever-present witty ability to make anybody smile. I love you Grandma Dubs... you will be greatly missed.

Good and Bad News

The good news is that there's only 9 weeks of school left. The bad news is that there's sill 9 weeks of school left. But, hey, only 2 weeks until New York. I'm really looking forward to that...It should be a lot of fun. I'll try to post an intinerary when we get one, but we're doing most of the standard NY stuff. Although it's crammed in to 4 days, it should still be really good.

One thing I'm really looking forward to is visiting the Today Show. I've always wanted to, and it will be especially neat to see Katie Couric on one of her last appearances. It's too bad that she's leaving...although I wish her the best for her new ventures, it is still kind of sad.

Baseball season is now in full swing (sorry...couldn't resist). Our Dodgers are looking halfway-decent so far despite the many new faces (practically a new team). Hopefully this will be a good season...much unlike the last.

Check out this video. Kinda creepy. Real or not??? You decide.

Who Wants to be an Idiot?! Uh...I meant Millionaire. Well, "idiot" fits better in this video. Pretty funny. Just FYI jumping backwards a bit, Meredith Vieira (the host) is apparently supposed to take Katie's place on Today.

That's all for now...I'll update later when my new camera arrives.

It's over already?

Urg.

Back to school tomorrow. That break went way too fast.

I spent most of my break either in a car or sitting doing nothing. It was nice to loaf for a week. I went up to Vegas on Wednesday and saw Andi and Karl who are doing pretty good, and Matt who's doing a lot better. With luck he'll be home soon.

On Saturday I went down to Tesoro High School (some really rich school) with Joe Walker for the State Science Olympiad. Although they didn't do the best, it was still a lot of fun. Ben, Jamie, Emily and I all got the wonderful job of standing in the rain and helping out with Storm the Castle (sort of a catapult thing) whilst dodging flying golf balls. Besides the cold and rain there was lots of free food, so that combined with all the other good stuff made for a fun day.

Google Earth played a little April Fools joke. Apparently there really are aliens at Area 51.

Speaking of April Fools, here's the list of the top 100 April Fools gags of all time. Some a tad more disturbing than others.

This little puzzle thing is pretty awesome. It's one of those things where you come up with a number, it tells you to do stuff to it, and then it guesses the right number, except this one is way more complex. Pretty cool find...thanks for the link, Tani.

That's all for now...I need to go finish up some last minute spring break HW.

Spring Break

What a wild spring break I'm having:
I'm sitting here watching MSNBC, eating cookies, and recompiling my music library.
I need to get out more.

After three long months without a break, spring is finally here. I actually survived the final week which was sure enough full of tests and presentations. So, here I sit, enjoying my break doing absolutely nothing. Good times.

Tomorrow I'm heading off to Vegas to see Andi, Karl, and Matt. Matt is doing a lot better after a few problems over the weekend, but all should be good. There’s a few new pics up on my Flickr, for anybody interested.

This is pretty fun. You chose 10 notes on a piano, and every time the software encounters the number of the note you picked going through pi, it will play a note on the piano corresponding to that number as it progresses though pi. Kind of confusing, but just try it.

Check out these Lego stadiums...pretty awesome.

In the future you won't have to choose which soda you want, it will all be programmable. At least that's this guy's idea. Pretty cool concept.

Finally, the classic Chinese takeout prank. It's been around for a while, but still funnier every time. Take a listen, if you haven’t heard it before.

That's about it. If I get bored enough, I'll update again soon.

Barstow: 29 Miles

I’m writing on the way home from Vegas, so I’ll probably post it when I get home in a few hours, which won’t matter too much for you, because I’ll be home by the time you are reading this anyway. I know…this whole time lapse post thing is beyond me too.

I have to admit…this was a pretty awesome week. On Wednesday I became an uncle. Karl and Andi had Matt a few weeks early, but all is good. We left for Vegas right after Solo/Ensemble on Saturday to see him. Apparently I’m not of close enough relation to him so I couldn’t see him because he’s in the NICU (I just sat in some waiting room and watched some Jackie Chan movie…but it’s all good), but it was still pretty cool.

Solo/Ensemble was a success. Even though I thought I could have done better (I can see half of you scowling at me now), I walked away with a superior and two CP’s. I even sight-read a duet half-way successfully for somebody. Despite the intonation issues on my solo CP, the day was a lot of fun. I helped out, ran music, and networked with judges, not to mention playing, all day, so it was a busy one.

I’m sitting in a cramped car right now, so finding links is kinda hard. Sorry...check back next week.

Welp, I think I’m gonna stare out the window at the desert until I fall asleep.

I'm an Uncle!

At 7:18 Wednesday morning, Matthew Crane Stutelberg entered into this world.

Happy Birthday, Matt!

Click Here for Pics!

As Winter was Just Beginning...

Wait...wasn't that supposed to be 3 months ago?

I guess Phil got it right this year...this is one of the better storms to hit around here this late in the year. It was actually real snow. It actually snowed. How awesome is that?

A little edit on last Sunday's post-
Buffy is actually coming home this week. Tomorrow, to be exact. It'll be nice to actually be able to play for a change. I'm getting tired of this playing on plastic stuff. Its good I'm getting it back...Solo/Ensemble is next Sat, and I kinda need to start practicing.

Not too much else new in my world. I got new glasses/contacts, so I can actually see now. It's quite nice not being blind, to tell you the truth. I'm now up to 20/300, and getting worse by the minute.

Google hired some 15 year old kid as a manager just from reading his blog. Now, why can't that be me? Oh, I need to know JavaScript and AJAX...that's right.

In case you ever get the urge to search Pi for your phone number (or whatever) here you go. Another great timewaster. The string "916(my cell #)" was found at position 2,967,495 counting from the first digit after the decimal point. Just in case you happened to be wondering.

Well, that’s about it for now. I'll best be off to start my search for asteroid impacts on Google Earth.

Snow!

Buffy's Coming Home!

I don't think I even mentioned it before, but my R-13 (my really good clarinet), named Buffy, is down in LA being repaired for a hairline crack. The whole crack thing sucks; it went through two tone holes (that's twice the price), but it didn’t go through to the bore, so that’s good. With luck he'll be coming home tomorrow, (almost) as good as new.

Wow...this was a busy week, but nonetheless a good one as well. Band/Orchestra festival went pretty superiorly. Symphonic got a superior on both the performance and sight-reading, and Wind Ensemble got a high superior on the performance, but we got a really funky sight-reading piece and everybody kinda fell apart, so we got an excellent.

Yesterday I went down to Cal-Poly Pomona with Joe Walker for Science Olympiad. It was a lot of fun catching up with everybody and seeing what the team has become since The Dynasty. We got to run Bottle Rockets (since apparently nobody else knew how), and got a free lunch (definitely one of the highlights). I had a great time (despite the fact I was getting sicker by the minute and ready to pass out a few times), and will definitely go again.

Can you really die from laughter? I guess so.

If you're ever planning on robbing a convenience store, just make sure this guy isn't behind the counter. Pretty funny to watch him describe it.

Finally, take a look at this. You have to look and listen very carefully and it takes a little while, but it's worth it. Thanks for the link, Karl.

I'm pretty dang sick, so I think I'll switch on the Oscars and fall asleep.

Hitting the Big Time

As a few of you know, myself, David, and Erin were featured in a segment on AV3 Thursday night. That's right folks...I was on the Channel 3 News. Yep, I'm just about a celebrity along with Mitchell Chase, "'You found a friend' Bob Montague", and the few other poor souls at Channel 3.

The segment looked like something similar to a home movie with the cut off heads and such, but, hey, it was local news. I wasn't clean-cut this time, but good 'ol Bob called us "prodigies," so that’ll suffice, I guess. It gave you that hokey small town wanabe news feeling, at which AV3 never seems to let you down. It was still nice, nonetheless.

My 16th birthday was on Wednesday. Off into that great stereotypical age. Some of this years highlights include: grow-a-geek, a Bob's Big Boy bank, socks, and cold hard cash.

Not too much else new in my world. Why does it seem that Florida and Texas are always doing the weirdest things? Florida wants to make it so Dogs can eat in restaurants. Wha???

And in Texas, we of course have our weekly occurrence of the school principal firing a bullet through the wall in his office. Wonderful.

A good AP copy editor always know to make their headlines short, concise and to the point. That's one of the better ones in a while.

That's about it for now...Band/Orchestra festival is later this week. Hopefully we pick out what we're playing soon.

`C

All State

All State was an awesome experience. It was a load of fun, and I had a great time. Not only was just the band great and some of the players phenomenal, but the entire experience was incredible. For those of you who are more visual, here's a few pics (there's more to come).

Seeing as my audition for band and seat didn't go that well (actually I screwed it up pretty bad), I made 2nd part in the Concert Band. I was still very pleased, after all, regardless of the band, this was All State.

16 Hours of rehearsal was a lot, but it all paid off in the end. It was amazing how talented and responsive some of the players were. Even though our conductor wasn't the nicest guy in the world, it was all good.

What made the experience real nice was that it was more than just one big long rehearsal. There were tons of other activities, like the CBDA Expo, colleges galore, and some great concerts. On Friday night we got to see the Boston Brass...they were absolutely incredible. All of this not to mention some of the great, talented people I had the chance to meet.

I had a blast at All State...and was dead tired on Sunday. Hopefully, with some luck, myself and a few other QHHSers will make it next year. Best of all, I didn’t get hurt of killed by all the Asians!

Here are some of the pics I do have, and I'll try to get some audio up as soon as I can.

Ready or Not...

All State, here I come.

See all of you when I get back on Tuesday.

`C

3 Days Away...

Only three days until I leave for Fresno. I think that I'm just about as ready as I'll ever be. The only thing that might hurt me is the sight reading, even though I've been trying to prep with that evil orange book by that poor man named Klosé. I'm kind of nervous/excited about the whole thing, and hopefully I won't get too roused by the mass infestation of Asians.

What is this world coming to? I mean, really, our own Vice-President shoots a guy. Honestly, I know the Cheney is ignorant, but to "accidentally" shoot somebody? Did his buddy look anything like a duck?

This is pretty hilarious. It's the second installment of Leno's "free" photo both. Definitely worth a click.

I always want to follow the Olympics, but never have time to watch them. NBC's Olympic site is great this year. You can just glance at it for results, or watch the previous day's events online.

Welp, tomorrow is the infamous "2/14." Let's hope the safest day of the year tomorrow is also the most entertaining.

Clean-cut???

If anybody even mentions the words "clean-cut sophomore" to me one more time, I swear...

Well, we made the front page (obviously). I was sort of expecting a short little human interest thing on page E-36, but hey, I'll take the front page any day. With the exception of the snickering "clean-cut" comments, it's been a cool experience. But as my dad says- today's news is tomorrow fish wrap.

Fish wrap or not, All State is approaching...fast. Only 7 more days, and a lot more practicing to do.

Disneyland last week was pretty awesome. Literally no lines, so we got to do pretty much every major ride, even some twice, in only 5 hours. It was a lot of fun, and I have to admit, the best part (besides the clam chowder) was hearing us announced in the "Disney" voice down the parade route.

Vista has a release date...mark your calendars for December 1st.

The annual race to the top of the Empire State Building was today. The winner of the 2-mile, 1,576 stair race was from Germany with a time of 10 minutes and 23 seconds. You gotta try that next year, Karl.

Finally, for those inquiring, here's everything you ever wanted to know about Phil the groundhog.

Front Page!

Click on the images to get them larger. If you still have trouble reading the article, ask me for one of my 16 copies, or it's posted on the Valley Press site for a few days.

Happy Groundhog Day!

Phil Says Six More Weeks of Winter!