Here we go, I finally have a few moments to sit down and output a full post.

So I’ve been in Terre Haute, Indiana for over two weeks now, taking part in Operation Catapult at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Basically it’s a geek camp. It’s similar to the weeks I spent at SMU over past summers, but I’m not actually receiving any credit for the experience.

When I was at the airport I saw Taylor, who I had also known at SMU, he was going to the project as well. I also met Isaac, who lives in Coppell. The plane trip was uneventful except for that guy who wouldn’t stop talking to me. We arrived in Indy, and were picked up by Abby, one of the counselors and drove the hour and a half to Rose. The three of us were the first ones to arrive at Catapult, but it was still cool. The counselors offered us some really cold cheesecake and we ate it. Other people started showing up and we watched part of fight club, (which I still need to finish by the way) and then one of the counselors started a game of ultimate, and the only people who didn’t go were Taylor, myself, and a girl I would later come to know as Claire. We joked about being athletic an a nerd camp and continued watching the movie. Everybody just hung out for the rest of the day until I fell asleep.

The next day was the first real day of catapult and all the people who hadn’t yet arrived showed up. We still didn’t do much other than have an “Orientation” for the parents more than anybody else. The next day they explained to us all of the choices we had for projects, I was pretty set for trebuchet, but I was talking to Taylor and he had this nifty idea for evolutionary programming in java, I said I didn’t know anything about java but it sounded like fun, if he could get other people to join up as well. It turns out that both Isaac and Claire thought it would be fun so we signed up together.

There were various activities that happened every night through out the week, including movies and playing Settlers of Catan, this weird strategy game (more on that later), and playing of blackjack. Speaking of blackjack, there was a casino night one day and I won a big jar of pretzel sticks.

I went to see Day After Tomorrow, which wasn’t a great movie over all, but it felt weird going to a movie without Kelsey, something I hadn’t done for months. The movie theatre did have free refills on absolutely everything (even the blue slushy drinks), and that was cool.

Every week day we have intramurals, and the teams are based on those from the old early nineties show “Legends of the Hidden Temple,” I’m in the Green Monkeys! We play various sports including but not limited to Ultimate, Soccer, Kickball, and Volleyball. We are horrible at all of them with the exception of volleyball. On Saturday there ws the wacky Olympics, which had multiple events like the egg smash, condiment body art the balloon pop, and “da relay” the egg smash involved one person getting on another’s shoulders with eggs tied to their head. They then had to smash the opposing teams eggs with pool noodles. We got last place in that event. We won in the body art event by covering the back of one of our guys in chocolate sauce and then drawing a monkey on his body. We also wod “da relay” by one second, and I was part of thew wheelbarrow race, I was the guy pushing.

I’m tired of typing so I’m going to stop, but I’ll finish some other time.
  ¶ 6/28/2004 06:16:00 PM