End of Another CSC Season

The TCEA Computer Science State Competition was yesterday, and it ending marked the end of the regular CS season (discounting other side contests, including UIL and ACSL). But let's rewind.
Friday was the day we were supposed to bus up to San An for the contest, but Wind Ensemble had UIL, so Fairley, Tom, and I went to that and drove up with the Fairleys. UIL went, in my opinion, very well. A lot of it sounded very good, with Nick sounding exceptionally awesome on his solo in "Horkstow Grange", but I've come to expect that. My solo went about how I wanted, with fewer cracked pitches than in the previous days, though I did have to back off a lot, to avoid "offending the judges", as Dr. Sedatole told me to do. Thankfully, I managed to play past the slightly cracked lip and cankersore I received from my darned cold. Sightreading went fine as well, though I can't say it was the most exciting piece I've ever gotten. I don't think there was near enough in the piece itself for us to work with, but that's fine.


We left soon after to go to San An. Fairley, thank your parents for driving us. The ride up was fine, if in slightly cramped quarters. When we arrived, we met up with Frank, Farhad, and Matt, who apparently were partying just fine at about 9. A "2 for 1" pizza deal and a visit from Tom's EMT cousin, who was on call at the time, we settled in to stay up. For quite awhile, my team worked on a connectivity algorithm (ask me about it later if you really care). Actually, it was more Frank and Fairley working, while I just chimed in with occasional comments. We stayed up till 2-3 ish doing this, while Tom managed to find some... curious programming on HBO that I did my best not to watch, but we won't talk about that.

Waking up tired, of course, we went to contest at Reagan High School, which was actually pretty nice for a school (coincidentally, we saw a notice on the wall for ppl to join Reagan Guard. 'Neone 'member that?) that had an entrance that looked like a prison. Unlike our prison, they had a courtyard in the middle and windows. 'Neways, the contest was held in a similarly odd manner, with tables going up and down a hallway, but it worked better than last year.

The contest itself went pretty well for our team. I worked from the bottom up, writing out all 6 2s, 5 5s, and 1 9. I managed to type all but 2 5s, maintaining my pride by getting that one 9. Fairley got 3 9s and a 5 in great time, with one of the 9s solved with connectivity, a product of staying up. Frank, unfortunately, picked the 2 hardest programs to work on, and, chasing the sweep, didn't give up, but got neither. We felt a bit shaky after the fact, but I think, on the whole, it was a much better packet than we've seen from TCEA since last year's area packet. That was good enough for a 2nd place finish to the Cy-Falls team, a team that really did deserve 1st, though it was very close. Our 2nd team had 40 pts to a 10th place 43 pts, so they did extremely well. In the end, I'm very happy with the results of our slap-together team.

With both of those over, my extra-curricular weight just got a lot lighter. Now to finish off the APs.