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This weekend was action-packed!

Friday night I stayed late at school for a Mario Kart tournament in the engineering building. The first 2 hour round I came out 7th out of 12. That isn’t too bad considering it’s been 4 years since I last played it.

Saturday I got up early and went over to school to get ready for the ACM programming competition. Chaitr met me in the lab an hour early to go over some things in preparation. In these competitions, they give you several problems and you have to solve as many as possible in 3 hours. We expected to lose (I haven’t used Java in 9 months and Chaitr isn’t really a computer science person so she doesn’t do it that much.) but we thought it would be fun to give it a shot. As it turns out, only one team got a problem right since the solutions are checked by a computer for correct results to test cases. We didn’t even get a problem done. We would have though, had they allowed us to use the Java API or if our copy of J Builder had been working properly. It would only sometimes do code completion and underline errors. When the time was up, we were probably 20 minutes from completion and it would have went way quicker if the program had been working right. That night I went to a halloween party put on by Erin’s friend Elaine’s family. I dressed as a flasher and it was a good time.

Sunday I went to school in the afternoon and did some homework before meeting with the Golshanis to play some basketball and soccer. We were supposed to play outside but it was raining so we played indoor at Kettering Medical Center instead. It was a darn good workout and I have a big bruise on my leg from soccer. We are supposed to start playing regularly every Sunday.

This week I have a few people to hang out with and some homework to do. But otherwise, it shouldn’t be too rough.

As many of you know, I have been participating in The Ultimate Drive for a few years. Mike and I went to Frank Z (in Dayton) to drive a few cars on Monday. But this time was different. I had heard in the past that they have volunteers transport the fleet between cities so I asked the girl about it. She informed us that they still needed a few drivers for that night’s drive to Cincinnati. Mike and I quickly volunteered (of course). When we were getting all signed up for the drive to Cincinnati, we also found out that they needed volunteers for Thursday’s drive to West Virginia. W00T! Mike readily agreed to do that and, after some deliberation, I decided to go as well.

The way that these drives are set up is as follows: In the front of the pack is a white BMW X5. Behind him is the signature car (this year it’s a 645Ci). After that is the rest of the pack. The rest of the pack consisted of 19 silver 2005 and 2006 BMWs and 1 blue one. Behind all of us was an RV in case of emergencies. We were allowed to move around the pack as long as we didn’t pass the front 2 vehicles.

Monday’s drive was a blast. I-75 southbound was all backed up due to an accident, so we had to go around and take 675. The trip was about 1.5 hours. I drove a 330i convertible. Damn it felt good. Mike drove the 330i with a 6-speed.

On Thursday, Mike and I had to be down in Cincinnati at 7AM to get a good pick of cars. We met at Wright State a little after 6AM. I didn’t see one other person in the Engineering building at that time of the morning. We left Mike’s car up there and raced down to Cincinnati. We got there in time for me to sign up for the 330i with the 6-speed. Mike signed up for a Z4 3.0. The 330i is a blast. I always loved the clutch and transmission in BMWs. In Portsmouth, Mike and I traded cars. The Z4 was neat because I had never driven it before, but it’s a whole different car than the BMWs I’m used to. I like a little more luxury and power out of my BMWs. But the Z4 definitely moved along pretty well and the fact that it is a convertible made it fun on the drive. During this leg of the trip, one girl got a ticket for 68 in a 55. We were all pretty mad that the highway patrol would pick one of us off for a speed like that. We stopped at a gas station about 25 miles from the destination and we had to wait forever for the girl who got the ticket and an old lady who was going under the speed limits. I traded a lady who was driving the 645 convertible for the next leg. The 645 is currently one of my favorite BMWs. It’s big, fast, and sexy. Unfortunately I didn’t know where I was going so I couldn’t play around too much and the trip was pretty short from that point. At the end, when we came into our destination of St. Albans, we had a police excort through town and to the dealership. It was already after 1PM by that point so any chance of me making it to class by 6:05 was unlikely. They bought us lunch at Uno and we made the long ride back in a motorcoach. I got to school at about 7:45PM.

I definitely recommend that you all get involved with this event next year when it is in your area. It’s fun and its for a good cause.