Culmination

My pride, my Army promotion, and my grades are all being decided this week, and so far I'm not doing well. The drill this weekend was fairly normal, nothing too bad except for the company PT test. I started on the push-up event, something I thought I had locked up. But about 10 push-ups in, I started lowering my head and looking at the ground. Almost instantaneously I had 3 NCO's standing around me and telling me to keep my head up and go down lower. With all of the commotion around me, I did a pitiful job, probably one of my worst performances on the push-ups. I didn't even come close to passing there. Disheartened, I wouldn't have even bothered going on, but SGT Murray encouraged me to at least finish all three events. I barely eked out enough sit-ups, and really took it easy on the run. All that preparation on the run with Pritchett, and I ignored my push-ups and failed before the run even started.

This morning was the Arabic written final. I don't think I did a spectacular job, but it was good enough. I did learn a lot this semester, and I do think it showed. Besides, Oustad Aissa is a very compassionate teacher, and he's always willing to help out his students when they need it. My components final is Thursday, and I feel confident about that. After all, it's a computer class, right? How can I go wrong? Directly afterward is the optional project demonstration. My partner and I have been putting together a two-machine pong game with serial-port communication. I'm impressed that we got it working this far, but somewhat disappointed with the results. We didn't figure out how to get the tiny LCD screen to draw smoothly, so we ended up with a quick flash for the ball, and a paddle that constantly changes shape. Not only that, but the collision detection is skewed, so the ball hits a wall, stays next to it for a while, then bounces. The whole program has a mind of it's own, and I don't think programs are supposed to do that. As the programmers, we should have complete control over it and know what happens and when it happens. However, I'm still looking forward to presenting it.