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We’re in Morton right now, and finally, on the day we’re going back home, it starts to snow. This is the first time I’ve seen snow in two years, so I just had to post a picture.

We drove up to Port Angeles, Washington today to visit relatives for Thanksgiving. On Monday we’ll drive to Morton to visit more relatives, and then back home the next day.

On the way up, we ran over some broken glass on the freeway, and we’ve been having tire leak problems all the way. Now, on the way back to the hotel from the grandparents’ house, I’m writing this in the car on the side of the road with a flat tire while we wait for my grandpa to come help us.

There’s free wifi at our hotel, but the router is probably relayed off about ten other routers, because the internet was acting really, really slow, and then it just stopped working period. Hopefully it’ll be working better after a while…

I’ve recieved probably about twelve spam emails today, each with an attached Windows virus (of course, they’re all zipped .exe files, so they can’t possibly harm my computer). Two of them were even “from” Office@fbi.gov and and Department@cia.gov saying that they’ve logged my IP on over thirty illegal websites.
I’ve tried using Mac OS X Mail’s “Bounce” feature, which lets you bounce the message back, but the bounced message gets bounced back to me.

Cease, spammers, thou foul knaves! (Oh, uh, wrong kind of spam…)

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Joseph and I have decided to be part of the same software company instead of each having our own. We’ll be developing for Mac OS X and Linux in probably Objective-C and Java. The only problem is we have to think of a name that we can both agree on… Joseph wanted it to be Stained Brain, but I don’t really like it. Anyone have any ideas?

Well, Christmas Training starts December 19th and goes until December 30th. There will be morning and afternoon practices every day except Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. ‘Twill be a hard ten days. Last year when Adam and I were still in Senior Prep, we came to two Christmas practices, and I was completely dead after both of them.
We’re planning on "swimming" from Reykjavik to London, but we’ll need all (or at least most) of our people to show up every day, otherwise we end up in the middle of the North Atlantic.
But if we do it, maybe we’ll get to make t-shirts.

UPDATE: Vancouver to Tijuana (or Canada to Mexico) sounds better, and it’s the same distance. Also, it’s a little less out of the way.

I finally submitted a repair order for my Tungsten C. It will cost $169, but my dad said he’ll pay for half of it. Now I’m just waiting for Palm to send me an email with instructions on what to do. Except they haven’t sent it yet, and it’s been about ten hours. Maybe they have to validate it or something with a real person…

I thought about just getting a new device, since the repair costs so much. But the Tungsten C, even though it’s discontinued, is still one of the best models. True, it doesn’t have Bluetooth, but it does have WiFi support, which only two other models have (the Palm TX and the LifeDrive). It also has the second fastest processor: 400MHz. Plus, the Palm Z22, which would be one of the options if I were to get a new device since it’s only $99, has a 160×160 screen — half the resolution of the Tungsten C.

But, when I finish learning Java, I’ll be able to write applications for the Palm OS, which will be fun.

Hmm, do you see something wrong with this screenshot?

Today I swam the 200 free, the fly split of the 200 medley relay, 100 free, 200 back, and 100 fly.

I got 2:02.76 in the 200 free, which is about a two second improvement. Kate said I didn’t go out fast enough though, so it could possibly have been faster.

In our 200 medley relay, Adam swam back, Nathanial swam breast, I swam fly and Raymond swam free. I forgot what our overall time was, but my fly split was 28.7.

In the 100 free, I got 56.29. I improved about a quarter of a second from two weeks ago. I was in Lane 1, but I won the heat and beat Mason!

I got 2:21 in the 200 back. Kate was really happy because I did what she said to do — my splits were 1:10 for the first hundred and 1:11 for the second hundred.

The 100 fly wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be; I got 1:04 (my best is 1:03), but there are a few things that might have had something to do with it: first, after the 200 back, Kate made Adam and me go warm down/up until the 100 fly, which didn’t give me as much time to stretch as I wanted. And then I thought I was in Lane 6 when it was really Lane 2, so I lost some time I could have used to stretch trying to find my lane. And then my goggles leaked.
Oh, and this doesn’t have anything to do with anything, but I think my hand hit the guy in the other lane on the last 25. Is that legal…?

My events today were 200 IM, 200 free relay, 50 free, 100 back and 500 free.

In the 200 IM, the time I got was 2:21.03. I improved two seconds.

Our 200 free relay consisted of Nathanial, Adam, Raymond and me. We got 1:48, and my split was 25.02.

I got 25.75 in the 50 free. A little off my best time. Kate said my stroke looked good, but my tempo was too slow.

In the 100 back I got 1:06.08, and my old time was 1:08. I was racing Adam in this event, and I beat him by a little more than half a second.

I got 5:34.20 in the 500 free, which is an eleven second improvement (although I don’t even remember the last time I swam it). Kate said my splits were bad because I decended the hundreds instead of swimming the whole thing fast, but my overall time was still good.

The warmup today was probably the most brutal in history (at least in my history); about half of our group had bruises when we got out. I had to swim under people several times, and Adam said he ran over just about everyone…

I swam the 400 IM, and I got 5:00.63. I beat my time from two weeks ago by six seconds. I was racing Adam, and this was not our typical 400 IM: Usually I get ahead on the fly, he gets ahead on the back, I start to catch up on the breast, and we stay the same on the free. Not this time. This time I got ahead on the fly, but then I started sprinting the back because I was afraid Adam would pass me. So he went faster on the breast when he saw that he didn’t get ahead on the back, and then he kept his lead on the free, so he beat me by three seconds.

This is off-topic, but if there are any Cocoa programmers out there who read my blog, could you please tell me how to make a Mac OS X Address Book-style textfield?

Well, I took an online typing test and my best results were 71 WPM (net speed, not gross speed). Take the test and tell me what you get.