February 2005 Archives

There's a certain camaraderie in College Bowl, the kind that forms when you stick a bunch of guys in vans every weekend so that they can go to tournaments to answer questions about things that really won't help them in real life. Nicknames are a natural component of this camaraderie. Now, the first rule of College Bowl is that you don't tell anybody else about College Bowl, and—accordingly—these nicknames are typically held sacrosanct, mostly because they'd be kind of embarassing if they got out.

Typically.

Since it doesn't bother me that much if these nicknames are in the public domain, and because I'm kind of struggling for material, I figured I'd let them out here.

John's College Bowl nickname is…

Seriously, Melissa, did you think I'd give it out? And Todd, you're not getting mine, either.

At least, not my old one. On our trip to USC, I actually "earned" a new nickname, and it doesn't bother me that much, so I'll let it out here.

But not all at once.

Since I'm a sucker for comments, I figure I'll play a game of Twenty Questions. Ask me a "yes-or-no" question regarding the nickname in the comments, and I'll answer it. First person to figure out the answer gets a custom comment signature (thus Nathan, *e, and Bethany don't really have an incentive to guess, but I encourage them to anyways). Naturally, UCD College Bowlers are not eligible…sorry, guys.

One ground rule: to prevent "comment bombing", I will only answer one question at a time. Thus, if more than one question is posted in the comments between one of my answers, I will only answer the first question asked.

Ok? Ok. Ask away!

Questions so far…

1. *e asked "Have anything to do with Star Wars?" No.
2. *e asked "Does it have anything to do with your music collection?" No.
3. Karina asked "Does it have to do with your major?" No.
4. *e asked "Does it have to do with Harris Ranch?" No.
5. *e asked "Does it have to do with your expertise knowledge in some subject(or lack there of) demonstrated at college bowl?" No.
6. David M. asked "Is it an animal?" No. Good question, though.
7. NC asked "Does it have something to do with academia?" No.
8. NC asked "Is it a proper name ie, someone elses name that has been applied to you?" Yes.
9. Melissa asked "Is it related to Sushi ?" No.
10. David M. asked "Is it the name of a place?" No.
11. David M. asked "If no, is it the name of a person?" Yes.
12. David M. asked "The name of an actor?" No.
13. *e asked "Is it a person from the Bible?" No.
14. *e asked "Is the gender of this person male?" Yes.
15. *e asked "Is this person Fictional?" Yes.
16. David M. asked "Is the fictional person a character from literature?" Yes.
17. *e asked "Is the author of said literature (and creator of this fictional character) European?" Yes.
18. neny asked "Is the name from Lord of the Rings?" Yes.
19. Tojo asked "Samwise Gamgee?" No.
20. Katie asked "Is it a non-human character?" Yes.
21. Laura asked "Is it Smigel [sic]?" No.
22. *e asked "Is it Treebeard?" No.
23. Laura asked "Is it Bilbo Baggins?" No.
24. *e asked "Would you say this was a 'good guys' character?" Yes.
25. Laura asked "Legolas?" Yes! Winner!

When your head hangs low with the weight of life—not to mention the mid-quarter flurry of exams, labs, and essays—it's easy to miss the beauty of Creation—and the Creator. In two weeks, these flowers will be gone—light and momentary. Lift your eyes and be blessed while they're here.

For the second time in as many weeks, the UCD College Bowl All-Stars made a 400-mile trek to Southern California—this time, it was for our biggest tournament of the year, the 2005 College Bowl Region 15 tournament. Unlike last time, we would be facing a different breed of tournament: the questions are easier, the game is faster, the competition is tougher (or sometimes, easier). How did we fare, and what happened? Read on…

The iTrip

So I (admittedly intentionally) found myself in an awkward position I'd written about earlier. Having acquired an iTrip for my iPod, we were able to listen to my music on the trip down. Seeing the iPod "take over" empty FM radio bands elicited much admiration, but after the "coolness" factor wore off, people were subjected to my "taste" in music, and it didn't take me long to realize that I don't have a lot of my better stuff on the iPod—or rather, none of it got played. Bah. It didn't help that Rishi had a knack for finding the more embarassing stuff on the iPod.

On the plus side, Ruwan and I made Rishi an appreciator of Garth Brooks' "Friends in Low Places."

The "Matrix" Incident

I really wish this story was about the five of us saving the human race after realizing that we know kung fu and how to look good in black. Unfortunately, the "Matrix" in the title refers to a "Cosmic Blue Metallic" Toyota Matrix we encountered near the Grapevine. The person driving our school-provided van at the time accidentally got too close to the right side of our lane, where said Matrix happened to be. He quickly pulled back to the middle of the lane, and the Matrix pulled up beside is.

The Matrix driver was a cute Meg Ryan-esque blonde, and we were expecting her to be mad at us for nearly colliding with her. Instead, she flashed us a grin with a mischievous twinkle in her eye and sped off. The guy in shotgun was immediately enraptured, and insisted that the driver do what he can to catch up with her. So he did (no mean feat in a Chevy Venture) and as we pulled up close, we noted that she had a UCD license plate holder. The guy in shotgun immediately requested the UCD hoodie that I was wearing so that he could hold it up to the window to show that he too loved UCD. Unfortunately for him, we never got close enough, and we caught a glimpse of her bopping her head to music before pulling ahead of us.

As we started up the steep grade of the Grapevine, we pulled up next to the Matrix again. Before the guy in shotgun could exult in our fortuitous position, the driver accidentally swerved right again. The outcry from myself and the guy in shotgun was enough to wake up John, who was sleeping in the backseat. As for the Matrix driver, she made a point of staying well behind us for the remainder of the Grapevine, no doubt scared to death.

Sunny Southern California

The drive from Davis to SoCal usually takes 6 or 7 hours, but the trip down took us nine hours due to heavy rain and the subsequent traffic snarl-ups. Considering the fact that the state saw tornadoes and mudslides over the past week or so of nasty weather, we were very fortunate.

Thank you, University of California

Since this tournament was a school-sponsored event, we were provided with much nicer accomodations than Gabe's living room floor (though perhaps a bit less personable): specifically, the Fullerton Marriott.

Who are you?

Prior to every match during the tournament, we were asked to introduce ourselves, our major, and answer a silly question, such as what cartoon character you'd want to be. Needless to say, this led to some interesting situations.

In the first, when asked which cartoon character we'd like to be, Justin answered "Himura Kenshin, an assassin also known as Battosai from Nobuhiro Watsuki's anime and manga series Rurouni Kenshin."

He was about halfway through the sentence when Ruwan and I started laughing uncontrollably, our heads on the table—this was a classic Justin moment. The audience and game officials, of course, sat in stunned silence as they tried to comprehend what exactly he'd just said. Then the game judge spoke up and said "Yes, you are kindred!" The game moderator looked over at the judge, bewildered, and asked "You know what all that meant?"

The second moment came when I came late to a match as people were answering what I presumed was the question "What is your favorite reality show?" Since I watch less than an hour of TV a week, I answered Sorority Life, out of tribute to UCD, where the first season was filmed. Everyone gave me horrified looks, and it was only after the match that I found out the question was "What reality show would you like to be on?"

And because you're no doubt wondering, here are my answers to some of the other questions:

Favorite example of onomatopoeia: "Kerplunk."
Cartoon character you'd like to be: "Spongebob" (actually, I'd rather be Patrick, but that's another story)
What you'd do if you could be paid to do anything: "Write." (which drew an odd reaction from John)

The Tournament

UCD's College Bowl teams have an atrocious record for night games—we've never won one in recent history. So it's perhaps not surprising that we lost our two games on Friday night against UCLA and Pomona. Attributing it to the long drive, we hoped that a little sleep and a big breakfast would help out. Instead, we dropped our first game Saturday morning to UCSD, beat Sac State, and then had a huge loss against Stanford.

We had a bye for the next round, and contemplated our situation: with four losses before the lunch break, we were looking at an early trip home. As a whole, the team was off-balance: we were still adjusting to the peculiarities of College Bowl, which relies more on instinct and speed than pure depth of knowledge. We were long-shots for the playoffs, and we only had a chance if we won our five remaining games.

So we did just that.

Finishing up 6-4, with convincing wins over strong teams like USC and Hawaii, we'd done the best we could to climb out of the hole we'd made. Amazingly, due to upsets here and there, we found ourselves in a four-way tie for the third playoff spot with USC, Sac State, and Pomona. With our wins over USC and Sac State, we clinched third place, while USC took the fourth spot. The playoff field was rounded out with Stanford and UCLA as the first and second seeds, respectively. Sac State, our perennial allies at the Regional Tournament, wished us luck, and we in turn promised to represent NorCal with pride.

Our first playoff match was against UCLA, a team that had demolished us 460-140 the previous evening. Their star player is a former Jeopardy champion, and over the past two years he's been on teams that consistently beat us by 200 points or more. We went into the match knowing that we had to put in a phenomenal effort.

And we did.

It was probably the single best match we've ever played. The lead switched two or three times, yet we didn't let ourselves get discouraged when we fell behind. It was a closely fought battle, and it was encouraging to see UCLA actually worried about losing a game against us for once. When time ran out, the final score was 285-245…in our favor. To say I was shocked is an understatement—I actually sat there with my mouth gaping. Could it really be&hellip?

Before the match could end, the game officials needed to address two challenges made by UCLA. The officials chose to deliberate outside of the room, and so both teams and audience remained inside, waiting for their verdict. I remember my hands being clammy as I clasped them together with my head down. For fifteen agonizing minutes, we sat quiet and still. When the judges came in, I could already tell who they'd ruled in favor of, and to their credit, they were the right decisions—they'd gone so far as to call the vice-president of College Bowl International to make sure they were in the right. UCLA won both challenges, we had 70 points deducted from our score, and UCLA won the match 245-215.

It was a crushing blow, especially after we had played so hard. Although I can't speak for the rest of the team, I know that I'd reached a point of mental and emotional exhaustion. The playoffs were double-elimination, meaning that we were still in if we could beat Stanford (who'd been upset by USC). And although I constantly told myself to stay focused during that match, I played horribly. We lost to Stanford 475-225, and were eliminated from the playoffs, an unimpressive end to my College Bowl career.

Most Surprising Correct Answers to Questions

Or "Questions that we knew the answer to WAY before anyone else…possibly to our embarassment."

John: "Wyclef Jean"
Ruwan: "Lindsay Lohan"
Aliotsy: "Sadie Hawkins"

To his credit, Ruwan also got us all 30 points on a bonus about Country Music Television.

"I'm a Redneck"

So says Ruwan. He likes country music, Southern food, fishing, and guns. Never mind that he's of Sri Lankan descent—country is in the heart. As the driver for the first leg of our trip home, it was his avowed goal to convert the rest of to country music lovers by leaving the radio on a country station.

Right now, I'm listening to "Check Yes or No" by George Strait. Grmph.

All's Well that Ends Well

The country music was appropriate as we pulled into our dinner stop: Harris Ranch, once voted one of the 100 best independent restaurants in the country. After passing it numerous times to and from tournaments in Southern California, we decided it would be a nice place to celebrate the end of a memorable and successful College Bowl season.

Interestingly, we sat at the table featured on the front page of Harris Ranch's website. Nice big comfy seats. We had a kind of funny awkward moment early on when Rishi asked what they had for vegetarians. The waiter, to his credit, didn't gawk and wonder why someone would ask that at a steakhouse. Instead, without missing a beat, he said "Not much, but let's see what we can figure out." After looking at the menu, he suggested a pizza appetizer…he would just make sure the chef didn't put meat on it.

Another awkward moment came when our waiter asked us what "College Bowl" was. Even the veterans among us hung our heads in shame and smiled sheepishly when we confessed our nerdiness.

Everything we ate was heavenly, from the butter that came with the bread (of which there were four varieties) to the veggies that came with our steaks. The steaks themselves—the best I've ever had. I didn't know that ribeye could be that tender. As Ruwan put it, it was like "steak-flavored mashed potatos." The mere thought of it has me salivating.

Are you someone who doesn't have a blog or online journal, but are (even remotely) interested in starting one?

Would you like to help me out with a market research project for one of my classes?

Would you be interested in being interviewed and/or participating in a focus group?

If you've answered "yes" to all of those questions and are available for a chat some time between now and next Tuesday (Feb. 22^nd), please send me an email at aliotsy AT ucdavis DOT edu with the subject line "Blogging Project." (PLEASE do not respond in the comments to this entry).

Responders who live in the Sacramento area are preferred (if you attend UCD, even better), but anyone is welcome.

Many of you know that I'm a member of UCD's College Bowl All-Star team, which is kind of like five good guys combining their powers to form a super good guy, in much the same way that Voltron Force combines their vehicles to form Lion Voltron. Except we don't have to wear skin-tight bodysuits, much to the relief of, well, everyone.

Our biggest event of the year is the Regional Tournament. In preparation for this, we drove 400 miles down to the 2005 NAQT West Sectional Championship Tournament held at USC. NAQT is a quiz format that's much harder (though slower-paced) than College Bowl. And generally, we don't do great at these sorts of tournaments, as long-time readers may remember. Nonetheless, the trips themselves are pretty fun, and I'll try to chronicle some of the more interesting stories from this past trip, including the surprising tournament results. I doubt this will interest most of you, since it's one of those "you had to be there" entries.

If you'd rather just see pictures, check out the photo set on flickr.

The Cast of Characters

Just so you know who everyone is:

John - Our illustrious captain who knows, well, everything. Three-year All-Stars veteran.

Ruwan - Second-year All-Star. Resident expert on biology, chemical compounds, Shania Twain, and everything VH1. He's Canadian, but we usually don't hold that against him.

Justin - First-year All-Star, who's a third-year with senior standing. His expertise lies in psychology, philosophy, and Arena Football. And the XFL. And Roller Hockey. And the WWE. And BASEketball.

Rishi - First-year All-Star. He's pretty cool and really amiable. He also seems to know a lot about a lot of things.

Aliotsy - Yours truly. I know way too much about Star Wars and tend to over-think computer science questions. And I also know about silly WB shows like 7^th Heaven, evidently.

Gabe - One of my best buds since the 10^th grade or so. He graduated last spring from UCLA, and has a nice one-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles. He let the five of us crash there, and even showed us around Westwood.

The Rest Stop

John's parents were gracious enough to allow us to use their van for the trip, and John himself drove us to our first rest stop at Harris Ranch. While we filled up the tank, the team went to get goodies from the gas station. As I was waiting in the checkout line with a Red Bull (I'd be driving the 200-odd remaining miles to LA), Ruwan relayed overhearing the following from John—

"This beef jerky looks good, but five dollars? What a ri—ooooooo, gummy worms!"

Aggies in Westwood

Gabe took us to Chili's in Westwood for dinner, where I enjoyed an excellent country-fried steak. While we were eating, a guy walked past us wearing a UCD hoodie. Although I don't know his name, I recognized him from around campus. What are the odds of running into another Aggie in some random Chili's in Westwood on a non-holiday?

Nyquil

I had not been feeling too great the week of the trip. My immune system had been doing a formidable job of fighting off the cold for the better part of three weeks or so, and I did what I could to supplement it eating and drinking a lot of soup and citrusy stuff. All I had to show for this was a cough that really sounded worse than it really was. The day of the trip, though, my head was feeling kind of heavy and "foggy," if that makes sense. Also, even though you don't have any elevation gain until you hit the Grapevine, most of the drive my ears were popping.

I'm not a big fan of taking medication unless I really need to, but I figured enough was enough. Ruwan, who was sick, had brought some Nyquil down, and offered me some. I was a little apprehensive, but downed a full dose.

Wow. I don't know what they put in Nyquil, but it works—and fast. I'd only ingested half of the capful, and I could literally feel the "fog" lift from my head—starting from the bottom and working it's way up.

Brutal honesty

Overheard during the pre-tournament meeting:

"You don't go to Quiz Bowl tournaments to meet attractive people."

Rishism #1

Rishi, as I've mentioned before, is a very amiable guy, and even kinda soft-spoken. Don't let the mild-mannered demeanour fool you though—he proved to be an awesome player in his first tournament, often surprising the rest of his teammates.

I was sitting next to him prior to a match, when the other team started complaining about the buzzer system we were using—a buzzer system that our team had donated for the tournament's use.

"I hate these buzzers," one of them said, for no particular reason.

Now I'm kind of indifferent when it comes to buzzers, and didn't have any feelings either way for ours. Rishi, however, turned to me, eyes aflame.

"Did they just diss our buzzer system?" He asked, his voice quiet and icy-cold.

"Uh…yeah."

"We're not taking that. We'll kick their butts."

"Huh?"

"They dissed our buzzer system. We better kick their butts."

"Ok…"

For the record, we won.

Can we do this?

We were entered in Division II for the tournament. Looking at the field of ten teams beforehand, we felt we had a pretty good shot at doing well, and maybe winning it all (at least, I did). The tournament director mentioned that the winner in each division would go to the National Championships at Tulane University in New Orleans, and I thought that sounded like a pretty cool trip.

It didn't totally dawn on me that we actually had a shot at taking that trip until we were 5-0. I'm certain the others were starting to consider the possibility, but no one mentioned it: we wanted to focus on the present, the next team we had to beat, the next question we had to get.

For the most part, we were playing really well. I think that many of our past tournament records are misleading—on a 5-7 day, two or three of those losses tend to be very narrow ones. On this particular day, we were winning our close games and occasionally rallying from fairly large deficits at halftime. I was impressed at how well we kept our cool—particularly Rishi, who was playing in his first tournament.

We finished the initial round-robin tournament at 9-0. There was a reseeding meeting to separate the teams into upper and lower brackets. Walking out of the meeting, I overheard the following.

"Who are we playing first?"

"Davis."

"Davis! They're gonna kill us!"

I have to admit, it felt good being one of the big dogs for once.

We went 3-2 after the reseeding, losing two very close matches to Stanford and UCSD. Nonetheless, our record was still good enough to win it all. So yes:

The UCD College Bowl All-Stars are the 2005 NAQT West Sectional Champions!!!

I had Queen's song "We Are the Champions" stuck in my head for the next five days or so. :)

Red Robin and Google

There's a Red Robin at the Harris Ranch rest stop, and we were hoping to get there for dinner on our way back—we felt like celebrating winning the tournament with something a bit nicer than In 'N Out. On the way up, though, I realized with a little mental math that we'd get there right around 10pm. Would they still be open? We had no idea what the name of the city was, or any contact information.

This is where technology stepped in. I called my brother at home, 300 miles away, and asked him to Google "Red Robin." Their official website had a listing of restaurants by city, he reported, but we had no idea what city our particular restaurant was in. So we then had my brother Google "Harris Ranch," and he thereby go the name of the city (Cualinga, CA), and a phone number for our restaurant. It's amazing to think that just over 10 years ago, that sort of information transfer would be almost unimaginable.

Rishism #2

Red Robin said they'd be open until 10pm, but they'd let us in any time prior to that. We arrived at 9:53pm, only to be informed that the restaurant was closed.

Furious, soft-spoken Rishi insisted that we should all do something to the restaurant that I won't repeat in polite company. We dissuaded him, and went to Denny's for a filling, but sub-standard alternative.

Thanks to your efforts (which amounted to clicking on Google ads), TheThousand.net raised $38.57 in the month of January for tsunami victims. Yeah, it's not huge, but it's not pocket change, either. I actually think it's really awesome, since I'd been expecting to raise somewhere closer to $5 or so. Online advertising is a lot more lucrative than I expected.

Google won't pay me until I raise at least $100, but I'll just make the donation to the American Red Cross shortly, and keep the ads until I earn enough for that first payment. So, unless there are strenuous objections, I'm going to sell out to THE MAN^TM and keep the banner ads for a while longer. At the current rate of income (that is, if you guys keep clicking - hint, hint), this site will actually pay for itself after a few months. Not bad.

And for those of you wondering, yes, I will post an entry soon about what transpired this weekend when UCD's College Bowl All-Stars drove 400 miles down to USC for a tournament.

I'm typing this entry in an on-campus computer lab: of 41 brand-spanking new flatscreen Dells, over half are unoccupied. All the other computer rooms on campus combined have only seven machines available, and they're all stand-up, 10-minute limit, quick access computers.

How is this so, you ask? Via the Computer Lab Management's "Available Computer Rooms" page, I discovered a treasure: a brand new computer lab that opened just yesterday in the new Sciences Lab Building. In general, the "Available Computer Rooms" page is a great way to find a computer lab where you won't need to wait in line for a machine.

On my way over here, I started thinking about all the nifty little tricks I've learned after attending 13 quarters at UCD, and how it might be nice to share some of them with those of you who will be here a while longer. A lot of them are fairly obvious, but I figure most people would learn something.

But let's not make this simply a channel for me to show off some tricks. After all, I'm certain I could learn a thing or two from most of you. I encourage those of you who attend UCD to use the comments to impart your wisdom as well. And for those of you who don't attend UCD, feel free to leave any of your secrets that you think would apply on any college campus.

So, on to the secrets …

How to see if it's worth your time to wait in line

Let's say you need to print out a paper really soon, and you're trying to gauge if you should wait in line at a computer lab. How do you tell if it's a fast line, or a slow line? As you walk in, give the busy computers a once over. If you see a lot of people writing papers, chances are the line's gonna be slow. If it's mostly people using email or web browsing, it'll probably be fast. If you see someone chatting, scowl at them.

How to order at the CoHo Grill (and get your money's worth)

Burritos are usually fast, unless it's really busy and there are a lot of orders—in that case, quesadillas can sometimes go faster since they seem to get priority over burritos (credit to John for figuring that one out). Before ordering, keep a close eye on the burritos and quesadillas coming off the line, especially if whoever's making them seems new—if they're looking small, you might as well try the hot food line instead (trust me, the Hungarian beef goulash tastes better than it looks). Also, I like to scope out the meat ahead of time, to make sure it's not looking charred. And although my personal preference is steak instead of chicken, someone who's worked for the CoHo assures me that if I knew how they handle the steak, I'd never eat it again.

How to avoid long Bookstore lines

So, even though you're a townie, you've waited until the first week of the quarter to get your books, and now the checkout line stretches to infinity. As a college student, you've got way more important things to do than wait in line—things like playing Area 51 at the Games Area, or sleeping. Whatever will you do?

The solution comes from Bethany. There's a "secret" checkout in the back corner by the art supplies, and the line is usually much shorter, if there's a line at all. It used to be that you needed to have one art supply item to use that line (get yourself some colored pencils—you know you wanted them anyways), but the last time I went, it didn't seem like they enforced that requirement.

Your turn

So, what are your survival secrets? Share them in the comments!