Heroes

Some schools achieve glory through athletic competitions, others through academic success. Nobody expects a group of nerds to be hailed as heroes at their school. Which is not to say that they can't accomplish some pretty cool things.

I woke up early yesterday for the countywide programming competition. I knew it was far away, so, to be safe, I decided to wake up extra early rather than just early. But, thanks to my deep-seated fear of alarm clocks (or, rather, alarm clock alarms), setting my alarm to wake me up extra early caused me to wake up super-extra early so that I wouldn't have to be jolted awake by the alarm. Trust me: I'd sleep in if I could. My mind decides it would rather not have me scared awake. It is, well, frightening. I was also a little worried that I wouldn't do well at this, my first programming competition. I tried not to think about how my school placed third the last time they were at the event, two years ago. (Last year, the team wimped out at the last minute and decided not to go.)

My dad took me all the way down to Cypress Bay High, where the competition was to take place. I saw that there were tons of cars parked there and wondered how that could be; the programming competition isn't that popular. Then I realized that they were having the SAT there, and things made a lot more sense. There were lots of signs saying where to go if you were taking the SAT, but none mentioned anything else. We asked a guy how to get to the programming competition, and he asked, "What kind of programming?" Another guy said to go to the library, and that looked like it was going to be where it was going to be, but no one was there yet except a few people from the school.

After a while, people started showing up and bringing their computers. I think there were 9 schools in all. Each school's team could have as many as four people, and each team could only use one computer. I had figured that each group would bring a laptop, but some brought desktops, including one with a CRT monitor (the big kind). After a while, our teacher, Mr. Mumtaz, came with his new laptop that we were going to use. Then, the rest of Pompano's team came: Ivan, Kenny, and Tanner (filling in for Gilbert). I gave each of them a "Hello, My Name Is" sticker with the HD-DVD processing key written on it, as per Kenny's previous half-joking suggestion. I figured it would be a morale booster because we knew we didn't have a chance of winning. Most of the other teams seemed to be using the C++ programming language, which would make them very efficient for the kinds of programs that we were expected to write. Mr. Mumtaz promised he'd buy us lunch if we won 1st place, but I knew he would do it no matter what.

As the time to begin drew near, we learned that we would have only two hours to perform a variety of tasks for points. It was basically impossible to do all of them in the allotted time, so we would have to choose which ones to do. We had already decided that Kenny and Tanner would start by collaborating on the 1-point programs, while Ivan and I would write down code or pseudocode for the 2- and 3-point programs so we could type them out on the computer later. We would be supervised by another school's teacher (we got Taravella's) who would judge each program as we finished it, giving us the points if they followed the format and returned the right results. No points were to be deducted for non-working programs, so we could show our judge the same program over and over again until it was creditworthy.

We began. Ivan and I combed through the more difficult ones, all of which seemed to involve math, while Kenny and Tanner started on the simpler ones, the easiest of which was simply to some words on the screen. After a while of writing out code, an hour had passed, and Ivan and I still hadn't used the computer. Eventually, Ivan got to use it, and at that point, none of the rest of us had anything to left to do. All of the programs had been typed out, debugged, and scored; planned out on paper; or pored over intensely and cast aside. I thought it was a good idea to try to relax before it became my turn on the computer. Eventually, it was my turn, so I started with the easiest 3-point program, a quadratic solver. For my next trick, I did a 2-pointer to calculate the cost of tires according to a given formula. We were running down to the wire, and I was hoping that I could simply adapt the tire program to a somewhat more complicated 3-point version given. But the seconds ticked down and I got more nervous with each keystroke. I never thought I'd break a sweat while programming.

And then, time was called. I didn't finish that 3-pointer. We ended with 18 or 19 points, which seemed like too few. There was a brief time during which the judges met to submit the teams' scores. During that time we heard some tales about the other programs. The group next to us had closed their laptop before the end of the competition, which meant to us that they were done; however, we learned that they had apparently given up. On the other side of us, a group using C++ had failed to bring some necessary libraries, so they couldn't do anything and got no points. But certainly, we knew, that of these 8 other teams, there were many who really knew what they were doing much better than we did. I knew my school wouldn't beat the 3rd place we had achieved two years ago, so I figured we would be 4th or 5th at best, if they were even going to give an award for that.

There were awards for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place. They started with 3rd place first. We all knew that if we didn't get 3rd place, we weren't going to do any better than that. South Broward won 3rd place, and you could almost hear the collective internal sighs of our team. That was it for us.

In 2nd place was... Pompano High?! We walked up to get our trophies. I couldn't believe it, and nobody else could either. Second place! How? Why? It didn't matter. We had done it. We didn't think we could, but we did. We were proud of ourselves and amused by our fortune. Mr. Mumtaz was proud too. "I'll buy you lunch anyway," he said. We were so excited that we didn't find out much about the winners. I think the winning school was Cypress Bay, which also hosted the event. Ivan asked what programming language they used, and they said BASIC. Immediately, I thought of

10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
20 GOTO 10

but I figured there must have been more to it than that. After all, we had also been using a version of BASIC, albeit a highly evolved one (Microsoft's Visual Basic .NET) whose number formatting functions saved us quite a few times when we needed to have numbers returned with specific formatting like comma separators or dollar signs. It also turned out that the winners scored 20 points, so if I had finished the last question, that 3-point program, we would have won. But it didn't bother me, and nobody blamed me for it. Instead, everybody blamed the clock. We had been really pressed for time, and we were glad just to win 2nd place when we would have considered ourselves lucky to get 3rd.

As promised, Mr. Mumtaz took us to Quiznos. Over lunch, he told us to bring our trophies to school on Monday so he could try to get us to appear live on the school's morning TV announcements. I doubt anyone will care, but it's nice to know that I was part of a group that surpassed all expectations and accomplished something.

Later that day I went with my dad and my grandpa to see the Air and Sea Show. It's got military stunt planes and things. I never really go to it because it costs a lot for parking and getting into the beach and buying water when you get thirsty. That's why there's another way: going by boat and watching offshore. It was such a nice afternoon to go boating. I was expecting them to put up the Bimini top, which is why I didn't put on sunscreen, but they never did, so I got a pretty nasty sunburn. I guess I should have said something. Oh well! At least now I know to put on sunscreen. And in a few days, I won't be all red and I'll be able to go outside without my arms hurting. But seriously, it was fun, and I realized that I'm really going to miss the beach when I move away.

Here's an interesting article from Nikon about the third eye.

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