H@w@ii@n P@r@dise!

 Two years ago, over spring break of seventh grade, I was fortunate enough to fulfill a fantasy I had always dreamed of: to take a vacation to Hawaii.  My trip encompassed two of the islands, Maui and Oahu, with scenic Maui being my favorite.  There were so many postcard-worthy views, fun ways to learn about the culture, and combined with the picturesque beaches and lovely weather, it was one of the best vacations of my life so far.  Look below to enjoy some pictures from my vacation!

At a waterfall on the Road to Hana

My mom and I at the Polynesian Cultural Center luau

My family and I at the International Market Place in Maui

The Oahu Strip

My brother and I in the Bowfin submarine at Pearl Harbor in Oahu.

At Diamond Head Crater

Rese@rch P@per!!!

If I have learned one thing in English 1 it would be that everything is a draft, a step in a complicated process.  This was clearly exhibited by this marking period's research paper.  All throughout the course of January, my fellow classmates and I have been relentlessly working on composing a formal, 4-6 page, MLA formatted, tense consistent, history related, persuasive, properly cited paper to hand in for a grand total of three essay grades.  The first step was to select a topic, a time period of interest.  Easy enough, 9/11.  Next came writing the thesis, my argument being that Al Qaeda's incentives for attacking were religious based rather than hatred based.  The tentative outline, due four days from then, encompassed all the general ideas I would include in my paper.  Then came the tricky, most tedious part.  Research.  The favorites bars of the half the freshmen class are most likely filled to the brim with bookmarked sources, eager to be read, waiting to be cited, a thorn in our sides.  Next?  Arguably the most painful part of the never-ending process.  Formal outlines, basically our entire essay in fragmented, very specific format with in-text citations, paraphrases and direct quotes speckling every page.  Shortly after came the rough draft, due pin one night, and the next day the rubric was distributed, and our rough rough drafts were done.  After final submissions of "final" drafts, which we can't revise due to the short amount of time remaining in the semester, I will be completely done.  After countless hours of simultaneously searching databases and searching Tumblr, countless pieces of paper wasted, and a red eye caused by radiation poisoning (I don't even think I'm joking)...I am ready to bid this research paper goodbye.  That is, until next year...

Finish with @ Fight, St@rt Strong

I can honestly say that this marking period, the second marking period of my freshman year, has been the most difficult marking period of my life.  Having never gotten anything lower than an A in my life, I was in for quite the shock.  Classes posed challenges, challenge that I wasn't used to, making me drop down in the standings of the class, even though I had previously always had the top spot.  When report cards are issued, I expect to see at least one B, if not a C in the first class I have found that I cannot seem to excel in.  Here's my plan.

Fight to the very last minute.  Produce quality work, write an impeccable research paper, take extra credit opportunities to use to my advantage, avoid procrastination, take amazing notes, find effective ways to study, and give it my all on finals.  And finally, take another fresh start, another blank page, as the second semester begins.

So goodbye to you History, Comm Tech, Health, Fitness, and English.  And as for you: DV, Spanish, Geometry and Bio, bring it on.  I'm ready for you.

Fun with Fl@sh!

This is the first project I've done in Communications Tech that I am genuinely proud of!  Check it out!

Network M@ni@

To get here, to this blog, I simply opened Safari, typed in the URL, or, in fancy terms, uniform resource locator, and clicked new post.  Little did I know before today how many steps these simple tasks require.  It can only be summarized in a seven layer, no not cake, but OSI chart.  And speaking of food, in networking lingo, a cookie is not a delicious baked good, but a miniscule, 4 bit unit.  I have a 16 gigabyte iPod, or, if notated correctly, 16 GB, because capital GB symbolizes bytes.  Therefore, my iPod holds 8,000,000,000 bytes, and a lot more bits than I want to calculate.  In the world of networking, bits, frames, packets, segments, data, data, data is just the basics of computer language.  (Which is HTML, hyper text markup language if you really want to get technical.)  "Please do not throw sausage pizza away."  Ever heard anyone say that to you?  No I haven't either, but this can serve as an acronym was the seven steps of encapsulation, or wrapping data.  Physical, data link, network, transport, session, presentation, application. Everyone's done math right?  3>2, 5<4.  But have you ever heard of Throughput< Bandwidth?  Bandwidth is, if you will, the full "potential" of data that can travel at a given time, whereas throughput is the actual amount traveling, which is always less.  Two valuable lessons.  One, you are never anonymous.  You can ALWAYS be tracked down.  Ever wonder how Facebook knows where you are when you add a mupload?  That's because the MAC, no not the computer, but the Media Access Control, is the original address that never ever ever disappears.  So this is just reinforcement, don't do anything stupid on the Internet, because you will and can be found.  Then, there's number two.  Everything comes down to numbers.  Everything comes down to math.  That makes me wonder if it's bad that I attend a school that has a focus on pretty much everything but math.  Well, everything on the Internet can be broken down into binary code, or, in simpler terms, a series of 0s and 1s.  Put this into a binary translator, I'll show you.
0110100001110100011101000111000000111010001011110010111101101010011000010111100101100011011011110110111101101100001011100110111001100101011101000010111101110011011101000111010101100110011001100010111101100111011001010110010101101011001011110110100101101101011000010110011101100101011100110010111101101111011100110110100100101110011001110110100101100110
Confused?  Yeah, me too.

Welcome to @ fresh st@rt.

Well, it's 2012.  Year of the apocalypse, year of 366 days, year of change.  I'll go into this year a naive CHS freshman, and most likely emerge as a sophomoric sophomore, no pun intended.  This year starts a new chapter of my life, a pristine page to be written on.  By December 31st, this book of my life will be full of jubilant recounts, tear stained pages, laments and expressions of anger, and instances of daily life.  However, we, as humans, do have control over the story we choose to write over the course of this next year.  We can shape it to our liking, include and exclude elements of life.  Each of us, as 2012 progresses, will weave our own tale, make our own path, conquer challenges in our own ways, handle situations with our own logic.  This year, I challenge each and every one of us to write a story worth telling, a story that sets an example, leaves a mark, makes a change for the better.  Happy New Year.  Embrace this year.  Give it all you've got.

Enjoy e@ch @nd every moment.

  Life is a roller coaster, a series of convoluted twists and unexpected turns, some seen, some not.  It is also like a roller coaster in the way that it goes by in the blink of an eye, so fleeting that you can't fully savor each moment of the ride.  This is something that I believe everybody should learn to do.  Something hit me this week, as I took on the semiannual endeavor of a dress rehearsal for dance.  As the spotlight shown on me in my shimmering dress, turning my pointe shoes pearly white and illuminating the space around me, I realized that everything, even my time at my dance studio, has a time where its curtain will close forever.  My time at Communications High School is finite.  The college years will be a blur, and before I know it I'll be a young adult, a middle-aged woman, and finally a frail, elderly lady.  The pages of my book will turn at a scarily fast pace and when the time comes, the last chapter will end.  this is why I want to learn to live in the moment and embrace every second of the life I have left to live.  My winter show that I've been attending ceaseless rehearsals for has finally dawned upon me.  Tonight, the dances we've been practicing for months must be impeccable.  Recitals bring so much worry and anxiety.  You must have the proper attire, shoes, hair, accessories, and overall confidence for the stage.  However, among this impending stage turmoil, I intend to stop behind the closed curtain and just appreciate how hard I worked to make it to tonight, and assure myself that no matter how many mistakes I may make, the potential to perform still remains in me.  I guess the point of this post is that we should always appreciate life's little moments.  As Frank Howard Clark said, "Everyone is trying to accomplish something big, not realizing that life is made of little things."  By taking each individual moment for what it is, we can live life much more fully.

The phrases in the above image list some of life's little moments that we must learn to cherish.