I have nothing...

As the title states I don't really have much to say. I would like to thank Jim for correcting me on a tweet I made last Friday. My meteorology professor was going over the most missed questions from our last test and one of them was something like, "If the temperature decreases and all other factors are held constant relative humidity will..." well he tried to tell us that the rh would decrease. I don't know how someone that's going for their doctorate can make this mistake...oh well.

The car search is still continuing, hopefully we find a car that we like/is in our price range and our mechanic likes, mostly it's the mechanic holding us back. I do want to know if they are bad vehicles but my god it would be easier to find a car that he does like.

Spring practice is going well, the spring game is next Saturday the 18th, which is also the Saturday of VEISHEA.

That's about it for now, I will be going home this weekend for Easter and to say goodbye to a friend that is taking an internship in the middle of no where Nebraska this summer. Let me know if there is anything that you want me to talk about or anything I love feedback! GO STATE!!! GOD BLESS!!!

My middle name is...

Random. Sorry that pretty much sums up this post. First off I would like to apologize to anyone that did not like my comments on the last post, I did not do a very good job of removing myself from the situation, sorry.

Spring break was AWESOME!!! I even made some money and will hopefully work with that guy more this summer! I had a lot of fun hanging out with my girl friend and friends last week just relaxing and having fun together, it was very enjoyable. On Wednesday night I went to an Eagles concert in Davenport with a couple friends, all I can say is it was EPIC by far the best concert I have ever been to, it was worth every cent. If you enjoy their music and ever have a chance to go see them I strongly urge you to go, even if it is expensive you will not regret it. They were the only band and played for a solid three hours.

I guess it is time to get back to school though. It was pretty hard to leave after such a fun, enjoyable, and relaxing week. I keep trying to tell myself that I will be back for the WHOLE summer in six weeks, that is easier said than done though since that seems like a year away. I am really looking forward to the summer if you couldn't tell. I have been here basically since last June. I did have a week off in August, another in November, and of course this past week along with three weeks for Christmas, but that just doesn't seem like enough. When you have been at school for basically nine months with another month and a half left you start to get burned pretty quickly. Hopefully I will have a car by then as well, my dad and I started looking for one this past weekend (if you have a good used car let me know). I found one on Craigslist, but no response from the seller yet.

I think that is it for now. Spring practice starts on Tuesday so that should mean work, however I have not heard yet from my boss, oh well. If you were Wondering VEISHEA is the week of April 13-19, the spring game is that Saturday as well. That is all for now, have a great week! GO STATE!!! GOD BLESS!!!

Why?

A certain Cedar Rapids TV station reported last night that a Linn-Mar high school basketball player was cited for having a disorderly house. There was drinking going on, however he was not drinking nor did he supply any of it. I am not going to make this into a everyone hates Linn-Mar post, quite frankly that's nothing new.

This is going to sound wrong but he was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time. If it would not have been his house he would have been released with no charges or citations. Some people say that he has to sit and he is done. This is also wrong according to state and school policy if he did not test positive for alcohol then he did nothing wrong. This makes it completely up to coach Robertson on what to do, I imagine that would include not starting Wednesday night but we will find out.

I do not know how this got reported. I understand yes a star high school basketball player had a party that there was drinking at and that is somewhat of a story, but the story was not reported well in my opinion. In my own opinion if you are going to report this you better report every other high school party that gets broken up by the cops in which athletes are present, it happens at every school INCLUDING private and christian/catholic schools. I think a better way to report this would have been in a story outlining how much of a problem it is.

How do I know all this? I just graduated from Linn-Mar and due to the anti-alcohol and drug organizations I was part of I have had several conversations with school officials about what school and state policies are and what the consequences are. Being a recent graduate I also know that this happens at every other school and if you think it doesn't or that there were not students or athletes from other schools at that party you are blind and ignorant. Most of these players are on club teams and are very close friends even though they go to other schools. Basically just because it was a party at a house of Lion player doesn't mean there were not people from other schools as well.

I do understand the situation and that it happened the weekend before state. None of us will ever know the entire situation or what happened. For all we know he tried to get the people with the alcohol to leave. Overall I believe this situation has gotten blown WAY out of proportion. If given the chance I would love to sit down with the reporter who did the story and just discuss everything, and yes I would be calm and understanding of all points I would just emphasize that the all the facts were not reported which is causing this to spiral out of control, if by chance anyone at that station reads this I would like to hear your side of this as well and will be in Cedar Rapids next week if you would like to meet. Other than that I hope the boys can put this behind them for now and play some great ball in Des Moines. GO LIONS!!! GO STATE!!! GOD BLESS!!!

Spring is....

In the air! Today was AMAZING!!! It got to around 72 today here in Ames, and my roommate complained about being hot. I wanted to respond with something along the lines of "Then I think you could take off 3 or 4 of your layers" but I decided not too. This is the time of year that we finally start getting warmer and have nice warm days and cold nights. In fact as I write this it's 8pm and the temperature is already 49 degrees. If you want to know why this is take a basic meteorology class, or ask me sometime when we both have time and you know you will be interested, once I start it's hard to stop.

I was waiting for my stat lab to start today and was looking through some weather stuff on my phone and pulled up the visible sat elite image. These visible images basically just take a snap shot and anything that reflects the suns radiation shows up. Due to this you can see snow and even sand. With the warm temperatures today you could see the rapid snow melt in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Sometime this weekend check out this website http://tinyurl.com/ (You have to do it during the day however). This is one of my favorite things to watch when storms are developing because you can really see them build. There are numerous weather websites that I check regularly and get my information from as well. Another one of my favorites is the iembot monitor. Basically you pick which NWS office you want to monitor and it shows all of the watches, warnings, and advisories as they issue them. It also shows the storm reports they receive as they enter them into the system. Check it out at http://tinyurl.com/5gef93

Other than that I mostly just look at models and stuff. One last descent website is weather underground at wunderground.com It's loaded with ad's which makes it annoying though. Speaking of weather my Meteorology class has been going pretty well until this week. Our old professor decided he was getting behind on his research and now we have a grad student that speaks in a monotone voice teaching the class. This doesn't make learning about thermodynamics any easier by the way, which I will spend some time studying over spring break...yay.

I want to congratulate the Linn-Mar girl's and boy's basketball teams on their great seasons and advancement to the State tournament. The girls won an UGLY game against Xavier on Wednesday to advance to the semi-final round on Friday to play second ranked Ames. It is beyond me why the girls athletic association matches the two top teams in a semi final game, oh well. Hopefully my Lions win tomorrow and advance to the championship game on Saturday night so I can go! The girls are 24-0 and deserve to win it all, good luck girls!!! I got to see the boys play last Friday night against Xavier, it was well an interesting game. Xavier is a great team that came out and took it to the Lions when they didn't come out of the gate and play, however the second half was completely different. With about two minutes left the Saints put in Kyle Jacobe (spelling?) Kyle has leukemia, Linn-Mar played defense and the Saints kept giving him the ball until he scored. When Kyle scored Linn-Mar called a timeout and Kyle came out of the game crying while every person in the gym gave him a standing ovation for several minutes. Some people would not want to be recognized like that but that is what sportsmanship is all about. The boys play Cedar Falls Wednesday night at 6:30, this will be a very good game since the Tigers beat the Lions in the regular season finale and then beat third ranked Kennedy to get to the state tournament, both wins however were in Cedar Falls. I think the Lions will win that game in a close one, lets hope. That's all I have for now. GO LIONS!!! GO STATE!!! GOD BLESS!!!

Welcome to America...

Okay so my little rant this week is about people coming to this great nation of ours and not knowing, well a lot! I am not saying we should lock them all out and keep them from coming here, especially since almost all of us are decedents of immigrants. I just think that they should have a firm prior experience with the English language. Trying to communicate with someone who has had little formal English education is extremely difficult.

I am mostly speaking from an educational point of view, meaning that they are coming here for to get an education and live for an extended amount of time. My roommate claims that he took English classes before coming here, he may have but they were not effective. Having communicated and had friends from around the world through foreign exchange student programs I have noticed that students from Europe almost perfect English and adapt to not only traditional English but our slang terms as well. Then there are people from Asia and the Mid-East, who have obviously had a less then stellar English education.

As I previously stated I don't mind that they come here just that communicating with them is very difficult. Several times I have tried to communicate simple things like "light switch" with my roommate and he had no clue (he actually started looking under his bed, I tried not to laugh). Then the other night I was already in bed and my phone needed to be charged so I asked him to hand me(he was still awake) the cord for it which was laying on the floor. He had absolutely no clue, so he handed me my hat that was laying by it. So I tried saying cable, that didn't work either. I eventually said black long thing and he handed it to me saying, "Oh you mean link". I tried not to be a jerk, so I kindly said "In America it's a cable or cord." He looked at me like I didn't know what I was talking about. I don't mean to say that I am not adapting to help him learn, because I am. I just don't think that me calling everything by how he learned them will help him when 99% of Americans will never call that object that in their lives, myself included its just how we are. So now I am not going to baby him I have decided to be as blunt and nice as possible because it is the only real way to learn at this point in the game.

Okay enough of that rant. Classes are going pretty well. The first round of tests are over now and professors can start reporting midterm grades tomorrow. The only class I am struggling with is English, I like to write just not in "academic format". That's about all I have for this week. I am interested in knowing what you guys think of my writing, and maybe suggestions for future posts. I am also on twitter follow me at twitter.com/jbgcook if you follow me you can see what I am thinking and doing everyday! Very stalkerish! Haha anyway I hope everyone has a safe and happy weekend. GO STATE!!! GOD BLESS!!!

What goes up...

Must come down. Okay I am sorry but that is all that I could come up with. I feel bad for writing that after the event in Buffalo last night. I found out about the crash via twitter at around 11:20, I turned on CNN and saw their coverage, they mentioned that it was snowing at the time so I pulled up a website that I like liveatc.net and someone had already posted a recording from buffalo tower around the time that the flight went down. On the recording you hear the pilots (specifically the first officer since it's a commercial flight) contact the tower like normal. The controller then gives them new vectors, and they don't respond. After several call outs you can tell by the tone in the controllers voice he is fearing the worst and opening up that binder with emergency procedures. He then asks other flights in the area if they could see the aircraft, none could due to their position in the air and reduced visibility with the snow. According to the controller he went down around the marker (it's an aviation term referring to something that pilots use to navigate). He then asked other flights about the icing conditions in the area, all flights reported icing mostly on the descent.

Although the exact cause will not be determined for some time, my guess would be icing with a possible engine problem. The biggest mystery at this time is that the flight crew never called out any mayday or notified the tower of any icing or problems at all, they just crashed. Thee FAA and NTSB were able to recover the flight recorders this morning and were going to start working on them this afternoon.

Being an aviation geek I have never been afraid of flying. Everyone always hears that it's safer then driving to the grocery store, it is though. There are thousands of flights every single day just in the United States, not many crash at all and even less have fatal endings. Commercial pilots are required to go to "school" every nine to twelve months to go over emergency procedures and practice them in the simulator. These tests go over everything from engine failure on takeoff to no thrust landings. If they don't pass they don't fly. Pilots are also required to go through a through physical every six months (or something close to that). Overall the next time you step on that plane you can feel at ease these are not just some people that were taught how to push buttons and manage an autopilot system, they are trained professionals that take great pride in transporting you and your family while give you a taste of what they love, flying.

There are several things that I love about flying. I love being up there, the view of everything form above is amazing! I have never been on a commercial flight but have been on several private planes. My uncle owns a Beechcraft Bonanza V-tail, I love it! I also enjoy the challenge of flying, landing is simply a controlled collision with the earth. I hope to one day get my pilots license and own my own plane, we will see on that. Here are some good aviation jokes, you may need some knowledge aviation knowledge to get some of these. http://www.retzer-land.co.at/flyamphibs/pg-fun.htm

The Iowa legislature is considering a new law that would completely ban the use of cell phones while driving. I believe that a complete plan is stupid, a better option would be a hands free only law. I am one of those people that finds it easier to text while driving then eat, and it is easier. My parents of course greatly frown upon this, ooppss. If we ban cell phone use while driving we better ban eating, listening to the radio, using a GPS, looking at scenery and talking to others in the vehicle as well. I find those things no less distracting then talking on a cell phone.

Guess what!?!?!?!? MY CYCLONES WON!!! Okay so the men finally won, I don't care if it was against Colorado and we lost to them (somehow) already. I was in the pep band for that game and I am starting a petition that I need to play more so we will win, I have gotten a few more games. The women's basketball team has won two big games, and barely lost to #2 Oklahoma earlier this week. On Sunday they host #14 Texas at Hilton for the Pink out game. The team will be wearing special Pink uniforms and shoes, I imagine they will later be auctioned off in the auction section of cyclones.com

I had two tests today, one next week in meteorology. I am going home this weekend as well to see some people. I hope everyone has a fantastic valentines day weekend! I will try and update next week. GO STATE!!! GOD BLESS!!!

So many things...

So little time. Sorry it has been awhile since I have posted, school has kept me very busy. Tonight I am playing in the pep band for the men's game against Colorado, then I have a Kappa Kappa Psi meeting. Tomorrow is filled with two classes and studying for two tests on Friday. I hope to have a real update posted this weekend, hopefully from home. Sadly though due to the weather I may not make it due to the predicted snow, however I did drive home for Christmas with near blizzard conditions at times so who knows. Feel free to follow or just stalk me on twitter at twitter.com/jbgcook I am always posting stuff on there. That's all I have for now. Have a great end to the week and I will talk to you on Saturday! GO STATE!!! GOD BLESS!!!