Grown-up

One of the things I hate most about being grown-up is other grown-ups.

Elder Matthew Keith Barton

I drove 522 miles yesterday to spend one day with Matt. It was exciting! A friend in Kelowna, Ashley, helped coordinate the meeting with a breakfast rendezvous at 8 am. We had breakfast, helped some members move, went to a baptism, went tracting and I took him and his companion out to some dindin. It was awesome. It was good seeing Matt and hanging out all day doing missionary stuff. I miss him and I miss being a missionary, I really do. He had my tag that I gave him after my mission that he wears periodically here so I wore it. It was a good laugh.

A sad realization?

I just discovered a lot of long lost high school friends' blogs. And I realized while they're blogging about their family and kids, I'm blogging about peggle.

Whatever...I love peggle!

I voted!

Today is the Federal elections for Canada where we vote for our next Prime Minister. Kind of like what's going to happen on November 4, 2008 when McCain will lose. No one knows about today because well...it's Canada. Anyway, a student asked, "Mr. Yamamoto, who are you going to vote for?" It made me think and pause for a moment, then I replied, "I'll give you my honest answer: I don't know. But even if I did know, I wouldn't tell you." Gotta save my job ya know.

So of course at lunch in the staff room we were talking about politics and I mentioned how I can't even vote because I'm new to Canada plus the fact that I don't know who to vote for. My gracious vice-principal went to the polls in the gym and asked them if I could vote. They looked it over and said I could if I had ID or a witness to vouch for me! I CAN VOTE! So after all my classes I looked up the platforms and quickly got caught up as best I could as to where each party stood.

It was interesting. I shun labels, and I don't affiliate myself with any particular party. But if you pin me down on it, I'm closest to being a libertarian. Often people see me as liberal, which I'm not, neither do I consider myself conservative. It still raises hairs on the back of my neck though when people call me liberal or conservative. I'm neither. I'm a freethinker. I've learned correct principles and now I govern myself. Blah blah blah. Anyway, as I was reading through the platforms, I was thinking, "I'm totally siding with the conservative party." Not the Marijuana Party? Or the Bloc Quebecois??? Whatever, it's all semantics. So I voted today. I may be the first Yamamoto to do so. It's a good feeling. It really is. And now that I've expressed a little of my views that I prefer to keep to myself, I hope we can still be friends.

Peggle Peggle Peggle

I have a new peggle high score: 25,527,620

But just as incredible are the amazing things that happen just from blogging. It all started with my previous peggle shout-out. Then I get this comment on my blog from Xuyen Nguyen from Popcap.com, the makers of Peggle. He commented:

Although, it is unfortunate that you did not pass Statistics the first time, I am extremely glad to hear that you passed it the second time around and became a Grand Peggle Master at the same time! Your scores certainly merit that honor and we'd definitely like to thank you for blogging about us! I'd love to send you a copy of Peggle Nights and try to become a Grand Master in the sequel! Let me know what you think!

Thanks again,
Xuyen Nguyen
PopCap.com
xnguyen@popcap.com

I was stunned that someone from Peggle-land gave me a kudos about Peggle. It was like an angel visitation thanking me for paying my ten percent and giving me manna as a kind gesture.

So of course I reply back and this was our conversation:

Xuyen Nguyen,

I am delighted to hear from your comment on my peggle blog. How did you find it? If your offer for Peggle Nights still stands, I would love to take you up on it! Thank you!

SamYam

And his response:

Sam,

Someone on our customer service team actually discovered it and brought it to my attention (I do a of outreach to bloggers). Your story is fantastic! And I’m glad you ended up passing the class in the end ;)

Yes, we would love to send you a copy of Peggle Nights, and I would also love for you to join our exclusive invite-only blogger group! The group is intended to thank bloggers for blogging about us! It is extremely small and I would communicate with you periodically asking your input on new products and/or anything related to Peggle! Please let me know if you’re interested!

Of course I'm interested. So not only do I get a copy of Peggle Nights, but I'm now a member of this exclusive invite-only blogger extravaganza party-like-it's-1999 group! The moral of the story: Failing your stats class because of peggle pays off in the short and long run.

Dream

I want world peace through dancing.

Touched to tears.

Class Questionnaire v. 2.0

I sent out another survey to my Concert Band class today. They're a great group of kids who have played their way to MusicFest in Ottowa, Canada. It's like Nationals. Just think of your high school basketball team going to the National Championship. Yeah, it's a big deal. I want to go, they want to go, but we've got some things working against us. First, grad week is the same week as Nationals. Almost exactly half the class is not willing to miss out on grad week. Second, we have to raise a lot of money. That's even bigger than the first hurtle, and it will take a lot of work. The last question was this:

Do you support the Center For Kids Who Can't Read Good and Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too?
Here are the results (my stats class paid off, can you tell?):
78% or 46 students responded Yes
15% or 9 students responded No
2% or 1 student responded Maybe
5% or 3 students did not vote

I wonder why the nine students responded no. And why was that one student iffy. And three didn't even care??? What gives?
Here are some comments:

them center would have to be 3 times bigger!

I highly support derek Zoolander's center, but it's way to small! what is this, a center for ants?

your a chimp

I have no idea what that is!

Passion

I love people who are passionate about the things they do. There is something about them that just exudes life. It's easy to see passionate people as they really are because you are actually seeing their true selves, not just a facade. And their connections are much deeper. Just a few people that I know that exemplify this:
Austin Craig
Dave Peterson
Melanie Orton
Nathan Robbins
Logan Bradford
Ryan Darton
Kara Stowers
Crystal Young-Otterstrom
Colbi Crawford
Kenji Hood

Well I've been watching these inspiring talks on ted.com and of course, I've been inspired. What is ted about? Well they can explain it better than I can. But to try to sum it up, TED tries to make the world a better place by sharing ideas from our greatest thinkers. These people are world leaders in their fields. They love what they do and their drive, ambition, hard work and passion is changing the world. They are true, real and passionate. Some of their talks will outrage you, some of them will make you smile, all will leave you inspired.

6th Grade and Beyond

I was thinking about 6th grade today (or as Canadians like to call it: Grade 6), mainly because I teach 6th grade band, my students are quite a handful and my thoughts were drawn to my 6th grade days with Mrs. Casdorph. Boy I hated her because of her inequality, ego, and ruthlessness. She felt she was entitled to teach without a formal degree in education because she was a mother. By the way, my parents wasted their money to send me to a private school where irrational thinking like that is allowed.

She's actually a small reason why I'm teaching because even at that age, I thought I could do a better job than her. I hope I'm right. Sometimes I feel like I'm the Mrs. Casdorph in these kids' lives. I hate disciplining, I hate being a jerk, I hate being a hard case. There has to be another way. Thanks Mrs. Casdorph for teaching me life's valuable lessons.

My 6th grade teacher, Mrs. Casdorph