Mo Ibrahim and his award

Mo Ibrahim, a Sudan native, who created and sold Celtel, a prosperous cell phone company. Mo Ibrahim is a very wealthy man, enough so that he set up the Mo Ibrahim Foundation. This foundation grants money yearly to former heads of state that were determined a good leader. So far Ibrahim has handed out two awards, each of which will receive half a million dollars a year, for the first 10 years, then 200,000 dollars every year after that until they die. In addition, they would receive funding for promotion of certain things like HIV/AIDs awareness, total 200,000 dollars year beginning the first year. The award is handed out yearly, based on an index created by a student of Harvard, by taking certain criteria into effect. That criteria is Safety and Security, Human Development, Sustainable Economic Development, Rule of Law, and Participation and Human Rights. Ibrahim is one of the 100 most important people in Africa.

Broken Thumb?

So I jammed my finger about a month ago, playing flag football. I didn’t think anything of it, it was just a jam right? Well either it was and I just keep aggravating it, or something more serious happened. I am normally able to play sports through pain. I never missed a game in high school due to an injury of any kind, but I actually had to take myself out of the basketball game tonight, because I could put any pressure on my thumb. When I go to catch the ball, it hurts. When I dribble the ball with my right hand it hurt. When I was try and steal the ball, it would hurt, and after grabbing a simple rebound it hurt, I finally decided I should stop and try and figure out what is wrong. Eight hours after the game and I can officially say my thumb hurts the same as it did when I was playing, so I’m guessing something a little more serious than a jam finger occurred.

Studying

One thing I regret about high school is the fact that I never learned how to truly study. Everything in high school came easy to me. All the classes had attendance policies so I couldn’t skip out, so I heard all the lectures, and was able to recall them, without studying, during the test. Now this leaves me at a disadvantage in college. I never had to work hard in high school, so now in college I have to learn how to put distractions aside and stay focused. If I had learned to properly study in high school, I wouldn’t be up at 5 am writing blogs to fill in time, between figuring out how study and then actually trying to retain a semester’s worth of information for 3 classes in one night. Maybe that also feeds in with procrastination. I’ve put these blogs off till almost the last minute, just as I put off studying for the finals I have today, back to back to back. We will see how that goes.

Marketing (Product Catagories)

So I was studying for my Marketing final, and though I should blog this for some odd reason. Products can be categorized in four categories. Those categories include: Convenience products, Shopping products, Specialty products, and Unsought products. Convenience products are products that are relatively inexpensive items that merit little shopping efforts. These would include candy, soft drinks and car washes. Shopping products are products that require comparison shopping because it is usually more expensive than a convenience product is found in fewer stores. Such items are washers and dryers, furniture, and clothing. A specialty product is a particular item that consumers search extensively for and are very reluctant to accept substitutes. These are items like Rolex Watches, Bose Speakers and Rolls Royce automobiles. Unsought products are products unknown to the potential buyer or a known product that the buyer does not actively seek, such as insurance, encyclopedias and burial plots.

Camp Shetek

Two summers ago, I was invited by my youth pastor to help be a counselor at Camp Shetek in Minnesota. We were taking a group of middle school kids up there from our church, and he needed another set of eyes. Most of the other counselors were around my age, and since there were only two people from my graduating class from our church, he didn’t have much to choose from for counselors. Camp Shetek is a beautiful camp located on the south side of Lake Shetek. During the week, we got a chance to share our testimonials with the kids, as well as play games, like basketball and hoccer, a mix of handball and soccer. Then we got the just to get in smaller groups and learn more about certain topics the camp felt necessary to go over. One of my favorite parts of the weekend was playing war games at the boy scout camp. About 300 kids and counselors each with a team color flag on their back raced around, trying to find certain objects while protecting their own flag, and trying to eliminate the other team by grabbing their flag.

Soccer (3)

Last summer was pretty uneventful for me. The being of the summer started off, pretty good. My sister plays on the high school soccer team, and her coach was my coach in high school. So, I volunteer to help the girls out and work with them so they become better players and teammates. I’m not the only person from my class to return and help out. One of my best friends, from high school, who happens to also be an ex girlfriend, comes and we use our collective knowledge, to not only help the girls we teach, but each other also. The main reason we go back is to give back to the program that helped us, but we also have a special task to help the coach get a different perspective on players. The players open up more to us, because we are closer to their age, and have been teammates or helpers for the past 5 or so years, so we get some insight that the coach might not, and splitting up practices is easier with more authority figures.

Soccer (2)

So, I started out a little shaky, as I got use to the indoor rules, and my goalie box. The first shot took at me squeaked by. Getting the worst out of the way I was able to settle down and play decent soccer. After two or three times playing, I was given a complement, as being one of the best goalies, that plays on Friday nights. Over the 6 weeks I’ve played with them on Friday I’ve probably played close to thirty or thirty five games. While I have played that much, I have still yet to break ten goals given up. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to play the past couple of weeks due to various issues, including a broken thumb from playing intramural flag football with a bunch of buddies from my freshman year. Being the only member of the team allowed to use your hands, a broken thumbs doesn’t work well with being goalie.

Soccer

Ever since I started playing it in high school, soccer has been one of my favorite sports to play. After making varsity halfway through my first year, is where it really got fun. Playing against competition, and having to learn the game at the same time is difficult, since before high school, I knew nothing about soccer. We had a decent team back home, but coming to Northwest I knew there was no team to try out for, so I put aside soccer. Earlier this year, a friend invited me to play with him on Friday nights with a group of guys. Although I do return home every summer to help my sister’s soccer team out, I know I wasn’t going to be as good as I once was. When I got there and saw the guys playing I knew I was in for it, but when no one wanted to play goalie, I sprung on the chance. Over the past summer I had played a lot of street hockey with my church, and goalie was always a strong point for me.

Basketball

Playing basketball is something I have loved doing since about the fifth grade, and since I got to school here, I have played a lot more basketball than I did in high school. I play every Friday at the Rec Center and every Monday at the Horace Mann gym. Both of those events are sponsored by the Navigators. I also am willing to play just about any other time, if someone will go with me. One thing though I hate, is the fact the players have no repercussions that stop them from fouling somebody. Because here, they are just pick up games so you just take it at the top of the key. In organized basketball you get a foul, and the other team gets to shoot free throws, and if you get five fouls you have to sit out the rest of the game. More than one time while playing here, I have took cheap shots in the back on fast breaks, that would warrant a technical foul or even an ejection from the game in organized sports. So I nearly get injured because someone doesn’t have the sportsmanship to play clean, because they know if they alter my shot enough I’ll miss and we have to take it from the top of the key. Which I think is quite ridiculous.

Video Games (Wrestling)

Although they are classified most of the time as sports games, wrestling games such as WWE Smackdown vs. Raw! 2009 to me are in a class by themselves. This ongoing series dating back to the original play station, has got my attention year in a year out. I believe it started way back, when my sister first got me hooked on the television show. Since the first game of the series came out, I have personally owned ever installment in the series. My favorite part of the game is you get the chance to customize your very own wrestler. You can make him look like whoever you want, and do basically whatever moves you want. Then you get to put him in the ring against the WWE stars you see on television every week. Every year, the game comes out with new features, revved up graphics and a variety of other things to keep your attention and make the game worth buying.

Video Games (Shooters)

Although I enjoy playing sports games, on my Xbox360, I also enjoy a variety of other games. Another primary genre of games I play is shooter games. With Halo 3, Call of Duty 4, and Gears of War 2, are my favorites in the class. Halo 3 is a futuristic first person shooter, with a mix of standard guns, and future guns to add a solid mix. The main enemies in Halo are the Covenant Elite, and the Flood. Call of Duty 4 is a realistic first person shooter, mostly with weapons currently in use by the arms forces today, ranging for pistols, to assault rifles to sniper rifles. Here you will be fighting and sabotaging the Russians. Gears of War 2 is a futuristic over the shoulder third person shooter, placing you with weapons of the future, including the infamous chainsaw gun, The Lancer. In this shooter you face hordes of Locust, literally hordes, when you play the new cooperative game type, rightly named Horde mode.

NCAA Football 09 (3)

Now that you know what all your players can do, you have to cut your roster down to 75 players. Sometimes this is no easy task, especially when I had a roster count at 89 pre cut. So you’ve trimmed the fat off your roster, now you get to begin the preseason, and at the beginning of each preseason you get your first glance at this year’s recruits, and can select a few for your target board. Since you have to look the future, the next task is to redshirt players. This takes them out of the depth chart for this year, and next year they return as freshman again. This is helpful, to give the player an extra year of training camp, and also if you have a deep roster and the player won’t play anyways. After that’s done you get to set your depth chart. This is putting the players in order of how good each is by their positions. Finally the last thing for preseason is the custom schedule, where you get to choose non conference opponents to fill the rest of you schedule. Once that’s done you are ready for your next season.

NCAA Football 09 (2)

Whether you choose to export or not has no bearing on your current game. Next you see if anyone wants to transfer to your school. The majority of the time, no one does want to transfer. Next on the agenda is off-season recruiting. If you were able to sign 25 players during the season, the next 5 weeks is dedicated solely to that purpose. At the end of the 5 weeks you are given a recruiting class grade, and you can see how you compared to other schools. Now, you have your players for next year, you get the option to change a player’s position to fit holes in your rosters. Once you are satisfied with that it’s on to training camp. All the players that weren’t in the last recruiting class go through training camp to improve their skills. Just like in real life some player gain more attributes than others, afterwards you get to review the stats and see who made the big breakthrough.

NCAA Football 09 (1)

My favorite game to play on my Xbox360 is NCAA Football 09. Specifically, I love playing dynasty mode. In dynasty mode, you pick a school and take them through years. During the time you can recruit players to make your program better, as well as playing the games in hopes of getting you team to the national championship. At the end of every year you are given job offers based on you performance to other schools wanting to acquire you services. You can choose to ignore these offers and stay with your current team, or take one the offers and try and build that program up. After you make that decision, you get tossed into the off-season schedule, with you first task is graduating your seniors and trying to convince underclassmen not to transfer or go to the NFL Draft. After you spend some time doing that, the game will ask if you want to export the draft class for use in the NFL counterpart Madden 09.

Fantasy Football (5)

So, facing the team that started my downward descent last time, I wasn’t going to let that happen. I was an early favorite through the projected scores. The game on Thursday put me quickly behind as he racked up a quick 18 point lead. The early games on Sunday brought me further away from victory, has he continue to lead 61 to 32. By late Sunday he had reached out to an 83-59 lead, and he still had one player left to play while I had two players still awaiting their games. One of which would play Sunday night, and one player on Monday night. At the end of Sunday, I had only brought the margin to 83-63. With both teams still with one player to play, for me a wide receiver and his kicker were still on the board. So I’m thinking my season is pretty well over with, I didn’t even watch the game. I get online at 11 pm and see some people talking in the chat room, one of them was my opponent, saying the game needed to end. So I scroll down to see the score, and my receiver was having a breakthrough career day, and ended with 200 yards receiving and 2 touchdowns. This brought my score to 95, and his kicker only netted him 5 points to bring his total to 88. So, with the luck I have had the past 5 weeks the playoffs should be interesting going in the number 2 seed with a 9-5 record.

Fantasy Football (4)

Unfortunately the player didn’t repeat for any of the next three weeks as I suffered three consecutive losses. This would bring my record to 4-5 and below .500 for the first time this year. This was the first major turn of my season, the second however was much more inviting. With the return of my superstar, and me picking up a new defensive unit, brought me to a lucky streak. I would go on to with 4 weeks straight, some of them by sheer luck, but hey a win is a win, and it’s good to get lucky sometimes. So sitting at 8-5, with just one game left in the regular season, and a playoff berth already clinched, I was set to face my division rival who beat me back in week 7 to start my downward spin. I got to looking, and for me to have a chance at winning in the playoffs, the victory here would be crucial to keep my momentum.

Fantasy Football (3)

This year I was invited to return to the league. So I got the chance to draft my own players this year, and get a team I wanted. With my team set I headed into week 1 with high expectations. I accumulated the 2nd highest point total of any team, that week and soared to 1-0, only to get wiped in week 2. So sitting at 1-1, I came roaring back with the 2 highest scores of the next two weeks, moving me up to 3-1. Before finally having some back luck, with my superstar getting injured, and a horrible performance by some other players led to a week 5 loss to the worst team at the time. With my superstar out for the next 4 weeks, I had to find someone to fill his shoes, I picked up a player off free agency, and it was the right pick as he blasted away giving me a narrow victory in week 6, bring me to 4-2.

Fantasy Football (2)

Last year, I was approach by my best friend’s father. He knew my interest in fantasy football, and was in a league with other people from our community. One of which was my youth pastor, who had very little knowledge of the NFL, nor the time needed to commit to fantasy football. I was asked to help out and co-own the team. I accepted and took over with 5 games left in the regular season. The team was 2-7, but I had a couple of superstars, to work with. I quickly made a trade, dishing out one of my superstars for 2 good players and 1 decent player. I held on to my other star, and made a change picking up a more solid defense. 3 weeks later, after gaining 3 wins, I decide to trade away the other star to get some more depths as I tried to make the playoffs. I won the 4th week after I took over, but lost the 5th by 2 points thus crushing my chances at the playoffs with a 6-8 record, which was one game out of the playoffs.

Fantasy Football (1)

Every fall since 2003, I get online with eager anticipation of the football season. I love to play fantasy football, and have done so each year on yahoo.com. Fantasy football is a game where you draft real NFL players and get points based on their performance in their actual games. They get points for yards gained, touchdowns scored and various other things. My first year in 2003, I created to different teams, and had great success. My first team took 1^st place in the tournament at the end of the year after being the lowest seed in the tournament. My second team took 2^nd place in the tournament, after being the top seed at the end of the regular season. So, being so successful my first year, means it can only get worse right? Well it did but not much, and in 2004 I took 3^rd place and 4^th place. This trend continued in 2005 as I took on an addition team, and got a 3^rd place team, and two 4^th place teams.