Halo Playing! By Jake Midgett

Language Arts                     Jake Midgett                 9/20/13

                                                            Funnel

    I started playing Halo since it was first released. I currently play two of their games Halo Reach and Halo 4 their newest game. The campaign for Halo Reach has about 12 levels.

    I started and completed the campaign on legendary, the hardest difficulty. The first level was pretty easy other than trying not to get your armor melted by the phantom’s and ghost’s plasma cannons or by the wraith’s cannon.

    I remember in one level I got an achievement that you had to earn by killing an elite messenger before he escapes. I got this achievement on accident because all I saw was an enemy and decided to try to stick him with a plasma grenade. My plasma grenade throw was off target but the elite ran into it when he tried to escape and he blew up. I remember only one easter egg in the game which is in a mission called Halsey’s Lab. The easter egg can only be done with two people. Both players need the armor ability called “jet pack” to be able to get to see the easter egg. Both players will die but when one player activates one of the two buttons and dies the other player that is still alive needs to wait for the second player to be respawn before activating the second button. Once both buttons are activated they are able to go through a secret passage that will lead them to a circular room that is filled with a bunch of monitors that you can activate to learn more about Bungie (the creators of Halo) and Red vs. Blue a webiseries based on Halo.

     You can also play online against other people over the United States or with your friends. In online mode you have different classes that you can choose from. The main difference about the classes is that they have a different primary weapon or different armor abilities. The armor abilities that you have in online play are Armor Lock (my favorite) Sprint, Hologram, Jet Pack, Evade, Active Camo, and Drop Shield. I mostly use Armor Lock because I love the animation and it makes you invincible for about four seconds. Also in online play you can perform assassinations on people.

    I have also played Halo 4 (now owned by 343 Industries and not Bungie). I have only completed two levels in campaign mode and have started my third level in campaign. I am attempting to complete Halo 4 on legendary. I have stopped playing campaign and have been playing online most of the time. In online play you can assassinate people just like in Halo Reach. The only difference in the assassinations with Halo 4 and Halo Reach is that Halo 4 has different assassination animation moves. There have been multiple times in online play where I am running away from another player and I jump behind him and assassinate him. I have also killed three people in a row with a sniper rifle too. Another online game type is called Spartan Ops. I don’t play it but I know that there is an easter egg is in it. The easter egg is in episode one chapter three. There is a walkway on the right side of the map where there is a lone piece of scrap metal or rock and if you shoot it you will hear the theme to the Red vs. Blue webiseries.

(Harrison Kight) Sonic Origins: The Story of a Blue Hedgehog

My name is Sonic the Hedgehog. I’m the blue hedgehog with an attitude that can run at supersonic speeds. I’ve had several adventures over the past twenty-three years and have met a lot of allies, enemies, and strange creatures. I’ve also learned some cool tactics, collecting gold rings along the way. I remember these journeys very well, and the way that I began my adventures.

It all began in the now-famous Green Hill Zone. I was running as I normally do, when I saw someone flying in the sky. This person, Dr. Eggman, revealed his first plan to create his ultimate empire. As I chased him to his base, I discovered the six mystical Chaos Emeralds: the powerful gems that, once gathered, grant the user unlimited power. After collecting these jewels, I arrived at the doctor’s mechanical base, destroyed his final trap, and brought peace back to Green Hill Zone.

Soon after this, I met an orange fox named Tails. He was a fan of mine, and he decided to join me on my adventures. One afternoon, we discovered that the area was hiding a seventh Chaos Emerald, which Eggman was chasing. He planned to use the emeralds to create a new weapon: the Death Egg. Tails and I ran through the island, eventually regaining the six Chaos Emeralds, along with the mysterious seventh emerald. After arriving on the Death Egg, I confronted the doctor into the core of the station, defeating his final trap, and destroying the Death Egg using my new Super Sonic form.

After briefly departing from my new ally, I found a new adventure on Little Planet, the small moon that orbits the planet. I discovered that Eggman was searching for the Time Stones in an attempt to control time. Upon racing up to the moon, I met Amy Rose, who is obsessed with me. Racing away to the other zones, I saw a blue robot speed past me and kidnap Amy. Much to my surprise, this “Metal Sonic” was a drone that even matched my supersonic speed. I chased the robot throughout the planet, rescuing the Time Stones, and thwarting the mad scientist’s plans again.

While I was away, Tails discovered that the Death Egg had not actually been destroyed, but instead crashed into the Floating Island. Eggman had detected a giant Chaos Emerald inside the island, and planned to use it to rebuild the fortress. Tails and I flew to the island on my biplane, the Tornado, and I zoomed into the scene as Super Sonic. Suddenly, a red echidna caught me off guard and stole the Emeralds. This inhabitant, known as Knuckles, was the guardian of the Floating Island; he thought that Tails and I were thieves. I knew this was a trap set up by Eggman, so when the echidna ran away, Tails and I worked to recollect the Emeralds, avoid Knuckles’ tricks, and reach Eggman’s construction site. Although the doctor briefly re-launched the station, Tails and I defeated his creation, causing the Death Egg to fall yet again. I knew, however, that this was not the end of this adventure.

Upon landing in Mushroom Hill, I discovered a Giant Ring that took me to the “Master Emerald.” This was the giant Chaos Emerald that Eggman was searching for upon my arrival. After encountering Knuckles again, the echidna realized that Eggman was tricking him the entire time. He attempted to stop the doctor from stealing the emerald, but was injured while trying. Knuckles teleported me to Sky Sanctuary, where I rushed to the now-reconstructed Death Egg. I infiltrated the station, and defeated Eggman’s escape robot, returning the Master Emerald to Knuckles. The Floating Island was restored to its home in the sky.

These glory days of adventure were only the beginning of times to come. I met several new allies while saving a city from a strange entity formed by the emeralds. I thwarted a plot to destroy the planet after Eggman discovered the Ultimate Life Form, Shadow the Hedgehog, who soon assisted me with this task. I joined Tails and Knuckles to defeat a reawakened Metal Sonic. After twenty years of these journeys, combined with several others, I’m still going strong to save the world as the fastest thing alive.

Oliver's RV trip

Oliver Sadler

September 26, 2013

                                                            Grand Canyon

                        My family and I flew into Albuquerque New Mexico. We got a cab from the airport to a K.O.A RV rental site. When we acquired our RV, that was the beginning of our travels to the Grand Canyon. We drove to Arizona, and on the way we stopped at a few gift shops. My dad told us “to save our money to buy other things”. I bought a sweet Concho hat at one of them. We visited the Petrified Forest and the painted dessert and a few other historical sights. We finally made it to the Grand Canyon National Park. My family and I set up camp and did some shopping at a General store. I purchased my CAMELBAK there, the blue one I have now.  We set camp and the next morning we went to a viewpoint on the Grand Canyon.  Later in the trip my brother and sister hiked with me on the south rim trail. One day on our campsite an Elk came through the campground, I got some good quality pictures of it.

               

                         Once we were done with the Grand Canyon we traveled to Colorado Durango.  I got my birthday present in Durango, which was a brand new pair of cowboy boots. My aunt Wendy and my uncle Pete joined us on our vacation with their two kids and dog. We camped in the mountains and there was a lake; it was on of the prettiest views I’d ever seen. On the lake my uncle taught, more like tried to teach me how to fly fish, it was fun though. Our family took a trip to an old western town in a valley called Silverton. We ate lunch a cool rustic restaurant, but I can’t remember its name.

Griffin O'Connor Narrative

Griffin O’Connor

Narrative Story

The Camera Card

“C'mon Bradley, I think it's this way!” I said to my friend as we walked through the Wal-mart. We had just been at a convention, and my camera’s photo capacity had already reached it’s limit, so I had to get a new memory card. I found the aisle with the camera equipment, and located the correct card. We grabbed a couple of other things and left, eager to get back in time for that night’s concert. The two of us returned to our hotel and began preparing for the event. I switched out the two memory cards, and put the old one in a pocket on my camera case. Once we were both ready, we met up with Bradley's girlfriend, Lindsay, and went inside the convention center.

The room they had set up for the concert was packed. Dubstep music pounded so loudly that you needed to scream to be heard, strobe lights and lasers flashed, and people screamed and crowded around the stage. I was loving every second of it. About forty-five minutes in, Bradley told me he was leaving. Apparently Lindsay was having a migraine and he wanted to take her back to the hotel. He asked me if I was comfortable with staying by myself, and I told him that I would be fine.

Fifteen minutes after Bradley left, a few people started crowd-surfing. Two tall guys were tossing people onto the crowd. I had always wanted to crowd-surf, so I ran up to them and told them to lift me. They hoisted me up by the waist, and all of a sudden I was on top of the crowd. I glided across their hands for fifteen blissful seconds, while the music blared and the people cheered. Out of nowhere, a large empty hole opened up in front of me. The crowd continued to propel me forward; unaware that there would be no one to catch me. I dropped to the floor. A second after my back landed on the ground; my head snapped back and hit the floor hard.

 Everyone around me gasped, and instantly people were helping me up and asking if I was all right. I told them I would be fine and went to get a bag of ice. I got some from the concession stand, and I located my backpack and left for the hotel, pressing the cold Ziploc against my head.

Out in the parking lot, I took out my camera to take a picture of the convention center. I noticed my camera's old memory card was no longer there. I had taken pictures during the concert, so I figured it must have fallen out then. The thought of losing all of my photos really bothered me. My night ruined, I walked to my hotel feeling anxious and depressed.

The next day, I walked into the convention center and went directly to the lost and found. I told the man there I was looking for a camera memory card. I showed him the one I had bought the day before, so that he knew what it looked like. He walked to the back table and came back a moment later, shaking his head no; they didn't have it. I thanked him anyway and tried to forget about it. Throughout the day, I had a pit in my stomach and the thought of the card being gone forever kept bothering me.

Right before we were going to leave, I went back to the booth and asked again, this time to another person. I showed him the other card too. He went back to the table and looked around for awhile. He turned around and walked back, and I knew he was going to tell me the same thing as the first man: that they didn't have it and that I could come back and check later. But then he held up a small, black, square of plastic, and asked me if that was it. I popped it into my camera, and the pictures that I thought I had lost appeared on the screen. I thanked him and ran back to my friend, the pit in my stomach replaced with relief.

Zackie Chans narrative

Zach Jones                                             

9/27/13

                              Wrestling

  

 My wrestling years started in 5^th grade. I went to the middle school practices even though I wasn’t old enough to join but they had a “little kids group” for those who were looking into wrestling when old enough. I liked it all except for the coach at that time. He was the true definition of a moron. He clearly didn’t care about the success of anyone’s wrestling year besides his sons. He had a jerkish way of saying stuff, didn’t know how to appropriately interact with younger kids or even older kids. So obviously he wasn’t a very good coach. So I took those practices until 7^th grade when I could actually be part of the middle school wrestling team. Fortunately, though the old coach had moved and was replaced with a very good and awesome coach, whose motive was not to make you pissed or be a jerk to you but to make everyone better and succeed at the sport.

    I WAS one of those kids who thought that they were tough, so I believed that I would just go and kick butt, and tear up the mats right off the bat. Man was I wrong. The only thing that I remember from my first match is getting my butt kicked and almost spewing from exhaustion. That’s when I realized that I had a long way to go to get to that kicking butt stage. So I practiced.

   I knew that I was one of the bigger kids on the team so of course I wanted and preferred to wrestle with the younger and smaller kids not realizing that I need to practice with the bigger and older kids to get any better. Finally lying on my back completely flattened after getting taken down by a 210 pound kid that year, I realized that I had been wasting my time with the younger kids.

 So the next year I really took this into consideration. I made an effort to try to wrestling with the bigger kids to try to get as good as I could. And guess what? It paid off with a 4^th place medal at districts and a chance to go to state. But I did as much as I wanted and got as far as I thought necessary in my opinion. 

  I learned many things during my seasons of wrestling. Most are lessons and virtues that are required to get through life and other sports and tasks. You can’t just go into the sport all goofy and inconsiderate. If you approach it this way then you will, like a lot of things have a bad experience and not get very good at what you are trying to perfect.  Second, I went in being all cocky and arrogant. Also like a lot of other situations in life if you go into the activity cocky and arrogant then you will never know what to do and what you need to work on. You can’t assume you know everything about anything. It’s guaranteed that there are multiple things that when asked to perform, related to a task or activity that you believe you know everything about, you will not know the first step in performing the task asked of you.

   So I learned a lot more than just how to wrestle in my years of wrestling. I learned important life virtues. 

Too Close At 70... By Aaron Cabaniss

Aaron Cabaniss

September 27, 2013

Final writing essay copy

Too close at 70…

It was the spring break of 2011. My fellow chorus classmates and I were eager to go enjoy the fun rides and everything that goes along with Disney World. All of us arrived at the school pretty early in order to drive the whole day down toward Orlando, FL. It was a very long ride indeed.

The first day in Disney we decided to venture trough MGM Studios, now renamed Hollywood Studios. There we rode rides like the tower of terror and the rockin’ roller coaster based off of the band Aerosmith. We all enjoyed singing in the Festival Disney competition as well.

There were several things that were out of place though. Such things included our bus driver running over a stop sign and saying: “I thought I ran over a cone.” Other events included him almost side swiping a car on the parkway on the way to Magic Kingdom. These foreshadowing events led to an unfortunate event.

After our trip in Disney we started back to our school parking lot to meet our parents. However, before arriving a horrible event happened.

We were on I-75 north going toward Atlanta when a minivan swerved and spun out of control, crashed into the median, and flipped in the air; everyone was killed. This was all a slow-motion movie-like traumatic scene. The car then came into our lane and caused us to swerve off the road, on to the grass, and crash into the side of an overpass of a bridge going across the interstate. I probably blacked out for a minute or two, I don’t remember. When I came to I could hear everyone screaming, crying, and yelling “Becca! Becca!” Apparently our classmate Becca had left her feet up on the railing of the bus while lying down before the crash and had gone straight through the windshield. She was then airlifted to a hospital near by.

I immediately called my parents to alert them of what had happened. I assured them I was okay. They then called the newscast to ask about any news of a crash outside of Atlanta, but the newscasts had not heard of any such thing. Fox 5 then came out to visit my parents at home and interview them about what they had heard.

All of us who hadn’t had too many injuries were taken out of the damaged bus and onto the bridge where we were checked out by local volunteer firemen. Those who had no sorts of injuries minus a couple of scrapes and bruises were taken to the Dooly county sheriff’s detention center where the community took care of us all.

            After arriving home with each of our parents, we took a cooling down period. This was a great thing to do since everyone on that bus had had a near death experience. I thanked my family for saying a prayer for me as they learned about my experience via my phone call. I have never been so scared in my life. We later learned that the family in the minivan following too closely caused the wreck. That’s why you do not follow close behind anyone when driving, especially at 70 miles per hour.

Mike Test

Mike Lefko test