Ben Carson

For this weeks blog post I will be talking about Ben Carson. There is a great documentary detailing his life on Netflix called “Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story”.  Ben Carson was born in Detroit, Michigan to a mother who would 2-3 jobs, making them very poor.  He graduated from Yale University, where he excelled in psychology, as well as receiving his M.D. (Doctor of Medicine Degree) from the University of Michigan. He then continued on to complete his residency in neurosurgery at John Hopkins University. A residency is a medical training program you take after graduating college held by an experienced preceptor. The main highlight of his surgical career happened in 1987. He had organized a group of 70 people separate twins conjoined at the head. The group had one hour to operate on the cranium after stopping performing a hypothermic arrest cools the body and stops blood circulation). In total the operation took over 28 hours!

Arizona Cardinals

For this weeks blog post I will be talking about my favorite professional football team the Arizona Cardinals. A quick background on the Arizona Cardinals; they are the oldest football club dating back to 1898 and are located in Glendale, Arizona. The Cardinals are in the NFC West inside the NFC (one of two football conferences). In the NFL there are 16 teams per conference, and through a postseason or playoff one team from each conference compete for the Lombardi Trophy in the Super Bowl.  Eligibility for the postseason is determined by the teams record in the regular season. Sadly the Cardinals have never won a Super Bowl trophy. And to be honest I dont know if we will win a trophy for a while because our quarterback is 35 years old, isn't fast and has a relatively strong throwing arm. We have been improving our team vastly through the annual NFL draft, improving on both sides of the ball every year. Our biggest strength- I would say- is our head coach Bruce Arians beacause he led our team all the way to the Wildcard Game on alternating 3rd string quarterbacks in addition to winning Coach of the Year for the 2014-2015 season. At the time of this blog the Cardinals' record is 4-2. This Monday night we are playing against the Baltimore Ravens. Hopefully then we can figure out a solution to our problems on both sides of the ball.


#RiseUpRedSea

GTA V Online

For this week’s blog post I will talk about GTA V Online. This game mode is what made me think this is the greatest video game ever created. One very sad thing is that the developer-Rockstar Games- has announced that they will not be adding DLC’s (downloadable content) to last generation consoles such as the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. If you want to have a good time playing GTA V Online buy a mic, so when you are doing heists (a 4 person co-op Mission) it is really easy to communicate. It is advised to play through Story Mode (which I talk about in my previous post) to attain familiarity with the controls. You do not have to go into public lobbies with 15 other players; you can be in a lobby by yourself and still do really cool things. Starting GTA V Online you are a level 1(one). The way to rank up your level is to gain RP (reputation points). There are various ways to gain RP, here are just a few: Complete Heist Setups and Finales, complete Contact Missions, TDM (Team Deathmatches), LTS (Last Team Standing), Vehicle Races, Completing Stunt Jumps, etc. If you have played first person shooter games you will hear of something called “KD”, and it stands for kill/death ratio. Other players are indicated on the map by a blip. If their blip is blood red they will try to kill you or other players to raise their KD. The real way to enjoy GTA V Online is to make GTA $(money). The easiest way to earn money is to play lots of Contact Missions, LTS, and Heists. Having lots of money can make you feel like a god. Having lots of money can enable you to buy million dollar cars, luxury jets, tanks, heist exclusive vehicles, combat helicopters and jets, boats, armored cars, guns and other versatile weapons, and even your own apartment with a garage. And for the fashionista in you, you can even design your character with: haircuts, tattoos, masks, hats, glasses, watches, any kind of top, bottom, or even shoes you could imagine. I currently have $20 million dollars in my GTA Bank account, owning practically all the vehicles that are awesome. That is all for this week’s blog leave any question below because GTA V Online can take a while to understand.

GTA V

For this week’s blog post I will be talking about my favorite video game, Grand Theft Auto V (five). The developer Rockstar Games has sold over 54 million copies, translating to over $3.2 billion in sales, making it the 4th most sold game of all time. I will be breaking down the features of the game, not a plot summary or how to use the buttons. I own GTA V for my Xbox 360 and I have to say it is the most visually realistic video game on the market. But it wasn't just the graphics that impressed me; it was the way the game is constructed. Now before you start even playing the game you have to sit through an 8 GB download. You should know that there are two main game modes: Story Mode, and an Online Mode. GTA Online is basically a multiplayer which I will get into more detail about in another blog post.When you first start the game you begin as Michael De Santa (one of the three main characters). The other two characters are Franklin Clinton and Trevor Phillips; Trevor is unlocked after completing the Jewel Store Job. In order to progress throughout the story mode you have to complete missions marked by the characters first initial of their first name. Once you finish a mission you will receive a bronze, silver or gold medal depending on various random factors such as time taken, headshot kills, being stealthy to a certain degree, etc. These missions usually involve setting up for a heist (a big robbery), rescuing or helping “homies” with something. For example, one mission you have to play as Michael and save Jimmy (Michael’s son) from some gangsters. After completing these heists or even random events on the streets you receive GTA $(gta dollars) to spend on guns, clothes, upgrading cars, etc. Another factor that can be annoying is the cops constantly shooting at you, but if you don’t cause too much trouble you can stay away from that. In all there are about 80 missions to complete in the story mode, and it can take a while to complete all of them. Once you finish story mode you can replay missions, play around with the enormous map, or you can move to GTA V Online, which I will be talking about in my next post.

Stanford School of Engineering

In this blog I will be talking about Stanford University, and it’s School of Engineering. Stanford University was founded in 1885, and is located in Santa Clara, California. I would like to take the computer science course at Stanford and earn a bachelors degree at the least to help me become a successful computer programmer in console game development, web application development and in more areas. I may do blog in the future on places I may want to work assuming I have the skills necessary. Stanford's computer science course in the School of Engineering was ranked 2nd in the nation with a rating of 5 out of 5. For those of you who don't know what computer science is then I will explain. Computer Science is the study of computers in general. Computer Science consists of 4 sub-units which are: theory of computation (deals with what can be calculated and what amount of resources are required to perform those calculations), information and coding theory (developed to find limits to operations using data), algorithms and data structures (the study of frequently used calculation methods and their resource usage, and programming language theory (which includes programming languages, type theory and compiler construction).To attend Stanford University it costs $47,073 per year (full time). A granted award or scholarship is worth $43,350.