Hello, everyone. This is really more of a story than anything else, but it's about how great technology is. Hopefully it'll inspire some of you to go out and help your community too.

Oh, and for the sake of kindness, let's say some of this is made up. You'll see why later on.

Words In Bold

Earlier this month the California State Science Fair was held at, of course, the California Science Center. I was lucky enough to serve as a volunteer for the event, and I can honestly say it was really very fun. Not because of how impressive the entries were, or because of how great the people there were, but because of how well the crowds mixed with my chance to, in a manner of speaking, "observe" the exhibits.

My position as a volunteer was to walk the floor and monitor the exhibits. I was supposed to make sure no one messed with anything that didn't belong to them, I had to help set up displays, and I had to answer all questions as best as I could. The fair was spread throughout the Science Center, and I was assigned to a really spectacular area, home to one of the most popular exhibits of the Science Center, one you probably heard about a few months ago; the Space Shuttle Endeavour.

Now, the layout of the place was absolutely wonderful. I simply could not have asked for anything better. All across the room were tables placed in a maze-like pattern, in the center they lined up creating narrow passageways for the people to walk through, splintering off into many other passageways, and along the walls were two rows of tables circling the maze. It had just the right setup for me to easily creep around the heavy congestion of hot sweaty students and turn just in time to be lost from anyone's angry or confused stare.

In the center of the room, held by large pillars up above the crowd's heads, was the space shuttle positioned perfectly for anyone and everyone just walking into the room to stop dead in their tracks, despite an unceasing heavy flow of irritated patrons, to gaze, stupified it would seem, at the utterly heavenly sight. A sight made all the more heavenly by the dazzling spotlights aimed at its relatively reflective white surface and accompanied by a musical score, which at first might sound inspiring but after a certain amount of time might only inspire insanity, constantly being blasted from nearby speakers at all hours of the day. All hours of the day.

Moving on, my shift was from 11am to 2:30pm. During that time I had the pleasure of, as I said before, "observing" many projects, answering questions as best I could, and really appreciating some of today's technology.

To begin, one bit of technology I came to love infinitely more, though not part of the fair, was Nintendo's 3DS. I'd brought mine along hoping to get some use out of Streetpass, and I was extremely pleased by what it gave me that day. Early on I'd noticed a student with a large rectangular lump in his right pocket. Ignoring all jokes I could make about that, because of how often he whipped out the contents of his pocket to check who had passed him by, I decided I should edit my Mii to look a bit more like an angry, strung-out Gary Busey.

With my scary new Mii and the help of having seen the student's name written on the back of his project, I walked the room and passed him several times, each time with a new and increasingly ominous message directed at him. Each time he checked his 3DS he'd look around and over his shoulder, trying to see who was doing this to him, always looking more and more afriad. Even though he ended up leaving early, seeing that happen enhanced my volunteer experience ten fold. It was a great use of technology.

I'd love to go on, but this is already pretty long and there's a lot more, so I'll stop here and leave the rest of the story for another blog. I hope you enjoyed this.