I just found out yesterday that Zach was heading to the programming contest at Bonaventure today - I thought last year was the end (when we got snowed out). I'm glad you made it another year, although dropping him off for a 5:15 bus was no fun for anyone.
Contest went well. Webster teams were very "Bills"-like, coming in 7th and 9th out of 17. I didn't realize that Zach was here either until I heard his name called during the participation certificate ceremony. Did manage to sort-of wave "hi"; not sure that he cared. I do hope he had fun, though.
Yeah, he had fun. He was frustrated that they read one problem incorrectly and lost a lot of time, and they made a dumb mistake on another that they had trouble finding.
A lot like orienteering - they could see that if they were a little cleaner on some "little stuff" they could have won.
Actually, the team that came in third blew problem #1. That problem had them read five purchase amounts and the price of gas, then determine the "store loyalty discount". They read all six numbers into an array and then accidentally added in the gas price (because they used their "standard sum this array" code). They passed the public examples (because $3 didn't trigger a bigger discount), but failed our tougher test data. Had they summed one less number, they would have won the contest - for the third year in a row. You have never seen such sad faces holding the third place trophies!