Bud and Harriet 3 rain into the water and slashed up and down while Sid and Harriet sat on the beach towels under the umbrella. Sid broke the exciting news that he was going to surf again today. "My darling I am going to surf today" said Sid. "No, you must not its to dangerous" said Harriet. "You worry to much my pet", "I will be fine". So with that Sid went to a surf shop and purchased a surfboard.
He ran to the shore and jumped into the water and headed out in to the middle of the lake. The life guard had turned the wave machine one and the waves were hight today. He hopped on the surf board and immediately fell of and was swamped by a wave. But, he was not detoured and he swam out to the waves again and this time he succeeded with riding the wave into shore. It was not pretty but, it was a start.
For the rest of the day Sid was content to watch his children build sand castles, he even help build one. Gathering water and sand. The day remained breezy and sunny. As he drove home Sid felt exile rated and ready for the next time he went to the beach to surf. Bud for was was excited that his father was surfing again and he could not wait to learn how to surf. The whole family slept soundly that evening.
The next month was a blur for Bud with school and homework and extracurricular activities. One thing he did remember was his first programming contest. He a 2 friends from computer city elementary decided to enter a computer game programming contest. It was for fist grades and specifically all the first graders who wanted to enter the contest. There was a local, and national competition.
The contest was started by Cynthia Files to find the next great programmers. And what better way than to have a competition and have the team member design computer games. It was called Sky's the Limit and sponsored by star computer company. It was a major success. That first year it started off slow only 20 kids entered for all the levels but, soon it was more than a thousand.
It worked like this. The were several categories for age levels. There as the 5-10, 11, 15, 15-20, 20+. The winners of each category went on to the national level. But, the winners of each category also were pitted against each other. There were five judges. The competitors had 3 months to write their games in, the competitors could use any programming language. It was great fun.
For their entry bud and his friend decided to make a football game. It was called field football and was played in a field with no lines and no rules except that a hit had to be hard. There were eleven men/women to a side and there were the same positions as regular football. Running back, quarterback, ect. The decided to write the video game in DISCO and it took them 2 month to design the game and one month of coding and designing the graphics. It was a fun to play as it sounded. Bud played it for hours looking for bugs and places where the game play could be improved. They had many bugs but, they got the game finished and ready for the competition.
The judges were video games gurus. Each game was played by each judge and beaten and ranked on certain important criteria. Bud and his fiends game did not come close to winning. 11th place if you want to know but, bud did not care it was the experience that mattered to him. He would surely be competing again next year. The was not much else out of the ordinary that happened in Bud's 5th year. Except that he did have a great birthday party. After all he was a first grader now and the party had to be great and so it was. Everyone who mattered in computer city was invited to the prestigious party of the social season.
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