I have come to the conclusion that Clinton is a normal person and I am a nerd. Consider.
In his spare time he:
Plays videogames
Watches TV / browses popular internet sites (usually at the same time)
Hangs out with his girlfriend
In my spare time I:
Draw pretty pictures (recently about superhero-robots)
Play with my Arduino
Read webcomics
Clinton has a job, and is supporting himself. I am living off my parents.
Q.E.D.
Additional: I stayed up late building Sarumon's Tower in Minecraft...
My first public-server build, and one of the "admin" (not really but essentially) players started helping me out. This caused major problems, tho, because anything he laid down, I couldn't change, which is why the white hands are floating away from the face of the tower, and not set into the sides... Ridiculously cool...
Notes on what I am doing:
EWB: If I haven't explained already, stands for Engineers Without Borders, and we are working on a modified bilge pump that will be sold for very cheap to farming towns in Africa (someplace specific, but I cannot remember where). We're working on stress testing the modified pump, and producing a document that can be given to our affiliate company, Emerging World Technologies.
I just spent the last three weeks working to find somewhere we could borrow the necessary load sensors to do a... hold on. As I was saying, I was looking for somewhere to borrow the necessary load sensors to do a detailed analysis of what force was being applied to the pump during normal use. I ended up talking to two gentlemen (one professor, one technician) about the possibility of doing this. It was really awkward. I am just starting out on the team, and while enthusiastic, I really don't know much about the pump specs, what's going on, etc. The professor had actually worked with the team before, and knew more than me. I did not know this going in. Furthermore, the team really didn't see much need for what I was doing. I have a tendency for wanting to know or do more than is necessary, and we really didn't need to know EXACTLY what our force curve looked like, in order to run the pump to failure and see what breaks. So after meeting with these people, hemming and hawing through them not knowing what I needed or why I needed it (and myself knowing little more), and making a complete fool of myself (in my own mind I hope), the team decided to let it go for now, and get back to it if our initial tests deemed it necessary. Disheartening, but still...
ASME: Specifically HPPV (Human Powered Paper Vehicle). Crissy, our fearless leader, has developed some AMAZING goop for her old team, three years ago. This stuff is essentially like making a bike entirely out of resin, only without the resin. It's just glue and shredded up newspaper, and compared to the typical practice of gluing LOTS of cardboard together, it is AMAZINGLY strong AND flexible. We are currently in the INCREDIBLY envious position of testing and prodding this stuff to find out exactly what it is capable of, while developing techniques of using it. Problem 1: It may act like resin, but is uses wood glue, which needs to air dry. This caused major problems last year when, expecting the bike to dry in a few weeks, it wasn't dry months later. That was because the room we were drying it in was humid due to a busted steam pipe, and this year we've been evicted and moved into a much nicer place (we seriously have our own office, though admittedly not much else). Needing to air dry causes other interesting problems, such as finding ways to make the molds we want, while still allowing airflow. This is clearly a work in progress. Problem 2: We're missing two of our bike parts, plus the spare we made for testing. We didn't move our stuff, and some of the stuff would have been thrown out if Crissy hadn't prevented that. Sadly, during the move some key (they're all key) components were misplaced, and we need to remake them. This is the exciting part for me. Crissy and Eric have a tendency to, no offense to them, spin their wheels without some clear direction to go in. As such, last meeting, when it was decided that we would not only need to remake the parts, but would also need to acquire a not insignificant amount of new stuff in order to do so, I was the one to break down into nuts and bolts, getting them to start pricing items, deciding on a budget, and making plans to get $$ to acquire said items. I still call Crissy our fearless leader because, honestly, I would not even be doing this if it weren't for her, but I've taken on a distinctly leading role, and it excites me! WHICH REMINDS ME. On the way to last week's meeting, I ran into Heremphthfthph, and dragged him along. He needed to fulfill the same requirements for Engr 120 that brought me to the ASME in the first place, but I'm really hoping he'll start coming to meetings regularly. I think he'll find that once he gets used to the team, he'll start becoming a part of it. Everybody's a rookie when they start out.
In his spare time he:
Plays videogames
Watches TV / browses popular internet sites (usually at the same time)
Hangs out with his girlfriend
In my spare time I:
Draw pretty pictures (recently about superhero-robots)
Play with my Arduino
Read webcomics
Clinton has a job, and is supporting himself. I am living off my parents.
Q.E.D.
Additional: I stayed up late building Sarumon's Tower in Minecraft...
My first public-server build, and one of the "admin" (not really but essentially) players started helping me out. This caused major problems, tho, because anything he laid down, I couldn't change, which is why the white hands are floating away from the face of the tower, and not set into the sides... Ridiculously cool...Notes on what I am doing:
EWB: If I haven't explained already, stands for Engineers Without Borders, and we are working on a modified bilge pump that will be sold for very cheap to farming towns in Africa (someplace specific, but I cannot remember where). We're working on stress testing the modified pump, and producing a document that can be given to our affiliate company, Emerging World Technologies.
I just spent the last three weeks working to find somewhere we could borrow the necessary load sensors to do a... hold on. As I was saying, I was looking for somewhere to borrow the necessary load sensors to do a detailed analysis of what force was being applied to the pump during normal use. I ended up talking to two gentlemen (one professor, one technician) about the possibility of doing this. It was really awkward. I am just starting out on the team, and while enthusiastic, I really don't know much about the pump specs, what's going on, etc. The professor had actually worked with the team before, and knew more than me. I did not know this going in. Furthermore, the team really didn't see much need for what I was doing. I have a tendency for wanting to know or do more than is necessary, and we really didn't need to know EXACTLY what our force curve looked like, in order to run the pump to failure and see what breaks. So after meeting with these people, hemming and hawing through them not knowing what I needed or why I needed it (and myself knowing little more), and making a complete fool of myself (in my own mind I hope), the team decided to let it go for now, and get back to it if our initial tests deemed it necessary. Disheartening, but still...
ASME: Specifically HPPV (Human Powered Paper Vehicle). Crissy, our fearless leader, has developed some AMAZING goop for her old team, three years ago. This stuff is essentially like making a bike entirely out of resin, only without the resin. It's just glue and shredded up newspaper, and compared to the typical practice of gluing LOTS of cardboard together, it is AMAZINGLY strong AND flexible. We are currently in the INCREDIBLY envious position of testing and prodding this stuff to find out exactly what it is capable of, while developing techniques of using it. Problem 1: It may act like resin, but is uses wood glue, which needs to air dry. This caused major problems last year when, expecting the bike to dry in a few weeks, it wasn't dry months later. That was because the room we were drying it in was humid due to a busted steam pipe, and this year we've been evicted and moved into a much nicer place (we seriously have our own office, though admittedly not much else). Needing to air dry causes other interesting problems, such as finding ways to make the molds we want, while still allowing airflow. This is clearly a work in progress. Problem 2: We're missing two of our bike parts, plus the spare we made for testing. We didn't move our stuff, and some of the stuff would have been thrown out if Crissy hadn't prevented that. Sadly, during the move some key (they're all key) components were misplaced, and we need to remake them. This is the exciting part for me. Crissy and Eric have a tendency to, no offense to them, spin their wheels without some clear direction to go in. As such, last meeting, when it was decided that we would not only need to remake the parts, but would also need to acquire a not insignificant amount of new stuff in order to do so, I was the one to break down into nuts and bolts, getting them to start pricing items, deciding on a budget, and making plans to get $$ to acquire said items. I still call Crissy our fearless leader because, honestly, I would not even be doing this if it weren't for her, but I've taken on a distinctly leading role, and it excites me! WHICH REMINDS ME. On the way to last week's meeting, I ran into Heremphthfthph, and dragged him along. He needed to fulfill the same requirements for Engr 120 that brought me to the ASME in the first place, but I'm really hoping he'll start coming to meetings regularly. I think he'll find that once he gets used to the team, he'll start becoming a part of it. Everybody's a rookie when they start out.
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