Finals Week Update

So the hour right before I have my linear algebra final (Math 220), I needed to stop by the last EWB meeting of the semester so as I could talk to them about the latest design of this thing I'm working on for them (more about that later). The meeting goes quick, and I even pick up a friend who's in my 220 class and take him back to the Honor's dorm to help him study (which is what Cole and I were doing for the past six hours). Unbeknown to me, the EWB was having a free pizza meeting to encourage people to come to the last meeting (when they would otherwise be studying their asses off or more likely relaxing their asses off). Not many people came to the meeting, so there was lots of pizza left over. I wasn't very hungry (I had eaten, and lately I've felt sick every time I have), but I took the pizzas off their hands. I figured that if anybody at honors wanted some, they would appreciate it, and if not we could always give them out at the exam. Well we studied hard for the last half hour before the test, and rushed out the door, completely forgetting the pizzas. The test went well (more on that later), and when we came back, we found some of the Honor's Hall study room regulars lying on the floor, eating the pizzas. One of them looked at Cole and said "we ate some of the pizza. I hope you don't mind." I chimed in, and told them that was kinda what it was there for, and apologized for not putting a FREE sign on it or something. Another (without pizza), perked up. "We can eat those? I'm getting a slice!" and jumped up to do just that. I left about twenty minutes later, and the pizzas were almost finished.

I've been spending a fare amount of time in Honor's Hall, studying in the study room on Arras' floor along with Cole (Arras' presence is implied). These folks are pretty cool dudes and doesn't afraid of anything'n'stuff.

(more about pump)
So for the EWB, I've been working on the design and CAD drawings for a frame to mount the linear actuator to for our failure test. Basically, we're setting the hand pump up with some sort of resisty-pumpy-loop-thing and rigging a linear actuator to pump it non-stop till it starts to break. The frame needs to mount the actuator at a specific distance from the mount point on the pump handle (the sweet spot between the actuator's maximum and minimum reach), it needs to not be the part that breaks, and it needs to be movable so we can test different pumping angles (which will put more or less pressure on the pump's fulcrum). I spun my wheels for the last couple of months on this project, and last Friday I finally just went and talked to Miles, who runs the machine shop that we pay to fabricate all our parts. Well I talked to him for about ten minutes, and he already came up with the best design. Period.

At this point I'm feeling stupid for not talking to this guy in the first place, but regardless, my job is now to get him a CAD drawing of the main piece for the actuator frame, and he planned to weld it to the pump's frame after he milled it out. That said, I needed to talk to the rest of the EWB before approving this thing to be welded, which turned out to be a good call, as the team decided that we really want to try avoiding any permanent modifications to the pump frame. Right now, the plan stays the same, but I still need to finish the CAD drawing, get it to Miles and talk to him about building it to bolt to the frame instead of welding it. On top of this, I need to study for the chem and Japanese finals, and I'm leaving this Thursday.

(more about 220)

220 went amazingly well. I was paranoid (rightly so), after not doing so well on the calc final (more on that later), so I met up with Cole around noon, and we studied straight until 7, when we packed up and hiked over to the final. Again, it went amazingly well. It went so well, in fact, that I spend about an hour after finishing the exam, doodling on all the exam pages. This wasn't ENTIRELY useless, as for each doodle I did, I checked over the math on that page, which turned up more than a few mistakes. Even after spending more time doodling than I did actually working, I still left the exam room with plenty of time to spare. I was waiting for Cole to finish so I could get back into Honors to get at some of the pizza there (I was a little hungry by that time). While we were walking back, I told him this, and he pointed out that I could have just called Arras. I conceded this, but retorted that it had given me a chance to doodle all over the exam. He gave me a pained look, as he had spent the entire time reworking this one problem that was a little more irritating than the rest. I had just powered through it, and found that it came out well in the end, but he had tried simplifying the problem and gotten bitten. Still, he and I are both confident that we passed with super-A's. As far as my friend from the EWB, we left before he was done. I hope my quick tutoring helped him some.

(more about calc 172)

The Calc 172 exam was easy. There were a few problems that gave me trouble, but I feel like I managed to solve them well enough. The problem came from issues I had where I should have had any. The last section of 172 was on vectors, which should have dovetailed nicely with my 220 class, but didn't (for reasons I won't go into here). I had fanatically studied everything up to this section on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, and was completely stumped when it came to it. It was aggravating to no end, because I KNEW the problems were not hard at all! But only if you knew the key facts about the problem. This, of course, put me in a sour mood afterward, and looking for something to take my mind off the test, I ended up calling Reily, and we hung out a bit. This test is one of the main reasons why I'm working so hard to prepare for the upcoming tests, and thankfully I'm pretty confident that I'll do well in my last two tests (chem and Japanese). Additionally, one of the only reasons why I have the will power to stay up and study Japanese tonight (just previously I went over a quick review with Colin, my IT/ChemE friend) is because I did so very well on the 220 final.

(japn oral)

Because I'm reporting on finals in its entirety, and I don't think I've posted about the Japanese oral exam I had this last Friday, I figure I'll talk about that here. Essentially, the class was 'randomly' paired up, and each pair had to come up with a skit in Japanese for two different situations (talking about their vacation on the way to the post office, or a job interview). Both these skits had to be memorized, and one would be picked randomly to be presented. I think that's a little extreme, but whatever. I put "randomly" in small quotes earlier, because I managed to pick my partner because the partner I had randomly picked was absent, as was my friend Ian's. We asked the teacher if we could pair up, and she agreed. Ian and I proceeded to make up the most bizarre set of skits we could, using just the words we had already learned (plus as many as we were allowed to look up). The first skit (the vacation) was amazing, and while the second skit was good, it wasn't nearly as fun as the first one. Sadly, our second skit was chosen, and we performed that to the best of our ability. Ian was perfect, I however didn't do as well. I didn't do terribly, but I didn't do as well as I could have. Still, I'm confident I've passed the class, which is honestly my main concern right now.

(current studies)

Currently I'm procrastinating. I need to review all my Japanese flash cards so I don't make a fool of myself on the written exam, but I also wanted to make a blog post for finals week while I'm still riding the high from my last exam. Earlier I stormed through last Fall's chem 105 exam with Collin, which oddly enough was the very final that HE had to take. Based off THAT I'm ery confident, but I just know that chem is going to find some way to screw me over. An hour after my chem exam, I've got my Japanese written exam, and even after that I've still got to finish the CAD drawing for the EWB and get it in to Miles before I leave.

OH! As one extra bit of news (and in order to complete my review of all my classes), my M E 116 (CAD) class finished up this last Friday with our final project. I had paired up with Thor, who is competent, but a bit lazy. It seems to me that he's more of a comp sci guy (which is his other major) than an M E guy, but still a VERY good partner. We also kinda picked up a girl named Lee, who seemed kind of along for the ride for the most part. She was very introverted, but she worked hard, and actually contributed more to the team than I did. That sounds bad, but it's true, just not the whole story. When Thor approached me, or maybe I approached him, he was thinking about modeling a trebuchet. I suggested that we do a mechanical calculator, and we started off on that. We spent a couple days spinning our wheels and doing research to see if we could actually pull this off, and decided that if we WERE going to try for this, we would need a simple, backup project that we could use in case it fell through, which it did. This backup project was a programmable music box that Thor found. Basically it's the same as any music box, only you can remove and replace pins depending on the tune you wanted to play, and the musical times were all adjustable. Furthermore, and this is the cooler part in my opinion, it was designed to be made by an amature carpenter. We even managed to improve the design by replacing a special set of belt and cog wheels that had to be bought, with wooden gears that could be fabricated. In the end I was really impressed by the results, and I made certain to keep a copy of everybody's files just in case I ever decided to make a version of the thing myself. THAT SAID, I need to tell you why I didn't do as much on this project as everybody else. While Thor and Lee worked on the machine proper, I immersed myself in US patents describing the mechanics of an INCREDIBLE mechanical calculator known as a CURTA (also a Pepper Grinder, for it's unique shape and opperation). After a few days of research, I understood the thing entirely, and I still feel that we could have modeled it, if we didn't have only two viable work days left. With this, I decided to scrap the project entirely, and went to work on the music box, which was mostly finished. But don't think I didn't contribute. For the barrel of the music box, Thor had just extruded a cylinder of wood about 10" in diameter. This doesn't work in the real world, and the instructions for the music box had the cylinder made up of eight pieces glued together. So I work to fabricate this. Furthermore, the Thor had just cut into the extruded cylinder to make the gear on the barrel, so they were essentially one piece. I cut mine out of a sheet of wood, the way an actual wooden gear would be made, and attached it to the side of the barrel. I'm not trying to deride Thor, as he DID build most of the rest of the music box, including the crank and gear that drove the barrel (Lee built the rack that the tines were mounted to, which was in turn mounted to the box), but I'm MUCH happier that the whole music box model represents something that could be constructed in the real world.

So them's finals. For once I think I'm really experiencing the stress associated with finals, where as I had previously only done the bare minimum and taken what I got. I'm feeling good about this.

Pre-break update

My Japanese oral exam is tomorrow. For my vacation I went to the Sky Castle and met Jeff Bridges. Every morning we would eat a lot of meat and go to the top of a mountain and sing. It was very fun. My partner held a party in his pants and everybody came, so now his house is not clean. It's going to be an interesting test.

So I'm officially paying for my own food in full now. Clinton and I have decided that we're not really cooking group meals, because whenever he cooks I'm never around, and whenever I cook (rare as it is), he's never around and never eats what I cook. It's a little sad that we've failed in this capacity, but it would be foolish to ignore the problem and keep going as is. Really it's going to be a relief that I won't have to worry about shopping for what he likes, and he won't have to deal with my preference for more expensive foods.

I've recently had to admit that I'm not a good cook. Tuesday I cooked some yellow chicken curry with pineapple. I managed to make something delicious, and completely over-spice it in the last ten minutes like an idiot. That said, it's still really tasty. The curry, however, is not the problem. The rice is the problem. I cannot cook rice. for whatever reason, it either burns, or gets undercooked, or overcooked, or a bizarre combination of all three. The curry is pretty good, but the rice is so bad that it makes the curry taste worse. Sadly I hate to waste food, so I'm going to munch on it until it's gone (hopefully before I leave for home). OH! It's also currently being stored in a Redvines container because all our tupperware has disappeared (most likely into Clinton's room, or Cara's apartment).

EWB is... interesting. I've experienced how a group like this should be run thanks to Skunkworks, and this is significantly different. It's like being back on the Chief Sealth team. Everything is lackluster and lethargic. Even contributing personal effort yields sub-par results, as it is difficult to get an equally enthusiastic input. I feel that Skunkworks could have done in a week what these folks did in a semester. THAT SAID, I wonder if I would be able to change anything even given a position of power. I had the opportunity earlier this week when we held elections for the various club offices, and I decided not to run for any of them. I'm currently, unofficially in charge of the HPPV, and things really aren't very much better. I don't think I can really critique these clubs for being less professional than Skunkworks, because a) Skunkworks is kinda amazing and that'd be unfair to these clubs, and b) in college I'm finding it surprisingly difficult to contribute as much as I did in high school.

Developments

Yesterday, while trudging through the snow, I decided I was going to make a dragon. So I called up my friend, told him I'd be making it outside his dorm, and he joined in. It looks pretty cool even after its head fell off...

So status quo is maintained, school is still in a state of disarray and hanging by a thread due to my won stupidity. Thankfully I know exactly what went wrong this semester, and I can fix it easily next semester. However the continuing, every day irritation that comes with know exactly how and why you f--ked up has become an almost constant backdrop to all my activities. This, combined with Steamcon, and planning for next year, has led to an interesting change in my everyday machinations. I've been playing with my tablet more and more recently, and leaning heavilly towards right-brained activities in my free time, instead of simply seeking mindless, instant gratification. I haven't completed any drawings to decent completion, but I've been exploring inking, coloring and especially shading techniques using color. At some point I'd really like to start drawing regularly, but we'll see how that goes.

School has no changes as of current. The classes I've been worried about are still a concern, and I'm going to study face until I bleed during this next week so I can be totally prepared for the finals.

The ASME is trudging along, but I'll admit that it's another source of stress for me. We currently have no budget. Everything we've gotten so far has been out of our own pockets, and while I believe this is money well spent, I cannot help but feel agitated that the REASON we have no funding is because everybody simply forgot to go to the funding meeting... I'm doing incredibly cool things, but I'm afraid that we're wasting our time a money by not having the cash to actually finish this thing, and that we're leading the cart before the horse. When I joined late last year, the bike had already been designed and we in the process of being built. We're still building that same bike, mainly making up for setbacks that came when we were ejected from our previous workspace and moved into a temporary space (we lost some key bike parts, as well as the molds for making said bike parts). The material we're using is simply amazing. It's incredibly strong and practically rubber (you can bend it a great deal before it deforms predominantly, let alone breaks), and exploring this stuff's capabilities is half the fun. However, I learned this year, that our bike is fundamentally flawed, in that sitting on it causes the wheels to bend. They can hold our weight easily, they just bend in half when they do. Furthermore, I've found out that our bike design was based off an arbitrary concept bike that looked cool, and not on any actual engineering concepts. We should have done our material testing before building the bike, but I wasn't a part of that. Right now I can only fix whatever problems come up and plan for next year, but doing that on my own budget is more than a little worrisome...