Why Hello New Calculus Class!

Reilley found out it was me... It's alright. He's going to keep finding those until the day he moves out (that's not exaggeration. It might actually be an underestimate).

So for the past two weeks I've been watching Reilley get up early to go to his organic chemistry class, while I lounged around till I finally had to leave for my Matlab class at noon. He's been working hard. He even joined a study group and studied diligently for his first quiz for the week before. I've been glad I didn't have to worry about anything like that.

Today was my first day in Calc III. I got up and left at 8:30, instead of my previous 11:30, and one of the first things our professor told us was that we shouldn't be taking any other classes, because we were going to do in six weeks, what we would normally have over two months to do...

So I've joined a study group. I'm currently trying to organize our first meeting over phone.

An Interesting Forty Eight Plus Hours

Reilley thinks it was Thor who hid all those butterscotch candies in various places around his room.

cannot remember how it began, but suddenly we were all heading out to see X-Men: First Class at, what, 6 pm? It was Reilley, Tom (whom we met through Reilley), Thor, Mirra and myself. The whole group agrees that First Class is easily the best X-Men movie that has been produced so far. Reilley loves to mention that it's so good that it actually overwrites the movie cannon established by X-Men III and by that Wolverine movie.

I think it is thoroughly enjoyable by both geeks in love with the comic book as well as laymen, as I'd like to think I fall somewhere between the two. It really is a beautifully well written movie, that puts its attention on the characters more than anything else. If you go and watch it, I recommend that you specifically pay attention to how they deal with Erik Lehnsherr (Magneto) and Charles Xavier (Professor X). They spend their time building up both characters, and then do an amazing job of showing how the two influenced each other. Charles changed Erik from a renegade loner into a leader, while Erik took away some of Charles idealism and gave him a bit of a ruthless bite. I have to stress, that this is all done over the corse of the movie, rather than as a cheesy, sudden realization due to the twist at the end of the movie (which I'm certain we all already know). Rather, the main 'plot' of the movie (which I won't spoil here) is used as a catalyst and a background for the interplay between the characters, and that makes this movie as good as it is. That and Wolverine's scene (but I won't spoil that either).

So that happened, and afterward we all ate a midnight breakfast at Denny's (Reilley also thinks it was the waiter who thought to serve his hamburger, disassembled and on three separate plates. We all tipped well after that). It was three by the time we got back to the apartment. Tom and Reilley stayed up later than I did, but when I woke up (at eleven the next morning, sadly) Tom was asleep on the couch. Then Clinton arrived at our door to tell me that the WSU surplus store was having a patently ridiculous sale on computers, and if we wanted to upgrade our server, we would have to get over there before they closed in an hour. I woke up Thor and Reilley, and we all headed over there (letting Tom continue to sleep on the couch). We ended up getting two $80 computer that had been marked down to $30 each, figuring to split the cost between the three of us. Twenty dollars for two fairly good computers is an extremely good deal, and we plan to network them with our (my) current computer and set up some sort of networked computing dealie to improve our Minecraft server (which we've also set up to work over the internet, so my friends will be able to get on that eventually as well).

By the time we got back Tom was awake (for certain definitions of 'awake'), and was emphasizing the need for pizza. He offered to pay (having been excited about recently getting a job) so we all agreed. Then Reilley got a text asking if we wanted to go to see the Green Lantern movie. Coincidentally, this had been a point of discussion after we saw the trailer for the Green Lantern movie before the X-Men movie came on. Everybody except for Thor and Mira, that is Clinton, Tom, Reilley and I, decided to go.

Reilley made a point to have a pessimistic view. He thought (still does) that the Green Lantern's outfit looked like it was made of green and black bacon. I cannot disagree. He was expecting it to be another expensive movie going for an easy audience that wouldn't really be worth it. He was also unhappy that we were going to watch it in 3-D (he doesn't like how 3-D tends to turn out, and it's more expensive). I don't know how he'd respond if you asked him, but I'd say it was a great movie. He'd probably say it was good, and then go into an explanation as to why, but that doesn't change the fact that during the movie, he was enjoying it as much as I was. It was funny, it made fun of itself and the whole movie genra ("I've known you your whole life! I've seen you naked! Do you think I wouldn't recognize you just because your cheek bones are covered?!"), I NEVER found myself bored or tortured by any of the scenes, and though it was not necessarily faithful to the comic cannon, it WAS faithful to the comic's IDEA, and it felt like a Green Lantern story. It was very well done. Our only complaint about the movie was the teaser at the end of the first credits (before the scrolling credits), but I won't get into that until you've seen it for yourself (even though we all were expecting that particular twist).

So that happened. It was getting late again, but Reilley needed to get his bike back from Tom's place (I recall now that Thor and I had to pick him up from there before going over to the X-Men movie the previous day), so we all walked over there. Once there, Clinton got called back by his girlfriend, and we watched Hero, because Reilley had never seen it before. The last time saw Hero, I couldn't understand what was going on. This time I'm glad to say that I understood it perfectly, but I found myself constantly irritated at it. I cannot recall exactly what it was, but I found the fight scenes patently silly. Yes it's a Chinese kung-fu opera so all the characters are going to be over-the-top with melodrama, ridiculous kung-fu moves and patently stupid mistakes, but I found myself laughing at the characters more than sympathizing with them. It's an amazingly beautiful movie, and the fighting WAS cool (wire-fighting and all), but it was up it's own asshole with melodrama, and the philosophical twist wasn't all that amazing. I know that many people enjoy it immensely for better reasons, but that's my opinion.

So that happened. Afterward, we just kind of hung out and talked for a while, before randomly starting an role play game that Tom ran for Reilley and I. Once that petered out, Reilley and I walked back to the apartment, only to find Zack sitting on our couch playing videogames. Apparently he had gotten off work to start his free day, and headed over here, expecting to find Reilley eventually. When that didn't happen, he just kind of hung out with Thor. By this time it was five in the morning. I realized I should just stay up to reset my sleeping schedule, but I haven't gotten anything worthwhile done in a while, and I've been slipping with my Japanese studies again. I wanted to be productive today, and I realized that if I reset my schedule, I would be a vegetable all day long. So I decided to take a two hour nap, and just keep napping periodically to keep myself productive. Either my alarm didn't go off, or I just slept through it, because when I woke up this morning it was noon again.

It's been a goo two days, but just thinking about it makes me want to just crawl back in bed and go to sleep...

Late Again

I've been planning a few pranks for Reilley. I need to think of some for Thor. More as the situation develops.

We finally learned how to write script in Matlab this week. I'm rather excited because I've got a couple ideas for projects that would work better in Matlab than, say, Grapher. Of course, already I'm mostly ignoring what's going on in class, choosing instead to play around with what we learned in order to glean a better understanding of it. What really irritates me about Matlab right now is how Matlab defaults the working directory to wherever the Matlab app is every time it starts up. I then have to use it's rather poor user interface to pick the folder I WANT it to use every time. So far this hasn't been an issue because we haven't been doing anything that would use it (like logging commands), but it's a little annoying. Still, I'm enjoying the class, and I expect that a number of my daily posts will regard it.

Week Late

If it's only been a week and I'm already late, does that mean I'm ahead of schedule?

So I've successfully moved back into my college apartment. Reilley moved in and Clinton moved out shortly after I left, which worked out well for Reilley as he would otherwise have no place to stay during summer session, but Clinton bemoans the loss of free access to the apartment so he can hang out whenever he likes. Personally, I'm happy with the switch. Reilly is much easier to get to do things like clean up or do dishes, though I realize I've still had to curb my nagging.

It looks like Reilley and I will also be able to figure out a meal plan, mostly because I've figured out how to cook in a way that facilitates this. Unlike me, Reilley tends to eat very little, which does not agree with my previous cooking habits. Originally I would cook a large dish, then proceed to munch on the leftovers (provided I didn't just eat the whole thing that night, which happened often). When I do this with Reilley, however, he tends not to eat the leftovers, and I devour the whole thing in a day's time anyway. Reilley is a much more picky eater than I am, which he is well aware of, so it's sometimes difficult to find things he will eat. The plan that I've adopted is to fry up some chicken, usually with some sort of simple seasoning like chili powder, and then just add some kind of starch and vegetables. This works well, and I think I can come up with enough variety of seasonings or other cooking techniques that it won't get boring too soon.

I've mostly been concerned with productivity this last week. Grannie was right, summer school has a completely different feel to it. I've only got one class, Matlab, and this is really easy, so I've usually got a plethora of free time, and I'm trying to be careful not to let that go to waste, more because doing so drives me crazy than any concrete necessity (I've inherited my mother's psychosis). The problem is that living with my friends, and having so many distractions so close at hand, makes it very easy to waste the day doing nothing but digging virtual holes in Minecraft. Furthermore, I had hoped to do a number of things with Reilley, most notably starting our respective webcomics, but Reilley seems to have no ability to actually buckle down and do the things he and I agreed upon. This has been a problem before we were living together as well, when he would frequently ignore prearranged meetings, without contacting us, because he got distracted by something and didn't feel like it.

As an aside, I realize this is going on the internet, where Reilley can stumble upon it (however unlikely), and I'd like to say that he's a really cool guy to live with, and also more than a little creatively inspiring, but I think he has dependability issues.

So that's life right now, caught up from the last week or so. I still need to call Crissy and talk to her about the HPPV as well as driving lessons (which I have to admit I'm dreading a little), and while I've started studying Japanese a little every day, I haven't started pushing myself regularly, which is the only way I can catch back up. Hopefully I'll also start making quick entires every day, but I'm afraid most of them will start to look a lot alike.

And Everything Was Going So Well Too

Yesterday, the only thing I had to eat were four tuna fish patties. I have gone shopping today.

So I've been pretty damn excited for college this time around. I've started getting up at seven, instead of sleeping in till the last possible moment and being late for class because I insist on flossing and brushing and eating breakfast anyway. Furthermore, I'm trying to start drawing something every day as part of a sort of challenge between me and Arras. So far I'm not doing too well. I wanted to start up a biographical comic, but apparently my inability to quickly spit out a basic comic outline (i.e. what happens in what panel) has made me unable to draw comics in the time I'd like to. I am, however, drawing every day, and that makes me happy. Furthermore, I'm drawing in that little book Mum got me for Christmas, which also makes me happy.

It was, in fact, WHILE I was drawing in that little book, during one of the lulls in my calc 3 class, that I heard the instructor talking about a list of students that, for whatever reason, were deemed unsatisfactory for the pre-requirements for the course. I'm used to this, it happens at the beginning of almost every important class, and I was about to ignore it too, when I happened to look up and see my name sitting at the bottom of this very short list.

Like a jerk.

So apparently I don't satisfy the requirements for the course, which I suspect is due to my VERY low (BUT PASSING) grade for calc 2, last semester. Thing is, I know the material, I was just fantastically stupid last semester and got bad grades, but the confusing thing is that I thought I PASSED that class... So I've shot an e-mail off to the person you're supposed to shoot with e-mails, and I'm hoping she (he? they?) respond soon because I've got till the 14th before I get dropped from the class like a chip you pulled from the bag without looking only to find that it's covered in ants.

Also my tuition is late.

Also I still need to buy books.

New Year 2010-2011

From about 1 to 8 this morning, my friends and I played Super Smash Brothers: Brawl, one hit kill mode. I have not yet actually slept since I got up yesterday at ten.

Friends:
This New Year feels auspicious. My group of friends from AHS is, for lack of a better word, dissolving. This last year, some of us had graduated into college, and already it felt harder to get together and do things. This year even more of us have gone into college, and next year still more will. I remember days when I would see these people every day. We would go to school together,and play robots together. Now it's a scramble to try and meet up, and inevitably not everybody can make it. We're fragmenting. Still, I don't think for a second that we're not going to stick together. Thanks to the internet, we can talk almost no matter where we are. It's just a humbling realization that I used to see these people every single day...

Resolution:
For years, my only struggle with school has been with my organization. The only lesson that I need to learn, that I have fought against for years, is that I need to use my system. Every time I make a new system, it works very well. Things are good, and I get tired of maintaining it, so I stop. I think, I can do this, I've got this under control, but I don't. Every time I drop my system, I end up getting screwed. I did this last semester, and I almost failed most of my classes. This year, I want to learn this lesson once and for all. I want to use my system, and keep using it.

Lessons:
This semester, I learned how to study. I had honestly never studied before, and I only had a vague idea how it worked. I would try over-complicating it, making study-groups and finding excuses not to study when my plans didn't work out. After doing so terribly in all my classes, I realized that I needed desperately to score well on all my finals. To this end, I studied harder than I ever have before. I learned that the only way to study is to do it myself. Study-groups are useful in specific situations, but for studying, I'm better working alone.

Year's summary:
Second semester at WSU. Taking out GERs still. W00t-Stock was amazing. Got stuck in traffic on the way home and missed the first 30 minutes, but the rest was very worth it. Forgot that Kyle wanted to come. Probably shouldn't have rubbed it in his face. He stole my challenge coin to get back at me, with the condition that it would be returned when I got him to W00t-Stock the next year. I know he'll keep it safe, and I'll get him there next year. Wasted another summer. Didn't learn to drive, but got taught a great deal by Aunt Elaine. Going to have to focus on learning to drive next summer. Talked to Kobie Boykins about NASA internships. This is probably the next step for me if I want to build exploratory robots. Need to finish this, but I still havent. I missed the deadline for the spring intern session, which I guess is just as well. Gotta finish this in time for this summer's deadline, because there are apparently a ton of open positions. I'm actually pretty confident in my resume, which is a change. I hate writing answers for the essay questions. Went to Steamcon 2 with Arras, Cole, Kenneth and Kenneth's posse. It was simply amazing. Always remember the Rise of Aester LARP games and Sir Jim Mangewood. Got a ton of steampunk stuff for Christmas. I guess this is officially a thing for us now. How did it take this long? I miss the friends that I no longer talk to, like Miles and Andrew. I could try reconnecting with them, but it wouldn't feel natural to me. There are just some relationships that I simply cannot maintain without seeing the person regularly, and I think this is just a part of myself I need to accept. I've stopped playing games, and started focusing on projects more. This is a good trend and I need to keep working on it. I can do some amazing things if I simply choose to work on them instead of reading web-comics. That said, don't underestimate the value of mindless fun.

Books I need to read:
Roadside Picnic
Dune
the Behemoth series (I think that's the wrong name but whatever)
House of Leaves

Skills I need to pick up:
Unix

Projects I'm working on:
GURPS Dr. Grordbort-style Steampunk mod
GURPS Island survival mod
DnD Spider-People campaign
DnD Epic Trap Dungeon
Mum's imitation Book-Book
Mum's cane
Arduino USB Midi-Guitar
Superhero Robots

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.