To funnel water intelligently from a dripping pipe into a bucket. It is hard to tell from the photo, but I cut a hole in the side of the bottle.

Konica Minolta DiMAGE A200.

Way back in May I was saying I’d post pictures from my trip to DC - well, this will still be happening, just not as soon as I had promised. The reason for the trip was for a class project, AWARE@home, a home energy monitoring device. If you happen to know any developers at TI and/or the industry, it’d be great to take the project beyond the classroom setting. Anyways, over the next weeks I’ll have some nice but nothing spectacular images up from said trip. Then, I”ll post some interesting pictures of a home being demolished.

MIT has all the fun events. Even a Time Traveler Convention. Why can’t U-M do this sort of thing? Coordinates follow.

The Time Traveler Convention
May 7, 2005, 10:00pm EDT (08 May 2005 02:00:00 UTC)
(event starts at 8:00pm)
East Campus Courtyard, MIT
42:21:36.025°N, 71:05:16.332°W
(42.360007,-071.087870 in decimal degrees)

This’ll be the last self-serving post I write (hopefully). I think I did OK - better than the midterm. Still pretty lousy (screwed up on 1c because I integrated wrong. I screwed up the easiest integration problem known to man. So stupid.). But other than 2 2/3 problems, I think I did the rest OK.

Oh, yes, what is this:

2n-1

The difference between a right and wrong answer. Sigh

Heh, I bet you, the nonexistent reader, are wondering if I totally forgot to post - nope. I haven’t had a chance to even sleep, let alone post here. Ha!

ahem

Anyhow, I just wanted to mention my schedule, so that you all could see when you’ll be able to read insightful, important and worthwhile drivel - soon, very soon. I have:

1) A math test to fail on Tuesday 19th, no matter how much I’ve studied. This is the sort of thing that I cannot study for because I have too much going on in another class, even though my grade depends on the amount I study. But I’m not bitter!

2) A short Ethics paper to write for the 19th

3) A massive engineering document, that is mostly complete but needs some proofing, for the 19th

4) A test Monday the 25th, which I’m 15-25% worried about. Otherwise I’ll have plenty of time to study, etc…

5) Work. Sort of like Office Space, but without the bad managers and TPS reports.

It has come to my attention (though various parties) that the post before this is wayyy too silly, and it might give people a bad impression of me. For this I am sorry, and will refrain from all silliness written herein. The post has been removed, and will never see the light of php again. I shall do several things to rectify the situation, of which:

1) I will start to spell words the British way.

2) I will use bigger and bigger words - the more syllables, the better! Even if I have to start using a thesaurus.

3) I will attempt to get more sleep, so that I am not prone to being silly.

4) I will only refer to classic literature, when speaking of other written work.

In all fairness, it was a silly post, but I think that, in a state of half wakefulness, it was necessary to keep my sanity (or whatever was left of it).

I survived, for the most part. This week isn’t as important as the next following, as my exams and project are due ASAP

Sigh

But I am still alive, which for the most part is a good thing.

Too busy to post. To busy to eat. Too busy to breathe. Too busy to even stop for a moment and pause for a second, or contemplate what I just wrote.

…at night anyways.

Canon 20D. A bell tower at the center of North Campus.

Didn’t have my tripod with this one, nor did I remember my camera went up to ISO 3200. Ouch. Still, in a creepy science-fictiony way, not too bad…

Not much more to say, been studying for a horrible math exam.

Canon 20D

Canon 20D

I’ve been seriously hoping that we have a huge ice storm, the entire city of Ann Arbor loses power, and it take 3 days to get everything back in shape. Oh, don’t get me wrong. There could be bouts of biblical flooding, U-M Ann Arbor would still stay open, and U-M Flint would open “2 hours late.” It’s a problem when you are a commuter at a college that is mainly made up of non-commuters. I just think that my professors might delay the exam a few days, what with the large scale freezing. Probably too much to ask for.

I’m doomed, doomed I say! I have an impending test in 2 hours and 26 minutes (+/- 5 minutes) had a test. Agggg. I keep getting the feeling like I’m being led to my own execution…

All rise, as the honorable Judge hands down his sentence:

Judge: You have been sentenced to death by paper! Any last words?

Me: Yes, I’ll have pepperoni on my tombstone.

Well, I HOPE it’s not that bad, but this is my first hour long test (all the rest have been 2 hours), so I’m not too sure what it’s going to be like. I keep envisioning I’m going to look at my test and just blank out - it happened in 320, it can happen here.

I often ask myself this question, wondering how effective, say, 20 undergrads would be versus one janitor - changing a lightbulb. Not to shed bad light on undergrads, I’m one as it is, but one incident struck me as the power, or lack thereof, of a collective body of students. Now, I need to make clear that I DID NOT call Public Safety (DPS) either, but I’m exempt, because, uh, well, you know.

The map above shows the parking lot I park in, and the path I set off on to walk to class (Orange lot, the yellow indicates Graduate student parking). Two weeks before Thanksgiving (Fall 2004), a dead raccoon appeared on the grass right next to the sidewalk (marked by the red “X”). Now, I really like raccoons, and was deeply saddened by it’s untimely demise. That being said, SOMEONE needs to clean it up.

You need to realize the context - the sidewalk is not often traveled by students - bus’s run every ten minutes - it’s about 1 USA city block to walk to the nearest building (well, main ME buildings). Still, there should have been enough students who said, “Sure, I’ll call DPS, and ask them who to contact.” Not that I can tell. I promised myself - if that animal hasn’t disappeared by the time I get back from vacation, I’ll call DPS. Sure enough, the animal didn’t disappear. I waited a few weeks, snow came, then the snow melted, animal still there.

Weeks later, I decide to call. By now, the raccoon is frozen, sort of like Hans Solo being frozen in carbonite. I couldn’t ask DPS to dig through the snow (Arrr, ye walk three paces t’ th’ port once ye pass th’ lightpost. Turn t’ th’ sun, an’ dig fer 3 minutes.), nor was I going to clear the snow and call them. I did the next best thing: nothing.

Once the snow melts, I will call DPS. Only if another student doesn’t do it first.

Update: 2/15/2005 I called!!! By this time, all the snow had melted, and the poor little raccoon looked like a ball of white rags, with a (shudder) spine. Gross. Thankfully, he was gone by the time I left for the day. Had they not seen him, I feared they’d think I was being a prankster. The woman I spoke to on the phone laughed when I said it’d been there since Thanksgiving.

More or less, yeah. This time it’s traveling back in time to the wonderful ME 350. Now this was one class I thoroughly enjoyed. The semester I took it, the course was split into two “parts” - the first part designing a pump, the second modeling a linkage in Adams. The second part was OK, but not as exciting, fun, or fulfilling as the pump project (nor as filling if you’re a bucket).

Were there problems with it? Yeah. Did it leak? Of course. What pressure did it get? 14psi (well… 13.9). If I had to do it over again, there are only a few things I’d do differently, namely: create an adjustable inlet, so we could see what varying that did; attach the tubes neatly to the pump housing and acrylic plates; try rubber instead of cork for the gasket material; and one thing I would have done had I not come down sick the week our team built the pump, multiple pulley sizes on the pump side.

Nikon Coolpix 995

Nikon Coolpix 995

Nikon Coolpix 995

Nikon Coolpix 995

Yeah, well, whatever. Here’s a picture of my ME 395 end of semester project. ME 395 is a glorified lab - a semester of labs that introduce the student to hours of data analysis, multiple papers, and methods of testing. Or, as the Course Description says:

Weekly lectures and experiments designed to introduce the student to the basics of experimentation, instrumentation, data collection and analysis, error analysis, and reporting. Topics will include fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, mechancis, materials, and dynamical systems. Emphasis is placed on report writing and team-building skills.

The final lab was an exercise in quantifying drag. In the lab, each team received a balsa wood block, and was required to shape, test, shape, test till they reached an “optimized” drag and lift force, while maximizing volume.

Nikon Coolpix 995

I’m not too sure how well we placed in the class, but in our lab section we won the “prize” - a bar of dark chocolate (mmmm, chocolate). I can look back on my experience in the class and say I enjoyed it, though at times I felt like I was never going to make it through the semester!