MnForked

Finally Class Type Infos

2010-09-27T07:20:00.000-07:00

Well, I have so far discovered that Grad School is rather different than Undergrad college was. By this I mean that right now I'm taking a very heavy load with a whopping three classes. but there is a chance that I will only actually be taking two classes (a normal load) this semester. That depends on the grade that I got on the recent Stochastics test. I think I did will and thus will keep all three classes but you never know till you do, it is Stochastics after all. Anyway this semester I am taking 18 credits. Listed below are the classes I am taking with a short description.

Class 1 -- Stochastics
This class is the "hardest ECE class in Grad School." It is all about random processes and using statistical type methods to predict what is going to happen. Heavily mathematical. I'm taking this because I think this class is going to provide a very useful mathematical foundation for much of my future work. So far seems easy, but we've only covered one fourth to one third of the material as of yet.
Credits: 3
Meets: Monday and Wednesday 4-5:15

Class 2 -- Radar System Design
This class is all about radar systems. I am taking this one for a good overview type course about communications systems. Basically this course is all about re-enforcing what I already know. This course should be really easy if it doesn't get away from me.
Credits: 3
Meets: Thursday 4-6:45

Class 3 -- SDR
This class is all about software defined radios. I'm taking this because working with Cognitive Radios (an offshoot of SDR) I need to have the "formal" background. This course is so far a joke. Everything that has been covered I have already had a much more in depth course on. The major points of the class are repeated every time we meet. The professor who was supposed to teach this course dumped it on another professor, who got a bunch of grad students to teach various parts of the course. Only problem is the grad students largely don't know what they're talking about and tell us (the students) that. I know people who have not even turned everything in for this course and gotten an A-. I'm not worried at all, but that doesn't mean I'm completely blowing it off only that I'm not stressed about any part of this course. No tests even.
Credits: 3
Meets: Monday and Wednesday 2-3:15

Wait a second if I'm taking three classes, each three credits, that's only nine credits... Where are the other nine from?
Well I'm talking a seminar style course on how to teach college students that is one credit. I have to talk that just in case I need to teach at some point before I graduate. Before classes started there were two eight hour days of this, then three sessions throughout the semester and one writing assignment. I'm done with one of those later sessions and I have another one tomorrow. The writing assignment is something like 500 words about how you feel about the course (this course was not designed by engineers...). That's not due until November, so I'm spending my time dealing with lab projects right now.

I am also taking the one credit ECE Grad Seminar course. This one meets five times through the semester and forces us to listen to talks about cutting edge research in ECE/how to do research/companies that may want to hire us. There are no assignments. This would be the world's best way to get one credit it all the meetings weren't on Friday from 4-5:30.

Ok, so now I'm up to 11 credits (nine from classes, 2 from seminar thingies). The other seven credits are from "research hours." Basically these are official hours that I spend doing research for my dissertation. I'm a little ahead on that front, because I have a general topic and a rough plan of where I'd like to go with it. Right now I count this time towards writing papers, reading papers, reading books, and working on lab type projects.

The specifics behind what I need to do to graduate are slightly complicated and I'll probably cover those later.

Busy Busy

2010-08-30T14:35:00.001-07:00

So last week was both the start of classes and the summer school on robotics. Now that that's done I'm down to only way to many tasks for the hours in a day, including but not limited to:
Helping to manage CWT involvement on a DARPA proposal
Taking 3 Classes
Taking 2 seminars
developing p25 functionality for PSCR based on an unseen embedded extension board
Aiding new lab minions
personal research
and associated minor lab duties

If this were industry there'd probably be one person for each of these...

Ph.D. = Light at end of tunnel...

Moving In

2010-07-08T07:00:00.000-07:00

Well my lovely wife and I now have the keys to our new apartment. In the first day back (Tuesday) we rented a van from UHaul and moved 95% of our stuff out of the secret storage location. We got Alex to help us with that one. Then all three of us went out to a lovely Italian dinner. Then wifey and I dropped Alex off and proceeded directly to Wal-Mart to obtained the first round of goods we needed for our apartment. After this fruitfull trip we returned to our domicile and promptly fell asleep.

Graduation Information

2010-04-20T16:52:00.000-07:00

Friday May 14-University Ceremony at 7:30pm Lane Stadium
-Gov. Whatsit will be talking
-Probably not a good idea to bring a backpack stuffed with knives
-I will have to enter through the South Endzone, I don't know about the rest of you

Saturday May 15-ECE Reception 11:00am-12:30pm Hokie Grill
-I would like to go to this
-My immediate thought is to walk over, but there is a couple fairly large parking lots if anyone would rather drive

Saturday May 15-The Real Deal 2:00pm Cassell Coliseum
-Doors open at 1:00pm
-All Guests should be seated at 1:30pm
-I will be sitting with the other Electrical Engineers
-All the EEs will be in Alphabetical order so I will likely be near the middle of the group
-I would like to be there around 1
-Hanicapped parking will be in the small lot by the tennis courts
-They only allow their photographers to be on the floor
-Below is a helpful diagram that shows where I will sit, where the stage is and the path I will take to get my diplomas

If there are any questions please let me know.

A random update

2010-04-20T07:45:00.000-07:00

Well it has be a long time since I've written an update for this here bloggy type thingy so here we go. I am approaching the end to my undergraduate life. I feel as though this is a rather good thing, and that in all rights I have lived 10 years within the past four. Four years were spent as a full time Electrical Engineering student (I think of this as the primary grouping), Four years were spent as a full time Computer Engineering student (the differences between Computer Engineering and Electrical Engineering start of subtle but one day you notice that all of a sudden everyone in the world walks backwards, on their hands, while humming show tunes), and the final two years were spent as a full time college football player (an experience that I both very happy to have had and that I very happy is now over with). I don't count the social experiences as their own years because a student/athlete has such experiences as part of their lives. At this point I'm rather excited about my paths converging in grad school were I will only be pursuing a single major.
I'm stuck in a Documentation arc now so don't be surprised if other short messages like this appear, but for now I must to class as they say.

2010-03-01T15:30:00.000-08:00

Plus Godzilla

Another Revision

2009-09-09T08:32:00.000-07:00

Ok so I looked over the essay I posted last night and consider input from various peoples and I have come up with the current revision. Let me know what you think:

Perhaps the best explanation of why I want to be a graduate student and what I hope to accomplish is that I want to be a “mad scientist.” I don't use the term to conjure up mental images of a crackpot or societal deviant. Rather, I use the term to highlight the passion and endless exertion in pursuit of “why.” Many people do not understand or appreciate this passion and tend to view it as abnormal. This response it what I expect and is, in many ways, what I'm going for in my graduate work. As an undergraduate engineer I have already developed such a passion for Electrical Engineering and the corresponding accusations of abnormality.
I entered Virginia Tech as an engineering student and Division I athlete. My “madness” became quickly apparent in my decision to tackle the considerable challenges offered by Bradley's Department along with those presented by Frank Beamer and company. Others would have been satisfied with being a “full time jock,” but I decided early on to pursue a double major, covering both Electrical and Computer Engineering. I knew myself well enough to know I would never be happy if I didn't challenge myself academically. In fact, I entertained the idea of adding a major in Economics to the mix, but, by this time, I could hear my true calling in life and it only involves two “E”s.
That calling was then, and still is, to be that passionate “mad scientist.” In light of this, I dropped my inconsequential past times to more thoroughly pursue my dream. I had become utterly consumed by Electrical Engineering, so much so, that I now consider my Computer Engineering degree a support degree for my EE aspirations. Thus, I took leave of Beamer's squad, to dive, head long, into Electrical Engineering. Many people say that I quit football because I couldn't balance the time demands of sports and school. I simply laugh, thinking of the many ways in which my life became more hectic after football.
Since leaving the football team: I worked in two nationally recognized research labs, became involved in various Engineering clubs, increased both my GPA and course load, and got engaged, all of which demand a considerable time investment. However, it was my work in the research labs that fueled my desire for graduate work the most. I worked in the Autonomous Systems and Control Laboratory (ASCL) on the second floor of Whittemore for a year following my departure from the ranks of student-athletes.
In the ASCL I met a group of “mad scientists,” led by, perhaps, the model for the term. During my time with these folks, the ASCL was developing self contained autonomous submarines for the purpose of mapping underwater environments. These people were looking beyond all the naysayers to pursue knowledge that has the potential to revolutionize navigation. It's the sort of world changing work that the average person would simply never think of. It is also an example of the work that Electrical Engineers do everyday, driving their knowledge beyond the limits of conventional thinking to satisfy their own passions. In short, these people exemplify what I mean when I use the term “mad scientist.”
At the ASCL, I was exposed to life as one of those “mad scientists” and I loved it. For a long time I dreamed about being in a research lab, pushing out the boundaries of science, fueled by an unquenchable drive to discover the unknown. I got a small taste of that dream at the ASCL. Although, I was mostly involved in the more down to earth tasks, I knew that the advances made in this small lab had application far beyond the depths of some murky lake. I was aware that the techniques developed there could and would apply to all kinds of things, many of which lie beyond our imagination. Perhaps the ASCL will one day deliver driverless transportation or housemaid robots that don't walk through coffee tables. Either way, the ASCL is making a difference by turning today's fiction into reality one step at a time.
While working in the ASCL, a professor convinced me to give some thought to an area of Electrical Engineering that I had never really considered before: communications. I'd never really thought of the importance of providing systems to connect people before. However, the area seemed to embody many of the aspects of Electrical Engineering that I had grown to love. This area held a special attraction for me, as well, because I didn't know that much about it. So, once again driven by the possibility of new knowledge, I wished the world of path-finding robots well, and continued my journey to a new world know as the CWT.
At the Center for Wireless Telecommunications (CWT), I met a truly fascinating technology: Cognitive Radio. This systems can sense its environment and react intelligently. This is, therefore, the quincentennial “mad scientist” technology in that it takes a passion for learning from its designer. The interest in bestowing my love of learning onto a machine is what drove me initially to the ASCL. It is also apparently what drove the invention of Cognitive Radio.
Working in the CWT, I experienced a whole new level of my conception of “mad scientists.” This group is developing a system that senses its wireless environment and then proceeds to design the best possible means of communication, all without the aid of a human brain. It's a system that operates in a world completely beyond the senses of humans. The researchers in this lab are truly driven by a passion for exploring and mastering an unknown realm.
The CWT already developed a cognitive radio that can avoid jammers and remember the clever things it has thought of in the past. Currently, a few of the challenges the lab is tackling are: developing smart communication networks that manage themselves, providing communications that only occupy unused sections of the wireless spectrum, and allowing public safety personal to stay connected even without an infrastructure in place. These are only some of the big picture projects the lab is taking on and I already get to play a small part. This exactly the sort of work I can dive into more deeply as a graduate student.
In the work of the CWT, the thinking part of their system is separate from the radio part. That means the thinking part, the Cognitive Engine, could be applied to other situations, completely independent of radios or even any communications. This technology already has the potential to completely revamp the entire communications infrastructure. Even more exciting, though, are the unexplored possibilities of using the Cognitive Engine for other purposes. There are endless possibilities to this work. This is precisely the sort of thing that demands the passion and drive of a budding “mad scientist.”
It is the passionate for exploration of the unknown, the drive to make the impossible a reality, and the willingness to continue to ask “why” in the face of conventional wisdom that forms my view of the “mad scientist.” I have grown to appreciate the nature and work of “mad scientists” through my work in research labs. Many can recite facts or equations, but few possess the passion of the “mad scientist”. The passion of a true “mad scientist” drives me to continue my education through graduate school.

Essay Revisions Everywhere

2009-09-08T16:15:00.000-07:00

Well in talking to Spud about my essay, he mentioned that it might be an idea to shift the tone from "insanity" toward "passion", after thinking about it for a bit and giving it a try I agree. I am including below the latest update. This one should be fairly free of spelling and grammar mistakes as well, but please let me know if you find any. Also let me know what you think.

Perhaps the best explanation of why I want to be a graduate student and what I hope to accomplish is that I want to be a “mad scientist”. I don't use the term to conjure up mental images of a crackpot or societal deviant. Rather, I use the to highlight the passion and endless exertion is pursuit of “why”. Many people do not understand or appreciate this passion and tend to view it as abnormal. This response is what I expect and is, in many ways, what I'm going for in my graduate work. As an undergraduate engineer I have already developed such a passion for Electrical Engineering and the corresponding accusations of abnormality.
I entered Virginia Tech as an engineering student and Division I athlete. My “madness” became quickly apparent in my decision to tackle the considerable challenges offered by Bradley's Department along with those presented by Frank Beamer and company. Others would have been satisfied with being a “full time jock”, but I decided early on to pursue a double major, covering both Electrical and Computer Engineering. I knew myself well enough to know I would never be happy if I didn't challenge myself academically. In fact, I entertained the idea of adding a major in Economics to the mix as well, but, by this time, I could hear my true calling in life and it only involves two “E”s.
That calling was then, and still is, to be that passionate “mad scientist”. In light of this, I dropped my inconsequential past times to more thoroughly pursue my dream. I had become utterly consumed by Electrical Engineering, so much so, that I now consider my Computer Engineering degree to be a support degree for my EE aspirations. Thus, after taking leave of Beamer's squad, I dove, head long, into Electrical Engineering. Many people say that I quit football because I couldn't balance the time demands of sports and school. I simply laugh, thinking of the many ways in which my life became more hectic after football.
Since leaving the football team, I worked in two nationally recognized research labs, became involved in various Engineering clubs, increased both my GPA and course load, and got engaged, all of which demand a considerable time investment. However, it was my work in the research labs that fueled my desire for graduate work the most. I worked in the Autonomous Systems and Control Laboratory (ASCL) on the second floor of Whittemore for a year following my departure from the ranks of student-athletes.
In the ASCL I met a group of “mad scientists”, led by, perhaps, the model for the term. During my time with these folks, the ASCL was developing self contained autonomous submarines for the purpose of mapping underwater environments. These people were looking beyond all the nay sayers to pursue knowledge that has the potential to revolutionize navigation. It's the sort of world changing work that the average person would simply never think of. It is also an example of the work that Electrical Engineers do everyday, driving their knowledge beyond the limits of conventional thinking to satisfy their own passions. In short, these mean exemplify what I mean when I use the term “mad scientist”.
At the ASCL, I got to be one of those “mad scientists” and I loved it. For a long time I dreamed about being in a research lab, pushing out the boundaries of science, fueled by an unquenchable drive to discover the unknown. I got a small taste of that dream at the ASCL. Although, I was mostly involved in the more down to earth tasks, I knew that the advances made in this small had application far beyond the depths of some murky lake. I was aware that the techniques developed there could and would apply to all kinds of things, many of which lie beyond our imagination. Perhaps the ASCL will one day deliver driverless transportation or housemaid robots that don't walk through coffee tables. Either way, the ASCL is making a difference in the world by helping to lay the foundation for tomorrow.
While working in the ASCL, a professor convinced me to give some thought to an area of Electrical Engineering that I had never really considered before: communications. I'd never really thought of the importance of providing systems to connect people before. However, the area seemed to embody many of the aspects of Electrical Engineering that I had grow to love. This area held a special attraction for me, as well, because I didn't know that much about it. So, once again driven by the possibility of new knowledge, I wished the world of path-finding robots well, and continued my journey to a new world know as the CWT.
At the Center for Wireless Telecommunications (CWT), I met a truly fascinating technology. Systems that sense their environment and react intelligently had always been the most interesting to me. The interest in bestowing my love of learning onto a machine is what drove me initially to the ASCL. It is also apparently what drove the invention of Cognitive Radio.
Working in the CWT, I experienced a whole new level of conception of “mad scientists”. This group is developing a system that senses its wireless environment and then proceeds to design the best possible means of communication, all without the aid of a human brain. It's a system that operates in a world completely beyond the senses of humans. The researchers in this lab are truly driven by a passion for exploring and mastering an unknown realm.
The CWT already developed a cognitive radio that can avoid jammers and remember the clever things it has thought of in the past. Currently, a few of the challenge the lab is tackling are: developing smart communication networks that manage themselves, providing communications that only occupy unused sections of the wireless spectrum, and capabilities for public safety personal to stay connected, even in the face of total loss of infrastructure. These are only some of the big picture projects the lab is taking on and I already get to play a small part, but this exactly the sort of work I can dive into more deeply as a graduate student.
In the work of the CWT, the thinking part of their system is separate from the radio part. That means the thinking part, the Cognitive Engine, could be applied to other situations, completely independent of radios or even any communications. This technology already has the potential to completely revamp the entire communications infrastructure. Even more exciting, though, are the unexplored possibilities of using the Cognitive Engine for other purposes. There are endless possibilities to this work. This exactly the sort of thing that demands the passion and drive of a budding “mad scientist”.
It's the passionate exploration of the unknown, the drive to make the impossible a reality, and the willingness to continue to ask “why” in the face of conventional wisdom that forms my view of the “mad scientist”. I have grown to appreciate the nature and work of “mad scientists” through my work in research labs. Many can recite facts or equations, but few possess the passion of the “mad scientist”. I know I have the drive to turn science fiction into reality.

Another Essay Update

2009-08-25T15:53:00.001-07:00

Someone be sure to tell Spud that there is another essay update so he is assured that I am not forgetting about this. Also this time I am not posting the requirements.
Here you are then:

Perhaps the best explanation of why I want to be a graduate student or what I hope to accomplish is that I would to be a "mad scientist". Probably not adhering to all of the mental images that the term likely conjures, but I believe the fundamentals of expression accurately describe what I wish to achieve. If you take mad to me crazy and the moniker to be applied by some observer, it precisely defines the response I expect to get from some portion of society.
Already I have in many ways achieve a status that is in line with the label of "mad scientist". As an undergraduate engineer most of my work is in fact based in science, and I am already accustom to accusations of insanity from many of my peers. Entering college I played football for Virginia Tech. Very quickly I was labeled as loopy because I decided to not only tackle the considerable challenges presented by Frank Beamer and Company but also all of those offered by Bradley as well. I had decided before begining my collegiate experience that I would persue a double major, covering both Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering. In fact I entertained the idea of adding a major in Economics to mix as well, but by this time I could hear my true calling in life.
That calling was then and still is to be that "mad scientist". In light of this I dropped the inconsequential past times I had taken on to more thoroughly persue my new addiction. I had become utterly consumed by Electrical Engineering; so much so, that I now consider my Computer Engineering degree as a support degree for my EE aspirations. After I had taken leave of Beamer's squad, I dove, head long, into Electrical Engineering. To those who say that I quit football because I couldn't balance the time demands of sports and school, I display my life since that point.
Since actively rejecting the status of deranged sportsman, I have worked in two nationaly recognized research labs, become involved in various Engineering clubs, increased my GPA and course load, and gotten engaged, all of which demand a considerable time investment. However, it was my work in the research labs that fueled my desire for graduate work the most. I worked in the Autonmous Systems and Control Laboratory (ASCL) on the second floor of Whittemore for a year following my departure from the ranks of student-athletes.
In the ASCL I ment a group of young "mad scientists", lead by a very kind man, who is also thoroughly outside of the normal thought processes of mankind. During my time with these folks, the ASCL was developing self contained autonmous submarines for the purpose of mapping underwater environments. To see why I keep refering to insanity, consider the idea that these grown men are attempting to seriously build a boat that swims through the water, guiding itself. This is the sort of thing that science fiction is made of, but much more importantly this is the sort of thing that has the potential to completely the change the world. This just one example of the taskes Electrical Engineers have taken on that both seem far too difficult to complete and have the power to completely alter the world in which we live. In short this the sort of thing that the average person would call someone crazy for attempting.
At the ASCL I was one of those crazy people tackling a new chanllenge that might not have a solution, and I loved it. For a long time I have dreamt about being in a research lab somewhere sitting on the forfront of science and perhaps the world as we know it. I got to live that dream at the ASCL. I was mostly involved in the more down to Earth tasks involved in keeping the dream machines operational, but I knew that the advances made in this small lab had application far beyond the depths of some murky lake. I was aware, just as the other members of my asylum, that the techniques developed there could and would be apply to all kinds of things, many of which we can not image. Perhaps the ASCL will one day deliver tansportation that is fast, effiecient and driveless, or maybe the techniques will be the key to unlock housemaid robots that don't walk through a coffee table. Either way, the ASCL is making a difference in the world and the people there are doing exactly the kind of work that I have dreamt about.
While working in the ASCL a professor convinced me to give some thought to an area of Electrical Engineering that I had never really considered before, communications. Previously I had felt disconnected from the disciple, having a larger interest in making systems make intelligent decissions. However, it seemed like a good idea to experience a new area of a major I had grown to love. So I wished the world of path finding submarines well and continued on to a new world know as the CWT.
The Center for Wireless Telecommunications (CWT) is were I meant the technology that is the fulfillment of my short life's dream. I mentioned earlier that I have wanted to work as a researcher for a large portion of my life, but I negelected to mention that I wanted to develop a system that senses its environment and reacts intelligently. This is what drove me to look at the ASCL in the first place; it is also a brief an simplified definition of Coginitive Radio.
Now if the staff of the ASCL is crazy, there is not a sufficent term to describe the insanity of the members of the CWT. These people are trying to develop a systems that senses its wireless environment and then proceeds to design the best possible means of communication given the information it has gathered, all without the aid of a human brain. If you have seen the movie "Terminator", this is the system SkyNet would use to talk to is drones. It's a system that opporates in an imaginary world (in that humans can not directly sense radio waves) and produces a useful result.
What a result it is, though. The CWT as already made a Coginitive Radio that can avoid jammers and remember the clever things it thought off in the past. Now the only work that's left is developng smart communication systems that never lose connecton, systems that don't interfere with other users of the specturm at all, intelligent networks that update and maintain themselves without need of human supervision, and that's just a few of the things currently being developed. Also that limits the field to communication applications.
On of the biggest advantages of the CWT Coginitive Radio system is that thinking bit is seperate from the radio bit. That means that the part of the Coginitive Radio, the Coginitive Engine, could be apply to other situations and is independent of the radio used.
This technology already has the potential to complete revamp the entire communications infrastructure of the world, let allong what could be done if the Coginitive Engine was applied elsewhere. This is exactly the technology that I've always wanted to be a part of.
The members of the CWT fulfill my definition of "mad scientists"; they are developing the sort of thing only heard in science fiction. If they were biologist Coginitive Radio would be renamed Frankenstein. People look at the work they are doing and just shake their heads, knowing that it can never work, knowing that these people are crazy for trying. This is the spirit of Electrical Engineering, pasted down from manic Maxwell, flaky Faraday, and (one of my heros) twisted Tesla. This tradition of thinking radios follows in the footsteps of the man that originally brought us radios. Tesla is still viewed as being insane because of how far from "the box" he thought, and that is exactly how I would like history to remember me.

Movie Wishlist

2009-08-23T08:11:00.000-07:00

For anyone that is interested my movie wishlist is published here.

Essay Update Again

2009-08-21T14:07:00.000-07:00

Many thanks to all of you that contributed. Even the "need more emphasis on desire to be mad scientist" comments proved helpful. So here is the latest update, again with instructions include so you all know what I have to do with this essay.

Applicants are asked to provide a 3 - 4 page, double-spaced personal statement which includes the following:

* Why do you want to undertake graduate work?
* What do you expect to derive from your program of study?
* If you have a concentration in mind, briefly outline your interests in this area.
* What do you expect to contribute as a student and subsequently as a member of the profession?

Since the 19th Century Electrical Engineers have changed the world more than any other group of professionals. Almost all of the advances of the modern age are in some way based on the work of Electrical Engineers, including the use of electricity, radioes, and computers. I have experienced some of the cutting edge of this group during my work in some of the research labs at Virginia Tech. I have so far worked in both the Autonomous Systems Control Lab at Virginia Tech (ASCL) [check name] and the Center for Wireless Telecommunications at Virginia Tech (CWT). Each lab focuses on a different aspect of the broad and influencial field of Electrical Engineering. The ASCL workes on autonmous aquatic vehicles, where the CWT workes on cognitive radios.
In my work at the ASCL I worked on developing a submarine that sensed its environment to decided how to move through it based on a set of mission goals, as discribed by the operator. At this lab I worked more as an outsider offering help to Graduate Students, but the level of inaction with the Graduate students was enough to pick up a falvor of Graduate student life. Most of the work I did her was support of the research projects going on in the lab by mantaining and reconfiguring the hardware of the submarine, however in this work I saw first hand the sort of research projects that were going on within the lab.
In the CWT I take on the role of a "Junior Graduate Student" in many ways. Once again I am working in support of the various research projects of the labs, but the nature of these projects is different. There is not a heirarchy of work in CWT; rather, all the work done in the lab is of a higher level. I am more connected to research done in this lab, more involved in the research. I have already started to consider taking on my own research project within the lab, much in the same way that the true Graduate students of the lab do. Within the CWT I have advanced the experience gained from the ASCL to come closer to life as a Graduate student, with a little more freedom and responsibility that than of an undergrad.
In both of these labs I was experiencing life as a graduate student, but more importantly to me I was advancing a life long dream. In both cases of my lab work, I was helping to design systems that sense their environment and react in a useful way. This is what I wanted my life to be about for as long as I can remember. Growing up, I viewed Engineers as the people that made science useful to people; since then I have not experienced anything that would make me reconsider this view point. As I continued my education I discovered Electrical Engineering, a profession that has made the largest impact in research history and certainly has the potential to continue reshaping the world for decades to come. I became enthralled with the idea of creating systems to take care of the work that I didn't want to consider.
This combine with my interest in working a research lab on the leading edge of knowledge, drives me to my goal of acheiving a Ph.D in Electrical Engineering. I know that this is the best way to achieve my goals of changing the world. Already in my work in the ASCL and CWT I have experienced systems that have the potentail to impact the entire world. The implications of developing even a submarine that can autonmously map waterways or a radio that can intelligently navigate a wireless specturm are endless. Beyond even that, though, I see the possibility of extending the knowledge gained through these endevours to impact everything. If I can help to master the techniques required to design systems that can dynamically access various bandwidths to provide efficient and durable usage of the wireless specturm, I believe those same techniques can then be extended to design a system that, given a clearly defined task, can go on to gather all the required information and provided a efficient and reliable way of completing its goals.
These systems will certainly change everything that they can be integrated into, providing a more "optimal" outcome with least effort from humans. This will allow humans to spend their time and effort on more difficult problems or tasks that are less clearly defined. Naturally all of this is decades away, but these are the exciting possibilities of the work I would like to do in Electrical Engineering. Part of the sucess of computers is based on a concept know as abstraction, the separation of outcome from implementation; I believe abstraction can be applied to some of the cutting edge research being done in communications and controls to provide general thinking systems.

Grad School Essay Update

2009-08-19T19:23:00.000-07:00

At this point I've jotted down a few notes about my grad school essay. I've included the instructions for the essay to provide a framework to judge my notes. Comments are welcomed, perhaps even encouraged. I tend to use run on sentences in the style of many of the great authors, who I am definitely not, so I was making an effort to avoid such. If you feel this is a mistake let me know. Also if there are any points I should elaborate on, that would probably be more helpful.

Applicants are asked to provide a 3 - 4 page, double-spaced personal statement which includes the following:

* Why do you want to undertake graduate work?
* What do you expect to derive from your program of study?
* If you have a concentration in mind, briefly outline your interests in this area.
* What do you expect to contribute as a student and subsequently as a member of the profession?

It's always been a dream of mine to attend graduate school. For my entire life I've had a love of learning that drives to continue my education. In my life I will get my Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, if for no other reason than to gain all the knowledge that I can. I've know that I was going to be an Engineer for a long time now. After I came to college and started my Engineering education, I've become entranced. I feel as though I have found exactly what I was made to do. Everything about this career field seems to be a perfect fit for me. I could not at this imagine at this point a life that did not involve me working as an Electrical Engineer, and I know that a large part of that work is continuing life long education. Graduate work will not fulfill this goal, rather it would provide a sturdy foundation for continuing the pursuit of that goal.

I hope to expand my knowledge

Grad School Essay

2009-07-12T12:30:00.000-07:00

Well the last thing that I have to do before submitted my application is write a Goal Statement essay. As this moves along I'll be posting...I guess you could call them drafts here and I'm expecting that you all will offer comments upon them.
For now I will post the Guidelines:
Applicants are asked to provide a 3 - 4 page, double-spaced personal statement which includes the following:

* Why do you want to undertake graduate work?
* What do you expect to derive from your program of study?
* If you have a concentration in mind, briefly outline your interests in this area.
* What do you expect to contribute as a student and subsequently as a member of the profession?

The Chapter Of Me at the CWT

2009-07-06T12:24:00.000-07:00

Well today as many of you probably know I went to talk to Prof. Bostian about working for him this summer. Here is what I found out.
I will being working for Dr. Bostian starting pretty much now. He will be paying $11.25 an hour, at least for the summer/until he gets more funding, for a maximum of 20 hours per week. Right now my tasks are to get as up to speed on Cognitive Radios as I can. This includes mostly becoming an expert at GNU Radio and reading an information package he gave me.
Dr. Bostian's stated goals for me and the other two undergrads he is taking on are to experience the life of a Graduate Student and to become familiar with the workings of his lab so we can take over when we become grad students.
Pretty darn cool. I know both of the other undergrads I'd be working with-one better than the other. I have my own spot in Bostian's lab, well right now it's temporary but I'll be upgrading as space becomes available.
I'm fairly excited-even if it does mean that I have to change the operating system on my computer again...

And Now for Something Completely different

2009-06-08T22:33:00.000-07:00

Well, I've taken further advantage of the unlimited text messages I have with this phone to set up mobile posting to this blog from my phone.

But now for something completely different.

I'm reading this book called Dreaming in Code by Scott Rosenberg. It was highly recommended by Prof. Bostain. So far I'm more than half way through and it's really interesting but definitely for a more computer savy/interested reader. It's a chronicle of the development of a program call Chandler that's supposed to provide a flexible solution to storing and sharing information on a computer. In truth though it's more about the perils related to ambitious programing projects.
It highlights many of the things that you wouldn't necessarily think of as problematic when it comes to software. The book points out interesting bits like Brook's law which tells us that software projects only slow down when we throw more labor at the problem; definitely the sort thing that is good to remember.
Anyway as I'm not finished with it yet and I don't want to write a summary of the book for you all that's all on that.
I've started to play around with python and so far it seems easy and fairly useful, but I'm running into the same problems that I always hit with programing languages and such-the documentation is too dense and I can't think of a use for it right away. I know that I seem impatience here, but I feel that if I don't start practice with a language (any kind really) I'll forget stuff about it faster than I'll learn. Maybe if I get good at python and I have plenty of thing (read as the following will never happen...) I'll write my own tutorial that teaches the language by having the user write programs as they go. Perhaps I'll spend enough time with it to do something cool, and perhaps not.
Oh well, The time has come to talk of many things: of shoes and ships and sealing-wax, of cabbages and kings, and why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings.

Disney09 Pictures

2009-05-27T17:21:00.001-07:00

Disney09

Jen Graduation Pictures

2009-05-27T17:20:00.001-07:00

Jen Graduation

Actually Bored

2009-04-27T14:28:00.000-07:00

Well, classes are winding down quickly now. Everything seems to be coming to a close and I am getting bored because I don't have the same level of homework that I did before. I guess I should enjoy it though, because I know I'm going to have plenty to keep me busy next year. Oh well. Short post today.

I had my last stat test today and it was really easy, to the point that I feel like I forgot something... Oh well I guess I'll find out soon.

The Big Event

2009-04-19T06:44:00.000-07:00

Well, every year VT has a day of service called the Big Event. It basically consists of the students organizing themselves and descending on the town of Blacksburg to complete various service projects. Yesterday there were about 5,800 volunteers involved. I was part of the representation of TBP (the national honors society for engineers). We had 17 people show up and were thus assigned three projects, Pick up trash and pull weeds, rake leaves, and paint a porch. We split up into 3 groups, trash and weeds the biggest at 10 people was the one I was in. So we arrive on site, a clean little neighborhood in Blacksburg and discover that they have a path by the highway that gathers trash from the cars. It was short so most of us started on that while other people started on the pulling weeds. Well, when you get a bunch of highly motivated engineering honor students together tasks don't take that long. We quickly finished with the trash and moved on to help the weeders, again we finished quickly. There were two more jobs wait-trim a grass/bush thing-like those plants that used to be in ma's yard, and clear some drain pipes. Again we split up to conquer these tasks-I got to cut up the bush thingy. Again we quickly crushed our tasks. Then we went to help out the leave raker guys-with the added help it took maybe 5-10 minutes to finish everything. We did not go to help the painting folk because they had limited brushes. All told though I left the apartment at 8:45 and was back and showered at 12:45-which is really cool. It is amazing how quickly a bunch of engineers can complete any task.

The Past Week or So

2009-04-16T12:04:00.000-07:00

So the past week or so has been crazy busy. I've signed up to be on the Smart Radio Design Challenge team. This is the team that works with Dr. Bostian and won basically all the major awards ever given in both the Smart Radio Design Challenges. I had to fill out some of the paperwork for that.
I had threeish tests-Apparently I got the highest score on two of them, and the third one is yet to be graded. Oh, I got the highest score on the Stat test too, but so did 4 other people (we all got 100s). So that's going really well and makes me happy.
Labs are winding down, which is good because I'm definitely getting tired of dealing with them.
Had a project all about modeling the solution to Laplace's equation within a region defined by known voltages. I wrote a nifty matlab program that simulates various situations and comes up with a solution by numerical iteration. The report on that was 36 pages. I'm very happy with the program but not as much with the report, it was kind of a victum of time. In any case I most happy that that one is done.
And just incase you think my life is 1000% about school, yesterday Dake, Paula, and I are sitting in AC Circuits. Just before that class Paula and I had a test in E-Fields, both of us feel pretty good about that one, but Paula was super nervous going into it because she didn't do as well as she would have liked in the first test. Anyway, in as AC was finishing Paula and I we just happy to be done with a long week or so of tests and projects and such, and Dake was happy cause he's Dake. So Dake suggests going out on the town after we all finish our various labs that night. Definitely some of the most fun I've had in a while. Dake, Paula, Angelia, and I made up the EEs for the group, but we brought Angelia's roommate (Linsy the Bio major) and Jen allong to round out the group. Started the night with Salsa Dancing becasue Dake is a big fan of such and surprising good. This was not a fair start though, because Dake is taking creative dance, Angelia is from Peru, and Linsy is from Puerto Rico <-cheaters! I can not salsa. Jen is throughy ok with this because Dake took her for one dance and she apparently doesn't salsa really well either. Paula, (from the Philippines) apparently knew how to salsa too. So Jen and I were just surprised and not so good. Anyway, after all this we went to VT's (the bar that Paula works at), which was made even cooler by the fact that of the 10 people in the bar our group made up 6. That was fantastic! Nathan, in town for the memorial, showed up at VT's around 12 ish. Then all went to Ihop, throughly good times.
Ok that's enough stream of thought for you (no I can not spell)

New Pictures!

2009-04-16T11:57:00.000-07:00

I know it's been a while since I have last posted anything but I've actually been busy (surprise surprise) but I have been updating some pictures and all. I'm using Picasa right now and I like it so far. Links to the Picasa albums can be found on my photo blog.

Dr. Bostian Update

2009-03-03T07:39:00.000-08:00

So I know all of you are waiting very patiently to hear the next bit on news on this front. I myself am a little bit less patient but here's how it goes.
Yesterday AC Circuits let out early ( this is the class I take with Dr. Bostian) I was talking to him after class about grad work and all. He was telling me that there are three or maybe for projects that he could win moneys for. One of them would be a melding of Cognitive Radio with Autonmous robots for the purpose of rescue opporations (I told him that I am very interested in that project-because it's exactly what I would like to do). He is working with a guy from Penn State on that one who is a world leader in the field of automonous robots. So basically that project looks good in terms of funding as well. After all of this he told me (numerous times) that should he get funding he'll be taking on more students and that he would very much like me to consider his lab. (I am unoffically offically being recruited to do grad work with Dr. Bostian) After all of this he took up to see his lab, and introduced me to everyone in there. They do some cool stuff up there-I have a bit to learn before I can help too much, but I'm not even graduated yet so I have time. (I did remind Dr. Bostian that I'll be taking all the classes that apply to his work next year, that I currently work in the Autonmous Systems and Controls Lab, and that I have experience in most of the software that his lab uses.)
Basically the way it looks right now is that I'll be do grad work under Dr. Bostian likely on a melding between Coginitive Radio and Autonmous Vehicles.

Snowy today

2009-03-02T10:24:00.000-08:00

It's snowy, we got around 4-8 inches of snow last night so day it's all over the place. Was very very pretty yesterday, but today it's mostly trampled. I didn't get any classes canceled and my shoes cut up my ankles for some reason-lucky the general store had duck tape. Add that to the uses of duck tape/star it if it's already there. I have to do a lab now and don't really want to.

HOWTO: Sign Up for Twitter

2009-02-27T13:51:00.001-08:00

Yes, Skip this is for you

Step 1) Point your favorite/used browser (internet program thingy) to twitter.com, or just click the link (right click and open in a new tab to leave this window open

Step 2) Click on the large green button labeled "Get Started-Join"
This should take you to a page labeled "Join the Conversation"

Step 3) Fill out the information it asks for

Step 4) After you click the green button to submit the info your in.

Step5) Click on home at the top of the page and then add by the word following on the right hand side
Search for people on Twitter (click the first tab) and enter "mnfork" you should see my picture pop up, click on it, then hit the button that pops up that says submit

Step 6) you can continue step 5 to find more people or you can click on my picture again an sell the people I'm following.

Step 7) make sure to go to settings at the top right an go through all the tabs and set things up the way you want For example go to the devices tab under settings to add your phone number to receive texts from twitter and to update twitter from your phone
After that you can go back to you home page then click on following on the right side to toggle which updates you'll get on your phone

if you have any more questions leave them in the comments

A decision coming

2009-02-26T20:21:00.000-08:00

Well, my field is electrical engineering. It's the sort of behind the scenes thing that nobody will ever really recognize as the force that has completely changed their lives. I currently am standing on the divide between the two fields that will revolutionize and rebuild the world as we know it. On one hand there is Controls, the building of smarter machines that will take care of things for us, on the other hand there is Communications, the increasing of our capability to have all the information we could ever want at our finger tips. The human race has already experienced some of the full force greatness of communications. The internet is the prime example (although not 100% communications in the EE sense); humanity is already addicted to notion that anything that you want to know can be found in 0.000567 seconds by a Google search. From an EE point of view what if we could transmit more data, more faithfully, further, and fastest? Who do you think comes up with the protocals for WiFi or Radio or anything else? The EE's are the one's expanding bandwidth, range, and speed-everybody else just uses that.
The true potential of Controls has not yet been seen. I mean you still have to do mundane tasks like changing the toliet paper when it runs out and it is ridiculous, at this point, to think of a machine to do that sort of thing for you. But when I was a kid it was ridiculous to think that I could write a letter to some one across the world and they could be reading it in seconds, or to think that I could sit outside with a laptop and edit a document in real time with a group of people anywhere that got signal. What controls needs is an extremely cheap but reliable carrier. Sure a car that drives itself would be nice but your not going to pay 10 grand on top of the price of the car to get a second rate system. No you want to pay 5 bucks for some device that performs a task perfectly and continually. Perhaps a plug in that regulates temperature of the house based on your temperature. Perhaps not. Controls is still that mysterious force that might never come out from behind the curtain.
I have right now the foundation to do either, but what I want, what would be most exciting would be to do both. I hadn't even thought of this Cognitive Radio business before, but it's a perfect fit for me, both intellectually and financially. Imagine a radio that can share a broad transmission bandwidth with a large number of other devices. This radio only transmits on frequencies not currently in use and the receiver seamless switches frequencies along with the transmitter. That's Cognitive Radio. It's a smart radio that can sense it's environment and react to it. To accomplish this task you have to have embedded systems knowledge to build the controller (something I'll get from my CPE degree), knowledge of controls to tell the systems what to do with the data it gets(something I'll get from my interest in Controls), and knowledge of radio waves and communications so you know what and how to transmits and receive (another thing I'll get from EE). This really feels like the perfect project form me. I hope it goes through, but I feel as though I'll find myself working on this even if I don't get the chance to do so with Dr. Bostian.
Still waiting on the email, I have to cut the man some slack though as he's currently putting together a proposal for $5million that could very well kick off my career in the field.

Outrage

2009-02-20T06:07:00.000-08:00

Normally this blog is not political but in light of resent events I am simply outraged by some of the bills that are rising for consideration. Recently I heard of an Amnesty Bill that would use tax dollars to pay for the lawyers of illegal aliens, put these criminals at the head of the line for citizenship (ahead of those who have been waiting to do the process legally), and other such ridiculous things. Hey, while we, as a country, are encouraging people to break our laws why don't we declare that every Tuesday Murders get free ice cream instead of sending them to jail? Seriously, what are the people writing these laws thinking? Doesn't any one remember that saying "if you give a mouse a cookie." I think it's pretty clear that a lot of law makers especially need to repeat kindergarten so they can learn this and other such valuable lessons.
And then the thing that prompted the writing of this blog is this new "Let's force taxpayers to pay for abortion" movement. I encourage all of the readers of this blog and every other legal US citizen to write their Congressman to let them know what to do on this issue. After all the Congressman works in Washington simply to make the voice of the people heard. This is where you can sign the petition against this Abortion madness. This is my letter to my Congressman:

I have recently become aware of a movement to strip "pro-life" riders from spending bills. Apparently these riders protect people from being forced to pay for abortions here and overseas. This is about freedom of religion. My religion is against abortion. Is the US government going to simply spit in the face of not only my religion but also its own Constitution. I'm sure that I don't have to remind you that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" Part of exercising my religion is respecting life at all stages of development. Sir, I believe you have a good head and a good heart and I know that you will do what is best I simply want you to know that as a 21 year old college student I have an educated stance on this topic.

100th Post

2009-02-05T21:11:00.000-08:00

WOO Post number 100! woo and what not!

I'm excited, I've been invited to meet with Dr. Bostian so he can tell me about the fun and nifty stuff that he is researching. He mentioned to me a number of times that he would like to sway me toward his area.

Dr. Bostian works on Cognitive Radio. Read about such here if you like, but it is basically a radio that switches it's transmission/reception frequency to one that's interference free when it notices some kind of interference. This is pretty color stuff it combines just about all aspects of electrical engineering, which is pretty nifty. It seems heavy on controls, which I have like for a long time and Communications, which I took a class on last semester and it seemed extremely interesting. I'd like to become a bit more comfortable with electronics and such, but I think I will definitely do that this semester with Analog Electronics.

Very Excited

In other news I'm coordinating the creation of a Video tutorial for HKN. Work is going well, today I learned how to do Surface Mount Soldering (a word that I think should have the "l"). It was cool once I figured it ok and before I started soldering the really really tiny pieces. Class went well, we learned about BJTs as switches today. I'm slowly becoming more comfortable with BJTs but the true test of that will be this week's homework. Well I think I'm off to read somemore.

February

2009-02-02T21:39:00.000-08:00

Ah February, month o my birth.

Today it was 45 in the morning->very warm, I was walking around with no coat cause it was so warm.

after AC (ends at 3:45) it was snowing.

by the end of lab (i finished at 7:15ish) parts of the ground where covered.

it has since stopped, we got less than an inch build up, but we did get a bit so yay for snow.

I'm tired and a bit frustrated by Electronics 2 homework. All the classes are going well, but that one is tough to figure out. I still feel like I have the potential to learn a lot from that class. Then again I have the potential to do well and learn absolutely nothing from that class as well.

Oh well, sleep time methinks.

Classes

2009-01-22T16:36:00.000-08:00

Well, I've been to all my classes except for one lab so here is my take so far

STAT 4714
This is Statistics an d Probability for EE's
Pretty much seems like exactly what the name is. Looks like it'll be fairly easy. Taught by a Chinese Professor.

ECE 3106
Electromagnetic Fields II
This is the second half of a class I took last semester. Going to be playing with electric and magnetic fields that vary with time. Heavily math and physics based; Not going to be a cake walk but not crazy hard either. Very interesting stuff. Taught by the Australian I had for the first half of the class. A lot of friends from the first one are back as well. Could be my favorite this time around

ECE 3004
AC Circuit Analysis
Just what the name says, dealing with Circuits driving by AC signals. Looks like I've already covered a good bit of this material in other classes, this one is just going to go back and fill in holes. Taught by the same guy I had for DC Circuit Analysis. A good number of friends in this one as well. Looks to be very fun so far-going to fill in a lot of stuff that I would like to know

ECE 3204
Analog Electronics
Not really sure where this one is going to go. Apparently is the second level to Electronics I where we learned about Transistors and Diodes. Apparently going to go more in depth on those topics. Taught by a Brit who is very application/real world oriented, very very smart guy-not quite on the same page yet. Could be a little tough at first because I learned Electronics I from a guy that could neither teach nor could he speak English. If I can over come my poor foundation here and sync up with the Professor this one is going to fill in a lot of holes and be very valuable.

ECE 3004
AC Circuits Lab
Here we go again, looks like the slightly better put together version of the terrible DC Circuits lab. If everything goes well should be fun

ECE 3074
Analog Electronics Lab
Haven't been to this one yet, but if it's anything like the lab for Electronics I it should be great. I learned pretty much everything I know from Electronics from a combination of study sessions and that lab.

Well That's all the classes, I'll probably put up more information as the semester goes on.

Another Day

2009-01-22T10:24:00.001-08:00

Well, Today is a fun day-normally on Thursdays I would work and have to get to class by 3:30pm (gasp, so early), but today is different. I don't have class until 5:30 and I'm not working so I can get everything I need to set up for this semester.

Specifically I mean my laptop. In the quest to install Dyknow I had to reinstall windows. I had been planning on this coming up for a while, so most everything was already backed up, which was nice. But I still had to install windows and configure everything and install all the stuff I need for school. I figured that while I was installing windows I might as well set up a dual with Ubuntu, as it really didn't add a ton of time to the process (I already have the latest Ubuntu release on CD). So now my laptop dual boots into Ubuntu and Windows. Ubuntu is my default but as of yet I have been unable to configure anything in Ubuntu, simply because I've had to spend so much time getting Windows up and running.

Oh well, I do have a homework assignment due tomorrow at 5 that I haven't really started yet, which I would have liked to get done today, but I kinda need a working Windows to do that as well, so...
But that will turn out just fine, I'm not terribly worried. While fighting with my computer I was also able to do a good bit of organizing and such around my room so Yay for that. Also I find that my 10 pages a day plan is going very very well, and I have figured out some new fun little things to play on the bass as well.

So far life is definitely good, even if I can't install MATLAB yet because VT needs to work out their liscensing situation. But I have indeed got a lot done today.

School Starting

2009-01-18T16:55:00.000-08:00

Well turns out that it's a good thing that I am keep one of my tablet as a windows computer, as I need to run Dyknow for one of my classes.
That's really just an aside for all you folk out there. But I have looked at my schedule and got my books. Initially I thought I would need to buy only two books for this semester but it turns out that I might need to get another one. My earliest class this semester is at 10:10 and my earliest class on Tuesday's and Thursday's is 3:30. I only have one class on Tuesdays. On Monday's I have 4 classes, on Tuesday's 1, on Wednesday's 3, on Thursday's 2 and on Friday's 2. It looks like it will be a good semester for me. I'm planning right now to work on Tuesday's and Thursdays.
Other than school I hopping that this semester I will be able to get to the gym about once a week, read about 10 pages of a none school book everyday, and play on for about 10 minutes everyday. I'm hopping to have a relaxing and happy semester.
Paul is once again needing to do well this semester to avoid suspension. This is Jen's last semester.
That's kinda it for school.
I set up my surround sound system finally because Paul got an entertainment center type thing for it to go on. Well for now Jen is making dinner and I have to go the bathroom. Till later

Crazy Project #3 Billion

2009-01-04T18:46:00.000-08:00

Of late I rescurected my old Sony Clie PDA, it's a fun toy to play with but I can't help feeling that it could be much more useful. Right now I'm trying to get it to sync up with Microsoft outlook (yes I did install it onto this machine). But I'm finding unsurprisingly that it doesn't work how it's supposed. So I figure if I'm going to have to fight with this to make it work I might as well make it work in the way that I want it to and the way to accomplish that is fight with linux. Step 1 to that processes being finding a flavor of linux that will play nice with the system. After that it's just a matter of cramming said linux onto device. For all of you avid readers you're probably thinking that this is yet another unrelated project to the millions that I've mentioned before, but in truth this is simply another step in my match toward total linux based computing. Unfortunately it appears that at least for a little while longer I'm going to have keep this computer completely and utterly stable. Thus I must put up with the slow boot on this machine for a while longer.

Bored Today

2009-01-01T20:53:00.000-08:00

Well today I was mostly bored-didn't really do much, just kinda laid about. But I did find my old Sony Clie, I also figured out how to make it read word documents and such which makes me happy. So I found something to fiddle with for a while that might just turn out to be rather useful.

Oh yeah this is a whole new year as well. I don't really have any big time resolutions for this year, but I would like to finally get in the shape that I want to be in. I suppose there is a bunch of other stuff I would like to do but none of it really fits into resolution typeness.

Anyway, looks like VT is going to be wining the Orange Bowl, so yay for that.

Good Semester

2008-12-21T19:15:00.000-08:00

Well, it was a good semester I got one A three A-'s and one B+. I am pleased

Home

2008-12-19T19:42:00.000-08:00

Well I'm home and while here the only school related thing that I need to do is copy my EF notes over to my notebook. I have discovered though, that I get bored easily when I don't have to do any school work, so I have have brought some books. Most of the books I've brought are just for recreational reading but I have my programing book should I fell like working on some project I dream up. I don't want to plan anything out and set deadlines so I can relax a bit. I'm kinda hoping to get some reading done. Maybe I might decide to install some new OS on this machine (my laptop), or write some programs, or build a circuit or two-I brought home my circuit box just in case I feel like tinkering about with that. I might look on instructables to build something off of that. Speaking of which I was thinking about bringing my Wii home to install a homebrew with SNES emulators, but I was lazy and didn't feel like packing up my Wii to bring it home. I found some cool kits from MAKE for under $20 that I'll probably be picking up some of those next semester. I'm thinking I'm going for a reduced credit load next time (only 14) so I can some more fun stuff. Well that's enough for now.

Tomorrow I go Home

2008-12-18T21:25:00.000-08:00

I don't know what to bring home. It feels so weird not having anything that I really have to do. At the same time though I'm tired and I don't know what to do with myself. I'm almost bored now that I don't have any school work to figure out...I dunno we'll see how it goes.

First Grade Back

2008-12-17T14:46:00.000-08:00

So I'm being lazy today and not pouring over my micro notes. I did get my first grade of the semester back- A- in applied software, I'm happy with that. I just hope the rest go as well, I've been getting grades in projects and such back in many of my other courses and I've been finding that I've done better than I thought I would, but only time will tell. Ah well back to being lazy for a bit.

All's well that Ends well

2008-12-16T12:03:00.001-08:00

Well this morning I had an exam at 7:45, I woke up at 8:30- Naturally I was not happy about that, but I went over and was actually able to complete the exam in just over an hour. My professor offered me extra time but I had my EF final directly afterwards and I had only left 1 problem uncompleted so given the situation it went pretty well. My EF final went well, despite my morning rush. Now I feel a little under the weather-throat ever so slightly soar, and a bit of head pressure, but this morning was rough, so I'm chalking it up to that. I was able to stay calm and I took care of everything.

I don't have an exam till Thursday(I've checked like 400 times) so I'm going to be spending the rest of the day relaxing and shutting down all the classes that I've completed.

Night before

2008-12-15T20:42:00.000-08:00

Well it's the night before my two hardest finals and I feel oddly calm-I feel ready but I'm a little worried because I want to do well. oh well, what will be will be on this one. To sleep-I feel oddly calm. "In God We Trust" I guess. Good Night

Update

2008-12-14T21:47:00.000-08:00

I'm sure Jenn will post more about it on her blog, but just so every one is updated: Jenn is just fine.
I think its best if I leave any details to her-if you want to know more you'll have to ask her, but she does have to tell you.

I'm tired.

I'm posting this most because it seems my phone has decided that it doesn't like charging any more so it won't do it. As my phone is basically dead this a bad thing. I'll figure out some solution till I get home and can go in and complain to those bum AT&T folk. grrr I say. Oh well. Now for sleep time...

Last Night

2008-12-13T06:15:00.000-08:00

She said... Ok maybe not but I did go out to see a band and hang out with some people Jenn knows, it was lots of fun. The band was pretty good and they played a pretty good selection. I didn't know too many of the people, but neither did Jenn so I wasn't alone in that. Everybody was very cool anyway. It was nice to see a different scene than the standard one these days. I was in a mood for listening to musics anyway. Well it was fun. Today I have to read a good bit of my comm book. Look over some EF too. Most important though is to take part in my secret study technique which involves video games and relaxing and such.

Exam Time

2008-12-12T15:53:00.000-08:00

Well it's exam time, that time of the semester when everything gets a little crazy. But I've already done two exams and I feel pretty good about both of them. They were Applied Software Engineering and Digital Design I. Still to come is Intro to Comm and EF (on Tuesday) and Micro processor System Design on Thursday or something like that.

Tonight I'm apparently going out for food and then to a concert or something of that nature. I didn't plan it, but it does sound fun. A nice break from school which is really all I've been up to for a good bit now.

I am most happy today I got my album from England. I've listened to the first already (it's a double) and I like it a whole lot. It's Porcupine Tree's Up the Downstair and I'm very very happy that I have added that one to my collection.

Part of me is a bit tired and just wants to lay around the house and listen to my new album but I'll have time for that later on. Might as well go out for a bit. Till next time hopefully I'll have something more interesting to say

Response to Obama's First Weekly Video

2008-11-15T10:51:00.000-08:00

Apparently President Elect Obama is going to post a video each week on youtube to let everybody know what's going on in America.
Personally I don't agree with all of Obama's policies and I wish he didn't win the election. But he did, I'm not going to be sour about it and I would appreciate at it if others wouldn't gloat about it.
The important thing here is that Obama, barring any disaster will be the next president. I really like this weekly video idea to keep people informed, but after watching his video it seems like he is still on the campaign trail. I mean I understand that he really doesn't have a lot of power right now and that his main function currently is to win the support of the people, but he did already win the election-it's kind of time to stop campaigning. I don't agree with all his policies but I like the talk of making jobs by updating our infrastructure. I'm not a fan of hand outs, but he didn't really commit himself to any, even if he inferred them.

Well that's all for this week, I'll probably respond to the next video as well-I hope these continue into his term as real president as well. I have to dig up a link to the polysciblog for skippy. But for now I'm off to the CEL.

Full Version of My Costume

2008-11-02T11:02:00.000-08:00

So I bring for you all you a picture of myself, in fact it is the full version of my profile picture-turns out that's the one I like best for posting purposes-if you all really really want to see the others just post a lot of comments or something

Any way here is the full picture.

new profile picture

2008-11-02T07:43:00.000-08:00

So I got one picture of me dressed up this Halloween and I even set it as my profile picture, but I don't yet have all of the latest pictures-My memory card doesn't want to talk to my computer right now, so... coming soon photos of me as a crazy butcher... I guess I hope...

Halloween

2008-11-01T09:59:00.000-07:00

Well, I told many of you to stay tuned for pictures and I have brought many to you-although I don't have any pictures of myself (I think those are all on Paul's camera). I bring a picture of Tuskie (Paul) and Chong from Cheech and Chong - apparently he got a bit lost but we hung out for a bit.

Stay tuned for more pictures and perhaps even a Day in the Life of a Tusken Raider Special...

Any Way Enjoy

-I should get some pictures of me up there soon for all you who enjoy that sort of thing

Notes on Pumpkins
I did the Haunted House with the clouds and bats-there was supposed to be a shadow on the moon, but it broke off
Jen did the Cat on a pumpkin carving-that's right a pumpkin carving of a pumpkin carving (Que Twilight Zone Theme)

Morning Post

2008-10-30T05:49:00.000-07:00

While I don't think this post will exist prior to any mother morning computing I figured I would write a quick note. Like the Lt. I know have a twitter account and if you want a more play by play of the events going on with me check it out-I should be connected to the Lt's account.
Busy day yesterday-I got a fairly intense program done really quickly so I'm well pleased about that. A couple of busy weeks coming up, but I'm doing my best to work it out such that this week end is filled with homework.
Jen and I are are craving pumpkins on Friday.
Today I have my Tau Beta Pi interview-nothing formal at all just a kind of get to know the candidates.
Oh I also got invited to join HKN which is the electrical engineers honor society.

I gotta run-bye all

Busy Week and Bass

2008-10-28T12:43:00.000-07:00

So last week was crazy busy and not cool, at all. This week much better though.

It snowed this morning and is possibly even snowing now. Been getting colder and colder.

I've being playing the bass a bit lately to relax after long day's (there are many) I've been learning more and more on the bass and am really enjoying it. I'd like to eventually, when I get better get a fretless bass. It's definitely something that I would like to do more, but at the very least I hope to be able to play for a long time.

Been a long day, I'm dehydrated from the cold so I'll end this post for now.

More Schemes....Muwahahahahah

2008-09-11T12:36:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I've gotten about half way through on many of my plans and thus it's time to come up with more plans indeed.
I'm thinking right now that I'm going to dump this XP business because it doesn't make me happy and instead install Gentoo on this laptop natively then install tinyXP onto a virtual machine. But before that will happen I need to have at least one completely stable and working computer.

Other than that-on a less computing front-I'm going to start my language learning quest-for real this time (thanks to Spud)-with Polish and Italian. So if any of you guys would like to learn Polish I would say now's the time, but if not that's ok, I'll just practice on Spud.

That's all for now-boring class (Micro) time.

Heck of a Week and only half done

2008-09-10T05:08:00.001-07:00

So far this week is going really well. I've been able to mostly keep up with the classes and all so that's a double plus! But this big news this week is yesterday all of my Blue Box parts (Well not all the video card arrived earlier but most) showed up at the apartment. Naturally I put the new blue together-it is awesome!! No OS on there yet, so I can't really experience the full joys of it's goodness, but it does start up and I've configured the BIOS to the best of my knowledge. Hopefully I'll be able to install the OS on Saturday. I'm excited about this one.

New Blue

2008-09-04T19:24:00.001-07:00

Ok, so here's the deal. In my upcoming new blog I will only be covering my ideas about Intelligent Control Systems. I don't think I want to expand to have a tech developed blog-like the Lt.-chiefly because I don't think I could produce the same level of consistent quality that he does. Thus my nerdy projects will be covered right here in my main blog.

That being stand-the coverage hasn't bee so good I know.

But to get you up to speed: a long long time ago I thought it would be nice to upgrade the Bluebox(my media machine). I started with upgrading the software and doing a direct comparision of Os's without any changing to the hardware.
I decided to compare Windows to Linux, because I'm not a enough of a socialist/Liberal Artist to use MacOs-it would detect my need for technical computing and boot me right off.

Well for the comparision I used Microsoft's Windows XP with SP2 and Ubuntu 7.10 (at the time the latest version).
I really really like Linux, but I'm no fanboy (from urbandictionary.com:

A passionate fan of various elements of geek culture (e.g. sci-fi, comics, Star Wars, video games, anime, hobbits, Magic: the Gathering, etc.), but who lets his passion override social graces.

). It was hard to use Linux at first-there is a lot of stuff that you can do and no really good way to learn how if you don't know. You have to read a lot of documentation that can often be confusing, even for some one who is in college getting a degree in computer engineering. But after working at it I got used to it and really enjoy the control.
As I was learning more about Linux and enjoying the stuff I can do, my Windows installiations started crashing. In fact the harddrive that I had the comparision XP installed on crashed completly. Not just the Os on that drive, but the entire drive itself. In fact I still have that harddrive and I will be throwing it out soon cause it's utterly dead.
Thus the choice became clear-for this project Linux was the way to go.
Now what distro (Linux distrubution) to use? I looked at a bunch, but fairly quickly I decided I wanted the most control, the best documentation, and the best user support-that all comes with Gentoo-the most power distro, but also the most instense.

Now I know the software choices made, but there is only so much that older hardware do, even with Linux calling the shots.

Thus about four months ago the search for better hardware began. I wanted a Q6600 Kentsfield-since intel introduced this quad core this is chip I wanted for the blue box so the search kind of centered on that. Beyond that I asked around and tried to play the balance game between cost and power. After much review this is what I decided on.

Power Supply: Antec is quality brand for an inportant and often overlooked bit, plus it's blue
Video Card: Not the bestest best super card ever, but it should beable to handle what I have for it with ease.
Ram: Corsair is a quality brand and 2 GB is the theorictal limit to what normal Os's can actually address and use, but I can always upgrade later on
Cooler: Keep everything cool, again not the bestest best thing ever, but the best for my needs and budget
Processor: The core of what I wanted. This chips should be able to handle anything I ever have ol' Blue do. It's a beatiful chip, I really really like it even if there exist ones that are faster or better. Read more here. Yes it does support 64 bit computing, yes that's awesome and kind of overkill and yes, i'm considering using a 64 bit Os
Motherboard: Asus is a quality quality brand and they tend to give a lot in one package. In truth this is actually the best component of my system, it can handle more hardcore processors and what more memory and all that, but I figured as this is the bit that brings it all together, I kind of want it to be rock solid
Opitical: sadly modern mobo's (motherboards) generally only support two IDE devices and I have two IDE 500 GB drives. Thus I needed a SATA optical drive to make everything fit.

I have finally ordered those bits all tonight. :-D

From here this project is not done. Naturally I have to install all the hardware and then get the software all working on that. But this is not the completion of the upgrades. The next thing I'm probably going to need is a new case, not because everything won't fit in the one I have now, but because the one I have now isn't easy to work on and I might need the extra cooling power (the major function of a computer case is to keep everything within cool by properly setting up a good airflow). After that I want to get some fast fast harddrives/lots of big SATA drives so I can look into RAID, because the purpose of the Bluebox afterall is a media sever.

Which brings me to my next point-eventually the Bluebox will be a webserver to bring media to those with the proper passwords and such anywhere in the world. Thats far in the future though.

Busy

2008-09-04T18:51:00.000-07:00

Well life is super busy these days.

heres what I have on tap for the next bit:
Grad School App
Gen Scholarship App
Blue Box Upgrade
Creating New Blog for posting Research and Ideas in Controls
Music Organization

I thinks that all. I mean there's always the regular stuff-school and homework and studying and work, but that's the exciting and different bits. I feel disorganized and like I have a ton of stuff to do, but I know it's really not that much and it's just that life is crazy right now for me-but still I don't like the feeling I have right now.

Well, I'm off to either make a list or chip at it a bit.

So I'm at home and all

2008-08-18T15:09:00.000-07:00

Yup, I'm all at home.

Today, Skip, the Max and I went out on a canoe. It was rather fun-just did a lap around the lake really, nothing too crazy. You can probably read more about it on the skip blog.

This post is really to point out other blogs of note and such. Mind you this is not a totally inclusive listing of noteworthy blogs. The skip blog was mentioned above-good for generally skippy news. The Lt. Nerd blog is a good place to find gaming related info lately-he is in a series of bringing video game type stories, which he is doing rather well and is making me consider starting a series of some kind. Rumbelow is an interesting, often deep blog.

After getting to watch the olympics-I do love to watch the olympics-I think I'm going to have to take up watching handball. It's an exciting sport and I'm hopping that I can catch a bunch of the games online. I'll find a video for you later, but for now here is a reference on the sport.

Disturbing News

2008-08-15T07:47:00.000-07:00

Well I think it's official now, most Democrats either support Communism actively or are tricked in doing so. On the other side fair less members of the GOP support the idea of making a socialist society then handing complete control to our government.

This all comes from a recent story on slashdot that informs me that about 30% of Democrats support a fairness (read censorship) doctrine and Democrats oppose government fiddling with internet content to a much less extent. Now mind you only 61% of Republicans oppose government censorship of the internet-which is far far too low.

I know that these are small little things, but this is America. We are capitalist. That's how we were started, that's how we succeeded, that's how we need to stay. I really don't like this growing trend toward socialism and communist controls. The government doesn't need to be showing up around here and telling me what to do. The federal governments exists purely to defend me against foreign attack, make the states play nice with one another, and maintain the infrastructure in the way that I as a tax paying voting America tell them too. All these "lets make life better for the average person" sort of things end up alienating those who aren't average. There also make you wonder just how far the feds will take there power.

Now don't get this all wrong and peg me as a nut job building up my personal arsenal waiting for the days that the feds show up at my door so I can start a week long standoff. Rather I am a college student-the sort of person that is supposed to be especially liberal. I like the federal government-I just think we need to remember why they exist and stop expecting the feds to take care of all of us individually while not spending negative money. If we want America to prosper we need to give the federal government a job that it can actually do then we the people need to pick up the rest and actually take care of ourselves.

8.5 hours

2008-08-13T17:30:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I know I'm not supposed to work more than 10 hours per week but today I worked for eight and half hours. I was building towed arrays for testing that is supposed to happen this Friday-but I don't know if the software will be done in time for all that.

It's nice to have a job in my field I feel like I'm learning so much, but at the same time I feel like I don't really know much of anything.

I will definitely have to upgrade the blue box and install gentoo on it before school if I possibly can because gentoo has tools that will be very very useful for the programing class that I will be taking this semester.

I know I'm a little all over the place right now, but my head hurts a little-I think not enough fluids.

I'm making ham with pineapples, it smells so very good-I'm hoping it gets done soon.

Today

2008-08-12T16:25:00.001-07:00

Well I know that the last post I wrote kind of had a quick ending and sometimes that happens when something like sleep comes up and must be taken care of.

Today has been a productive day-I worked for 5 hours this morning and since I've got back I've been switching between cleaning up in the apartment and working on organizing my thoughts about english-both of which seem to be going well.

Work was a little crazy today-I've basically become the master of hardware in the lab so anything that has to be built goes immediately to me, basically. It's kind of nice in a way.

I wish to learn more about all the other aspects of the project though, which is definitely coming with time and such so again that is good.

I want to upgrade my blue box-a project I've been looking at for a while now and I can certainly afford it right now, but I wish to wait until I get paid and I want to be here as pieces start showing up, thus I currently haven't started ordering anything. But I probably will when I come back here for the start of classes (going home for a bit before then).

Kinda a busy day, and I haven't drank much so I feel as though I must go push some liquids. I will probably post again later on.

End of Summer II

2008-08-11T20:00:00.000-07:00

So I have successfully finished out summer two-got an A for my course, so I am happy about that. At this point I'm spending some time at school working a bit and trying to finish up my English class (I hate English classes so very much) but hopefully I'll be done with this one soon.

I kinda figure that if I can out line each individual assignment that it'll make it a lot easier to figure out what exactly I need to do where. That's kinda the plan for today and tomorrow. Then if after that I'll be able to put pen to paper (so to speak it'll actually fingers to keys) and draft out most of the assignments I have to do. This one has been a huge pain because of all the research that I had to do for it-all stuff that I'm interested in anyway but is very tedious to go through and figure out for an English class type paper. I think too often I try to read some of this stuff once and then completely understand it and remember it for life-a little hard to do considering most of this is based on a foundation of knowledge, most of which I've never had any contact with before.

But I'm making more progress now so...

Other than that not much has really been going on. Been getting the apartment set up exactly how we want it-it's a rather iterative refining process but as time goes one we slowly approach the break point for that loop.

At this point my room is basically completely set up and I have an organizational method for a lot of things-not that everything has to be just so, just kinda of a methodology for keeping organized so it's easier to take care of the stuff that needs to get done. I feel that with a good base and method I can take care of a lot more with a lot higher quality.

-The was a pause for sleep right at this post so as I have lost the flow I shall simply post this one-

Wow, It's Already Wednesday

2008-07-30T12:56:00.001-07:00

This week, this summer session has seemed to go by fairly quickly. I have discovered that I have already finished all the non-final tests for my class, which is nice. I also feel as though I'm pretty well back on track for that course, again nice. Today I might even get ahead a little.

But all of that is boring compared with work.

Last time I worked it was for 7.5 hours doing field testing of the little toy sub that we built. Much much fun. We were driving around the lake having it take sonar images of whatever we could find. Overall the day was a large success, until we hit the last run for the day.

We had been having good success of taking sonar of fish and the boat and such, so with just enough charge we decided to drive across the path of the little bot so it could get the boat in motion, instead of just flying by a stationary boat. Well we sent the little sucker on its way then gunned the boat to get in front of it and swerved about in the sub's path, thus ensuring some wild sonar images. Well we waited to here the little "I'm over here" alarm the sub gives after it surfaces. We waited and waited-no alarm.

This is about the time the panic started to set in, the forward look sonar device the sub was carrying is worth about $50,000. Naturally not something that would be good to lose. Well after spending a few minutes trying to figure out what happen and convince ourselves that we had not in fact run the darn thing over we pulled out the hydrophone and triangulated the position down to about 2 meters-This took an hour or two. After this we waited for the scuba diver to arrive (one of the reasons I would like to get scuba certified) and after testing the water and depth and other such things we dropped him basically on top of where the sub was. He was under for maybe 10 minutes when he came back up holding our $50,000+ toy.

We were well pleased to find that there wasn't a scratch on it. Apparently the prop wash was enough to throw the thing about a third of it's own length into the sticky mud at the bottom, where it engaged it's "I'm too deep under water" routine which consists of turning off the motor and waiting to float to the surface. The mud disagreed with this plan and instead held the little sub on the bottom until it's battery died and then we found it.

That was an excited day at the lake.

Today I spent outfitting another sub to pull a hydrophone along behind it so that we can listen in on fish conversations and what not. The plan with the next run is to try to get two of our subs working together.

Fun Fun

2008-07-29T12:53:00.000-07:00

Well once again I got the highest grade in my class on a test and once again it was a 98. So I should be doing pretty well in that class, but I'll have to see how things turn out with homework and what not.
Today was a busy but boring day so far. I settled all my banking stuffs and what not-it's really nice to have a job because I can actually see my money grow now instead of it just kinda sitting there. USAA makes me happy with how very helpful they are. Oh and any of you folk who happen to buying Christmas/Birthday presents and not getting some sort of music or what not another idea for you is Savings bonds-the gifts that keep on giving. But then again nothing is always an option too.

I got all my filing done! I even have left over files!

I've been really lazy with interneting since I got the new apartment, I'll probably get back into it more as everything else gets more settled. Oh, we discovered a current layout that we like for the living room, but I think we shall be getting rid of the original free couch, which is ok cause we have plenty of seating otherwise.

Well, the microwave just alerted me that it has finished heating so I must go check on it-more later

tired

2008-07-24T17:26:00.000-07:00

Well, today I took a test then worked for 7.5 hours-bit of a long day I'll tell you more about it later on

Alright so I haven't posted much

2008-07-17T07:38:00.000-07:00

I know I know, I've kind of dropped off the face of the internet for a couple days maybe even a week and in terms of the internet and technology that can be forever, but it's been busy with moving and and class and I just recently got the internet back.

Well lets see, bunch of stuff going on...let's start with probably my favorite bit-academics.

Ok so right now as I write this I have 88 credits and I'm sitting at 3.51 GPA overall-decently good but not where I want it (should be 91 credits at 3.7 but whatever). Anyway I woke up early this morning to go talk to my adviser about the much fabled BS/MS-fabled because I've been trying to get into that sucker for a while now. But here's the news on that one. As soon as I complete this summer term (August 9th) I shall be applying for the program. Now this is a bit crazy because while I will have 90 credits at that time, I'm not planning on finishing the undergraduates until spring 2010. For the BS/MS program the last two semester of your undergraduate are where you take the 4000 levels that double count. (this is concise plan coming next) So, I apply for the BS/MS Fall 08. I spend Fall 08 and Spring 09 being a regular Engineering student. Small Small Chance that I'll need to do classes Summer II 09 (hopefully not!). Fall 09 and Spring 10 I spend finishing my undergrads while (at the same time) starting my graduate degree in Electrical Engineering. Summer I and Summer II 10 I have no idea right now (might have to spend in Blacksburg doing research, might spend in Warrenton working). Fall 10 and Spring 11 I spend finishing my graduate degree and graduate Spring 11 with a Masters in Electrical Engineering! Then I go in the world find a job, a house, a wife, a house, and a sack of gold so I don't have to be a sprite. Then I get the people I work for to send for a Ph.D.

In other academic news I get to officially be a double major now-instead of just doing all the work without the official recognition. I'm completing the form later today and sending that in. I am not currently an official double major because football didn't want be to do as such-something about eligibility or some nonsense, but I don't have to deal with them any more.

Exciting news-I have a job, I am designing, building, and testing an autonomous undersea vehicle for the US Navy. I should be making about $10/hour, but that is technically not certain yet. Ok so now for the story behind this one a little bit. I emailed Dr. Stilwell because I knew I wanted to do research for him, I was expecting unpaid research for credit. He responded very quickly and told me that there just might be a paid internship position open for an undergrad. I went in to talk to him and he mentioned that contingent on his alloted budget he might be able to take me on as a paid undergraduate research for $10/hour. It'll be rather flexible Dr. Stilwell will mostly likely only let me work 10 hours per week just because of his budget could probably only afford that much and because he wants me to still focus on school work. Technically I believe the university will only let me work 20 hours. But after I was talking to Dr. Stilwell about the project for a bit he took me to meet the whole research team and what not and the guy I would be working for directly. I'm going to be part of the navigation team consiting mostly of me and a real life graduated engineer. I'm naturally pretty excited about such-it's not entirely certain that I'll be paid, but I'd do the work for free-the pay just makes life easier all around.

I think that cover's most of my academics and all. Jenn is late to work today and a little stressed, but it's going well with her. Paul and I cleared out the rest of our storage. the apartment is definitely coming together, even if slowly. This post might be a little disjointed cause I'm excited and slightly unorganized right now and the writting of this post has spanded an entire day pretty much. Right now I have to go clean some disks and what not so I'll have to post again later.

Yay for internet again

2008-07-15T21:56:00.000-07:00

Well, we now have the internet once again after a period of no internet-also it seems that the firewall and virus protection that I was using no longer plays nice with windows so I have switched to that provided by Tech-looks to be decent. I hope it does well what with daily scans and what not. Well that's all for now-still much to be done, perhaps I shall get to sleep later even...

Ouch!

2008-07-07T13:44:00.000-07:00

Well, I have some advice for you, if you should be thinking about building something that requires a bunch of screws and your don't have an electric screwdriver or drill available for the job, wear gloves. I have a hole in the palm of my right hand and a blister on my middle finger because I did not follow that advice, although I don't think I have gloves here that I could have worn- but Paul's hands aren't doing too much better than my, thus if you're thinking about that sort of activity go find gloves first.

Well, this is the start to a busy week, it's not quite into the super busy bits yet, but today had it's moments so far and the day is not yet done. Class seemed like it went really fast today with no real lulls until the end, which is kinda good and kinda bad-good because it makes the class time seem shorter that way, bad because there were lulls at the end which made it that much worse. But today we learned all about Bode Plots, yay.

Bode Plots are a convenient way to show the magnitude and phase responses of a system to a sinusoid at any given frequency. Bode Plots show the magnitude and phase responses separately which is pretty handy and in fact they are not really that hard to make. All of this gives me another tool for use in designing networks. All these tools and such give me a better understand of what everything means and how it all fits together-which is always a good thing. Overall I am very pleased with how my education and all is going.

Today there are also a whole bunch of little freshmens here for orientation. I feel all snazzy because I'm a legit college student and therefore cool-which is definitely a plus about our culture, for all the looking down on geeks and nerds and such-mostly in high school-you are automatically cool when you become a college student and you can ever be a cool nerd. But more importantly because it is once again orientation time, the food quality at d2 has increased-Horay for trying to impress people with inflated profomences which result in me eating tasty food.

But I must end this post for now as my computer is working very hard trying to do a lot at once and the network isn't helping very much

Congrads for Brothers

2008-07-06T11:36:00.000-07:00

While I did not include the Lt. in the Congrads given in the previous post (chiefly because I'm pretty sure he was not involved in building the sandbox and such as mentioned in the Skip blog and such), he certainly does merit congratulations because not once while he has been on duty has the country been invaded by communists of any sort. If fact not once have we been attacked while he has been protecting our rights. It's a tough job, especially considering the fact that he's never home, but he certainly does it well.

Well, I've decided to try and learned Gentoo Linux-this is the super famous one, with the penguin and the control over literally anything. I figure it will be a useful skill to get things done, especially if I will be needing to do crazy things like developing machine intelligence, which is way easier on a Linux device. Also the documentation for Gentoo is very good and will a little effort I should be able to handle it fairly easily.

I will keep you all updated as I progress through this process and certainly be willing to offer any advice that I can if you need such.

Props for Stan

2008-07-06T11:17:00.000-07:00

Late Post

2008-07-06T02:47:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm up late learning about interesting things on the internet (chiefly linux and it's compatibly with Virtual PC 2007, and reading tomorrow's Slashdot headlines). But today was one of those days that got off to a late start then really picked up speed. Jen flew out to Colorado today, with a layover in Texas where she had some crazy experiences and decided she doesn't much like Dallas.

Paul has been working hard at creating a IM service through his website, for which I've been the testing helper.

My job on the advancing technologies front has once again been linux related because I like linux so. I'm trying to figure out which distribution works best with Virtual PC and in general. But don't worry I did take the 6 necessary hours out to complete all 3 of my homework questions-the study time that followed that was one hour or less so I didn't really take that into consideration. Although this brings up another reason why I like music so very much-you can listen to music while you do homework, you can't watch a movie and solve RLC circuits using Laplace transforms as easily. Or at least that's how it works for me.

But I also completed my version 1.0 Ledger where I can keep reccords of my expenses and such. In fact pending verification of how much money is reserved for school stuff, I plan on using some of those recently allocated moneys for a project that I've been wanting to do for some time now. I figure it's my money that I've accumulated over time and I'm being sensible, even if it is a little strange, so way not. I mean how many other kids my age have reccords of their expenses and their moneys budgeted into regions that take account not only of entertainment and food, but also bills, investing, and savings. I worked hard sorting all that out.

But my study is complete, Jen is safely in Colorado-she was super tired after travelling all day, Paul is just getting off his night job, and that's all the people I can account for really.

Oh, I'd like to congradulate those of you back on the home front (chiefly Mom, but certainly not forgetting Max, Skip and Spud-NOT Hiccup, no congradulations for him) on all the work that you seem to have completed since I've left. But I have to wonder are you all trying to tell me that everything works better whilst I'm not there?

Well, hopefully I'll get the chance to test my linux choice (Fedora Core 9) tomorrow, as well as study Bode Plots and call home. But forth now, methinks it's time to consider sleep

PS-flac is very impressive although certainly not for those who don't want to hear everything

Happy Independence

2008-07-04T09:25:00.000-07:00

Hullo all,
Today I write you after being inspired both by a discussion about welfare that I'm involved in on my most favoritest forum (collegeminds.net) and the Skip's post last night.

Now I must say that I believe there is no day that would be more fitting to bring up this point than the day that long ago our forgotten fathers signed there names to the document that told, definitively, all others with designs on our people and land to piss off. These men are today, sadly, forgotten because we no longer remember that they were men, great men with great ideas about how a country should be governed. Today they are simply names or symbols that no one understands.

Take the Congress, filled to the brim with overpaid suite wearing chuckleheads, just doing whatever they can to avoid losing there nicely paying job with the company reviews every two or four years. These people have forgotten that in the time of the birth of this nation the men that signed that declaration came from their land and families and jobs to serve the nation. They didn't show up to become famous or to become wealthy. They all knew that the document they signed made them all guilty of treason, infamous. They all knew that breaking from the richest nation in the world had made them all guilty of charity, paupers.

These men came only to fill the people's hearts with joy by creating a better nation, not to fill they pockets with gold. Today America is driven by the almighty dollar. It has forgotten its roots-the newest nation, nothing more than a disorgnized group of farmers, fighting the largest most powerful nation in history. We started our national life by winning fights through innovation, why rest our laurels now and fade away like the giants of the past did.

I saw we remember our fathers, not only those who fought years ago to fourge a new nation for us, but also those that fight now, everyday, to fourge better lives for their children. Those who overcame obstacls of a different culture or language. Those who overcame the obstacls of growing up in the city. Those who were told they could never make it, they couldn't do or write or be. Those who went on to protect not only their children's right to a pursuit of happiness, but also their nation at great personal expense. Let us remember these great men and their spirit.

Let us soak up the influences that are all around us; not the flashy guides to damnation that are easy to spot, but the more subtle forces that drove the creation of our nation. The influences to give and make life better for all. Everyone that walks the Earth as recieved the greatest gift anyone could give-Life. Do not forgot that for you to be here your mother had to take care of your every need for at lest nine months. Your mother changed her life utterly, went through tortue, just so you could be born. Do not forgot get that was only the start of her care for you. Let her lessons sink in. Let yourself learn to forgot yourself utterly and serve other from her example. Let yourself learn how to keep giving beyond the point of crippling pain. Let yourself learn how to walk life through another's shoes as she did when all you could do was cry.

Everyone has a mother, everyone has a father-do not forgot these people. Remember the fathers of this nation. Remember the families that supported them. Remember that this small group of men took on the world's greatest power just so you could have a say. Remember that they did not fight for money or fame. Remember that they fought to improve their lives and ours. Remember what it means to call yourself American.

Wow

2008-07-03T11:52:00.000-07:00

Ok, so today we got a lot done. We being Paul and I. We settled basically all the apartment stuff taken care of, the only things that are left are figuring out what ISP we want to use and we have to pay. But we have to pay after we decided between NTC and version because if we chose NTC we pay $30 more on the rent instead of version were we have a seperate bill. Version is currently winning the debate. But after we figure that out, we need to call and let the apartment people know then we need to pay the rest of the security deposit and the first month's rent-which will have to be done through money order, so I'll have to figure out how to do that.

But other than that today in class we learned how to actually build some of the functions and things that we been learning about the math and theory behind for so very long. It's a little crazy how we spend so much time learning about how stuff works and then when we learn how to actually build or implement one of the processes or functions that we've design everyone in the room goes into super focus mode.

It's like we've been starving for this knowledge for so long that we absolutely don't want to miss a word of it, enough though we all know how about tons of resources that we could visit and use our background knowledge to figure it out. I guess that's part of engineering though, the thirst to be able to use your knowledge to actually make something instead of just talking about. The recognition that you must understand the background of exactly why this stuff works before you can truly design a system to complete some task.

I mean I'm a only going to my third year in Electrical Engineering and I already know exactlly how a lot of stuff works. It's nice to know how to build it, but I still am able to respect how important it is to know what you're build and why it does the things it does. I mean if I'm to design new things I can't do everything just the way that other people did, I have to be able to figured new ways of doing this based on a solid knowledge of the stuff works by itself.

But all in all I just wanted to point out how striking it was that as soon as we started to learn how to implement the functions that we've studied about for so long, the whole room just seemed to change in atmosphere.

First day back

2008-06-30T20:07:00.000-07:00

Well, the first day of class was a bit boring but it was mostly review so in a way that's actually a good thing. I'm surprised at how much free time I have. I got a lot done today-got my book situation covered, notified football that I was done with their nonsense, went to class, took care of my meal plan, and then came back to the room and sorted a bunch of music and read a whole lot for English. I also got my exercises in today. Now Paul and I are watching 20 straight episodes of Robot Chicken. Good day, kinda busy at points. I'll probably write some better posts for you all soon

Back to Tech

2008-06-29T14:43:00.000-07:00

Well, here I am laying on my nice full size bed-it's soo big! :) Paul and I just got in a little while ago and we're just relaxing for a bit. I might have a job working night security on campus-I'm going to go ask about it tonight. It's the perfect job for a college student cause I basically just have to sit there and watch a building, so I could do homework or study or watch movies or whatever.

The house we're staying is crazy-it's super big but a whole bunch of people seem to be living here, so far I've only seen one.

Well, it's very nice to be back at school-during this part of the summer I need to find a job, notify football that I'm done with them, do the stuff I have for english, and take care of my class. It's the first day and I think I've already taken care of one of those, so it's looking good.

I do miss people already mostly I miss Ma and Jenn, then Skippy and Spud, and finally Max-Max is last cause he's loadest and I haven't been gone too long-I don't miss Hiccup.

Well I'm going to continue laying around for a while-I will keep you all posted.

Tired

2008-06-26T18:06:00.000-07:00

I've spent almost all day at belivoir in the commissary and bx and such and I'm tired and I don't want to do anything. I have some interesting stuffs to write about later, but right now I just don't really feel like it. I don't know if i want to watch tv or just listen to some music for a bit...

Well till later

Bluetooth

2008-06-23T18:30:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Best Buy putting one on sale, I now have a bluetooth headset for my phone. It is pretty awesome-the sound quality is great and it makes it much easier to talk on the phone.

It's pretty nice because while it's active it plays all the sound through the ear piece instead of the phone so I'm he only one that hears should I be playing music on the phone or if the ringer sounds or something. I am well pleased by such.

I also got a bluetooth adapter (again thanks to Best Buy) this way I can transfer files and such to my phone without worrying about making wires fit and all.

Overall this bluetooth business is working pretty good for me. Now I have to get my music in order so as to be able to load some nice music on my phone for the listening.

Fun night

2008-06-22T21:36:00.000-07:00

Well, I have to say, I know sometimes I say I am bored at night, but tonight was definitely not one of those type nights. Jenn got to come over after she got off work. Also a friend of Skip's was able to be here for dinner.

Rewinding a bit-it was nice today to have a more relaxing type of day-Max and Skip were out most of the day so Spud and I got to complete our shelving project (completing projects is always very good). Also, as much as I must admit that I like Max, it's more relaxing when he's not around.

But later in the afternoon Skip, Max and Skip's friend came back to the house and we were all hanging out. Jenn arrived a little while afterwards and it was crazy for a bit cause we where getting dinner ready and the Lt called and all, but it was nice because it really seemed like a complete and bustling family-everybody there seemed to fit.

After dinner we relaxed some more (I did tell you it was a relaxing day). Then we had some delicious peach and french vanilla ice cream that Ma and I stumbled across.

Eventually Skip, her friend, Jenn and I got to play Canasta, which was very very fun. Jenn and I were on a team and we won, but Skip didn't do bad-her partner allegedly was just learning and made a couple decent mistakes that gave me some good points and made Skip not so happy. In the end I think everybody had a good time though.

After that I got to relax with Jenn and watch a movie/talk for a bit, which is always super super nice as I happen to like her very very much. Sadly though she had to leave at around midnight cause she was falling asleep and lives kinda far away. It'll be nice when we're both back at Tech and she'll live much closer.

Anyway as for me, learning Russian is going well so far, I'm up to lesson 5, which looks like a longer one so I'm not sure when I'll be able to fit it in. I haven't started that push-up routine that I talked about and I probably won't until I get more settled at school-although I am doing a little of this, a little of that while I can. And now, as it is getting late and Jenn is already asleep at her home, I leave you all for some sleep.

Learning Russian

2008-06-21T15:12:00.000-07:00

Hi ever body, I just spent some time going through the first couple lessons of the learning Russian program Ma got for me. I have to stay I like it and I feel as though I'm already starting to pick somethings up. It's a pretty good feeling. Now I just need to get to point where I can speak a bit and have Ma get to the same point so we can talk in Russian, thus improving the both of our skills more quickly. I just feel as though the sound set for that language is one that I can more easily acquire than that of the romance languages.

As I just got back from Dake's birthday cookout-it was nice to and hang out with those guys. It also made me realize how much I missed by playing football and that I can just kinda be myself and hang out.

I'm well pleased today, there is even a small chance that I will get to see Jen later on.

Oh also in an effort to stay fit I've been looking into bodyweight exercises and such that way I don't really have to go to the gym to workout and from what I've seen it all kinda starts with building a good core and the ability to do many good push-ups. Thus I'm starting off with a program that is supposed to have me doing 100 push-ups in 10 weeks that I found on the free body weight exercises website that I found to advance this purpose.

It's dinner time so I will have to post later

50th

2008-06-19T18:33:00.000-07:00

Well, today we went to the zoo today. It was rather fun-there were kind of 100 billion screaming kids running around today, but I was kinda happy to see that the kids got to go to the zoo. Everybody loves the zoo.

I'm pretty tired and tomorrow we go to Cousin Mary's wedding, which should be fun. But I wanted to post because I don't remember if I did yesterday and plus this here is my 50th ever post. So Woo.

I don't really have anything to crazy for today, just kinda wanted to say hullo.

A Switch

2008-06-16T19:33:00.000-07:00

Well, I've decided to jump into the world of FLAC. FLAC is a super high quality audio format that is completely open source and thus well loved by the Linux community and somewhat hated by large corporations like Microsoft and Apple.

That's right everybody's favorite liberal popular computer builders are just as much a big evil corporation as Microsoft, in many ways much more so. In fact it seems to mean that a big evil corporation is, in fact, a very liberal idea-what with the centralized power. Now, I'm not saying that I hate big evil corporations and we need to take down the man at all. I just want people to wake up and realize what's really going on.

As far as my own view on big evil corporations, I add the evil only a somewhat satirical nod to public perception. We need large corporations, certainly. They have the resources to accomplish things that could otherwise never be achieved. Please remember that things like mass production lower cost. However, I think that large corporations, like the government, just has no business (Har Har Har) in certain aspects of my life.

There are a number of restrictions that are inherent to large organizations that are simply unnecessary, most of which I will probably talk about some other time. But for now back to FLAC. If I feel like FLAC is the best format for me-there is no reason that my music should no be in such a format. I should get to pick this sort of detail and what's more I should be able to easily covert my music into said format.

Now this is where the twist comes in-The shoulds from the last paragraph are exactly how it is.
The world operates in the correct fashion on this one-I feel like using this format and I can and it doesn't cost me anything but time to convert the music I have legally to this format. -Side Note-I've been converting for almost seven hours now. Not everyone supports this format but again that's how it should be. Everybody shouldn't be forced to use this format just because some people like it.

Now some of you folk out that might be craving upheaval may be asking, well what about the popular players that force you to use formats like AAC or Mp3 or WMA and for that matter what about those formats not being open source so that anybody can use them. Well as far as them not being open source for the average person that doesn't matter at all because there are plenty of safe, free, and easy to use programs out there to convert to such formats. And if a popular player forces you to use a format you don't like, get a different player.

This is a great point that many people (especially Democrats) don't seem to understand. Just because everybody else does something, doesn't mean I have to or that it has to work for me. You can never ever make a system that will work for everybody, rather everybody simply needs a common interface that allows them to work together, the implementation of how things are accomplished must be left up to individuals. I'll leave this one there.

But in all, Apple need to stop pretending to be an underdog corporation fighting against Microsoft's evil controlling ways. People need to realize that Microsoft did a lot of good for the world and allowed people to use computers-your average user could never figure out Linux and Mac Os simply does not interface broadly enough to be practical. Apple is just as evil and controlling (probably more so) what with it's whole computer as a single piece you can upgrade anything by yourself outlook. I direct you to the Lt.'s blog on this one.

FLAC is awesome, but I have a lot of converting to do, it takes up more disk space, and I will need a new portable player (I'm looking at the Cowon D2) if I wish to take FLAC along. But I can still convert FLAC to the more widely used Mp3 so that's not an immediate requirement. However, along those lines, if anyone would like to buy a 30GB white zune....

Well, I leave you all for now, I shall most like blog again soon about something or other.

Ah fun

2008-06-15T17:45:00.000-07:00

Well, today was one of those day's that I woke up worked a lot and now I'm tired.

I got to see Jenn last night after she finally got released from work and that was good.

I dunno what to say, I spent most of today building shelves and such and now I'm tired and I don't really know what I want to do with myself. Eh, well, I will post later when I have something more to say.

:P

2008-06-13T18:11:00.000-07:00

Well, I got a new phone. It's actually a pretty nifty new phone and it seems like it was right about time to get a new one anyway. The only real problem is I don't really have everybody's number that I would normally have.

I still have to call Newsome and let him know that I'm done with his nonsense, but I can't really do that until I have his number...

Anyway, back to my new phone-it's fairly basic-I went with the cheapest one be all the phones they had had all the features I would realistically use, because for any of the really crazy features you have a ton extra per month, which bites. but this phone has some cool stuff on it and it seems very very functional which in all honesty is exactly what I'm looking for in a phone.

I like the calender deal that this one has, but in using it I have the somewhat depressing realization that I don't have any up coming events really.

I should have figured out a way to go the event that was being held tonight, but I couldn't do so in time so...

Ah well, I'll be back at school soon and have lots of things going on then.

I guess I've posted enough for one day-till later.

OK OK

2008-06-13T09:11:00.000-07:00

Ok, so upon reviewing the photo hosting sites on the web, most of them bite or cost money thus I will be going with the plan of creating a photo blog so there are no worries about whether or not you all have to sign in or register or something to see the pictures I post. Just bear with me as getting all the photos up will likely take a while.

New Look

2008-06-13T09:00:00.000-07:00

In trying to figure out a good way to share all my pictures with all you guys I noticed a nice new look that I like. I like green so I updated the look and after all I am the blog master.

For now I'm thinking the easiest and quickest solution to sharing my pictures is to use a service like Photobucket or something of that nature, just because putting all of them up on a Blog will be a hairy organizal problem all around.

Look for more updates later.

Bored At Night

2008-06-12T19:53:00.001-07:00

So we got back from PA earlier today and earlier I posted to tell you about the Utz factory and such and since then it's been mostly laying about for me.

Yeah I sorted a bit of my massive music collection but I didn't really get that much done otherwise, just kinda laid about a lot. It's these sort of days that make me feel bored.

I've been thinking though and instead of including some pictures within various posts of this here blog, I've decided to make use of some online picture hosting website where I can put all of my pictures for you to see. Now this doesn't mean that I will never again include pictures in my posts but rather that I shall more likely simply refer to the picture site. Perhaps the thing to do is once again steal a page from the Lt.'s book and simply create a whole different picture blog for your entertainment.

Naturally all this means I shall have to sort through my pictures to make this a reality but I should probably do that anyway.

Man, I just really want to study engineering right now. I was going through my old emails, sorting out the ones I don't need, directly before writing this and I was noticing on all the stuff I missed out on. It makes me want to go study my books and learn more. I understand how extremely nerdy this is but that's how I am-nerdy. I just want to learn.

Eh well time to go deal with the dog.

Home Again

2008-06-12T11:31:00.000-07:00

Well, I am home again, as you can probably tell from the fact that I'm actually posting again. This morning before leaving Pennsylvania we went to the Utz factory and saw them making chips there and even got a free sample, but possibly the best part of the trip to that was the factory store where we went afterwards. I got a snack tin of greatness. We got a ton of snacks altogether though. Three huge bags of pretzels and a 3lb bag of chips are among the highlights.

I am well pleased. Visiting PA was fun but it's nice to be home in my proper state and county-I like it here.

Well I just wanted to give you all a quick little update, I shall probably post again sometime this afternoon and I'll figure a good way to post the Gettysburg pictures for your enjoyment.

Gettysburg 2

2008-06-12T11:30:00.000-07:00

Day 2 Remote Posting

I'm rather tired today-long day in the sun and such. Although I am well pleased because I feel as though I better understand the goings on that happen at the Gettysburg.

Today we woke up and headed straight out to the battle field to explore and basically see what we would see.

-Side Note- Yesterday we went to dinner at a German style place. It was pretty fair outside of Gettysburg and I had concerns that it really wouldn't be worth the trip out but it turned out to be the best German food that I have ever at in the States so it was worth it all around.

At first we went up to Oak ridge, North of Gettysburg and saw some of the sites there. It was pretty neat indeed, but a little hard to figure out just how it fit into the rest of every as we were working off just the map to an audio tour. The audio part of the tour that went with that map came only on cd so we didn't buy that bit as our car only has cassette.

Anyway, after Oak ridge we were heading back into to tour as we saw Robert E. Lee's headquarters so we stopped to look in there, just a tiny little museum nothing too crazy. However the gift shop had, among other things an audio tour on cassette so we picked that up and followed it for the rest of the day.

-Side Note- The gift shop also had the flag for Lee's headquarters which is pretty cool. I got one. I'm thinking it would be pretty cool to have the flags from all the countries I've been to and other such things of note that I've actually see a part of.

The audio tour was very very good. It basically walked through the entire battle field and told you who occupied that spot and what happen there and what the generals were thinking and such. It really helped me understand how the battle happen and seeing the actual places made it much more real than a theoretical discussion would.

When I get a chance to post the pictures I will do so, so that you too can see the terrain and get a sense for how it happen and all.

But my gripe with the Civil war has always been that I have never really felt that I was able to get it straight in my mind how the battles and war really happen. I mean I've always known that Gettysburg was the high water mark of the rebellion and that sort of thing but exactly how that all happen I never really got a sense of before. It's like I knew all the details without really have a good overall idea of how it really fit together and that I feel like I really acquired for Gettysburg today.

Anyway after we got back from the battle field tour-it took like 4 hours because the tape was about 2 hours long and at various spots we all got out of the car so that max could run around and we could see some of the more interesting sites (Be sure to look for pictures of such events)-we came back to the room for just long enough for me to label all the pictures so that I wouldn't forget what they are of then we set out on the town.

We stopped at a shop that had some nifty T-Shirts, I got a cool one of a bayonet charge for me and one of Picket's charge for Jen (Perhaps I'll post pictures of them later on). Max got his second mini cannon for the trip. Then we went to a place called the Gingerbread man where I had the Philly cheese steak. It was good but not as good as the German food from last night so in comparison it was simply ok-I enjoyed it though.

After food we walked around the a bit more of the town, saw some shops, I got a book of maps that explains the various points of interest and what was around during the time, exactly the sort of thing that I like in regards to understanding wars.

We then walked to the center of town, where there is a traffic circle and a statue of Lincoln talking to a flabbergasted modern man holding a copy of the hand written version of the Gettysburg address, the statue is entitled "Return Visit"-No pictures of that one, by this time I've used up the batteries on both my and mom's cameras chiefly because Max likes to flip switches and my battery never really charged.

After all this walking we returned to the room but not before getting ice cream. I got chocolate peanut butter-very tasty indeed.

I'm rather happy on today because I feel as though I really understand how the battle of Gettysburg happen, which was my personal goal for the trip.

Oh my phone screen broke today, which bites super hard, because while I did kinda have the feeling that a few things about my phone aren't how they should be, I kinda needed that phone, but I guess these things happen, I guess. But that means that I don't have any body's numbers and I realize I could use facebook's creepy phonebook dealie to look up some numbers but if I don't call any of you for a bit you know why-also I can't spend or receive text messages so if I don't respond see above.

Anyway at this point I've most likely bored you all enough with my writing and everybody else is asleep so I shall close for today.

Gettysburg 1

2008-06-12T11:27:00.000-07:00

Day 1 Remote posting

Hullo all, I did indeed bring my computer to Gettysburg, but it seems I have forgotten to bring along the internets. Thus I will be writing my posts up using one my favorite windows programs, Notepad (nice and simple).

Well last night as many of you blog fans probably know I did not get to sleep until 5 in the am thus I have been tired today but it hasn't really too bad. I was able to get all my stuff together and in the car before anybody else got dressed, but to be fair I must note that I have neither a 2-year-old nor arthritis like my travel buddies ma and skip.

The drive wasn't bad, it was mostly Route 15 and had much good green screenary and not very many slow driving nimrods. Max was very good throughout the ride despite a few high pitched squeals, but it was lucky considering the potential horror of a two-year-old and a two hour car trip.

When we got in the hotel room wasn't quite ready yet so we went to a farnsworth inn to have some lunch. I was rather hungry as I didn't really have any breakfast. I had meatloaf and a bottle of cider as well as a black walnut apple cake with a glass of chocolate milk. Overall it was good. Our waitress was a fairly ditsy girl that couldn't seem to believe that I wanted the entire bottle of cider.

Upon arriving at the hotel room I unloaded the car while ma got an extra bed while max proceeded to take over the entire room and overall be a little boy. As soon as we got everything in the room we left again. for the new and improved visitor's center.

The new center is pretty darn nifty. Has a bunch of stuff to see, plus it's all new and expansive.

In the gift shop me and ma found Max simply by following the screams of Max, who was holding a toy gun yelling boom at anyone that he saw.

My only problem with the whole thing is that it seems likes it's all about slavery and civil rights and such. I don't disagree that that stuff is important and connected to the Civil War, but the point of the whole thing was State's vs. Federal Rights.

The northerners opposed slavery because they felt that it would prevent small farmers, expanding westward, from competing with larger slave owning farmers-Paraphrased from the visitor center.

Also I'd like to point out the Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves from the South and didn't really say much about any slaves that might be in the North.

Anyway going back to the main story, after the visitor center we all went down to the civil war cemetery and walked through that. I have discovered/remembered that are an incredibly huge number of unknown soldiers buried there.

As we were leaving the cemetery a large rain was approaching so we came back to the hotel and I turned on the computer in hopes of posting, but it looks as I have to write the post now and actually post it later.

Well I think that that is as much post writing that I can do-Max is getting into everything and we are beginning to talk of food once again. I shall write again tomorrow.

Ok that was easy

2008-06-10T00:04:00.000-07:00

Well hi again, I know it's quick since my last post buy that's ok. I figured out a better way to keep track of all your all blogs and fun content and such. It is called google reader and it basically tracks websites and tell you when they get updated. But the best part is it brings all the content to you in one easy to handle space. Like the guy in the intro video explains it is an inbox for the internet. I suggest you all look at it when you get the chance to.

Now that I have an organized way to keep better track of all the input I can start to produce a little output.

I'm not sure if all of you all know, but I have decided that I shall no longer be playing football at Tech. It's just not the best thing for me to do and without it I will be able to explore a lot of other interesting hobbies.

To keep you all informed about such hobbies and what not I shall be using this here bloggie deal.

Oh-side note-I have stolen this format of little paragraphs of mostly contained thought from the Lt.'s nerdy blog. I think it makes it easy to read and it certainly makes it a lot easier to write so this is the format your going to have to deal with out of me.

I believe you all know of my large interest in music. I an amassing a cd collection and a vinyl collection to go with and enhance my impressive mp3 collection. I already have databases to the first two published on these here interwebs and I shall be publishing a database of my mp3 collection as soon as I get the chance to figure out MySQL. (Links to databases can be found on there names)

-Side note- I am a big fan of google and all the fun stuff they let me play with for free.

I am publishing these databases so you'all can know what I have should you need to borrow something or find yourself in a savager hunt for a person that has such and such. As I get my movies organized and settled I shall produce and publish a data of those too.

As far as music goes my tastes are very broad and getting broader. Right now I'm exploring the realm of jazz a bit and I am finding that so far I like bebop the best. Although I always like anything progressive-Porcupine Tree looks especially interesting.

I also have a Last.fm page, so ya'all, or at least those of you with a last.fm profile, can track what I listen to on the BlueBox (my media box that runs ubuntu 8.04)-just increase you want to do that sort of thing.

-Side note- I'd like to point out that I include these links and such not best cause you couldn't find the content on your own, but because I want to make it more convenient for you, because I truly care about you the consumer. Plus that way it helps to balance out when I can't spell stuff.

I am also learn the bass (guitar not fish), which is sometimes slow but overall going very well and certainly very fun.

I am attempting to learn Russian, so far that is going very very slow, but it's ok, because I have much time to do that one.

That's all of that I can think of for now. Tomorrow me, the mom, and skip are going to Gettysburg for three days (coming home on Thursday). -Tempted to take my bass- But I shall indeed be taking my computer, which certainly does have use beyond folding proteins (which if you should get into go here and be sure to use group number 100921) . I shall also certainly be taking my camera and I hope to have pictures for you folk later this week.

In other news things are going well with Jen, I happen to like her and lucky she feels the same of me, even though both of us are incredibly busy this summer.

But I think that is enough for now, I shall post again for you all soon.

Under Construction

2008-06-09T23:43:00.000-07:00

Well folks, I'm trying to figure out a bunch of the cool stuff I can bring you guys with this here bloggie business, but I have a lot of ideas and such and not so many good sources of information on how to get it done. My first project is to try to get thunderbird (my RSS ) handler to manage the feeds from all your all bloggs so as it is easier to check them all. but eh- it does not always go well
Also i'm switching to shorter and probably crazier posts-bye for now

I want to go home

2008-05-06T13:45:00.001-07:00

I'm tired of doing this school business for a bit and trying to figure everything out. Ugh I only have one exam left and i just want to be done with all this stuff.... I'm too close I just want to be finished for a bit.

Start of a new week

2008-04-20T20:38:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm done with football practice which makes me rather happy cause that means a cut down in time I have to spend on that with meetings and such like that, also a dramatic drop off is in days that I have to get up early or go in on weekends. This week I still do have to lift on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, which is not cool but it's better than obligations everyday. Oh, also on Monday I meet with Coach Newsome to go over how the spring went and all that jazz. I don't really have much school work to do this week because I have tests in a bunch of classes and projects and papers coming up. Fortunately two of the tests this week don't really matter for mean cause I already got A's on the first two tests and they drop the lowest of the three. I have a practical exam in lab on Thursday, which means that I have to go in and build a bunch of circuits and take measurements and such. I am not at all worried about that one, I'm fairly confident in my ability to build and measure just about any circuit from that class. I'm going to be taking advantage of this time to be finishing any projects I have left, do any extra credit that I possibly can, and study for finals so that as the semester winds down it'll just get easier and easier for me. Which means that I will most definitely be studying for and taking the tests in the classes that I don't really have to take those tests.
My face hurts. I have this small bump under my jaw, right at my lymph node and it's sore and I don't know why it's there but I want it to go away.
For all you people with facebook accounts, you should thank Jen, because she took pictures at the spring game and gave them to me so I can post them for all you guys to see. I shall be doing that shortly.
Well, it's late and I'm going to think about bed or relaxing or getting into something fun to do for a bit, because I don't have wake up at 6:40 tomorrow morning and I spent the majority of today doing work but I didn't get to cross that much off my to-do list.

Three Weeks from Tomorrow

2008-04-15T18:04:00.000-07:00

Well, three weeks from tomorrow I get to go home and start the many fun things there. I'm excited about a change of pace. I'm also excited about being done with football-it takes up too much time. Life is not exciting here, it kind of bites but i'll be on break soon enough. Oh well, I'm sick right now, but I'll post again later.

Stupid Pollen

2008-04-11T06:58:00.001-07:00

I really don't like spring, just because that's when all the pollen comes out to attack me. It makes me sad because I didn't do anything to that stupid pollen but that pollen feels the need to float right up my nose while I'm just trying to breathe. Once that darned pollen gets up there it decides, "hey this would be a great place to create a little chaos and havoc." Then I end up with a constant drip from the nose and sneezing and the absolute worst, the eyes. Apparently pollen really really hates my eyes, cause it feels the need to brutality attack them and make them hurt and itch and water constantly. GRRRRR I say to the little pollen but it just laughs and continues it's devilish plots. Makes me very sad.
Well, I must say if you haven't yet seen the links on the brother's blog you should look upon them. He's got links to some nifty pages in the More Nerdiness post and a cool little video. He's out in the west building a very enviable media set up, which one day I hope to replicate.

Ahh

2008-04-10T06:51:00.001-07:00

Well, once again I'm posting to you guys and I am happy, if a little in want of sleep. I got a 91 on my computer org and architecture exam 2 and I also get a chance to redo that sucker to raise my grade a bit more. I'm pretty much done with school work for the week due to clever planning and execution. Football is going well, had another half scrimmage last Wednesday and the three offensive drove the ball pretty much the length of the field both times we were in, but only scored once because Tyrod fumbled, which may have been due to the snap, but those things happen and such.

As a number of you have probably seen I have started to use a few applications on facebook and some are pretty neat. I honestly feel a bit weird using that green patch one, but I do like the idea of keeping some rain forests about, so I guess it's worth it.

Um not really much going on here, been hanging out and doing work and football. Connor is failing chem2 so he'll have to retake that-it's the first class he cares about and is doing poorly in, so he's kinda bi-polar right now, but such is life sometimes and if I thought about how much I want my own room next semester any more I just might lose my mind, so I'm trying to think of other things that are good and I don't really have to wait for that long.

Jen is a real goof ball and great to have around. All my friends though are quickly getting to the "I want to be done" point and it's still too soon to go on cruise mode-close but not just yet. Eh, I'm going to go relax and hopefully I'll have something more exciting to post about later.

BIG SMILES

2008-03-30T09:44:00.000-07:00

Hi everybody, I have been invited to join HKN, which means that I'm in the top quarter of junior electrical engineers here at Tech. It's going to be interesting to join, but I would really like to make it happen.
Last week I was walking across the drill field coming back from class and a helicopter just flew over the drill field and then landed right directly on the drill field and three or four dudes wearing suites and carrying suite bags, one of them was a general of some sort as well. It was a military helicopter and marines or army guys were definitely driving the thing. The sucker blew everything around on the drill field, everything. That was a crazy thing that I kept meaning to tell you all about but kept forgetting.
I have also made a wish list of vinyls on Amazon.com. It should be a public list that you should be able by searching for Nicholas Kaminski's Vinyls wish list, but I really have no idea if that would work at this point, I might have to do some research on that and let you guys know. I mention this chiefly because I know a certain Skip that has a record player and I know there are a number of vinyls on my wish list that she would steal if I had them, so I encourage her to go there and get a few of them so that I can steal them from her instead. That's kind of all for today I'm off to look into either homework or general goofing off, it doesn't look good for homeworks though-I needed this weekend and I am well pleased by it so far.

Busy Week

2008-03-27T15:09:00.000-07:00

Well, hi every body, this has definitely been a really busy week. um practice has started-I'm playing more center now, which makes me happy cause I feel like I can relax and play better at that position. After this week is done I only have 3 more weeks of practice (3 days a week and saturday scrimmages) of football then after that I only have to worry about school. School this week was crazy, I had a test on monday in electronics and one on wednesday in signals-I feel like i did well on both, which is really nice because if i got an A on both of those tests i won't have to take test 3 for either course, because the lowest grade is dropped-not that i'm going to completely skip test 3 but more like i really don't have to worry about it beyond it being a study aid for the final. I have a project due tonight as well as a stupid tech writting module and electronics homework tomorrow. This week has been nothing but football and work, so basically just all work, which kinda sucks especailly when there are people around here that do nothing all day long then complain about how tired they are after taking a 3 hour nap. I haven't been able to go to sleep without simply colapsing from exhautsion since last weekend. Then people tell me that I'm never around-well, sorry, but i have two engineering majors and i play football. I know some people think i'm not around because of jen, but the only times that i see her are for lunch and doing homework. She has been really supportive and helpful-she keeps asking if there is anyway she can help and even demanded to copy some notes into a new notebook. It's funny cause she's not an engineer, but she's one of the few that seems to understand how much work i have to do and is actually making lift easier for me instead of complaining to me and making life worse. i have also discovered that i really like unix as it is proving to be more and more helpful as i learn more and more that i can do with it and then actually make used of what i have learned. well i'm sure there is more i wanted to say, but i have forgotten what that is now and i feel as though i must get back to work-the time i just saved with unix is just about up. Sorry for the huge just block of text, but i'm kinda in a rush-this whole week is a rush. I'll try to remember to post again soon

Posting Feast o Joy

2008-03-19T04:37:00.001-07:00

Hello everybody, once again it is directly after a winter workout and I am back in my room posting to say hello to all you readers. These goofy workouts are started to wear on me-it's been a long long two weeks. Tomorrow we have a team cookout at 5, but we still have to lift. Then on Friday we have the last winter workout for this year! YAY! Only one more to go.
Ugh, yesterday I was squatting 350lbs plus chains and after I finished and was going to put the weight back I lost my balance and dropped the darn thing down my back. I'm fine except for the scrapes that it left. But it's little stuff that build up over these two weeks to make them really bite.
Eh, I guess that's all I really have to say, I'm glad I have friends to hang out with while not doing work and I must say I am well pleased to be dating Jen.
Well, that's kinda all for today, I've been at school for a really long time now and it's getting to be the point when I want to be at home for a real length of time, but that will come very quickly methinks.

Ow!

2008-03-17T04:42:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm writing this after Monday's Winter Workout on the second week of thems and I definitely hurt. This week is going to be tough, but I do definitely have a bunch of people supporting me and I appreciate that. This is one of those weeks that I'm kinda just planning on making it through because after this week life begins to get a whole lot easier really really quick. I don't really have a lot going on, I feel super boring. Most of this weekend I just laid about being happy that I was alive, hanging out with friends, playing cards, watching movies, and playing video games. I am most pleased with the peoples I know here. Oh, I forgot to mention Connor was gone this weekend to a concert and visiting home and next weekend he's visiting his grandmother and home. It's kinda nice to have the room to myself and have the quiet to sleep and such, but it's also nice to hang out with friends. I'm very sore and tired so I think I go forth to find a soft spot to sleep for a bit

Finally My Computer Works

2008-03-14T04:40:00.001-07:00

I just finished with my last winter workout this week and let me tell you those things are not fun. But I'm definitely getting much better as time goes on. For the first one on Monday I couldn't sleep beforehand and that one was much worse than I thought it would be, I'm really glad that's over. I knew my problem was dehydration and lack of quality rest, so I spent pretty much all of Tuesday relaxing about the room and pushing fluids and Wednesday was not that bad. Since I had a winter workout on Monday, lifting on Tuesday, another winter workout on Wednesday, and then more lifting on Thursday, by the time I went to sleep last night I was worn out from a long week so I was a little nervous about this morning, but I stayed hydrated and got to bed early enough all throughout this week so today was tough, yeah, but I can definitely handle winter workouts now.
As for the computer, despite my best efforts I did in fact lose most of my data, but in a way I guess that's ok because now this machine can be completely organized and stay just for school from the start. The huge bad news is all the information and applications I had gathered for scholarships were also lost, which makes me mad, much like a hornet, fortunately I got an email recently about some kind of academic scholarship for student athletes, unfortunately I found that email yesterday when I finally got done with shifting through my ton of emails and the sucker is supposed to be due today, so I shall be looking in that shortly and hopefully I can at least get one application in.
Classes are going pretty well, this week was a little tough cause I had to both come back from the break and deal with winter workouts, but I made it through and now it's the weekend where I can relax, get myself set up for next week and sleep a whole bunch. I guess that's all I really have to say for now.

UGH

2008-02-21T15:59:00.000-08:00

Well, everybody it's been far far too long since I've been blogging or reading blogs. I'd like to some day get a phone that can receive emails and retrieve various blogs as RSS feeds, but that is not for a while if it should ever really happen. Well as for what's new with me I've had a test in Signals and Systems (grade still unknown on this one), Unix(78 on this one, hoping for a curve...), Computer Org and Architecture, probably the class I have to work the hardest in (92 on this one-I am well pleased) and Electronics (91-again well please). That leaves only electronics lab as a class in which I have not yet had a test and I've gotten a high A on every one of those assignments so far so it's looking pretty good for me. I have a project due in Computer Org and Arch on Friday but I have it mostly done and am planning on finishing it tonight so I can go to the snowboard party tomorrow. As for that Signals and Systems test, I feel like I got a 100 on that sucker but I wish the grades would come out for it so I can be sure cause those are the kinds of test that you always make so silly mistake on-like that electronics test. I really really want to join HKN (which is the electrical engineer honor frat) but just because I think I can, and oh man is the stuff I'm learning crazy interesting, I just want to learn it all right now.
I know all of you are on the edge of your seat to hear the next development with football or Jen. I hate to disappoint but this is the middle of the semester a time filled with crazy school work and tests and such so those two things have been back burnered for a while-I mean I still lift 4 days a week and that going well, other than the fact that apparently I won't be released on Friday until 7pm cause of timing but...but such is life sometimes.
Well I must go finish that project I mentioned and I'll probably write again soon I hope

Well Pleased

2008-01-26T20:24:00.000-08:00

Just a short one today folks. I am very happy right now at this point, despite the fact that I seem to have lost a great deal of music from my external hard drive. I have actually set up my media box with a windows OS just because it'll be much easier to deal with this way. I'm currently in the process of ripping cds and figuring out how to regain my lost music (500GB are reserved just for music). I love music very much.
This weekend was AWESOME!!! but as of yet I didn't really get much work done, but that's ok. I dunno what to say, much to do, but much has been done. I am well pleased.
A small note as well, I meant some one new recently and it has turned out well for me. Now as I haven't really slept since friday at around 5:30am i must depart

Hmm... Now where did I put all that time...

2008-01-15T18:01:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm back at school and I've been to every one of my classes except for electronics network lab and so far I have to say they are really really sweet. Intro to Unix turned out to be an online class, that I only have to so up to class for the midterm and final. My Electronics prof doesn't speak English very well at all, but he seems really fair about it and I think that classes will go well. For Signals and Systems my prof is really cool and easy to understand. In that class I sit up front next to one of my friends from over the summer (he's a computer engineer and that is actually an electrical engineering class, so he didn't need it till later in his career and that means that I'm split 50/50 between computer and electrical classes). Calculus of Several Variables seems like a typical math class, shouldn't be too too bad but it's still a little early to tell with that one. Um today I only have one class and it's at 8:00 am, thus giving the whole day to do whatever-today I just hung around, did a little bit of work around the room, setting stuff up and all, and a bit of schoolwork here and there so I won't ever really get swamped-the class today was Computer Organization and Architecture and that seems really interesting. I'm really excited about all my classes this time round and all my engineering ones seem unbelievably interesting and I'm excited about them. I have to be sure to remember that I do have two non-engineering classes though cause I can completely see my self spending all my study time on engineering just because it's interesting to me. But oh well
I lifted for the first time with football today, I was nervous and didn't feel good going into to it, but it was actually fairly easy for me overall. I actually felt a lot better after working out, tired, but better. I was nervous about what it would be, but I guess I kinda realized today that I am indeed an athlete.
Well as is only nature I've been hanging out with Paul. He didn't do real well last semester and now his parents are all scrutinizing cause they want him to pass and such. I mean the guy did kind of have an evil roommate that made him miss a bunch of classes, but it does completely make sense that his parents want to see him graduate with the degree of his choice. I would really like to help as best I can, cause I've already taken pretty much all of the classes his in now, but it's strange cause I'm younger than him but much farther along academically. He never asks for help, just not that kind of guy, but I hate to see a good friend of mine fail. It'll all work out though cause he's smart and knows how to work.
Oh I'm having trouble fitting all my stuff into my room so I'm thinking that I'm going to need to send some stuff back and get a bunch of those command performance hooks to hang up other stuff. I know I'll figure it all out some how. I did set up my new speakers and they are really nice. I really really really like my pen and the little book thing has proven unbelievably helpful so far. well that's really all I have to say for now, I'm going to go relax for a bit and then think about sleep

Hullo Again

2008-01-07T20:11:00.000-08:00

Well, I know I haven't been keeping up with the blogs while I'm home, but that's how it goes. but I've started to collect the Barnes and Noble Classics book collection and I've accordingly posted a listing of the books that I currently have right here. Um, that's everything I have...wait no, actually on Wednesday I'm going down to Richmond to inspect the condition of an antique mercedes that I might be purchasing that day. It's a black manual, it's pretty cool and if I hadn't lost the link to it I'd post the pictures of it. but hopefully it turns out and well and I'll own it, but who knows-must first be sure it works. oh it's also a diesel and the plan is make biodiesel to run it on. but that's kinda it f