oh well

I don't seem to be catching on to this blog thing. Sorry. Other things seem to always take precedence, and I rarely even think about it until I'm home doing something else. I suppose I'll keep trying, but it's just a constant struggle. Don't give up on me yet, loyal readers. Oh wait... Maybe it's too late.

oh well

I don't seem to be catching on to this blog thing. Sorry. Other things seem to always take precidence, and I rarely even think about it until I'm home doing something else. I suppose I'll keep trying, but it's just a constant struggle. Don't give up on me yet, loyal readers. Oh wait... Maybe it's too late.

he lives

Ha! You all thought I had disappeared and given up blogging, didn't you. Sheesh, I must be the worst blogger in the world... Oh well, for better or for worse, I'm back to post again. No guarantees for the future, however.

In the past few weeks I've traveled a bit for work - to both Minnesota/South Dakota and San Diego/Mexico. I enjoyed the installation trips quite a bit, though trying to keep customers happy when they know they have to, gasp, CHANGE. People can be so resistant to change. In Mexico we installed a machine for a company that makes hockey sticks. It was fascinating - I never knew there was so much technology behind hockey sticks. This company makes custom sticks for about 120 NHL players, and every single player has at least one blade mold, if not more. One guy has 9. There's an upcoming trip to South Africa that I could go on, which would be great, but... It's looking like it might get pushed back to during my first week of school, so oh well.

When I'm in the office, I've been doing engineering design work on a new belt drive system. I like working with a team of engineers.

I got the old Porsche that I've been rebuilding for the last three years painted. It's looking good. I just need to finish the interior and fix some annoying little electrical problems. Tomorrow I'm going down to some junkyards to try to pull some parts. I've been enjoying driving it quite a bit, however.

Lastly, I've decided to do the Agony Ride again. (For those of you who don't know, it's a 24 hour bike ride fundraiser for a camp for troubled teens trying to recover from drugs, alcohol, sex abuse, etc. Riders get sponsored per mile and then get 24 hours on a loop to go as far as possible) There's a part of me that's a little afraid of it because I still remember in the back of my head what kind of agony it really was, but it was an awesome experience riding for a cause like that. You see the kids up there as they're filling your waterbottle and getting your food at the rest stops, and they realize that the only reason you're riding is for them... Some of them have never experienced love before.

Anyhow, Last time I rode I was in good shape and rode 313 miles. So this year I'm not in shape so much anymore, but I have to ride at least that far, cause I can't admit I'm out of shape :-) But I have been riding 3-4 times a week, both mountain and road, in an effort to prepare. I have just over 1 month to go.

Have an excellent weekend.

Life at home

I enjoy being an engineer. I spent most of today modifying parts in a machine shop, coming up with ideas for mounting terminal strips, and wiring a machine. Not all of that was directly "engineering", per say, but it was all related and very enjoyable. The best part is, I didn't have to get out my calculator a single time to do any of it! It's nice to use the practical knowledge I have gained to do something productive instead of solving carefully crafted problems all the time.

In other news, I took my car to get it painted. I should have it back by either Saturday or Monday. It's never going to be a show car, and the interior is a bit rough with all the cracked plastic parts and the cruddy carpet, but it runs nicely and it will all be one color, so I'm excited about getting it back. The downside is cost of insurance... Ah, the curse of being a 20 year old male.

I went on my first bikeride in 6 months. I'm definitely out of shape, but I love my Litespeed, and it felt good to be back in the ol' saddle. Hopefully by the time I head back to school I'll be a little more fit and can actually keep up with the friends I ride with.

Annoying - I went to all the trouble to answer the random question posed to me on my profile, only to find out that I'm limited to 150 words. Oh well, here it is for your enjoyment (ha)

"How tall would you be if you had never cut your fingernails? "

That's a complex question. I think the best way to go about answering it is to explain how to figure it out, just in case you ever need to. You would have to find out how much energy it takes to grow an inch in height, then find out how much it takes to cut your nails. Armed with this valuable knowledge, you would then have to find the rate of nail growth as a function of time and multiply it by your age, thereby finding the length your nails would be if you had never cut them. Assuming you cut off about 1/16" at a time, figure out how many times you have cut your nails. Multiply this by the average amount of energy used to cut your nails, and you can find out how much you have expended. Tada - one simply multiplication problem and you know how tall you would be! I could go into a lot more detail about finding the energy required to cut each nail, since it's a just a moment applied by your fingers and it can easily be transformed to work and energy, but if you really care, you can ask...

...

Ok, maybe that's not as funny as I thought it was at the moment. Sorry about that. If you're still reading this, you now understand what happens when you don't give engineers enough to do.

Enjoy the rest of your week!

back at home

I'm back at home now - very glad to be here among mountains and forests with beautiful weather to boot. Now I get to (mostly) quit thinking about school and instead focus on my car and working.

In all honesty, I'm sick of my car. I'm going to try to get it painted next week so at least I can feel kind of good about it when I look at it. It really is close - mechanically it's fine, I just need to track down the few minor leaks in the seals and figure out why my headlights won't turn on. Hopefully it won't take too much longer.

In July I head back to Texas in order to begin preparing for my trip to Sierra Leone. I have to write some reports for LEGS as well, one of them before June 10, but without classes and homework, it seems a lot more doable.

My family gave me flak for not updating my blog enough, so I did it - but see, when I don't actually have anything to say, it's pretty boring...

Oh well

Here I am trying to establish the fact that I'm not a complete nerd, and then my school has to come along and confirm the fact that I am, indeed, a nerd, with the entire school. I received this last week:

The great part is the phrase "with all the rights and privileges pertaining thereto"... No one has made clear to me what those rights and privileges are exactly.

In other news, one of the groundsmen here at school seems to think two of my best friends and I have come up with one of the answers to the impending oil crisis. (I know, you guys always knew I'd amount to something) Here's the answer -

Yes ladies and gentlemen, that is what you think it is - a fully human powered lawn mower. Now you, like everyone else who's seen this (aside from the nerds here who are extremely excited about the successful completion of this project) might be thinking, "a human powered lawn mower, they made those a long time ago - they were called reel mowers!" Ha - but this is a fully human powered riding lawn mower. Your feet propel you forward through pedaling, and your arms spin the blade at about 2000 rpm through the use of 4-bar linkages. This is a custom design - you won't find anything else like it.

...Maybe there's a reason for that...

It cuts grass though - quite well. You just can't take on an overgrown field with it. So seriously -when the oil crisis hits, you'll want one of these. It's what all the high-rollers who used to have their John Deer Riding mowers will switch to when they can't afford the gas. We're thinking of putting this one on eBay, so be watching. I'll let my faithful blog readers know if it happens so they can have a better shot.

Still more exciting news - My parents and brother came to visit, so I got to show them lots about what my life consists of these days. Definitely enjoyed the visit. Only about 12 more days of school.

Think what you will...

Wait for the video - it's worth it...


Not sure what this video should really tell us. I'll let the viewer decide that so I don't get into trouble. I'll just say that maybe they should raise the legal voting age unless you can pass a test, perhaps mainly on history...

Wow...

Two posts in one day - I'm on the internet highway to blogger fame! Incredible.

Here's the problem with posting more than once a month... Or once a year. Contrary to the title of this blog, the life of an engineering student is really not that exciting. Busy, yes, but exciting - probably not to anyone who's not an engineer. For example, I'm writing this right now instead of analyzing a copper tube with an electrical resistance heater inside of it, or finding all of the bearing forces in a four bar linkage rotating at some given rate. The most exciting homework I have waiting for me is the poster I have to make for the World Congress of Biomechanics, but even that takes research and lots of hours.

Is anyone still reading this? Just thought I'd ask - the point is that I desperately want to avoid a blog that has the appearance that I threw up all over the page. Frankly, not many people have deep, inspiring thoughts that are worthy of sharing with the world on a daily basis. I don't care what people had for lunch yesterday, or how boring their class was. Hopefully I can be more creative than that.

I watched The Manchurian Candidate tonight (one more very successful attempt at procrastination). Interesting movie. Obviously quite a bit farfeched, but still enough to make you think about the democratic system that America is blessed with. It relies on people and their integrity, and when that is compromised, the system cannot succeed. This brings up an entirely different point - the fact that there seem to be a lot of politicians these days that are lacking when it comes to integrity.

Ran across this last night - interesting. Certainly haven't seen it in the news, but if you poke around on the internet and follow a lot of her Michelle's links, you find a good number of this man's pictures and they certainly don't ring of truth.

I suppose I've ignored the many "nerdy" tasks that I have waiting for me, so - I'm off to become an engineer, one homework problem at a time.

About me

I go to school with a lot of smart people. All through highschool I was always told that I was a "nerd" and was "really super smart". Then I came here, and I realized that nobody back home really understood true "nerddom". There are people here on a whole different level. But we all coexist happily in this boring little college town, and spend most of our time doing homework, and study to be engineers. Sure, all the sports players on campus laugh at us, and probably a lot of the girls think we're a little strange, but we like being engineers.

I'm still not sure, however, that I truly qualify as a "nerd". I like working with my hands too much. I spend too much time in the machine shop, and I actually know what I'm doing down there. And I like working on cars, and playing sports, and riding bikes. So maybe I'm not a nerd. Or, the other possibility is that I am a nerd, and all the guys so much smarter than me are "super nerds", or maybe even "geeks". I don't know. I guess my role in "nerddom" will just have to wait to be determined.

Life is good.