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.