N-Dimensional Litter Boxes!

For your N-dimensional cat, of course.

That's what we talked about today in Vector Calculus. We covered two different methods: the easy way, and the mathematician's way. And I swear, you'd think this man who holds a PhD in the subject could be trusted to do this pretty well, right? Wrong. And don't even get me started on notation. Jeez.

The Superfriends met again today to work on some Inviscid homework that's due on Monday. Unfortunately for Jeff and I, Dr. Vakili keeps ruining our street cred by assigning homework problems that we don't know how to do right off the bat. How many of you out there could evaluate a line integral over a triangle without breaking a sweat? I didn't think so.

Lunch in the cafeteria was good. Apparently, macaroni-and-cheese counts as a vegetable. I did not know that.

Also, we met tripod the deer today. He's only got three legs. The nickname seems to make sense today.

Jennifer is coming to visit tomorrow! Sweet! We're gonna go to the Jack Daniel's distillery and probably go see Rock City. Neat, huh?

I had more, but it's a lot later than I intended for this, so I'll save it until sometime tomorrow.

Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles!

Guess who showed up uninvited again at around 7:30? Show me "roofers." Survey says: Roofers! I hate them.

Lunch was good today - my other sandwich from Subway (it was also a steak'n'cheese). While I can't really taste a difference, there does seem to be more meat on the sandwhich. In my book, that's always an improvement. A sandwich should really be a pound of meat garnished with some bread.

Most of my waking hours were spent scratching my head at Heat Transfer homework that won't get collected. I really should do it simply because I want to learn. But let's be realistic. Dr. Antar isn't actually going to grade it, but completed homework is my get-out-of-jail-free card for the final - the only grade in the class. It's not the worst deal I've ever heard of, but it's hard to keep thinking about that right now in September. Oh well.

Anytime Jeff and I go out of the apartment, we see all these roofer guys just standing around. Blatantly. At least I'm good at looking busy. They're not even trying. If this grad school thing doesn't work out for some reason, I think I know my next best career path. I would get to work outdoors, wear jeans to work, spit, and say "yeehaw" and other fun things - but best of all, I wouldn't have to do ANYTHING.

Jeff and I made tacos and rotel for dinner, which I have to say turned out very, very well. You get nice change from chicken tenders, and you get a lot of mileage out of a pound of beef. Not bad indeed. Show me a man that doesn't like rotel, and I'll show you an idiot. If I offended anyone, you're wrong. It's ok - I won't hold it against you.

I somehow stumbled on www.retrojunk.com and saw the intros to a few of my favorite tv shows from waaaay back. The weirdest thing was the British opening to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - over there, they're actually the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. Driving on the wrong side of the road, calling fries "chips," and now this? To me, this alone totally justifies the American Revolution.

O Chewbacca, Where Art Thou?

The roofers are STILL working. But they've mutated from roofers to general contractors. They're like cockroaches, but with more power tools. That makes stomping on them a less-than-perfect solution. Today, however, I defiantly stayed in bed until 9:00. Score 1 for me.

Well, Vector Calc is starting to make a wee bit more sense now. We've finally gotten out of the Chapter 1 mire, and are stumbling on into Chapter 2 - multivariable calculus! This is actually stuff I kinda remember and / or might find useful. Partial derivatives are fun. However, I do think that if Dr. Kuperschmidt expects me to memorize derivatives like the secant-squared of x with respect to x, he's out of his proletarian mind. Also, he complained about my use of pencil & small handwriting. He even gave me his pen (actually, a marker, but who's keeping score?). That was weird.

Inviscid (or Inviskid) Flow is flowing right along (hahahaha). We're somewhere around Chapter 5. It's good that he's rederiving some of the more basic concepts in vector algebra notation. It's stuff we were supposed to learn in Calc III, but we didn't, so I'm not so strong in it. And I enjoy Dr. Vakili's class. And that's not just because he's my boss. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Today we had another meeting of our study group (The Superfriends) in the office that Heather & I share. Rich the Canadian guy joined us, which is cool. He says things like "zed," which is just cool. We covered a lot, and have decided that these meetings are way more productive than actual class.

Heat Transfer today was also pretty good. This class (and Dr. Antar will say it if you ask him) is really a Math Course in Engineer's clothing. Which is poor fashion sense on the part of the Math course, but that's neither here nor there. He started a big long solution method about a week ago, and we finally arrived at the solution today. I had really hoped there would be a solution, and I was fairly pleased with the result. This is really what I had in mind when I thought grad school classes. It's like being backstage during a really complicated play - the play being undergraduate Heat Transfer. I still can't quite do the homework, but its neat.

Technical Writing was another bowl full of stupid, with a side of asinine. And Chewbacca didn't even show up, so I had to hand-write our stupid group memo. I would have much rather had the wookie do the typing. I was not in the mood tonight either. At least Little Oprah and Hot Rod pull their weight. We wrapped up with some flagrant snarking from me and IMing from Jeff.

Subway has replaced their cheesesteak with steak'n'cheese. I think I can tell the difference, but then, I can't tell the difference between brown and maroon.

Urge To Kill...Rising...Rising

The roofers are on my list. Not the historical mathematician list; the list of people who need to be hit with a truck. They woke Jeff and I up at 8:00 last Friday, the day when I don't have to even be awake before 12:30. Not good.

Heat Transfer has become a confusing mish-mash of summation signs, derivatives, and other math widgets that would suggest a MATH class instead of an ENGINEERING class. Also, the bi-weekly meeting was rushed by Dr. Shet (yes, you read it right). He's ready to retire and Dr. Vakili wasn't there. Sweet.

So we get back to the apartment around 3:00, and the roofers and their extended families are standing around as we pull up. Then they leave the roof half done. What's up with that? Now Jeff has a tarp in front of his window. That's just lazy. And their stuff is everywhere.

I swear, I had more to write about, but I'm fresh out. Oh well.

Don't Pet The Rattlesnakes

So far, this has just about been the best Wednesday I've spent up here. I slept until about 9:15, ate some breakfast, and watched Nickelodeon GUTS until 10:00. So far, so good.

Then Brent Ellis, CBU alumni and fellow UTSI student, met Jeff and I at our place to drive to Mufreesboro for disc golf at Barfield Crescent Park. What a gorgeous day outside - clear skies, perfect humidity, a high in the VERY LOW 70's. The first game went to me, by a stroke, with Brent and Jeff close on my heels. Chick-Fil-A for lunch was excellent. Did you know that you can get bacon on your sandwich there? Well, you can. The second round went to Brent, by a stroke, with me and Jeff not far behind. Brent is an Ultimate (or Yultimate) Frisbee maniac, and the skills are pretty similar. His can out-distance me, but I throw a straighter drive. I own the trees.

The owners are replacing the roof on the townhouse this week. That kinda killed any chance at productivity the rest of the afternoon and early evening. It's hard to hear yourself think with all the hammering and sawing and stomping and shooting going on above your head. Buffalo chicken tenders for dinner.

I read Dr. Vakili's patent for the Spin Lab equipment. Documents from the patent office will never, ever qualifiy as "light reading." And they're in a bad format for reading that doesn't have a very good sense of flow. I think that's so that most people won't be able to interpret the patent.

I'm gonna read more of A Meeting At Corvallis tonight. Haakaa Paalle!

Well La-Dee-Frickin'-Da!

Well, it's been days again, and I've got no apology for you. Didn't see that coming, did you?

Last week was mostly a blur. I don't even think we had a Thursday. But I could be wrong on that. Wednesday was fun - Heather (the other Carbon Fiber GRA) and I got to sit around and watch some technicians run the Spin Lab. The end result looked like a Tribble From Hell. Klingons beware.

On Friday, Jeff and I tried lunch at Piggy's Place, the local barbecue establishment. I recommend it only to the starving - and I recommend it reluctantly. Maybe I'm being a bit of a snotty elitisit, but I don't think they know what barbecue is supposed to taste like. I distinctly remember having meat on my sandwich back in Memphis.

I drove back to Memphis over the weekend, and it was a pretty good trip. It was great getting to see Jennifer again. We went to the Cooper Young Festival, avoided the Soul Bowl, and went to see Sandeep's new house. The house was very nice, right down to Sandeep's very effeminate shower curtain (it looked like a giant doilie). I also ate at Huey's, Chili's, and thank the Lord, Central BBQ. Word has it there will soon be another Central BBQ opening in Memphis. I'm anxiously awating their Tullahoma location to open up. Here's hoping, at least.

Classes yesterday were fine, and so was Heat Transfer today. Some of us (Jeff, Heather, Amy, and myself) met in the Carbon Fiber office to start a study group for Vector Calc. That's a first for me, but I'm not going to knock it. I think we were more productive than class is.

And speaking of productive classes, boy is Technical Writing NOT one. It's like taking a shower in STUPID. Today, we made up 10 questions to ask a class mate, for no reason whatsoever. Then we split up into groups to talk about some fake company that's planning on spying on its fake employees that use dial-up internet. At least I got my homework back - my memo that I wrote to my fake boss to get my fake department's fake laser printer fixed without firing the fake stupid single-parent technician was very well written. Well La-Dee-Frickin'-Da.

Haakaa Paalle!

It's been a few days - whoops. I'm still doing better than my old blog, by far.

I guess I've mostly settled into a routine here, which is what I've been doing since everyone heard from me last. Classes are moving along well enough, but the workload is picking up. I've got to improve on accomplishing more things during the week, so that my weekends are (mostly) for rest. I'll do better, I swear. The main thing that's going to get in the way of that Jeff and I have come to the conclusion that we're going to have to work EVERY PROBLEM IN OUR MATH BOOK. It seems that way at least, from the way Kuperschmidt talks. Its enough to make me want to curse in Russian.

The Carbon Fiber group had its first meeting of the academic year. As I expected, it was mostly to introduce me and the new girl (Heather) to the rest of the group. It was pretty basic. Also, one guy quit the group to go work on another project. No one seemed upset at that, and I'll draw my own conclusions about it. Afterwards, Dr. Vakili gave Heather & me a tour of the "Spin Lab." That just sounds cool.

Dinner at Western Sizzlin' on Friday was good, but I ate WAY too much. The rolls and the soft serve gave me flashbacks to Ryan's from when I was little. Stargate(s) were pretty good. I'd say 7 out of 10 or better.

Our dishwasher died last night after dinner. We don't know why, but it seems to be through no fault of our own. These things happen, I guess.

Today, Jeff and I drove up to Murfreesboro to play a round of disc golf and find some civilized food. Overall, it was a great course. There's a nice mix of open fields and wooded holes, with some ups and downs and blind corners. The park is well kept, and beautiful. Lots of squirrels, too. Civilized dinner was Steak'n'Shake, because we couldn't find the Chili's. Oh well.

I'm still in the middle of The Protector's War, which I need to finish in order to start A Meeting at Corvallis. I doubt that will happen this week. Such is life.

I Saw A Racoon!

Yeah, that's right. A racoon. Viscious little marsupials.

Anyway, I crawled out of bed at 7:00 today, hit the road by 7:45, and rolled into the apartment parking lot / driveway at 11:30. Not bad at all. However, the ride is not for those with weak bladders or poor glutteal fortitude. Lots of smokies out today too.

Heat Transfer at 1:00 was a little dry, albeit timely. He did cover the book verbatim, but I definitely benefited from it because I didn't read everything beforehand and I could solve a non-homogeneous partial differential equation if the nation depended on it. Which is sad, because in my future line of work that might actually come up.

Meatball sandwiches at Subway (Eat Fresh) are really good. And cheap. That makes them taste even better.

Technical Writing for Dummies went from 0 to Asinine in 10 seconds today. See Jeff's thoughts on that and I pretty much agree. Tonight, I wrote a fake memo to get my Product Development Department's laser printer replaced. Got to earn that degree, don't I?

And then we saw the racoon.