You Picked A Fine Time To Leave Me, Lucille

Well, Tuesday wasn't so bad, I guess. There weren't any feet to use for the characterization machine, so I went up to school and worked on some of my missile project and some Viscous homework. Both were off-and-on, with more progress made on the missile project than Viscous, until Heather & I broke down and asked Dr. Vakili how to do one of the problems.

At about 2:30, Jeff and I called it quits for a bit and drove up to Murfreesboro for a round of disc golf. I think the last time Jeff played was around Thanksgiving and I had played once with Jennifer over Christmas Break. It wasn't my best round, and I lost my Stingray, but I had fun. And more importantly, it was Wing Night at Buffalo Wild Wings. I love that spicy garlic sauce.

After we got back, I played phone tag with Cingular to figure out where the phone I ordered (almost 2 weeks ago!) was. It turns out that they didn't feel like sending it to me. So, I got them straightened out, eventually. Hopefully I'll have my new Samsung X-507 by Friday. Hopefully.

Today, I got up and spent the morning in the Characterization Lab. Dr. Fei wants us to reuse some feet to continue with our characterization. And he keeps trying to change our methods. From an academic point of view, I understand that we need to strive for excellence here, but I keep feeling like he's trying to back-seat-characterize. Makes me want to hit him.

Instead of eating a regular lunch today, I just had a granola bar & a snack pack. I did this to see if running on an emptier stomach is very helpful. And, at least for me, it is. I was a lot less uncomfortable today than usual. Its something I'm going to try and work on.

Finally, I realized last night that my TI-89 calculator was gone. I've referred to it for years as "Lucille." It turns out that Amy inadvertantly (so she claims) snagged it while we were working in the office yesterday. I'm just glad she's safe (Lucille).

El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Lee

Happy birthday, Johnny.

So I have apparently angered the homework gods. Dr. Dekken threw us another 20 problems today so that he could plow on into the chapter on shafts (I can dig it). It was almost made worthwile by two things: 1) He started talking about power transmission, but instead of "power" it sounds like a pirate saying "paaaargh!" 2) We found out when the mid-term was going to be, and the format (in class, open notes, 5 or 6 questions). That's not the worste situation I've dealt with, but Dr. Dekken is no Dr. Shiue.

In Missiles, Dr. Flandro started talking about combustion instability. This is a problem that he has been working on SINCE BEFORE MY DAD WAS BORN. Holy Schnikes! Anyway, its apparently a very big deal that almost every rocket that's ever been designed; for rockets that work its something that gets swept under the rug and for rockets that don't, well those are called "learning experiences," or "bombs." He also made a pipe sing and I got to handle some rocket propellant. It smelled funny.

What can I say about Viscous other than that it went? We're in a patch of stuff that's not terribly interesting, but important. Something about Navier-Stokes applications. And it related to crankshafts somehow.

During lunch, it was brought to my attention that my trajectory code was erroneous. It wound up being serendipidous, though, which is a good thing. On the one hand, it turns out that all the work I did on Friday was a waste, but on the other hand, I was able to get a much smaller missile out of the deal. I'm now at a 1500 lbm, 2 stage rocket with an effective range of about 400 miles. Not bad, not bad at all.

Tomorrow night is wing night at B-Dubs. I might just have to go.

Every Excess Becomes A Vice

That was what my fortune cookie read, after I ate a rather large meal at an all-you-can-eat buffett. How did they know?

Anyway, I spent the weekend in Memphis. I had a good time, and got some work done - a good mixture. I met Jennifer for lunch on Friday up at Memphis, but wisely decided to pass on sitting in for her Torts class. If it happens twice, shame on me. Anyway, afterwords I snuck into the Nolan Engineering Computer Lab to get some work done on my missile. After a couple of hours of playing with parameters, I happend upon a 2,000 lb, 2 stage rocket that seems to fit the bill. Now I have to start sizing some things to make sure I'm inside my mass budget (hopefully, I'll have over-compensated and can reduce my mass even further ( lower mass = lower cost) ). And yes, I used a double parenthesis. Later on, Jennifer and I met up with Angela Dunn & her friend Molly and drove down to Tunica (I navigated from the back-seat). It was Jennifer's friend Paula's birthday, and she had $20 players cards. Sweet deal. After the huge meal and some winings on the slots, Jennifer's meal was essentially paid for. Not too shabby.

Saturday started off cold and rainy. Then, Jennifer and I ran a 5k out at Shelby Farms. It was the 5th annual "Celebrate Everybody" run, with special emphasis on eating disorders. I did recognize the irony of me pigging out the night before the race. Anyway, the reason we were there at all was to support Jennifer's sorority (AST) and their philanthropy (its like a charity, but sounds better). How many ASTs showed up? One. And her name was Jennifer. Bad form, girls. Bad form. That being said, I actually ran the whole thing without stopping. I doubt I could have done it without Jennifer pacing me, but I did it. Go me. Also, decent schwag. Later on, we went up to the Law Library so Jennifer could research the position paper she's writing and so I could scare the law students with my math. I was non-dimensionalizing like a man possessed.

We wrapped the evening up by having dinner with my family at Ryan's and watching Gridiron Gang. The movie was alright; it was kinda like the Mighty Ducks if only the kids were gang members and drug dealers instead of loveable scamps. Oh, and football instead of hockey.

Today I spent a little time hanging around the house, hanging around CBU, and driving back to Tullahoma. I got some great gas mileage this trip - 31.2 mpg. I have almost a whole half of a tank left. I did a little bit of missile stuff, and watched Battlestar Galactica. Now its time to sleep.

Laissez Les Bons Temps Rouler

It's French, but its really Cajun. That makes it ok. Anyway, happy Mardi Gras.

Yesterday, we dodged homework in Mechanical Design but heard more talk of a possible test. In Missiles, Gloyer gave us mardi gras beads that he rescued from his flooded property down in Mississippi. I sure hope he washed them. He then proceeded to redefine our project again for the umpteenth time, which is starting to get really annoying. I wore my beads to Viscous, and had an interesting conversation with Rich the Canadian Spy (I mean "Guy"). He asked what was up with the beads, and I explained that tomorrow (today) was Mardi Gras. So I said to have a good "Fat Tuesday." Here's where it gets a little weird - he didn't know that "mardi gras" was French for "fat tuesday." He grew up and is a citizen of Canada, who's other official language is French. I would have thought that it would have come up. He even mentioned a cajun restaurant called Fat Tuesdays, which served fried alligator. And then Dr. Vakili volunteered that it tasted like chicken, and so do frog legs (which can be found at the UTSI dinning hall on occassion). Then he assigned homework - curses!

Today I went up to school to do some characterization...hopefully the last for a little while. As it turns out, we're out of feet (the plastic tabs that we fix the fibers on to put in the machine). So, no feet = no characterization = happy Lee. I'll spend tomorrow doing Missiles work instead. Good times.

Jeff and I celebrated Mardi Gras by fixing tacos for dinner. We don't know any French recipes, and we wanted tacos anyway, so it worked out.

I'm close to having a GUI (Graphical User Interface) for my missile program. That'll come in handy in short order.

Finally, UTSI chili is pretty tasty. It doesn't have corn in it at all.

Jeeperdoodles!

Well, its been a few days. Mostly I've been lazy, but I also felt like any one day didn't warrant a blog entry since Wednesday.

Thursday was a normal day of classes. We dodged homework in Mechanical Design (woohoo!) but Dr. Dekken did mention that we might possibly think about discussing a probable exam sometime in the not-too-distant forseeable future (no woohoo!). Gloyer rambled, but about missiles. And the man tried to correct me regarding carbon fiber manufacturing methods. I can sit through a class, but I will not be talked down to by someone with a mullet. Finally, Viscous Flow as a wonderful excercise in non-dimensionalizing equations. Everyone always talks how they're important and significant and the pinnacle of theory, but I'm not impressed. I spent the evening on some homework. Jeff and I fixed a dinner fit for royalty: garlic-herb marinated chicken (me), sour cream & chives mashed potates (boxed), and cornbread (Jeff). Tasty.

On Friday, I spent the morning in the lab characterizing fibers, trying to figure out what the heck Dr. Fei is doing, avoiding Dr. Fei, and trying not to swear too loudly at the characterization machine. I cut out around 2:00, hit the gym, and vegetated through most of the afternoon. Later, Jeff and watched Enemy at the Gates (pretty good, lots and lots of shooting), and Employee of the Month (a solid 7-out-of-10 comedy).

Saturday was actually kind of productive. I finished the most recent set of Viscous homework (I need to work on the stuff he assigned on Thursday, but I've got a while). Then, I got my trajectory code working. It turns out I was dividing by mass in two places, which was making everything crazy. But it got fixed. Later, Jeff and I watched the 80's classic Who Framed Roger Rabbit. It had been forever since I've seen it, and its a riot. The shorts included on the DVD were awesome too.

Today, I got up went to see my cousin Tracy play in a volleyball tournament at the Webb School in Bell Buckle, TN. If any of you thought that Tullahoma was a hick town in the middle of nowhere, I invite you to explore the cosmopolitan experience that is Bell Buckle. All I have to say is, "wow." Anyway, Tracy's team won the tournament. That made getting up more bearable.

After I got back, I added the proper mass profile to the trajectory program and started getting answers. Right now I have a single stage solution, with a missile that weighs less than 5000 lbs that reaches the target range and altitude. However, its moving at several THOUSAND miles per hour. In a word: undesireable. I need to start realistically acounting for drag (including my drag brakes). That's on the agenda for tomorrow.

Finally, jeeperdoodles.

Meat & Three

Yesterday was the Career Fair up in Nashville, and it was quite the learning experience. The companies I talked to, + sign indicates cool schwag:

FFA (Federal Aviation Administration): The job would involve designing control towers and whatnot, lots of travel over the region (from the Mississippi to the East Coast, from Kentucky to the Carribbean). Cool job, not so big on the travel.

National Instruments: The mostly make widgets in the techincal field, for various private and governmental organiztion (cool, I guess). They're mostly looking for people to join their Engineering Leadership Program (they mentioned phone sales and my eyes glazed over).

SSR (Smith, Seckman, and Reid Inc.): Engineering consulting firm based in Nashville, with locations in Memphis, Hernando, Knoxville, and other mostly southern cities. Sounds like an ok place with pretty good benefits (good). It's mostly HVAC (not bad, not at all). Very nice recruiters. +

TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority): Official Motto: Dam It! (I kid. But it should be). They have all sorts of power plant, HVAC, and design jobs that open on a rolling basis (good). Not much bad, just general job availaibility is unpredictable. +

FedEx Kinko's: Just Kinko's. Jerks.

Y-12 National Security Complex: Located in Oak Ridge, TN, they moniter weapons or something (good). Kinda shady. Not many job opportunities for mechanical engineers (bad).

Cummins, Inc.: They make and recondition diesel engines (good). Headquartered in Columbus, Indiana with a location in Memphis. When the recruiters heard Jeff and I say "engineer," they were on us like white on rice (very good). +

FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation): Weren't interested in engineers, but they were interested in math majors. Go figure.

M2E Consulting Engineers: Engineering consultants, mostly construction work with some forensic engineering (very good). Based in Miami and soon to be in Las Vegas (not so good). Seemed pretty laid back.

Jacobs ESTS: They do a large part of the contracting for NASA in Hunstville (good). As I understand it, they're doing a lot of work on the Ares project (really good) and are expanding in the next couple of years (really really good). +

CIA (Central Intelligence Agency): +

PEO (Program Executive Office Missiles & Space): If it involves a rocket engine in Hunstville, they know about it. And probably helped design it (good). Also hiring a lot of people in the near future. Apparently, there are still Apollo engineers still kicking. +

Nuclear Fuel Services: Honestly, I don't remember much other than their location in Oak Ridge. And probably some nuclear-related work. +

Baker Hughes: Oil drilling support company, from drilling to searching to refining. Based in Texas (suprise). Very nice recruiters, perceptive enough to realize I won't read anything they give me. The German engineering manager guy was a little too eager, though. He really put it out there. The whole experience gave me a "don't drink the kool-aid" vibe. ++

Jeff and I looked for Parker-Hannifin, but they were no-shows. They have an office in Memphis, and make automotive couplings. Garrett worked for them for a while during college.

After the fair, we went to lunch at the White Trash Cafe. The food was excellent, and cheap. I had the meat loaf, mashed 'taters, and fried apples - cornbread on the side. We're told that they have murder mystery theater nights on Fridays. Neat.

Today Jeff and I went up to school to meet with Amy and Scruffy to work on our programs for Missiles. We figured out how to get our programs to stop when we want, by using the bisection method. All it took was a minor felony on my part (I self-checked some books from the library). It's a victim-less crime. Anyway, the bisection method works for now, but may not be sufficient as we add more and more realism to our programs. We'll see.

I'm really beginning to loathe carbon fiber characterization. It took 3 hours to run 12 samples. It should have taken 1 hour, tops. Long story, and I won't go into it now.

Happy Valentine's day to everyone in a relationship. Happy Singles-Awareness Day to the rest of you.

Drag Bakes, Retro Rockets, Shuttlecocks, Oh My!

shut·tle·cock (shŭt'l-kŏk')

n. A small rounded piece of cork or rubber with a conical crown of feathers or plastic, used in badminton. Also called bird, birdie.

I'll get to it in a minute.

Classes were up and down today. Mechanical Design was interesting. Dr. Dekken worked some problems that he didn't assign, but was helpful anyway. He was especially helpful regarding a problem that invovled a displaced load, acting on a beam through an attached bracket. Its one of those things that's hard to visualize without a solution manual. Good times, though.

In Missiles, Paul Gloyer started covering mission and device architecture. This was probably his first lecture that went anywhere, and I was impressed overall. We talked about propellants, stabilizers, and eventally, decelerators. There's a few options: drag brakes (also known as "slow down flaps"), retro rockets, and drag ribbons / parachutes, and "shuttlecocks." Gloyer owns a patent or two on the topic, and it's rather ingenious. Essentially, the missile unfolds into a giant badmitton birdie in order to slow down to a reasonable speed with a reasonable temperature at our target location. The only danger is that the enemy could up the arms race another notch and develop a gigantic raquet. THEN we're in trouble.

After lunch and resume printing, we had Inviscid. Before class, Dr. Vakili said he needed to talk to me about work stuff after class. Call it a guilty conscience, but he had me nervous the whole time. He went over some homework, and got into some non-dimensionalization stuff (blegh, but its too important to ignore). It turns out that the work discussion was fairly benign (just more work), but it put me off the rest of the day.

After a haircut, some grocery shopping, and procuring a belt, I'm all set for the job fair tomorrow. I hope I knock 'em dead. Except those CIA guys. They're probably trained to get through this stuff anyway.

Chili Today, Gone Tamale

Executive Summary: Another good weekend spent in Memphis. And some chili.

Classes went fine on Thursday. Dr. Dekken didn't assign homework, The Flandro was awesome, and Dr. Vakili actually showed up. After class, I had to sit through the bi-weekly Carbon Fiber group meeting. Basically, certain people talked a bunch when they could have talked a little, and Dr. Vakili gave us the first rule of Carbon Fiber Club: Don't talk about Carbon Fiber Club. Also, the fibers that Heather and I have been working can be a little dangerous and we should be wearing masks when we handle them. Thanks for the heads up, Chief.

The drive to Memphis was uneventful. Even leaving an hour late, I dodged most of Nashville traffic (which can be awful). I made it to CBU, and did a little bit of Mechanical Design homework and watched some Smallville. Not their greatest episode, but not their worst either. Mostly, I kept Jennifer company while she was on duty in the RD suite.

On Friday, I met Jennifer for lunch at Memphis, and then went to her Torts class. For those of you not in "the know," a tort is defined as "a civil wrong." Anyway, I don't feel like typing the whole story, but click here for the account. It's the first story.

The rest of Friday afternoon was spent working on our respective homework. Good times. Later on, we went to Comedy TN to redeem the free tickets that we had won. Russell, Nate, Angela, Paula, and John Paul joined us. A bunch of other people were going to join us, like David Tran & Christina, Justin Khuel and Dawn Gullickson (yeah, she's got a last name!) - but they turned out to be losers.

Saturday was Homecoming at CBU. From noon to 2:00, there was a Chili cookoff. At said chili cookoff, I ate what most people might consider an obscene amount of chili (4 bowls). The "Chipotle Off the Old Block" was pretty good, as well as the TKE batch, but my favorite was the chili made by Felix Bishop, one of our chapter founders. That stuff was awesome. Apparently, there was a basketball game too.

We went to J. Alexander's for dinner which was nice (soup of the day: chili!). I got Jennifer some chocolates for Valentine's, and she got me a really neat Rubick's cube that has 6 pictures of us on the sides instead of colors.

Today was Blake's 16th birthday. Watch out, motorists of Memphis. He doesn't have wheels yet, but its only a matter of tme. Other than that, I hung around with Jennifer for a little bit before I headed back to Tullahoma.

In other news, I found out that Troop 261 (my scout troop) has been retired. From what I've been told, its hoped to be only temporary. Apparently, there's only 2 or 3 kids involved now, some are moving away, and none of the dads want to step up and be the Scoutmaster. Its sad. But, I'm told, the cub scout pack has about 40 kids involved. There'll be some boy scout age kids soon.



Looking back, that much chili might have been unwise.

Admiring The Monkey

Tomorrow is Jeff's birthday, so the Superfriends went to breakfast to celebrate. And where did we eat? Only the best place on the planet: The Cracker Barrel. I like pancakes. And country ham. Mmm. Country ham.

After breakfast, Jeff, Amy, and I sat down for a brainstorming session about improving our code. Basically, we've decided to abandon the Matlab defined Runge-Kutta function and are going to write our own version that's better, faster, stronger. I won't bore you with the details though. Not now, at least.

At 1:00, Heather and I met with Dr. Fei (the new research professor on the carbon fiber project) and showed him how we do all of our characterization. He's familiar with the whole process, and I don't think he concluded that we're total nitwits. He is worried about us breathing the molten wax fumes from the soldering gun. I don't mind them, but I do mind the pink elephants that steal my carbon fibers.

After a long-winded discussion with Dr. Fei, we had to hurry over to the seminar today: "Lessons Learned During 45 Years of Engineering and Management Career" by Dr. Frank W. Steinle, Jr. Topics included: handling the unfamiliar, smelling for fish, admiring the monkey, utilizing the Boyd theory, getting a decision, discovering territorial boundaries, forming alliances, and having fun in the midst of chaos. This was a different seminar than what we usually get; instead of a bunch of technical broohaha, we got all kinds of nuggets of wisdom from a guy who's been around the block a few times. He was pretty well-spoken, covered everything he meant to cover, and I still could not tell you what on earth "admiring the monkey," means. Honestly.

I went to gym after the seminar, and it's been all downhill from there.

Also, Jeff and I apparently have a following at Amy's mom's company. We know you're out there. Yes, you. At the computer. You know who you are.

It Stinks And I Don't Like It

Not a whole lot to report on today, I'm afraid.

I slept in, went up to school for lunch and some errands (print off my Matlab code, and pick up an admission ticket to a job fair up in Nashville next week). The first task is straightforward, even though I have to go into the wing secretary's office to get to the printer. She's a scary woman. She tried to melt Jeff with a glare once. The other task...not so simple. We have to pick up the admission tickets from the Director of Admissions (its a stretch, I know). Unfortunately, Callie is off somewhere doing something and won't be back until Friday. And she locked the tickets in her office, and no one around her neck of the woods felt like looking for a key. Oh well.

I made it to the gym again today. So far, I'm batting a thousand on that. Go me. And I feel silly for ever paying for Harvey's Gym. Oh well, lesson learned.

The rest of the day was spent plodding along with my Mechanical Design homework. Dr. Dekken cleared some things up on Monday, which was great. However, these problems are still long, complicated, and poorly written to boot. I think the author should be forced to go to Technical Writing class. Yes, its that bad.

Earlier this evening, I tried upgrading my blog template to the new version. Some things were an improvement, I guess. Primarily, they've GUI-fied the template process (GUI = Graphical User Interface). This is good for people who don't really know HTML or XML. However, at this point they haven't given the GUI enough range to satisfy me. Also, they changed how a few other things looked (brighter pastels = blegh). Overall, it stinks and I don't like it. So I switched back.

In the news: Crazy Astronaut Lady

Interesting point: Cmdr. Bill Oefelein, the hapless guy in the story, was the pilot of the most recent shuttle mission, and a UTSI grad. Interesting.

Finally, today celebrated the return of White Guys With Irrelevant Opinions. Jeff and I aren't going to be as active with it, but it's back and that's a good thing. We have two new scholars to chew the fat, but Jeff and I hope to chyme in from time to time.

That's Not Very Elegant, Paul

What a day, what a day.

Mechanical Systems was pretty informative. I hadn't made very much headway on the Ch 2 problems ( 1 part laziness, 9 parts gross incompetence). Today, Dr. Dekken starting covering a lot of the stuff I'll need to get through it. Also, everyone in the class agrees that the auther was on some mind-altering substance(s) when he sat down to revise the book for this edition. We have compressive forces causing expansion (can't happen), impossible problems (can't be done), and very few pictures (makes me sad).

After class, I stuck around and started going through some of the problems with Seth (he works on the base, and goes in at 10 am. Yuck). We helped eachother on a couple of early problems, and walked our way through the rest of the problems. We're planning on doing that after every class now. It's better than sitting around; idle hands are the devil's playground.

Just before Tactical Missile class started, Jeff, Amy, Scruffy, and I were discussing our various trajectory codes with Paul Gloyer (he ain't a doctor, and I don't respect him enough to award him with a "Mr."). One of the problems we have is that our missiles are supposed to release the payload at a certain altitude. As of right now, none of us have figured out how to make our programs do that. So Gloyer tosses out that we could just let our code run until we return to the ground, and chop off our data afterwards (pretty easy, from a do-nothing point of view). As he's saying that, Dr. Flandro walks in, overhears him, and says, "That's not very elegant, Paul." And I swear, the "Paul" part had a profane emphasis on it. Hilarious. Also, Jeff inadvertantly accused Dr. Flandro of having a mistake in his equations of motion for the problem, so we worked through it again. At the end, with the right answer, Flandro points out that its a good thing we reached the right answer because he's been using that code on various designs for +30 years. Ouch.

Dr. Vakili made it back for class today. He missed last week because his wife was having some kind of operaton, so I'll cut him some slack there. He was definitely back in full force today, blowing right through those evil Navier-Stokes Equations. Again, I must stress that you should avoid them if you can.

After class, I returned to the gym. It's been way too long, and it was time to take action. Maybe I'll go again tomorow too (if I can hobble out to the car in the morning - oy!).

Finally, Heroes is a great show. Watch it.

Dave Grandy: The Dog Whisperer

As most of the English-speaking world knew, today was Superbowl Sunday. Except for the 29 hours of pregame programming, it wasn't much different than a usual Sunday. I didn't watch any of it - I spent most of the day working on Mechanical Design homework. Its slow-going, mainly because of the subject matter. Dr. Dekken hasn't covered much of it yet, and when I went through it back at CBU, it was long and awful.

I did catch a little bit of programming on other channels. Mostly it was Spike TV's "Craziest/Wildest/Scariest/Goriest - Wrecks/Sports/Animals/Things - Gone Mad/Bad/Crazy/Wrong - Ever - Ever" marathon. Train wrecks are weird to watch - they're horrific, but you can't turn away. In that respect they're kind of like . . . train wrecks. Bad analogy.

I was talking to Bekky Robbins earlier, and she told me that Dave Grandy (my roommate from college, in case you forgot. Looks like a hippie) was coming over to their place to watch the game.
She also mentioned that their dog Oakleigh doesn't like people at all - except for Dave. I suggested that he was the "Dog Whisperer," which Bekky thought was hilarious, and her husband Paul didn't get. I guess you had to be there.

The Superbowl itself was pretty entertaining. As a Vol, I had to root for Peyton Manning (according to the coverage, he pretty much single-handedly won the Superbowl). That kick-off return by the Bears was amazing. Its pretty much the only NFL game I ever watch, but its worth the 4 hours. On the other hand, the commercials were disappointing overall. There were some gems though: Paper-Rock-Scissors, Pimp-Slap, and the GM robot were my favorites. I also like the Blockbuster pets. Does anyone know who voices the hamster? I know the rabbit is James Woods, and the mouse was Bobcat Goldthwait.

Anyway, class in the morning so I'm calling it a night.

Ezekiel 25:17

Well, its been an eventful few days, I suppose.

On Wednesday night, we started getting a little snow. By Thursday morning, we had about two or three inches. I got up at 6:30 to check the news for closings, and Brent had apparently hidden the remote. After spending two minutes fumbling in the dark with the cable box, I found News Channel 5 just in time for the closings cycle to start over (that means colleges last). It turned out that UTSI was the only school on any level that was open within about a 100-mile radius. That's pretty bogus if you ask me.

So, after digging my car out of the snow, I made it to school early (there wasn't anything wrong with the road ice-wise, but that possum on Wattendorf Highway deserves an Oscar). Dr. Dekken assigned another slew of homework assignments, which doesn't make me happy at all.

Things are going pretty well in the Missiles class now that Dr. Flandro has started participating. He's very helpful, and his anecdotes are just awesome. I could listen to him talk about pretty much anything.

Dr. Vakili missed yet another class this week, sending his post-doc Abraham MEGAnathan. Honest Abe didn't do too bad, but it did take him a while to get going. He starting deriving the Navier-Stokes equations (evil fluids equations based on both the Conservation of Momentum and Voodoo) but he didn't finish. That's-a-no-good. Hopefully Dr. Vakili will be back on Monday to set things straight.

On Friday, we got a little bit more snow, but nothing to worry about. I spent my day in the Spin Lab characterizing the new fibers. So far the data looks promising (when we get good data). However, sometimes the people above me don't do a good job communicating what I should be watching for. Sometimes is the diameter, sometimes its the modulus of elasticity, and sometimes its the tensile strength. If I don't guess right when I'm asked about a given property, I seem a little dense. That's right annoying.

By the way, try the chili at the UTSI dining hall. It's excellent!

Jeff and I watched Hart's War and The Great Raid last night. For whatever reason, we've been on a World War II kick. Hart's War is good if you're in the mood for a though-provoking movie about racial tension, queer (and I don't mean odd) nazis, and very little stuff blowing up. The Great Raid is good if you're in the mood for a solid heroic story, plenty of explosions / bazookas / gunfire, and a forced love story that doesn't take up too much screen time.

Aside from watching my Saturday morning cartoons (Superman, Batman) I spent most of the day working on my ballistics program in Matlab. Fortunately, if you've done much programming in one language you can move to another one without too much trouble. The last one I used extensively was FORTRAN, which isn't too distantly removed from Matlab. So, right now, I can accurately predict where a projectile (bullet, artillery shell, cow from a French castle) will land. Once I figure out the subroutines for rocket-powered thrust, changing mass, and drag brakes, I'll be set to predict the path of my missile. How cool is that?

Tonight, Jeff and I watched Pulp Fiction. Its one of those cult classics that movie fans just have to see at sometime in their life. It was pretty good, but I don't recommend it for everyone. Quentin Tarantino movies aren't for the weak at heart, or the stomach. Kinda like spicy Mexican food. If you can handle it, it's great. If not, get the chicken finger basket.

Looking back, things weren't really all that eventful. Oh well.