Sloan [12 days ago]

Been sitting in sloan, the fans wailing stashed in ugly Beige cases, been sitting for so long my body hurts, my brain on the verge of crashing. it has been 15 hours and it will probably be another 2-3 before I leave for classes, with the hours spent in this dusty, computer laden, overly and artificially bright lab filled with high pitched power supplies in ugly Beige cases, with the faint clack of key boards, and the clicking of mice.

Thoughts turn to alcohol or better yet sleep, either path to unconsciousness is welcome. It is already the end of the week but I probably wont even be conscious for classes today. Will be getting an early breakfast to try and stay awake, a test looms on the horizon as Monday is bound to roll around far too soon. I need to get a flu shot cause I can already feel my already feeble immune system going to crash. It feels like I am pushing my body and mind to it's breaking point, I will probably lose it at any moment and just fall asleep. it isn't really a fight any more it is more of a wounded belly crawl through the mud and under barb wire and bullets.


Sloan, the squat ugly building connected to the tower - there is a reason there are no opening windows other than those of the offices on the right side of the building, doing homework and assignments here can be frustrating enough that it would make you want to jump out a window, to maybe break a leg to get out of a test or project. All this work is enough to drive you crazy.

Back in Pullman already.

Back in Pullman already. Dam#, in the first week flooded with homework. The schedule looks lite, with only 4 classes, but 3 of them have labs - labs are usually a total of 3 hours or more, Physics and Calculus 2 both have scheduled labs - however CS251 is an unscheduled lab. Note there is no assigned time but you cant do the work at home unless you have Linux or buy Visual Studio C, and even then you cant submit unless the computer is on the network which this year only the computers in Sloan have the connection. Phuck. I need astro lube or something cause the homework load is raping me, every class has homework every day, most takes about an hour for each assignment that adds up to about 10 total assignments and 2 Lab projects/write-ups. Unlike High School, if you have a REAL major, skipping class is a no-no . . . no because the profs will care (few do) but because it will phuck you over when you try and understand the homework and test later. second year crash'n at Orton, not bad, get your own room,mic+frig.




There is also never enough sleep. dam#. Did in the middle of all that get to sip some, at 2 parties with some booze, about 3 weeks or so ago, and last week 9 shots of 100, Smirnoff while watching Internet vids, like Tiki Bar ect. lol. yet I was still disappointingly sober, maybe it was dinner - too full or something, dam# kinda wish i was a cheap, and get wasted in like 2 shots, phuck 9 costs too much. still burnt out from class though. phuck. already a month or so in and the midterms are coming up. sh!t. Wanna get a black DS lite - it looks sweet. the games are sweet. FF3? Zelda?ect! should get a tv. Dam# so tired.

A+ OS Exam & Study, Study, Study!

Thursday, May 25, 2006

Passed the A+ OS Exam today, lots of stress, studied a butt load for nearly 2 weeks, when taking the test I was almost deathly afraid that I was not going to pass even with all my prep - and that would seriously suck pricing at $153 a pop failing the test would really bite the pocket book. Yet I pulled through with about 150 points over what is needed to pass. *wipes away imaginary sweat*



Now I just need to study for that CLEP Calculus test, dam. More studying. After that I plan to multi task and take Calculus 2 while working somewhere like Best Buy and Hopefully buy and get a discount for a Nintendo DS Lite, and a few games to boot.

Gaming, Studing, and Testing

Sunday, May 21, 2006

On Friday I am planning to take the A+ certification test, for computer software, the second half of a two part exam to get my A+ computer certification. So with some cash in the near future I looked in to the hand held market, I did some research on the two big competitors in the market, the Nintendo DS Lite and the Sony PSP; I pit the Lite vs the PSP because it will be the newest one out and at the same price it is worth the wait. There were a huge amount of site pitting the two against each other, each with their own fan boys arguing and fighting each other over which is better. I am one of the fortunate ones that have had the unique experience to play both systems and spend a large amount of time with each. The DS I got to play Yoshi touch and go, with the objective to guide Yoshi with the stylus drawing clouds, and the microphone to blow them away, it had an entertaining net feature to play against other players in the area. The battery life was extraordinary as I played for hours on end on the bus ride back, but the system was a tad heavy because it was unbalanced with a center of gravity near the fold causing my hands to hurt holding it at certain angle, yet the DS was entertaining as a portable gaming platform and seemly indestructible as a brick just like the previous Nintendo handhelds as my friend would tell me about the numerous times that he had dropped his DS.



Later I got to play another friend's PSP, he had a number of titles for his system and I got to try out alot of them, the screen was the sexiest hand held screen I had ever seen, the sleekness and just the sheer size of it was beautiful. On the main screen was a list of icons games, movies, music and so on, but as my friend said that putting music on the system was space consuming and with the memory cards extremely expensive he was reluctant to waste too much space - rather using his iPod to hold music, this was much the same for the movies with the UMD versions of the movies nearing the same price or higher than their DVD counterparts, it was as my friend said not worth it especially on such a small screen. In fact it was better just to use a portable DVD player this knocks out the two most enticing features for the PSP, and the so renown analog joystick is in my opinion not in the right place - I was trying to play an RPG in the PSP and with the analog stick were it was it made the game hard to move, this is not to say that I don't like it - I believe that the analog stick will revolutionize handhelds but the thing is it needs two of them to be affective in moving around in 3D environments. Not to mention that the PSP was as fragile as glass, my friend had it in a shatter proof case with impact resistant padding, making it nearly 50% bigger, not exactly yelling handheld. But when I asked him he said that he would not trade his PSP for anything - and with long road trips home that it would be invaluable. Summing everything up the PSP and the DS Lite are both formidable gaming systems but if you are planning to by a PSP also plan to spend nearly $350 - $400 to get a game or two and the protection it needs to prevent it from getting damaged. I did not have that much money to indulge and I also wanted something with good games, battery life and finally durability. So my choice is more than likely going to be the Nintendo DS Lite.

Following the Halo craze that is going on many people are reading the books and replaying the games in anticipation for the release of Halo 3, no doubt the trailer prove that 360 can dish it out and with the release of Halo 3 people are going to be all over it, I plan to actually play through all the games all the way to actually understand the story all the way. Along with getting the A+ test over with I plan to custom build a motor bike transforming my mountain bike into a motorized bike through using a bike motor kit on the Internet. I need to make quite some money if I am to finish all my goals, such upgrading my computer RAM and video card, buy a digital camera and TV tuner. Might as well get studying for the A+ test.

Reaney Park

Friday, May 12, 2006

Late Thursday night - or rather every early Friday morning at about 2:30 am on Finals week a group of us decide to trek to Reaney Park, behind the Sloan engineering building, to go play on the playground. No this is not some term for getting wasted or some other cr*p, we really wanted to just go chill on the playground. lol. So we make our way a group nearly 10 strong, down from Stephenson and across the empty street, and slowly toward Sloan in the middle of the street, about halfway there a cop parked on the side of the street tells us to get on the side walk, what the heii is he doing up at nearly 3 am? heh. Taking a right we go down toward the old steam plant, and across the gravel lot past storage tanks advertising flammable liquids. After we make our way down a small street we get there - and it was so f'ing dark we can't see very much. Taking to the swings its like being a kid again, lol. Some of the guys tried out the little spring mounted animals for the toddlers, let me put it this way it was not designed for adults, and after having to walk bow legged for a few seconds no one learned their lesson as everyone wants to find out how painful it really is. Suddenly we find out that there is in fact another, playground shrouded in the darkness on the other side - everyone runs for it . . . tire swing, huge slide, a fort-like playground - and a candy cane colored pole. As the mature adults we were the guys were all over the pole in no time - a fake pole routine, trying to climb it, and a balancing act on time as the chicks and the rest of us laugh and look on. We then discover the huge slide on a hill and now every one wants to go down, a few of us walk over to the fenced area and find a drained out swimming pool, the barb wire on the top makes it look like a POW camp or something. That Purple Dinosaur, I don't think i need to say anymore for those who were there. Kathleen decides we need to play some football, but it never really goes through, but we did get to see some drunk guy try to talk to us and stumbling off. After talk of bunnies, among other things we make our way back.




Reaney Park
Pearl & Gray Lane (1.64 acres)
Home of the National Lentil Festival and the Reaney Park Concert Series on summer evenings, this park contains outdoor pools, a gazebo, playground area, sand volleyball court, picnic tables, BBQ area and a horseshoe pit.

Camping Trip 12th floor SS!

Friday, April 14, 2006

Cant wait for this camping trip this weekend, the floor are all going on a sweet camping trip, tents, sleeping bags, BBQ, hiking the whole works.



Yes that weekend we drove out and camped somewhere in Idaho, near the mountains, the first day was very fun as we got the campsite prep'd erecting a shelter in case of rain, then built the fire and set up the tents, we chilled as the burgers were cooking.



The food was campfire good, the floor chilled as the night set in and it started raining and then snowing heavly, we moved to the built shelter some of us had the forsite to build earlier, and also moved the fire there, it was great as everyone just hung out.



Me and two guys give our best O-face but I crack up before the camera goes off.
The next moring my tent wakes up to a flood, as we are right on top of a now huge overnight pond that has formed under Derrick and Chris' Truck and Jeep. All of us in the tent had our sleeping bag soaked through with water and were damp and cold. After finally being coaxed out of the tent by everyone outside we find it below zero - and snowing.



Five of us decide to go back as our sleeping bags and nearly everything we owned was soaked and we were freezing, so after we ate a breakfast of . . . what other than campfire cooked burgers, we came back early in the morning and went to sleep.

Spring Break (updated)

Friday, March 17, 2006

Spring Break, no I'm not on the sandy beaches of Mexico, in the stereotypical version of college spring break, (rather unfortunately)rather I'm at home typing out my GenEd11 and Biology 102 Essays, yet is has been relaxing and it has be a really needed break. I've gotten to drive around alot - it's been like half a year since I've driven a car - good to know i haven't killed anyone yet lol, at least I'm not
that rusty. I feel really to go back and get back in gear, even with two more tests and a workload of homework. Might as well get some sleep. More excitingly, something I forgot to write about was the engineering "field trip" if you will, to the exciting places of Boeing, Genie, and Aerojet. Ironically the more exciting of the visits was Genie and Aerojet, the two which I had no idea were even in the
northwest.



The Engineering department of Boeing was mind numbingly boring, that single handily discouraged me from wanting to do drafting, while moving to the gigantic assembly building, the on site engineers seemed to have the more fun jobs interacting with
everything. Thus while, what Boeing does is very impressive and the results are spectacular, the every day work of most of the engineers was a bore.



Then after leaving Boeing, we drive around in search of Genie, once we get there we are handed safety gear, the funniest thing ever are the toe caps, that are designed to fit over our shoes, the impact protection was in place of steel toe shoes,



unfortunately I couldn't get a picture in time, along with glasses, we march in and then wait at a ear plug dispenser to get hearing protection. The tour was a loud, machine rattling, cart dodging, alarm sounding, smokey, taste of Genie industry and to be frank a lot of fun.



After breaking at Taco Time - which is a very strange mix of fast food and restaurant style of eating. You order like conventional restaurants but then sit down to get the food delivered. wtf? the food was ok, but expensive. Then our adventure to find Aerojet began - which was filled with getting lost repeatedly. When we finally found the back of no where Redmond Industry we disembark and make our way into the lobby, where we wait for the rest of the group to find us. In the lounge we find we are not allowed to have cameras, so I drop mine off at the counter, in the corner there is a big glass case with a large rocket engine - sweet.



We were in for a treat, Aerojet as we were soon to find out was a maker of rocket engines, in a presentation we learn that they make rocket engines for every major space endeavor besides the Russians and a count few.



(even the vending machines are cool there.) As we make our way through we are taken to the fabrication building and we get to see the machinery used to build the parts, we get to see up close the small to large rockets in production. The technologies there are cutting edge as we get to see an Ionic engine designed for long term use on satellites in space. There are two large clean rooms but no work to see in them. Making our way to the order facility we get to see the vibration testing equipment simulating launch condition vibrations, then we get to the the vacuum test chambers, and a test just finishing, we even get to walk around the back and check our all the cool machinery, by far the coolest tour. That was basicly the coolest part of my spring break.

Bored

Monday, March 06, 2006

I'm bored. So i went to Bored.com and found something that caught my eye, mysticalball.com/ which claims to read your mind. To my initial surprise it works well and is entertaining for a few seconds, then being the engineering student I am, i what to know how it REALLY not that superstitious cr@p, then I notice a pattern in the chart, and low in behold there the answer lie. The set up is symbol it has you do a small math problem with your number that you are guessing, and then you find the corresponding symbol on the chart. Well wouldn't you know that the math problem, which has you take a two digit number and subtract the sum of the two individual numbers from the original, turns out that with two digit there can only be so many answers and what would you know all of them have the same symbol, all the rest are fillers - aka cr@p. Then again if I take everything too seriously, life would suck so sometimes it is fun to pretend and be amused.

Motion City Soundtrack in the Palouse!!

Thursday, March 02, 2006

Motion City Soundtrack in the Palouse!! February 24th, The Motion City Soundtrack tour stops at Pullman, Washington and played in the CUB ball room. In between the shows I run into the lead singer for MCS, Justin! and got him to sign my arm!!My friend and I got pictures with two of the band members. Then at the after party got to chill and listen to more bands, on of the guys break out - break dancing . . . Today went to math lab, then bio lab and finished early then as I was leaving bio lab it starts snowing again, lol. Getting back I go to sleep for three or so hours - yes!