Finals Week and EWB Project

It is finals week at Washington State University right now and it is hectic, I've got an exam lined up for each of the following days Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. This is even a lite semester, next fall is going to be a full load not to mention quite the nightmare. Yesterday, my friend and I went to open to close at the ZZU, for mechanical engineering ASME, meeting a few friends there, then we went to Mike's aka Stubblefields down to the dance floor, it turns out I knew the bouncer and we got into the basement dance without even waiting in the line. After waking up late today, Andy, Jaclyn and I got together and went over the viable options for the EWB at WSU chapter and looked at the safety of the countries, the travel costs, the professional contracts and advisors, as well as personal preference and we found that the project that best fit up was the Santa Cruz, Ecuador project. Now we will need to lock in the project by writing the proposal and filling out the paperwork for the project and other logistics. Onward to studying so I can pass my classes, Bon voyage.

Hanners-logic, Bookmarks, Afganisu-tan, and 21

Been reading an awesome comic Questionable Content, it is witty and funny. I've been trying to catch up starting from the beginning, and I like how the art style has slowly changed, the obscure Indy culture references are both off putting and funny at the same time, and the Coffee house of Doom sounds like the perfect anti-culture to Starbucks. Oh and Hanners-logic is awesome.

Some other bookmarks I keep track of are, Penny-arcade perhaps the most renown, Red vs Blue of the Halo machinima fame, MegaTokyo for the anime and quirky inside references, XKCD a favorite of mine, for it's engineer's style inside humor - its like what Dilbert has always wanted to do, Weregeek for the geek humor with the LARPing and D&D culture, WaiterRant for the brutal hilarity that ensues in the restaurants of America, and finally TokyoMango for the quirky insights of Japan, reminding me of Taiwan which seems to be caught between the two cultures of America and Japan.



Saw on TokyoMango, the Japanese take on the middle east, Afganisu-tan (and friends), now as everyone knows the Japanese can take anything on earth and turn it into something unbelievably cute, and this is no exception. Imagine taking one of the longest running conflicts in the world, and turning all the countries into cute manga characters and you got yourself this comic.








Just got back from watching 21, one of those "based on true story" movies, although there are huge flaws in some of the logic, it is an awesome movie, it is a movie that you need to just sit back and enjoy, cause if you try to take it apart - it will not hold up for long, especially during the parts were the directors probably think majority of the audience is not going to understand - so as a tech guy and an engineer I had to ignore the fact that the technical parts, one of which was used as a reason for a dramatic argument between nerds, was implausible - I decided that I just needed to enjoy and stop analyzing. Still I seem to be down on this movie too much, however Kevin Spacey shines as always, even though the Mace Windu thing doesn't work in Las Vegas; this movie always has you cheering on the protagonists in the movie. Finally it leaves you with a smile and really at the end of the day it is hard to top that.

EWB Seattle 2008

Just got back from a four day adventure called the Engineers Without Borders USA, International Conference, Sustainable Engineering and Global Health, some interesting speakers included William H Gates, from the Gates Foundation, NASA Astronaut and Engineer Bonnie Dunbar, and Bernard Amadei the founder of Engineers Without Borders. This conference has been alot of fun, but also exhausting with around 5 hours of sleep each day just to make all the events. Starting on Thursday, with Gates Sr. with a speech about the Gates Foundation and it's goal of Global Health. Later in the evening at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, Dr. Bonnie Dunbar, Ph. D gave an inspirational speech that got a standing ovation from the crowd. The many presentations and seminars were not only interesting but they were extremely helpful, it was a great networking opportunity and a great chance to make friends, on Thursday while by myself because the rest of the team had not arrived, I met Lauren and Maria, who were from Clemson University in Greenville, South Carolina, we hit it off well.



So on Friday my friend David and I, gave our newly made friends a bite size tour of Seattle, we parked at the Seattle Center, and took pictures at the Space Needle, then took the monorail to Westlake Center, and then walked down to Pike Place Market to see the sights and shop, afterwards we walked down to the docks and stopped for a bite to eat at Ivar's and tried their famous clam chowder. After getting back to the UW campus we continued our seminar hopping and continued listening and learning, not to mention getting to talk to some of the groups that presented and asking detailed technical questions about their projects one on one. In the projects management seminar I even met an Engineer from Vanderbilt University, [ the team that beat Washington State last year in the NCAA basketball tournament, grrr...lol] who had a OLPC or One Laptop Per Child project, laptop and I got to chat in depth with him about the laptop, it was awesome being about to check out the laptop in person and being about to chat with an Engineer about what he thought about the Laptop. Saturday night there was an event that was labeled ferry cruse and since Lauren and Maria, were both on their last day, needing to skip Monday due to flight schedules, I came along, unfortunately it turned out to be just the Bremerton ferry down and back in the rain and dark and not much to see, it needed to be during the day, to be able to be enjoyed fully.

Finally On Sunday after sleeping over at my friend mike, his friend's place at Seattle Pacific University [SPU] we found out that the direct bus did not run so we hopped onto one that took us a few blocks, the driver told us to catch another bus and he gave us the number, then the next driver told us which bus after that to transfer to, unfortunately it turned out that the driver forgot to mention that at 8 am, the transfer she told us about did not start until 11 past so after consulting the information board, so we decided to just start walking, we caught a trail and walked about a mile or so around Lake Washington and got to the University of Washington campus, we even came just in time for the seminar and didn't miss anything except the morning welcome. The day was great and again even more information to digest and process, in total I took 17 pages of notes from start to finish, it well worth the registration price, I can't wait for next year. EWB-USA at Chicago April 3-5, 2009!!

TSA & EWB

Just got back from Taiwanesse Student Association or TSA and the Taiwanese Night Market event, it was a lot of fun but rather hectic.

Unfortunately, I did not get any homework done this weekend, and since next week the EWB@WSU club is going to the international conference in Seattle at UW it means that we need to get homework done early, well I guess that just means more last minute cramming before we leave, so it just means who ever is the least tired is going to end up driving.

Airplane II, Bun-o-vision, Oblivion

Caught the end of Airplane II: The Sequel on HBO, it is hilarious and my friend tells me the first one is even better, so adds another movie to my list of must see. Bun-o-vision, is something I ran into while surfing youtube, and it is awesome, remaking many of the memorable movies in the last few decades. Played though some more Oblivion and it is ridiculous how much stuff there is to do in the game, I put in some mods for convenience, but I can't help but notice that I seem to be having a hard time when it comes to fighting wildlife NPCs, bears for example are hard to fight, I almost sympathize with Steven Colbert, and his bear phobia.

Juno, & Homework for NATRS312, CE215, ME212

Just finished Juno, it is a charming little movie, I absolutely love it. So I guess it was fortunate that I went up to check it out if only just for the food, unfortunately not planning to actually watch caused a mass procrastination of my homework, yet in retrospect it feels worth it. Now I just have about 1-2 hours of reading for NATRS312, daily homework in CE215 Mechanics, and the last problem in the weekly ME212 Dynamics homework.

EWB Conference, also Mechanics and Dynamics Homework

The EWB International Conference, is the next weekend and so for this week it means that I'll have to go through two weeks worth of and Dynamics homework as well as the assignment that I'll miss for Mechanics, no to mention taking a quiz early because the club will be gone for Friday. All in all it will be worth it, with a great line-up for the conference, the Keynote Speaker on Global Health is William Gates, Sr., the Co-Chair for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. At the end there is also Bernard Amadei, the Founder of EWB-USA, who will close on Sunday, quite an exciting weekend coming up, can not wait.