.
i must be crazy
sunday, november 22, 2009
as you may have noticed, several months have passed...in fact, almost all of fall semester has blown by. needless to say, i have been busier than a humming bird on crack. as this sort of post usually goes, i'll try to hit the interesting parts:
average time on campus has settled to somewhere between 11 and 12 hours per day
i fixed the broken light fixture in the kitchen and replaced all the 60W 'soft white' bulbs with 100W 'bright white' bulbsccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc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summer (like all good things) must come to an end...
sunday, august 30, 2009
fall semester starts tomorrow, so i figure i should write something about how the final weeks of summer went.
for most of summer there has been a lot of 9-5 type going to school and doing research for me. under the vain assumption that you read what i said about my research when i first wrote about it nearly 2 months ago, i'll just brief you on what we have been focusing on recently. you might recall that i mentioned the need to be trained on the SEM (scanning electron microscope) - that still hasent happened, but it's ok because one of the professors on the biology department can operate the machine for me. by now you might be asking yourself, "what does a SEM have to do with making composites conductive?"....the answer is as follows: to make the composite conductive, we really just need to make the polymer matrix conductive. to do this, we are suspending nickel nanostrands (NN) in the mix before the polymer solidifies. we want to observe the electrical path to further validate the assumption the electricity 'percolates' through the network of NN. to observe the electrical path, we apply a voltage to one part of a sample, and then look at the sample inside the electron microscope. exposed nickel that has a negative applied voltage will repel electrons, and make that area of the electron image appear brighter....so, when we apply the voltage, we basically light up the NN and create a 'contrast image'. sounds pretty easy in theory, but there are half a dozen settings on the SEM that dramatically affect the image quality. thats the nice way of saying that our first 2 visits to the SEM, we didnt really know what was going on, so we didnt actually make any contrast images. by the 3rd visit, i decided that we needed to do a statistical analysis to take out the guess work. we made a factorial design, took data, analyzed it, and figured out what settings were best, and big surprise, everything worked nicely after that.
its a benji!!
monday, july 13th, 2009
this past wednesday we were got to see our new baby for the first time, and we're having a boy!! the most common response we get when telling people this is, "congratulations!" or "hey, now you have one of each!" shortly thereafter, lots of people ask if we were hoping for a boy or whatever, and the truth is that we werent hoping for one or the other and that we're super excited. elizabeth's due date is november 29th, and the ultrasound showed that benji is measuring a few days earlier (like the 25th or whatever). my parents-in-law happened to be in town this week, and they were so excited that they already started spoiling him :P
speaking of in-laws, they got into town on friday the 3rd, and have been staying at grandma whiteley's place in PG. this of course means that elizabeth (and occasionally myself) drove up there to spend time with them all week. as you can imagine, the 20 minutes or so to get to PG from provo is a lot easier than the 11 hours to drive to arizona! one of the big excursions of the week was a trip to a place in salt lake called the "this is the place" monument. evee got to ride a pony and do a few pioneer craft type things. im told that they had a great time.
lets see...other cool event since last time was july 4th. this year was somewhat significant because elizabeth and i went to the stadium of fire. this was not only significant because it cost like 100 bucks for 2 nosebleed section tickets, but also because of what happened on july 4th, 2005...........*cue flashback*
i had broken up with elizabeth early in june of 2005 because of a fear of commitment and/or fear of the stereotypical RM-falls-in-love-with-the-first-girl-he-dates-seriously scenario. anyhow, while we were on this break, i was going date crazy. i was working very hard to convince myself that there honestly wasnt anyone else for me, which meant that i was going on a lot of dates with a lot of different girls. july 4th rolls around and it just happened that i did not have plans for the evening yet when i got a call from a friend from my freshman ward - it turns out that brittany fitzgerald had a job as a custodial staff member at the stadium, and had recently come upon 2 tickets to the stadium of fire. i could have called elizabeth, and she prolly would have come with me, but i didnt want her to feel like she was the backup plan or whatever. besides that, it would be a swell free date for me to go on with some other chick. since i didnt have any fresh phone numbers or strong desire to go on a second date with any of my recent female aquantances, i enlisted the help of 2 of my cousins and their respective spouses to see if they could find me a last minute blind date. with 4 phones hard at work, its no surprise that after about 15 minutes, i had a date. my date was intelligent and easy to talk to, but (nows where you see how shallow i really am) i wasnt attracted to her. about a month or so later i came to my senses and started trying to get elizabeth back. ever since then, each 4th of july has had an unspoken (and sometimes spoken) guilt trip about how i took some lame date to the legendary stadium of fire when i could have taken elizabeth.........
so, here we are 4 years later, and i finally repent! we left evee at grandma whiteley's place and went to the show. it was really fun. the most humorous part was the overwhelming swarms of 11-13 year old girls, each of who was dying in love with the jonas brothers (headline performance). the opening band was shedasiy, which elizabeth liked a lot. other highlights of the show were the flyby executed by four F-16's, retiring of a US flag that was 150 ft x 90 ft (HUGE), and of course, the phenominal fireworks display.
last but not least of the noteworthy events was evee's first trip to the zoo. after some difficulty locating the zoo entrance, we had a great time (turns out we were at the rear entrance to the zoo, which meant that it was very low profile...we were expecting a giant parking lot with big signs that said "HOGLE ZOO" - they dont have that at the rear entrance). evee did a lot of walking, and really enjoyed looking at the animals. one of the really fun events at the zoo was a bird show where all sorts of falcons and hawks and parrots did cool stuff and flew just inches above the audience. they even had a real live bald eagle! anyways, i couldnt hope to name all the animals we saw, but it was a ton of fun, and evee zonked on the way home. i mean, she CrAsHeD...we had barely gotten to the freeway, and she was out-cold and drooling.
grad school underway
thursday, july 2nd, 2009
as you probably already know, i recently began grad school. i just took one class during spring term: ME 501- stress analysis and design of structures. even tho it has an ME class code, about half of the class was CE students. the class was taught by dr. chase, and it was pretty good. a lot of the material was a repeat from ME 372 (machine design), but in greater depth and with more homework. the last few weeks of class we talked about finite element analysis (FEA) software, and i was forced to revisit my least favorite software packge ever - ANSYS. since the class was during spring term, we had to cover 2 weeks of material every week. dr. chase's approach to this painful fact was rather refreshing: rather than meet for 2 hours 3 times a week, he had us meet for 1.5 hours 4 times per week (MTThF). that way, it worked out to be kinda like ordinary fall/winter classes that are offered on tues/thurs...in other words, class on monday and tuesday was like one week, wednesday was a "weekend", and then thursday and friday were a second week, followed by the real weekend. the institution of homework partners was nice (as you know, 2 heads are better than one!) we only had to turn in one homework assignment per partnership. the drawback was that if you let your partner do all the work, you dont learn the material, and you bomb the test. i got B's on all the midterms, and had a strong end-o-term project, so i ended up with a B+. the end-o-term project was to do something awe inspiring with ANSYS where you stretch your limits, and teach the class something during your project presentation. we did a FEA of a cantilevered chair and compared results of 2D vs 3D.
during spring term i also began working on the research project that will eventually be the subject of a really long paper that i'll write so people will let me have an advanced degree. the project is still missing some important scope definition, but its still pretty awesome. we're dealing with multi-functional composites...which is to say that the goal is to add some cool properties to carbon fiber composites. i assume my explanation still made little or no sense, so allow me to give an example: suppose you want a composite part to be conductive in every direction. first you think, "no problem! carbon fibers are already conductive", then you realize, "crap...every fiber is coated in an ultra fine layer of insulative thermo set plastic" which means that composites ARE conductive parallel to the fiber. to get other directions to be conductive, you would need to make the plastic conductive. sound like an oxymoron? the current plan is to add nano-filaments of nickel to the matrix resin. the obvious intended result is that the plastic will behave as though it is conductive.
the machine we are using to prepare the composites is called a "filament winder". you start with a large spool of dry carbon fibers, add resin that has recently had hardener mixed in, and then wrap the "towe" onto a pipe or "mandrel". not only does the fiber wrap on, but it has to scoot back and forth just a little bit so that the winding has a consistent thickness. a computer that comes straight out of the 90's is used to control the rotation of the mandrel, AND the travel of the carriage. as you can imagine, there is a fair amount of training required to make the the contraption dance just so...to learn the ways of the force, i began working with a guy named brooks. this was nice because brooks has spent the past 2 years working on the project as an undergrad - designing and machining various parts for the winder to work better, and writing amazing spreadsheets to facilitate programming before a wind, and analysis after. this was actually good and bad: brooks knew everything there was to know, but he was also the only person who knew what needed to be known. now the kicker - brooks was scheduled to leave for washington state at the end of spring term. this gave me all of about 8 weeks to learn EVERYTHING.
well, the term is over and brooks is gone. i think i may have learned the essentials, but im certainly not as well versed as i wish i was. the good news is that ive still got brooks' phone number and email address, so i can call if i get in a bind. with summer term in full swing, i've been trying to get close to 40 hrs a week working in the lab. hopefully we'll know soon if we can have as much nano-nickel as we want, and maybe i can get trained on the SEM. after those things happen, the actual research will start moving forward pretty quickly.
speaking of summer term, wes recently came to town to start college. after a brief stint on dining plus, he opted to take a less luxurious dining plan where he only gets ~40 bucks a week and is expected to eat at home more often. this was somewhat dissappointing to me because that means i dont get to mooch as much. anyways, he has come over to hang out and do laundry on several occasions already (and of course to dishes and/or housework too :)
and now, the most amazing news to take place since my last post - ive got HOMEBREW!!!!! the unenlightened probably have no idea what im talking about or why it is cool. allow me to explain: hombrew is a user created "channel" that can be installed on the nintendo wii. this channel can run and execute user created code, such as EMULATORS!!!!! if you still dont get it, i'll just cut to the chase: i can run ROMs on the wii. this is much cooler than running ROMs on a computer because you can still use the wii-mote, so the old school games are console style awesome!! now you're prolly thinking, "gee thats a lot of effort to do what the wii does anyways" but thats where youre wrong. the wii plays old games IF nintendo has released them for the virtual console, and IF you PAY for them. homebrew fixes both of these issues because ROMs are free, and you dont have to wait for them to be 'released' or whatever...you just download whatever ones you want!! huge shout out to KC Kern for figuring out the difficult part, and doing the entire installation for me.
winter semester, 2009
friday, may 8, 2009
seeing as far too much time has passed to allow a simple chronology of the events that spanned the past 4 months, i will try to hit the highlights...winter coursework...being the second semester of my senior year, you can imagine that everything was pretty intense. below you'll find a short description of each class (with my opinions mixed in), and my final grade.
ME 476 (capstone) - this is the infamous 'integrated product design' class. the idea is that companies buy in so that a team of senior engineers can work on their project. its swell because the projects are real, and there is no "right" answer sitting in a solution manual somewhere. unfortunately, "real" also brings inadvertent negative consequences...some of these might include working with people that drive you crazy, and realizing that what you're trying to accomplish is impossible. naturally, the capstone propaganda does a good job of ignoring the existence of the negative side which creates an inflated view of the class. as it turns out, my team was among the 50%-70% that had marginal (at best) results. the sad thing is that even though i learned a ton about design and put lots of work into it, the failing nature of the project meant that i got a 'B' in the class instead of an 'A-'
ME 437 (kinematics) - as you might have guessed, kinematics considers the relative motion of linkages and such. this was a GREAT class. the teacher (dr. b jensen) was very good, and very well prepared. the course was well organized, the material was captivating, the homework was appropriate, the tests were good measures of learning, and there was a group project in liu of a final. doesnt get much better than that. the project my group decided to build was a table-top backhoe similar to those ones that used to be in playgrounds...except instead of scooping sand, our table-top version was designed to scoop candy. i got an 'A-'.
ME 501 (plasticity and fracture) - i was a bit skiddish about taking this class for several reasons - its a graduate course, and none of my undergraduate study buddies were taking it. i decided to take it because other technical electives were not my cup-o-tea (such as advanced thermo or another fluids class from gorgamell...those were the classes dallin and bryce took. garrett took more CAD and programming classes). anyhow, i took the class because i am interested in materials and fracture mechanics, but also because it was being taught by dr. nelson. i had him for ME 282 (manufacturing processes) long long ago, and remember him being a good teacher thats pretty laid back. at the graduate level, that still held true...although the material was much harder, and he seemed even more laid back. we had 2 "quizes" and 4 or 5 homework assignments the whole semester along with a group project. admittedly, the group project was a little over my head. there were 9 people in the class which the teacher divided into 3 project groups. my group was assigned to oberve deformation mechanisms in magnesium (specifically MgAZ31). long story short, the hexagonal close pack crystal structure coupled with the grain reorientation that takes place during rollilng....it doesnt deform much before breaking. i got a 'B' in the class.
MFG 202 (history of creativity) - this was the second installment of my civilization credit, which means that despite the course title, it was actually more of a history of the world with an emphasis on creativity of leaders, scientists, and artists. this half covered the year 1500 AD through the present. its a very interesting class, and i feel like a much more rounded individual. dr. strong is a good lecturer and made the otherwise dry and boring topic of history rather interesting. i was a little bitter that TA review sessions ceased to exists after the 1st exam was over. my creative project was another claymation, and i earned a perfect score (just like last semester). that might not seem like a big deal, but i'll tell you...one of the TA's once said, "forget about getting a perfect score on the project - you would pretty much have to solve world hunger". yep...my project (this semester AND last) is just that good =) I got an 'A-' in the class.
SFL 210 (child development) - i took this class in order to fulfil my social science elective to fulfil the university GE requirements, but also because i really wanted to know what was going on deep inside evee's head. i would have taken this a semester or two ago, but i had schedule conflicts and/or i wasnt able to get into the section being taught by L. Nelson (i wanted him because ratemyprofessor.com sang his praises to the moon and back again). anyways, i took the class and was not dissappointed. he is an incredible lecturer, and really did a good job of explaining what reasearch findings really meant. the class had 3 midterms and a final (100 questions MC), and 3 papers. i did well on all the exams, and pretty good on the first 2 papers. the 3rd paper i wrote in about a day an a half, but did decently well on. my final grade was a 'B+'
EXCS 116 (bowling) - my veteran readers are probably thinking, "didnt you take that last semester?" the answer is YES! i liked it so much that i took it again. only difference is that this time me and bryce convinced dallin and garrett to get onboard as well. the teacher was a tongan guy that was fairly cool, but rather unyeilding at times as well. we didnt have regular bowling near as much as last semester plus we had to keep track of our spares and strikes and stuff. it was still way fun. my semester high score was 184 and of course, i got an 'A' in the class.
graduation...at long last, i completed the requirements for my bachelor of science in mechanical engineering. it took me 5 years. in addition to the embossed piece of paper declaring my triumph, family members from far and wide came to visit and share in the celebration. specifically, almost all of elizabeth's immediate family drove up from AZ - including her sister and her whole family. that was cool because jacob&amanda and their kids (tessa and jake II) stayed here at our place. i think evee really enjoyed the play-mates. if we woulda had more free-time, me and jacob would have played a lot more video games. in addition to elizabeth's family, my mom and dad flew out from TX. they had planned to borrow peter's car, but ended up using our neon.
anyways....there were 2 planned ceremonial events: the commencement and the convocation. the commencement was at the marriott center and ALL of the graduates were invited to come and sit. after a wonderful lunch at applebee's (courtesy of elizabeth's parents) libby and both our parents were the only ones to come to commencement and they sat almost exactly opposite me...it took a good 5 minutes on the cell phone to find each other. it was somewhat emotional for me when president samuelson was at the pulpit with the deans from each department standing while having a scripted conversation with the dean of students. something along the lines of, "these students have completed the requirements to graduate, and it is proposed that we grant unto them their degrees" "per the recommendation, and providing that you meet the requirements set forth by your respective departments, we hereby bestow each of you your respective degree". the next day (friday) was the convocation...all the students in the school of engineering met in the smith field house where there were some talks and whatnot followed by the walk where they call your name and you walk across the stage and get a blank piece of paper while smiling and shaking hands with some important guy. when it came my turn i arranged for them to announce me as "Tommy Hyatt". i may have been the only one that didnt use a full legal name compete with middle name. it was a very cool feeling.
after the ceremony, we took some pictures and went over to the clyde building where there was a brunchy thing. shortly after that, everybody went over to fred's HOA's clubhouse in springville. there was some swimming and playing outside at the playground, and food...it was very fun. i dont remember if we played card games that same night or on saturday. what was cool saturday early afternoon, jacob and amanda took me and libby out to olive garden. it was fun to just hang out without our kids screaming and running amuck.
before i get too far ahead of myself, i must mention the senior party that took place at byu a few weeks before the end of the semester. basically you show up, and get free food, free bowling, raffel prizes, and a sweet show put on by the BYU performing group called "living ledgends". it was very very fun. i was one of the lucky few to win something at the raffel...a tool kit! of course libby said that was the one raffel prize i didnt need, but i was way stoked.
job prospects (or lack thereof)...now that i finally had my degree, i could do one of three things: get a job, go to more school, or loaf about the house without any plans to speak of. i wanted to get a job because then i would have way more money, and more money means more cool stuff! unfortunately, the economy has made the job market (even for engineers) considerably thinner. i thought, "no sweat, i can just get a job with AL". as it turns out, they were unable to make me an offer because a hiring freeze was instituted. this was bad news for me because i was so certain i would get a good offer from AL, that i had not been terribly ambitious about getting interviews and so forth. i did have one remaining glimmer of hope to be employed by a company called "navair". i had been invited to visit the base in the middle of the southern california desert, and i had high hopes. the site visit went well, and was a bit more comfortable for me because there was another student from the BYU ME department visiting the same hiring manager the same day. we even had the same flight in and so forth. anyways, by the end of the day i was REALLY hoping i would get an offer to work there. the city was small, but had all the nessesities and then some. additionally, the job would be perfect for me. immediately following the site visit, i flew to dallas for the ASME competition (see below for more details). after the ASME deal, i came back to provo and took my last few finals in order to complete my undergraduate degree. just days after finishing finals, the whole graduation thing began (see above for more details). throughout the graduation festivites, i was walking on pins and needles because i did not know if i would have a job.
this seems like a good point to stop and insert another important piece of the puzzle: my veteran readers will recall that i applied to grad school during the fall. i recieved notice of accpetance to ASU, and from BYU...but acceptance is nothing without funding, especially since graduate tuition is more expensive than undergraduate. i had spoken to at least half of the faculty members in the ME department about their research activites and/or potential need for additional grad students. everywhere i went, the story was the same: "im doing some really interesting reasearch, and i'd love to have you on board...but i dont have enough funding to pay you". despite the minor victory i had felt by being accepted, i thought that grad school was out. then, out of the clear blue, during the last week of classes, i got a short email from a professor i had never met before that read something like this, "Tom, Are you still interested in an MS at BYU? I have some money for an RA position, and would like to talk with you if you have any interest." after retrieving my jaw from the floor, i immediately went to speak with dr. fullwood in his office. turns out that he is doing carbon fiber winding research, and the undergraduate RA he had was going to grad school in washington. that meant that i had a soft offer for 100% tuition payment plus 11.5k living stipend payment to go to grad school at BYU. if i took the offer, dr. fullwood would want me to start research and graduate coursework right away (ie spring term).
now back to the pins and needles. i wanted a job, but still did not have an offer. i could go to grad school, but needed to make a commitment. shortly after everybody left town after graduation, i found out from the hiring manager at navair that he had 3 positions available, and i was his 4th favorite interviewee. that meant that if anyone declined their offer, or if he got permission to hire a 4th person, i would be getting an offer. at this point, i had 2 options - sit on my duff and hope, or accept the offer to attend grad school. if i sat on my duff, there was the possibility that it would take 3 months before i found out that i did not actually have a job, at which point i would be completely screwed. given all of this information, i delayed responding to my grad school offer until the first day of spring classes. seeing as i still had not recieved an offer from navair, i decided to take the safe bet - grad school. from that instant, i felt better. you see, i had been a complete wreck for almost a whole week. i had been irritable, nervous, had no appetite, etc.... deciding to attend grad school felt very very good.
assorted cool stuff... now that i have skimmed over most of the significant events, i'll share some snipets of unrelated interesting stuff:
fixed the latch mechanism on sadie - at some point during finals week, perhaps shortly after my partents got into town, the latch on the driver side of our neon stopped being able to be unlocked by a key from the outside. this was probably hasslesome for my parents who borrowed the neon, but i was really put out that it would fail so randomly. after a short consultation with alan (at fairauto), i decided to try to fix it myself (if i had paid for it to be fixed, it probably would have been $60 + ). i looked online for a guide about taking apart a neon car door, and tore into it. one odd tool i needed was a torx bit in order to undo one of 2 screws holding the panel on. luckliy for me, the tool kit i won at the raffel had the torx bit i needed! after some difficulty, i decided to take apart the passenger side door so i would know what it supposed to be like on the inside. i eventually realized that there was a clip that had become undone. after reclipping the thingy back, it worked fine.
got a new computer monitor - i wasnt actually planning on getting a new monitor (as you might know, my old monitor was a 20" LCD screen, which was more than adequate!). what sparked my interest in a new monitor was when my dad called asking about certain monitor specs because he was looking on newegg.com to buy a new monitor for his dad. while i was not terribly well informed so far as the meaning and importance of most of the specifications, i was happy to hop onto newegg and see what i could see. after a few minutes, i found a 22" widescreen LCD monitor for $150....HOLY COW!!!! i recommended to my dad that he get the 22" acer that i found. later i convinced elizabeth that it was a good idea for me to get one :D i suppose it ended up counting as my graduation present.
completed N - i would be willing to bet that precious few of those reading this has EVER heard of the game called "N". http://www.thewayoftheninja.org/n.html go there, download the game, and play. there are 5 levels per episode, and 100 episodes. if you're good at math, you now know that there are 500 levels. as you can imagine, some are VERY VERY difficult. by the middle of winter semester, i had beat 494 levels. unfortunately for me, my computer decided to lose my progress. i was rather put out, but undeterred and decided to start over. the second time through was much faster because i had already gotten good at it. about a week ago, i finished the 500th level and ascended to the highest rank of ninja awesomeness.
ASME competition - i think it was sometime in march when i got a call from peter (who is involved in the leadership of the BYU chapter of ASME). basically there is a student competition every year that has a few different categories and prized money pulled from a pool of money created by dues being paid by life members who dont have to pay dues. the BYU chapter was preparing to go to the regieonal competition in arlington, and needed a person to compete in the oral technical presentation category. the BYU chapter knows that all seniors in the ME department have to take the capstone design class, and every capstone team has to prepare technical oral presentations. they therefore wanted different teams to present to them so they could pick somebody to go to the competition with them. unfortunately, middle of winter semester is obscenely busy for most seniors. in order to "encourage" people to compete, BYU ASME offered $100 for showing up. even with that, only 3 people had signed up. the day before the local mini presentation contest, peter called me and asked me to show up and support. i figured i could go for a free $100, so i went. the next day i found out that i had recieved 1st place, and was now committed to become an official ASME member and travel with the team to arlington during april. the trip was scheduled for the day after my site visit to navair in california, so i arranged to fly directly from california to texas. as it turns out, the added hassle to allow the direct flight did not make me arrive any earlier, plus it screwed my return flight (i'll get to that part later). anyways, there was inclement weather at DFW, so they had us in a holding pattern until it was safe to land. once it was safe to land, we only had enough fuel for one approach, and if we missed the approach (due to windy conditions or whatever), we'd be in sad shape. that meant that they redirected us to OKC where we refueled, and then flew back over to DFW.
so...finally, after making special arrangements to get there a little bit closer to on time, i got there very late. an hour after landing, dr. chase and greg arrived at the airport to pick me up in the rented minivan. that evening at the competition, peter's robot team had some hardware failure in the middle of their event, so they tied for dead last. the next day (saturday), was the oral competition. that night at the hotel i stayed up until ~1:30am tweaking my slides and stuff. btw...they got 2 hotel rooms to go between 6 students and the faculty advisor - i thought that was a little odd, but whatev. also, dr. chase snores REALLY REALLY LOUD. the next day i put on my suit, and went with the guys to the university of texas at arlington campus (where the competition was being held), and found out that there were 14 teams with an oral competitor (myself being one of them). each presentation is supposed to be 15 mins + up to 5 mins of Q&A. there would be 2 rooms, each of which would host 7 presentations. the top 2 from each room would present again in a run-off. i was selected as one of the 2 from my prelim group, so i had to present a second time later in the day. at the run-off, i was the last person to go. at the awards ceremony that night, i found out that i had earned 1st place which included a $1000 cash prize and a all expense paid trip to the national competition at disneyworld. crazy, eh?
the lame part about the ASME competition was that because i flew directly from LAX to DFW, the round trip ticket that had been purchased for me no longer applied. the next best thing BYU could do for me was buy a ticket on frontier for monday morning. so on sunday, when everyone else got on a plane to fly back to salt lake, i could only hope that frontier airlines would let me fly out early. turns out frontier is very anal when it comes to customer service. they only allow standby if you already missed a flight, which meant that the only way i could go home before monday was if i paid $150 change fee. whats even more retarded is that even if someone didnt make it to their flight (thus making for empty seats), they wouldnt even let me pay to sit in that empty seat. in their ~system~ the seat would not be released until the plane was already in the air. long story short, i slept in the DFW airport on sunday night because frontier airlines policy is full of crap. thankfully, DFW airport has nice people working there, and they arranged for me to use a camping cot, pillow, and blanket.
elizabeth is pregnant! - as of today, elizabeth is approximately 11 weeks along. we had our first appointment this past week, and heard our second child's heart beating. she has been very very very sickwith morning sickness (that pretty much lasts all day). hopefully the morning sickness is done soon. some of you are wondering how bad/long the morning sickness was when libby was pregnant with evee: she was arguably more sick, and the morning sickness tapered off during her 16th week. lucky for us, libby hasnt need to go to the hospital to get IV fluids at all (like she did last time).
laptop repair - you might remember from last time that i was no longer recieving work to do from AL. seeing as i havent heard from them in months, i assume that i am probably fired or laid off, but i dont know for sure. along with that uncertainty is what i should do with the company laptop that is still in my possesion. until i hear otherwise, im happy to keep using it. unfortunately, the DC-in jack stopped working a week or so ago, and shortly there after, the pitiful battery died. that combination of events meant that i was now the proud posessor of a large and expensive paper weight. i talked to a buddy of mine who repairs computers at the BYU computer store, and he told me that a soldered connection had failed AND that they dont do that repair because they cant warentee the work. he did tell me what needed to be done though, so i went to peter's apartment, and we tore the laptop to pieces (very gently). after every possible screw had been removed, and the screen, keyboard, motherboard, chasis, etc were on different parts of the table, we started soldering the 3 suspicious connections. we then proceeded to put the screws back along with the parts. when we were done, the power cord worked perfectly. a funny side effect of taking everything apart and putting it all back together was that the keyboard and mouse take a minute before they start doing everything right. that might have been because we had 2 extra screws when we were done :-)
exams, christmas, new year, and then some
monday, january 12, 2009
as you can imagine, late november and early december were very busy for school. we essentially halted all progress on my capstone project in order to prepare a fancy report and impressive seeming presentation. my not-so-good fluids teacher had a cow when me bryce and dallin submitted our last lab write-up. my engines semester project ended up being a big improvement to the spreadsheet model that we wrote earlier for the class. i got a perfect score on my civilization semester project. i failed my controls final.
the week after thanksgiving, elizabeth and evee took a week of vacation in arizona. elizabeth wanted to be there for the baptism of 2 of her little sisters. while she was gone, i got the carpets cleaned. in order to reach the minimum fee, the guy had to clean the halls and stairs in addition to the living room. as you might know already, my stairs have an ingenious plastic cover that protects most of each step. i ended up tearing off the old one so the guy could clean the stairs. when he was done, i had peter come over and help me install a new piece of plastic. the new plastic and wood hold-downs are way nicer than before. plus the carpet is clean!
on the work front there was some sort of reorganization that eliminated the title "reliability center" and 2 or 3 positions. for the western zone, 2 of the eliminated positions were the people i worked with the most. so, i wasnt fired, but i didnt have anyone giving me work to do either. long story short, i am technically employed, but not working.
christmas was fun. despite a deep yearning on elizabeths part to spend christmas with her family, i convinced her to stay here in provo. evee got the mother-load when it comes to presents. toys, clothes, books, money, etc...you name it. elizabeth and i didnt do too bad either - we got guitar hero world tour for each other, i got ear-rings and a kitchen timer for libby, and libby bought me a nice little socket set.
for new years, bryce and annie helped organize a small party at my place. we played video games and catch phrase until about 11:45, watched the ball drop, and then played more games. in addition to bryce and annie, mike and lisa (from bryce and annie's ward) came over, and so did my brother peter. peter also brought a game called "wiz-war" that some people played for a bit while me and bryce played mario kart.
as promised, i also finished applying to grad school. i took the GRE on the saturday of reading days (the same time as bryce). i got 760 on the math, 530 on the vocab, and 4 on writing. those scores plus an acceptable GPA mean that ive got a fighting chance of getting into grad school. the remaining question will be whether or not i choose to take a job, or attend grad school. i suspect that by mid-march i'll be ready to lean one way or the other.
our 3 year anniversary was on december 30th. all 3 of us went to denny's for breakfast, and then kinda loafed about at home until mid afternoon. libby got me 3 pairs of vise-grips, and i got libby a really nice pair of sapphire ear-rings. as evening approached, we got bryce and annie to come over and baby-sit evee while we went to dinner and a movie. it was a REALLY fun date. we saw the new 'twilight' movie (mostly because libby has read the entire series multiple times), and then we shared an appeatizer, entree, and dessert at applebees (we had a gift card from her parents).
while waiting for school to start, i realized that elizabeth could use a much better jewlery storage solution than she was using (a few small cardboard boxes). after observing what could be purchased, i decided that i could build something far superior, and set out to home depot. check out the jewlery box page for more pictures and info.
just yesterday evee turned 1 year old. we had her party on saturday, and boy was it a busy saturday! it started with a 7am elders quorem committee meeting followed by a 10am primary activity - the pancake breakfast. incidentally, this is the activity we missed a year ago because elizabeth was in the hospital having recently given birth to evee. when the activity was over, bryce and annie came to help with party preparation. bryce finished the "bryce approved party playlist" that he started several months ago, and annie helped libby frost evee's cake. i spent most of this time tidy-ing things up, and playing the N-game (speaking of which, during the break from school, i have beat EVERY level except 85-89. i have unlocked 9 new ninja flavors. i am awesome!). when the playlist was done, me and bryce played halo for a bit. i creamed him on the first round, but lost pretty consistently after that. when the cake was done, we all played mario kart until the party guest's showed up. for more pictures and info about the party, check out the baby page.