Semester Update

For the multitude of you out there who are dying of curiosity about what my semester exactly entails, I've decided to lay out my classes below. Feel free to exact pity upon me at any time...

Class 1: Mechanical Design (3 Units) - I'm actually going to enjoy this class because it continues off of stuff I learned Sophomore year, tackling basic force loads, moment arms, and stability. I have the same teacher who taught me this stuff Sophomore year, which will only make it that much more enjoyable! I'm hoping that amidst the work, this will turn out to be an easy class.

Class 2: Mechanical Engineering Problems (3 Units) - This is a fancy title for a class that's primarily geared towards applying complicated mathematics to computer programs (essentially MATLAB). I have a feeling this class will be difficult, especially since my MATLAB experience is rather limited. At least the professor is reminiscent of Robin Williams in "Good Will Hunting".

Class 3: Linear Control Systems I (3 Units) - The fact that there's a Linear Control Systems II scares me. I've heard this class is hard and I am not ready to find out first hand. I still am uncertain what the class is exactly about, but it does seem to build off of the differential equations I despised in the past. Anyone want to take this class for me?

Class 4: Computer-Aided Design of Mechanical Systems (3 Units) - Another fancy title for what really should say "Design With Solidworks". This class basically teaches how to use the design program Solidworks to build stuff. What this means is another easy class where I can possibly make another dancing man (and erase another important file).

Class 5: Engineering Economy (3 Units) - Yes, I'm taking an Econ course cleverly disguised as an Engineering course. This class will be annoying, but easy. I guess the ease of economics causes me to get annoyed easily by the tediousness of the lectures and discussion sections. Yes, I do know what a fixed cost and a variable cost are, so lets not spend a half-hour on it....

Class 6: Experimental Engineering (3 Units) - This is my Senior design project course where I have to design, build and test some system or part. This is what will take up all of my time this semester and hopefully I can get through it without killing myself. For some reason the words, "Senior Design Project" strike me with great fear.

Class 7: Concert Choir (1 Unit) - Once again I have managed to fit choir into my schedule to help me keep my sanity. It's going to be an interesting semester because most of the choir is new (again) including the conductor. So we'll see how things go.

In case you've been keeping track, yes I am taking 7 classes this semester (6 of them Engineering) and 19 Units. The units are sort of deceptive because they change the weight of them for engineers so we can take more classes. In essence, it's like taking 25 Units, but who's really counting? So it is going to be an interesting semester, but hopefully I will not only live through it, but also have some fun along the way. As for now though, I should probably get some work done. I'm still generating some top 10 lists to add so those will probably come next. Until then.... Vaya con Dios!

Back to School Update

I'll make this short because it is late and I do have a 9am discussion tomorrow on Engineering Economy. I'm back at USC and am slowly adjusting back to college life, though it hasn't been fun. I got to campus sort of late and spent my first few days not only running around campus going to classes, but also adding classes, signing waivers, buying stuff, etc... Plus it wasn't until yesterday that I got my internet to work. I spent several hours on the phone with the computer technician from my dad's office troubleshooting my computer, until finally I removed the firewire card I installed over the summer and deleted some keys from the registry to get it going. But I am back online (which will be helpful since all of my classes require that I use my computer) and will be able to provide more posts full of witty remarks and interesting stories. I have some top 10 lists that I thought up during work that I want to post, so I will have some entertaining things soon. But those will have to wait as I have to head to bed now!

End of the Summer

Well it's finally here. The end of summer sneaked up on me and now I have to start getting ready to begin classes on Monday. Today is my last day of work; which has consisted of me cleaning up both my desk and my desktop. All this work is really cutting into my web browsing time!

Through some sort of miscalculation on my part, I thought I had an extra week of summer and that classes didn't start until the 30th. Fortunately my roommate called, as he was driving through town last Friday, and told me otherwise. The sudden loss of a week will really take its toll on me since I thought I had more time to relax and enjoy some last few breaths of freedom. But going back to school won't be all that bad. Well the classes will be bad (19 units this semester!). Going back though will allow me to go dancing again (school permiting), see some really great friends again, and even signifies the beginning of the football season! So I take the good with the bad, the strikes with the gutters (still love that analogy), and the a-pexes with the b-pexes (you wouldn't get it).

Going back to school also means that I will be online more than I was during the summer. I don't think that one 2-hour session every other week really counts as 'online time'. Hopefully I will be able to be more up-to-date with this log with some rather cool items, but all that depends on how busy I get. The good news is that I got the broken parts on my computer replaced (4 days before the warranty expired), so now my computer almost feels like new. Now I just need to find a way to get the edited material from our movie off my computer so it can run faster and then I'm set.

Our movie never got finished, though we really tried to complete it. What killed us in the end was that we got to a stopping point where we needed to rely on other people for cameos. However, coordinating schedules between more than just 2 people proved to be too much of a challenge. Also, the fact that of the past 4 weekends I was gone for 3 of them (I think Becca's been gone for all of them) doesn't help matters much either. We're still filming stuff and trying to get as much done as possible before I have to leave, but we've decided to hold off until winter break. Hopefully by then we can get the editting to work for us and actually piece this movie together. And hopefully we'll have better luck in trying to assemble an ensemble for our remaining scenes. Otherwise we're going to have to do a lot of rewriting (which we don't really want to do).

I'm supposed to have one final meeting shortly to sort of sum up my summer so I'll leave you at that, but I will soon be back at school, back online, and hopefully back with more ridiculous updates of my ever-continous wacky life.

Office Anecdote

In our single-toilet employee bathroom at work, there's a small storage bin about toiletseat height with drawers placed between the toilet and sink. I had always assumed that the drawers were empty and that it was used as a small table for company newsletters to be placed upon so that the other employees could know what was going on in the company. You know that sort of:

"Well, time to bone up on the company mission statement."
"Conference call Bob?"
"No, gotta take a dump."

I should start referring to going to the bathroom as 'boning up on my mission statement' from now on. Anyway, the purpose of this story (if I ever get to it) is that one day I went in to 'bone up on my mission statement' and noticed one of the drawers slightly ajar. What caught my eye was not the fact that it was open but in fact that it had stuff in it. My initial reaction was that they were probably filled with archived employee newsletters for those extra long mission statement sessions. However, I saw something that looked familiar in the print that was slightly peeking out. I opened the drawer further and found, to my surprise, that it was completely full of Terry Pratchett books! What had caught my eye was The Color of Magic, one of the few I've read. This is quite a surprise and gives me a whole new perspective on my "mission statement" time.

I might just spend a little longer in the bathroom these last few weeks. Hopefully the other employees won't be distracted too much by my uncontrollable laughter. In fact, I have some boning up to do myself....

Brilliant or Ridiculous?

Ireland Is Lost Island of Atlantis, Says Scientist

Quick Hits

I've been wanting to update for a while and now finally have the time (and effort) to do so. Here are some of the top stories from this past week:

Weekend Adventure: Went to Denver this past weekend for a wedding and had a fun time with the family. We went to the Brown Palace (got 5 free desserts thanks to Paul), saw the Broncos train, and even took the Coors beer tour. On the tour, your hand gets stamped if you're old enough to drink, which all of us in our group were except for Patrick. So after my hand is stamped, he presses the back of his hand to mine, not expecting much ink to rub off. Not only did it rub off onto his hand, but he was distracted by a phone call and wasn't paying attention to the lady who put on a wristband for him. The wristbands are used for them to gage how many free beers we drink at the end of the tour (up to 3). So needless to say, my 19-year old brother had three beers at the tour's end and my parents... didn't really care. These are the sort of hijinx that we Burzlaff's get ourselves into.

Tuesday Treat: As I was going back to work after lunch on Tuesday, my car died on me. It started fine, I pulled out of the parking lot and suddenly it died. I waited about an hour inside my car in the hot summer sun until the tow truck came. That was pretty crummy, but it could have been worse: it could have happened on the way to/from LAX or in Yosemite (again). What's worse is that as of yesterday the mechanics didn't know what the problem was. Granted they're down one mechanic and had lots of other cars to look at, but the more time that goes by without them knowing what's wrong, the more I worry it's going to cost. Hopefully I'll find out this afternoon what's wrong, and hopefully it's not too bad....

Everything Else in Between: After a rather stellar, fun weekend, it's been sort of a blah week. Aside from the car fiasco, no one is home this week, giving me more chores to do everyday plus lavishing attention on Callie (she gets depressed so easily when people leave). There was no food in the kitchen (couldn't even make Macs & Cheese last night) and work's been sort of slow this week. My right contact was really bothering me earlier in the week and my stomach's out of whack a bit. All this with other disheartening news has been too much of a reality check for my last summer at home. Life's like they say in "The Big Lebowski": strikes and gutters.

Extra: Something I stumbled across. Try "WMD", "secret", "die", "magic trick", and others. Be persistent because sometimes it doesn't register the first couple of times. Worth wasting 10 minutes of your day on.

That's it for this week's edition, tune in again next week!