News From This Past Week

Hey all, it has been a while since I last posted, and even that was not much of a post. Here's a rundown of my week:

Early in the week: enough of my rocks and stuff arrived for me to start playing with it (or so I thought). Turns out the chrysocolla isn't anywhere near as gorgeous as the picture made it out to be and the amethyst is still part of a geode matrix. So, I figured that I would try to remove the amethyst from its matrix; I plug in my new dremel, put in a nice small bit, and grind for a bit. The bit snaps in half. I try another bit. This one is in an odd shape; it is bulbous with a flat plate on top. The plate works like a knife edge, but after grinding some with this bit it seems that all the diamond has come off. Hopefully that's not truly the case. I put the stuff away -- I need to purchase a different tool (a diamond cut-off wheel) for this job.

Thursday was my birthday, but it was really nothing special. In fact, it followed the template laid down by last Thursday. I again slept through the morning recitation (I'm not entirely sure there was one anyway -- there was a test on Wednesday). I slept so late that I almost slept through racquetball too; I got a full twelve hours of sleep. This week, however, I lost every game of racquetball except the very last one I played. I attribute this to lack of sleep -- not that night but

Tuesday night and Wednesday morning: I had a lab report to write (again). Yes, the lab was great fun this cycle. No, the write-up wasn't particularly hard. However, the write-up did end up being 14 pages including 4 pages of appendices and two graphs. Appendix 3 was nothing but MathType. I had a whole lot of partial derivatives and error propagation to calculate.

The best day of my week was Yesterday (Saturday): I woke up early and proctored for the physics section of the Science Olympiad. The guy in charge of that physics section just so happens to play baritone with me in the band, and he asked me to volunteer. My responsibilities included making sure the competitors could use the LoggerPro software to take data, answering questions that wouldn't give away answers, and grading the papers afterwards. Now, it's rather difficult to grade papers when there is no "right answer". The setups were different (if only very slightly), so each group might gather different data. Furthermore, some groups didn't show their work, and some data was just too good to be true. For instance, they had to calculate the mass of the SAME OBJECT two different ways, and no math appeared on the page. Nobody who showed their work got exactly the same answer for those two problems, and several groups were off by a factor of three. Those groups got full credit. One group (with no math shown) had exactly the same answer for both and I had no choice but to pick one and mark it wrong. Another group calculated both answers, but chose to use only one of their solutions for both answers. I had to mark one of those wrong too. And then there were tie breakers. For first through fifth places, there could be no ties -- but we had two groups with perfect scores, and the teams that would take fourth and fifth places both had 27 points. There were special "tie breaker" questions on each part of the competition, but these four groups each got every tie breaker question correct. After struggling for a bit we found a criteria that fit both ties, and sorted the teams out. Final result: I win a tee-shirt. Final result of the Olympiad: I haven't the slightest idea.

And then there's today: my Dad's coming through to celebrate my birthday somehow. Also, I have to do laundry. Desperately.

Weekends

The start of another week begins
Five more days 'til it ends
I might not sleep enough,
I might not work enough,
But in five more days
The weekend comes.

Alright, that's definately not my best work. I wrote it with no thought and no revisions; I just wanted to post something. Have a good week!

Well, after spending that much...

Several weeks ago, I watched Shawshank Redemption. Several days ago, I got a sudden desire to carve a chess set. I spent days searching online for rocks or gems or whatever for carving, but all my efforts were for naught. No search engine seemed to stock marble or quartz or anything else remotely usefull... until e-bay. When I entered "carving stone" into the e-bay search engine, the results (as expected) were in the thousands. Of course, very few were what I wanted. The interesting thing was the "related search" menu, which mentioned the word lapidary. I say to myself: I know that word. So, from then on all my searches included the word lapidary, and the results were stunning. I have since bought a set of 10 diamond files, a dremel, 20 diamond bits for the dremel, and a couple of large semi-precious stones off of e-bay. I suppose that means I had better try my hand at lapidary... it's a bit too late to turn back now.

I guess that means I'm a geek

Okay, so I'm walking back to my dorm from class, and I just happen to be looking nonchalantly around. Suddenly, a double take! What? No! But yes, it is... The street address of the Mandel School of Applied Social Science building is the first five terms of the Fibinacci sequence. 11235. And that was sufficient to make me stop in my tracks. I wonder what onlookers were thinking.

Until next time, carpe diem, cotidie. (Yes, I randomly looked up how to add "every day" to the end of carpe diem.)

Done

Well that's it for the lab reports! YAY! That took 6 hours yesterday and another 3 and a half today. Now just 2 tests and I'm done for the week. G'night!

Worse than Every Other Week...

...and don't let the title fool you. This week isn't worse that any other, in fact it's better in a lot of ways. The distinction "every other week" refers to the two-week cycle for physics labs. On one Wednesday at 6:30-9:30 PM I'm in the lab performing some rote activities for a grade, and then a week from that day the lab write-up is due. For those who are reading this and are not familiar with college level lab reports, here is a brief rundown: (1) my reports frequently go to ten pages. (2) Large ammounts of calculus and algebra are required to calculate obscure values and the propagated uncertainties associated with them. (3) Even though the labs are worth only 20% of the final physics grade, anyone recieving less than 60% average in the labs fails the course. Every Other Week is bad. Every Other Week I have to write a lab report.

This week I have to write two. And I have two tests. And my ENGR 145 hw due date has changed from each Friday to each Tuesday, and that means an extra assignment, not one less. And... well, that might be it.

For anyone else out there who's week might be worse than mine: let it be over soon!
For anyone who's week is better: here's to you!
For anyone who knows exactly how I feel: I'm so sorry!

star wars

For those of you who have not watched Star Wars episodes 1-6 in order, I highly recommend it. The only letdown is the severe and obvious drop in special effects technology between episodes three and four. Oh, and by the way, we just finished our Star Wars marathon... good times!

Poker

So, the upperclassmen decided to sponsor a texas-hold 'em poker tournament. Entry was free, $2000 in chips, and more than 100 people showed up (unfortunate because there were only 8 tables of 10). I was number 95, and I got in when they opened up two more tables. Knowing a bit about poker, but by no stretch of the immagination an expert, I played guardedly and folded all but the very best hands. However, I quickly got frustrated. My 'best' hands weren't as good as my opponents' hands, and the worse hands that I threw away would have won had I kept them. On about the fifteenth hand I got careless. I had an ace/six suited, and the flop paired up my six. Let's win this, I thought. Of course, I didn't. The newest player at the table (I don't know her name, and I don't think she'd ever played texas hold 'em before) had the king of clubs in her hand. There were four clubs on the table. Woulda' been nice if i'd been paying attention earlier, because you can't bluff your way out when your opponent doesn't know to try guess what's in your hand. I should have folded... But that's okay. I can be a gracious loser at the game (and I was) and then be rude and ventfull here. > )

Groundhog Day

What would you do if you were stuck in February 2 day after day for... too long? What would you do if you were so lame as to watch the movie Groundhog Day starting just before 11 o'clock PM on February second, just because you were just that lame?

Have a great Groundhog Day everybody! I hope Punxsutawney Phil sees no shadow!