(no subject)
Summer school is over now, what a relief that is.
The course I was taking, Control System Design, covered the topic of stability and instability in various systems which undergo oscillatory input.
For example:
-A car suspension is a system of bolts, springs, washers, and other bodies of mass. The oscillatory motion is the bumpiness of the road.
-Any electrical device which contains resistors, capacitors, and inductors (which most all do). The oscillatory motion is the electrical current.
And then you have to be versatile with how you think about a spring-mass system or an electrical system.
Your body, for example, is an electrically and chemically powered spring-mass system, and has its stability and instabilities like any system.
Really, it applies to almost anything you want to apply it to; you could check the stability of your desk if you wanted to.
The final exam for the class was really rough. Even after doing all the reading, homework, and lectures, I was only able to solidly answer two of four questions. I hear some people weren't able to get any. I performed well on the homework, and the first exam in which I scored seventy out of eighty, and my grade ended up being a B+, so I'm quite satisfied with myself.
Recently I've had to do some talking with the department of engineering about my future courses. Namely, the department chair asked me if I wanted to try and graduate in the coming Spring semester. While it would certainly be a great burden to lift from myself, I think that the amount of courses I'd need to take each semester would be too overwhelming. Five classes each semester, all of them engineering, three of them with labs (each semester), AND a senior project, AND the engineer in training exam? No thanks. I'm thinking of doing something more like this:
-Fall 2010 :: 4 Classes; all core engineering classes, EIT Exam.
-Spring 2011 :: 4 classes; 1 core engineering class, 1 upper-division G.E., 1 Mech. Engineering elective, 1st semester of senior project.
-Fall 2011 :: 1+ class; 2nd semester of senior project, 1+ Mech. Engineering elective
I think it'll be best if I stick to doing it this way. I'll be able to perform more effectively and produce better grades, I won't be overwhelmed while I'm trying to prepare for the EIT or while working on my senior project, and it'll leave me the option to take more than the required 2 M.E. electives if I so choose.
There's also the possibility of some business classes during the summer.
But ya, I've got about a month to decide how I want to handle this.
What's kept me busy aside from that? Why a road trip to the state of Washington with Lyn, of course!
The trickiest bit of the trip was finding a week where Lyn, Chelsea (Lyn's best friend), and Graham (Chelsea's husband). Our first day up in Washington was really nice; we went on a sort of day-hike to a nearby park and took Chelsea's awesome dogs, Xyon and Gypsie, along with us. Afterward we went to get Graham and...well, he's an interesting fellow. This particular night we were going into Seattle to a lounge called 'Chop Suey" where we watched several "hardcore" bands play, including the main event (also Graham's favorite): Sick of it All. It was funny going, and obvious that neither myself, Lyn, nor Chelsea belonged there. We ended up just hanging out at a table in the back, doodling together, and having some drinks. A lot of the trip seemed like that though...
Graham, as Lyn told me, was a lot different before he joined the Navy. Said that a lot of this machismo behavior was most likely from being on a ship full of guys. Nothing new to me, really, but it's unfortunate that his attitude ended up putting a buzz-kill on most of the week. One night we watched some Rifftrax (basically a podcast version of mystery science theater 3000) to the movie Twilight, but the deal with it is that you have to get the Rifftrax and the movie synced so that the jokes are told at the right time. Well, Graham had put the DVD in the Television's DVD player, which they did not have a remote for, and he was too obstinate to be bothered with moving the disc about a foot in distance from the TV to the Playstation. We tried to make the sync more accurate, but from his impatience in the task it became even more out of sync. We thought about doing it again, to which he snapped at all of us saying, "No, just leave it." And so we watched the remaining hour and a half of it out of synch.
To generally put it: Graham and his attitude reminded me exactly of the kind aggressive brain-washing that Brian Dunbar would do.
I don't know what it is about myself that draws out that behavior in people like that. Is it because I'm smaller than them? Or (as Lyn postulated) am I intellectually intimidating, making them feel they couldn't relate to me? Or are they just jerks?
It wasn't until our last couple of days there that Graham mellowed out, but things were still alright overall. Lots of hiking around the area of Bremerton (where Chelsea and Graham reside, across the bay from Seattle), I enjoyed playing with the dogs a lot (they were very disciplined), and lots of hanging out.
So my summer has officially started now, I just need to make sure I make the most of my time.
Visit friends, play guitar, play guitar with friends, go to the archery range, start up an exercise routine, maybe do a bit of reading, and most definitely clean up my room.
Which I think I'll be getting to now!
There are some other musings on my mind at the moment...but I think I'll save that for an evening in the near future.
" I used to think
I used to think
There was no future left at all
I used to think
Open up, begin again
Let's go down the waterfall
Think about the good times and never the bad
Never the bad "
The course I was taking, Control System Design, covered the topic of stability and instability in various systems which undergo oscillatory input.
For example:
-A car suspension is a system of bolts, springs, washers, and other bodies of mass. The oscillatory motion is the bumpiness of the road.
-Any electrical device which contains resistors, capacitors, and inductors (which most all do). The oscillatory motion is the electrical current.
And then you have to be versatile with how you think about a spring-mass system or an electrical system.
Your body, for example, is an electrically and chemically powered spring-mass system, and has its stability and instabilities like any system.
Really, it applies to almost anything you want to apply it to; you could check the stability of your desk if you wanted to.
The final exam for the class was really rough. Even after doing all the reading, homework, and lectures, I was only able to solidly answer two of four questions. I hear some people weren't able to get any. I performed well on the homework, and the first exam in which I scored seventy out of eighty, and my grade ended up being a B+, so I'm quite satisfied with myself.
Recently I've had to do some talking with the department of engineering about my future courses. Namely, the department chair asked me if I wanted to try and graduate in the coming Spring semester. While it would certainly be a great burden to lift from myself, I think that the amount of courses I'd need to take each semester would be too overwhelming. Five classes each semester, all of them engineering, three of them with labs (each semester), AND a senior project, AND the engineer in training exam? No thanks. I'm thinking of doing something more like this:
-Fall 2010 :: 4 Classes; all core engineering classes, EIT Exam.
-Spring 2011 :: 4 classes; 1 core engineering class, 1 upper-division G.E., 1 Mech. Engineering elective, 1st semester of senior project.
-Fall 2011 :: 1+ class; 2nd semester of senior project, 1+ Mech. Engineering elective
I think it'll be best if I stick to doing it this way. I'll be able to perform more effectively and produce better grades, I won't be overwhelmed while I'm trying to prepare for the EIT or while working on my senior project, and it'll leave me the option to take more than the required 2 M.E. electives if I so choose.
There's also the possibility of some business classes during the summer.
But ya, I've got about a month to decide how I want to handle this.
What's kept me busy aside from that? Why a road trip to the state of Washington with Lyn, of course!
The trickiest bit of the trip was finding a week where Lyn, Chelsea (Lyn's best friend), and Graham (Chelsea's husband). Our first day up in Washington was really nice; we went on a sort of day-hike to a nearby park and took Chelsea's awesome dogs, Xyon and Gypsie, along with us. Afterward we went to get Graham and...well, he's an interesting fellow. This particular night we were going into Seattle to a lounge called 'Chop Suey" where we watched several "hardcore" bands play, including the main event (also Graham's favorite): Sick of it All. It was funny going, and obvious that neither myself, Lyn, nor Chelsea belonged there. We ended up just hanging out at a table in the back, doodling together, and having some drinks. A lot of the trip seemed like that though...
Graham, as Lyn told me, was a lot different before he joined the Navy. Said that a lot of this machismo behavior was most likely from being on a ship full of guys. Nothing new to me, really, but it's unfortunate that his attitude ended up putting a buzz-kill on most of the week. One night we watched some Rifftrax (basically a podcast version of mystery science theater 3000) to the movie Twilight, but the deal with it is that you have to get the Rifftrax and the movie synced so that the jokes are told at the right time. Well, Graham had put the DVD in the Television's DVD player, which they did not have a remote for, and he was too obstinate to be bothered with moving the disc about a foot in distance from the TV to the Playstation. We tried to make the sync more accurate, but from his impatience in the task it became even more out of sync. We thought about doing it again, to which he snapped at all of us saying, "No, just leave it." And so we watched the remaining hour and a half of it out of synch.
To generally put it: Graham and his attitude reminded me exactly of the kind aggressive brain-washing that Brian Dunbar would do.
I don't know what it is about myself that draws out that behavior in people like that. Is it because I'm smaller than them? Or (as Lyn postulated) am I intellectually intimidating, making them feel they couldn't relate to me? Or are they just jerks?
It wasn't until our last couple of days there that Graham mellowed out, but things were still alright overall. Lots of hiking around the area of Bremerton (where Chelsea and Graham reside, across the bay from Seattle), I enjoyed playing with the dogs a lot (they were very disciplined), and lots of hanging out.
So my summer has officially started now, I just need to make sure I make the most of my time.
Visit friends, play guitar, play guitar with friends, go to the archery range, start up an exercise routine, maybe do a bit of reading, and most definitely clean up my room.
Which I think I'll be getting to now!
There are some other musings on my mind at the moment...but I think I'll save that for an evening in the near future.
" I used to think
I used to think
There was no future left at all
I used to think
Open up, begin again
Let's go down the waterfall
Think about the good times and never the bad
Never the bad "