January 16, 2003
A New Semester. Woo.
Thursday, January 16, 2003
I don't know what sort of deep-seated insecurities make me grumpy and irritable (and nervous) around the beginning of the semester. I just always have this Sword of Damocles feeling, and no matter how many semesters I start (and GOD it's been too many!) it still happens.
Doesn't help that I overslept for class on Tuesday.
So today, I went to class, and had an appointment with my academic adviser to dot all my I's and cross my T's so I can graduate this spring.
Let me reiterate.
SO I CAN FINALLY FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT'S HOLY GRADUATE THIS SPRING.
Insert many happy expletives now.
So I sit down with Dr. Seath, who is basically the only professor on the faculty who does nothing but Aerospace Engineering courses. I've just walked out of his Aerospace Vehicle Design II class, and I've taken two other classes from me, so he knows me pretty well.
(By that I mean he could probably pick me out of a lineup and put a name on my face. : )
He and I start going through my degree plan, which strangely is something I've never done before. The degree plan is basically a roadmap of what classes you need to take in order to BE FINISHED. See, I've been operating on a sort of platonic ideal of which classes I've taken (many transfer classes from UT Austin), but I hadn't actually gotten that plan vetted by the University.
I realized this last night after having a nightmare about forgetting I hadn't taken a course, and that would prevent me from graduating on time. Let me tell you...that skeeved me out.
So anyhow, I've got this idea of what classes I need to take. I know I need to take Design II, Chemistry II, and a "technical elective". So my prof and I start going through my transcript, matching up the transfer classes to the required class, and making sure I had all my ducks in a row.
As it turns out, I didn't. First, this was a good thing. He said "Hmmm...you've got a couple extra semesters of physics over here, why don't we use those for your Chemistry II credit." Uh, OK. You've talked me into it. I was dreading learning stoichiometry again. "Oh yeah, and this fluid mechanics class you retook here at UTA, we'll take the UT Austin instance of that class and stick it here for your tech elective." Now, I'm thinkin' SWEET! Only three hours this semester! Life is good!
Then the other shoe drops. He says "Hey, what did you take for your materials science class? And how about this measurements class?"
Me: "Uhhh, I know I took mat sci...where is it?"
Couldn't find it. We looked on the computer, only to find that the class I'd thought had transferred, hadn't.
Three hours back on the schedule.
Him: "What about measurements lab?"
Me: "Well, that was sort of subsumed in three other classes..."
Him: "...."
Me: *cower*
Him: "Well, it's offered this semester."
Me: "But, I don't want to take that class."
Him: "Want to graduate?"
Me: *crying miserably* "Yes, yes, for the love of GOD, Javert, let me out of this prison!"
Him: "Well then."
OK, so that's the way it played out in my head. In real life, it wasn't nearly that funny.
So I didn't have at all the schedule I wanted. That's bad. But I do have all the classes I need to graduate. That's good. But I have to take two lower-division aero classes, which are designed to weed people out. That's bad. But I get to stop going to school in three months.
That's good.
Jane, stop this crazy thing!
Posted by Lee at 01:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 09, 2002
Titanium is Neat
Monday, September 9, 2002
I'm getting ready to graduate this Spring. That makes me pretty happy, as you might imagine! Of course, one of the most important issues a graduating senior deals with is, "What kind of class ring do I want?"
Well, I don't like any of the options at the bookstore, so I've designed my own.
I've got some requests into some custom titanium ring fabricators who are going to engrave my logo on one of their bands. This one looks the most like what I want, although I'll need a broader band to get my logo on there. It may be that these guys will be able to anodize the UTA logo in red and blue, which would be SUPER cool.
Aren't I crafty?
Posted by Lee at 01:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 19, 2002
When I was Just A Boy...
Wednesday, June 19, 2002
I found a folder full of my elementary schoolwork in the garage this afternoon. Several of the kids, I remember. The last kid in the first row was my arch-nemesis, David Thorkildsen. He beat me two years in a row in the Indian Guides soap-box derby on North Park Hill. I remember giving him a toy I really wanted for his birthday...that made me kinda mad too. : ) I'm the second to the last kid on the third row. Immediately to my left is Andy Van Milligan, my best friend. With his little brother Denny, we'd play Battle of the Planets on their swingset. Andy and I switched off being Mark and Jason, but we always made Denny be Tiny or Keyop. He never wanted to be Princess. Go figure.
There was this guy I knew, name of Geoff Hooker. He went to the school across town. He had a relative, I think maybe a grandma or an aunt, named Ruth Hooker. She gave me an autographed book she'd written, called Kennequahair. It was an interesting post-apocalyptic sci-fi story about several children who found a safe valley to start a new life in. I've still got the book somewhere. Geoff and I used to play a game called "Catch-the-Cat Football". He and I liked it. The cat didn't.
Okay, and here we are in Second Grade. I'm the first kid on the third row. Unfortunately, I don't remember a lot of these kids' names, and the back of the picture wasn't labeled. I'm pretty sure the second to the last kid on the second row is Andy.
I had a big crush on Miss Weimer.
Posted by Lee at 01:29 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 08, 2002
New Job!
Friday, February 8, 2002
Wow. It's been quite a couple of weeks! Since I last wrote lo these many moons ago, I've landed a research assistant (read: flunky) position with one of my professors here at UTA, Dr. Shiv Joshi. Several grad students and a couple of us undergraduates are going to be building two machines. One is a nanopulse titanium-sapphire laser machining system. This device will be used to fabricate embossing blanks used to mass-produce MEMS, or micro-electro-mechanical systems. Said embossing blanks are going to be put into the second machine, which will actually press the parts out of some weird polymer goop.
This is real science-fiction stuff. The plan is to mass produce tiny tiny little contraptions that can be injected into a patient, travel through their bloodstream to the area of interest, and transmit data collected from on-board sensor systems to a console outside the patient. The devices will then be simply excreted like any other waste product, and, well, flushed. Current MEMS are very expensive, and are not practical for use where retrieval would be complicated (or, in the case of medical applications, messy).
So this is cool stuff. Click here to see a bunch of links I'm using to get up to speed on this stuff. Once we get our lab set up, I'll provide a link to the project web page.
I'm a bit excited about this. Can you tell?
Posted by Lee at 01:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 11, 2001
Admiral Yamamoto
Thursday, October 11, 2001
I'm pretty excited. I found a biography of one of my personal heroes today, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto. Admiral Yamamoto commanded the Japanese navy through the Second World War, until he was (very cleverly) taken out of commission by a pair of American P-38 Lightnings. Admiral Yamamoto was the mastermind behind the Pearl Harbor attack, and was absolutely mortified that the Japanese diplomats in Washington failed to deliver the formal declaration of war to the American government.
Admiral Yamamoto to me has always personified honor. Although he did not agree with the path his country was set upon, he worked and fought brilliantly to try to accomplish the task.
In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain, I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success.
-Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, 1940
Admiral Yamamoto was a great admirer of Western culture. He believed that there was no reason for Japan and America to be enemies. Unfortunately, the Japanese Army, led by Hidekei Tojo, had greater aspirations and forced Yamamoto to choose between his beliefs, and his duty. Like General Robert E. Lee, Admiral Yamamoto subsumed himself in his duty.
Admiral Yamamoto felt a great kinship with President Abraham Lincoln. Both men were born in poverty to rise to the height of power. Yamamoto wrote:
A man of real purpose always puts his faith in himself. Sometimes, he even refuses to trust the gods. Thus he falls into error from time to time. This was true of Lincoln, but that does not detract from his greatness because a man is not a god. Making errors is part of the attractiveness of a human being; it inspires a feeling of warmth and arouses admiration and devotion. In this way Lincoln was a very human person. Without this quality, one cannot lead others. Only if people have this quality can they forgive each other's mistakes and assist each other.
I don't know if I could come up with a more concise declaration of some of my own basic principles. A wise and honorable man, and a superb warrior. Would that we had more people of his strength today.
And now for something completely different.
Posted by Lee at 01:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack