Thursday, August 24, 2006

So some of my avid readers are probably wondering why its been so long since I last posted anything. I assure you its not because nothing of interest (at least to me) has happened in the last week+, nor because I have had no time to post. The reason it has been so long is the damn thing wouldn't let me sign in! It had a very friendly page asking me to type in my username and password then click "sign in" where upon it brought me back to the exact same page. I thought at first it was some sort of glitch in the website, like someone had screwed up the link or some such. Well, after a week it seems hard to believe that a glitch like that would go unnoticed by the good folk at Google. Turns out, they had upgraded their site, adding a few features (none of which I have seen yet) and such, but the upgrade required me to click a box saying I understood the new terms and conditions before it would let me post anything more. Pretty irritating.

Speaking of irritating, everyone knows how annoying it is to get those little popup windows when you're surfing the net. It annoys me so much that I go way out of my way to avoid the damn things. I use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer (which helps a LOT) I have a popup blocker running, and I have McAfee's security center running at all times. Then, just to taunt me it seems, McAfee throws up the occasional "Would you like to try our upgraded service package?" tool tip window. Because CLEARLY I like pop-up ads so much I might just try their product because it was advertised that way. LOUD NOISES!!

So classes started this week. I'm taking 5 classes this semester, all 3 credit (that’s 15 credits for the less mathematically inclined among you ;-) ) and they all meet Monday, Wednesday and Friday, with one exception for a lab class, which meets Tuesday instead of Friday. I like most of my professors. I start at 8:00 AM (which feels ridiculously early) and go till noon, then have one more class at 2:00 PM. I'm taking Thermal Systems, Metals, Mechanical Design, Mechatronics, and Polymers.

Thermal Systems looks like it will be fairly straightforward. Its taught by an Indian guy with the last name of Dutta. His accent isn't too bad, and he's pretty friendly, so it'll be an ok class.

Metals is taught by the Materials Science department chair. He used to work at Alcoa, so he obviously worked with a lot of Aluminum. He seems like a pretty good teacher too. We're talking about phase diagrams for alloying steels right now. I remember talking about alloys a lot in my last materials science class, but I don't remember a lot of this stuff.

I've had all of two classes of Mechanical Design, and already I don't like it one little bit. The professor is a short little Chinese man named Dr. Ding. He's hard to understand, drops the word "ok" in between every sentence, and spent the last two hours of class talking about simple statics problems (sum of forces=0 and that stuff). Now, I know its all important stuff, but we learned it freshman year and have been using it in nearly every class since then. If people don't have it down by now, they probably aren’t going to.

Mechatronics is taught by a Dr. Hutton, who seems to be pretty on the ball with what he's talking about. I've heard stories of him coming to class completely tanked and canceling class because of it. (Alex, you'll be sorry to know he now has a whiteboard, and doesn't carry pieces of chalk with him anymore.) I like him though. He speaks well, and so far at least has been able to relate information well.

My last class is Polymers, and is taught by Dr. Johns. He's the same professor who taught MSE 301, which is arguably the hardest class I've taken. Actually, forget arguably, it IS the hardest class I've taken in terms of new material covered, and the depth and breadth of material covered. I got an A- in it though, so I'm pretty pleased with myself. I fully anticipate learning a lot in the Polymers class.

So far we haven’t gotten much homework, so I can't speak to that yet.

I did however do something fun two days ago (Tuesday) : I went for a plane ride with my friend Ed Patry who has a 150 that is certified to fly aerobatics. The plane is rated for +9 and -3 Gs! How do you even MAKE a 150 pull +9 Gs?! Anyway, we drove out to Colfax where his plane is hangared and went up for an hour. We did some rolls, Lazy 8s, Immellmans, loops, snap rolls... It was a blast. Its not very often I get to see the horizon as a vertical line. I can't wait to go for a plane ride with Dan Miller and see what he can do in his new RV. Ed's 150 could barely get off the ground with the two of us in it plus about a half a tank of fuel.

I'm probably going to have to go in to work today and make another batch of PZT. The last batch was "gelling" when it was spun on, which means there is water in at least one of the chemicals used to make it. There was a small hole in one of the Nitrogen hood gloves, so its possible that water got in that way. Pretty annoying as the process of making PZT involves several oil baths that take over 24 hours all told.

Well, back to the grind.