My teeth are all gone!

Well 4 of them. I got my wisdom teeth out today. Got them out at 9 am. All I remember was the nurse telling me to bite down, and then nothing. Then I remember being comfortable with my grandma's blanket on the resting table. And then I remember walking back to the car very drunk, swaying back and forth, but i thought it was a dream. Turns out it wasn't.

Next thing I know I'm awake and there's blood all over my pillow here at my grandma's house in New Jersey. She helps me take out the gauze and it's soaked, and then I ask for the more gauze that they said they'd give. Well, they totally forgot to give her more gauze. And the cleaning syringe. So she had to drive back and get that. Anyways then I was awake, and I was in a really good mood. Well for the rest of the day it's been me waking up and falling asleep. Kind of boring. Oh well. Goodnight.

No sleep and No service

What a week it’s been. I haven’t really gone to sleep before 5 am in a long time. I’ve been enjoying myself way too much to go to sleep early. Life after the swimmer project was done has been really relaxing. On Sunday night, we went to Cape Cod. Then on Monday night, at 8:45 pm, we started a Star Wars movie marathon. We watched all six movies from Episode I to Episode VI, right in a row. We went until 11:30 am. I was the only one who actually stayed and watch all of the movies. There were other people who came a movie into it and then stayed, and people who left towards the end. There was another girl with me who stayed the entire time but she fell asleep for a few hours so I’m not sure if that counts. She says it does because she was absorbing the Star Wars in her sleep, but I’m not so sure. Anyhow, we finished at 11:30 am. So it took a total of about 15 hours. Good stuff!! At 12 pm I had our Seeing and Hearing (a class) showing of all of our documentaries which was boring, and then at 3:30 I had my expo presentation until 5. So I basically didn’t get any sleep until 7 pm the night after I should have fallen asleep, and I only slept for around two hours. I actually calculated that including naps, I slept a total of 8.5 hours in the span of a little less than 4 full days. Is that healthy? I don’t know, but it’s definitely lots of fun.

Expo presentation went pretty well. I had a poster, stood in front of it, and didn’t really talk to many people but no matter. The two faculty members I talked to liked my little spiel, especially Mark Somerville, who’s always one to point out your faults. So that was good! I talked about the swimmer project, and how that’s taught me so much. It really has. I’d say half the learning that came from this semester came from the penguin project, and that’s saying a LOT, considering I’ve learned so much.

Another thing that I got out of the swimmer project which I didn’t talk about during my Expo spiels in front of my poster was, in a way, a family. Our team is now known for being the ones that always hang out together now. Well, one member isn’t always there, but me and two other teammates are always hanging out together now, it’s really funny. But it’s awesome! Last night we went to iHop as a team. Good god I don’t know if I can ever go to an iHop again. First, we were pulling out of the parking lot, and Natalie hit her tire on the curb, and the tire just blew out immediately. So we had to change the tire in the freeeezing cold, get in Ali’s car, and finally go after like 30 minutes. We get to iHop and it’s really crowded. It was so weird, it was a Thursday night at like 2 AM! It took forever just to get our drinks, but our food came a bit faster. Then came the worst part. A guy walks past our table, and just as he gets next to our table, he pukes on the floor and keeps walking away. Great. It was really gross. I went and told the waiter and he said ok. And I went back to my table. And waited. What the hell! The waiter wasn’t coming to clean it up! I went to tell him again, he said ok. Went back to the table. He still isn’t coming! This time I was absolutely pJJJJJ off. I couldn’t believe the waiter wasn’t coming to clean it up. I went up and told basically told him

 

 “There is VOMIT on the ground, you NEED to clean it up. It’s disgusting, and I’ve told you two times already to clean it up.”

“Look, I’m busy, talk to the manager.”

“Are you kidding me? This is your restaurant, you’re all working together, you’re  an employee. YOU go talk to the manager.”

 

What an aJJ. I haven’t gotten angry late that in a while. I went and talked to the manager and he got some guys to clean it up. But wow. Yeah. Not a great iHop experience. And excuse my language, but it was that necessary.

Anyways, right now I’m on the train from Philadelphia to Lancaster. Going to visit my friend Sam from California! I’m really excited, especially since she was right next to Olin college during Thanksgiving and I didn’t realize she’d be there at the same time I’d be there as well until the night before she left (and therefore we couldn’t meet up).

Well, I’m going to watch some Simpsons I guess. w00t.

Spontaneous Roadtrip!

On Saturday night, I stayed up until about 5 am (as usual nowadays). Worked on ModCon final project, then went to a Man Hall party (fun!), then back to work on the project. But for some strange reason, I didn't wake up until 4 pm on Sunday. Luckily, we finished the project at about 10 pm, and after that, I decided that doing any more work would be unfitting for the night. On the other hand, I was a bit bored not doing anything. We started watching The Office on Hulu, when Natalie and Ali (partners for penguin project) came up and told me they were kidnapping me. They wouldn't tell me where we were going, and I was kind of scared about where we would go, but hey, I was kind of bored. So we ended up driving out, and we ended up at a Wendy's. How depressing! I was hoping for something awesome and we go to Wendy's. Well I got myself a little kids burger, and we were driving home and we were still kind of bored, so somehow we got into talking into doing a roadtrip to New Hampshire. We were about to go, but then we decided if we're going to go anywhere, we should plan it at least a little bit. So we go back to Olin and start looking at places in New Hampshire we could go to at 2 am, but nothing looked interesting. I'm not sure how we got the idea, but next thing I know we were pretty set on going to Cape Cod to watch the sun rise! And then we got two more people to come with us! Boris, and James.

So we brought blankets, warm clothes, cameras, tripods, and iPods with us, and we headed out for the two hour drive starting at 3 am. The ride down wasn't bad. We were expecting 2 hours, but at the speed that Natalie was driving we made it in about 1.5 hours. We were going to stop at an iHop, but unfortunately it wasn't a 24 hour one so it was closed. Anyways we got to Chatham (city in Cape Cod), drove around only a little bit before we found a parking place, and walked down to the beach. We found it to be quiet and peaceful and open to the public, so we brought out our equipment and blankets to the beach.

Well, at the beach, me and Bolo (my nickname for Boris) went nuts with our cameras, taking hundreds of pictures. In the end I took about 9 gigs of pictures, which is about 700 pictures. When the sun rose above the horizon, it was beautiful. Looking through my zoom lens at the sun was a surreal experience. Don't worry, I didn't look at it for too long though.

After the sun rose, we went to some small cafe/bakery for breakfast, walked around chatham a bit, and then left for Olin. The drive back was pretty uneventful, until Natalie realized a sign that said Plymouth - Next 5 exits. She was like oh that's where my ancestors are from, and that's when I realized that it was the same Plymouth that the pilgrims landed. So we woke everybody else and told them we're going to Plymouth!

We took the exit and started  driving down a road not knowing where to go. We got really lucky when we took this one right cause we came upon the museum for the settlements there...Too bad it was really expensive and there was literally nobody in the entrance/tickets area of the museum. So then we drove out onto this beach which was like a  2 mile long skinny peninsula that extended and hooked around the coast. It was so nice, and we we were really excited that it wasn't closed off or anything. I ended up going out about 1.5 miles while running on water barrier rocks which was tons of fun and actually really relaxing. We stayed in Plymouth for probably a total of two hours before we started to head home.

So that was the story. Such an amazing trip! We were all so happy to do it, despite the major lack of sleep. Some things in life are just plain worth it, and this was one of them.

Well, that's the story! School ends on Thursday, I think I'm going to visit Kristen, a friend from Budapest, and then on Friday I'm going to Philly (Lancaster, to be exact) to visit my friend Sam from California! Woohoo!

Star Wars Marathon right now! I, II, and III!

A week away from Life.

Last week, I lived a life that was not Chris Gallello's. The culprit was mainly because the swimmer project was due on Monday, and my group had a ton to do.

We had to get the forwards motion mechanism, figure out a way to link the drive motor to the actual mechanism (hard due to limited space), put it all together, make the skin, and get it working.

So I don't I don't want to estimate how many hours we spent on the penguin all together, but I will.

Monday - 4 pm - 11 pm = 7 hours

Tuesday - 4 pm - 12 am = 8 hours

Wednesday - 4 pm - 4 am = 12 hours

Thursday - 4 pm - 9 pm = 5 hours

Friday - Day off!

Saturday - 2 pm - 7 am - 14 hours

Sunday - 12 pm - 6 am - 18 hours

So that's a total of 64 hours in one week. That's longer than a standard work week.

It was mostly a blur. Honestly. I don't remember much about the week, but it definitely was a LONG week. Saturday, I have to say, was kind of satisfying. We got the main mechanism working and we started putting things all together. Stayed up till 7 am, and it started snowing. We were super excited! And then we went to iHop (I heart obese people) for breakfast.

MY GOD they serve a ton of food. I ordered pancakes with hash browns, eggs, and bacon. I was expecting it to be kind of big and was thinking "oh man I'm going to be full after this, but I'm hungry." But I got the meal, and it took up two full sized dinner plates. Ridiculous!

Anyways we got back and we ended up going to bed in the design nature studio at 9 am. We were able to fit me and a teammate on a small couch, as well as another teammate on two of those single couches put together.

We woke up to people alllllllll around us working in the studio, machines blaring, people talking. It wasn't unpleasant really, but it was just kind of funny. Well we pretty much immediately started working after the 3 amazing hours of sleep. That day we got everything put together, made a skin out of fabric (I sewed!). And then we put it in the water! And it worked! And we cheered! And YELLED! And hugged! And threw a party! Well, no party. But we were amazingly happy. So we cleaned up the room a bit and finally went to sleep at 6 am!

Woke up to everybody in the room, including our professor, at 9 am. We were all set to go, and the kids came at 10:30 am. We were at our table presenting the penguin to the students, and they seemed to like it! Then we had the demonstration, and lo and behold....The penguin doesn't work! Turns out the chain that we used for the gears got unlinked (it was a lego chain). And then a rod fell out of the truck. So he said to come back at a later time with it working. So we got it working. We put it in the water. It swam forwards for 5 seconds!

And then.....The penguin wasn't able to turn. And then...the wings stopped moving. This time the wire that connected the servo to the tail BROKE. So whatever. Our penguin didn't work in the end. But it was over!

DESIGN NATURE IS OVER!!

How amazing.

So now, I've been adjusting back to life this week. I found myself unshaven, nails long, emails not replied to, and in general out of touch with the world. But now I'm back to normal. I'm enjoying myself and doing what I want...It's a pretty amazing feeling in general.

So that was my week. Some fun, but crazy intense. Crazy, crazy, crazy intense.

Overall, it was a pretty amazing project. As hard as it was, it taught me so much. My skills with working in a group improved a lot. I learned from my mistakes. Always make a CAD model and keep it updated. Aesthetics is very important. A teacher can always be defied!

So that's that. I learned a lot. I made a new awesome friend. I was able to work with an existing one. And I got to know another guy really well! I was in Team List of Sheild of Bug Species Recorded In Korea, and we made Trevor LeRoy the Badger, a remote controlled penguin that swims in the water.

Going crazy

The penguin is making me go insane...

We have the butt working, it swings side to side and the servos are all hacked and waterproofed. The mechanism that makes it so that when the penguin eats garbage the circuitry gets cut off is also working.

But the main forwards motion has a lot of problems....Bleh. It's due Monday as well.

Ahh I have to make a 5 minute documentary by Friday and I'm just starting. It's 6 AM now though, I'm going to go to sleep.

An Awesome Week!

New Jersey was great! Good to see family, and first time having Thanksgiving with the familiy as well! On Friday I went to the Bronx to Fordham University to visit my friends from Budapest. One of them goes there and there we like 6 of us that came to visit him. Everybody was sleeping over for two nights but I couldn't even sleep over because I had to leave the next day back to Boston. It was still amazing to see them though, I had so much fun. We hung out in my friend's dorm, played some Halo for old times sake, got lunch at an extremely cheap lunch place, and hung out more in his dorm. Anyways, the Bronx was really sketchy. Lots of mofo people as my me and my dad put it.

The drive back from Boston was good. We picked up my friend Johannes in West Jersey and after that I slept for the rest of the 4 or 5 hours or so. It was definitely nice...

Being back at Olin...it's good to see everybody again, but I'm going to miss being on break. Well, it's not like  I'm in study mode. Today, with the exception of an hour to do some work and maybe 30 minutes to eat dinner and some other breaks, I've been playing or waiting for a turn to play Rock Band since 12:30 pm. It's 3:45 am right now. I've never played this game before, but it's so much fun! I've played Guitar Hero (similar game) twice before, but besides that, no experience and I'm already playing some Expert songs! Oh, my right arm is exhausted, and I have a blister on my right thumb. But it's so much fun!

Well, school starts again tomorrow....Goodnight!

Thanksgiving Break Shenanigans

My parents are here! On Friday, I went to Boston and met up with my dad. I had an amazing steak dinner, and we stayed at a hotel right next to Quincy Market. Unfortunately, the weather turned out to be paaaaainfully cold. I never want to have that again. The next day, we woke up, got some Dunkin’ Donuts breakfast (no wonder America’s fat), and then headed out to the airport to pick up my mom. Didn’t take us too long, the T goes right to the airport (well, there’s a free shuttle that takes you from the T stop to the terminals), and we went to go look for the rental car counters because we had a reservation for one. We were standing at the info booth, probably 15 or 20 minutes after my mom’s flight landed, and I heard an “oi!” from behind me. I look around and it was her! Gotta love how small Logan International is…

Then we drove off in the rental car to Olin, I showed my parents the room and the campus, packed my things for NH and NJ, and we drove back to the hotel in Boston. They were pretty impressed with the campus, especially that I felt comfortable with leaving my key in the door for a week of being away with all my valuables in them (steal my monitor, I dare you).

So we got back to the hotel and rested a bit, then went out again in the f-f-f-f-f-freeeeezing cold to have dinner at King Hall (a restaurant) right in Quincy Market with my dad’s old friend from high school and his wife. It was a lot of fun, and some good food once again…

Yesterday morning we woke up early (7 am) and headed out of the hotel by 8 am to New Hampshire. Up in New Hampshire, we know a family from our Tokyo days (back when I was two). The dad right now has the worst form of Alzheimer’s disease, where something like his front part of the brain is deteriorating. Basically he’s lost a lot of his short term memory. Last year we saw him during Christmas and he was able to carry out conversations and reminisce the good ol’ days in Japan with us, but this time, there was no such thing as a conversation. When we saw him he was at the end of the hallway in the nursing home, his wife called his name, he turned around and raised his hands when he saw us! He walked over, said heyyyyy but then turned around and walked away. We did get some words and sentences out of him, and we were told that this was the most he’s ever said in months, which was pretty nice. It was really sad to see such a great guy turn out like this though.

On a lighter and happier note, I didn’t know it until we were there, but we were actually about two miles away from Dartmouth! And I didn’t realize it until I got a Facebook message back from him, but my best friend Alex from the California days was still there for another day or two before heading back to California for Thanksgiving! So we went to see him, and we watched his sister’s swim meet. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to say hi to her. Anyways we also picked him up for dinner, and we went to a really good Japanese/Korean food place for dinner. I had really good tonkatsu (one of the best kinds of Japanese foods there is!).

This morning, we left NH at 7 45, drove down to Cambridge, looked at some properties with a real estate agent (parents are moving here in the summer), and then we went to the North End to grab a bite to eat before we head down to New Jersey. This is where it got pretty hilarious. The North End is basically the Italian district. Need I say more? Well, not really, but I will anyways. We went to a little Italian Deli shop, we ordered some food, and sat down. Then walks in a relatively big guy with sunglasses on and another woman and a little boy. They’re speaking Italian, they say hi to the people running the shop, and sit down. The guy leaves his sunglasses on, and acts in such a stereotypical Italian way. He’s having fun with the little kid, saying “bello bello,” all while being like a wannabe mafia boss wearing all black with black sunglasses and a black fedora. Me and my parents nicknamed him Uncle Dominico…

Then all of a sudden, right outside the shop, I see a good old fashioned Italian parking battle starting to take place outside the shop. There’s an open parking space on the street in front of the shop, and there’s a car that’s lined up to get the spot but behind the actual spot and in the intersection of the street. He starts pulling into the spot, but then all of a sudden, a guy (I’ll call him Davide) comes and completely cuts him off and shoves his car into the spot. Too bad for Davide, his car is in the spot, but it’s almost perpendicular to the actual side of the street. This created a complete gridlock, which included the other cars around them because Davide, who stuck his nose in the spot had his butt blocking the street lane as well. The best part then, was seeing inside Davide’s car. Davide was doing the whole Italian gesture thing with his thumb and two fingers and yelling at the other car to get out of his spot. In the end, Davide left, but it definitely took about ten minutes.

Oh, Italy. What fine people you produce.

So now we’re on the road to New Jersey! And we should be there for dinner…Yum, pasta and chicken at my grandma’s. It’s her surprise meal that she makes us every time we arrive at her place. The surprise factor is wearing off after the 18^th year, but we still love it.

Wow, I just passed a sign that said “Exotic Dancers.” On the other side of the highway, “Exit 69.” Hahahahaha. 

Au Contraire

Watched all three Matrix movies last night starting at 10 or 11 or something...We finished at 4:30. Woke up at 8. That's 3.5 hours of sleep.

That's 2.7 times less the amount of sleep I got the night before.

or

That's 0.000399 years.

or

In my sleep, a cheetah could have run 245 miles.

I'M SLEEPY!

Oh well, no homework really for tonight. I'm going to 7/11 now I think...Gonna hit it up with my Indian friend Said who works there late nights on week days...

Cheese! Peace!

Sleep!

Sunday night I went to bed at 12:30 am, and last night I went to bed at 1 am! World Record!!  That's a whopping (each night)

8 hours of sleep

or

480 minutes of sleep

or

28,800 minutes of sleep

or

9.4 times the length of the shortest baseball game
or

96 times the time it takes me to walk from my room to the farthest classroom at Olin

Oh how I feel so much un-sleepy. Very nice.

I'm pretty excited about the documentary final project that we have for Seeing and Hearing. I get to use the nice HD hard drive video Canon, rather than the 10 year old pieces of junk, thanks to some clever planning on my part of getting my camera (instead of going up to the front to get a camera like everybody did when the teacher said to, I waited until there were no crappy ones left, so she had to give me the nice camera).

Anyways, I'll be bringing that back to New Jersey so that I can get some footage for my documentary in NY.  Speaking of New Jersey next week...New Jersey next week!! YES! Thanksgiving! Dad arrives in Boston 6:30 tonight, but I don't see him till Friday. Then my mom comes in on Saturday, we go to New Hampshire to visit friends, then on Monday we head down to NJ! I'm really excited! Then after Thanksgiving break we only have one week of classes left, and then final exams (which I don't think I really have any...if I do it's only one or something), and then back to New Jersey!

Sweet sweet hot dogs, I'm excited and not sleepy!

Busy week this past week...

SERV auction was this week. We had the silent auction running in the dining hall all week, and the live auction was on Friday. This means a lot of preparation and organizing things. Overall the auction went really well. We made 7400 dollars total! For a school of 300 students, I'd say that's not too bad...I ended up winning a lullaby or something donated by the singing group here...for three dollars. The live auction went well...We had two auctioneers 

taking turns with each item, and I was up on the stage with my laptop, which was connected to my monitor, which was facing the audience. I had the monitor have the current bid price and the total money donated so I was up there constantly updating it. Worked really well though...

Swimmer project CAD model is also almost done! We also had a team motion illustration assignment...check it out.

And here's the almost final CAD model...still have a ton of issues to work out though.

Anyways I have a flying lesson tomorrow, hooray! And it'll be my first time using my new headset that I got this week, so I'm definitely excited about that.

Last night was a pretty kickin' party. It was a two story party. Both Man Hall and Metro Hall combined (2nd floor and 3rd floor) hosted the party, and they had a few bands come in to play which was pretty cool. At the end of the night I was exhausted and my voice was pretty much gone.

Oh, and I ice skated this past Friday and today as well...I'm getting better and better at crossover turns! Did some speedwork on ice on Friday which was really good but really exhausting for my legs.

And my butt still hurts from falling last week.

Stop with the amazing iPhone commercials

Stop it Apple, your commercials are too good it's just not fair.

The Seige of West Hall 312 and History

Oh man, what a week it has been.

So on Monday, I was in my room with my roommate, and all of a sudden three people storm into our room (we leave the key in the door) and cover us in nerf darts with nerf machine

 guns. Now this isn't anything tooooo surprising, as Olin has a club called OWW (Olin Weekend Warriors). This club basically has huge nerf gun wars in the academic center...and they have an immense amount of nerf guns. And yes, they have nerf machine guns.

Anyways they storm in and shoot us and ran out of the room. I think to myself...hey...they did something to us...let's do something to them. So I simply took the key from the door and closed it. And now we had their nerf darts! What do you know, after a minute or two they're banging on our door asking us to let them in but we don't respond at all. After a while of laughing at them, my roommate and I start drawing things and putting it under the door, such as a beautiful drawing of them banging on our door with us laughing in our room. The picture says "SUCK IT" in big letters.

Stuff like that. Just to play with them. Then next thing we know they go outside and start shooting our 3rd story window from the ground with nerf gun darts but they never actually hit our window. Haha.

Now it's time for revenge. Last week was halloween, and as you read in the last post, I made a huge pacman costume. This left a lot of extra cardboard in our room, so I proceeded to make us two shields and two swords out of cardboard for the counter-battle. We both dress up in full suits, I put my aviators on, he puts his sunglasses on, I tie my b

ig Japanese flag around my neck so that it's a cape and my roommate puts on a....a....oh wow. I don't know the word in english. Hachimaki. A bandana that's folded over so it's a stripe that goes around the head.

Anyways, we look absolutely badass. From the inside of our room, I yell in my deep samurai voice that I do, "What the hell are you guys doing!!!!" and we both storm out and start whacking everybody outside of the room with our swords.

In the end, we defended the room successfully, and the Seige of West Hall 312 failed.

---------------------

So next - Tuesday night. Everybody knows exactly what happened on such a historic night - and I know that I won't forget what happened anytime soon.

Now I want to say, I'm an Obama supporter. But I also do want to mention that I'm not an Obama supporter because it's the hip thing for young people to do. I have watched all three debates, I watch a ton of the news every day, and also read the news online. I have my reasons for liking Obama, and one of them came through on Tuesday.

Here at Olin, we watched the election coverage on CNN, and there were probably about 20 or 30 people in the room. When we saw that Obama was elected the next president, the entire dorm went wild. People running around, hi fiving, cheering, and hugging. It was amazing for everybody....

The real celebration came after Obama's speech though. His speech was absolutely amazing. He definitely saved the best for last, and it was especially something to see Jesse Jackson crying. Obama hit the key points he needed to hit, and he did it in a presidential style.

Well, I definitely wasn't the only one who thought so. After his speech we all cheered and hugged and ran all around. It was the first time I truly felt euphoric since the Sziget music festival in Budapest in August.

I do have several things to say as side notes before I end this post. 

• First - congrats to CNN, who was the first news network to put a hologram of a person on live television. I can't tell you enough how pointless this was, but I do have to admit, it was kind of cool. On the other hand the hologram of the Senate diagrams and all that...that did have some purpose in adding to the news experience. Kind of like the CNN Magic Map. John King loves that toy...
  
• Second - I frown upon you Stewart and Colbert. Indecision 2008 was not nearly as funny as I hoped it would be.
• Third - Honestly, I'm not really against McCain so much as I'm absolutely against Palin. We can't have another Bush for this country. We can't have somebody who doesn't know the difference between slang and formal speech. I applaud her for having the highest approval rating of any other governor in the US, but I'm going to say it right out. She makes herself seem like an idiot. We can't have somebody who seems like an idiot as the Vice President of a world superpower. Maybe she's an extremely intelligent woman deep down inside, and she most likely is - but it's disappointing to see that the McCain camp chose Palin.
• Fourth - McCain's a decent man. His concession speech, I have to admit, went well in my view. Of course, it's all politics, and a concession speech will always have a set structure. "We lost. I congratulate Obama. Thank you. Bla bla bla bla bla..." But it was still a pretty good speech. The only part of the speech that saddened me was not in the speech itself, but in the response to the speech. When McCain said that he phoned Obama and congratulated him, the crowd actually booed. I don't remember exactly when else, but the crowd booed several times for Obama. I guess this is somewhat natural, but it just made me feel saddened that this national hero was being surrounded by people who were this shallow.

Well let me get back to my original point. This week, one of the reasons I support Obama really came through.

Obama has the unique ability to unite, excite, and inspire. Everybody knows this. The media reports it. We all talk about this. But what happened this week went beyond my expectations. On Wednesday, CNN showed many video clips of people celebrating and partying in the streets of the United States. But no, this isn't the kicker. The kicker is that people were also celebrating with America, for America, outside of America.

I lived in Budapest, Hungary for the past five years, so I have hands on experience with people who hate America. There are people who are truly racist against Americans, and it's really unfortunate. I think one of the biggest reasons for that is the image that has been thrown upon George W. Bush during his controversial two terms. But that's life, and I personally had to deal with the consequences.

But seeing people - not Americans - celebrating America, was very emotional for me. I rarely see the American flag outside of the US without it being burned on television.

So I look forwards and hope that these next four years will be the years to remember for America.

Halloween Weekend

Woohoo Weekend!

Friday was Halloween (if you didn't know that already)! This was my first Halloween in 5 years (since they don't celebrate in Budapest) so I was pretty excited! I was going to go ice skating from 7-9 and then a dance party in the dining hall from 10 -1.... 

Anyways in the end, ice skating was cancelled because the rink was closed for Halloween. So in the end I went with Roland (14 years old) back to his house and me him and his sister Rachel went trick or treating in his neighborhood. It was tons of fun! Funniest thing...Rachel is 2 months older than me, but a senior in high school. And then there's Roland who's 14 and is a freshman in college. And I'm in the middle! Shouldn't it be flipped?? Well that was tons of fun, it was 

good to go trick or treating again.

Went back to Olin for the party after that...I made a huge pacman costume, which unfortunately didn't end up drying (paint) completely. It was still a bit sticky at the party so I only wore it for 5 or 10 minutes, but it was still tons of fun!

I also went over to Roger's Pub (Bab

son College campus) with my friend Johannes but we didn't 

go in because nobody was there.

So that was Friday night. It was surprisingly fun. Somehow...

Saturday included me flying....It was fun, flew 1.1 hours, practiced stalls and all that....Then later Saturday night I worked as an Air Traffic Controller for Flight Simulator Multiplayer....So not a real ATC controller but just for people playing online in flight simulator. I was controlling about 10 people but it was still crazy hectic. Anyways I did this ultimately to improve my radio skills for in the airplane and it definitely helped.

Then I went to a Man Hall party...fun stuff!

Today I flew again....Our ELT (Emergency Location Transponder) went off at cruise climb for some reason. Didn't realize it for like 2 minutes. The ELT sounds an alarm in the Tower, and they usually ignore an ELT for the first minute or two and then they'll start to dispatch emergency services if it isn't shut off. Anyways they were recording the ATIS informatioon at the same time (ATIS is a radio frequency where they record information about the air

port such as wind and altimeter setting and play it back on a continuous loop for usually an hour or so), so you could hear my ELT going off in the ATIS recording that all other pilots in the area listen to. That was pretty funny to hear....

Besides that flight went well...no emergency dispatched luckily.

Then after flying I went straight to ice skating which was tons of fun! Well, honestly, I only know how to turn left, and at the rink, they were having everybody going clockwise. So I completely had to relearn turning...and learn how to actually turn right haha. I'm still not good at it but oh well.

So that was my weekend. I should be getting my security badge for the airport soon, and I also bought my own headset for the airplane which are supposed to be amazing. Exciting! And my surround sound speakers which I bought for cheap on eBay are coming Tuesday. So I'm going to be kicking it with music a bunch this week!

Well I should go now, it's getting late. I still have yet to go to sleep before 2 at Olin. I'm not kidding. I literally haven't been to bed before 2 am since I've been at Olin.

Oops.

Birthday Weekend!

My birthday was on Saturday, woohoo! I'm 18 now...and it feels so weird! But also so good! I can sign for myself and buy lottery tickets and smoke cigarettes and the whole shibang! Not that I would. I still can't drink alcohol which is kind of weird but whatever.

Saturday, I woke up early and went into Boston to meet my mom's friend Bridie, her husband, and her sister at 10:30. We went to an Irish pub for breakfast/lunch/brunch/breakfast bagel which was really good and talked. Then we walked around Quincy a bit, and then went to the old US customs building (Now its a Mariott hotel, 26 floors) and we got to go to the very top because Bridie's husband owns some small part of a Mariott somewhere in California), and we got a pretty amazing view of the city from up there.

Then they left, and two friends met up with me and we went to the aquarium to study the motion of penguins in the water for our Design Nature swimmers project. In the end we chose to make a toy based on a penguin by the way...Anyways I found out that nobody...NOBODY smart is at the aquarium on Sundays. The woman working with penguins tried to convince me that the wings flap straight up and down without any rotational movements. Way to go. Well we had a fun time at the aquarium and then we left.

Me and Natalie then went to Mike's Pastry and each got a free canole cause they didn't take credit and we didn't have any cash on us. Nice little surprise birthday present.

On the way I saw Andrew D's university music group tour bus, the Tamburitzans from Duquesne University. I was really excited and tried to get his phone number through various methods so I could see him but I never did in the end. Never got to see him, but oh well.

Then some people met up with us and we went to the Hard Rock cafe which was pretty cool. I was exhausted at that point so dinner was a bit unenergetic, but it was nice that the waiter made me stand up in front of the restaurant and made everybody in the restaurants scream happy birthday to me. Well at least I got a free ice cream!

Then went to Urban Outfitters and bought a new t-shirt that I love, as displayed here

[I'll take a photo and put it here later]

And then went on the Babson Shuttle back to Olin. Slept the entire way, walked back to my room, and went to sleep at 9:30 pm. Told Natalie to wake me up at 10, and supposedly she shoved me but I just rolled over in bed and didn't wake up. Next thing I know my Sibb is in my room and telling me that it's 11:30 pm, it's my birthday, and I'm wanted at the party. So I got up and headed over, and had a lot of fun! I definitely needed the 2 hours of sleep though!

Well it was a fun night overall. Decided I'm not going to drink at Olin any time soon at least, and if I do drink, it'll be with old friends who I know don't binge drink like crazy.

So for our swimmers project, we're at the stage where we're supposed to be doing initial sketches of our toy, but to be honest, I can't think well on paper and pencil with complex mechanisms. So I SolidWorks-ed it, and now I have the exact motion of the wing that I want and the motion of the beak up and down (so that the little kids can catch toy fish in the pool with the mouth!).

And here it is! Kind of interesting, considering I hated using SolidWorks about a month ago. Now I can do a whole lot...even sophomores here were impressed with what I did, so that made me feel a bit less stupid and a bit more qualified to be at this school I guess.

So I flew today for an hour, and turns out my Logbook isn't completely in ruins. I don't need it to get resent from Europe with a different format or anything, I just need to make some changes by myself and it's good. My instructor's very precise, and it's making me work very hard while flying! Which basically meant, after flying, I was exhaustedly tired. And I still am. So goodnight!

I'm Legal

I'm finally legal! I'm legal in the worst country to not be legal, YES! Now I don't need parents' signatures for stupid things, and now I can go to some bars and pubs and clubs. But only 18+ ones...stupid America.

So in the first 10 minutes of my birthday, I got my finger actually stuck in a plastic ramune candy bottle.

Fail.

Anyways, hopefully it'll be a fun day tomorrow!!

Mod Con Labs

Mod Con labs take so long. Modeling and Control of the Physical World.

So in high school we'd have to do a lab and investigate one property of something or one concept.

Here, we have several things to investigate in each lab.

And then, we have to simulate the concept using computer software....This includes getting graphs and all that and overlaying those on experimental data.

Ah, they take forever.

Still sick

Hallo. Still sick. Hurts to swallow and coughing.

It's parent's weekend this weekend so pretty much everybody's parents are here. But mine. But that's ok cause they're coming for Thanksgiving! Yesterday I tabled for SERV and told various parents about what we do and what kinds of things I've done. Honestly, it was half BSing because I still haven't done an actual service activity.

Also talked to Will on the phone for a while last night, it was good to hear from him.

Oh, and we had the hopper demonstration day. Mine jumped about a foot and a quarter, but meh. Next we're going to be starting on swimmers, but for this project we're working in groups. The first assignment is to upload a picture of the animal you want to mimic for the swimmer, and make a video of how the animal swims, using whatever you want. I decided to use myself, yay.

I also helped my friend with his, and he did a mermaid. Let's just say it was hilarious.

Anyways, I'm going to bed. And it'll be the first time I went to sleep before 2 am in forever...

Goodnight!

I'm sick

No fair. Being sick isn't much fun when you have school. Went to the doctor's office at Babson today and she told me it was a virus so it just needs time. Good stuff.

This morning CNN wasn't working for some reason, so I decided to watch some Fox news. Holy CRAP they're uber mega conservative. Sure, CNN is more on the liberal side, but it's not too bad. And what is up with Fox news and their love of yelling at each other? Good God, it's not news. Let me note that I'm not very liberal. I guess I'm more independent...

Well, today's the voter registration deadline, so I'm going to head over to the mail room when it opens at 12 and mail off my reigstration form. Hooray!!

Anyways, I'm going to head over to the dining hall and see if I can get something in my stomach.

Weekend!

Helloooo all.

So it's Sunday. Let's see what has happened since the last time. On Friday night, we were disappointed to hear that there aren't any parties going on at Olin this weekend, and my Deutchish friend went back home to NJ for the long weekend. So me and 2 other girls and 1 other guy went to Harvard Square just to hang around, so we went, got kind of bored, and then I ran into a girl I know from Wellesley and she was with 2 other girls so we hung around together and had fun. We found a Harvard party and we were going to 

go but then when we got there everybody was leaving for some reason (it was 1 am...not sure why it was ending. Maybe it's them Harvard geeks that have to get 8 hours of sleep). Anyways we went back at 2 ish and in the end it was a fun night!

Next morning I woke up, and for the 3rd straight week in a row, we took the 3:40 pm bus to Boston. Went with about 10 people or so and the plan was Quincy Market exploring, MIT Asian Night Market, MIT Frat party at Sigma Phi. Shweet. Well we go to Quincy, I buy myself some 7 dollar sunglasses for flying, I buy a pair of jeans, we watch a street magician make extremely crude gay jokes in front of little kids (why are there such messed up people in our world), and then start heading over to MIT. We get off the T at Kendall, and follow Jacob who's been to MIT and all that before. We end up walking in a huge square and end up at Kendall again, before he realizes exactly where we were. Then we finally found the place after lots of walking, and it was pretty cool. 4 bucks to get in, you get 5 tickets, and one ticket will get you one portion of food or drink. So not bad! What really ruined the night was that there was no Japanese food! I was going in hoping for takoyaki and okonomiyaki, but all I got was Chinese chicken and some dumplings. Oh well. I did get these ice cream mochis which were pretty amazing I must say. They also had some performances put on like a Chinese dragon dance. Cool cool, I'm heading over to the frat.

Well, everybody decides to bail on going to the frat because we did so much walking that day and we were all tired, except for one girl. So her and I walk back to Kendall to pick up some other friends, and then we walk across the bridge, go to the right after the bridge, and realize we were on the wrong bridge. So we ended up having to walk a few miles south which was kind of annoying. Anyways we got there and in the end we could only get me and the other girl in because they were really strict that you have to know a brother at the frat and not too many in at once. We go in and it's kind of ok, but we didn't know anybody...then Jacob came by himself and we hung around and we met a brother and he took us upstairs to the private party which was ok, but still nothing special. Anyways we were going to leave and then the cops came, and they were at the main party and had no idea about the private party, so we weren't allowed to go downstairs otherwise the police would find out. We waited about 30 min or an hour and then finally we were allowed to leave. Then trying to find the bus that takes us back to Wellesley college took a while. We found it, went home on it, and then had a friend pick us up from Wellesley college. In the end we got back at 4:30 ish. Ugh.

Then today I woke up at 11:00 am for flying. Went to the airport with John, a senior, who's going for his commercial rating. Met the instructor, talked to him about my training, and his first impression was basically that I'm a trainwreck student. See, in Hungary, there's no such things as regulations. So my instructor didn't teach me accordin

g to a syllabus, nor did he do things like sign my logbook after every flight. So at this point, I'm not sure if the FAA will take my hours from Hungary. Which...would....you know....So yeah. I'm flying out of Hanscom Field, and it's pretty intense. Business jets flying in and out, and there was even a 757 and an A319 parked on the tarmac. If you don't know what those are, those are the big commercial airplanes you fly on to go home to grandmas. So me, flying a little propeller airplane, was very scary when there are jets all around me. Tons of traffic at the airport, the air traffic controllers speak so fast! But I actually could understand most of it, because at our club we can borrow headsets! It makes talking to my instructor much more clear and easy, as well as listening to the air traffic control. Also, I flew in a Piper Warrior, which is Piper's answer to the famous Cessna 172. Well, to be honest, I like the 172 better. It flies much easier. The Piper requires a lot of control input, so my flare for landing wasn't so much a flare as a nosedive to the ground. Ok well not that bad, but you know what I mean. I definitely didn't pull up enough. Anyways, in the air we went up to 4500 feet (wow! never been so high in a prop plane...in Hungary we'd always be below 2000 feet or so) and did some steep turns, did a power off maneuver, and a forward slip. Instructor was impressed at how well I did the forward slip, and I just said "gliders." Definitely explained a lot to him! So overall the lesson went well. This guy's very strict which is good, and wants you to do exactly as he says. I definitely miss Endre (my old Hungarian instructor) more though, and would fly with him any day.

So tonight, my hallway threw a party. First party hosted by freshman this year, and to be honest I wasn't too fond of the idea. The organizers kind of bitched me into letting them use the very front of my room for the bar. I wasn't too happy when they brought 3 refridgerators full of jello shots into the back of my room as well as coolers and stuff, but I couldn't really say no. In my point of view, if I said no to this, I would be the...you know...idiot, especially after Matt picked us up at 3:30 am last night. Anyways, I didn't stay for the party. Seriously, hmm...how do I say this? Americans drink so amazingly irresponsibly. It's terrible. They do shots together, and do shots together, and do shots together. So I didn't want to stay with the irresponsible freshman. Instead, I went to East Hall for a techno party which, once me and a few other people got people to come, was pretty fun! I had a good time and I was glad I didn't have to stay at the freshman party!

So that was tonight. And like all other posts, it's 3 am! Off to sleep...soon.

One last thing, YES!! I got ice skates today at Sports Authority. They're pretty comfortable (as comfortable as ice skates will ever get), and they only costed 46 dollars! Nice!

At that rate, if I go ice skating 9 times in the next 4 years, I will have paid them off. Skating is free at the rink that's literally a 5 minute walk from my dorm, but rentals are $5. So hooray for saving money, because I'll definitely be going a lot more than 9 times, and I get comfortable skates as opposed to hard old crappy blue rubber ones.

I need to buy my own headset for flying eventually. Guess how much they cost, minimum.

$119

And it's kind of like any other technology product. The headphones sold at the cornerstore cost 4 dollars, but when you want a decent pair, it runs up to about 70 dollars. So a decent one goes up to about $300. CRAZY.

If only money grew on trees. Or at least in a plant hidden under my bed.

Tomorrow I'm having dinner with my Uncle Claude from New Jersey! Score!

Goodnight!!

It jumps!!

So the parts came back for my second prototype of the mechanical hopper, and this time it actually jumps kind of! It only jumps about a foot or less, but still! So the main design change was to make the legs skinnier and shorter, so as to make them lighter compared to the base.

So there it is. It actually hops this time. It's smaller and lighter, and more 2.0 than the 1.0 prototype. Well anyways, 3 day weekend coming up, going ice skating again tomorrow, and I'm still enjoying the new HDTV in the lounge! Watching The Office in HD was incredible! Anyways, as usual with these posts it seems like, it's crazy late and I should go to sleep. Goodnight!

Mrawwwrrr.

So several happenings:

West Hall 3rd floor lounge is now officially the best lounge in the school. We just got a 42" HDTV for the lounge. Dang, I love how rich Olin is. Basically the East Hall 4th floor lounge's TV broke, but nobody actually hangs out in the lounges in East Hall, so instead, we pushed to get a new, nice TV here in West Hall. Well, in the end, we got it! I set it up yesterday and immediately played GTA on it. Well, let's just say it was awesome. I hooked up cable, and for some reason which nobody knows, the cable here is reaaally really staticky, so watching cable on the big TV was a bit sad. So I brought out my TV antenna, hooked it up to the TV, and started kicking it in HD. The HD broadcast towers for Boston are right next to Olin so we get great reception. So yeah, 42" of beauty. One down side of HD: we were watching the presidential debate and we could actually see the wrinkles on McCain's face :D. Anyways, I'm excited to watch The Office tomorrow in HD!! Oh, and we only get the few local channels over the air, so we're just leaving cable plugged in to the TV.

So I built my hopper for Design Nature, and I found out how much it fails. The three legs are supposed to come down, hit the ground, and meet each other at the bottom of the hopper. The hopper then jumps up to Mars after the high impact collision of the legs again

st the ground. Instead, what really happens is the legs snap together. And the hopper jumps about 5 cm. Hooray! That's just a tad less than my two foot goal. I talked to my professor, Ozgur, about it, and he helped me through the problems and what's going on, and that definitely helped a lot. It's pretty cool to actually see it though. And I'm glad because everything works smoothly, it does exactly what it's supposed to do. It's just that the design is really lacking. Oh well. The model went from 3D to in my hands. K

ind of hard to describe the feeling, but it's really awesome! So now I have to make some changes to it, which includes shorter legs, heavier base, tighter rubber tubing, and stuff like that. I'm hoping it'll work in the end! The project is due Wednesday...eek.

So exciting stuff! This Monday my uncle will be in town and we'll probably go out somewhere for dinner which will be fun! And then next weekend my friend from California's going to be coming!! So hooray for that. Definitely. And other stuff...OH!

I have a class called "Seeing and Hearing." Let me repeat. "Seeing and Hearing." Let that stick in your head for a bit. Now what if I told you that my professer for that class's name is Helen Donis-Keller. HOW GREAT is that?

Everybody always gets a kick out of it. I definitely did. Anyways, she's gone all this week, so we aren't having any classes. We have class twice a week, but still! Tuesday at 10:00 am me and 3 other people went to the Babson ice skating rink to celebrate the fact that HDK (as she likes to call herself, but she doesn't want other people to call her) is gone. It's a 1 minute walk from campus, free admission, and skate rentals are 5 dollars. I'm thinking of buying my own pair of really crappy skates for like 40 or 50 dollars, because even if I go twice a year, they'll pay themselves off after 4 years.

Anyways it's sort of late. I should sleep. Got 4.5 hours last night...I was exhausted today.

Oh! Haha more things just keep coming. I'll be brief. I made a thermostat in class today. Yup. A thermostat.

Bye!!

Career Initiatives Day

Today was Career Initiatives Day at Olin!

That meant, no classes, and the chance to sell yourself to big name companies including:

EMC

Lime Brokerage (Limewire)

HP

Prismark

Intuit

iRobot

Boston Scientific

Google

Aurora Flight Sciences

MIT Lincoln LAboratory

Tyco Electronics

Raytheon

IBM

DRS Technologies

MITRE

Sun Microsystems

Microsoft

Rockwell

US Navy

Bose

Dassault Systemes SolidWorks Corporation

Textron Systems

National Instruments

and much more! CRAZY! Can you believe it? I always imagined a job fair to have small local companies like Dunder Mifflin paper company or Bob's Discount Furniture. But wait, I forgot (and I still forget), I'm at Olin!

So it was a dress up day (well, for most people) which I always like. Wearing a suit makes things fun. And feel like MUN. Which I actually find myself remeniscing about with other people who did it here. Each company had a booth all over the Academic Center, and they were all trying to catch the smartest people with the best past research experiences by throwing freebees at them. Mugs, high quality frisbees, bags, USB hubs, Screwdriver sets, ping pong balls, magnets, and other unnecessary crap! Unfortunately for me, the extent of my research experience has been the extended essay, where I investigated the relationship between angle of attack of an airfoil and the resultant lift force.

So I gave my resume to Aurora Flight Sciences, Textron, and for the hell of it, Bose. Besides that, nothing interested me too much. I'm trying to find an internship for the summer that has something to do with aerospace engineering. The guy I was talking to from Textron was very nice and seemed kind of interested, and he made my face light up when he said that Textron owns Cessna.

!!!

How cool would it be to intern at Cessna over the summer? I'm going to be starting my flying again pretty soon (heading over to Hanscom Field to set up some lessons tomorrow afternoon I think), and so far, the only kind of airplane with a propeller that I've flown or flown in has been a Cessna 172. So I'll gladly work for Cessna, even if it is in Middle of Nowhere, USA. I mean Kansas. 

Anyways, I became a member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics today. As in, I paid 20 dollars and now they're going to send me some stuff. But what I'm really in it for is to find internships and possibly found a chapter of the AIAA here at Olin, so I can look somewhat decent to a future employer.

Well, I have a Modeling and Simulation project due tomorrow, and my partner is nowhere to be found. I better get going on trying to get our code to work.

Adios.

(Seeing and Hearing self portrait 2nd draft)

Whats up.

A ton. Drama continues. Work continues.

Over the past few weeks we've been working on designs and 3D models for mechanical toy hoppers. We have a limited amount of materials to work with and a few different rules that we have to follow, but besides that, the entire thing is pretty much up to us. I had a design, made a prototype out of basic materials, created a 3D model of it, ran simulations on it, and saw how it would jump in 3D. That's a lot of work. Then that night I had a dream and thought of a much better design. So I basically redid it. That put a lot of work on me, but I finished, and I haven't gotten the simulation working or even make a prototype, but I'm hoping to god it works. The picture is showing the final 3D model, which I care not to explain in detail, but basically the yellow tubes are stretchy tubing that pulls on the 3 legs downwards. And then it jumps. Good stuff! So I submitted the part designs and they're hopefully being cut tomorrow morning, and I can make the actual hopper tomorrow afternoon. This is the first real prototype, so I guess the beta stage. We're then evaluating how these hoppers work and then making any necessary changes in the 3D model and remaking them for a final. Pretty cool class I must say! Lots of work though!


So here's something that you wouldn't see often if you know me.



Jeans, lacoste shoes, and a Hello Kitty carpet in the middle of my dorm room floor. Well, the Hello Kitty is for kicks, but yeah. I just thought this was kinda funny. I'm really happy with the shoes though. Got them today at the mall (going to the mall on a tuesday! score!). If you didn't know, I have 4E wide feet and custom orthodics, so it's kind of a pain for me to buy new shoes. But they're wide enough and they're pretty comfortable! Not as comfortable as my running shoes, but they definitely look better.


Oh, and another thing I love about college. Free stuff. I got a really big lamp for my desk from the 1st floor lounge. Shweet. I got the free hello kitty carpet from the 4th floor lounge. And people send out emails saying when they're giving out free stuff, so it's really convenient. Hm, that may be confusing to you.


Because Olin is 300 people, everybody has e-mail access to everybody. Staff, Faculty, Students, President Miller, etc. And there are also things called lists. You can sign up for lists, and whenever somebody sends an e-mail to that list, everybody in the list gets the e-mail. For example, Carpedium is a list for things such as announcing free stuff, announcing events such as "I'm going running in 10 and I want somebody to run with...does somebody want to come?", and other things like that. So yeah, that's how I got the free hello kitty rug.

I guess that's all from me for now. Room still isn't too decorated but oh well. I ordered a mouse for my laptop. I'm excited. It'll make 3D modeling a lot easier, as well as reading through documents (it has one of those almost-frictionless scroll wheels that just keep spinning if you let it go). And it's pretty small so it'll fit easily in my backpack. Hooray!

I guess that's all for now.

Economy = No

Wow, and now the American economy is just as screwed as the things going on in my life. At least we're on equal levels :)

80 people

80 people, 4 years.

Wow, this is already hard.

Life continues

Hiyo. Life continues here at Olin.

So Monday night I went to bed at 4 am, and I woke up at 8:30 for a 9:15 meeting with a woman in the financial office (I'm the Manager of Finance and Records for SERV, the service organization here, so I needed to learn some stuff about the SERV credit card). I knew I'd be dead tired, and I also knew that I didn't want to be yawning during the meeting. So, being smart, I crawled out of bed, munched on a bagel, and drank a red bull. Then, as I walked over to the meeting, I popped a Japanese soda candy into my mouth (the best candy in the world. And hey, it wakes me up). So the meeting was fine, and I had a few minutes to go down to the dining hall before my only class of the day at 10 am. I ended up just drinking an orange juice to wake me up a bit more, and headed over to class. We were critiquing our panorama photos that were due for homework, and as we moved down the pictures towards mine, I was starting to feel a bit queesy. I was thinking "Wow Chris, if you're actually scared to talk to the class about your photo, that's just sad. Way to go." At that point I hadn't registered the fact that I consumed an explosion for breakfast. I talked about my photo, and we moved on to the next one. Well turns out it wasn't that I was scared or anything, I was just really feeling sick now. So I left the classroom to go chill on the couch outside and hopefully feel a bit better. Well I sat out there for a few minutes and I started to feel a bit better, so I took my chances and went back in. They were still talking about the last photograph, and I took a seat rather than stood with the class because I knew standing wasn't a smart thing to do. Nope, still didn't work, I went back outside for about 30 minutes. In that time, I fell asleep, woke up, and I SWEAR I saw a professor I have peek out from behind a roller white board in a creepy way and throw something in my direction (hey, I was OUT of it). After that I went back in the classroom, now my professor was showing a slideshow of self portraits of famous photographers, and when I looked at one of them where the photographer photoshopped out her eyes and nose and mouth, I just about had it. I went back outside, luckily I felt a bit better, and I decided to go back to my dorm to sleep it off. Slept for a few hours, woke up, felt alllll better. And in the end, I'm glad I did this. I had a rediculously horribly terrible day on Monday, and because I didn't really go to class, it felt like a second weekend for me, which I needed. But for all of you who actually want to go to class, here is a concoction that you should never brew:

• 1 Bagel
• 1 Red Bull
• 3 Japanese Ramune Soda Candies
• 1 Glass of Orange Juice

To be honest I'm a bit tempted to mix them together and watch the explosion. Maybe YouTube it.

So what else. I realized just how rich our school is. For Engineering of Compartment Systems (or better known as Mod Con (Modeling and Control)), we use these pretty crappy and low cost instruments called oscilloscopes. As well as signal generators. An oscilliscope basically reads anything relating to electricity, and displays it on a graph on the screen. Well, I did a bit of research, and each oscilloscope in the room costs about 5 grand (shown to the right). And at about 15 of them in the room, that's a grand total of $45,000 dollars. Now the signal generators are $400 dollars each, but still. That means another $6,000 added to the room. Yeah, I know, that's nothing compared to the half a billion dollars in endowment at Olin, but still. I mean come on, in high school physics, I don't think we used anything over 200 dollars. So not bad.
Oh, and as Manager of Finance and Records for SERV, I'm handling, oh, about 8,000 dollars. Just a bit of a step up from NHS, where I handled...I don't even know. 50? 100?

So yes. Besides that, I'm excited for Season 5 of The Office to start tonight. I learned a bit of improv soloing on a guitar last night from a junior. And oh! Another thing I can write about. So I don't know why, but once every few weeks, theres a few people that cook two rice cookers full of rice, and give it out. And, coincidentally, I love rice. Yay asians. So getting free rice with hurike at 10 pm last night was pretty fun. And cake for my friend Chris' birthday. I have a 1600 word essay due tomorrow, but if I get that done relatively early, I'm definitely going to go for a run and work out. I met a guy on the Babson baseball team and he said I should find out if I can play with them. So I'm giving it a shot, but I need to get in shape first.

Tomorrow night I think I'm going to go to a pub on the Babson campus with a friend. Now you ask, Chris, you're 17. How can you do this? Legally, you can't enter, and you certainly can not drink.

Now here's where I must give credit where credit is due. Needham and Wellesely are both DRY towns. Selling alcohol is illegal. Babson College knew this would suck, so they decided that they'll become their own town and make it legal. So Babson College is legally its own town. And they have a pub which will let anybody in and sell alcohol to anybody. Ok, selling alcohol to everybody is still against the law, but its not like they care. Don't worry, I'm still not drinking. I'm considering having a drink on my birthday, but meh. We'll see.

So there you have it.

Wow, I'm impressed that I actually wrote on this blog again. Not bad...

Life at Olin so far

Helloooo everybody! And when I say everybody, I mean the two, three, or five people that are going to ever read this.

So I've been getting all sorts of questions about life at Olin. And here are your answers.

Olin's great. The atmosphere is really great, everybody knows each other and really cares about each other. At parties, the hosts go around and hand out water and cut people off at the bar if they're too drunk, stuff like that. People also help each other with work the best they can, which is really helpful in such a hard school like this. At the same time, this small size is a down side. There's 300 people in the entire college and 80 people in my class. This creates a really different environment than what you'll get at any other college. If you do something, 297 people will know about it. And this has lead to an enormous enormous amount of drama (yeah, I know, what the hell) in the first few weeks of Olin.

Speaking of drama, who are my friends? To be honest, not a lot of people. Let me just put it out there, that everybody's extremely nice. But I find quite a lot of people to be...very weird. Some...hmm...have a younger mentality than me? Yeah, that's right, I did just avoid saying they're immature, but that word carries too much of a negative connotation than I think this situation deserves. So you know, they're all very nice, and they get along, it's just that I can't imagine having them as a good friend.

Of course, I do have some friends who are more like me. Unfortunately, they're mostly girls. I've found really only one or two guys who I can imagine being great friends with later in life. I'm sure this will change as the weeks go on, but life is life for now.

Here at Olin, there's something called a Sibb. It's like a sibling, but not. Every freshman gets paired up with another person in the school who isn't a freshman, and basically this program can help establish connections with upperclassmen, and help freshman get acquainted with this new life. My sibb is Kevin McGraths' old best friend from Moscow, so we both know the honorable McGrath family, which is kind of cool. He's also a partier like me, and I must say, he sure can down a few. And when I say a few, I mean a ton. He's a really fun person to have. To know that somebody in Olin is the complete opposite of a nerd is kind of nice. 

General life is excellent. Everything's open 24/7 (with the exception of the machine shop and the cafeteria). Food is excellent, dorms are very nice. Roommate is great. Parties are a lot of fun. Man Hall (East hall, 2nd floor, north wing hallway) is a really fun place to be. They're kind of like the frat in the school, but they're not. Anytime I go over there though it's always fun. Last night was a classy themed party, so everybody dressed up in suits and all that. Good stuff.

Academics. Work is pretty tough, I must say. Not killing, but it's tough.

• Design Nature - A class which students learn to relate designs in nature to designs in mechanical products. Right now we're working on a hopper project, where we must create a bio-inspired toy that jumps. We did a short study of how click-beetles and frog-hoppers jump, and now we are in the protoyping stage. We prototyped 2 or 3 models out of basic materials after we did sketches, and now we're modeling one of our prototype SolidWorks (3D CAD program), and doing a computer simulation of these to see how well they will jump. No math required, pretty much no physics knowledge required.
• Modeling and Simulation - Using MatLab (programming software) to create models (not physical) of different things. We just finished our first case study, and I chose to create a model which predicts how many new freshman Olin should admit for the next year based on dorm availability and many other factors. 75. This class doesn't deal with any physics or math, just programming and a bit of logic on how to program.
• Modeling and Control - A class in which we use a program called SimuLink to model physical systems. For example, take two graduated cylinders, cut a hole on the side of each at the bottom, and put a tube between them. Now fill up one of them to the top. The tube will drain into the other tube, but then the draining will stop when the two heights are equal. We modeled this and created a graph of the height vs. time for each for one of the first labs. This class requires a good amount of physics and math knowledge, especially calculus based physics, which isn't something we did at all in high school. It takes a bit to get used to, but it all makes sense in the end. I've learned a few new concepts in this class already.
• Seeing and Hearing - Exploring communication through the media of photography, video, and audio. Currently, we are doing our photography unit, which is very nice considering I love photography. However, we have also watched 3 documentaries about various things (Murderball was the best one by far. Watch it. It's great.), and wrote a bit about each. We've done one essay so far, but we have a 6 page one due on Friday. Of course, it's on the worst documentary of the three.

So there you have it. Until next time, I'll be repeatedly throwing my computer out the window because of SolidWorks, and going to IT and telling them that I'm covered under warranty so fix it.