Starting New and Fourth of July

This past week was all about starting new. New company, new dilemmas.

I still haven't sent out "the e-mail," saying I'm going to step down, but everybody knows that I will sometime soon. Just to clarify, I'm not stepping down because Lonoa is going down or anything, I just feel like I'm not the right person to lead a group of 7 other inspired students. Mostly, because I'm not inspired anymore. It's not my baby, and reality's hitting me in the face. I love the toy idea on the other hand. It's more of a "typical" business. You have an idea for a product, you create the product, you sell the product. Lonoa's very difficult because our product is our intellectual property, not the system that we've created. And no, I'm not just taking the easy route out, but I believe that the toy idea has a much higher chance at being successful than Lonoa. Another great thing about the toy idea is that it's just me and one other guy, Rob, which makes a variety of issues a lot easier. Management, equity, distribution of work, meeting times, etc.

So similar to my whole experience with flying before ever driving, I hired my first intern before doing my first internship! We're not paying her, but she's willing to work for free. 

Now onto the fun stuff. Last night was unbelievably amazing. Actually the past 48 hours has been pretty fun. Friday was our intern's first day - then went to Needham to watch the fireworks, which were surprisingly decent. Then yesterday I went for a run because it was a gorgeous day and found a really nice trail to run on. Then it was time for Project Best Idea Ever - http://www.projectbestideaever.com/.

The gist of it is that there were 90 people in little dingies barbequeing on the water and watching the fireworks. It really was the best way to watch the fireworks. For those of you with Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2019976&id=1149840163

And finally, in other news, the San Francisco Giants are tromping on the Astros. Tim Lincecum is crazy. Sadowski looks to be incredible. It's awesome.

I'm back!

I'm back to blogging! It's been a while but I decided I will.

So I'm at Olin this summer, technically working on only one venture but now I'm starting on another project idea. The venture is Lonoa (http://www.lonoa.com), which is something that's been put together by a group of 7 classmates and myself. Chris Fitzhugh and I are working 40 hours a week on it at the Olin College Foundry (our incubation center for ventures) and things have been going really great! Press release is coming soon, and work on a prototype will be starting soon. We also submitted a provisional patent application at the end of May, and it's pretty cool to be patent pending at age 18.

I'm also working on another business idea, which is more specifically a toy idea. We've been getting a lot of support for it whenever we talk to people, and it really looks like it might come off the ground. I'm not going to disclose exactly what it is, but it's pretty exciting stuff! Yesterday I created a 10,000 pixel wide, 15 foot wide when printed (and yes, I printed it), mindmap of all of our ideas for the toy. It was pretty mind numbing but I did it all!

I'm keeping this post short so that I don't run out of things to say immediately and stop blogging again. Until then, enjoy yourself. Also, enjoy my Flickr, Twitter, and LinkedIn sites.

http://www.flickr.com/cgallello

http://www.twitter.com/cgallello

http://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisgallello

New Jersey!

Well, I'm writing from my grandma's couch in New Jersey! I came down just for the Easter weekend and it's really nice to be hear. Good to be away from Olin, and it's great to see the family again. Daniel, my friend from Budapest, is also coming in at 3 today to hang out for the afternoon because he's in North Jersey. That should be a lot of fun! But I do have a lot of work that I have to do. Conference call from 1-3 with the Lonoa team, and I have to work on my bio lab notebook (eek). Then tomorrow it's Easter, I'll probably do more work, and then another family dinner. And finally on Monday I'll be returning home and getting there at night.

So yup. Everything else is going pretty well but I have a lot of work. Starting up a business, if you haven't heard, but I can't tell you what that is (hey, I'm on the internet). POE's going pretty well as well, we're almost done with the camera system and the circuitry, and then we'll be creating the bomb drop mechanism.

CNN got a new magic wall. It's huge. *Drool*. I wonder how much that thing cost them. I bet they need a pretty nice dedicated computer just to run that thing. at a decent framerate.

Should I get a Wacom Bamboo tablet? I'm thinking about getting one to take notes with, because I use OneNote so much, especially for Biology and now for E&M. I can get one for 50 bucks on the internet. Hmm....

NoroMonster

100 Babson students have the norovirus. The school has been closed for Monday and Tuesday, and possibly even further. They aren't allowing any students in or out of the campus, and police are checking ID's. That's a one minute walk away from my dorm.

We have 2 student cases of norovirus here at Olin, and 2 faculty cases. It's slightly entertaining to see everybody freak out about it, but it's also pretty serious. We're not allowed to self serve in the dining hall anymore, they're starting to bleach the hell out of everything, and there's hand sanitizer everywhere in the dorms now.

Besides that, things are going ok. I've done 2 solo flights, one was extremely short due to weather (I flew in a cloud! Slightly dangerous for a student pilot but awesome). I'll be doing short field and soft field takeoffs on Wednesday with my instructor!

Can't wait for the night flying and the cross country part of the flying!

Spring Break!

Yes! It's spring break now! What a relief...i really need it. Just went into boston today for the first time in a long time. Went to see sarah bunker and arthur zetes (friends from budapest/europe). We didn't do much, just walked around and talked, but it was still really fun and good to see them! And yesterday night was pretty fun. Went to ikea and i bought two lamps and a bookshelf. One of the shelves are at the same height as my desk, and the bookshelf kind of faces my desk so it's like an extension to my desk. Anyways the room looks so much nicer now and i have more room to work with so i'm happy. And then me ali and natalie went out to a nice italian restaurant for dinner them went back to olin. Oh and last night we hooked up natalie's nes system to my hdtv, we played super mario brothers and it was awesome. We also hooked up her snes and played mario kart. Ah fun stuff. Well, thats all for now i guess. I'm waiting at the tram stop for natalie to pick me up. Here she is :)

Apple fails - Watch their stocks today

The new Apple iPod Shuffle is absolutely terrible. If you haven't already, head on over to Apple's homepage and check out the new Shuffle. At first you see it and you say, "Oh wow! It's so small!" But watch the tour video. It TALKS to you? What the hell? Yeah, the only way to select a playlist is to use an annoying computer voice which yells at you. But to even get to that, you non-intuitively have to press and hold the play/pause/next song/previous song/song info/playlist button (How can you be so stupid Apple. I thought the pause/off button on the normal iPods was confusing enough) just to get to the playlist reading mode where the voice yells at you.

So about the play/pause/next song/previous song/song info/playlist button. You press the main button and it plays a song. Press it again to pause it. Then double click it to go to the next song. Triple click it to go to the previous song. Then press and hold it to get computer Sam to speak over your music and tell you what you're listening to (I can't figure out the point of this feature. On a device like the Shuffle where you put only your favorite songs, why would you need a feature which tells you what song you're listening to??). Well, if you're really in the mood for holding it even more, you can then get computer Sam to start reading the playlists to you. Then you press the main button one more time to access that playlist while it's reading them to you.

The use of one button for that many features should be illegal.

And one final thing. Apple. Why the hell are you putting the controls on the headphone? Nobody cares that it's smaller than the previous Shuffle. The previous Shuffle was small enough! Just put the buttons on the damn music player! You've effectively increased the size of the music player because now the headphones are essential to working the machine, so if you lose those you lose.

So, in conclusion, buy yourself 79 cupcakes instead of the new shuffle. You'll be glad you did.

Spring Break?

I'm REALLY excited for Spring Break

Working on stuff for Lonoa, doing my bio notebook, catching up with bio readings, getting ahead in vector calc.

Ok, that doesn't sound so great. But I'm seeing Sarah Bunker on Saturday! She's a friend from Budapest...And maybe Arthur, a friend from...well, Boston. But I met him in Romania.

Urgh, how long is this going to go on for? I can't do any of the homework without help. It's really bad.

First Solo! Candidates Weekends!

Hello there. Long time no post for me!

So I did my first solo today! I did it! Hm...where do I start. I guess from the beginning. So I flew with Maurice (my instructor) and Ali (my friend who drives me to the airport) for 4 touch and goes. Let's just say they weren't the best. It was also really hectic in the air, and that combined with a trainee controller ended up in having to pull out of a final approach and turn 360 once. So then we did a full stop landing after that and pulled up to the west ramp. Maurice and Ali got out, Maurice told me some things like to tell the air traffic controller that I was a student pilot on a first solo. So then I was all alone in the airplane. Weird...I was definitely nervous at first. I gave a call to Hanscom ground and then taxied my way over to runway 29. Switched over to the tower frequency, gave them a call, and got an instruction to hold short for landing traffic. Basically that means to stay off the runway but be ready to go for takeoff after the traffic lands. So I waited there and the airplane that was on final landed. I waited for my call to takeoff but that never came. Hm. Then another plane landed. And another plane. Oh, here's a break in the planes, maybe he'll let me takeoff after this one. Nope. I was about to give him a call just to ask what's up but then he told me "9ND (my callsign) keep holding short I'll get you up in the air soon." So I patiently waited and waited...it was about another 4 or 5 minutes of waiting there before he finally gave me the call to takeoff. And with an airplane, you really have to push down the brakes with both feet (theres a break pedal on top of each rudder pedal) to be able to stay stopped otherwise the plane will start rolling. Anyways I then taxied onto the runway and took off! And a pretty good takeoff as well I must say. Well I did a left traffic pattern which means all of the turns were to the left. On my downwind leg (the part of the flight where you fly opposite of the runway) the controller had me extend the downwind so I would fly a lot further past the end of the runway. Well I did that, turned around, and went for landing. Normal landing, woohoo. Immediately took off again, and went for another touch and go.

Ok, I honestly don't remember what happened when, but here are the interesting events. After takeoff, the controller made me extend my upwind leg by a mile for some strange reason. That basically means not to turn left after takeoff when you're supposed to. Wait and fly another mile before you turn left. Well then I turn left and turn left again, and realize that the plane that took off behind me didn't extend his upwind leg and he cut me off in the traffic pattern. Ugh.

There was also a time when I was on final approach and the controller said "9ND turn base." Ok. I was on final approach, and he wanted me to turn base. Turning to the base leg is way before going to final approach, so I was really confused as to what was going on. I figured that Warrior 249ND was in the air as well (I'm Warrior 239ND), and  since he was a trainee controller,he's just forgetting to say the full call sign and he actually wanted to call the other plane. But then nobody replied and he kept repeating it until he was really raising his voice. I finally was like ok I don't know what's going on but it's best to call in. I said "9ND is almost over the numbers (on the runway) on short final." Then there was like 3 seconds of pause on the radio, and I heard "72M turn left to base." Ugh! Idiot controller mixed me and a different plane up.

I ended up being right behind another airplane on final approach. It was still on the runway when I was over the runway. I was really close to going around but then the airplane finally turned off the runway onto a taxiway.

Hm. What else? I was pretty confident and really not nervous for the entire flight. Things went really well!

Almost hit a puppy on the way home from the airport. Ahh. Ahhh. Those eyes. Looking at us. Ahhh. That was scary.

It's candidates weekend right now! Well, it's actually over now. Last week and this week. I got to interview 5 people last weekend...It was really cool that I was able to interview even just as a sophomore! And it was a really fun weekend. Both weekends!

Ok, Stupid daylights saving stuff. It's 4:20 am. I really need to sleep. Goodnight!!

Work.

Work. There's so much of it.

It's weird having to be in a situation where you just can't get A's
and B's. You have to settle for a pass. A C or a D. And sometimes you
have to skip class to get some sleep. It's bad.

First solo flight tomorrow!

Need. Sleep.

I keep thinking things are going to be better next week. I'm not sure why I keep thinking that and I guess I've finally reduced myself to stop thinking that.

It was a pretty tough week. Barely got sleep. Thursday night I didn't actually get sleep (thank God I slept an hour during lunch), and I went to bed at 12 on Friday night. We have so much work it's crazy. But that's college, right? Luckily I was mostly in an ok/good mood during the week....Thursday night I worked almost all night  on the MIT Clean Energy competition. We have so much work to do with that but it's all fun and such a priceless learning experience. I'm really learning more through that than any of my classes right now. The deadline for submission is the 26th...oh man how close that is!

Flying last weekend was fun! Did touch and goes with one go around and one simulated engine out when we were flying past the runway to turn around and land. That was pretty fun because I had to fly over the airport and do a sharp turn right over the runway and land. Good stuff!

Today we went up again and did touch and goes at the airport but this time I was controlling the radio as well. I still need work on talking over the radio but oh well. It got pretty busy up there! There was also a student flying....I believe it was a Cessna, and he made a mistake and ended up about 50 or 75 meters away from me, flying parallel to me. There were lots of times when the controller told me "no delay on the go" (basically after you touch your wheels on the ground, get your ass up in the air) and to go as fast as possible on the approach because there would be a jet coming in to land on my tail. Oh man, it's crazy sometimes. Also, something that was pretty funny...I was aligned with the runway and number 3 for landing. I was pretty far from number 2 so I wasn't too worried, but number 1 and 2 were so close! Number 1 landed, and number 2 was almost over the runway. Then we hear "3 Yankee go around." We see him going around, but number 1 is doing a touch and go so he took off immediately. Anyways in the end they were both pretty much flying one on top of the other until the controller had one of them side step to the right a bit.

Well, here's the good news.

The next time I fly I'll be going SOLO!!!!

w00t!!

Looks like blogger doesn’t support HTML over email. I email my blog posts now. So much easier than logging in. And I’m not going to take time to log in and edit the past posts.

Correction*

First fatality in <b>3</b> years in America.

Bleh

So I had kind of a bad week. Not much sleep, and a combination of not so great things. I need the weekend, but even this weekend isn’t going to be so great. Starting to feel sick. America’s first death in a commercial airplane crash in two (can’t give you a source on that) years. Lots of homework. Missing home.

 

On the flip side I’m looking at studying abroad in the UK or Japan. More to come on that later, as in when I actually do heavy research into that.

 

Well, I have a biology essay to finish. Blegh.

I don't get it

This is weird.

 

I did 300 diamond pushups throughout the course of the day today. Something’s going on. Weird.

I still enjoy photography

Portraits of two of my friends. Used my 50 mm F1.8 lens

6 pictures for you

So I've been getting into photography a lot more in the past. I love
it. It allows me to express myself *ahem BS*. No, it allows me just to
have fun. It does not express myself at all. Really, I'm not trying to
be sarcastic. It's just plain old fun. And my friend showed me how to
do macro photography two nights ago.

Oh, and I just found out I can email things to my account and it'll
post it. SO COOL!!!

Back at Olin

It's been a while since I've blogged! Sorry.

So the general happenings of nowadays:

New Classes

MIT Clean Energy Prize Competition

Flying

Other general stuff.

So classes. Here they are:

• Principles of Modern Biology - Just as it sounds. Normal biology class. It's hard, but I actually like my professor. He's a really cool guy. He tries hard to get to know the students. We have two parts to this class. On Tuesdays, I have two hours of lecture from Bram (my professor), and then three hours of lab, which is taught by Bram but more by Sadie, another professor. Sadie's not a great teacher. Really nice woman, but she doesn't understand the fact that some of us have only had a semester of biology in high school. Lab is pretty cool, but I wouldn't say I'm interested in it. We cloned something though this past lab. I'm not sure what it was. Bacteria maybe? But cool! I cloned something!!
• Electricity and Magnetism Theory - I had the option of being in the Modeling and Simulation section which would be implementing E&M Theory into simulations of cool situations. But I decided since I'm terrible at coding, and coding wouldn't help towards going for a mechanical engineering degree, and the professor in the Theory section was supposedly really cool, I switched into Theory. Every week we have a problem set due, so it's a pretty typical college class. The professor really is hilarious. She's Russian. Shhhh, but she brought in a Guiness to demonstrate an electrical effect with a can. She didn't open it, but still!
• Vector Calculus - Another standard class. Problem sets due every week or every other week. It's not too bad but it took me a while to integrate sin(pi*t) today. That was bad.
• Engineering of Distributed Systems - Same class as Mod Con last semester but just different people in the class. Same classrom. Same teachers. Although now we're doing a bit more complicated things. The lab writeups are sucky in general, but this pasts week was especially hard. Took two long nights of work, and I still only finished part of it.
• Principles of Engineering - A class which mixes electrical engineering with mechanical engineering. This is the cool class. First day of class we took apart printers/VCRs in groups and we tried to understand exactly how each thing works. There were some pretty amazing mechanisms in something as simple as a printer! We're not working with devices called PIC microprocessors, in which we write code in C and upload it to the microprocessor, and then that microprocessor will do whatever you told it to without any need for a computer connection. So for this class, there have been some pretty amazing projects that have come out of it. I'm thinking of creating an autonomous remote controlled airplane as my final project. Yup, you read that right. The sky is really the limit for this class. For past projects, go here...and I really encourage you to, there's some pretty amazing things.

http://ece.olin.edu/poe/projects.html

So those are my classes. Definitely not as great as last year, but not too bad. 5 hours of biology on Tuesdays is a killer.

So the MIT Clean Energy Prize competition is a 200K grand prize competition in which you submit just the executive summary of a business proposal. The final document is due on February 26th, so it's really crunch time right now. We've split up into two teams but we're still working together. We have two ideas, but I really can't say here on the internet what the ideas are - first of all it's a competition - second of all we might patent one of our ideas. Anyways, it's a very time consuming thing, but we're making progress on it. And if you're reading this and you've helped on it (you definitely know who you are), here's a public shout out to you. THANK YOU!!!

Flying. I've only flown two times since I got back from the break. The first flight we just did sharp turns and slow flight (flying at 60 knots, full flaps). The second flight, which was yesterday, we went out to Fitchberg airport which is a small uncontrolled airport about 10 minutes away. We did two full stop landings. On the second landing, there was a flock of bird crossing the area just before the runway. I told Maurice (my instructor) and he was like don't worry about the birds. But then as we got closer I became more aware that they were right in my flight path. In the end, all of them got out of the way, but one came probably 20 feet right in front of my propeller! And he was going in the direction of the airplane! Ahh I hate stupid animals. Nothing happened, thankfully. Anyways, it was really busy in the sky. Oh and when we were pulling out of our spot to taxi to the runway, we had to wait for a single engine taildragger being towed by a truck with a firetruck following it. Wow. Turned out that it was a brand new airplane, they forgot to pull off something or remove something before the flight, and they ended up with a low oil pressure and high oil temperature warning - aka no oil fllow. Oops. Everybody was ok though.

Anyways - here's the shibang of it all. My instructor said that next time we'll be doing touch and goes at Hanscom (once again, it gets as busy as Logan), and then the next time, if I do well, will be my first solo flight! AHH!! Exciting!

Well, besides that things have been going well. I've been really busy lately, so I should go now. Went to the ABC party last night in Man Hall. Errr - Anything But Clothes party. That was tons of fun. Pictures of my escapades at Olin are on Facebook, I don't have time to upload them to here.

Bai!!

BEEEEEEER!!!!

Last night was the Reel Big Fish concert in Worcester. It was absolutely crazy amazing. YUSSSSSS. So we left Olin at 5 pm. Drove up to Worcester, got there at 6. The line was already about 100 meters long so we decided instead of getting real dinner we just went to a cigarrette shop and got some snacks. Then we went to stand in line outside in the freezing cold. Doors opened at 7, and in the concert hall I was able to get kind of close to the front....maybe 5 or 6 people behind the fence. So first a small upcoming band called Tip the Van played and they weren't actually too bad. It was REALLY cool when one of the singers came down to the audience and put the microphone right in my face to sing, and then put it in some of my friends faces. Then with everybody pushing and shoving I was able to get to the very front (on the railing!!) in the very very middle during the middle of Tip the Van's set. Being on the railing was pretty painful. Even at Sziget, things weren't this crazy. Not just waves of being pushed against the rail, but a constant pressure from behind me pushing me into the railing. When Tip the Van finished I was happy that it was over and was hoping that the pressure would lay off, but it stayed. I also talked to the guys around me, they were all really cool people, not scary or anything like some of the people in the crowd (tons of lip piercings, real mohawks, etc).

Next band was Streetlight Manifesto. They're also a big ska band, so during that concert, the pushing got even worse. I actually thought that my ribs would break at some points....Oh the pain and the agony. But it was so much fun. One of the...long saxaphone, whatever those are called. That guy that played that instrument, he was so good! And he was able to pop his eyes really wide, it was so funny. Anyways that concert lasted of course longer than Tip the Van but still probably about 45 minutes. When that finished, I asked for the set list, and I was able to get it! I was so happyyyy!! To be honest though, that concert was good but not great, because of all the pushing and shoving and me trying to protect my ribs.

Oh and another thing. The bouncers that are in the front to pull people out who are crowdsurfing were pretty hilarious. After one of the bouncers pulled out a person from the crowd, he raised his arms in the air like a referree and yelled "TOUCHDOOOOOOOOOOWN!!!!"

Well, then it was Reel Big Fish. Their set list was AMAZING. They started off with Trendy (YES), then another FU song, and they played stuff like Good Thing and Your Guts (I Hate 'Em) and The New Version of You and yeah a lot more stuff that was awesome. Kind of towards the beginning, Aaron Barrett (lead singer/guitarist) threw his pick into the crowd but it didn't go far, so it only went to the front row area. It was kind of to my left, and uh, let's just say my baseball skills came in handy. I literally just yoinked it into the air at the very last second to catch the pick and quickly pulled it back. I couldn't believe I caught it!! Right after I caught it they played Nothin' But a Good Time and YES it was amazing. Funny things they also did were to play a bit of Enter Sandman, and in the pause during She Has a Girlfriend Now they stopped and Aaron said ok so I've been working on a sequel for a few years and I'm finally done with it. I don't know if it's good, but let me know what you think. And they played "I kissed a girl, and I liked it!" (song by Kate Perry, popular on the radio now) Bwahahahahahahaha. That was freakin hilarious. Oh, and I kept yelling out "BEEEEEER" as loud as I could in between a lot of the songs when it was quiet (it's one of their songs). And Aaron was like, NO! We don't drink beer anymore! And then after another song he was like "OK EVERYBODY. Time for the most requested song of the night. It's about a beverage, that I think we all love." And they started playing TEQUILA. Not a Reel Big Fish song, you know, the good ol' song tequila that's just a generally famous song? Yeah that was pretty funny. But then they stopped playing that after 30 seconds or so and they started playing Beer. And of course when the show ended they came out again and did an encore. I was REALLY happy because I realized they didn't play Sell Out or Take on Me! Sell Out is usually their last song, so when the played that without playing Take on Me I was kind of disappointed. But then they kept going! And for the last song they played Take on Me! It was awesome. Definitely. Definitely definitely awesome.

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm BACK!

And HAPPY NEW YEAR everybody!

Welcome back to the famous blog of me! But without the famous. And possibly without the me. But the blog will always be here!

So resuming from where I left off. The week where I got my wisdom teeth pulled was a pretty terrible week. I got my teeth pulled on Monday morning. Started feeling better and was able to eat more regular foods around Friday. Of course, on Thursday, I started getting sick. So I wasn't able to eat until the following Monday! So from Sunday night to Monday night a week later, I didn't have a single normal meal. Also, the drugs that I w

as on were pretty intense. I had to first sit down and then lay down during church on Christmas because of the drugs. So all in all I was out of it for the entire week and I lost a lot of weight.

Besides that, break has been mostly uneventful. Sitting at home. I have nothing to shop for really. My family does, because they don't live in America. I don't have much else to do though...Seeing the family, seeing the friends, and that's about it. Not much to do in this area.

However, we did go up to New Hampshire to visit our famikly friends last weekend. Stayed two nights in NH. Got to see my old friend from California days. He goes to Dartmouth and I didn't think he'd be there because it was the holiday break, but I called him just in case...and he was! Because they have classes already...So that was fun. And then the next day we drove down to Boston, went to my friend's house, mommys met, then we went out for lunch, and then to the mall. Then we looked at some houses in Winchester, then we drove down to Connecticut. We stayed in Mystic for a night. Dad had business in the morning.

 And then we drove home. Fun stuff. Mystic was a bit boring but oh well. We went to this one restaurant which was really good. Restored a bit of confidence in America's ability to produce something nice. Especially food. 

I'm exhausted right now if you couldn't tell. My brother leaves for Tokyo tomorrow, and then my parents leave Saturday for Budapest. Then I'm here with my grandma until the 19th, when my roommate will hopefully pick me up and drive us back to Boston.

Goodnight.