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.