Monday, February 18, 2013

Update: Since Last December

So, I'm realizing I have 3 saved drafts since December relating to things I've been involved with. Much of it seems dull and non-technical though. For the most part, they're reflections. Here I highlight some.

Did a presentation on affymetrix gene chips and got to see an exam question relating to the topic on our micro final (woot!). Also, I'm getting better at the public speaking thing - significantly better than other times. Seriously, in the past I would freak out, talk at 200 wpm, then begin pacing back and forth while fumbling through index cards prepared the night before. This no longer happens as much..

During the winter break, much time was spent on this:
 Yes, it his a game history full of green. Granted I was in silver league back then, but if you played a StarCraft 4v4, you would want my zerg-ness on your team. Actually, a  fellow google+ user introduced me to "Stephano's 11 min roach max." These results are a testament to that success, but as time went by I learned how this could be countered in several ways - fun.

School started again, this time on MLK day, but by defacto the semester started the day after. Since the semester began, I really didn't know where I was anymore. We're having our first exam in 320 this Thursday. That's probably how I've been holding a sense of time. Time is measured by exams that come and go, not days nor weeks. I'm actually less apathetic to the whole schooling thing this time around, which is good,

So, I'm being "more involved"  with school stuff, and I've been around campus more. Actually, this is more due to the fact that:
  •  I'm no longer taking classes at CSN - thus no more cross-campus commute and all my time is spent strictly at UNLV.
  • My laptop has experienced issues - thus I need to use the school computers more and am forced to socialize with .. people. They're not people. And they all copy homework from each other. I dislike them for this. Seriously, let's see how well they do come exam time.
  • Getting RMC "formally" established - thus I need to often stick around random hallways and stalk professors to occupy their time in a polite and non-intruding way to pitch them our interest and secure resources for the club. Is this what lobbyist do? Have I stumbled down to an existence as low as this? They probably have blogs dedicated to this kind of thing. I should read those.
 Today I discovered that a lot has actually been happening as I wondered about aimlessly between buildings. Weird things happen, and I'm oftentimes not sure how to detail them with words. For example, this:

                                       
understand that this is now a "thing"

I mean, anyone's first expression on that would be, what the...? Turns out, a new dance meme caught on early February, and some students from our college decided it was our turn to contribute. I like this. This kind of randomness needs to happen more often. But the point is, this kind of stuff is happening right before my eyes, and I'm not even noticing. Also, that bass drop is pretty good.

So, due to becoming more social, a number of my colleagues (> 8 of them) have brought up the FB. As if I don't exist without one. This is not the only way to connect with another, but a lot of my colleagues use it. It's sad to note that some would respond via FB in mere minutes versus days through typical e-mail. I don't know, it's not like FB is any more private than what's in our e-mails. Another thing that came up was that I essentially have no voice on FB. I'm thinking this will become more important later.

p.s. Dulaya got inked! I'll post a photo here soon, after consent gets obtained.

 Back to that laptop thing. I submitted a "HELP ME!" request via forums.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2113956

That plus, a few e-mails sent to people I knew who might be knowledgeable with Linux issues. I received several replies via e-mail (thanks you guys! No really thank you. You rock, just for caring <3), but I've not been able to diagnose what went wrong. At the end of it all, I assumed that at some point the BIOS settings were changed. I took the CMOS battery out to reset the BIOS configuration to default. But then, upon restarting, my system would fail POST.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-on_self-test

On top of that, the monitor was still black! One problem became masked by another, and nothing but a codified beeping sound was left for me to ponder on. I finally asked my step-father for help since this is his area of expertise. We're currently past BIOS (woot!), but operating under a windows OS to collect drivers which might have gone missing. Turns out getting a screen out before an OS booted was as simple as hitting Fn+7 (already programmed in) so that the screen would switch to an external monitor. This was a noobish overlook on my part, but I'm happy knowing my system wasn't bricked. I'm being very hopeful about getting that laptop back to work. Maybe I'll be less social when it does, because it'll just mean I'll hide out in the library versus being forced to spend hours within the CoE computer lab. I prefer hiding out in the library, but that isn't entirely healthy.

A couple weeks ago, I got the opportunity to volunteer at a middle school math competition. The event is known as Mathcounts. It's similar to a spelling bee, but for math. This was at the Nevada regional level.

http://mathcounts.org/Page.aspx?pid=1553

I had originally gone as the a volunteer from the NSPE student chapter, but got to meet several other UNLV students (some Alumni) who had returned to help out for the event after having attended the previous year. There's a portion of the competition know as a lighting round, where two students (middle school) go head to head on a buzzer. It's a jeopardy style battle. We were impressed. No really, WE.WERE.IMPRESSED. Us, college engineering students, were impressed by these middle school kids who would answer questions given to them well before we even had the chance to finish reading them on the screen.


Aside from that good feeling of contributing to something like this, we also mingled with SAME members (apparently' I'm card-carrying member),  met other engineering professionals, and found one of our professors from within the crowd. Something worth pointing out were the parents. They took photos, oh the photos they took. Imagine being a parent, and being proud that your son/daughter was out there competing in a math tournament. That's what this was essentially. The smiles, the photos, the hugging. It was nice to witness this.

So yeah, the semester began, and is ongoing. This time around I'm only taking 15 Cr.Hrs. 2 of them labs.. 3 of them labs. We have a thermal lab. The school bought this 4 thousand dollar heat exchanger set up with various modulus because the one from the previous year broke, and guess what?

Above you see a tube and shell heat exchanger pinned down by one plexiglass brackets. There are supposed to be two. That experience was exciting, (the pop, and crack, and my paper got wet) though it still works. Except for the motor, which runs the pump. Actually, we believed there were some software problem where the pump flow reversed itself spontaneously without allowing us to reset the pump direction. Again, this was hardware that the school bought for 4k (we could probably make our own with a couple hundred and enough time), and I believe I understand exactly how the bracket blew off. Let it be known that no one within group 4 was at fault. The software issues were another thing. It wasn't bad, we managed to get all our data points from the experiments we ran, it just took a while and our group ended up being last to leave lab. I'll need to write up a report on this thing.. tomorrow. I'll do that tomorrow.

No comments:

Post a Comment

(-_-)...