Monkey Made of Drugs

Sitting in the Marrakesh airport, I decided to kick out a post here.

There were four of us: me, David, Gabi, and one of Gabi's acquaintances, Peter. It never ceases to surprise me how many people he knows. Peter was a giant man, pushing 6'5" from Holland. He made all his wealth in the states, but now rents his house and just travels.

After we landed, Gabi and Peter went through one line at customs; Dave and I went through another. Each official blazed through the disembarked passengers with unbelievable speed, as it took about 15 minutes to move three spots in line. Peter and Gabi beat us by several minutes, and as David reached the front, the officer asked for the address where we would be staying. We didn't have it, so we had to find Gabi outside the exit and get back in to tell him. If you've ever tried to go back into the secured part of an airport after leaving, you can begin to appreciate the difficulty involved here. The whole thing was an ordeal that shouldn't have mattered, let alone happened.

As we approached the curb outside the airport, the Gabi Oanţa bartering began. We found a bus outside that would take us pretty close to the hotel. It would cost us €3.50 each, summing to €14.00. Gabi started haggling with a taxi to do it for €12, but the guy would drop below €15, claiming that the bus was going to drop us a ten minute walk from the hotel. Gabi said the stop was 2 minutes away, the guy argued, and we ended up getting on the bus right as it pulled out.

The bus did drop off pretty close to the hotel, so we saved a couple of euros between the four of us. It really came down to a matter of gabi's pride rather than the actual cost of the trip.

Upon arriving at the hotel, we had to change rooms because ours smelled faintly of smoke. Quickly became apparent that exactly zero crap would be tolerated here. Gabi tore his way back down to the front desk and demand us another room but it would not be available until the following day. He responded by saying that we would change hotels and wanted a refund. After they heard this, the room suddenly vacated and cleaned itself, making it free for us to move in. The hotel was nice with the pool located within jumping distance from our second story window.

After dropping off our stuff, we decided to head over to the center of the old city. Peter offered to sit this one out and take a nap instead. Having only one key to the room, we told him we would be gone for an hour, locked him in, and went on our way. The older part of the city consisted mostly of narrow, cobblestone streets. Survival Marrakesh requires constant attention to traffic coming and going from streets, sidewalk, alleys, shops in doorways. Everybody and their mangy dog owns a little two stroke scooter with bike pedals. They use these to zip around the 1.6 million residence town, all the while missing you by no more than 5 inches. While walking around, and Gabi kept looking for a specific barber that he used when he was there before; David and I just looked in little shops. We encountered a man who made small, wooden necklaces with a manual lathe. He had a bow he use to spin the wood while he used a chisel to carve it. It being difficult to stabilze any sort of woodworking tools with one hand, he used his foot to hold it in place. It seemed to work well for him. We got a few and went on our way. Among other things, we saw a man hacking the horns off a goat's head. It was here that we learned that we arrived on day two of Morocco's three day Christmas-like festival. As we continued to explore the winding streets, we saw a fellow cleaning out a traditional brick oven they use to make bread. As one of his friends explained what he was doing, he walk inquired if we had enjoyed the local hash. We politely declined and left. Upon realizing we had been gone for well more than the promised hour, we returned to the room to find Peter awake and frustrated we had locked him in. He told us he wasn't feeling too well, so he slept a bit more and the rest of us fell asleep in turn before heading out for the night.

To be continued...

What's This?

September 11, 2011

Last week I went climbing seven times in seven days. Today, it feels like my fingers are broken. I'm thinking it comes from hitting the same 11.a twice in two days and not being used to it. That, however, won't be much of a deterrent from going this week. It is about all I do anymore.

Work has been work. Some days are better than others. Some days feel like weeks, others feel like minutes. There is plenty to do, but often it is just that after a whole day of working, there isn't a lot of visible progress. At that point, you just have to step back and say, "I swear I worked all day, even if I don't have much to show for it." 

David and I went shooting on Saturday, and the surprising lesson of the day was that the AK-47 can easily pinpoint a tiny cup from 20 yards. Dave and I played "Top Shot" and through a series of challenges, I prevailed. Luckily, there was no shotgun challenge, otherwise I would have been annihilated. 

September 16, 2011

Today, no work. Instead, David and I worked on building a floating candelabra for my madre's haunted house. 

System Restart

So when blogging from das iPad, it it doesn't like to allow text in the compose field, so welcome to HTML zone.

I didn't go to work today because I didn't really have to. I worked ten hours on Monday and about eleven hours yesterday, so it left me pretty close to forty for the week without going in. I was planning on spending at least a few hours there this morning, but then decided against it because sleep was just too awesome. That seems to be the trend of my weeks as of late. Instead of saying, "I could easily get overtime today," I say, "close enough." That, and I've been dealing with some other stuff today.

Don't get me wrong: I've got a great job and I work for a great company. I enjoy what I do and I wish I could be there longer than just the summer. I mean, they're giving all of the employees iPads, just for being awesome. I shall sell mine to recoup the costs of Master Control. Everything went better than expected.

What's that? You want to know the nomenclature of my electronics? Well then, here you go...

1. 80 gb iPod: îPod (named this because I had recently returned from my mission where the I-hat is used all the time)
2. MacBook: Mactop (Mac + laptop)
3. iPod touch: (-1)^(1/2)Pod (the square root of -1 is i, I was spending a lot of time in school at the time)
4. Nexus One: GLaDOS (you get it or you don't)
5. iPad: Master Control (this was after I decided that all future electronics with names are denoted by robots and AI from movies and games)
6. Netbook: HAL-9000 (same as above)

By the way, this is front porch bloggery. As I've told many folks , you don't know what you'd do with an iPad until you have it. Then you don't know what you did without it. I am hoping that the AYCJ comes back into existence again this year and I can take it with me on my journeys.

This just in: cream soda looks like beer.

Cindy speeds down the road in the neighborhood. Just saw it with my own eyes. No pics, although it did happen.

Despite having not finished my regular season shows, I am excited for summer season. Mostly for Burn Notice, but whatever.

Just a quick thanks to everybody who helped me deal with my crap last week. You all know who you are, even if you don't know exactly what you did.

It's More Than Just a Free Minor

So now that May is almost over, I suppose that it is time for another blog post. Again, apologies to all that actually check this.

So here is something that I have been thinking about recently: Math. But you might be saying, "Brian, you just graduated. Why in the world would you be thinking about math?" and the answer to your question is simple: Math is everything.

Music is math: When you convert the frequency of equivalent notes between octaves, they are an exact double of the lower octive. For example, if you were to take the A note just above middle C to be 440 Hz, then the A below it would be 220 Hz and the one above it would be 880 Hz. Each note is thusly proportionally spaced (A to A# to B to B# and so on) to be 2^(1/12)x the note preceding it. All of this is simply boiled down to the rate at which waves propagate through matter, but then there have been numerous papers written on the rhythmic patterns of Chopin, Motzart, and Beethoven, one of which takes Beethoven's fifth and pulls the raw equations out of it using Fourier transforms and demonstrates the mathematical soundness of the entire thing. If I could find the link on it right now, I would link it, but I'm not in the mood to go digging. On a less classy note, there's auto-tuning of today's horrible pop stars that makes their voices more tolerable: also math, but just less classy.

Weight loss is math: when you're trying to lose weight, it is going to come down to one thing: calories. A calorie is defined as the amount of energy it takes to heat one gram (which is also conveniently one milliliter and one cubic centimeter) of water, one degree C. This is stored energy and equal to about 4.184 joules. When you are actively using up this energy, you can express the rate of energy consumption in watts, or joules per second. So if the average person takes in 2000 dietetic calories (or 8.368 MJ) per day, they would have consumed enough energy to power a single 100 watt lightbulb for almost an entire day. Now, this really isn't all that much, but bear in mind that there are people that are consistently getting fatter, which means that they aren't using all the energy that they take in, and there body has to store it somewhere. Basic universal laws state that you can't create or destroy energy, only convert it between forms. So they are taking it in, nit using it, and then converting it to fat. Yup. So if you want to lose it, you have to use more energy in a day than you consume. E_out > E_in. Simple as that.

Motion is math: say that your standing on top of a building and drop a baseball off the top. The representation of the acceleration of the ball will just be a = g. Then to find the velocity at any given time, this is simply v = g*t, and then to find the position of the ball, you can integrate once more to find that x = .5 g*t^2. this is neglecting any drag forces that the air exerts on the ball and also just a simple drop. If you were to throw the ball with an initial velocity of 65 mph at an angle of 35 degrees from the horizontal with a cross wind of 30 mph off a 75 foot tall building, you could effectively calculate almost exactly where it would land. This same principle relates to anything that moves. You can use math to explain the lack of friction on old shoes coupled with a diagram showing the unequal forces causing one to slip while walking, or to show the devastation between a head-on collision between an F-150 and a smart car. In that scenario, you can guess who the victor is going to be, but can you explain why? Well, math can.

There are plenty more examples, but these are just a few that I could think of off the top of my head. So every time somebody says to me, "math is hard" I like to interpret this into "understanding everything is hard." Granted, you don't have to understand the math behind everything to do it, it just makes it a lot better.

(And this is what happens when I don't use my brain for a month after being out of school.)

Denim Chicken?

Check out the six day turnaround on blog posts. Not bad, eh?

I am mostly writing because I forgot a very important even in the last post. I went to Disney World. (Hey, I was rushed...)

It was pretty awesome; here are some pictures,

Awesome Castle Show (Forgot the name of it...)

Untouchable Buzz Lightyear Score

Derek Enjoying an Epic High Five Adventure

Umm.... Zebra Man?

Jeniece went to every length to ensure that Derek and I had a great time, and she did very well. Hopefully it was enough to pull through to the end of the semester.

Meltdown Imminent

It has been well over a month since I last posted anything on here, so I will give a quick recap of what has happened since February 3rd.

• I got into ASU.
• I went to Wyoming for a job that is in the middle of nowhere, that would be interesting, good experience and pay well. However, it is in the middle of nowhere.

That is about it. I have also assembled a really sweet gun. It is a .308 and I haven't taken it out yet. I plan on eventually hitting something at 1000 yards. Just for a point of reference, if you shoot completely horizontal, it will take the bullet more than a second to fly that distance and will drop more than 35 feet. It will be a challenge, but I have 40 rounds to try and pull it off. If I can't do it with those, I will just buy more.

I have also spent a liberal amount of time this past month playing a game called "Fallout." It is set in post apocalyptic Washington DC and is massive. I have been checking some walkthroughs on the internet as I go mostly because I don't want to waste exorbitant amounts of time doing things that don't really matter. Fun game overall. I think that if I do decide to go up to Wyoming, I will buy the next one to spend my free time on this summer.

Derek is currently on "operation: don't look so damn fat" and I've decided to join him. Mostly because I feel like crap and don't exercise and I'm gaining weight. I ran a mile and lifted a bit today, but not a whole lot. We'll see how long I keep it up. I figure that if somebody else is doing it as well, I might be more motivated to actually keep up with it instead of quitting like I do every time.

Thanks to my geophysics class, I know exactly how many Joules of energy were released in the 9.0 Japan earthquake from a few days ago. Correction: I know where to look up the equation. I don't have it memorized. I have better equations to memorize to be honest.

There remain 36 days between me and the end of my BYU career. I am very excited to finish up and get out of there. Overall, they have been really good to me. I am just sick of the SSDD outine that I go through there. I am hoping that by not spending much time at ASU, I don't develop the same feelings for that university.

Current shows:

Dexter: Just finished season 4.

Rescue Me: Middle of season 4.

There really isn't anything else on right now. Everything is taking sporadic breaks and I never know when it is on. I think that I am going to start saving entire seasons until they are done. I will definitely burn through them faster but I think that I would enjoy them more. I will likely still acquire them as they come out though.

Anyway, my room looks like total crap and I have resolved to clean it today. Something smells like fire. Better check it out.

HaHA!

For some reason, whenever I'm bored, I never think to post to this thing. Except for right now. Right now I just remembered.

Dave sold Derek and I some cards for a nursing thing fundraiser. Last night we went to Trafalga with them and each got two free games of mini golf. We didn't play our games sequentially, we played six balls at the same time. These were the rules:

1. If you were playing on an odd-numbered hole, you shot one ball, then the other. After you, somebody else did the same thing and the hole was played in this fashion.
2. If you were playing an even-numbered hole, you shot one ball, then the next player went, and the loop continued in that fashion.
3. If you were playing a prime-numbered hole (and later perfect squares as well) you had to shoot both balls at the same time. This rule supersedes the previous rules when determining the style of hole.
4. If somebody gets a hole-in-one on a prime-numbered hole, they got to shoot all six balls simultaneously on the next prime-numbered hole.
5. Bad-Ass points are awarded for doing something awesome.
6. Dumb-Ass points are awarded for doing something stupid.
7. Dick Treason can be called if you rob somebody of a shot within 6 inches of the hole.
8. The 18th hole is treated as prime if a hole-in-one is made on the 17th hole.

It seems like there were a few more rules that were made up, but you get the idea. Also, if you're reading this, you were also likely there...

This semester sucks. Capstone needs to go away. It is one semester too long. I've been spending a lot of time down at USS and we had a design review last week where we were told "you should be afraid of not finishing." I don't really care.

Geophysics isn't too bad. The teacher isn't too spectacular, but she does try to make it interesting. The class's redeeming quality is that the class number isn't preceded by "ME EN" making it a change from the standard I've been experiencing for the past four years.

Tonight, Dave is hosting "Geektober" which is odd, because it is February. "Geekuary" really doesn't have the same feel to it though.

The distributor that I use for my weaponry is currently out of stock of anything and everything that interests me. It is a bit of a pain in the ass. I can't say that I am overly pleased with the fact that I have no guns to sell right now. I have my AK, but as indicated, it is mine and I won't be selling it anytime soon.

I have posted a picture of a magazine that I created. The last gun that I sold initially came with two mags and a hard case. I sold it with one mag and no case, but for less than I initially intended. I did this to one of the mags and quite enjoyed the project.

Yes, you could hide amongst a herd of zebras and nobody would even know you were there...

Also, I've decided to post a picture from last September, when Derek and I went off on a grand adventure around the world. It is entitled "Derek Picked Horrible Breakfast, So He Can't Criticize Brian For Horrible Dinner"

This was at breakfast. Derek carried a similar expression at dinner.

Bombachus

• I'm gonna live forever!

The Final Stretch

So I'm simply going to give a rundown of what happened last semester with the classes. If you need to brush up on what the predictions were, you can read about them here. <- You can click on that...

• Capstone: Sucked. My group was pretty horrible. I've learned that MET's for the most part are useless. There is nothing that they can do that a mechanical engineer can't do better, faster, and more efficiently. I thought it was going to be fun, but I was very, very wrong.
• System Dynamics: Wasn't too bad. I understood the material for the most part and did fairly well in the class overall. I didn't necessarily enjoy it, but I had a really good professor.
• Fluid Systems: Great professor, loved the material, got destroyed on the tests. I felt like a hero walking into the exams, and felt like the stupidest peasant walking out of them. I still did alright in the class.
• MEMS: Didn't enjoy the class as much as I thought I was going to. I really had a lot of fun and learned a lot in the weekly labs, but the coursework was less than pleasurable. I threw a hail-mary on the final which worked out and got me a good final grade.

Now for this semester...

• Capstone: Crappy as crap could be. I can't wait for this to be over.
• Geophysics: Supposedly the biggest fluff class you can take as a mech. I'm taking this just to be able to get an A in...
• Heat Transfer: One of the hardest required classes for a mech. I'm not actually too worried about it.
• Gas Turbine and Jet Engine Design: This class has a 99.8% chance of getting dropped. I will keep it as long as I need 12 credits. If I don't, goodbye. I would really enjoy the class and the material, but I am ready to be done and want to wash my hands of this degree.

Christmas was really fun. I got a remote helicopter which as been more fun than ever imagined. Derek and I have played a week's worth of Donkey Kong. I went out shooting with a bunch of friends on my birthday (Mark, Grant, Brent, Derek, Dave) and did basically nothing for New Year's. Oh, and I got a new calling at church. I'm an assistant ward clerk. I deal with money. Simple enough.

Also, I'm buying an annual pass to Disneyland this year.

final day

This is me: bored. We're doing Capstone presentations. I get to just sit here.

...or Puff the Magic Dragon

Today is Thursday. This means:

• Community
• 30 Rock
• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
• Burn Notice
• The Office
• Bones

It is a horrible night for productivity (which is a lie). I don't usually watch any of these shows on Thursday night. I usually "DVR" them and watch them on Friday and Saturday.

So I just took a three hour break from writing this to finish up some homework. I don't know where it came from, but I suddenly realized what I had to do to finish a project that I've already spent about 7 hours on. Myself and some comrades at school had to do some work with supersonic flow and produce some experimental and theoretical results. Experimental was easy; theoretical wasn't. We couldn't figure out how to get the data we needed from what we had. I realized in about one second tonight what I tried to figure out for two hours yesterday. However, after realizing it, it took me three hours to do it.

Speaking of school projects, here are some images of some of the cooler things I've had to do at school so far this year.

• This is an analysis showing the speed of air coming off of an airfoil (wing). The redder, the faster. You see all the blue? That is where the air pretty much is stopped and just hangs out behind the wing. This is for Mach 8, and and 8 degree angle of attack. That means that it is moving 8x the speed of sound and pointed 8 degrees above the horizon.

• This is what I just did. These are contour lines showing air pressure as it moves across a shock wave. Shock waves happen as supersonic air (Mach > 1) suddenly goes subsonic (Mach <>

• These are little, tiny switches. We made them by depositing various liquids, selectively hardening parts of those liquids and desolving other parts, over and over. Each of the longer switches is about 100 microns long (which is less than 0.005 inches). There really isn't even anything you can give for comparison. Just imagine that if you stacked 200 of these switches from end to end, you'd still be under an inch.

There has also been a lot of code writing, but nobody wants to see that. Nobody wanted to see this either, but this is what you get.

Call of Duty: Black Ops came out last Tuesday. Since getting it, Derek, David and I have wasted quite a bit of time with it. I'm currently enjoying it more than I remember enjoying modern warfare, which is saying a lot. The campaign is confusing, but it is supposed to be. There's a bunch of shadowy crap going on and you're supposed to figure out the over-arching theme. Its fun. Also, it has uncle gazpacho, which is fun.

Flight 25: jfk-...home

So I'm sitting here in JFK, waiting for my last flight. It has been intense this last month, but I'm glad I dropped the $700 and decided to do this. I got to go places and do things that I likely never would have done if I was buying individual tickets. The pass kinda forced us to get creative in our destinations and amusements. I don't know when the last post was, or even what I posted, so here is a synopsis of our weekend travels.
1. Puerto Rico: very physically taxing. It was a really good way to kick off the whole thing. Derek and I rented a car and pretty much just drove it around the island. We spent a lot of time on the beach swimming and peeing into the Caribbean,obtaining coconuts and getting caught in a torrential downpour. It was really fun. We special t the night in the car since we had a way early flight and didn't want to deal with sleeping for like two hours and trying to make it to the plane. Derek slept, but I didn't. It was a little sketched by the thought of being attacked by wild Puerto Ricans in our sleep. We had a total of about 35 hours in the air for 19 hours in Puerto Rico. Worth it though.
2. Orlando: much less taxing than Puerto Rico. We got a Disney hotel so that they would pick us up from the airport and take us back the next day. It was only $70 or so for the whole thing. I got to meet Derek's cousin Jeniece, who basically did everything you could ask for to accommodate us. She got us free park tickets and we went to three of the four parks. Animal kingdom, magic kingdom and Epcot. We really didn't get to do a whole lot at all the parks, but we knew that coming into it. Time constraint were our biggest downfall on all of our trips. Anyway, we also went to downtown Disney before heading back to the hotel and dying.
3. New York: way fun. We went to 30 Rock and we were gonna get some standby tickets to snl, but we never would have gotten in with how high our numbers would have been. We went to the MET, which was amazing and got lunch at a Romanian restaurant. We went up to Yankee stadium but didn't get in. I however could see the huge TV through the columns at the entrance, so I saw a game at Yankee stadium, right? Time square yielded a new Ferris wheel picture and then little Italy. It was a really fun trip, but there was a lot of foot traveling involved.
4: Orlando again: this time we went to a Universal park, which wasn't as good as any of the Disney parks, with the exception of the Harry Potter land. It was incredibly well done, with one of the best conceived theme park attractions I've ever encountered in my life. The food was good at "the three broomsticks" and butterbeer is glorified cream soda. We still spent loads of money on it though. Gotta live it up while you can. Jeniece was again an amazing host to the state of Florida and even put us up at her apartment in addition to being airport transportation. By the time we got back to her apartment, we were ready to die. We crashed for the night and now I'm on my way home and Derek is headed to Boston tomorrow.
I've punched all of this out on my phone so excuse all the grammar errors and typos.

Ginger Ale and Cranberry Juice

Derek and I are sitting in the Long Beach Airport. It is the sixth time I've been in this airport this week.

We just saw some kids doing some lewd things. They need to be punished.

Anyway, so we're in the LGB airport just waiting for our flight home. We have been flying and waiting in airports all day. We left Aguadilla this morning at 4:00 (their time) and we will be getting home around 23:00 (Utah time). So do your own math if you care how much time it was in the air.

We somehow missed the fact that if we had been willing to wait in JFK for another 2 hours, we could have gone directly from New York to SLC instead of coming through Long Beach. We don't know why this happened like it did. I am pretty sure that I just thought that since we had to go through California to get to Puerto Rico, we would have to come back through it to get home. Dumb move. We'd be home about now. Its all good though; we had some awesome mexicano food here since we had a chance to leave the airport.

I am trying to upload a picture from Los Puerto Ricos right now, but my phone is stuck at 47%. I'll post if it eventually succeeds.

Here is a bit of a rundown of all the events of our glorious trip.

Yesterday when we landed, we rented a car. We were expecting some sort of a POS, but we got a Lancer instead. It was actually really nice. It got great gas mileage and had some good acceleration to it as well.

We drove down through the main part of Aguadilla and down by the beach. We stopped in a little sandwich shop and had some lunch. There was a crazy man (Franky) there who tried to rent us a room for the night. We chatted with him for a bit until he left. It was enjoyable and the food was really, really good. I got a Monte Cristo and Derek got a Cubano. We're not entirely sure what is in them, but that is what we ate.

We decided to go check out the mall. Neither of us took any flip-flops, since we were just planning on buying some there. Neither of us bought any. The mall was pretty american, just low-class american. The main store was K Mart. Not even Sh0pKo. They went with K Mart. I suppose it is okay when you are planning on selling more horchata than mountain dew.

We went to the beach next. We had pretty much the entire beach to ourselves. We were gonna try to build a Bear Grylls raft, but got tired of it after we collected all of the wood. We found a bit of rope to use, but then never ended up using it. We occupied our time there trying to get coconuts out of a tree. We tried to throw some boomerang-shaped sticks at them, but they remained unaffected in the tree. We went back into the Caribbean to hang out for a while, and we saw a native headed for the same tree. He had much more success than we did. Needless to say, after he left, we took another shot at the tree. I climbed an adjacent tree and used a long bamboo chute to poke the coconuts enough to cause them to fall. We used a board with a nail in it (which was just laying on our forsaken beach) and punctured the coconuts to drink their precious juices. Having just come from the tree, it was somewhat bitter, but better than the juice that we got on the flight. We had a coconut that had already fallen to the ground, and we punctured that to drink as well. There was a capri sun that somebody had left on the beach which provided the straw for our tropical beverage. Gross, but we just kept thinking, "What would Bear do?" He'd use the straw. We cleaned it out with some ocean water first... After emptying the coconut, we broke it open and ate some of the horrible meat inside. It was a long time on the beach, and we're both sunburned, but it was awesome.

After leaving the beach, we got some street vendor food. Kabobs to be more exact. Derek got chicken, but I was more adventurous and went for pork. Right as we bought them, a torrential downpour started and we made a beeline back to the car. We were still soaked from the 100 yard journey, so we tried to dry off a bit in the car. It was mostly unsuccessful. We got sand everywhere and had to drive around looking for a gas station with a vacuum so we could clean it up a little bit.

We took an hour nap in the car and decided to drive around the island for a bit. We drove for a few hours and it was spectacular. As the windows were down, it sounded like the jungle cruise from Disneyland/world. Driving through the winding roads of Puerto Rico was pretty awesome. It was the best part of the trip. It was somewhat surreal to be in a place that was so drastically different from the mountains that we are accustomed to. We may have driven around 150 miles or more. It was great. We just kept going and going, and were never disappointed.

We eventually just parked the car in a close proximity to the airport and tried to sleep for a few hours. I couldn't. There is something about trying to sleep in a car in the middle of Puerto Rico that prohibited me from relaxing enough to sleep.

We returned the car and went to the airport. I had trouble printing my ticket for my LGB-SLC flight so I called JetBlue to resolve it. There were a bunch of dumb excuses as to why I couldn't do it, so I just took care of it when we went to JFK. We Pictochatted in the airpot and just hung out until we could get on the plane, which was spewing a strange mist in the cabin when we boarded.

The flight up to JFK wasn't bad. The layover wasn't pleasant though. Derek took a nap on the floor and I did some homework. That was pretty much it.

We got into LGB and walked about a mile to get some mexican food. Yup, it was good. We're now just here in the airport waiting for the last flight, which is where we started. So here is a picture:

From Travels

This is just a pic I snapped as we drove down the Puerto Rican cost. There were better pictures, I just didn't take them with my phone. Battery life wasn't great and Derek had 3G versus my edge. He provided maps, so I didn't have much time with a living battery.

Thank You For Using Long Beach Airport

So I'm in Long Beach, and I'm sick of homework. I'm just sitting here, enjoying the ocean and having never been more pleased in a single purchase of a plane ticket. Granted, it was a massive, all encompassing plane ticket, but still... just one... kinda.

Tomorrow Derek and I are going to Puerto Rico. We won't actually be there until Saturday morning, and we'll be leaving at the break of dawn on Sunday morning. I am way excited. I am still debating as to whether or not I am going to be taking much homework with me. I might just take my laptop and call it good. It depends on how much homework I have to get done by Monday. I may be up for a while tonight trying to get everything done that I need to.

So, I am at the airport now. They have free wifi here in Long Beach, so I'm pleased. Everything else was done by phone tethering, which has all but killed my battery. I quit the battery hogging and killed all my apps so that I could use my maps to make it back to the airport. It must have worked because I made it here.

I was going to upload an image from today, but we're in EDGE country here, so here is one from yesterday.

From Travels

It was taco Tuesday, so it was only appropriate.

I'm exhausted.

Chop Chop

As school is now upon us, I feel it obligatory to do a blog post about my classes and predict their outcomes.

Capstone: Today we submitted our bids for which projects we want to work on. Our choices were

1. US Synthetic: Create a machine that reduces die-swapping time from 30 minutes to 2 minutes.
2. Union Pacific: Design a cover for coal cars that can be used when the car is full or empty, as to reduce the amount of coal lost from the car and reduce drag
3. Panasonic: Create a device and automate a system that measures the amount of lubricant on a battery to determine if it needs additional cleansing.

We really think we are going to get our number 1, but who knows. We could get completely shafted and get none of them. Our number 3 is our "lesser of the evils" pick. If we get shafted on our 1 and 2, we want to at least choose how we're gonna get shafted for number 3. Nobody else bid on it, so it is better than getting stuck with one of the really crappy ones.

Outcome: Time consuming, but too early to tell if it is gonna suck.

System Dynamics: Nobody is really sure what this class is actually about. I think we mathematically model physical phenomena so we can work on it.

Outcome: Gonna suck

Applied Fluid Dynamics: I didn't really wanna take this class, but it fit so well in my schedule and I already had the book for it. It is all about fluid flow through turbo-machinery and over airfoils. I'm actually kinda stoked for it.

Outcome: Not gonna suck too bad.

MEMS: Little tiny robots.

Outcome: Awesome.

There you have it. I am doing my best to get ahead with homework, so back to work I go.

5.56 x 45 = .223

Today, Mark and I went up to Cabela's. As we left the store, I seemed to have discovered that there was some cheap ammunition just off to the side. As I contemplated how much I should buy, the voices whispered "If you buy a whole box, it will be easier to carry." to which I responded "You're right!" and I bought 1000 rounds of .223 Remington ammo. Oh, but I do not have a rifle that fires a .223 round. I am planning to sell them on KSL. If that turns out to be unsuccessful, then I will buy one of these. Then I will have a rifle that fires a .223 round.

As of right now, my personal armory is stocking the following:

• 1000+ rounds of 9mm ammo
• 1000 rounds of .233 ammo
• 550 rounds of .22lr ammo
• some 12 gauge shotgun shells

Nope, I don't personally own a shotgun either.

1,000 Taquitos

Minor Differences - The Oatmeal

I have decided that "The Oatmeal" is the "30 Rock" of the internet.

Hoop Jumping

I've been staring down my GRE book for the last few hours. No, I never opened it.

Here is a representation of how I feel:

Just for comparison, Billy Mays never sold anything with less than 2.2 gigamays of enthusiasm.

I take it on August 20th at 9:00.

HTC > Nokia

"Hello Blog, It has been a while."

"Oh, you know, not a whole lot. Just hanging out; living the life. Doing whatever."

"Yeah, I know I really should study more for the GRE. It is just really hard to get motivated to study something that I will never use again in my life. It is like learning to jump through one big, flaming hoop for one big show, then I will never do it again in my life."

So the last publication here was on the day that I broke my phone. It was a horrible day. I subsequently spent two weeks without a quality phone. At least T Mobile had a loaner program and I wasn't completely lost.

So here is the one reason I wish I had an ipad: I am currently about twenty feet away from my computer, yet because of the ipod touch, I can still write this on the computer. Is that worth the $600 for the ipad? Hell no. I am hoping that there is a killer android tablet that comes out before long. Rumors indicate that google is working on one with verizon, which pleases me not. Apple did it right by introducing a wifi version and a 3G version. I am afraid that you won't have a wifi version with this google/verizon pair up. Since I can use my nexus as a wifi hot spot, I have zero need for a data connection beyond wifi. Also, the nexus is basically a tablet computer itself. Maybe I should just invest in a new laptop.

It is Tuesday, which means tacos. I may or may not do an encore of my disappearing lime trick.

Here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure:

Today, we celebrate our independence day.

I just downloaded an app to blog directly from my phone. So far I'm not impressed. Here is a picture of a puppy in a microwave before it has a tinfoil hat.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.3.9

Never go to Micro 39. You will get killed.

I've decided that since there isn't anything to do at 9 am, I am going to write a blog post. I made the mistake of taking quite the nap yesterday after watching Red October. This poor decision caused me to wake up around 9:30 and I was up all night. I had to go meet with one of the all-knowing financial aid councilors at BYU at 8 so instead of getting an hour of sleep and trying to wake up, I just stayed up. It is kinda nice to be up before noon, but there is less to do in the morning than there is to do at night. Oh wait, Deadliest Catch is available online 24/7. I guess there is equally as much to do.

Hillier is going to buy a Glock today. It seems like the best idea we've had in a long time.

For those of you who don't know, it is Flag Day. It is easily celebrated by having your local deacons post flags on everybody's lawn. It might also be celebrated by going to Beto's and wearing shoes. According to the last person to edit the article on Wikipedia, "Flag Day is not an official federal holiday, though on June 14, 1937 Pennsylvania became the first (and only) U.S. state to celebrate Flag Day as a state holiday." However, I believe that if it shows up on a calendar, it counts... which is why I don't celebrate Kwanzaa.

What is the first thing that just came to mind?

If you thought of the children's book "What the Hell is Kwanzaa?" before seeing the image, you win.