Coryphaena hippurus

So this morning as I was walking to class, I was listening to Pandora with Anberlin Radio running. This has been the favorite station since I got the cylon. Anyway, Beck came on. It was the first time I've listened to Beck since he went on tour with Bender.

Once upon a time, I was ambitious. I used to come to school at 7:30 so that I could work on homework and get reading done for my classes. this was short lived this semester. It started up last semester when I had a 5 hour block of classes every day, and had no time during the day to work on homework. I used 3 hours in the morning to do what I needed. Now I have a 3 hour break between classes Aircraft and Thermo which I use for that homework. So I've been sleeping for an extra hour. (Cool story Hansel.) Anyway, so now when I come at 8:20, I have to park in Azerbaijan, which is located by the Bean Museum. I went in the Bean Museum a few days ago, and there was a fish on the wall which was labled Dolphin (Mahi Mahi). Since then, four people have brought up the topic of Mahi Mahi. In each conversation, I said something to the effect of "You know that Mahi Mahi is a dolphin, right?" and everytime, they tried to call BS. Well, thanks to Wikipedia, I proved them wrong. I never said that Mahi Mahi is the dolphin you think it is, just that it is a dolphin. There you go.

Speaking of which, there are free fish tacos today at Rubio's for BYU students. That's right UV(SC)U students. How's your basketball team faring in the NCAA tournament? Oh, that's right... no tacos for you.

I had a stupid meeting for capstone yesterday. Capstone is a class where some company hires BYU to make some B-project for them. It was useless... except for the pizza at the end. See, I've been worried about capstone since I first heard about it. I've asked pretty much everybody I've run into about it, so I already knew pretty much everything about it. We did get pizza. It made the trip to BYU on a Thursday worth the effort. Then I did homework for the rest of the day, and made something awesome for my car. Chinese parts are crap, until you de-crap them.

Here is how Fall 2010 is looking for school:

• Capstone 1: Start up your project and realize you're not much of an actual engineer.
• Heat Transfer: Self-explanitory. I've been told this is the worst class in the BYU undergrad experience. Stoked...
• 335: I've never been too sure what the actual name of this class is. All I know is that it isn't fun, it adds onto 301 and 363, and that I didn't want to take it from The Blotter this semester, so I put it off until then.
• MEMS. Little tiny machines. If you're interested, here is a link. If you want to know what a meme is, here is a different link.

Here is how Winter 2011 looks:

• Capstone 2: Finish your project and hopefully be an actual engineer.
• Another class, which I have to take to qualify for a grant by credit hours.

There is a Switchfoot song called Meant to Live which says,

"we were meant to live for so much more, we lost ourselves, somewhere in Versailles..."

I'm not sure what it actually says, but this is what I want to believe.

Our teacher let us out of Aircraft early today. I think he wanted us to think he was being nice, but I think he had somewhere to be. He also canceled homework over the weekend. I think he was actually being nice there. Apropo de aircraft homework, I spent 30 minutes or so calculating the area of some "weird-ass crap" (<- technical term). Later, I found out he posted the area to said "weird-ass crap" on blackboard. Meh... Time for famed segment of:

What's on Brian's Clipboard?

1. Work problem 10.1 in your text. Treat the handle as a cylinder of length 10 in and diameter
1.25 in (don’t treat it as a truncated cone). This will mean that you won’t get the same answer
as the back of the book, but it will make the problem a lot easier.
2. Using the method of virtual work, add the capability to calculate input torque to your four-bar
program. Plot the input torque required to drive the four-link mechanism from problem 1 in
homework 8 for the first ten seconds of mechanism motion. This mechanism has dimensions
r1 = 15 cm, r2 = 5 cm, r3 = 12 cm, and r4 = 10 cm. The mechanism starts from rest at
an input angle of q2 = 0°, and it has a constant input angular acceleration of 1 rad/s2. In
addition, a constant output force of 1 N acts in the positive y-direction at the coupler point
(with a3 = 4 cm and b3 = ��5 cm). (Note that this output force pulls up on the mechanism
at the coupler point.) Also, m2 = 0:2 kg, m3 = 1:0 kg, m4 = 0:4 kg, I2g = 4:8 10��5 kg m2,
I3g = 1:5 10��3 kg m2, I4g = 3:5 10��4 kg m2, rg2 = 2:5 cm, rg3 = 7 cm, rg4 = 5 cm,
d2 = 0°, d3 = ��30°, and d4 = 0°. Note that I have posted a program performing acceleration
analysis of a four-bar if you would like to use it as a starting point.

Okay, so I copy homework posted on blackboard into a Google doc so that I don't have to access blackboard all the time to see what it was. This is Kinematics for next week. We were promised it would take a long time. Looks like it.

Okay, I've wasted adequate time today. Time to get to work.

Spring-Broken

It has been a long semester. I went ahead and counted up the amount of classes that I have left. I've got 15 hours of each class left (after today) until the end of the semester. It seems like it isn't that much, but it is. That is still 5 weeks. Then finals. Let's not forget those now. I don't have any tests this week, so I've just be chugging out homework. I decided that the best way to see how much I like a class is by how far ahead I can get in the homework on a week that I don't have a test. For example:

• Fluids: 1 assignment due per week (next Tuesday) > Haven't touched it
• Aircraft: assignments due every MWF > Haven't even started Friday's
• Thermo: assignments due every MWF > Done Friday's, next Monday's and next Wednesday's
• Kinematics: 1 assignment per week (this Friday) > Did it yesterday.

So, take a guess which one I enjoy the most. Yup, Thermo.

There have been other events that occurred this week. This really isn't the appropriate setting to address it, so I'll leave it be for now.

I was going to go to Vegas this weekend, but I'm not anymore. I was excited to go and call it a mini-spring-break. By which I mean a weekend in Vegas. A spring-break by definition must include a day where a person would normally be in school. I would love to see some reasoning why BYU doesn't get a spring-break. These are the reasons I know of:

1. BYU gets out a week earlier than others (I would rather have a week off during the semester and get out a week later)
   
2. BYU doesn't want its students going to Cancun to have rampant beach-sex
3. BYU believes itself to be of a higher standard than other institutions, with quality students who don't need a spring-break.
4. BYU believes that some sort of break doesn't rejuvenate students during the depressing winter months, but instead causes you to fall out of rhythm, inflicting a downward spiral that will inevitably cause lower scores on tests and finals.

Good news everyone! I've developed a program that will force you to hear my voice as you read this in your head!

Here is a current list that I've been working on in Google Docs while I've been in the computer lab:

Obnoxious Things About the CADEM Lab

• When people forget that they're LITERALLY surrounded by engineers, and try to sound smarter than they are.
• Crappy 3G coverage.
• Sometimes people you know trying to come up and carry on a conversation with you while you're obviously trying to work.
• Anytime you have any sort of a problem with your account (printing, connecting, etc.), the CADEM administrators reply with "huh... that's weird..." and can't fix it.
• People who think it is okay to bring little kids in who are loud and run around.
• The "One Man Army"s walking down the narrow aisles, hitting everybody with their backpacks.
• When some guy comes and decides to sit right next to you when there are dozens of open seats that have nobody immediately next to them.

I've got class in about 30 minutes, so I've got that long to fill. I refuse to do more homework, because I know that I won't be able to finish a single problem before Thermo. I won't start something that I can't finish. I mean, I will start an assignment that I can't immediately finish, but I won't start a problem if I can't finish it. I have tried this in the past, and I just get confused as to what I was doing, and I have to start over anyway.

Fact: Man can live by starbursts alone.

I want to go here...
...again. Really bad.

I've recently joined the ranks of the many who have seen Avatar. I also joined the ranks of the few who thought it wasn't that great. Up next: Hurt Locker. Let's see if it deserved to beat out the Bear Jew.

I've polished off two episodes of BSG while sitting here today at school. I didn't intently watch them; just listened to them and glanced over when something interesting was happening. Good times.

And finally, a segment not yet forgotten...

What's on Brian's Clipboard?!?!

4
r2 2×cos( 3 - 2) 2
2
+ ×sin( 3 - 2)


× r3 4
2
+ × ×sin( 4 - 3) - 2×Vs× 3
r3 + r4×cos( 3 - 4)

Take it for what it's worth. I need to go to class.

Say No to Gradians

I thought of something really funny, but then forgot what it was by the time I got here.

I'm supposed to be working on my aircraft homework, but frankly, I hate it. The teacher is one of the worst that I have ever had. He doesn't really teach us much of anything. He just talks at us and continually says "you know this from a previous class" when in reality, we don't. So when we ask him to go over things, he just glazes them.

I'm going to start a new segment on here, which I will likely do just once and forget about it. It is called...

What's on Brian's clipboard?!?!

It is pretty simple. Basically, I just give you a good ol' command-v and whatever the last thing I copied gets posted here! Awesome, huh? And I promise that whatever it is, I'll post it and leave it. It may be passwords or whatever (which I will promptly change), but even so, I will post it (so you'd know the old password, but not the new one... got it?). Anyway, I honestly don't know what I'm going to be posting, since I can't remember the last thing I copied. So for today, you get...

°

After I did, it, I was all, "what the poo? Nothing pasted..." But then, I realized it did. It's a degree symbol!! Isn't that awesome!! I was writing up a technical report, and I needed it to explain some things. Now, you're asking yourself "Hmmm... I wonder what temperatures he was talking about..." Come on now, you weren't thinking that at all! You know we mostly work with the Kelvin scale in temperatures, which aren't degrees at all, but just units of Kelvin. That's right 0° C = 273.3 K. Not degrees Kelvin, just Kelvin. That's your science lesson for the day. Anyway, I was working with angles. That is what the symbol was doing. At this point, you're all "Brian, don't you use radians to be more specific?" to which I would reply "You just shut the hell up. I hate radians."

Last night, Emily and I played a game called "Where in Disneyland is x, where x is equal to some small detailed picture of an object in a ride or wherever." I won. Yup. Speaking of which, here is picture of Derek and me on Splash Mou'uhn. We're right by the Raccoon and his jug of porn.