Jeff

ages

Yeah, I know its been a while since I last posted an entry. I have been busy. I am in the midst of senior design (we made a nice step last night: VIDEO ), a part-time job writing software, two work heavy classes, and the job search (still).
I get to stay pretty busy from all this and yet I enjoy what I do (for the most part). It is interesting, exciting, and fun. I am looking forward to the projects coming to completion, they are really neat. I still need to work more on the software that runs everything. Right now I have a rudimentary control on the motors (I need to clean it up and move it to the final code I am building), I am going to hopefully get working with the sensors this week and have them mapped out before break. Then I can get to the real work after I am back from break.

Speaking of break, we leave this Friday. I am going to have a “minor” surgery on Monday (a week from today) that should have me out for a day. Then on Wednesday I am going to Chicago with Kim for a few days. It will be a nice break (even though I will probably do some work while there, she will hate me for that too). Then I come back and begin the last weeks of my educational career.

I am supposed to hear back from two companies that I interviewed with in the next week or so. Hopefully I can start making some moves towards a career upon graduation (versus the current unemployment I am in) and put my degree to use. So fingers crossed that I have good news in the next few days.

Well, I need to go and head to lab to work on OS.

overdue

So I haven’t updated this in ages (like 3 weeks…) and I hit the button in my bookmarks toolbar and realized that I’ve grown tired of the design. I’m also getting up the energy to stand up and sit on my bed to work. I probably will get around to redesigning this sometime, I have an idea mocked up on paper, which means little since my ability to recreate paper concepts on my computer is very limited, but we shall see. It looks good in my head, still very simple and I’ve gotten a few different techniques to try with it.

Anyhow, I’ve been busy with classes. Senior design has consumed a lot of my free time along with my part-time job. I’m already on my second task and pretty far into it, it’s pretty neat and I think I will implement another neat feature that will make it even neater for now. For our senior design project, we have settled on a quad-rotor. You can follow it here: LINK. I am the one updating the site mostly, hopefully in the coming weeks I will add pictures. I will probably end up mirroring all of them here anyways. I also am getting back into Java and undertaking Operating Systems. I have confidence I should do fine in both courses, I just need them to get rolling.

I’ve been enjoying going out and doing things with friends (mostly Devin and Dave). We have visited Chumley’s twice and then the other day we played Edward Fortyhands and had a very fun time. Nothing really matches the absurdity and entertainment you get from doing everything with two giant bottles of beer taped to your hands, well almost nothing. Try it sometime, petting the cat… with a forty taped to your hand, standing up from your chair… with a forty taped to your hand, scratching your arm… with a forty taped to your hand, opening a door… okay you get the idea I hope.

Well, I’m going back to Java, my good old friend… for now.

finals suck

For some reason this week of finals sucks real bad. I finally realized why a bit ago too. This is one of the first time where failure is not even a possibility. I don’t want to fail a class, ever, but this is the first time where failure has major consequences. I have been working around the idea and goal of graduating in May. If I fail any of my classes this semester (well not PSY 235, I got a B in that, at least I think I did) I could be here past May. Suddenly this applies an unbearable pressure. I am struggling to concentrate on my exams and struggle to remain calm with the exams coming soon. I have two exams today.

The first is my ECE 462 exam, which I have been unable to study for. This is mostly due to it being a programming course, and I cannot find any real way to study for it beyond redoing code that I already know how to do and have done. The other is that the exam he is giving us is not anything like the past 4 exams in this course, meaning that I go into the exam with no idea what to expect. That really hurts since often I can enter a final with an impression for the types of exams the professor gives and how to prepare for them. I have two hours to answer 5 questions, this could cover anything and I have no idea of how to prepare for anything. I just have to get there and hope I am ready.

The second is my PSY 222 exam. I have studied for this the entire past day and all night thus far. I feel good about it, but know that I must do well to ensure I do well in the course (the final accounts for a whopping 25% of the grade). I’ve felt good going into all the past exams, but because the types of questions range so heavily, I cannot be sure I know what I am going to be asked. This was the same with my other psych final. I studied a lot but when I showed up, the questions asked were just not in the ways I was ready for them. (throwback to my cognitive psych course) I had established cues, aka methods of retrieving the knowledge, that were built in one way of being activated, sadly these cues were not used in the exam questions, which triggered other cues that brought me to close possibilities but not to the proper answer. sigh Maybe I should have just been a psych major, even though I hate memorization, I enjoy the reasoning and problem solving.

Well, shower time and then breakfast and heading to campus.