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.

homework-less is not work-less

So I am beginning to become sleep deprived. I have only gotten 4 hours each of the past two nights. That is all thanks to Java and its difficulty to not be C++ (I really like a standalone binary, so sue me). I got it working properly last night around 3:00 last night (this morning?). I don’t have any homework, just big work assignments (2 projects due the end of the semester and month long labs). sigh

So for one project, it sounds like we have to do all the web interface stuff in JSP (Java Server Pages) versus something much more friendly (like PHP or Python). sigh I also need to get to my lab stuff in OS, which I really don’t feel like working through SSH now (especially since I can and do all of my development on my laptop natively). I also setup Django on my web server and got it working with Apache and installed it on my laptop. This means I can begin developing this site in Django just for kicks. I may move back to using PHP since it lets me have more control and I am a lot more comfortable with it. I am going to hopefully rework a number of things and begin implementing stuff soon since I have all this free time. First I will see how the Django works, else I may have to get some other things working for PHP until I am satisfied with it.

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.