1 day weekend, finals

Wow that FE was a beast! I know I was pretty unprepared but not that much! The morning test (4 hours) wasn't so bad. The questions were straightforward for the most part and I was a little bit ahead of schedule so I could check some of my answers. The one mistake I made during that time was trying to learn chemistry during the test. I only took 2 semesters of the easiest chemistry known to man back in 2004. And that was all I could take. I was happy to get a passing grade and get out of there. So I tried to teach myself chemistry for a bit during the test because they give you a reference book that just has equations in it. Bad bad idea. I wasted probably 1/2 an hour doing that. I guess I was fooled because that worked a little with Econ. I've never taken any econ and I don't think it's required as a mechanical engineer. There were some questions that were straight out of the book. I was on top of my game with math, thermo, strength of materials, and statics and dynamics. I didn't do so good in fluids. So the morning test gave me a warm fuzzy feeling then I came back for the afternoon session and it was horrrendous! I think we all know how application questions can be bad news bears and that is all they were. I probably guessed on 30% of the questions. Hopefully everyone else is in that range. It think I passed anyway. I'd hate to suffer through that again.

Oh, and to make things a little more tense for me in the test. They assign you a seat in a specific room. I was seat # 1 in room # 1 right up front by the proctor. You also have to put your driver's license and exam authorization on the table by you. Well they announced that they would be checking our id's and our calculators to make sure we were using nothing but crappy computing machines. Since I was right up front every so often the proctor would just get up and check my id and calculator then sit down. He didn't check the goober next to me's id. Just mine. It was like he felt a need to do something and hey since I'm right in front of him then why not bug me a little. Both proctors in the morning session checked my id and calculator twice. The first proctor almost didn't let me in the door because my photo id was taken when I was 16 and I look like a little kid in the picture. She held it right up to my face and I felt like Harry on dumb and dumber when he scrunches his face so that his face looks like the picture. Then she said "Ok Mr. White you're sitting up front". Sheesh. At least I got in.

So that was my weekend. Every spare minute I had I spend studying for that test. I took work off on Friday to punish myself a little more. I felt like those kids on major payne where he teaches them to take a slap in the face or a yelling by answering back "Thank you sir may I please have another!!". I would spend hours studying one subject and want to relax but then I'd feel guilty for not studying the next subject. Saturday I took the test and felt like dying in my sleep when I got home. We did got to formosa and get some chinese. That was about it.

I spent a guilt-filled hour or two last week waging a war on the grapevine next to our garden plot. I pulled a grapevine out of a huge tree that must have been 30 feet long. I bet there will be some angry squirrels as a result of that action. But they would also be fat squirrels who never had to leave their branch because grapes always used to grow outside their front door. So I'm not too worried about any vermin attacks. They probably can't walk over here anyway.

Finals start on Wednesday when I have 3 of them. Shouldn't be too bad since I just endured an 8 hour beast. I'm so excited for this week to be over so the summer can begin!

cram jam

This saturday I have to take the FE. I'm totally unprepared for it too. It's really hard to study when I'm the only one of my friends taking it. I think it would be easier if I had a group who was taking it. Oh well. It cometh anyway.

Friday we went to see "Knowing" in Layton. I thought it would be an amazing mystery type film like indiana jones or national treasure. Instead it was really creepy. At first it seemed like it was turning into The Ring with that creepy girl. It finally chilled out and turned into aliens. Aliens! that's right. I don't think I'd go see it again. Just a one time thing.

I also reranged our attic. Since I'm not working from home I don't need an "office " per say up there. Me and the dudes used it last week to study for tests. Which reminds me did I mention that we got a whiteboard? Well whether I did or not tell you I'm going to tell you right now-- we got a whiteboard. It was really handy when we were studying for the tests and is also especiallly useful when I'm upstairs just dreaming of an equation and feeling an intense urge to write that equation down somewhere but don't want to waste a sheet of paper. Directly across the room from the whiteboard we put up an old dart board that tom and dani gave us when they moved out. I put it up just the right place that if you are working on the whiteboard and happen to have a dart in your other hand (marker is in the other) and then you get stuck in a problem you can take advantage of a stress reliever by throwing the dart from where you stand to the dart board. We also have a table where fellow students sit that is in between the dartboard and the whiteboard. So far we have had 0 casualties. My goal is to keep the human casualties less than or equal to 3.4 per million.

Spring has come again for another week or so (maybe). I got to wear shorts and flip flop it up on campus. In the process I relearned a lesson I experience every year. And that is that you need to give your feet time to adjust to being outside the shoe. First I had to relearn how to walk in my flip flops, then I had to endure the pain caused by not having calluses on the bottoms of my feet where the plastic strap attaches to the back of the flip. Or maybe it attaches to the flop. Regardless, I have nubbins on my feet from the traumatic experience. Also my feet dried up quick and feel funky again. I wish I didn't have to relearn this every year but I doubt that will change. Hopefully someone will learn this by having read this blog and not have to suffer. As for my feet, I have them strapped in sandals (no flipping or flopping) and I'm not so sure they will come back out to flip flop land for a while.

By the way, I hope y'all like the chuck norris facts. I considered putting a game or something on it instead but I like chuck. I have a small insignificant infatuation for episodes of walker texas ranger (every monday night at 11 pm!).

Old Main Beach Bums

Sometime over the Easter weekend Old Main Hill on campus turned into a beach. It's a fun place to go sledding in the winter and it always looks really nice in the summer when the grass is green etc. We take the bus up to campus and walk the steps down it every day. It is usually a nice relaxing walk home but over the weekend a bunch of seagulls invaded the entire hill. Their attach was not uninvited, though, as I soon discovered when I walked home. I understand people having easter egg hunts on that hill but it looks like maybe a whole stake or something had an easter egg fight there! There are thousands of colored, boiled eggs on the hill -- all smashed. And it really stinks too. Especially today since it rained. Anyway, the smell, the colors, the entire atmosphere has prompted millions of our state bird to come and turn that place into a beach. It sounds just like it and they are everywhere. I've almost stepped on a couple birds and am surprised I haven't been poo-bombed yet. I'm so disgusted.

We tried out our kitchenaid mixer last week to make bread. It was a good try. Now the bread is a tad moldy because it didn't cook all the way. The loaf was huge though. I bet the bread outside the pan was twice as big as what was inside. And the bread we did get smelled like yeast and resembled pound cake. We'll try again later.

Finally finished the puzzle. We made good headway over conference weekend and decided to finish it the Monday after. We were a tad worried that we would have some pieces missing (always aggravating) since we got it from DI. In fact the reason we got it from DI was because the box had a big note that said it was "certified" to have all the pieces there. And we were not disappointed. All 1,500 pieces were there and contrary to our beliefs at the start of the project, they all did fit someplace.

The day before Easter we went to Wal-Mart to get some Easter candy. Sara loves those cadbury eggs and we went to get some but everyone kept saying they were gone. We got to the easter candy isle (which was packed) and occasionally someone would find a little treasure trove of the eggs and they would be gone in seconds. I'v never done the Black Friday shopping thing but I think it may have been similar. We found our own little treasure of eggs. I'm pretty sure we go the last package too. It was all by itself hidden behind some other stuff. I think that is Wal-Mart's way of creating an easter egg hunt for adults.

interesting stuff

I finally got all the data transferred to our new computer. I think we ended up having like 30 GB to transfer so it wasn't so bad. In the meantime we have re fallen in love with Pandora now that we can actually listen to it (and use other programs). I also discovered a very interesting bug/phenomena associated with pandora. If you have the time to do it I'd be interested to see if it happens on all computers (xp, vista, hp, dell, etc.). Okay you open pandora in one tab in internet explorer then let it load up and start to play. Then in another tab (same browser) open gmail and log into your account. Let your gmail load up then click the x on the gmail tab. When I do that internet explorer freaks out and starts bringing up new windows that log me into my gmail account. I thought it might have an end but it will just continue bringing up new windows forever. I tested it out at work and it does the same thing (that one has xp and my computer has vista). Here is a screen shot of it happening (29 windows opened up). It actually may be just google apps (which is what we use for my work) that does it.

Conference Sunday we went to Laketown to see Mom and Dad. It was good to just be away from Logan and the demands of homework. Amazingly, I still got it done (most likely thanks to my new 10 key numbers on the computer.) Mom and Dad gave us their old KitchenAid Mixer. Sara is going to make some bread and is excited for it. I'm pumped to get homemade bread. We've wanted a mixer for a while but would never feel justified in buying one used or new right now.

I went to my 1st mission reunion in Bountiful on Friday. It was a blast! It was like a family reunion just the way it should be. Everyone there was someone I wanted to see and just about all of them were there too. Quite an experience, too, to see my mission president talk about politics and the economy and how he likes to watch the 9:00 news. My mission president's wife, however gave a talk just like she used to give back in GA.

stalking the fedex man

Well we finally got our new computer from HP. We figured it would come on Monday (we were correct) but the fedex man didn't know where our house number (4 1/2) was. I don't know why, I mean I found the place as soon as our landlord showed it to us. Well, anyway he came at 11:45 but came to the wrong door. Sara was in the house and never heard him either. I figured he would have left a note on whichever door he figured was the right one but I checked the other apartments in the house and there was no note on their door so I wondered if he went to our neighbors who aren't connected to the house. So, Tuesday, as soon as I got back from class I began stalking the fedex man. I waited by the big front window with the venetian blinds and every revving engine I heard I would slowly peek out one of the blinds (a different blind every time to avoid detection). I was also sitting by the puzzle and for a split second I got distracted by it. Then I heard a BANG BANG BANG! holy man I thought someone was using a battering ram on our neighbors door! Looked outside and lo and behold it as the fedex man at our neighbors door. I just barely caught him before he ran away again. I had this thought in my head that they walked at a "brisk pace" but I have since learned that is UPS. The fedex man has more of a "olympic jog" speed. Lucky for me I did speedwalking in 5th grade with Mr. Willis so I was able to nab him.

The computer is great. The cadanswer computer has 1.50 gHz frequency and our new one has 2.20 I think. We couldn't even listen to pandora on that thing and the fan would turn real fast and eventually the whole computer would turn off because it gave up. This new one though has no problem and has a bigger screen and to my great joy has a numeric keypad (10 key). That is so nice. I wasn't expecting it but extremely delighted. I hated doing things in AutoCAD or the other cad programs we used at cadanswer and not having the 10key. Especially painful was having to do my numerical methods homework which on one assignment we had to have accurate to 13 decimals. What a pain! As soon as I got the computer going I opened up the calculator and did some calculatin' just to feel the rush the 10 key gives. Yea.

Now that we have the computer we have a problem-- transferring data. I have no clue how to do that. I got a crossover cable from work but I couldn't make it work. (Meaning I plugged it in and it didn't bring up any boxes or anything). I really did some research on the internet and it was talking about fixing the ip addresses and setting up a network and enabling file sharing. I got the file sharing turned on but have no clue what to do with the ip configurations. Shoot, I barely know what that means anyway. I also tried to setup an ad-hoc network but got the same results. If anyone knows how to use either of those please let me know! Right now I'm using an 8GB flash drive and that takes forever! I've probably got 1/3 of our data switched over in the last 24 hours.

I'm also having a dilemma with facebook. People are inviting me as their friends who I really don't know. They used to live in Laketown but I never hung out with them (some because they are older than Tom & Frank). They seem to be "friend collectors" who only want to stalk others who they can claim a remote connection to. I'm thinking facebook was a bad idea, especially after reading the news article frank sent. Waste of time. I really don't need to know what someone is thinking or doing every second of the day and sometimes it gets annoying to know it anyway.