mattymatters

Alright, so the family deal I mentioned last time goes something like this:

My brother wound up getting pulled over by a police officer back in my hometown, and the guy found pot in his car.  Not just, a baggie or something where there's a possibility a friend left it or something, no.  Ashes in the ashtray, the whole nine yards.

Why in the hell do you do something like that when 1) the penalties for getting caught severely outweigh doing it at all and 2) you live in a small town where everybody knows everything?  Seriously, with that on his record, he'll lose his license as well as the ability to receive federal funding for college.  C.J....


Anyway, I finished my first Fields I exam yesterday and I got back the grade from my Diff. Eq. II exam.  I wound up with a 81 in the exam (not bad at all, with the whole "I didn't have my book for the class until last week" thing.  I'll definitely improve for the next one.  As for Fields I, I'm pretty sure I'll make a B in it as well.  This semester is turning out to be a pretty great vacation, I've gotta say.

In other news...well, actually, I guess that's it.  I'm apparently still doing the thing where I nap four hours every afternoon and sleep five hours every night.  Kind of weird, but at least I can function.  I've never been more awake for 9 A.M. classes.

Wow, almost four months since my last entry?  I really need to get it together.

So, in the last four months, I've...well, continued classes.  Finally got my room really nice and clean; it's definitely a place I could call home.  And it's only been what, seven or so months?  Better late than never, I guess.  Maybe I'll take a few photos later.

I'd discuss the reason I'm irritated, but it's a family thing, so I'll wait a while before going into it.

And I really can't think of anything else to write without forcing myself to.  I'll try and get into a more regular habit of making entries, despite my very, very, very limited audience.

Today began beautifully with 12 hours of sleep.  Very wonderful when I've been getting not enough sleep for the past few weeks!  I think I will take 12 hours of classes next semester, regardless of whether or not I push my GPA above 3.5 like I'm supposed to.  I mean, that one scholarship is nice, but...well, I'd rather take a loan than kill myself with work.  It's not the end of the world if I'm in a little debt.  And electrical engineering isn't the kind of job I want to get anyway.

So today was pretty much another West Texas BEST prep day.  I helped load and unload the field for the event.  Not too hard at all.  Doing that reminded me a lot of band; is it weird that I enjoy doing loading work?  It's really simple, but the organization is always fun.  I noticed the parts were put on backwards before anyone else did.  It's kind of funny, you get a room full of 20 or 30 engineers and we can't even put together a simple competition field together.

That's right!  I haven't even explained this year's competition for the kids.  The scenario is that they have to construct two airplanes on the factory floor and then set them up on the skyhooks with one person controlling the robot remotely.  The plane consists of a wheel base, the wings, the body...you know, the details aren't even important.  >.>  It's a robotics competition and they have to build a robot to do the job.

So then I head home and get caught up playing Team Fortress 2 again.  Not horrible, but I really do have to get some project lab stuff done this weekend.  Gotta get that pulse I showed you guys last update onto that MSP430...

TF2 Classes (in order of current, fickle preference):

Medic
Sniper
Heavy
Engineer
Spy
Pyro
Scout
Demoman
Soldier

9 kills with the heavy in one life.  Joyyyy.  Count four hours of goofing off and chatting with people, and...here we are.  Be sure to remind me not to slack off tomorrow!  I've been doing enough slacking off...meh.

Also I found out Ruthie was a sheep tonight, so that's the reason for the title.  She is the wooliest and fluffiest girl.  (Apologies, Ruthie.  It's just too cute of a concept to ignore.)

So, hooray, the weekly Horrible Monday is over with. Didn't exactly do my weekly report (really short) or physics lab report at all, but eh. I can finish it Tuesday!...provided I wake up at six, of course. So that leaves me four hours of sleep, oh boy college is so fun.

Ah yes. I should really brag about my wonderful success in project lab today.

Initial Plan: Use the MSP430 microcontroller's program to convert an analog signal to a digital one, just to show that I can do it.

Problem: Um...how exactly do I get some appropriate data to convert from A to D?

Solution: Give up and then get completely lucky on something my partners were working on.

See, our project involves making a pulse oximeter (that thing with a light in it that you put on your finger in the hospital). So far, we've put together a rather simple prototype with a finger brace and dark box. Now they were doing this while I was in class today, so I wind up at the lab after they've left. They leave me a message to mess around with it if I wish to see how it works. Cue an hour passing and I eventually figure out how to operate the setup. Cue another hour and, lo and behold...



Success! I have a pulse!

The basic reason it wasn't working for them was because this oscilloscope (device with the blue screen, measures voltage levels and thus your pulse since blood flows into your finger that the light shines through and you know it's not really important for this story anyway) can display in analog mode or digital mode. With analog mode, you pretty much see exactly what's coming off out of that box. However, change over to digital mode and you get a lot of new options to play around with, namely a self-centering measurement and the ability to recall what measurements were made previously.

The short version? I made the screen do like hospital heart rate monitors do, except without the beeping.

So yeah, that was probably an excessive amount of information for such a small feat, but damn if I wasn't happy about it. Not having anything solid to present on in lab is just begging to get docked points.

And that was the highlight of my day. Think it's time for bed now, night!

P.S. Oh yeah, a friend of mine said I must've been on crack or something to have my heart rate this high. The output on the screen is just scrunched together really tightly. Explaining that just in case you're premed.

Now, I was going to share my specs right now, but I decided against it and instead will just say that I'm getting a 22" monitor!  It's...um, pretty excessive, yeah, but it'll be nice to have.  Oh, also I'll have like 500 GB of space, which is ten times the hard disk on my laptop.

Other than that, there's nothing really going on.  I cooked burgers again tonight, but they weren't near as good as the three 'test burgers' I made the night before.  Or maybe they're the same and they don't taste as good because I'm used to the flavor or something, I dunno.  I should really get the proper ratio of seasoning salt to lemon pepper from dad or Dee.

Monday's going to be really busy, and it worries me.  Have an exam in my computer science class (really easy [CRAP just realized I need to do similary easy homework for that class]), need to do at least half of my physics II lab report (time-consuming), and I also must do all my work for project lab which involves utilizing analog-to-digital conversion on some microcontroller (hard and time-consuming).  I've got the new computer to look forward to on Tuesday, at least!...but still, Tuesday will be busy and I'll wind up really tired, and my roommates will have to pick it up from the mailroom for me since I'll be gone from the time it arrives to the time the office closes.  Sigh.

So that was my day and my expectations for the following one.  Hope you had a really good weekend, reader.

Today was a damn tiring day. A damn, damn tiring day. The previous night, I went to bed at 10 P.M., then woke up around 2:30 in the morning. Couldn't go to sleep after that. So...yeah. Tired the entire day. Didn't finish my Electronics II homework again, but a friend apparently has the solutions manual. That'll definitely help! It's nice when, you know, you can actually see how the problem is done instead of just magically figuring it out without any real examples. -_-

Another reason I'm tired: self defense! I really enjoy that class, but getting thrown around and choked and having to repeatedly kick can really take it out of you. And it definitely didn't help that I showed up 20 minutes early only to have the instructor show up five minutes before class. He's usually there a lot earlier, and I was all getting ready to leave and everything.

After that, I get a call to say that my project lab group was meeting early, so I explicitly say I have to drive across town to my apartment and catch the next bus to Tech (since I can't park on campus until after 5:30 P.M.). So I ride there...and I turn off my phone as I get on the bus since the battery's low. Well guess what. I get there, nobody's there. I call them. "Oh, sorry man, we tried to call you and say we were done for the day." Really wish you'd had the foresight to know that you'd be done in a little over an hour like I told you in the first place, guys. On the bright side, them calling while I was on the bus wouldn't have remedied the situation anyway.

Soooo after getting a ride back home, I was done for the day. Take a quick nap, play a long game of Trivial Pursuit, and here we are.

Well, I guess that was my day- oh! Also I ordered a desktop computer. It should be in...next week?, so I'm excited. I broke my budget by about $100, but damn if I'm not going to have an awesome system. I'll be sure to share the specs sometime later!

Also, I'd like to apologize for the structure of this blog post. I could have written it much better, but I'm really too tired to form coherent and structured thoughts right now. Anyway, time for bed...

Edit: HECK YES got the manual for Electronics II.  This will really help with figuring out how to do problems in the class.

Woke up late again, but it's expected of summer break, right? Even if it was 2 P.M...

Our fourth roommate, Tim, finally showed up today a few hours late late. Something about having to drive around San Antonio to a couple of places that he didn't expect to. Well, he's moved in now, and his parents treated us all to some subs at Which Wich. I chose a delicious roast beef with provolone and barbecue sauce. Eat there if you're ever in Lubbock!

After we moved all of Tim's things in and ate, we all messed around with black holes in Smash. Bros. Melee for old times' sake. I'm really impressed that the glitch is capable of overloading even a Wii...I guess it's not that much more powerful. Everyone got bored with that eventually, so I retreated to my room to play my wonderful copy of Mario Kart Wii.

AND THE AMAZING HAPPENED. Sort of. I got bored, so I made it my goal to beat a Time Trial of Vince's. The matter of it taking two hours to accomplish isn't all that important...um, right? After all, any opportunity to best the great Schneider is well worth the effort.

Apparently Tim and Scott are busy setting up a server in the living room right now. A country bumpkin like myself doesn't really need one of these, though I really should learn more about using one if I hope to become an ace programmer. Class starts early for me, it seems...

I made it to my apartment this past day. Everything's paid for, everything's moved in, all we have to do is just get to work on stocking everything and unpacking our belongings into our rooms.

Well...I really don't have a lot else to say. Maybe later when I'm not so tired. Anyway, it's good to be back!

My internet connection is now fixed! Apparently something about the dish being out of alignment so much that the guy said we shouldn't have even had a connection. Which is pretty amazing, I have to say. Somebody up there must have really wanted me to be able to use my internet...

Oh. And apparently this household has downloaded seven gigabytes in the past 30 days. SEVEN GIGS. I have no idea how that happened, but if it had anything to do with Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, it was darn well worth it.

I got my car in the shop today, so now I'll be able to make it to college without running off the road and dying or anything like that. Something about worn tire rod ends? Not sure how they work on a car, but apparently they keep your tires pointing where you want them to. That and replacing two tires should set me back around 300 bucks, though. :/

After that, I finally got around to mailing Ruthie her birthday present! I felt a great deal of self-accomplishment for giving her a gift about five months overdue. I just exude prudence, I swear.

Since I was already in town on a mailing run (driving my mom's awesome car, of course), I went ahead and gave Dee and Dad a visit. Dee is still awesome as usual, able to talk about pretty much anything and remain interesting (I had no idea that dad got full rides to three different colleges), and Dad is doing well. It's probably due to some simple antibiotics or whatever, but he seemed in fine condition. I really wish I could be close by during his surgery on the 19th, but I have to be in Lubbock by then. Such is life, I suppose. On the bright side, we went the absolute best Chinese restaurant I have ever been to, no lie. It's kind of a mix between buffets where the food is okay enough to eat and the prim and proper dining establishments where the food is a little too exotic to be properly enjoyed in large quantities. Give it a visit if you're ever in Daingerfield.

Other than that, nothing else really went on today. I tried communicating with some friends without the use of vowels tonight, but all I can really say about that is that laughter is the hardest thing to convey.

I said I'd start this eventually, and by golly, here we are.

Today was a day of sleeping. I stayed up late last night (again), so I woke up around noon, and then I napped again from 6:30 to 9 or so. So that's about 11 hours of sleep? ...really gotta work on that going to bed thing before classes begin.

Sleeping aside, I wound up pretty busy today. Mom had an appointment in Texarkana, so I chauffeured since her doctor says she can't drive. Normally I'd get her to ask Justin or CJ, but they have around five GameStops in Texarkana (crazy, I know). That new Mario Kart game is impossible to find, I swear. I don't even want to spend the money on it anymore, but the fact that I can't find the damn thing means I have to get it despite how illogical this line of thinking is. On the plus side, a Best Buy claims they'll be getting them in this morning, and I can even get them to hold the copy for me (yes!).

I got a call from Dee while driving in between stores. Apparently, Dad has to get head surgery because he's been having headaches and his eye's been swollen. According to the doctors, a head injury he sustained when he was a teenager led to some padding being placed in his skull, and that padding's causing the issues. All the doctors will do is remove the padding and replace it with some tissue, so the operation is low risk. Still, I can't help but worry a little.

Patriarch woes aside, tonight Nanna came by and took the baby chickens Mom had hatched for her. So that means no more chicks to take pictures of or hold. The little hatchlings grow on you after they dry up and become super fluffy and adorable. :(

Lubbock apartment in six days! About time I get a place of my own. Everyone, feel free to crash at my place...as long as you don't freeload, of course.