Don't believe everything you think.

That's just a bit of wisdom from Dr. Kupershmidt, my Complex Variables professor. He told us that in class yesterday, he even wrote it on the board. Neat.

Also, in my missiles class, Dr. Flandro lectured about trajectories. I thought I knew a decent amount about ballistic trajectories from physics, but it turns out I was wrong. I know nothing. We have to correct for the Earth traveling around the sun, the Earth rotating on its axis, varying altitudes, mach #, angle of attack, drag, lift... Crazy stuff. I'm starting to regret my decision to stay in this class, but it's just so COOL. I feel like I'm learning a lot, and it's very interesting stuff. Even though it's not directly related to my field, I feel like I'm going to get more out of this class because I'm branching into other areas.

I wrote a few days ago about how schools dumb down classes to the level of the slowest learner, and how that's detrimental to the high-performing students. I fear that in my missiles class, I'm the slowest learner, and I think we're dumbing down for me to a certain extent. Sorry, guys.

In Dr. Flandro's lecture, at one point, he said that if we followed the lecture to that point, the rest would be "duck soup". I don't know what that's supposed to mean, but I really like it. I think I'm going to try to incorporate the phrase into my everyday vocabulary. "Oh, Dr. Kimble, this research is just duck soup." "Yeah, Dr. Kupershmidt, this problem was easy, just duck soup." "No Mom, I had an ok day - just duck soup." Watch out - this phrase coming to a conversation near you.

P.S. Today is my half birthday - I'm exactly 22-1/2 today. I was thinking of getting half a cake, or buying myself half a present. We'll see...

Go Colts!

Well the Colts made it to the superbowl! It would have been cool to see the Eagles make it, but yay Peyton Manning and yay Indiana! Go Colts!!

In other news, I've been wrestling further with the class decisions, because I was again encouraged to switch out of Missiles. But - I'm going to stick with it. Sure, vibrations is the most logical choice, and will make use of my math background more, but 'Tactical Missile Design' just sounds so darn cool!! It may be more work, but I think it'll be interesting. AND - today I discovered the Scud-D missile (or SS1-e here in the US) and I think it fits the bill for a rocket for our first design project. At least it'll be a place to start, and I'll feel like I've contibuted to the class.

I am so ready for winter to be over. I hate being cold. Being hot I can handle (and I do everyday - my office is like a sauna for some reason) but being cold is no good. I vote for cold weather, with snow, on Christmas Day and Christmas Eve, and then tropical sunny skies every other day of the year. That would be lovely. All this dreary cold weather without the perks of snow is driving my crazy!

Tomorrow night is dinner at Kim's which should be fun. Last time I went over, I brought Sammy with me and he was a hit! Everybody loved him, and he was very well behaved. This time when she sent out the invite email, she specifically mentioned that he was invited. I think my dog is more popular than I am...

That's all for now, unless I get bored later tonight - Peace.

Happy Friday!

This class thing is really starting to butter my bread (I'm not so sure that's bad - I like butter and bread, and I like butter on bread, but basically read:tick me off). I finally figured it all out yesterday. I am taking: Computer Animation, Tactical Missile Design, and Complex Variables. Well, this morning, Dr. Flandro, one of the Missile Design teachers emailed me and said that it's fine for me to take that class, but I'd probably do better in Mechanical Vibrations. It would be of more use to me and I'd be able to use my differential equations background. AAAHHH!

I think I'm just going to stick to my missile class. Designing a missile is way cooler than solving vibrations in a string anyway. Also, the vibrations class is at 7:45 in the morning, and let's be honest, how often would I oversleep for that!?

My first project for the missiles class is very cool, if not a little vague. I have to design the missile which will carry an SDB (small diameter bomb) 350 miles toward its target and 30,000 feet in the air. I have to figure out everything, from how much the whole thing will weigh (adding up every nut, bolt, screw...) to deciding the fuel it will use, velocity, air resistance, time it will take, how will I get it to the "battlefield". The teacher seems nice, but he's pretty vague about what exactly our requirements are and what's expected. I'm not the only one wishing for some more clarity, and I've got my muscle (read: Lee) on it for Monday. He'll sarcasm it out of him (I would have said beat it out of him, but sarcasm seems to be Lee's strong suit - Lee, you know it's true).

I watched "The Descent" last night. Very scary. Makes me never want to go caving again. If it's late at night, or scary movies freak you out, or you don't like seeing people's insides being eaten, then don't watch this movie. That being said, it really wasn't terrible, but it was scary.

I'm back..

Wow, I haven't posted in a while. I guess I owe you all a good update. I'll start with the wedding. The week of was crazy, if it could have gone wrong, it probably did. The flowers didn't arrive until the day before the wedding, and they were wrong. The deacon's plane got delayed in New York Friday night, so we didn't get to rehearse until the day of the wedding. The boys locked the car keys (and their tuxes) in the car so the whole thing was about 20 minutes late. Once the wedding started though, it was fabulous. Karen was beautiful, Jason was handsome, and now they're married, so that's all that matters! The reception was a lot of fun, and the after reception at the hotel was even more fun! It was soo nice to see all my family, and I genuinely think everybody had a great time!

After the wedding, I did a lot of decompressing and rushing to get actual work done for school. I also went to my first hockey game, which was awesome!! I've watched hockey on tv before, and found it pretty boring. The live games, though, are fantastic, they even let the guys fight! In other sports, the refs try to break it up, but in hockey it's all fair game until somebody wins. The predators won against the Annaheim Ducks (no longer mighty) in overtime, which made everything very exciting.

Once I got back to school, the stress began. Due to a VERY complicated chain of scheduling problems, I was left with only 2 classes to take. I have to have 3 to remain full time and keep my job. Dilemma. So this week I'm "interviewing" a couple classes by sitting in on them to decide what I should take as my third class. I'll keep you posted on how it goes. I should know by tomorrow...

Today I had a very good discussion with a friend about education. Basically about how we dumb down America's education system to cater to the lowest level of understanding. No Child Left Behind is good in theory, but in actuality, some students are going to be left behind. Some students, in fact, want to be left behind, and in catering the unmotivated learners who don't care, we're really punishing the motivated students who want to excel. I certainly don't have the answer, but I think we need to find it. When I became a math major, my career goal was to teach. I've been a member of "Future Educators of America" since junior high, and I was a tutor in high school and college. I really really enjoyed it. I think a lot of people are turned off of teaching because it's not viewed as a glamorous, respectable profession the way doctor and lawyer are. Also, the money really sucks. I haven't completely written off the idea of teaching, but those issues are factors, certainly. I think that's part of the problem. If teachers made more money and the profession ranked with astronaut and rocket scientist, I think we could attract far more qualified and eager applicants. Anyway, enough of that - time for me to hit the sack. Good night all, and I'll try to be more diligent about updating now that I'm back at school.

Dum Dum Da Dum

Well, the wedding is very close now. We're in the home stretch. Less than 24 hours we'll have family in town and the wedding extravaganza will be in full swing.

New Years was very fun, we went to Claire's house and played Scattergories and Life. I love Life. I got to be the doctor and make 100k a year, but I still got the mobile home. Go figure. Research is slow going. I've been so busy, I forgot that I have work to do. Hopefully I'll get a chunk done today, we'll see...

Well, back to cleaning, making wedding bags, shopping, and worrying for now. Most likely this will be my last post until after the wedding, since my life is about to get crazy exciting. Karen gets here on Thursday!! Yay!!