4.28.2005
11:22am

Sitting here bored inbetween classes. Econ got out really early since we didn't have anything to talk about, so I caught up on some history reading for next period. We managed to get done with our program last night around 12:30, and I finished my slides for the PowerPoint presentation. We're only supposed to present for 30 minutes to Dr. Kepuska, but the way things look it's going to take longer than that to explain everything. I figured out how to add colored text to console applications so at least my program didn't look absolutely boring. Ron and Rolando's is pretty awesome with the GUI interface, although it imposed a lot of limitations since they don't know much about the controls. I'd like to try something similar, probably next semester in our programming class "Multifarious Systems." Hopefully we can come up with something cool to make like Dave's Ebay-esque campus bidding service. I haven't talked to him much lately because he's busy with school and Integrated Ideas. They have their own web site and an office only about a mile from campus, how cool is that? Maybe five years from now they'll all be millionaires.

4.27.2005
11:39pm

Software/Hardware Design programming party goin' on right now. Rolando, Ron, Matt, and I are trying to integrate the four parts of our Casino program into one big program. Part of the problem is that my and Matt's parts are console-based and Ron and Rolando's are GUI-based. We got some pizza and caffeine so everything is good for now.

4.25.2005
11:18pm

Ok, so it's been a few days. Five days, in fact. I'm just so bad at this remembering-to-update-my-blog thing. That and the wrap-up of the academic semester is making my life busy-busy-busy right now. This past weeked I didn't even have any free time, between working at Best Buy all three days and trying to do what homework I could. This is our last week of classes before finals, which will last another week. I found out from Jenny that Duke University has a total of three reading days which help space out their exams, but oh no Florida Tech couldn't do something nice like that. I guess it does allow people to go home for the summer earlier, which is a good thing.

I got an honors award Sunday for my academic performance in Electrical and Computer Engineering. I wasn't there to accept it because of work, but I will be able to pick up the plaque from the office. Matt and I are going to work with Dr. Anagnostopoulous next year for undergraduate research; he's doing a project related to image recognition.

Rolando and I are working on something big at the house *wink*, and hopefully it will be ready by the weekend. We're all going to need a break from studying anyway. Oh yesterday we had our Student Ambassadors year-end banquet at Makoto's, and although we only had 9 people able to come it was still fun. Our chef wasn't the most energetic guy but he did a great job cooking the food at least. Afterwards I went home and crashed after a long day away from home. Today I got up pretty early to go to the Melbourne post office and find out where all my forwarded mail has been going. They checked with the carrier and verified that my new address was correct, and they suggested that maybe there was a problem on the Palm Bay Post Office side of things. I'll try going there tomorrow morning and see what's up, because I haven't gotten any mail yet with forwarding stickers, just new mail with the correct address already on the envelope.

4.20.2005
2:33am

I have a summer internship with Harris working in their NetBOSS department. Starts on May 16th.

Chris, Dan, and Cory came over tonight to see the house and we watched Akira which is one of the best anime movies of all time supposedly. I'm not a huge fan of the genre but I can appreciate movies like this one and Princess Mononoke. It also had good surround sound with THX certification, can never go wrong there. Some of the stylistic elements from Akira are present in later animation movies and also emulated in live-action films, just to quantify how broad of an impact it had.

4.18.2005
1:22am

Quite a weekend, between unexpectedly being called into work Friday night, having Open House Saturday, and Eta Kappa Nu inductions today. We had a different schedule for Open House this year because they moved the student panels until after lunch, which meant that we Ambassadors had to stay a little longer than usual. The morning went well, with tours starting right on time at 9:45 and ending at 11am. I had a group of about 25 ECE people, with some that fortunately asked questions and made the discourse more enjoyable. Steve is getting pretty good at directing people in the residence quad, so we didn't have to wait an inordinate amount of time before showing a room. After the tours were over we had some down time at Clemente before lunch. We did our typical lunchtime "mingling," walking around to see if any parents or students had questions that needed to be answered. I talked with a few families that were really interested in the school and had some in-depth questions. The student panels after lunch didn't go as well as usual, mainly because the prospective students didn't ask many interesting questions. Derek tried to keep us all entertained and was doing some verbal sparring with a particularly spontaneous guy. We were free around 2:30 so I went home for the rest of the day, doing some cleaning around the house and washing my car.

On Sunday morning Rolando drove back from home so he could go to the Eta Kappa Nu induction ceremony at Olin Engineering. Ron was late because of work, but we made it alright. The ceremony wasn't very long and we got our certificates and pins and signed the society ledger. They had a luncheon afterwards in the Hartley room that was pretty good, and Dr. Hadji even showed up. After that was all over I went back home and Rolando went to Home Depot to get a lawn mower, since our grass was getting really tall. I volunteered to help out but he took care of it. I read some Electron Devices and worked on my Roulette program for C++. Rolando and Ron are trying to get their GUI working for a Windows-based casino, so I will probably have to convert my program over to a graphical interface as well. I just wanted to get it all written out in text first before trying to port it, so at least this way I have something concrete to turn in if the GUI doesn't work out. Around 8 I took a break and went to the Rat, where I ran into Ron coming back from church. Dan and Havier also stopped by so we talked for a while. Ron followed me back to the house so he could work on stuff with Rolando, and I finished up my program. I never realized how complicated Roulette was until I started to code all the permutations for potential bets. I've got 890 lines so far and need to add a few more features before it's completed.

I forgot to post this before, but I won $20 from Proximities Wristbands for their testing they did with our Circuit Theory class. They're going to give away an HP iPaq PDA as well on Tuesday so some lucky person from class will get that.

4.14.2005
7:40pm

Hey a post before midnight, imagine that! The only reason I've got free time tonight is because Dr. Murshid decided not to assign any Circuit Theory 2 homework for tomorrow. Probably because he knows we're all sore from that last test re-take. This week has sorta blown by so far, nothing of significance to stand out among the monotony. Today was really beautiful outside and reminded me of why I love Florida so much. My parents can enjoy themselves on their Hawaii vacation but I'm not all that jealous--well, mostly not jealous. I noticed that our lawn is looking a little scraggly at the house so Rolando's going to have to buy a lawnmower to cut it this weekend. We may be college students but we're not completely lazy.

I helped Chris out yesterday by setting up his surround speakers and lending him my old RCA center channel speaker to use with his Marantz Dolby ProLogic amplifier. He's missing out by not having DD or DTS, but I have to agree it still sounds pretty nice with movie material. Eventually he's going to buy a Klipsch center to match his front two speakers, but it costs about $250 so he's holding off for a bit. Cory has moved all of his stuff to the apartment from his dorm room so Dan has a single all to himself now; he's probably enjoying the extra space. Ron hasn't decided whether we are going to try to do a Halo night tomorrow at his place--it will be the first one since Rolo and I moved if he does. Tim, Buff, Chris, and Cory still haven't been over to see our house yet so they may visit this weekend as well.

4.11.2005
12:20am

Well today was actually the most productive Sunday I've had in a long time. I had to wake up early at 6:30am so I could be at Best Buy by 7:30. We had a training session about customer centricity and digital subscriptions, along with a few E-Compass online trainings to complete. I set up a couple new surround systems in audio and stayed pretty busy until my shift was up at 2pm. After that I headed over to Saratoga to see if Chris had gotten any of my mail; they had received the package containing my free leather jacket from the Best Buy holiday competition. I ended up staying until after 6pm helping Chris move stuff from his apartment to my old apartment. Cory was also there to help along with another one of Chris's friends. He definitely had a bunch of little stuff that had to be carried over, and his apartment needed an extra-thorough cleaning. After that I headed home and listened to some music and watched "Without a Paddle" and "Changing Lanes." Rolando got one of those monthly subscriptions to Blockbuster so he's been renting two DVDs almost every other day. I also did a little receiver stress testing and got a reference peak of about 120dB on the intro to Top Gun. Definitely kept the duration under 5 minutes at that high of a volume; don't want to do any permanent damage. Chris and Cory had planned to come over to join me for a movie but cleaning took them longer than expected, so we'll have to do it next weekend.

4.10.2005
12:09am

Long, long day at work today--if I was Cartman I would say it was hella-busy. It's a good thing I love home theater as much as I do, otherwise I would have gone crazy quite a while ago. What's even better is that I have to be back there at 7:30am for training, and work until 2pm. On the plus side, at least I'm getting regular hours this week. Danny's gone now, with Mike replacing him as HT area manager. Last night Rolando invited Ron, Jason, Jenee, Dan, and Drew over to see the house and watch Elektra. I had heard that it got bad reviews but it was pretty tolerable to watch. Rolando is still trying to find a job, but he said when he does he will probably buy a big-screen TV; that would certainly complete the movie experience. We got to see Ron's new car, a used silver 2003 Hyundai Elantra to replace his broken Cutlass Supreme. Apparently the engine gave up on functioning properly.

I'm almost done with being sick. My voice is back to normal and I only get the occasional light cough. Lots of people at work seem to be sick so I think there was something going around. Oh I almost forgot to mention the Circuit Theory 2 retake exam last Friday--yeah it sucked almost as much as the first one so I'm not sure whether I scored any better or not.

4.6.2005
4:40pm

Ok so I'm guilty of a little blog procrastination. At least I don't let mine go without update for months on end *cough*Dave*cough*. A lot has happened in the last few days, mainly because of the move into the new house. Rolando and I packed up most of our stuff last Thursday and took it over to Palm Bay where the house is. We finished with the small stuff on Friday and cleaned the inside of the apartment. It was supposedly painted on Monday and will be ready for Chris and Cory to move in this upcoming Friday. Anyway, the house is four bed/two bath with a large living room and 2-car garage. Right now Rolando and I are the only two there, but the other two guys should be joining us shortly. It feels a little different to live further from campus, because now I tend to make better use of my time; rather than going home for breaks in between classes I try to study or do homework. I've got to work tonight at 5:30 so I'll be heading over directly from campus rather than driving all the way back home just to turn around again. With gas at $2.20 now it's a smart thing to do.

I've been sick for the past two days with a sore throat and now some coughing. It feels like it's going away now which is good, because having a hoarse voice is not cool. I didn't go into work on Sunday because I couldn't talk, but they were very understanding. Danny will be leaving us shortly to go manage at another store in Orlando, which will probably put Mike in charge of home theater. I don't anticipate to be working there over the summer if I get selected for a summer internship, which might be happening shortly. I've also gone to some informational meetings about EMD-MLR which is an undergraduate research project involving machine learning. Matt, Chris, and I will probably be one of the teams next year.