I’m alive! Barely, but alive, I promise. And I posted before LesleyT, so I win at life, despite still being traumatized by yesterday’s Orbit Mechanics test.

My life in a sentence: Work work sleep eat work work class class eat work work work work frisbee shower eat work work want to go to bed but just remembered that I had some other work work. Yeah.

Some cool things that managed to happen:

Rocket launch! (Oh, wait, this was for class, so it still counts as work.)

We were launching with G motors, which my brother was thrilled to hear. However, his suggestion that we stage about fifty of them in a rocket and go to orbit is slightly unfeasible; apparently he doesn’t think weight considerations matter.

The following pictures were taken at Turkey Run State Park in Indiana (the sky was actually clear, not cloudy!). Clicking either of the images will take you to my flickr account where there are more. Motive: my mother wanted some colorful fall pictures, as autumn at home … isn’t so colorful.

Jim Lovell (that would be Capt. James Lovell of Apollo 13 fame) gave a talk at Purdue which I was really excited to attend. He is just an amazing, humble guy who can really engage with a varied audience. He apologized for not looking like Tom Hanks and explained that writers for general audiences (referring to The Right Stuff) like to exaggerate certain characteristics to get their point across. In spite of this, it was clear from his first-hand description of his Apollo missions that he was, in fact, generally amazing.

I still need to find a research topic. I’m slightly frustrated about the way the whole working-in-a-lab thing is going – or rather, how it’s not going – but need to get back to work. I also need to do some blog maintenance, but I have no clue when that will happen.

My math prof on algorithms: “… switch off the thinking part of your brain … [because] … you see an algorithm – you start thinking about it – [and] you become emotionally involved.” (He emphasized the part in italics.)

Professor: “How is your semester going?”
Me: “It’s going all right – I’m looking for a research advisor.”
Professor: “What are you interested in?”
Me: *goes into semi-exhaustive detail*
Professor: “Aggghhhh funding!”
Me: “But I don’t have to be paid this year because I have a TAship.”
Professor: *fails to take the hint* “Ah … well … good luck!”

Me: “So … I’m looking for a thesis topic and advisor.”
Professors: “It’s okay, you have a TAship this year – you don’t have to worry.”
Grad Students: “Get one ASAP or you’ll be here forever!!!!!! Like me!”

Girl walking past me talking on phone: “I’m a science major in an engineering class for engineers, and I don’t know how to do the first problem set even though it’s been explained to me three times, and I WANT TO SHOOT MYSELF.” (Sheesh, chill out. It’s only the second week of class.)

Me: “In my rocket propulsion class, the grad students get to earn their keep by coordinating the rocket launch project.”
Peter: “How is that punishment?”
Me: *smirks slightly* “Exactly.”

Purdue University, presented by TxDOT, OkDOT, Hank the cowdog, MoDOT, Bass Pro Shops, LBJ’s Andrew Jackson Expansion Memorial (aka the Gateway Arch), IlDOT, construction, Neil Armstrong, Home Depot, tornados, and the letter R (reserved).

Some pictures:

Springfield, MO: Bass Pro Shops - the largest one in the world and the only game in town

St. Louis Science Center: I want one of these in my room. Talk about an aid to procrastination!

St. Louis Gateway Arch: Officially the Andrew Jackson Westward Expansion Memorial, or something like that. (AJWEM a good acronym, possibly?)

St Louis Gateway Arch: a little spatter on the arc welding

St. Louis Gateway Arch: Sunset from the top of the arch, in between thunderstorms. I really like this one.

Purdue apartment: My DIY set of room furniture - see below for details

My bed frame, courtesy Home Depot. It was quite entertaining walking in and garnering quite a few "Excuse me, do you need help finding anything?"s within the first few minutes. I obviously don't look like I know my way around a Home Depot.

Does your desk do this? Thx to E for the suggestion, although large whiteboards are more expensive than I thought.

I also need to mention that we’ve felt that labeling the distance down our very long hallway was necessary; frame of reference is the handle of the fridge. Can you think of anything more worth knowing the distance from? I don’t think so.

This week has been spent setting up the apartment, going to orientations, registering, etc. And playing ultimate and saying “y’all” as much as possible. My roommate is kind of awesome. Oh, and the payroll orientation and forms were, IMHO, solely to make sure we knew how to write our names and Purdue ID numbers – roughly a hundred times. I mean, there must be some reason behind this incredibly pointless bureaucratic exercise. Or maybe I’m giving them too much credit.

As to classes, I’m swinging between cynical anticipation, enthusiasm, and wondering what new hell is in store for me. I have Math I, Rocket Propulsion, and Orbital Mechanics, as well as TAing  “Jet Propulsion Powerplants”. I think I need to start doing some major reading.

This is one of those “here’s what I’m doing” posts. Here goes:

I finished my summer internship at Vestas and said goodbye to basically everybody in Houston I know. At least, I tried. Which, come to think of it, was a heck of a lot of people and inspired all sorts of emotions that I really don’t want to analyse right now because I want to be braindead and withdrawn for a few days, I think. I don’t want to think about that either. It wasn’t really goodbye forever, but if and when I do go back it won’t be the same. But I am extremely grateful for the amazing friendships that I have in Houston and at Rice, and really hope I won’t lose touch.

I got all my junk packed and was putting it into my car when I and one of my roommates came to the same conclusion: “This is not going to fit” and “I have too much stuff”. Yeah. I drove half of it home on Monday and came back for the rest on Tuesday. So that was intense and probably why I’m so dead today.

There was a Chick-fil-a opening that I wanted to take advantage of, but I got there at seven this morning, only to find out that over a hundred people were already there by six. I should have gotten up way earlier. Oh, well. I’ll get free food some other time.

I’m home for three weeks until my family roadtrips with me up to … grad school. I feel old. And creepy. At the same time, people. I thought when people felt like this, it qualified them to be grad students, but now I may have to revise the thought: maybe being a grad student makes you feel old and creepy.

That’s about it, really. Chill out at home, try to figure out what I need to do for school, see some old friends, finish some projects … and repack. Because I have waaaaay too much stuff. I’m pretty sure I don’t know what half of it is, and therefore won’t miss it.

And if I haven’t mentioned it before, Psalm 18 is a really good one.

I’m really not a fan of France, even though I took three – maybe four? – years of French, but there are exceptions to everything. In this case, the exceptions are: the Revolutionary War (although that was mainly because they hated the British), cheese, chocolate, guttural rs, and the Tour. As in, le Tour de France.

Instead of raving obsessively about it, I’ll just mention that I’d really like to see Garmin’s Tyler Farrar (the 25-year-0ld Washington sprinter) take a stage and stick it to Mark Cavendish. Of course, now that they’ve started on the mountains, all the sprinters will be hanging on for dear life, so we won’t see much out of them, but later on there might be a few chances. I really think Farrar can do it (oh, and become the first American in twenty years to take a sprint finish). It’s comforting to know I’m not the only one out there who considers this a possibility; see this article. However, Dean is also his teammate – he wouldn’t be much use if he didn’t believe it.

Also – Astana what? We all know it’s Team Livestrong using Kazakh money. I would really like to see Levi Leipheimer in the yellow, though, just because he kind of gets lost in all the attention surrounding Armstrong and Contador and whatever drama they’ve got themselves into. And can Armstrong please stop advertising anything and everything to with cycling? Please?

Some good/entertaining links for following this year’s Tour:

• Official site (standings and points; I’ve been navigating in French but I assume there’s an “English” language button somewhere): http://www.letour.fr/indexus.html – huh. I think it figured out that my personal computer is in the States and pulled up the U.S. index.
• VeloNews (good all-around cycling news and deets): http://www.velonews.com/
• TDFblog (more internet links on this site): http://www.tdfblog.com/
• Tour day Schmalz at NY Velocity (snarky commentary on each stage. Quite enjoyable, but occasionally pushes beyond the PG level. Here’s Stage 6; consecutive stages can be found in the sidebar on the right): http://nyvelocity.com/content/features/2009/tour-day-schmalz-stage-6
• If you’re interested, here’s a catalogue of Twitter feeds out of the race: http://www.tdfblog.com/2009/07/tour-de-twitter-1.html It almost makes me want to get Twitter. Not quite though.

Also, the BBC live audio feed is useful for listening to the action while I mindlessly copy and paste data into tables. It’s accessible from the text feeds (they usually throw up the link at about 1445) . The hosts do tend to follow a pattern, however:

1. Talk about breaks. Talk about who’s at the front of the peloton.
2. Talk about the weather and the road conditions.
3. Talk about who’s got the best chance of taking the stage or the GC rankings.
4. Talk about Mark Cavendish and whether he can keep the green jersey.
5. Rave about Mark Cavendish.
6. Talk about Armstrong and Contador.
7. Talk about Mark Cavendish.
8. Crash! Talk about who’s down. (“No, can’t quite see there, looks like Tom Boonen…”)
9. Talk about Mark Cavendish. And the Ashes, mostly in passing, and then back to Cav.

I’m totally rooting for Garmin, btw.

Epic fail. I got a used car checked out by a mechanic and subsequently decided not to make an offer on it. Julia and I decided on the ride back that the massive inadequacies of the car were slightly hilarious. For your pleasure and amusement:

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Dear Rice,

Now that I finally possess the right to designate myself a “concerned alumna”, I would like to address the topic of tradition. More specifically, I would like to comment upon a certain practice, pleading for a return to the values, customs, and doctrines that characterize our community and our university.

My most treasured memory of Orientation Week (familiar to Rice students as “O-Week”), (besides, of course, playing Sardines in Sewall Hall, ubangeeing co-advisors at other colleges, screaming at other colleges at the top of my lungs, losing my voice, and [of course] Austin Bratton) is engaging in the time-gilded ritual of hedge-jumping. After a thorough primer by our illustrious fellow, who was determined to see us initiated as quickly as possible into the ranks of Real Rice Students, my entire O-Week group lined up for our first attempts. I am proud to note that I rapidly mastered the correct technique: the gently curving approach run, the headfirst launch with the quarter-twist over the hedge itself, and the assertive shoulder landing and roll on the soft lawn. The fact that I emerged with the cuts and scars of warfare upon my arms is further evidence of my dedication and complete hardcoreness.

Why, you may ask, is such a valuable part of a Rice student’s education now excluded from the curriculum? I give you: Facilities Engineering and Planning (FE&P).

We have done battle with them before. We have dealt with the hideous Green Fences of Construction and Isolation, the Limitations upon Jacks, and the Closure of the Gymnasium. But in cutting down the iconic Academic Quadrangle Hedges (symbol of all that is Good and Right about Rice) in late 2005, FE&P launched an assault upon our tradition and honor. (Sing with me: All for Rice’s honor … oh, wait. Nobody knows the words. Never mind.)

FE&P justified this heinous act by claiming that the hordes of students who,over the years, had engaged in hedgejumping, left large, irreparable holes in those bastions of culture. The hedges were therefore ravaged, reduced to mere stumps which not only detracted from the aesthetics of the Academic Quad … but also refused to grow back. Commencement 2006 featured a Quad filled with tiny bushes, some of which had been newly planted to cover the stains on FE&P’s escutcheon.

Over the last three years, as the hedges have slowly grown back to mere shadows of their former selves, the practice of hedgejumping has died out. There is no pride in dominating a six-inch bush, and institutional memory is tragically short. But I have a dream – a dream that one day this university will rise up and live out the true meaning of its traditions; that one day from the red halls of Sewall and Herzstein, we will look out and once more see students flying over those hedges in complete freedom and loss of dignity.

With Hope,

A Concerned Alumna

Just a quickie update: I’ve been slowly unpacking and adjusting to ‘real life’ – the one where you cook your own food – again; I started my summer internship on Monday with Vestas. More on that later, or just ask me.

The pool here at the apartments is really short. Yeah, that was random. My shoulders don’t like me right now because I went and swam fly after work.

Oh, and I graduated on Saturday. Woot! It was really hot and humid. I will have pics up on Facebook at some point, as well as send some round to the relatives (like the official full regalia ones). In fact, if you want to be included on that picture-attachment email, please comment here or drop me a line. It is really weird saying I am a graduate, or having people at work refer to me as a Master’s student – kind of like having a birthday and having to remember your new age, or having a new address. But more significant, I suppose.

“No man drowns if he perseveres in praying to God, and can swim.” – Russian proverb

In two days, I will finally have the right to place “B.S Mechanical Engineering” after my name. (I won’t be holding a diploma with that title for several more weeks, however – the cardboard tubes they’ll give us during Commencement will have a noticeable lack of diploma.) Over the past four years, my concept of engineering has definitely changed.

I think my original idea of what an engineer did and was developed from my parents (engineers who built cool stuff), from popular media like Star Trek, Stargate, and Jules Vernes’ works (engineers who saved the ship/team/world from imminent destruction), and from my fascination with 18th and 19th century inventors (engineers who were engineers before there were engineers). I thought it was awesome, and so I wanted – you might say was conditioned – to become an engineer. After all, who wouldn’t want to invent (current technical term: “design”) really cool, innovative stuff that would save the world, and possibly end up on a space shuttle in the process? And best of all, engineering and science were quantifiable; they could be described in numbers and figures, and everything could be predicted or simulated.

Wrong.

I discovered in my first design class, Mechanical Engineering Design, that most of those neat little equations were now friends with safety factors and multitudes of coefficients designed to compensate (approximately) for roughness, roundness, load, notching, fatigue, and oodles of other properties. Partial DiffE was all about learning how to approximate different types of curves and responses. My precious precise engineering, with one right answer, became a horrendous clump of optimization problems; much less of a science and much more of an art. Engineering is taking all of the data you know, making “assumptions” about the rest of the data you need, simplifying everything as much as you dare, applying the formulae you think you need, adding safety factors everywhere and then crossing your fingers and hoping that nobody dies. And that’s the way it’s been for hundreds of years.

And it’s darned fun.

A few weeks ago I helped my roommate smash virtual arches in a finite element program so she could determine how overengineered old cathedral-building rules of thumb were. This senior week’s project has been to put solar-powered lights on the college’s Acaglider (I’ll post pictures when it’s complete). Oh, and I’ll be playing with airfoils for a wind turbine manufacturer this summer. See? Fun.

So … I’ve given you blood, sweat, and tears for four years, Rice – I think it’s time to be able to say – “I is an engineer”.

“Engineers like to solve problems. If there are no problems handily available, they will create their own problems.” – Scott Adams

I’m going to go watch Star Trek now.

Classes are over. (!!!!) (????) Fortunately or unfortunately (I haven’t decided yet), school is not.

On my plate:

• Three finals
• A paper/essay thing
• Senior design presentation and report
• Lots of mayhem and college stuff
• Senioritis that may finally be creeping in
• oh, and finding a summer job. Anybody want to hire me?

ps. I finally added pictures to my Spring Break post below!