Die Hard

*Live Free or Die Hard.  Tara, Andrew, Elliott, Stuart (who we weren't sure existed anymore :-P) and I went to see Live Free or Die Hard.  I personally thought that it was pretty awesome, and I liked it better than the 2nd and 3rd movies.  It is probably one I will want to own once it comes out on dvd, since I was hoping it would be great and full of explosions and it was just what I had hoped, only doesn't take place on Christmas.

 

*Getting consistent results with my calibration project.  If I keep getting results like I got, I should be able to get the number Jeremy needs by late Sunday.

 

*Leaving work right after a big rainstorm, and not getting too wet getting to the car without an umbrella.  A huge storm came up right as I tried to leave the building so I hung around for about 20 min until it lightened up a bit and I walked in the light rain.  Its always fun to be headed home in the rain because if you get a little wet you could always just change when you get home, and the rain sounds so great.

Repairs

*A working car.  Having a car that works is something often taken for granted.  Since mine was towed and is now working again, I'm happy to have it back.  Having a car repair place I can walk to quickly is also quite a plus.

 

*Beginning my final project report.  I realized since I was stuck at home, I might as well start my report since I can write about 3/4 of it without actually having the results.

 

*AAA and the tow truck driver were quick, helpful, and hassle free.  Its always good when things go easier than expected when the day starts off poorly.

Mouse/Mail/Props

*Figured out the problem with the laser mouse, with lots of help from James of course.  It now works perfectly!  I just have to figure out how to mount it and then I can run tests on it!

 

*Made it to the post office to get some stamp upgrades, and actually got 8 things sent out in the mail!  Normally mailing things is one thing I'm really slow at.

 

*UCM's study of influential people went really well again today.  Mark did a lot of background and prep work and it showed.  Its always cool to see people really put effort into these things.

Thunder & Light

*Large Thunderstorm.  It rained for quite a while and there was a lot of thunder, but none of it too close.  I really do enjoy thunderstorms and used it as an excuse to stay home in the morning and work from home.  I finally went into the office but used rain gear to keep me dry, except sandals so my feet would get wet, but dry quickly.

 

*Collecting more data points, some good, some not so good, I might just reset some of them and run it a bunch of times to see how the new ones compare to each other.  All in all my current status hold some promise and I now feel closer to the end than previously.

 

*My old committee member I was trying to replace because he will be out of town will actually not be out of town.  It was a pleasant surprise and saves me some trouble.  He's really nice, and I'd much prefer that he be at my exam than someone else.

Zeke and Tennis

*Lots and Lots of Mario Tennis. I hadn't played before Friday but its a fun game and Andrew and I have spent many fun filled hours late into the night playing Mario Tennis the last couple nights. Its been fun to hang out and take turns playing and playing with Zeke while its not my turn. The game is too intense at times to keep playing constantly.

*Zeke (Andrew's 12 week old dog) is learning to be potty trained and is doing much better. He's also beginning to learn how to not bite hard and when he's allowed to playful bite and when he can't.

*Cheese Fries. We went to cheddars and I wasn't too hungry so I only had cheese fries. They were so good that I ate a ton of them. It was incredibly unhealthy but so tasty....cheese, bacon, fries, ranch!

TV

*Finding a good movie on tv.  The Last Castle was on, and I had never heard of it or seen it before, but it was really good.

 

*Being disappointed that I had accidentally missed the daily show while watching the movie, but remembering that my computer had recorded it automatically for me :)  I didn't miss it after all!

 

*Cloudy weather making the walk to my car after leaving the office much more pleasant than it would have been otherwise.

Shopping

*Grocery shopping and actually having meal ideas come to me while shopping.  Normally I am stumped as to what meals to shop for, but I got a few ideas while in the store.  After getting home I actually impressed myself and froze all of the meat immediately, and even started some of them marinating in 3 different marinades.  I'm looking forward to each of them...yum yum

 

*Picking up some dry-bags for our Sea World trip in a little over a week.  It makes the trip seem closer and its good to know I'll have something just in case my backpack gets wet, so my camera stays dry

 

*Hanging out with Andrew, Tara, and Zeke at Tara's and just watching TV and playing with Zeke.  Zeke is so full of energy and then completely dead the next minute, but such a cool little fluff ball.

Clean Kitchen

*Another at least semi-productive day at work

*Clean kitchen...it looks so much better now

*My neighbor had asked me to help her carry her trash down the stairs, but someone else already did it and we don't know who. Its good to see that anonymous people still help out.

Productivity

*Getting a lot done during the workday.  I even stayed until almost 6 without realizing it because I was being so productive.  I managed to design a tiny addition to my circuit, talk to James about it and completely redo it, then actually order all the parts in time to give all the paperwork back to the business people and have my stuff ship already.  I also programmed up a lot of what I need to analyze the data that I have taken and the result are promising already.  I had told myself that I could get it all done, but didn't really believe it, but now I did it.  Being actually productive really makes the day sooo much better

 

*Waking up before my alarm went off.  I woke up at 7:30 and my alarm was set for 8:00, so even though I didn't get out of bed until after it went off, I still felt better.

 

*No rush evening.  I didn't feel the need to rush through the evening to do anything in particular, so I got to just move at as slow of a pace as I wanted and actually even get more work done intermittently

Birthday!

*My Birthday. It is a special day of the year and I still look forward to them, even if I am old! At least I remembered how old I am this year....

*Rain. It rained a lot off and on, and I love the rain. It was almost like a birthday present

*Fun presents. I got all sorts of things from clothing, to kitchen gadgets, to something that turns water from a faucet blue or red depending on the temperature.

*Chicken, Pepperjack, Chipotle-Ranch, need I say more? I picked Chili's for dinner because there are a few really good things I like to get there, and yes they pretty much all involve chicken, ranch, and hot sauce. This time I picked the Cajun Chicken sandwich and it was delicious. Andrew, Tara, Leslie, Dasia, Brian, and Stefanie all turned out for my dinner and it was a nice mix of the department and UCM friends.

*Blizzard. No, it didn't snow, Andrew, Tara, and I stopped at DQ on the way to Andrew's after Chili's to get blizzards. I hadn't had one in a while and it was a good bday treat. I got Reese's Peanut Butter cups in mine

*Making a fool of myself and not caring. At church we had to sing and do the hand motions for the VBS songs. Since I was at rec and doing registration, I never really heard the songs or learned the hand motions since I wasn't in the room or was otherwise occupied the whole time, but I still got up and did it with all the kids. We had a large turnout at church and it was awesome. Normally there are 6 or so kids at the children's sermon, but this time there had to be at least 20 or so.

Brian & Crystal's Engagement :)

*I looked on facebook and discovered that Brian had gotten engaged the previous evening!!  The news was shocking (in a good way) and exciting.  I called Sean to tell him what I had discovered, but did not call home to talk to Brian because I thought he might still be asleep (he probably was).  He called me later in the afternoon to tell me the news :)

 

*Sending off my resume finally to the other Kevin in hopes of getting a job at AMA in Hampton, VA.  I'm holding my breath and hopefully things go as I want them to.

 

*Carolina and Stefanie both passed their defenses :)  Exciting and changing times all around

Bible School Comes to an End

*Bible School went really well.  I had a blast helping out, today was the last day, and felt good about sticking around to help clean up.  I'm absolutely beat from it but it was completely worthwhile. 

 

*Updated Resume.  I have been needing to update my resume for quite some time now, and I finally did it.  Today it got reviewed and edited by 5 other people and looks a million times better than the version I had originally.  Special thanks goes out to all who helped me with it!

 

*Data collection 1 complete.  I collected enough data to really start analyzing and see what kinds of results I might possibly get.

More Bible School

*Bible School.  The kids are still so excited and bringing new friends every day.  It was so much fun, and I'm looking forward to doing it again

 

*Ability to wing rec time.  The wind picked up and a storm approached so most of our rec games were blowing away.  We had to just wing it, but we did really well and the kids had a great time.

 

*Relaxing evening.  After getting home it felt good to just relax and know that I'd go to bed, get up the next morning and work.  It made me think I could really do the whole job thing.

VBS

*Vacation Bible School has begun and it is a lot of fun.  I am working registration by myself and then helping out with recreation each day.  It is quite chaotic filling out forms and distributing 60 or so nametags in about 15 min as people are coming in, but its still fun.  The kids are so happy at rec and really get into the simple games that we think up so that they can learn their "spy" techniques and memorize their bible verse.

 

*Free Food.  VBS is providing free dinner each day for all of the workers, its like a college student dream

 

*PYCC.  I have been invited to be a sponsor for the Presbyterian Youth Connection Conference in July by some of the people at VBS.  I don't know that I will be able to get away for a week in July but it would be an amazing experience(and free!).  They may bend the driving age rule for me since they know me and want an extra driver, and I've been driving undergrads and others around for UCM and SEI.  I had been thinking a couple days ago that I needed some form of experience, but didn't know what kind, and this one just kinda fell into my lap a couple days later.  I think it might be feasible if I really work hard, and it seems based on the timing that that might be exactly what I'm supposed to do.

Lazy Saturday

*No Work.  Not feeling any pressure to do any real work all day long.

 

*Playing Age of Empires with Jeremy.  We hadn't played since sometime fall semester so we figured we had lost most of our skill but left it on hardest difficulty anyway and won without too too much trouble.

 

*Relaxation.  Along with the no work and playing AOE, I got to lounge around on what felt like a very relaxing Saturday and do very little.

 

*The chicken I cooked turned out better than expected after some previous attempts (other days) which were poor, most likely due to freezer burn

"Normal" Evening

*Things mysteriously starting to work.  Sometimes not working things left overnight just work in the morning.  Such is the case with part of my apparatus.  I'm glad it works

 

*Lounging around on what felt like a normal after work evening.  I got home sometime not long after 5 and lounged around and for once it felt like a normal evening, which is odd considering it was not like very many previous evenings, but was welcome.

 

*Finally picking up a form that I should have picked up weeks ago, it is now one step closer to being off my to-do list

Free Rootbeer Floats

*Free floats and birds.  It had been so long since I went to freebirds that when I was really hungry and drove past one, I had to stop.  It was as good as ever :)  Then later in the evening Sonic was doing free rootbeer float night so I got there right before it started and got an outside table and they kept bringing everyone free floats.  I love floats and to get a couple free was really awesome.  We hung out and drank as many floats as each person wanted and then headed out.

 

*Nature.  Twice I stopped just amazed at nature in general.  The first time was just walking across campus in the wind, and the second was on my way to Sonic on the walking trail by the woods.  It is nice to stop and see some of the details that you don't normally notice just walking along.  There is a lot of power in making sustainable strong winds over a large area...where does it all come from/go?

 

*Sleeping in.  I decided to sleep in a little before going to work since I could.  Its a nice feeling to wake up later than normal and helps put my day in a better mood sometimes.

Accomplishments - Academic, Instructive, & Personal

*Very promising experimental results.  I ran my first set of test runs to see if I was even close to having anything that works, only to find that I got answers from 2 different runs within 6/30000!  That's extremely close, and actually closer than I ever expected the results to be since there should naturally be some error %.

 

*Teaching Xiaoli "R", "L", and "N", or at least trying to.  I spent about an hour today trying to teach Xiaoli how to do those sounds so she could say things like "Wellborn" without it sounding more like "Wenbo"(a guy in the department).  We were confused as to what road she was talking about and started teaching her sounds that require the tongue at the top of the mouth after that.  It was fun and I felt helpful and she was grateful even if we didn't succeed.

 

*Being back in College Station for a week an only eating out once.  I had gotten really horrible about eating out a large number of times per week, and finally got it down to once in a week for the first time in a long long time.  I hope to keep it this way so it was good to meet my goal.

Summer UCM

*Working from home.  I decided not to go in to the office to do my work since a large amount of it was programming which did not need the experiment to be done.

 

*UCM summer meeting.  I missed the first summer meeting last week so this was my first UCM meeting since early May.  It was good to see some other faces I hadn't seen in a while again.

 

*My computer properly recorded the Daily Show for me (it had been having problems) so I got to watch it right after it ended since I was busy when it was on.

Working gadgets

*Working TV remote.  Our old one broke a few days ago so I watched a lot of the same couple channels instead of surfing, but now Jeremy bought a new remote.  Its nice to have a working one.

 

*Rebate forms complete.  All I need to do is mail them, I usually take forever to get to this point, so I'm happy with my efficiency this time.

 

*Further progress on the experiment.  I think I have most of the bugs worked out of the microcontroller prog.  It seems to work

Smell B' Gone

*Going to Covenant Pres and seeing people getting excited about VBS (Bible School).  The theme this year is Special Agents and they did a cool skit to promote VBS which starts next Sunday.  I had been gone for a few weeks for a variety of reasons, but it did not take long for Nissa to find me and "convince" me to sign up to help.  Rec was all filled since this is the week before it starts, so I signed up to help with registration since I couldn't find the kitchen/cooking help form and I didn't feel confident enough to sign up for the lead position for 3rd-4th grade (all helping spots were taken).  It should be a good time :)

 

*Getting rid of the smell in my apartment.  I think the smell is gone, but its hard to tell since I've been in it so much, but I had the windows open and a fan in the window all day (even though the high was 91) and it didn't even actually feel that hot in here.  I think feeling hot is all mental and if you know you'll be in a condition and it doesn't change rapidly, along with staying out of the sun, it really isn't that bad.  I think this mentality came from living in VA with no A/C for 2 years when it would reach the mid/upper 80s consistently.  I'm glad I learned to cope with it because it comes in handy and now my apartment doesn't smell as bad

 

*Cooking a good dinner.  I again made a multi item dinner which actually went together and was balanced in food groups and felt like something I'd get at home.  I appreciated every bite!

Wax on, Wax off

*Successfully making my experiment run smoothly and stop at a particular point.  It is almost ready to run the linear cases and see what kind of results I get.

 

*The apartment office had informed us that the water would probably be off from 8am to 2pm, and I woke up later than hoped at 8:10 and the water was thankfully still on so I could get a shower.

 

*Playing video games and watching Karate Kid with the gang..Wax on, Wax off

New Camera

*The camera I wanted to get sometime this summer was on super sale until Saturday in-store so I went ahead and got one :)  I'm already loving it and am very pleased with its picture quality thus far.  I still plan to use the old one a lot since my original plan included both types of digital camera from before I even bought my previous one.

 

*I hooked up an encoder in less time than expected to my experiment and it worked right away...index, counting and all.  I know that doesn't really make sense or mean anything to just about anybody who might see this, but it was a large positive of my day.

 

*Hanging out and watching Superman Returns with Tara, Andrew, Elliott, and Meredith.  I had forgotten most of the movie since I saw it last year so it was good to see it again.