Where to begin, where to begin. So much has happened since I last posted, this may end up being a long blog. So go get something warm to drink, perhaps a blanket to wrap up in whilst you read, and lets begin. First off, why haven't I posted? Well, the end of the semester was a really busy time for me. I had exams, presentations, and projects to work on. I still have one exam to take and two projects to work on, but the deadlines are further away for those.

The first project was our closed loop controlled dc motor supply. Me and my group, the Users, had been working on it all semester. We had to finish it up and debug it and do all kinds of crap. I was in charge of the documentation for the project. Basically you have to document every little thing you do all semester long. The final product was 100 pages, front and back. My obsessive compulsive anal retentive nature came out while working on this document. Everything about it had to be absolutely perfect. In the end, it was. Its the most gorgeous comprehensive thing I've ever made. My professor was very impressed and even said he couldn't wait to read it. And I don't doubt that he meant it with all sincerity. We also had to put together a powerpoint presentation to show to the prof. We did our presentation pretty quick the night before it was due. We had plenty of time though since the last day, we started working on it at 10:00am and didn't finish until 9:00am the next day. I was bound and determined to have the thing finished before I went to sleep. And I did. Our presentation went well even though we got absolutely grilled on the Q&A. Our prof wanted to give us questions that were a cut above the normal question, and they were hard. I think I answered one completely right, and the other one I had to say "I don't know." I wasn't too happy about admitting defeat, but I had no choice.

After the presentation we all went over to the Chicken to relax, drink beer, and play pool. Our professor even joined us, and helped us close the bar down. I paid the pool guy 10 bucks to take the door off of the pool table, so we got unlimited pool the whole night. Because I did that, I didn't have to buy any beer the whole night cause everyone felt indebted to me. That was pretty cool. I got pretty stupid that night but I had a great time just hanging out with everyone from my major. We spend so much time together up in lab, it was nice to kick back with them and just talk about things not related to a 68332 microcontroller. Turns out, my classmates are fun people. Ryan and Todd showed up to Northgate and I was supposed to go home with them, but they ended up ditching my ass when I went inside MadHatters to find Allison. That was cool ... NOT. But whatever, me and Allison ended up getting a ride home from two guys she had met 2 seconds before I showed up. I was under the impression that she knew them, but it turned out that she didn't. Their names were Buck and Kix ... wtf? Why she was talking to a couple of guys named Buck and Kix, I'll never know, but we got home safe and thats all that matters.

Another thing I had to be doing this past weekend, in between my 14 hour stints at the keyboard working on documentation was attend concerts for symphony extra credit. I was concerned that I wouldn't be passing the class. Turns out I was right. Its a good thing I did that extra credit cause it bumped my grade up to a D. A D will really fuck my GPA this semester (which would have been a 4.0 otherwise) but at least I get credit for the class and my fine arts are out of the way. An interesting turn of events though. Our prof in symphony informed us that being a 300 level course, there were prerequisites to get into the course, which only a handful of people knew about. They messed up in the catalogue and allowed us all to sign up for an upperlevel music major course. So depending on the grades, he may curve the whole class, which could potentially bump me up to a C. That would be nice. I'm not counting on it though.

Another project I'm working on is a digital thermometer. We designed the circuit, built it, and tested it and it worked. But for any extra credit points, we have to have it etched onto a pc board. So we frantically designed a pc board, something none of us had ever done before. It was hard, but we got it done and verified by the prof before sending it off to be fab'ed. Turns out it's gonna take way more than the estimated 3 days leaving us with 24 hours to test and debug our system. Sucks. So I don't know what were going to do. Soldering the parts on alone would take that long. We'll see what happens, it may not be possible. I have an A locked down, so I couldn't care less, but my teammates could use the points. We bargained on so many added features (7-segment displays, dual celsius and fahrenheit capabilities, mounting it in a remote control car, and wireless capabilities) that we could earn as many as 10 points to our final final grade. That's so out of control.

Finally having time to relax is weird. At first I was having trouble sleeping. I would wake up every couple of hours and jump out of bed constantly thinking I was either late for something, or wasting time not working on anything. I'm better now though. I slip back into my slothfully prefered mode quite easily. All in all this was a pretty good semester, though I'm not sorry to see it go. Making the highest grade on every test in every class was pretty funny.

I've run out of things to talk about even though I'm sure I've forgotten some things. If I remember I'll post again. Anyways, I'm back now, so fear not. Updates will commence. Peace out, you HAVE NOTS!