Cranky. Old. Man?

SO TODAY IS GOOD DESPITE RAIN.

- For my Structures class, I spent this morning operating a band saw, using a disk sander and then getting out a metal file. YES FOR HANDS ON PROJECTS! Our display will look SHARP once we get it done. We've split the group in half to make things keep happening and keep schedules good. I'm with the nice kids, I think. I get to spend some time this weekend filing some more (because after you cut through a piece like we did, you need to make sure you don't INJURE anyone with the sharpness). It's all very zen.

- I thought I chipped a tooth yesterday, because I inherited my dad's bad enamel, but no. False alarm. Yay! Truth is I need a cleaning. >.>

- Decided to do the motion of a rocket skateboard instead of a hoverboard (not enough info). But it'll lead to the same basic thing, theoretically. It's surprisingly SIMPLY mathematically, I am all a-twitter, really. God, I am SUCH A NERD.

( and now for some audience participation! )

( epic poem updates! )

~Cendri

Ok, this isn't the end of the week, but I thought this was something fun to share with ya'll. The kind of stuff I remember hearing and thinking, "HELL YEAH I WANT TO BE AN ENGINEER THAT ROCKS".

Alright, so it might not have the same effect on you, but at least it helps me recover from the result of my last exam grade. Ha.

( So who wants to learn about gimbal lock and why the Apollo 13 movie had so many slide rules? )

So, the moral of this story:

- Don't divide by zero, you could crash and die.
- Some technobabble in movies is based on real things
- Jim Lovell would have made a good pirate
- This icon makes more sense now, doesn't it?

P.S. OMG EULER ANGLES IN MOOOOTION:

Ha, alright, so my dynamics prof REALLY remembers me. By luck of the scheduling, I managed to have two classes in the same room--one after the other. At the end of the day, when I'm most tired. This is good, actually. Anyway, so I'm sitting waiting for the next class and my prof starts up a conversation with me. It was nice. I like his dorky California-ness and dorky laught responses to my frank way of answering questions. He also seemed pleased I got a job. It's weird, it's not so much an ego boost (I passed his class with a C, a very hard-earned and almost B type of C, but a C) as much feeling like I'm still sort of in the engineering family. You know, not the favorite child, but the kooky cousin that is from out of town that stayed too long because she sold her car to buy donuts. Something like that. A walking talking What Not to Wear: Engineering Edition or something.

But getting people to snicker and laught dorkily (several of which I don't know, or can hear me, because my voice somewhat projects) is a good sign to me. I think I've gotten back to being myself, entirely. And by being "myself" I don't mean taken steps back on the maturity chain, but like, there are certain core things to a personality. Mine just happens to be frankness and no embarrassment when it comes to my appearance. I suppose that's directly related to confidence, and I think I've got a lot of it back now. Despite things being hard and it taking me a little longer to figure out some things, I really feel like I deserve to be in this program. Maybe not because I'm a supergenius (god lord, I don't even think I'm THAT intelligent, let alone genius) but because of grit. Or something.

Makes me kind of wonder what things some of ya'll have held onto in your personality and stuff. Or are all of you in transitional phases? Considering the wide variety of ages on my f-list, I'm curious. You don't have to answer, though. It'd just be nice.

~Cendri

P.S. Cosplay Wednesday worked, though due to the temperature (that being HOT) I changed my outfit a little after that class. What I got after that was kind of stylish and I'm trying to figure out the camera I checked out so that I can take a picture. We'll see how that goes. It's a pretty camera, though.

P.P.S. This comic is pretty close to my thoughts on the matter. <3

OMFG. ALRIGHT. I TOTALLY NEED TO BABBLE AT MORE PROFESSORS MORE OFTEN.

So.

Since I went and visited Professor Jersey Highwind in his office, because apparently he has office hours anytime he's in there (which meant I simply went up to him at the end of class and said, "HEY WHEN ARE YOU IN YOUR OFFICE" which resulted in some giggles form the prof coming into the class, who is now Professor Boyscout, as he comes up again later in this story). So I showed up, told him about my history project and what I spent last semester doing and that I am basically the Engineer Who Sucks At Math Like Whoa, which resulted in some fabulous discussion and postulation.

Of course, on my way to his office AFTER WRITING HIS OFFICE NUMBER DOWN, I had a dyslexic moment and mixed them up. So, I got lost. In my own damn engineering building. I found an office open with a dude that didn't appear to be doing much (Professor Boyscout, who is apparently one of he department heads?! WAY TO PICK THEM) and he helped me figure it out, and was a little lost himself. He said "ah, good, I got my boyscout deed of the day out of the way before lunch" and also remembered me from class as "being the one who asked Prof Jersey Highwind when he's in his office in such a blunt tone."

ANYWAY.

As a result of fabulous discussion and postulation and then good old JH asking why I suck at class sometimes, he said:

"Hey, since you kind of work in this field, if you have time, why don't you try designing a module for this class?"

My immediate thought was "DO I GET EXTRA CREDIT?" but this is college, and they don't offer that stuff in my classes. However, should I ever be on the borderline between two grades, this helps. After leaving the office, I realized just what I'd been asked.

WHICH FUCKING ROCKS.

Naturally, I decided to talk to Professor History Gast after his class about this development. And like a good hippie with a technical bent, he was naturally excited. And offered to let me use the module as a chunk of my project.

WIN.

I guess the real dilemma is... how do you teach airplane dynamics concepts in an interesting non-book and lecture way? How do you turn the book into a RESOURCE and not a BIBLE? What can I use from work to translate to much more complicated and not entirely grokked problems on my part?

And how can I involve crayons in this??? Come on, like you wouldn't want to play with crayons in class.

Suffice to say, this will be eating my brain for a while.

tl;dr version:

- profs are people too
- if you suck at something, fix it
- i want to play with crayons

Warmth!

Omg WARMTH!

Sure, there's still snow on the ground, and it was melting, which meant lots of puddles, and there was fog because the ground was cold, but the AIR was WARM and that's ALL THAT MATTERS. To celebrate this, I decided to wear a skirt.

Note to self: buy more high waisted skirts. Because yeah. I'm rocking this look.

I also dressed up a little more than usual because I woke up later than I intended and had to do my workout during midday break, which was starting to make me cranky, so yeah. Don't ask me why it helps, it just does. I'm foppish like that.

Also, hilarity on the track (because you go around noonish and all the treadmills are taken)! I was feeling self conscious about being the only walker on the track (as opposed to the EXTREME RUNNERS OMG), and then this incredibly old (at least he looked it) guy started snailing around. And I mean snailing. I walk fast.

But the main lesson of the day is when I get a derivation problem, if you defend your steps enough, you get lots of credit! Considering that I was making it up as I go along and hoping the math went with my semi-logical basis, this is good!

Oh, and I have Andy Hunter's Life album finally. I don't know why I didn't look for it before, considering the song "Wonderful" pops up on my Pandora playlist all the time. It's great workout music that is happy (as I realized a lot of my techno was dark and kind of defeats the sort of on crack mood you have to be in when you're working out).

Alright, dinnertime. Still have to do Monday Updates for ff_fanlisting. It's on like, all three of my reminder things, so I will not forget.

~Cendri

P.S. Also, new love, The Quantic Soul Orchestra has brought the funk back to my playlist. Never ever close down, music blogs!

P.P.S. Saw a boy today in a black shirt with white stripes and a white tie. Was half tempted to stop him and tell him how proud I was to see a boy that could dress himself, but I thought that would be weird, even for me.