Shouzer

Last week, a few of us–namely Jason, Al, Stephanie, and I–went down to Jason’s condo in Gulf Shores, Alabama.  That’s the big reason I haven’t posted anything for a while.  They had internet down there, but only if you wanted to pay $10/day.  That would have sucked.

We’d gone down there about 3 years ago (with the addition of Kyle and Quint, minus Stephanie), but since then they’d gotten hit by the hurricanes the southeast saw last year.  It was strange seeing some of the local businesses closed and deserted.  There were still a few condos that were being rebuilt and some houses that were being rebuilt, as well.  Luckily the condo we were staying at didn’t get hit very hard at all, so it looked fine.

The trip was pretty fun.  I got a bit sick at one point, but it was all good because even though I couldn’t go out to the beach, I was still about to just lay around and watch tv without having to worry about anything else.  It also means I was the only one who didn’t actually burn, and that includes Al, haha.

The last few hours of the ride home wasn’t that fun.  Al’s car starting having some overheating issues and it got to the point that we had to roll down the windows and turn the heat on high.  That was rough, to say the least.  The heat coming out of the vents was insane.  I put my hand in front of one of them a few times, and it felt like it would have started to burn if I’d have left it there any longer.  Hopefully it won’t be a major issue to get fixed.

Thursday morning was my last final. I finished up with it around 11am, and went directly to work on ChallengeX. Around 3:30am Thursday night, we took the ‘Nox out for the first road test ever. I was riding shotgun as we drove down Wabash Ave (45 mph speed limit) at 72mph with no headlights. The car performed amazingly, especially in high speed charging mode, in which we drive >40mph and charge the 360V battery at the same time. The car drags a little between 0-50, but it hauls from 50-70. We lost the vehicle tailing us when we did the 50-70 test that night. Afterwards, we went for the mandatory celebratory trip to IHOP. I got home that morning around 6am, took a shower and a 1.5hour nap. Then, we reconvened to prep the ‘Nox for shipping. That’s right, we did our first road test 7 hours before shipping it. Not something I would highly recommend btw. I would have liked to have had more time for testing, but this makes for a totally cool story.

While I’m talking about ChallengeX, I have to tell you about this guy on the team named Tom. Tom is 2nd in command of the Fab team, which means he puts all of the mechanical stuff in the car, and he was instrumental in the design/building of our custom transmission. Anyway, Tom pulled an all-nighter Wednesday night fabbing up a new driveshaft. (We sheared the bolts on our previous one). He showed up 45 minutes late to his 8am final, and then left about an hour later. Edit: I was also in this final, and it took me around 3 hours. He told me later that he only needed to get a 55% on it so he wasn’t trying hard. End Edit Then, he proceeded to return to work on ChallengeX. Around 11-12 that night, he got bored because we were doing some electrical/controls testing. So he decided to build a little 5hp moped. It took him like 30 minutes. The guy is insane. He ended up staying up for like 50 hours straight, working on ChallengeX almost the whole time.

Today, I moved into my new place in the Haute. That went pretty smoothly actually. On Tuesday, we’re flying our to Phoenix for the big testing competition. I’m really looking forward to it now that our car is fully functional. I was starting to dread it up to that night because I didn’t think we would finish. I believe I’ll have internet access there so I’ll try to post updates.

In other news, I had yet another hard drive replacement yesterday. Hooray Compaq! Actually, the hard drives are Hitachi so Hooray Hitachi!

I know this is a bit of a hit against free speech, but I think this is a good law.

Story

So today I saw The Da Vinci Code. Having already read the book I figured that the movie wouldn’t be as good since they usually never are, but I really enjoyed the movie.

I thought the cast was wonderulf. I love Tom Hanks, I think he’s great in every project he does. Ian McKellan was great as Sir Leigh Teabing. I think his scenes were fantastic, he’s a very good actor. Audrey Tautou was great as Sophie. I’d never heard of her before, but apparently she’s been in a lot of things…but those were all French films.

I say it’s good, though it seems like almost everywhere else I read they think the movie is horrible. Hey, whatever, I can deal with that. Afterall, we all have different tastes in entertainment.

But for these people he think it’s hypocrisy, get real. For those who think it’s a true story…GET REAL. It’s a movie based off of a book. It’s FICTION. SLU went a tad bit crazy/overboard with this. We had theology and philosophy professors offering classes and seminars to demonstrate how false the book is and how not to go see the movie this past semester. Can you say overkill?

It’s entertainment….that’s all. It doesn’t try to be anything more. It’s one man’s–though that was questionable until a judical ruling–ingenious idea for a compelling and entertaining adventure/story.

So, overall…I enjoyed the book and the movie. I’d go see it.

I have this prof for my Power class who also is part of the professor team for my Principles of Design class at 8am. He’s this old English guy who I guess grew up right on the boarder of Ireland. On Fridays, they bring us coffee and donuts to offset the suckiness of that class. Well, a few days ago, in power, some guy told Dr. Grigg that a guy name Rusty brings in alocohol to put in his coffee. So Grigg walks up to him this morning and asks him for the flavoring. Rusty produces a flask which Grigg proceeds to smell, and then pour into his coffee. He takes a drink of it, and he’s like, “Yep, that’s the stuff. I thought you were joking.” Then he proceeds to walk off and and his coffee.

I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time at Rose the last few weeks, mostly because the car ships next Monday. Also, it’s the end of the quarter and all of the classes are starting to pile on the work. I’ve decided that Rose should start a nap room, a room with a bunch of beds in it that students could go take naps in. I usually don’t have time to go home in between classes, and a quiet room to sleep in would be awesome.

In other news, it turns out Baslers in Terre Haute (a local grocery store) sells Louie’s Italian Beef seasoning. One of my roommates found it after I cooked some that I brought from home. I think that’s kind of cool that a local product of Herrin is sold here.

Finals officially begin tomorrow for me, though I’ve already had two finals and one practical.  It’s actually a pretty decent final exam schedule.  I have one exam every day except Thursday.  So, not bad overall.

Good luck to everyone else taking finals!!! Enjoy your summer once it begins, I will, of course be taking another summer class.

I broke my nose again. It’s almost humorous how I get hurt so often now…

Here’s a couple great videos I saw today. Stephen Colbert is the man. And I now like Steve Bridges, too.

[Edit:] God damn it. As much as I usually like WordPress, it pisses me off sometimes too. It won’t let me embed videos in the page for some reason. I’ll have to play around with it more. For now, here is a link to the first and here’s a link to the other. Watch them both if you’ve got time.

I was walking back from class today and this funny thing happened.  One of the sidewalks I take back here is pretty small.  You could pretty easily fit two people on it, but three is pushing it.  Basically, I was walking about 10 feet behind this guy who was coming up to two girls walking his direction.  They were walking side by side and so were taking up the whole sidewalk.

Well, when this kid gets to them, it was obvious they were expecting him to walk off the sidewalk so both parties could pass, but he didn’t.  He just walked straight and basically smashed into one of the girls.  She tumbled over and they both started screaming at him.  They were yelling stuff like, “Don’t you look where you’re going?”, “What’s wrong with you?”, etc.

What made it the most funny to me was that he basically didn’t raise an eyebrow.  As calmly as could be he explained, “Yes, I saw exactly where I was going.  However, I feel I’m as entitled–if not more so–to this half of the sidewalk as you are.  You obviously weren’t going to move so I decided I wouldn’t either.  I guess we saw who won that one.”  And then he just walked away.  The girl he crashed into almost started crying.

Needless to say when I passed them, she moved out of the way.  It was great.  I wish I could watch it again.  The thing is too, I definitely agree with him.  I’ve always thought it was ridiculous when people just assume I should be the one to move because they’re talking to a friend.  Fuck that, I should get my half of the sidewalk too.

Story

Some rock bands are suing Sony for breach of contract over online music sales. I think this quote from the story sums it up well:

“Tracks sold over the Internet usually go for about 99 cents. About 70 cents of the sale price goes to Sony. The bands are getting about 4 1/2 cents per song, according to the suit, rather than the approximately 30 cents they claim is rightfully theirs.”