Shouzer

I just rolled back into Homewood–where Scott lives–after a nice week-long retreat with him in “The Upcountry” part of South Carolina.  We stayed at a place on Lake Keowee which was amazing.  To give you an idea of the location it was about a half-hour drive to Clemson University.

It took about 12 hours to drive there, but the scenery as we drove through the mountains was incredible.  The lake was beautiful as well.  We didn’t do much the first day except drive around some of the towns.  We also went hiking to look at some waterfalls, but unfortunately we missed a turn on the trail and hiked a significant ways past the falls.  What turned into a 45 minute hike turned into a three hour hike, but oh well.

The fun ended the next day, though when what was supposed to be a short boat ride around the lake turned into a four-hour excursion.  Needless to say, Scott and I weren’t exactly prepared for a day on the lake and are burnt to a crisp.

We left a day early and stayed the night in Gatlinburg.  Instead of the Interstate we took the scenic route into part of Georgia, then North Carolina through the Great Smoky Mountains.  The sun was just beginning to set when we started up the mountain, and the views were breathtaking!

Aside from the being burnt to crispy critters, we had a great time!

There is a new fully electric sports car created by a company in Silicon Valley.  Here’s a story.  I’m not a huge fan of electric-only vehicles because the batteries have not been good enough up to this point to make them viable.  However, high capacity Lithium Ion batteries are starting to find use in the automotive sector.  We actually tried to get one for the car we built.  I could see electric only vehicles finding a place in the auto market, especially as a commuter vehicle.  Having an insanely quick sports car that was all electric like this one would just be awesome.

I had my first class on Wednesday night; it’s an introductory sociology class.  I was a bit surprised to find that there are only about 20 people in the class, all of whom seem to be Detroit natives.  Most of them are majoring in some arts subject.  It’s weird for me to be around people like that because they act and think so much differently than the engineers and scientists I’m used to.  The prof wanted to make a point that we only believe things because society tells us they are true, so he picked a well know fact, that America was discovered in 1492 to prove his point.  So this kid sitting next to me goes off on a rant that America was discovered when people migrated over the land bridge between Alaska and Russia.  He was seriously mad that the prof was implying that America was discovered by Columbus.  I have heard of people like this, but I didn’t know they actually existed.  Talk about a loser.  Speaking of losers, the prof went around the room and made us all tell him why we were taking the class.  Some girl told him she thought it would make her a more well rounded person.  He then proceeded to make fun of her for lying about something like that.  I told him I was taking the class because it started at 5:30.

After class, I went down to the fireworks display downtown.  Detroit has the 2nd biggest fireworks display in the country, with 4 million people attending.  I was pretty impressed with them.  I took a picture with my cell phone that I was thinking of putting up here, but the quality is not very good.  Plus I was too lazy to upload it to my web space.  Maybe I will get ambitious tonight and do that. Next week is shut down week.  All of GM is on vacation.  I have to stay in Detroit because of my class, but I won’t be at work.  On the up side, I get my very first paid vacation on the 4th.  I’ve never been paid to take a day off before; I can’t wait for that action.  There’s a big festival called the Taste Fest, similar to the Chicago taste fest, which features lots of local food vendors and free concerts.  I’ll probably go to that this weekend.  The All American Rejects are playing on the 4th, and I really like them.  Bowling for Soup and Yellowcard are playing next weekend as well, and I would definitely like to go to those concerts if I can find anyone to go with me.  Steve Miller Band and an orchestral version of Led Zeppelin are also coming up soon.  One of the other interns mentioned going to those so I might go as well.

I went over to Cedar Point on Saturday, and it was awesome. Cedar Point is an amusement park in Sandusky Ohio, which is right on Lake Erie. The calling-card of the park is its plethora of roller coasters, including the number one roller coaster in the world, the Millennium Force. It went about 92 mph off the 380 foot hill, and the negative g’s coming over some of the smaller hills was pretty intense. The Millennium Force was pretty amazing, but my favorite was the Top Thrill Dragster.

It used electromagnets to accelerate from 0-120mph in 3.8 seconds. I calculated that out to be about 1.4g’s, but I did that with my cell phone so don’t quote me. The feeling in your stomach is indescribable when you are accelerating that fast. About all I can say is, “it hurt so good.” After reaching 120 mph, you go straight up a 420 foot tower, and then straight back down the other side. It was only about 15 seconds long, but it was the craziest ride I’ve ever been on.

A group of GM interns went out for the trip. I didn’t know any of them before we left, and they all worked/lived together in a little town about 1 hour outside of Detroit. That was honestly a little weird, but they turned out to be pretty cool. I had a good time hanging out with them.

Here’s another great story about our government eroding our privacy. It’s ridiculous that Bush gets away with this stuff. Somebody want to explain how that works? I don’t care what his intentions are–he’s breaking the law. Here’s a good comment on it.

[Edit:] Like this guy points out, you Republicans are supposed to be the ones for smaller government that plays a smaller role in our lives. Yeah, that’s happening. You’re spying on us, you’re deciding who can and can’t get married, and so on. It’s appalling.

It’ll be a glorious day (hell probably would have frozen over, too) when everybody realizes that this is the kind of thing that happens when you elect leaders like Bush. The judicial process doesn’t matter anymore. They can say what they want about needing to “help the police”, but how about the police respecting our country’s laws?

This was passed along to me by Jordy after I’d seen a similar, shorter version posted on /..  It’s pretty damn funny…and pretty damn sad.

As you well know, I’m a big fan of Penny Arcade.  It’s comics like this that keep me coming back.

The GM interns go bowling every Monday night because one of the local bowling alleys has 1 dollar games on Monday night. I think they have cheap beer as well, but I’m not really sure on that. Anyway, it gives us something to do after work so it’s a good time. I seem to always bowl my best 3rd game which is pretty different than everyone else, but I like it. I had my best game last week at 158 I believe.

The interesting thing about last night’s bowling activity was that Rasheed Wallace of the Detroit Pistons was there bowling 3 lanes down from us. Everyone, of course, freaked out because they saw someone famous. Cell Phone usage went up about 10 fold. I just thought it was funny that Rasheed Wallace would be at the cheap bowling alley on a Monday night. I would expect someone with money to go to nicer places than that.

I saw this great shirt the other day. On the front, it said “University of Akron Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering”. On the back, it said, “When the numbers are imaginary….so are the girls.”

It’s sad, but true….

I wish I was a hockey goalie.  That’d just be cool.  Cam Ward is my new hero.  22 years old and he won the Conn Smythe trophy, which is given to the MVP of the Stanely Cup finals.  That’s pretty sick.

In all honesty, I can’t say I was a huge fan of the Hurricanes before the NHL playoffs started.  I’d followed them a tad throughout the season.  They were generally my favorite team–I’ve had a Carolina hat for a couple years now.  It sucks during the season, though, because the NHL doesn’t have many games broadcast on national television.  Hopefully they’ll beef up the coverage next year so I can follow them better.

The finals really turned into a great series, though.  It looked like it might be over quick with Carolina jumping out to a 3-1 lead, but Edmonton made them work for it.  Game 7 was close all the way through, too.  The final score might have been 3-1, but you can’t really count an empty net goal the same as the others.

Now if only the Broncos could win the Super Bowl next year, I’d be set.

My newest theory is that if your name is spelled wrong–and, believe me, his name is spelled wrong–you gain these super human powers. I only have one test case, so it’s certainly possible that the theory is flawed. But until somebody proves me wrong, I’m going to count it as a law.

Anyway, in Wade’s case, his crazy superman powers are insane basketball skills. Who knows what it would be for me. From this point on, though, my name is spelled Jraed. Remember that.

Dwyane blew up at the end of the game last night. It was pretty damn cool to watch. He’s been on fire the last three games, and I hope it continues. At the end of overtime, he was covered by about six guys (which, the last time I checked, was against the rules), and he just drove through them and picked up a foul. He actually set the record for most free throws made in an NBA finals game. It was ridiculous all around.

Jason Terry played pretty well, too. It’s my opinion that if the Mavs would have given him the ball more, they would have won the game. Dirk also nailed a crazy shot with 10 seconds left in OT to force Wade’s insanity. Hopefully it continues to be a good serious. When it’s all over, though, I’d like to see the Heat holding the trophy.

[Edit:] Aha! I have a new theory. Perhaps Mr. Wade is the only one spelling his name correctly. Intriguing.

A new study claims that ultra-clean environments can actually lead to problems with allergies and auto-immune diseases. Maybe now companies will finally stop thinking they need to make every damn product anti-bacterial. It’s ridiculous really. It just makes the bacteria evolve.

The ChallengeX competition finished up last Thursday. We ended up getting 10th overall which I was pretty happy with considering we didn’t have our first test until 3am the night before it shipped. We had a few little Dur-Dee-Dur’s that cost us some pretty big points as well, but I really didn’t care how well we finished. The biggest mistake was when someone forgot to put the fuse back in for the engine cooling fan which resulted in our engine overheating in two of the major events. We also had some major problems with our transmission leaking and breaking down. On the up side though, we did well enough that GM is going to give us a new transmission-electric motor combo so we shouldn’t have those problems next year. The thing they are giving us is pretty sweet. It has two electric motors and a transmission to tie them together with the engine. Plus, it has a 2 speed transmission in it as well, so it sort of has 2 transmissions. It’s kind of hard to explain without getting into some major jargon. Basically though, it will replace our 2 electric motors and our homemade transmission plus give us two speeds instead of one. All of this in a package about the size of one of our current electric motors. Oh, and I forgot to mention that is has more power than our current setup. They originally did not want to give it to us because they thought it would give us too much of advantage over other teams, but I guess we got enough people pulling strings for us that it finally went through.

I had to give three presentations on the last day of the competition. The control strategy presentation, given by me and one other guy, was the biggest point event of the competition. They had 13 corporate big-wigs in this room trying to rip holes in our presentation. I felt pretty exhausted afterward, but I guess we did decently because we got 6th place in that. I also gave 2 presentations for sponsor awards, National Instruments and Freescale. I gave the NI talk basically myself although there was a short demo by another guy, and the prof wrote a paper that we had to submit beforehand. We got 2nd place and $750 for that. I was pretty happy with that. The Freescale award was a disaster. We tried to Captain Planet it by having 4-5 guys talk about different stuff. They were not impressed, but to be honest I don’t even know why we tried to do it. We hardly used there stuff at all. So they ripped us a new one.

I started my new job in Detroit last Monday. I finally got a computer on Friday afternoon. I have yet to get a GM user/pass or the software I need to do the work they want me to do. I didn’t do any real work until Thursday at which point I started assisting the guy I’m going to work with. I basically just made some cables and connectors. That was good because I did not know how to do any of that stuff, and he taught me some good tricks. I was transferred to a new position the week before I came here, and they did not tell me until I got here. Honestly though, what I am doing now sounds basically like what they said I would be doing. I am working in a different location than I thought I would be though, Pontiac instead of Warren.

I am going to be working on a controller for a piece of equipment that tests seat belt anchorages. It sounds like a pretty decent assignment. The department where they do the testing is pretty cool. They have a bunch of hydraulic machines set up to do tests like that on various parts of the car. For instance, there is a machine that slams the doors on the car repeatedly to test the latches. They had big machines that shake the chassis, powertrain, suspension, etc. to see how they will hold up under road conditions. The idea is they take the car out on the test track and get real drive cycles, and then they bring the parts into this lab to test them under the same drive cycle to get repeatable test conditions.

My apartment is really nice. It is a 2 bedroom/2 bath with walk in closets in both rooms, huge overstuffed suede couches, fully furnished kitchen including dishwasher, and washer/dryer. My roommates are pretty cool as well. They thought I was coming in about 3 weeks ago so they were pretty shocked when I showed up. Two of them were gone home last weekend, and the other one came in about 3:30am Saturday night to find me sleeping in his bedroom in the spare bed. I guess he was a little freaked out. The area around the apartment is pretty upscale as well so it should work out well.

This is a pretty crazy video that shows the transformation of Michael Jackson.  It’s pretty sad, really.  He looks like ass nowadays.