Thursday, October 19, 2006

All Quiet (Relatively) on the Western Front

So yeah, I haven't posted in a month. Sorry about that. Anyway, so yeah, I finished the mini-project mentioned in the last post, and just yesterday finished the second project, which was a rubber-band car which had to go as far as possible with a limited amount of materials. I'll post a picture of it. Looks pretty sweet, huh? Of course, you recognize it! It's the boilermaker special! Actually, its a "mach" boilermaker special, named Morris Code. His motivational quote? "Run, Morris, Run!" Oh yeah, the picture is Morris in construction. The coating? Duct tape. Morris actually ran an average of 17 ft, but we once got a max of 22 ft. out of him, which was amazing to see. Unfortunately, during our official demonstration, not only did a rubber band stick, causing him to stop, but then a wheel also fell off, meaning we had to go find super glue to glue our wheel back on.

Okay, so I joined a new band, yes I'm still in marching band, but I also tried out for GABS (Gold and Black Sounds) which is the Women's Basketball band. Why women's? The purdue women's team is better than the Purdue men's team, and I hear GABS has more fun. And yes, we have practices and everything. There's about 80 people in the band. This means, however, that I have to take a concert band in spring in order to be a part of GABS.
I've also, as of now, done 2 AAmbassador outings. That's a clever play on words, since the band is the AAMB (All-American Marching Band), and we're ambassadors. Basically we go out in the morning to a local elementary school and talk to the 5th graders there about our band, let them try our instruments, and teach them how we march and stuff, and basically get them fired up about band so they'll join their 6th grade band. On the last outing, we had representation from every instrument, which was really cool, except I was the only trumpet, and we actually play for them, which was a lot of pressure. But its really cool, and it makes you feel really good to do, and its an excuse to wear my uniform, which is awesome.
Okay, so really exciting, check out this picture!! Yeah, that's right, I went to Cedar Point one sunday in late september!!! It was absolutely the bomb, even though I really didn't know anybody who went....
So I did pass my first round of exams without too much trouble. I got decent grades I think.... I don't think I did too badly... Speech is probably my easiest class, I haven't missed hardley any points in that class, especially on the acutal speeches. Maybe I just have an easy T.A.... I'm even keeping up in engineering, which suprises me. Though the programming experience I had before coming here has helped IMMENSELY... I have a couple people in my group who don't have any experience with that, and yeah... they're having trouble grasping the whole programming/scripting thing. BIG shout out to Uncle Eric for giving me a BIG jump on the programming.
So, purdue is 5-2, 2-1 in the big ten..... woohoo, we have an excellent chance of a bowl game, very likely somewhere warm!!! I'm so excited for that.... we had a crazy september for performances, all 5 weekends in september were games, and the last weekend was the Notre Dame game which we travelled to, which was a really really cool experience, since we got to march into the stadium and actually sit on the sidelines, right there on the grass. Wow. Being in Ross-Ade Stadium is just about as awesome though... nothing like Big Ten football anywhere. Amazing.
Well, I'll wrap this up. Hopefully I'll find more time to write more often.
Thanks for reading.