Thursday, March 22, 2007

Yum! Minne-sooda....

So! Not the warm temperatures I was hoping for over spring break, and I didn't go anywhere warm, either, but I didn't mind! The Purdue women's basketball team went to Minneapolis, Minnesota for the first round and second round of the NCAA tournament, and I went with the pep band. There were 30 of us that went, which means it was roughly 10 times smaller than the marching band, and a lot more fun than the marching band Florida trip. Yes, it was cold, but Minneapolis is such a beautiful city, it was amazing! It's so clean and pristine, and just a lot of fun to walk around and explore and look at the beautiful buildings. One unique thing about that town is that much of the downtown area is connected with skywalks on the second floor, which act as an effective tunnel system that allows you to go anywhere in the city without ever going outside! It's really cool.... I also felt like I was more than a number on this trip, like I actually mattered, since there were only about 30 in the band. I got to hang out with some cool people and do some very unique things, including hanging out at the Mall of America. All in all, a great trip. And I didn't mind the free plane ride there and back, the free lodging at an expensive hotel, and about $61 a day to pay for meals, a lot of which I kept and will use as spending money.
Everything else is going pretty well... the rest of my spring break worked out mostly like I wanted it to, even if it seemed a little shorter than I wanted it to be. Of great significance: I studied very hard for the weekend before spring break weekend, because I had both a math and a physics test that coming week. It paid off: I got a 70% on the physics (avg: 54%), but I'm most proud of my 95% on my Calculus II test (avg. 75% or so)! That surprised even me!
I guess I should mention that they found Wade Steffey in a high-voltage room in Owen Dormitory on campus and ruled it an accidental electrocution. Most people have probably already heard by now, however.
Outside of that, we had a demonstration for our teams robot today, and it did pretty well, the only thing that messed it up was that on two of the tasks it ran on paper, and we had only tested it on the floor. But it ran within the boundaries, which means it went really really straight, and we got 11/45 points, which sounds bad but its actually really good, since a lot of teams probably only got 5 points total on this. So we made some bad assumptions and now we know what to correct, and our design works well and its really cool. To go straight, we have things worked out so that if one wheel is being powered slightly more or is going a little faster, the robot eventually detects that and corrects for it. It's really pretty exciting!
I also got a really good grade on my paper that I wrote (98%) so I'm really really happy with the way things are going now. I just hope I don't get behind now...
well, that's about all for now. Hopefully I'll post again soon!