Greetings from Gothenburg, Sweden!

My European vacation started Friday morning, at 8:30. I headed down to the license branch to get my new car plated and registered, which is a different story altogether. However, all that was a precursor to our leaving our house for the Indianapolis airport at 11:30. Our flight plan was as follows: catch a plane from Indy to Philadelphia, from Philly go on to Brussels, Belgium, and from Brussels to our final destination of Gothenburg, Sweden. The entire trip was supposed to take around 14 hours and move us part of the way around the globe, landing us in Sweden around 11:30am local time Saturday morning.
The first hitch occurred when our flight from Indy was delayed approximately an hour and a half past its original departure time. The good news was that the actual flight gained an hour on the estimated flight time; the bad news was that this still put us getting in at Philly a half-hour later than expected, when our layover there was only supposed to be an hour anyway. The end result was the Rockey family running through the airport while a cordial female voice announces over the loudspeaker that they were "Now boarding flight XXX to Brussels, Rockey family to gate A4; This is the last call for the Rockey family." Thankfully, our out-of-breath selves made it to the gate just in time, and we caught our 7 hour flight to Brussels. Thankfully the flight was uneventful, and we made it into Europe with no major hassles in security. From a timing perspective: we departed Philly about 6:30pm, and arrived in Brussels around 8:30am.
The plane from Brussels to Sweden was fairly small, and relatively unpopulated, which was nice, because we had the opportunity then to actually stretch our legs during the flight. We also had the opportunity during this flight to look at some interesting landscape, as we most likely flew over the Netherlands, and aerial observation of this region was very interesting.
Jim Brinson was at the Gothenburg airport to pick us up when he arrived, and he drove us from the airport to his house, where we'll be staying for the next couple days (until Wednesday). We had the opportunity to explore several facets of Swedish life already: we took a small trip to downtown Gothenburg using Swedish public transit went shopping in a Swedish grocery store (which was very confusing and only manageable with the help of our friends here, and then visited the church at which the Brinsons are serving. It was a unique group of people at that church; this particular saturday afternoon they were hosting an event for area children as an outreach to start forming relationships. There were a group of college students from a university in Florida that chose to do mission work at this particular church for five weeks, so they were there as well.
Well, that about sums it up for the first day here in Europe. Hopefully lots more to come!

A Weekend Trip

For those of you who don't know already, this past weekend I made a brief cameo in Indiana for about 48 hours before heading back to Texas to finish up my research position. That's right, for just a little sliver of time I was back in the Hoosier state.

This weekend was the celebration of my grandparent's 50th anniversary. I had originally thought I would be around for the party, since I didn't know I was going to be in Texas, but finding that out kind of threw a wrench into things. I put off figuring out what to do about it until recently, though, because I didn't think the REU would be willing to cover the charge of flying home (which is what I would have to do, to make it worth it.) Eventually, we worked things out to where I was able to fly in to Ft. Wayne for the weekend.

The plane ride was relatively uneventful, though a bit cramped. This was the first time I had ever flown by myself before, and also the first time I had ever had a layover (in Cincinnati), so I was slightly nervous and fearful that the process wouldn't go as smoothly as I was hoping it would. Fortunately, everything came off without a hitch, the only inconvenience being that I forgot where I packed my DS, and so I didn't have it for the entire trip up to Indiana. Oh well. That and a bit of a seat mix-up that shouldn't have involved me were all the troubles I encountered on my trip. All in all, not bad.

Once I got to Ft. Wayne, things were very rushed as I stayed at my grandparents house one night, stayed in a hotel the next, and in between I attended my grandparents party, where there were close to probably 200 people. They held the anniversary party in the basement of Anthony Wayne church, which was the church where my Dad used to be youth minister, and long before that my Grandpa was senior pastor. It was like a homecoming for them, getting to see all sorts of people they hadn't seen in many many years, but for a good portion of the party I found myself behind the punch bowl keeping cups filled. It wasn't a bad place to be really, since it gave me an excuse not to have to mingle. It was nice to see all sorts of people I hadn't seen for a while, but it got to be quite tiring after a while.

Anyway, nice trip there, nice trip back, it was a good way to spend a weekend. Now to finish up my Texas time.

Beginning of the End

This past week was interesting. I had a successful presentation, which was good, but then Dr. Makki announced that we needed to have a first draft of our final paper turned in by the end of the day on Friday. Of course, it was a somewhat lax requirement, because I think that often he doesn't remember these deadlines he sets. I still felt like that would be a great deadline and motivation to abide by, however, so I put together a rough draft of the paper by Friday. By Friday, a lot of our group were pretty burnt out and frustrated, but still felt like they had to continue to work on Friday night in order to get more done on the paper. Around 8pm, Justin and I felt like we should come and pull them away to do something else for a while, since they had been working for almost 12 hours at that point.

We decided that it would be kind of fun if we found some sort of LAN game we could all put on our laptops and play together. In the end, we decided that all five of us would have the most fun playing Starcraft; at least, that's what all our computers could handle. We lost track of time and played until about 1:30 in the morning, and a fun time was had by all. We had so much fun, in fact, that we decided to do the same thing on Saturday for the day. Instead of Starcraft, we decided that we wanted to play Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. So we went into the building where we work, and accessed a lab there that we had administrative rights to, and installed COD4. Since these machines were 2.6GHz Quad-cores, they had no trouble running the game, and we had a great afternoon playing a local LAN game of Call of Duty against each other.

Monday and Tuesday passed pretty uneventfully, but this morning we had to give a visiting professor a brief presentation over our projects. He is actually the Computer Science department head at Texas Tech University, and he was looking to find out more information about our experience because he was looking to apply for a computer science REU at Texas Tech. Actually, those presentations probably were more enlightening as to the real state of people's projects than any of the two presentations before this, because we were forced to summarize our project in our own words and very briefly, which is very tough thing to do if you don't have a firm grasp of the material.

This afternoon, a group of four of us went to the new Harry Potter movie, which was absolutely spectacular. It is as least the best of the Harry Potter movies since the second one, which makes it pretty darn good in my book. That was definitely a worthy way to spend an afternoon.

We're drawing near to the end of the program, and there's not much time left to get things wrapped up before I have to submit and present and then come back home. It's going to be here before any of us here know it, and I'm not sure I'm ready for it to be over.

Opinion: Google Chrome OS

Yesterday, Google announced that they have been working on Chrome OS, a Linux-based operating system centered around getting users up, running and on the internet as fast as possible. Judging from the name, Chrome OS will be built around the same ideas as the identically-named up-and-coming internet browser. Though everyone and their brother saw this move coming, the intertubes are still buzzing with the news, with much speculation as to the future impact of Chrome on Microsoft's death-grip on the operating system market share, on the relative user-unfriendliness of most Linux distributions, and on the way the world currently runs in general. Ironically enough, a friend was just talking about how ubiquitous Google has become in any application it chooses to design, and he said that "If Google designed an operating system, it would kill Microsoft". Well, I like to think I have a legitimate opinion on this issue. Let me try and answer a few questions that are being thrown around the web right now.
r that.

“Does this mean the end for Microsoft”? In short, no, not at all. First, Microsoft has its fingers in a lot of pies: productivity software, game consoles, internet applications, and DirectX. But I think even the Windows market share is safe, at least for now, and here's why:

1. Google has chosen to make Chrome a Linux-based architecture. No matter how user-friendly you make it, its still going to be a UNIX machine, not a DOS machine like most have been using for 20 years. Plus, there are going to be compatibility problems with graphics cards, sound cards, network cards, and more. Ubuntu has been out for years and still hasn't manage to patch up the compability problems, even with a dedicated base of modders out there working valiantly to try and fix them. Google's army might be paid, but its still going to take them a good long bit to sort out the problems. After all, Gmail was in beta for nearly five years; Chrome OS is not even on the Windows challenger horizon yet.
2. Google has stated that it will open-source the source code later this year. Now of course, I am all for open-source movement, but if Google has any chance of competing with Microsoft for any real part of the OS market, they have to start securing government contracts for OS rollout on a U.S. system, and there's no way that the DoD, who already have hacker/security problems up the wazoo, are going to agree to open-sourced OS's on their machines. Same for a lot of major U.S. companies: no matter how much security you stuff into that OS, no company who is trading millions of dollars through their computer is going to trust a machine running off a transparent kernel.
3. Chrome OS is going to be specifically for those who mostly utilize their computers for the internet access and perhaps some word processing. I know there is a good portion of people who do only this, but there is an equal number of people who want to do more than this, whether its gaming, video editing, database management, or software development, an OS whose main focus is embedding the internet into the OS and booting quickly is going to be lightwight and wholly insufficient for any of the pasttimes listed above. Windows has a stranglehold on gaming in particular, with most gaming on Linux machines restricted to running games through a Windows kernel emulation.

My conclusion is that for now Windows is safe. Chrome OS is unlikely to pose any sort of threat to Microsoft. As for the future, I see Chrome OS acting as a springboard to the design of a much larger, expansive OS that can challenge Windows and perhaps even be its successor.... but that's far in the future.

"What does this mean for the future of Linux"? I see two potential futures for Linux post-Chrome release, and there is a chance both could happen. With the amount of cash Google has to sink into this product, they could create a better Linux OS than any of the ones currently on the market. Potentially, this could do, many times over, what Ubuntu has already done; unite the Linux community behind one open-source OS that every can develop for. There might be some stragglers still playing around with their Fedora cores and BSD, but if Google includes much of what draws people to Linux in the first place (easy root access, mod-ability, package installation utilities, etc.) they could make a lot of converts.

Another potential possiblity would be that Chrome OS would win converts from Windows. Not a lot perhaps, but if Google does an especially good job with the web integration (and considering their history, I don't see why they wouldn't), they can expect to win quite a few people over, especially netbook owners frustrated with XP boot times. Even chipset developers who have a vested interest in the field are excited that Google is going to focus effort on Linux developement.

"How is this going to affect the way the world runs?" Again, in short, its not. I think it will definately effect the way Google develops applications; we're going to see a lot more Chrome-centric application appearing in the early part of 2010. I think it will also affect the way Microsoft develops its next OS after Windows 7, because Google is going to do some revolutionary stuff with embedded web that Microsoft will want in on. Looking long term, I think, again, that this may act as a spring-board for Google, giving them experience with OS development without going toe-to-toe with Microsoft, and hopefully a group of dedicated users who will be able to give them feedback on the good and bad of their first attempt. If all goes well, perhaps by 2012 Google will be ready to give Microsoft a run for its money - literally.

Slow Weekend

So, my bad for not getting around to making a post this weekend. It just wasn't something that was high on my priority list. Much much higher on that list were getting a significant amount of work done on my project and playing World of Goo.

This past week and weekend were fairly uneventful. We collectively decided to take the weekend of from doing anything like we have the past few weeks, and so we mostly lounged around and relaxed. We took the opportunity to watch a few movies, and as I stated before, I really got into the game World of Goo, which is a fantastic physics-based game that has you using "Goo balls" to construct bridges across treacherous spike-bottom valleys and towers to the sky (a la the picture above) in an effort to reach the end point and get as many free goo-balls as you can to that end point. It really is the best use for a physics engine I've seen in a while. It's an independently made game, too, which is fantastic to see. If you're interested, head to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_Goo for more info, or you can download the game or a demo on Steam.

On Sunday, we decided that we would experience some real Texan cuisine and so we headed to what was supposedly the best BBQ place in Beaumont. It had a very modest appearance, both on the inside and the out, but the BBQ was absolutely fantastic, and highly recommended.
My work is now getting intense. Because it took a while for the Professor and I to come up with a viable research direction, I have only had about two weeks to pound out exactly what needs to happen in the implementation of my theory, and thus I have not yet worked out all the corner cases. Unfortunately, the midway presentation is coming up very soon, and the professor was hoping that we would have actual numerical results by then, so that we could focus on writing our paper for the last few weeks. I don't think is going to happen, but in the last two days of last week, the goal came sharply into focus (as far as what I needed to do to get there), I realized how much work I had to do, and I started working very hard at getting my stuff ready by next Monday. I'll continue to work hard, possibly even over this fourth of July weekend.

Last night (Monday night), the group of us decided that it would be fun to play some board games, but nobody had thought to bring any. So we went out and got Scattergories and Cranium, and had an absolute blast playing those two for about 3 hours.... we all lost track of time.
Ultimately, as I refine my project and I have more and more of a goal for each day in mind, and as I get to know my co-workers better and better, I increasingly enjoy the time I'm having here in Texas, not just in my free time but also in my work. It will be very sad when my time here draws to an end.

Houston Confusion, Pt. 2

As far as work goes, this week was pretty uneventful. Which would be unfortunate, if I hadn't had a spectacular weekend.
On Friday, we found this really seedy bowling alley in Beaumont that was also really cheap, and took about an hour and bowled our hearts out. It ended up being the same five of us hanging out all weekend that went to Houston last week. That was probably the most fun I've had bowling in quite a long time. After bowling, we all decided we were hungry yet again (because they feed us so early here!), and so we went to Chick-Fil-A, where I successfully spilled a peach milkshake all over the place. It was a very fun night.

On Saturday, we took another trip to Houston, to finish out the last of our CityPass tickets. We visited the Houston Health museum in the morning, which was enough entertainment for about an hour, then we went and ate lunch and headed to the Johnson Space Center. We spent the entire afternoon there, as there was a lot to do, such as watch educational movies, see the inside of the cockpit of a space shuttle, and take a tram tour of the actual base, complete with a visit to the current Mission Control room. We even got to see one of the actual Saturn V rockets that took men to the moon (in the picture above). Also, there was a special exhibit at the Space Center, about the films of George Lucas and featuring props from Star Wars and Indiana Jones, so that was interesting.

After going to the Space Center, we ate dinner then headed to the Houston Aquarium, which is actually open until 11. We were expecting a normal aquarium, but the Houston Aquarium is anything but. First, the Aquarium did an excellent job of presenting the exhibits, and showing some unusual animals, such as the Moray Eel, a giant octopus, and even rare white tigers. In addition to this, there is also a Restaurant and a Lounge within the Aquarium, and situated right outside is a perpetual carnival, complete with a carousel, a Ferris Wheel, live music, and carnival games, all affiliated with the Aquarium. It was all very enticing and a good way to get people to go to an Aquarium.

Houston Confusion

So, I'm starting out on my fourth week in and third post from Beaumont, TX. It is a beautiful area, and the weather is always beautiful, and the city is nice, but I have to say: I prefer Houston (skyline to the right). I mean, yes, the mess of roads that go through Houston seems to confuse my GPS more often than not, sending me in the wrong direction half the time. However, the third largest city in the U.S. seems to be a shining example of the success of the American economy in this dark economic time. I have been to quite a few different places in Houston and have not yet seen any slums or even any less than nice areas. Maybe I just haven't been to the right areas, but regardless, there are just way too many huge houses in downtown Houston.

So, as you might have guessed, I have been to Houston several times now. Last Saturday I went to Houston for the evening with a couple of friends from the research program with which I'm involved. We went to The Galleria, the fourth largest mall in the U.S., and it was spectacular. I was more impressed with this mall (its selection, cleanliness, and overall style) than I was with the Mall of America. There seemed to be a store for everything; there was even a Sony store, which I don't think I'd ever seen before. We also found a little coffee shop that was a bit off the beaten track, but it was very unique.

This Saturday we again went to Houston, this time with a more defined plan in mind. We managed to cram five people in my car (a decision later regretted by those in the backseat) and we made the hour trip to Houston. We bought a CityPass for Houston, which allowed us a nine-day window to see 6 different Houston attractions, such as the aquarium or Johnson space center. This Saturday we visited the Houston Zoo, which was good but not the best I've seen, and the Houston Museum of Natural Science, which had an impressive display on energy and energy sources, such as hydrogen, oil, natural gas, wind power, etc. Those two took up most of the afternoon, though we had to take a bit of a break to catch our breath after the zoo, since it was about 100°F outside, and we'd been walking for quite a while. In the evening, we went to the Alamo Drafthouse Theater, which was a Theater combined with a full-service restaurant, and had dinner while we watched Up (which is an excellent movie, by the way). After such a long day, we were all quite beat, and headed home. Even though it was evening, we went with the top down, because it was 97° outside when we left. Interestingly enough, it had dropped to 81° by the time we reached Beaumont; whether this was because we were out of the city, or because we went north slightly, I'm not sure.

Friday was Scott's birthday, so some of us took him out to play putt-putt and then out to Sonic for an evening semi-meal. The dining halls here are interesting, because lunch lasts from 11-1, but dinner only goes from 4:30-6, which means by the time 9'o'clock rolls around, some of us are hungry again, which explains the half-meal at Sonic. Looking back on it, it seems like a lame way to spend a birthday, but it was really a lot of fun.

I also had to give a presentation on Friday, giving a little background on my research subject and then my direction of research I am going to take and a projected timeline for the remaining weeks. Evidently it went fairly well, or so I was told by others.

Oh, and continuing in my line of thought about ways Texas is different from the Midwest: Whereas doing U-Turns is often frowned upon in many places in the Midwest, here in Texas they have devoted U-Turn lanes. For example, if you get off the highway on an exit, and you get to the intersection, there will be one lane to go straight, one lane to turn right, one to turn left, and then an entire lane devoted to pulling a highway U-Turn; it takes you right through to going the other direction on the road on the other side of the highway, from where you can get right back on the highway going the other way, with only a yield sign in your way, no stoplights. Also, on many non-highway roads, there are devoted U-turn turn lanes that cut into the median. They are specifically posted as "no-left-turn", so they only leave the option of a U-Turn.
Anyway, enough about that. Not much else to report, so... so long from Texas, for now.

P.S. I want to encourage you gamers (and non-gamers too!) out there to try the game Braid. It is a fantastic game that gives a whole new take on the 2-D side-scrolling adventure. The one-man development team took three years of his life to put this project together, and it is one of the best games I have ever played. It was a pure joy to play, much like Portal. It seems short, compared to the fairly large price tag, but it really was worth every penny. Braid can be downloaded for the PC through steam. Here's a Youtube link to the game trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqtSKkyJgFM

Where are all the Yellow Roses?

It's my second full weekend here in Texas, and I'm inside, not enjoying the sunshine. To be fair, I took a book and sat outside for a half an hour and tried to read this morning, but after about a half hour i started to break out in a sweat, so I went back inside. I guess I can still enjoy the sunshine from inside, but I love being outside in this weather. Its interesting that they don't provide that many places to just sit outside around here.

While I'm on the subject of the weather around here, its a lot different. In Indiana, thunderstorms roll, rain thunder lighting and do their thing, and then sweep right back out again, and all in about 15 minutes, usually. Here in Texas, I haven't seen that happen. The skies get darker and darker, almost to the point where you think the sun is setting, and then you start to hear the thunder, and then the rain slowly starts, gets harder and harder, etc. It takes like 2 hours for the storm to roll in, and then another 3 for it to end and roll back out again. This has happened several times, so my impression is that that is the norm.

On other subjects: I was able to get a library card and check out some light reading from the library. This is an enormous relief, because I really have had way too much time on my hands some days. I also paid a reasonable amount for a gym membership here at the university. It's based on a per-day, so I hope that because I already paid for every day, I feel compelled to go because the day is already paid for. So... here's hoping.

As far as my research goes, I now have a direction. It turns out that I don't really have to come up with a new theory, just an inventive way to implement an idea he came up with, i.e. write code that performs the semantic caching the old way and his new way, and compare the two. So, shouldn't be too immensely tough, but enough of a challenge to where i won't get bored.

As for everything else, well, at this point there is nothing else. I got paid this week....yup, that's about it.

Summer starts with Texas

I can't believe it's been almost two years since I actually wrote anything on my blog. You would think I would have things to write about, but I guess not. In reality, my life has not changed that much. In the intervening summer, I did another stint at NSWC Crane, working as an engineering intern yet again. I also switched my major from Electrical Engineering to Computer Engineering; that's kind of a fine switch, and there's really only a difference once you get to some of the higher level courses. CompE will let me do more of what I want to do without all the EE classes getting in the way.
I guess the most significant thing to report is this: I am writing this blog post from Beaumont, Texas on the campus of Lamar University. At the moment, I find myself unable to fall asleep, but yet direly in need of sleep, and so I thought that perhaps piddling around facebook and writing a blog post would help calm my nerves enough to fall asleep.
But what am I doing in Texas, you might ask? (Or maybe you don't. Whatever.) The story is this: Earlier this spring I applied for and was accepted into a "Research Experience for Undergraduates" program sponsored by the National Science Foundation that was based out of the computer science department of Lamar University, in Beaumont, TX (about an hour east of Houston, 20 min. west of the Louisiana-Texas border, and half an hour from the Gulf Coast). I really had no idea what I would be doing until I arrived down here on the 24th of May. I actually brought a car down, thinking it might be useful (it is), and I braved a 16 hour drive from Bloomfield to Beaumont in order to get here.
There are 10 of us that were accepted into the program, and 7 of us are not from Lamar University. They put all 7 of us right next to each other in the LU dorms, which is really nice and has led to us becoming an even closer group than we might have. Most of us are from the midwest, with a few exceptions. Now, we are all mostly working on seperate research projects. However, the professor in charge of our program, Dr. Kami Makki, insisted that we be given at least a cursory introduction to every person's project, so that we had some level of understanding about others projects. Everyone has very interesting projects.
My research that I have been assigned delves into semantic caching and query processing in mobile environments. To put that in laymen's terms, I am looking at figuring out how to most effectively temporarily store data in your mobile devices, such as cell phones, that you have downloaded from the internet. The project itself deals with theoretical data in the form of rows from a database, such as a parts database, or an employee database. The part I am working with, semantic query processing, involves taking a request generated by the user "I want to see all employees from list a with a salary over $50k" and seeing if some, any, or all of the information requested can be retreived from temporary storage on the your cell phone, which would happen if you just accessed that same list. That way, the device doesn't have to connect to the internet for as long as it would otherwise.
I have also been able to get out and enjoy Texas and observe just how different this region is than what I am used to. I was able to take some time off on Saturday and cruise around exploring the area with a couple other people, and we even made it down to the Gulf of Mexico. Beaumont is not exactly the nicest town the the whole world, and it is clear that the city is past its prime. It seems to be an oil town thats running out of oil. All in all though, I am glad I took this offer, because I am getting to experience living somewhere else for a while. I am so thankful for this opportunity.
Right now, I'm getting pretty tired, and I can't think of anything else I forgot to post.

Back to school

So I finished my internship at Crane on Thursday the 9th of August, was all packed, had visited all my friends for the final time and was ready to leave for Purdue on Sunday the 12th. That's right: back to school for All-American Marching Band Camp. Since I was a returning member, I didn't have to be back until that Tuesday, but I wanted to get unpacked and all settled before I had to report. So camp started on Tuesday and was increasingly arduous until ending on Saturday. I successfully made it into the band, and my official position is Rank 22, no. 3. There are 343 members of the band this year, including auxiliaries and big bass drum crew.
I am finally starting to get settled back in, and am somewhat prepared for the start of classes tomorrow. I did my inaugural load of laundry this afternoon, and everything is in its own place, and I have all my books in for my classes. Mondays this semester will be mercifully easy, with only two classes excluding band, one at 10:30 and one at 11:30. On the other hand, Thursdays will be agonizing: I have classes from 7:30 to 5:30, with only one hour-long break. of course, though the 19-credit hours I am taking seems intimidating, I am taking a (3-credit?) theatre course, and 2-credit marching band, so some classes will hopefully be easier than others. Other than that, i'm just sitting around...

Norfolk, Pt. 2

Our day began at 0830 EDT, boarding the bus to the Submarine and Surface Naval Base of Norfolk. We took a public tour of the base, and thus were shown all the buildings, as well as given information about while driving by all the ships currently in port. The most impressive thing about this tour was driving by the U.S.S. Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Nimitz-class Supercarrier, the largest ships in the Navy. What an imposing sight to see one of those things floating in the water. Jaw-dropping, really.
Next, we took an up close and personal tour of an AEGIS strike command cruiser, the U.S.S. Porter. This was an impressive, if smaller, ship, and was manned by about 250 men. The tour was quite extensive. We then took a break for lunch, resuming the tours with an interesting expedition into the LHA multipurpose amphibious warfare ship the U.S.S. Nassau. The sheer size of the ship was difficult to realize until you were right beside it, or inside of it. It bears a striking resemblence to a miniature aircraft carrier.
Finally, we ventured into downtown Norfolk in order to visit the Nauticus museum and U.S.S. Wisconsin. The museum explored some interesting naval history and contained some fascinating scale models of old and new ships (including the aforementioned Nimitz-class supercarriers). The U.S.S. Wisconsin is a Battleship attached to the mueseum that has not yet been taken off the active duty list, so it can still technically be recalled for use by the navy. We only got to walk on the deck of the Wisconsin, instead of going inside like we did on the other ships we toured.
I had cheesecake from (gasp) the cheesecake factory tonight. There was a little Cheesecake Factory bakery that served all sort of food in the MacArthur center mall in downtown Norfolk, so I decided to indulge, courtesy of the government. It was Godiva Chocolate Cheesecake. Amazing.
To top it all off, we ran by the Apple store next and they had fully functional iPhone models just waiting to be test-driven, so me and Josh Riggins spent a full 25 minutes or so messing around with the iPhone. Now that is a technological marvel. For all the complaints about it, it really is a stunning piece of equipment.
Tomorrow, heading home: departure at 0700 EDT.

In Norfolk

Well, a lot has happened in a short amount of time. First, I'm out of school. That's new. I made it out of my first year and kept all of my scholarships, barely.
Second, I got a job, at Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) Crane as an intern, which means I'm an official government employee. This base is about 25 minutes away from my house, which is really convenient. I'm working in the electronic development department, working on all sorts of fascinating government projects. Pretty cool.
What does that have to do with Norfolk? Well, they decided that they were going to take all the interns at our base and bus us to the east coast this week so we could see how what we are doing is applied in the Navy. So technically this is considered to be government travel, for which we are getting paid. It's a nice little deal.
So, about Norfolk. We left at 8am EST on Monday, and arrived at 11:30pm EST, taking a two one-hour pit stops, one for lunch and one for dinner. The actual driving portion of the trip, then, took about about 13 hours. We passed some of the most beautiful scenery, since we went right through the Appalachian mountains. According to our bus driver, we crossed right over one of the deepest gorges in the US.
Our day yesterday (Tuesday) began at 8am on the bus, and we proceeded immediately to the Little Creek Naval Base. It was there that I got to see and board a real hovercraft. They're very imposing machines when you are standing right next to them. Here's a picture of the back of one. I had no idea these things actually hovered above the water; I always figured they just floated along on big tubes, but that big plastic sheet underneath is just a skirt; four superpowered fans underneath actually suspend the 160-ton machine in the air, be it over ground or water.
We then moved on to a demonstration of an expeditionary force assault (an amphibious assault, such as the Normandy beach assault). Actually, it was not as exciting as it sounds, because it was a bunch of string lead models moving around on big pieces of carpet, and accompanied by the most dull video in the world.
We ate lunch at the Chief Petty officer's club, at which we had an excellent lunch, and then proceeded to move to the Surface and Submarine Naval Base. We went to the submarine training center, which was actually very interesting (and I'd wish I'd taken pictures). First we went to the water hazard simulator, which was a giant room that simulated the environment of a submarine, and an operator in a seperate control room could trigger up to 16 different leaks, and they usually throw servicemen in the simulator for a 3 or 4 hour session. Then we moved on to the fire hazard simulator, creating the environment of a submarine that has an on-board fire. We were also taken to the virtual reality helm, which allows submariners to slip on a helmet that allows them to take control of a virtual surfaced submarine, complete with being able to issue voice commands to the bridge. It was very interesting. Finally, we got to move on to the the weapons simulation room, which contained 3 M16s, an M50, and 4 9mm handguns that had all seen actual use at one point, but which had been modified to shoot CO2 instead of bullets, which means there was no hazard, but the opposite wall in these room could detect exactly where you had shot and the gun still delivered the same kick that a normal model provided. I only tried the M16, which was neat.
Finally, we were taken on a tour of the USS Norfolk, an active-duty fast-attack submarine whose crew was still bustling around as we were touring it. That was pretty cool to get to see that, but so much information and neat stuff that it would be hard to scratch the surface in a blog. Here's a picture of the mast. My finger got in the way.
Up for today: touring an AEGIS cruiser, the USS Wisconsin museum, and exploring downtown Norfolk. Should be fun!

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!

Warning: May Cause Drowsiness

It seems that the weather can't make up its mind, and neither can my "u" key. First its warm then its freezing, and I never know what to wear in the morning. My "u" key is quite uncooperative, and that began when I popped the key itself off by accidentally dropping a DVD case on it from a height of about 5 inches. I put the key back on, but since, it doesn't want to work very well, and so I continue to try and avoid words containing that letter. Luckily it is infrequently used.
I am putting off going to bed, because it does not seem like a very fun thing to do right now, and so I just won't, at least not right now.
I had crappy engineering tests last week, and I hope to get them back with a decent grade, as well as hear back on the grade for my paper I wrote for english. I'm kind of excited for that, not so excited for the math and physics exams I have to take. I AM however, excited to go on spring break. I have apparently been chosen to be part of the women's pep band for Purdue for the NCAA tournament, which is extremely exciting. I don't know where I'll be going yet, but we will probably leave the thursday or friday of spring break, and hopefully be going somewhere warm and exciting. We get a bunch of free time, so it should be pretty awesome. Which reminds me: uncle josh, you oughta give me a call sometime this week and come down, since its your spring break.
I put together one of those lists earlier today, where you take this random list, like "if your life were a movie, here are the scenes: which songs go with what scenes" and you put iTunes on shuffle and whatever song comes up is the song that plays for that scene, supposedly. Its supposed to be eerily accurate. No, not for me: the soundtrack for the birth of my first child was "Never take friendship personal" by Anberlin. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Random Fact: (Total lie): I watch 37 hours worth of movies every week.
Point: I don't have time for that. I use useless entertainment like movies as a way to get away, but watching them is a luxury I can't afford. There's no need to worry that I'm wasting my time here with stuff like video games, tv and movies. I do those things to get away from the work for a little bit, to distract myself, not as a main preoccupation.
In other news... I'm getting hungry. And my roomate's "new" DVD player is a defective piece of crap from Hitachi; does anyone have any solution if I say that this player randomly shuts off, sometimes 30 minutes into play, sometimes 5, and sometimes almost instantaneously after turning it on? It also sometimes refuses to read mp3 discs, and sometimes has a hard time reading DVD's. Piece of crap! It was brand new at the beginning of Fall semester.
Oh, i give up.... i'm gonna get something to eat.

Maybe its maybelline...

And maybe its just me!! Yeah, I just look that good. So, really, though, I got to wear my suit for the first time today (Sunday), because I had a band concert. I'm in colleigiete band, which is the third best out of four concert bands at Purdue. Which doesn't mean anything, since the two band above me take place during times that I said I probably wouldn't be able to attend band at, so I don't know where I would've placed if I hadn't said that. Oh well... it was interesting... we played at Long Center in downtown Lafayette.
This weekend has pretty much been me doing homework interspersed with breaks, so I don't have a nervous breakdown. Though, on Saturday morning, I went to the Rube Goldberg competition at the Armory, mostly because Heather is on the SWE Rube team. This year's theme was to make as complicated machine as you could to juice oranges. It was pretty much amazing to watch these seven machines that people made, and the winning teams creation was absolutely incredible. Of course, THEY have like infinite funding...
YEAH!!! I just got to my absolute favorite song on the new Anberlin CD, "The Unwinding Cable Car". It's pretty much an awesome mostly acoustic track talking about "the correlation of salvation and love". AHHH! This track tops every other acoustic track they've attempted up to now, except maybe "A day late(acoustic)".
On a different subject, I just basically finished up my english paper, so I'm pretty psyched about that...
and back to music...
i've decided that pretty much I like the lincoln brewster version of "Everlasting God" better than the chris tomlin version.... hmmm.
okay, done with boring you. sorry.

BTW...

I thought that since I posted an essay, I might as well give an update on what's been happening around here lately. Well let's see...
Yes, its true, we got 14 inches of snow here, followed by another 3 a couple days later, so it was pretty crazy for West Lafayette... that final 3 was last Saturday, and it was followed up by 41 degree temperatures on Monday, so the snow has been consistantly melting since the beginning of the week, and we have been getting freezing temperatures at night, so when I venture out in the morning like a bear after a hard winter, I slip and slide all over the ice that covers our pathways. As I write there is a giant puddle just across stadium avenue from cary quad that completely covers a corner of the sidewalk.
I had the joy of walking to down to Borders in the melting mess on Tuesday to retrieve my just release of Anberlin's new CD, cities. I must say that every other Anberlin CD took me a while to get the groove, and it will be no different with this one, but I'm trying to conquer the curve as quickly as possible. There are a couple songs I really like already. It is definately a worthy follow-up to Never Take Friendship Personal.
My favorite class right now.... hmmm, it would be a close tie between English 108, advanced first year composition, and Engineering 117, Honors Engineering Computer Programming. Engineering is just programming, which is something I enjoy and don't mind, so its not terrible at all, and I'm getting great grades in there. The semester-long project, which once again deals with a robot that we must manipulate to perform certain tasks, is also tolerable: we will eventually begin programming it in C, so that will be great to stop working in the visual environment we have been working in. In english, we're studying fairy tales, and not just surface scopes of trite children's stories, but the REAL fairy tales, the ones that the American versions are descended from, with murder, sexual innuendo, violence, and a generally grimmer outlook on things. It is mainly a discussion course, with various reading assignments outside of class. I am currently working on a report called "Flight of Fancy or Final Fantasy?", comparing two versions of Beauty and the Beast by the same author, Beauty and Rose Daughter by Robin McKinley. My main premise is arguing that the two books are entirely different genres (one a fairy tale and the other a fantasy), and why this is so important to the story.
Basketball band is getting ready to come to a close; in fact, I'm getting ready to go to my final game in a couple of minutes. It was a great experience, and really got me interested again in watching Basketball. I look forward to rooting for our women's team as they aim for the top in the NCAA Tournament.
On another, short, note... I've been feeling very pensive lately, as you can see by the essay written in the previous entry....
well, I need to go get ready for the game. Hope to post again soon.

Musings of an Earthbound human

* The game Earthbound and its fans have received a lot of criticism over the years. This bothers me, and I wrote this essay in response to that criticism.

Some say Final Fantasy VII is the greatest game of all time. For those of us who would rather play games we can relate to, there is still Earthbound. Yes, I know, I'm going to sound like one of the thounsands of rabid Earthbound fans that make fan art, visit Starman.net every day, and make a big fuss out of Mother 3 not coming to the states, but the reality is that Earthbound was an escape from reality for those of us not living in the middle ages. Okay, so I played Earthbound when I was about 10, and haven't looked back since. What attracts me to this game? Outside of the memories of hours of gameplay that it holds for me, it also serves as a getaway car to reality, a trip away from the troubles of the world, to a place where I can have the convenience of technology, the simplicity of linear topography, and still solve all my storage problems by calling a service called "Escargo Express", which ironically took less time to arrive then "Mach Pizza". Not only did it quench my desire to escape to a parallel universe, but it also fulfilled my need to feel that I could be a hero. At any time, I could quit playing my game, grab my baseball cap and hat, and be the embodiment of Ness. I could be filled by Sad Ness, Happi-Ness, Good-Ness... and Ness's objectives paralleled my own lofty ambitions. I really truly wanted to take out the leader of the gang, maybe stay in a fancy hotel in a paradise and eat fancy food, knock the enemy out of the park simply by praying. Most of all, I wanted to be able to have psychic powers, to control fire, ice, lightning with my hands or my thoughts, and to be able to act like such powers existed in a modern world tickled my fancy. The music was another important of the game to me, and always has been. You have to know that music is a very critical thing to me, and having good music is as critical to a good game as the graphics and the storyline. If a soundtrack to a football game was all Keane songs (which I love), it wouldn't matter whether the players were life-like or just four pixels arranged in a square, the game would be awesome. The moving melody created by the sound stone when all 8 sanctuaries had been collected, along with the counter melody played in Ness's memories, made the game for me... it inspired my imagination, my thoughts, made me think about what might happen next. Combined with the themes for the various locales, the soundtrack for this game is probably the greatest collection of synth pieces you can find outside of the soundtrack for Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Why does Earthbound hold lasting appeal for me as I grow up? Because it is so intricate and deep, and each time I play it I catch new things I never saw or never understood before. For instance, I now find myself wondering why Mr. T is wandering around several different cities in the game, and why they never specifically call him Mr. T. The game is quick-witted, and an often cynical social commentary. One only has to listen to the characters in the game to
realize that each and every one of them is a drastic charicature of some stereotype. It is this cynicism that appeals to me, because it comes in a package with great music, an awesome RPG engine, a clever and often tongue-in-cheek naming system, and a compelling and poignant storyline. I know, I hear all those non-fans out there telling me to get over it, but seriously, that's like telling any gamer to get over Ocarina of Time, Halo, or Half-life. Earthbound ranks among these classics, and deserves respect for the path it paved. If not for Earthbound, it is doubtful that the die-hard Pokemon fans out there would ever have gotten the game they so faithfully protect. Earthbound has earned its place in the ranks of the best games of all time.

The Snow is not your friend....

Yes, believe it or not, it's a new blog posting, sitting here late at night, listening to the quiet, somewhat dissonant strains of Hundred by The Fray. mmmm. So we got a treat right here in west Lafayette just the other day... a snowstorm that blew right through and left us no snow whatsoever. But while it lasted it was nasty, and it definately taught me that, pleasureable as snow may be to play in, here in the wind tunnel of America, snow is not your friend. Not only does it seem to blow in every direction, but it blows like 20 m.p.h. in every direction. It's like radiation on a much larger scale, little particles tearing the skin off of your face. I'm serious!!! It's sweet relief when you finally get in a building.
I also had my first real illness here at purdue just this past weekend. Yup, Friday I began to get a tension in my throat, it felt like I was having trouble swallowing, and it was a bit sore also. Saturday, it just got worse, and I actually started taking medicine for it, and told myself if it didn't get better by Monday, I would go to the health clinic. Nothing else felt bad just my throat, but by sunday, that didn't matter... the pain in my throat alone was bad enough to make me feel miserable. I suffered through and went to the doctor Monday morning. They gave me a strep test, which came back negative today.... but they put me on antibiotics yesterday, and I'm to continue taking them until they're gone... and today I feel much much much better.
So here's where I put my little rant about me being so upset that crazy people would put FLORIDA in the BCS Championship bowl over Michigan... WHO DOES THAT?... that's like handing Ohio State the trophy. But I guess that about sums it up. I'm excited about Purdue going to a bowl in Orlando, which means I get a free Florida vacation this year!! Woohoo!
So the robot is due tomorrow, and it's actually ready!!! At least I hope it is... unfortunately, there is some of the programming that we can't test, since we need to transmit values to our robot to simulate what will happen tomorrow, and we have no way to do that. But our team is very happy with the way the thing is running. It's actually very suprising how much control we can have over this robot, especially since the environment used to program it is graphically based, more so than any other environment I have ever used. That's supposed to make it easy.... HAH!
I get to come home for Christmas break next thursday....

Overcome with sugar and spice and everything that makes you sick...

So I have a lot of desserts. Yes, all leftover my birthday. A BIG thank you to everyone who made me something!!! And yes, I had a really good birthday. That's strike three for Curtis Painter and the Boilermaker gridiron crew, though, three games lost in my presence... that's way too many, and for them to lose on my birthday? How dare they.
So I found out the exciting news that its almost 100% likely that I'll be able to come home for the play in November, on the 19th. Which excites me very much. I would put an exclamation point on that, but I'm too busy eating chocolate covered pretzels, mmmm.
So about that project about robots... yup, here's what we have to do. We're given a programmable lego mindstorms kit that has a programmable brain, and we're supposed to program the robot with the logic to be able to:
1. Follow a 1-inch thick circuitous black line.
2. Follow a "broken" black line, represented by 1-inch diameter black circles spaced 1 inch apart.
3. Interact with some sort of station which is capable of exchanging information with our robot.
Should be fun. If you're so bored that you'd be interested in looking at the full project description, you can access it (at least for the rest of the year) at web.ics.purdue.edu/~mrockey/robotproject.pdf
So. Yeah. The "Here Comes the Pain Train" show came together in 5 days, which was pretty impressive. I found out that the show was actually very very very similar to the show that Concord High School in Elkhart, Ind. did for their show last year, which happens to be the school where our new assistant director Max Jones just came from. So basically, he did the same show with us, that he did last year. I think. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention: The Concord High School Marching Band was the Class B Indiana Grand Champion Marching Band. Just a little side note there.
Oh yeah. I did go to church again this week, for those who might ask. And we get monday and friday off of band. And I'm done now.

Pumpkin is not just a pet name for your significant other...

So, yeah, I had time last night to carve my pumpkin that I bought. Here's a good picture of it. But that's about all the time I have to write, because I have to read a selection for speech, preferably before speech starts!!!