A change of pace would be nice.
I'm writing today's update from outside. I'm sitting on the deck behind the Mod. The air is moist and clean, and it is still quite warm out, for 12:45 AM at least. I'm looking at the new campus, where I'll be living in two weeks. I took some pictures of it, which I'll try to post later, although it's very dark and they didn't come out so well. Susan said some buildings were inspected the last few days, but none have probably passed yet. Soon we will be moving equipment over.
I wrote my learning plan today. Actually I only started it. I have to have it done by Thursday to show to my advisor, Prof. Mike Moody. It was more of just a draft. Probably I should be more serious. Or not. I still have lots of time, relatively speaking.
I have a theory. There are two types of people: car people and computer people. I know this is an overgeneralization, but for most cases there is something similar you can replace "car" or "computer" with. Car people are more inclined to involve themselves with corporeal physical objects, while computer people are more abstract and work with ideas. The distinction arose when I realized that while many people hotrod their cars, there is a growing class of people who hotrod their computers. This may seem silly to traditionalists, but then again, hotrodding cars seems silly to us computerites. For car people, where you are is very important. Having a nice car can get you to your friends' houses and into the city, or on long vacations. Likewise, for computer people, the Internet can fulfill many of these desires. Sure, no person wants to stick in front of the screen all day, but computer people are more likely to look something up in a book before they ask someone else's opinion. Sometimes this book just happens to be the Internet. Anyway, if you have any comments, please shoot them my way, and I might post them in an update here or work them into a more permanent page. Adam and I applied this theory further, deciding the difference holds equally true for EEs and MEs.
My other theory is that there is a nerd-jock spectrum, and if you watch Conan you're more towards the nerd side. Jocks tend to watch Craig Kilborn. That's just the way it is.
I just heard a train go by. These are the things you miss when pent up inside all day.
Dan has this demo of a program from NVidia that lets you type in an address anywhere on Earth and then zooms in on it really close using satellite data. What sets this apart from those satellite websites is the fact that the Earth is rendered in full 3D and the zooming is entirely to scale. Dan can see the playset thing in the backyard of his old house in Lake Forest, IL. You can also see people waiting in line in front of the I.M. Pei pyramid at the Louvre. I have almost the same picture of Adam and Dan walking towards the Louvre pyramid from the side. Oklahoma City is at a much lower resolution on the Earth viewer, so you can't make out a lot of stuff. Coincidentally, there is an I.M. Pei structure in Oklahoma City.
Today I spent over $1000 of Olin's money. Well actually I ordered electrical supplies for Gill. He told me what to buy, but still it is nice placing a four-digit cost order online over a wireless ethernet connection. Yes, I guess that makes me a computer person now, doesn't it?
