Checksum Arcanius

Today was the first day of summer classes. It was also the first day of trying out my last-minute schedule change. I started the day out at work, leaving at noon to head to school. However, I left my house keys at work, so I had to rely on my roommate Doug to get back into the house. Fortunately, I have an extra room key in my backpack, so I still had access to my room. That would soon change.

I left again to go to my 4:30 Capstone class, which went well enough although Christine didn’t show and has decided to drop the class because she enjoys her CREE activities more than she anticipates enjoying her Capstone activities. Then Dennis treated me and Teresa to dinner before I headed back home. Good thing too, because once again I was locked out, but this time I had to wait for Enpei to get back, about an hour later, to get into the house. I spent the time reading a journal article for my CREE project and catching some accidental sleep.

Not long after this, Hoyin came over to pick up a network cable, and I ended up dropping him off at his new condo on First Hill to avoid wallowing in deep thought about the way things might have been. After dropping Hoyin off and checking out his new pad, I decided to scurry on over to Bellevue to pick up the just-delivered new laptop of wonderfulness from my Mom’s office where it was delivered. More on the laptop (a Dell Latitude D630) another day.

Returning home, I let myself in to the house with just-departed roommate Daniel’s old key. Unfortunately, I had failed to bring along the extra room key, which was still in my backpack, locked securely inside the room. I tried carding the door and forcing it open without breaking anything with no success. Enlisting Enpei’s help yet again, we were about to climb up on his megavan to attempt to gain access to my room, but then I spotted a ladder. Finally, I climbed into the thankfully cracked open second story window to my room while Enpei stabilized the ladder below me.

So, there is a happy ending, to this day at least. Now I get to wish again for a happy ending to some other chapters of my life.

Recently, I have been thoroughly reevaluating my current summer plan. For a variety of reasons, including the hardware capstone topic & length, I am leaning more and more towards the software emphasis for my Computer Engineering degree. That would mean no more requirement for EE 233 (although I could still sign up for it if I wanted to). That would free up my summer mornings, possible for work. I could then sign up for my Bioengineering capstone and start it early with just a couple of credits — 6 in all I believe. The working hours would be better (early morning to noon or so), the school less intense (just one “real” class), and I would have my afternoons free to do CREE stuff, capstone stuff, and fun stuff. Plus my weekends would still be mine.

The more I think about it, the more it sounds like what I should do.

Better than I thought, but still probably not Dean’s list material. Oh well, the GPA is still on the up ‘n up.

The quarter is over. It was my least favorite college term here at the UW — and anywhere else, I think as well. Certainly the worst class was, by far, Bioengineering 481, but BioE 492, BioE 357, and CSE 403 weren’t very good either. The only redeeming part of the quarter was CSE 471, but I just got back from a mediocre final. The late night last night (perhaps more on that later) didn’t help at all.

My Spring 2007 grade predictions are:

BioEn 357: 3.6
BioEn 481: 3.2
BioEn 492: 3.7
CSE 403: 3.3
CSE 471: 3.8

So yeah, not too great.

I can’t believe that there is a 7:30 class that I have to take to graduate. And its already a class I know I’m not going to enjoy. Oh well, thats life. Pictured here is 18 credits, but only because my Capstone would be taking up 4 of those.

In addition, I will be working at Microvision Mondays and Wednesdays at 3:00 and Thursday all day. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday between classes I will be doing CREE research.

I sure haven’t slept much as-of-late. Wednesday to Thursday, I stayed up working on Computer Architecture homework. Thursday to Friday, I stayed up to work on a ridiculous “Capstone Design” assignment. Friday to Saturday night I was awoken several times by phone calls and was waking up at 6:00 (actually didn’t wake until 7) to go to the Second Annual Pacific Northwest MATE ROV competition with Dan.

It was quite interesting seeing some real-life underwater robots, but what I found most compelling about the competition was that the drivers were not allowed to watch their robot while maneuvering it. They had to rely entirely on on-board cameras relayed through long winding tethers to small TVs located at their driver station. As Dan Marsh said, this twist gives the whole competition a much more “robotic” feel, rather than the supercharged “R/C Car” feeling that FIRST Robotics Competitions often degenerate to. MATE is much more robotics in the real world. Being able to watch the drivers attempt to operate their machines almost blindly also created a lot of real-world dramatic irony. “If only they knew,” I found myself groaning, “that they are still three feet away!”

Due to a Software Engineering meeting I had at 2:00, a late competition start, and the competition’s relative remoteness out at Evergreen State College, we had to leave before any official matches were played. However, I still had a good time.