Tonight’s lesson is brought to you by my stupid roommate. If you know who he is, good for you; but for others, I shall do the standard courtesy of leaving nameless.

At about 2:30 in the morning, I was finally finished with my work, sign off, and recharge for tomorrow’s challenges. Meanwhile, my roommate is pretending to work hard and ironing ALL his clothes in his closet. I turned out the main lights, so he had to use his desk light, which was just as bad. So, for about two hours, I tossed and turned in my bed trying to get that light and noise out of my sensory. Here is where the irony is: Is he truly working hard? If so, then he would have: (a) Picked another time to do it or (b) Took all his clothes to the laundry room (which is about 25 ft. away). No worries. He knows my utter displeasure as a consequence.

So, the lesson for today is: There is a time and place for everything. Ironing your clothes while your roommmate is trying get some sleep is NOT proper timing and place.

I think I have said before that VH1 shows make me sick. That is reinforced by a show I saw recently, called “The Flavor of Love.” When my dormmates watch that show, there was an unprecedented amount of bleeping, and that made me sick because of how unrestrained people can be. Sure, that is reality, but here is where it gets unreal: I see this show as some jerk manipulating women’s minds under the guise of searching for love.

In yet another surprising move, Google bought YouTube for $1.6 billion (reference)! Now, MySpace is whining about it by threatening to block YouTube (a.k.a. GoogTube)(reference). Censorship in a place allegedly intended to let people express themselves?! I am appalled, and this is one of the reasons why I have my own web site and not a MySpace — I can post anything I please! I dare MySpace to block YouTube videos — I really do. People do such stupid things for money, I tell you.

While I am on my soapbox about MySpace, I would like to tell you about what I saw yesterday: There were two people sitting next to each other, on MySpace, adding each other and telling each other to post on each other’s walls! That is not too bad, considering that little girls would get together and dress each other’s dolls in a similar manner. What shocked me was when one of them, in her attempt to bling up her post, goes to some site offering all kinds of graphics, blindly copying HTML code, and posting it on her wall! Gosh… I really do not know where to begin taking into consideration that there could be code to do drive-by downloads of spyware and all that fun stuff into the viewer’s computer! But then again, I think I have said enough.

The University of Texas Solar Vehicles Team is practically my life. Thus, I have taken the position as the primary/emergency contact and scapegoat (also known as “President”). At about 3:18 PM today, the faculty advisor emails me and says that we got suspended by the College of Engineering for not filling in the annual paperwork what I did not know about. So, in only one hour, I:

• Called the professor to explain my side and assess the situation
• Rode down to the ECE building to make the paperwork necessary
• Ran to a building 100m away to turn in the paperwork
• Returned to the ECE building to give the professor a copy of the paperwork and to notify him that we are OK again

Wow! Talk about a new record!

It has been a while since I have written in this blog! So much has happened in so little time! Here’s just a small sampling of them:

There was no hurricane to ruin my plans to go to Fredericksburg, TX to go to the Renewable Energy and Green Living Fair this year! Although it took a lot of time out of my studying, but it was still great getting to see all the innovations that are being made in the industry and to see what I can do about securing funding for the Solar Vehicles Team. I saw a bunch of folks who retrofitted their cars to be purely electric. One even talked about the time he took his car to a testing center dominated by Ferrari owners. His car was (obviously) the first non-high-end car to be on the bench. With that said, after he ran his car, the torque curves made everybody’s jaws drop — it was something that gas engines could only dream to achieve! Besides that, there was also the machine that acts as a dehumidifier, water machine, and air purifier. It costs about $1,500, but it certainly beats having the water truck coming all the time!

Right after that, the sprinkler head in one of the buildings in Whitis Court (thankfully not mine) decided to go bad and rupture, flooding out all 30 residents of that building. The housing crew handled that situation very well, to say the least. Not only did the residents get compensation for the damage, but they got some goodies! The cleaning crew worked practically 24 hours a day to get the place cleaned up; and in only seven days, everybody was able to move back in!

The career fair came and went. I am now thinking about working for either Dell or APC (American Power Conversion).

I offically hate Motorola phones with a passion. My roommate recently got a Motorola Razr, and little did I know how annoying it gets when you miss a call or get a text message and leave your phone for a long time. That’s right — the phone beeps every ten minutes! Now try staying asleep with that going off every ten minutes! I have a previous grudge with those stinkers even before my roommate got it because of the fact that it would make the repetitive “bloop” noise whenever one turns up/down the ringer. Now imagine doing that in a meeting! My phone, for one, only rings when it is trying to notify me of something important (i.e. incoming call, upcoming appointment, alarm), and that is the way it should be.

I signed myself up for MSA’s Fast-A-Thon a week or two ago oblivious to the fact that I have two midterms on that day. Technically, I blew it by drinking a cup of water after sunrise, but staying committed to it after that gave me a sense of how disciplined I am. One of the professors brought in donuts, and I survived on vapors from that. During the time when we broke the fast, I waited patiently for my turn and was quiet when people were giving speeches even though I was hungry and weak. That is the very thing I want — to be able to remain composed in times of irritability and panic.

Other than that, everything is going well, I need to learn how to divide work among other people so that I do not get overwhelmed, and I am always going to be a work in progress.