It’s a compulsion of sorts that I go into my spam box and clear it out every now and then. There is always that garden variety of pornography, medicine, and drugs that supposedly enhance the size of a man’s phallus. Today, I had this observation/revelation I would like to share. I found it quite ironic that I get these messages when the senders are the ones who need it much more than I do. As a matter of fact, I don’t even have to look down to know mine is there.

On Friday, I took my EE 438 (Electronic Circuits) test.  In retrospect, I realized that I made a “stupid” mistake.  Since I have the same professor for EE 325 (Electromagnetic Engineering),  I told the professor about that “stupid” mistake, to which the professor responded by telling me that I should not call my mistake a “stupid” mistake.  At worst, it should be a “careless” mistake, but it is definitely a “human” mistake.  This brought things into perspective for me, and it is definitely something I wanted to share with you all.

Given a few sensors and user-provided offsets, I do not see how hard it is to align something on a page correctly with only 1 pt. error any way (note: 1 pt. = 1/72 inch). A month or so ago, I offered to burn some DVDs of all the pictures and video I took during orientation. It is a 3-DVD set, and I decided to go all-out on it with DVD labels and covers. It is simply incredible that it prints off by as much as half an inch!  Even after correcting for the printer’s errors with my ruler, I obtain a defect rate of at least 50%.  If I were to fail at half the tasks I was given, I would surely be unable to even get a high school, part-time level job.

I do not know how to write printer drivers, but I know that it will be a while before HP will see a dime from me again. Don’t be surprised if I take this printer down Office Space-style. I take that back… maybe I do something more civil and EE-like: Take the entire printer apart. Either way, it really deserves to rest in pieces.

Standing between me and the 21st milestone is only seven days. In seven days, I can legally buy alcohol if I so desire. What I cannot understand is why people are so hell bent on getting me “trashed,” “wasted,” “drunk,” etc. so that I can have “the college experience” of getting hung over. Of course, this is coming from a college student who rarely has coffee or energy drinks and makes fairly sound investments on his gadgets and stuff.  Besides that, I like to see myself as a rabid saver.

As I said earlier, I am going to make my own “college experience,” even if it means that I will have to go into hiding for that day.

It took me two years to finally who I am.  No longer do I feel that I am missing out on “the college experience” — I am setting out on making my own.  Although I will be doing homework on a Friday night instead of going to Sixth Street, the technical community is where I belong.  Indeed, the solar car team needs me more than Sixth Street would ever want me.  It is an exciting time as we make preparations for North American Solar Challenge 2008.

During these past couple months, my roommate has been sleeping past his first classes.  It does not matter whether it is 9:30 in the morning or 11 in the morning.  I made my attempts to help him wake up in time for those classes, but to no avail.  I told him that he needs to take care of himself physically, but that was also for naught as he continued to go out on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night.  I feel that I now have no choice but to throw my hands up and let him learn his lesson because he went out one Thursday night and did not come back until 11 Friday morning.  Instead of going to class, he went right to sleep.  This gave me the impression that he does not care about school.  It saddens me when people do not take my hand and let me lift them up, but God gives us free will for a reason.

I have started to look for a summer job to gain some technical experience.  Two places I am looking into are BP and General Motors.  BP gave me the first interview.  As the interviewer describes what he does at BP, I felt overwhelmed and wondered whether I will be expected to do the things he does.  The entire interview was behavioral, and it hinged on how much I grew as a result of failing EE 313 and overcoming that brick wall.  As Randy Pausch put it:

The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough.[1]

Well, I want my EE degree badly enough to disregard my parents’ comments about how EE may not be right for me and my classmates’ appeal to switch out of Professor Andrews’ class because he will be tough.  I sought help from the TA on a regular basis, gave the class everything I could offer it, and received an A in the class.

[1] Pausch, Randy,  “Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” 18 September 2007, Accessed 20 october 2007.  Available <http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/Randy/pauschlastlecturetranscript.pdf>, Pg. 8