For today’s state of the economy, “The Difficult Financial Times” seems quite viable as a publication title.  Ever since I started watching Wall Street, I have never seen such a drop as I’ve seen today: 777.68 whoppin’ points!  This, apparently, was because the House of Representatives rejected the bailout deal composed this weekend.

What do I think of the bailout package?  Well, after some deliberation, here’s an idea I’d like to present: For those with homes in verge of foreclosure, the owner can continue to make monthly payments on the principal while the government makes the interest payments.  This is almost like the subsidized loans that college students see.  This way, the government bails out Main Street AND Wall Street at the same time.

I am also concerned about the Chinese economy.  Some of you may recall the pet food recall from 2007 in which some Chinese manufacturers tainted the pet food with melamine to make the food appear to have more protein.  This caused thousands of pets to perish.  This year, melamine crept its way into the human food supply in the form of milk powder.  Without a doubt, this is a vagrant violation of trust, and China could face some tough times if companies start pulling out and making their operations domestic again.  A company doing this could earn some good PR, and this PR involves the company fulfilling its “social responsibility,” the company being patriotic, the company providing jobs to the people, etc.

Monday: a restaurant’s message sign said, “We’re so cheap, Lehman Brothers shareholders can eat here!”

Friday: Apparently, someone had a little bit too much fun with a label maker:

While presenting the car at NIWeek, some members in the press spoke to us about the Samsung Solorean, UT Solar Vehicles Team’s latest solar car.  An online video program for engineers called Engineering TV did a full-blown interview with me.

Part 1: http://engineeringtv.com/blogs/etv/archive/2008/09/08/university-of-texas-solar-vehicle-team.aspx

Part 2:http://engineeringtv.com/blogs/etv/archive/2008/09/09/samsung-solorean-solar-car.aspx

To some extent, I wish that the people who came up with the designs were able to be there and talk about their work.  Nevertheless, I am there to show that I am proud of what my team did because engineering marvels are made in teams.

To transition into what many call “real life,” I decided to go out and get my own apartment.  This means three things:

1. I have more bills to keep track of and pay every month
2. I will be cooking for myself instead of going downstairs for a all-you-care-to-eat deal every night
3. I have more space!

My place is located in North Campus (away from all the parties — I need my beauty sleep on the weekends) and has a gas stove and oven!  I am particularly excited about that because gas ranges are hard to come by for some reason, and I’ve always loved gas-powered stoves.  Here are a couple of pictures of my new apartment:

As you can see in the picture of my kitchen, there is NO microwave.  Let’s see how long I can survive without one.
AT&T hell, Time Warner Heaven

I wanted to get dry-loop DSL from At&T for the apartment, but it turned out to be one of the biggest travesties in the flurry of settling down in the apartment. It all started on Monday (Aug. 18) when I moved in.  I called AT&T to check on the status of my order.  Even though I properly input all the data in the online form, my order was missing my apartment number because someone actually has to put that data in and may have missed it.  After an hour on hold, I supposedly had that fixed and everything was set to come on Friday, the 22nd.  Meanwhile, I picked up a DSL modem from Best Buy.  Friday rolled around and I plugged that bad boy in.  Unfortunately, the red DSL light taunted me all day as it sat there, blinking, saying “Ha ha!  You do not have Internet service!”

I called back Monday to find out what is going on to determine my next course of action.  After 60 minutes of holds and transfers, the system hang me up.  I proceeded to call back to cancel the order.  The rep proceeded to suggest that my line may need repair, so I gave that a go.  Unfortunately, the system disconnected me again, and I approached my breakdown point as I called back to (definitely) cancel.  I was close to sobbing as I told the rep that I do not have infinite cell phone minutes or time and that I had it with the transfers, disconnects, etc. as I told him my entire story.  Needless to say, he was convinced that he needs to cancel my order… nothing more, nothing less.

Right afterwards, I headed to Time Warner Cable’s office to establish my new account.  I waited for about 30 minutes in line, spent about 10 minutes with a rep, got my modem, and drove home.  As soon as I plugged in the modem, I was up and running after 15 minutes on the phone.  GOOD JOB, TIME WARNER!

What AT&T did a good job of was checking back on me every couple minutes.  Nevertheless, I believe that telecom companies should have some sort of local presence for people to turn to.

Camera Disassembly

While at Grand Teton National Park with my family, I dropped my Canon PowerShot S3 IS right on the retracting lens assembly.  A secondary impact broke the LCD screen.  Fortunately, my parents brought their camera with them, and I continued taking pictures using that.  After settling into my new apartment, I got my hands on a digital SLR and called Fred (because he loves taking stuff apart).  After treating him to fried rice (that I cooked myself), we busted out the screwdriver to take apart the camera and see how things worked.  The both of us slowly took the camera apart as we marveled at its intricacy and identified which board does what.  Contrary to what many of my friends thought, we did NOT get shocked by the 330 V flash capacitor.  As a matter of fact, that was one of the first things we identified and said “no touchie” until we could safely discharge it.  Here are just a few pictures:

Gone To Texas – Rocking the House!

One phone call was all it took for a friend to whisk me away from Engineering Fall Gathering and to Gone to Texas, a welcome (back) celebration for students.  After that bit, there was a party with live music.  She started dancing, and I followed suit to not look like an idiot.  Meanwhile, I continued shooting pictures (I pride myself in that ability).  By the time we left, everybody was dancing.  We would sure like to think that we started all this!

1st Floor of RLM = Texas Petawatt Laser

In my head, there is a list of things I would like to do before I graduate.  It goes something like this (in no particular order):

• See the first floor of RLM
• Get Professor Hallock’s dog (Jessie) to bark
• Drive the solar car
• Be an orientation advisor
• Participate in the Texas 4000
• Be an RA

To my fortune, the automatic controls class got canceled for the day, so I was able to go to my apartment, grab the camera, and head on down to see the Texas Petawatt Laser on the first floor of the RLM.  Not convinced?  I even took a picture of a sign for evidence!

This is going to be a good year.  Many challenges await me, and I will divide and conquer with the help of my friends, family, professors, God, etc.

(11:43:22 AM) Friend: my calc teacher once called the Down Industrials a 30-dimensional vector
(11:43:28 AM) Friend: I’d love to be able to visualize that!
(11:43:30 AM) Me: Down Industrials?
(11:43:33 AM) Friend: *Dow
(11:43:34 AM) Friend: lol
(11:43:46 AM) Friend: that was rather ironic I should type that
(11:43:48 AM) Me: Wow… where can I invest in a market that’s doomed to go down?
(11:43:51 AM) Me HA!
(11:43:56 AM) Friend Yay shorts!
(11:44:03 AM) Friend I just put mine on, they’re dark blue
(11:44:12 AM) Me ha!
(11:44:19 AM) Friend can’t go out for breakfast in my undies

Note: In the finacial market, “shorts” refer to selling something not in your possession and then buying it back later.  Typically, you would want to “sell” when a stock is high and “buy” when it is low.  This is a dangerous endeavor and should not be tried unless you really know what you’re doing.