All Things Yummy

I find that best way to stay awake during lectures is to be interested in the topic being talked about. That’s not always easy to achieve, but it’s usually helped by knowing what’s being talked about.

Since there are some lectures of seemingly no redeeming qualities, however, we go to the second step. Do something other than just sitting, listening, and writing stuff down. Nibble on something, get some tea, coffee, water, or whatever else that gets some other part of your body moving. Eating minty stuff also seems to help… There was a period in second year where I mainly lived off marshmallows and halls (yes, the cough tablets! high in sugar!) - seemed to do the trick.

I’m of the school that feels it’s better to be awake and be distracted rather than fall asleep altogether. If you feel waves of drowsiness washing over you, then try doing some other work. Do homework for another class, day dream, or doodle. Solitaire was my friend during 3A. I sometimes also enjoy people gazing and trying to figure out different class dynamics.

Now, we’re getting into desperation tactics. If everything above fails you, you can try the old tricks like pinching yourself or consuming quantities of caffeine and/or sugar. One thing with sugar is that you need to replenish constantly or else you’ll get off the high and >CRASH<.

If none of this is working out, don’t even try. If you’re going to sleep, sleep with authority! Get as comfortable as possible and don’t even try one of those half-asleep, half-awake states… Just get a good friend with neat handwriting.

teehee!

Snow day today! And we don’t miss any important classes, so it’s win-win situation. ^^ I was forwarded this link, which puts our snow into perspective…

Anyway, while rummaging around 1A calculus text book trying to look up some trig identities, I came across few maple leaves that I had put inside the book (and was subsequently completely forgotten). They have dried perfectly… After this term, I’ll be in the oldest class in the campus. I still remember being scared by all the upper year students walking around, and before you know it, you’re one of them intimidating other people.

Opportunity has landed! And apparently Spirit is (more or less) working too. Happy happy ^_^

Doing space robotic stuff would be pretty cool for a job… Lots of risks, lots of potential disappointments, but it’ll never be boring…

The VoIP Adapter (SIPAdapter from sipphone.com) finally came! All I had to do is plug in RJ45, RJ11, and the power cord and everything was up and running.

The default “white noise” is little bit different from the POTS so it’s little unnerving… Also, the phone automatically downloads new configuration from central TFTP server, meaning I cannot set any personal settings. I guess I can override it, but I’ll wait for now until I get more familiar with it.

Just waiting for my aunt to setup the phone so that I can actually try it with real service. ^^

School is slowly starting to really gather steam… prelabs, labs, projects, and postlab reports are starting to fill all available time slots, Midnight Sun is starting again in earnest (and against my best efforts, it looks like I’ll end up having to lead the Team). So far, I think I’m still on top of things, which is good sign. In situations like this, once you lose it, then you’re screwed…

I had an interesting experience today - one of those joys of figuring something neat and novel out of something unexpected… This one involved, well, some circuits, two function generators, and an oscilloscope. Either I’m becoming too much of a geek (^^) or E&CE fits me. Hopefully it’s the latter.

Oh yeah, Midnight Sun solar cells came couple of days ago… so I opened them up to check for defects and to take some photos. The ones we received have average efficiency of little over 27%… Wow! I think we grabbed last batch of high efficiency cells from Emcore.

Guess what? The IBM/Hitach harddrive (Deathstar) died again! At least this time, I managed to salvage majority of data out from it.

Instead of click of death, I got something really odd this time. Everytime I try to access a particular sector, the drive would click around for a while followed by Windows freezing. At the end, I managed to figure out that it was affecting one of the files and one directory (and all the directories/files underneath that one) where even trying to access them would result in windows freezing. This is, what, my 5th, 6th drive?

Unfortunately, I’m no longer covered by 3 years of warranty since I bought them in November 2000. Maybe I’ll open it up and make a nice plaque out of it - I saw one when I was in highschool and it looks really pretty.

Just finished watching My Sassy Girl and Oh! Happy Day. Pretty fun fluffy movies, albeit little too predictable and sappy at times. Just like how Koreans like it.
First of all, for Oh! Happy Day, I just have this to say to all the non-Koreans watching it… You guys are missing out. Big time. Main heroine’s sister talks in hilarious accent… and since the main character works as a voice actor and you guys are missing out on some amazing and incredibly funny voice bits. Oh yeah, and leave it to Koreans to find a caucasian actor who can’t speak english XD. I just hope that you guys don’t think that movie is representative of Korean society. :p

My Sassy Girl was a lot better. I see what Phil was talking about. The thing I liked most was its freshness - it’s got enough quirky parts to be different from usual Hollywood affair… The main guy’s way too nice, and he has incredible resemblance to one of my cousins… it’s uncanny, even the mannerism.

After couple of freak days of warm weather, cold weather came back with vengeance - not any normal cold weather, but one of those Canadian style kick your ass cold with daytime highs of -12 degrees and windchill of around -25. It was enough to break strong men and women of Waterloo into bound, whimpering, and hurdled masses… But it was defeated by one individual. While waiting to pick my brother up at the highschool, I saw this highschool girl walk by in a mini skirt, with her chin held up proudly. Ah, the power of vanity, I applaud thee.

First two days of classes went pretty well. Professors seem nice, we have nice midterm schedule (still straight set of exams… but we got a weekend inbetween now!), and it’s good to see all my friends again. I handed in my workterm report (I think I was the first one to do it since Donna had to get the stack of receipts from a cabinet… hehehe), distributed the reference letter forms… I’m still in good shape. Heck, I even managed to wait in the lineup and buy my Anthroplogy book ($100+! For a soft cover book! Bah!). I’ve yet to pickup my cheque from the used book store… but it can wait.

Oh yeah, I’m Class Rep again. I guess it’s meant to be.

Just spent last three hours on NASA TV and few other websites following the Spirit rover. Wow! I think I’m starting to regain some of that optimism and hope that I had when I was 9, 10 years old about this wonderful and wonderous world that we live in and the wonderful profession of scientist or engineer. Makes me proud to think that I’m working toward something that could eventually lead me toward those goals.

Good to know that solar car stuff does come in handy. I overheard in NASA TV where battery voltages were being called out… 4.06V, 4.1V, 4.02V… Fully charged Lithium Ion packs, just like in solar cars.