Happy New Year!
I guess it’s a brand new year again. Wow… 2005. 4 more months until I graduate. It’s amazing just how fast the time flies by.
No, I really don’t have any specific New Year’s Resolution yet. Even if I did, it’d be something fuzzy like “Be more organized!” or “Take more chances!” which is nice and good, but hard to do and even harder to measure. My last year’s resolution was something concrete (Take 3 photos a day) but that didn’t really pan out either, especially after I completely took the camera apart and somehow left a finger print in the innards that shows up in every single picture taken with that camera.
Anyway, it’s good to be back on a school term. I only have 2 courses with labs and/or projects, so it’ll be pretty light term as far as academic workload is concerned. Solar car building process is now in complete and full motion, but I’ve *much* rather spend my time buliding and debugging circuits as opposed to dealing with bureacratic things… although I doubt the bureacratic aspect will ever be taken away from my plate as long as I hold the “Village Idiot” title. In any case, the plugs are finally going out so we’ll start to see actual car being built soon.
This term has been unlike the other terms, in that we have a big deliverable right away. Our fourth year design project symposium is quickly coming up, but after a weekend of debugging, I think we’re pretty close to having everything working. We blew up a power board (we’re thinking overheated voltage regulator) but we did fix most of the funny problems we’ve had during the demo.
Oh yeah, and I’ve ordered a new computer to replace the one that was given to Emo! Specs are below. For $1,063.51, it’s a pretty nice system, replacing the computer I’ve built back in 1A (with blown caps and all).
AMD ATHLON 64 3000+ PROCESSOR S939 1.8GHZ 512KB L2 CACHE RETAIL BOX 1 $179.98 $179.98
ASUS A8V DELUXE MOTHERBOARD ATHLON64 S939 K8T800PRO DUAL DDR AGP 5PCI SATA 1394 SOUND 1000LAN 1 $159.98 $159.98
SAMSUNG 512MB PC3200 DDR400 184PIN OEM 2 $77.99 $155.98
SAMSUNG SPINPOINT 160GB 7200RPM 9MS SATA 8MB OEM HARD DRIVE 1 $118.98 $118.98
BENQ DW1620 DVD+-RW 16X4X16 DUAL LAYER +R 2.4X BEIGE IDE OEM W/ SW 1 $69.98 $69.98
ANTEC SLK1600 MID-TOWER CASE 3X5.25 5X3.5 BEIGE ATX12V 300W 1 $49.98 $49.98
UBSIOFT FAR CRY - DVD ONLY - *BUNDLE WITH AMD ATHLON 64 CPU & MOTHERBOARD ONLY* 1 $0.00 $0.00
SAPPHIRE RADEON 9600XT 128MB DDR DVI-I W/ TV OUT OEM 1 $175.98 $175.98
MITSUMI FA404A 7-IN-1 FLOPPY DRIVE & FLASH READER CF/SM/SD/MMC/MS 1 $28.38 $28.38
Shipping & Handling: $40.60
Shipping Insurance: $14.09
SUBTOTAL: $993.93
GST (7%): $69.58
TOTAL: $1,063.51