Wow, what a day. First a meeting that never happened, then a 16 page Differential Equations take home exam due, then classes, homework, and more classes. I had a class at 6:00 PM, so I couldn’t leave for home until after class around 7:00 PM. When I tried to merge onto I-95, I set a new record: I merged onto the interstate at about 20 mph becuase it was nearly total gridlock. Nice…That’s what you get for traveling home the night before Thanksgiving. Oh, well, I’m thankful that I got home!
Well, I tried to make no-bake cookies today. They are oatmeal chocolate cookies that you boil and then put on waxed paper to set. After they have set, you can eat them like a normal cookie. Unfortunately, being the engineer that I hope to be, I decided to “improve” upon the recipe. Why not add some marshmallows to the mix? And if you don’t have waxed paper to put them on, why not use aluminium foil? It turns out that if you put marshmallows in the recipe, the cookies never set and you get a gooey glob of a chocolate cookie. And it turns out if you try to put them on aluminium foil, the cookies stick to it and never come off. OK, so I guess I should stop trying to be creative.
What an insane week! Looking back, I’ve realized that I’ve spent no less than 12 hours at the UCF campus every day of the week! Monday I had a rescheduled class from 8:30 to 10:15 PM. Tuesday I had a very important work deadline to meet. Wednesday I had a massive assignment due. Thursday I had an exam I was not prepared for. Friday I had another extremely important deadline to meet. And Friday night I crashed and got me 10 hours of sleep…mmmmm….nice….
I also helped a friend hack my first attempt at an existing open source project. We added a password change option to SquirelMail using the Mercury Mail Server on Windows Server 2003. Awesome!
Oh, and yeah, my webhosting company upgraded some stuff to add some security measures and broke most of my php scripts. I had to coax my webmail and Typo3 back to life, but I think I’ve gotten it now. Whew!
Tonight was time to hit the Volusia County Fair! Every year my family gets together and we go to the Volusia County Fair for the night. We had lot of fun, watching some tigers misbehave during a show, eating all sorts of grease and sugar, and looking over the plants, animals, and farm equipment. Of course, my sister and my aunt were blowing through the rides like no tomorrow. I did notice they didn’t go on the ride that dropped you from about 50 feet in the air. Anyhow, it was lots and lots of fun!
Wow, I actually got to go to a social event tonight. Amazing! Must be a record for most engineering students. OK, so there was a reason: today is Veteran’s day and I didn’t have to go to school! Whoopie! Instead I spent 7 hours in front of my computer. Then I decided to go hit some balls around at the tennis courts. I came back for a quick change and then went to my church’s spagetti dinner and entertainment, which was a mockup of the show The Price is Right. I hadn’t heard of the show before, but if it’s anything like what I saw, it is pretty pathetic. However, it was an uproar with all the twists, enthusiastic college kids, and goofups. Anyhow, gotta be up early tomorrow (6 AM, no Mom, 5 more minutes, please?), so gotta get to bed. Oh, yeah, and in the last 23 hours, I’ve gotten 42 spams. Cool, almost 2 per hour. Awesome.
Well, I’ve spent the last few days studying (ur, um, cramming) for my second Electrical Networks exam. Yeah, and it didn’t go well…at all. I only finished 3 of the 4 problems (like I didn’t even draw the circuit on the 4th problem), so I hope he drops one. The problems weren’t too difficult, but they were really really long! So I was rushing around doing stuff as quick as I could. The other three problems I didn’t get to double check and I’m pretty sure I didn’t quite get the last couple parts. And I probably made some dumb mistakes too. All I can say is I hope he curves a lot!
Today I voted – and boy was I prepared. I had heard horror stories all around campus and from friends that they had waited 2 or 3 hours to vote. So I brought 3 books on my PDA to read while I was in line. I figured it would be a nice relaxing afternoon reading my books in the cool Florida fall weather. And boy was I wrong. I parked my car at 2:57 and walked in and got in line – a very short line since there were only 4 people in front of me. I didn’t even have time to pull out my PDA book! I waited for several minutes, then got my ballot and went to the booth. I took a while to look over the ballot and understand all the legalese before voting. The machine didn’t want to accept my vote, but after spitting it up a couple times I force it down. By the time I was pulling out of the place, it was 3:16 – I had spent grand total of 19 minutes voting. Not fair!