The Mongoose: Nature's Assassin

I finally broke into my DVD of the first season of Robot Chicken, which I've had for months. I'd seen most of the episodes, but there were a few I hadn't seen, and there are some deleted scenes which I haven't gotten to yet. One of the episodes I hadn't seen had a sketch where a mongoose killed president Kennedy in Dallas, hence nature's assassin. The show is inappropriate for those of any age, but it's hilarious. According to Sarah Michelle Gellar (providing her own voice for the sketch), the eighth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was going to begin with Chucky hiding from the police in a lettuce patch when he's attacked and killed by lettuce patch kids, who need souls in order to . . . well, it was the premise that sold it, not the actual plot. The show is stop-motion animation (Nightmare Before Christmas is another example), created by Seth Green, so he gets some of his friends to do the voices. I have recognized / seen credited Tracy Morgan (SNL), Gellar, Mila Kunis (70's Show, Family Guy), and Scarlett Johansson (Eight Legged Freaks), among many others.

I haven't really done much that I can mention in the last couple of days besides class. Heat Transfer is completely worthless. I'm not learning anything; I'm just watching him derive things all class, then you get to the answer, and, look, it's what I learned in undergraduate. Part of this class is how we get to the solution, I guess, but the book doesn't include the derivation and Antar is getting as bad as Brother John was at missing a sign or not carrying terms along, then having them reappear 4 boards later. And, it's right after lucnh, the worst possible time to have a class.

Tactical Missile mid-design evaluation in the morning. I'm in a pretty good place, a little farther than everyone I talk to regularly, but not so much farther as to make it seem that my friends aren't putting their full effort into it. I do have pretty pictures, though. It's not the technical that sells a design, anyone can get to that, it's the pictures and the name. More tomorrow.

Us by 10

Tennessee beat Florida tonight in basketball. At one point, Tennessee led by 27. Tennessee won by 10. I don't care one way or the other about college basketball, but I watched the end of this game mostly because it was on TV and I didn't want to do any work. That guy for Florida was just shoving our guys all over the floor and the refs didn't call anything on him. Still, Tennessee won, and who cares about the rest.

Now, I'm tired and still full from all the food tonight. More tomorrow.

New Sensation

Heroes was AWESOME. Usually the story jumps around to about 4 or 5 sub-plots (maybe only 3 in a given episode, but there are several things going on at once), tonight was one story - a few of our heroes track down the is-he-really-bad guy, hold his family hostage, and demand answers about their powers. There was one point where I was literally shaking with excitement. If Heroes and Battlestar Galactica can continue to do a 1-2 punch like this weekend, my Sundays and Mondays will be worthless. Granted, BSG will be over in a month, so I won't lose too much time.

Tactical Missiles today was the Flandro discussing combustion instability. Think of the hardest problem you can, this stuff is harder. The Flandro has advanced the theory significantly by himself in just the last few years. We didn't so much discuss the solution as look at the evidence of combustion instability. We are supposed to address this stuff in our reports, and if he expects anything worthwhile, I'm going to need a lot more information. Oh, and the instructor totally lied to the Flandro when he said we'd covered internal ballistics. He mentioned one day that there was a power law relation governing the burn rate, but that's it. We didn't get into anything useful.

After class, during lunch hour, the three superfriends in that class decided to run some numbers and see how well our missiles are performing. In so doing, we were all getting different results for the same inputs. While Lee went off to class, I compared his code line by line to my code. I found a typo in his code causing a big error and two smaller errors, and I found an error in my code. His errors were the type giving him a range of 100 miles longer than he should have. My error, fortunately, was giving me results about 30 - 50 miles shorter than it should have been. Everything is fixed now, and we both have 1500lbm missiles capable of reaching out and touching someone at 400 miles. Except due west, where mine will only reach 385 miles. Something to do with the rotation of the earth. Stupid earth.

The weather has been gorgeous the past few days. Really makes me want to go disc golfing. More tomorrow.

Weasel Stomper

Archimedes is out; the new name for the tactical missile I'm designing for class is the Weasel Stomper. It has its own theme song: Weasel Stomping Day by Weird Al. I need screen caps from the video to use in my presentation, so if anyone finds them, please email them to me.

I worked on said missile design this weekend. I now have a decent model of the nozzle flow ready to go as soon as I learn how to interpret the three tons of data that the instructor sent us on propellant reaction chemistry. The amount is required if the designs are going to have any flexibility at all, but interpreting that much information from memory isn't going to cut it. (And I don't believe anyone else has had the experience of using this data before, though one other person might have.)

I don't wanna go to class. More tomorrow.

Best Oralist

Get your mind out of the gutter! A friend of mine (who shall remain nameless in the tradition of not naming people unless I have good reason to believe they read my blog) is at a moot court competition (fake appeals court cases argued in front of a panel of judges / scorers) and told me that the other person on the argument team won best oralist for the first round. Could they not come up with a better name for that honor? I am convinced someone sat around trying to make it sound as dirty as possible while being technically correct. I want that job.

Speaking of naming things, I've been trying to decide on a good name for my missile project. Lee is using "The Doombringer" (it's from Futurama), which is an apt description of any [working] missile, I suppose. I am thinking of calling mine the Archimedes Launch System for the Small Diameter Bomb (ALSFTSDB), but it's far from decided. Other options I've considered are Ballista, Wyld Stallyn, Wraith, Death Glider, The Milfred, and Batleth. All are references to my inherent geekiness, with The Milfred being the only one that you won't find with a little research. Freshman year in our first semester design class, out midterm project was to design a device to aid the handicapped or elderly in opening a jar. Groups were assigned by the professor, and included in mine were students who spent their time after the first semester across campus in the business department. Nate may have been in that group, too, but I'm not sure now. Anyway, while I was busy with designs, trade studies, and writing the report, they were envisioning the person for whom I was designing this. The character, Milfred, was horribly disfigured and, I believe, quite unintelligent. (It kept them busy and out of my way, they could have made him from Ceti Alpha V for all I cared.) The report we produced was named Milfred's Cure, and that drew criticism from Doc Brown (the professor). So I always reference Milfred when thinking about off-the-wall ideas. My design for that project was awesome, though.

We think we've got Gloyer understanding that we need something on paper for our project now. He says we'll have it by Monday. On the one hand, him giving me a list of things to address gives him a list of things to take off for if I don't address them. On the other, if he was going to take off for them anyway, I need the list to work towards. And no more surprises.

After class and lunch today, I have been completely unproductive. I need to run a ton of cases through my trajectory program just to have the data, but I didn't feel like doing it tonight. So I watched downloaded TV shows. Now, I'm going to bed. More tomorrow.

Better Get Your Own Jeff

Today was dedicated to my trajectory code, its GUI, and its outputs. And Lee's trajectory code, its GUI, and its outputs. And Amy's trajectory code, its GUI, and its outputs. Lee had started his GUI last night, so today was coding it and making it work with the trajectory program. Amy wasn't as far with the trajectory program, so the first order of business was getting the code farther along. I don't think she's planning to make it as detailed as mine or Lee's is, but it is more detailed now than it was before. With Lee and I both extolling the virtues of a GUI, and the prospect of making it pretty, Amy wanted a GUI for her program. I helped her get started with the layout options and the first steps of the basic programming. That part is mostly repetitive, and her laptop was running out of battery life, so she didn't finish that while we were all working together. I talked to her later, and she'd finished the cosmetic part of the GUI, so we'll find some time to finish the coding. I've tried helping Lee over AIM, and it just doesn't work, so it's going to take me sitting there looking at code and troubleshooting errors as they come. I did this stuff for a whole summer, so it's just reminding me of stuff I already learned the hard way, whereas they could both spend hours on looking for the commands, not to mention the errors. This lead to a slight problem of sharing, and Lee telling Amy to "get her own Jeff." So now, I'm Cheezits.

My brain has been off since about 9:30, and I've had a massive headache since about 10, so that's all for tonight.

Gearshift: No, Bender, wait. We're the lamest frat on campus. Even Hillel has better parties than us. Please, you've gotta stay and teach us how to be cool.
Bender: Hmmm... okay, but I'll need ten kegs of beer, a continuous tape of "Louie, Louie," and a regulation two-story panty-raid ladder.

More tomorrow.

Hey, Mister!

In Missiles today, the instructor handed out Mardi Gras beads before the start of class. Both Lee and I had the same thought about 10 times in 30 seconds. You see, the beads were recovered from his hurricane-damaged house in southern Mississippi - they had been flooded. Lee asked the question: so, um, were they washed? (They were.) So we all got Mardi Gras beads.

In class, Gloyer (instructor) changed the parameters of the project yet again. Lee and I were both of the opinion that about another two weeks of engineering would finish the analysis, then we could work on the report and PowerPoint. Now, we have a bunch more stuff to consider and analyze and study before we can begin on the report. When it comes to engineering, if you give me a target, I am pretty good about hitting it. I can even go the extra mile on the project when the mood strikes me. What really, really irks me is changing my target mid-design. In this case, it doesn't affect the design at the stage I have it right now, but it seriously changes the timeline. I am not happy with the way this class has been run.

After class, I tried some of Amy's mom's chili with corn and no beans. I'm not a huge fan of any chili, but this one had a good taste to it. The corn was a little weird both in texture and what it did to the overall flavor, but I ate all that I microwaved for myself (which wasn't much - again, not a chili person). I kept looking for the other vegetables to make the soup. I also remembered as I was driving back to the apartment, that I'm not sure anyone put the chili back in the fridge. I think I remember it still being on top of the fridge when I left, but I'm not sure now.

It got late all of a sudden. More tomorrow.

Range: Little Rock, Target: WJC Library

My missile in its current configuration can reach 375 miles (including payload capabilities), which puts the city of Little Rock within range from Tullahoma. Why Little Rock, you ask. Because Little Rock, Arkansas is the home of the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Library. It's close right now, the extra 25 miles of range that I need to tweak out of the design will make a hit more probable (especially since I don't know where in Little Rock the library is). Lee is the one who thought Little Rock might be in range, and I proposed the targeting of the library, so we'll both take credit for the idea, but I get more credit for picking out the actual target.

This morning, Lee was off at some volleyball thing for his cousin, so I got to sit around and do nothing this morning. So, usual Sunday morning. The afternoon also involved sitting around, but I was working on my trajectory code. I gave up on what I wanted to do, and compromised with myself on a combination flight path. It's not the simple pure ballistic trajectory that the others are doing, but it's not the boost and cruise that I wanted to do when I started, either. Sacrifices must be made, I suppose.

It was nice to be able to unwind with The Simpsons, King of the Hill, Family Guy, American Dad, and Battlestar Galactica tonight. Sometimes I have enough work to force me to skip everything but BSG, but I felt comfortable taking those 3 hours off tonight. I do need to finish up some literature searching for Moeller, but I'm planning to do some of that tomorrow at school. Hopefully, it's going to be easy to find what I want. Probably, I'll have to threaten to kill someone and leave a horse's head on their desk.

I think we should have convinced Gloyer that tomorrow was a school holiday (President's Day, which the school obviously feels isn't very important to honor the father of the country and the inventor of peanut butter); I don't want to go to class. More tomorrow.

I'm Not Bad, I'm Just Drawn That Way

For the record, Who Framed Roger Rabbit was not that off-color when I saw it almost 20 years ago. It was funny, but the sex jokes sailed right past me. I did remember that Jessica Rabbit was inhumanly-endowed, but I certainly didn't remember "Nice booby trap" when the weasel reached down her dress and a bear trap clamped on his hand. Funny movie, and no kid under my care will ever be allowed to watch it. I know better now.

I've got my trajectory program doing what I want now, but the answers it's giving me aren't the answers I want. Well, I don't have a preference on the answer, but the instructor seems to think this can be done at about 1000lbm. I have found a solution at about 3000lbm, but it's not a cruise trajectory that I was looking for. I'm going to have to spend some more time on the program to get the cruise just right, but I think it can be done. I just can't look at code all day.

Buffalo Wild Wings is tasty. The one in Murfreesboro is a little far to go often, but Lee and I made the trek in the snow today. We'll probably frequent it a little more once the weather improves and we start back disc golfing occasionally. Good food.

Dolores: Is that a rabbit in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

More tomorrow.

Brent, If You're Going to Keep Her, You Have to Feed Her

Apparently, in an effort to save money, Brent has not been allowing his wife, Ashley, to eat. He has also taken a job as a puppy assassin just to make ends meet. Life is tough, bless their hearts. I was talking to Brent this afternoon, and Ashley fought her way to the computer to try to get someone's attention to get help, but it was only me. Here's the pertinent snippet:

Brent: brent has to go cuz i'm starving
Brent: he doesn't feed me ever
Me: alright
Brent: hahahaha
Me: well, that doesn't seem very nice
Brent: ok, you hear the woman, i gotta go, ill talk to you later

Barely two months married and he's already starving her. I can't imagine how bad it will be once he moves her away from her family and up to D.C.

I remembered my forgotten rant topic from last night. I was about to go to sleep when I did, so I didn't feel like editing the post or adding an addendum. Let me start with a quote:

"The President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States . . ."

This is from Article 2 of a little document called the United States Constitution. Now another brief snippet:

"Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., who chairs the House panel that oversees military spending, said he plans to introduce legislation that would end Bush's plan by setting limits on which troops can be sent and would prevent them from being sent back too soon or too poorly equipped. Troops going overseas for another tour would have to stay in the United States at least one year before being redeployed."

Let's take a look: the President is commander in chief, which means what he says goes when it comes to the military. Congress doesn't get a vote. It has come to be that they have some control when it comes to funding issues, but the Constitution says if the President tells the military to do something, they do it. Funding worries come later. Rep. Murtha is going to set limits on troop numbers and when they can be deployed. I'm going to ignore for now that this is a monumentally STUPID idea, and present the argument that this is ILLEGAL. He certainly doesn't have the power to do this by himself, his committee doesn't have the power to do this, the House of Representatives doesn't have the power to do this, and the whole of Congress doesn't have the power to do this. The Congress can declare war, but the President is in charge of the military whether they do or not. The only way Congress can legally stop the President on military matters is to impeach him and remove him from office (which gives them Dick Cheney, who I'm sure will play nice with Congress' wishes). This, of course, requires that the President break a law, you know, other than committing perjury. (Anyone else notice that when Clinton lied UNDER OATH, it was an endearing quality, and when Bush presented bad information that everyone else in the world also believed to be true, he's worse than Satan for lying? Also, Iraq did have WMD. Saddam used chemical weapons in the past, and several caches of chemical weapons were found after he was deposed. If it were just nuclear weapons, we'd say just nuclear, but WMD means nuclear, chemical, and biological.) This Murtha guy has been trying to single-handedly lose the fight in Iraq for several years now. The worst thing we could do in Iraq right now is to pull out a significant number of troops. I want them to come home and spend time with their families, too, but you know what? They VOLUNTEERED for MILITARY SERVICE. No one doesn't understand that you've signed up for the Army (Navy, Air Force, or Marine Corps). We didn't draft them. They aren't slaves. They agreed to do this, and many are getting some decent deals out of it - college tuition and more. Yes, war is hell. I don't want to get shot at myself, which is why I didn't volunteer. Every person over there did. What happens if we bring them all home, as Murtha wants? We get another Taliban, just like Afghanistan before 9/11. How'd that turn out for us? Oh, right, they harbored a terrorist who planned the attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. That sounds like a fun government to have around, especially so close to the Israelis. What I really don't get is how this guy is a Marine and championing retreat. Frame it however you want, but pulling all of your troops out of an area where there is still work to be done is a retreat.

Something else I was thinking about, remembering really, is what Orson Scott Card said in his column on The Ornery American. President Bush is a terrible speaker. I generally like his ideas when I read about them or hear them explained by his press secretary, Tony Snow, but hearing his ideas from him makes me dislike them somehow. It's not the nuclear / nucular stuff, either. I had a chemistry teacher who said it the same way the President does, and he's not the only one I've known to pronounce it that way. I'm not sure why he's such a bad speaker, either, but he is, and I think that has hurt him more than any issue in Iraq or domestically.

Back to boring current events, i.e. my life and what I did today. Since I'm considering a cruise trajectory for my tactical missile, I'm altering my code to include that capability. I spent some time deriving the equations I need to include thrust along an angle to the body's velocity. For the non-technical readers: the missile wants to fall out of the sky, I need to push it upwards while sending it towards the target. It's a tricky calculation because of how I want the program to handle it, but I think I've got it. I haven't updated the program yet because I was lazy this afternoon, but that shouldn't be too hard now.

I would like to thank John Kerry for stopping by to leave a comment this morning. I feel much more enlightened now. More tomorrow.

C is for Cornbread, That's Good Enough for Me

Fun Fact about Liberals: They love freedom of speech when it comes to flag-burning, fecal artwork, and protests, but can't stand it when it's used to criticize liberals, point out liberal hypocrisy, or voice a conservative opinion. On my Facebook news feed tonight, I noticed the joining of a group named "Remove 'Katrina Made Me Smile' from Facebook." While I consider the first group ("Katrina Made Me Smile") to be in bad taste just by its very name, that doesn't give anyone the right to demand it be removed. I can't currently find the group on Facebook (it could have been deleted by the Facebook administrators, the group creator, or just not show up on searches), so I don't know if the creator really felt the way the group name suggests, but I get the feeling he was trying to be an idiot about it and get people angry and upset. Even if he is stupid, he has that right. I don't support "Katrina Made Me Smile," but I do support the right of someone else to support it, if they wish. Want to argue against it? Great. Demanding that someone else not be allowed to voice their opinion because it is counter to yours? No.

I had another rant earlier this afternoon that I wanted to blog about, but I don't remember what it was. I'm sure it was insightful and thought-provoking. It probably started out with a generalization and insult of liberals, too. I like those.

Marinaded chicken, sour cream and chives mashed potatoes, butterpeas, and cornbread make a fine meal. More tomorrow.

Going Up

Lee stole books from the UTSI library today. We needed an algorthm for our trajectory program (we used bisection because it's freakin' easy), so Lee went to the library to get some numerical programming books. We took a numerical methods class at CBU, but both of our books were at the apartment. I think he got every book that UTSI had that included anything even loosely related to programming or MATLAB. We found what we needed, though, and now have a way for the program to tell itself to stop. I was going to title the post "Good Catch, Amy" because she caught a big error in the logic that kept giving the program bad results, but then I realized that if I gave people post titles for finding errors in my work, that might lead to people looking for errors and could ruin my image of "quite brilliant," and that would be unacceptable.

I now have three working versions of my trajectory code. One works with the GUI, but hasn't been updated in several revisions of the others, and I don't think it even includes the basic thrust model. The second version includes all the updates, but not the self-timer (the bisection thing we got working today). It requires manual changes to the flight time in order to make the program converge to the appropriate solution. It's been what I use for most of my calculations. The final version has the bisection solver method which finds the flight time on its own. The last one includes most of the final modifications, so it's the best version, I guess. I need to get the bisection version merged into the one I use for calculations, then convert for use as a stand-alone or with my GUI. That sounds like a summer project, but I doubt the instructor will let me take that long.

That'll do, pig, that'll do. More tomorrow.

You Don't Plan Sincerity, You Make It Up on the Spot

We, the jury, find the defendant Denny Crane.

Oh, right, sorry. We, the jury, find the defendant Denny Crane not guilty.

I sat down to write a post last night and realized I had nothing to say, so I skipped it. I've still updated more recently than two of the three linked bloggers, so keep your hate mail for another time. Better yet, direct it all at Brent. That's a solution we can all support.

Today, I skipped class and went to the College to Career Career Fair in Nashville. Lee served as driver on this trip, and Amy was the lunch consultant. Of the two jobs, it's hard to say which is more important. Certainly, I don't want to end up in a wreck or lost, but lunch is the most important meal of the day.

I got nominated the boss of the group at one of the early booths at the show. Excellent. Wherever that guy was from is where I want to work. Anybody remember? Anyone? Bueller? It's not important. I'm sure I've got something from the company. It's in the pile in the middle of my bed, with all the other junk and most of the cool shwag (sp?). Of the freebies I was able to snag, my favorites are the Cummins (diesel engine company) water bottle, the Baker-Hughes (petroleum pumping) frisbee and laundry bag (yes, a laundry bag, crazy), the SSR (HVAC work in large buildings) mints, and the Jacobs ESTS (support Marshall Space Flight Center in all activities) sunglasses. I could have gotten more, but it was mostly things I'd either break or break stuff with, so maybe it's for the best.

Careers, right. I talked to several companies (I said 15-20 on the exit survey), gave out maybe 10 resumes, and have brochures from most of them. No one is really there to hire today, but a couple of companies were doing selections for interviews based on resumes received today. Most of the recruiters say to apply online, which I understand to a point. It's paperless and an additional step you'll do if you're truly interested in the company. However, I may be interested, but lazy or lose your card or something. With me, it's probably the first one, but others may have more of a problem with something else. Anyway, I went to the trouble of printing the resumes, the least these companies could do is take one.

Lee, Amy, and I mostly stuck together as we went through the show. It puts the recruiters off a little to talk to three students at once (and gives us control of the information flow), and I know it's easier for me to be in a comfort zone with some backup around. We did split up a little, if there was something that was more math-related, Amy went and talked to them while Lee and I found a more engineering company to talk to. Most places looking for math majors also look for engineers, so that was convenient for travelling in a group. The FBI was there, and practically ignored Lee and me once the recruiter found out that there was a math major nearby. There were a couple that did that in the other direction, too. Missile Defense and related areas are looking to be interesting. The CIA is hiring (I didn't tell you that). Everyone seems to be expanding, so maybe I'll actually get a job this time around. Lee and I talked to several companies in Memphis. Cummins has a branch in Memphis. We tried to talk to FedEx, but it was Kinko's not the real FedEx. There was at least one more, but the name escapes me. Not really what I'm looking for, but I'll talk to anyone who might give me an engineering job. The Cummins recruiters heard "engineering" come out of our mouths and bum-rushed us. The water bottle was worth it, though.

I added some more output graphs to my trajectory code. I am now outputting all three position coordinates vs. time, range vs. time, all three velocity components vs. time, a 3-D plot of position, absolute speed vs. time, and the three direction angles vs. time. It's not really more work to do all that, but it sounds impressive. I have also adjusted some numbers in order to meet the requirements of the Sergeant missile. The Flandro said to see if we could. I just kept adjusting the numbers that I just made up until the mission specifics were about the same as those quoted on what he gave us. It's easy to engineer when you don't have any clue what you're doing.

For the record, I'm staying as far away from the shuttlecock jokes as possible. More tomorrow.

Good Luck, Grumpy

It was on an episode of M*A*S*H from last night. I like that show, and I thought I'd seen most of them, but I had not seen this one. Hawkeye, Hot Lips, and Klinger were sent to a front-line field hospital (more front-line than a MASH, I guess), and it was under artillery fire. Radar and the 4077th was "Snow White" and the travelling party was "Grumpy" (because they didn't want to go, get it?), and after they radioed that they'd made it, Radar signed off and muttered "Good luck, Grumpy." Good episode.

I didn't do a lot this weekend. I believe I have said that in every weekend-recap post this semester. I had plenty to do this weekend, I just didn't do it. I did work on my trajectory code, but there is still some sort of a problem with it. I can't get the thrust model to work right, and I'm tired of trying. I was also going to incorporate the variable drag coefficient model into the code, but the instructor didn't email the equations until tonight when I no longer wanted to stare at the code. I had written down the equations, but not the limitations and those are at least as important as the equations themselves.

One question for Lee: in all that chili this weekend, how much was without beans and how much included corn? I hear beanless corn-based chili is the way to go.

Apparently, Lee and I "give the 'older generation' hope for the future." Yeah, I know scary thought. More tomorrow.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Are quite tasty. I made some tonight. For some reason, mine turn out thinner than they really should. I either spill too much flour (a distinct possibility), or the recipe isn't meant to be followed. The result is that the cookie spreads during baking and isn't quite as moist. Still, they are yummy. Apologies to Lee since I'd talked about making them earlier in the week, but just never got around to it, and he's back in Memphis and won't be back before the cookies are devoured. (or maybe that was the plan)

Another Tactical Missile class, more corrections by the Flandro. Today, we were starting the process of estimating mass based on trajectory requirements, and a possible equation to use is the famous rocket equation. Gloyer explained sort of how to use it and was explaining that it is for a perfect-case scenario (dragless + gravityless), so corrections are added in to account for the "losses" arising from reality. The Flandro didn't even let him finish explaining the drag loss term before saying that the rocket equation was so much of a bad estimate that including the losses was essentially a waste of time. The rocket equation is fine for back-of-the-envelope work, but once you start including real effects, you might as well go to a more advanced model rather than trying to use the rocket equation. Gloyer tried to defend himself, but really, it was a wasted effort. We also talked about how to include thrust and variable mass in our trajectory code, though neither can be considered all that difficult for the case we considered.

I keep wanting today to be Friday so that I don't have to go to class tomorrow. It hasn't happened yet. As Lee has become fond of saying for the past few days, "it stinks, and I don't like it."

Additional thanks today to: Lee, Heather, Brent, David, Jennifer, KC, Will, Amy, Russ, Ben, Marly, Matt, Nick, Matt, Sheena, and Garrett for the birthday wishes. I haven't quite gotten around to returning last year's birthday wishes on Facebook walls, so it may be a while on this year's, too, but I do appreciate them. If I've missed anybody (other than family, which I left off this list), thanks to you, too. But not as much, since you obviously aren't very memorable.

Tuesday does not equal Thursday. Especially since I want my weekend between now and then. More tomorrow.

Ruining Brent's Marriage

Without ever involving Brent or Ashley. Tonight, Lee and I took it upon ourselves to have a little fun at Brent's expense. While talking to a mutual friend (who gets mentioned by name only when I have evidence that she reads this page - yeah, you heard me), Lee mentioned that Brent was squatting in our living room. That part is true - he stays up here when he has to get work done at school - but friend asked if he wasn't married (he is, quite recently). Lee implied that that was the reason he was staying here. I then volunteered something or other and got the response: "I thought he was married . . ." to which I responded "He is. . . .for now." It was about this point that Brent figured out that Lee and I were up to something (mostly because we told him that we were). We had friend believing that the two-month marriage was on the rocks while we had Brent wondering what we'd been saying about him. I blame Rocky.

The Superfriends and Brent went to breakfast this morning at Crackerbarrel. It was tasty. Thanks to them for arranging it, and to Lee for paying for mine. Oh, right, this was in honor of my birthday tomorrow. We went to lunch for Heather's last semester, but since everyone's schedule was going to be bad tomorrow, breakfast today was the best choice. And really, I'd been wanting to go to Crackerbarrel for breakfast for about a week now but was too lazy to get up and go on my own. So the plans were appreciated both for the sentiment and for the choice of location. Amy's is next, some time in July if I remember correctly (and I do because I just looked it up on Facebook). So thanks again everybody.

There was a seminar today. I can't say it was quite as good as the robotic-sentries-with-shotguns guy, but it was better than uranium guy with his imaginary friend. Someone must have put a muzzle on Tom because he didn't make all the students look like pompous idiots. For Tom, that's progress.

The tactical missile contingent of the superfriends decided to hold a brain-storming session to work out some issues with the trajectory program. It was mostly storm, very little braining, but we accomplished a better understanding of the Runge-Kutta algorithm if nothing else.

At 10:30, I had two things to do before bed - blog and shower. In total, that should have taken maybe 30 minutes. It's now 11:40. And I'm off to take my shower. More tomorrow.

Such Divas

White Guys With Irrelevant Opinions is coming back. Actually, it's already started. Lee and I are backing off of the day-to-day debating, but will still snark as appropriate. I think the format and author changes will benefit the franchise.

Dr. Antar gave us heat transfer homework today. Essentially, he got bored working out a derivation on the board, so he assigned it to us to finish. I didn't care in the first place, now I have to do the work.

Not much else going on, really. I've been making some minor changes to the Tactical Missile Trajectory Program, but nothing of note. I did get the GUI up and running yesterday. It's not perfect, but it accepts inputs and generates the correct output, so it's good enough for this beta version.

Speaking of good enough: more tomorrow.

Paytun

In preparation for the Super Bowl, my own personal in depth research turned up several interesting facts. Again, these come from my own thorough research into the teams, players, and coaches. (1) Peyton Manning is a good quarterback and had never made it to a Super Bowl, or ever won one. (2) Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith are black. (3) Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith are good friends and respect each other. (4) Dallas Clark, the Colts' tight end, was Peyton Manning's "X-factor". (5) The Bears had a player, Tank Johnson, who is facing charges in Illinois, but was allowed to travel to Florida for the game. (6) Peyton Manning had never won a Super Bowl. (7) Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith are both black. (8) Rain makes things wet. (9) Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith are black. (10) Peyton Manning had never made it to a Super Bowl.

During the game, I also learned that the defense was trying to stop the progress of the offense down the field. Good stuff. If this engineering doesn't pan out, I think I could work as a sports commentator. All I need to be able to do is babble incoherently while nothing is happening on the field, and draw circles and squiggles on the telestrator.

I felt the commercials were sub-par this year. A lot of them weren't even new for the Superbowl. I mean, if you're going to spend $2.6 million dollars for a 30-second spot, you can make a new and exciting commercial. And the Clydesdales only made a cameo (in the white / dalmation dog commercial). This has to be one of the signs of the apocalypse. More tomorrow.

Hamburgers. The Cornerstone of Any Nutritious Breakfast

I didn't think I would, but I'm developing a liking for Quentin Tarantino movies. They are usually hard to follow, include lots of cursing, and scenes that I just don't need in my memory, but they are fun and entertaining. Pulp Fiction was on tonight's schedule, and it was no exception to the list of attributes above. Samuel L. Jackson plays himself, his usual role, this time as an enforcer for a mob boss. There are other characters and several interlacing stories, but really, it's all about Sam Jackson.

My ballistics / trajectory program is coming along quite nicely. I now have drag included in the analysis, though a few of the parameters still need detail. I still need to figure out how to make it stop at a certain point in space rather than after a specified time. I think there's a way to make it stop under certain conditions, but maybe not the conditions I want. It's all MATLAB stuff, and I haven't worked enough with those parts of MATLAB to know for sure.

Three tomatoes are walking down the street- a poppa tomato, a momma tomato, and a little baby tomato. Baby tomato starts lagging behind. Poppa tomato gets angry, goes over to the baby tomato, and smooshes him... and says, Catch up.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go home and have a heart attack. More tomorrow.

Gay Nazis

In the movie Hart's War, the Nazi P.O.W. camp commander is obviously homosexual. He hits on Bruce Willis and Colin Farrell, and there's a weird vibe with his officers. Also, he likes jazz.

I'm really starting to dislike having class on Fridays. I'm sure I'll really hate it when spring starts coming around. I like Dr. Antar well enough, and I'm sure the class will get better, but a Friday afternoon class is no fun at all.

I feel like I could sleep for a week. I'm almost over my cold, so the general weariness is gone, but I'd really like to go to sleep and not wake up for at least 7 days. More tomorrow.