Huzzah it's Friday! I was going to have a pleasant break from school, but ended up getting 40 hours of grounds work - shoveling bark, weeding, raking leaves, edging, sweeping, etc. It was nice to get some exercise, sunshine, and extra money.

Last quarter was a wild sprint to the finish line - late nights of finishing projects and scrambling to study for finals. Oddly enough my grades turned out better than I expected... Here you can see one of my projects for Embedded System Design. Michael and I made an RLC meter including a cool case with the university's rapid prototyping machine (big thanks to Josh for helping us design it in ProE)!

The brand name spawned as an amusing parody of Fluke which makes high quality electrical measuring devices.


Electronics proved to be the hardest class. Here you can see my lab partner, Chuck, working with me on an audio power amplifier. On the oscilloscope, you can see the waveform for Jack Johnson playing through my MP3 player. It actually works! It's a small part of next quarter's project - to design and build a radio.

Aside from school, I had a fantastic time with Michelle and David! Michelle came to investigate nearby hospitals and apartments with her dad. Fingers crossed, she'll be able to move out this way around July.

She showed up just in time to distract me from finals and we had a great time watching movies, celebrating Pi day (3/14/08), going Contra dancing, and visiting the park. David was kind enough to make great food during a stressful finals week - cheers!

This is one of the few pictures we actually took while she visited. Somehow we keep reminding ourselves to take lots of pictures and it doesn't seem to actually happen...

In other random news China is planning on controlling the weather during the Beijing Olympics with artillery and supercomputers! Pretty cool techniques in my opinion.

In a second piece of random news, Moby will be releasing Last Night in a few days. From what I've heard, it's quite an enjoyable chill/dance album...

This quarter has been rather challenging, but I'm still alive... Michelle is coming to visit in a matter of days, finals are next week, Sharona is engaged, and my sister is having another kid! Quite a bit since my last post I suppose.

Of course, I only have pictures of the cool, fun, exciting stuff. Not the hours of studying and struggling through lab write-ups. That would only be interesting to a small handful of you.Finally made it out rockclimbing on REAL rock for the first time in ages! You can see Kirk modeling while a friend does all the hard work of climbing :PHere is me out snowboarding again. I went two days over the long weekend and had a blast! The board I rented was brand new (pulled straight out of the plastic while I watched) and I'm still recovering from a few crashes :D
Here is just an artsy photo to polish this short update off. Enjoy!

It's been more than a month since my last post (thanks for reminding me!), so it's time for new pictures! It's been rather cold and snowy in the past weeks and I've made the most of it. Here you can see me and a bunch of friends relaxing at a hot springs in Oregon. I saw a couple friends I'd made at Avondale which was a nice surprise.
A group of friends went snowboarding/skiing 2 weekends ago at Bluewood. You can see Max, Chuck, and Yong here (all engineering students). The powder was amazing and we all had a great time!

A college group CABL sponsored a weekend of cabining and cross country skiing/snowshoeing. It was great fun and my first experience on cross country skis was not a disaster... Here you can see Erin (a great friend of mine) and me (below) trekking through the woods on a beautiful morning.
The last picture here is from a birthday party at Erin and Amy's apartment. Ironically, the actual birthday'ee was not present. However, we had great fun eating anyway. You can see me, Erin, Amy, Kirk, and Kristin here. They are all rather amazing people.
Aside from that, I've been plowing through homework and test. Learning all about Gibbs Free Energy, MOSFET biasing, BJT saturation, Legendre transforms, and capacitor measuring algorithms. Great stuff!

It's been quite a while since the last post. Finals are a thing of the past and I'm already one week into new classes...

Between these two times, I flew back home to spend time with my family, friends, and girlfriend for a few weeks. Here is a quick summary:


I worked 2 weeks a few small projects. It turned out to be a good learning experience and provided some extra money... This is a prototype I built and tested. It's so colorful!

Michelle visited for a week and we had a great time going out on dates, finishing a bit of Christmas shopping, playing tennis/frisbee, and generally relaxing from school.
Michelle and I went to the aquarium for a day and it was rather stunning! I took a heap of photos and a few of them even turned out alright. I'll be posting a few more from the trip over the next few weeks. It reminds me of the Disney song "Under the Sea."

We also managed to create a Charlie Brown Christmas tree. I was rather proud of it. It's not such a bad tree really... All it needed was a little love!

Most recently, I got a haircut, moved into a new apartment, and started a full quarter at Walla Walla taking the following classes:
Feedback and Control
Electronics 1
Thermodynamics
Embedded System Design

In the picture, you can see me, my roommate Michael, and my friend Amy sitting down at our new kitchen table.

As you might suspect from this picture, I had a very happy Thanksgiving break!

Life's been more than insane recently. I finished my last class of the quarter a mere 10 hours ago with only 3 looming finals ahead.

Not many truly remarkable things have happened recently, so here are a few of the unremarkable things:
-lots of ultimate frisbee on Friday (in the snow for the past 2 weeks).
-sushi dinner for the last 2 nights - SO tasty!
-really enjoying Advanced Calculus homework. I've gained so much mathematical maturity in the past 2 months
-considering moving off campus next quarter if I can find a reasonable option.
-getting far too little sleep
-planning on going to England for 3 weeks this summer on a history trip (sure beats sitting in a classroom)
-Hurled myself at the annual Putnam exam (an all day event with math people, followed by a 6 hour math test Saturday night!). Probably didn't get any points, but it was great fun :)
-attended my niece's baby dedication in Portland
-spend a fantastic week with Michelle and her family in Missouri for Thanksgiving. Huzzah for hugs and kisses!

All up, life is good. Especially since I am about to sleep for a solid 10 hours :)

Our mission is finished. We successfully torched the evil traitor. God save the King! Next year will be even better - perhaps a full bonfire :) Kudos to the History Club!

This video is long, but worth your time. Kudos to Charles for sharing this with me! It's about Daniel Tammet - a savant with extraordinary math and memory gifts. You don't need to know anything about math to enjoy this.

In other news, I've been climbing more - this time at Whitman's outdoor bouldering wall...
I caught a cold quite some time ago, but with all the late nights to finish homework, it drug out to nearly 3 weeks. I think I've shaken it off now - hopefully for good.

Tonight I'm off to celebrate Guy Fawkes Day.

“Remember, remember the fifth of November,

The gunpowder, treason and plot,

I know of no reason

Why gunpowder treason

Should ever be forgot.”

We will be burning an effigy among other activities. Should be fantastic!

I couldn't pass up the opportunity to post this. It was found randomly while scouring the internet and I can't seem to locate the original source. However, it does highly resemble the Demotivator posters by Despair, Inc.

Happy Birthday, Amy!

I've been waiting for great bloggy material to fall into my lap. I waited for a month and nothing really jumped out at me. Therefore, I've decided my methodology is bad (or at least uninteresting). Time for more random, unimportant posts.

To catch everyone up, I'm in the full swing of school. Lots of tutoring, tests, and homework around every corner. I'm recovering from a fairly nasty cold (probably made worse by my odd sleeping hours).

Tonight, I'll be running a rockclimbing small group with my friend Tyler (a fellow engineering student). Should be quite fun.

That's the quick version of me. Oh and I finally have a ticket to go spend time with my amazing girlfriend, Michelle, for Thanksgiving!

Mikey (my roommate), Amy, and I went on an awesome rockclimbing trip to Smith Rocks, Oregon - a Mecca for climbers in the northwest! Here are a few photos from the trip:

Mikey on his first trad lead (climbing without pre-placed bolts to anchor the rope into). Quite a fun climb called Mines of Moria (chimney up cave in the dark)

Me climbing an easy 5.8 sport route - last move was a challenging 5.10a though :P
The legendary Monkey Face rock formation. The mouth is tall enough to stand in and it just looks like an amazing climb. Maybe some day...
The trio of climbers! We climbed Monday - Thursday before school started.Setting out our gear and preparing to climb 5-Gallon Buckets (5.9 and a 5.10a)
It was just a lot of fun, good weather, and I got to use a lot of my new gear (hurrah for birthday gifts)!