Inspiration

My post about LEGOs inspired me to stop by the LEGO store that had recently opened at the mall near my apartment in Houston. They have a wall of bricks there that you can select different pieces from and then put into a cup. Once the cup is full you pay a set price for all of the bricks in the cup. Being the engineering student I am I couldn't help but think of the most efficient method of packing bricks into the cup, but I gave up about half way through and just started trying to fill the thing up with bricks I thought looked interesting. Long story short ....

Meet Frank the duck and his remote cotrolled propellor powered car.

I have no idea how often I'm going to have time to play with LEGOs this semester (judging from my first two days, not too much), but it is still fun to have them on my desk.

Excuse me while I go add wings to that car....

Learning me some knowledge

Classes began today at Baylor University. For the first time in three years I feel like I really have a good idea of what to expect out of most of my classes and professors. My schedule is far from what I would really like it to be, (too spread out) but I'm sure I'll make due and figure out a way to use my breaks productively.

Another first for me is the feeling that Baylor's Engineering school is growing too much. I came to this school precisely because of the fact that it was small and I had a good chance of getting to know all of my professors. This fall, our department has somewhere around 216 freshmen and I have to wonder if we can really support that number of students. We don't have to facilities for that many people, much less the professors to make small class sizes a reality. It seems that our department's strengths have suddenly become our weaknesses. I'm worried that there are going to be a lot of growing pains for the department in the next several years, but hopefully my class won't have to be the one that ends up getting the short end of the stick.

Getting down with the sickness

Today is the first day of my last weekend before school starts... and I'm sick. I'm not really sure what I have, but for some reason my sinuses have all gone crazy and I'm going back and forth between being congested and draining like crazy. Maybe it's the pollen in Waco, or maybe I'm just tired from a long, fun, and exhausting summer, but whatever the reason I am totally out of it. Hopefully I'll still be able to get a few things done today.

Thoughts on engineering (Part 1)

Tonight I took a break from unpacking all of my worldly possessions to have dinner with one of my friends and his dad. (I'll call him Mr. S) Mr. S is an engineer who works with the military on a number of various projects. I really enjoy getting to talk to professional engineers about their jobs, and during dinner Mr. S talked about how the military had started trying to get design input from former aerospace engineers from Boeing in an effort to gain a fresh perspective on some of the problems that have come up in Afghanistan and Iraq. At one point during the conversation we talked about how even though some of the solutions that had been thought up were great by aerospace standards they did not even come close to being viable answers to the problems that the soldiers were having on the ground.

I think it is fascinating that even though there are tons of similarities across all of the engineering related industries there are still such large differences. It can be intimidating at times to think that I might get stuck in some branch of engineering that I am not particularly interested in, but in the end I really just look forward to diving in head first and finding out what makes me tick.

Rainy Car Wash

My car has been through a bit of trauma in the last few days, so this afternoon when my younger sister asked me if I wanted to wash my car with her I figured it was a pretty good idea. We started out on the right track with our bucket full of soapy water, a few rags, a brush to clean my wheels, and the hose. Even the weather seemed like it was going to cooperate with us as we started working. Then, after we had finished up the passenger side of the car it started to drizzle. A few moments later it started to rain a tad harder. By that time I felt like we might as well finish the job since the car would look better once we were done even if it did keep on raining.

My car. Clean but still wet from the rain.

Throughout the rest of the job I could not help but think about how so much of life is just like that car wash. Often times I find myself working toward a goal for a long time only to take a step back and feel like my work was all for nothing. I've had this expereince with things as big as sin issues in my life to as small as studying for a quiz in a class. In the end things usually tend to work out if I persevere though. I'm so thankful that I serve a God who is able to break through my feelings of inadequacy, and I know that with Him life does not have to be like washing a car in the rain.

My little sister is watching the Olympics on TV here at home in Arlington. I've always enjoyed the Olympics, especially the summer games. I feel like they are a much more inclusive event than the winter games. I suppose that is rather inevitable though, since not every country can have snow for skiing or frozen lakes for curling. (You gotta love curling.) By the same token, not every country can afford the kind of infrastructure that it takes to train athletes for winter games (ski jumps can be a tad pricey). Realistically it is probably impossible for a small country that only sends one or two athletes to the summer games to somehow pull off a surprise victory in today's world of NASA funded swimwear and shoes designed to shave hundredths of seconds off of runner's times, but part of me hopes that there is still a chance. I guess I just can't resist rooting for an underdog sometimes.

Adventure on I-45

Today my younger brother, my dad and, I packed up my apartment and hopped onto I-45 to make the long, but usually mundane, drive from Houston to Arlington. Little did I know that soon I would be in for the adventure of a lifetime... or at least a few seconds of terror followed by some sweat and dirt.

I was driving along, minding my own business when suddenly the back end of my car started making a lot of noise and shaking. At first I thought I was just on a rough section of 45, but then I saw smoke out of my rear view mirror. I realized that this was not simply a rough section of road, but in fact an especially rough section of road and decided to pull over and see what kind of groves the department of transportation had put in the pavement. Low and behold when I pulled over to inspect the roadway I found out that the highway was actually pretty normal; I had just blown a tire. (Maybe that's what that tire-looking object was that I saw in my rear view mirror a second before pulling over...)

My tire (or lack thereof)

I've had a few flats before, but nothing has ever even come close to this one. I'm really thankful that I was in the right lane and had a fairly easy time pulling off of the highway and onto the shoulder.

My younger brother Connor was with me in the car and he managed to take the above photo and the video below once we got off of the highway. It seems that his habit of picture taking and movie making has payed off for my blog. Thanks bro! (Just to address the question before it gets asked, the purple bean-bag chair in the front seat belongs to my girlfriend. She left it at her house and I'm bringing it to her on Monday when I get back to school.)

On the bright side of things, I found out that I have a really cool jack in the trunk of my car. I also discovered that my spare tire is a real tire and not just a doughnut. How cool is that? I'm definitely buying another VW when I get a new car. Now if only they would find a way to keep the tires from exploding...