Some Pictures at the Getty Center Art Museum
Santa Monica in the front, LA in the back
What a BEAUTIFUL Day!
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Adventure Time!
I'm visiting my sister and brother in law, Padraig for spring break! They live on a navy base in "Port Hueneme, California. Port Hueneme is like an hour west of LA. Today, my day started @ 9am. I had to drive home from Purdue, catch a bus from Portage to O'hare airport, and then had the privilege of sitting through a 2 hour delay. My flight was scheduled to take off at 6:40pm. I wanted to get to the airport with plenty of time, so I arrived at about 4:30. Unfortunately the east coast had some pretty bad storms, so my plane was delayed 2 hours arriving to o'hare. The flight didn't end up taking off until about 9pm. I did get a coupon for 10% off of my next flight anywhere within a year, so thats pretty cool.
I spent a lot of my 5 hours at the airport just wandering around. I figured that I would have the whole 4 hour flight to sit on my ass, so I did some exploring. I found this cool tunnel that went under the runway to connect terminal C to terminal B. It had a half mile of moving walkways in a tunnel, with some really neat neon lights on the celing. I also stopped in one of the bars and caught about 20 minutes of the Purdue Minnesota game (awful!) and looked wandered around some of the retail stores like oakley and an art/knickknack shop.I was pretty excited that I booked a flight with continental. They were going to give me a free in flight meal and the bags were free to check. For some reason, I was switched to a United flight, so it would have cost an extra 48$ in bag checking frees, had I not packed light in a carry on, and a back pack. I ended up watching 1 episode of big bang theory on the flight, and then slept the remaining 3 hours.
Tonight, I got a tour of the house (which my sister did an awesome job decorating!) and played with the little mut before its time to crash. Night!
O'Hare
Beautiful Day in Chicago
Canadian Tuxedo!
Landing at LAX breaking the rules by taking pictures!
LAX @ 11:00pm
The Little Punk (And the big punk!)
Saturday, March 6, 2010
EVGP@PURDUEHELLYEAH!
And for those of you who didn't understand the title...
Electric Vehicle Grand Prix @ Purdue!
This past summer, President Obama awarded Purdue a (Sticks pinky finger to mouth) 6.2 Million Dollar grant to develop electric vehicle courses and degrees. Apparently, developing the degree programs is a big collaboration between the powers at colleges across the state, including IU, Purdue, Ivy Tech, Notre Dame, Purdue Calumet, and IUN. Some of the new "stuff" emerging from this: "Certificate and associate degree programs for vehicle technicians, bachelor's and master's degree programs for electric vehicle design and manufacturing engineers, and a certificate program in electric vehicle safety for emergency responders. It also will develop an outreach program to secondary schools and a Web site to provide information on electric vehicles to the general public."
The most exciting and relevant thing to come out of this (in my eyes anyway) is an electric vehicle race similar to Purdue's annual Grand Prix kart race!!!
Grand Prix is an annual race that is unique to Purdue, where teams throw a lawn mower engine on a go kart and design everything from the ground up. Then, they strap on their helmet and get it on! The winners get thrown in the record books, and get some awesome scholarship awards. I believe the Grand Prix race is about 141 laps on the track, and ends up being about 60 miles total! It also happens to be one of the biggest party weekends at Purdue, but that is besides the point...
Currently, I am an officer in the Association of Electrical Technologists. It's a club on campus that we try to set up events with people from industry to come and present for the club, and we do some activities like factory tours, and we did some stuff like a cookout and mingle session for freshman to meet each other and their professors before classes start in the fall.
Anyway, last Wednesday one of my professors on campus emailed the AET advisor about how he is assisting in teaching this new graduate course about electric vehicles, and it didn't dawn on him to try to get AET involved in the fun. The graduate course they are learning about electric vehicles, and are designing their own electric go karts for a EV Grand Prix race on April 18th. Professor Richardson explained that because the race is so fast approaching, that he would do anything he can to help us get up and running.
The Grand Prix race on campus is a huge annual event, and has been since 1958. The organizers of the very first EV Grand Prix event want to rival the media attention and scale of the Grand Prix. In order to do this, they need lots of participants! As of right now, they have around 10 teams constructing cars, but some of them may not complete their build in time for the race in 6 weeks. The goal of the EVGP organizers is to have around 16 teams competing in the race. Once the EVGP is recognized as a legitimate event and great tool to enthuse students about the future of electric vehicle technology, industry interest would be stimulated and the student-industry-university bond would be strengthened.
As of Thursday, Professor Richardson was 99.99% sure he would be able to get us a go kart chassis, and 95% of EVERYTHING we need to get our go kart running and the equipment required for us to race! He even offered to meet with us and bust his knuckles with us assembling it. He is even providing links to suggested parts that most of the students in the EV grad course are using so we don't even have to research that extensively where to find stuff on our own. Cool!!!
Basically, the students in the EV graduate course are learning the design process, and about acceleration / top speed gear ratios, battery technology, motor controls, motor specifications and how they all relate to each other. Professor Richardson is going to take all of the "middle of the road" specs they design and throw them on our go kart. Then, it is the responsibility of AET club to tweak and optimize our go kart for battery life, gear ratio, wheel base width, and anything else we want to try to throw in to our design last minute.
The race flow from my understanding is going to be 80-100 laps around the new Grand Prix track, which is about .4 miles long. Half way through the race, all of the racers will take a 15 minute pit stop break, and will be able to switch out their batteries and the second half of the race will continue in the exact same order the racers were in before the break. One of the things to consider is how much juice is being drained from the batteries during the first 40-50 laps of the race. If we were to run our motor at full speed, we would most likely be at the head of the pack, but then the batteries run the risk of dying and then we would drop back and most likely be DQ from the race. The opposite extreme is if we only run our controller at half capacity, we could have 1/4 of our battery life left at the half way point of the race at the battery swap out. Then, we are not using our battery capacity efficiently.
One of the big factors that influence how well we are going to do is kart/rider weight. The minimum weight is 350 lb. and maximum is 600 lb. The less weight added to the kart in dead mass that has to be carried around, more weight can then be contributed to the kart as components. Well, the club president and myself both weigh about 140-145 lb. so the odds of me being chosen as the driver are pretty good! How freakin cool would it be to get to go through the driver training and actually be the driver in the kart race!
If you couldn't tell, I'm really pumped about this! Myself and a few of my friends in my major get the opportunity to participate in the very first EVGP race at Purdue. We also get to play with a really cool toy and also get to put some of the things we learned about in our 3 years of schooling into practice in a very fun way. Who knows, maybe we'll even get lucky and win some scholarship $$$. Hell Yeah!
Some other related Videos:
Electric Vehicle Grand Prix @ Purdue!
This past summer, President Obama awarded Purdue a (Sticks pinky finger to mouth) 6.2 Million Dollar grant to develop electric vehicle courses and degrees. Apparently, developing the degree programs is a big collaboration between the powers at colleges across the state, including IU, Purdue, Ivy Tech, Notre Dame, Purdue Calumet, and IUN. Some of the new "stuff" emerging from this: "Certificate and associate degree programs for vehicle technicians, bachelor's and master's degree programs for electric vehicle design and manufacturing engineers, and a certificate program in electric vehicle safety for emergency responders. It also will develop an outreach program to secondary schools and a Web site to provide information on electric vehicles to the general public."The most exciting and relevant thing to come out of this (in my eyes anyway) is an electric vehicle race similar to Purdue's annual Grand Prix kart race!!!
Grand Prix is an annual race that is unique to Purdue, where teams throw a lawn mower engine on a go kart and design everything from the ground up. Then, they strap on their helmet and get it on! The winners get thrown in the record books, and get some awesome scholarship awards. I believe the Grand Prix race is about 141 laps on the track, and ends up being about 60 miles total! It also happens to be one of the biggest party weekends at Purdue, but that is besides the point...Currently, I am an officer in the Association of Electrical Technologists. It's a club on campus that we try to set up events with people from industry to come and present for the club, and we do some activities like factory tours, and we did some stuff like a cookout and mingle session for freshman to meet each other and their professors before classes start in the fall.
Anyway, last Wednesday one of my professors on campus emailed the AET advisor about how he is assisting in teaching this new graduate course about electric vehicles, and it didn't dawn on him to try to get AET involved in the fun. The graduate course they are learning about electric vehicles, and are designing their own electric go karts for a EV Grand Prix race on April 18th. Professor Richardson explained that because the race is so fast approaching, that he would do anything he can to help us get up and running.
The Grand Prix race on campus is a huge annual event, and has been since 1958. The organizers of the very first EV Grand Prix event want to rival the media attention and scale of the Grand Prix. In order to do this, they need lots of participants! As of right now, they have around 10 teams constructing cars, but some of them may not complete their build in time for the race in 6 weeks. The goal of the EVGP organizers is to have around 16 teams competing in the race. Once the EVGP is recognized as a legitimate event and great tool to enthuse students about the future of electric vehicle technology, industry interest would be stimulated and the student-industry-university bond would be strengthened.
As of Thursday, Professor Richardson was 99.99% sure he would be able to get us a go kart chassis, and 95% of EVERYTHING we need to get our go kart running and the equipment required for us to race! He even offered to meet with us and bust his knuckles with us assembling it. He is even providing links to suggested parts that most of the students in the EV grad course are using so we don't even have to research that extensively where to find stuff on our own. Cool!!!Basically, the students in the EV graduate course are learning the design process, and about acceleration / top speed gear ratios, battery technology, motor controls, motor specifications and how they all relate to each other. Professor Richardson is going to take all of the "middle of the road" specs they design and throw them on our go kart. Then, it is the responsibility of AET club to tweak and optimize our go kart for battery life, gear ratio, wheel base width, and anything else we want to try to throw in to our design last minute.
The race flow from my understanding is going to be 80-100 laps around the new Grand Prix track, which is about .4 miles long. Half way through the race, all of the racers will take a 15 minute pit stop break, and will be able to switch out their batteries and the second half of the race will continue in the exact same order the racers were in before the break. One of the things to consider is how much juice is being drained from the batteries during the first 40-50 laps of the race. If we were to run our motor at full speed, we would most likely be at the head of the pack, but then the batteries run the risk of dying and then we would drop back and most likely be DQ from the race. The opposite extreme is if we only run our controller at half capacity, we could have 1/4 of our battery life left at the half way point of the race at the battery swap out. Then, we are not using our battery capacity efficiently.
One of the big factors that influence how well we are going to do is kart/rider weight. The minimum weight is 350 lb. and maximum is 600 lb. The less weight added to the kart in dead mass that has to be carried around, more weight can then be contributed to the kart as components. Well, the club president and myself both weigh about 140-145 lb. so the odds of me being chosen as the driver are pretty good! How freakin cool would it be to get to go through the driver training and actually be the driver in the kart race!If you couldn't tell, I'm really pumped about this! Myself and a few of my friends in my major get the opportunity to participate in the very first EVGP race at Purdue. We also get to play with a really cool toy and also get to put some of the things we learned about in our 3 years of schooling into practice in a very fun way. Who knows, maybe we'll even get lucky and win some scholarship $$$. Hell Yeah!
Some other related Videos:
Work... On a Friday Night.
Well, I guess it's about time to get this thing rolling and give "Blogging" a shot. Here I am, sitting in the fourth floor of a vacant building on a Friday night... again! I currently work for ITaP, which stands for Information Technology at Purdue. I started working for ITaP last November, right before the end of the semester. My job title is "Lab Assistant" which should actually be changed to "Printer Refiller and Homework Doer". They should just call it what it is, instead of making it sound like it's hard or something.
My career started with ITaP on a weekday evening at around 7PM. Orientation. Blah. ITaP orientation for a lab assistant was basically two hours of how to do this job, and how to submit a time-card, what you need to do to securely close and how to open a lab to make sure it is appropriately set up for classes in the morning. All of the responsibilities were pretty much covered in 1 hour, but we were getting paid for 2 hours. Why not cover it all again!? All of the information we needed to know for the job was drilled into our heads once again! "When are timecards Due?" "What do you do if someone is looking at inappropriate material in one of your labs?" "What do you do if your computer lab is on fire?!?" Yeah, we covered it all. Hey, at least we got paid for it, right?
Now that orientation was over, we were to email our supervisor with a day we would like to work our first shift. The first shift, they arrange someone to work along side you and show you how to clear printer jams and properly lock up the doors and such things. Because the semester was nearing the end, we were not given regular shifts. We were to use the online "Take hours" system to pick up shifts people subbed out, or take extra shifts that operations could use some extra help with. When the semester ends, we would email our availability to operations so we could have regular weekly shifts scheduled around our classes.Well, after the usual "first day on the job" jitters and uneasiness, this job turns out to be one of the coolest college jobs you could have! I did happen to make the unfortunate mistake of providing ALL of my availability to them when I applied for the job. When someone applies to ITaP, they make you fill out a schedule spreadsheet with all of the weekdays blocked off into 30 minute boxes. You have to check when you have a class, and when you are available. Then when you are available, you assign a 3, 2, or 1 to each free chunk of time when you would prefer working... 1 being the time you prefer to have and 3 being the least desired. Last, you assign X's to all of the times you either don't want to work, or cannot work. I began the process by chunking off all of the times I actually had class. Then, I assigned X's to all of the times between 12am and 6am. I decided I liked the 7-11pm shifts from my month long "take hours" experiences, because it provided a good time to get some homework done after classes. Why not take those shifts because I would most likely be at home during that time doing homework regardless! I assigned 1's to all of the weekday 7-11pm slots, and 2's to all of the other free time I had between, before, and after classes.
Well, it turned out that time slot is pretty popular. A few weeks after I submitted my schedule request, i found out the wonderful news that my schedule was:
- Monday: 6:45am - 11am
- Wednesday: 6:45am - 11am
- Thursday: 7:00pm - 11pm (Yay!)
- Friday: 11:00pm - 2am
Figures, the only night I get the 7-11 shift, is one of the most popular nights to go out on campus to one of the bars for cheap drink deals. Most likely what happened is I got a 7-11 on that night because other people wanted to have the freedom to go out drinking on Thursday nights! Oh well, I don't really drink very much these days anyway, so it doesn't matter that much to me anyway. What does matter is the crappy Monday, Wednesday, and Friday shifts. I guess if you tell them you are available on the crappy shifts, they give you the crappy shifts...
All in all, I find a lot to complain about this job, but in reality I really really like it! Even though I have to get up at ungodly hours of the morning on Monday and Wednesday, and abstain from drinking and going out on Friday so I'm sober to work... the job does not ask very much of me. I just have to pretty much show up, and do 30 minutes of work. I figure that hopefully this job will improve my grades this semester AND I'll get a little extra money on the side. SWEET!
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