Wednesday, January 05, 2005
Breathe Into Your Butt
Tuesday was a long day. Starts at 9:30, ends at 9:00, with only two hours of break in there. But the good news is that Wednesdays aren't as bad, and Thursdays are the last day of the week. So maybe it will be worth it, and maybe it won't. I have not yet experienced the joy of no class on Friday, so I cannot judge. Oh well.
My first programming class was yesterday. We didn't learn all that much, but I did create my first program ever. I would reproduce it for you here except that Blogger reads my program and actually tries to execute it, which creates all sorts of problems. So I'll just have to tell you that it was a very simple program, one that's only function is to print out my name surrounded by a frame of pluses and minuses. My program worked on the first try; I was very excited. I cannot tell how easy or hard this class will be. We're learning the Java language, which my professor says is a difficult language to start with. Also, a large majority of the class seems to already have programming experience, so I'm not sure what I'm expected to know coming into this class. But I do think that I will enjoy the subject matter, and that always helps. And hey, if I hate the class, then this can be the last one that I take. (Remember? I'm going for the computer science minor. But if I ditch that I might be able to graduate sooner. And by sooner, I mean on time.)
I had both speech and chem again. There is nothing to report there except that chem is two and a half hours on Tuesday instead of just one, like it is on Monday. That's a lot of chem. I enjoy chem when I understand it, but therein lies the problem. We're supposedly reviewing tomorrow what we were supposed to have learned in high school, so hopefully that will help.
I also had my industrial/manufacturing engineering lecture yesterday. I learned a little bit about how to produce a printed circuit board. Woot.
Band immediately followed that. We have two new trumpets joining us this quarter, so I am no longer the new guy...very exciting. And as the two of them will be playing third part, Mike (section leader) decided that he needed a second to move to first and a third to move to second. So I got promoted, evidently due to the fact that Mike thinks I'm a pretty good player or something. So hooray! I liked third part...it was nice and easy. But second probably won't be much harder. And it's nice to feel like I'm making progress.
--Sleep--
I got up this morning for an 8:00 class, the only one in my schedule. It was the IME lab. I spent the morning creating a schematic for a circuit board, a process which had both its good and bad moments. Good? I had fun placing all the wires between all of the pins on all of the components, without letting any of the wires cross. Bad? Creating the logical schematic (as opposed to the physical schematic) was a pain in my butt...the program I had to use to do it was very touchy, and it took much longer than it should have. But overall, I think I enjoyed it. Over the quarter I will be building a power supply box from scratch, which means I'll be folding a piece of sheet metal into a box, punching holes in it, designing a circuit board for it, building that circuit board myself (which includes etching all of the wires onto it), and wiring all of the external parts together into the box to create a functional power supply. Learn by doing, right?
The only other interesting thing today was in speech. We spent the day learning relaxation techniques, which - among other things - involved laying on the floor for ten minutes, exhaling all of the tension out of my body. But here's the interesting part: I stayed after class to ask Ms. Stauffer about the speech I'm giving a week from Monday, and she made the comment that she thought that I'll be a good public speaker. I'm not sure how she knows considering that I haven't really spoken much in class yet, but she says she can tell. Maybe she knows what she's talking about, and maybe not. But regardless, her comment lifted my spirits somewhat. And that's always good.
And there you have it: another entry completed. I have to admit that I'm starting to have to force myself to write these...I might have to start writing shorter entries or writing less often or something. I don't know. My only problem with writing less often is that I hate to have to summarize so much at once. And I never know what to eliminate if I want to write shorter entries. So I don't know what I'm going to do. But for now, I'm good for today.
Have a good rest of your week. (My rest of the week? One day!)
Cheers,
Josh
mood: bleh
music: Kevin practicing viola (he's joined symphony orchestra now)
location: dorm
My first programming class was yesterday. We didn't learn all that much, but I did create my first program ever. I would reproduce it for you here except that Blogger reads my program and actually tries to execute it, which creates all sorts of problems. So I'll just have to tell you that it was a very simple program, one that's only function is to print out my name surrounded by a frame of pluses and minuses. My program worked on the first try; I was very excited. I cannot tell how easy or hard this class will be. We're learning the Java language, which my professor says is a difficult language to start with. Also, a large majority of the class seems to already have programming experience, so I'm not sure what I'm expected to know coming into this class. But I do think that I will enjoy the subject matter, and that always helps. And hey, if I hate the class, then this can be the last one that I take. (Remember? I'm going for the computer science minor. But if I ditch that I might be able to graduate sooner. And by sooner, I mean on time.)
I had both speech and chem again. There is nothing to report there except that chem is two and a half hours on Tuesday instead of just one, like it is on Monday. That's a lot of chem. I enjoy chem when I understand it, but therein lies the problem. We're supposedly reviewing tomorrow what we were supposed to have learned in high school, so hopefully that will help.
I also had my industrial/manufacturing engineering lecture yesterday. I learned a little bit about how to produce a printed circuit board. Woot.
Band immediately followed that. We have two new trumpets joining us this quarter, so I am no longer the new guy...very exciting. And as the two of them will be playing third part, Mike (section leader) decided that he needed a second to move to first and a third to move to second. So I got promoted, evidently due to the fact that Mike thinks I'm a pretty good player or something. So hooray! I liked third part...it was nice and easy. But second probably won't be much harder. And it's nice to feel like I'm making progress.
--Sleep--
I got up this morning for an 8:00 class, the only one in my schedule. It was the IME lab. I spent the morning creating a schematic for a circuit board, a process which had both its good and bad moments. Good? I had fun placing all the wires between all of the pins on all of the components, without letting any of the wires cross. Bad? Creating the logical schematic (as opposed to the physical schematic) was a pain in my butt...the program I had to use to do it was very touchy, and it took much longer than it should have. But overall, I think I enjoyed it. Over the quarter I will be building a power supply box from scratch, which means I'll be folding a piece of sheet metal into a box, punching holes in it, designing a circuit board for it, building that circuit board myself (which includes etching all of the wires onto it), and wiring all of the external parts together into the box to create a functional power supply. Learn by doing, right?
The only other interesting thing today was in speech. We spent the day learning relaxation techniques, which - among other things - involved laying on the floor for ten minutes, exhaling all of the tension out of my body. But here's the interesting part: I stayed after class to ask Ms. Stauffer about the speech I'm giving a week from Monday, and she made the comment that she thought that I'll be a good public speaker. I'm not sure how she knows considering that I haven't really spoken much in class yet, but she says she can tell. Maybe she knows what she's talking about, and maybe not. But regardless, her comment lifted my spirits somewhat. And that's always good.
And there you have it: another entry completed. I have to admit that I'm starting to have to force myself to write these...I might have to start writing shorter entries or writing less often or something. I don't know. My only problem with writing less often is that I hate to have to summarize so much at once. And I never know what to eliminate if I want to write shorter entries. So I don't know what I'm going to do. But for now, I'm good for today.
Have a good rest of your week. (My rest of the week? One day!)
Cheers,
Josh
mood: bleh
music: Kevin practicing viola (he's joined symphony orchestra now)
location: dorm
