Goals for break

1) Go to the rock gym 3-4 times a week so I can actually start building the muscles and getting good at climbing.

2) Fly my R/C airplane as much as I can so I'll be really comfortable with it for clinic flight testing next semester.

3) Read several of the books I brought home. Ones I'm particularly looking forward to: 30 Seconds over Tokyo (about the Doolittle Raid), Hiroshima (about the atomic bomb attack), and Animal Farm.

4) Finish up my MATLAB GUI for the GPS reciever :-P yes, I am a horrible nerd, but I've actually enjoyed working on it quite a bit so far (you know, doing that instead of STS finals and stuff...). I really like working in matlab!

5) Not waste so much time in front of the TV/random internet surfing! There's so much more out there!

Man I suck at blogging

...my life isn't exciting enough apparently.

No, that's not true, its just not exciting in all the right places. A lot has been happening with clinic and projects and whatnot, its just nothing anyone but me is excited about.

So whats new? Hmm...and of general interest... well I think I've decided I'm not going to apply for grad schools for next year. By 'decided' I mean I kept pushing it off again and again until it was about that time where I figured it was kind of late to try to get letters of reccomendation...the apps for some schools are due in the next week. I figure though, this is probably best for me. I don't have a specific area of research I'd like to go into in grad school, my entire motivation so far has been the desire to take more specialized engineering classes (because engineering classes abroad sucked...). So my plan now is to go work in industry for a couple years, see what I like, and then I can go to grad school in a couple years. I definitely want to go to grad school at some point...I'll be very disappointed in myself if I let the opportunity pass me by.

Man, next semester is gonna suck... I'm going to have so much work to do... mostly because of clinic...arg clinic, the bane of every engineer's existence. How can it be so much work, and yet so enjoyable at the same time. My team gets to fly R/C planes!!

Swift drives to New Jersey: Day 1

Quick bit of background: I've been interning this summer at an engineering company in San Clemente, CA called Swift Engineering working on their Killer Bee project. The Killer Bee (currently KB4) is a small UAV they are trying to market for the military. For about a month in July and August, Swift is participating in the BTCR (Beyond-line-of-sight Tactical Communication Relay) demonstrations at Ft. Dix in New Jersey. Basically, both the Navy and Marine Corps are looking for a UAV to fill the role between very small scale UAVs (backpack-carried, hand launched) and larger aircraft (Global Hawk, Predator). For those who enjoy the military habit of making acronyms out of everything, the role its meant to fill is the STUAS/Tier II

Anywho, for the demonstration we needed to take a bunch of stuff out to New Jersey, and it would have been bloody expensive to try to get it there by air somehow (C-130 probably), so me and 3 other guys at work have been recruited to drive all the equipment out there. We have the Ground Control Station van that has all the fun computer stuff in it, towing the trailer that is the pneumatic launcher, carries the poles and net for the recovery system, and also carries 3 KB4 aircraft. We're also taking a F-350 diesel truck hauling a 5th wheel with a bunch of other gear stowed away.

Thats a 2,800 mile drive from San Clemente to Fort Dix, estimated to take around 5 days of almost non-stop driving. How can you not have fun with that?

We headed off out of San Clemente Tuesday morning around 8 am, hoping to make it to Gallup, New Mexico by evening. Google gives it as about 670 miles, which you could make pretty easily within 10 hours at an average speed of 70 mph.

Problem was, our average speed was somewhere around 50 mph. Traffic and hills really slowed us down, plus stops for food and gas. The 'check engine' light on the truck also came on at one point, so we tried stopping at the Ford Dealership in both Needles, CA and Kingman, AZ to get them to hook up a reader to the computer just to see if the light was because of something important. Neither place could do it right then, but then the light happened to go off when we left the dealership in Kingman..... We didn't question it and kept on going.

We were only able to make it to a hotel just outside Flagstaff, AZ, almost 2oo miles short of where we intended, but it turned out to be probably better anyways. The area for 80 miles or so west of Flagstaff was pretty incredible. I wish I had gotten some photos of it, but I was driving at that point. It seemed so odd for Arizona, it was green everywhere. Huge trees covered the hills as far as we could see; really, it looked more like one of the forests of Northern California than something in Arizona.

That night was cool, we walked from the hotel to the other side of the freeway to get food at a Harley-Davidson bar and grill. On the way over we saw a nice sunset - I have a picture of it on my camera I'll upload as soon as I get back and get the microSD adapter. The bar/grill was interesting, they gave you the raw meat and provided a grill so you could cook it yourself just the way you wanted. I made myself a tasty burger (plus included salad bar), but as the guys were saying later, it wasnt very expensive, but more than we should have paid for a piece of raw meat. Then we played a couple rounds of pool: Trent (driving buddy) and I won the first one because Steve (other intern) pocketed the 8-ball, lost the 2nd, and lost the 3rd, although that last one was so close! I was on the 8 ball, but sunk it and the cue ball at the exact same time. I had a pretty good time despite spending waaaaaaay too much time on my butt in the car, I only wish I could have gotten some more pictures along the way.

Day 1: 490 miles traveled - about 11 hrs driving time