A Momentous Occasion

The fact that the Powersuite never sleeps is not new information for anyone who frequents the floor, but the occurrence of one member wishing another goodnight and having the reply be good morning is not an entirely common situation for anyone. However, when Play-Doh woke up at 4:00 AM on Friday morning, Grey was still up from Thursday night, making a full cycle from Thursday morning to Friday night not only a possibility, but an actuality. We are the pitiable creatures who never sleep. We are Engineers.

 
 

And a cool pic for your trouble

Now, the cool pic

So it is down to you, and it is down to me (if you ignore the other two guys in the room)

As many avid readers may have noticed, this blog has not been updated by someone other than Grey for approximately one year. The last non-Grey person to post was Pebble, in late February early March last year. Well, no more, says I! This is to be an open forum for four people to post on; no more, no less. There should be an equal right for all the scourges of the power suite to post the blog. Freedom of the Press! Long live liberty! Or at least until I become dictator. Hehehe.

For your trouble, here is God coding the Universe.

I wonder what language that is...

Clorox Bomb

Saturday was Film Fest, and this year I finally entered something. It wasn't much, just a short commercial, but I think it came out really well (It also took a lot longer to edit than I expected). It can be found here:

Clorox Bomb

Unfortunately, even though we filmed and recorded in HD, YAC must have recompressed it or something and the quality came out terrible. The YouTube version is probably better. It didn't win any awards, either. Oh, well. I have ideas for next year.

However, the fact that I didn't win didn't stop me from having fun at the ceremony. Lately, YAC has been trying to make the whole thing more ritzy, and they've introduced a red carpet entrance. In the spirit of fun, they still tell people to be as extravagant as they want when dressing up, but I decided to take things a step further.

I had bodyguards.

And then I thought, what if those bodyguards were needed...?



Heh, heh, heh...

When our group entered, the triangle of "celebrities" was myself, Shutter, and Gauge (with date Christy). We were surrounded by our bodyguards Dozer, Beaker, Expo, Treads, and Hopps. After we had posed for a few seconds, Vici, dressed as a hippie and yelling something about the environment, broke trough the paparazzi and made a run for me. He was taken down by Dozer and Expo who dragged him out the back while the other bodyguards swiftly escorted us to our seats. It was great fun.

A video was taken of the whole affair and should be up soon. Further pictures are available on the 41 website.

Edit:
The red carpet video is up now!

Vici meets bodyguards

41st Post!!!!

The original purpose of this post was to let everyone know that I am feeling better now and that all of my tests came back normal. I'm really busy now, especially since I'm directing a skit that I wrote for Hootenanny and producing a movie for Film Fest.

That's all I was going to write until I noticed that this was going to be the 41st post of the Powersuite blog, which meant that I would have to post something special. So here is a clip of the always awesome Singing Tesla Coil, also known as the Zeusaphone:

Hmmm... it seems Blogger is not cooperating in showing the clip. So here's the link instead:

Zeusaphone


Interesting note: the primary on this Tesla Coil operates at 41kHz.

I'm hoping to build my own Zeusaphone (albeit a much smaller one) for E-Lab 3 by connecting the output of a keyboard to a power amplifier then through a flyback transformer. We'll see how that works out.

I'm not dead yet

But I may be working on it.

Since about the beginning of December, I've had a nagging cough. It started out as something little and mildly annoying, but over the course of the break joined forces with nasal congestion and got worse. I started coughing up phlegm. I've always had nasal problems at home, so I expected things to get better once I got back to LeTourneau. However, not only did the cough not go away, but I started getting really fatigued. This was something that I could not afford, so this last Tuesday I went to see a doctor. A chest x-ray showed that, while I didn't have an infection or pneumonia, my lungs were 10-15% filled with mucus. The doctor determined that, unless lab tests showed something deeper, this was due to sinus drainage and gave prescriptions for an antibiotic, an anti-allergenic, a steroid, and an emergency inhaler.

The medicines have been working pretty well. My cough is down, I can breathe more easily through my nose, and I haven't had to use the inhaler. Unfortunately, I have to take the medicine three times a day, and it causes dizziness and drowsiness. This has greatly reduced my productivity. I've told all my professors, and they seem to understand, and I've been able to grind out enough homework this week to stay mostly caught up, although my projects are starting to fall behind.

Yesterday, I was called back into the clinic for further lab tests, and I got a call from them this afternoon. It turns out that, while I don't have anything like mono, I do have elevated levels of bilirubin in my blood and they want me to come back for follow-up testing in two weeks. Having no idea what bilirubin was, I did some brief looking on the internet, and it turns out that it is a naturally occuring enzyme that is a result of the breakdown of red blood cells and is typically filtered out by the liver. There is a small portion of the population that has eleveted levels of bilirubin and are perfectly fine, or it could just mean I have a little harmless jaundice.

...or...

It could be a sign of clogged bile ducts in my liver, liver disease, pancreatic cancer, or even sickle cell anemia (I kinda doubt I have that one).

So I could be fine or I could not be, but I won't let it worry me until I'm told I actually have something. I may not even worry then.



On a lighter note, here is a picture of a fractal I've been working on. I originally described it using AutoCAD, but that was taking too long so I had Wharf write a program to generate it:

Haiku

For some reason, everyone around here has been writing haiku (yes, that is the plural form) recently. Fjord started it when writing something for his birdwatching website, but it quickly spread to the rest of us. Although usually made extraordinarily boring by public school English classes, haiku can actually be quite fun. For those of you who don't know, a haiku is a for of Japanese poetry that follows the structure of:

[5 syllables]
[7 syllables]
[5 syllables]

Here are some that I've written about LeTourneau:


We all have no time
Dr. Kim speed - none can catch
Make sure wife can drive

Dr. Lee's Statics
T is now in the freezer
Because I say so

Dynamics first day
Dr. G walks into class
You've already failed

Documentation
I haven't slept in three days
Still stuck in the Lab

And here it is - just as some of you predicted - the post for December will occur on the last possible day! And it shall be short, for I have a New Year's party to attend. First, a quote appropriate for both the New Year and the Powersuite:

"The best way to predict the future is to create it."
-Alan Kay

I figure that most of you have been involved in the recent events of interest (such as the bonfire), so I won't really talk about them. Instead, I will simply say that for Christmas I got an eternal golden braid. However, I also came into possession of a saw...

Tempus

Yes, it is the last day possible for a November post.

No, I don't have time for a review of Thanksgiving.

Update will happen... later.

Warning

Senior design documentation may result in loss of head.

Type Casting

Good evening.

In my last post, I mentioned that Fall Fest was approaching. Well, it is now over, and I can discuss the happenings and results of the last week.

First of all, 41's theme was Ancient Egypt, and our queen won. Huzzah!

However, I was not really a part of 41 Fall Fest this year, because G2 nominated me to be their king candidate. And for their theme, they had me dress up as (what else?) a mad scientist:
The girls then dressed up as half-animal/half-human mutants, cyborgs, and other monsters to be my creations throughout the week.
I also had an Igor:
It was very fun walking around campus, eating at Saga, and going to class as a mad scientist. I was told I looked like Dr. Horrible (from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog), the guy from Back to the Future, Einstein, and Yzma (from The Emperor's New Groove).

And, to top it all off, the results came in today, and I was crowned Fall Fest King alongside 41's Queen.Another 41/G2 monarchy!

Edit: Pictures as well as the airband videos for both 41 and G2 are up one the 41 website (link newly added on the left).

Problematic

Contrary to popular belief, I have been trying to get this blog updated. Blogger is just being obstinate in not accepting the accounts of the new members (Play-Doh, Riff, and Synk). We also finally got a new picture last night, which is shown below in slightly greater detail:
In case you can't tell, Synk is holding a large metal rod, Riff is holding two hammers, I'm holding my railroad spike, and Play-Doh is holding a knife.

In other news, Fall Fest will be starting in a little over a week, which means that things are going to get really crazy (as usual). At least it's really fun.