read it, please either comment, email, or message me. I do kinda treat this as a journal and so if I am going to make it that way, private would be better. However, I also use it for just updates, goals, and just expressing myself so I am not going to pen and paper altogether. I will making the necessary changes to "privatize" it by the end of next week. It's been real. It's been fun. It's been real fun. Let me know if any of you are interested because I know how annoying it is when you can't read about what your friends and family are up to and how they are doing. Love y'all!
Saturday, April 30, 2011
By Semi-Popular Demand
It has come to my attention that it'd be best if I made my blog private because of the personal nature of my writing so if you are a reader or follower of this blog and wish to continue to be able to 
read it, please either comment, email, or message me. I do kinda treat this as a journal and so if I am going to make it that way, private would be better. However, I also use it for just updates, goals, and just expressing myself so I am not going to pen and paper altogether. I will making the necessary changes to "privatize" it by the end of next week. It's been real. It's been fun. It's been real fun. Let me know if any of you are interested because I know how annoying it is when you can't read about what your friends and family are up to and how they are doing. Love y'all!
read it, please either comment, email, or message me. I do kinda treat this as a journal and so if I am going to make it that way, private would be better. However, I also use it for just updates, goals, and just expressing myself so I am not going to pen and paper altogether. I will making the necessary changes to "privatize" it by the end of next week. It's been real. It's been fun. It's been real fun. Let me know if any of you are interested because I know how annoying it is when you can't read about what your friends and family are up to and how they are doing. Love y'all!
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Being Back Home
If life isn't exciting, we can make it exciting. Put a little passion in the mix and everything becomes an adventure. Things haven't been too bad being home yet. I have been rebuked for not testing as much as I should have when it comes to my diabetes... to be expected because it is true. I have been through the joy of a few competitive games of cards... always a fun experience. 
I won't get into that because it might be a bad thing from the amount of fun I have with my overly competitive family of which, I admit, I am a part. Watched a fabulous chick flick because we are still and will be for quite some time, over populated with girls... except with this vote I decided in favor when it came to watching Far And Away. It is a great movie. The only seriousness in my life right now is thinking about my internship for the summer which starts on Monday, considering how to finalize my car purchase I am going to make, checking up on my grades for the semester, and trying to keep ties and relationships with my friends alive from across the country. All in all, I am really blessed and enjoying life because if those are the only things I worry about, things could be a lot worse. Looking on the bright side... I already made a friend who will be coming back home this summer, I have read two books, I got all my luggage home, and I have a summer job, internship or no internship... preferably internship. Now if only I could stop living out of a suitcase and get a real room in our own house and life would be just grand. Then I would probably shave for once and stop pretending that I am homeless.
I won't get into that because it might be a bad thing from the amount of fun I have with my overly competitive family of which, I admit, I am a part. Watched a fabulous chick flick because we are still and will be for quite some time, over populated with girls... except with this vote I decided in favor when it came to watching Far And Away. It is a great movie. The only seriousness in my life right now is thinking about my internship for the summer which starts on Monday, considering how to finalize my car purchase I am going to make, checking up on my grades for the semester, and trying to keep ties and relationships with my friends alive from across the country. All in all, I am really blessed and enjoying life because if those are the only things I worry about, things could be a lot worse. Looking on the bright side... I already made a friend who will be coming back home this summer, I have read two books, I got all my luggage home, and I have a summer job, internship or no internship... preferably internship. Now if only I could stop living out of a suitcase and get a real room in our own house and life would be just grand. Then I would probably shave for once and stop pretending that I am homeless.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Old Friends, New Friends... Friends
One of the great pleasures in my life is being able to create and strengthen relationships. You ever wonder why we measure time from sunrise to sundown, rotations of the earth, rotations around the sun, and our years centered round the birth and death of the Savior Jesus Christ? I guess we need in our pursuit to comprehend things, need something to compare things to in order to understand ideas such as time itself. And I figure if we measure time by dividing up the space between events in history and in our days, then the relationships I foster make better use of my time than waiting for the next thing to happen in my life.
I realized that the greatest gift that I can have or give is building a friendship with a complete stranger. Sometimes it surprises me when it feels like that friendship has already lasted a lifetime, because in all honesty, who knows? I
may have already had such a relationship with them before. The point is that it is being able to share memories, laugh and joke, tease and praise, love and listen, and be able to completely open up yourself to another person that it naturally just fills your heart and your soul with joy. I do have my own nervous moments when I am trying to open up or trying to be comfortable with people, but I know that their choices and their opinions are their own and I cannot make them. I can only be myself and love them no matter what they choose to do. If I am able to do this, there is no fear. So whether it is catching up with an old friend, a relative, or even an acquaintance, it doesn't matter. Just like with any other circumstance, the choices you make allow you to choose how to see things. Old friends... New friends... We are all just friends.
I realized that the greatest gift that I can have or give is building a friendship with a complete stranger. Sometimes it surprises me when it feels like that friendship has already lasted a lifetime, because in all honesty, who knows? I
may have already had such a relationship with them before. The point is that it is being able to share memories, laugh and joke, tease and praise, love and listen, and be able to completely open up yourself to another person that it naturally just fills your heart and your soul with joy. I do have my own nervous moments when I am trying to open up or trying to be comfortable with people, but I know that their choices and their opinions are their own and I cannot make them. I can only be myself and love them no matter what they choose to do. If I am able to do this, there is no fear. So whether it is catching up with an old friend, a relative, or even an acquaintance, it doesn't matter. Just like with any other circumstance, the choices you make allow you to choose how to see things. Old friends... New friends... We are all just friends.
Eleanor Roosevelt
"Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life. Learn from others mistakes. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself. Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That's why we call it 'The Present.' It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know. The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends leave footprints in your heart. We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all. Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art. Life is what you make it. Always has been, always will be. No matter how plain a woman may be, if truth and honesty are written across her face, she will be beautiful. To handle yourself, us your head; to handle others, use your heart. What could we accomplish if we knew we could not fail? A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and in all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably with the circumstances of life, knowing that in this world no one is all knowing and therefore all of us need both love and charity. Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living, the other helps you make a life. You have to accept whatever comes, and the only important thing is that you meet it with the best you have to give. Work is always an antidote to depression. When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it? With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts. Happiness is not a goal... it's a by-product of a life well lived. The giving of love is an education in itself. We have to face the fact that either all of us are going to die together or we are going to learn to live together, and if we are to live together we have to talk. Confidence comes not from always being right but from not fearing to be wrong. There is not human being from whom we cannot learn something if we are interested enough to dig deep. You wouldn't worry so much about what others think if you realized how seldom they do."
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Getting Me Through The Day
Music is what many times gets me through the day. When it comes to finals week, there is hardly a better time for me to find good ways to relax while still trying to be productive. Here is a bunch of the songs that help me do what I have to do...
PS - I hate to make you follow all these links but I can't upload any infringing material... Sorry!
PS - I hate to make you follow all these links but I can't upload any infringing material... Sorry!
Friday, April 8, 2011
What's It Gonna Be Like...
We loved. We laughed. We lived. We lost. I don't know what happened between point A and point B but I missed it, because the only thing I can remember are all the reasons I want you back. The way you look as your eyes sparkle when you smile. The feeling of your skin on my fingertips. The way you pulled me so close that I could feel your heartbeat. The games we played whenever I challenged your quick wit. When I hear your voice it is music to me, relaxing me, its beat driving me. You were my inspiration. Where have those days gone? Why do I still get nervous when I see you but still bite my tongue until it bleeds? What's it gonna be like when you are gone? How's it going to be when you don't know me anymore? How's it going to be?
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Enduring to the End
The hardest part of anything you do at least for most people is finishing it. This semester in school has been an absolute beast. I have had tests, projects, quizzes, and tons of homework on a continual basis. There really has been no down time if I don't plan it out in advance, but then again being a planner is a new thing for me. I typically like to be spontaneous in most cases but also be ready for pretty much anything. So in reality, I guess this has been a blessing. Anyways, the moral of the story is that the semester has been a real doozy and now I am going to update you all on my life since I haven't written on here in a while.
The projects have come from mainly one of two classes. I am in Mechanical Engineering so I have a Machine Design class where we study stresses, loads, material properties, fatigue, failure, etc. The idea is to be able to know how much a part can handle without breaking but also knowing if it does break, where and why. One of the projects we have done in this class is using a software package called ANSYS. It is an FEA (Finite Element Analysis) program that takes all these things we have talked about and applies them to a part you model in the computer. It then graphically displays the results of the loads. Here is a couple examples of our truss and bracket project.
(Stresses on the Bracket)
(Loads on the Truss)
(Stresses on the Truss)
We were supposed to design a truss that could take certain loads we put on it which was also connected to a bracket that had to be designed to basically do the same thing. Besides being given the loads and the dimensions of the truss we had to pick out everything else.
Also in my engineering classes, I have a Numerical Methods class where we program code in C++ and in Matlab to compute many of these same equations. However, a computer can compute them a lot faster and if coded correctly can even determine what the optimal design of a product can be, such as designing a car, based on a variety of conditions: cost, size, forces, visually appealing, etc. These are called Genetic Algorithms. We have coded other things as well, but the only one that is not entirely useful but definitely cool was a robot. It reads the color on different plastic balls, if it is red like the Utes, it tosses it away. If it is blue, then it will take it out to the three-point line, spins, and shoots.
The last project was for my History of Creativity class. I have talked about my idea in a previous post, but the final result is posted up on Youtube at the following link: Ophelia's Syndrome (Animation Project).
However, I did have to do a couple edits on the actual animation to make it presentable and finalized. The video above is the actual animation itself and the narration and the guitar accompaniment before I finished it for Youtube. Well, this has been my life. Good life, huh?
The projects have come from mainly one of two classes. I am in Mechanical Engineering so I have a Machine Design class where we study stresses, loads, material properties, fatigue, failure, etc. The idea is to be able to know how much a part can handle without breaking but also knowing if it does break, where and why. One of the projects we have done in this class is using a software package called ANSYS. It is an FEA (Finite Element Analysis) program that takes all these things we have talked about and applies them to a part you model in the computer. It then graphically displays the results of the loads. Here is a couple examples of our truss and bracket project.
(Loads on the Bracket)
(Stresses on the Bracket)
(Loads on the Truss)
(Stresses on the Truss)
We were supposed to design a truss that could take certain loads we put on it which was also connected to a bracket that had to be designed to basically do the same thing. Besides being given the loads and the dimensions of the truss we had to pick out everything else.
Also in my engineering classes, I have a Numerical Methods class where we program code in C++ and in Matlab to compute many of these same equations. However, a computer can compute them a lot faster and if coded correctly can even determine what the optimal design of a product can be, such as designing a car, based on a variety of conditions: cost, size, forces, visually appealing, etc. These are called Genetic Algorithms. We have coded other things as well, but the only one that is not entirely useful but definitely cool was a robot. It reads the color on different plastic balls, if it is red like the Utes, it tosses it away. If it is blue, then it will take it out to the three-point line, spins, and shoots.
The last project was for my History of Creativity class. I have talked about my idea in a previous post, but the final result is posted up on Youtube at the following link: Ophelia's Syndrome (Animation Project).
However, I did have to do a couple edits on the actual animation to make it presentable and finalized. The video above is the actual animation itself and the narration and the guitar accompaniment before I finished it for Youtube. Well, this has been my life. Good life, huh?
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