Planet Olin

Driving everyone around again and being used to having a car available is nice. Far beyond that privilege is riding on a motorcycle again. Have I mentioned I love motorcycles? Today, I rode on the back of Ebs' PC800 to Van Sant Airport, a motorcycle hangout and generally awesome place to be. Who doesn't want to go to an airport with old planes and no air traffic controllers?

On a related note, gas is now above $4.00/gal.

Hey Virginia kids! You should come and learn why you should support Leslie Byrne, and then we can hang out after. Yaaaaaay.

Start with a seasoned hamburger patty. The one I used was from Whole Foods and was covered with crumbs of onion, bell pepper, garlic, and parsley.

Cook on a grill. I used one of the tabletop ones that grills both sides at once. Well-done works best so that it’s a bit crumbly.

Make a bed of spinach on your plate.

Toss some sliced pepperoncini peppers over the spinach.

Lightly cover the spinach with a garlicky Italian dressing, then spread some flaxseed over it so that it sticks to the dressing here and there.

Take the burger patty and cut it into chunks, and spread over the salad.

Crumble some white cheddar on top, leaving the chunks fairly big.

Serve with some crackers. One great choice is “Everything Flatbread” by Passport which adds even more garlic and seeds to the mix.

People to hang out with over the summer:

• Dan - have him stay over for a few weeks
• Ebs - give surgery support
• Kiri - yes!
• Erin D.
• Erin K.
• Ruth - depending on plans
• Tesch - Pittsburgh
• Bonnie - Pittsburgh
• Sheryaar - Maybe?
• Sophy - 20 minutes away isn't too bad
• Sophie, if she's in the area
• The Usual Suspects
• Anyone I know and like from Sherwood or Oakland Mills
• Family - Memorial Day with Joy, 4th of July mini-reunion, a weekend of the Takahashi family reunion
• Am I forgetting anyone?

I promised myself that I would do something active every weekend. Let me know if you are in the area and want in on anything. Possible social activities include:

• Drive to the beach and camp for a weekend. Note that I just came into the possession of a tent. Yay camping!
• D.C. - the Mall, Arboretum, Spy Museum, etc
• Baltimore - Harbor, other
• Local concerts, shows, and community activities
• Visit farmers markets and make awesome food. This could possibly become a dinner and a movie night.
• Find bike trails and bike on them
• Possible bar crawl for my birthday
• Local bars and microbreweries
• Clubbing BEFORE my birthday

I also have some important personal projects and goals for the summer:

• Teach my brother AP English 11 and 12
• Review MechE so I feel more qualified in the fall and am up to date for work
• Learn more Japanese and go over everything I'm supposed to have learned in class
• Read my awesome motorcycle dynamics book
• Finally get my motorcycle license and start riding
• Work on fellowship applications
• Cut to final graduate school/program list and start those apps
• Regular gym attendance
• Relax with a netflix membership
• Practice bartending skills
• Spend time reading in a coffee shop or the equivalent
• Join a meetup group for Baltimore and meet up
• Go to Philly and do things with Ebs
• Attend the weekend outing for work
• Learn about investing and become financially secure

I'm sure there are more things to add to these lists. Perhaps I will come back and add to them later.

Tonight is the first time in weeks that I have been able to calm down, relax, and not worry about waking up for pressing meetings, deadlines, or finals. Tomorrow (Friday) my schedule is almost empty and bills have once again become the most important thing I need to take care of. The sudden relaxation is eerie.

The onset of finals season was when I really started to be grateful for front loading my Estimation independent study. We went over our preliminary partial semester schedule, but had everything in the bag by the second week of April.

Estimation Final Schedule: What We Did
Feb 3-9, Week 1: 1st week of February
Reading 2/4: Metamagical Themas by Douglas Hofstadter
2/4: Discuss Metamagical Themas, Finalize IS Goals
2/5: Estimation Problems
Reading 2/6: Order of Magnitude Physics - Chapter 1: Wetting Your Feet
2/6: Estimation Problems, Garbage in NYC

Feb 10-16: Week 2:
Reading 2/11: Order of Magnitude Physics - Chapter 2: Dimensional Analysis
Reading 2/11: The Buckingham Pi Theorem by E.S. Phinney, P. Goldreich
2/11: Follow Dimensional Analysis Chapter
Reading 2/12: Fundamentals of Fluid Mechanics by Munson, Young, and Okiishi - Buckingham Pi Excerpt
2/12: Atomic Bomb Calculation
2/13: Estimation Problems, Mental Math Discussion

Feb 17-23: Week 3:
Homework 2/18: Measure parts of your body, have string cut to common lengths, bring items to measure
2/18: Measurement and Estimation of Physical Properties of Common Objects
Homework: Find 10+ Constants and Conversions
2/19: Present Useful Constants and Conversions
Study Selected
2/22: Constants and Conversions Quiz, Barrels of Oil/Year

Feb 24-Mar 1: Week 4:
2/25: Estimation Practice, Quadratic Equation Discussion
Reading 2/26: Methods of Design-Oriented Analysis: The Quadratic Equation Revisited by R.D. Middlebrook
2/26: Practice Estimation, 747 Boeing Thrust
Reading 2/29: First Half of Ben Linder’s Thesis
2/29: Discuss Thesis, Units Quiz

Mar 2 – 8: Week 5:
3/3: Discussed Ben Linder’s Thesis
3/4: Poster and Portfolio 1 Discussion, Working Day
Possible lecture by Ben – Cancelled
3/7: Estimation Problems

Mar 9-15: Week 6:
3/11: Estimation Hour
3/12: Poster and Portfolio Due
Reading 3/14: Order of Magnitude Physics – Chapter 3: Materials I
3/14: Discuss Materials I

Mar 16-22: SPRING BREAK

Mar 23-29: Week 7:
3/24: Discuss and apply Materials I (estimations related to Materials I)
Reading 3/25: Materials II
3/28: Discuss Materials II
Reading 3/28: Selections on Fermi
3/28: Discuss Fermi Readings, Organizational Meeting

Mar 30-Apr 5: Week 8:
3/31: Estimation Marathon
4/1: Begin preparations for estimation booth
4/4: Zhenya Meeting, Estimation Practice, Portfolio Work

Apr 6-13: Week 9:
Portfolio Checkpoint 4/7: Have 3 problems in the portfolio
4/7: Estimation Marathon, continue preparations
4/8: Finalize Preparations for booth.
4/9: Portfolio 2 Due
4/11: The cake is not a lie. Eat some.

Expo: Setup and Run Estimation Booth

I baked a cake for the last day as an "oh yeah" follow up to an offhand Portal joke. Turns out adding pudding mix of a complimentary flavor to box mix cake makes it amazingly moist and overall a much better cake. Just remember, it doesn't rise as well with the pudding mixed in, so you probably want to use all of the batter even if you add a little water. The Estimation group will have one final presentation at Expo, Olin's period of professional presentations, in the form of a booth where we will estimate with people and reveal some tips and tricks. It will be fun.

Design for Manufacturing was the first thing I crossed off my list completely. I clocked some major hours for the class over the weekend and I'm surprisingly pleased with the final product. There were so many issues with my team and with what we were trying to do that I'm impressed we even have a final product, much less what we did end up turning in. Rock.

Biomechanics ended up with me putting in "just one more hour of work" on the paper for about twenty-four hours, pulling an all-nighter right before the presentation by myself on a group project (I did volunteer for that last hour out of the goodness of my heart), and coming up with the culmination of a semesters worth of work that ended on the side of good. I'm revisiting it for Expo.

As much as I was never enthusiastic about Biology, I've given the class a large amount of time and effort. Hopefully it showed, because I'm not sure how I feel about the final exam. Overall, I think I've been both rightfully called on when I've slacked and fairly harshly judged on some of the things I feel proud of (read: the first and last labs, my lab notebook, etc). I wonder how the people who cared even less and didn't put in near the effort will do. Meh.

I was nervous about the Japanese final exam. Last semester I knew I had at least a 95% in the rest of the class and I walked out of the final hoping I passed. I aced the class, but I didn't want to take my chances again. I officially finished my last final at 5:30p with my doubts somewhat assuaged. After the exam my entire Japanese class., including the professor and excluding two people who bailed and one who had to reschedule the final, went to Yama for dinner. I had chirashi for the first time and very much enjoyed it. Have I mentioned that having a small language class is awesome?

I've spent all of the intervening time catching up on email, allowing myself to be distracted guilt-free, and helping out my friends with some of the most random things. Tomorrow will be a brand new day -- one in which I won't need to breath work and abstain from sleep.

This past weekend was the Batizado for my Capoeira group, Capuraginga in Dallas. I got my first official cord (our ranking system uses cords rather than belts), which is dark green. For the first cord, you have to display a number of movements (kicks, dodges, and such), "balanco sequences" (sequence of movements that flow into each other), and recognition of particular rhythms on the berimbau (signature instrument of Capoeira). During the actual Batizado, you play a more advanced Capoerista and they essentially take you down. This is considered your "baptism" into the Capoeira school. Here is a video of my Batizado from yesterday (I start on the right):

I've been doing Capoeira for a little under a year now and I love it! It combines dance, acrobatics, fighting, music, language, and culture. I really couldn't ask for much more than that.

I am reading the book What Color is your Parachute? by Richard Bolles to help me figure out what I want to do with my career. It has a bunch of activities that are supposed to help you "get to know yourself." At times it feels kind of stupid, but they do reveal things about you that you may not have realized (it reminds me of the first couple design phases in User-Oriented Collaborative Design).

Ideal Jobs
I did the "Pick Your Ideal Job from Some List" exercise and wrote down any profession that I have ever honestly considered or think I might actually enjoy. Here is what I came up with:

• Electrical Engineer (no surprise here)
• Energy Efficiency Engineer (not really sure what this job would be, but I like the title)
• Professor
• Designer (of some sort...)
• Musician (more Cowbell! ...err, viola)
• Dancer
• Professional Blogger (working on it!)
• Forrester
• Veterinarian
  
• Entomologist (I love bugs!)
• Plumber (because I like fluids??)

This exercise honestly made me think about being a plumber for a full 30 seconds and that is actually pretty influential.

Who Am I?
I also did the "Who Am I?" exercise, which I found a little more insightful. You are supposed to write down 10 answers to the questions "Who Am I?" each on separate pieces of paper then add some reasoning to each answer and prioritize them. This is what I ended up with:

I am a...

1. Learner - I love gaining knowledge; whether from a teacher, a mentor, or my own experiences. I always want to be continually learning.
2. Creator - I like creating and building new things and I find the design process really enjoyable.
3. Big Picture Thinker - I always need to understand the significance and bigger picture of what I am doing.
   
4. Achiever - I like to know that I am working towards a goal and strive to do it really well.
   
5. Idealist - Although it often leads to disappointment, having an ideal vision keeps me motivated and going in the right direction.
6. Questioner - I always want to know why things happen/are one way or the other. I require good explanations with clear reasoning; otherwise, I am very dissatisfied.
7. Collaborator - I like brainstorming in groups and bouncing ideas off of other people; it yields better ideas/results and is usually a lot more fun.
8. Independent - I like being self-sufficient and doing some things on my own (while not contradicting the previous point).
9. Art Appreciator - I love things with artistic expression that have a lot of thought put into them; mostly because I'm horrible at art.
   
10. Supporter - I care about my friends and go out of my way to help them with whatever they need.

This tells me that I need to work in a creative team environment where I can come up with crazy ideas and actually pursue some of them. But, if I can't find the perfect job, I can always be a plumber...