| Hmm... |

I'm not to sure why the comments aren't working right now. I'll take a look at that when I have a little more time. Sorry guys.

| Work update |

Kind of a slow week at work this week. I've almost finished up the three projects I have been working on recently. The report I had to write is just waiting to be approved and the flownet I had to write is working (running), but isn't producing the results my buddy wanted to see, so he has to take a look at it more closely when he has time. One problem with the flownet I wrote is that I used Cd's of 1 for basically everything. Obviously this would never happen in reality and flownet is converging to some weird result. The problem is that in order for the Cd's to be at all accurate, we would need to do lab testing and experimentation to validate the Cd's (what I am doing for that third project on something else). The problem with that is that we are using flownet to model what we will hopefully see in the lab. It's going to be an iterative process probably.
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For those technical minds:
By the way, Cd is the "discharge coefficient." When a fluid is going through a pipe and is then forced into a smaller hole, the air flows over the edges of the hole in such a way as to decrease the area that is available for flow to go through. Since we know that mass flow equals density x velocity x area, the mass flow is affected by this decrease in area from the "regular" area of the hole. This "new" area is called the "effective area" and is equal to the "regular" area times the discharge coefficient.

A_eff = (A)Cd

It is difficult to know values of the Cd for specific holes without finding out experimentally how much that area changes.

That's mainly for dave.
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So the other project should be finished either today or tomorrow. My buddy is going to visit the aircraft engines division in cincinatti all this week, so he doesn't have time to get me going on anything knew.

| Trip to Tech... finally |

I was finally able to make it up to Virginia Tech this weekend to visit with my friends. It was a blast.

Friday night:

I had to stay late at work on Friday, so I didn't leave Greenville until 5:30. It took about 4 hours and 15 min. or so to get to Blacksburg. I got there to find everyone already in the apartment hanging out. I came in to a wonderful greeting and lots of laughs. After catching up a bit, Dave and I decide it is time for a cookie ingredients run like old times. We get brian and jason to come with us (brian driving) and head to food lion to pick up what we need to make them. We get there and pick up the stuff with some milk (goofing off in the store as usual) and pay. While we are waiting for Dave to find some green food coloring (he wandered off to find some/ask people for it), Jason starts playing with the grocery carts in the parking lot (running and then jumping on the back of it kinda thing). After Dave returns, he joins jason in the extravaganza. It ended with brian, dave, and I sitting in brian's car being mooned by jason. He was running around the car for some reason (oh yea, dave wouldnt let him in) and of course he moons us.

So we drive about 400 ft from food lion when Dave and I almost simultaneously realize that we forgot something. We forgot to get cookie crisp cereal. Yes, we turned around and went back to the store. We decided to have a cookie crisp cereal eating marathon. We'd each get our own box - first to finish the box wins. We bought more milk. Once we got back home, we scratched the cookie- making idea and went forward with the cookie crisp. 3 boxes of cookie crisp, 1 gallon of milk, and 12 minutes later, a winner emerged. Dave came in a close second (only 20 seconds after the winner) and Brian was in dead last.


The first-annual cookie crisp eating extravaganza was a success. Jason and Ali commentated the action. That was fun. We came away with a few battle scars - the roofs of our mouths are still raw from being scraped apart. I think it's safe to say that the three of us won't be touching that cereal for a while.

After the first-annual cookie crisp eating extravaganza was over, ali suggest playing some cranium. It was such a good idea that we drove her to AJ (her dorm) to go get the game. While we were there, we stopped in on Stu and Kiril so that I could see them a bit on my visit. We got back to the apartment and a few people had dispersed - andy went back home, derek, jason easter, and abby went next door to play some mafia. The rest of us (Ali, Dave, Brian, Jason, Wes, Paykon, Paykon's girlfriend [insert name here]) all played cranium. It was a great time. I think I wasn't laughing 8% of the time.

On top of that, I even learned a few things from the game:

• I don't know how to spell helicopter
  
• kiwis aren't orange
• the empire state building isn't in france

After the game (sometime after 3am I think), everyone dispersed and Wes, Derek, Jason, and I were left at the apartment. We all chilled a bit before getting some sleep. I offended Jason by not sleeping on his soiled linens and picking Wes's clean linens instead. I went to bed somwhere around 4:30am.

Saturday:

I woke up at 9:00am to get my things together to go and play some racquetball with Dave. Yes, it was extremely hard to get up, but I couldn't let the day go to waste by sleeping. I picked Dave up and we went to the new sports store in the University Mall to see if they had any squash racquets, balls, and some goggles (mine are somewhat broken). They had none of the above, so we headed to play. We played 5 games or so and decided to grab some lunch at owens. At owens, we ran into Ali and Lindsey, so we got to eat lunch with them (roof of my mouth hurting almost too much to eat). Dave and I headed back to the apartment to shower. Afterwards, we called brian and john to come over to plan our schedules for next semester. That quickly turned into an Age of Empires III game slaughter. Around 4:35, we all decided to catch the 4:40 movie of V for Vendetta playing in Christiansburg. Once again I complained of now being able to get there in time, and once again I was proven wrong by walking in the theatre at the last preview. The movie was good.

We went to dinner at Mike's Grill afterwards (this was just Wes, Dave, Jason, Derek, Brian, and I at the movie and dinner). We had a nice dinner and then returned to the apartment. I talked to Amanda for a bit and then Jason Easter, Abby, Wes, Derek, and I played Scene-It: Music Edition. After that, more Age III. We played until it was about 12:30. After that, Jason and I went for our night jog that we used to do freshman year. We left at 12:30 and got back at 2 am? I can hardly jog more than 20 min. I have no idea how we jogged for an hour and a half. After that, we came back in and ate chocolate cake with derek until it was bed time. I think it was sometime after 3am.

Sunday:

I woke up at 8:45am on my own without jason's alarm (which was set for 9am). That disturbs me. Anyways, I ate some breakfast, gathered my things and headed back to SC. Of course I managed to leave my work shoes at Tech.

Sorry for the long post - mainly for my own memory-sake.

What an awesome weekend.

| Living now |
currently playing: Third Eye Blind - Motorcycle Drive By


If you haven't heard this song, you're really missing out.

My new year's resolution this year was to live more in the present. I've always been so focused and concerned about the future that I often miss out on what's important at the moment. I need to slow down. I always can't wait and I always look forward to what's coming up that I don't appreciate what's going on now. It's always "things will be better when...", "I can't wait until...", "I'm so tired of..." - in reality, this is awesome.

I'm often too driven by the future.

| Craziness |

The weather has been absolutely gorgeous down here the past few weeks. I've started going jogging at the park with Venkat right after we play squash. We've made it sort of a routine to go play squash right after work and then head to the park for a cool-down jog. We're hoping that jog turns into a better workout, but I need to build up to that. It's been a while since I've run every day.

So Friday night we had gone to play squash. While we were playing, I accidentally swung my racquet right into Venkat's face? The racquet sliced his eyebrow up. We called the YMCA staff to help clean the blood up and stuff and then had to fill out an accident report thingy. After that, I decided that we should take a trip to the ER because the cut looked pretty bad and I thought he might need some stitches. We were there for 3 and a half hours. That was how I spent my Friday night - waiting for Venkat to get his 3 stitches in his eyebrow. Now he knows why I always ask him to wear goggles. Unfortunately he wasn't this time. I think he learned his lesson.

This hasn't stopped our squash playing. Of course we will be playing again tomorrow.

I hope everyone's spring break was excellent. I wish I had one.

| Work update |
currently playing: nothing...


Work is going very well. My buddy decided to put me in charge of a "very, very difficult" project. I have to make a Flownet model for a brand-new design that will be used for testing in a couple months. In the past, all of the work I have been doing has been with Flownet models that have already been developed and validated and such. For this, I have to do some crazy research on the drawings for this "test rig" and then design how the flow will work through my program. I can't disclose the names of anything unfortunately, but so far it's pretty exciting that I've been given this responsibility - it's something they will use for a long time after I leave. I like to know that I am making a lasting contribution. The reason why this is so "difficult" (according to my buddy) is because flownet is a 1-dimensional flow analysis program. Usually the flow doesn't come from two different sources - it usually just follows one big path through the combustor. In this "test rig" it actually comes from two different places and we are going to need to allow for this in the program. I'm not really sure how that's going to be done yet, but that's one of the major challenges. One of the other major challenges is that there is a big time constraint on this.

Along with that project, I have two more that I am working on. I am finishing writing the technical paper (documentation) for my last project. It's about 16 pages so far. It's kinda scary that the company will have this paper of mine for years. People will be going to it and using it as a source for other proects. I'm also working on this other project that I can't talk about. haha. Kinda sucks, but if you ask me while I'm talking to you, I can give more details (I'm sure you don't particularly care anyways).