Hurting, Tired, and Busy

I really need to go to bed soon. I was up until late Wednesday night, in part due to the fact that Nik and a few others came in and started playing Halo at 1:30. In all fairness, he asked if I minded, and I said no. I really didn’t think they,d still be going at 3, though. I went to bed a few minutes after 3, and I guess they quit about 3:40. None of them had classes until after 11, though. (My first class Thurs is at 9:45, not terribly early, but enough that 3 is a bit late.)

Then last night, I went out to Café Procrastiné about 10:40, and they were decorating the lounge. Well, Nick Zubach was, and maybe one other person. So I helped, and we quit decorating at 12:30, or so. We had Icicle lights all the way arround the room, at the top, and colored lights in various places. There is a tree, all decorated, and the mantle has garland arround it, as well as more lights. There’s even a train set arround the tree. After we finished, there were a few of us out in the lounge, just talking. The movie White Christmas was played, but by the middle of the movie, just Ryan and I were left. At 3, I decided that I was going to bed, and wasn’t going to bother the finish the movie.

After we decorated, while we were talking, several lights were starting to fall down. The duct tape just wasn’t enough, I guess. At one point, I had just turned the train on for one trip arround the track, adn then walked across the room to re-tape some lights. I heard the train get caught, and went back that way. I chose to go over the back of the couch. As near as I can tell, I put my foot on the top of the back, and pushed off, and my foot slipped back down towards the cushions. At any rate, I was going forward, and my foot was still on the top of the couch. I fell, and stopped myself with my arm. I was a bit sore after that. 😉 Actually, my arm still feels kinda funny. I don’t really think anything is wrong, but I have an appointment Monday at the health center, and I’ll have someone look at it if it still feels wierd. Otherwise, I’ll cancel. It kinda feels like a bit of growing pain, or something. I feel it ont he inside of my arm, though, and when I lift something with my palm up, I can really feel it. We’ll see how it goes.

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Starting at 1:00 tomorrow, and lasting til about 4ish, is the Design competition. My team is now in decent shape, we finished the device about 5:30 tonight. I don’t remember if I’ve blogged about the competition yet, so I’ll run over it briefly.

As part of my Intro to Engineering class, we have this competition. You are given limited parts, and you have to construct a device that will collect whiffle balls from a competiton arena. There will be four devices in the arena, at the same time, competing for the same balls. There are four balls the size of a softball, worth 10 points each, 8 balls the size of a baseball, worth 5 points, and 50 balls, worth 2 points each, the size of a golf ball. There is a 2 minute time limit. There are 4 prizes the easiest to explain are: one for most points, one for most ingenious. YOu have the option to stop collecting balls at any time, and so there is a prize for the most points per total time collecting. So if you aren’t going to get any more balls, you may as well quit, so you don’t run up your time.

As we built this, we were charged fake money for supplies. You got a basic kit, and then had the option to purchase additional supplies. There is no spending limit, and you have nfinite money to spend, but the fourth prize is for the most points per dollar spent. To my knowledge, very few people built their devices with an eye on this prize.

The competition is a pretty big event. Besides all teh freshman engineers, there will be a lot of parents, and they invite prospective students out too. I had the option of having invitations sent to some of my high school teachers, and sent ones to Mrs. Collins and Mrs. McAndie. I doubt either will come, but I thought they might be interested. Mrs. McAndie told my Dad a few weeks ago that she won’t be coming.

Here is what my device looks like:

We have a paddle wheel to scoop up the balls. This is a design shared with about 20 other devices. And to my knowledge, all of us thought we were the only ones that thought of a paddle wheel.

I have to show up at noon tomorrow, and we find out the order of competition at 12:30. I’ll try to take a few pictures, but we’ll see.

Until later

–Nathan

3 thoughts on “Hurting, Tired, and Busy

  1. Indeed, the competition itself went well. Our device had a small malfunction, and so things weren’t so good for us. I’ll try and post in the next few days about it, during some sort of study break–it’s dead week, now, and everything is due by Fri!

  2. Since I forgot to blog about it, my arm felt fine by Sunday, so I canceled the appt. I think the reason I was thinking it was so bad was that I hurt it about 2ish in the morning, adn I woke up ‘the next day’ at 9, and it still hurt. After all, it had been hurting for a day, so it must be a bit serious. 🙂

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