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Ubiquitous paradigm shift; AKA: Prom

Ubiquitous paradigm shift is defined as a “constantly encountered” shift in “an outstandingly clear or typical example or archetype.” In other words, I had to change my expectations of Prom. This in fact, actually ended up benefiting me. But to completely understand the story, one must begin at the beginning.

I decide that I was going to prom several months ago. The decision stemmed from the fact that A) I had never been to a school dance before; and B) 5 years down the road, prom would have been the think that I would have liked to have gone too. I won’t retell the effort it took to actually find a date to prom. However, I will say that prom was journey, not a destination. For the record, my dates name was Lia DiBiase. We both go to Seattle Academy. There is no romantic interest. We had dinner with Celeste, Alex, Paige, Thomas, Natalie, and Joey (who attends O’Dea) at Thai Kitchen on Queen Anne. Then we proceeded to the Lake Union Cafe for the actually prom event. I would say that over half the population was drunk before they even arrived. There were no alcoholic beverages on the premise…at least that I was aware of, but I do know of several parties that occurred afterwards where such beverages might have been present. I wouldn’t know for sure as dropped my date off at a quarter to one and returned home to work on the Mexico Slide show.

Prom Picture…more to come soon!

Chorus: Well it’s been a long, been a long, been a long, been a long day!

Whew! What a weekend. On Saturday I had the pleasure of waking up at 7am in the morning to film my latest movie, Orion. It’s actually a music video and it’s going to be awesome. Anyways, I filmed until about 5 and then I had to run up to Lynnwood to drop of some equipment. This, and traffic, unfortunately, caused be to be late to the closing night of my musical. I did arrive before the curtain went up, but not before causing mass panic and some chaos.

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying was a smashing success, to say the least. Quinn remarked, “Quality. It’s worth seeing if you didn’t see it tonight. Lots of good acting and overall a good production. It’s long, but not boring.” Duane remarked that he was “impressed with the high school production.  Better than the drama program was in my high school.” The play was rather long, running in just under three hours. I also cannot give enough praise to the entire cast. Being someone who likes to do whatever I activity I’m engaged in to the best of my ability, I’m often in the company of persons who don’t share that same feeling. This was not the case for this musical. Everybody had something very important invested in this production and everybody wanted the production to succeed…no pun intended. But I digress. Closing night was wonderful. We had a great cast party and later went to IHOP for about an hour. I got back home at 12:30ish and watched some Star Trek until 3am. Gotta’ love the Trek!

On Sunday, I had the esteemed pleasure to give the focus at The Edge. This story actually goes back to Tuesday night. I came home from Dress Rehearsal at about 10 and shortly after I walked in the door, Jeff Towne called me up and asked me to do the focus. I was pretty ecstatic at the time, although I’m not sure if I conveyed that adequately over the phone. Back to Sunday though. I woke up at 1pm and worked on my focus for the rest of the afternoon pretty much.

Monday was a pretty non-eventful.

That brings me to today. I woke up this morning at 6 to help out at the Cascade Land Conservancy. The CLC was having their annual awards banquet at the Westin Hotel in Downtown Seattle and they needed some AV help. I was more than happy to oblige, especially if it meant free food…which it did. Always a sucker for free food. Alec Turnbull was there as well as Nora Johnson. Nora is actually interning CLC for her Senior Project. Alec is interning at a travel agency somewhere Downtown. If you didn’t know, I’m interning at the UW. I should make a Senior Intern page sometime.

The event lasted until about 9am. In addition to breakfast, I also received a bag of coffee from Starbucks, a CLC hat, and, my personal favorite, a name tag with my name on it. The latter part of the morning was filled with more working graduation announcements. This afternoon I went to the Maxillofacialist. For those of you who don’t know what a Maxillofacialist is, they’re the ones responsible for pulling wisdom teeth. Fun stuff. I’m tentatively scscheduled to have surgery on June 10th at 9am.

Daniel Busyhead wanted me to mention him, so now I am. That also reminds me about this so called “Backwards day.” It’s the one where you give an answer to someone they don’t like and then they say, “But today is backwards day so everything you say is just the opposite.” Well, I have news for you. Backwards day cannot logically exist. If one claims that it is backwards day, and it were truly backwards day, that claiming that it was backwards day actually means that it’s not backwards day. If that doesn’t make any sense…well…it shouldn’t make any sense really.

And finally, for those who are wondering what the hell the title of this blog means; it’s a line from one of the songs in How to.

Over the musical hump

I decided to try and not combine blog topics anymore. Today is the 3rd of 4 productions of How to. Last night was a tremendous success. The house was almost packed and it should be packed both tonight and tomorrow night. During “Brother Hood of Man,” the audience really got into the groove and we performed an encore right then and there. Everybody was pretty damn estatic…so was I come to think about it. Tonight should be even better and tomorrow night should just blow everything away.

Senior Project: Day 11

I’ve been working on some finishing touches to the mechanical design of R2. That includes creating a battery rack to house to the two batteries. One battery provides power to the onboard computer (6 volts). They other battery provides power to the linear actuators that control the steering, accelerating, and braking systems (12 volts). It’s not exactly electrical engineering, it’s more mechanical engineering, but that’s why I like EE: it combines Computer Sciences and Mechanical Engineering, plus some other stuff into a nice little bundle of joy. Woo-hoo!

Senior Project: Day 9 & 10 / Lights, Curtain, Action!

I went into the UW on Saturday after rehersals to work on R2 for a few hours. When I got there, Andy and David were outside playing it. Unfortunatly, just before I had arrived, one of the power relays fried and had to be replaced. I replaced the relay and then called it a day.

Today I’ve been working on finishing up the final safety relays. The next task will be to supply 12volts to the GPS unit. And then hopefully I can start writting code tomorrow.

We start our short four day run of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying today. The show runs the next four days @ 7pm. Tickets for today and tomorrow are not quite sold out yet, so there is still time to come!!

Senior Project: Day 7 & 8

On Thursday I completly finished with the guidence computer. It required rebuilding part of the power unit, but it worked…and it worked on the first attempt…something rare in my usual line of business. Anyways, we plugged the battery in a everything worked just fine. It was rather errie because the computer didn’t make any noise until the floppy check. I also started working on the safety restraints.

Today I worked on finishing up the safety restraints. I also designed two custom fabricate brackets for some tether restraints. Before I left, I was able to wire all of the safety restraints. Tomorrow we plan on running R2 around the lot outside Sieg.

Cinco de Mayo already? / Senior Project: Day 6

*Sigh*, it’s the 5th of May and the year is getting close to be half over…but it feels like it just started. I had a dentist appointment today. Teeth look nice and clean, no cavities; but the wisdom teeth gotta go! So I’m going to schedule an appointment and get that taken care of. How to continues and we started Tech Rehearsals today. ONLY ONE WEEK ‘TILL OPENING NIGHT!! I would highly suggest you get tickets now as seats fill up fast in our small theater. I hope to have pictures from rehearsals up soon!

The Senior Project continues. R2 is getting closer to running status. I finished with the CPU box and began installing some safety cutoff buttons. I also have to create and install some safety restraints/cutoff ropes. I hope to have pictures of my project up soon as well.

Senior Project: Day 5

I started building the next compent of the power unit. It’s a small circuit that reboots the system. Then I moved on to wiring some cables for the visual/audible alert system. That should be installed by Thursday. The R2 should be up and running by Friday. (Re)Becca A. and Caitlin S. stopped by today. They had a break and decided to wonder on over.

Senior Project: Day 4

I finished building the power supply unit Friday. The UW Engineering Open House was also on Friday, so for the rest of my time, I pretty much just explained what different robots did and how they work. It was pretty fun. I also get free food which is also a major plus.

Time:
Today: 5 hrs
This week: 15 hrs 
Total: 
15 hrs

Dead Panic / Senior Project: Day 3

So prom is pretty much just 36 hours away…and that has put me into a dead panic. I really have no reason to be in a panic…maybe I’m just excited. Hmm…I’ll have to ponder that one for a little while. In any event, work on the Mexico 2004 slide show continues and it is lookin’ good…in fact, it’s looking excellent! This has to be one of the best mexico videos ever!

Today, er, yesterday (Thursday), I started out by tapping the gas tank on robot 2 and installing a drain. I then reasseblembeled the engine and put some screws into the drive shaft to hold the brake and the gear in place. Then I began work on a new power supply unit. That was acutally really fun. I got to create my own layout and drill some aluminium to mount the 4 power control units and 4 capacitors to. I will probably spend another 2 or 3 hours on that project tomorrow.

Time:
Today: 5 hrs
This week: 10 hrs 
Total: 
10 hrs