Sorry...

Hey guys sorry for not being on here as much as I should be. Right now let me summarize the past couple of weeks. Had a lab report which about killed me last time I talked to you. The test did not go well but hey that's old news. For Thanksgiving weekend I wanted to knock some things off my to-do list for the rest of the quarter. Here it was. Me 570 HW - did it at home Friday and at apt Sunday Nuk 606 HW - did it at home Friday Nuk 606 Extra Credit - did it at home Friday Grading Job - did it at home Friday, got a whole new batch now due Wednesday ME 570 Lab Report - last one, slaved over it until 2 AM last night. ME 570 Lab Oral (Design Project) Presentation - this is complete crap. I spent 4 hours on this tonight, probably 2 more than I should have. Hopefully I will be competent enough to pull an 80 percent on this one Nuk 606 CHPPRep - easy stuff did it Friday at home ME 563 Group Design Project - yeah haven't done much on this but it is due Thursday so hopefully the 4 of us can pull it together in time ENGRAPH 410 Drawing Project - 8 detail parts of a lamp, I've got 7 built. No working drawings or assembly yet...I'm seriously worried that I will not be able to get this done correctly or with enough detail to suit my professor. Argh! On the bright side, other than the grading I do every week I only have to give my lab presentation tomorrow night (it is done though) and finish up my 2 last projects for the quarter by Thursday. Of course I also have a final exam on Thursday too, but the project is worth 4 times as much as the in-class final. In conclusion, mechanical engineering school sucks. I cannot wait for Thursday after turning in my 2 projects and taking my final that afternoon...I'll be basically free until finals which shouldn't be too rough this time around. Wish me good luck and sanity! BTW, Thanksgiving break was very great. Very relaxing. I should have done a little more work, but I love to procrastinate on these projects. And it was a very relaxing time...get to spend more time with Kelley starting Sunday until I leave for Chicago. More details later on my Xmas plans...but anyways, I cannot wait to spend two more weeks with her. God, it's getting so hard every time we say goodbye whether it is for 2 weeks or a week or a couple days. 7/7/07, you cannot come with more haste than I want :-) Oh and one more rant...law school applications, will I ever get them done? I'll probably interview for Northwestern before I submit my application...oh well. And one more thing. MP3 player, so cool!

Screw Lab

This sucks. I just wanted to write. I am going to bed just about now and I just finished my lab report at 6:35 AM. Ugh! And I haven't even studied for tomorrow's midterm yet. I'll be getting some limited ZZZ's before waking up to cram and go to class and lab for my hell day. Wish me luck. I even started this lab report early and yet still it takes me FOREVER. 2 PM to 6 AM with not much for breaks...I need sleep. This ME bullcrap is so bad sometimes...oh well. At least I did not learn anything at all from doing this lab report. Hope everyone has a great Tuesday...hopefully I'll make it through the midterm and final lab of the quarter unscathed.
-DF
PS - I will be waking up to go to class around this time every day next quarter. How utterly absurd 7:30 AM class is.

The Week That Was...

Welcome back. I will have to run through things quickly as I do not quite remember details so well and it has been a while since I talked on here. The past week and a half went well. The Indy tip was fabulous...a great time and some good HS band music. Our alma mater did not make semifinals (top 30-34 out of 95 bands) but oh well they are not as good as they used to be. Went and saw "The Incredibles" that weekend too, it is great. Go see it if you have not because it is actually worth that high cost for a ticket. The City Center Mall there in Indy was fun to walk around...Kelley's shopaholic father and grandparents walked out of ONE store on two days combined with 12 bags of stuff...big bags. Even I bought wine glasses for Kelley at that store. The only other purchase I made was an Indy Hard Rock Cafe bear. I now have 12, 10 of which I went to in person. Las Vegas (one I did not get in person), Paris, London, Kuala Lumpur, Memphis, Washington DC, Denver (the other not in person), Cleveland, Chicago, Indianapolis, Orlando, and Berlin. Quite a spread of worldwide cities...so pissed the one in Nassau in the Bahamas was boarded up when we went on the cruise. Oh well. Anyways, off on two tangents now.
1. If I want another HRC bear form the Bahamas...I guess I'll just have to go back on another cruise :-) And speaking of, I guess the current plan is to go right after my graduation again this summer. Kelley is going to run with me around the world again but it is so much fun! And we are considering a spring break trip to Boston, somewhere I have never seen.
2. I mentioned those wine glasses...well they are the tip of the iceberg. Kelley and I now have a complete starter bar basically and have been mxing our own drinks some nights. It is a blast. Anyways, we have like5 different types of glasses for different liquors (wine, champagne, beer, hurricane, etc). and about 13-14 bottles of good hard liquor. If only my Christian group could see me now. ;-)
So anyways back to the story. So finals at grand band nationals was amazing, as the bands are so big and the concepts so cool. Then we drove back to Columbus, and I was struggling the last 30 minutes of the trip but we all made it back OK. Then Kelley and I did not do much on Sunday but we relaxed and had a lot of alone time. She finally made her way home Monday and I had another stinky lab report to crank out in a day. I wonder why I always wait until the day before it is due to crank those out? It sucks...but I get it done anyways. So then the normal humdrum of classes this past week. I had to hold office hours for the class I grade papers for since there was some bitching or questioning over my grading of their misterm exam. We got it all cleared up though and it was better than I expected initially. I am doing so well in all of my classes, definitely have gotten an A on every midterm so far and have a 4. at this later point in our quarter. I could still mess it up really badly though...but it's better than usual even for me at this point. So I'm not worried about my bad work habits...I am organized enough to get everything done. Now if I could just fit in some guitar practice and law school application paperwork...oh wait I remember I played Halo 2 all week. OK maybe not all week, but definitely Wednesday and Thursday night on Xbox Live. It is so much fun. But anyways, classes are moving out of midterms and going into final projects and finals...I actually have 3 projects to muster this quarter. I'll explain more in later entires, but it is not all that bad.
So Friday I have this information session job interview with a relatively unknown company. Turns out they are a stupid pyramid scheme and I would be the middle link between the painters (hard labor) and the masterminds. Umm no thanks...although I would be interested in painting and being the low man on the totem pole. They earn 10 dollars per hour just like I would as their crew leader. We'll see as I would love to stay in Columbus for the summer but I'm not turning down Prosonic if they have the best offer on the table again. Kelley would love to move in with me for two months in the summer too...but I do not know how that would fly with my roomies even though she would pay her way. And don't even get me started on parents and landlords...ugh! At least in the summer work generally doesn;t chase me home to ruin my fun time :-)
Kelley came up on Friday and we had a sort of date. It turned out to be us going out to the closest Nextel store (in Newark, a damn hour away from OSU!...no wonder my phone roams here) to get our phones exchanged since they were broken. So now it works again...let's hope it stays that way. We had dinner in Newark at Olive Garden and I got the usual Tour of Italy with a frozen Tiramisu as a dinner drink/dessert. So good. Then we went home for a little while and then later went to see the late showing of Friday Night Lights. Eh, not so good...kind of slow and pretty predictable. Then we came back home and had a LONG sleep to make up for all the time we lose in sleep over the weeks at school. Speaking of, she's done with her quarter this week basically...how lucky!
Kelley left Saturday (boo...I hate that we have to leave each other, only 940-some days until it will be done) and Shep showed up within a half hour of that. We watched the first half of the OSU game (which of course they lost to Purdue and they earned that loss) before going to my Christian group's Halo 2 launch party. This wa snot advertised well at all and turned out to be only about 16 guys. Shep squeaked out wins over the best Chi guys all night so I guess his group is slightly better than our Chi Alpha group...but I suspected that. I've gotten a lot better as well which makes it a lot more fun. I love that game. But I'm not addicted like some of my friends already are. I guess I have a life or schoolwork or something like that. Today (well yesterday by now) Tom Shep and I played in the GPT for Chicago in Columbus. We wanted rating points to qualify for the pro tour that way, we wanted and needed experience playing this set together, and we wanted to win another bye in the Grand Prix in December (we had one on rating but if you win a trial you get 2). Well we won the whole thing to keep a long story short, and it is the first thing I have won since the Darksteel team pre-release event. Magic has taken a huge backseat over this season, but winter quarter will have a few more intriguing tournaments thanks to my favrotie formats being in season (Team Limited and Extended). Then I came home and worked on stuff. Another lab report but this one got started on Sunday...I just did hardly anything so it's like I'm starting on Monday again. At leas tI have the grading done and all I have to worry about other than this lab report is the my final midterm exam I have on Tuesday right before lab. Should be easy but I need a review. So it's back to the old grindstone. Have a good one!

Halo 2

You know I wasn't going to play Halo 2...and then we decided to fix the problem with our box not being able to connect to Xbox Live. Then I got to play with people from around the world. Can you say new addiction? Wow it is so cool...anyways, I'll update this for real tomorrow.

First New Entry

Have not figured out if I am backing up my entries this time on diary X or just on my own computer. I'll probably just plug it all into a big word document and keep them that way for reposting in case I lose everything again. Let me just describe how much that sucks! Screw the hackers! So anyways...
Life is OK in my world right now. Things would be going perfect if I could only get my butt in gear on these law school applications and personal statements. Basically I think I am going to write a special closing paragraph for each school to put on the personal statement so that it personalizes each one a little bit. Of course I have to write said personal statement first. We had a law school fair today and ALL 8 of the schools I am considering applying to were there. That was so cool getting to talk to admissions officers from each school all at one time. For those interested, the definitely applying to list is U of Chicago, Northwestern, Ohio State, and Michigan. I will probably apply to 2 of the following 4 as well: Notre Dame, Case Western, Indiana, and Cincinnati. In other words I will be spending my next 3 years in Chicago, Indiana, or a big city in Ohio. Wish me luck and any advice is appreciated!
Since I last talked to you my Buckeyes have ruined and then reclaimed some joy in their football season. Dropping to 0-3 in the Big Ten was rough, but our play merited just that. I went to the Iowa game and visited family so that was fun going with dad despite the Bucks getting killed 33-7. Got to see us play Indiana and Penn State though and we look fundamentally better. We shall see with road tests at a pissed off Michigan State this weekend and a slumping Purdue next weekend. I think we will get the big win number 6 this week, but not by much as MSU is playing sharp. Only 2 and a half weeks till THE MICHIGAN GAME yay!
The election had some surprises for me. I voted for Bush and I am very happy he won the election as he earned a shot to fix his problems in office in my opinion. Not to mention how awful Kerry was as a presidential candidate...can we get Edwards or even Howard Dean please? My two states Iowa and Ohio ended up being the critical states come election night, and the lines outside our Columbus franklin county polling places had the feel of a 2000 florida recount disaster written all over it. But in the end Ohio did elect Bush and considering the 3 million margin in popular vote he deserves the job. gore at least had a legitimate claim to fight 4 years ago, Kerry just lost in every sense. And today he made a classy exit without draggin the country in the dumps again. We will see if Bush can reunite the country and regain respect in the world...it will be tough. Also Issue 1 passed 2-to-1 to ban gay marriage in Ohio. While I am happy to see our state has a lot of people with the same moral values and beliefs as myself, I feel the bill was too strongly worded and I am stunned it passed. I, as a dead-red conservative republican, voted against this bill. Based on the percentages alone, 20-25 percent of the voters in Ohio voted to ban gay marriage and put Kerry into office, and that seems like an odd couple of decisions. Oh well at least it is over and while I'm happy Bush won, I really hope he can become a better president in the next 4 years.
Life at school is well. My grades are better than usual, but I do have a pretty easy schedule barring my one lab class which is the toughest ME department has to offer I hear in undergrad anyways. I could get a 4. for the first time in a few quarters and after last quarter's mess, I'd love to get it back on track. I still stress out over getting everything done, but at least I seem to be getting results for hard work and going to class. We shall see as I have 3 projects this quarter which just started up and will be occupying my time. As for extracurriculars, I really have plugged into Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship more than the last two years while pretty much neglecting everything else. I occasionally make it to a Block O or NSCS meeting, but I can barely call myself active in those.
Got a random email today from a Columbus businessman who owns his own company and wants interns for next summer from OSU. I'm going to go see what it entails in an info session but I'm not too worried about it because I do have my Prosonic job to take again if I want it. This one pays about 75 dollars more per week than Prosonic so it seems worth looking into. I will keep this updated to see if this pans out. I love random internship opportunities OSU sends us.
Things with Kelley are so good right now. I feel bad because I called her tonight after she went to sleep but I did not know that because she was home and had no AOL message up. I get to see her tomorrow and all weekend as we are vacationing in Indy for HS Band Nationals. We'll see if Marietta can pull a miracle semifinals berth out of a broken season. I doubt it but we'll see. Kelley has went off birth control to try and get her weight down to use the patch and get ready for the wedding, but it will be slow. She is considering a tummy tuck I guess but she has not talked to me about it much in a while. I guess I understand if she wants to do it but I worry about any surgery complications. I just want to spend 50-60-hell 80 more years with Kelley (as long as we both shall live) and don't want to lose her to something silly. I'm sure it is safe but then there are the disadvantages like going out to eat will suck. In the end I understand because I am too overweight as well and cannot get my metabolism to make it up right now...I wish I could get things back on track myself. That's another project though.
My mom got in a car wreck last weekend and is just now stabilizing emotionally and still hurting physically. She calls me every night just to hear my voice, so I know this is tearing her up inside. Pray for her healing and easy settlement with insurance. At least that finally started working today as she is driving a 2005 Cadillac Deville for a couple of days until they can get her a smaller rental car. Speaking of car wrecks, one of the approximately 50-55 students in all my ME classes died in a car wreck this weekend. I do not see any open lamentations or anything but I am sure his closer friends will miss him and it sucks to lose one of our classmates. I'm just happy I did not lose my mom or anything like that.
Looking forward to Christmas break already as classes are kind of winding into projects or boring stuff leading into finals in 4 weeks. I get to spend some time with Kelley and I cannot wait. We are seeing each other a lot now that HS band season is wrapping up. She has a sex drive again (something she lost on depo) and that is cool...but without birth control it means we have to be very careful. I know that;s TMI already so I'll leave it at that :-)
I finished Stephen King's Dark Tower book 6 today and am starting book 7. The final book in the series is very long, and I cannot wait to get into it. I even got Kelley to read the series and so it is a great read for anyone who likes an epic story. It's a mix of horror, western, and lord of the rings. I played some Magic in the State Championship a couple weeks ago and then at the Pro Tour in Columbus (side events) last weekend. That was cool as I had never seen a pro tour and my goal is to play on one before I retire from the game. Tom won states and was the first of my friends to Q for the tour and specifically for the Columbus one. He lost horribly though. ChrisP is Q'd for the next PT in Japan and he is making the trip so that's cool. The next PT is a team event in Atlanta and hopefully Tom, Shep and I can break through to the PT this year. Part of that will be doing well at Grand Prix Chicago in December, another great fun road trip. Of course I will not be wasting the trip as I plan to visit Northwestern and Chicago Law Schools on that weekend as well and head to Iowa for a week of christmas after the GP ends on Sunday. Speaking of Iowa, it was so cool to see CJ play soccer for her school as I really have no way to get out there and see the kids play in their school sports normally.
Note to self: if December rolls around I don't know the guitar...it's time to buckle down and use my break wisely. Especially after I get done with law school applications, then I'll have less to do and worry about.
I've written more than enough for now. Please let me know how you are doing out there! Have a good weekend as I will not update this again until Sunday after we get back from Indy.