ways I have seen vectors denoted in papers and books since coming to grad school

• italic
• bold italic
• italic with over-arrow
• italic with under-arrow
• italic with over-harpoon
• italic with overbar
• italic with underbar
• italic with under-tilde

Whose hallway looks more fun?

Operations Research and Information Engineering: they research how to make office workers more productive and efficient and stuff--*hurk*. I think the best word for this hallway is "edifice."

Computer Science: Tightly closed, nearly-unmarked doors behind which grad students and profs alike burn LCD tans into their skin.

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering: Machines and mechanisms on display--and look, there are even some people!

Astronomy and Space Sciences: These guys send robots to other planets, and it sure shows!

Saturday night roomie visits

Me: Zzz*snort* Huh–euh–wha…? [Sits up violently] Hello?
Housemate: Heyyyyyyy. [Feeling his way along the wall]
Me: Uh… [rubs eyes] You all right, man?
Housemate: Yeah.
Me: Um, what’s up?
Housemate: I can’t find the stop sign. [Shuffles forward, slaps at wall]
Me: What.
Housemate: The stop sign? I can’t find it.
Me: Oh-kay. Are you drunk?
Housemate: Yes!
Me: [Stumbles out from under covers] Oh-kay. That explains things. [Turns on lights]
Housemate: Oh! This is the wrong room!
Me: Uhm, yeah.
Housemate: Whoops. Sorry for scaring you. [Sticks hand out]
Me: Oh, you just startled me is all. Uh… [shakes hand]
Housemate: Okay, goodnight!
Me: Maybe you should drink some water or something.
Housemate: Good idea. Bye! [Waves]

meteorite thin sections

1. 

   PCA82506

2. 

   PCA82506

3. 

   EETA79001

4. 

   ALHA78040

off the top layer

1. Time-Varying Inertia for Attitude Control
2. AIAA Call for Papers
3. taughannock falls state park summer concert series
4. magnetic field of a magnetized cylinder
5. ma = Fpin + Fcoil + Fcoil, meissner
6. Sine sweep
7. 2 Jul 08
8. Concise?
9. X Transfer Functions, Unwindowed Data
10. the advanced mirror image method
11. exhaust velocity
12. Hamilton’s Equations
13. FFT, 6.0065 cm
14. 0972 counts
15. (but bad averaging)
16. Glue something here to force flashlight into proper orientation

events on my mind

1. Squash ladder match #3
2. Binghamton Airshow
3. Ithacafest
4. Williams Reunions
5. AIAA Guidance, Navigation, and Control Conference and Exhibit
6. Jonathan Coulton concert in New York, NY
7. Spore Creature Creator Trial release

semester’s over now

1. Northern Water Snakes
2. Enemy at the Gates
3. Robert Downey, Jr.
4. Book sale
5. Modeling clay
6. Window envelopes
7. Scrambled eggs
8. Nimbus clouds
9. Callithump
10. Twelve-hour airplane flights
11. Five hundred dollars
12. Science fiction

Castle Aagh

1. Saturday: South Central Group Commanders’ Call for five hours
2. Monday: grade 62 problem sets
3. Tuesday: come up with new problem sets
4. Tuesday: fill in aerospace CAP activity
5. Wednesday: hold TA office hours, probably fielding complaints about problem set grades
6. Wednesday: Doctor’s appointment x2
7. Wednesday: Need to go buy more food
8. Wednesday: My turn to make dinner
9. Thursday: Problem set on which I am totally stuck is due
10. Thursday: Give SiGMA lecture
11. Thursday: Assign problem sets which I made up
12. Friday: Give group presentation on how little research I have done

no, I haven’t

1. Rockets
2. Hamburgers
3. Paper clips
4. Staplers
5. Propane gas
6. Cheese
7. Oblate planets

why I hate, despise, detest, and loathe LabView

1. Inability to write descriptive comments!
2. Inability to name variables!!!
3. Nonlinear, graphical programming interface:
   1. Messy, horribly hard-to-follow programs!  Wires everywhere!
   2. Extreme difficulty to insert new commands into an established program without ruining the organization structure!!
   3. Frakking impossible to debug!!!!!
   4. Computer processors operate linearly anyway–LABVIEW IS LYING!!!
4. Sequence structures–the most cumbersome way possible for the LabView creators to have tried to rectify the problem that sometimes YOU JUST NEED TO EXECUTE COMMANDS IN ORDER JUST LIKE A CONVENTIONAL PROGRAM, DAMMIT!!!
5. Mouse sensitivity!  As in, my programming ability should not have to rely on my skill to accurately position the mouse over some of those frakking tiny terminals!
6. Timing structures–THEY DO NO SUCH THING!
7. The fact that it has to rebuild all its data acquisition sub-VIs every time I want to make a tiny change to the sampling mode!
8. Shift registers and sequence instances!  The saddest excuses for variables on the planet–and they contribute to the messy wiring problem!!
9. It handles arrays in an extraordinarily clunky manner–and when you’re taking data, the role LabView is best suited for, MOST OF THE TIME YOU CAN’T POSSIBLY AVOID USING ARRAYS!
10. MY LAB RUNS ON IT AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!