Finals: Day 2...summary

Day's Stats

Finals: 0 (ish...take home requires attention)

Hrs. of sleep: 8 (ish... it's a Christmas miracle)

I basically spent my day working on my take home final for Advanced Econ. 9:30 to approximately 4 (except for lunch... I nuked soup and made a grilled cheese for those concerned about my nutrition during this difficult time). Put a good dent in it. Should be able to wrap it up tomorrow. This evening was all about SIM with Ed. I worry our model is too simple but then I remember it's possibly because our class models were SO CRAZY. Whatever. We've committed. It'll be fine.

Next maneuver: Go to bed. Again at a decent hour...unless Conan gets good. Finals week sucks but somehow I'm working in more sleep... how does that happen?

Tomorrow's plan: Get to school by 9ish and just start annihilating that econ final. Go team!

Finals Day 1.5

Captain's log--Star date: 12/13/2010 00:08 central time

Current coordinates: Durland Hall

Status: Groggy

I managed a nap this evening after dinner and cleaning the kitchen (it was bad and I had to clean it before the health department found out). It was supposed to be for 20 minutes but because I'm tired and our microwave clock is way wrong I miss-set my alarm and overslept (a whole hour nap!) and left Ed to fend (simulate) for himself. Woops. Good news, he forgave me.

Tomorrow's agenda: 9am begin Advanced Econ take-home final in earnest. Work until 2 or 3 when Ed and I begin working on SIM. Eat at some point... fill all spare time with Econ Final. Try not to fall asleep on my computer.

Next maneuver: go home and go to bed at a decent time. Tomorrow should be good.

Finals: Day 1

Day's stats

Sleep: 3.5 hours

Finals: 2 (CAM and Urban and Regional Econ)

Mood: Fair considering the lack of sleep

Captain's Log--Star Date: 12/13/2010 13:51 central time

One final down (CAM) and fast approaching #2 (Econ). CAM went well. Anticipate a decent grade on my Econ final.

In spite of sleeping only between the hours of 3:30 (ish) and 7:30 (ish) I am functioning normally (as far as I can tell).

Caffeine consumption is at normal levels (1 travel mug) and I didn't skip lunch entirely (there was a free sandwich and a piece of cake).

Next maneuver: Econ final in 10 minutes.

Will check back in later with further updates.

My SIM family

It's currently the middle of the night and I am still in the lab. I have been in the lab for basically every spare moment this week and it's starting to get cagey in here. I'm running on 11 hours of sleep since Monday and it's not looking like there will be any improvement before Friday (and even then the improvement will be small). On the bright side I am "stuck" here with my team who has fashioned itself into a family. No really. We are calling Jeff "dad" because he keeps bossing us like our fathers would. We also call Brant dad because he was the one who mandated that we wouldn't be leaving for dinner until everyone reached a stopping point (which didn't happen until 8pm). Yep. We have two dads. Two "gay" dads. They aren't so fond of this. Like I said...we're not functioning at our peaks here people. Kevin, Ruth and I are pretty good kids and we're trying to be obedient to the team leaders but we tend to drift. We took a "family trip" to Dara's (the gas station across the street) for late night sodas and snacks and a boost in team morale (Kevin's personal mission on this project is team morale so we try to do things to uphold it often).

Which brings me to my next barely coherent point. My diet is abysmal these days. Well during the day it's fine. Emily has even fed me REAL DINNER twice this week. But after about 10 pm I try to be strong and fail. I either eat whatever candy I can find, drink a pop, or eat a baked good Jordan brought in (she did some baking and we are all reaping the benefits). I've just resigned myself to the fact that I have to get energy from somewhere and late night food (CAFFEINE!) is my only option (sleep just doesn't make the cut). It is what it is. I keep telling myself that after finals I'll try to reign myself in. It shouldn't be too hard because I'll go into a temporary coma once I finish everything and I'll sleep through the sugar jonesing that would pull me off the wagon.

The things keeping me going at this point besides coffee: Christmas music, Greek yogurt with honey (discovered it at Dillon's the other day and it changed my outlook on life), Kevin's morale boosting efforts, Tweeting all the ridiculous happenings of the lab, and short naps.

If you don't hear from me in the next two weeks (or for a few days after that) it's probably fine. I'm either holed up somewhere trying to furiously iron out four projects simultaneously or I've fallen into that coma I alluded to.

Countdown

to the end of this project: 1 day (technically 2 but we're pretending otherwise so we can go to the pub crawl)

to Christmas break (end of finals for me): 15 days

to actual Christmas: 23 days

People... good things are coming. At least that's what I keep repeating to myself in hushed tones when I get more assignments and tasks added to my list...

I forgot to mention this earlier...

This is my current time-suck of choice. It's pretty funny in my opinion. I think partly because this dude is PhD in Engineering and makes good nerdy jokes (graph jokes are my faves! Seriously!) and partly because he is just standing awkwardly in the frame pointing to a random part of what he's written. A way to be a web comic when you can't draw. I admire the creativity there.

SIM update: My model runs to completion and is giving me reasonable results as far as I can tell. Life as we know it will continue. At least for now.

Thanks Dr. Wu...

Proctoring an exam again today. It's so fun. By fun I mean boring. Watching students think (and sometimes sweat) is about is thrilling as watching your lawn grow.

Kate visited this weekend to play rugby (Go Saints!--2-0 for the day!) and while she was here I learned that she loves when I make lists of things. Apparently that's when I'm at my funniest. I can't disagree but lists have to be organic (not pesticide free but flowing from a naturally creative place). I'm going to try to force a bit of inspiration here and make lists about my weekend.

People I saw this weekend (warming up here...don't expect much):

--Mom (came through Thursday which in college is the weekend with Al and Dad for Al's college visit-a-palooza)

--Dad (see Mom)

--Aly (see Mom. She was the reason for the road trip so we hope she's be included. Could make for an awkward college visit if you don't bring the kid...)

--Kate (came and stayed with me Friday for rugby-palooza on Saturday)

--Amanda (came with Kate...and by that I mean Kate came with her or whoever has a car)

--Hallie (see Amanda/Kate)

--Neesha (sp? See Amanda/Kate/Hallie)

--Andrew (Came up Friday just because he's a big shot engineer and he can do that. Stayed on my couch Friday night)

--Work Friend Of Andrew Who's Name Escapes Me Just Now (She came with Andrew and also slept on my [other] couch)

--Jen (Came up for the Texas game and is now back in Houston gloating about how we OWN Texas)

--Ben (Also here for the came... came up with Jen)

As you can see my weekend was crammed with fun people, a good sign for a weekend. Bad sign for my productivity but that's not really the point.

Reason this weekend was awesome:

--I saw all the aforementioned people for at least an hour each (most of them considerably more)

--We own Texas. If not in the Legal sense of the word then in the Pride sense of the word.

--I ate Korean food with Emily and Andrew. Pusan may be nestled deep within the armpit of Junction City but it is a shining beacon of velvet-painting-clad goodness.

--The BC Saints beat both K-State and Nebraska's rugby teams. Best of all I kind of knew it was happening while I watched. I'm catching on to this rugby thing...

--I won a Wildcats Forever travel mug on Big XII Friday. I love travel mugs. Especially such nice, purple, large ones.

--I found $20 on the ground in Aggieville. It was filthy as it had been run over by a car but it spent the same as if it was crisp and new. Free Early Edition breakfast for me!

--I had Early Edition for breakfast/lunch with Scarlett. It was delicious.They really know how to rock some Banana-Nut pancakes.

As a result of all this awesomeness my week will probably be hell because I have a SIM project due Friday and I just feel like I'm never going to finish it. I blame not working on it all weekend but honestly... I probably wouldn't be much farther ahead at this point anyway. If anyone out there knows anything about ARENA (I'm using version 13) and more specifically transporters and their relation to MOVE blocks, feel free to shoot me an e-mail explaining the finer points of AGV's.

It's come to that point in the semester when I'm pining for Thanksgiving break like children pine for cake. I want it NOOOOOOOW. So thus begins the countdown to Thanksgiving and other awesome things:

End of Project 3 (SIM): 4 days

Thanksgiving break: 11 days

Christmas break (END OF THE SEMESTER FROM HELL): 33 days

I think I can hang on that long. I think...

Not dead yet!

So I know I don't ever update and that makes Mom sad (sorry Mom) but I honestly spend most of my time being busy with REALLY boring things (read: Simulation). Since last I wrote not a whole lot of new and exciting things have happened...

This past weekend was homecoming and we had a home football game. Naturally that's the weekend we chose to do our IIE tailgate (IIE==Institute of Industrial Engineers...our professional society. I'm the Chapter Developement co-chair this year...). I was in charge of this event. Our president kept bugging me about if she could help (she didn't really want to but she had to look supportive) and honestly I didn't have much to delegate. Everything was gangbusters (what the heck are those anyway?) up until the morning of (we made breakfast burritos the night before and I rounded up all the stuff we'd need and had it staged in my living-room ready for pick-up promptly at 7:30 the next day!).

The morning of rolls around and Aaron overslept (the kid who was providing the vehicle and the ride for me and all my stuff). Not a huge deal but I realize I can't find the parking permit. Shoot. Well we finally get up there with 10 minutes to spare before this thing is supposed to kick off. Not bad. But we go to the gate to explain our parking pass issue and they give us the runaround for 25 minutes about not being on "the list" before finally admitting that there is no list and we never stood a chance. Buttholes. Whatever. We're late and we're not where we're supposed to be but we'll make it work. No one will die at this point.

We get over to the student lot and set up and get our crock pots going (to heat our breakfast burritos) only to find out that the emergency batteries (to jump your car) we brought can't handle the amperage (or voltage I can't recall how it works exactly) required to run a crock pot (who knew those things were such power sucks...) for more than 15 seconds. It's finally clear that this will NOT work so we have punted at this point and have Aaron's girlfriend Erin (yea...I know...) calling her sister to get a grill. God bless Erin and her sister because they provided us a way to serve our stupid (and yet quite tasty) breakfast burritos. Love her.

So at this point it's like 1/2 way through the event and things are finally good. Better late than never.

I get into the football game with all my IE's and Jordan (who acquired her dad's parking permit) tells me she just found the permit that started all this...in her pocket. Damn. Well no use crying over spilled milk I guess...

That night was "Halloween" (the "" are because it's really the day before but since it's a Saturday it counts). I was a "White Lie" (dressed in white with little notes on myself that said things like "You're a good dancer" and "He'll realize it was a mistake to dump you! He'll be back!") and I went out with Kyle a Capone era gangster. I saw Ed "Professor Plum" Zuiss, Brant "Mayhem" (from the Allstate commercials) Roney, Jordan "Bever" Bever, and also ran into a "Ceiling Fan" (white t-shirt with "Go Ceiling!" and "Ceiling is #1" written on it), and several Chilean Miners--one mid rescue (complete with the hoisting cage thing...)! It was a good night out. I bonded with "Ceiling Fan" guy over the difficulty people had at figuring us out. I got his without help but I didn't have anyone get me... Ha!

As for the rest of my life... well it's back to the grind this week. I made some drawings in my notes today in class (I take notes in OneNote and this class is BORING...so naturally playing with the "Draw" options is necessary.)

Yep...these are it. I know you're impressed.

SIM is about to rear it's ugly head once more... so I'll be gone a while. But this weekend Kate will be visiting to play Rugby and I just found out that Thursday I'll see the rest of the fam as they travel to watch Al try out for some sweet volleyball teams. Go girlfriend! I shall be persevering through the week with those bright spots as my guiding lights! :) Sometimes I wax poetic (wax? what does that mean... where did that come from...? Whatever... I didn't make it up).

See you...when I see you!