Friday, October 29, 2004

i believed!

and speaking of baseball.....

how bout them red sox?

strike three, you're out!

dr. jo has lectured me about priorities for the last time. this week he gave us a two-part test, closed note on wednesday and open-note on friday. i'm sure i failed. i'm dropping the course. what really gets me is that vectors is easy, i understand the material, i just can't pass jo's stupid tests! well, i can pass, but what i want here is an "a". so forget it. i feel really bad about ditching adam, especially when i'm actually doing better than he is in the course.

i feel like a quitter. i feel stupid and i know i'm not. josh was right, i should have taken statistics this semester.

on wednesday adam and i were studying for our vectors test at breakfast. adam told me tony was at home cramming like crazy for his fluids test, but the fluids test was next week. i called tony and told him that. then we asked collin about some vectors concept, and when he was leaving, he asked me if i was ready for our fluids test. there was another whole table of people studying fluids at the same time. thus i found out that i had a test less than a whole hour before i took it. i ditched the vectors and crammed.

i think i did really well. i'm not joking.

yesterday i didn't get any sleep because i was so sick. i went to breakfast and begged mike to give me some of his pain pills and went back to bed. i slept through half of my economics test. luckily, i only slept through half, dr. gosh gave me a little extra time, and i think i did really well on that one, too.

i have another thermo test next week. i don't really know how to study for it. i guess i'll have to see how i do. if i flunk again, i'm really going to have a talk with dr. cal. i talked to him already about my test, but there was really nothing he could do about it. hopefully i just had a bad test day.

and then we come to dynamics, my shining star. it's nice to have one class at which i am excellent. i just hope i don't have to eat my words on the next test.

the other day, when i was working really hard on my dynamics homework for the week, jd told me that it's just not worth it, it's really not worth it. i ignored him, because i like turning in my homework correctly and working hard on it. it makes me feel good. then he asked me what i want to do with my life. i told him i don't want to wash dishes anymore.

Friday, October 08, 2004

yes, that's a golf ball. and yes, that's hail, not a snowball.

i'm finally getting a chance to post some of the pictures from the hailstorm on tuesday...
it was crazy... really really crazy. tech campus actually got hit harder than the rest of the town. the largest stones were about as big baseballs, and most of them were much larger than golf balls. it only came down for about fifteen minutes, but the damage is gone! almost every roof in town needs work. all the trees are stripped of their leaves and most of their small branches. three people got caught outside in the storm and had to be rushed to the hospital. one got hit in the head, there are pictures of him in the internet bleeding, with a concussion. every windsheild is smashed, and every car has pock marks all over it. some even have holes in the body. now they're all covered in tarps and plastic bags. the glass companies are really going to make a killing.
the storm was incredible to watch. the hail was coming down so fast that it sent dirt and grass flying up where it hit the ground and terra cotta tiles falling where it hit the roof. the velocity was unbelievable. adam told me that after the storm passed, his new roommate josh (who is quite a bit more athletic than the average techie) picked up one of the stones and threw it as hard as he could at his truck- not a scratch. that means they were coming down a lot faster than that, and i really don't think that josh is a weakling.
mike had just parked my car under a tree before the hail came down, and he actually got hit in the back with one of the stones on the way inside. he's okay, but poor jules is very beat up. the tree didn't protect her, it just covered her in dents and foilage. my back windsheild had three good-sized holes in it when the storm passed, and my front windsheild is destroyed too.
but she's not the worst. all the cars parked by south hall got really hammered. mike's truck is very beat up also. he lost a mirror and a headlight. the golf course is pretty jacked, as you can see.
honestly, these pictures don't do the storm justice. going outside is depressing because there is SO much damage. all the buildings have barriers around them so people won't get too close and get hit by falling peices of the roof. a lot of tech's buildings have skylights- or used to have skylights, i should say. there's broken glass everywhere. for more pictures, check out our "official" natural disaster site.






we used to have a nice golf course

Thursday, October 07, 2004

test day

there's good news and there's bad news, and both have this annoying sense of irony.

last thursday we had a thermo test, and let me tell you, i studied for hours and hours. i can't remember the last time i studied that hard for a test. dr. cal told us to study the homework and we'd be fine. i went through every homework problem with the solutions he gave us and worked through what i had done wrong and highlighted all the formulas i used and put sticky tabs all through my book. i made a immaculate cheat sheet. i really felt very prepared for this test. i worked SO hard, harder than all my study buddies. i bet you can see where this is going.

well, nothing i studied was on the test. i might as well have had a macgyver marithon and never cracked a book.

on tuesday we had a dynamics test. i was pretty wiped out from all my thermo studying, so i didn't start studying til ten p.m. the night before. i didn't even look at the homework, i just skimmed the book and wrote stuff down on the cheat sheet.

we got both tests back today. i got the highest grade in the class in dynamics, a 98. i beat jon berg, the brainiest guy in the whole school, by nine points. i was one of only two people to get the angular velocity question right, out of a class of about thirty. the averae was about a 73.

the thermo test average was an 84. that's very high. i got a 57. i know it's not the worst, someone got a 48, but i'm so upset! i worked so hard, and i have nothing to show for it. the test was graded fairly and everything. what lesson am i supposed to learn from this?

Tuesday, October 05, 2004

the great hail storm of '04

SOCORRO COUNTY DECLARES DISASTER AREA
Socorro County Commissioners, in an emergency meeting on Oct. 7, declared the county a disaster area. Help for uninsured property owners may be on the way, but the process is lengthy, and everyone is asked to be patient.County Manager Jody McSmith said the county today has started rounding up figures of all damages in the county to forward to the Emergency Preparedness Office in Santa Fe.
If the total damage assessment is greater than $2 million in uninsured personal property, Gov. Bill Richardson can ask the President of the United States for an emergency declaration to release federal funds to aid individual property owners.