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As creator of the famed EggXpert Prize Box, some consider me rather intelligent.
I consider myself a genius.
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I'm sure you've all heard about the stereotypical county fair. A week-long gathering of overweight inbreds with the purpose of celebrating the community's achievements and prospects. Where all the food is deep fried, even the ice cream, and flavored ice is a foreign delicacy. The smell of fecal matter hangs in the air, and there's a very real chance that getting on one of the rides may be the last thing you ever do.
My county's fair exemplifies this stereotype with an exactness known only to those who have spent their life calculating pi to the thousandth decimal place. And I love it.
Firstly, I'd like to state that I can, with honesty, discount myself from the incestual pool. If you look up my last name in the area phone book, you will find three entries - my father, my mother, and my father's parents. As I'm an only child, I suppose it's up to me to spread our genetic makeup among the peons. In addition, at 22 years of age and a lean 135 lbs, I'm far from overweight.
Now, don't misunderstand me by thinking that I consider myself above the average fair-goer. The previous paragraph is stated simply for the purpose of illustrating that I am able to observe the fair from a, shall we say, sophisticated perspective. Again, I'm not calling myself a sophisticate - aristocratic would be about as inaccurate a description of myself that anyone could muster. I am, however, intelligent (to say the least), and there are certain... Occurences... At the fair, which, though I consider beneath me, I find endlessly entertaining.
For instance, the food. Yes, each bite of whatever greasy goodness you decide to engorge upon probably weighs in at about 100 calories or so, but let me be the first to say that there's nothing like a powdered sugar and chocolate syrup covered funnel cake to set the world right.
The rides. Sure, you accept an admittable amount of danger by getting on them, but that makes the thrill all the more real! What terrorizes you more - a 300 foot drop from a perfectly smooth, clean-record, big theme park attraction which has triple protection restraints, or being thrown through the air 50 feet up on some contraption that was constructed in mere hours, squeals and groans with every motion, and has only a lap bar to keep you in?
The events. As our group of friends was walking past one of the fair buildings, the loudspeaker was broadcasting that the pig wrestling match was about to begin. There was a monetary fee to watch, which none of us felt was worth the experience, but the announcer commentated during the event. At one point, the dialog went something like, "Oh, don't worry about that - we'll get him another pig and start the match over." I can only imagine what must have happened...
And of course, the people. The particular day we decided to visit the fair, they were holding a demolition derby. Nowhere else could a crowd of such magnitude be so motivated by a show of already totalled cars bashing the remaining mechanical life out of each other. 13 year old girls tried to appear 16. 16 year old girls attempted to look 21. 50 year old women dressed as if they were 13. Every boy and man wore jeans and cowboy boots. If they chose to wear a shirt, it had no sleeves. If they went without, either their stomach hung halfway to their knees, or they had tatoos covering half their torso. Or both.
So what's the message? You know, I don't have a clue. I am, however, left with a purpose to finish my education to the best of my capactiy. And, of course, it's always fun to see how the other half lives.
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I used to keep a fairly regular blog over at MSN, which I'd forgotten about until I re-discovered it last night. I just finished reading all the entries, and I'm left with the all too familiar want of "I wish I'd known then what I know now". What follows is alot of reflection and updated perspective on things I had to say back then - I'll try and keep things appropriately contexed such that you'll know what I'm talking about without having to reference my previous blog.
To begin with, I started The Dingalls Lunch Hour at the beginning of what I refer to as my Junior year. It was my third year, but because of a missed semester, the university actually classified me as a Sophomore still. But what do they know? Anyway, that was to be my second full year at Purdue, so I was still a little ripe as a student. It was my first year living off campus, which was a life learning experience to say the least - if you want a crash course in learning to manage your money, move out of the dorms. It was also the first year I had a job at college, and that probably taught me some monetary lessons as well.
The one biggest change I think I underwent was in regards to my (school) work ethic. I became lazy. My first two years at Purdue, I was on my homework almost before it had been assigned. Come to think of it, there were times I was on things before they were assigned, a la referencing the syllabi. It was no chore at all for me to crack open the books right when I got back to the dorm and tackle the homework before doing anything else. I'm not sure if it was because the work got harder, or because I wasn't living on campus anymore, or what, but that trend slowly died over the course of my junior year.
Things were really bad around last Christmas - I would regularly put things off until sunday, and would face late monday and tuesday nights to get things completed on time. I finally told myself that I wasn't going to deal with things like that anymore, and I got better at dividing my homework into chunks and dealing with it progressively. I did begin to notice how the workloads had changed from my freshman/sophomore classes. Instead of a lot of problems that took not so long, assignments now consisted of a few problems that could take an hour or more a piece. That's probably what got me into the funk I was in, without me realizing it.
My grades haven't suffered, though. I still haven't missed making the dean's list or getting semester honors, and the GPA is somewhere around 3.9.
I have to eat some of my words about one of my professors - Gerold Neudeck. I had him for microelectronics the first semester of my junior year, and I pretty much hated him (it's a recurring theme in the Lunch Hour). After taking the class, though, I realized he's actually not a bad guy - he really knew his stuff, he just sucked at conveying it, especially on paper (proofreading was not his thing). Turns out he had some incurable form of cancer, and he died in April last year.
I talked alot about coming home. The past year I didn't do so much of that, somewhat because of the crazy gas prices, and somewhat because I just didn't have the motivation. One of the principle reasons I liked being home was to hang around a girl I had a massive crush on. We never got together, and my affections have since moved to another. ...And now she's the reason I like being home. I'm not with her, either... There's another blog post worth of stuff on this topic, so I won't bore you with it now.
I'm still driving the Jeep (Sheila). We got dumped on again last winter (no closings, mind you, but the roads weren't friendly in the least), so having four wheel drive is still proving invaluable. I just wish the gas mileage was better... I still haven't done everything to the Jeep that I'd aspired to, but it is most definitely mine. I put in some subs at the beginning of the summer, and now you can hear me coming from about a quarter mile away. I still need to replace the door/window control panel on the driver's side - a new one is outrageously expensive, so it's a matter of me dragging my butt to a junk yard some weekend.
The computer I spoke of in the Lunch Hour is but a fond memory of mine. I put together a new one last summer, and if you've read the previous posts to this, you know that I plan to do the same in a couple of months.
There was one post I made in my previous blog that sparked some thought for me. I spoke of not feeling like I belonged at school, or anywhere for that matter. It's a feeling that I don't think I really ever got past, I just ignore it. It has a lot to do with my spiritual beliefs - forgive me for the sharp turn I'm about to take.
The semester of school that I missed (medical reasons - read some of the older stuff on the old blog if you really want to know), I was at church alot. ALOT. I felt like I fit in there, like I belonged there, and like I was supposed to be there. My afore mentioned crush went to the same church (this is not the current crush), so that just furthered my sense of being in the right place. That might not have been the best source of insight, but I did feel really close to God, and like my life was pretty much on track.
I returned to school in the fall, but then, come Christmas, was faced again with the situation that I might miss another semester of school. The specifics were that one of my blood tests showed worrysome levels, and I was going to have to go through more treatments which would make school pretty much impossible. Because of the timing of things, I had to decide whether or not to go back to school without any solid information as to if I would actually need the treatments or not. I of course prayed about it, and was waiting for some sort of direction.
Coincidentally (?), this is also when I began realizing that I was interested in the girl I'm currently interested in. I was a bit off on the timing, though, as I'm pretty sure she'd had a thing for me earlier, but I was still nuts over girl number one, and was too dumb to notice. Like I said earlier, more details than are worth writing here and now. So, faced with this decision of staying at home or going back to school, I'm thinking that being able to spend time with this girl wouldn't be so bad.
There were also financial implicaitons affecting my decision. I would end up best, obviously, deciding to go back to school and ending up not needing to leave for the treatments. However, I would end up worst deciding to go back and ending up having to withdrawl. Staying home was the middle ground, but was going to be enough of a drop to be considerable if I ended up not going back and not needing the treatments after all.
The night before I had to make up my mind for sure whether I was going back to school or not, I thought for sure that God was giving me a sign. I came home after hanging out with some friends, and opened the fridge for a snack. Dad drinks skim milk, which is nasty, so whenever I'm home, he buys some 2% for me. Inside the fridge was a fresh gallon of milk, which, for me, was going to be impossible to finish in half a day (if I was going to be leaving for school the next day). So, I'm thinking, the only way I'm finishing that is if I stay home, so that's what I'm supposed to do.
The next day, my doctor calls, and says he wanted to give me his advice on what I should do (he knew my financial concerns as well, so he genuinely wanted to help out). He said that I should go ahead back to school, and deal with things if they should need dealing with. I decided to change my mind and take his advice, and I drove back up to school that afternoon.
It turned out that I didn't need the treatments, and the weird test levels were just that. Ever since then, though, I haven't quite felt like I made the right decision. I think alot of it has to do with the girl, who I'm still infatuated with, and who I still haven't actually dated. I do feel distanced from chruch, though, at least compared to what I used to be. And I definitely feel nowhere as close to God as I used to.
I'm not doing badly at school at all - I'm doing great by all standards. I have an awesome job lined up for after I graduate (where I'm at now), and my future is pretty much destined for good things. I just wish I felt like that's how it's supposed to be. Anyway, there's your glimpse into my head. Yes, it's dark, and there are alot of sharp corners and sudden drops. I'll try and remember the flashlight next time.
So, looking back, aside from the whole "belonging" thing, I guess I'm pleased with how things have gone. We lived in that apartment for two years, and we're moving into a (brand) new one this year. We're all graduating this year, so it's pretty much my last taste of non-adult-ness. Real world, here I come... Where's the bathroom?
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Last week I designed a test circuit board for a part that I'll hopefully be testing (surprise) soon. I just received the board today, and I have to admit that it's pretty neat seeing something that I custom-designed actually be professionally fabricated.
Other than that, I'm rather frustrated with my job at the moment. Don't get me wrong - what goes on around here is cool. Unfortunately, the fascinating things are peppered about a main course of drudgery and monotony. Let's take my test board as an example.
Without going into too much detail (for fear of either boring you or my getting shot - yay government job!), the board will hold a certain number of devices as they are subjected to a particular environment, and has the purpose of keeping the devices operating as intended while they are being subjected to said particular environment. Now, you (and I) would think that acquiring the board would be as simple as designing and then ordering the board (granted the ordering part would involve some hoop-through-jumping, as acquisitions at any company is ever far from simple). Allow me to expound upon the process by which I have finally come to physically hold my test board...
The group I'm a part of has a database that they work off of, which contains various documents and files relating to the devices that are tested - component data sheets, test plans, etc. Since the board I designed falls into the category of "various documents and files relating to the devices that are tested", it must be added to the database. To initiate this, I must first request a catalog number under which my board will be posted. I then wait for my request to be approved. Following the catalog number request approval, I must then submit a change request form which states my intent to upload the test board to the database. I then wait for my request form to be reviewed by a board whose sole intent is to scrutinize everything that makes its way onto the database. Following the change request form review, I make any amendments to the change request form as directed by the review board, and re-submit the amended change request form for re-review. Following the amended change request form re-review, I make any further amendments to the amended change request form as directed by the review board, and re-re-submit the doubly amended request form for re-re-review. I think you can see where this is headed...
Now, don't get me wrong, such a device as this review board is necessary. I'll also contest that such a duty would not be one that I would enjoy in the least. However, they can sure make life a pain if they so choose. To clarify, some of the amendments I had to make to my fixture document (see next paragraph) included re-titling some figure captions to something less specific, changing the formatting style on some particular text, and adjusting the alignment on another figure. I'll also add that the review, re-review, re-re-review, etc. process generally only involves one amendment phase (I only had to add one thing to my change request form), but I have been assured by co-workers that the seemingly endless loop has occurred.
Okay, where was I... Alright, my change request form (in whatever stage of amendment it might be) has finally been approved by the review board. I can now upload my fixture (test board) document. I'll give you two guesses as to who looks at it next. This can similarly take a few rounds with the review board, but I lucked out here again in that it only took one pass for me to get things acceptable.
The process of merely getting those two forms submitted and approved took almost two weeks. I was, of course, finally able to order the board, and I have it now in my hands. The fun doesn't stop here, though. No no... I have yet to finish a test plan which documents exactly what will be occuring in my tests of this device, and it, too, will have to make its rounds with the review board. *sigh* I can't wait...
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Since I started college four long years ago, it's been a kind of unofficial tradition of mine to purchase a new computer each year. At the end of my sophomore year, that tradition was amended into me building the computer myself. In a couple of months, I'll be building my fifth computer/third custom rig.
Now, before you mistake this entry for yet another "rate my rig" post, let me assure you that nowhere will you find the entire specs of the machine I'm putting together. You will find one spec here, however - the case.
This blog entry is going to serve a couple of purposes. 1 - to see if anyone actually reads it. 2 - to see if someone can help me find a better case. I have my selection narrowed down to two... Selections...
Apevia X-Jupiter S Type
 This is the case I'm most likely going with - as of now, at least. I used an Apevia case (back when they were still Aspire) for my first build, so they're a brand I trust.
The big hook with this case is of course its 250mm side fan, which is quickly becoming a trend. I'm going high-end SLI with this computer, and I'm not totally sold on water cooling, so lots of air movement is a must. One thing that's irksome, though, is that this fan is a smidge higher than I would like it, and would only blow directly onto the top card of my setup.
Also, because of the size of the cards, the case has to be full-tower. I don't have enough room on my desk for a full-tower case (there's a shelf thingy that runs above it), so an unfortunate consequence is that it'll be located on the floor under the desk - it's a big desk, though, so that's not a huge deal. It does need to be taken into account as far as the configuration of the case goes, though.
This case also has mounting space for a top 120mm fan. In the world of air cooling, a top exhaust fan is the absolute best thing you can have.
The "front" I/O ports (USB, audio) for this case are located on the top, as are the power/IDE lights. Since it'll be on the floor, this is a big plus.
It has a couple of temperature sensors with a swanky blue-backlit LCD display, which is nothing decision impacting. However, it also includes a copule of nice looking fan controllers, which, for the monstrosity on the side, is a must. Yes, I know that the bigger fan can move more air at a slower speed (and therefore with less noise), but I still want to be able to set it myself. I plan on using the other controller for the top fan, and letting the motherboard handle the other three (one in front, two in back).
XClio Windtunnel Advanced
 This guy has two 250mm fans on the side, blowing directly onto the graphics cards. Each fan is hooked up to a controller on the front side of the fan housing.
There's also a 200mm fan on the top of the case, which is great. A controller is also included for that fan, but it's on a PCI slot bracket, which kind've annoys me.
XClio is a brand I'd never heard of until I started case shopping. They apparently don't have the best rapport as far as documentation goes, either, but then again, it's a computer case...
The thing that really turns me off to this case is the location of the USB/audio ports. They're located low on the right side of the case, just behind the front panel. Now, let's think this through... The left side of the case will be left away from any surfaces to let the fans suck in air, so which side of the case is likely to be butted up against a desk/cabinet? Also, seeing as how the case will be on the floor, the ports' lower positioning is rather inconvenient.
In short, compared to the Apevia case, the side fan positioning is a big turn on, but the controller for the top fan and the location of the USB/audio ports is a turn off.
Alright, my challenge to the readers. See if you can find me a case that has the best of both worlds. Necessary parameters are that it be full-tower, that it have a large side fan, and that it have front fan controllers for all larger than normal (> 120mm) fans. A top exhaust fan isn't absolutely necessary, but it's definitely a deciding factor.
Thanks!
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For those of you who don't know me, my name is Dave, and my claim to fame on the EggXpert forums is the EggXpert Prize Box. Many of the "players" there have noted that I am most likely of greater than average intelligence. I feel it is my duty to support those notions in every way possible. I'm currently 22 years old, and I'll be attending my last (for the time being) year at Purdue University starting in August. Pending a lack of catastrophy, I'll graduate with my bachelor's of science in electrical engineering - that's BSEE for all you acronymial types. This is the second summer in a row that I've been employed at Crane naval base as a - you guessed it - electrical engineer. This summer I am in fact a full-time employee in training status (as opposed to last summer where I was simply a lowly temporary intern), which means that, following my graduation and the filling-out of certain over-complicated forms, I'll be a regular full-time hire. The beauty of this plan is that I get to avoid the standard hiring process, and the biggest change after the transition will, in essence, be the doubling of what they're currently paying me. As it is summer, and school's currently not in session (except for those weird summer-class-takers... weird...), I'm living with my father in a small town in southern Indiana. My days are occupied with work (see previous paragraph), and in the evenings I'm generally either working out, at church, hanging out with friends, or eating. A good portion of my weekends I spend unconscious, and when I am awake, I'm usually doing as little physical and mental activity as possible. Besides flaunting my intelligence, I enjoy playing computer games (might I direct you to my favorite HL2 mod?), listening to music, playing paintball (though that happens all-too-rarely lately), and, of course, hanging out with my not-so-genius, though infinitely crafty friends. Well, there you have it, not that you ever really wanted it. I'll hopefully continue to fill this slice of e-heaven with more insightful posts, and you'll hopefully continue to read them. In the mean time, head over to the EggXpert Prize Box and see if you can't win yourself something nice.
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