Through the Bible in a year

The week before Christmas I finished reading the Bible. This project started in January when Amanda made this post on her blog.

My general comments are:

• The Old Testament/Hebrew Scriptures could have used a good copy editor. Things are out of order, repeated, contradict each other, and make for a very boring read in several places.
• There are some unappreciated things in the New Testament.
• The prophetic books have a lot of oracles against different groups of people. However, it is hard to build a sense of who is who because I have no exposure to these groups of people outside of a Biblical context.
• I want to learn more about Judaism to understand how they view and interpret their scriptures.

My observations about needing a good editor gave me a few ideas on how to arrange a book. Derek is anticipating that just as the Jefferson Bible was produced, soon we will have the Page Bible.

If you want to do something like this, you need to find some kind of accountability. Amanda and I were on the same reading schedule and chatted about the readings over Skype every week. Since we would talk on Monday nights, I did most of my reading on Sunday and Monday right before we chatted. We would often pick out different (or even the same) verses and ideas to comment on. She picked up on a lot of things I completely missed. Without her support, I would have fallen away from the reading soon after starting. While you could probably read 1500 pages of a normal book, there are a few sections that could derail all but the most dedicated reader.

Some of the things I learned have already been useful. Someone had a question at a Bible study and I was ready to give a short lecture on typology as an answer. A few weeks ago my general comments about Zephaniah had someone asking if I took a theology class. My knowledge of ancient history was helpful in understanding a few of the things I read.

Now I am working on some summary sheets with a few comments on the minor prophets. Knowing just a couple of sentences about a few people can go a long way. The next time a Protestant or a self-proclaimed Christian who rejects the Council of Nicaea (which I think is a contradiction) tries to argue with me I want to be ready.

I also read the Catechism of the Catholic Church in the last year. Nothing specific stands out from it.

Now I need a new religious reading project. What do you think we should read next? It could be the writings of the early Church Fathers, Vatican II documents, Papal encyclicals, writings of saints like City of God or Summa Theologiae, a specific study on one gospel/letter, or something completely different.

The Poison Belt & Professor Challenger

I just finished reading The Poison Belt by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I enjoyed it.

I read this story because it was published immediately after The Lost World and follows the same main characters. I read that novel a few years ago, when I used to make a lot of posts and read a lot of books.

I never made a post about The Lost World, so I will say a few words about it. The novel follows some adventurers as they find an isolated area where dinosaurs still live. Aside from that, you should know the book is awesome. Written in 1912, it has all the excitement of turn of the century English men of science exploring unknown lands. Then there is the adventure of trying to survive dinosaurs and holdovers from prehistory. One of the memorable characters is Professor Challenger. He has an imposing intellect, possess great reasoning skills, and does not back down from his conclusions. However, he is aware of his intellectual prowess and lacks patience when dealing with lesser minds. He can be arrogant and argumentative.

The Poison Belt starts with Professor Challenger publishing a letter to the public stating the blurring of Fraunhofer lines in light could be a harbinger of horrible things for humanity. This is a great scientific way to start a story and fully consistent with the science of the day. Since the story is relatively short, I will leave off any more details.

Standing alone, The Poison Belt is an interesting read, but not a noteworthy novel. If it did not continue with the main characters of The Lost World, it would be nearly forgotten.

If you want a book to read, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World is highly recommended. If you want more of Professor Challenger after that, The Poison Belt should be next.

Mail and Christmas

First, I will share some of the mail I have received recently. I watched Miracle on 34th Street for the first time a few days ago, which provides another reason to appreciate the Post Office.

There are a several cards my parents got addressed to the entire family. However, these cards are addressed to me. The card with the Campanile is from the College of Letters and Science at Berkeley. It is from the Deans of the different divisions and reads "Your generosity lights the way to a future of unlimited possibilities." The odd thing is I do not remember giving any money to Letters and Science. Not pictured is a card from my Congressman that is unafraid to declare "we celebrate the Birth of Jesus."

Christmas in my parents' house
It would not be in the spirit of Christmas to say a lot of bad things. The short version is my family needs to grow up (in some ways I need to as well). My parents want to have the type of Christmas our family had 20 years ago. Trying to fit the realities of today into the mold of Christmases of decades past does not work. It makes this the low point of my year, not the joyous time it was created to be.

I want to move my life forward, and the people around me want to turn the clock back. I want to be happy on Christmas, which means changing my expectations based on the situation and the time people put into things. The people around me think everything will magically go like years past. However, their grumpiness and crying are not signs of happiness.

If Christmas is not a joyous time for you, you are doing something wrong. For me, the problem is the people I am around. There was a lot of concern in my parents' house over what food we would eat, what cookies would be baked, when decorations would go up, which decorations would go where, who would get Christmas cards, and what presents people would get. Poor planning and terrible communication led to a lot of last minute work. After all of that, there was little left for joy. What we really needed was to have a Whoville Christmas.

The problem is not Christmas, but my family. These are all manifestations of problems that have been on display for the last couple of years. I have tried to help out, but they are not taking steps to improve themselves. I need to remove myself from this situation. I should not ignore my own responsibilities and wants to keep them afloat.

Everyone's Exciting Updates

First I have an exciting update of my own. I got an A in my electrical engineering class!

Friday night I got back from a trip to Northern California. It was a lot of fun. I went there to visit some friends. Many of them are up to interesting and exciting things. However, not all of the stuff they said is ready to be widely publicized. Some people want to share their news with a few people before posting it online for everyone.

Recently I have been reading some Sherlock Holmes. Since I am in a mystery mood, I will make this a guessing game of sorts. I will share a couple of items here and leave the identities of the people undefined. My regular Newman readers are friends with both of the people mentioned below and could do some detective work to figure out the people who match the stories. The main thing is do not publicly out anyone. Do not post revealing questions on someone's wall.

The theme for this trip was everyone's progress in relationships. Chris and Linda were looking for a wedding venue. One person related adventures (or misadventures) in online dating. This included some messages that were horribly received pick-up attempts. If I had more time I would have visited Kim and Patrick, who had their first baby earlier this year.

Person 1
One of my friends will start to a date a longtime friend. After a confession of feelings, both of them were open to trying a romantic relationship.

I hope things work out for my friend, especially because I have a heartbreaking story from when I was in a similar situation.

Once upon a time I was friends with a girl. We had almost exactly the same sense of humor and got along very well. Every time we were together was amazing. At some point, I developed romantic feelings for her. Sadly, she did not share them. So, she cut me out of her life. She did not return my phone calls, she said the seats next to her in class was saved for her other friends, she avoided all the places I frequented, and she dettaged herself from my picture albums. She broke my heart into a million pieces and I lost one of my best friends.

I do not mean to discourage my friend. I know how horribly bad hope things can go and I hope they work out better for him/her.

Person 2
One of my friends is engaged.

The Season of Anger

When I was a child Christmas was my favorite time of year. I liked the decorations, the snow (when I lived in Kansas and Ohio), the food, almost everything. For the last several years this has not been the case. Now Thanksgiving to Christmas through January is a drag. It is my least favorite time of year. Almost every year, my grandma comes to visit and my dad and brother do very little to help take care of her. They abandon my mom to deal with her alone.

My grandma is not the type to sit still. If she is not worrying about what the rest of the meals for the day will be, she has to find a project to do. She will sweep the floor, even if it was just swept a day or two ago. She has to worry about the napkin holder on the table getting low, even though there are still enough napkins for a few more meals. She cleans the stove after every use. If there are any leftovers in the fridge that could be put in even a marginally smaller container, she has to drag the container out, move the food, and then wash the former container. Some days she insists on cleaning the fridge as well. For my grandma there is no such thing as good enough, everything has to be perfect or it is horrible. She will work herself to death over the smallest of things.

It is so frustrating that my dad and brother who have known my grandma for over 30 years do not understand this about her. At least if they do, they are not doing anything about it. Instead they hide in the furthest part of the house and waste their lives on in front of computers. They run away like little children. While I strongly disagree with my grandma's ideas about cleaning and preparing food, I accept that she is 93 years old and not about to change. I try to help out by anticipating her next moves and beating her to them. If there is stuff on the shelves of the fridge, I will clean it up before she sees it. If the microwave is dirty, I clean it. If the laundry room is dusty, I will clean it. If the sugar is running low by her standards, I will fill it up. If there is food to be made or warmed up, I start doing it my way (using this great invention called the microwave) before she pulls out a pot and warms up everything on the stove (and then cleans the pot and stove).

This is the season of anger for me. I would estimate that of the 30 moments that I get the angriest in an average year, 27 of them happen around Thanksgiving, Christmas, and January. It is a minor miracle I have not yelled at anyone or broken anything (maybe if I did people would understand how destructive their inaction is on me).

I am not in a happy mood. I do not want to decorate the house. I do not want to bake a dozen different types of cookies. I do not want to send people emails. I do not even want to get out of bed in the morning. The things I have to look forward to are smaller than the work, aggravation, and frustration I have to put up with. This is what it has been like for the last few Christmas seasons. All of the other "adults" in the house go missing when they are needed the most.

However, there was a year when my grandma did not visit. Instead, my two cousins and their parents from Sweden came for a visit of over a month. In that time, they stayed in my parents' house (which meant I had to vacate my room and sleep in a closet), visited almost every theme park and tourist sight in Southern California on my dad's dime, sat in their rooms (my room to be exact) between meals (even downloaded some junk to my computer, including a virus), expected us to make all of their meals, did not help with any of the cleanup, ate all the donuts we bought the night before when they get up early (without a thought that other people might want some), and bought untold amounts of M and Ms at Wal-Mart. Since they were here for Christmas, my dad bought them many great gifts, as if paying for their plane tickets and entertaining them for over a month was not enough. They were bad house guests who acted entitled to a lot of things without working or paying for them. Which is exactly the way my dad has trained them to act over the last few trips they have taken to America.

The more I think about everything the angrier I get. This is not a joyous season for me.

The actions of my family at this time of year bring out the worst in me. I do not like the way I start acting because of them. I do not want to be angry and I have to work every hour to be patient.

Disappointment
From the above situation as well as other things I am disappointed. I am disappointed with the choices I have made that have brought my life to its current state. None of them were conscious choices, but inactions and omissions. Sometimes I let bad luck or a genuinely poor situation be an excuse for not trying hard enough. Sometimes I compared myself to the worst situations of people I knew and told myself, at least I am doing better than them. A few times I let myself settle for tiny steps in the right direction instead of taking strong action.

If I had worked harder applying for jobs I might be employed now. Or, if I had worked harder in my classes I would have raised my GPA more and be a full time student by now. If I had surrounded myself with different people they might have motivated me to make something of my life sooner. The ifs of the past are only good if they help me make better choices today.

This is not the life I want. I am sad, disappointed, and fearful I am wasting my life.

I know some of you will say things like "you have made so much progress in other areas of your life," "you are always doing something interesting," or "you have turned your life around a remarkable amount in the last year and a half." All of those things are true. However, it is difficult to remain positive and push forward when I have to deal with the situations I do every day.

What is your address?

All of my ideas for posts lately have been sad and depressing. They are full of things I am angry about or ways I think I have failed. However, I do have a good idea below.

For the last few years I have been sending out Christmas cards. This is great because the post is under-appreciated and receiving letters is something people like. They have an old-fashioned feel. These are not cards to my family, but to my friends. I have met some great people and I do not want to lose them.

This year there are a few things I want to change. I need to reevaluate the list. There are people I want to add. These are people I should have contacted a few years ago to get their mailing addresses. Then there is a grey area. These are people I care about, but do not think they care about me beyond someone they randomly know from something a few years ago.

The good news is you can help me sort this out. If you are reading this (and actually know me), send me an email or Facebook message with your mailing address. I will add you to the list. Even if it is the same as last year, drop me a line saying "I am still on La Brea Lane" or "I am waiting on Woodbriar when not on call."

Several people I know have moved in the last year. This is me asking for your new address.

If you send me a message by Monday December 17th, I will send you a Christmas card for 2012. This is also a survey of sorts to see who is reading my blog. I have been an inconsistent publisher this year, so do not feel bad if you are an inconsistent reader.

In general, I do not send out cards to people I know from high school who live nearby. If you are in this group and think I should, send me your reasoning.

Comments on Family
This week my second cousin was visiting. He flew in with my grandma and stayed for a day before taking a bus to Las Vegas. My brother and I showed him some of the Orange County sites and had a great time.

After seeing extended family at weddings and different visits in the last couple of years, I am deciding which of my relatives I want to get to know better. Specifically, which of my cousins (including second cousins) I want to build relationships with and which ones I will not actively try to stay in contact with. I am thinking about who I would go out of my way to see on a trip if my parents were not making the plans.

None of my extended family live nearby. They are in Colorado, Indiana, New York, Sweden, Michigan, Ohio, Georgia, Wisconsin, and some other places I am not sure of. I do not want to drop any of my cousins like they are horrible people (maybe one or two of them), but I am not equally excited about hearing the latest happenings of all of their lives.

I am also going for quality over quantity. It is better if I can be close with two or three of them, instead of knowing six or seven a little better than I do now.

In case I did not say it clear enough earlier, send me your address now! I have cards that need addresses.

On the up?

I want to say things are looking up for me and improving. I started this post a week ago and one of the good things is crashing into a bad thing.

Three Radio Tests
On Thursday of two weeks ago I took a radio test. It was for a General Radiotelephone Operator license (GROL) with ship radar endorsement. I took it because it was recommended to me by people in LA where I volunteer. It could help me when I apply for jobs.

If you want to see what type of questions are on the test, take a look at one of these practice FCC license tests. I took elements 1, 3, and 8, which had a total of 174 multiple choice questions. The material covered basic electrical concepts, radio protocol on the high seas, distress communications, international communication systems, microprocessor concepts, practical electrical circuits, aircraft operations, radar equipment design, radar operation, and a bunch of rules.

After teaching a class on amateur radio, getting a degree in physics, and working on a degree in electrical engineering, I had a lot of exposure to many relevant topics. However, I can be proud that I taught myself everything else I needed to know in a month and a half. There are people who take classes just to get this license. The test proctor told me it was ambitious to try to take all three of those tests in one sitting. However, fortune favors the bold.

I think I passed the tests. They will let me know the results in a week. I used the great website nc4fb.org to learn what I needed. I am glad the test is over. For the previous month my default activity when I was in front of a computer was to take practice tests.

House Sitting
Two weekends ago I was house sitting. It was for the person I met at church who got me involved as a volunteer worker for the City of LA. It was great that I could get away from my parent's house. It was two miles away so I could easily drive home to pick up anything I needed or food I wanted.

I enjoyed watching TV and movies without interruption. No one in my house has an appreciation for watching fine television or movies. They lack not only appreciation, but also a willingness to try something different and see it to the end. While I am trying to watch something (which is not very often), my dad and brother make all kinds of noise in the kitchen, start to talk to me about non-timely and unimportant things, and have no concept that I am trying to immerse myself in someone's carefully constructed world. On Sunday I watched Natural Born Killers, which is a perfect example of a carefully constructed world that needs undivided attention to follow.

When I got home after being gone for most of four days, it felt odd. I was stepping into a world so different from what I was used to, so different from what I wanted. When I was away from my parents' house, I had time and space to think about a lot of things. It is apparent living at home is not helping me become the person I want to be.

The girl from two weeks ago
This is a update on what happened with the girl I met at a Halloween party. Two Thursdays ago I texted to ask if she wanted to go out. I suggested we could visit a museum. She texted back: "Hi Chris! Sure, lets hang sometime! Any particular museum in mind?" I replied with two possibilities, asking if she had a preference. Then the next morning I texted an update, saying one of them was closed for the weekend and suggestion a timeframe for visiting the other one. I asked what time would work for her. For the next three days, I kept compulsively checking my phone. Wondering, why has she not texted back?

That was on a Friday. Last Thursday, I called her up and left a voicemail saying I thought it would be easier to plan things with a phone call instead of texting back and forth. I reiterated I wanted to do something with her and asked her to get back to me so we could plan something. That was four days ago and there has been no response.

From when we talked in person and the text she sent me, I got the impression she wanted to get to know me better. Her lack of response makes no sense to me. I have done everything on my end. All I can do now is forget about her.

Other Things
Last week I tutored my neighbor in AP Physics. It was great. I got paid to do something that was simple for me to do. Depending on how things go, I should pursue tutoring as a side job. It was the easiest $50 I have ever made (aside from returns on a mutual fund).

I saw my friend Andrew last week. He was filling me in on his life after law school and what we should do politically after the election. We also enjoyed the Asian establishments at Diamond Jamboree.

Yesterday Frank was in town so I saw him, Dave, and Dan. We watched Skyfall, which was not as great as some of the buzz made it out to me.

Happenings of October

My last post explained the negative things around me. In contrast, this is about the (mostly) good things going on around me. This is about the life I am building for myself.

College Fairs
As in years past, I am a volunteer alumni ambassador for Cal at college fairs at high schools and community colleges. I am working at seven events this year, and it is usually fun.

Looking around at the other college tables at these events, I realized how blessed I was to get into and attend a great school. When prospective students ask me what academic programs we are know for, I tell them Cal has the top departments in the country (according to U.S. News) for Chemistry, Computer Science, English, History, Psychology, and Sociology; the number two place for Biological Sciences, Math, and Statistics; number three for best undergraduate business and engineering programs; and a few dozen other disciplines to round out the top ten.

Then I explain how UCs are significantly cheaper than over half the other colleges at the fair. This year I also told people one of the latest recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics got his B.A. in Physics from Berkeley (like me and one of the other alumni volunteers). We sent 45 people to the Olympics in London. 17 of them earned medals, 11 of which were gold. I do not know how other schools advertise themselves to students.

A Bad Class
The professor for my Linear Systems Analysis class is in serious competition with a professor I had last year for the title of worst science professor I have ever had. He uses Power Point slides to try to teach us math. The slides have very few example problems and the homework questions are sparse as well. At least in Berkeley the professors could have the excuse of "I do research as a primary job, the teaching is just because I have to." At Long Beach there is no research imperative. The professors' only job is to teach. I do not even try to pay attention in lecture anymore. Instead I work on the problems in the lecture notes and the homework.

In the past I have let a professor's poor teaching skills allow me to think I can put in that same low level of work as a student. While this is a nice theory, tenured professors are guaranteed a job for life, even if every student in the class gives a poor evaluation. However, when I get my grade at the end of the semester no consideration will be given to how the professor did.

For the midterm and quizzes so far I have scored a few points below average. I have a lot of things to learn and get better at for future tests. The professor grades hard; for many problems he gives little if any partial credit.

Last Night
Last night was also good. This weekend was supposed to be a retreat at church. However, we could not get enough people signed up so we had to cancel. This is horrible because everyone who attends the retreat has a great experience; many people describe it as life changing. Since there was no retreat, the team gathered at someone's house and enjoyed carne asada, homemade salsa, and fresh guacamole. After that I went to a Halloween party at Ryan's house. I used my costume from a couple of years ago. I decided to call myself the coachman for hell. I played a couple of games of beer pong with Speed Racer. I also met a girl who was dressed as Anonymous complete with a Guy Fawkes mask. We talked about a movie both of us wanted to see and exchanged phone numbers.

Background of living at home

First an update. On Friday I received an email saying the position I interviewed for a week ago was canceled. The good news is they did not cut me before what would have been a second round of interviews. I also had some experience with that type of interview. The bad news is I will not be starting a job. I will still be living at home with my parents and brother.

I have explained pieces of this to people, but I do not think anyone has the full story of how things are in my parents' house.

Two years ago my dad was laid off from his job. It was very unexpected. However, the Air Force is not buying the airplanes it used to. Since then, he has kept it a secret of sorts. He is telling most people he decided to retire. I can understand why he says this to certain people, like his parents. One role parents never grow out of is worrying about their children and he does not want them to worry. However, there are people I thought he would tell the truth to. Recently my mom's cousin and his wife were visiting us. My mom grew up with him, and my dad has known them since they all went to college together. When they were talking, my dad started saying how great it is now that he is retired. He talked about all of the work and projects he has done around the house. I was so disgusted I wanted to walk out of the room. The truth is in a lot of ways he has shut down and done almost nothing. He does less stuff around the house since he lost his job than he did when he was working full time. He jokes about all the things my mom now has for him to do that keep him busy. There is a list of stuff he could do, but he is not doing it. What worries me is that he might believe the fiction he is telling people.

My mom has multiple sclerosis and has used a wheelchair to get around for the last twenty years. Because of her immobility, a set of health problems comes into play. In the last year a new thing or two has appeared. It is nothing major, but if any of a couple little things get out of hand it can become serious. Her quality of life has gone down.

My brother has Asperger's Syndrome. He cannot process nonverbal communication and has trouble with social interactions as a result. His other problem is an unrealistic sense of how things work and a lack of important skills. This is primarily the fault of my dad. He has not taught him how to make food for himself or how money needs to be managed to make payments for a house, insurance, and food. Because he does not understand money, my brother is currently involved with three or four multi-level marketing companies. These have a lot in common with pyramid schemes.

On top of that, there is little if any meaningful communication between my dad and brother. They do not have the patience to deal with each other.

It is taking a toll on me that I am the only adult in my parent's house. My dad has mentally checked out of his responsibilities as head of household. My mom can see what needs to be done, but is physically unable to do most things. My brother means well and is physically capable, but lacks the experience and decision making skills to get things done.

My dad was gone for two weeks to visit his parents in New York. They were two horrible weeks. I had to do a lot of basic things to keep the house in order, so I could not do some things that were important to me. I did not do any of the exercising I wanted to do. I did not start the homework for the one class I am taking this semester. One of my friends had a connection for a great part time co-op job, but I could not follow up with it because everything around me was falling apart. I did not do a lot of the reading I wanted to. To be fair, some of these things did not happen because of poor time management on my part. However, there was a minimum of help coming my way.

This has been my life for the last two years. There are more horrible days than there should be.

A different type of writing

Today I was at the Barnes & Noble at the Irvine Spectrum. I was looking at random stuff between watching the Bears play a horrible football game and picking my dad up from the airport.

There was a big display dedicated to journals. I thought, I should try writing in a paper journal for a while. It is a storied and old fashioned way of doing things. Then I thought, I already have a blog where I write stuff; why would I write in a book instead?

The main reason I would write in a book instead of here is if I did not want to share or explain in writing my thoughts and feelings about certain people. I have posts started with substantial themes like my dad is failing as a father and some of my friends do not care about me. However, if I bring up any of those they would invite a detailed explanation, which I do not want to write.

The other category of things I would write on paper but not online are situations I do not want to give continuous updates on. For example, in my last post I mentioned a girl I met. She said she would be at a meeting last week. I was there, but she was not. So I figured out where one of her classes was and waited in the hall so I could talk to her. She told me she would see me the next day at another club meeting. Once again, I went there, but she was nowhere to be seen.

If I gave a play by play account of this, then I would feel I should give updates every week. If I did not make an immediate post, people might start asking "Did you see her?" every Thursday night. I do not know what my feelings are for her. Do I want to be friends? Do I want a romantic relationship? I have only talked to her twice; I do not know what she is like. Based on the list of similarities so far, she could be the female version of me. All I know for sure is I want to get to know her.

On Second Thought
Now I am rereading this post. I am not convinced by my reasoning. These are not good reasons for refraining from writing everything online. A lot of people could write a "I went here, I did this" type of blog. I want to write more. My worst case scenarios for not making certain posts are fairly dull. The only people I have told about this blog are people I am willing to tell everything to.

Thinking about it, you should know why I think my dad is failing as a father. One day it might make you a better parent. If I talk out why I might need some new friends, it might spur me to find the types of friends I want. If I share details of my life, someone who cares about me might ask a question.

These are all great possible outcomes.

The first time I started writing anything like a journal was senior year of high school. I started writing because there were great things happening that I wanted to remember. I wanted to capture the things that occupied my attention and interest from one day to the next. It is easy to remember the big long term things like taking classes in electrical engineering, starting as a volunteer worker, and being involved with a retreat program at church. However, it is the smaller things that add color and dimension to my life. There is a vast middle ground between the mundane and the monumental where I spend most of my time.

I want to get back to writing about the smaller things.

Pushing forward alone

Every day I try to make my life better than the day before. I get frustrated that some of the people around me do not share this commitment. They are content to waste their lives away or ignore the reality of their situation. Things at home are horrible. I am living with people who are old enough to be adults, but are not acting like it.

I want to talk about some of the great things in my life.

Thursday
I got a call from someone at Boeing. They reviewed my resume and want to interview me for a job. I have a phone interview on Friday. This is the first of the dozens of jobs I have applied to in aerospace where I have been contacted for a interview. I am excited.

At Long Beach there is a club that gets students involved with rockets. Through a combination of private companies, faculty support, and relationships with other organizations, students can design, build, and test rockets. Now that my schedule allows me to attend their meetings, I am getting involved with the group. They said to show up to the meetings and ask people if they need help.

On Thursday night I was standing off to the side looking for someone to help. Everyone was busy getting the rocket ready for launch that weekend so I was being ignored. I spotted someone else in the same situation, so I started talking to her. I discovered both of us:

1. Are taking classes in the electrical engineering master's program.
2. Have undergraduate degrees in physics.
3. Went to Berkeley. (She graduated a year before me.)
4. Were in the same physics class in Fall 2006, but have no recollection of each other
5. Took UCI Extension classes in engineering after graduating.

She is taking the same classes I took last year and wants me to help her. I am thinking of things we could do together.

Friday
The license test for amateur radio was held at my volunteer job. Of the 12 people I taught who took the test, 7 passed. People were pleased. A few of those who failed admitted they did not put in the extra time required. Next week I will run an intensive practice session for those 5 people who failed.

I discovered a soda vending machine was giving away free cokes. I wanted to know how much the machine was charging, but after I pressed the letter/number combination it dispensed a can. I demonstrated this for my supervisor, who enjoyed the coke.

That night I had dinner with Kim who I know from Berkeley. She and some friends were in town for the weekend and we ate at the Smoke House Restaurant near Universal Studios. I found the place on yelp and everyone liked it. Then we went to a bar for soju, which is a flavored Korean alcohol. However, they only had one soju left and the beer on tap was still warm. To make up for this, the waiter gave us a free corn and cheese appetizer while we played a long game of Uno. I had not done anything in Koreatown since Salgu and David (some other people I know similarly from Newman activities in Berkeley) were around over a year and a half ago.

Plans getting derailed

Last post I talked about some good things I have done recently. However, there have been a few bad developments.

My plan was to apply this month and start an MSEE (masters of science in electrical engineering) in January at Long Beach. When I went to fill out the application I discovered Long Beach has closed all applications for next semester. They cited budget cuts as the reason.

This has disrupted my educational plan. I looked into other schools to apply to, but they do not look feasible. All the prerequisites I have taken were focused on what they would ask me to take at Long Beach. Other schools could have different requirements and ask me to take different classes. There is also geography. Long Beach is ten miles away from my house and I can take either the 405 or surface streets depending on traffic. If I started at Pomona, it would be a 45 minute drive if there was no traffic. If it was a busy time, I would be stuck on the 22 and the 57.

I am considering plans for what I will do with these eight months.

I have talked to the people at my volunteer job about what skills I should learn. So far, many people have said I should get a commercial radio license. It is similar to the radio licenses I currently have and am teaching a class on. I have to pass two multiple choice tests of 24 and 100 questions. I am also thinking of getting a radar endorsement along with the license. It only requires passing an extra 50 question test. Radar is closely related to radio and is mentioned in many of the job postings I have seen. A few people have also mentioned getting a Cisco network certification. I have to learn how networks work, how to configure them, and then pass a test. These are all things I am interested in that would also help me get a job.

My top priority is getting an outstanding grade in the one class I am taking. If I can do that and get to know the professor, I will have a better chance of getting into the MSEE at Long Beach. After that, I want to lean as much as I can and gain as much experience as possible at my volunteer job in Los Angeles. I will also apply for jobs that are closely related to the experience and classes I have from the last year. There are some great opportunities for people with some of the skills I now have.

Back at Long Beach and a radio class

One year ago was a landmark week for me.

From August 28th to September 3rd 2011, I was finishing a class in control systems at UCI (a real class, not one of the extension jokes I took) that had homework due, three hour lecture sections, and difficult lab reports. It was also the first week of classes at CSU Long Beach. I would drive from my morning class in Irvine, to Long Beach for classes in the afternoon. That Monday was not only the first day I was taking a class at Long Beach, but also the first time I had ever been on the campus. At UCI I was leaning about Bode plots and root locus, while a county over in Long Beach I was figuring out a new campus and enrolling in classes without enrolling as a student. There were also some memorable people I met at Long Beach.

A post from that time captures everything that was going on.

I just finished my first week of the semester at Long Beach. I am only taking one class this term because I am not in the electrical engineering master's program yet. I can only transfer six units into the program, so I would not get credit if I took any more classes. My current class is titled linear systems analysis. It will use matrices, vectors, z-transforms, Laplace transforms, and some other stuff. A lot of the class looks like a review of stuff I have worked with before.

At my volunteer job, this week was the second session of a three part class I am teaching. I am explaining to city employees everything they need to know to pass an amateur radio license test. While I know some of the theory about radio, I have almost no practical experience. Luckily, there are people with practical experience who will jump in when someone asks a question I do not know the answer to. However, some of these people will go off on tangents that take up time.

Of the dozen people in the class, there is a wide range of knowledge. Some of them know a lot about electronics, while others have trouble understanding the metric system. All of the feedback I have gotten is positive. Yesterday one of the people brought me a new set of markers for the whiteboard.

The license test will be on Friday, so I will find out how people do then. I have printed a lot of materials and directed people to some excellent online resources. As my supervisor says, if most of the people pass the test, it shows the wisdom of management and its ability to do great things. However, if most of the people fail, it will be because the instructor did a poor job and it is all the instructor's fault. I told him he could cut my pay if the people did poorly. (As a reminder, this is an unpaid job.)

I am very pleased with how some things have developed in the last year. However, there are still things I want to change.

My Grandma and Father Joe

I am currently in western New York visiting family. I have seen over a dozen cousins (first cousins once removed and some second cousins), four great aunts/uncles, and some other assorted people.

However, the main part of the trip is to check on my grandma. She is 93 years old and having problems associated with getting older. Her memory is starting to fail. It seems like it is only short term things, but we are concerned it could become (or already is) more serious. We have to stop her from driving. A couple of weeks ago the priest at her church called us to say she almost ran someone over. My parents are trying to take her car away without directly saying "You can't drive." She lives alone, so we are telling her she needs to start wearing a medical alert pendent. This way, if she falls, she can use it to call for help. We set this up even before she told us that last month she fell and an ambulance had to take her to the emergency room. We want her to live in her house as long as possible. She has lived in the same house since she was 5 years old.

These are unfortunate things that happen as people get older. All we can do is deal with them.

However, during this trip I have seen something worse than getting older. It is being healthy and wasting your life. While my grandma is running around and doing as many things as her energy level and body will let her do, reasonably healthy and much younger people are sleeping the day away or spending it looking at little screens. There are people in the neighborhood who will sit on their porch and gossip all day.

My Grandpa Joe
Now I need a happier topic. I never knew my grandpa Joe. He died while my mom was a teenager. However, all accounts say he was a character. This is the story of how he got his nickname of "Father Joe."

One day my grandpa Joe and his friends went to a bar. The staff was not coming around to take their order. Since they were waiting a long time and were tired of being ignored, one of my grandpa's friends looked at him and said rather loudly "Father Joe, what will you be having?" When the staff overhead this, they thought he was a priest and immediately started paying attention to his group. After that the name stuck. Anytime he was with his friends, they called him Father Joe.

I recently saw the family of one my grandpa's best friends, Frank. His family would take trips with my grandpa and do a lot of things together. While Frank is deceased, his wife and all of his children knew my grandma, grandpa, and mom when they were growing up. All of these people think my grandpa is one of the greatest people ever. I heard more than once, "Father Joe was the best."

For example, Father Joe taught a couple of them how to drive. When they were old enough, their actual father Frank started to teach them how to drive. However, he did not have the patience to keep teaching them so he stopped. When Father Joe heard this, he took it upon himself to teach them. He did not give up until they could successfully drive.

Baseball, milling, and a form

In the last few weeks I have been to two baseball games. I have not been to a baseball game in two years, so I wanted to go to one at some point this summer.

For the first game I saw the Angeles play the Kansas City Royals. I was joined by James, who is a devoted fan of baseball. However, the Angeles lost.

The second game was on Friday. The Dodgers decisively beat the Cubs. It was also Star Trek night at Dodger Stadium. This involved William Shatner throwing out the first pitch and reading the Dodger's lineup. There were also fireworks after the game set to music from Star Trek. I sat in the free food pavilion. This is an area in the stadium where the price of the ticket includes as many Dodger Dogs, soda drinks, nachos, peanuts, and popcorn as you can get. While I ate three Dodger Dogs, it looked like most of the people around me ate even more food. I got the ticket and saw the game with my friend Andrew, who I know from a mutual friend from high school.

Friday was also an Andrew double play. Earlier that day I saw the Andrew I know from college who had just finished law school and the bar exam. He is currently living in Los Angeles, but will be moving home to Orange County at the end of the month. Since I was volunteering in the city, we met at Philippe's. Andrew explained that is the place he always ate at after he went to the shooting range nearby.

Earlier that day the excitement continued at my volunteer workplace. I wrote G-code to mill a box for a circuit board. I wrote the code from nothing and after some testing I had a complete program. I did not have time to run the final version, but I am confident it will produce a successful final product. My program even finds the exact position of the part to within a thousandth of an inch. It then calibrates its motions so the cutting is perfectly centered without any subsequent user adjustments.

The oddest thing I did last weekend was make changes to a health care form. My friend's wife works for an insurance company. Her boss asked her to make some changes to an application form. However, she has no experience with forms or with advanced features of Word. Since she knows I am good at computer stuff, she asked for my help. After trying to add features like drop down menus in Word, I decided it would be easier to migrate the form to pdf. In case you do not know, moving a file with boxes and a lot of formatting from Word to an Adobe format is a disaster. It rendered one straight line as a dozen distinct line segments that were not in a straight line. It also made one long shading box into many rectangles. It was a lot harder than it should have been and Adobe Designer does not have layers. I added fillable fields, radio buttons, checkboxes, and drop down menus. After some feedback and several hours of work, it looked a lot better.

CNC Machining and Mold Making

Through my volunteer worker job with the City of Los Angeles I attended a class this week. It covered how to use a Haas CNC machine.

A computer numerical control (CNC) machine works by following user written code to machine a part. You put a block of metal into the machine and it will drill a pattern of holes, hollow out areas, engrave text or a design, and even smooth the piece's edges. Once you write the code and press start, the machine does everything and all you have to do is come back when it is finished. Then you can put another piece of material in, press start, and make another identical part. It is a great machine.

The class detailed the operation of a Haas brand CNC machine. It covered how the control interface worked, a few practical tips on some buttons, and how to program in G-code. The G-code tells the machine which tool to use, where to make cuts, and how fast to go. They had a control unit at my seat so I could practice inputting everything on the machine as I learned it.

I was able to attend this factory training for free because the city department where I volunteer bought a CNC machine. It is a big piece of equipment. It is the size of a small car and costs tens of thousands of dollars. A few months ago I tried to learn how the machine worked without the benefit of this training. I managed to crash the machine, which is very bad. A crash happens when the tool collides with something it is not supposed to like a vice that is holding a work piece in place. However, I am blessed to be working for understanding people who were not mad at me when I crashed the machine, broke a drill bit, and damaged the vice.

I enjoyed the class a lot. If I was not academically inclined, I would strongly consider making a career out of working with machines like that. If you want to know why I am doing electrical engineering instead, consider a more comfortable work environment, less physical exertion, safer working conditions, and a higher salary.

After my last CNC class on Thursday, I took and passed my third radio test. I now have an Extra class amateur radio license. Next week I will apply for a special vanity call sign to use when I talk on the radio.

Casting and Mold Making
While I am on the topic of training I got into because of my volunteer job, I have a few pictures from December. I took a class from Smooth-On (part of Reynolds Advanced Materials) on casting and mold making. It was a hands on class so I got to practice the process.

Here are a couple of terms from the process. Molding is the first step when a negative impression is taken of an original. Casting is the second step, when the material for the copy is poured into the mold.

First, an original item is placed in a container. Since the mold material is good at getting into things, the original has to be glued to the bottom of the container. Next, the mold material is prepared. Smooth-On makes user friendly products, so all you have to do is mix equal parts of what is in the blue container and the yellow container. The user then has around ten minutes to pour it into the container around the item before it hardens. For our training, they had small statues about three inches high for us to make molds for. They must have planned ahead for me; they had a statue of a pig for me to make a mold of.

After the mold had a few hours to sit, we removed the original and prepared the casting material. It had a similar two part mixture. I added some blue color and poured it into my mold. A couple of hours later, it was time to demold and I saw my pig.



The process even picked up the signature of the original artist on the pig. I was able to take home both the cast pig and the mold I made it from.



It was fun to learn how everything works. If I had any great ideas on how to make money with this knowledge I would give them a try.

Posts from the Past

I was looking through my draft posts and realized I have some great things that need to be shared. Today I have fragments of two posts I wrote in May and June of last year.

In the post from May, there was a recipe for a margarita. It is nothing revolutionary, but you can try it.

Margarita

1 1/2 oz tequila
1/2 oz triple sec
dash lime juice
3 oz sour mix

If you want to make a margarita presidente, just add a dash of brandy to the above.

One advantage of posting this recipe a year later is that I have since shared my recipe for sour mix.

Now a draft from 6/28/11:

Last week I went on a trip to Berkeley and the Bay Area. Over the trip I saw many of my regular and semi-regular readers. Every idea, comment, story, and future plan of mine I would blog about was heard by at least one person. In fact, I told some of the same stories multiple times.

While I was in San Francisco, I went bar hopping with Linda and my Associate. One of the places we ended up at was The Buena Vista. They are known for creating the first Irish Coffee in the United States. Making it is simple, pour coffee, stir in two sugar cubes, add a jigger (1.5 oz) of Irish whiskey, and top with whipping cream. It is something like this.

Irish Coffee

1.5 oz Irish Whiskey (rumor online is The Buena Vista uses Tullamore Dew)
4 oz Hot Coffee, or a little more or less depending on size of your glass
2 Sugar Cubes
Lightly Whipped Whipping Cream

Take a glass and preheat it. Do this by pouring hot water into the glass and letting it sit. After 20-30 seconds, dump out the water. Add the hot coffee and stir in two sugar cubes. After they are dissolved, add the Irish whiskey and top with the whipped cream. The idea is to layer the cream on top, so be gentle and consider pouring the cream onto the back of a spoon just over the coffee.

My favorite part of the Irish coffee story is how the creators were having a problem getting the cream to layer. They asked the mayor of San Francisco, who was a dairy farmer, for help. He suggested using cream that was aged for 48 hours and frothed up to the right consistency. This worked perfectly and the drink became a success. Those were the good old days, when elected officials knew useful things. Now too many people holding public office are career politicians.

The most striking feature of the day was the heat. When I was getting on BART at 11 that night it was still warm enough out I did not need a jacket. My conclusion is I bring the heat when I travel. When I visited Washington D.C. four months earlier it was over 70 degrees in February.

Since my last trip there, the Bear's Lair closed. However, I spent some time at Jupiter's, which is becoming my official post-graduation Berkeley hang out. While there I enjoyed beers such as a Red Spot, Quasar, Frances Drake, Prohibition, and another Francis Drake.

EDITOR'S NOTE: With my vantage point a year later, I am glad to say the Bear's Lair reopened. However, I also know Raleigh's burned down.

Reading all of the Bible

In January I started systematically reading through the Bible and Catechism of the Catholic Church. For this I have to thank Amanda. In January she made a blog post saying it would be great if she did this and then asking "Who's with me?!" I said, "I should do this as well." A couple of months later, we talked and discovered both of us were weeks behind schedule and had effectively stopped. So we decided to talk on a weekly basis to make sure both of us were staying on track.

The program we are following goes through the entire Bible (even those books our Protestant friends do not acknowledge) and Catechism in a year. However, since we are overachievers, we are on track to finish two months ahead of time.

There are a few parts of the Old Testament I do not recommend reading. The first eight chapters of First Chronicles are genealogy tables. A lot of Leviticus and Deuteronomy repeat the same procedures when relating laws.

The biggest thing that struck me about the Old Testament is that it could have used several good editors. Things are repeated, identical stories are told about different people, and the details of stories are contradicted in later retellings. There are also a few points where verses or chapters of one book would fit very nicely a few chapters earlier or later or even in a different book. The notes in my version even say sections are best read in a different order. However, there are some great names like Shamgar.

From my reading I am also disappointed. My parents paid good money to send me to 12 years of Catholic school and it never covered some good things in the Bible. Have you read the book of Tobit? It is a great story with a wonderful message. It has a demonic possession, an angel masquerading as a person, and some magical uses for a fish. Then at the end it rewards a person for his almsgiving and risking his life to selflessly help people. Joshua walking around Jericho with people blowing horns has nothing on the book of Tobit.

There is a second reason I am bringing this up. To talk to Amanda, I have been using Skype. If you have never used it, you should give it a try. You can video call people for free.

I would suggest any of you who would like to talk (especially my friend who hits the ignore button when I call) email me some times that you are available and we can plan a video call. I only sign in to Skype when I plan to talk to someone, so if I am signed in I am busy.

Fun activities and summer so far

Since I made going out, doing different things, and seeing people I want to see more one of my priorities for the summer, I should chronicle some of what I did. It feels like time is flying by, but there is so much I still want to do. This covers the last month and a half.

• Went to an end of year bonfire with the Long Beach Newman group. I was a little worried because I only knew some people vaguely from a retreat a couple of months earlier. However, it all worked out and was fun. At the end all of the extra items ended up in my cooler, including vegan hot dogs. I do not know what to do with them.
• Attended a graduation party. While I did not know Justin very well in Berkeley (my senior year was his freshman year), it was fun and everyone was glad to meet everyone. I also saw such exciting people as Juliette and Sidney. I ended up with some candy from a pinata and some avocados.
• Went to happy hour at the Lazy Dog with two of my friends from Long Beach. This was exciting because it was the first time I did something with friends I made at Long Beach. Well, it was the first time socializing with people from Long Beach did not turn out to be an unmitigated disaster.
• Saw Larry after he returned from graduate school in Arizona, only to find out he was leaving for Vietnam four days later. That night some of my friends tried to fly kites, which was amusing.
• Volunteered at a speaking even put on by the Orange County Cal Alumni. Executive vice chancellor and provost George Breslauer gave a great talk covering Russian politics and campus developments.
• Saw Terrance and played the zombie game Last Night on Earth. After I equipped one of my heroes with a chainsaw, I ripped through 8 zombies. Then I saw Prometheus with Eric and Peter. I expected something better than a remake of Alien.
• Donated platelets four times and went to an appreciation event that celebrated regular donors like me.
• Went to a BBQ at Brandon's house, which is still being built. Then we had a bonfire at the beach. It was the first full day of summer and one of Eric's processed pictures I stole from online is below.

• Watched Battleship with Eric and Peter. We waited until it was in the cheap theater, which was a good choice. A couple of the choices the main characters (who were supposed to be navy officers) made were incredibly stupid. How does a ship fire all of its ordnance on an enemy except for its most destructive weapons (cruise missiles)? Or, if firing missiles at an enemy will give away your location, why do you wait until you are being fired upon to change course instead of immediately changing after you fire missiles? Either the characters are stupid or I am a genius at naval warfare against aliens.
• Went to the Queen Mary with Aden and Ashley. The engine room and the propeller were fun to look at. We also went on the Ghosts and Legends tour that took us to the haunted parts of the ship such as the boiler room and main pool. The ship was nice to see once, but I do not envision myself going back there.
• Tried several different flavors of wings at Buffalo Wild Wings. My favorites were mango habanero and jalapeno. Afterwards I discovered people will just hop into my car when I am in the drive through at Sonic.
• Saw the fine motion picture Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter.
• Went a few places around town with my aunt and uncle who were visiting from Indiana.
• Saw Frank who is back from England and ate at Lucille's BBQ. We then saw Ted, which was like a long episode of Family Guy.

While many of these points could be expanded to full posts, that would be too long, detailed, and boring. Instead I will drop in extra random points here, such as my friend's uncle who kept offering everyone shots of tequila, or how Peter was instructed to get margarita mix at the store only to return with sour mix. There was the time I parked on a street with this ominous sign.



Now for one of the oddest things. I walked into an office and I saw a video playing in the next room. The video had me in it and was something I did in high school. Then I realized the video was redone with Spanish voiceovers. I do not know what this says about my life, but a video I was in has been dubbed into another language.

I still need to figure out what is next. Tomorrow I am going to Terrance's Mom's house for a BBQ and after that my mom, dad, and brother are leaving for San Diego. I will be home alone for three days and need to think of some exciting things to do.

Some Public Service Announcements

Two weekends ago I took a test to upgrade my ametuer radio license. After a 35 question multiple choice test, I passed. I now hold a general class license which means I can transmit on certain radio frequencies.

This is half way to finishing one of my goals for the summer. Next month I will take a longer test to expand my license to the highest level for this type of radio license.

Before I could send transmissions into the radio airwaves, I had to pass a license test. I had to prove I knew how radios worked, what the rules for radio use were, and what the accepted operating procedures were. I bring this up because I have a problem; people mass forward emails to me that sometimes have incorrect, bad, or even deadly advice. I wrote about a supposed health email a while ago. It would be nice if people demonstrated a level of competence and intelligence before sending emails to dozens of people.

The latest email I got was from my uncle. It was about the triangle of life. The main idea is when earthquakes happen roofs collapse and crush people. To avoid being crushed by falling roofs, people should immediately seek shelter next to a tall and sturdy object when an earthquake starts. This way, the big object will prevent the roof from completely falling to the floor and a triangle of life will be created where a person is safe.

There is one major problem with this; it was based on studies done in other countries where building codes and materials differ from what is used in the United States. While the triangle of life might be useful in some situations in developing countries, it is not applicable and definitely does not supersede drop, cover, and hold in places like California. The American Red Cross response to the triangle of life has some good comments and interesting facts.

I also got an email about cough CPR. The short version is coughing when you have a heart attack is similar to doing CPR on yourself. The real version is medical experts say don't try it.

I would say more about these emails of misinformation, but I do not want to deprive you of the practice of checking the facts online. Researching these claims is not only informative, but also fun. The conspiracy angle the triangle of life guy has would be amusing if lives were not at stake. Great claims require great proof, or at least a few minutes perusing Google search results.

If you ever receive an email that gives incorrect life-saving advice, you should immediately email the sender with correct information. If you ever send an email that you later discover had some misinformation in it, it is your responsibility to email everyone again and correct the earlier mistakes.

If a car will not start
One other thing came up a couple of weeks ago. It is what to do if you cannot start a parked car. Sometimes, it is possible to put the key in the ignition and turn it a little but not far enough to start the car. Sometimes this occurs because the steering wheel was turned to one side and then the car was turned off. The pressure of the turned steering wheel does not allow the ignition to turn to start the car.

If this happens to you, all you have to do is turn and hold the wheel to the other side while you start the ignition. The torque you exert on the steering wheel is enough to allow the key to make its full turn.

Party for Bachelor Terrance

On Wednesday I saw Terrance. Since he will be getting married in the fall, we decided to throw him a party.

We started by going to an obstacle course. It was at UCI and geared toward team building. However, our group had already done a lot of team building. Some people in our group have known each other for 15 years, some of us have gone backpacking together, some of us have worked together playing games, and some of us have gotten lost in the woods in the dark before.

The most exciting part of the course was the ropes course. It was 50 feet in the air and 360 feet long. This is us climbing up to the start of the course.



There were four different aerial sections. The first two involved walking across four wires as a group. Since we are not tight rope walkers, we had to walk across and rely on each other for balance. The third section had a platform we had to ferry ourselves across on. It is pictured below.



I went across with Terrance and Eric in the first run. This is them at the other side.



The fourth section was the hardest. We had to walk across on one line with only two pieces of rope hanging vertically to support us. I fell off the wire two or three times in attempts to get across. Eventually we all made it across. The course ended when we zip lined back to the ground. It was a lot of fun. This is our group together at one of the towers.



After some lunch, we went go kart racing at K-1 Speed in Irvine. They have electric karts that can reach 40 MPH. Our race package started with 14 qualifying laps. I finished second to Andy by only 0.3 seconds for best lap time. The second part was a 16 lap race. Our starting positions were determined by our best lap times in the qualifying laps. I was not able to keep up my performance and finished 5th out of our group of 7. The good news is I did not spin out (like Brandon). However, as a group we did well.



I liked the racing. However, paying $50 for less than half an hour of racing is not something I will be doing regularly.

After that we had a BBQ in a park. We ate bacon, hamburgers, and sausages.

Summer is supposed to be easier

When I finished classes for the semester last month, I thought things would calm down. However, they have only gotten busier. This story starts last week.

On Friday I woke up at 4:45 to go into LA for my volunteer job. I ended up helping someone cut medallions out of plastic on the laser engraver. I started working on the project in the late morning. There were a lot of issues with the file format, programs not reading the files correctly, and experimenting so the plastic would be engraved and cut correctly. By the time I did all of the testing, modified all of the files, and finally cut the pieces out of quarter inch plastic, it was 6 the next morning.

While I spent a long time getting everything correct, I gained useful experience. The other day my supervisor told me one of the other volunteers was interviewing for a job. After he explained his work with the laser printer and the process used, they offered him a job on the spot. The company needed someone to run their machine and produce parts for a military contract.

On Saturday I helped set up tables at church for a ministry fair. On Sunday I worked almost four hours at the fair and tried to recruit a few people for our upcoming retreat. We got several people interested and are very pleased.

On Tuesday I lined a case for a sound board with foam for Peter. This way he can safely transport it to different concert venues. On Wednesday morning I went to a meeting where I helped Peter run the sound system for a band.

Then on Wednesday night I was at a speaking event put on by the OC Cal Alumni. It was a great talk by the executive vice chancellor and provost.

I would have gone into LA today, but at 2:30 this morning I woke up feeling very sick. However, I am all better now.

Every week I have retreat meetings at church. I am the Spiritual Director for the retreat, which is a big job. According to the other people, I am doing a great job. The deacon is telling everyone how great I am at it. In addition, I am doing most of someone else's job. This is effectively my retreat.

Tomorrow I will be celebrating the Belmont Stakes with appropriate cocktails. However, I am greatly disappointed I'll Have Another was scratched today.

I am working on projects for two Cal alumni groups. I made some big updates to one's website and planned some important next steps for the other one.

Every two weeks I am still donating platelets. A week from tomorrow I will be taking a radio license test.

Good Grades, Bad Timing

Last week I received my grades for the semester at Long Beach. I got two As and one B. These were upper division electrical engineering classes that students usually take junior or senior year.

One class was on assembly programming. It was my first real programming class, so I was concerned. Everyone I talked to said it was a difficult class. However, I thought it was one of the easier classes I have taken at Long Beach. All of the programming made sense to me and I understood most of the computer architecture concepts.

The second class covered analogue circuits such as current sources, amplifiers, and op amps. My earlier exposure to transistors was five years ago and much less theoretical, so I had a lot of background learning to do. All of the other students took the prerequisite class a few months before. I spent a lot of time in office hours and bought another textbook to help. I scored 1/10 on the first homework and 4/20 on the second one. I spent a lot of time learning things and working problems. By the end of the semester I learned everything I needed to and got an A.

My third class was on power systems. Since I took the prerequisite class last semester, I figured it would be the easiest of the three classes for me. However, it was the class I got a B in. I blame my low grade on the final. I only scored 5% above average. This was because all three of my finals were in 24 hours. I spent so much time preparing for the other two finals, I did not cover everything I wanted to for the last one.

For comparison, my comments on these classes at the start of the semester are also posted.

With these grades, my GPA is now above the minimum cut off to apply for the master's program at Long Beach. This is great.

However, the application period for the fall semester closed before my grades were posted. The soonest I can be accepted and start the program is spring 2013.

Since they have a cap on the number of units I can use for the master's degree before I am admitted, it is only practical for me to take one class next semester. The good news is the class is scheduled to be taught by the graduate adviser for the electrical engineering program. I will have a great opportunity to impress him by my performance in class. It is a graduate electrical engineering class in linear algebra.

While I should be excited about my grades (and I am), I am disappointed I cannot start the program this fall. I want to get on with my life, but I am stuck in the grey area of being a non-matriculated student for six more months. I can't even take a full load of classes like I did this past semester.

I am also sad for other reasons. I realized in May I graduated four years ago. Since then I have not attained any of the major things I would have described as success. I do not have a job. I am not in a degree program to further my education. I still live at home. I do not have the kinds of relationships I want with people. If four years ago I was asked to describe my idea of failure at this point in my life, this would be it.

Now is it Summer

On Wednesday I had my last final for the semester at Long Beach. With two finals on Tuesday night and one Wednesday afternoon, I had all my finals within 24 hours. The good news is I had strong grades in all three classes going into the finals. One of them was harder than I expected, but the professor admitted after he made it that it was harder than he intended it would be. Since it was a lot of multiple choice, I think I did well enough for an A.

I spent a lot of time preparing for my finals. I did a lot of practice problems and spend a lot of time at the library. This is in sharp contrast to when I made a Facebook album like I did my last year at Berkeley (see I should be studying for finals).

Now summer is upon me. I want to make the most of it.

These are three of my priorities for the summer.

• Turning my volunteer worker position with the City of LA into an internship. I will go there two or three times a week and treat it like an internship. I will also work on a few specific projects I can talk about when I apply for a real internship next summer or a job. Right now they want me to design and build a solar turbine and figure out how a dual compound spraying machine works.
• Upgrading my amateur radio license. After working with radio stuff for the Baker to Vegas race, I am inspired to take a couple of tests and get the highest level of radio license I can from the FCC. I currently have a technician class license, which has only basic frequency privileges. All I have to do is learn some things and take two multiple choice tests.
• Do something different and fun every week. There are a lot of things to do around Orange County and into LA I have never looked into. I want to combine this with seeing people I do not see as often as I would like. This is also where you can get involved. If you are nearby and want to go somewhere or do something, let me know.

Some of my drink recipes have mentioned sour mix (or sweet and sour mix, which are the same thing). While there are many premade mixes available, the one below is what I make and use myself. Since I recently learned of a reader who made a drink that required sour mix, I am sharing a recipe.

Sour Mix
(short for sweet and sour mix)

18 oz water
12 oz Real Lemon lemon juice
1/2 cup sugar

Mix the above ingredients and keep in the fridge. Real Lemon brand is highly recommended, unless you have a bunch of lemons. However, I do not have a largess of lemons lying around.

My mom found this recipe online, but I do not know where. Some person on the internet deserves credit for it.

From Baker to Las Vegas

A few weekends ago I was on the support staff for a relay race. The Challenge Cup Relay is a 120 mile relay race from Baker, CA to Las Vegas. It is for law enforcement personal.

The race is divided into 20 different stages of 5-10 miles each. At each stage, there is an EMT team to handle any medical emergencies that occur on the course. The medical radio system is used to dispatch ambulances if any of the runners go down or any of the spectators need medical treatment. Since most of the race occurs in the desert near Death Valley National Park (aka the middle of nowhere), there is very limited cell phone coverage and the only reliable way to communicate is by radio. I helped service the medical radio network.

The weather over the course can vary wildly. The weekend before the race, part of the course had snow. The weekend of the race itself was hot; it was over 100 degrees.

My assignment was ensuring the first four stages had their medical radios up and running before the runners got there. Since we issued all of the stage leaders their radios the day before, most of my field work was fixing problems, replacing fuses, and giving them speakers.

The Race
I left Vegas at 6 in the morning so I could get to the first location before the race started at 9. It was 115 miles away and I had to contend with race traffic. All of the roads in my area were one lane in each direction. The pavement was just wide enough for the lanes and the shoulders were gravel. Each of the teams was required to have a vehicle follow their runner at all times, so there were a lot of cars on the road. Driving the same way as the race required passing all these follow vehicles, while driving the other way involved avoiding the cars that were using my lane to pass. Everyone talked about how dangerous it was and how long it would take to travel any distance. For me it was a lot of fun.

This picture gives an idea of how empty the desert was. You can also see some runners and their follow vehicles.

I spent 10-15 minutes on average at each of the stages I was responsible for. After that, most of my time was sitting around listening in on the radio for any problems, essentially doing nothing. I spent a lot of time sitting at one of the repeater sites. The person in charge of the site had a camper trailer with an awning that provided some shade. I also hung out at medical base where one of our group serviced the radios on the ambulances. This was the place the ambulances took people who needed more advanced care. If a patient's condition required hospitalization, there were helicopters on hand to transport people.

One of the things I liked was seeing the immediate effects of what I did. A few hours after I replaced a fuse powering a radio at stage 2, the radio was used to call for a direct helicopter evacuation for a runner who was unconscious. There was the time I helped someone replace every part of a radio in an ambulance only to discover it still did not work. Then when I heard him test it I realized the low voltage alarm was going off. After we removed an iPhone charger from one of the power outlets it worked perfectly. Minutes later the ambulance was off to collect someone.

If I was talking directly instead of writing, I could capture all the drama and immediacy of these incidents.

We were surprised there were around 250 medical incidents for the race. Surprised because last year there were over 400. A lot of the incidents were related to the triple digit heat. For a few hours the radios were in constant use. At one point they ran out of ambulances; they had to call 911. At another time they ran out of helicopters.

Our Thermal Resonator
Out in the middle of the desert I ate some great food. Someone from our shop built a pizza oven and was making fresh pizzas. This is the oven at the repeater site I spend most of the day at. The guy wielding the pizza mover did most of the design and welding for the oven. He is an interesting character; he is a certified welder and a registered nurse.

It was some of the best pizza I have ever had. This is not just because it was the only food around; it was top tier stuff.

Here we have Tom making some pizza. In the back you can see my car sporting an MRN (Medical Radio Network) sticker, as well as the truck I have been practicing manual transmission driving with.

The Route
From home to the Riviera Hotel (where we were based out of) on Friday I drove 272.9 miles and followed the normal way into Vegas on the 15. On Saturday I took Nevada 160 to Old Spanish Trail to California 127 (Death Valley Road). I then drove up and down 127 since that was my area. By the time I got back to Vegas past midnight and after some breakfast the next morning I had driven 314.0 miles. On the way home I drove the entire race course so I could drop some keys off in Pahrump, Nevada. That took me 327.8 miles and 6 hours, 45 minutes.

During the race at some points there were dozens of cars parked on both sides of the road and the street was filled with people walking around. It was past midnight and I had to drive at walking speed to be sure I did not hit anyone. I drove by the same place later that day and there was no sign of all the commotion from a few hours ago. All that was left were some bags of trash awaiting pickup.

Three Weeks of Non-Stop Stuff

I just finished a busy few weeks. They are recapped with points.

• Took a midterm on assembly programming and processor architecture.
• Went on a radio test trip to the desert of California and Nevada. I spend a couple of hours in Las Vegas and the most fun thing I did was help a friend change a flat tire.
• Did a week's worth of reading in a day for a online discussion.
• Started a homework assignment one hour before it was due. I was too busy studying for a midterm to finish it.
• Took a midterm on power systems. I had to draw a lot of graphs to explain switching systems.
• Led a meeting at church to plan a retreat. We had agendas, milk, and cookies, but no one showed up.
• Had more homework. One of the problems was to find the collector current for each of the 24 transistors in the diagram below. I could not finish the problem.

• Organized a neighborhood meeting to start a disaster response team and prepare everyone for earthquakes.
• Had more homework due. I did not complete it because I was busy studying for. . .
• A third midterm. It covered output stages and op-amps. A simplified op-amp is pictured above.
• Worked on a lab report. I did three weeks of lab work in two days, only to discover my program did not work. However, someone in class realized the professor had a mistake in his code so I was able to get it working by lab time.

Another two points could be added about my time in the desert last weekend. However, that will get its own post when I get the pictures ready. For now I will say there was 100+ degree heat and at one point we ran out of ambulances.

This weekend is the big library fundraiser my parents plan. Helping them with that will take most of the weekend. While my midterms are finished for the semester, finals are coming in less than three weeks.

Even though I am busy, I am mostly happy. There have been times when I had absolutely nothing to do, and I like this a lot better.

A Retreat with Beach Newman

Last weekend I went on a retreat with people from the Newman club at Long Beach. Since CSU Long Beach often goes by the name "The Beach," they are called Beach Newman. Since I added Beach Newman as a friend on Facebook, I have some pictures from her to share.

The retreat ended up being more like a camping trip than a retreat. The theme was discernment. All of the speakers talked about how they discern things in their lives. Most of my comments will focus on the camping aspects. If you want to hear more about the retreat programming, ask me and I can fill you in.

On Saturday we hiked a path at the top of some hills while praying the stations of the cross. As we walked the trail, we stopped at crosses along the way. At the end there was a big cross and a great view of the surrounding area including Irvine Lake. We could see all the way to downtown LA.

To give an idea of the area, this is taken from where we parked. The big cross of the earlier picture can be made out at the top of the center mountain.

It also shows how the girls had no sense of adventure in pictures. While they all stood next to a fence for pictures, the guys piled onto a merry-go-round. You can also see the friendly dogs who followed us the entire way and knew all the right places to be for pictures.

The club had some military surplus tents for everyone and brought food. This kept the cost down to $30 per person. All of our food was pre-cooked, so it just had to be warmed up. The warming was done on fires we made from wood and fire logs we brought along. There was spaghetti, hot dogs, sandwiches, and even some eggs and bacon someone drove in one morning. Our food prep area was half of a room with a couple of fridges. We had to use a hose if we wanted water. I would say we had half a kitchen, but I think it was less than that.

On Saturday night the rain rolled in. We decided to move out of the tents and into the room where we had our presentations. Since everything was either dirt paths or grass, there was mud, water, and more mud.

In the morning I was one of three people from our group of around 17 who took the hike down the hill to take a shower. Everyone else thought it was too cold and the walk would be too muddy and too far. I do not think a little cold air and mud is too much to get through for a cold shower.

Overall the retreat had too much free time and not enough planned activities. Since I did not know anyone going into the weekend, I did not like the free time as much as many of the other people who already knew each other well. However, I met some good and interesting people I would like to get to know better.

Desert Travels and the End of Extension

As those of you on the RSS feed might have realized, I am having issues with the new blogger editor. Working in the HTML view, when I save and reopen the draft multiple break tags are added for no good reason. Then I discovered a red banner will appear telling me my HTML tags are unbalanced when I am in the middle of writing the tag. This might be hard for Blogger to believe, but people who write posts in HTML know what they are doing. While I am on this rant, anyone who needs a button to bold or italicize text in HTML should not be writing in HTML. Blogger should put the spell check button back, keep the upload image button, and throw out the other ones.

I was on a trip last weekend; before I get to that I should cover the weekend before that.

Two weekends ago I was in the desert to set up a radio relay network. It is for the annual Baker to Vegas relay race later this month. I learned a few things about radios and drove a couple hundred miles in a stick shift truck. I was assigned my job for race day later this month. I will distribute radios to ambulances, fix any problems they have, and check the equipment back in.

Even more exciting than the desert, two Sundays ago was the end of my UCI Extension classes! While my final project did not work, I did well enough on it to get a B+ in the class and earn my certificate in Digital Signal Processing Systems Engineering.

I took five classes through UCI Extension. My last two classes had some horrible moments. I wanted to quit and give up multiple times. However, I did not give up. I kept working on the classes with their assignments and projects, even when they were past due. In the end my persistence succeeded.

While my experience with UCI Extension engineering ended on a bad note (and in general I do not recommend it), it was not always this way. When I started it was great. In the spring of 2010 I took a class on MATLAB. I had never used it before, so I learned a lot. The experience of taking the class was fun and civilized. My homework was due on Sunday nights so I would spend several hours on Sunday solving linear algebra problems in MATLAB. While working, I listened to classical music and drank cocktails such as Jack and cokes. My class project was one of the most exciting projects I have ever worked on. I even celebrated the completion of it in great style.

After a few more classes, some anger, frustration, lost time, and money spent, I am finished with the certificate. I am happy to put it all behind me.

What to do over Spring Break?

Next week is my spring break from classes at Long Beach. I am soliciting ideas on what to do.

I will start with what activities I have planned. This weekend I am going to the desert between Baker and Las Vegas. I will be setting up and testing a radio relay network. This is the same type of test trip I went on a few months ago. I hope to get more practice driving a stick shift.

I will get back sometime Saturday evening (or Sunday morning if things are really bad). Then I will spend most of Sunday working on the final for my last extension class at UCI. I will explain more later, but my initial comment is to avoid UCI Extension classes. Most of them were a waste of my time and money.

During the week I have meetings at church Wednesday and Thursday night. Friday through Sunday I will be at a retreat.

Spring Breaks past
There are two spring breaks of years past that are worth summaries.

The first one is senior year of high school. I spent the week working on our senior musical. I was on stage crew where I assembled the set, moved set pieces around, and had to deal with actors, actresses, and choir people, which usually worked out OK. There was a lot of screwing around and multiple trips to the 7eleven down the street. I drank many gallons of Dr. Pepper that week. There were also random things such as a rugby game.

I took a few hours off from stage crew to go to a UCLA preview program for admitted students. It was a nice place, but after looking at their course catalog it was obvious Berkeley was a better choice for me.

Senior year of college was also a fun spring break. It started when I drove home down the 101 with Lisa and Sidney who were going to Orange County as well.

I saw my friend Sean from high school. We hiked around his parents' new house and enjoyed the community's pool. We narrowly missed a mountain lion and a security guard almost pulled a gun on us.

We had a Southern California Spring Break Seekers. People met at Lisa's house in Costa Mesa, learned about her dad's coupon hobby, swam in her pool, and played with fire in the fireplace.

The story of the drive back was interesting as well. The Sunday before classes started again David was in charge of student dinner. Being David, he planned something that made the other dinners look paltry in comparison. He wanted to make tamales. However, he was unhappy with the quality of ingredients he could find in Berkeley. He asked me to stop by his parents' house and pick up some dough.

So I drove to the address he gave me. I knocked on the door and was given dough, as well as some other items and even some chips to enjoy on the drive back up. It was 370 miles from David's parents' house to Berkeley and Lisa spent the entire trip with the container of dough sitting between her legs.

When we returned to Berkeley there was a viewing of Monty Python and the Holy Grail at Sean's and making of tamales the next day.

This Week
Before I can start doing non-academic things, I have a project due Saturday night. For the waste of time and life extension class I am taking I need to write a digital signal processing program in C. My good friend from church gave me the idea I am using and helped me record some data yesterday. The only problem is I learned nothing in the last five weeks of my useless extension class. While I only need a C in the class to get my certificate, this project is worth 40% of my grade.