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.

A lot of work and CRP follow up

Last week I had homework due on Sunday, Tuesday, a midterm on Tuesday, and homework due on Wednesday. This week I had homework due on Sunday and a midterm on Wednesday. Next week I have work due on Sunday, Tuesday, and a midterm on Tuesday.

All of these things are keeping me busy. I wonder how I managed as an undergraduate to finish two majors, be very involved with two extra activities, and spend time with a lot of different people. Then I remember, I was a horrible student. This time at Long Beach I am making academics my number one priority.

Last week's midterm covered microcontrollers and programming in assembly. The professor decided to give everyone some extra points since the average was low. I ended up with a 104%. Yesterday's midterm was more difficult than I expected. I will find out next week how I did.

CRP
When I write summary posts of trips I often feel I fail to convey important points. That might explain why a backpacking trip from 4 months ago or a New Year's trip to Vegas have not been published yet. Before it gets too far away, I need to make this post about two weekends ago. I drove to Burlingame for the semiannual meeting of the California Republican Party. Along the way I picked up Derek.

One of the best things of conventions is hearing the interesting stories of people I know. This one happened earlier in the day before I got there. On Friday there was a lunch at the hotel. While different people gave speeches, the hotel staff served the attendees lunch. One of my friends from Berkeley (a former Editor in Chief) did not eat all of her food. She asked for a box to take out her food. She was brought a box, but the hotel staff did not give it to her immediately. She had to sign a waiver saying she would hold the hotel harmless if she became sick from improper storage and reheating of the food.

The best event of the convention was the speeches at lunch on Saturday. Rohit is the bay area chairman of Newt for President. Since the speaker was coming to the convention, Rohit had to select some people to stand on stage behind Newt to wave signs. Since I was fortunate enough to be a friend of Rohit, I got to be on stage at the same time as Newt. As an added bonus, Herman Cain also made an appearance to support Newt.

There are a few pictures of the event from the Burlingame Patch. For some reason I look less than happy, even thought I enjoyed being there.

When I planned out my driving route to Burlingame, I selected the shortest travel time possible through Friday afternoon traffic. I took the 405, to the 101, to the 85, to the 280, to the 92, to the 101 (again), to get to Burlingame. It was great. I only encountered a small amount of slowing on the 92 and the 101. The trip up was 450.7 miles.

Driving back on Sunday I made a stop in San Mateo to see Monica. I ended up taking the 82 (El Camino Real), to the 92 west, to the 101 south, to the 405 south. This route was not as carefully planned out. My plan was drive southeast and find a freeway.

The entire trip was 896.4 miles. That means my trip back (which was not as carefully planned) took 5 miles less than the drive up there.