Sunday, June 13, 2004

Had a great flying lesson today. At first it looked like I wouldn't be able to go since cloud cover and visibility were not so good in the morning and early afternoon, and thunderstorms were predicted later in the day. So I went to have ramen with Ken and friends for lunch. Luckily, later in the afternoon there was a window of opportunity with skies clearing up a bit. Did some takeoffs, climbs, descents, turns, etc. and some stalls, which were interesting. Oh yeah and talked to the tower/ground controllers. It was a lot of fun... I think I improved from last time and I'm starting to get the hang of things. We made the most of the weather because as soon as we did our final landing, it started to rain.

On Thursday we took the group bowling, which was fun. I got a 130 and a couple of 1-oh-somethings. Florent brought some wine from France which was quite good. Went to Charley's afterwards to watch the Lakers get crushed in Game 3.

Not a real good day today for LA.. I watched Dodgers-Red Sox and Lakers-Pistons, both were on TV here, both teams lost. Oh well. I wonder if we'll be able to catch Game 5 in Belgium.. it'll start at like 2:30 am though.

Anyway, I gotta sleep since I leave in less than 7 hours.. see you in a few weeks.

**

Oh yeah, I saw Super Size Me a few days ago. Good movie. But (and I'm sure this reveals me to be a disgusting person) it actually made me want to eat some McDonalds. Haha.

Wednesday, June 9, 2004

So I finally had my first flying lesson on Tuesday. Woohoo! It was great. We had a long lesson since we went over a lot of things on the ground first, including the club's procedures and the preflight inspection. Then I got to taxi the plane and take the controls while we were in the air (though of course the instructor did the take-off and landing). It was pretty windy, which made for a bumpy ride. I got to do some turns, descents, and level flight. Very cool. I felt like I could have done better, I kept having trouble keeping the plane at a fixed altitude/speed for very long, but hey, it was windy and my first time flying. I can only improve, right? =) Oh, taxiing is harder than it looks, especially when it's windy. =)

Afterwards we refueled the plane and I made the very first entry in my pilot logbook. I now have 1.2 hours of flight experience!

All in all, I learned a lot of stuff that I'll probably absorb better over the next few lessons. Too bad I can't fly for the next few weeks while I'm in Belgium and then visiting Jenny in New York. I'm supposed to have a lesson early tomorrow morning (I think this is the only thing that would get me to wake up early) but it looks like it's gonna rain.. Oh well. No rush.

So today there was a tornado warning in Ann Arbor, and they evacuated offices in the EECS building.. we had to move to the "tornado shelter area" of the building which turns out to be just this area on the first floor. But the storm never came, turns out it was west of town and heading towards us but got weaker before it arrived. So we just got some wind and light rain. I must say we were somewhat disappointed.

BTW, I kicked ass in Nerf HORSE today, winning the lab belt (photo is from when I did same some time last year):

Sunday, June 6, 2004

Made a lil' search function, you can find the link over on the left at the bottom of the "Archive" box...

Saturday, June 5, 2004

Have you heard of the show "Sports Night"? I hadn't until watching the DVDs that Jenny brought with her when she visited last month. Apparently this show had a 2-year run on network TV.. I guess I missed it because it was those first 2 years in undergrad when no one watches TV because they're living in dorms and busy enjoying college life and all that. Anyway, it's really good... she sent me a couple more DVDs when she finished watching them and I've been watching them for the past few hours. I finished season 1, so now I have to wait for her to send me season 2. =)

Yesterday we finished submitting papers to Micro. I've basically been working on Micro for the past 2 weeks so I've rarely been online, nor have I gone flying yet. So today's my first free day in a while. I was hoping to go flying, but their schedule was pretty full.. I could have gotten a slot if a plane that was down for maintenance came back up by a certain time, but it didn't. Oh well. Maybe during the week.

So instead I was going to change the oil in my car and wash it for the first time since last fall. (Luckily frequent rains have more or less kept the car non-ugly between then and now.) Well, I changed the oil but couldn't wash the car because the garden hose has gone missing. Hopefully a roommate or landlord just took it by accident.

Fun things are coming up soon. Manjunath and I still have to celebrate our passing of prelims, which we will probably do by taking the group bowling. We're also supposed to go to Cedar Point (where I hope to finally ride the Top Thrill Dragster) some time next week. And later in June I'm going to Belgium for a couple of weeks with a couple of other lab guys to work with ARM Belgium. So that should be cool.

Oh yeah, our group has a student from France interning with us this summer. I was tasked with picking him up from DTW yesterday. I had never been to the international terminal at DTW, but I was told it's the bottom level at the Northwest terminal. So I drove to the airport the back way, and sure enough, huge signs saying "International Arrivals" directed me to the bottom level of the Northwest terminal. I circled a couple of times, parked the car at the curb, walked around inside and outside of the terminal, and asked a bunch of random people whether or not they were this guy I was looking for. I couldn't find him. Then I parked in the actual lot (didn't feel comfortable leaving the car unattended at the curb...) and did a more systematic search through domestic arrivals, international arrivals, the baggage claim area around there, etc. and was about to have him paged. (Keep in mind, I hadn't left for the airport until the guy called us to tell us he had already passed through customs, so he was definitely somewhere in the airport.)

Anyway, the lab called to let me know that DTW actually has two international terminals: McNamara (Northwest) and Berry. (They like to name their terminals here rather than give them numbers or letters.) So off I went to this other terminal, this tiny, one-level thing way off in the corner of the airport, and there he was. Only picked him up like an hour later than promised.

Sigh.

Tuesday, June 1, 2004

Today I got the official letter saying that I passed my prelims. I am now a PhD Candidate. Woo.

This is kinda cool. A bit out of season, but still.