Wow... what a week. I haven't had such a good time in a long time! Life was good chilling in Wyoming with the McCoys, Casey, Nikki, Karissa, and everyone else. Actually, I probably shouldn't use the word "chilling" since it was up in the 60's (even 70's) the whole time there. I hear it was twenties and snowing here in Ithaca. Bummer I missed it.

Where to start... well, shortly after I composed that blog post in Philly, my flight to Denver was delayed. We only boarded half an hour late, but one of the overhead compartment bins wouldn't stay closed and we had to wait another half an hour for the maintenance guy to show up and slap a piece of duct tape on it. I hope they get paid well to do such things. Anyhow, I only had a 40 minute window to catch the shuttle from Denver to Cheyenne, which was now completely gone, So Cameron ended up driving down to Denver to pick me up and we had a nice 2.5 hour drive back to catch up. It was about midnight (mountain time) when we finally got to Lagrange, making it a full 20 hour day for me.

Friday I woke up to nice weather and being reunited with some more very good friends. I went to morning classes and chapel with everyone, then I got a chance to walk around town in the afternoon with Casey. And when I say walk "around town", we walked "around" town, if you get my gist. According to the signs, Lagrange (Here - the school is the blue roofs in the middle and the McCoys live just off the main highway near the railroad tracks in the SE corner of town) has a booming population of 332, presumably not counting the 200 or so students at the school. It had it all... a general store/restaurant, a bar, a church, a post office, and rodeo grounds (apparently a necessity in the cowboy state).

Lagrange: (clockwise from upper left) Welcome sign with granary in background; rodeo grounds; The longhorn, (Lagrange's general store/eatery); The school; Old spur tracks; the Lagrange gas station.

Friday night was a school-wide social, which consisted of a nicer-than-normal dinner followed by a Clue-based skit and murder-mystery. Then Saturday, all us folk originally from Washington spent the afternoon in Cheyenne, which is the closest city-at about an hour drive away. For those of you not familiar, Cheyenne is the capital of Wyoming, and not much else. And its the biggest city in the state. (There are so few people in Wyoming that they only have 5 digits on their license plates!) We had a great time walking around the "downtown" and the capital building area (here) and taking lots of pictures. Then we all got smoothies at the favorite coffee shop and headed back for Saturday night dinner at the McCoys' house where there were about 20 of us that chowed down on Fettuccine and had a great time of hanging out.

Cheyenne: A little collage of photos from our day in Cheyenne

Sunday we got up to head to church in Torrington, a slightly more significant town about 45 minutes to the north. Church was fun, and a family provided lunch for the 10 or so of us "college kids". Then came a lazy Sunday afternoon back in Lagrange before heading back for youth group, which is basically run by a few students from the school.

Casey and I at a natural rock arch at Lonetree

Me at Lonetree

Monday morning I went to classes again, then after lunch Casey and I went up hiking with another guy from the school out at Lonetree Canyon. Its only about 20 minutes away from the school, and its just a ridiculous amount of private land including some bluffs that some guy lets students from the school go hike around on. It was beautiful out there... sunny 70 degree day, hiking in the wind-sculpted sandstone formations on the edge of the bluff.

Bouldering

Some pretty nice terrain for SE Wyoming

We did some awesome bouldering (free climbing short routes without ropes) and got into some nice terrain. It was indescribably nice to get out in the great outdoors with such beautiful open space. Especially on such a nice day coming off a northeast winter. I definitely miss open space and rugged terrain in the northeast!


That night, we grilled up some tasty burgers back at the McCoys' did some more just hanging out. Tuesday I failed a pop quiz in "Modern Trends in Christianity", but I did get over a 60%. hehe... That night was open dorms, which happens after their "white glove" dorm room inspections. It's the one time a semester guys are allowed in the girls dorms and vice versa for a few hours. So everyone was pretty much just hanging out. Then it was already time to pack up. Man, the week went by SO quickly, its ridiculous. Even looking back writing this post, it sped by. Wednesday morning, I woke up at 6 and Cameron and I headed into Cheyenne so I could actually catch the shuttle to Denver this time. As far as travel days go, it went smoothly, mostly because I had relatively long layovers everywhere. Anyhow, after a day of sitting around, I got back to my place in Ithaca at about 10:30pm.

I can't even explain how great it was to see everyone there in Lagrange. Even though I'd never been there before, I knew so many people it felt almost like home in a way. I'd almost forgotten how great it feels to just be with real good friends...

Spring Break!
(Actual date of writing: 3-15-07)

I suppose one disadvantage of having spring break right in the middle of the semester is that it tends to concentrate all the prelims (midterms) into the week right before it. Things have been pretty crazy.

It started late last week when I had my mechanical vibrations prelim on Friday, right in the middle of a poster session and visit weekend for next year's prospective Ph.D students. The weekend was actually a bit of fun, because my department makes sure the prospective students get a chance to meet and talk with the current grad students, so I got several nice free meals out of the deal. Those were part of a record streak of five consecutive days with free lunches for me (Plus one dinner!). Whoever said there's no such thing as a free lunch obviously didn't go to Cornell. (OK, OK, he was right... but from my perspective it was all free.)

Then I had a crazy long two-day take-home prelim for multivariable control that took pretty much the entire two days solid Monday-Wednesday. It involved writing a controller for a (simplified) autonomous vehicle, but the results really didn't work out that well. Chatting with the prof after I turned it in, I found out HE had been up until 4 or 5 in the morning trying to get it to work, too (and he even wrote the problem!). There was one obscure thing that you could tweak (Something that everyone took for granted as part of the derivation process when in fact it was somewhat arbitrary). Anyhow, I think I'll be fine grade-wise.

So that finished yesterday, then this morning (Thursday) I had my last prelim in robotics, this time a 2-hour in-class, at 8:00AM. It went alright. I think there was probably some obscure trig identity that would have made one of the problems about three times easier, but oh well.

Despite some very pleasant weather in the 50's earlier this week, it decided to start snowing heavily this morning, right in time for me to try and get to the airport. (Yes, I'm taking break one day early, but I only miss one class). However, things all went smoothly out of Ithaca and now I'm sitting in Philadelphia waiting for my connection to Denver, where I'll then catch a 2.5 hour bus ride to Cheyenne, where I'll meet some good friends from my high school days. Then about an hour drive later, we'll arrive in the official middle-of-nowhere Lagrange, WY, where I know several people going to a tiny Bible school that composes most of the "town". It should be a really fun time.

Tomorrow will break my streak of ~65 consecutive days being on campus working for some significant portion of the day.

I'm ready for a break.

Cornell Hockey

I've been told you haven't experienced the northeast until you've been to a hockey game in the northeast. So I guess I "experienced" the northeast tonight at the Cornell hockey game.

Unlike the northwest and especially the southwest, hockey here in the northeast is not "just another sport". It easily trumps baseball and basketball combined, and (at least here in upstate NY) it leaves football in the dust, too. Cornell is no exception, and the hockey games here are seeped in decades old Ivy league tradition. Here's a few examples:

A great action shot of our defenders

-It gets going before the game even starts: when the opposing team's starting lineups are read off, all the students bury their noses in newspapers and loudly make disinterested noises to drown out the announcer while shaking the papers. When they're done, all the papers get thrown out onto the ice.
-The Canadian anthem and American anthem are played at the beginning, and people sing along half-heartedly until the phrase "and the rockets RED glare...", when "RED" is punctually shouted by everyone at the game. (Cornell is known as "Big Red")

Wouldn't be a hockey game without it...

-There are of course plenty of chants and taunts and so on...
-Perhaps the best know tradition happens when Cornell plays Harvard, our biggest rival. In those games, fish get thrown out on the ice along with the papers. Don't ask me where that came from.
-For an undergraduate, tickets are notoriously hard to get. There is a week each fall when tickets will go on sale at any point of that week based on an announcement on a radio station or something. When that goes out, it names the place to get them, and the tickets are gone within 10's of minutes. People do crazy camping out and such, so its a pretty dedicated crowd. Fortunately, I scored a ticket from a friend who was out of town this game.

Another decent action shot. I was in the third row

Anyhow, as far as the game went, it wasn't the best one. We played some school from Connecticut (Really... what's in Connecticut? I don't even remember how to spell it!) It was a scoreless game into overtime when they sneak one in past our goalie. Bummer. I took one video on my camera the whole game and it just happened to be right at the end when they scored. I uploaded it at:

http://people.cornell.edu/pages/jdh74/videos/hockey.avi (2.5 meg).

Lynah Rink... Home of Cornell Hockey


Whatever the outcome of the game though, it was still quite the experience.

On a different note, Since I was uploading the hockey video, I put up a video from several weeks ago of a little antigravity lifter I made. Actually, its propelled by ionic wind from a high voltage power source that I needed for my research, but either way its pretty cool. And yes, it WAS research. I was studying the corona discharge properties of small diameter wire. (ok... maybe there was a little fun involved, too.)

http://people.cornell.edu/pages/jdh74/videos/lifter2.avi (5 meg)

Just thought I'd get a quick post up while I'm putting off homework. Everything is going fine, just the normal busy-ness. I've been putting anywhere from10-16 hours a day on campus (slightly less on weekends) and getting some good research stuff done while staying on top of classes. The weather has taken a turn for the warmer since the last couple postings, and its actually partly sunny and 40's outside right now! Time to break out the shorts and sunglasses...

I bought tickets last week to visit friends for a few days in the middle-of-nowhere Wyoming during spring break. It should be a blast!

Well, homework, deadlines, and prelims are demanding my attention.