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.