Current Update

Hey Y'all:

Here is the latest update from the world of Gavin:

1. I went to the embedded systems conference last tuesday... It was fun, but there were no booth babes to see! ;) oh well, next time I guess. (jk). I actually won a few prizes there, including a Blu-Ray for Dad (independence day) which was pretty cool, and a T-shirt from another place... it was really good to see what people are selling and what some of the trends in the community are. It makes me feel a little less rookie, if you know what I mean.

2. I am going crazy with classes, at the moment. I enjoyed my trip down south, but it really put the pressure on in the other classes for this last week. So much so, that I barely got any sleep during the week, and missed a final on Friday. Not my finest moment, but then you live and learn I guess.

3. I decided to switch majors to art this week also... ;) Okay, not really, but I am going to help with tutoring in one of the art classes since they are using electronics to add intelligence and flash to their projects... that should be pretty cool. My professor accused me of helping just because there are good-lookin' women in the class... I think he just disagrees with my philosphical position on "outsiders" learning high-level theory. (But it doesn't hurt to have girls in the class either) ;).

4. I (finally) got my workstation to be stable at work (it's been crashing every few hours), which makes me infinitely more productive! I actually got some video stuff done this weekend for dad and he made his first DVD on his own (phone support only). That was really good.

5. I have some working models of trees (they are currently 2-dimensional), hydraulic cylinders (not totally finished, but they have control, mechanical, and hydraulic elements), and high-level, linear, mechanical shakers. On the whole, there are many good things about what the models are telling me ("the gold speaks to us, poppet"), but I am still getting used to the way that you build models in simscape and how to be smarter/more natural with my constructions.

6. I am now without the will to continue such a long list... therefore I will end thus.

On a more personal note, I am (as always) changing faster and more dramatically than before, so that makes it hard to give a "state of the union" type of summary as to where I'm at, but I'll do my best. Not knowing the future of my journey, seeing only that path that lies in front of me, I am struck with certain anomolies. First, everything I put my hand to (in terms of projects) seems to be going really, really well, so that hints to me that I am on the right track with my training and endeavors. As evidenced by my missing the exam last week, I see that my discipline needs a bit of work, but where I would have stopped there before, now I see some solutions to the problem. I think this is an appropriate level of depth for my audience (seeing as there are those that I'm unaware of reading my blog), so I'll not expound further than this. Hopefully I'll be able to share some further details/developments in these areas next post.

Sorry, no pics this time. Maybe next time I'll have some vids or pics to put up.