My Possessed Phone

About a month ago, Ry and I bought a new phone from Walmart (you couldn't hear him very well on his).  We were happy because it was super cheap, it felt cheap, but it was a phone and worked like a phone, so, as already said, we were happy.  I took the phone because Ry didn't really like it.  No biggie to me.

So, I use my phone as my alarm.  It's something I've been doing since I've had a phone.  It ends up that I can sleep through even the loudest alarm clock (you can ask my family members, I bet they remember).  However, even the vibration of the phone (unless I'm super super super tired) will wake me up.  So it's worked well for me.

This new phone has an alarm that talks to you, and this is what it says, "It is time to wake up.  The time is [insert current time here]."  And it just repeats that over and over.  I find it kind of humorous.  Anyhow, one night we set the alarm for 7am.  When the alarm went off, as expected, it said, "It is time to wake up.  The time is 2:32."  And I thought to myself, "Weird!"  I asked Ry what time it was and he said it really was 2:32, so I checked the alarm and it was set for 7.  I disregarded it, but since that time, it goes off at least once in the middle of the night everytime I use it.  Needless to say, the phone is no longer being my alarm.  ;)

Our Christmas Prank and Summer news

So, as promised, I will now tell about our prank we played on all of the Madsens (Melissa's Grandparent's and descendants). Every year the Madsens have a Christmas party on the 23 of December. Every year each family gives a presentation. One of her cousins led us all in singing happy birthday to Jesus. It was quite memorable

Anyway, the prank. Before the Mikhail family started the presentation I made the following announcement (with Melissa's encouragement) "Before we get started I would like to announce that Melissa and I are expecting, in May, to live in Toronto!" We had a LOT of thems peoples convinced that Melissa was pregnant. Haha!

So that's the news. We will live in Toronto from late May to late August of 2010. Melissa is looking for work there, we will be living with her grandpa, Zarif Mikhail. Unfortunately, my end date is too close to the start of classes. Melissa will have to go back to Utah without me.

Anywho, I've included some pictures of Toronto to make this post more interesting:

(Sorry this one is small, it's the only way it would fit!)

The Clyde Building

Today has been an interesting day.  Not because the day itself was really all that interesting, but because there was an "accident" in the Clyde building leaving me without a lab, classes, my coat, and my backpack with everything inside it (homework, books, phone, keys, notes, cell phone, any identification I have, lunch, and saddest of all my TI-89  :(  Missing it.)  Anyhow, not having my calculator ends up not being that big of a problem because all my classes tomorrow are in the Clyde building and the Clyde building is closed until 5pm tomorrow.  Yay!

So, I heard lots of different stories (no stories from credible sources, but some info from credible sources).  This is what I currently think must have happened, or in other words, a story I made up from the things I heard.

They've been doing some sort of construction on the first floor (where all my stuff is) and they put a screw into the main electrical duct.  (If that's not something, sorry, I think that's what I heard.  I don't know what an electrical duct is, but the thing I'm actually talking about is the grouping of main wires controlling the electricity.)  So all the power went out.    So, that's my power outage story, I guess.  There must have been a fire involved because the fire alarm went off.  And for sure there was a carbon monoxide leak (the firemen told me that one).

This is how this involves me.  I was working in some labs on the first floor (a machine shop and a room of ovens).  My stuff was all in a room near the machine shop.  I was near the room of ovens.  The power went out.  The emergency lights came on.  I went to look for a flashlight because the oven was on and I thought we should turn it off before leaving.  Then the fire alarm went off.  I went through a quick debate about exiting the near exit or going back to the room to get my stuff.  I figured they would let us back in soon, so I left.

After standing outside for a short time, I went to write a paper.  Part way through writing it, I was gonna go try and grab my stuff.  I ran into a teammate who told me they wouldn't let me in.  So I finished my paper. I went to see how I could get into the Clyde building.  I talked to some firemen that told me about the CO leak and that once they get clearance they would take people into the building to get important items.  I decided to leave and come back later and instead tried to find a way to read my assignment for my class in one hour, but was unable to, so I just didn't (book in backpack deal).  It ended up being fine though.  I went to all my classes, then tried to return to the Clyde building.  It was all locked up so I tried to find someone to give me information.  The only information I could get is that they wouldn't let anyone in.

So I walked to Campus Plaza and hung out with some friends and made them listen to my saga, which I think was fine.  It's really quite humorous.  After a while, one of them received an email that said they would be escorting people from 3-5 to get important things from the Clyde building, and also that all classes in the Clyde building are cancelled tomorrow.  Yay!  No school!  :)  I was super excited and ran up to the Clyde building.  When I got there, I found out that they would take people anywhere except the first floor.  Boo.  They said they couldn't take people there because "that's where the accident happened".  (Which is why I decided the accident was on the first floor.)  They told me to come back in the morning and that I'd probably be able to get myself then, so that's the current plan.

That's my long story of how today was interesting and now, I won't do my homework or go to school tomorrow.  Lovely!  :)

Mooching off other people's news

Here are the upcoming events in chronological order:

Natalie Harker (Ryan Scott's googalie) will be marrying Calvin (insert last name here) in March.

Jamie (Melissa's cousin) will be marrying Sasha (insert last name here) in March.

Nathan Cerny (Ryan Scott's cousin) will be marrying Mackenzie (insert last name here) in April.

Nicole (Melissa's friend from Toronto) will be marrying Jake (insert last name here) in April.

Emma (Melissa's sister) will be marrying James Clark (not James Armstrong who's 4 years old) in May.

Kyoko Mikhail(Melissa's sister-in-law) will have her second baby some time this summer.

That's our other people's news!

p.s. The definition of googalie is this:

One's sibling's spouse's sibling.

So my brother's wife's sister (Natalie Harker) is my googalie.

My siblings and my wife's siblings are googalies to each other.

St. George Trip

Monday (December 28, 2009) Me and Me(lissa) headed to St. George to try and escape the snow and a little bit of the cold temperatures. We'd been planning on it and really thought it sounded like a good idea. So that's what we did.

Again no pictures. Sorry. Our hotel was in Hurricane (still not sure how to pronounce that). We saw a cool monument about how hurricane was founded and how the canal was built. The next day we went in to St. George. At the in-n-out we stopped for food. Coincidence of coincidences, we saw one of my googalie's (Matt Park's sister Robin)!

We visited the Tabernacle. We stood at the same pulpit that Lorenzo Snow (and many others) did. Awesome. We saw Brigham Young's winter home. We did a session in the temple.

The next day (December 30) we took a 4 hour nature walk. It was only supposed to last 1 hour but we didn't study the trail map to figure out that it DOESN'T loop around. We just assumed it did. After 2 hours I called the office of Red Cliffs Desert Reserve and asked them what to do. They said turn around! Ahh! And Melissa had to pee when we started! Wow, what a trooper.

The next day we visited the Parks (Bonnie, Matt/Mateo, Noel, and Amy). We stayed up and welcomed the new year with some pleasant conversation and fun games! Noel didn't want to miss out. I think she lasted almost as long as Me and Me(lissa).

It was great fun!

Love y'all!

Christmas

Hello whoever reads this!  So, we had an awesome Christmas break.  It started with fake Christmas with the Armstrongs.  Sadly, the parents and Salli's family couldn't make it.  It was awesome though.

On fake Christmas Eve we hung out...details are slipping my mind.  I remember that Sam has an awesome army crawl (it's super cute.)  There are lots of other things worth noting also, but I don't have any pictures, so I'm not going to note them because they need pictures.

On Christmas, we had a little gift exchange, played some games, and headed to the church to dance with the Cerny's and the Reeves'.  Fun!  After all the dancing, the children (and Ryan) dressed up for the nativity.  They gave Finn a black cape.  I think he was supposed to be a wise man, but he ran around and screamed, "I'm BATMAN!"  It was hilarious!  Then I made lemon cookies with Malia.  And we had dinner at the Cerny's.  After that we headed to Shelly's house, played a quick game of bang and went home.

The next morning our home teachers came.  Yay!  Our plan for that day was to visit the Salt Lake Temple and Temple Square and then in the early evening go to a reception.  After the reception, we were heading to the Mikhail's house.  Then, before we left, we found out there was supposed to be a long, sleety storm and decided to just go straight to my parent's house instead.

I don't remember what we did that first day there.  The next day was the Madsen Family Christmas Party and it followed it's regular pattern.  One thing that was really fun though is that my grandparents asked Ry and me to man the kids pinata.  They're the ones that like pinatas the most, so that was really fun.  Oh another funny thing we did during the program too to play a joke on my family.  It worked and it was funny.  I'll let Ry write about it though.  :)

Then on Christmas Eve, Matt and Kyoko joined us and they brought Kei!  He crawls and stands now.  He was being super cute and interactive.  He hasn't been that way before, so it was super fun.  We did typical Christmas Eve stuff.  Ate dinner, played games, opened some presents, sat around and talked, read Luke 2, at one point we decided to sing songs...so my dad started singing Edelweiss, then another non-Christmas song, then another.  So Ry started singing an Anti-Non-Christmas song...I don't remember which one.

On Christmas we (My sisters, Ry, and I) got up early and made breakfast, like we always do.  Then everyone got up and we ate and then opened presents.  After Kei's nap we went to Grandma and Grandpa's house.  We reminisced on how weird it is to not head to Great Grandma's afterward.  After that, we went back to the Mikhails and hung out.

We hung out until Sunday and then headed back to Provo.  And that was it for Christmas!  Fun!

Snow

So a couple of days ago it snowed the first real snow.  That means it stuck to the ground and boy, is it stuck real good.  I'd been enjoying the fact that I was in Utah, it had gotten to be December, and the ground was still devoid of snow.  Then one Sunday morning there was snow all over the ground.  "Lame!" I thought.  But since then, this is what the snow has brought me to think about.  (Nothing too exciting, sorry.)

For anyone unaware, I'm afraid of ice.  I can't explain why because I don't actually hate falling down, it hurts yes, but nothing terrible has ever happened to me because I fell down.  When the snow starts to fall, I start to anticipate ice being absolutely everywhere.  I walk super slow; stare at the ground; go through the puffy snow rather than the packed whenever possible; that sort of thing, you know.  When I think about it, it doesn't really make sense.  That's probably the thing I'm afraid of most, ice, with no explanation as to why. 

A year or two ago I decided I was going to rid myself of this silly fear and so I registered for a hockey class.  (I got permission to take hockey although I had no idea how to ice skate.  I know.  What kind of a Canadian am I?)  Anyhow, the class began and they taught us how to stop.  That frustrated me, since everyone else would hurry to the center of the court and stop and I'd be at the beginning trying to figure out why my roller-blading motions didn't work very well.  Things got better, but for a good portion of those first few weeks of class I was terrified to stand on the ice.  (I don't know why.  I was fully padded.)  After a while I got really comfortable ice skating, but I was not so comfortable with people skating toward me.  Then one day some guy and I accidentally body checked each other.  That's when I learned that it's not scary for a short person to play hockey.  I can just bend over a little and anyone trying to body check me will go over me and I'll probably lose my balance and fall, but it won't be by force.  Eventually I could skate and stop and hit a puck (I wasn't very good, but I could do it).  After all was done, I wasn't that great at hockey, but I could ice skate, and despite my desires and dedication, I was still terrified of ice.  (Hockey was probably one of my favorite classes ever.  Not only was it super fun, but for me it was inspiring because nobody hated me for being bad at hockey.  Also, except for this hockey course, I had never been in a class where I was honestly the worst at the subject.  That was a new experience and I liked it.)

Sorry that was a much longer hockey story than I meant to tell.

Ice is my greatest fear, my next greatest fear is cars, which is weird.  I really like them.  I think it would be fun to design them.  I even like to drive them (when the road conditions are perfect - clear of bad weather and people).  I guess what I'm really trying to say is that riding in vehicles in the snow makes me the most annoying person in the entire world and I apologize for that.

That's All.  I don't know where this was going, but this is where it went.  :) 

Nostalgia

I was thinking today that I've been married for merely 3 months, which is really not very long at all, but anyhow I've come to a few conclusions.  First, I like being married.  It's fun and highly suggested by anyone who is happily married, as far as I'm aware.  Another conclusion I've come to is that although I really think that Ryan is the same person today as the person I married 3 months ago (I've heard people say that you really don't know a person until you marry them and well, I haven't felt that way at all.) there's a lot we don't know about each other's pasts.  This brings me to the title of this post and the real reason why I'm writing at all...nostalgia.  For any of you who are not aware, and it seems weird that anyone could be unaware of this because of my extensive past with this, but I play the violin.  I was minding my own business doing "fabulously entertaining" homework when I thought of playing my violin and entertained the idea.  I found a familiar yearning, one I've been ignoring (mostly) since I decided to be an engineering student.  It reminded me of some conversations Ryan and I have had since being married, learning a little more about each others pasts.  To his surprise, I told him about some of my violin students I used to have.  I told him how I used to teach Jr. High orchestra classes, individual students, substitute for my own orchestra class when my teacher was gone, teach after school orchestra classes to elementary aged children, participate in Utah All-State Orchestra and off-and-on in the Brigham City Youth Symphony.  While doing all of that I still made it a priority to practice 6 to 9 hours each day.  Really I was crazy...but sometimes, like now, I miss that.  Love the violin.  That was really the whole point of this.  :)  Since this whole post is basically about me, 2 things I was thinking that are kind of funny, one being, in Jr. High and High School I was actively involved in the MESA club (essentially the engineering club) and I mocked people who wanted to be engineers.  (Kind of ironic.  :)  No worries, my mocking really wasn't rude at all.)  The other is that engineering has screwed up my brain.  I couldn't find a sock I was looking for the other day and I kept saying, "I'm deficient a sock and I can't find it anywhere!"  Um...deficient?  Okay, I'll do more homework now.

Some of the things I do

So, I'm a mechanical engineering student, and as such, I make projects.  :)  So I thought I'd share some pictures of projects with you all.

This is an anemometer (an instrument that tests wind speed and direction).  We tested it in the wind tunnel.  It worked, but not really that great.  Weconnected our ping-pong ball contraption to the rest of the instrument with hot glue.  That may be part of the reason it doesn't work so well.  We were impressed, however, that it endured a maximum speed of 30 m/s before breaking.

I designed the hat on this man.  It had to interface with his head.  Obviously, you can't see that part, but that part was really hard.  There are several reasons why you would never want to buy this hat though.  1) It's kind of goofy, 2) The way it was designed, (although it is specific to each persons head), it will be really really tight, 3) the surface touching your head is cork.  I don't think that would be comfortable.

This is a Wankel Rotary Engine, which happens to be my absolute favorite engine of all times.  I just like it.  Maybe because I understand how it works a lot better than all other engines.  Um...most people think this
picture looks like a door knob.  Sad day.

This is a gyroscope.  It is entirely made of aluminum.  I take that back.  The stand is made of steel.  Anyhow, this was a poor idea because aluminum rubbing against aluminum while spinning caused this thing to

ruin itself pretty quickly.  I guess that's why they make you do projects and then teach you about things like that, to ensure any project you make is really missing important elements.  ;)

Once I wrote a a lathe manual for an english class with my friend Skyler.  We took pictures of everything to give a visible to the step-by-step instructions.  This was once of my favorite pictures.
(Drilling, in case you didn't know.)

I had some cool videos to explain why this circuit is cool, but blogger isn't letting me upload videos.  (Maybe another time.)  Anyhow, this circuit is a triggering circuit with no particular name.  It was supposed to be a Schmitt Trigger, but my professor messed up the instructions on how to build one and everybody built this instead.  It still triggers though.

How it works, in case you are interested:  You connect a positive and negative input voltage to their respective places on the bread board.  The photo transistor (blue pin thing) and the IR transistor (white pin

thing) face each other and are connected with a beam made from the circuit.  When the beam is blocked, it triggers the system and (in this configuration) the red LED closest to us in the picture lights up confirming the trigger.  We used this in my class to trigger a high speed camera and video tape really fast

processes in slow motion.  My group taped popcorn popping.  We intended to trigger the circuit with the popping popcorn, but due to a weird refraction of the light through a beaker, we gave up and used our finger to trigger. The videos are cool.  I wish I could upload them.

This has nothing to do with engineering, but I made it.  It's a quilt piece for a quilt we made for my mother's parent's 50th wedding anniversary.  It was fun.  It'd been a long time since I'd done any cross-stitching.  (In case you can't tell, that's me and Ryan, and the building next to us is BYU.)

The following pictures are a series of pictures taken while building a carbon composite bridge for a competition last May.  It was a really cool design.  I think it had real potential, but after we thought we were done (and had no time to restart) we learned we were going off of the rules for the wrong year and had to somehow had to cut off 100 grams of material.   (In case you are not familiar with composites, they don't way much, so 100 grams is a lot.)  We managed to do it, throwing away our intended supports and hoping not to destroy the integrity of the bridge and the bridge placed pretty average in the competition, which do to the circumstances, we were VERY pleased with.

This was our mold.

This is release film.  Without it, the bridge would never come off of the mold.

This was in-process.  What we were doing was questionable, but we'd done it before and it worked (despite all of my knowledge against doing this to composite material).  Mostly, we tried to hide what we were actually doing and later decided that cutting the top surface  into tons of different pieces didn't matter because of lots of reasons.  I was going to list them, but then decided this was getting long.  :)

We clamped it like this overnight to ensure that everything was being held in compression.

We wrapped it very tightly with shrink tape.

We also wrapped it a lot with shrink tape.  (This was experimental because when we'd done it before, we didn't have shrink tape.)

This is what it looks like before going in the oven.  The yellow bag is a vacuum bag and the spout thing is where you hook the vacuum up.  By cooking it in a vacuum, you increase the compression in the material, which is a good thing for all materials I've studied.  (Being in compression that is, not necessarily cooking them, although it usually has its benefits depending on how it's done.)

This is our bridge almost entirely out of its mold.  No pictures really did it justice.

This was us shaving LOTS and LOTS of materail off of our bridge to get it to fit into the testing requirements.

I suppose that's all for now.  Um...sorry that was so long.  :)

' s ' and ' f ' sound the same...

So I was in my instrumentation class today (a class I've come to enjoy although I don't usually like the material) and we were talking about low-pass and high-pass filters.  A low-pass filter only lets low frequency signals through whatever it is filtering while a high-pass filter only let high frequencies through.  We then listened to a song that had a series of low-pass filtering done to it.  It sounded really weird by the time we listened to the last one.  Anyhow, now I will tie the title and this all together...So telephone lines have a low-pass filter on them that only lets frequencies of 4 kHz and lower through.  When you are talking to someone, many of the sounds we hear (such as the difference between the sounds ' s ' and ' f ') are of a frequency higher than 4 kHz.  This is also why women and especially children are hard to understand on the telephone.  Their voices are simply made up of high frequencies.  So there you go...a short random blob on filtering.