07.28.07
Posted in Blogroll at 9:39 am by kevincw01
The more I take classes for my masters, the more deeply rooted my love-hate relationship with school becomes. This is my second class with professor Crowley at USC. The guy is amazing and I find myself reusing the stuff I learn in his classes daily. But I also spend most of my non-working life writing code for his homework assignments. In this 11 week class, I’ve probably spent an average of 3 hours a day; not just on the 2 days of class, every single day, including weekends! I’m not gonna do the math but I know that’s got to be some serious time I lost from my life. I could take an easier teacher; everyone knows who they are. But after the class I feel this sort of liberation from my ignorance of the subject he teaches. I’m even using my skills that i learn in his class at work. So [insert aerospace company here], you are at least getting some of your money’s worth 
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05.13.07
Posted in Blogroll at 7:06 pm by kevincw01
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I heard about this thing called the “Rip Stick” from a B-1 pilot and thought it sounded fun. It turns out that there’s 2 companies (at least) that make them and the other company calls it “The Wave”. They were both on sale for $89 at Sports Authority and they look almost identical. The Wave, only comes in silver and looks a bit bigger and possibly more sturdy, so I got that one since it seemed like the manly thing to do.
Before I bought it, I had read some online reviews and they all came to the same conclusion: Hard to learn, but once you get it, it’s really fun and similar to surfing and snowboarding. I ripped the thing out of the box as fast as possible (passing up the instructional dvd) and set it down on my sidewalk to get going.
The reviews were right, getting the thing going seems completely impossible at first. It basically a slim skate board with 2 wheels that pivot like office chair wheels(360 degrees). The catch is that the center of the board has a spring loaded pipe that can twist 45 degrees in each direction. Picture yourself standing with your right foot heal up and your left foot toes up and that’s how this twistable pipe works on the board. By rotating the pipe using your ankles and at the same time cutting the tail in front and in back of you, the board starts going. It suffers from a similar problem that snowboarding and surfing does in that if you don’t go fast enough, you can’t balance and fall over. Starting is the hardest since you need to balance with you right foot while you place your left foot. And there’s no changing of your stance once you’re on because the board will move with your foot if you try and move it.
Anyways, 5 minutes into the learning process and I hand the basics down and it was really fun. Only thing I noticed was that after about 30 minutes of use the back wheel was pretty beat up from the asphalt street in front of my house. I’m guessing I’ll have to replace the wheels with a harder set in a couple weeks.
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03.13.07
Posted in Blogroll at 3:50 pm by kevincw01
For all the times that people tell me that moving away from california is a good idea, this is what they’re up against:
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03.10.07
Posted in Blogroll at 6:22 pm by kevincw01
Insert clever first post here.
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