Blood sacrifice complete

MMy apologies for the shortage of posts since spring break, but starting school back up sorta kicked my but.

However since I am sitting here with my arm elevated waiting for the blood from my slightly mutilated left index finger to clot (so I don't bleed on the project I was working on) I thought I'd take this opportunity to give a quick update.

1) I normally type with my left hand... so this is hard.

2) Because I cashed out my 401K as part of the divorce...taxes suck this year. A lot. A whole lot. If anyone wants to contribute to the Architecture fund this would be a REALLY good time to do so.

3) I need to get photos of my last couple of projects, hopefully I will do so this
weekend.

4) I think my daily uke practice is on hold for a bit.

5) I think I just dripped blood on my head. Gross.

6) Kenpo is going well...however... I think sparing will be on hold for a bit too. We've finished orange belt techniques, I just have to learn the form and a bit more practice of the techniques and I'll be ready to test.

7) I have made a new friend over spring break, as readers of my other blog are aware of. She's a nice girl, who manages to occasionally out-geek me.

8) Between when I started this and now... I went and got a band-aid and latex glove and forgot what else I was going to write...

Back to work.

Done.

So after starting work on my final project for arch151 Friday at 4:00 PM I am finally done with all the drafting and rebuilding of my dog-eaten model at 6:49 AM on Monday.

I did pause for sleep for about 7 hours on Friday night, but I haven't slept since sometime yesterday.

So I should get about 4.5 hours sleep before class at this point. Unfortunately it looks like I may have to go into work after class or at least do an onsite visit, fortunately at the airport so when I'm done I can go home and whimper.

I suspect I have a 5 page paper on bridges due Wednesday.

Either that or my bridge is supposed to be built by then.

Ah well I'll burn that bridge when I come to it. (Hah!)

err..

right.

Sleep.

Anyone want a dog?

So my darling mutt apparently has a taste for Balsa wood.

Unfortunately for me, she demonstrated this by chewing on my UNGRADED model that took me 20 hours to make.

I might be able to salvage the base shaving off 3 hours of work left to be redone.

I am not a happy camper.

I am the exact opposite of a happy camper.

This on top of about 4 hours of drafting homework I was working on when my boss called me into help deal with a crises. One of the big clients has lost their server, but we've got the data backed up on our old test server, and we need to point all their machines temporarily at our server so they can remotely access the network.

Oh... and they neglected to give me any admin passwords so for every single machine I am touching I have to blow away the password before I can log in and redirect.

Cranky.

Group Model Shot

What can I say. There it is in all it's glory.

They were taking some better pictures when I left for the night... but I figured feeding the dog was more important then preety pictures.

Cranky, day Two and Three. The GEEKS Revenge!

Okay, sadly not.

Saturday I worked 10-4, and then went to Romney. The same two people from yesterday were there, and no-one else showed up. We worked until about 8:30 and then knocked off for the night.

Sunday, we three agreed to meet at two, and when we got there it was decided the Steve sounded the most pissed off on the phone so it was his job to call people. His side of the dialogue would have done Machiavelli proud for being menacing without overtly threatening. Every one he actually reached on the phone showed up to help within 20 minutes. One of the people who showed up we sent home. He was actually sicker then Morgan and I. Also, he'd done the bulk of the building construction the first day while everyone else was arguing what type of board to use.

With enough people, and the with the damn contour lines finally getting easier (I figured out a faster and more accurate way of making them) it only took us 7 hours to complete it.

I'll try and post some pictures of it tomorrow I think I'm going to have to go andzzzz......... *drool*

Friday Work Session

Per request, here are some pictures of what we are working on today in class... and will be working on again in about 30 minutes when the other class gets out.




This one is annotated for you enjoyment. My TA was playing with camera and by some chance I got caught in the frame. You tell which desk belongs to the geek can't you?



My teammates... pondering building benches.




Closeup of the model interior, before contour lines are added.



Just one of the many banks of shrubbery that I am in charge of.

4 line Composition... the model

So here is my final model from the 4 line assignment. I wont go into the details of the rules I use to compose it, but everything is built to specific purpose. It's hard to see from this angle but most the elements sweep towards the center space.

Sick and tired. Oh and some school and job stuff too.

I addition to having limited use of both my thumbs, I appear to be be having intermittent head cold issues. I'm not sneezing, and not coughing much but I have a sore throat and I randomly feel like me head is stuffed with wool.

This of course is being aggravated by the fact that my air-bed has leak. I thought I had tracked down and patched said leak but apparently I either didn't patch it well enough (unpossible) or I missed one... which given the acreage of the bed is not out of the realm of possibility. The bed is not normal air-mattress height, but is in fact effectively two mattresses. This increases the square footage to be searched for leaks by like 32 times. Really.

I have apparently slowed down the leaks with my patching that I can almost go 8 hours before the bed tries to swallow me whole.

Oddly enough I keep having dreams about sinking in quicksand... no wonder I'm tired.

~~~~

The design project is full swing. It is both a group and individual assignment. The group portion, which we are exploring now is that each TA section of the class has to build a 1/4 scale model of the walkway area between Cheever (architecture) and Howard (music) halls. By my calculations the scale model will be slightly smaller then my car. But, I don't actually care because in the course dividing up tasks people noticed that 1) I have nice digital camera and 2) my scale figures are badass. All those years of miniature painting have paid off.
I was assigned the task of photo-documenting the building for reference (took less then an hour) and creating the 20 little wee men and women populating the scale model. I have 18 of them done allready and they aren't due for another week and a half. I further volunteered to "help" make the various shrubbery and trees since the guy it was assigned to shows up 1 in 4 classes.

After our scale model is coplete, individually we have to design an art instillation only using 3 8'x 20' sheets of 1 inch steel and 4 6'x6'x 6" peices of wood. We then are going to build scale models of them that will fit in our bigger scale models.

Finally will will draw plan, elevation, and section drawing of our instillation.

~~~

Today was my first day at Computer Troubleshooters of Bozeman. My new boss handed me a 600mhz iBook laptop with a dead hard-drive chuckled evilly and then left.

I wept.

You have to COMPLETELY dissemble EVERYTHING to get to the hard-drive. If I ever meet the designer of the laptop I will run him over with my car. Twice.

For those of you who aren't quite sure the implications of this... imagine trying to disassemble the worlds most complex wooden puzzle, with screw the size of seed beads and the screw holes are hidden inside of recesses you can only reach with a set of chop sticks.

This was slightly worse.

Other then that it was fine.

New assignment for Design

I don't know what it is, but the prof has dropped some tantalizing hints.

1) It will take us the entire remaining 5 weeks to accomplish
2) We will probably spend the first week arguing in groups. (which means it will be a group project)
3) We will apply what we have learned making models (so presumably a group model?)
4) Monday we are to show up with sketch-pad and raincoat in case it rains.

As a couple of dear friends said... "You'd think pants and pencils would be on the things to bring list."

Studying, building, punching and growling

So it was time for our second Arch 121 test. 121 is the weird Architectural history/design class that I'm taking. The lecture portion covers modern buildings of importance from 1890-today. The recitation portion (taught by a TA) covers various design techniques and history.
I'm doing well on the recitation part, with B or B+ on all my assignments thus far. The lecture part... I enjoy but while taking the last test I suffered a brain freeze and forgot the location of darn near every building. As that was nearly 1/4 of the total points for the test... well I got a C, and not high C at that.

However, we had our second test today and I think I aced it. The only thing I think I got wrong is one of the architects is named Hans Sch______ and I forgot the last part of his last name. I scribbled something in there. I don't know if it was right, but I'm hoping it's close enough that I get credit.

Other then that I got every question on the test right, knew who built it, where, important facts about it and was able to draw it.

Feeling pretty happy about it.

~~~~~~

The other 2/3 of my weekend I didn't spend studying I spent build study models for Arch 151. It was about 16 hours of work for the two big ones and maybe 4 for the smaller. We have to have a finished, craft-perfect model ready by Friday. (We actually get next weekend off!) I have some changes I want to make to my design so I need to generate another study model tonight and then harass my instructor with it tomorrow. Wednesday is a in class work day and we are expected to 1) have started our final model 2) bring it to class to work on.

~~~~

Some of you may be aware that over the course of the years I have studied a couple different martial arts. The one I keep returning to because of my love for it, the fit it's philosophy it has with my own, and it's sheer practicality is Kenpo.

On Friday I discovered a small Kenpo school that offers one-on-one instruction in a relaxed atmosphere. My first class was Saturday (at 8:00 AM!) and I had a blast. Even for being as out of shape and out of practice as I am it started coming back pretty quick. However the 15 minutes of quick punch drills reminded me that I need to spend more time working on my cardio.

I've got a bonus session on Thursday night, but unless he has a student drop looks like Saturday 8:00 am is my time.

~~~

After Kenpo I went looking to see if any of the sporting good stores had punching bags. (One had a single abused display model.)

However, when I pulled up to the Sportsman's Warehouse Cinnamon noticed the Bronze Elk out front and started growling at it. She growled at it as I left the car. She was still growling at it when I came back to the car, and she growled at it as we drove away.

I guess she doesn't like bronze, because she didn't growl at any of the elk in Yellowstone.

Line Study Final

Before I go into to much detail let me say unequivocally I hate Crow-quill pens. They blotch, they drip, they break, they stutter and I have spent lots and lots of time with them over the past two weeks.

This is a 15 x 20" study of composition using nothing more then lines. It is a linear-datum composition with a skewed horizontal language.

Things I like about it. The proportions turned out well and in the initial studies leading up to it I had the diagonal a solid black line, and in the final I changed it to the same horizontal language as the rest, which ties it together.

Things I don't like. Some of the earlier studies I drew the lines with ruler and they were razor sharp. This was booth good and bad. I like the more organic feel, but I have less control over the damn pen then I would like so the lines are rougher because of incompetence not design.

Oh... and see that big heavy block right below the light block? That was not on purpose. That was the thrice-damned pen leaking ink which got wicked under my trace paper. I added that block to cover the huge blob of misshapen ink.

Everyone in my critique group loved it as contrast to the light block...

But we're done with it and I can throw my Crow-quill pen out the window...

Wait?

What's that?

Our next assignment uses WHAT?

*mutter grumble swear*

Excuse me, I'll be outside looking for my pen.

*Edit apparently my random character used in the place of swearing genereted some HTML code that caused the paragraph to replicate. Who know I was so talented?

Final Fingerprint

So here it is. The award winning, earth-shaking final fingerprint composition.

Aren't you just blown away by it?

Weekly update. Nihongo blues, More learning experiences and Lines o' doom

This week both dragged and went fast. I had my first migraine in almost two months on the same day that the ISP folks finally saw fit to repair my intarweb. (If you bumped the cable the connection crashed. The cable ran past where Cinnamon likes to sleep...) 6 hours of drilling and rerunning the entire cable run from the box to my apartment...
~~~~~
This week I had a pre-calc test on that I walking out of it I felt I did better then I expected initially to do. However, I apparently bombed my Japanese test I thought I had done well on.

There will be of course great Nihongo time spent this weekend.
~~~~
I am typing this particular post waiting for another one of those great learning opportunities to occur. There is a 4 day workshop on Architecture + 3d Fabrication technology this weekend (which I almost talked my way into into in spite of it being for 3-5 year students.)

The presenter is doing an all-school presentation on it in umm .... 15 minutes or so.

*Edit... the three presenters all just showed up and setup a row of Mac Power-books o the stage looks very avant-guarde. It's also funny because the Arch-IT staff just spent 15 minutes getting a Vista PC that kept puking running on the projector and now it's being kicked to the curb.
~~~

In Design class we have have (thankfully) moved past the fingerprints are are doing line studies. Doing a meaningful composition with nothing more then a pen, straight lines that have to be only parallel or perpendicular, and line density is damn hard.

But it's not a fingerprint so I'm happy.

On Recovering, things you don't want to hear, lectures, and sore feet.

So I'm still sick. Daily doses of dayquil and nyquil have rendered me semi-functional through the week, but I could definitely tell when the dayquil was wearing off... My nose would start to clog, I'd start coughing, the hands would shake, I'd develop a violent twitch until I could get my next sweet sweet dose.

I don't remember the nights I took nyquil. That will be what I say in court too.

(I don't actually remember, but I did wake up in some funky positions that to the best of my knowledge I have never slept in before.)

Today was my first full day without any drugs, and although I'm still a little sick I don't feel like I'm missing half my brain.

Apparently it helps my test taking. My first pre-calc quiz I got 62% with the class average being 66%, the second one (which I don't remember taking) I got 82% with the class average being 68%.

I plan on drinking dayquil before every quiz.

~~~~~~

Things you don't want to hear from your design professor as he looks at your final proposal for the major assignment you've been working on for a month.

"If you turn it exactly as you have it now you will get a B-, if you make the changes your TA suggested... I would have to give you a D."

For the record, I did not storm out of the building and hunt down my TA to visit gross bodily harm on him.

I did spend nearly an hour with my professor one-on-one in his office working to improve the design. It means instead of a relatively easy final step I will have to do some shuffling of elements around... It will probably double the time it takes for me to complete the final.

(I may have also ghosted through the halls unsuccessfully looking to visit gross bodily harm on my TA... but I won't admit it.)


~~~~

So one of the fabulous advantages of going to a school like MSU is the visiting scholars they have and the on campus events. For example the AIA (American Institue of Architects) is the big professional organization for Architects, and the student chapter organizes events, visiting scholars, continuing ed and the like.

For example, there is a senior class called the Gypsy scholar class where approximately every two weeks a different notable architect teaches for a two week stint. SAIA got the current visiting scholar to give a presentation at 5:30 today on the importance of details.

So at the end of class our design professor asked how many of us had heard about it, with 1/10 of the class raising their hands. (I hadn't)

He then asked who was going. Maybe 5 people in a class of 60 raised their hands.

"This man is tremendously brilliant archtect and you ALL can learn a lot from him. I strongly recommend you go."

He then asked again who was now going. 12 people in a class of 60 raised their hands.

I went.

I was the only one from my class there. In fact out of the ~600 total students in the complete architecture school probably only 30 were in attendance.

He was utterly brilliant. More specifically, he blended international style with American vernacular in a balanced fashion that I have never seen accomplished before. He does a lot of remodels in the D.C. area and the historical districts have strict rules, so over the last 40 years of practice he's had to learn how to meld the two.

I'm probably the most jazzed up I've been about architecture in months.

~~~

I started my new job. Like everything else in life it seems to be a mix of bad news and good news.

Good News: Good coffee, there is very little technique-wise I have to learn. Everyone I've met or got to work with on my first day has been great.

Bad News: You get 3 free drip coffee or iced tea, Everything else you get 20% off. Considering that the actual cost of latte is like $.35 and the bulk of the cost is either capital costs or labor... I think that is pretty chincy.

Also... During my interview when I asked about pay I was told "Our barristas pay ranges from x to x+$3" depending on experience.

I am making X-$1.50 until my 90 day probationary period is up, at which point I "should" see a significant pay raise. I was also told that for employees demonstrating exceptional "Wow Factor" can have their probational period cut short.

But to put it in perspective. Right now I make almost as much in a 5 hour shift as I used to make an hour.

My monthly salary is only slightly higher then what I normally have spent on coffee in a month.

Needless to say I have mixed feelings about that.


Oh yeah... sore feet. No ergo mats for the barristas. Weird. 5 hours on hard floor is not something my feetsies are used to.

Daily Goal: Soak My feet
Weekly Goal: Re-read the pre-calc chapter I don't remember, 8am gym time, and not to cry like a little girl.

Locking horns with a professor (but in good way)

This happened last week, but it just now occurred to me to post it. (something someone said about it being okay if I posted positive happenings on my blog too...)

Our first design assignment (before the fingerprint one I'm working on now) was apparently a struggle for most of the students.

The professor at the end of class told us to take a 20x20" piece of bristol board and make a composition of what "design" is. He then informed us that neither he nor any of the TAs would answer any questions about the assignment and chased us out the class.

It was clear from overheard conversation that the other students had no clue what to do, but I had already planned out what I wanted to do.

Rather then attempt to demonstrate my (at this point) poor illustration skills I wanted to share examples of design. Since the professor didn't specify good design, or even human design I figured I had a lot of options. So I gathered up photos of things like ferns, the eiffel tower, spider webs, pyramids at giza, the Anchorage Performing Arts Center (my example of BAD design), mokume gane, the Golden mean (Heidi's idea and a great one) and many others. I then stuck a picture of sunflower in the middle and had the rest of them spiraling outward in pattern reminiscent of the of the middle of a sunflower.

Next class came and we all pinned ours up on the walls. Mine was one of two that was photographs, the rest were hand drawn (some good... some awful.)

We then circled the room looking at each others, when after about 5 minutes the prof came to mine, ripped it off the wall and went striding to the chalkboard where he pinned it up.

"Who's is this?" he exclaimed angerily.
I raised my hand.
"Can you identify all of these photographs on the board"
"All except two, I don't remember who designed the log cabin and I'm not positive if the Basillica was St. John's in Prague or if I'm getting it mixed up with another."

Then the grilling began..

"What's this... and this... and this... and this..." as he ran me through every photo on the board.
Finally the last one he pointed too I answered "Seattle Public Library designed by Joshua Prince-Ramus."
"Wrong!" shouted one of the TAs.
"The library was designed by Koohaas." said the prof grimly.
"I believe that you will find that Joshua Prince-Ramus was the principle architect on the project before he left Koolhaas NY to start his own firm."
"Are you certain? Willing to bet a passing grade on this assignment on it?"
"I am." (This happens to to be only one of the three pictures I was 100% certain on."
"Very well, if you are right you get a passing grade, and the loser buys coffee."

He then addressed the class... "What I was trying to demonstrate, is that if you include a picture of another person's work on your assignment you damn well better know who made it, and why it's important. Which Mr. Nelson will now tell us something important about the Seattle Public library."

Fortunately for me, about a week ago I re-watched Joshua Ramus TED talk on the design of the library so I was able to talk about hyper-rationalism design and the continuous spiral stacks and other cool features of the library.

The professor brought me coffee the next class.

(The two other pictures I knew a lot about was James Binnion's Mokume-gane teapot and Nadir Khalili's fired clay dome at the cal-earth institute.)