Goals 6, 43, & 59: 49er's Weekend

This was the first true 49er's I've ever had. I wasn't underaged, or out of town, or pre-occupied. I was in Socorro (for most of it) and I was ready to enjoy my final 49er's. Really, it all started early in the week when we started making Pauly Shore t-shirts as an ASME fundraiser. We sold a good amount of shirts, getting a lot of publicity in the process.

The night of Pauly Shore, things escalated rather quickly to involve fleshy tagging.

Naturally, I was pumped. I was about to see a childhood role model. Pauly Shore, of Bio Dome was coming to my school, and I was going to let him make me laugh.

On stage, he acted exactly as I expected. It was like he hadn't changed a bit. He made noises, acted immature, and did the weasel.

Then there was a lot of in-depth info I hadn't exactly bargained for. Things like his sexual positions, his previous partners, and his experiences with ladies. I couldn't stop laughing because Pauly Shore was up on stage, in his 42 year old time capsule appearance.

Goal 59: Meet Someone Famous that I Respect

I'll admit, respecting Pauly Shore is a stretch, not to mention considering him famous, but it's as good as I'm going to do for right now. Meeting Pauly was pretty low key and quick, but he did tell us he liked our shirts and chests, and we were told to post this picture up on all of his social networks.

Goal 6: Take the GRE

The Graduate Record Examination is like the SAT for big kids. Last year at the SHPE conference I attended a GEM Fellowship seminar, and got a 50% off code for the GRE. I've been waiting to use that coupon. I was going through the rules, and when I saw that you can only take the GRE once a month, I decided I needed to take it in October, just in case. So I went on the website on that Tuesday, and luckily there was an opening that upcoming Saturday! Someone must have rescheduled at just the right time, because all weekends through November have been booked for a while. So I jumped on the opportunity, despite it being 49er's weekend.

Goal 43: Conquer the GRE

I didn't study for the GRE too much, and it probably showed in my verbal section. I tried to learn tons of words, but none of the words I learned showed up. In the quantitative section I missed one question. I put a decimal when it asked for a percent (my answer was 1.25; the correct answer was 125%). In the end, it was a 790/545 (out of 800/800) or an [above average]/[average]. I would retake the exam with my confidence that I could get a perfect score, but I'm not sure it's worth the $150 pricetag without a discount coupon.

After the test, I drank a celebratory beer with David, and headed back down to Socorro to finish the weekend. First up was getting tatted like we be hardcore, and rollin' intah kaseeno night!

We were rollin' like celebrities...

Tearin' it up, makin' mad monies...

Walkin' on the floor with mah cronies...

Cacklin' loud as the bills accumulate...

After winning an iPod as a team, it was time for bordeaux to titillate...

Our friend Natasha was getting pretty irate...

After a night of dancing and drinking at Ashley's house, followed by a late night of partying at Nick's house, followed by a macing, it was time to sleep for a little while before climbing the next mountain: M-Mountain.

It was the 99th anniversary of the M-Mountain climb, in which people gather and haul up bags of lime and marble dust to keep the iconic 'M' looking white and defined.

We were Team Amber Ortega, and as a team, we had team t-shirts. Comprised of Adam Anderson, Austin Silva, Matt Swanson, and myself, we had a great time carrying 50 lbs of lime up to the top.

The first time for three of us, we made it up in a little under two hours. Not too shabbeh, if I do say so myself.

We finished as a team, keeping everyone close the whole time, and not more than two minutes between each member finished.

The world from the top.

Austin brought up some prayer flags, and we put them up by ripping one tree out of the ground, and conveniently relocating it.

Walking around in the lime was like walking on flour. It makes me want to dedicate a room just to flour playing.

49er's was concluded with a Socorro Springs feast, and celebratory beers.

With that, my final 49er's weekend had come to an end. Very eventful, I had somehow managed to not do any homework the entire time, and get away with it. The next weekend will be the FE exam, and grad school applications. The semester pushes on.

Cincinnati and the Grad School Expo

This is a little bit of a backwards post, since it all happened before Disney, but it's not like that really matters, does it?

Purdue gave me $375 to visit their school, and attend their Big Ten+ Graduate School Exposition. That's a deal, right? Right. I decided it would be a good time to have a vacation too, so I routed through Cincinnati to visit a good 'ol friend, Kathryn Franchini.

I left on September 24th to Cinci (Local-speak), where Kate picked me up from the airport, we drove through terrible traffic, and we caught up a bit.

We had some cheese with our wine.

The next day, Sept. 25th, I toured Cinci while Kate was at work. This was at the library, the only place to get internet because she's too cheap to have modern conveniences (such as a couch to sleep on).

Then for dinner I made this delicious stir fry dish. I made it all with inspiration from Whit, and her impromptu stir fry dishes.

The bamboo shoots in this batch were the first Katy had ever tasted.

That night we went out on the town in Cinci. It was pretty lively because there was a music festival going on at the time.

Many fountains featured people with water-related super powers.

We saw this band called 'Oh My God.' They were actually really good, despite having Jerry Seinfeld on Keyboard, and my cousin Logan on lead guitar.

Kate couldn't help but enjoy the music.

After the concert, we went to Skyline chili, which is apparently a local favorite chain. It was really good, and it's roots go back to Greece. The prices were reasonable too, losing me only a single $2 bill.

After the chili, we went to an 80's dance party and jammed out until the night got late. The next morning Katy graciously drove me to the Indianapolis airport (2hrs away) to meet Nic Schafer (another Techie attending the expo), and pick up my rental car, this Honda beaute:

We drove to Purdue, now Sept. 26th, and touring the school was really eye opening. I toured the acoustic, engine, and HVAC labs. Then, after eating dinner with a member of the ME faculty, he took us on an exclusive tour of the nanotechnology lab, and Discovery Park. His name was Jeff Rhoads, and he is now responsible for, basically, everything I know about grad school.

Touring the labs and seeing the campus really sold me on the idea of a big school with lots of resources, and it also made Purdue seem much more appealing.

Purdue became infinitely more attractive when I found out about their aesthetic campus facilities, namely, their skybridge. On Monday, Sept. 27th, there were a few more seminars about graduate school, followed by a brunch with representatives from each school.

At the brunch I talked really in depth with Duke and Notre Dame's Business and Innovation schools. They gave me some really cool information, and told me a lot about the new programs that are being developed that give engineers a business background, focused on going into industry.

The grad school fair was excellent, and many great schools were there. However, after talking so much with Purdue faculty, and representatives at the brunch, speaking with recruiters and admissions people felt like a waste of time.

One of the biggest revelations while talking to people here, was that PhD's get all the funding, and Master's students are left out to dry a lot of the time. This is going to be a huge factor in deciding what I do after I graduate.

We left Purdue a whole lot smarter than when we got there. I felt many magnitudes more comfortable with the process and schools involved, and I think it was a great experience.

This was a fun little trip to visit one of my best friends, and learn a ton of information about life after undergrad. I plan on visiting more campuses, and deciding if I want a PhD or not.

Goal 42: Disney Conference

This post consists of two parts, one is mostly talk, the other is mostly pictures.

The HENAAC Conference basically represents my success as a NMT student. I've had success elsewhere, doing other things, but it seems to me that if I'm actively attending NMT, the HENAAC Conference will prove I'm doing things right. The 2009 conference was in Long Beach, CA, and as President of ASME, I managed to fund and send twelve students, including myself. This was the first time our club had attended a conference in recent history, and three members came back with awards, including my own record-breaking 1st place in the College Bowl.

This year the conference was held on the other side of the country, at Walt Disney World. I planned on going purely for this fact, and received a travel grant to go for applying early. A few months after I received my travel grant I was made aware of the Technical Poster Competition. No real risk involved in submitting an abstract, I decided to modify an old conference abstract, and submit it with the intention of future work. About a month later I heard back from the judges when they let me know they were going to fully fund my trip to Florida because I was a finalist in the competition.

Fast forward through a month of me planning on doing the experiments, but failing to find time until taking the week before off, and hiring two freshman helpers to do all the testing the weekend before the conference. That weekend was likely the worst weekend of my life, and was spent trouble shooting fluid models, fixing experimental setups, and trying to extract meaningful data out of what seemed to be random noise. Long, stressful nights spent on this project were not planned, especially not the Tuesday night (I flew to Florida on Thursday morning) when I was up until 6:00am (Wednesday morning), only to lose eight hours of work from an Adobe Illustrator crash! Luckily I was able to redo the poster quickly, and have it printed by 3:00pm, Wednesday afternoon. This is what it looked like:

Now, I wasn't especially happy with it because I knew I could do better, but I kinda ran out of time. I made it mostly by the judges rubric, so I felt good about the way I made it, but then I also didn't like it because I thought I could have put many more pictures. At any rate, once it was printed, I didn't look at it again until the day of the competition.

Goal 42: Present My Work at a Conference

I arrived in Orlando and met Austin Silva before heading to our hotel rooms at Disney's Coronado Springs Resort, it is October 7th.

The first thing I did was lose my registration information, and lock my room key in my room. That was alright though, because the SECOND thing I did was go to WALT DISNEY WORLD!

We lucked out enough to be at Walt Disney World during Epcot's Food and Wine Festival. I had plenty of Main Gate Passes, so I called up my old friend Rachel Edsey, whom I worked with at Epcot and had recently moved back to Florida, and we made a night of the night. We started in Mexico with margaritas.

Then we ate:

• Pot Stickers in China (excellent sauce)
• Pierogi in Poland (tasty combination)
• Pulled pork lettuce wraps in South Korea (delicious. really delcious.)
• Mussels and waffles in Belgium (small mussels, but we got a free order for getting a shell without an edible inside)
• Beef Rendang in Singapore (very good, but made excellent by the SINGAPORE SLING drink, made with fancy and extremely smooth gin)
• Baclava in Greece (this was free because of my charm)
• and escargot in France (pictured and scrumptious)

Did I mention we got to go see Sugar Ray in concert at the American Gardens Theater? Well that couldn't have been much better. Mark McGrath rocked it like he was still in his 20's, and at this point the Singapore Sling made the entire experience pretty surreal.

After watching Illuminations: Reflections of Earth, we made our way over to Downtown Disney, where Rachel caught us up on the newest Disney rage: Vinylmation.

The next day Austin and I took part in a few HENAAC seminars...then...we kinda went to the Animal Kingdom for lunch... We went straight from the conference, so we were dressed to impress. When I called Rachel, she wanted to meet us, but she had just finished with an interview, and didn't want to pay to park. We told her that by being dressed up she would only fit in, and then Austin and I decided we'd hike out to the toll booths to meet her. When we finally arrived at the booths in our ties, the cast members were confused to see us out there, and didn't really know what to do, so they just told us to stand on the side of the highway... then we got picked up and it was time for AK!

We got fast passes for Dinosaur, ate some dino-pulled-pork, and went single rider at Expedition Everest. When I was placed in a seat, the guy I was sitting next to was by himself also, and Austin just happened to be a row in front of me. I requested that him and Austin switch, and he agreed. You can see him in the picture as the one that thinks he's a zombie.

After all the fun for lunch, I had to go make my poster presentation. This signifies the completion of the aforementioned goal.

The rest of the day was seminar and another trip to Downtown Disney. At this time, Austin and I had mostly reconnected with the others from our school, and we went to bed ready for the morning.

The next day was the final day of the conference, October 9th. My phone alarm didn't go off, so we ended up sleeping in way later than expected. Nonetheless, we were able to book it through the career fair and make it to WDW by 1pm. It was a marathon of Disney in which we started at the Animal Kingdom, made a guest appearance at Hollywood Studios, toured the world at Epcot, and ended the magic at Magic Kingdom.

At Animal Kingdom, we went on the best safari I've ever been on. The animals were out like crazy, and we saw rare black rhinos, giraffes, new additions, and tons of field beasts.

At Hollywood Studios, we were thoughtfully stuck in....

The Twilight Zone

At Hollywood Studios I began my amazing streak of acquiring free things. It started when I asked for an orange at a turkey leg dealer. She said they didn't have any fruit, so when I pointed out the fruits on the counter behind her, she informed me those were supposed to be gone. She got me one, and then asked me to "blahblah fera turkey leg."

Me: What?

Her: Gobble for a Turkey Leg?

Me: Oh! Uh... gobble gobble gobble.

Her: Louder.

Me. Gobble Gobble Gobble!

Her: Use your arms! (like a chicken dance)

Me (using arms): GOBBLE GOBBLE GOBBLE!

>BAM<

=Free Turkey Leg and Orange for our group=

Then we rode the boat to Epcot. Just before this picture, I found out that I won 3rd place in the poster competition! (I missed the awards ceremony because I was enjoying the magic)

Epcot was awesome. By this time I switched pins with Alex Plonczak (far right), so now I had a "Just Engaged" pin that had Alex and Erika's (Middle) name's written on it. I wanted it because I knew I could use it much better than they could. So at every kiosk I was sure to inform cast members of how I was recently engaged, and I got lots of extra attention because of it!

Then we rode Spaceship Earth... Welcome to the future.

Epcot ended in the fireworks that bring it all back for me.

We had just enough time to make it over to Magic Kingdom before their fireworks show. We met up with the last person from our school, Nic Schafer.

I realized before entering that I lost my ID. I got this ice cream to cheer me up. You can't tell from this picture, but it worked.

Space Mountain had a huge line, so we walked to the other attractions. It was already 10:00pm, so it was no surprise that Splash Mountain had a 5 minute wait time. Being one of the biggest attractions in the World, we decided to take a walk on the wild side and just go for it.

Immediately after getting in line it was apparent we may have made a mistake.

"You may get soaked!"

...What were we thinking?

For the next fifteen or so minutes, the six of us screamed at the top of our lungs, put our hands as high up in the air as we could, and caused as much of a ruckus as a crazy bunch of college students going to a kid's theme park.

After the insanity that was Splash Mountain, we couldn't get the song out of our heads, and we couldn't stop recalling the laughing place, so we couldn't help but skip to a tune: "Skippity-doo-da, Skippity-day..." across the park. Whilst skipping, a challenge appears!

The Electrical Parade was in our way, so we had to re-route! On our new route we ended up skipping through the cafeteria in Tomorrowland, still singing. The people in the back of our skip line informed everyone that we were applauded by the time we made it out of the diner!

Making it back to Space Mountain, it was much fast than we remembered.

We ended with a picture in from of the castle, and went back to Coronado Springs. Four parks in one day is something I have never done, and was not easy, but was the time of my life.

At the end of the night we all headed to the pool and spa for a little while before headed to our rooms. Austin and I quickly packed and indulged in an all-nighter while we waited for the 5am bus departure times.

My weekend of unimaginable luck wasn't over yet, though. At the airport, I volunteered to change flights and received $483.00 in Southwest vouchers. My new flight was with Austin all the way home, and I ended up making it home before my original travel plans would have gotten me there. This was, absolutely, the best way I could have ended the prior weeks of hell. I doubt I will ever forget this trip to the Disney Conference.