I work in the structural section editing drawings, writing bridge inspection reports, doing quantity take-offs and whatever else they need me to do. I feel like the experience I've received while working at the Corps has really paid off by helping me understand early in my educational career what civil engineering is all about.

This project involves a lot of teamwork. We have to use our knowledge from our previous classes to develop the software interface and the code for our system. Our main problem was establishing the connection to the database. With some help of our professor we were able to upload the database onto our network server.

We got to deal with some pretty cool RFID hardware to write our data onto our tags. The software that reads the tags was developed by our professor, Dr. Berisso, and can be downloaded on our IT website. Check it out!

Another group created a supply chain management system to check the quality of parts for a production run they’ll be doing next quarter. Our presentations are on Monday, in front of a couple of our professors and the chair of the IT department. It could be a long Sunday, trying to wrap everything up.

In addition to the four experiments, every individual had their own design project based off of an experiment that was performed in the lab. My design project was based on the continuous distillation experiment. The objective of the design was to properly size and cost a distillation column that can process a specified amount of feed. The feed was at a given composition and the desired composition of the product was also specified. After countless hours in Stocker, my design was complete and I presented it to three of my professors.

Now that Unit Ops I is complete, I am looking forward to Unit Ops II.

The first part is an artificial eye created using a camera that will be programmed to search for specific objects and learn which objects it wishes to pursue in the future. Say for example we want a red square, if the eye is tracking an object that that is red and instead of being a square it is a triangle it will learn through a "reward" system that it doesn't want that object and if it sees it from a distance again, instead of tracking it and wasting time it will automatically remember that it is not what it is looking for and go on trying to find the desired object.

The second part is a mobile base. This base will make it easy for the robot to track objects and examine them further by getting closer to them and/or avoiding them. The camera will be mounted on a 2-servo system that will allow horizontal and vertical adjustment for better ability in tracking objects. We will implement a wireless communication channel that will allow communication between the robot and the computer. The robot will be completely independent of user interaction after its initial programming and will carry out its task until finished or until a kill switch is thrown (should the need arise).

We are in the product research stage now and will be ordering parts relatively soon. I will keep you updated with our progress as we move along.

As unsettling as this may sound, I am currently in an organizational behavior management class in which I learned about the punctuated equilibrium model. Basically, this model shows how a typical group’s performance over time is small until right before the deadline, and then performance skyrockets. Although I don’t condone this type of group behavior, at least it has been proven that I’m not alone!

The first is a foundation engineering project. In this project a group of 5 students and myself are faced with the task of designing a set of foundations for a proposed building development.

The second is another group project involving the design of a water treatment facility. We are given a test sample of water from our mock source and have the assignment of cleaning the water in order to meet EPA standards.

The final project is one that I have a lot of interest in and is in computer aided structural design. For this project, one other student and myself are given a generic plan for a building. It is then our job to input the structure into software which aids in the actual design of the structural members. This is something that I hope to do once I graduate so the experience I am gaining through this project is priceless.

In my Entrepreneurship class we are creating a big presentation discussing our progress towards a business plan which should be pretty interesting. I also have a project involving quality assurance for one class, and another project that requires my group and I to write a software program that will be used for library management of books, etc. This should be a busy couple of weeks, but I think it’ll be cool to see all of the things that we’ve learned come together in these projects.

Last week I took my last test in Marketing 202 and ISE 432 before the final. While I’m relieved to have those out of the way I still have a ton of work to do. I still have a paper for marketing due and a group project in ISE. Both of these are very important since it is 15% of my grade in class. Even though I do not have a major project due in calculus, the final will be here before I know it and I want to be thoroughly prepared for it.

Physics is probably my hardest subject this quarter. We are given individual and group quizzes every week along with homework that sometimes can be pretty tough. I am going to start looking over equations now, so I will not be overwhelmed when it comes to test day. Overall, it is going to be a very busy three weeks for me. Hopefully everything goes well, wish me luck!

This year a few friends and I dressed up as characters from the movie “Robin Hood Men in Tights”. Yes, this outfit required the wearing of bright green tights.

Early in the day before the festivities started uptown I made a triple batch of my mother’s epically delicious award winning chili. This recipe normally only requires one pound of ground beef, I used closer to three and a half pounds, so you can imagine the amount of chili that was consumed by Robin Hood and his merry men.

Other friends were also present for the dinner with costumes ranging from Loofas (the shower things) to witches, Bob Ross the painter, and even Batman graced us with his presence. Overall it was a great Halloween weekend with no rain and not too cold of weather.