Kitty

Howdy! It's been a while. This semester has been overwhelming, but it's almost over. I've had a good time--enjoying time spent with friends, family, and boyfriend. Now, I'm procrastinating for finals, anticipating my freedom in T- 5 days!



Stitch, our new kitty. She's my roommate Leslie's. She's adjusted to living in our apartment quite well, especially cohabiting with a dog! In fact, just this afternoon, she walked over to our dog Marco's water dish right before he was going to drink, and Marco just waited patiently for her to drink her fill. Hehe :)

Green thumb? Maybe.

Jamie, Jamie, you dismay me.
How does your garden grow?

Good question! My attempts at gardening this year, although not abundantly fruitful, have been fun. Here is the progress of my sunflowers so far... :)


1 week


3 weeks


5 weeks


9 weeks--taller than me!
And I am very, very tall.


Can't wait until next summer. :)

Summer Fun

Howdy! I'm back home in Florida. Mom, Dad, Tom, and I once again populate the same house. Thomas and I just keep coming back! (I think Mom and Dad secretly like it.) I've been doing some kayaking, beach-going, and volleyball-playing.

I'm going to church with Mom and Dad, and going to a bible study. Haha, I just found out that the person who wrote the curriculum also wrote Blue Like Jazz, a book I've been suggested many times. Maybe I should really read it this time. :)

Another fun activity this summer: a garden! I planted cherry tomatoes, yard long beans (yes! they're supposed to be really long!), and two different types of sunflowers: a dwarf variety that grows to 20 inches tall, and a normal variety that grows to up to 12 feet tall! Amazing.

Homework Bound...

Well, folks, I had a great time during spring break bumming around home. It was good to see old friends and soak up some Florida sun.
I brought a friend of mine, Nori, to visit. We used to play the same 2-D spaceship game around seven years ago, and we've been friends ever since. Anywho, it was fun to show him around my hometown, although I was thoroughly shamed by my lack of knowledge of the space program. I now know about 20x more than I used to in that area thanks to a tour of Kennedy Space center and Nori's fascination with space.



We also visited ECHO, saw some of the farm, saw some briquette presses and solar dryers, and poked around in ECHO's library. I got the titles of some cool books on solar drying (how ironic!) that look like they'll be useful in our peanut drying efforts.

But sadly, I am now back in school, working diligently on homework (with a bit of socializing and EWB stuff thrown in for good measure, of course).

A tad nutty

After perhaps my most depressing blog entry yet, I thought I'd give an update on Engineers Without Borders stuff. I'm still leading "The Haiti Project," one of our chapter's international projects. We're currently working on...

A Solar Peanut Dryer
We built a solar peanut dryer last March at MFK's factory in Cap Haitien, Haiti. It doesn't work very well though. Costing about $400, it is too complicated to build, and too expensive for the amount of drying it can accomplish.


We're going to be working with some peanut experts that visited Cap Haitien recently to develop a cheap, simple drying structure that allows farmers to keep their peanuts out of the rain but still allows them to dry fast enough. Once we get a working prototype, we'll distribute the plans to farmers. This, combined with proper peanut drying and storage at the factory, should greatly reduce mold on the peanuts, and therefore the amount of peanuts thrown out at the factory.


Peanut Shell Charcoal
We're developing a way to make charcoal out of the waste peanut shells at the factory. They want to employ 1-2 people to make charcoal and sell on the street. Wood charcoal is the main cooking fuel for average Haitians. A large coffee can's worth of charcoal sells for about $0.60. By setting up this mini-business, MFK will employ 1-2 more people, and reduce demand for wood charcoal, which has wrecked Haiti's environment.


We put the peanut shells in the chimney, then light then with newspaper underneath.


Then once it's burning well, we smother the fire with a bucket and let it cool down. This pyrolyzes (I think this is right) the peanut shells and just leaves simple carbon chains.


Then we use cooked tapioca flour goo to bind the charcoal fines together and compress them into these nifty briquettes!

A New Factory
MFK is planning on building a new factory, to be completed in 2011. Jim S, an engineer that's helping us out, is going to be helping them put together a construction schedule. We're going to help as much as well can.

The Suite Life

This year I'm rooming with five of my friends in a suite here on campus. We have a very industrial-looking bathroom (with urinal! ewww), a common room and a balcony. Even though we're in the shabbier "traditional" style dorms, I really like the setup.

Our suite is extremely musical. We have an electric piano in our common room, and besides myself we have two cellists, a clarinetist (base and regular!), a retired flute player, and a singer. On top of that (literally and figuratively...), one of the guys upstairs plays the piano and another plays the djembe. We've had some pretty cool jam sessions, if I may say so myself.


When we're not jamming, we're probably decorating the walls with paper art, visiting instead of doing homework, actually doing homework (at 1am??), or playing frisbee. All of this is spotted with the occasional corny joke (courtesy of yours truly)

In all, our suite gets along quite well. We're all a bit odd (except for me of course), slightly messy, quite easygoing, and prone to spontaneous dance parties. Add this all up and you get one "suite" concoction!

Life's a Breeze...

Howdy! Or should I say "Good Afternoon!"

Our second week in Ireland continues. I'm sitting on the floor in our cottage watching the fire pop. Dad fears that I've inherited his pyromaniacal tendencies. He could be right!

Our first week was spent wandering around western Ireland. We hypothesized that Ireland would be an excellent place for wind power: so much wind and plenty of land for wind farms. We always kept our eyes open for wind turbines but only saw a handful in our week.

Contrast that with Northern Ireland, which is actually part of the United Kingdom. Based out of a cottage in Norther Ireland, we've been pleased to see many wind turbines around the countryside here. We've probably seen on the order of 70 to 100 wind generators in the three days we've been here. In all, the UK (England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland) has some 200 wind farms supplying 3,500 MW of power, enough electricity for about 2 million homes. Pretty impressive. Ireland seems ideally suited for wind power, just as Florida is ideally suited for solar. Unlike Florida though, the UK seems to be pretty progressive about adopting responsible energy practices--we read today in the newspaper that by 2015, the UK plans on obtaining 20%-25% of its electricity from wind power.

For Peat's Sake!

Jim, Jody, and Jamie at Bogspot.com

Surprise! I'm in Ireland. I've been so delinquent in blogging lately that I forgot to tell you I'm going to Ireland. We'll, we're here. We arrived Yesterday, Saturday morning, in Dublin. Since none of us slept on the plane, we were pretty loopy yesterday. The combined stress of navigating round-a-bouts, trying to remember to drive on the right side of the road, and trying to figure out where everything is, made us downright slap-happy toward the end of the day yesterday.

We rented a four-door Audi manual car (45mpg, we reckon--or if you care to calculate it as the Europeans do:

1 gallon 3.785 L 0.62 mile 2.22
-------- x -------- x ------ x ---- = 5.07 L per 100km
45 miles 1 gallon 1 km 2.22

)


We are spending a week in Oughterard, a small town in Western Ireland. I think it's pronounced "ottered" with a longer "r". Maybe when its first inhabitant moved there, he was mauled by a bunch of freshwater mammals? There is a lake here! It's possible!

The cottage we are staying in has an excellent view out onto Lake (or Lough, if you're feeling Irish) Corrib. I took a walk out this afternoon and chatted with a fisherman down the road. He was just leaving his ~12' boat to head home. He told me it was a "hardy day" today. Cold and wet, and only one fish, about "thiis" big. Fishing for brown trout and salmon, the fishermen tie mayflies to their lines, let the wind catch the lines and hold the fly just at the water's surface. The fish then comes up to the surface, eats the fly and gets caught by the hook as well.



Between Dublin and our cottage in Oughterard, we stopped at a bog. Bogs are a curious and common geological feature in Ireland. Layers and layers of dead plants fill up a shallow lake, and before they can fully decompose, they are covered with water and more plants, especially a specific type of moss. Eventually the dead plants turn into peat and the whole area becomes a bog. It takes approximately 1000 years to build up 1 meter of bog.



Peat is a common fuel in Ireland. I'm actually warming my feet in front of a peat fire right now! There are a number of peat power plants around the country, and provide enough power for 500,000 homes. We passed some peat bricks "drying" on the side of the road.



This bog is especially interesting, because it is home to the Corlea Trackway, an ancient (c. 150 BC) oak-plank road stretching across 100 meters of bog. We got to see 18m of the trackway, perfectly preserved after it sank into the bog just ten years after its construction.



The curious thing about the trackway is that the people that built this had to have known that the road would sink into the bog quickly, and that it was possible to travel around on the higher land without too much trouble. So is it possible that this road was instead some sort of religious item? Who knows?

Tulips

Spring in St. Louis is beautiful. I know Mom is "oooh"ing over the tulips right now. I've been enjoying 50-70 degree weather (well, for the most part--it snowed two weeks ago). Things have been crazy lately, but I guess that's the way it goes.

We had our first build day for the solar peanut dryer yesterday. So far, we have a bunch of cut but unattached pieces of wood, some fun pictures (that I haven't been able to get my hands on yet--sorry!), permission to use the engineering shop, and a place to store our dryer-in-progress.

I got my guitar fixed. It got knocked over a couple times (don't know who would have done that...) and I finally managed to knock off a tuning peg. Still, I got it fixed at the music shop on the Loop for $14! Sweet!

I played second oboe in an oboe-oboe-English horn trio last monday at a recital. That went fairly well. Oboes in harmony are so nice!

Anyway, I don't really feel very philisophical right now. Things are just...busy. I have three more weeks of school and then I'm done. Two more weeks until finals. Two of my classes have no final, just final projects. The project would be really neat if it weren't for the fact that we're given very little time to work on them and each one is worth about a third of my grade! Here's a concept sketch for one of my projects:


Since the school year is coming to an end, I guess it's time to reflect. I really like college. It's a good feeling to be on your own, figuring out life for yourself.

I feel like I can cause things that I care about to happen. I'm very happy I've been leading the Haiti project with Engineers without Borders. Going to Haiti was an eye-opening experience of course, but I was amazed at how much I was pushed and stretched to get it in motion. I had to make many phone calls, and do a ton of coordinating, because it takes a lot of people to make such things happen. I've found a lot wanting in myself, but I think I've grown a lot this year as well.

I've made some friends here at Wash U. My roommate, Carissa, is awesome--we're rooming together next year! I still haven't settled down completely in a church, but I've made a lot of good friends through the church groups on campus.

Back to Normal

I've pretty much gotten back into the swing of things back at school. Mom and Dad are relieved to hear that I've gotten caught up on the work that I let slide prior to the trip to Haiti. My roommate's glad that I'm here to bake her pumpkin cake. I'm taking hot showers for granted once again.

Remember the fondue party I helped organize a few months ago to raise awareness about human trafficking and promote fair trade bananas? Well, starting last week, our dining service offers only fair trade bananas! This is an amazing accomplishment for Students for Fair Trade on campus. Fair trade bananas are virtually impossible to buy in St. Louis, but due to the dedication of about a half dozen students, and positive responses on campus to events like the fondue party, our dining service switched to fair trade bananas. Victory has never tasted so sweet!

In addition, last month Cadbury announced that it's best-known product is going to be fair trade certified by late summer this year. This is the first step made by a major chocolate maker toward fair trade. I hope this trend continues.

Our first Haiti Project meeting is tonight. We'll start working on tweaking the design for the solar dryer so that we can build and test one here in St. Louis. Here's the current design made in CAD software.

Haiti Pictures

We got back to St. Louis yesterday night. Boy was it nice to have a hot shower. Still, it seems a bit surreal to be back in the US after our week in Haiti. Back to the land of plenty, perfection, and my own naivety.
After a week of intense visual and cultural learning, it's back to the books. But before I get back into my routine, I want to get down as much of my trip as possible. I thought I'd do some of that while showing you some pictures from the trip. I did not take any of these pictures: these were taken by Cory or Robin, my industrious travel companions. All but the one marked are by Cory.

(Robin)

This is Robin, Cory, me, and Eddie (the Haitian carpenter we worked with) standing with the dryer. As we drove out of the gate, Eddie was about to put the roof on to finish it. We spent quite a bit of time working with Eddie on the dryer, and although the three of us have had more formal education that he has had, he far outstripped us in carpentry ability.


In addition to the dryer, we made charcoal from waste peanut shells. This picture shows the yellow-ish smoke from the peanut shells. Once that smoke turns clean, we cover the can with another can and seal it with dirt to let it carbonize in an oxygen-deficient environment.


Haiti is a pretty bleak place. 80% of the people live in poverty, some 50% in abject poverty. It has almost no exports, no internal industry, and only one real natural resource: concrete. Haiti is receiving so much aid from the largest political and philanthropic organizations in the world (like the IMF and WHO) to tiny churches supporting orphanages across the countryside. It's hard for me to believe that Haiti will ever be brought out of its terrible poverty. But just like the boy on the beach throwing starfish back into the ocean, the little bit we do means a lot to those people who benefit, however few.

I'm Off!

Well, off to Florida, at least. But this is the first step to getting to Haiti! I'll spend a couple days at home then go to Ft. Lauderdale to fly out on Monday. I'm leavin' on a jet plane..

Going to Haiti

Boy things sure have been busy around here lately. Our chapter of Engineers without Borders started a new project partnering with Meds and Food for Kids (MFK) in Haiti. A team of one professor and two students (including me!) will travel to Cap Haitien in Northern Haiti over spring break, March 9-16. There, MFK runs a factory that produces peanut butter to treat malnourished children in Haiti. At the factory, we'll help MFK implement a maintenance for their machines so that (hopefully) they will need less repairs and last longer.


We'll also be taking a look at a solar dryer that they are building to dry their peanuts. MFK buys all of its peanuts from local farmers (supplementing their economy!) at coops or from individuals. They get the peanuts at about 30% moisture content and have to dry them down to 10% immediately so that they don't mold. Right now they're looking at plans from ECHO! I've seen the dehydrator at ECHO that the plans are based off of. It's really neat to see things connect together like that.

After we get back, we'll work on redesigning the dryer, build a prototype, and test it here. We'll alter it as needed and send the plans back to the factory in Cap Haitien. If we can, we'll go back and help them build it.

I am one of the leads for this project, and I've been super busy putting all of this together. Two weeks ago, the trip was up in the air, but now it's pretty definite that we'll be going. After an insane week, we selected the team members and bought tickets to Cap Haitien yesterday.

This project has been a lot of work. This past week, especially, has felt a lot like the night before science fair--putting together my board and results late late into the night. The only difference is that where the science fair scramble lasts maybe 10 hours, I've been in scramble mode for the past five days straight! It is definitely worth it, though. This is such a great project and a great learning experience for me. It's been a whirlwind lesson in leadership for me--keeping a schedule, keeping the "big picture" in mind, being diplomatic when working with other people, keeping in touch, figuring out how to get information, holding meetings, you name it! So far, I've figured out some things that work and many more that don't...

I'm really excited about this project. Still, I'm hoping that things will quiet down a bit--I'd really like to spend some time on my beloved 2D spaceship game...

Life is like a laundry basket full of oboe reeds...

Last semester, I started taking oboe lessons, concentrating mostly on making oboe reeds, an essential skill for a self-sufficient oboist. You can't buy high quality reeds from a store; you have to get someone to make them for you, and then tweak them for you as they change.

Well, as I was working on some reeds this morning, I started thinking that life is kind of like making oboe reeds. Making quality reeds is an extremely tricky process, and takes a long time to learn. It's fairly easy to learn to make a reed that looks right, but extremely difficult to make one that plays right.

Here's how reed-making goes:


First you have to attach a piece of (1)bamboo cane (just called cane) to a (2)metal base called a "staple." You take the piece of cane, fold it in half over about half of the staple, then wrap string very tightly around the cane and staple. (3)

Then, you have to shave bits of cane off of the reed in certain places to make it vibrate right(4). This is the hardest part, and where all of the skill comes in.

There are many subtle techniques to shaving the cane, most of which I have not learned. Pretty much I just work as best on the reed and then my instructor takes it and tries to salvage a playable reed from it.

The thing that impresses me most about the whole process is how difficult it is, and how you go into it knowing that you will not make decent reeds for quite a while. My teacher told me that people say you can't make a good reed until you've made a laundry basket full of them. That's a lot of reeds! Regardless, it will probably be a year or two before I make acceptable reeds, depending on how much I work at it.

I guess that's what life seems like a lot of the time--there are so many little things that you have to learn before you can really excel on your own. Until then, hopefully, there are people to help you salvage your actions to mold them into something useful. But you've gotta make a whole lot of not-so-wonderful moves before you really get the hang of things.

Fondue!

A few months ago, I presented some information on human trafficking at an Amnesty International meeting. I recommended that if Amnesty wanted to do something regarding human trafficking this semester, a good event would be to participate in Stop the Traffik's "World's Largest Fondue Party." The idea is to have tons of fair trade chocolate fondue parties around the world to raise awareness about human trafficking, raise money to support anti-human trafficking efforts, and to make a statement to chocolate companies about the importance of traffic-free chocolate.

Well, everyone at Amnesty liked the idea, and last night held a fondue party of our own to participate. We had it in one of the eating/hang out places on campus. We estimated that about 45 people stopped by during the night.



We teamed up with Students for Fair Trade, who were actually going to have an event promoting fair trade bananas (they're trying to get fair trade bananas sold on campus) on the same night! So, we had chocolate fondue and banana splits with fair trade chocolate and "whole trade" bananas from Whole Foods (fair trade certified bananas are nearly impossible to find in St. Louis).

We had flyers talking about fair trade and human trafficking for people to grab. In addition, Students for Fair Trade showed a British film on the banana trade, and Amnesty gave a powerpoint presentation on human trafficking in the chocolate industry and in general.

The event was fairly successful, although we did have some mishaps. The fondue kept burning until someone (I don't know who) came a half hour into the event and fixed it. Since we had burned about half of the chocolate, I think, we ran out pretty quickly. Also, the projector in the room we used was typically used for movies, and didn't have a hook-up for computers. Fortunately, I have the proper equipment to hook up a computer to a DVD player because Thomas and I have been hooking up my computer to our TV and DVD player at home all last year. Who knew all of those super nintendo games we played on my computer last year would be so useful!

I'm rather proud of the powerpoint presentation I made for the event, and I think I'll try turning it into a video and uploading it here for everyone to see! You might have to wait a bit, though--I do have exams. :)

Snow!

I thought I'd write a quick blog about my life recently. Nothing too exciting, mind you, except for some very cold white stuff we don't see in Florida much. Here I am enjoying the first snow of the season! Exciting! Yes, that little pick rectangle is my face, I promise.



I've been really busy lately (although I had a really nice break over Thanksgiving at Grandma and Grandpa's in Peoria). I'm a project lead for Wash U's Engineers without Borders newest international project in Haiti. I've been getting a lot of valuable experience with that. Right now, we're working on applying for funding, learning more about the machines that we'll be making a maintenance schedule for, and recruiting a professional engineer to come with us to Haiti (EWB national requirement). If any of you know any PE's that might be interested in coming with us (they don't have to live close to St. Louis--we can telecommunicate beforehand if we have to) or know any good resources for learning about diesel generators and powering a building with generators, could you let me know?

In addition, I'm helping plan a fair trade chocolate fondue and banana split party on Dec 10 to raise awareness about fair trade and human trafficking. Things are going well so far. It's really amazing to see it progress--we'll see everything come together soon!

I'm coming home on Dec 22. Mom and Thomas are flying up on my last day of exams, the 16th, and we'll drive up to Pittsfield to visit Grandma and Aunt Becky and Uncle Mark until we head back on the 22nd. Then I'll be in beautiful, warm Florida! And I'll be warm. Did I mention that it will be warm there? Ahhh, warmth..

Two Worlds Collide! ECHO meets St.. Louis

Friday I ate lunch with the Hargraves! I stayed with the Hargraves while I was at ECHO this summer. I ended up spending a lot of time with them--helping Ellen cook (she's such a good cook, too!), talking computers with Bob, playing games, and talking about our lives. They are one of the reasons my trip to ECHO was so awesome.


They are in St. Louis this weekend, visiting their daughter and her son, who are going to seminary here in St. Louis. They live very close to campus--the Hargraves thought it was only a 4-mile drive. So, Friday at lunch time, we met on campus to have lunch! It was really nice to catch up with them, and it brought back memories of ECHO. A new round of interns has arrived at ECHO. Four of the interns went on a six-day hike on the Appalachian Trail recently. A couple that will be starting as interns in January were at the New Wilmington Mission Conference this summer! I wonder if I've met them...

Color Touring

This past Thursday my aunt Becky kidnapped me at school and took me back to Pittsfield for the weekend. One weekend each year Pike County, Illinois holds a Color Tour. Sort of like a county-wide festival, towns have booths set up along their main street or square with pies, chicken and noodles, hand-knitted scarves, jewelry, collectables and other doo-dads. My aunt, grandma and I hopped from one town to another with me at the wheel of my grandma's beast of a van. Besides eating and buying stuff, a large part of the enjoyment of Color Tour is checking out the trees turning color as you drive from place to place. Although most of the trees are still green here, trees here and there were a beautiful red or orange. See for yourself!




Friday and Saturday, my aunt, Grandma, and I shopped at about every garage sale in Pittsfield, I think, as well as booths at several towns in the area. I scored quite a few long-sleeved shirts, as well as a soft fabric guitar case for my guitar! (I think I came back with 2-3 times the stuff I left school with on Thursday!) Oh well--I'm pretty much set for winter, I think.

I got a haircut! I cut off 11 or 12 inches and donated it to Locks of Love. Since I was donating, Great Clips gave it to me for free. How nice! I love having short hair. Uncle Mark teased me about getting it cut just in time to not keep my neck warm over the winter. Maybe that's why I bought scarves this weekend..

Sorry for the silly pose (I just can't help it).

Fun around St. Louis

I went grocery shopping today. The nearest grocery store is called Schnucks. Believe it or not, they don't have Publixes up here! Anyway, Schnucks is just over a mile walk away from my dorm. I successfully found the store and all of the things I wanted (especially eggs and oil to make muffins from the mixes I got for my birthday). The most exciting part was that I got to use a new grocery bag made out of recycled plastic bottles I got last weekend at a Green Home and Renewable Energy Festival in downtown St. Louis. Quite exciting.


Last weekend, Leslie found a flyer for a Green Home and Renewable Energy Festival here in St. Louis. We rode the trains into the city and walked about a mile, maybe, through a dance festival going on at the same time (very cool!) and ended up at the festival we wanted. A block's length of street was closed down with booths lining the sides. There were booths for solar consultants, home energy consultants, energy efficient windows, green cleaning products, recycled clothing, green home builders, and many, many more! I impressed the person manning a booth about SIPS (Structurally Insulated Panels--used instead of normal 2x4 house construction with styrofoam insulation inside the walls already) by already knowing about them! He gave me a carpenter's pencil. :)
In addition, Principia College in East St. Louis had their solar racecar there. There was a group of 20-somethings that travels around on a vegetable oil-powered bus promoting PowerVote--a movement trying to get energy and global warming more political attention in the coming years.

In addition, there were many workshops at a nearby high school. Leslie and I attended one on rehabbing homes (they talked about the St. Louis Habitat for Humanity ReStore, I was quite excited because we worked there a month and a half ago), we also attended one on passive solar design for homes in Missouri. It was really neat to hear about home energy efficiency in another climate and see how it compared to what I've learned in Florida. The men teaching the workshop from the University of Missouri (www.MissouriFamilies.org if you're interested) put a lot of emphasis on added thermal mass, like a concrete or brick wall that absorbs heat during the day and dissipates it through the house during the night. If you're interested in more, you can read about it on Wikipedia by looking up Trombe wall. And no, I haven't actually worked on this page. Although it sounds like fun...

As we were leaving the festival, we stumbled across this church. The building had been burned down and the congregation couldn't afford to rebuild it, so the Pulitzer Foundation in St. Louis helped build a new roof for it! Of lights! Too bad I couldn't have seen it at night time.


In addition to roaming the city, I've had fun just hanging out at Wash U. Here's a picture of Anna-Marie and Leslie enjoying my colored pens and guitar (I was enjoying the camera).


Here's me posing with my "Happy Birthday" sign. It's taped to my ceiling above my desk, now, so I can look up and see it anytime!

Classes!

I've now had six days of classes, and so far, they look promising. I get really excited when I hear about what we'll be learning, because I immediately begin to figure out where I can incorporate those pieces of knowledge into Wikipedia. I haven't actually edited it since I left for Illinois early August, but I still think about it often...
Maybe a break from Wikipedia is a good thing. I do think it is neat. I think I'll learn a lot of things I can incorporate into Wikipedia--some this year, but much more so in the following years when I start taking higher level classes. If I do graduate classes, I will learn even more obscure information that I can add to wikipedia!
So far, I've been the most excited about my computer aided design class. Essentially it's a drafting class, 50% learning how to design things with pencil and paper, and 50% designing things on a 3D modeling program. The modeling program, called Solid Edge, is fascinating! You can create all sorts of things--make a rectangular prism, then cut out various holes, or handles or what not. This kind of program is like the kind where you will design your house in (in 3D), then use the energy analysis add-on software to analyze the building exactly as it was drawn. This is all called Building Information Modeling, except for the 21st century! (you can find information of Building Information Modeling on--you guessed it--wikipedia. I've done some editing of that page, but I don't really know what I'm talking about--hopefully I'll know more once I'm done with the class.)
I'm also taking computer science I, where we will be learning the basics of computer programming and practical uses of computers. For those who are interested, we'll be programming in Java. Already we've done a bit--involving changing the colors of pictures, combining, pictures, and other fun stuff!
Okay, enough computers. I've spent several hours now playing the piano in various practice rooms on campus. There's one in a dorm a short walk away from me, and very nice practice rooms in the music building, a five minute walk away. I've been teaching Leslie and a guy down the hall from me, Daniel to play chords on the piano, and we've been enjoying ourselves immensely. Leslie and I spent an hour and half yesterday going through my book of guitar music playing songs on guitar and piano. We're turning ourselves into jazz pianists! Well, maybe.
Also, I've been helping some people to learn guitar. Mainly, I've just been showing them chords or giving them music and letting them go to town on my guitar. When they become famous I can say I taught them everything they know: