Wednesday, July 14, 2004
Has it really been two whole weeks? Heavens, I seem to have lost my pace on this thing. And neat things continue to happen.
First, work. I taught classes! Weehaw! Here at work, in our section, we have classes that we offer to new hires, both those new to the workforce and those simply new to Radar. I got to teach two this time around. One was the SNR class; the other was a MATlab class that I actually got to make up. Weehaw! For those of you that don't know, SNR stands for Signal to Noise Ratio. For more information than that…I'm going to have to ask you to get a Bachelors Degree in an engineering discipline. MATlab is the program I use to write and run most of my simulations here at work. It's very common around these parts, and the class was an introduction. It had about 50 people in the class. Yowza! I brought donuts. They were a big hit. And I think the class went really well. So good news there.
Schoooool! I have yet to be accepted/denied entry to the USC masters program, and it's getting late. I'm trying to figure out what is up with my application, but the people there are useless. I have a theory, though, and so I'm going to try some stuff. It's certainly not for lack of credentials. Getting in won't be a problem, once the actual paper work is out of the way.
And I got an A- on my midterm. Booyah to that. What's scary is that my score was a 58. Pretty low for an A-. The high score was something like an 80, and a 38 would get you a C-. Now that's a pretty torqued-out curve, right there.
Martial arts. I'm a blue belt. Woot for me! This means another form, another board break (two actually, front kick and then side kick) an additional sparring kick (axe kick) and some other miscellany. It'll be *12* weeks before I test again, though. So about another…what…6 months and I get to go to the advanced class. Can I get a booyah? (Booyah!) Thanks. They even let me practice my spinning hook kick in class for the first time *ever* on Monday. That felt great. I've been practicing it some though my right leg is fairly…ahm…useless. My left leg kick is quite solid, and rather rapid. I've been working on my back kick too, trying to get the speed and form up. It's a great counter kick, but not if it's slow, or if you throw it too late. Perhaps I should be like Kevin (in all things!) and learn the *jumping* back kick. And then kick them in the head! No, wait, no head contact yet.
I don't know if you've noticed, in any of the movies, but most of my kicks don't look very good. This probably means they are a little week, too. I have a theory, though. I'm trying to improve their height, and that means leg lifts. I've got these massive tree-trunk legs, but the muscles along the side of my legs haven't been keeping up. So hopefully that will help. Course, added to the long list of things I'm trying to train already, I wonder if I might not end up stretching myself out too thin.
Video games! I continue to see people I know online in City of Heroes. I play it more (okay, *much* more) during the weekend than during the week, though (stupid classes!). Disgaea continues to be fun as well.
Creativity? Sure! I managed to get a good start on a short story about my character in CoH. Trite, I know, but certainly fun to write. Derek wants me to write some more music too, cause then we can make music videos for stuff. Sounds like a great idea to me. I've got to stop putting off this whole 'making a studio' thing.
And in the land of movies, production on 'The Alliance' has fairly well stalled. Guess we're just not cut out for larger projects. We'll see if we ever get it working again. We're going to do a short, though, next weekend. Really short. One of Derek's moment-of-inspiration pieces. If I ever get an idea, I'll write one too. Tweaking Derek's stuff is easy, but a little unfair.
We're going to try to have a get-together for all the Hawaii people, or at least as many as can make it, this weekend, if we can find a place to do it. I thought we might be able to use the common area downstairs, but as it turns out it costs $100 to do, plus a $250 deposit. Crikey! I don't have that kind of money to be throwing around. So we're still in flux, a touch, but hopefully we'll nail something down. There's a lot of us going, would be nice to meat some of them. Derek can't make it, though, he's going up to his parents place for the weekend. He's bringing his brother down too. Someone else to play video games with; joy!
Okee, so now you're all caught up. Hopefully it won't be another two weeks, eh?
-N
First, work. I taught classes! Weehaw! Here at work, in our section, we have classes that we offer to new hires, both those new to the workforce and those simply new to Radar. I got to teach two this time around. One was the SNR class; the other was a MATlab class that I actually got to make up. Weehaw! For those of you that don't know, SNR stands for Signal to Noise Ratio. For more information than that…I'm going to have to ask you to get a Bachelors Degree in an engineering discipline. MATlab is the program I use to write and run most of my simulations here at work. It's very common around these parts, and the class was an introduction. It had about 50 people in the class. Yowza! I brought donuts. They were a big hit. And I think the class went really well. So good news there.
Schoooool! I have yet to be accepted/denied entry to the USC masters program, and it's getting late. I'm trying to figure out what is up with my application, but the people there are useless. I have a theory, though, and so I'm going to try some stuff. It's certainly not for lack of credentials. Getting in won't be a problem, once the actual paper work is out of the way.
And I got an A- on my midterm. Booyah to that. What's scary is that my score was a 58. Pretty low for an A-. The high score was something like an 80, and a 38 would get you a C-. Now that's a pretty torqued-out curve, right there.
Martial arts. I'm a blue belt. Woot for me! This means another form, another board break (two actually, front kick and then side kick) an additional sparring kick (axe kick) and some other miscellany. It'll be *12* weeks before I test again, though. So about another…what…6 months and I get to go to the advanced class. Can I get a booyah? (Booyah!) Thanks. They even let me practice my spinning hook kick in class for the first time *ever* on Monday. That felt great. I've been practicing it some though my right leg is fairly…ahm…useless. My left leg kick is quite solid, and rather rapid. I've been working on my back kick too, trying to get the speed and form up. It's a great counter kick, but not if it's slow, or if you throw it too late. Perhaps I should be like Kevin (in all things!) and learn the *jumping* back kick. And then kick them in the head! No, wait, no head contact yet.
I don't know if you've noticed, in any of the movies, but most of my kicks don't look very good. This probably means they are a little week, too. I have a theory, though. I'm trying to improve their height, and that means leg lifts. I've got these massive tree-trunk legs, but the muscles along the side of my legs haven't been keeping up. So hopefully that will help. Course, added to the long list of things I'm trying to train already, I wonder if I might not end up stretching myself out too thin.
Video games! I continue to see people I know online in City of Heroes. I play it more (okay, *much* more) during the weekend than during the week, though (stupid classes!). Disgaea continues to be fun as well.
Creativity? Sure! I managed to get a good start on a short story about my character in CoH. Trite, I know, but certainly fun to write. Derek wants me to write some more music too, cause then we can make music videos for stuff. Sounds like a great idea to me. I've got to stop putting off this whole 'making a studio' thing.
And in the land of movies, production on 'The Alliance' has fairly well stalled. Guess we're just not cut out for larger projects. We'll see if we ever get it working again. We're going to do a short, though, next weekend. Really short. One of Derek's moment-of-inspiration pieces. If I ever get an idea, I'll write one too. Tweaking Derek's stuff is easy, but a little unfair.
We're going to try to have a get-together for all the Hawaii people, or at least as many as can make it, this weekend, if we can find a place to do it. I thought we might be able to use the common area downstairs, but as it turns out it costs $100 to do, plus a $250 deposit. Crikey! I don't have that kind of money to be throwing around. So we're still in flux, a touch, but hopefully we'll nail something down. There's a lot of us going, would be nice to meat some of them. Derek can't make it, though, he's going up to his parents place for the weekend. He's bringing his brother down too. Someone else to play video games with; joy!
Okee, so now you're all caught up. Hopefully it won't be another two weeks, eh?
-N
Comments:
Re: Tree trunk legs
You know, they say your average ballerina is stronger/better in shape than your average football player. I am actually not sure how they determien this, but the moral of the story is stretching makes a serious difference in what your muscles can do. I hope you do a lot of stretching ( toe touches from various legs assumer sitting positions, pulling feet up to butt... the like) of all your muscles, legs esp since you use them so much.
Makes you "dynamic."
Congrats on the midterm, wish me luck on mine.
-Sandlin
Post a Comment
You know, they say your average ballerina is stronger/better in shape than your average football player. I am actually not sure how they determien this, but the moral of the story is stretching makes a serious difference in what your muscles can do. I hope you do a lot of stretching ( toe touches from various legs assumer sitting positions, pulling feet up to butt... the like) of all your muscles, legs esp since you use them so much.
Makes you "dynamic."
Congrats on the midterm, wish me luck on mine.
-Sandlin
# posted by 
: July 15, 2004 at 5:17 PM
: July 15, 2004 at 5:17 PM