Ugh. I hate living next to all this construction. See, my apartment building (and quite a few others) are conveniently located next to the lot where Stanford is constructing two new buildings of studio apartments. That’s nice and all, except for the fact that construction has been ongoing ever since I got here in September. And probably will continue until I graduate. The one year I am here is the one year they are building these new studios right next door. They work every day of the week, and Saturdays too. Most of the time it doesn’t bother me because I have to be up in the morning anyway. But today I was planning on happily skipping social dance and aerodynamics and sleeping in until 10:00, since I was in the A/A library late last night doing homework. Then I got woken up at 8:30 anyway by the noise of some awful construction machine.
Argh.
(12:15 a.m.)
I am ready for this week to just be OVER!! I didn’t get to go running tonight, which makes me quite frustrated, especially because I didn’t go running last night either. I went Sunday and Monday, but I must definitely go tomorrow night. I have found recently that there is no better cure for my odd mood swings than to go do some strenuous activity. It always makes me feel good. And if I lose a few pounds, that is a nice side benefit, eh?
The cause of my laziness tonight? I was stuck in the A/A library trying to figure out the optimum balance between solar cells, span, chord, and velocity for an autonomous solar-powered airplane flying at 50,000 feet. There are so many different ways I could configure it…I wish I had a better idea of what reasonable wing dimensions are. I’m sort of thinking 12 feet is too long…maybe more like 5-6 feet. The nice thing about this class is that we are actually being challenged to make and justify design decisions, unlike Professor Jenkins’s senior design class last year where we were basically force fed the numbers and equations. The “bad” thing about not doing it Jenkins’s way is that I actually have to think.
