The Benefits of a Hard Major

So I'm nearing the end of the semester and only have one semester left in this five year odyssey that I've been on. These last two years have been extremely tough on me. I've had to push myself farther than I ever thought possible both mentally and emotionally. I've learned more than I thought I would ever learn and have been on several emotional roller-coasters that pushed me more than I would have liked. Overall though I'm very happy with where I am in all of this.
The thing about being a chemistry major though is that there are very few other people crazy enough to do it too. For the last few years in chemistry there are only about 12 other people in class with you. Because of this you get to know those other students really well. This can be good or bad depending on the group. For me...I lucked out...the guys that I'm graduating with are a group of really nice hilarious and fun guys. We all get along really well and have a ton of fun both inside and outside of the classroom.
Last week we had PChem Lab Orals where you have to present a powerpoint presentation about a lab experiment that you performed. During these orals, one of the guys, Trevor, started doing cartoon drawings of all of us...The PChem Presentation Action Figures!!!! These may not be as funny to those of you who don't know all the guys but I wanted to post it anyway, mostly because I think my action figure is hilarous and pretty much an on-the-nose representation of me.



In case it's not clear my action is "5 pre-recorded 200 decible phrases!" and my other favorite parts are our Professor (bottom left) "Their arch nemesis: The Insidious 'Dr. Frenchman' with Mathcad and Wine Battle Box Play set!" with Louis (the professor) saying "Sacre Bleu" and finally where to get one "Sold wherever chem students are subjected to pain, anguish and humiliation". Oh, and no you're not reading it wrong...I am the ONLY girl in that class. In fact I am the only girl graduating this year in our big ol' group of 12. Good thing I've always had more fun with guys than with girls.

Things are starting to get pretty busy around here as professors pile on all those last minute assignments. But soon we'll have a minute to take a breather and fill everyone in on the goings on around here.

Proof Positive that Brian Goes to School

So it's been a while since we've posted anything, but before you get your hopes up, this one's going to be short. However, hopefully it will give you a little bit of an explanation of why we haven't posted anything. Check out the College of Art and Architecture's website. At the very bottom on the left-hand side there is a link that says "Featured Projects," click on that and see if you can pick me out of the line-up. If you need a little help, here's the link to the page.

My Final Medal Count

For those of you who have been asking I calculated the final medal count of the Olympics to be...

China 223 points
USA 220 points

One more gold medal and we would have tied.

I am a syncing fiend

Here's an update on my "Why can't Microsoft play nice?" post. Ok, not really an update just a conclusion to how I got started on the post in the first place, trying to sync my phone and my computer:

I finally got my phone to sync with Mozilla's Lightning for Thunderbird (and if you just want the calendar and not Thunderbird you can always use the stand-alone version Sunbird). Its sort of a round-about-way of getting the job done, and its not perfect, but it will work for now. So for those of you who might want to do something similar or are just curious this is how I got the job done. And if you don't read this post...I'll be ok. I realize that I'm probably the only one out there that really cares this much about using the program I want.

Starting with my phone I have the calendar and contacts sync through Windows Mobile Device Center (Vista, Active Sync in XP) to Outlook 2007 (2003 should work as well). Then using a program put out by Google called Google Calendar Sync I sync my Outlook calendar to a Google calendar (available if you have a Google account). Then using a third-party plug-in for Thunderbird/Lightning called Provider for Google Calendar I can sync my Google calendar to Thunderbird/Lightning, Ta Dah!

There are a few good things about doing it this way other than I get to use the programs I like versus the programs the Microsoft forces me too (even though I'm still forced to). First, by going through Google Calendar you have a html, xml, and ical web address that you can use to publish your calendar. For me it works that Kelly can get my calendar on her computer and subsequently her phone so she knows my schedule or vice versa. Second, again by going through Google you can have your calendar on your iGoogle homepage and therefore see it anytime you open your web browser. This lets you be updated on what you've got going on without having to open up Thunderbird/Lightning/Sunbird. Finally, it's all free (except for paying for Outlook, but I had to do that anyway).

And of course, there are some drawbacks. Hopefully, these will get resolved with future releases of software but for now they are manageable. First, Google Calendar Sync only syncs the default or primary calendars in Google and Outlook, and second, Google Calendars doesn't support categories for events. So even though in Google Calendars you can have multiple calendars on one screen and see all your events in different colors, you can only put one of those calendars into Outlook. And even though you can have different categories, as well as calendars, in Outlook, only the default calendar will sync with Google and all the pretty colors you have to categorize your events won't show up in Google either. Finally, and this might just be my computer, even though you aren't actively using Outlook for anything other than a go between, you have to have it open in order to sync with the Google Calendar Sync. Every time I have Outlook closed the Google Calendar Sync programs freezes when it tries to sync. Then usually I have to open up the task manager (ctrl + alt + delete) to stop a few errant Outlook processes before Outlook will open.

There are other utilities out there that people have claimed will make there Google Calendar Sync with Outlook with multiple calendars etc. but this method worked the best for me. A program called KiGoo, looked promising until I read that it doesn't work with Vista. Another one called RemoteCalendars looked really good but for some reason it wouldn't sync correctly (ie; I delete an event in Outlook, or from my phone, and it never deletes it from Google. Also, recurring events never synced right). Jotlet, is another web-based calendar program like Google Calendars that used another program called Funambol to sync with Outlook but I couldn't get it to work right, plus it's another service you have to sign up for. Calgoo also looked very promising but it didn't find my outlook calendars in order to sync them. Probably the best program is one called OggSync but you have to pay for it, and I'm really cheap. I downloaded a trial version and it worked great except for the fact that in the trial it only syncs the past 3 days, today, and the future 3 days. Not enough if you need to schedule a doctor's appointment 3 months in advance, but in paying for the service you should be fine.

What about contacts you ask. So far I haven't found anything that will sync them and the calendar together that is free and works. So for now I'm just going to have to deal with every so often exporting and importing my contacts from Outlook to Thunderbird, since most of the new contacts I add are on my phone, and any e-mail contacts can just stay in Thunderbird since I don't use my phone for e-mail.

Well there you have it, entirely too much information on a subject that none of you probably care about...unless you spent the past few days figuring it all out like I did.

Don't let the numbers fool you

Let me start off by saying I love the Olympics. I remember watching them on TV as a kid and cheering for the USA in any sport, it didn't (and doesn't) matter if I even understood the game. But one thing I always remember doing is keeping tabs on the medal count. Don't ask me why, but I would always look at it in the newspaper. I guess I just liked seeing how many medals we actually won in the games. So when I saw that I could put the medal count on my iGoogle homepage I was really excited. I heard that China was probably going to take the medal count from us this year so I really wanted to be updated every time I opened up Firefox so I could see how we fare. I had seen the medal count on NBC and was pleased that we were ahead in total number of medals but when I looked at the iGoogle gadget it has China listed first. NBC ranked the countries by total number of medals which currently puts the US in the lead with 54 to China's 47. However in Google they rank the countries by the most gold medals, then silver, then bronze. So that puts China ahead with 27 golds to our 16. Crazy that almost half of those are from Michael Phelps. So I decided to see who was leading the medal count another way. I gave 3 points for every gold medal won, 2 for every silver, and 1 for every bronze. Crunch the numbers and you get China leading the US with 114 points to 102 . . . as of 3:30 pm Pacific time on August 16th. I can't wait to see how it all turns out, not that it really matters. I'm probably not going to move to China if they end up with more medals than us, it just gives me something to do so I don't have to think about starting classes in 9 and a half days (not that I'm counting).

Why can't Microsoft play nice?

Last semester I had some problems with Outlook and syncing my calendar with my phone. I was fine with it at the time because I didn't have much variation in my day to day schedule and I could deal without Outlook, but with the fall semester starting here soon I figured I'd better figure out the whole syncing issue. While I was at it I thought I'd look into other calender programs to see if there would be something out there I liked better. In fact I like so many other programs better than Outlook because I don't need all the big business stuff that Outlook has in it...I just needed something that would sync with my phone. But then that made me remember why I had to go with Outlook in the first place. It is the only thing that will sync with my phone.

Vista comes with a mail program (Windows Mail) that is pretty decent, an address book program (Windows Contacts) and a calendar program (Windows Calendar) that I could use. The problem being that in order to sync with my phone I first had to download and install the Active Sync for Vista, Windows Mobile Device Center. Upon downloading that I found out that I needed Windows Mobile 6 in order to be able to sync with the mobile device center. After finding a download for that and installing it on my phone (by the way, up to this point this all took about 9 months from the point at which I got my computer with Vista) I connected up to my computer to sync my contacts, etc. and Windows Mail, Contacts, and Calendar, don't sync with Windows Mobile Device Center...they don't sync at all. Apparently you have to use Outlook in order for your "Microsoft phone" to sync with your "Microsoft computer" with the "Microsoft applications" that come with it.

So I have two questions, why can't Microsoft get along with Microsoft? And is there something out there that I can use instead of Outlook? I really want to get back to Thunderbird. Mozilla also has Lightning/Sunbird to use as a calender program, but from what I could find there isn't anything out there that will let me sync my phone with those programs. If only I had an iPhone that would sync with the free for everyone iTunes with whatever program I was using for e-mail/calendar/contacts.

After the beep

I feel like I should change my voicemail greeting to something like this:

"Hi this is Brian, I can't answer my phone right now but that probably doesn't matter to you. You must think that by just calling me I'm going to pick up my phone, see that you called, and automatically call you back. Don't worry, I don't have anything better to do with my time, and I like returning every missed call whether I recognize the number or not. Nothing appeals to me more than awkwardly saying, 'who is this and why did you call me,' when you answer the phone. So please hang up now and wait impatiently by the phone for me to call you back."

The only thing that bugs me more, and my hypocrisy is evident, is when I get a message that simply says, "Hi, it's me, call me back." That's even more useless than not leaving a message at all. Is it that much harder to say, "Hi, it's me, Brian, I need to talk to you about _______, call me back," something that takes about 5 whole seconds more to say but reveals 100 times more information?

I envy visual voicemail, if only I had an iPhone.

Le Tour de Palouse

Earlier this summer, after some car problems and rising gas prices, Kelly and I had been talking about saving some money on gas and trying to cut back on how many trips I make back and forth between Moscow and Pullman. There is a great bike path between the two towns that makes it really easy for someone to ride back and forth between the two but my bike wasn't really the right kind for commuting. So we ended up getting a road/touring bike for me and now I ride that back and forth as much as I can...ok, maybe not as much as I can, but enough to cut back a little on how much we end up paying for gas. I've put over 180 miles on the bike so far which seems like a lot, but then when you consider that the Tour de France was 2178 miles long it no longer seems like it's that big of a deal.

AWESOME

Can't wait until tomorrow

One Year Later

One of Brian and my favorite little kids, as you all know, is little Evalie Rippy. Yesterday, July 14th, was Miss Rippy's first birthday. Brian took baby pictures for her announcements when she was born and yesterday I got to take pictures of the birthday girl one year later. I'm working on touching these up but here are few to view, especially for her Dad who's on the west side of the state.
Enjoy...

Picking grass...


...then eating it






Who could be cuter than me?




Cutest little girl ever!


So I hope you guys didn't overdose on the cuteness...it's tough not to whenever that girl is in the room!

As promised

As Kelly mentioned we took some photos of the Rippy family on Father's Day. I've been lazy and haven't posted anything up, even though I was already done editing the photos. Here are some of my favorites:


I've never tried to take a portrait of a family this big before. I just tried to get everyone looking at the camera and take as many pictures as fast as my camera can handle.


Besides Kelly and I, the Rippys had also invited their neighbors to come for dinner as well, and their children brought over their rabbits. No, the rabbits weren't on the menu but the kids had fun playing with them.


After we had eaten and the pictures were taken we all enjoyed some home-made ice cream, some obviously more than others.

As per request

Brian told me that I had to write about this so I will...
As you know I took pictures of Stacey's sister's wedding this summer. Well, Stacey went to print off one of the pictures at Walmart and they flagged it as a professional picture. She had to get my permission in order to use it. This happened to us before but it was Traci's (my sister's) pictures that time. So Brian was really excited. I was too, except that that wasn't even my favorite picture from that day!

Speaking of pictures, we went to Spokane yesterday to take family pictures for Jeff's family yesterday. It was lots of fun and I'm hoping that we got some good pictures...Brian took them to work so I won't get to see them until tonight! We will put them up as soon as we've flipped through them.

Until then!

Super Librarian strikes again

Is it sad that I can now type numbers with a 10-key number pad better than I can type (faster, less mistakes, and without peeking)? Not when you consider I've been typing about 5600 numbers every time I've worked at the library this past week. That's roughly 400 barcodes of 14 digits each per day. Some days like yesterday I did 620 barcodes, or 8680 numbers. I guess with all the practice its no wonder I'm getting pretty good at it. Chalk this one up as another one of my super librarian powers!

Birthday

Its a birthday tradition of mine to go on a bike ride and think about good things that happened in the last year of my life. It started either right before we moved to England or right after. Either way though I try to do it every year...especially because my loving mother likes to remind be of it every year. So this year I thought I'd invite Brian along, you know we are married so I guess I could invite him into my life. But first he had to take pictures to document the tradition. So here's a look.



It was a really good bike ride and I realized that I have a lot to be happy about.

On that happy note, my sister gave me an excellent birthday gift...



It was such a great surprise and I absolutely love it! This isn't the best picture but I was doing it myself in a mirror (which explains the backwardsness). And for those of you who don't get the shirt, it's from Juno and if you don't know what Juno is then you MUST go out and rent it if not buy it! Anyway, I'm sure there will be many more pictures in this shirt in the future. Just thought I'd show you some pictures. I'm off to read some really boring and complex research papers so that I can stop feeling guilty.

Caleb Lance

I had the opportunity yesterday to take pictures of our friend's newborn baby Caleb. I was so excited at this chance because there is nothing I love more than the Peterson's kids. So here are some pictures from the shoot, including one of our favorite big brother Dainen...













I hope that Elise and Jaaron like these photos. I had so much fun taking these photos and am so happy that I was able to do it. We look forward to taking many more photos of these two munchkins.

Final Grades

I just took a look at my final grades from this semester and they are as follows: Studio, A; Seismic and Masonry, A; Concrete, A; and despite my efforts to just not care in my Spanish class, I got an A in that one as well. So with this 4.0, my cumulative GPA is the highest it's been since my first semester of college. Back then it was a 3.87, now I have a 3.89. But with my classes that's really not that big of a deal, did I mention that Kelly passed P-Chem? Just that one class probably consisted of more work than all of mine put together, save studio.

I've become Linus

I have been working on this one knitting project for a really long time, I think a year. But this last month my mom came and tore the whole project out because apparently I didn't really know what I was doing...I think I made up a stitch. And then things became so easy and I actually managed to finish it in about a month.
I made a shawl that I plan on wearing around the house like an old woman, but it also works as a thin blanket. So here is the long in process but totally worth it finished product...

Melissa and DJ's Wedding

Just a quick snapshot of the wedding I shot this weekend. And for the bride (and anyone else who cares) these pictures have not been touched up or touched at all. Even though Brian has downloaded photoshop onto my new computer (aka. My Precious) but he has yet to teach me how to operate it.
So for now these are just a few pictures from yesterday.

The bride getting ready...



A cute kissing shot (there are many of these)...



The new couple...



These two were so easy to take pictures of, their personalities just shine...



A shot on a rustic and slightly poopy bench...



And a shot I stole from my sister...



So hope everyone likes these. I certainly had fun shooting these two!

Summer work

I know that some of you have heard, but not all of you so I thought I'd take a minute and fill-in any lacking information about what Kelly and I will be doing this summer. Kelly will be working at the movie theater again putting in a few more hours now that she won't have classes to worry about. She will have research to worry about because she is going to get started on some preliminary research for the research she will be doing this next school year in order to graduate. I don't really know all of the details but I'm sure she could fill you in a little more. Kelly will also be working at a new job she was offered dealing with equipment checkout that the university does for local high schools...or something like that. Again, I'm not too clear on the details. This summer isn't going to be that busy with it, more or less just getting acquainted with what they do so she can put in more time this coming fall when she will be working there for work/study funds she was awarded. Finally, as if she wasn't doing enough already, when she isn't doing all of that she will be babysitting Evalie Rippy while Stacey is going to start going back to work at the theater and Jeff is hopefully going to be getting an internship in Spokane.

As for me, I'll be working this summer at the library putting in hours on the evenings and weekends. During the day I'll be taking summer architecture studio, pending on a few circumstances, and also working as a research assistant for Frank Jacobus, my current studio professor. I'm really excited for the research assistantship for many reasons. It will look great on a resume and the research will be interesting (we will be looking into defining an architectural genome that could then be used to develop design computing software, which has many different applications). Most of all I'm really excited to be a part of architectural research. Here at the university you can see that many of the professors are dabbling with different things they are researching but for the most part the student body isn't involved, unless their research involves using us as "guinea pigs." This is an opportunity where students are integrally involved in the research. I think something that has helped with this is the fact that we got a grant to fund the research and therefore have money to pay us. The interesting thing that really helped in getting me the job is the fact that I have the experience with the library. Frank was really pleased that I had that experience with the library because much of this research at this stage will be finding out what other schools are involved with similar projects and getting enough background research done so that we can find further funding in the form of other grants.

Also, if you haven't noticed already, check out my "drawing board" blog for details on the ICMA competition and my fire station design. The link should be in the upper left of this page and if that doesn't work, http://vandalarchitect.blogspot.com, is the address.

The Lundbergs

Kelly and I recently drove out to St. John (between Pullman and Spokane) to (re)do a photo shoot for the Lundbergs, Jeff's sister Kelly's family. We originally tried to get some family photos for them last fall when they had just adopted the newest member to their family Marcos.

However, due to weather, lighting and kids that wouldn't really cooperate we didn't get too many good family shots. We did get some great candid shots of the kids, especially birthday cake shots of Marcos (he turned 1), but we still needed some group family shots. So this time, rather than trying a Mexican restaurant in Spokane we just went out to their house. I thought it might be worse getting the kids to cooperate there, but on the contrary they we much more mellow and easier to work with...although I'm not sure their mom thought so.

Here are some more we took. I'm currently going through them and trying to pick out the best ones and touch them up a bit, but these ones were just too good to not show them off right away.

Interactive Flash

Look at what I learned to do at work tonight...click here.

Tagged!

I was tagged, thanks Jeff. I really despise that fact that I now feel obligated to write 7 random things about myself. But in the spirit of things, here goes...

1. I hate chain letters/junk mail/facebook apps/anything that tries to get more people involved by a snowball effect. I will not have bad luck for the next 15 years if I don't send this on to 15 people in the next 15 minutes.

2. I own more shoes than any man should probably own...but they all serve a specific purpose you can't expect a man to play indoor soccer without indoor soccer shoes.

3. I support the WSU Cougars just as much as I do the Idaho Vandals, as far as wearing that support. But to be truthful I only own as much Vandal gear as I do because I feel I owe it to myself to have just as many Vandal things and Cougar things...but as far as style goes, WSU has U of I beat.

4. I will not be a Disneyland virgin for long...15 days, and counting

5. I never thought that in creating this blog that I would post as much as I do. I figured I was doing Kelly a favor by creating it and she would take after her sister and be the main blogger. Not that it's anything against Kelly. She really does post when she can. The only reason I have time to do it is because at the library things get really slow on Friday nights and after a week of classes I'd do anything other than work on homework.

6. We are trying to get the Dean of the Library to close the Library at 8 pm on Fridays because the computer labs shut down for maintenance at that time and therefore hardly anyone comes into the library. For example, between 8:00 and 11:00 there have been 30 people walk in or out of the library. That's not 30 people that I've helped at the desk, that's thirty pairs of legs that have triggered the gate counter. They could have just come in to use the bathroom, dropped off a book, or research the average air speed of an unladen swallow. African or European?

7. One of those patrons that I have actually helped at the desk didn't think we had a copy of the Torah because all he could find were books that had basically the Old Testament. I had to explain that what he found probably was the Torah and that the Old Testament and the Torah contain many of the same writings. Before I told him this he said he couldn't find a copy of the Bible either. While this may not be random info about me...I did know, and find it quite funny, that in the Library of Congress cataloging system religious texts are found under the two letters B and S. So the Torah's call number was BS896.A1P45.

Since you can see from #1 I am totally against tagging people and making them write 7 random things about themselves I am not tagging anyone. Plus, anyone that reads this and has a blog has already been tagged. But, if you are reading this and don't have a blog then I strongly encourage you to create one. Blogger, is pretty good. Kelly's sister Traci uses one called Blogsome. A google search will give you tons of other options and I'm betting it will take you less time than it took me to write this post. Happy blogging, and you can post your URL to your new blogs in the comments.

Breaking news

The Palouse has been hit hard this week with snow. Sunday we got about 6 inches. Tuesday we got about 6 more. Last night and today we've gotten around 7 and it's still currently snowing. Both U of I and WSU have closed for the day. From what I understand this is only the third time since the U of I opened in 1889 that the University has closed due to weather. It closed once back in the 50's due to snow, later because of flooding so students could help sandbag, and today because of snow. Kelly is still on campus because she had some early classes before they announced the closure, but she's on her way home by way of the nuclear reactor. Actually WSU is still open until 10am, right now it's about 9:30. U of I closed around 8:00am. I was still asleep because I don't have class until 2:00 but my supervisor at the library called to let me know that the university was closed and so was the library. I'll try to get out and take some pictures to post so you can all get an idea of how much snow we've gotten.

Escapando a Karl Marx (Escaping Karl Marx)

I have a few minutes before I have to go to work and since I haven't written an entry for a while I figured this is as good of time as any. Plus, right now I'd do anything to stop reading this article for Spanish (Like I would understand Marxism, "economic base" or "social superstructure" and how they relate to social disruption and conflict in English anyway, and he wants us to read it in Spanish!?).

School started a couple of weeks ago. This semester should be a little easier than the last. Instead of project intensive courses I just have a lot of reading to do and papers to write. I'll be honest...I can fake a paper a lot easier than I can fake a project. On the other hand I can stand to work on a project longer than a paper. I think it has to do with being able to leave one portion for a while and come back to it later while still working on the same project. For me no matter what part of a paper I'm working on, it's all the same. I still have my studio course, I will every semester, so you can periodically check my other blog for updates on that.

Work is pretty much the same as always. I forgot to mention that I was selected as one of two student employees of the year at the library. I was also given $100 of scholarship money for achieving that. Plus they decided to nominate me for the University-wide student employee of the year award. Nominations and letters of recommendation, etc. are due on Monday so I won't know for a while how that turns out, but you can be sure I'll update you all on that as well.

That's pretty much all the noteworthy happenings of my life (maybe Kelly will fill you in on hers, hint, hint). I'd better get back to Marx.