I'm still alive, I promise!

I'm taking a break from the Bubble right now to spend my first Thanksgiving at home in 5 years or so. Projects are killer during senior year. I mean really, it's insane. So far this semester, I've designed oscillators, power supplies, radios, several logic controllers to control lights and things (one of which I should be writing a report in right now) and a few other small devices. I still have to design a system of power lines, one more digital logic controller (this one is supposed to control the operation of a bell tower...but I don't like the bell tower, so it'd rather just make it turn off) and a voltmeter.

The big kicker though is this senior design project. It's...wait for it...an automated weather station. It's designed for pilots, so it'll measure things such as pressure, wind, visibility, temperature, and humidity at their destination, so they know what they're flying into. The biggest challenge is the budget. We're basically supposed to take a device whose cost typically reaches 5 digits, easily, and design, build, and implement it for under $200. Obviously, it won't have quite the quality you'd expect from a $20000 full-scaled AWOS, but it's supposed to have most of the basic functionality, with the biggest difference being how the pilot interacts with it. We've gotta come up with some crazy little tricks to get the acceptable accuracy with these devices on the cheap. I'm in charge of the visibility sensor. I've studies these things so intensely the past few weeks that I could write a book about them. But when you get down to it, there's so much going on with them that I still don't know exactly how I'm going to go about designing it all. One thing's for sure. If I can get this thing to work like it's supposed to, I'll have some pretty cool stuff to show future employers.

In other news, this semester is wrapping up pretty fast now. It's exciting. December 14 will be here soon, and in many cases, not soon enough. I just THOUGHT last semester was busy. If I could go back and do last semester again, I'd find it quite relaxing in comparison lol.

Well I hope you all have a happy Thanksgiving. I'll be watching some more football and getting some last bits of Internet before getting back to the grindstone in a few hours. In the meantime, enjoy this picture of me and my sister.