Crap. One of the things I hate is when the insights come after the exam is over. I just finished my third final of this week, geotech. I can already think of two mistakes that I've made.

In one of the problems, we are given the following. There is a site, 12 ft of clay over some gravel and sand, and the water table is at the ground surface. Ten feet of fill with a specific weight of 125 pcf is to be placed over the site, and the water is drawn down 20 ft. Some specs from a consolidation tests are given: 55% water content, 2.7 specific gravity, fully saturated. Additionally, from the test, the compression index was determined to be 0.22, the reloading index, 0.1, and the preconsolidation stress, 800 psf. The two parts that I messed up on....

1)Calculate the amount of settlement expected to occur as a result of the water table draw down and the load from the fill. When I calculated the initial effective vertical stress, I subtracted pore pressure, which I shouldn't have done because there is no pore pressure after the draw down.

2)Determine the additional settlement under the center of a structure that is to be built over the fill, immediately after the placement of the fill, given that it's load is 1500 psf. I didn't calculate the additional settlement but rather, the total settlement including the fill. But all I had to do though was subtract the settlement from just the fill from that total. I could have simplified things a lot, though, by realizing that it's all going to be virgin compression. So I could have just calculated it from the compression index and preconsolidation stress.

Dang it. If only I hadn't been rushed. Took too long on the other problems.

The important part is knowing your mistakes and knowing how to correct them. But it's school and most of us have been socialized to believe that the grade is what matters. I try, but it's hard not to hold a grudge against myself when I know the capability was definitely there to get a great score, but I didn't maximize on it.

Anyway, that's that and that is done.

If you've ever visited my website, which by the way you can visit by clicking here, you will notice that the ads on the top are kind of related to the page content. For instance, on the media page where I show a clip of a hydraulic jump demo, the ads are for flow modeling software and other kind-of-related stuff. What amuses me is that they haven't figured out the LAUP page. Maybe I will add a more descriptive heading to help them out.

So I didn't get the internship at CP&E. They needed someone who will graduate by next Spring and can join them full time after. I'll be finishing my master's a semester too late. I actually can probably finish within the next year, but I'm not in a hurry to leave school. I really like school... They asked me to interview with their sister company, Environet. So that will be on Wednesday. I also got a call from Engineering Solutions asking if I would be interested in an interview. So I will call them back on Monday, and try to schedule something. So that is the update on my search for a summer job.

Other news, I got accepted to participate in the 2005 PET (Programming Environment and Training) Summer Institue at UH. It's a two week program that starts at the end of July and continues into the beginning of August. I will be learning parallel computing and will also get to go to the Maui High Performance Computing Center to see, perhaps use, their supercomputers. I'm kind of excited about the program.

Well, only reporting and no real thoughts to share this time......I guess the thoughts are there, but the time isn't. Need to finish up some school work tonight, and I still have a ton of grading to do. Sigh...

Nihon ni iku. Kairu-san ni Nihon de au. =)

In about a month I will be going to Japan. I bought my tickets just a couple of days ago. And I already have my passport..it arrived four weeks early! After so much talk, I'm really actually going.

Yesterday, I helped out with open house for admitted students hosted by the Engineering Department at UH. I got to show and explain this. Isn't it awesome?

When my mom came to pick me up, she asked how it went...How did it go? It was good. Did you get asked a lot of questions? Yeah. Oh, the students were pretty interested in it then, huh? Umm, no. The parents were. Oh. =)

God's creation never ceases to awe me. I think back to Genesis study from summer con - "Behold..." I have this image in my head of God saying, "Hmm, I think my beloved humans will get a kick out of this," and He throws down a hydraulic jump.... Also how the flow maintains that S2 profile over the weir....beautiful. In a practical sense, the jump is an undersirable thing, but man it's impressive. And heck, that was only a lab demo!

Kyou, CP&E no CEO no Anson-san to Jyoaan-san to Arakea Kooporeto Tawa no rokkai no CP&E no jimushitsu de intabyu wo shimashita.

It's hard to tell how it went. It started out pretty well, I thought. But then I began to run out of things to say, so I'm somewhat concerned that it didn't end too well. Somehow I got the impression that the CEO was getting a little impatient and then he left pretty quickly when it concluded, which isn't really a good sign. I'm hoping it was just because it had been going for 50 minutes and he had a lot of work to do.

I was tempted to review in my head everything that I could have said better, but then I decided I wasn't going to do that. I know what would have been better responses. That is good enough. I used to have this tendency to replay things in my head a million times over until I've "perfected" every little detail...crazy.

A summer job with them would be so great. I got a really good impression of the company. I arrived there early and had an opportunity to talk with one of their engineers. She gave me a tour of the office and introduced me to all the other employees. And then she waited with me in the kitchen until time. We chatted and I got to ask her about the project she's working on and how she feels about her job and her coworkers and the company in general. She was really nice.

I've been seeing lately how much of a difference it makes for people's experience when you take the time for them. I'm refering more to another incident, but this is an example of that, too. The other incident, I'm not going to give much detail, but it would have been a pretty big setback for me. A couple of my professors stood behind me, though, and I'm so grateful for that because I would have no authority to do anything or say anything and just would have had to accept it. A way was found to work things out, and in the end, I felt very blessed to know that I have professors that care about me.

Take the time for people and care about people, that's what I've been getting. It's been pretty cool because it's like God's been showing me all these dimensions of my character that needs a bit of work, and not by harsh criticism, but by gentle example..."You see how good this is, so do the same."


**Edit**
Had to do a little correction to my Japanese. Forgot the -san's. I had a feeling Kyle would find some mistake. =P

It's kind of silly, but I started this log so that I could have another page to add to my website. Even played around with the design to get it to match my webpage. Four pages, one of which is the home page, seems a bit scant for a webpage. Five is good. I didn't even write in it for the longest time, until now, now that my LAUP page is ready for its debut. =)

So I finally finished my LAUP page, yay!! It was actually mostly finished at the end part of summer last year. Just had to add some stuff to the reflection section, but man, I dragged that on for forever. I guess it's because that is the meat of the whole page. It wasn't easy to decide what to write about, and then to capture it with the "right" words that convey sincerely what's on the heart...

I didn't work on it for months when school started. Worked on it some during winter break, but not a whole lot. And now I'm on spring break. I decided yesterday that I was going to finish this thing. I guess I'm finished now. I added some pictures to break up the text, because there's a lot of text, but the pictures didn't come out so good, both the quality and the arrangement. But, I'm no computer expert, so it's probably going to stay like that (unless someone wants to give me a quick lesson on computer graphics and web design..anyone? =) ).

Well, enjoy the page: LAUP 2004