Name:Gareth Country:United States State:Indiana Birthday:8/17/1980 Gender:Male
Interests:Haven't had much time for interest or hobbies until recently. Now just trying out new stuff and making the most out of my life and time here in the states. Occupation:Engineering Industry:Engineering
That's all I can say about the lifestyle I've been having lately. Kind of really missed my frequent Xanga update, but the schedule I've been having doesn't permit it. *Sigh*. The last few weeks have been working-overtime-while-neglecting-studies ... then studying-overtime-when-work-winds-down ... then working-overtime-while-neglecting-studies ... and the vicious cycle continues. Like right now, it's already 6:30 pm, and I'm still stuck here at the office. Same situation yesterday -- ended up leaving for home only after 8:15 pm! Another *Sigh*. It appears that it's going to be that way for a sometime ... at least until the end of the year. By then, our big project here at the office should be completed (or at least 'scheduled' to be completed) and my school semester will end. Until then, it's going to be hectic with work and final exams coming up! Yet another *Sigh*.
I did however managed to take some time away from work and school, with a 4-day roadtrip with Diane this past Thanksgiving holidays. With the long 4-day weekend (Thu - Sun), we drove up to Buffalo, New York to visit Diane's brother who is going to school there. And not to mention visiting the infamous Niagara Falls! The trip was great! It was a nice time to forget all about schoolwork and office work and just relax -- despite the long drives, about 18 - 20 hours altogether. Fortunately, with the two of us, we split up the driving time.
And as always, I try to map my trip in a way that we can stop at different places for a short visit, so our drive don't feel so long.
Our trip started with us dropping by Columbus, Ohio for a couple hours -- just driving around downtown Columbus and taking some pictures. Didn't visit any tourist spots or stores as it was Thanksgiving Day, and the town was pretty much empty. Finished off our day driving to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where we stayed the night. We took a dinner cruise on a boat and enjoyed the great night view of Pittsburgh. Even greater was the view from on top the hill overseeing the city of Pittsburgh. We took a cable car up the hill and the view up there was just breath-taking. Would have stayed longer and enjoy the view, but with strong winds and below freezing temperature, even the heaviest, thickest coat would not keep us warm!
Spent our second day touring Pittsburgh --- the Fallingwater (a house built over a waterfall), walking around downtown enjoying unique building architectures, and the Carnegie Science Museum (which unfortunately wasn't impressive at all). We left late Friday evening and headed on our 3.5 hour drive to Buffalo. Spent the rest of the night resting and playing Mahjong! (Diane's brother had a mahjong set at his place). Spent Saturday sleeping in late, and spending a few hours in the evening visiting Niagara Falls. The view there was breath-taking, but again, wished the weather was a little more warmer. Couldn't take the boat ride --- also due to the weather. Pretty much made up my mind that I would try to visit there again next summer!
Our fourth and final day wasn't too eventful -- as it was a pretty long drive back home. Estimated time 9 hours, actual time with a few long, loooonnngggg traffic jams, it took about 10 hours (we did overspeed a little though .. hehehe) Dropped by Cleveland, Ohio for a couple of hours and visited the Tower City Center Mall, and a short walk around downtown Cleveland.
So, that was pretty much my summary of the short vacation over the last weekend. Would have described in a more interesting and detailed way, but honestly speaking, my brain is pretty much dead from all the work here today. The trip was a little tiring, but it was a much needed trip. I really needed it after the crazy schedule I had the last couple of weeks getting my two midterm exams done and keeping up with the increasing workload at the office. In addition, I really needed some quality personal time with Diane, as I hadn't been spending as much time with her as I would have liked to -- with all the school work and office work.
I managed to take a lot of great pics on this trip, and I think the pictures will actually better describe our trip better than words can. I'll try to get the pics organized, compiled and loaded into my next entry.
Til' then, I better get back to work and finish off a couple of things before heading home.
My apologies for being away for such a long time. It's just that my schoolwork is really taking a big bite out of any free time I have nowadays. Even yesterday when I was home sick (sick in the tummy), I was at home working on catching up on my schoolwork. I had so much trouble understanding the lectures and notes that I decided that I better read through the textbook -- which is not a usual practice for me. Unfortunately, I'm so far behind that it's going to take me a long time of reading to catch up -- have read almost 300 pages of one textbook that took an average of 30 mins for each 10 pages. It's not that I'm a slow reader, but being a technical book, there so much digesting and understanding that needs to be done. And I still have another 300 pages of the other textbook that I need to go through! And it needs to be done before I can work on my midterm exam that is due next Tuesday! That's 15 hours of reading needed before this weekend (that's when I plan to start on my midterm) !! Not sure how I'm gonna achieve that, seeing my work schedule ... but all I can do is hope for the best!
Okies, I'm actually in training all day at work today, and am on my lunch break. It's time for me to head back to the training class now.
Hopefully all this hectic work / school schedule will clear up soon, so I can relax more and also blog more!
I know I've been Missing-In-Action for a while now, and unfortunately, I'll be M-I-A for some time longer. Things have picked up a lot recently in terms of work and school work. Remember the Understanding Power Quality midterm I had due on Monday --- I was working on it until 4 am on Monday! And believe me, it wasn't all because of procrastination ... the exam was genuinely brain-killing frustrating! I worked on it some on Saturday -- got 10% done, then worked on it on Sunday from 11 am - 1 pm, 5 pm - 9 pm and finished it off from 11 pm - 4 am. All it all it was more than 13 hours of work -- mostly consumed by me staring at the questions for hours on end, trying to figure out a way to begin the problem. I'm glad that it's finally completed, but now I have another midterm I need to work on. It's a take-home exam, but being a distance-learning student with no other students to work the problems with, a take home exam is not much better than an in-class exam. That, plus 6 hours of lectures and a homework due on Friday has me pretty much booked for the rest of the week. I don't even want to estimate the several hundred pages of reading and comprehending that I'd probably need to do for the midterm and homeworks! Oh well, I bought the textbooks for a reason, right? *don't you just sense the sarcasm here? ... that's the only way I keep myself sane sometimes*
Fortunately things around here isn't all work and no play. Been spending a lot of 'quality' time with Diane and also got to go catch the Avril Lavigne concert down in Cincinatti. Almost got ourself lost, coz' we didn't have a map. We actually printed the directions, but the directions were for us to go directly to the concert arena. Since we got there several hours early, we had to guess our way around downtown Cincinatti to hunt for a good place to eat. Called ahead of time to a friend's son-in-law to get some suggestions for a place to eat, and only got one suggestion, the Redfish restaurant ... and lo and behold, we find a parking lot just 1.5 blocks from the restaurant -- what a coincidence! :P
Took some pics, but there no close-up quality pics of the concert stage / performers. We're seating a little ways away from the stage, and my camera zoom can only do so much and needing a steady hand to take night pics didn't help either. Will post some of the pics once I find time to sort them out.
Learning. There's probably isn't a day in anyone's life that they are not learning. Be it learning in school, at work or even from watching the world pass by; whether or not you realize it, but you've probably picked up / learnt something everyday. The only reason I started this thought is because I realized that I'm currently formally learning so many things --- and when I stopped and thought about it, I realized that I may be trying to learn much more that my brain / body can handle. I'm learning from my school courses, I'm learning from tasks / projects at work, I'm learning from French class, I'm learning from Ballroom Dancing class, I'm learning from church / Bible, I'm learning from Diane -- in getting to know her better .... and many more informal stuff. Have I signed up for way too much learning? I don't really think so, ... though I do really wish that I could spend more time in each of the items I'm learning. For example, I am not practicing my French as much as I should ... except for the 20 minute drive from work to class every Mondays (traffic is pretty bad, so it wasn't really dangerous reading while driving, considering all the stops I have to make at the two million traffic lights ... :P)
Anyway, that aside, things around here for me have been pretty busy, to say the least. Have finally opened my textbook, 10 weeks into the course, only because I have a take-home midterm exam that currently still looks Greek to me (was thinking of using "French" as the comparator ... but I think I'm starting to understand French more than my coursework). Midterm is for my Understanding Power Quality course .... which has a mixture of calculation problems (typical of any engineering problems) and word problems --- i.e. How would you solve this? Suggest a solution to overcome the power quality issue. --- which would made it a pretty good idea to read the textbook. 60 pages done -- 100+ to go. I made photo-copies of each chapter in the book, so that I don't have to carry around a thick book. Plus, it's weird, but I think I have a better attitude reading a small stack of paper than the thick textbook --- I guess it's the intimidation thing, the feeling that there's so much more to read. The midterm exam was actually due today, but I managed to get the due date extended to Monday. Will have to try really hard to finish my reading assignment by tonight, so I can begin the midterm exam problems tomorrow (Saturday) morning, and hopefully complete it Sunday. I'm not going to work on the exam tomorrow afternoon or evening, coz' I'm going to a concert! Yup! I'm taking Diane to an Avril Lavigne concert in Cincinatti (2 hours drive from here) that starts tomorrow at 8 pm. Probably go down there in the afternoon and do a little sight-seeing ... neither of us have ever been to Cincinatti before. Since it's just 2 hours away, we decided that we could just drive straight back home after the concert. I planned for this trip as sort of a one-month anniversary gift to Diane. I'm really looking forward to the concert --- it would be my second live concert in my life --- first one being the Clay Aiken concert in St. Louis earlier this year.
Ok .. time for me to get back to my work, got lots to do before the end of the day!
