When I become Supreme Dictator of the World (which I will), I will destroy Disney channel....FOREVER!!!!!!!

My writing ritual is pretty much the same as my homework ritual, because when I write, it is usually for a homework assignment. When I get home, I start by watching a half an hour of TV. TV is really relaxing because my brain doesn't have to do any work. I usually watch a sitcom to make me laugh and get me in a good mood for homework. Then I go downstairs. I always do my writing downstairs, because my brother turns on Disney channel the second he gets home. If you don't have a younger sibling, then you probably don't understand, but Disney channel is impossible to tune out. It's like this high pitched drone that drills into your brain!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If you ever feel like torturing yourself, turn on disney channel for a few hours. But be careful, prolonged exposure has been proven to increase the urge to strangle the person nearest to you. Anyway, when I begin a writing assignment, I usually sit on the downstairs couch, because I am too tired to sit at a table. This is really stupid, because sitting on a couch just makes me even more tired, but most days, I don't have the energy to fight my stupidity. By nine, when my I begin nodding off, I grab a can of Mt. Dew to wake me up again. This usually lasts until 11 or 11:30. Hopefully, I have finished my writing, but if I haven't, then I have to use pure will to keep me going. Mt. Dew has very little effect at that point. This is not really an ideal ritual. I am still always distracted and tired. I have tried working at the library and at coffee shops but I just never really feel comfortable anywhere. I think its because every where is too big and distracting. I really need my own little, secluded, soundproof corner to do my work. 

This is my ideal work space...

When I am older, and I live in my own home, I will have a reading room. It will be a medium sized room in the basement with dark colored walls and thick carpeting. If I have enough money, the room will only be accessible through a hidden door, because that is just awesome. There will be a desk in the shape of a ring in one corner, so I can sit in the middle and lay out all of my work. There will also be a large reclining chair in the other corner for comfortable reading. This room will only have one of those small windows near the ceiling that underground basements have, because I prefer to read and work under artificial light. Sunlight is too warm, too bright, and not very cozy. This way, no matter what the weather is like outside, my reading room will have a constant atmosphere. The walls will be lined with bookshelves filled with books. The room will also have a space heater, so I in the winter, I can heat the room to the perfect temperature without having to overheat the rest of the house. In this room, I will do my work for whatever job I have, and in my spare time I will write science fiction/ thriller novels.  

My Weekend Adventure (Why I am writing this at 6:00 instead of 4)

I began my four day weekend at the University of Minnesota. Right now, I am participating in SciMent. This is a program where I find a mentor, help them with their work, and then design my own research project. I am currently working with Professor Girshick and his graduate student, Ping Yan. They are using plasma to create nanoparticles that can detect and kill cancer. Pretty cool, huh? So I woke up a little late and got the U by 11. We worked on the experiment until 5:30, varying different levels of oxygen to get the right chemical composition for the nano particles. It was going fine until the filter broke three times in a row. At that point we had to give up for the day, because we ran out of massed filters (filters that had already been weighed). I got home around 6:30 because rush hour is terrible. When I got home, I at dinner, watched T.V. for a few hours, because it was the first day of break, and then fell asleep. Did you catch my big mistake? I DIDN'T CHECK THE WEEKEND UPDATE BLOG POST!!!!!

At 9pm on Thursday, we made the last minute decision to visit a few colleges. We woke up at the crack of dawn  on Friday to begin our quest (as all great quests do) and headed to Wisconsin. I would have rather set out to recover the treasure that Smaug stole from the dwarves, but since we don't live in middle earth, I had to settle for a quest in Midwest. Our first stop was the University of Wisconsin Madison. After a long, boring, drive, we arrived at around 11:30. The tours were booked solid, and they couldn't possible accommodate us because they were already overbooked. So naturally, we walked outside and joined the nearest tour that was getting ready to leave. My mom and I both kind of felt like Hermione when she was organizing a secret meeting for Dumbledore's Army (DA) ,"It's kind of fun...breaking the rules." After the tour, we went to the engineering building, and luckily they had a few open seats in the engineering information session. Overall, this was my favorite college that we visited. The campus was beautiful; it was right next to a lake and there was plenty of open grass space. The buildings were nice, and they had recently added a few new engineering buildings. Education wise, they had a lot research opportunities for undergrads. They also had a great system for homework help (free tutoring from students who had done really well in the class you needed help with). The university wide snowball fights also didn't detract from the overall appeal.

When we were done at Madison, we got back into the car and drove to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Did you know that cars don't have WiFi? You don't think about it until you need it, but it would really be nice wouldn't it. Anyways, we arrived at the hotel at around 9:30, and I passed out on the bed within 10 minutes (notice how I didn't go on the internet to check your blog for assignments *face palm*).

We woke up at 8, had breakfast, and then headed over to the University of Illinois (10 min from the hotel). I was actually really disappointed by it. First of all, they were completely shut down on Saturday. The admission building was closed so we couldn't get a tour or even a pamphlet (we probably should have checked looked up their schedule before we went). The whole university also had a lonely, small town feel. The campus wasn't really separate from the surrounding houses and town. Although most universities have a town right outside, this one was surrounded by it. And unlike a university in a large city, this town was run down and full of small old gas stations. The campus had a similar feel. It was very old, but not in a good way like Harvard. The only really new structure was the football stadium. The engineering buildings on the other hand, seemed to have been left out of the renovation money. It also felt too familiar. My grandparents live in Illinois, and the overall environment (the trees, the grass, the weather, even the town) felt like where my grandparents live. I would really prefer to go to college somewhere that feels new and different.

Our last stop was Pudue University, because it was only two hours away from the University of Illinois. When we got to Purdue, it was swarming with people. There was a football game between Purdue and the University of Illinois (which may have explained why there were so few people at the U of IL) that had just ended. The campus was huge and it was a lot more welcoming. They had just built a brand new Engineering building. It was wide open with a high ceiling, and hanging from the ceiling was a capsule from one of the rockets that went to the moon (appropriate since the building was named after Neil Armstrong). To create a modern effect, they used a lot of glass walls so we could see all of the research and projects they were working on, such as an electric car they had built for competition. We also went to the electrical engineering building (this is what I am leaning towards right now) and looked around. It was a bit older, and the inside wasn't nearly as nice as the Neil Armstrong building, but it seemed much happier than the University of Illinois.

By six, we decided we better hit the road, so we began our long WiFi-deprived drive back to Minnesota. The drive back to Minnesota takes 9 hours so we stopped at 11:00pm in Madison for the night. I walked into the hotel room, and within 10 minutes I passed out again (notice AGAIN how I didn't go on the computer to check your blog *double face palm*).

We woke up at 7 and had breakfast in the lobby which consisted of raisin bran, potato squares, and a sausage link (not all mixed together, that would be gross!). We hit the road and arrived home by 2:30. After sitting in a car for 6 hours, I was still tired, so I walked through the door of my house, lay down on my couch, and fell asleep. I woke up at 5, after my mom yelled at me for an hour to wake up (There could be a tornado ripping though my house and I still wouldn't wake up), and I proceeded to surf the web about the colleges I'm applying to, check my email, and look on facebook (Did you know that facebook is banned in China? That's probably why they do so much better in school!) At that point, I remembered that we were supposed to check your blog for the weekend update (*face punch* as a face palm is not severe enough for my reaction). And for the past two hours, I have been writing this.

Overall, my excuse for not writing this on time sucks (hopefully this didn't come off as whiny, because that was not my intention. It was more of self frustration.), but the story is pretty exciting, so hopefully you got a bit of entertainment out of it!

THE END

Pet Peeves

Pet peeves

• When people break out into song.
• When people breathe really loud. (Especially when I have to sit next to them during a test. So the square root of four is.....*breath* *breath* "luke I am your father!" AHHHH)
• When people constantly complain about everything. Except for this guy. He's hilarious (caution: uses a lot of profanity)

• Drama. There is enough of that on television.
• National high five day. How come all of the courage/respect retreats always seem to land on national high five day? 
• People who think they know everything. You don't.
• People who play 16 instruments. When do they actually play all of them? Come on.
• People who walk really slowly down the stairs. 
• When people think they are too good for society and believe "the man" is oppressing them.
• Excessive make-up. 
• When people don't shower enough and they start to smell
• When we spend half of the time in MoPro talking about completely irrelevant topics.
• Also, Harry potter is better than twilight. That is a fact, not an opinion. 

2 million minutes

Overall, I think american students don't care enough about school. They focus too much on sports and they don't work hard enough. On the other hand, I think there does need to be some balance between academics and life. What I like about the American culture is that students have to push themselves, they are not doing something just because their parents told them to. My dad has always to me to make up my own decision about what I want to do. He has never tried to persuade me or any of my siblings to pursue a particular field or career. My parents have never really forced school on me at all. It used to really bother me. If I came home and told my parents that I got a B on the test I took last week they would say "Oh honey that's great!" My response would be, "WHAT! No it's not! That's horrible, I'm never going to get into college now!". My parents just didn't seem to understand the importance of school. But now I am thankful. If my parents had pushed me, I would have been more likely to rebel and give up on school all together.

In response to For Once Blame the Students, I think that Patrick Welsh is right, especially in a district like Wayzata where we have excellent teachers. I know that there are a lot of inner city schools that suffer due to poor teaching, but many times that is not the case. I think that students just don't care enough. The teacher may be brilliant, but the students wouldn't know because they don't pay attention or they don't bother to do the homework. In my 4X class, kids complained because it was too hard, and they were getting B's and C's on the tests. They also weren't trying. When they got to a problem in the homework that looked even remotely hard, they left it blank and waited for the teacher to explain it the next day. I saw a lot of papers almost completely empty. How can you learn if you don't try. The most common complaint I heard after a test was, "Well I understood it when he explained it on the board". WELL OF COURSE YOU DID! ONCE YOU KNOW THE ANSWER THEN IT MAKES SENSE!!!! If they had tried on their homework and figured out one of the problems on their own, then they would have been able to do it on the test. Being able to comprehend what the teacher says is completely different from actually being able to solve the problem yourself. When I did my homework, I would do every problem to the best of my ability. If I came across a confusing problem, I would at least write it down and try it. If I had worked through it and still couldn't figure it out, I would look online to find a similar example problem. Only after I had done all of that, would I give up and go ask the teacher the next day. But I am not perfect. There were some days where I was tired, and I did leave a few for class. Also, I love math, so I work harder in that class. There have been far too many days where I got home, watched Lost for 4 hours, and then fell asleep in the middle of my APUSH reading. I think a biggest part of American student's problems is that they are afraid of a challenge. They don't take the honors or AP version of a class because they don't want to work hard, they don't want to look stupid, or they don't want to ruin their GPA. If they don't even try, then they might as well just get a job at McDonald's now, so they can become the manager before they are 50.

I had mixed feelings about 2 million minutes. It was definitely very biased. The director chose two less ambitious american students and four ambitious Chinese and Indian students. The American students watched T.V. instead of doing their homework, and they were almost bragging about the fact that they hadn't studied for the test or completed any of the readings. But at the end, it kind of turned around by showing that the American students got into good schools, and they were proud of what they did. On the other hand, the Indian and Chinese kids were not accepted to their schools of choice, and they were disappointed, as were their parents. I think that the big difference between America and India and China is that there are so many more students competing for the same colleges and jobs. If a student wants to succeed, they have to work so much harder to get into the best schools. In America, there are a lot fewer students and a lot less competition, making it easier to get into a good college and having a successful career. This is changing though. More students are going to college, and many of them apply to more than 5 colleges. When you talk to an adult who graduated from college 40 years ago, they will tell you that they probably wouldn't be accepted to their college if they applied today. Its a never ending cycle. As the competition increases, students have to work harder. By working harder, the competition increases even more and the students have to work even more. I feel bad for the students of the future (Assuming the robots haven't taken over and enslaved us by then), because I enjoy spending time with my friends and sometimes doing nothing at all.

Adding an iPod plug to my car: Part 2 the saga continues

So I finished adding the iPod plug to the car. I got all the wires to squish in behind the radio. I plugged the car battery back in and I turned on the car. The display lit up on the radio/CD player. This means that I at least didn't cut the power cable. Next, I put in a CD. First, you should note that my radio/CD player is really old and messed up. The time always has an extra digit and I have to try 10 different button combinations to get it to the CD mode. Anyways, once I got it on CD, it actually started to play the CD!!!! I flipped the switch and it stopped. This means that the switch isn't broken and I connected the radio/CD wires correctly to the switch. Next, I plugged the headphone cord into the iPod, turned the volume all the way up, and I flipped the switch. NOTHING....I pressed all the buttons in every combination I know possible and....NOTHING. This is very disappointing but better than my first attempt. I know that I wired half of it right. Next weekend, I will play around with the iPod cable wiring and see if I can get it to work correctly. It may have been where I connected the red and white wires from the iPod cable. I read online that red and white should correspond to right and left respectively. I think my problem might have been that I connected the red to right positive and right negative speaker, and I connected white to left positive and left negative speakers. I think instead, I should have connected the red to the right positive and the ground wire (which I just cut off the first time) to the right negative and the same for white). I don't know why I didn't think of that!!! Anyways, at least it wasn't a complete failure.

Adding an iPod plug to my car: Part 1

cassette adapter

This weekend, my project has been to add an iPod plug to my car. I have been working on this all day today. I actually tried to do it this summer but when I was just about done, I tried flipping the switch and found it to be stuck. I'm pretty sure I melted the insides of it by holding the soldering iron on it too long. This was extremely frustrating after working on it for 3 hours!!!!!!!!!!! AHHHHHH! It has taken me a long time to actually get around to trying it again. The failure was just so discouraging. But I had time this weekend so I decided to try again.

Background: Over the summer, my Dad got laid off from his job. Because he had to give back the company car, we bought a cheap car for him to drive until he got a new job. But now that my dad has a new job and a new company car, I get the cheap car. The only problem with this car is that it only has a CD player and a radio. I like to listen to music in the car while I drive but the radio has too many commercials, and CDs only hold 20 songs. If it were a bit older, it would have a tape player and I could use a cassette adapter to plug my ipod into the car. If the car was really new, it would have plug specifically for the iPod. So because my car has neither of these, I decided to add my own iPod plug.

To begin I did some research online to figure out what I had to do. After a bit of surfing I found this website http://www.mattgilbert.net/carstereoauxinput/ . Matt Gilbert did exactly what I was trying to do. So I went to my car and got the radio out. Connected to the radio are about 15 different colored wires. Fortunately, there is a website that has stereo wiring diagrams for just about ever car ever made! http://www.modifiedlife.com/2004-dodge-neon-srt4-car-radio-wiring-diagram/. This is the page for my car. It is a 2004 dodge neon. 

The next step was to get all the materials I needed. I have a soldering iron and solder, but I still needed a headphone cord, and a 4PDT (four pull double throw) switch, so I could change between using the CD player(just in case i ever had a CD I wanted to listen to) and the iPod. For the cord to connect to the iPod, I just used an old pair of headphones and cut off the ear buds. For the switch, I went downtown to ABC electronics (I bought one online from china first, but I found this store after I broke the first one).

I have been working on this all day, and as most projects, they actually take longer than estimated. I began at noon, but I am only halfway done. Here are the steps I have taken so far.

1. For safety, I began by unplugging the car battery and waiting an hour for all of the electricity to drain from the car. This is mostly because I don't know where the airbag sensors are and I don't want to accidentally set it off while I am working (mostly because it could injure me, but also because it costs a ton of money to have them put back in).
2. soldered wires onto every pin on the switch. I did this because the wires that connect to the radio aren't long enough for the switch to extend in front of the radio when I am done. Also, by soldering on wires to the switch, on the workbench, I have more space to work. With more space to work, I can work work faster, which makes it less likely that I will melt the switch.

4PDT switch with wires soldered on

same switch, different angle

3. Once that was done, I labeled all of the wires so that all the right positive, right negative, left positive, left negative, would be connected to the right wires behind the radio.
4. I drilled a hole for the switch to fit through. I can't leave the switch behind the radio. I have to be able to get to it so I can flip it.

soldering the wires from the switch to the wires behind the radio.
(the ones hanging out of the hole)
click to enlarge

This is as far as I have gotten. Here is what I still have to do.

5. The next step is to solder all of the wires from the switch to the wires to the wires that go to the radio and the wires that go to the speaker. It is really hard to describe in words. Basically, I need to solder the wires to the switch.
6. I need to plug the wires back into the radio and put the radio back into its slot in the car.
7. I recconect the battery and turn on the car.
8. If I did everything right, my car should work.

I will post again when I finish it!!!!

Rhetorical Analysis of Obama's "back to school" speech 2011

Last Wednesday (September 28, 2011), Obama gave his annual "back to school" speech. This speech is aimed mainly at students in high school. He acknowledged that school was already started, and that students were probably already getting ready for the school musical, marching band, and big tests/projects. These activities mostly apply to older students. I know my middle school didn't have a marching band, and we didn't really have big tests. This also makes sense given that he is giving this speech in a high school. He is talking to high school students when he me mentions the importance of going to (and graduating from) college. He brings up the issue of paying for college and 

He begins by trying to relate to the students by mentioning facebook and twitter, while at the same time trying to add some humor. When he mentions twitter, his tone has a bit of sarcasm in it, which generates a chuckle, because the audience sees him as "old" and not very familiar with technology and social networking sites. Even though it displays a difference between him and the students, it's still effective in creating a bond with the audience, because it establishes trust through the use of ethos. By admitting that he doesn't know that much about technology, he seems more human and more trustworthy. He continues to relate ideas to technology because that is something the students will relate to themselves. The only problem with this is that when he tries to be serious and act like he does know a little about technology, he fails. He tells students that if they take risks and challenge themselves in school, they will be prepared to go out into the world and be innovative. But his example of technological innovation was to, "invent a device that makes an iPad look like a stone tablet". This is probably the worst example his could have given, because it doesn't make sense. Isn't that a bit backwards? The goal of the iPad is to be small, thin, and light, the exact opposite of a stone tablet. Also, changing the appearance of the iPad isn't really an "invention". This just shows just how little he really knows about technology, except for this time, he wasn't using it as a joke to establish ethos, he was trying to seem informed. I think this created distance between him and the students because it shows how very different they are.

He also uses his own educational experiences to try and relate to the students. He "tells us a little secret" about how he wasn't the greatest student in high school. This is another use of ethos to establish trust. He is not the valedictorian of his high school, telling them that they are stupid and they should do better. He is just an average student wishing that he had paid more attention. His intentions were good but the example falls though when you think about where being a "not so great" student got him (being president of the United States!). It could lead to the idea the, "if he didn't have to try that hard in school, and he still became president, then why should I have to try any harder." He probably could have used a better example. 

Overall, I think his message was good: try harder in school, go to college (graduate from college), challenge yourself, make the world a better place, etc. I think his delivery could have been a bit better though. His inflection was pretty monotone. I wasn't really inspired to do anything. His goal was to motivate, so he should have been a bit more excited, like a motivational speaker. Compared to the MLK's speeches that we watched in class this week, this was pretty boring. This is another example of how he fails to understand his audience. If he were talking to adults, his calm delivery would have been appropriate. But because he is speaking to young students, he should have been a bit more excited. If you want students to do something, they need to be "pumped" to do it. There wasn't one point where the students responded with enthusiasm. They didn't clap or cheer or even nod. They just sat there with blank expressions. He could have raised his voice more at key moments, made more dramatic pauses, and showed a little more emotion in general.