chaz720.net - journal

Wed, 10 May 2006

Ryan — Wed, 10 May 2006 12:00:00 +0000

I took my last final this morning. It went well. It's always good to come out of a final not only feeling that you studied the right things to do well on the test, but that your overall knowledge of the course material is really what got you through it. I've learned a lot from my recent antenna courses, and I should get the opportunity to apply some of it in the near future at work.

On a grander note, that's it. It's done. It's finished. School is over. And the fact that I've had to state it several times just now might serve as a hint that it hasn't really sunk in yet. Or has it?

The relief and good spirits that usually follows any exam I take, that feeling of meeting a milestone, actually lasted a shorter duration after this test than it normally does. Maybe that's because the next test isn't out there on the horizon, and as a result there's nothing that completing this test has tangibly prepared me for. Or maybe it's because I never feel as good about accomplishing most things as I tell myself I'm going to in order to get myself to do it in the first place.

I attribute it to simply expecting a lot out of myself. Completing things like this successfully is a given. I don't expect compliments, and I shrug off the ones I get. Am I just that good at picking goals for myself and knowing what I can do? Or is the truth that I have no idea what I can do because I don't reach enough? This is something I've been thinking about not only now that I'm done with school, but really for these last couple months.

This past Saturday I got an opportunity to try out a Katana-120. I gotta tell you, it's a real joy to fly. The range you can get from the inputs is incredible, and the thing does exactly what you tell it to, never complaining. I think I will try jumping a Katana-107, and maybe even comparably sized Crossfires before I buy anything (the # indicates the square footage of the canopy for the non-jumpers) but I can definitely see one of these modern elliptical canopies in my future. The openings were, all-in-all, not that bad. I think once you get into the realm of "not a whole lot of canopy over your head" you simply have to pay closer attention to what you're body is doing and what your canopy is doing during openings.

Oh yes, and a slightly amusing anecdote regarding the canopy demo process.

Saturday morning I gave my rig to one of the PD reps to unhook my canopy and hook up the demo. When she went to put my canopy in the storage bag for the day, she moved the risers over to the bag and then said, "wait a sec, are these backwards?" I looked at them and said, "no that looks right, the rsl loop is on the left side, as it should be." So we shruged this off and I promptly forgot about it. I jumped all day and at the end of the day, laid my rig out for them so they could disconnect the demo and reconnect my main. The other rep there took care of this, and I closed my container and handed it off to Caitie, who had just walked up and needed to borrow it so she could have two rigs to jump the following day.

Sunday evening I get a phone call, "Hey Ryan, thanks for letting me borrow your rig, I appreciate it... however next time you might want to make sure the main is actually hooked up properly before loaning it to your sweet and loving friends."

Evidently it was (at least) hooked up flying the proper direction as I had confirmed the day before, however the risers had been twisted an asymetrical number of times (known as a step-through malfunction) requiring some aerial rigging to coax into a landable state. She was able to manage this and land it just fine, but I have no doubt this was all done while muttering unintelligible sentences composed of my name and other four letter words.

Wed, 29 Mar 2006

Ryan — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 12:00:00 +0000

Today is a sad day. After nearly 21 months of loyal service, my coffee machine has died. It appears to be clogged, wedged, or borked in some non-trivial fashion, preventing it from getting me through mornings 16oz at a time. It truly is difficult to put a price on what it provided me, because I cannot find the receipt for it. I think it was around twenty dollars.

Spring break was a tease. Not having classes or assignments for a week was an excellent experience, but only left me looking forward to May with less patience. I completed my midterms before the break and did well enough on them. I estimate I'll finish in the A- realm in both of my classes, which is fine by me.

If ever you decide to visit southern California, do yourself a favor and avoid the month of March. Any other month is beautiful out here, but March is just cold and rainy and shitty, and that's the way it is. It's even cold and rainy and shitty outside right now. It's supposed to clear up by this weekend and be beautiful again. It's also supposed to be April by this weekend as well. Coincidence?

Speaking of which, Leandra and Eric are visiting this weekend. I'll be taking a weekend off from jumping to hang out with them, and visit some cool places while they're here. A change of pace is always good, and I haven't seen them since Thanksgiving, so that will be cool as well. I'm excited.

Tue, 28 Feb 2006

Ryan — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 12:00:00 +0000

My last semester of school seems to be dragging a bit, but let's be honest, who didn't see that one coming. My antenna class I really like. The material makes sense, the professor is cool, and the lectures are well organized. The communication theory class is alright. The material is a lot more dry so far, and the lectures aren't quite as organized, but overall it's still coming along okay, and I'm learning. So, you might ask, if I like the classes so much, why is it the semester is dragging on? It's simple. Homework. Having two lengthly homework assignments week after week waiting for me when I get home from work each evening (nevermind finding time to watch lectures themselves) is really starting to bug me. Having a large amount of homework on your plate at all times (even immediately after you hand the previous assignment in) hangs over your head, and the relentless nature of it makes it easy to forget I'll be done in May.

But on the other hand, I'll be done in May, right?

This last weekend I benched my camera suit and borrowed a friend's old one that had larger wings on it than mine does. I was having trouble with exits, and even though I was pretty convinced my timing was right on, I was still struggling to stay in position to get a good shot of the formation. To either confirm or put to rest the theory that I was a hopeless case, I tried some different threads, and low and behold, the right tools make the difficult jobs much easier. So my camera suit is in the shop this week undergoing "wing augmentation surgury" and I'll be able to give it another go on Saturday.

The still camera has been a lot of fun, although I don't wear it on all my jumps. When I'm shooting 4way video for a team I'd rather not have extra stuff to think about on exit at this point. I like taking it out on random jumps where I can stay just outside the formation, there's no pressure to get good video, and I can fly around at will to get the photos I want. Anyway, that's led to some cool photos, and adds a little icing on the cake so to speak.

Coming up in the post-graduation time-frame I may have a couple choices before me regarding work that I'm having a hard time solidly deciding on. It's really going to depend on details I don't have yet, so more info on that as it develops.

Thu, 05 Jan 2006

Ryan — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 12:00:00 +0000

My trips are over and work has started back up again. It has been kinda slow going so far, though, as people kinda trickle back in from their vacations. But that's what I expected.

It's good to be back in California, apparently other states have gas stations that close and/or run out of gas at times, and that terrifies me.

My classes start next Monday, and once they get going I need to get myself some textbooks for them and figure out the best schedule of time away from work to attack them (did I mention they were my last two?) I think I'm going to stick with the "one day completely off" method that worked so well last semester.

Christmas was pretty cool, it felt much like a timewarp because I don't think I fully got over the few hours of time change until I got back here, which of course, did me a fat lot of good. My sister came through with some choice clothing picks which is cool, I actually like having nice clothing to wear, but I definitely don't have the patience to go somewhere and buy it. To round out the materialistic feast, my parents hooked me up with a Canon Rebel XT. I put a few of my first shots with it up in the photos section. Jumping with it is going to take some getting used to. Where with video you just "switch it on, jump out, and make sure what you're looking at is interesting." stills actually require conscious framing, attention to lighting, etc.

Added bonuses involved seeing my grandmother who wasn't able to make it up to Chicago for thanksgiving, securing control of the car keys to be sure that if I was in the car, I was the one driving, and the final complete death of the A/V receiver in my parents living room, which, prior to its demise had become possessed by the devil and thus accounted for roughly 75% of the total phone conversations I've had with my parents over the last two years.

I did get sick somewhere in there too. Not really a bonus, but that's why I started a new paragraph. I had to postpone my trip to Eloy so I could go into a NyQuil coma for a couple days. When I did head out, I felt a lot better but was, admittedly, not 100%. Amazing how when you're sick you can get 18 hours of sleep in a night and wake up tired.

Most of the details of the Eloy trip ended up coming together at zero hour, which for a group of skydivers trying to plan a road trip is actually very impressive. I had fun, but after a couple years of doing it, I can't decide if I want to do it again. I always tell myself I'm going to chill while I'm out there, make a few jumps, no real rush, and that if I average 4 jumps a day while I'm there that I'll be good. But in reality, being in Eloy makes me stir-crazy. You are in the middle of nowhere, and there's only two things to do, go skydiving, or sit around and watch other people go skydiving. The latter seems to be very popular among the locals who, as I think I've adequately established, don't have anything better to do. The former is what you must do a lot of to keep yourself sane as an outsider who looks around and sees nothing but dried up cotton fields.

Wed, 30 Nov 2005

Ryan — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 12:00:00 +0000

I just polished off my last assignment of the semester. Now I just have a review session and a final for both classes. I already feel pretty good about both the finals. I don't feel I need to change anything from the way I studied for the midterms. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I'll just have a better idea of what to expect this time from each of the professors.

In case I never mentioned it here, I work M-Tu-Th-F, skydive Sa-Su, and Wednesday is the day into which I squeeze a weeks worth of grad school. Sometimes it spills over into Tuesday and Thursday evenings, but most times not. Today was a bit busier than most school days as I took last week off for Thanksgiving. One of my classes took it off with me, the other... well... resulted in a lot more work today. Still, the semester went very smoothly like this, and I'd definitely do it again.

Plus, it helps alleviate my apparent ADD by only doing the same thing for at most two days in a row.

Thanksgiving was fun, it's good to spend some time with the family every once in a while. (and only every once in a while :P) The turkey was delicious, and the following day I went to the club with my Dad and shot a round of trap which I haven't done in many moons. I also got to see some college friends in Chicago and eat italian beef sandwiches and Chicago-style deep dish pizza. Twas a good break, I'd do it again.

While I was there, Hans let me play with a yet to be released cell phone that I think I'm going to have to get. My current phone is a model you might recognize, The Free Phone^TM. While it has generally served me well, its shortcomings are becoming numerous. A louder speaker and a louder ringer would be nice (along with human-phone ring tones) and the ability to use the phone in a flicker type manner, posting images directly from my phone to my site, is what's drawing me towards a new phone. This particular phone also includes iTunes, and will handily curb any interest in buying an iPod shuffle or nano I might have had.

Plus, my current phone can no longer be trusted.

I was getting off the highway last Tuesday when my phone rings. I don't like talking while I'm in traffic on surface streets, so I tell her I wanted to get together later but that I'll call her right back. I get home five minutes later and try to call back... the phone hangs up before it even starts to ring. I try again... same thing. I try calling anyone... same thing. The phone refuses to make outgoing calls.

Five bars my ass.

I look around my apartment, mostly trying to decide what it is I should be looking for. Something with which to solve this dilemma? Or perhaps something sturdy at which I can lob this impish contraption? I ended up sending her an e-mail and she called me back so it wasn't a big deal, but those who know me well know the last thing I need in my social life is more obstacles.

Mon, 31 Oct 2005

Ryan — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 12:00:00 +0000

Time flies when... well... pretty much all the time these days.

I'm done with midterms for the semester which leaves me with (consults imaginary reference) 6 more exams between now and May. These tests went pretty well. I left myself plenty of time to study for them, so the whole ordeal was relatively low-stress.

My Lines, Fields, and Waves class is particularly cool, mathematical, and yet chock-full of real world examples. It should lead well into my Antenna Analysis course next semester, which I'm looking forward to. Meanwhile, Comm Systems leaves something to be desired as the antithesis of Random Processes, which I took last spring. Where RP was prone to leave you scratching your head, wondering what it was the menagerie of symbols on the page in front of you was actually supposed to mean, Comm Systems leaves me skeptical as the professor gives arm-waving explainations to reduce every equation introduced in the class to the expression "how good it is = awesomeness - suckiness adjustment factor"

The past few weekends have been fun. Last week I got my D license (which means I'm an "expert" skydiver, whatever that means) for the same reason anything other than skydiving gets done on a dropzone: it was cloudy. I've been getting more practice with 4 way video, and worked on my head down flying a bit yesterday. As Danilo says, "There are two steps to learning head down. First, be able to fly with a formation, and suck. Second, is to stop sucking."

I'm getting hung up on the second part though.

Tue, 20 Sep 2005

Ryan — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 12:00:00 +0000

I can always count on David to bring to my attention albums that I should have brought to my own attention, but I hadn't yet...

...because I wasn't paying attention.

I was busy, dilly-dallying one might say, with the usual school, work, and skydiving, forgetting to occasionally set some time aside for the truly important things in life: frisbee golf, foosball, getting drunk at baseball games and heckling the home team, having stretched limousines cart you and a dozen friends around on a bar crawl, and eating chicken-fried steak in a diner at 4am.

Another semester is starting up at school (my second to last I might reiterate) and the classes are going well thus far. Work is cruising along. My office mate is moving to a different project, so as of tomorrow I'll have an office to myself. It will be larger than my manager's, so I will have to strategically aquire and position additional furniture to deter the introduction of a new office mate. Skydiving continues, and I'm coming up on 600 jumps. I'm still mixing up RW, flying video, freeflying, and wingsuit jumps as much as possible. I do, however, have a new jumpsuit and lens suited to shoot 4way video on the way, and I plan to make that "the thing" next season.

But as nice as southern California is essentially all the time, I had to get away for a little while.

After Hans picked up a little something in Hermosa Beach for his girl back home, he and I set out under the cover of night for San Francisco. The drive was fairly uneventful save I-80 being closed just west of the Bay Bridge via a sign that said, in more words, "freeway closed, deal with it." After our eventual success finding a parking spot (and a brief spell revelling in it) we spent the weekend with David, Katie, Joel, and numerous cameos touring the city as our cab drivers navigated previously unexplored alley ways and whitened the faces of countless pedestrians for our viewing pleasure. We went to three of the four Cubs-Giants games that weekend, and saw two of the three victories the Cubs went home with. I also played golf for the first time in over three years on a small par three course in the middle of Golden Gate Park.

I came back to Los Angeles for a brief stint to watch lectures, bang out a few assignments for my courses, and finish a bunch of stuff for work. Then I was off to Pittsburgh.

I know it's not as bad as going to Australia or anything like that, but getting on a plane at 11:30pm, squeezing in a couple hours of sleep, and then waking up at 7am to start another day messes with your head. My head was then further messed with when I discovered Pittsburgh was actually pretty cool. I realize I was there to be with friends, but honestly, when I consulted a U.S. map as to the specific whereabouts of Pittsburgh, I was not particularly impressed. (It's proximity to Akron was rather off-putting as well) but the rivers give it a cool look, and it also had some fun hang outs. We BBQed at Sam's Friday night, and Saturday night the 14 of us hit up a whole mess of bars and clubs thanks to our comedically huge Ford Excursion and our driver Joe who, on more than one occasion, drew cheers by squeezing through city intersections and parallel parking that beast.

Sure, neither ended up being especially relaxing vacations (as some people prefer) but as I've mentioned before, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Sat, 06 Aug 2005

Ryan — Sat, 06 Aug 2005 12:00:00 +0000

Alkaline Trio has a lot of very so-bitter-it-is-funny lyrics in their songs, so a song like this that's legitimately morose is pretty strange for them. I still like it though.

This morning I took the final for my Digital Image Processing class. It went well, and in hindsight I probably could have done without taking Thursday off to study for it. The professor threw a bit of a curve ball with his practice exam which had a couple of really strange problems on it that got me worrying. The actual exam ended up being much more straight forward (however a bit tedious) No big deal though, a little extra time off never hurt anyone.

The third and final assignment for the course (which, if you recall, I was working on right around the time I wrote my last entry) took a lot of my time that week. It was not an issue of getting the algorithms working, but the tweaking and re-tweaking of all the details to make each of them perform well that went on for hours. In the end, the parts of the class I enjoyed the most were the elegant, simple, and robust algorithms that really impressed me with their performance.

Last weekend I had the opportunity to make my first wingsuit jumps (yes, I bought beer.) and they were absolutely awesome. It's going to take some time (and perhaps some upper body exercises) to get better at it, but in the words of Patrick de Gayardon, "I knew immediately, this was something I wanted to play with for a long time." Being able to fly just over the top and around clouds with nothing between you and them is an experience I simply can't describe.

There's a warning label on the wingsuit about it being addicting that I probably should have given more of my attention.

I have a couple of trips lined up in September I'm looking forward to. A long weekend in San Francisco for back-to-back-to-back cubs games, and a long weekend in Pittsburg to visit Sam and some other college peeps out that way. I rather like taking a bunch of little weekend trips like this, it helps promote a completely insane schedule where you never have time for anything.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

Wed, 20 Jul 2005

Ryan — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 12:00:00 +0000

It's a vicious cycle. I don't update for a while, then the things I want to write about pile up and doing so becomes a huge task, and so I put it off in favor of getting some sleep or something along those lines.

So... 23 years old now... yeah...

I got my camera around the begining of June and it's been one of my favorite toys to date. In the photos section I've been putting up several frame grabs from the video I've shot weekend to weekend. I've been dabbling in putting together video compilations, but since most of the people that read this site don't skydive on a regular basis, I'll not drown you with every second of video I have, and rather sum it up with a few frames, I think that works out better for everyone.

I did my 500th jump this past Saturday up in NorCal (specifically: Byron) which was a lot of fun. Myself and two others did our 500th jump on the same skydive. Plus it was good to get out of the greater Los Angeles area, I hadn't really been in a couple months. It was ridiculously hot that weekend out there, so Sunday I drove into Berkeley to meet up with Joel, who lives there now. I got there at (admittedly the fairly early time of) 8:30 and woke Joel up not long after he'd passed out from a long night of drinking. Not wanting to intrude, I called up David and drove into the city to meet up with him instead. We hung out, went to Golden Gate park and played some frisbee golf, and eventually Joel woke up and caught up with us for a beer. Also, we had some excellent deep dish sausage pizza that brought me to tears of joy.

My digital image processing class is actually going to be wrapping up pretty soon. The last assignment is due Friday (which I will likely spend the rest of today and most of tomorrow working on) and the final for it is on the 5th of August. This class has been very cool, and the professor's straight-forward approach to all the algorithms we need to get done the assignments is very refreshing. I feel like my "effort exerted:shit learned" ratio is very high. Higher than most classes anyway.

Work has also been cool, I've had the opportunity to do some more higher-profile talks and presentations that have gone well. Public speaking is defintely something I've come to enjoy. I think if you asked me how I felt about it 7-8 years ago, I'd have a much different opinion about it.

Tue, 31 May 2005

Ryan — Tue, 31 May 2005 12:00:00 +0000

My finals went fairly well and I got a pair of A minuses for the semester. Considering how I felt about those classes at times this semester, I'd say that's not too bad. At this stage in the game it isn't about grades, it's about learning what you need to learn and moving on. Decent to good grades are practically automatic.

My camera helmet should be here soon (hopefully, sheesh) which will be very welcomed. Flying camera is a skill that's technical in a way that I like, so learning to do it well is something I really look forward to.

I got nabbed on Saturday to compete on a 4-way RW team that didn't have enough people. The sad part? I had the most RW jumps of anyone on the team, and about 90% of my last 300 jumps have been freeflying. The hilarious part? I now have a silver medal for A class.

My overall volume of skydives seems to go up quite a bit when I don't have classes to deal with. In the last two weekends that I've jumped, I've done 36. However I did throw a trip to Chicago in there for good measure.

Speaking of which...

I had a lot of fun coming back to the windy city. I got to see the parents, and rather enjoyed sipping cognac in the living room and chewing the fat with my dad. I love that room in my parent's house. It's smack dab in the middle of the house without any real walls so you feel like you're in a wide open area. You step down into it, it's got a sound system so you can play background music, it's got a fireplace, it's got a bunch of really comfortable couches, and it doesn't have any other distractions like phones or televisions.

After a little stint in the �burbs (which included delicious italian beefs, delicious steak at Morton's, and delicious fish at Shaw's) I headed downtown. The days that ensued included two cubs games, many bars, dancing, drinking, random cab rides loaded with people, poker, Risk, shouting at cars off a balcony, Gino's pizza, and a graduation party for Bill catered by Portillos. I leave the chronological arraignment of the above events as an exercise for the reader.

Prior to leaving for Chicago, I cleaned up my place to avoid any kind of fruit fly infestation like those I've come home to in the past. And it worked quite well. The reason I mention it is that in the mere week and a half since then I've driven the "sty factor" of the apartment into territories on the scale previously unexplored. I think it be prudent to do something about that now.