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Gerritt's Homepage Classic - October 2003 Homepage Classic SEEING DOUBLE October 31, 2003. 12:45 PM When I was a freshman here at Tech, I used to see this one guy all over campus. I didn't know his name, and I still don't, but he must have had the same schedule as me or something, because I saw him all the time. I think he also might have lived in my dorm or near it. And it wasn't just me, either. I can remember talking to Bret about it once or twice, and he said the same thing: this guy is everywhere. Bret and I were Pritchard boys, spending our freshman year in what Tech claims was "the largest all-male residence hall on the east coast," or something like that. So Everywhere Guy, we had to assume, must also be a freshman living in Pritchard, and also an engineer. After Bret and I got the heck out of Pritchard and moved into apartments as sophomores, I don't think we saw Everywhere Guy even once, or ever mentioned him again. Until now. Today, as I took a different route to get to class, I passed Everywhere Guy in the hall of Randolph. Only there were TWO of him! Apparently the odds of of seeing Everywhere Guy are much greater when he has an identical twin roaming around campus too. So now I pose to you a question: If you had an identical twin, would you go to the same college as him or her? Would you take the same major, or live in the same dorm? Would you go to Halloween parties dressed as your identical twin? I would. Have a safe and happy Halloween, and be sure to watch the big game tomorrow night! Let's go Hokies!! CHAMPIONS FOR THE DAY October 27, 2003. 11:45 PM Wesley Co-rec Flag Football won a game!! Our first in two years! The game was a much more convincing win than the final 9-6 score would seem, with Wesley dominating on both sides of the ball. The score came after a 60-yard drive capped off when Randy connected a 3-yard scoop pass to Krista in the end zone, securing 9 points and the lead for the remainder of the game. As competitive as Wesley players tend to be, it still is always a pleasant surprise when we actually win a game. Especially when we play the fraternities with guys who played football in high school. We still managed to lose our men's volleyball set tonight 2 games to 1, but we put up a good fight. And its loads of fun. I'm more than happy to say that the Yankees lost the World Series, to some team from somewhere. I think it was the fish team from Miami, but who cares. The Yankees lose, I'm happy. I'd have liked them to lose to the Red Sox, but I can deal with the Marlins just fine. And in college football tonight, a travesty as the Hokies didn't even make the BCS Top 15 after their loss in West Virginia last Wednesday. That means there are now three teams with two losses who are ranked better than the Hokies who've only lost once. Yay BCS. It doesn't really matter until the end of the season anyway, so we'll make judgments then. GONNA GO BACK IN TIME! October 24, 2003. 9:15 AM In case you didn't read me for the last few days, a full account of my weekend expedition to San Francisco is available under the 'Classic Entries' link below. Lots of positive responses about those entries, thanks for your feedback. Sorry they're a little bit wordy, there's just so much to tell. This week was a nice short slacker week for me, having only a few light assignments due, and having done most of my schoolwork before leaving last week. I'm headed out for a relaxing weekend in Maryland, just 5 hours up the road. I'll be coming home Sunday evening to lead a 'Hot Topics' group discussion at Wesley about Separation of Church and State, and Gays in the Church. (Two separate topics.) It'll be interesting. This Saturday night will bring us the "fall back" version of daylight savings time, where we all get an extra hour of sleep. That is, unless you stay up until 2 AM, in which case you get to experience the ever-revered "Hour That Doesn't Count"! (buh buh buh buuuuuuum). Since, at 2 AM, it suddenly becomes 1 AM again, the hour from 1-2 before you change your clocks is a free hour. Totally, completely, and absolutely meaningless. Which, of course, means that the hour should be filled with something you'd never really do during a normal, meaningful hour. Preferably something absurd and silly, like going to the all-night diner dressed as Batman and ordering in Spanish. (I have no idea where that came from.) What will you be doing for your. . . Hour That Doesn't Count!? (buh buh buh buuuuuuum) SUITE! October 23, 2003. 5:15 PM (Part 4 of 4 on the Big San Francisco Weekend) Funny things can happen when you know the right people, or just end up in the right place at the right time. If anyone had told me that I'd end up hanging out in the President's Suite on the 34th floor of the historic Westin St. Francis Hotel in the heart of San Francisco on Saturday night, I'd have laughed a lot. But there we were, 13 OEs from Virginia Tech, riding the glass elevator all the way up into the night sky, watching the city lights grow small below us. We'd met up with an alumni from 1982, who is friends with the President of SNAME, and got the prez's room key and his permission to venture upstairs into his suite, the most elegant hotel room I've ever seen. Mostly it was just us students and alumni from Tech standing around, drinking from his bar (also with permission), and laughing about how we ended up there. Keep in mind we started out the day from the enlisted quarters on board an old Navy ship, and had taken a streetcar through town to get to the hotel. It was like a dream. Although, I'm not sure if its really the life for me. I'd rather live on the ship, but the plushness of a fancy hotel is certainly welcome now and then. On the return trip to Blacksburg, it was a strange string of broken transportation incidents. First, the streetcar that rides us from the pier to the BART subway station took almost 25 minutes to come, despite the 'every 10 minutes' sign. Then, the BART was broken down somewhere in between the waterfront and the airport, so we rode as far as we could and had to jump into cabs ($35!) to get the rest of the way. The plus, comfortable interior of the 767 that flew us to Houston was a welcome relief, and those neat little LCD screens in the back of the seat in front of you let you choose between a bunch of movies, games, and music while you sit. I watched Pirates of the Caribbean again. Then more trouble met us in Houston where the AirTrain monorail (monorail!?) thingy was packed as it took us from one terminal to the other for our transfer flight. Then, as all 300 of us piled off of the AirTrain and onto the down escalator, it suddenly seized up and we had to walk down. I guess that's part of the beauty of an escalator, if it breaks, you get steps. But I don't care, they still creep me out. Our flight back to Charlotte was generally uneventful, and most of the group got to sit together all the way in the back of the plane and joke around the whole flight back. It was 1:30 AM Monday morning when we got back to Blacksburg in the cold, dry air of the mountains, and as we all drove home, I'm sure I wasn't the only one wishing Virginia Tech was in San Francisco. But that might ruin the whole small-town feel of the school, plus I guess it wouldn't be called Virginia Tech anymore. I'm glad to be back, but I'll be just as happy to leave again. SHOW US YOUR GOODIES!! October 22, 2003. 3:15 PM (Part 3 of 4 on the Big San Francisco Weekend) Saturday morning found us up at the sunrise, watching from the deck of the Golden Bear as the brilliant light of the morning sun erupted over the San Francisco Bay, breaking the horizon right between the piles of the Bay Bridge. As the 13 of us wandered over to the Convention, the reason we were in California to begin with, we got a great ride on a streetcar, or a trolley as they're also called. These vehicles run on tracks set in the street and have an electric motor on board powered by an overhead wire. In San Francisco, unlike any other city in the US, there is also a set of tracks for a cablecar, also called a tramway, a totally different vehicle. The cablecar contains no self-powered device, and instead runs on a giant cable that runs underground throughout the city. The driver operates a huge clutch handle and a brake handle, which grab the cable to make the car move or release the cable and brake the wheels to make it slow down. These are the transit cars that make San Francisco famous. They run up and down the hills at ridiculous angles that any other vehicle would struggle with. Most cablecar systems shut down before 1900, and only a few survived until the 40s and 50s. The San Francisco cablecar is a ton of fun, with each car having room for 10 of its passengers to stand on a platform on the side of the car and hang on tight as the tram shudders violently around curves and cuts dangerously close to cars, trucks, and other cablecars. Its a great way to see the city. The World Maritime Technology Conference, sponsored by SNAME, had a cool segment directed toward college students where all 10 or so Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering universities sent students to participate in a competition to design and build a barge out of blue styrofoam blocks, dowels, and some other very limited supplies. The barges had certain restrictions and stipulations based on how much weight it needed to hold and such. My team's barge went first, and did rather poorly compared to others, but it was cool to hang out and see how students from other universities interact. An 'International Luncheon' followed, whatever that means, and a long, dull speech by the speaker of SNAME. After lunch, a student 'job fair' was scheduled, but only a few companies sent representatives to interview, and most of them I'd already talked to on campus here at Tech. Following the end of the day at the conference, we all met up with a few of the old OE alumni from Tech, including a graduate from last year whose senior design project was the first American team to ever win the prestigious Lysnik Ship Design Competition. After a bit of schmoozing and a bite of dinner with the alumni, one of the graduates from '82, who is friends with the president of SNAME, suggested that we head over to hang out with the President and the students from Michigan, his alma mater. We weren't really 'invited' I guess, but he talked us into it, and you'll never guess where we ended up . . . HOW MANY ORDER!!?? October 21, 2003. 10:45 AM (Part 2 of 4 on the Big San Francisco Weekend) The first plane, a tiny ERJ-145 with 2 x 1 seating, took us from Charlotte, NC to the Continental hub in Cleveland. From there, an old-school 737 with 3 x 3 seats took a plane-full out to San Francisco. Most of us had been up since 3 AM, so sleeping on the flight wasn't much of a problem. The fabulous Bay Area Regional Transit subway, or BART, took us from the airport up to the waterfront near the San Francisco side of the Bay Bridge. Then we walked. It was only maybe a half mile, but with all of our stuff in duffle bags, it sure seemed longer. And to top it off, once we found pier 27 where the TS Golden Bear was supposed to be docked, there was no ship. So we sat in a nice little bay-side cafe on pier 23 (which was right next to 27), and ate lunch while we waited. San Francisco is a funny place, and people really seem to go out of their way to help us out. Probably because we were a group of 13 college students with money to spend in their city. Just up the road from our ship's pier was the famous Pier 39, part of San Fran's waterfront urban renewal, similar to New York's South Street Seaport, or the Inner Harbor in Baltimore. As we waited for the ship to arrive, we ran into one of the students from Cal Maritime, who let us stow all of our stuff in her car until we could load it onto the Bear, and then we walked down to Pier 39. From there, we got the post-card view of Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge, which was awesome to see, even from afar. Then we loaded up our gear onto the ship and headed into the city. We had a great view of the Bay Bridge, the city skyline, and even the Golden Gate from our ship's pier as we walked towards the skyscrapers in the distance. We ended up in Chinatown, which is another unique experience for sure, and ate at a hole-in-the-wall place called Sam Wo. The newspaper article pasted on their front door remarked about people coming to Sam Wo "not for the food, the service, or even the atmosphere, but for the ghost stories and beatnik legends" that haunt the narrow, windy stairways and dark, tiny upstairs dining rooms. It was an experience to say the least. Solomon managed to get yelled at by the waitress when he couldn't understand her English, and she didn't get any friendlier after that. But the food was good, and fast, and the price was sure right. We climbed down out of the steep steps that dump you back out into the noise and smell of the city street, and meandered down to catch the cablecar back to Pier 39. The other crazy thing about Pier 39, which we didn't find out until that night when we came back, is their sea lions. Hundreds and hundreds of sea lions pile up on the floating docks by the marina at Pier 39, and sleep, fight, bark, play, and just generally make a whole lot of noise. Its quite a sight to see, especially at night when they just seem to appear from the deep black harbor and swim right by you. It was like nothing I'd ever experienced, and I kept having to remind myself that they are there by choice, and can leave and swim back out into the bay anytime they want. It just seemed too much like a zoo. WATCHING THE SHIPS ROLL IN October 20, 2003. 8:45 AM (Part 1 of 4 on the Big San Francisco Weekend) What a fun weekend in San Francisco. In fact, we did so much crazy stuff that I'm going to spend the next four days to writing about it. The first ever SNAME World Maritime Technology Conference, the reason we all went to San Francisco this weekend, was a huge gathering of the bigwigs of the ship design world at the Moscone Center in downtown. The center houses about 50 big, fancy conference rooms throughout a maze of large, high-ceilinged hallways and lobbies. It felt a lot like an airport without as much security. There was also an official hotel for the event, probably the nicest and most expensive in the city, called the Westin St. Francis. The students, however, opted for the cheap way out and were able to secure berthing on the training ship Golden Bear, operated by the California Maritime Academy. 'The Bear,' as we affectionately called her, docked on pier 27, near the Bay Bridge but at least 2 or 3 miles from the conference and about 20 miles from the San Francisco airport. So, we learned the San Francisco mass transit system quite well, and I think we probably took ten different types of available transportation by the end of the weekend. A van, three different types of airplanes, two airport 'AirTrain' monorails, a cable car AND a streetcar (I'll explain later), a cab, and a subway. And, in typical Gerritt style, I spent so much time looking at stuff and taking pictures and trying to see everything I could in two days that I failed to bring home a single souvenir or trinket save for the free tote bag that the conference gave us. Oh well, the 115 pictures I took will be online soon. There's more to come, so come back and read all the updates this week about the San Francisco Weekend. BE SURE TO WEAR SOME FLOWERS IN YOUR HAIR October 17, 2003. 2:45 AM This morning, er, night, or whatever it is right now, I'm awake at 2:30 AM. I'm leaving here at 3 AM for a long trip to San Francisco, where I'll be for the weekend. Most of the senior OEs from Tech are coming too, and we'll all be attending the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers World Maritime Technology Conference, at The Moscone Center in San Francisco. It should be an interesting trip, with 13 Ocean Engineers coming from Tech, and many many more from all over the world. Lots of us have reserved some cheap berthings on board the training ship Golden Bear III, where we'll be experiencing how the sailors live on board the boats we'll be designing. There's also a job fair, some student social stuff, and of course, two free nights in the City by the Bay. (I'm gonna swim to Alcatraz.) I think this will be the first time I've been on a plane since I started college, it'll be the longest plane ride I've been on, only the second ocean I've ever seen, and the farthest I've been from home. I'm excited. Have a great weekend. GER-BEAR AND THE BLUSTERY DAY October 15, 2003. 12:45 PM Its a really really windy day here in Blacksburg. Accuweather says its blowing a steady 19 mph right now. After two weeks of nice sunny days, we finally get a reminder of what fall is like here in southwest Virginia. But today I noticed something funny that my aerodynamics professor said we should look for on a windy day. Outside of one of the big buildings here at Tech, Burruss Hall, stands two flagpoles, one with the American flag and the other with the state flag of the commonwealth. Well, today when I was waiting for my bus outside of Burruss, I looked up and noticed that the flags were both flapping straight out, but in opposite directions. Why? I'll give you aerodynamicists a hint: the flag poles are both shorter than the building. Stumped? I know you're all captivated by the question, so I'll let you know what happens. My professor gave us the comparison to driving behind a tractor-trailer: the wind is blocked by the body of the truck, so when it gets to the back, where your car is, it breaks off of the sides of the trailer and becomes turbulent, creating a vortex (a swirly tornado thing) on either side of the body. The turbulence and cyclonic motion of the air is what makes your car shake all around. The same can be said when a strong north-westerly wind whips through campus and hits the back of Burruss. As the air hits the building, it flows around the edges, making that howling sound you hear on a windy day, and then turns cyclic and turbulent when it reaches the front corners of the building. Since the flags are symmetrically on opposite sides of the building, each one is effected by a different vortex, and when the wind is just right, those vortices create fluid motion in opposing directions. Its hard to understand without a diagram, so I made one (Yeah, I know. I'm a geek.): 
THE LITTLE ENGINEER THAT COULD October 13, 2003. 12:45 PM Just because I'm sure you want to know more about why Ocean Engineering is the greatest major at Tech, I've got another great story about being a senior OE. Besides the bonus of bouncing out to San Francisco this coming weekend, I also performed the perk of playing with the tow tank in the basement of Norris this morning. Part of senior OE lab involves setting up a test to determine the force it takes to drive a hullform through the water. So to determine it experimentally, we set up a gigantic tank and towing mechanism with wires and computers and everything. Then, we climb on board and ride it up and down the 100-foot long tank while towing the model and taking measurements. The best part, of course, is coming to a sudden halt at the end of the tank and trying to throw your classmates into the water. One of the guys in my lab group who was placed in charge of driving the train-like towing carriage made the joke "if an engineer drives a train, does this make me an ocean engineer?" So we made him a captain's hat out of engineering paper, and sang him the Gilligan's Island theme. Of course, its not all fun and games, seeing as how I spent at least eight hours of yesterday studying and running practice problems for my ship dynamics midterm that starts at 7 tonight. And writing this journal entry is just my way of putting off the inevitable six more hours of studying until then. I think I can, I think I can . . . CAN'T GET ENOUGH OF THAT GOLDEN CRISP October 9, 2003. 11:45 PM Part of being a senior in engineering is all the cool stuff that goes on for us. For example, at this time next week, I'll be packed and ready to leave for San Francisco for a huge conference with SNAME. Just by joining the student chapter of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, I get a weekend trip to the City by the Bay for $100, including airfare and everything. Of course, we're leaving at 3 AM on a Friday morning, but whatever, I'll sleep on the plane. This will be my first trip to California, my first trip to the west coast, and the farthest I've ever been from home. I'll be staying on board the Training Ship Golden Bear III, a former Navy oceanographic ship maintained by the U.S. Maritime Administration and loaned to California State University and Cal Polytechnic State University. It is operated by students of California Maritime Academy, and takes many students out on semester-long cruises to learn about ships and maritime customs and to gain some international experience. Sounds cool to me. I guess not everyone likes it that much, though. I'll see how a weekend on board is before I decide whether the Cal Poly program really sounds like fun or not. For now, its homecoming weekend in the 'burg!! ALL IN FAVOR? October 7, 2003. 11:55 PM The ballots have been cast over on the west coast tonight, and another precedent has been set: Americans can now oust their elected officials from office when they do a poor job. Californians voted very strongly in favor of having democratic Governor Gray Davis be only the second governor ever to be recalled from office in the US. And in the lead to replace him? You guessed it: republican actor and former bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger. But my vote? I'd vote no recall. Arnold might do a better job, and he probably will, but how long until we're ready to start recalling all the governors until every state has a famous actor or professional wrestler as their governor? Gray Davis had been elected to a second term just 11 months before being reprimanded, recalled, and replaced. How does one state make so many mistakes? Just vote for the right guy in the first place, California! Over 130 candidates were on the ballot to compete for replacing Davis, and the votes were not all counted at the time I wrote this. But we all know, its so easy to vote for the Terminator. After 14 percent of the precincts had been counted (about 2.15 million voters), Arnold was on top with about 52 percent of the votes, a commanding lead over the democratic lieutenant governor Cruz Bustamante's 29 percent. Then again, who wouldn't vote for actor Gary Coleman, or comedian Leo Gallagher, or some guy named David 'Laughing Horse' Robinson, or my alliterated namesake Garrett Gruener. At the time of this entry, my favorite to win was Todd Carson, who had a total of 52 votes. Out of about 2 million. Yeah, that's roughly 0.002 percent of the total so far. I think I could do better. DON'T FALL October 4, 2003. 11:55 PM Things I like about fall: - Back to school. - The leaves turn cool colors, so does the sky. - College football! Tech is 5-0!! - Baseball playoffs. (Twins-Cubs?) - "The hour that doesn't count." - Pumpkin pie - Intramural football and volleyball - Alumni weekends. - Fireplaces. - Starting my job search, wondering where I'll be come next June. Things I don't like about fall: - Back to school. - End of the summer. - The weather turns cold. - No more sailing for like 7 months. - Raking leaves. - Chapped lips. - No more shorts and sandals. - Allergies. - Starting my job search, wondering where I'll be come next June. |
