Mr. Engineering

They had the 2nd Annual Mr. Engineering pageant at school tonight. And I won third place out of 11! That was fun! The Society of Women Engineers put it on. There were 5 parts to it. The first was the Nerd Wear competition. This, I did pretty well in, I suppose. I went to the Salvation Army in town (Those places are great) to get clothes for this part. John and I found a green T-shirt with goofy on it two sizes too small, a bright yellow hawaiian shirt with pineapples on it, and a pair of brown pants that were actually my size, but were very stretchy. I took these, pulled the pants up to about 6 inches above my belly button, put on a huge belt buckle, the green T-shirt, and the hawaiian shirt, only tucked in on one side and unbuttoned. It looked pretty geeky. (also, all of the competitors corraborated so that we all had our zippers down with our shirts sticking through. That was pretty funny as well) Then I took an old pair of glasses and covered them in masking tape, manufactured a pocket protector out of cardstock, and wore my backpack with all of the pockets unzipped, books, paper, and computer wiring hanging out. They were calling each of our names, and we would walk across the stage and back the other way. I had a big armload of books and papers, and as I stumbled out, muttering numbers, I 'tripped' over the top stair leading to the stage and 'dropped' my armload of homework all over the stage. Then, gotta pick it all up and run away, because a -gasp- girl is talking to me and trying to help me pick it up!

Anyway, that was fun. THe engineering trivia was also fun. We were asked simple questions and given a, b, or c choices. Then we messed around, trying to create a good show for the audience, primarily, without caring about right or wrong.

For the talent portion, I did something called meteors, which is two small buckets on a rope, the buckets are filled with water, and then you spin the ropes and buckets around, keeping the water in the buckets. That was fun. A friend taught me how to do that a month ago specifically for this purpose. I'm going to post a video on youtube for you to see - its hard to explain.

Salvation Army is great. Where else could you pick up a pretty decent business suit for a Business wear competition for under $10? A couple of people were surprised that it came from Salvo, so I guess I looked pretty good.

Well, After all of the above, I ended up receiving third place. First place went to a friend who did some amazing juggling for his talent - he deserved first. The second place went to a guy who played the piano really well, so he probably also deserved second. Praise the Lord - I didn't know I had so many friends who would vote for me! I ended up winning some free mcDonalds food, a free video rental, and 15 dollar gift card to a restaurant.

Two videos are going to be posted on youtube -
Nerd Wear Clip




Meteor talent Clip

Thanks Matthew...

Fall Break

Fall Break!
The time when all of the local people go home and the international and western students and football players stay here. Its cool - I'm about the only person left on my hall. I've been able to get a lot of programming work done, and studying stuff for a civ arts exam on thursday. Oh Joy. I did pretty good on the last one though, so, Lord willing and help me, I should do decently well on this one.
Our last rugby game on homecoming weekend, we lost 40-something to 0. Oh well. The opponents were a good team, and they were larger on average than us, and they knew their size advantage, and they used it by piledrivering themselves through our bodies. That was a painful game. And it was snowing for part of the game.
And of course, after that completely painful game ( in which we had a handful of injuries), the rest of the surviving players had to play another game vs. the alumni rugby players. These guys were generally very large, and hurt very much to tackle. Our team was better in the past, and for some reason our current good players dissapeared immediately after our first game.
Other than that, Homecoming was rather boring. I did go to the homecoming dance on friday night, and that was interesting, and almost fun. As always, I tended to observe the people there for my entertainment. The dance was held inside the atrium of HAL (our main classroom building) which was packed full to bursting. In the beginning of the dance, the region could be classified by chaotic turbulence ( to the extent that walking people can be characterized as fluids), which would at times coalesce to steady-state flow before becoming chaotic again. Over time, the friction of movement tended to decrease the desire to move in the crowd (or people left - I couldn't tell) , and as a result, groups of stationary (or dancing, which is pseudo-stationary. The dance floor was so small, that I don't think anyone could actually be dancing - jsut vibrating. In that case, it could be said that the dancers were 'frozen' from a moving fluid into a high-energy solid. ) people emerged, leaving more substantial walkways for me to wander on. Then a friend of mine convinced me to learn how to swing dance, which I surprisingly enjoyed. I may be tring the swing dancing again and learning more.

Jonathan, my roommate, knows of a church in New Jersey called Liquid. They have a podcast, and thier pastor is not afraid to tackle some very interesting and rather controversial topics! For example, we have been listening to a 9-part sermon on Song of Solomon. Thier pastor is very good, and that series is very thought provoking - and (warning and, yet, a good thing) holds nothing back.
Here is what their web site says about their current sermon series ( the song of solomon was done a while ago).
'Join us at Liquid Church this Fall as we explore God's design for marriage, sex, and relationships that go the distance. Whether you're single, married, or single again, you won't want to miss this practical and provocative message series.' I will say that, they are not afraid to tackle these tough and taboo'ed ideas!
I would recommend listening to it. The web site is www.liquidchurch.org. Look under the free podcasts section.

Well, there are my musings for the week. That is about all of the time for musing that I have - back to sleep, work, eating, studying, and testing. Oh Joy! Praise the Lord that we live in a nation where people have the ability pay to work and slog, committing four years of thier lives, merely to improve the ability of our minds.

Praise the Lord for his blessings on us all -

Jeremy Turpin

Its winter already

It snowed today. During rugby practice. On a muddy field. With strong, cold wind. It was an interesting practice.

It could have been worse - the wind had mostly dried out the field. Yesterday, it was more like a marsh.

Right now, its about 32 degrees out. I sorta wish that it wouldn't get cold so soon, because the autumn weather is really nice. All of the trees are (were - the leaves are mostly on the ground now) turning into really pretty colors. We don't get that kind of variety up near home.
Last weekend, on the 2 and a half hours on the bus, some of the hills looked like patchwork quilts with patches of vivid orange and yellow trees, intersperced with the green of the more hardy trees.

We did have a rugby game last weekend - that I neglected to post about. We played Juniata, and lost 5 to 22. The ref was horrible, and we didn't play all that bad, but even though we lost, it was still a good game.

This weekend is homecoming - and like last year, I will be spending saturday on the Rugby field. We will be expected to be there at 11 for the women's game, our game is at 1, and the alumni game is at 3. Its a good thing I don't have anything that I want to do with regard to any of the homecoming events anyway.

Praise the Lord for me - I have had two tests in the last two days, and I believe did reletively well. I hardly bothered to study for the Linear Circuits engineering test, but most of the last couple of days has been spend in rote memorization of large quantities of information for the science, Faith, and Technology course. I like the class, which is interesting, but the exam wasn't fun. My hand just about got a cramp writing so much so fast. Pretty much, 3 pages of small handwriting of stuff - a bunch of definitions, two paragraph-type essays, and one big essays. I still don't like essays on exams - I don't feel confident about them when I have time to revise them - I especially don't like them when I don't even get to read them over and fix mistakes.

I read the xanga sites of a handful of people, like eric, and see that they are posting thoughts, philopizing ideas, etc - then I look at mine, and see a description of current events for a student at a small college. It seems like this information about my life must be pretty boring. Oh well.

JT