The City

Its been 4 phenomenal days in New York City. I miss big cities-the lights, the people, the noise, the environment, the life- after all I did grow up in an 8 million people city as well. My friend Eric and I have toured the city all over while we talk about life. We have gone to central park, the bronx zoo, the Empire State Building, groud zero, Penn Station, NYU, Little Italy, China Town, Brooklyn and many other great places. The parties have been "ooowesome" as new yorkers say. Bars in the city just give you a totally relaxed vibe where you can have converstations with people and just have a good time with the entertainment of the best bartenders around. I look forward to parhaps the best new years celebration I will have ever experienced 60 hours from now. This has been one of the best christmas breaks......so different and refreshing.

Fire in the sky

Every day I used to wonder, when will I get to see an extreme event happen with my own eyes? Well, it finally happened yesterday. As I walked through the beaches of south beach and enjoyed the view, all of us there suddenly heard a loud blast. We looked at the sky and we saw an old hidroplane breaking up. It was diving as a heavy rock. Aparently, one wing broke apart and caught on flames while the remainder of the fuselage dived into the water. Some 19 people died as the plane crashed in the canal that allows ships to enter the port of Miami. An amateur caught the moment as it happened on video, you can watch it on cnn.com. It only took a few seconds but it was shocking. Judging from what I saw, nothing could have been left from the impact against the water.

My dear Miami

I was extremely lucky yesterday. After a night of crazy celebration and staying up, my friend Ben took me to the airport at 4:55 am. It was so relentlesly cold. I checked in and the lady at the counter said "the flight is wide open". That gave me good hopes although I did not want to take anything for granted yet. For some reason it looked like there were so many people and such a little plane. A couple of minutes before the flight took off, they called out "passenger Leno". I knew it was me. Passenger Leano boarded and the flight went on its way. My seat was in the emergency isle which is very much appreciated by a tall individual like myself. I had the chance to seat next to a fine arts/ business girl from Ohio (who was tocalla of mine, Alejandra) and had a very interesting and refreshing conversation about life, art and travel. It was very enjoyable. We got into Houston, and upon my arrival into this massive terminal I noticed that the connecting flight to Fort. Lauderdale was full. I tried to see which was my next option but even before I had the chance of figuring anything out, my name was called. I immediately hoped on the 737 and we took off. I still can't believe that everything worked out nicely. It probably won't be that way on the way back. Now for a couple days its just spending time with my sister and on the 25 off to NYC. The weather is so nice here, you have no idea!

And so it is....

In the picture to the right you can appreciate the view from my window. It feels like christmas, no snow though. The time has finally come. Fall 05 is over. I really hope for the best for me and for everyone! It was classic, Shane brought some New Casstles and we cheered to them in the courtyard. It was a crazy semester, definitely learned a lot in every way. Tomorrow 6 am, my journey starts, lay over in Houston, Texas, then Miami, Florida, and then by the 25 I should be setting step in the big apple.

Se sudo la gota fria pero valio la pena, la felicidad de terminar este semestre es algo nuevo para mi y para todos los Aerospace. Felicidades!

Got that Feeling?

I am not even done with finals and I am getting that nostalgia that always comes around this time of the year. This year the feeling is definitely stronger as many of my close buddies are not coming back next semester and the season is moving in -actually the trees are losing their leaves and it is way cold outside. I'll miss you guys. Life goes on though and the good memories are what keeps us going on. Coronado is also starting to feel empty and it's kind of weird. I tend to forget how dead Tucson feels over break as no one is here. To everyone who is gone already, merry christmas, happy hanuka and a great 2006! -it won't take that much for it to be better than 2005.

Bad Luck Issue

Many people believe in it, many don't. I personally do not believe in any kind of luck whether good or bad. However, many people I have talked found a Colombian urban legend very interesting. In Colombia, some people believe that tuesdays that match on days 13 of the month are bad luck (just how in the United States some people believe that floor 13 is bad luck). What was today? Tuesday the 13th. Last night at 1 am, Cole, Shane, Jeff and I were talking about this and it did not seem pleasant at all considering our hard final was on this date. However, nothing happened; on the contrary the final went well relatively speaking.

24 hours later, 3 done, 2 to go

Fluid Mechanics, pretty hard subject if you think about it. We did not learn anything at all in those 8 am 1:15 hour lectures! So last night was 24 hours of self-teaching that actually paid off. The test was not bad at all and hopefully with the curve, a good grade will be achieved. I have not been so tired in a long time. I did not even realized I passed out for like 2 hours! I was happy to be done but then I realized I had to study today again. I am doing so, MSE 331 makes sense as well and its more memorizing but since we get a cheat sheet it is not as bad. Tomorrow, finally there is a little break although friday's final does not look too good.

2 done, 3 to go....

After the AME 324a final the feelings were not so great. I remember coming out of the test and thinking that I just did the worst I have ever done in a test. Thankfully, everyone's feelings were exactly the same ones as mine. It's good to see that everyone is in the same boat. So, after that there is not a whole lot of motivation to keep going through this week of finals; studying so much and still getting no positive results makes me not want to study for the other finals because the same things might happen. Then, today we just had AME 302 (Numerical Methods) and got a hard test. 1 Matlab code question and other algorythms that most of the class had no idea how to derive. Again, the same happened but its good that people who studied all weekend long did as well (or as bad I should say!) as those of us who studies half of the time and relaxed the rest. Now, those of us taking AME 331 (Fluid Mechanics) have roughly 16 hours to cram all the material. It is not that hard but the tests are impossible to pass. The average on the midterm was 33. I got a 49 and the professor said I should be proud! Good luck craming, and then tomorrow, craming again for MSE 331! Hope this ends soon.

Skid off at Chicago's Midway 13

A Southwest Boeing 737 with 98 passengers, 5 crew members, skid off the runway at Chicago's Midway airport. The event occured at 7:15 pm local time. The weather conditions were harsh; low visiblity, about 8.3 inches of snow on the ground and heavy winds. The plane ended on central and 55 where two cars crashed into it. A child died. Fort Lauderdale pilot says Midway usually is not difficult to land on but the conditions were pretty bad and if a problem comes up during landing, this airport cannot offer the 12000 ft runway that many pilots desire. Bad weather, short runway, poor visibility. What other elements could be possible causes for the accident? The NTSB will give a report on what happened within a few weeks.

Solid Mechanics

The first final is tomorrow. For the majority of the Aerospace and Mechanical engineers in their junior year, this final will be, perhaps, the biggest challenge they have ever been through academically. We were told that 33% of the test will be HW problems. You would think its easy; just go over problems and remember how to solve them. However, it takes about 15 minutes to review each problem and we have to go over 80 problems in one day. So what do you do? engineers are not good at memorizing. And we still have to read the 1000 pages in the book and go over the 443 slides online. I trully believe that craming that much material in one day is not possible. Best of luck to all!

This is what happens....

At 1:31 pm an American Airlines flight landed in Miami International Airport coming from Medellin, Colombia. A passenger shouted "I have a bomb". Unfortunately for this man, fortunately for everyone else, there was U.S. marshals on board. The marshals confronted the man and as he refused to give in, they shot him to death. Anyways, you can read more on the story on any news source. The important thing to consider that will affect all of the Colombians is that the reputation will cuase people to judge the whole situation. What will happen is the media and the people will propagate the message that obviously this happened because the plane was coming from Colombia and will make connections between the country and terrorism. Unfortunately, the only thing this accomplishes is to make our reputation worse. This, will also cause side effects such as destroying any increase in tourism to the country for example. The story is still developing and it is interesting to see how with few information, false assumptions are made and at the end it ends up happening that they are proven wrong. What do you think about this? to comment on this issue click below.

An extra challenge

So, everyone knows finals suck and for engineers they are hard. Everyday, you can listen to people, especially freshmen, asking how do you study for finals, how do you wing finals, what's the best strategy.....? I have no helpful answer, as a matter of fact, I am wondering those questions myself. Circling the subject over and over, I remembered how scared I was when I first took finals my freshman yeah since in Colombia I did not have finals. We had so many tests every week that we needed to know all the material continuously but there was nothing labeled as a final. I ended up doing well, I guess just forcing myself but for some reason it does not seem like that will work this semester. Any suggestions anyone?

What is the first time like?

Well, after much work this is coming to life. Over the following weeks it will be decorated with all the designs I have made. Soon you will be able to see pics to, so enjoy, I must say the first time was interesting. How could there be so much behind computers? I am impressed but in the end having an imac makes yourlife way simpler.