Here is a link to the pictures I took of my apartment in Orlando on the University of Central Florida campus.
http://www.berto-republic.com/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=5695
Pictures
August 27th, 2007Its been a busy time
August 26th, 2007Over a week ago on August 15 it was time for me to head back to UCF in Orlando from my home in Panama City Beach. I was getting excited about moving back, starting a new year, and moving into my apartment, but first I had to wrap up things back home. For starters, I had to pack everything up and get it into my car; while throughly prepared for I still left home without a few things. I was in a bit of a rush, as I had planned on the day before to be my last day of work at my internship, however, around midday it was becomming clear that I needed to go into work for atleast a few hours on the following day to wrap things up. I just had to finish up what I was working on and I didnt like the idea of dumping it on someone else. So I went in that day and I planned to be out by noon, but I soon just told myself 3:00. Well after wrapping everything up I didnt leave until 3:30, and I still had to finish packing up at home. Well on the way home I stopped to say bye to my mom at work, then proceeded to finish the packing. However, that took longer than expected and my mom was home before I was out of town. I think I finally left home at 5:30 or something like that. Still, I had to meet up with a friend in town and at this point I figured I should grab dinner. So after all that I wasnt on the road until 6:15 or so. The drive itself was rather uneventful, except for almost running out of gas on the Turnpike; arriving at the Hampton Inn near UCF around 12:30 or so.
I got up the next morning a little later than I had been used to at the time and headed over to campus around 10:00AM. I figured I could check in early and I could, so there was no problem there. Moving in was rather easy, especially since I was the first one in my apartment. Of course when I unlocked my bedroom I found that it was arranged as I had hoped, so I had to get that all straightened out before I could set anything up. However, as I unpacked I realised I was short on shelf space, so over the weekend I picked up a $14 shelf at Target. Later in the day one of my roomates moved in, but did not stay as he was semi-local. The other two moved in over the weekend with the last one moving in on Sunday.
After moving in I just started to readjust back to campus life, and on Friday found myself walking around campus and eventually bumping into someone from my high school who just graduated. I spent the afternoon showing him around campus and meeting his roomates. Then there was the buying textbooks deal, which was quite expensive this semester, but I guess if you want to learn you have to pay up. Also, had to pick up a friend from Orlando International as he had not found a replacement car for the one he sold. Surprisingly, we did not have to wait around at luggage claim for his four pieces…
The first week of classes was a bit mixed up if I were to say so. I swaped from my 8:30AM Physics II class to the 10:30AM, which I had originally tried to get into, and coincidently my old roomate was also signed up for. I also dropped German, because I wanted to save a few bucks on textbooks, but after (finally) working out my plan for the next 3 years I realised I should take another class, Statics, as this will be my last “easy” semester. So that meant another expensive book I had to buy. I went to that class for the first time on Wednesday and for the Discussion class, the TA never showed up, but the Lecture seemed easy enough for now.
As for other classes I am taking Intro to Chemistry which has been quite easy so far, C Programming, which hasnt been very difficult and Differential Equations, which I know will get harder, but right now its a review of Calculus III and isnt that bad.
I saw The Invasion on Friday night, which was ok, it is just that the ending could have just been done much better. Still I was entertained for an hour and half at 1:00AM, so I dont have much to complain about. As for the rest of the weekend I was running around all over the place and finally made it to the World’s Largest/World’s Most Unique McDonald’s here in Orlando. For some reason it just didnt feel much like a McDonald’s, more like a cross breed of McDonald’s, Chuck-e-Cheese, and a non fast food establishment. I have no plan to return anytime soon, but atleast I can say I have been there.
Now, I have this upcomming week to get through which will be equally or more busy than this past week. There’s classes and homework and of course on Friday I have to run from UCF right after my Differential Equations class to the airport in order to catch a flight to Atlanta, where I have a very short connection before continuing on to Moline, Il for the labor day weekend. Should there be any weather on that Friday afternoon I can be assured that I will misconnect in Atlanta. Still with all of that, it should be a rather fun week, and I am looking forward to this upcomming weekend very much.
I will upload pictures of my new apartment sometime tomorrow and will post a link to them here….
T-Minus 4.5 Weeks and Counting
July 15th, 2007I have a slightly more than one month left before I head back to Orlando and UCF. It’s almost hard to believe that at this point I have been home for more two and a half months. Sure I have been keeping busy working at the theatre solely for the first two months, and now doing my internship, but time just flies by so quickly. I really do wish there was more time, but then I am also excited to be heading back to UCF as well.
I think it started to hit that going back was getting close was when my housing bill was posted last week. Speaking of housing that should be interesting to see how that turns out. I am going to be living on campus again, but instead of a traditional dorm I am going to be in an apartment. So it will mean that I will have my room, but instead of being in contact with just one other person primarily, I will be sharing all the living space with three others. Since I don’t know these others and what you can find on Facebook isn’t always 100% true, I have no idea what this next year will bring. At least if things don’t work out all the way with my new roommates, at least I have my own room to retreat to…
There is stuff to finish up for UCF for the fall semester, such as finalizing my schedule since I need to swap some classes, but some of the things have to wait until I get back down there.
My two jobs have been going pretty good. I am being kept busy at my internship and I wish I could say the theatre is keeping my busy, but this weekend I am only scheduled on Sunday. Yes the day off is nice, but I could use the extra money (that was the reason I stayed at the theatre).
In other news, I finally decided where I was going to put my Eagle Scout certificate and medal frame on my wall. I think the spot I choose looks great and looks a lot better than what I had there. Here’s a picture of what it looks like now:
I moved my license plates over, and the small picture I took on the Isle of Capri in Italy from where the Eagle Scout frame is to where my team photo from Beach League basketball in 6th grade was. Since that was 8 years ago, I think its time to take it down, and someday I will find another place to put it. Now I just need to get the wooden Eagle Scout plaque my Dad got me for making Eagle, and a few photographs up on my wall. Hopefully I can decide on everything before I make it back to Orlando. That and I need to start figuring out what will be on my wall in my apartment in Orlando (such as posters)…
Internship!
July 3rd, 2007Today was my second day of an engineering internship with ARINC here in Panama City Beach. So far I am really enjoying the place, My first day consisted of what you might expect a first day to be: briefings, paperwork, and getting a handle of the situation. I was also assigned my office, which really isnt shared with anyone except someone who comes in once a week and another who comes in once a month. Theres always people comming in though, since I have the nearest printer. Its not so bad, besides the fact that I ran my knee into the ends of the two desks that are pushed together to give me a desk. That wasnt too much fun.
My second day was better, despite the fact that I was not able to get to work at 8 as I had planned, instead getting in around 8:30. But all was well and I finished up reviewing stuff that I wasnt able to finish the day before and then running over to the navy base to get finger printed. I thought black ink was used for those things, but its red and then is put through somesort of process that turns the prints black. Interesting.
The rest of the morning consisted of me testing some things out, and going and getting some BBQ for lunch. After that I took care of some product research and completed the training I needed to do. Of course that and RIP A PHONE BOOK IN HALF! Yeah, I did it. Took a little while, and now its proudly displayed on my desk.
Otherwise, that is it. I am looking forward to rest of my time there and it shall be interesting when another intern who is a senior (at FSU I assume) starts in a week and a half.
Its about time for a new post….
June 23rd, 2007Ok, so it has been roughly two months since my last post on here, which is really bad. I had been going good since I launched this blog, but I do not know why I haven’t posted in so long. Maybe it is because up until now nothing exciting has taken place. I have been working at the brand-new Grand Theatre since May 18th as an Usher. Really I am nothing more than a janitor (clean floors, spills, bathrooms, etc). The first two weeks were great, I was able to get 45+ hours a week. Then came the third week where I was dropped (along with the whole usher staff) to 11.75 hours. I started to explore my options. I placed a few job applications at local businesses, but heard nothing back. Then the fourth week came and I was down to 11 hours. It was then when I decided to take a chance.
I starting looking around and found an opening for a “Quality Assurance Intern” with the local office of ARINC. It looked easy enough from the job description as I would be essentially working with Microsoft Office apps and proofreading. The next week came and I was down to 10 hours that week at the theatre. I was really hoping ARINC would call me back, and on one morning I woke up and decided I would apply with UPS for a package handler position. I was running out of options.
It was at that moment that I got a phone call from the human resources manager at the local ARINC office, who told me that they had an Internship that would be more engineering based and offered me an interview. This was last week. I went in for my interview, got a tour of the facility and was told that I would probably hear something back soon. This week on Wednesday I got the phone call saying that they were signing off on my offer letter and that I should get it shortly. On Friday the FedEx guy showed up with an envelope. At first I didn’t think it was for me, but it was and inside was a folder with the offer letter and some paperwork to fill out. I wasted no time. I made some calls to various ARINC HR people and headed out the door. I went by the office to drop off the paperwork then headed into town for a pre-employment drug test. All of that went by quickly. If there are no hiccups (which there shouldn’t be) I will start within a week.
Afterwards, I stopped by a friend’s house and we went Geocaching over at St. Andrew’s State Park. Managed to find two caches; one of which had a $1 lotto scratch off, which I won $1 from! There was a third we tried to find twice, but we just couldn’t get it. I doubt I will be back there anytime soon, since it cost $5 to get in.
Hopefully, this will not be the last post before I head back to UCF. I am sure I can think of something to write about between now and then………
Goodbye UCF…
May 1st, 2007I am writing this late tonight, since I really cannot sleep. It was my last full day at UCF and I had my Physics II final exam. I really do not know how I did, but I wont know until May 5th when final grades are posted online. I just hope that I made a C or better.
It has been a busy week, with everything going on. I had finals in Calculus and Speech and Papers due for Cinema Survey and Speech. Therfore, I spent most of the week studying, writing, and enjoying what little downtime I had. Not to mention I also had to pack, which I did start to a degree over the weekend, but did not throw it into overdrive until this afternoon. I pretty much had the bulk of my stuff packed in about 2 hours and am now just left with my computer set up, which will be dismanteled in the morning. The trunk of my car is filled to the brim and the rest of it is here sitting in my room.
You know its rather empty here. My roomate moved out most of his stuff on Saturday since he lives only 2 hours away. He only had a little left and today he was picked up with what little he had. That was around 5:30. Its been just me since then. Of course Lee came over around 7:30, and we walked around campus for a little bit before we headed our seperate ways. I of course needed a hair cut desperately, just think what 4 months of hair looks like!
I am having strange feelings about moving home. Maybe its the once you get a taste of freedom thing going on, but its going to be a little weird getting used to living back at home, even if it is only for 3.5 months. One thing for sure I will have to get used to very soon is getting a job again. My first job was for two years and I quit that when I moved to Orlando. I had plenty of cash, so I did not have to work during the school year. Now it’s the summer and I desperately need some $$$. Ive scoped out a few places for jobs and on my way home I am going to swing by Atlantic Southeast Airlines (Delta Connection) at the airport to fill out an application. The rest of the week will be spent chasing other job leads. That and serriously cleaning my room at home.
Also, I would like to note that Delta Air Lines officially came out of bankruptcy today. There was a big ceremony at Delta Tech Ops in Atlanta, in which thousands of employees attended and the new corporate branding and aircraft livery was unveiled. Even though it was leaked weeks ago, and I had my reservations about it then, it looked much better on the 757. You can see the new logo and a mock up of a 777 here. Also, head on over to this blog, which recounts the events of the day and has some pictures as well.
Well it is now past 1 AM and I really need to get up early tomorrow. I have to be out of the building by noon and I would prefer to be out of here by 10AM if I can help it.
Storms….
April 15th, 2007This morning the Orlando area, and really pretty much the entire eastern United States has been dealing with storms ranging from snow to wind to thunder storms. Here in Orlando we had Wind, Rain and T-Storms that passed through this morning.
I like to sleep in, and when I got up at 10:30 I looked outside and noticed that it was very slightly raining. Around 11 I checked the window again, and there wasnt any change, so I went into the shower. Just as I got out of the shower, turned off the bathroom light and opened the door, the power in my building went out. Just for a split second though. Since the clock came back on I tried to turn on the sink light, but it did not work. Next I tried my light, and that was acting more like a strobe light, and finally checked my roomates light, which was very dim. All my electronics were shut down, except for my clock which managed to keep the time despite the fact that I never put a battery in it.
I booted up my computer and discovered that the ethernet connection was down, so I enabled the WiFi which unfortunately could not detect the network. Somewhat worried that my ethernet card might have fried I tested the connection on my tablet and it couldnt connect either. However, my tablet could connect to the wireless and since 11:30 that is what I have been using.
I went to the library around 2 to meet a group from my Technical Presentations class, about our presentation tomorrow. A fairly productive meeting for once, but when I got back to my dorm I found this note on the door:
I am not sure why they want us to use electricity sparingly, but I am sure it is for a good reason. I still havent seen any physical plant or electrical company employees fixing anything or even any IT guys trying to get the wired LAN back up in the building.
Of course I spoke to someone shortly who lives in another hall and they just had a brownout, yet now it is sunny, so I am hoping that is just a sign they are trying to get the issue resolved.
Either way this is a bit of a pain, as I need to get work done and doing so under the power of my small desk lamp and LCD monitor glow just isnt going to be good when it gets later in the night.
UPDATE:
Well around 6:30 we started to experience some strange things with the electricity. My desk lamp and my roomate’s desklamps both got really dim. I thought maybe my lightbulb was on its last leg at first. My roomate went ahead and shut down his computer, and a few seconds later our power went back out. About 30 seconds later, the power came back on and everything was back to working order including all the lights. Also the LAN is back online! I am sure glad that they were able to get everything fixed before tonight….
The Great Navel Orange Race
April 8th, 2007In the months of March and April there becomes a strong sense of competition in the halls of the UCF College of Engineering and Computer Science as students enrolled in EGN 1007 – Engineering Concepts and Methods (Intro to Engineering) build boats to compete in the Great Navel Orange Race. GNOR as we shall call it, is a design competition in which teams of 3-5 must build a boat which can hold an orange and shuttle it around the UCF Reflection Pond. The fastest teams get to compete in a finals round which has a prize for 3 years of textbooks paid for. The competition was on Friday.
I spent the better part of thursday and all of that night working on stuff relating to GNOR. First of all, we had to have an AutoCAD drawings of our project, which is one piece of software I just dont really gel with. So after downloading the 2008 trial, I found myself spending 5 or so hours in AutoCAD painfully recreating my teams watercraft to the best of my abilities. I was also the editor of the tech report, and that was a nightmare. One group member wrote his entries so poorly it made my roomate and I bust into laughter while still wondering how this person got into college.
I knew it would be an all-nighter in order to get things done. Around midnight me and my roomate frantically tried to connect to the Engineering remote system so we could write programs in MATLAB as required for the tech report. After 45 minutes of failing to find some way I got the bright idea to use the MATLAB online trial, which nearly took both of ours 2 hour allotted trial time to write the m-file and run it. At 3:00 AM the delivery guy from Silver Mine Subs brought us our late night dinner. After more editing, my groups tech report was done and my roomate sent his part off to his group. Feeling accomplished we went to go see if they were setting up yet at 5 AM, but they wernt and instead we wondered around campus trying to get into Engineering III, discovered a 24 hour computer lab, and also found many caches of easter eggs in the grass everywhere.
At 7:35 my roomate and his group checked in and I was suppossed to as well, but talked to my TA and told her we would be back at 12:30. I watched the first boats go and some were quite interesting, including the one made from K’nex. My speech class was semi-cancelled, so I was there for only 15 minutes and no EGN Lecture. Came back at 12:30, but was told that we had to come back at 2:20 instead. Me and my one friend could make it but would be close with us both having physics classes that get out at 2:20. I skipped out of class a few minutes early and ran to the pond (luckily Math and Physics is right next door), to make the cutoff. My friend joined up with me shortly and we made our way to the starting lanes.
As soon as pre-race prep was complete, the horn was blown. I put our boat in the water, but it made a very sharp U-turn, so I went reclaimed it and set it back the right way. It still turned, but this time into the outer wall. I was thinking “What is happening…Our test run an hour ago, it went perfectly straight!” I made another reset and this time it hit a ballon obsticle which was good. For some reason the ballow gave it the ability to navigate a bit better until a water jet from the fountain caused it to turn back towards a wall. Soon enough the 5 minute horn was called. We didnt win, but it doesnt really matter. It was fun, and only like 6 boats finished. The hard part was getting through my 3 hour physics lab afterwards….
Enough with reading, here are some pictures of my group’s boat:
2007/2008 Here I Come!
March 29th, 2007The other day I regisitered for my classes for Fall 2007 and Spring 2008 terms. I was lucky and got a registration appointment on the first day thanks to being in Honors and having Junior status. Without saying anything else, here are the classes I have registered for:
Fall 2007:
CHM1032 – General Chemistry
COP3223 – Introduction to Programming with C – Might take EGN3210, which is the same class, just different number, if there are better times.
EGN3310 – Engineering Analysis-Statics
MAP2302 – Differential Equations
GER1120 – Elementary German Language and Civilization I – Still up in the air if I will stick with this class or not. It puts me at 16 credit hours and I may need to try and squeeze another class into the schedule
Spring 2008:
EEL3004 – Electrical Networks – Might swap with Statics in the fall.
EGN3420 – Engineering Analysis – Also a candidate to swap with statics.
PHY3101 – Physics for Engineers and Scientists III
STA3032 – Probability and Statistics for Engineers
Well thats it. I still need to do some tweaking with classes, but this is a good idea of what I will actually be taking in those terms.
Slideshow
March 26th, 2007I was bored a few times over the past week and I decided to make a slideshow of some of my pictures from my trip. I set it to the song “You Know My Name” by Chris Cornell, which was the theme song for the latest 007 film, Casino Royale. You can watch it right here through the embeded YouTube player or can play it through Windows Media Player (Better Quality) through this link. On a somewhat related note, I now know why some of my photos were looking a little funny in my Gallery: Image quality had been set to 50%. I took it up to 75, and I’ll see how they do at that res, and if they still look odd, Ill take it up to 100% (and hopefully I wont have to reupload images)….