Friday, April 25, 2008

Good News!




The other day I was awarded, by Mr. Harrill, the "Outstanding Student Award" for Electronics and Computer Technology. I was honored by him two days ago at the Meyer theater and my family attended (including my sister's boyfriend). This honor is definitely a resume booster. On top of that, I received a call the same day for a potential job. I was out when I was called, and had to call back. I go in for an interview on Thursday, after all my finals are finished. I'm really excited, if I am able to get the job this will be my first real job in electronics. I also receive my Electronics and Computer Technology Associates Degree after I finish this semester, and I expect to have at most one B for this semester (in Sociology). This has been a great week, and I'm really happy.

In addition to all the important things, I also have finally gotten a GLCD to work properly. Mr. Harrill purchased one a few weeks ago and unfortunately it only came with a single page for a datasheet that gave a potentially wrong pinout. The darn thing wouldn't work after 3 hours, and after extensive debugging of the program I checked the wiring over again. I happened to touch the controllers on the back of the GLCD and noticed they were extremely hot. After that fiasco I went and bought my own off of Sparkfun since they provided heavy documentation (to note I was the one who told Mr. Harrill to buy the faulty GLCD from Mouser). The Sparkfun GLCD used the same controllers and after plugging everything in the program worked great. As of now it is a very simplistic program that displays a line (simply to test the thing). I intend on making a quick picture displaying program for it after I finish with finals this upcoming week. It should be great for the presentations we (Mr. Harrill, Alex and I) do for the Electronics section at various High Schools. Mr. Kelly and Alex suggested a simple game, which I probably will end up doing. A simple scroller where you control a horizontally stationary sprite that navigates through a path, similar to this.

Over this weekend I have to wrap up studying and any leftover homework. If we manage to box up most of the lab (for the lab renovations) before the weekend I will be able to finally start reading K&R. Ugh, 8 classes with 8 tests next week. Thankfully I only have 19 credits next Fall semester, the free time for personal projects and a possible job will be amazing. Below is my schedule for the Fall,

ART-155-01 (13466) Art Appreciation
MECH-102-01 (13902) Manufacturing Processes
MATH-162-02 (14052) Introduction to Statistics
PHY-251-01 (14065) Engineering Physics I
MATH-271-01 (14061) Calculus III


Don't mind the Art Appreciation, that's for the Computer Engineering Degree. After all, I need to be "well rounded." :)

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