Friday and Family Visitation Weekend -Paul Deardorff

Friday was a great day because we were able to learn some basic values of a good team and how a team works. This information was very helpful because we were beginning to start working in a team on our kinetic sculpture group projects. Having been previously familiarized with the kits the day before, we were able to begin work building the mini-sculpture and begin learning the code language BASIC for the microprocessor control boxes. I had never worked with Basic language before, but it seemed to hold pretty true to its name, so far at least! Our first objectives were to test the LCD screen on the processor, initiate several motor servos, and finally use sensors to print messages on the LCD screen. I also wrote a program which moves a servo and tells the user the position of the servo on the LCD screen. For example, LCD: Position of servo: 500 or -500. We also created while loops and if statements to represent some basic logic.

After a fun day of classes, we were able to go to a nice dance on the roof / balcony adjacent to Cafe Ventanas. The dance was fun and the sound system / "DJ Booth" was fun to observe. It unfortunately went under some difficulties with the computer and speaker interface, but that was towards the end. I was not planning on dancing, but was eventually pulled in and it turned out to be not as bad as I thought it would be. I will see about the next dance that I hear is the last week.

And today, which I was really looking forward to was family visitation weekend. I was picked up at 10:30 A.M. in front of the dorm building. I was sad to realize that I had to part with my lanyard for the weekend. It felt awkward not wearing it for a couple of hours. After I was checked out, my family and I searched out the nearest coffee/bookstore on the UCSD campus. It turned out the Price Center was the perfect place. There was a place called "Perks" where I sat with my family to open several packages that had arrived while I was gone and to talk with my family all about COSMOS. I told them all of the fun stories that I had and about all the interesting information I learned during the many lectures / activities.

The packages were full of trains that I had purchased via Ebay during my time at COSMOS. My hobby is buying/selling pre-WWII Marklin antique trains. I did surprisingly well on my purchases, given limited internet time. I actually acquired some of my nicest pieces while at COSMOS.

I took a picture to share!:

The large black/red locomotive (+tender) is especially rare being it is from 1934 and I have only found two instances in which they have sold in the past few years. The engineering of these German trains is exquisite, and they were all designed without the assistance of Working Model or CAD!!!

Thanks for looking,

I hope everyone has a great weekend, I hear COSMOS planned some fun activities for those who stayed. The Batman movie being one of them, I saw it today and it was excellent. I can't wait to get back and talk about it with my friends.

Enjoying my time with my family, but also looking forward to getting back into Cosmos!

Best Regards,

Paul Deardorff