1) Sure, I can already believe that it is week 10 of this semester. I suppose everyone else cannot though. Only a few more weeks and I am halfway through with this academic year and only one more course away from my undergraduate degree. What a fantastic group of years it has been. I do, however, have a sort of dormant feeling as I await the coming of graduate school. Big changes smell of great excitement to me.

2) Unsurrounded by people gets to me a bit. I have no group of fire modelers or co-students heading in the same remote direction as me. It’s hard sometimes to work on the FDS project or fire models or even CFD basics when no one in the near vicinity is doing the same. Just me on my own, in my own lit up universe. Thanks to the internet, this is not a problem for me to contribute, but it is still a mental block in my day to day workings.

For instance, I have to wait until my local classwork and lecture work is done before I can get to what I really want to do, so I end up staying up late or working on this stuff at the end of my day. I can quickly see how something abstract like not having a group around me thinking alike has affected my sleeping habits, eating habits, productivity, even my daily schedule. Scary. I will take note and be careful in the near future and far-fetched future to set up my days to work as my mind and heart do.

Got back from Las Vegas a few days ago, the trip was well - the city is not my favorite though. A vegetarian would die from malnutrition there on The Strip after 4.5 days; luckily I was only there for four. It was great to be with the guys of the fire industry again, haven’t had that experience or mindset since I got back from the summer. Sometimes things here at home can be quite disconnected from all of that. Either way, it’s really cool where just one-and-a-half years of focus can get you.

Of course, this leads to a packed week of school and teaching tasks, and then I am heading to New York for a couple of days for a watered-down conference. All is well.

I am pretty excited to finally get to work on some big projects for fire modeling. More on that later. It’s just time to put the crap tasks aside and get them done anyway, all the while providing some hardcore value.

I suppose I can only describe these recent days as: unfulfilled, crispy cool at night, overblown, and inspective. That gets a big thumbs up from me. I have this feeling like I am imminently waiting for something big to happen at the end of next spring… In the time from now to then, see you around, and I’ll think of you, too.

When I think too much, the outputting of my output stops.

Each week that goes by, I see more and more opportunity and innovation in the future years. Some of those ideas involve disconnecting from my past. Weird, not a normal thing that people do.

1) Midterm week is upon me.

2) I wish that my classes were more catered to what I am doing - modeling nature and fire. I guess this means that the undergraduate life is over for me.

3) Applying to University of Maryland right now.

4)  My sleep schedule is off the charts.

I wrote a spreadsheet earlier this year for the fire modeling program that I use daily. Why? In an effort to help everyone write faster input files by hand without calculating values, then looking up the value on a table, then dividing the blah blah, and back and forth and so on. Some students came up with very tedious ways of “automating” this process by using Goal Seek in Excel and just making the process even more inefficient, hence the reason I made the spreadsheet tool - for myself and the world to use.

My point is, tonight it was returning an incorrect value for one of its calculations. Hmm, surely I must have made an error somewhere. But it only happened for this very specific number. Hmm. The student teaching aide in the class starts going off on how everyone should be using a real tool like the classic one programmed by a Doctorate, which is still available online. His tool is great. Mine has a bit more functionality. Isn’t that where growth comes in?

Oh technology; it will cripple you if you let it.

Moving on, I get to thinking of the tools that I use everyday and who made them (someone with the same progressive mindset) and who broke them (the users) and how they are better than ever now (the result of that community effort and collaboration) and it just keeps going.

Turns out, after extensive testing, that I actually found an Excel bug (2003 on Windows, 2004 for Mac are the ones I have tested thus far) with the MATCH function. Reproducible and all. Aha.

Sure, I am an undergraduate that made a workable spreadsheet. Apparently I was clouding minds and killing student’s brain cells when this bug was uncovered earlier. What a crazy perspective. All I ask is that in your environment, wherever that may be, please don’t halt and impede progress and growth because you don’t agree with something or think someone is under-qualified to make it, chances are, you might not be as qualified as you think, having that mindset and all. Thankfully, I feel as if that notion is flying out the door day by day with progress, but it is unfortunate that I do my work with a few (and sure you do too) people who revel in the sour taste of regression.

Tell me, what is worse? A version 0.01 (beta beta) that has some odd glitch in it, or version zero that doesn’t exist and doesn’t contribute to anyone? You could apply this concept to a tiny spreadsheet program or all the way up to some idea that you have had in the back of your head for 5 years.

All I know is that now, I am excited to move this spreadsheet tool to another robust platform and make it even better and more functional now. No thanks to the folks impeding it, but thanks to the students (users) for breaking it and causing progress.

Think.