Week 1- Sign Ups

September 2, 2015

        Today we met at the Spartan Superway workshop in a group for the first time. I was running late and when I made it to class Dr. Furman asked me for my name and when I gave it to him he asked if I was in the class, and I told him I was adding even though he said he would hold back on giving me an add code until after I was enrolled in ME120. Also he asked for my name, I went to see him every semester, except for the last, and he still doesn't really remember my name. Apologies Dr. Furman, just trying to add some humor to this first post, maybe expect more later.

        So, next to the first order of business. Today we were assigned the task of reading over the previous project reports to learn about things they did with the project and to get up to speed with it. There were many concerns I had with this project, but one thing that got to me was why the rails were designed the way they were. I read through some of the previous rail designs and I still don't seem to understand the design they were going after. So I gave a 'flash speech', as Dr. Furman calls it, about the rail system and my concerns about it, and also the fact that we have so many moving parts that it will be prone to failures.

        The next order of business was joining and signing up for groups that we would like to work in. I wanted to work on the small scale project because it had more to do with what I want to do in terms of mechatronics. Below I wrote a note expressing my interest in programming, I am hoping I will get to do that for this project later on for the small scale, and also maybe with the 12th or full scale designs. That was essentially all we did today. The end.

Note: I actually think I'm in the wrong major since I think I would prefer doing computer science or software engineering, but its too late to change now. I'm actually glad I'm doing mechatronics since I do have an interest in engineering, I get the best of both worlds, however I do wish I could go deeper into programming, even with Java, C++, OpenCV, and C I have only scratched the surface. Hopefully I can have more of a reason to expand that knowledge through this project with the opportunities it presents later.