Beginning of Winter Term

Hey y'all! It's been a while again, but I found some time to update my blog from last time.

So things that are going on right now!

Engineering 
Awesome. Just pure awesome. My teacher is very strict and keeps us busy for every minute of class. But it's really fun! Week one and we are learning how to use Matlab for coding purposes. Our first lab session was self-teaching Matlab, and since I took C# back in high school, it makes Matlab seem like a review session. During our second lab session, we used an NXT LEGO robot (which we built) and synced it with Matlab to write code and tell it what to do.
Here's a picture of the robot followed by an example code I wrote:

Lego NEXT Robot with Voice Command Module

%This program searches for right triangles for

%which all three sides are integers 

%Initialize the counter m

clear all; clc; close all;

m=0;

%Loop to check all combinations of x and y up 

%to limits

fid=fopen('output.txt','wt');

fprintf(fid,' x y h\n');

fprintf(fid,' === === ===\n');

for x=1:25

    for y=x:25

        %Calculate the hypotenuse h

        

        h=sqrt(x^2+y^2);

        

        %Check to see if h is an integer

        %If it is, write x, y, and h to the 

        %screen

        %and advance the value of the counter

        

        if h == floor(h)

            m = m + 1;

            fprintf(fid,'%5i%5i%5i\n',x,y,h);

        end

    end

end

fprintf('\nThe number of triangles found = %i\n',m)

Math
My teacher's sarcasm is hilarious and it makes it really enjoyable. He's super fast paced and it's sometimes difficult to keep up but he's very approachable and makes a world of difference between him and my last teacher. Definitely planning on leaving a good review!

Health
Yes. I have to take health. So far it seems like we will be focusing on nutrition this term. I'm not having too much fun, but it's supposed to get more fun approaching week five so let's see how it goes.

Physical Activity Class (10K Trail Running)
I chose this class because it's being taught by Tyler, the coach for Crescent Valley high school, and I definitely wanted to see what it would be like working with him. So far it's been a lot of fun, although I was only able to make one class (As some of you may already know, I injured my MCL (Medial Collateral Ligament) when on a run, and ended up going to Health Services to get it checked out and it's a sprain. Should be back in the game next month or so but we will see.

Chemistry
I kept the same chemistry teacher from last term, and I have to say I'm enjoying it. He's definitely the funniest teacher I've had in all of my college classes. One of the funniest things he's done so far was that he showed us what happens when you set fire to liquid Oxygen. It really makes the flame grow fast, and even though he had a "blast-shield" set-up, it burned over the shield and landed on a conveniently placed roll of cotton. The entire roll of cotton caught fire and he used a meter stick to push it to the ground. The plus outcome was that the cotton was able to be stamped out. The delta outcome (we aren't allowed to say negative in Hall Council) was that the meter stick caught fire too.

Hall Council
Man the opportunities! Joining Hall Council (HC) was by far the most important and door-opening thing that I've decided to do.

• NRHH (National Residence Hall Honorary): Basically a group of students who live in resident halls. This is a prestigious group that is limited to a total of 1% of all students in residence halls across the nation. I'm planning on applying for the position because it has a small time commitment and resembles National Honor Society back in high school. 
• RHA (Residence Hall Association): This is like the mother of all the hall councils here at Oregon State University. I'm planning on applying for the Treasurer position (surprise surprise). 
• RA (Residence Assistants): These are the guys and gals that monitor the halls to make sure you know where everything is and aren't doing anything illegal. If I get my RHA position, I would wait to RA until next year. 
• NACURH (National Association of Colleges and Universities Residence Halls): This is a huge conference in North Dakota and I'm really trying to get in. Everything would be paid