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As I’m sitting here at the Fake-bux on campus spreading cream cheese on my bagel, I’m listening to the guy next to me talk about philosophy. As well all know, philosophy is the study of saying things everyone already knows and accepts, except 3 years late. I’ll put on a different hat and talk about something that I’ve noticed in the past year or so of taking 3 and 4000 level classes: Engineers view the world differently

Note: Since I’m a Mechanical Engineering student, I’ll start with my view of the world and how it has been influenced by everything I’ve learned.

When you start late high school/early college, you accept everything as a given. You just go with it. The derivations are there and taught, but everyone just wants to do that homework assignment and pass the class. Later in the classes, as engineers start to get more into their field, they start to see everything around them differently. Electronics are no longer ‘magic’ to Electrical Engineers. Structures no longer just sit there, dormant to the forces around them. Processors become more alive as you start to program closer to the bare conductors and transistors. Everything starts to become a series of forces and reactions.

I started to become aware of this just this past Sunday morning as I went out to get the oil changed in my car. After dropping off my car at the shop, I ran across the highway to get to one of my favorite breakfast places, The Breakfast Nook. I love breakfast, when I get a chance to eat it. I also happen to love going out for food. So, naturally, I love breakfast restaurants.

(Notice that they’re almost always staffed by middle-aged women.)

As I sat there with my mug of coffee and plate of home fries and toast, I started to think and that’s always a dangerous thing. The light from the morning sun was catching the steam just right, illuminating it so you could see every turbulent swirl. At this point, I started to think more about it. “I know the basic fluid mechanics. I also happen to remember some of what we’ve been learning about in heat transfer with regards to convection flows and how they’re directly related to fluid flows.” Thinking about this, it hit me: this is the perfect example of explaining and demonstrating convection heat flows.

I sat there for what must have been ten minutes just watching the steam rise from the cup of coffee. Watching it as it goes from a nice laminar stream, twisting a few times, and then disappearing into the turbulent flow. As the coffee sat there, you could see the steam wasn’t rising as fast and stayed lower than the rim of the cup. The cooling of the cup had lowered the heat flux of the air rising from the Finally, I snapped out of my trance.

It’s one thing to learn about everything in class, but it’s another thing actually apply it and actively think about it as you observe it. As you start to learn about different subjects, it starts to slowly change your perceptions of the world. Instead of wondering about how a car engine was created, you start to wonder about the materials and the theory behind it.

Next time you’re out by yourself, enjoying the sunrise, surfing the web, or looking at the engine of your car, look at it and understand it. You’ll be surprised how much of it you can analyze.

Most people that I know have already heard: Whitehatters Computer Security Club at USF won 2nd place at the Southeastern Collegic Computer Defense Competition. If you know any members from WCSC that went to this competition, give them mad props for their work.

Some interesting points from the competition:

• WCSC was the leader of business injects, leading by about 200 points out of 1000.
• WCSC also had the best uptime of any team for their services. This was also the same case in the iCTF held by UCSB. We also had the best availability in that competition. Props to Jay and Dustin for maintaining our services.
• Vista on a Macbook Pro: NOT COOL Everyone in the competition agreed on this.
• Out of 9 teams, only two girls competed.
• We didn’t have any girls
• I think Dustin holds the record for the least amount of time it takes to drink a Red Bull. At one point, I saw him grab a Red Bull and step out of the room. I turned back to the machine I was working on and instantly turned back around upon hearing the door open. There was Dustin, empty handed and feeling good. Time to Red Bull: approx. 5 seconds.
• Many judges told us that we were the best organized and most calm team that they’ve seen. I’ll chalk this one up to having experience with the CTFs.
• About the UNCC SARS: One of the teams had a member who was mildly ill with the flu. A day later, Saturday, we heard that was so Ill that he had flown back home. One of their other members was also looking ill. On Sunday, there were many people that not only had been exposed to the flu, but also started to feel the effects of it. Sunday I was feeling not only a little bit like I had the flu, but also hung over… *Always try to get the waitress at the bar to have a drink with you. If it’s your birthday and you plead enough, you’ll win. :)
• Even if we won and we had a bid for the National competition, we wouldn’t have been able to go at all. There is a ruling that all members must not work more than 20 hours a week in an IT related field. For us, that’s 6 out of 8 members of the team.
• This is the second competition of the year that we beat UNCC.
• The fact I’m most proud of: I believe that our team was the most diverse in terms of majors and backgrounds. Most other teams have degree programs that are custom-tailored for this sort of competition. We faired very well despite this.
• Don’t drink on Spring DST. You lose an hour of drinking and the morning is an hour worse than it normally is.
• Everyone on WCSC surprised one another.

Much love to the WCSC team. You guys seriously made me proud to rock it with you.

After a night of drinking at Mad Dog’s at Charlotte’s Boardwalk, we get back to the hotel…

Matt picks up a Wall Street Journal and says:

“Who the fuck is DJ Stocks…”

“Oh, that’s the Dow Jones…”

I’ve finally sorted out my problems with Apis and Mephisto. I’m now bloggin’ in the Web 2.0 like a pro!

I’m going to be messing with Mephisto in order to integrate with my Flickr account. We’ll see how the current Mephisto+Flickr offering works. Until then, we’ll see how it goes!