As an engineer, I’m intrigued by projects where people mod things, particularly electronic or mechanical things, and turn them into something just crazy. Case in point, the VW Beetle with a jet engine.  But although that’s a cool project, it leaves something to desired. Or rather, it leaves a gigantic carbon footprint.  So what kind of mod would an earth-conscious engineer be into?

How about a mod to turn the Toyota Prius into a plug-in vehicle?

It’s a pretty cool project, but at the moment lacks practicality (you know, as opposed to a jet engine in a Beetle).  First of all, you have to fork over the money for the car, then pay one-and-a-half times the cost of the car to have it converted.  Although the replacement batteries can be charged via a regular old extension cord, it sounds from the article as though the car needs to turn on the gas engine at the same speed as a normal Prius but it’ll just go longer than usual on batteries at the lower speeds (so less filling up… anyone want to calculate the rate of return on that $32,000?).  Currently, my Prius has no problem charging its battery during normal driving, because when braking or coasting, power is flowing back to the battery.  And I’m not completely convinced that plugging your car into the wall will really lower its carbon footprint, unless your house is covered in solar panels, like that dude’s, or you live near the Hoover Dam or something.

Yeah, buff that.

All in all, it looks like a project I would rather work on and get paid for than pay to have done to my Prius.  I’ll be totally on board when Toyota produces the vehicle that way, or I’m absolutely loaded.

I’m not someone who procrastinates a lot. I like to get unpleasant things out of the way as quickly as possible, because otherwise I’ll just worry about them. So I remember to go to the dentist, pay my bills, and get the emissions checked. But lately, I’ve had to face facts. There is one major thing I’ve been procrastinating on so long, in fact, that I’m drastically lowering my chances of completing it at all just by not actually DOING it.

That thing is taking and passing the FE. And I have been procrastinating for 4 years.

In case you don’t know what the FE is, it’s the Fundamentals of Engineering Exam. It’s an 8 hour test divided into two parts: the general section, and the specific section. So you get 4 hours of math and chem and statics and thermo and all that stuff, and another 4 hours of whatever engineering discipline you feel like getting owned in. It doesn’t sound like much fun, and I doubt that it is. The people that hold these tests are hardcore. They don’t allow much into the exam room, and they go through all your stuff to make sure you don’t have anything illegal. If you do, you’re out. Done. The test is only held twice a year, so if you fuck up once by cheating or just failing, you have to wait 6 months for the next one to come around. And a lot of people fuck up. Especially the ones who have been out of school for a while. Like me.

Can't I just flip an official NCEES quarter or something?

If I’m going to buckle down and start studying now, I’ve got 5 months to study. That’s a long time, right? I don’t have to panic yet. But four years is a long time. That’s as long as I’ve been out of college, and was how long I was actually in college. Hopefully I haven’t forgotten things at the rate that I learned them.

“There are heroes… there are superheroes… and then there’s Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr). With great power comes great responsibility — everyone knows that — everyone, that is, but Stark. Edgy, conflicted, sarcastic, and misunderstood, Iron Man’s well-intentioned heroics might get the job done and save countless lives, but always seem to leave jaw-dropping damage in their wake.”

Maybe it doesn’t match quite as well as a Surfergirl plug-in, but it does an okay job.  That’s the first half of a synopsis of Hancock with Iron Man stuff thrown in instead.  Let’s see… rogueish, handsome superhero reforms himself in order to better help the world.  Hm.  Oh, wait, Stark possesses a modicum of intelligence and a level of humor somewhere above “toilet.”

Well, scratch that comparison, then.

I’m so into placeholders right now.

My Day