Graduation's right around the corner now, 4 days to be exact. Assuming I don't fail any of my classes, I should be just fine. I think professors try their best to pass a senior, and frankly I'll take some C's cause that's all I need and at this point it won't dent my GPA. So I walk on Saturday, drive 8 hours to St. Louis on Sunday, and get on a 15 hour plane flight to China on Monday, sounds like the suck. I'm gonna have to work out the time change so I can start adjusting for it on the plane. The trip's either gonna be a major pain in the ass with tension with my dad, or it's going to be a minor pain in the ass. I'm not forcasting a pain-free trip, unless I find some chick, but probably not going there. The fun starts when I get back. It's be confirmed that I will be going to Hanscom Air Force Base to do research this summer. That's just damn awesome. The military's always been kind of cool to me, but I know I'm idealizing it and I wouldn't really want to join. Something that's scary though I have to to fill out a 14 page long security questionair that includes things like where have I live for the last 7 years and name 3 people who together can vouch for my whereabouts for the late 7 years. I'm not applying for an security clearence, though I hear that process gets even more intense as they're send agents to interview your parents, friend, high school teachers, basicly everyone you know.

On a different note, the AF is more of a career move as I'm getting my foot in the door with the AF, which is a big employee of people in my field. I think I may take this chance to have a little fun in Boston, since I'm only there for 2 months, anything stupid I do will be forgotten.

Graduation is 2 weeks away. It's odd how this is just hitting me now. I guess I'm finally grasping the signifigance of it since my work load has dropped as projects are getting finished and over with. Before I was busy doing this and finishing that, so I didn't really thing about graduation. It may also be due to the meeting I had with the other grad students this weekend. I guess you can call it our first research group meeting. We meet on saturday and the professor bought lunch. We went over what our projects were and shared our knowledge on the tools we were using. The scary thing is, while the other guys were talking about their projects, I was actually interested and understood the theory behind it. Plus I actually had questions about the projects. This suprised me as up till now I haven't really cared about anything I've studied except in relation to getting an A. Guess I'm starting to get into the Ph.D frame of mind or actually caring and wanting to know more...scary.

After graduation I'm going to China for a month. I'm not really looking forward to this since I don't really have a good connection or close relationship with my relatives. The last time I was back was about 10 years ago before 6th grade. Alot has changed since then, but I still feel like an outsides, not quite a tourist, and not quite a native. I'm not even sure what I'll spend a month doing. We'll probably go see some sites like the great wall or the forbidden city and such. I guess I'll spend the other days watching TV, on my laptop w/o internet :(, or maybe I'll bring my gameboy. I'll probably get time to work on drawing and hopefully be good enough by the time I return to start on the webcomic. Although now that Patrick is leaving to go home and tend to some family issues, we've lost a driving factor behind the webcomic. I also dread having to explain why I didn't go to MIT when I had the chance. In foreign countries, the big name schools are MIT and Harvard. It's even worse that in the US because in China they don't have any sort of knowledge about other schools, they just know MIT. I could actually care less about what my relatives think of me not going to MIT just for the prestige, but I'm not looking forward to the annoying questions. No matter where you go, the Chinese mentality is the same, make your parents proud.

Well the dust has settled, and I think the folks have finnaly accepted that I won't be going to MIT. Well, mom's accepted, I think dad hasn't accepted but he can't do anything about it. I love my parents and respect them, but they don't respect my knowledge, they still think they know better than me on engineering. Guess I just strained my relationship with my parents, but life goes on.

Lets see, this summer I'm trying to go do research for the Air Force up in Massachusets. This should be pretty cool since the research topic is interesting, it's using and oxygen beam to probe nanostructures, or something like that. Plus, this will also give me some contacts with in the Air Force, which will be a big help cause they fund alot of research in EP. I'm still working it out with the director there at the Hanscom AFB, but it looks good. My other option is to go back to Boeing and work in hydraulics for the 787. I don't really want to go back there. It would be a much easier job and probably pays better, but it was just so mind numbing and boring. I would much rather get research experience and research contacts.

Now lets wrap up with my ski trip. It all went well, no one got seriously hurt, though I was sore for a week in my shoulders and knees after we got back. It was a blast, and I think I'm hooked. We're already talking about going skiing again before Christmas. This was my first time skiing, but I picked it up pretty quick. I still don't have the side to side movement down right, and I am so not good at hockey stops. Next time I may try snowboarding, atleast for a day.

And another coversation with the folks ended with me hanging up. So the question is what is the role and duty of a parent? I think parents are to support their children, guide them, provide them with a moral structure, and help them if needed. They are not suppose to treat their children as an investment that should provide some sort of return eventually. It is the duty of parents to raise their children without except of reward. They are suppose to sacrifice so their children can find happiness and grow up.

Know what my folk's view is, or apparent view from what they've said? Apparently my dad has sacrificed his life (dream to get a Ph.D. in history) so that I can make him proud. When I said choosing grad school was my decision because it was my life, he said what did he sacrifice for then? Boy was I stunned and kind of pissed off. I think they fully expected to get some kind of profit off me in pride or bragging right or something. While I understand wanting to be proud of your child and be able to brag about them, that should not override wanting to see your child happy and doing what he desires. I swear I'll never do that to my kids.

So I was going to talk about my ski trip for spring break, but first I need to rant a bit about my parents and fucking MIT. I had gotten the acceptance from MIT about 2 weeks ago but I waited to hear about finacial aid from Georgia Tech so I could have some support when I told the folks I was going to stay. So as of today, Tech will cover my tuition and pay me a good $30,000 a year to go to grad school here. MIT hasn't said anything, and I know for a fact the professor there is broke or close to it in funding. So added to that the fact that Tech has the type of research I want to do, all logical signs point to Tech.

Now I call my mom after I get back to Atlanta to let her know I'm safe, and I let her know that I got into MIT but haven't heard about funding while Tech is giving me some pretty generous funding. The first thing she says is to call MIT and see what my finacial aid status is. Next she says to wait to see if I get any of my external fellowships. She completely glosses over the fact that Tech is giving me lots of money and had the decency to let me know about their funding decision a week ago while MIT has said dick. Then I tell her it doesn't matter what the MIT funding is since they don't have the type of research I want to do, and she asks "how do you know they don't have what I want to do." At that point I had to end the call or I was going to flip out and use some very bad words with my mother. She is questioning my knowledge of what specific type of research I want to and what the school does when I've spent the last year working on the research and talking to professors and grad students in the field. How the fuck does she have the right to question my decision of what research I want to spend the next 4 years doing when she knows jack shit about it. She and my dad are so in love with fucking MIT that they would probably empty their bank account if it means I would go there. That is just wrong. I swear to all that is holy that if I get the power one day, the world will witness MIT burning to the ground and me peeing on its ashes.

Score one for me, I'm gonna get paid to go to school! HELL YEAH!!! I got the e-mail today from Tech's graduate finacial aid department. I'll be getting a research assistantship which will pay for my tuition and I think some money for a stipend, not sure cause the wording in the e-mail was unclear. Plus, I'm also getting the Georgia Tech Insitute Fellowship, which will pay for any extra tuition costs and give me $12,000 a year as stipend. That's not a lot of money compared to working, but I'm getting paid to learn, that's awesome. I'm still waiting to hear from my two external fellowships that I applied to, though I don't know if they can all stack. If they can though, I'll make out like a bandit and have more money to spend than I ever had. I think I hear a fancy new computer and x-box calling my name in the future. :)

EVE Online is awesome. I'm recently stopped playing World of Warcraft, since my friends stopped playing and I was getting bored of level grinding. After I quit, I played Guild Wars for a week or so since it's free, then together with my roommates relogged into EVE Online. We played EVE a couple months ago but school was kind of busy and we didn't really do much. Now though we're doing mission together, going to blow up stuff with our ships. We're going to join Goonfleet, a huge corporation (guild), who are all members of Somethingawful, a forum. I've watched one of their PvP videos and it was pretty awesome. They use teamspeak to give commands by the commander of the fleet and such. It lets you feel like you're in a space battle. I think I'm going to stick with this for a while.

8 Days till we leave for Vermont. Party!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyhow, me and 3 of my friends are driving up to Vermont to go skiing for 3 days. It's like a 20 hour drive, so we'll probably end up doing it in 2 days, cause even with four of us switching off driving, it's a long trip. Now I've never been skiing before, so this ought to be interesting, I'm fully planning on breaking something. Here's the problem though, the week after I return, I have to give a presentation on my research for my Honor's program, and I am so no ready yet. I finally got over a stump in the research and got the computer model to work right, now I just have to run a bunch of different cases with different configurations so I can improve on the design NASA has right now. Sound cool huh...well back to trying to make a name for myself in science.