I had a feeling my Peace Corps invitation packet would arrive today. Sure, it certainly hasn’t been 7-10 business days like they had told me, but I just knew that today was the day. I went to check my P.O. Box, and inside was a little yellow sheet indicating that I had a large envelope

I’ve been waiting to post this until my invitation. Today was my lucky day! October 4th, 2008: As I near the end of my college experience, I begin applying to the Peace Corps. Ultimately, the time isn’t right, and the application gets purged from the system a year later. February 19th, 2010: I restart the

Wow! It’s been almost a year since I last updated. I felt like a new WordPress theme change, too. SO much has happened. I don’t even know where to begin. Basically, I started the PC application process way back in early 2010. I had gotten back from working in Germany and I wanted to continue

UPDATE: I made this post several months ago,and never got around to completely finishing it to my satisfaction. So I’ll just post what I was able to complete. So, I’ll admit it. I enjoy performing statistical analysis on moderately-sized data sets. Lately, this has meant I’ve been spending some time analyzing the Peace Corps applicant

It’s been over two months since I last updated! I figure if I am going to use this as an “online journal” of sorts, I had better update it at least occasionally. So here is what’s new: The family crisis finally abated for the most part, so I took an immediate vacation to Connecticut, Florida, [...]

Since I have a half-day, I’ve been able to put together a graphic showing an assortment of Peace Corps timelines that I found when reading various blogs across the internet. I threw out some of the timelines that weren’t complete, and ended up with a total of 17 that were usable. I tried to make [...]

Today I received a small white envelope from the Peace Corps. I wasn’t expecting anything, since I just got my nomination letter on Friday, and it’s only Monday. The letter was too small to be my medical packet, and of course it’s still a bit as well. So what was it? I opened it up [...]

I’ve finally got a few minutes to detail the latest developments in my life. I’m sure this post will bring back some feeling of nostaligia or relief, or who-knows-what, one day when I read back over this. So this week I was nominated by the Peace Corps to serve in Sub-Saharan Africa as a science [...]

Highlight of the week: I just stole some pop tarts from my sister; I tried to reseal the box with glue, but I couldn’t find any. I don’t feel too bad about it because she was recently accepted to the food stamp program, which I’m paying for through taxes! Basically, the crisis continues around the [...]

I’m not particularly happy. I’m really quite burned out. I just want a single day off! I haven’t had an entire day off since December 27th, 2009…it’s really getting to me! I’m so tired! Of course, I realize things could be worse…I have plenty of food to eat, I have a place to sleep, I [...]

Life as a caregiver continues… So, it’s been almost a week since I last posted anything. As usual, I’m still confused, and still feeling trapped in my situation. It’s my own fault, I know, but when the family asks a favor, I can’t bear turn them down. I think the whole experience will probably end [...]

I found this when looking through an accumulation of old files on the computer. I built it ages ago, so I don’t remember all of the construction details. I think it was eventually disassembled and used for parts. The device was created to launch hobby rockets consecutively, and it did this successfully. In reality, its [...]

As a simple method of reaquainting myself with the capabilities of the Basic Stamp microcontroller, I constructed a digital barometer. The essential mode of operation is as follows: A pressure sensor produces a voltage that is linearly dependent on the pressure. This voltage is directed to an analog-to-digital converter (ADC), and the produced digital signal [...]

While working with the Parallax Propeller Professional Development Board, I was looking for a quick way to control the six 16-segment LED displays that are included with the board. Using only the most basic ICs that I had on hand, I also wanted to minimize the use of I/O pins on the Propeller. Looking at [...]

I’m adding some old posts from years ago, so that I can easily reference them when needed. The Nokia n810: Hardware Interface Commands The following are files present in OS2008 on the Nokia n810. The contents of these files may be manually read using the ‘cat’ command in the terminal. Example: cat /sys/devices/platform/gpio-switch/slide/state will return [...]

Growing up on a ranch has a way of desensitizing you to the process of dying and death. I suppose in the long run, this is a good thing; death is an undeniable aspect of life, and denying that very fact will probably cause difficulty later in life. Since I was young, I can remember [...]