BAND 117 - Concert Band

A wonderful experience as always, it's nice to take a break from marching band and sit down and play some relatively more difficult music. Dr. Leppla once again directed us, and as usual did an outstanding job. The variety of music that we played was also outstanding. As usual, a guest conductor visited for one of our performances; that's always an interesting experience. All in all, I'd still say that this class was the highlight of my day.

EE 302 - Probabilistic Methods in ECE

Probabilistic methods. *shudder* It started out innocently enough...what's the probability of drawing a King from a standard deck of 52 cards, for instance. After a few weeks of that they found some way to throw a lot of calculus into the mix, and things pretty much just got ugly from then on. This class wins hands down on the "sucks-the-most" list. On the positive side, though, the professor was great. He knew a lot about the subject, spoke fluent English, and would occasionally go off on little tangents regarding how what we were doing could be applied to do actual, useful things. (None of which I plan to do, but still...)

EE 369 - Discrete Mathematics for Computer Engineering

This class wasn't half bad either. The professor that taught it specialized in AI, so he had some really interesting things to relate the material to. The class provided me with some useful things that could actually be used in relation to my major as well. All in all the professor really knew what he was doing and did a great job presenting the material. It's unfortunate that I can't say the same about EE 368.

PSY 120 - Elementary Psychology

Hehehe. What can I say? I needed a general education elective. Let me summarize the class: I didn't buy the book, I didn't read the book, I surfed the Internet on my laptop via 802.11b, and I restrained myself from killing the hippies behind me who said, and I quote, "man, this is the hardest class that I've taken at Purdue" and I still got an A (granted, just by the skin of my teeth; but hey, that's the way it should be for general education electives).

EE 495d - ASIC Design Laboratory

This is the best class that I've taken so far without question. 495d basically provides a crash course in ASIC design using VHDL, and it's really fun. We implemented many basic components in the beginning, an I2C bus for the mid-semester project, and finally a fully functional "Chess Chip" for our final project (that was what my team decided to do). The entire time it was a blast. I love writing VHDL and synthesizing IC's that could actually be useful and could actually be sent off for fabrication. The professor for the class was great too; we learned things in lecture that helped round out the whole ASIC design and fabrication process. Although the class was only two credit hours, and a lot of work, it was definitely worth it.