Batteries and Beerlympics (the last part so read it all)

Hi friends,

I hope all is well in your respective lives. I haven't written in here for a while, so I figured I should.

The best way to start things off is with an embarrassing story about myself. I haven't been drinking a ton lately which depresses me somewhat. My roommate can't really go out much because he is on crutches from ankle surgery. He doesn't really want to get drunk on crutches because he thinks he'll fall over. I think that would be hilarious. Anyways, I went out with some people from my department: one first year girl who could be described as a dumb bitch by Krajny and her old roomies, a Michigan grad and some of his buddies. After midnight or so, me and the Michigan guy decided we were drunk enough to actually go try and dance with some ladies. I noticed a cute girl dancing by herself a few feet away so I go up and attempt to chat. Here is how it goes:

Me: A pretty girl like you shouldn't be dancing by yourself......what are you drinking there?

Me internally: wtf kind of opening line is that? I suck at this.

Girl: a gin and tonic

Me: oh cool I have a vodka tonic.........do you want some?

Me internally: that is easily the creepiest response you could have had. now she thinks you want to roofy her.

Girl: uhh why would I want some of yours when I have a drink right here?

Me: good point

I think we danced for like 30 seconds and then she walked away. Epic fail.


Second, here is a fantastic youtube clip from Axe. I have no idea how they got Jaime Pressley to do this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bevJr3Ra84Q

Third, life udpate. So I'm in the middle of my semester down here, and it's a little bit busier than I expected. I'm taking 2 classes, one of which is a little difficult. I am also TA'ing an undergrad class, which has been interesting. As an undergrad I always assumed the grad students knew and understood everything. I now know that is not true, at least in my case. The class is called trasnport phenomenon, which basically means modeling heat, mass, and momentum transport. If you want to know more, I can tell you all about it some other time. I have office hours for 2 hours and run a 2 hour recitation, where I call on students to come down and put their homework solutions on the projector to explain to the class. Other than that, I just have to proctor and grade the midterms. I've gotten some good feedback so far, but that may just be because the kids like me better than the other TA, Ming Pan, because I can speak clear English. The other aspect of the job is to try to avoid being creepy towards the attractive sophomore girls in the class. My roommate and I joked that it was going to happen and then bam, first person in my office hours is a smoking red head-fml.

Over Christmas break, I finally got my research adviser situation figured out. I'll be working for a professor in the mechanical engineering department (but still getting a chemical engineering degree) to try to make advanced materials for cathodes in batteries. The goal is to give the batteries better storage capacity and lifetime performance to improve the economic viability of alternative energy sources. The batteries would hold power generated from sources like wind and solar to be used when the sun doesn't shine or the wind doesn't blow. I haven't really gotten started yet in the lab yet. I just follow people around and try to learn what they are doing. I will be working with an undergrad and a postdoc on the project. The research group webpage is here: http://www.me.utexas.edu/~manthiram/ If you look at the people section, you can see that the group is very international, with domestic students being in the minority, so that'll be something to get used to.

I've got some fun weekends coming up, which I'm excited about. At the end of February, we have our recruitment weekend for the students admitted this year. Basically we pitch the department to them and then get them really drunk at night. It's a vicious/wonderful cycle. The week after that Dreami is coming to visit. My dad is not coming, just Dreami. I have no idea how I'm going to entertain here for multiple days, but frankly I'm afraid. On a Dreami-related sidenote, she got a Facebook account. I know she's going to ask to be my friend, which means I'll have to censor pictures now. The week after that, Jon and Justin are coming down, so hopefully they'll be some drunken shenanigans to share after that. It's also the start of South by Southwest that weekend, so we'll have to scope out the free things to do during that. Then a couple of weeks after that Rachel (a former Stater) is going to San Antonio with her parents, so they're going to come up here for an afternoon I think.

Finally, I emailed Jho, Gerbetz, Rapien, and Salmon Suz to get beerlympics going again this year. They checked with other groups and selected Friday, April 16th as the day, which is the day before Emeyer's wedding. This is fantastic news because hopefully lots of us will be back in town for that wonderful occasion. Clearly we will be welcome at this event, so I plan on going already. Hopefully some of you guys can make it/want to make it.

I think that's it for me. Sorry f0r another long post. I like to ramble. Keep on posting guys so we can stay in touch. Adios all.

-James