On impossibilities and being merely human

So, it turns out that I didn’t get into Columbia’s Comp Eng program, but the EE program. I must have chickened out at the very at minute when applying and changed my major. When I look at what EE’s do for a living, though, I’m more and more convinced that it’s not what I want to do, and that while I could just do EE and take the cards life hands me after graduation, I would rather do Comp Eng. I think some emails to the Comp Eng department at Columbia are in order, although it might take some more finger crossing and pig sacrifices to get myself into the program.

When I lay awake at night, I (sometimes) think about the reprap. Again, I don’t think I’m going to finish it, and I’m getting more certain every day. I have 2.5 weeks of school left, and almost exactly 4 weeks until break really starts. Will my professors be around after then? Who knows? Can I finish an extruder, or even two? Who knows? Can my partner finish this on his own? Can I even finish soldering all the electronics together? Can I recoup the costs of putting a double order of electronics in (the school needs some results by next week, or they can’t reimburse me for this year)? Where can I find a tooling ball, and find someone that knows how to use one? If I started cutting, really cutting, at the very beginning of the semester, would I be done by now? I’m worrying about these things, and I can’t seem to forget them. I really want this to get into a working state, as kind of a validation of the force of my own will. At least, I’m guessing that ‘s why I’m so concerned about this.

So, I better find out how to cut those corner brackets with or without tooling balls, and get myself a hotplate so I can start soldering smd components once the digikey parts come in.

And then, there’s everything else. I was reminded of all of it when my friend asked me, first, how to program: after trying to figure out why a microbiologist wanted to program, he told me he wanted to animate something. He has a ways to go, but so do I: god, everything that I want to do is on hold, and it’s bothering me. It’s making life harder than it needs to be…

Anyways, time to stop complaining and time to do homework.