"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover"- Mark Twain
This is a quote that I've always loved. Not only because of the sailing reference, but also because Mark Twain has a way of speaking to the common man with vivid images. I do not know quite how this one will translate so I'm getting a little help from google...forgive me if it's not the best.
These past two days we've been busy working on our notebooks for our Ethics class like crazy so we've had to skip out on a few things that Rocio and Pau suggested, but hopefully we'll be able to make up for that later. Also I've been trying to figure out how to add links to the sidebar, but for those who have asked here is:
On a more exciting note, beginning yesterday and lasting until tomorrow afternoon, the University has been playing host to The 3rd Manufacturing Engineering Society International Conference. See! It's official!
But this is a pretty neat thing to be having while we're here. Here are links to a general description of the conference and the conference's website if you'd like to learn more about it. Professor Schmid was the opening lecture, which many of us attended;
Unfortunately I didn't make it into the picture, I was sitting to the left in the picture (I swear!) but Miguel said that once things are only slight less insane (considering the number of things that he seems to do here, I guess I can forgive him!) he'll send along a few pictures that I can put up later. The reason that we are wearing headphones is to translate the opening speeches by the mayor and other prominent citizens of Alcoy.
Another plus to having "the author of the second most famous author of a manufacturing textbook" as professor is that he is that he has lots of friends at this conference. So long story short, we had the opportunity to have a lecture from Professor Jack Jeswiet from Queens University this morning on basically the information that he is going to present at the conference (although probably somewhat dumbed down for us considering we don't have nearly comparable technical knowledge as the people attending the conference) on calculating carbon footprints and implications of energy use.For those who know of my interests, I'm sure that you can image how neat that was for me. For those who do not, I have two main interests that I would like to pursue in engineering:
1) The viability of taking existing technology in terms of energy and making it more viable for economically developing countries (and therefore, also renewable/alternative/implications of existing energy technologies. That was one of the reasons that coming to Spain was so attractive to me: wind technology! Speaking of which this is more information on the wind farm we visited and the company that runs it (I meant to put the info up last week, sorry) and
2) The aerospace aspect of engineering in the expression of fluid dynamics, in particular air flow (anything from cars to NASA...I was a wannabe astronaut as a kid and went to Space Camp three times), although we'll see if I'm so intrigued with this after taking fluid dynamics next semester.
So long story short, I was pretty excited to have had the opportunity to hear a lecture from someone who is so prominent in his field. The other lecture that I went to this afternoon was by Professor Thomas R. Kurfess from Clemson University (there is a link to his website from the school site I linked to). He is the Chair in Manufacturing for BMW and I believe he said he was based in Greensboro, NC although I believe the the manufacturing plant is in Spartanburg, SC so I probably misunderstood. Long and short, I'm sure Dad is intrigued by this point :). He gave a lecture on the Direction of Inspection (he does a lot inspection for companies), which presented a lot of information on the everything from the wear on manufacturing parts to methods of testing at the BMW plant.
So that was a pretty neat thing to have the opportunity to see as break on working on the notebook.Sounds like from the brief emails that I've gotten from mom, things are really starting to pull together as far as planning for our travels in June, which is pretty exciting! Juan and Rosa came to Alcoy yesterday to go over some documentation and have me sign some papers for the bank, but I hope that we do get the chance to spend some time in Alicante this weekend, it sounds like the festival if going to be great!
"Veinte años a partir de ahora le será más decepcionado por las cosas que no hiciste que por las que no hacer. Así que fuera de la bowlines. Navega lejos del puerto seguro. Captura los vientos alisios en sus velas. Explorar. Soñar. Descubre" -Mark Twain
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