Ok, So maybe I'm in a posting mood.

This is going to ramble a bit. Consider yourself warned.

Sam Patt and I are working on starting a small video production company. I set up a website for it. It was just sort of generic, waiting for real content to be added. After I put the real content up there I was going to worry about getting an appropriate URL. That was about a month, or more, ago. Now I'm stuck trying to remember the url of the hosting company i used. Yay me. I'll update you when I have more to say about that.

Some of you may know that my right knee has a problem that prevents me from running without extreme pain. I have located an office to look at it, but have been hesitant to make an appointment until I could isolate the dates of two other appointments my dad already made for me. (He doesn't always keep track of information like that very well.) I finally called and got the dates, so I'll be making an appointment to get my knee checked out soon. I also need to start my allergy shots again. I should call them soon too.

My academic situation is interesting. I've been a botany major in a special program called HTC (at Ohio University). In the program each student must have a "tutorial" every quarter. Tutorials are essentially guided independent studies where you'll meet with the professor one-on-one at least once a week to discuss progress. I get to choose the topics of the tutorials, and choose which faculty I want to have them with. My problem is simply that my tutorials haven't been going very well. I can't even find a topic that is interesting enough for tutorial in the fall. This leads my down three trains of though: A) I'm just getting bored or something and i'll get though it if i keep with it and keep pushing it. B) HTC might not be the best place for me. If I'm not motivated enough for the tutorial program, it would be better to just be a normal botany student. C) Botany really isn't the place for me.

This last option needs more explaining. If you know me, you know i like science. I knew that. So my question was, what branch do i like best? Physics is boring. Chemistry is too confusing. Geology, is mostly devoid of anything close to excitement, beyond boring. Biology is nice... but what type. Zoology, Microbiology, or Botany? Animals are kinda messy and gross. I couldn't imagine dissecting them all the time, or trying to feed or clean up after them.. But i really like the idea of genetic engineering. So, onto Micro or plants. Micro deals with small stuff only, but i love plants. So, Botany it was. The problem come not from the fact that i love botany more than the other branches, but from how i like interacting with science.

The thing is, I apply science. for biology that would be developing better planting techniques, or but genetically engineering organisms to better serve people. But in order to genetically engineer in the way my mind works we need to know a whole lot more how plants work as a system from dna to organism and every process in between. Now, we don't have that kind of working knowledge yet, so my options are reduced. I could do primary research to advance science to the point where people can just make the things they want, OR I could genetically engineer things the traditional way, and use a lot of trial and error to achieve results. The downside here is that it takes years to make good products, which is way to slow for me.

What got me thinking about this agian was some photoshoped pictures of cars. People were claiming they were full-body kits for smart cars, which of-course was not the case. (link if you'd like to see. I'd highly recommend) I figrued, you know what? I see what they did, they just halved the legth of the car, and then corrected the proportions of some things, like the tires, that needed to be normal-size. So I made one of my own. (link It's based off of a Saab 9-3) The problem the came when i started thinking about the mechanical features of the car. For example, the window on my version was too large to actually go down all the way because of the cut-out I made for the door. The engine and other "under the hood" things would be very cramped, not-to-mention the poor handling the vehicle was likely to have because of the high center of gravity relative to the stance.

I looked up the Mini to see how it was designed. I looked closer at the real Smart Car for two. And i thought about how i'd solve the small car problem, as I saw it. People want to have a car large enough to cary everything they need and their family or friends; however, they usually drive alone with very little luggage. The problem here is to make a car that is more appropriately sized for one person, but will accommodate more in times of need. For one person, you need very small car with a centrally placed seat, with room for luggage behind, probably in a hatch-back for easier access. To cary one passenger, add a fold-up seat in the back luggage area. For two, maybe you could widen the back bench a little to squeeze in two back there. What if you have to cary 3 passengers? Well, i don't know what to do but push the driver and all of his control back to the left, and put the extra seat to the driver's right. But now it looks like a normal sedan, albeit cramped because it's only just large enough to hold everyone.

No, this is a really cramped 4-seater, it's not even comfortable for the driver. so, the driver would really like to be back in the center, as long as he has fewer than 3 passengers. Solution: slide the driver back to center when you don't absolutely need the extra front seat. WHAT?!?! That's crazy! I know... I know. but listen. The petals are all hydraulic, so they can slide on rails from center to left and back, with hydraulic hoses to keep everything connected. The Seat slides on rails too, nothing too unusual here. The steering wheel and Dashboard are tricky, because they can't move... oh wait, the steering could be hydraulic too, couldn't it? So... you could put it on rails too, with the dash.. and just slide it back and fourth... But rails aren't pretty. Oh! but you could mount the wheel and dash panel on some kind of one-spoked wheel, so you could swing it into place, then lock it in positions. but then it wouldn't look balanced, and wouldn't the wheel be heavy? So off set it with a second spoke that acts as a counter balance, and add a GPS/back=up camera/whatever LCD display panel that moves opposite the wheel. Of course you'd need to put in mechanical things to keep the panels, wheel, and display the right orientation, but that wouldn't be hard.

Then I took a second to look at what i was doing. I was designing a car. Designing a car? That doesn't sound like a botanist.. more like an engineer.. oh, my dad was an engineer... and i used to like seeing how mechanical things worked and designing mechanical things.. But engineering is the application of Physics and Physics is boring... but I did really well in physics because it came so naturally to me...

So now I'm stuck. I was thinking that perhaps i should take some Comp Sci classes and head more towards bioinformatics, because i liked computer programing. This realization that I might like being an engineer caught me off-guard. That; however, does not help resolve my current dilemma. I'm loth to transfer colleges, but i don't want to be stuck in botany if i'd really be better off in engineering. I'm thinking about how I could give engineering a try so i have a better idea if i want to do it or not, before i make a mess of things but trying to change majors.

More updates to come, i hope. May your future be more clear than mine.