Oh My Gosh, I Know

I wish I blogged more often than I do, blogging for me was an outlet to get out anger, happiness, or just talk about random crap but I haven’t done it in forever. Only once since I’ve started college have I attempted to blog, I hope this semester that it changes. I feel like I should catch you all up on what has happened in my life.

I finished my first semester with a 3.225, fairly low compared to my high school GPA(3.6 if I recall correctly). This semester I am planning to devote any free time I have towards studying, but as you’ll find out that free time will be very limited.
I am now working flexible hours, something I wanted when I first started at Steadfast Networks (just surpassed a year there!) which will be very good for my college social life.
I am pledging Kappa Sigma here at SMU right now so for eight weeks(now three weeks in) I will have little free time. The good thing is that they do want us all to succeed and not have pledgeship as the reason we got bad grades and don’t come back to SMU. Their constant reinforcement to study hard and succeed is a positive for me as that’s why last semester my GPA was low(er) than I wished.
I finalized in my purchase of my first aircraft, yay! I worked my butt off during high school and now in college to able to afford one of my biggest dreams, being an aircraft owner! I’ve always been one to say that if you put your mind to it, you will achieve it and I feel like this proves it no doubt.

I wish I had more time to blog but I’m at club fondy (our 24/5 library) and need to study for my psychology exam that I have on Wednesday. Here are some photos of the airplane though! :)

Howdy,

I moved in to college last Thursday(August 17th), finally! If you all didn’t know I am attending Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas so it is not all that far from home. There are some pluses and minuses to it for sure but in the end I think it will be beneficial for me to study here in Dallas as Dallas has so many tech job opportunities available which should open up in the next 18 months or so.

I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned that I did actually get into SMU so yes, I did. I got off the waitlist in mid May or so. Want to know how I ended up here at SMU? It is definitely an odd one. It all started with me getting pulled over for an “unreasonably loud horn”. I had to go to court but at my high school we can only miss two days of school before we lose our exemptions which is a big motivator to get to class on time and whatnot. However I am a person that likes to burn through those unexecused absences last minute by taking off of school prior to finals which would allow me to get out mid-late May instead of the last few days in May for seniors. I needed to go to court and take care of my ticket which meant that I would be missing two of my classes since my senior year I only took two classes a day. I went ahead and scheduled my court date for mid February. I went to court but I needed a way to get that absence excused so it would not count against my ability to be exempt for exams. I devised a plan to just run by SMU and grab some paperwork and show it to the office at my high school to prove I went to SMU when I really only just dropped by. However I found out that SMU wasn’t willing to sign the paperwork that would say I actually went without actually attending the whole mustang monday day which was just a campus tour. I went ahead and took a quick self guided tour, not really caring all that much. Who would of know that in the end the tour that I half-assed would end up being my college or that I would go to the same college at Kelly’s ex-boyfriend? Not me! Continuing on though, I went to school and found out that without extensive proof I went to visit SMU I wouldn’t get that absence excused. That’s fine though, in the end I did get it excused by contacting my tour guide who handed me the papers and he vouched for me, so hey, thanks ;). In the end I took the time to half-ass apply too since SMU uses CommonApp.org which I highly recommend that you all take advantage of. Originally I got waitlisted by SMU which was a letdown and my mom and I discussed whether or not to actually take advantage of going on the waitlist so I just said “Screw it, I don’t want to. It’s fine.” Last minute though I changed my mind and we filled out the paperwork to get me on the wait list which was the best decision I could have made. I then found out who my admissions counselor was and kept in close contact with him throughout that whole process which is why I ended up getting in. I got accepted in mid May and when I finally met him in early June I asked him what made *me* get in who doesn’t really compare to most SMU students and it was because I was dedicated and showed that I had a real interest in SMU. What really changed me from not caring and half-assing everything to actually caring? I am not really sure definitively but I do know one reason as I was uneducated about SMU and how prestigious it is and once I found that out I respected SMU a lot more! In the end I am so freaking glad that I got into SMU, go stangs!

By the way, thank you Mr. Police Officer for pulling me over. :P Who would of ever thought those words would come out of my mouth?

I think I am one of the few people who enjoyed the graphing part of all the math I did in high school, I like the ability to track trends and especially when it comes to tracking the trend of the logarithm of gasoline cost, trip length, time between refuel, mpg, and cost per mile at that point.

I guess there are a few people confused why I chose to use the logarithm of the cost of gasoline instead of its normal cost. The reason behind that was because it skewed the scale horribly and secondly you can tell the trend of gasoline cost just merely by looking at it. You can see that realistically my driving pattern hasn’t changed much in 2011 since the cost per mile has been in sync with the increase in gasoline cost in 2011. I’m not sure if I used log correctly though in this case, someone who is a bit better at math, did I do it right? :)

Enjoy, have fun looking at all the pretty graphs for my driving in my car.

Today I went on a little adventure, to buy some seats! Not just any ordinary seats, I could go to Staples if I wanted them but I wanted something unique, something that relates to me. What would I buy if I wanted something unique? *ponders* Airline seats! Yes, I went on an adventure to buy some airline seats. Now if you know anything about buying airline seats is that they’re actually really expensive. An AB row can cost mid $200s and a DEF row could cost you in the mid $300s. I found a steal thanks to RobertJ who posted it on DFWPilots.com. I was supposed to make a trip to Northwest Regional today with Colton and Maison so they could pick up approach plates and so that I could pick up some sic sacks. Either way I randomly told them I’d be getting some seats that I found off of craigslist and they were game to go pick some up to. Originally I planned to go with Rachel to use her car but in the end thankfully that didn’t happen since they wouldn’t of fit in her car as they barely fit in the suburban. Either way here are some pics from our adventure.

Protip: Don’t do anything illegal in NRH, we passed nearly a dozen cops while were in city limits.

Us trying to get them into the Suburban... We're lucky we didn't crack any glass

Oh yeah and I'm in the yearbook! :D

We're cool, amirite?

Just to prove they're authentic!

This is how I set it up in my room, can anyone see something that doesn't fit in this picture?

I’ve started my multi engine training over at Dallas Air Park(F69) finally. I found them over at DFWPilots.com which was nice since I’ve been looking for a fast airplane to fly at a reasonable cost. The C310F cruises at 180kts no issue and isn’t too much of a gas hog at 25-28 gallons per hour. I flew it first last Wednesday which was really nice since it was the first time I was able to achieve 14,000 feet MSL, the legal maximum before oxygen is required for crew members(FAR 91.211). It took us no time to get to altitude on full fuel and with ~400 pounds in the front. We were able to get from F69 which is near Addison to Oklahoma, climb to 14,000 feet, do some maneuvers and back within one hour from start-up to shut-down with no problems. I achieved a top speed of 209 kts which is ~240 mph which was amazing too! It is just shy of the 212 knot groundspeed we had in the Baron last year. So freaking close! :( The one thing I’m not used to is the time it takes to descend when you’re realistically traveling nearly 4 miles per minute in a descend. To go from 14,000 MSL -> 600 MSL at 1,000 feet per minute * 4 miles per minute you have to start your descent 53.6 miles out from your destination. This especially applies to when you’re going into DFW since class bravo extends a fair amount it seems and you’re never guaranteed to be cleared into the class bravo. Case and point, I was descending through 10,500 when the bravo was approaching rapidly and regional approach just had us do circles until we lost the altitude to go under the shelf. As some of you all are aware I’ve been uploading my recent flights on vimeo however in the 310 I videotaped it but the intercom wasn’t recorded thus it’s kind of pointless to upload I think. As I get some more interesting videos I’ll upload them. If you haven’t seen my flying over Southlake video please go and look at it, it’s probably one of the most interesting flights I’ve ever done and although it’s long I promise you it’s worth it to watch. Thanks!

Anyways, here’s some pictures of the pretty bird. :)

I took my senior photos in the last week of May, so right before school got out. I finally picked up the CD though and here are the ones that I liked.

I finally hit 4 gallons of donating blood today.

It only took me 19 months to do and twenty donations. :)

Thanks, Meagan, for coming along and donating – you did amazing. :)

4 US gallons = 15.1416471 liters

15.1416471 liters = 512 US fluid ounces

512 US fluid ounces = 42.666666666666667 cans of soda

:O

Taking off from KADS – N62009 from Jacob Wall on Vimeo.

Last night was going really great until the thunderstorm came. I got a frantic call from Madi just saying “Just listen to me, go home. Now!” At first I was completely brushing it off until her mom came on the phone and told me the same thing. However one thing that confused me was why were they so concerned? The storm was supposed to get here at 6pm and at that time it was nearly 8pm and it was lightly raining in Southlake. I honestly thought that someone had died or something but it wasn’t until they said they were in their pantry that I got the severity of what they were talking about. I quickly put Rachel into the call and then looked at the radar. All I could think was, “great, my car just got $5,000 in damage fixed and here comes one hell of a hail storm and potentially tornado.” So I don’t keep you in suspense my car has nice lovely dents on the brand new hood and one dent on the trunk. All I could do was go to the gym and the moment we walked in the hail started coming down and the gym people announced that everyone need come down to the first floor but you still could work out if you wanted. I watched in horror(and probably overreacted) about my car and how it’s my baby and I didn’t want it to get hurt. I just kept telling myself this is why we have insurance. >.<

I love my mom though, after it passes even though there were more waves of hail coming comes to the gym to say Hi and do her workout. Priority fail? Sure. In the end after we saw we had a good ten minutes or so until the next wave hit Rachel and I busted balls home. At that point I wasn’t going to get caught in the storm while driving as it would only cause more damage to my car if I was getting hit by hail driving 45 mph down the road.