Auto Hammer and Drill

This last semester I took a product development class. The first week of class, we were divided into design teams and given the task to design an improved model of a Hitachi impact driver (see below) such that it would fill some unmet market needs.

My design team decided to create a new cordless hand power tool capable of drilling holes, driving screws, and hammering nails, all with a single device. The operating function is changed simply by changing from a drill or screw bit to a specially designed hammer bit. After creating our design, we had to manufacture a functional prototype. Here's a movie of our finished, functional prototype in action! It actually works surprisingly well!



The technology we developed is pretty cool (if I do say so myself.. :) ). It changes from a rotational motion to a back-and-forth hammering impact just by changing the bit. The Technology Transfer Office at BYU has started the process of filing for a provisional patent and then they will present our design to manufacturers. If any of them bite, we'll work out a licensing deal for them to lease our technology.

It has been a really fun project to work on! I learned a lot, and am really excited and happy about our results!

Christmas Vacation

Christmas vacation has officially started. We get two weeks off! Unfortunately, it got off to a sad start with the burning of the Provo Tabernacle. It's still too early to say how it started, but it's looking like an electrical malfunction. Yesterday morning as Travis and I left for school, we were dumbfounded with the sight of this beautiful building in flames. It's a sad loss to Utah history, but we're hoping that it will be rebuilt. Until then, I wonder where we'll have our stake conferences? No Stake Center around here is big enough for our student stake!

(photo from KSL.com)

But the day got better, because Travis came to school with me and talked to my Spanish students about holidays in South America. He did a great job, and it was lots of fun having him there with me. As we were walking to my classroom, holding hands, one of my students looked at us and shouted above the crowds, "No way! He's good looking!" Yeah, I know. :) He was also very good with the students...

Turkey Day

This year we spent our Thanksgiving feast at the Anderson's, and boy was it a feast! I even tried my hand at making a cornucopia. I saw it online and figured it couldn't be too hard to make. (It's made from my bread stick recipe.)

I also brought my Reeses Peanut Butter Pie for my in-laws to try. It was a hit! (I've had people ask me for the recipe, so I left it as a comment in my first post this month.)

On Tuesday, the National Weather Service issued a severe blizzard warning for all of Utah. This was to be the biggest blizzard Utah had seen in years! People left work early to try to beat the storm, and universities canceled classes after 3:00 pm. This was a big deal! But we managed to stay warm inside our home surrounded by friends as we celebrated our annual Friends' Thanksgiving breakfast (for dinner).

Sometimes we would get up and look out the window to see this so-called "blizzard". The result: half an inch of snow. Really? But what we did notice were the FREEZING arctic temperatures. It was -15 Thanksgiving morning! We better gear up for another cold winter! But I will say this, the snow on the mountains is absolutely breath-taking. Sometimes, that makes the cold worth it. :)

My "Teacher Roots"

I presented at a conference last Saturday in South Jordan, and after my presentation we decided to make a special trip to my "teacher roots" in West Jordan. It had been so long since I'd seen my previous schools; it felt very nostalgic being there again. For posterity's sake, I might as well dedicate this post to my early teaching experience in Salt Lake.

For those of you who don't know, BYU-Idaho does their student-teaching a little differently than most universities. Since Rexburg (and the surrounding towns) are some-what rural areas, the only student-teachers who get to do their actual student-teaching in and around Rexburg (i.e. Idaho Falls) are married students! There was no room for the rest of us, so we had to go elsewhere. BYU-I has teamed up with different school districts in the western states that took us in. I had the option of going to Salt Lake, Arizona, Nevada, or Washington. Since I was madly in love with a boy named Travis, who was ever-so patiently waiting for me back home, I decided to student-teach in Salt Lake. (I'm still madly in love with him...)

But it wasn't easy moving away from BYU-I. The scariest part about graduation day was waking up in a cold sweat that night in my hotel room in Idaho Falls! I was going to be separated from so many wonderful teachers and friends! I was on my own! I never had my professors visit my classroom. Instead, it was a lady who worked for the local district. She was super nice, but...not the same. Even today, I get a little sad when I'm at a conference and my friend, Danielle, stops to chat with previous classmates from her days at BYU-Provo. Lucky, her. I don't know where my classmates ended up!

But it wasn't so scary after all. I was assigned to teach U.S. Government and Spanish at Copper Hills High School from August-December of that year. Both cooperating teachers were fantastic, and taught me so much! Copper Hills even offered me an internship there for the rest of the school year, but when the administration asked permission from BYU-I, they were denied. (BYU-I doesn't offer internships for teachers; strictly student-teaching.)

As my semester of student teaching was nearing its close, I started looking around for other teaching jobs. Not so easy in December! But I was very blessed to have one open up nearby. My government cooperating teacher was so kind and offered to take over a class period so I could drive down the street for an interview. I received a call later that day and was hired! I finished my last week at Copper Hills and the very next week started my new (paid!) job at Joel P. Jensen Middle School, also in West Jordan, where I taught geography and Utah History.

Of course, when I got married that next summer, I really had to move closer to home. And that's where I've been since. But I think about my Salt Lake days often, and am so grateful for the things that I learned, the people I met, and experiences I had there.

Placed Again!

Remember how I won first place in my school's bake off last year? Well, I couldn't pull that off again, but I did manage to squeeze by and get third place! I decided to dazzle the judges' taste buds with a bit of a new recipe of mine, Reese's Peanut Butter Pie.

I made this pie (in the picture) the week before in preparation for the bake off. I had never made it before, so I wanted to try it out on my brave husband before releasing it to the public. It was a hit! I made the actual entry last night. I was nervous when I first handed my pie over to the faculty because when I took off the pie cover, a lot of the stripes stuck to it and came off, and it looked awful! But I guess the taste won out, and I won a gift card to Target! My department chair asked if he could take what was left of the pie home, so I let him. Sorry, husband. I guess I'll just have to make it again sometime. Shucks. :)

Creativity At Its Best...

I feel like we've been celebrating Halloween for the past two weeks! We've had so much fun with friends at family (and students!), and had lots of opportunities to get in touch with our creative side.

For those of you who don't know, I started a Spanish Club at my school (the third club I advise!). For our first meeting, we made "papel picado" and Day of the Dead skulls out of rice krispy treats. They had so much fun, and so did I. But I have to admit, it wore me out! Good thing we only meet once a month! I picked up Travis on the way home from school and we both decided we were too exhausted to go to our ward party that evening. We had dinner and went to bed at 8:00. Yeah, we were pretty beat.

We made up for it the next night when we carved pumpkins with good friends. I love how our pumpkin turned out. I also love how Travis's face turned out. :)

Since it's "uncool" NOT to dress up for Halloween at my school, I decided to go in my cop-out costume- a train engineer. Sorry, Husband. This is about as close as I'll ever get to being an engineer. I also got "in character" a couple days before that for our Explorer's unit in my Utah History class. What do you think? The kids loved the visual aide. Even my Spanish students loved it!

(No, I didn't take the hatchet to school...)

Finally, we celebrated Halloween today by going to my parents' house to make caramel apples. As you can tell by the first picture in this post, these weren't your ordinary caramel apples! We're pretty impressed with how they turned out!

After our hard work, we feasted on chili-dogs and homemade root-beer (the dry ice kind, which is the best!). We then came home, and while I was still in a creative mood, made sugar cookies for some friends in the ward and attended the door for trick-or-treaters.

I think it's safe to say we had one terrific Halloween!

Prospectus Is Done!

The last month and a half I've been working a lot on my prospectus, which is basically a document that gives some background about my research topic, details specifically what my research objectives are, defines the scope of my research, gives a basic methodology outline, gives some indication of whether or not the objectives are reasonable and attainable, and lastly describes my anticipated contributions.

The biggest challenge was the size limit: my prospectus couldn't be over five pages of text, and my committee members are not systems engineers, and my research topic is difficult to describe succinctly anyway. And then each committee member had different things they wanted added in, so I had to figure out what else I could remove.

Anyway, I submitted a first draft, and only had to make one additional iteration before they all signed off on it. It's nice having that done, because now it's clearly defined exactly what I need to do moving forward!

Probably nobody but me cares that much, but for posterity's sake, you can read it here.