Fall 2015 Grades

Like most students, I have been eagerly awaiting me final exams results and course grades. My partner Nathan Wheeler and I completed grading the ECE 362 assembly programming course's final lab reports on the morning of the 19th, Saturday. We wanted to complete grading to conclude our term, but we also wanted--being students ourselves--to get final lab scores to our lab sections' students as quickly as possible.

Early on the morning of the 20th, I found an email from Canvas, the online course management that has been replacing the more widely used OnCourse. My final exam in ME 295 had been graded--thank you, Professor Grethlein--and posted, with the result that I received an A. The official filing with the registrar will happen Tuesday at 9 a.m.

Late at night on Sunday, senior design I was officially posted with the registrar as an A.

Monday at 5:16, we received notification that the ECE 440 grades had been posted on OnCourse. I was very pleased to see I had earned an A, which makes another 4.0 term. This brings my lifetime IU AND IUPUI cumulative GPA to 3.585. My engineering degree GPA has become 3.788, while my EE GPA is untouched at 4.0.

The successful conclusion of this term means that I still have a one-credit required engineering ethics course, the second term of senior design, and five electrical engineering electives. Then I will be done, which realistically means graduating in December 2016.

A Review of and Deleting Sent Messages on an LG441G

Since returning to the US, I have relied on prepaid cell phones: Two-year contracts are bothersome, costly, and usually provide far more than I ever want to use (thus pay for). Currently I use Net10, which means I pay about $15 per month, for which I get enough minutes for all the texting and minimal talking I do.

Some months back I upgraded to the LG441G from something older yet better. Better because the size was right, it had only relevant buttons, and it lacked costly Internet access; it was so old that had I left it, nobody would have bothered stealing it. Sadly, that freebie had to be replaced because I accidentally cracked its screen.

The LG441G has various annoying aspects. There is a button that will cause texts to be read; it apparently cannot be deactivated and is close enough to the Clear button that I accidentally hit it, causing messages to be blurted out robotically. There is an Internet button placed to be accidentally struck as well, the mere tap of which immediately snarfs a minute. These are admittedly all quite trivial. The phone has worked fine, and adapting to it did not take long.

Yet there is no Sent menu option for messages. Instead there is an Outbox, which suggests a holding place until a text actually goes. Adding to confusion, the Outbox displays a numerical zero if everything in it has been sent, yet it can be full of sent messages. The outbox can be so full that you get warnings, yet the Outbox says it contains 0 texts. Why would the designers choose to display a zero for a finite number of items?

Only by opening the Outbox can you find how many sent messages are in it. Now you can delete them to reclaim memory:

  1. Got to Messages then Outbox.
  2. Choose Options then Select multiple
  3. Choose Options and Select All
  4. Choose Options and Delete
  5. Approve Deletion

Surely there is a better way, such as renaming the Outbox to Sent and including a Delete All option instead of requiring a multi-step multi-dialogue box process.

Senior Design 1 Complete

Today was the final presentation for the first term of senior design. My group did well enough that the professor commented on it. The majority of the other groups did well: we are all keen on our projects. There were 13 groups, so almost 3 hours were filled even at just 8 minutes per group. Since l was our final speaker, I made certain we were done on time.

Later in the day my group had a separate and longer presentation before our sponsor and two of his colleagues. That filled nearly an hour but gave us far more time to discuss our design process in some detai. That went well, too. The people in attendance seemed quite pleased with our process and confidence in completing the project on time.

It is late but I want to thank my exceptional project members Jason, Nathan, and Stefan.