Epics of India

Yep, that title sums it up a lot for me this week. This week was a roller coaster of sleeplessness, robotics, and just about getting everything done I needed to get done. Yes, I spent 11 hours across two days doing my homework for control theory right before it was due, but that's just a product of doing a bit too much. Every semester is a stress test - I keep piling on more and more weight until I'm just about to break, and then I take the weight off. This sixth week was that maximum stress point, so I need to manage my time better so I can keep going strong for the rest of the semester. A major source of my tireless struggle is robotics. The high school robotics team I mentor is coming up on their first competition. That's this upcoming weekend, so we will be working really hard and then it will be much more relaxed hopefully. This build season has been long, but I'm hoping we come up good in competition. Additionally, I have been working hard to get insurance f...

I spend a lot of time at the Rawl Engineering Practice Facility working on robots for my competition team. Some people on my team even list it as their "Home" location on google maps because of how often we spend time there. Many people don't know where this building is, and it's often hard to explain to someone unfamiliar to the engineering quad, so I thought I would demonstrate how to put a google map into a blog post by showing where I spend most of my time on campus:

A Royal Family Five princes and their mother, the queen, were looking for a new palace, and the royal real estate agent had found a great deal for them. The king and other princes had already checked it out for them, and so they went ahead and moved into their new home. It was a lovely palace: it had high ceilings, was open-concept, and had shiplap walls throughout. While hanging out with his friend, one of the princes saw a commercial on television that made him think. The commercial had a fearsome tone, and talked about how you can get mesothelioma from being exposed to asbestos, a common building material in old houses and other structures. After watching this, the prince went to his new home and set about investigating the walls and ceilings of the palace. One of the planks of shiplap was a bit loose, and when he peeked under the crack it left between the exposed wall, he saw a lot of small fibers that looked a lot like the asbestos in the commercial he watched earlier that day...

PDE Mahabharata Sources provided by: Arnold , Besant , Devee , Dutt , Ganguli , Kincaid , Macfie , Mackenzie , Nivedita , Seeger , and Tagore . #21 This story is a full story in and of itself. I thought it was strange that the prince who made up the plot to burn the Pandavas and Queen Kunti alive hadn't acted sooner. I would think the oil would lose its effect if he waited such a long time, and the presence of the oil would be detected immediately (like if someone sat on the couch or whatever the furniture was at the time). This is a classic villain move where the evil character takes way too long and could have accomplished his goals had he acted sooner. I also thought it was brilliant that they had a miner dig their way out of the house. Essentially, the main characters in this story have also faked their own deaths by accident, so I am really interested to see how that plays out in the rest of part B. The Pandavas escape. I like how the children all look like tiny ad...

PDE Mahabharata Sources provided by: Arnold , Besant , Devee , Dutt , Ganguli , Kincaid , Macfie , Mackenzie , Nivedita , Seeger , and Tagore . #7 In this story, Vyasa sires three sons - one is blind, the other is pale, and the third is with a handmaiden. I think it is really interesting that Vyasa totally takes himself down with respect to his looks. He basically calls himself disgusting and makes that the reason his son is born blind - because the woman who gave birth could not look at Vyasa. At the same time, Vyasa is writing himself out to be good. He calls himself a mighty sage and praises his own asceticism and devotion. This guy cannot pin himself down, and I think it is pretty funny. A Sadhu, which could be similar to what Vyasa looked like. Source: PDE Mahabharata   # 8 Karna's origin story is like that of Moses from the Hebrew Bible, except his mother was not seeking to protect him. Rather she was ashamed that she gave birth to the sun god's child an...