Things are slowly coming to an end with my study abroad program. I’ve got 2 short weeks of internship left, and just 3 weeks of classes including exam week. It is striking at how quickly the entire experience has passed. I suppose that happens when you’re taking in new cultures, seeing new cities, and making new friends.
At my internship, they have a procedure involving hyperperfusion, used to increase blood pressure to the far extremities (toes / feet) of the legs and stimulate arterial growth. Involved in this procedure, is a tube that connects the femoral artery to a pump external of the body. This tube is sewed to the artery and passes through a wound in the skin. I was tasked with making some design modifications for this tube to be used in a cardiac application, in which it would be connected to the subclavian artery for the extent of a cardiac bypass surgery. On Monday, I will construct a prototype for this assembly, which will hopefully be shipped off to the surgeon for approval, bringing the design cycle to a near complete finish.
In classes, I gave a presentation in International Business this week with Alicia, on Woolworths Limited (no connection to the US Woolworths company) and had a research paper due in Sociology today. That concludes the major projects for my classes. I have a journal portfolio for my internship to complete and then just exams to study for.
CAPA is putting on a Thanksgiving dinner for us students on Thanksgiving Day (local time, for simplicity). We will get a proper Thanksgiving meal catered by the Billy Blue School of Culinary Arts. Turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and gravy will all be featured. There is a battle between Pumpkin and Pecan pie at the moment, I’m rooting for Pecan and may bake my own if Pumpkin wins out!
I bought plane tickets this evening for a trip with Stephanie to New Zealand from December 5th – 10th. We’re flying to Christchurch, on the Southern Island, and will be looking to partake in some lovely hikes and tours of the glaciers and mountainous surroundings. Perhaps a Lord of The Rings tour is in order (how cool would a tour of Hobbiton be?!) but may be pricey. Luckily the exchange rate is pretty good for us at the moment (~0.61USD:1AUD) giving us cheap flights and the NZ$ is pretty weak against the dollar at the moment as well (0.55USD:1NZD).
My parents are coming to visit me! They will arrive in Sydney on December 7th, while I’m in New Zealand. I’ll be meeting up with them, taking them around Sydney and then we’ll be off to explore another city or two. I’m rooting for Melbourne and then somewhere a little North for SCUBA diving. They’ll be in town until the 20th, and I depart for home on the 21st, just in time to recuperate for Christmas, then moving to back Minneapolis and into my new apartment with my new roommate, Jeff.

I register for next semesters classes in an hour. I’m looking to graduate in either 2 or 3 more semesters, depending on some small factors. I can do 2 semesters, but I’m weighing the pros and cons of a December vs Spring graduation and the ability to take additional technical electives that would help me in my major.

I suppose that is all I have for now. Cheers.

Life just won’t stand still for me, no matter how hard I wish it to.

I will shortly be departing on my adventure to the “Down Unda’”. That’s right folks, I’ll be spending the next 4 or so months in Sydney, Australia doing a study & intern abroad program. I’ll be taking classes like Business of the Pacific Rim, Understanding Australia from a Sociological Perspective, and a class to integrate into Australian business culture during my internship. Whilst studying I’ll be interning at Advanced Surgical Design and Manufacture (ASDM). I’m not quite sure what I’ll be doing there yet, and probably won’t until I show up for my first day of work. I’ll keep you posted as I undertake duties.
I’m very excited for the transition to living in another country and adapting to another culture and their way of life. Of course, I will miss all of my friends and family here in the states, but to help soften the blow of that pain, I’ll be keeping in touch with Skype. I have already purchased the plan where I have unlimited calling to the US, and will shortly be acquiring an online number through which all of you guys can call me through, without having to pay international calling fees. Wow, is the internet great or what!
I’ll be trying to post regularly while I’m gone, to keep everybody up to date. For reference, Sydney is 15 hours ahead of the Central Time Zone in the US, so if I don’t answer your call, make sure you’re not trying to call me at 3am! I’ll also be trying to post pictures regularly on Flickr, and I’ll have a dedicated group for all of my Australia pictures.
I’ll also be posting mailing information for those of you who would like to send me stuff while I’m gone. I would much appreciate receiving things from you guys, it’ll really cheer me up!

I leave at 9:00 am central time from Milwaukee, WI on August 25th. If I don’t see you before I leave, I look forward to seeing you after Christmas (I get back on the 21st of December) and catching up.

I hadn’t realized how long it had been since I last wrote a post on this blog; my goodness. We’ll start with some Solar Car news: We have two beautiful shells, amazing bulkheads, and a hell of a lot of more work to do.

After countless hours at NWA (and I mean countless) we were able to finish off the top and bottom shells with many minor setbacks. Then after a sleepless night (7pm to 5:15am followed by an 8am class…) we had composite bulkheads! They are definitely a thing of beauty, and fit wonderfully in our shells. This last weekend we glued the bulkheads into the top shell, and layed up a lip on the bottom shell to seal the seam where the bottom shell sits on the chassis. This weekend we are planning on joining the top and bottom shells, and after many months of manufacturing, we’ll have one, unified, glorious shell!

Unfortunately, this stuff is all still “top secret” until we official unveil the car, so I can’t post many pictures. I suggest watching these two flickr streams, what you see there is what you’ll get until we go public.

In other news, I’ve picked up a new project. I’m now the lead developer and partial owner of LandOrSlum.com, a landlord rating website. The site started in Pittsburgh and has expanded to dozens of states throughout the country, currently boasting over 800 users and 600+ ratings. The site was written in Ruby on Rails. I’ve been brought in to bring about a bunch of new features, and we’ve decided it will be beneficial to do a complete rewrite of the application.

Besides all that, I’m still working for the College of Liberal Arts Webteam (CLAW!), and am taking all Aerospace classes this semester. Those classes are Aerodynamics, Flight Dynamics and Control, Aerospace Structures, and Instrumentation Laboratory.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so busy in my life. I love it.

Fantastic story of a British Operation from WWII.

http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=176

I saw this video a year or so ago and had forgotten about it. I thought of it recently and have been searching for quite some time to find it.

Watch the Video
I think it is an interesting comparison to Bush’s orating and debating skills contrasting when he was in Governor debates to the Presidential debates. Though I don’t necessarily agree with the diagnosis (nor do I have any medical basis to disagree), I think that the change is incredible. Although I don’t agree with his policies, Bush was very smart and well spoken. I’m not usually one for conspiracy theories, but he may still be both.

The current trends of laws and deterioration of individual rights in the country is exactly what a small group of elite have dreamed of. They are using fear to keep the American public in line and willing to undergo ridiculous amounts of governmental oversight, and “security measures” that create nothing but inconveniences for the innocent, and marginal effect on the “rampant terrorists”. Things like the no-fly list, and armed national guard soldiers with M16s at the airports. The no-fly list contains no names of people the administration is currently searching for, those names are classified. So why have it? It creates the illusion that they are doing something about the problem. It creates a security measure that affects the people only so much to inconvenience them. Once they are accustomed to that inconvenience, they will layer on another one. It is a measure to keep us all in fear, we must do everything they say so we can stay safe!! And so far, we’re all putting up with it.

We need to start demanding accountability of our elected governmental officials. The point of the government is not the rule the people. The role of the government is to work for the people. When did that change in America?

In 2009 (when Bush leaves the White House), the Bush/Clinton ‘regime’ will have been in office 28 years. Don’t let it be any longer than that. The Bushes and the Clintons are friends, allies, and have the same goals. The purpose of the 2 term limit was so that 1 group of individuals would not rule the government for longer than 8 years. That is exactly what is happening, don’t let it.

/rant.

The end of the semester is upon us, and there is much rejoicing. Classes ended yesterday and my finals start Saturday. I feel that this has been a good first semester here at the UMN and am looking forward to next semester too. Though, I will admit that I miss Daytona Beach a little bit, the people here are much more friendly in general, I’m already getting involved on campus (about to get involved in the Solar Car project) and I just feel like I fit in a little better. Bad driving seems to have followed me all the way across the country though, its really a curse.

I think I did well this semester, though that might change once I actually take my finals and get my grades back. There was a period of 2 weeks in November where I was pretty depressed and slacked off a bit, hopefully they didn’t hurt me too much.

I started Christmas shopping today. Got part of Luke’s present and part of Beth’s (brother and sister) as well. It is a good start, though I’ve already spent too much money. I’m going broke. I really need to start getting my ass in gear on this whole online marketing thing, but thats another post for another time. I’m looking forward to seeing my family, especially my oldest brother Matt and my Uncle Bob, since I don’t get to see them much anymore; living outside of the ‘main land’ and all.

I am most definitely looking forward to going skiing, sledding, and in general enjoying the snow. I’m pretty surprised that we haven’t gotten much snow here yet. We got a very small amount back in November that didn’t stick around for more than a few hours. Hopefully it will be a white Christmas though, they’re the most enjoyable.

Well, I wish everybody luck on their finals, and safe traveling to where ever you call home for the Holidays.

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

That’s the nice message I got from Wordpress after I had to start from scratch because I accidentally deleted the database that this site was being run off of when I was cleaning up my server. I won’t go into the details of how that happened, but rest assured I didn’t see “wordpress.peterleonhardt.com” database and say, “Oh! I can delete that!” It was more like “obscurehostname.obscuredomain.com” and said… “I don’t use a database on that site anymore… it can go!”

Several days pass and I, for no reason apparent to me, google myself. Low and behold PeterLeonhardt.com comes up as the first result, but the quoted text is a wordpress error! Ughhh…

Alas, here we are and I’ve restarted up one of my sites that I let die back in May. It is on course to make up the cost of the VPS I had to get (since it can’t be hosted on a shared server, hint hint) for it. It is growing well and will hopefully profit next month. I’m probably going to set up some copy cat sites of it too, since it takes 0 maintenance time, and I can just let them run, maybe rebooting the server once a week or so to keep things running smoothly.

I’m also working on the rewrite of Textbook Haven. Originally written in procedural PHP (yick!), I hope to be rolling it out as a Ruby on Rails app in a few months. Along with simply rewriting the back end, I’ve added a number of features and have designed it so adding features in the future will be much easier than in its current incarnation.

Thats the news for now!