Weapons Quals

It was a busy weekend, I'll say that. Friday I headed down to Fitzsimons USARC, and through the morning we got our TA-50 field gear and our rifles. We got settled in at Ft. Carson, and after lunch chow we headed to the zeroing range. The object of zeroing is to set the sights according to the way a person aims. I had a little trouble with this. By convention, we would always shoot 3 rounds and then check where they went. A prerequisite of this method is that all 3 rounds hit in the same general area. Usually, I'd have 2 rounds pretty close together, and then one that was jerked way off. Needless to say, after 6 or 7 iterations of this, I was a bit frustrated. I did eventually zero the rifle to myself, but it felt like an ordeal.

Saturday was our day to qualify. We drove back to the zero range to move all of our gear over 400 yards to the qualification range. A few of us privates were tasked with moving a good-sized tent to the new site. Someone had the brilliant idea of just carrying the whole damn thing whole instead of breaking it down. It worked like a charm. They got the range ready and went hot pretty early, and I went up for the first firing order. I qualified the same as basic, Marksman with 24 of 40 pop-up targets. After that, I just sat around with a few buddies while the rest of the company qualified. By noon we were done. They drove us over to a driving course for some people to get experience with driving Humvees. I hadn't taken the classroom portion, so I was left sitting on some rickety old bleachers listening to the colonel talk about retirement and our unit's mission statements. I learned what our unit actually does in the Army, but other than that it was thoroughly boring.

This morning we cleaned up the barracks, cleaned weapons, and headed home. We had a goodbye for our commander, Col. Evenson. Long weekend, but productive in places.

No More Calculus

Well, this has been a busy week. Tuesday night was the Physics midterm, which I thought went pretty well. Yesterday I stayed at school after my classes to try and study for calculus that evening. I got distracted with building a spreadsheet of my current grades, my last midterm grade and final grades, and my overall course grade. It turned out that I needed 75% on both the midterm and final to get an overall 60%. And judging from the old posted exams I was trying, I was going to get about 15% on the midterm if I had taken it. I decided it wasn't worth the effort.

My study skills this semester have been really, really horrible. I'm trying to use my high school strategy of go to class, understand the material, do zero homework, and ride the test grades. It worked marginally in high school, and again marginally in community college. Unfortunately, university classes don't work at all for this strategy. I'm so lost in calculus right now that there's no hope for this semester.

So today was my day to register for the fall. I talked to my academic advisor, told him what was going on, and I suggested retaking calculus over the summer. He agreed, and suggested a program called Course Repitition, where my calc score from this semester won't be calculated into my GPA. We also went over a plan for the fall. I wondered if I should take any more computer classes at the moment, since I have so much core curriculum to finish, but he said it was a good idea to keep taking classes that will boost my GPA. So next semester, I'm signed up for Arabic 1, Physics 2, and Computer Algorithms. I may try and change Algorithms to something else later, but we'll see. And I'm pretty far back on the waitlist for Arabic, so that may not happen.

Tomorrow is Army drill. We're going to Ft. Carson again for Weapons Qualification, so wish me luck!

Happy Easter!

Things have been going well lately; school's the same as always. Although, I am getting worried about midterms next week. Calculus has been rough, really rough. I'm going to keep trying, but I'm pretty lost at this point. Infinite series are just not snapping for me, there's just too many cases and too many techniques. Physics should be fine, I just need to keep up a decent work ethic.

For Easter, I went to Mass in the morning with Ashley's family, and then had breakfast at their house. We stayed for a bit of the relatives showing up, and then Ashley and I headed back to Alcott to relax a bit. Good day though.

Home Improvement and the RTD Strike

Well, I got back to Colorado on Friday night, and pretty much just crashed for the evening. Saturday I went and watched Jeannie's rugby games, and was very proud of her. She made a few great tackles, two of which were about 5 seconds apart. Ashley bought a few houseware items from the Habitat for Humanity thrift store. We have a new love seat, dishwasher, refrigerator, and a toilet and sink for the basement bathroom that's about to be built. All that for about $160. And everything's in pretty good condition too. Jeremey managed to install the new dishwasher earlier this week, and it works wonderfully.

Spring Break ended quietly, and on Monday I headed back to school. I drove to the RTD Park-n-Ride and waited about 5 minutes for a bus, but none came. I realized that the RTD drivers were threatening a strike, so I drove to school and parked in the Euclid visitor's lot. Sure enough, RTD is on strike, and only a smattering of local routes are running. My regional route to school is off for the strike, so I'm having to drive every day. I finally managed to find a free parking lot. It's about a mile away from campus, but the school has a temporary shuttle set up for just this emergency. Oh, and I might finally get to work out loans and pay tuition. With only a month of class to go. Hup team.

Tonight I'm going with Cameron and Jeremey to the Nuggets game, so that should be fun. Tomorrow Ashley and I are putt-putt golfing with Kristen and Holly and their boyfriends. Yay for triple dates. ( :P ) And with luck, Saturday night Ashley and I will go to dinner and a movie with some gift cards. It's been a while since we had a night on the town, just the two of us.