Door handles

Well, I am back at University, and everything is back into full swing.
The first design project is to design a door handle, which at first
glance seems simple enough... but don't be fooled. It is actually quite
a challenge to design a handle that can be cast out of metal so that it
can be used on both sides of the door with very little or no machining.
Concepts and a detailed drawing of the lock mechanism are due in on
Thursday, and I haven't really started! I guess that can be something
for tomorrow, I finish Uni at 11.30am on Wednesdays, and my only other
plans are to go and see a play in the evening... that should leave
plenty of time for design work.
This semester, one of our lecturers started out our first lecture
saying; "This is machine dynamics, its very easy to fail. This is a very
hard subject." I was scared, he said the f word! Fail. Not just that,
but that it was quite easy to fail. After I recovered from my initial
shock, I made a vow to keep up with all the work for this class. (I
think I promise myself this at the start of every semester, lol) I went
and bought the textbook and I did all the week 1 problems before my
tutorial (I felt square having done everything he was trying to explain)
Anyways, so far, so good, I worked on week 2 questions after Uni today,
so hopefully I will be able to spread out my workload a little bit this
semester.
No more last second lab reports and no more late nights! I am going to
be an angel and goto bed early every night. I'm trying to keep my
weekends pretty clear of homework, so that I can have a social life too. lol
Speaking of things other than Uni, a couple of days ago my computer
decided that it wanted to stop working. It was still having issues with
overheating, so I pulled the heat sink off to have a closer look at what
was happening. Mark helped diagnose the problem over the phone, my
thermal grease had dried up! I reckon its because when I moved my
computer to Kelly's house while I was house sitting, the heat sink must
have come loose a little. Without full contact with both the processor
and the heat sink, my thermal grease started to dry up and get baked
onto the CPU. I cleaned the area, and applied some new thermal grease,
which cost $20 for a grand total of 3.5 grams. I guess it could have
been worse, if I had to replace my CPU I would have forked out upwards
of $250! Anyways, the new thermal grease seems to be working even better
than the Intel supplied grease, making my PC quieter and cooler. Thats a
relief!
I cant think of any other news, ooh... Grandma on my mums side had a
fall and went to hospital, so keep her in your prayers.
There was a youth planned service at church on Sunday, which I had
worked on. It went quite well, and we even had a new member come along.
His name is Toby, and he's almost 21, his birthday is just after mine. I
also offered to take him to Glen Waverly's evening service, which he
came to, so I hope he keeps coming and gets something out of it.