Nerds

Not the candy. Today was spent in the company of so-called ‘nerds’ (myself included). For one thing, they are doing a school project while on break from univ. Well, I guess they’re not really nerds, but I consider them nerds kwani the brain required to do what they do is not a brain I possess. I was hanging out at University of Nairobi with my friend Stanley and his Electrical Engineering classmates (and 2 of the 14 group members are women). They’re building a (actually 2) robot(s) for a competition. Ay caramba! There are so many wires! They were trying to convince me that building a robot is easy (they claimed easier than nursing. Right, I’m sure. Though Stanley did make the point that you do have the flexibility to experiment while you are working, ‘I wonder what will happen if I put a wire here?’, without killing people). I agreed /c that, but maintained the position that my brain could never even begin to grasp the concept of how to build a micro chip or which wire to attach where on a mother (or whatever) board.



Their robot has to be programmed to pick up a small box and take it somewhere else. But it also has to be able to differentiate b/w different colored boxes (it’s supposed to pick the blue ones only). It also has to do this without any encouragement from its creators. So, when told to go, it must just know that it is to find however many blue boxes and bring them to a certain area. The boy robot is named ‘Tom’ and the girl robot is named ‘Stephanie’. The girl is prettier. She has a dark red plexi-glass frame, while the boy just has his wires sticking out every which way. I have not really ‘chillaxed’ for a while, and it was really nice to spend time with the univ. croud for a bit (a.k.a. ‘age-mates’).

Why am I a nerd?……………………..I bought a nursing dictionary.