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Well, this is one of those “I haven’t fallen from the face of the Earth yet”, kind of post. I think we all have one of those every now and then. I’m still alive and kicking, but seriously, whoever has the voodoo doll, could you please just leave it alone? Yes, you know which doll I’m talking about, the Mexican looking one with the wavy black hair and the glasses. Just put the darn doll down!  Now, I don’t really believe in voodoo dolls or any kind of witchcraft, but the truth is I’ve been having some very bad luck the last few days. First, I tried for the CSWP test a few days ago and didn’t pass it. I was very sad about it, but I don’t consider it a total loss, since now I know what to expect the next time I try, and I think I even learned a thing or two from it. The test is not impossible, just really long and tedious.  I didn’t use my three hours wisely and couldn’t finish. Next time, I hope, I’ll do much better.  OK, so maybe that’s not so bad, but guess what else? Well, my minivan got burglarized and brutally vandalized. It happened right in front of my own house, in broad daylight, and nobody heard or saw anything! Except for the personal items that were stolen from the vehicle (my beloved GPS was in there), the insurance will cover all needed repairs, but, as usual, I was left to deal with all the hassle of finding a good shop to do the work for me, arranging appointments, etc. I called the police to report the crime and they told me to file a report online, but they won’t do anything about it. They won’t even come or take a look at the vehicle. Nothing! So, I wonder, what’s the purpose of filing the report in the first place?  Just for it to become a statistic on how many cars get burglarized in this city? Hmmm…

Anyway, now I need to get back on track with everything else, including SolidWorks and blogging, of course. Haven’t got much done, but at least I’ve been practicing on SolidWorks 2008 for my second attempt at the CSWP test and I can tell you something: I am loving it. I know I said before I wasn’t sure yet, but now…  I just love what they did with it!  One thing that really saves me time is that little context toolbar that shows up every time I select anything in the graphics area or Feature Manager. I use it frequently to change to a normal view of a face, edit a sketch or feature, show or hide an item, or start a new sketch. It’s so convenient that I think next time I’ll take the test using SW2008, instead of SW2007. After all I had heard about it, I was afraid the new user interface would make me waste time while looking for toolbars and icons, but is actually helping me work faster, instead. In my humble opinion, it’s the best thing about SW2008.

This week I’m also unearthing some of the notes I ran into quite some time ago and that I had been saving for “some other day”. They are an introductory course to Finite Element Methods, written by Dr. Carlos Felippa; lecture notes and materials from one of the classes he teaches at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Ever since a brief encounter with ALGOR in 1997, I’ve always been fascinated by FEA, collecting all kinds of materials I can find about it, and now with COSMOSWorks so conveniently integrated into SolidWorks, I can finally learn about it, like I’ve always wanted to. I had been waiting until I felt a bit more confident in my SolidWorks basic skills. Now I think I can try to jump into it with both feet. I already have a few books on COSMOS, but I would appreciate if anyone can recommend a few good books on Finite Element Analysis.  And of course, any advice and suggestions are always welcome!

So, that’s all that’s been going on (or not going on at all) on this end. Hope I have better things to talk about real soon!