My New Car's Arrived!

Click for a photo gallery of my new car!

I bought my shiny new 2005 G35 Sedan back around April 30th. As a bunch of you know, I've been wanting this car since it debuted in 2003. For 2005, Infiniti kindly made several upgrades, including a refined interior and a very cool wireless key system. I don't have to take the i-key out of my pocket to open the doors or start the car. All I have to do is walk up to the car and open the door to disarm the alarm with that key somewhere on my person. When I turn the ignition, it uses the same wireless transponder to let me start the car with no keys either. Cool! The color I picked was Diamond Graphite, which I think looks great on the car. Check out the gallery of pictures.

You can read up on stats at Infiniti.com if you care. This thing's fun to drive, great to ride in (it has reclining rear seats :-D ), and has a subtle elegance to its design that I like. I also picked the black leather interior which some people have said may get hot in the summers. That's not a big deal, since I can roll the windows down and let the heat out from the i-key. It also plays MP3 and WMA CDs in the in-dash changer, and I could go on and on about all the nifty features.

I like the car a lot, and had a great sales experience in Memphis working with Cliff Taylor at Infiniti of Memphis. I highly recommend him and his team. I got it for about $100 over the invoice price, or about $2800 below the MSRP, thanks to a Vendor / Partner deal between Infiniti and IBM.

Thesis is DEFENDED!

Dr. Jerry Crain, Director of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering receiving a special award

Brian and I just completed the defenses of our theses this afternoon. Aside from revised introductory material, our committee consisting of Dr. Sridhar Radhakrishnan, Dr. Jerry Crain, and Dr. Monte Tull approved our works. With that, I've (almost) completed a Masters of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering in one year.

I also emceed an awards banquet for IEEE OU about an hour later. Many, many thanks to Lisa Morris for her keynote! I think we all got a great message out of it. For anyone that's interested, leadership opportunities in IEEE OU and HKN OU are still available. Email me for information.

Also, thanks to the entire IEEE OU officer team from 2005 and the new officer team for 2006! Without you guys, we couldn't have pulled this off. This has been a great year for IEEE at OU.

~ Mike