Saket Vora

This site might be getting a lot of attention due to me hosting the Krispy Kreme Challenge site on my hosting account. It is rather accidental — we didn’t get the domain name situation straightened out so the real domain: http://www.krispykremechallenge.com isn’t quite masking right. Oh well — we’ll fix it for next year.

We haven’t put any flyers around campus and already we have 242 registrants. This event is growing bigger and bigger each day and it feels quite thrilling at times to be one of the guys at the helm of it. I’ll do a recap of how far news of the Krispy Kreme Challenge has spread after its over.

Classes are off to a great start. For the past few days I’ve been working on getting the anechoic chamber built and made a few new friends in the process. We’re waiting for more materials to come in before we can finish. The EEP program is having a Silicon Valley trip for spring break that costs us just $200 out of pocket….it includes airfare, lodging, food, etc. It’s going to be a lot of fun. Dr. Christal Gordon’s class on Bio-information and biologically inspired circuitry looks like a great course. We covered basics on the neuron today and got a sneak peak at what is ahead.

Afterward I met up with Greg and Peyton who had a Krispy Kreme Challenge meeting. This is getting crazy big — 191 people registered. We have community support and nothing but optimism from people we talk to.  As one of the co-organizers for this event, it’s extraordinarily gratifying seeing it grow from just a few friends meeting on a Saturday morning to a huge community event raising over $1000 for the North Carolina Children’s Hospital. Who knows where the numbers will go when we start blitzing the campus with advertisements? 300 is a sure bet, but 400?

Tomorrow I’m heading to the lab. Materials for this anechoic chamber are coming in tomorrow. I need to also finish up this Circuits Lab test that I’m writing for the regional tournaments for North Carolina Science Olympiad. Too bad they locked us out of the EEP lab so I can’t get in to test out a circuit…I’ll just stop by RadioShack I guess.

In other news, Nader got engaged to Ashley Chadwick on December 28th, (my birthday). This was a complete surprise to me. My friends and I are still absorbing the news.

My good friend Naman leaves for India on Tuesday. Last summer/fall he was a coordinator for a polio vaccination campaign…incredible work. He will continue working in the same vein, only different disease I think. Mike heads back to Georgia Tech on Saturday.

This break has been really great.