Strange Smell

So, last night I came home about 11:00 to find my roommates outside our apartment huddling in their blankets. Looking confused at them, I entered the apartment. IT REEKED! Our entire apartment was filled with an overwhelming smell of a mixture of diarrhea and old, hot cheese that is now going bad. Considering how late it was, there was no way to call management and it is probably just something we left out in a bag. Well, the roomies told me that they were almost in bed when there was this sudden smell and it had completely overtook the apartment. I tried sniffing out the source but everywhere in the apartment smelled the same amount, bad. So, my roommates all had tons to do the next day and so they investigated their cupboards for a cause, and when they didn't find any problems with their stuff they decided they really can't do anything about it. So, after realizing that the bedrooms don't smell that bad, they went to bed and shut the doors behind them. One roommate did go borrow a smelly spray from somebody and sprayed it everywhere so now we have a mixture of the curdled cheese and peach (which I don't think is an improvement).

I didn't particularly like the idea of sleeping in an apartment that has no real ventilation and thus having the smell build up all night, and so I went around and borrowed fans from various apartments. I set up the fans to channel the air from the back of the apartment to the front and out the front door. I also lit several candles too. After studying for a bit outside, I gave up and decided to clean the apartment in hopes that I can find the cause. I didn't do any major cleaning, but I at least did the dishes, washed off the counters, swept the floor, and washed the sinks and the toilet. By the time I finished the smell was no better and I still had no clue what or where the source was. I still didn't want to close off our apartment to the world of fresh air, so I set up camp on the couch and left the front door open throughout the night. It was a pretty cold night, but at least we weren't drowned by the smell. Well, this morning I woke up to the smell still being there. Darn it. I was hoping it would randomly go away during the night. Oh, Well. Hopefully my roommates will talk to the management today and see if they have any ideas.

I am wondering if something came in and just died either in our apartment or between ours and the people above us or below us. Anyone have any suggestions as to the cause of the smell or a way to mitigate the smell? Anyways, I work most of today, so hopefully the mystery will be solved by the time I get home.

UPDATE:
Well, it is the next day now, and I have found out the source of the smell. It wasn't our apartment at all. the windows in the back of our apartment happen to open into the office/lobby/lounge area for the complex, and so when my roommates opened up the windows for the night so that we can milk off of the air conditioning in the lounge, the smell happened to come into. It ends up that someone thought it would fun to play a prank on the management and so poored spoiled milk in front of the office door and the office window area. The management didn't come in till 8:00 the next morning, so it had been sitting there all night. We thought our apartment had it bad, but the lobby/office area stank so bad that when I went to talk to them later in the afternoon I saw a few gas masks hanging around, as if that would help. So, thus solved the mystery of the mysterious smell. The office is getting its carpets cleaned tonight so our apartment will probably stink for another day or two before returning back to its normal self.

Wednesday (5-11-05)

So, mom has been after me for not writing more often. And I agree, now that I have more time I should at least attempt to write. Life here is good. I finished out last semester with a 3.78. I could have done better but I had a few classes that wouldn't give you points back when you were correct and they had marked off points. With Winter semester over I am in a much more relaxed state. For Spring term (which started about 3 weeks ago) I am taking Chem 481, which is biochemistry. I have taken this once before, but the teacher and I really didn't get along very well in terms of his way of teaching and my way of learning, and so I did horrid in the class. So, I am retaking it and I really enjoy this other teacher and I am learning a lot from it. To fill out the rest of my schedule so that I am full time, I am taking Phys 340 which is a physics lab that is based on circuitry and so I have done a lot of the labs beforehand in my Electrical Engineering Class that I had to take a few years back. And then my fun class is RMYL 223 and is camping skills. This will be a lot of fun and very interesting. Our final is basically go out as a class and camp for a few days. With the rest of my time, I am working. Well, now that I have everyone up to date ...

Wed. - stayed up late the night before trying to study for my biochemistry exam. Finally gave up and went to bed. Got up around 6:30 and got ready for the day. At work this morning I worked on creating a new copy of our code that is cleaner for when we create the next version. Currently we are just finishing up version 5 of our particle simulator. As soon as we get collisions working between unequal sized particles then we can create version six. At our work meeting we went over some thermodynamics. It is so funny how different the physic and chemistry people treat and teach thermodynamics. One considers work to be negative and the other positive and so even the equations themselves are different. I wish there was just one standard, but both groups are so stuck in there ways that it would never happen. Another example of that is the fact that chemists use PV=nRT as the ideal gas equation and physicists use PV=kbT or some form of that. Anyways, after work meeting we went into our boss's office to make fun of his computer. The boss just got a new computer because his old one is a few years old, and because the department had the money available, they decided to buy a 64 bit machine. The problem with that is that it is so new in the market, that all the software for a 64 bit computer are in their beta form and so still have tons of bugs. The operating systems also have errors. They computer support people have tried Red Hat, Mandrake, Debian, Slackware, and Fedora and all of them have problems of some type. We think that we were a little bit too quick and we should have let the 'market' stabilize a little and let everyone get the bugs out of there systems.

Anyways, after that I ran up to my physics lab where we were fooling around with using transformers as switches and hooking them up with a light bulb. It was fun, but I had a hard time getting the various circuits working even though I set them up right. We eventually figured out that my oscilloscope and my signal generator were both broken. Go fig. After the lab I ran over to the BNSN where my Biochemistry class was just starting. Fun class, we learned about enzymes and there function. After biochemistry I studied for about 2 hours for my biochemistry test and then went to the testing center to take it. The test was pretty short, but I couldn't remember one of the formulas and so I spent the majority of my time deriving it by hand and remembering everything that applies to it. I really enjoyed the test though. Unlike my last time taking biochemistry, this teacher gives us doable tests. Last time I took this class I got an average of 30% on the tests, this time I at least got 14 of the 16 multiple choice questions right. Thank goodness for teachers who know how to teach and test.

I got home from the testing center at about 9:00. I decided that I wanted a break and so I watched a movie called “Mean Girls” that my roommates had borrowed. It was interesting how it depicted high school. Personally, I don’t like the ending because it was the whole happily ever after sort of ending when I don’t think that situation could have come out good at all. I guess from my high school experience I just have no faith in high schoolers trying to resolve their differences and trying to remain nice to one another. They are probably the worst group of people when it comes to holding grudges, gossiping, and acting upon those idiotic feelings. I don’t know. Maybe that was just my high school experience, but about every day I was at high school, I won’t it to be over so I wouldn’t have to put up with that pettiness and stupidity. Thank goodness for my siblings who kept me sane during that time. Well, after the movie I went to bed and dreamed about high school and my experiences with it. It was interesting cause I dreamed about all the situations I got into in high school, but I resolved them in my dream as I would now instead of how I really resolved them back then. Interesting.