Jon's Spot

Blog Moved

2007-10-25T00:37:00.000-05:00

I now have my own domain and my blog can now be found at http://blog.jthon.com/.

Enjoy.

Housing Found

2007-07-23T14:00:00.000-05:00

I spent this last weekend out in the Bay area looking for an apartment. I was unpleasantly surprised to find housing had gone up about 20% since I did a brief survey about 6 months ago. One Bedroom apartments out there now start around $1,250 a month for a "decent" apartment. I found a few places similar to the worst Madison has to offer to students for ONLY $1,095 or so a month. On the other end of the spectrum are the "luxury" apartments aka new which run from $1,600 to over $2,000 a month for a one bedroom.

I've decided to go with a place which had a 850 square foot 1 bedroom for "only" $1,325 a month. As this complex only does month to month leases at least I have some flexibility to move if I find someplace else. As two and three bedroom apartments only cost a couple hundred more than a one bedroom, if I find a roommate I can always move into such a place to save some cash. Now I get to start the fun process of coordinating a move of my "room of junk", and car to CA.

Done with school

2007-06-21T12:00:00.000-05:00

As of last week I've officially turned in my Thesis and finished my Masters degree. Now I have about two months off and then I start working full time. So far during my break I've been working on turning my Masters Thesis into a paper to be submitted to a conference, and relaxing a bit back at home.

Of the two the relaxing is the harder task as some members of my family think one shouldn't have freetime. As this is my last break before I start work full time I don't really want to do anything but sit around, read, play video games, watch movies, golf, and do whatever outside.

Disney, why do you hate consumers?

2007-06-02T16:14:00.000-05:00

So I bought the new Pirates of the Carribean: The curse of the Black Pearl Blu-ray this last week. I just popped it in to watch it only to find out Disney has decided this new hi-def format needs to work just like their childrens DVD's. So what's this mean for the consumer. Previews, lots of previews before the movie. Did I mention that you cannot use the menu, or pop-up menu features to skip them?

At least Disney still let me use next chapter, so after pressing R1 about 20 times I finally got to the movie's top menu. Does anyone know why Disney makes their movies do this to you? Just about every other Blu-ray I've played so far drops you right to a menu after a very short Blu-ray trailer. The only other movie I saw with any more extensive previews let you hit menu to skip them at least.

All Disney's managed to accomplish is to ensure that I don't bother buying another movie from them again. I'm so much better off just finding whatever I want from them and downloading it. At least this way I don't have to deal with all their stupid previews.

Playstation 3 Just Got Better

2007-05-24T13:11:00.000-05:00

As of this morning Sony released a new minor PS 3 Firmware, upgrading the PS 3 to version 1.80. While the increment was minor it packed a few new features including:

1080p output scaling for DVDs
1080i/p output scaling for PS1 and PS 2 games (yes that's hi-def PS 2)
Support for DLNA media servers

So what is a DLNA media server you ask? The DLNA is a consortium of companies which sponsor a UPnP media server system. Programs such as Windows Media Connect, Nero HomeShow, Myth TV, and Xbox Media Center all support this protocol. Basically it's a way to stream media from one system and play it back on another.

What's this mean for the PS 3? I can stream movies over the network to it just like with my haxx0red Xbox. That's right the PS 3 is now a media center device you can use to for listening to streamed music, and watching streamed videos! The only downside of the whole thing is PS 3's limited support for different file formats. For some reason the PS 3 only supports the following video formats:

MPEG4-SP
MPEG4-AVC
MPEG2

For those of you unfamiliar with the MPEG 4 spec you'll know MPEG4-SP as some very low bitrate mobile version of MPEG4, and MPEG4-AVC as h.264 . The problem with this is that I have very few h.264 media files. Most of my movies (that aren't just ISOs) are in the MPEG4-ASP format, also known as Xvid, or Divx. Of course this "Advanced Simple Profile" isn't supported directly by the PS 3 so I can't watch most of my videos.

Luckily I purchased Nero 6 a couple years ago and it comes with a Nero HomeShow which can do on the fly transcoding of some videos. As I'm using this as my Media Server it can transcode all my Xvid files to MPEG2 on the fly. The only downside is that for most Xvid files this doesn't look good as the Xvid source is to low of a bitrate/resolution which doesn't transcode very well on the fly. In any case the better encoded stuff still looks pretty good, and while it's not quite as pretty as the Xbox it's good enough for most things (then again I'm not testing my Xbox on a 1080i capable display). Now I just need to find myself a good transcoding Linux server so I setup a Linux file server.

Looking for a Domain Name

2007-05-22T17:28:00.001-05:00

Since I'm soon to be completely done with school (silly Thesis). Because of this I'll be losing the wisc.edu address that I've been using for the last SIX years. Rather than send everything to gmail I'd like to get myself a domain name for e-mail and hosting. The problem is that most of the good names are already taken.

So I ask this dear readers, do you have any suggestions on a domain name I might register?

VIM why didn't I use you before

2007-05-22T16:40:00.001-05:00

I've been doing quite a bit of file editing at the command line recently. Rather than using the my good old standby editor pico, I've been forcing myself to use vim for the last 6 months. After doing a bunch of command line editing recently I think it's finally paid off. Plus, I recently discovered a new trick!

Those of you who may be familiar with this little program know a search and replace can be conducted using the following command :

%s/thing to find/thing to replace/g

Usually when I do this there's something in my editing buffer I want to search for and replace so I dutifully retype what I want to search for and replace and hit enter. Then realize oops typo, and have to hit u to undo and repeat the process.

Now I've finally learned how to paste into the command buffer. Simply start your command, then when you want to paste type ctrl-r then hit " to paste the last thing you yanked. Even better you can paste from any of the numbered or named vi registers. For example you can yank something into the a" register by typing a"y rather than just hitting y. Now when you use ctrl-r hit a and bam your thing in a gets pasted into place.

You can combine this with any of the 26 a-z registers to juggle up to 26 things at once! BTW, to paste normally from the special registers you just type x"p where x is your register name (a in previous example).

The only downside of my newfound vim skills is that I now find myself typing :w in Word to try and save my work.

Vista why are you so slow?

2007-05-21T23:06:00.000-05:00

So I ended up putting XP x64 back on my desktop as I wasn't ready to go Linux full time yet (I should probably test duel-booting + games). I did find some amazing things out. When I said Vista was dog slow in my last post, I didn't quite capture how slow. See a fresh cruftless xp install flys on my hardware. We're talking 15 seconds from post to desktop.

Running WoW I'm seeing a solid 60 FPS while running around even in Shattrath or Ironforge. As a comparison Vista liked to average 20 FPS in the same areas. That's right I go from a nice solidly playable framerate to 20 FPS by switching from the ohh so slow 64 bit XP, to the horrible bloat that is Vista 32 bit (yes 32 bit Vista == slower than 64 bit XP).

What I'd really like to run on my desktop is OS X except that only works on Apple systems. Unfortunately they don't have an non-uber workstation tower, and even in that case they don't support the latest graphics cards. I really wish Apple would just sell Tiger as a separate product and let it work on other hardware. At that point I think MS would be crushed.

Vista + XP + Hibernate = Dead Computer

2007-05-13T15:48:00.000-05:00

Well it finally happened, dual booting Vista and XP has now hosed my desktop. It appears that at one point when I was using XP it got hibernated instead of properly shutdown. Turns out that if you do anything to XP's disk when it is busy hibernating, such as run a program from the disk it doesn't wake up very well.

Rather it boots, then explorer just keeps restarting every 10 seconds until you shutdown. But that's not all! If you manage to shut the system down during a brief moment when explorer is up it marks all your disk as dirty. Then on the next boot it runs chkdsk, which somehow goes through your OS file system and does some magic. So that when XP tries to boot again you're left with a mouse cursor, and a giant black desktop until force a restart. Ohh did I mention that safemode also gives you a giant black desktop?

Well at least XP didn't eat Vista so my computer isn't totally dead. Only Vista is a giant dog on system resources and so doing anything, like gaming really sucks on it. I guess it's about time I reinstalled XP 64 anyway. I just hadn't planned on doing a big backup/reinstall this week.

I might as well throw this out there. Should I bother putting XP back on or should I switch my desktop over to Linux?

Reasons to use Linux:

Works well as a desktop
Could maybe actually do work related to my research on Linux
Can play UT 2004
Not Windows

Reasons to use Windows:

I can play games other than UT 2004
Desktop is primarily used for gaming
Really all I can think of is I like gaming

Cooking at Home

2007-04-25T18:41:00.000-05:00

After eating out most of last week, or eating whatever was easy to cook (like hotdogs). I decided today to make some good food. So tonight is Indian food night. Of course I'm making Chicken Tikka Masala which is about as Indian as General Tso's is Chinese. That doesn't stop it from being good.

Chicken Tikka Masala

Serves : 4

Ingredients

6 Chicken thigh pieces (boneless) (Or use some boneless skinless chicken breasts)

Marinade

6 tbsp. Yogurt
1 tsp red chili powder
1 tbsp Garlic paste
1 tsp red chili powder
1 tbsp Garlic paste
2 tbsp Ginger paste
1 tsp Cumin Powder
1 tsp Curry Powder (Garam Masala)
4-5 tsp lemon juice
Salt to taste

For Gravy

2 Tomatoes(chopped)
1 Onion
1 tsp Ginger-garlic paste
½ tsp. Cumin powder
½ tsp. Coriander powder
¼ cup Milk
1 tsp Sugar
Salt to taste

Directions

Chicken tikka masala is a two step process, Tikka and Gravy. Grilling the chicken definitely flavors this dish but if you do not have a grill, you could use any oven too. Once you have your chicken grilling, you could start the gravy process in parallel. (I usually just cook the chicken in a pan)

Cut chicken into smaller pieces. Drain any water.
Mix all ingredients for the marinade and add chicken into it. Set aside for at least 1 hour
Grill chicken on hot grill (barbecue) to golden brown. Baste butter (or oil) frequently to ensure that chicken remains tender and moist. Do not overcook.
Heat oil and add ginger, garlic paste. Fry a little and add chopped onions.
Keep heat on high to slightly caramelize the onions. Caramelizing onions enhances its flavors for this dish.
When onions turn golden, add chopped tomatoes and keep frying on medium heat until the oil separates.
Add cumin and coriander powder. Mix
Add salt and sugar and drop the chicken tikka pieces in it.
Let it simmer for 5 minutes on low heat and let the flavors mingle a little.
Increase heat to high and incorporate milk slowly. Stirring continously.
Once the gravy is of right consistency, reduce heat to low. Prepare any garnish
Serve with basmati rice. In the event you don't have basmati rice, white rice will do.

(Another hint, if you decide to cook basmati rice you should rinse it as it's a very starchy rice. Rinse it with cold water until the water stops being cloudy.)

I'd have a photo of the food, but my one camera has a dead battery, and my good camera's busted.

Podcasts

2007-04-24T14:16:00.000-05:00

Today I thought I'd mention a couple of interesting Podcasts.

The first is the MPR's "The Current" Song of the Day podcast. They feature a variety of music from both local (MN) and other artists. The music tends to be pretty good and given they release one song every day it doesn't take long to accumulate a nice collection of free tunes from them.

I also enjoy listening to the Irish and Celtic Music Podcast. This podcast features well Irish and Celtic music and comes out once or twice a month. Unlike the MPR podcast it's usually about a one hour solid block of music. Doesn't work as well as MPR for fitting in with the rest of my music, but it's still fun to listen to.

On a less musical note I enjoy listening to NPR's weekly radio news quiz show Wait Wait Don't Tell Me. This radio show features current events, and special guests along with some wacky news. Where else would you ever learn about the Burqini, or scented tires so you can burn some lavender rubber? Plus special guests such as "Elmo", Tony Snow, and Associate Justice Stephen Breyer always have something interesting to say.

That's it for now, I might have some more podcast fun later. All the podcasts are available on iTunes along with through the links I've posted here.

The Light It Burns

2007-04-20T01:53:00.000-05:00

Well apparently I've finished my transformation into a creature of the night. It appears that spending a couple hours outside in the morning is enough sunlight to cause a large amount of sunburn on my arms and face. Apparently, our ozone layer has shrunk a bit compared to when I was younger as it used to take a lot more sun before I'd burn, that or I'm now a Vampire.

Free TV Online!

2007-03-01T13:14:00.000-06:00

AOL now has a free online tv service available at http://video.aol.com/video-category/in2tv/2120 called In2TV. This service bring free and full TV shows to you via the 'net. You can even download high quality versions if you happen to have Windows XP (Mac OS X and XP 64 not supported of course). This service has some high quality shows for free and isn't just full of a bunch of junk.

They have Babylon 5, the old Batman Cartoons, Silverhawks, Thundercats (Ok, these two aren't great but I liked them as a kid), The Adventures of Brisco County Junior, The Fugitive and more. I've only played with it a little bit but so far I'm impressed with the selection given that it's AOL.

High-Def Gaming

2007-02-15T15:48:00.000-06:00

My PS 3 component cable has arrived, and I spent last night playing around with high-def. While doing this I learned the following.

My Dell 24" LCD doesn't support 1080P over component.
High-Def Harry Potter trailers are cool.
High-Def games look really nice.
PS 2 games look really crappy in comparison.

I tested my one PS 3 game Resistance: The Fall of Man first. This game looks great in high-def. The graphics are crisp, with no noticeable slowdown. While playing online matches it's much easier to pick out your targets compared to on a normal SD TV. Only negatives is that I could actually notice some poor mipmapping on some chain bridges in one of the maps. The quality of the standard def TV makes this completely unnoticeable.

I also gave GTHD a spin. The cars and track all look great. They're all very crisp and the detail amazing. Especially as I fired up GT 4 right afterwards. Comparing GT4 to GTHD in HD makes GT 4 look like complete crap. Doesn't help that the 1080i output setting for GT4 seems busted. Setting it to 1080i makes some stuff look crisper but really does some weird stuff to the graphics. I'm not sure if this a PS 3 bug or just something with GT4. The 480p setting does look ok, but is super chunky and doesn't compare to GTHD. I'm not sure if I can stand the graphics of the game now that I've seen a high def version.

I'll post a few comparison pictures of the what the various games look like in high def later today.

Cable on the Way

2007-02-13T23:29:00.000-06:00

My PS 3 Component cable has finally started its journey from Amazon.com. More info on the awesomeness of HD once it gets here.

A New Year

2007-01-02T18:13:00.000-06:00

Once again a giant chunk of time has passed since my last post. It's been about 2 months since posted anything here. Nothing to interesting has happened in this time. Mostly I was just busy with schoolwork which is probably not to interesting for others to read about.

So what exciting things have happened in the last couple weeks since break started? I backed my car into a tree causing about $1000 in damages to it. So my car has been at a body shop since the 26th. Apparently, a broken tail light and some small damage to the rear left quarter panel add up quickly. It also appears that the body shop may have broken a door lock while doing their repairs. I'll find out more about that when I pickup my car tomorrow.

In addition to breaking my car, I played some video games (no WoW!) with my family, did some homework, and picked up a 60 GB PS 3 from a local EB Games store the Wed after Christmas. I'll probably put up a review of the PS 3 later. So far I like most of the interface but they do need to add some more features before its media capabilities catch up to that of my hacked Xbox. I also might take a stab of setting up linux on it once I get back to school and can play with it on my 24" LCD monitor.

The one accessory I still need to pick up is a component video cable as they didn't include one in the box. The official Sony one is only about $20 and other offbrands can be had for about the same price. My local Best Buy only carries a $62.99 PsyCable super monster component cable which is way over priced. They also had a $99.99 HDMI cable for the PS 3 which is the same as a $5 cable available online. Since no sanely priced cables were available in my area I need to pick one up in Madison or online.

Trip Album Uploaded

2006-10-07T14:49:00.000-05:00

So I've uploaded the only photos I could quickly find of my trip back from CA. You can check out some brush fires in Nevada here. If I come across any other photos I'll add them to the album.

CA to MN

Oct 7, 2006 - 6 Photos

Also if anyone knows a better hosting service with more space let me know, preferrably something free. I've got gigs of photos and manually resizing them or adjusting jpeg compression ratios is a pain. I'm also open to suggestions for software to batch automate such a conversion without messing with the originals.

Been a long while

2006-10-07T01:32:00.000-05:00

Well looking at my blog it's been quite a long time since I posted last. While I didn't die during that time I've been busy with school and haven't had much time for posting (that and nothing exciting happens at school :(). Anyhow, I was finally able to migrate my blog to the new blogger beta. So far I'm impressed it managed to migrate my links without any real data loss.

In the last two months since I last posted, I drove from CA to MN. Drove from MN to WI. Had my roommate burn up my apartment's kitchen. Played WoW (acquired my tier 2 epic set). Done schoolwork. Eaten cheese curds. From my trip I have a few pictures of Nevada on fire as we saw lightning strikes start a few brush fires on the way back. I'll try to post something from my trip back over the next couple of weeks.

Quiet week

2006-08-09T00:57:00.000-05:00

Well it's been pretty quiet here the last couple of weeks. This last weekend I spent Saturday in San Francisco with a couple of friends from Madison. I managed to get a nice sunburn on my face since I once again forgot to use sunblock. I also learned that it's a long walk from the piers to Lumbard Street, those hills in San Francisco are a pain to walk up.

I spent Sunday in Livermore wine tasting, and it was a lot of fun. Unlike trendy Nappa/Sonoma Livermore has mostly free tastings and some very good wine for reasonable prices. Only one place was charging $25+ for a bottle and their wine wasn't even that good. I spent more than I should have buying wine. Ahh well I'll just have to drink it sometime. The trick now is to get it back to MN/WI without it going bad.

That's it for now. I'll try and post a few pics of San Francisco and my earlier crater trip when I have time.

It went pop when it stopped

2006-07-14T02:13:00.000-05:00

Well it seems my air mattress has decided to die on me. As of 6am this morning my mattress has some mysterious leak and loses air at an incredible rate, only silently and without any breeze. Instead the air dissappears quickly from the confines of the mattress and leaves no trace of its escape route. As I haven't had time to find a replacement I get to sleep on the floor for a night. Tomorrow I need to go air matress shopping to find one that fits my bed.

First Repair

2006-07-09T10:31:00.000-05:00

My car is going in for it's first service this morning. Sometime over the last month it developped a slow leak in one of the tires. Since driving around on a flat is a bad idea I get to enjoy an hour or two at a tire place while they diagnose and fix the problem.

Stupid Cars.

(Also I'll try and have an update on my trip later, I still have Gigabytes of photos to go through.)

The Adventure Begins

2006-06-30T23:51:00.000-05:00

A long weekend stands before me, for four days I have no work, and no repsonsibilities. Starting early tomorrow morning I set out on a long journey, a great adventure.

I venture forth to the uncharted north of the Republic of California, and into the wilds of Oregon. For during my time off I will visit the silent giants standing along the shores of the pacific, explore a cave, and visit an island of wizards.

I plan to document my adventures through pictures and text but it we shall see how things go. With that I shall head to rest before I begin my journey early on the morrow.

I just want you to know who I am

2006-06-29T00:30:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I made a post. Now where do I start. I've been both busy with work and yet had nothing to do while at work? Strange Huh?

Outside of work I've been busy as well. On the WoW front my guild has managed to make it to the final boss of Black Wing Lair, Nefarian. So far after about 5 tries we have him down to phase 2 so we're doing pretty well.

In the real world I've been to a few LAN parties, woke up at the crack of dawn to watch the world cup, and been to a concert in the last couple of weeks. Of those I have to say last night's concert was probably the most fun I've had in the last week or so. I went to the Goo Goo Dolls/Counting Crows summer tour concert held at the Shoreline Amphitheater. Of the two bands I enjoyed the Goo Goo Dolls the most. I'm just not as into the music of the Counting Crows. This was the first time I've seen either of these groups live and I have to say they have a totally different dynamic. During a live show the music has more more energy and yet many of the songs had a different slower pace.

Now I need to decide if I liked the music well enough to buy their latest CD. I almost did the night of the concert but the "merchant booth" was charing over $15 and I wasn't sure if the extra cost ws going to the band or some third party.

I'd upload a few pictures of the concert except I managed to leave my camera at work and so didn't take any :(. I tried to take some photos on my cellphone but it really doesn't work that well.

Uni-Man

2006-06-15T00:06:00.000-05:00

On the way to work today I saw someone with a sweet ride on their way to work. It wasn't a ferrari, lotus, porsche, or maserati (those are a dime a dozen).

What I saw was a guy riding a unicycle.

Photo Time!

2006-06-01T22:19:00.000-05:00

Today I have a bunch of pictures to post. First I have a bunch of pictures of the top of Donner Pass which is at about 7,000 feet. This pass is crossed by I-80 as you enter California from Nevada.

I have a few more pictures of the pass but I need to find a good place to host a photo album.

In addition to these last photos of my trip I have a few pictures of my apartment.

Finally I have a closeup of that set of Katana's you can see in the first photo. My Dad purchased these for me in Chinatown when he went in the San Francisco Tuesday. They look kinda cool and the whole set cost $26 after tax! If you pull them out the appear to be steal and a bit greasy. They really remind me of practice blades for Iaido but less practical.

Day One

2006-05-30T20:26:00.000-05:00

I've managed to survive day one of my summer internship at a small fabless-semiconducter design house. Even so we've had a few interesting changes from last year. Apparently, due to space constraints interns don't get cubes, we get sit in the hall, with a modular desk thing attached to the outside of the cube we sit by. At least the hall we sit in is by the giant glass windows on the side of the building so at least I get some sunlight out of the deal. The downside is that I don't get a desk, just a sort of hanging table without any storage/drawers. Next year interns will probably end up in the parking lot :P.

Another interesting change is that we no longer get phones, instead we were given some usb headsets and use some software phone. To bad the headsets suck and can't pick up your voice at all, don't ever buy a Logitech Premium 250 USB headset. It is impossible to turn it up enough to pick up a voice without shouting. The IP phone software at least appears to work well except for our crappy headsets. This sort of makes me feel like I'm working in a Dilbert cartoon.

In more interesting news I get to do something completely new to me, and once again I'm forced to learn a ton of new stuff. Basically nothing but my knowledge of internal chip code names is useful from last year. But being thrown into the fire is what internships are all about! I also found out some of the work I did last year is still being actively used, worked on and has been slightly improved. Apparently, my internship last summer has had some long lasting effect on what's going on at my employer!

Busy Day

2006-05-28T00:30:00.000-05:00

Well today we (my Dad and I) put another 700 miles on my car. We drove all the way from Evanston, WY to Rocklin, CA, crossing the states of Utah, and Nevada. This last trip was a bit more exciting than the last couple, as we got to see some cool mountains and enjoyed a few rain, sleet, and snowstorms. I got the honor of driving anytime we approached mountainous terrain as my Dad dislikes driving in the mountains. This meant I got to drive from WY to the middle of the Utah salt flats, and from Reno, NV to CA.

First I have a few pictures of Utah just outside Salt Lake city at the first reststop after entering the state:

This is a rather pretty part of Utah and a fun canyon to drive down. At one time pioneers came down this same canyon on their way to California and Oregon. The last picture gives a brief glimpse of the road ahead. About 10-20 minutes further into Utah you drive by where the bobsled, luge, and skiing events of the 2002 Olympics at Salt Lake city were held.

Next we have a picture of part of the area where the olympics where held along with a picture of the Great Salt Lake (from a moving car):

Finally, we have a few pictures from the small set of mountains in between Utah, and Nevada. As you can see in these it's gotten a bit colder and it's now snowing instead of raining on us.

That's currently it for pictures. I have a few pictures from the top of Donner Pass which is between NV, and CA but they are on my other camera (and about 5mb a picture). Can anyone suggest a place I can host a bunch of pictures for free? The mountains between CA, and NV are pretty cool but I don't have any pictures of the trip as I was busy driving. My Dad was to busy cringing on every turn to take pictures (it turns out that a Mazda 3 corners really well :D).

After arriving in Rocklin, my Dad and I went and saw the new X-Men III movie after eating some dinner. I'll post my thoughts on the movie later after I've given others a chance to see it first. (One hint, STAY UNTIL THE END OF THE CREDITS)

Night-time Driving

2006-05-28T00:20:00.000-05:00

Here are a couple pictures of my dash at night. When taking the photo's I didn't realize my camera would automagically set the shutter speed really low so they turned out sort of blurry.

First is a picture of the dash when you first enter the car:

This next picture is of the dash before you turn on your headlights:

Next we turn on the lights, and we get the blue back:

Finally a picture of the console with the stereo, clock, and temperature readout. You can't make them out since they are all in black on that giant glowing red bar. A tiny bit of camera movement loses the readout:

Zoom-Zoom

2006-05-26T21:46:00.000-05:00

Well nothing really exciting happened today, we managed to make it across Nebraska and Wyoming with no real trouble. Today we drove 400 miles across Wyoming and about another 400 miles across Nebraska. That puts us up to around 1,400 for my 2,200 mile trip. Right now I'm sitting in a hotel Evanston, WY taking full advantage of the wireless internet (yes I logged into WoW but I don't really plan to play). It took me a bit to get logged in as it appears the default name server assigned by the hotel doesn't really exist. In trying to figure out why I couldn't find Google I discovered they use linksys home routers as access points which all happen to use the default admin password. With my newfound power I could h4x0r the router and mess up the 'net but that would be pretty pointless and just screw me over.

Anyways I have a few pictures to post. I have a couple pictures of Wyoming from the car, and a few pictures of my car. For those of you who don't know I recently (two days ago) purchased a 2006 Mazda 3, S model to drive around for the next 10 years. In any case I have a couple pictures of the car for those interested. But first Wyoming!

These are the only pictures which turned out, the rest are just of completely flat land and have reflections from the car window. Now for my car.

Now the interior:

Those of your who may have looked closely might have noticed that yes, this car has a manual not an automatic transmission. I currently have like 4 days experience with it and have it down pretty well now. Another interesting tidbit is that you CANNOT see any of the gauges when the car is off as the red is 100% led lights. As an added bonus the white edges you see turn blue at night, it looks pretty cool. I'll try and snap a photo after it gets dark and post it later. Anyways that's it for now. Tomorrow, it's time to cross Utah, and Nevada as we plan to stop in Sacremento for the night (my Dad doesn't want to drive further than that).

California HO!

2006-05-25T22:39:00.000-05:00

Well I'm off to California as of today. Right now I'm sitting in a hotel in Lincoln, Nebraska after about half a day of driving like crazy. So far the trip has been pretty uneventful. Nebraska/Iowa are probably the two most boring (and smelliest) states to drive through so I don't think much exciting will happen over the next day or so. Hopefully I'll have something more interesting to post tomorrow.

Vael Down

2006-05-25T10:13:00.000-05:00

As of last night my WoW guild has finally downed Vaelastrasz the Corrupt! This boss is considered the second hardest guy in BWL after Nefarion. With Vael down we will once again start making serious progress in BWL.

Now back to packing for CA.

Time is Money Friend

2006-05-24T09:36:00.000-05:00

Well it's been a very busy week and a half for me. I've spent most of my week taking care of stuff before I head out to California to start my internship at nVidia. WoW time has been restricted to my scheduled raid times once again.

So what have I done this week (in no particular order)?

Played with my new Olympus Stylus 600 and Olympus E-500 cameras.
Test drove more cars than I can count.
Driving my brother and sister to school/work/events.
Picking out a new pair of glasses.
Shopped for Car insurance.
Compared Car loan rates.
Worked on some school stuff
Spent a couple days sick with a 101° fever.
Setup shared internet in a relatives house.
Went to a birthday party.
Went to a car auction.
Got pulled over for driving a white Cadillac.

As you can see it has been a busy week, especially as I think I left some stuff out. Now I need to get packed up and ready to head out to CA tomorrow.

Orphan Tour

2006-05-11T00:59:00.000-05:00

For some reason my brother decided to take a poor Stormwind orphan along to BWL.

I don't think this is really the right place for children.

AARGGGHH Stupid Server

2006-05-11T00:14:00.000-05:00

It's been awhile since I've made a post about World of Warcraft. Some of you may know that I play this game upon occasion. Since my last WoW post stuff has changed quite about. I left my old small guild and joined a raiding guild on my server Perenolde. Since I started raiding with them (I actually started while still a member of my old guild), we have managed to master Molten Core and basically have this dungeon on "farm" status. We have also managed to get Onyxia on farm status, and can get Razorgore in Black Wing Lair down in 1-2 attempts regularly.

Last Sunday my guild was disbanded after our officers asked our guild leader to step down due to some personality conflicts between the leader and some of our membership. Rather than step down gracefully a long argument ensued followed by the GM disbanding the guild rather than transferring leadership. While this could be the death of a guild luckily my guild bounces back pretty well. We have already reformed with new name and leadership and we are stronger than ever. Now to the reason for this post.

Right now we are working on getting down boss #2 in BWL Vaelastraz the Corrupt. Today we managed to almost kill this guy 5 times, our last two attempts would have been kills but for one annoying problem. BLIZZARD HATES US. That's right we had some freak disconnects our last tries which basically cost us the fight. While we had a tank disconnect just as we started the fight and about 2 minutes into the fight we lost another 5-10 players. For this particular fight healing and damage dealing are all very important and we cannot lose that many players and still expect to finish the fight. So we ended up the night empty handed with only our normal Onyxia/Razorgore 2 kill combo. Hopefully we have time Saturday or Sunday to take Vael down.

For those of you interested I have a video of the fight encoded with the xvid codec, with full audio. You can here my current background music and the teamspeak chatter. Two interesting things to note. Just as you see ATTACK show up on the screen you can see yellow text in the bottom left corner which one of the tanks disconnecting. Around 2 minutes into the fight you can see the mass disconnect which doomed us. WARNING: 60mb video! Download here.

SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T4 P330 H5

2006-05-08T15:44:00.000-05:00

After talking with people about all the great old games I've inspired myself to go play some of those old classic PC games I have sitting around.

Ultima 1-8, Wing Commander 1-3, Crusader:No Regret/Remorse, Magic Carpet, Tie Fighter, X-Wing, Dark Forces, Warcraft I, Wacraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal(impossible expansion), Syndicate, Theme Hospital, Settlers 2, Dungeon Keeper, Mechwarrior 2(Wolf Clan Campaign), Master of Magic, Master of Orion 2, Fallout and more I can't recall now!

Now I just need to figure out how to run all these things on XP 64, without them running to fast.

The Light - It Burns!!!

2006-05-07T23:18:00.000-05:00

So far finals week is off to a racing start. Yesterday I had a cookout out at Vilas park with some friends. The first thing we did was assemble the grill, which took longer than I had expected since we had to many engineers on the project. Once that work was done we got the food on but it took a good 1-2 hours to get it all cooked.

While waiting for food we enjoyed the beautiful weather, and played some Frisbee. After eating we walked over to the Henry Vilas Zoo where we looked at the animals. I hadn't been to the zoo since freshman year, and not to much has changed. For a free zoo they have a nice selection of animals, we saw: Lions, Peacocks, Kangaroos, Bears, Giraffes, Sea Otters, Harbor Seals, and more. Some of the animals didn't appear to be out yet. We were also a bit to late to see some animals as they closed up a few exhibits about 5 minutes before we made it over there :(.

Well while playing Frisbee and looking at all the animals it appears I acquired a nice sunburn on my face, arms, and the back of my neck. Next time I spend more than an hour or so outside I'll remember that I should put on sunblock. You'd think I'd learn I burn at the beginning of the season by now.

(Bonus question: What computer game is my post title from?)

All plants must die

2006-04-27T14:13:00.000-05:00

It seems that all the plants have declared war on me. This morning I woke up with my eyes all puffy and watering, and my nose completely stuffed up. Apparently something I am VERY allergic to is spewing its devil pollen into the air in an attempt to kill me. I've tried taking some prescription strength allergy medication, but it has had little effect against to the weapons of the plants. At this point the only option is a mass attack to eliminate the plants before they kill me in my sleep.

At this point there is no hope of a peaceful solution and so it is with great sadness that I declare war upon the cellulose ones.

It's Alive

2006-04-25T00:59:00.000-05:00

I can't believe it finally works!! What is it you might ask? It is the Maquina engineering fountain remote server I've been working on the last couple of years. Or original server was written by me in about 10 minutes a year or two back. Since this fall we've been slowly rewriting the server to support several concurrent connections and actually be somewhat feature rich! No longer does it completely crap out if you give it invalid input (actually I lie, it sill dies when you give invalid input only now it's a nice assert!).

You should check out Colins blog (link on the right) for movies and pictures of the server in action. The working version has been the effort of a bunch of people. Tim reworked our ladder network code to deal with disconnects. Colin and Craig have been the primary coders on the new and improved server and have done a good job. I revamped/cleaned up my networking library(it's still not perfect), wrote a logging library, gave some random C++ and system design/architecture help, and have been figuring out how to turn our poor console app into a Windows service (which as of about 10 minutes ago I think I have figure out).

All that's left before we can do an initial deployment is:

Finish coding the last bits of the server
Port the server to a Windows Service (my job)

Stuff left for final version:

Implement User ID Protocol
Finish Website Design (Mikah where is our Ajax Web 2.0 XML Service Client?)

Thank You for Smoking

2006-04-22T08:27:00.000-05:00

Last night I saw the excellent movie "Thank You for Smoking". I definitely recommend the movie, it gives some interesting insight into "Spin" and the world of lobbiests. It even comes with some good tips on how to debate someone, just remember you don't need to be right you just need to show the other person is wrong.

This morning I'm heading to Engr to give a talk to high school students about how great computer engr is. I hope I manage to convince someone to become and engr. To be honest I'm not sure how much influence college student has with highschoolers. I could really see making a difference if I worked with them everyday and showed what cool stuff you can do in engineering, but given 1 hour? Hopefully our demo of our fountain remote control project doesn't totally break just before we give our presentation. What could possibly go wrong? Computers never make mistakes.

Afghani food made easy

2006-04-18T17:01:00.000-05:00

Since I didn't make the 5 hour drive back home for Easter this last weekend, I decided to spend a rainy Sunday making some Afghani food with a recipe from my favorite restaurant. Well it turns out I didn't have all the ingredients necessary, and I was already hungry and didn't want to wait on food. So instead I made my own cheesy version of Kabeli Palow that was much simpler.

Rather than doing all the work in the recipe I simply browned some chicken in a pan threw in some garam masala, garlic salt, and raisins. I then combined the mixture with some basmati rice, and amazingly it turned out pretty good. It wasn't nearly as good as the food from Da Afghan but it sure was easy to make. I'll probably have the same thing tonight since all I have is some chicken and a 10lb bag of rice left in my apartment.

Dell invents everything!

2006-04-11T11:43:00.000-05:00

A recent interview with the Dell CTO has Dell claiming if it wasn't for them PCI-Express, 802.11, 64 bit x86 support and more would never have come to be. While I agree Dell has a lot of power in the industry I think they are taking to much credit for other peoples work. About the only technology I might give Dell some credit for is making Intel support 64bit technology on their processors. They probably had a conversation along these lines:

Dell: Hey, Intel.

Intel: Yes?

Dell: We need 64 bit computers HP is stealing sales from us.

Intel: You have 64 bit processors. Itaniums should be good enough for you.

Dell: We want 64 bit x86!

Intel: Microsoft doesn't even support this.

Dell: I WANT IT!!!

Intel: No.

Dell: We'll use AMD.

Intel: .....

Intel: Would you like anything else with your 64 bit x64 procs?

Dell: Buy one get one free with your processors.

Intel: Ok.

Hell just froze over

2006-04-05T23:24:00.000-05:00

Well I think its official hell just froze over. Apple has just announced a beta for a tool which will allow end users to dual boot Mac OS X and Windows XP on their Intel based Macs. This tool makes repartitioning your harddrive as simple as adjusting a slider and it gives you a full set of Windows drivers for the Apple hardware. This solution is more elegant than the previously announced user written BIOS compatibility layer. While the layer allowed you to boot xp it driver support for Apple's hardware was lacking. This makes me want to replace my 17in PowerBook with a MacBook Pro. Except I really can't justify dropping another 2k on a laptop in less than a year.

One of the funniest parts of the announcement shows Apple's attitude toward its PC competitors and Microsoft.

Macs use an ultra-modern industry standard technology called EFI to handle booting. Sadly, Windows XP, and even the upcoming Vista, are stuck in the 1980s with old-fashioned BIOS. But with Boot Camp, the Mac can operate smoothly in both centuries.

Newegg is Teh Sux0r

2006-04-04T01:05:00.000-05:00

Well the title says it all. I received a replacement mainboard for my broken one today. Only it wasn't really a replacement for my mainboard. Instead of the model I returned I received a inferior model which retails for $30-40 less than my board. It doesn't have even the same set of features as my old mainboard. To top it off the mainboard came all by itself and didn't include any of the cables, a manual, drivers, or any of the other stuff I returned as per Newegg.com's instructions.

After talking to a customer service rep I found I needed to RMA/return this POS board they sent me, and wait for them to get off their butts and possibly send me the correct item. The rep was kind enough to tell me they would refund $20 for shipping the item back (it actually costs $20.49 to ship). Hopefully they will actually credit my account, but as the overnight shipping I was promised on the phone doesn't show up on the RMA order my hopes for this aren't very high. At this point I was better off attempting to fix my mainboard by myself. This is probably the last time I ever buy anything from Newegg.com, or even recommend them to others. It seems that Newegg's customer service is starting to suck as they become more and more popular.

The Quiet Before the Storm

2006-03-29T15:24:00.000-06:00

This last month has been rather busy, I've had three midterms, and spring break, over the last few weeks. Break was a quiet time where I had a chance to relax a bit. I played a bit of WoW (not as much as you would expect), went to an orchestra concert, went camera shopping (didn't get anything), and worked on some research/paper writing. Since returning I've been slowly getting back into the swing of things.

Despite the release of Bethesada Softworks' new game Oblivion, the death of my PC motherboard's chipset fan has kept me on track. I won't be receiving my "new" (refurbished...) board until next Monday so I'm still pretty safe. The lack of my desktop has also curtailed my WoW playing to "scheduled" times (laptop != good gaming). This is a good thing as it's now project time at school. This semester I'm developing a secure network poker game, implementing a few real-time networking scheduling algorithms, and examining the effects of using DRAM without refresh cycles as caches in multi-processor systems.

I think I'm going to have my hands full the rest of the semester. Despite all this I've had a pretty quiet day so far. I went to meet with a Professor only to realize he was out of town (oops), and I followed that up with a meeting with a project partner. After my meeting I headed home, ate some lunch, and made up a large pot of chili for tonight (Yummm). I'm probably going to have left over chili for the rest of the week, but this is a good thing as chili only gets better with age.

Kendo Update

2006-03-02T20:14:00.000-06:00

Here's that post I promised about the Kendo tournament at the begining of the week.

So last Saturday I got to ride to Detroit, MI for the annual Kendo Tournament. One of our club members was testing for his San-Dan rank and we needed to be out to Detroit by about 2pm. Given the 7-8 hour long drive this meant I was getting picked up around 5:30am Saturday morning. Knowing this I carefully set my alarm clock to 5am Friday night so I would have enough time to wake up and finish my packing.

Saturday morning I awoke to my cellphone's ring to find out that my ride would be arriving in about 5 minutes! I didn't remember my alarm going off so I checked my alarm and verified I had set my alarm to 5:00, 5:00 pm that is. Oops! After a quick scramble during which I loaded my backup up with my clothes and other items I had set out the night, I ran downstairs and found out I had only kept people waiting about 5 minutes. Next we went to meet up with Van #2 which was delayed by someone and so didn't show up until about 20 minutes later. Looks like I could have taken a bit more time packing, instead I spent the rest of the weekend with the feeling I left something important behind (I didn't).

We arrived at the hotel around 2ish and after checking in a few of us went down to the lobby to play poker while we waited for testing to be done (in retrospect I probably would have found the test interesting). At 7pm there was a banquet scheduled which set each of us back around $35. There we were served the most expensive 3oz of chicken with rice I have ever had. One person at our table managed to snag an extra meal (the waiter just dropped it off and said he looked hungry) so we split it up among the hungry people at the table.

Later that evening most of our club got together for a pre-tournament party where we played a round of Texas Hold'em Poker (this is really popular for some reason). After I destroyed everyone at poker (I'm not kidding), we played a couple rounds of Uker and went to sleep for the night.

The next day it we arrived at the tournament only to find we had somehow made it there 10-20 minutes late and had missed the opening ceremony. On top of this fighting begain right away so we didn't have any warm up time. I managed to do alright in my one match but lost in the end to a more experienced Kendoist. I spent the rest of the day watching the various matches and was really impressed by the 5-dan and above matches. I've never seen people move so fast and hit so well. Some of the fights went for 15-20 minutes of overtime until someone scored a point! Google video seems to have one of the semi-final matches for the Yondans.

After watching the finals I got another chance to fight in the team tournament. I was on our second team with the rest of the 1-kyu club members. This was probably the fastest set of fights I've seen. The first and last team members did pretty well and lasted for a whole 2 minutes each. The rest of us? I think we lasted for 5 seconds.

Google Rocks

2006-02-24T11:12:00.000-06:00

Well Google has added a dasboard widget that lets me make posts to my blog. Now I might actually make more posts as I sit bored in class :). They also have created a gmail preview widget which is pretty cool. You can grab them both at http://www.google.com/macwidgets/.

So Tired

2006-02-20T11:16:00.000-06:00

I'm back from Detroit and pretty wiped. I arrived back here at 2:20 am or so after the long 7-8 hour drive. I'd post more but as I was up for 20 hours yesterday, I need to take a quick nap now that class is done.

Early Morning Kendo!

2006-02-17T22:21:00.000-06:00

Today is the day. I shall be getting up around 4:30-5am and heading out to Detroit for the MWKF tournament! The tournament actually starts tomorrow but Kendo club is needs to be out there early as we have some member's testing for new ranks. Hopefully, the tournament will go well and Detroit will be a lot of fun.

The drive will suck though.

Ahn'Qiraj

2006-02-17T01:16:00.000-06:00

Well the gates of AQ are opening tonight on our server. It turns out that our server has died under the load of people. Someone at Blizzard put little thought into the whole event as so far on every server that opened the gates has crashed repeatedly. Well if the one person who could open the gates hadn't decided to do it at 1am our time I might actually have been able to participate. Well I have class so I'll be heading to bed. I think I'll set my alarm early to catch the tail end.

Plus I need practice getting up at 4am for kendo.

Kendo Hurts

2006-02-02T00:22:00.000-06:00

Well after a long 2 month break I've finally started Kendo again. One thing I've learned from this is NEVER stop any form of intensive exercise 'cause when you start again your muscles hate you. The funny thing is the only way to make my arms and legs stop hurting is to do more Kendo, which makes it worse. WTF!

Of course someone who shall remain nameless hit me about 50 times in the right arm by my elbow today and a nice bruise is forming. Right elbow != Kendo target.

Back in Madtown

2006-01-16T00:41:00.000-06:00

Well I'm back in Madison. I manged to get 99% of my stuff packed yesterday (a first), before I headed on the 5 hour drive all the way out here today. My Dad and Brother came with me so they got stuck with a 10 hour round trip drive (I really appreciate the ride, 10 hours sucks).

On top of packing yesterday I ran another MC run (that thing I ranted about before). I managed to pick up my classes Tier 1 epic robe the Arcanist Robe for a measly 5 DKPs (Dragon Kill Point), the minimum bid for an item during a run (this is good, don't worry about what DKP are).

Other than a trip my weekend has been pretty quite so far. Turns out one of my roomates was happy to see me.... I mean happy to see my Xbox return so he could once again watch movies on the TV. I need to practice getting to sleep early, and waking up early for my wonderful 9:55am class.

A Very WoW Break

2006-01-08T13:27:00.000-06:00

Well I haven't posted in awhile because not much has been happening. I've been using my break to play World of Warcraft before I head back to school. In the last couple weeks I got my PVP rank up to the first level of "officer" Knight, while also finding a guild to run Molten Core with (for those of you who don't know MC is the first of the two 40 man end game instances).

Molten Core while "small" in size compared to some instances, MC is filled with monsters that take 40 of the max level characters to take down. There are 10 main bosses in the dungeon:

Lastly there is the main boss at the end, the Firelord Ragnaros.

MC is large enough that they actually save your progress through the dungeon and give you one week to complete it. Our first night we stomped our way to Shazzrah who crushed us a couple times. As it was getting really late, like hour 4 of the run, we stopped for the night.

Run two was a couple days later. During run two we finally managed to nuke Shazzrah after we adjusted our tactics. We crushed Golemagg, and Sulfurion with little loss of life, but Majordomo Executus was another matter. It took us 4 tries and 3 raid wipes (a wipe is when all 40 people die) to defeat the Majordomo. As this was the first time the group had taken down Majordomo we were pretty excited about the whole thing. The only boss left to us was Ragnaros the Firelord who we didn't stand a chance of defeating. Despite the fact we couldn't kill him we decided to spawn him and say "Hi".

Of course in our excitement over the defeat of Executus we tried to go to fast, on the first set of "trash" monsters we ran into the entire raid wiped, twice. We went back to the start of the dungeon and decided to visit Rag through the front door as the monsters over there are much, much easier.

After spawning Rag by talking to the defeated Majordomo, Rag appears and kills Executus for his incompetence. Of course after the scripted sequence ended someone decided to attack him which ended up getting a chunk of the raid killed by Rag and his big hammer. Luckily a bunch of us jumped through a portal and escaped to Ironforge and safety. Screenshots of the end room are below, click for a high-res image (300k).

Majordomo Executus

Ragnaros

DONE!! I think....

2005-12-21T23:32:00.000-06:00

Well I think I'm done with class. I got my project compiling and working as of 11:30 pm. All that's left is to finish the report and I'll let my partners whip up the rest of the first draft (I already wrote a page or two of stuff).

For now I'm taking a break and fleeing ASAP from coding.

Jon

Paper Down , more to go

2005-12-20T10:24:00.000-06:00

As of 8:45pm last night my CS 838 final paper is done and handed in. It only took a marathon eight hours in the lab combining my half, my partner's half, and editing the whole thing. The report was around 16 pages of text and reading it straight though takes around 20 minutes (assuming you want to follow our work). Eight hours doesn't seem so bad considering we needed to meticulously go over every single sentence to edit it. Then we needed to mark everything up in LaTeX (this wasn't to bad), and import our figures.

After finishing the paper I tried to grab something to eat but Cousin's Subs closed about 20 minutes early last night. So I headed over to CAE to work for another three hours on my 556 project.

All I have left is a final today at 2:45 and that project which is due thursday.

You know you're a geek when...

2005-12-19T11:30:00.000-06:00

I've been rather busy these last few days as I've been busy working on a final paper for cs838, and project for my CAD Tool Design class. Anyways, as I was working on my paper this morning I was staring out my window while thinking deeply about my paper.

While looking out my window, I noticed the branches on the tree outside my window didn't look smooth like on most trees but they had a horrible set of jaggies. My first thought was that the tree outside needed some anti-aliasing, but then I realized the screen in my window was causing the effect.

School Over! Sort Of

2005-12-16T22:59:00.000-06:00

Well yesterday class officially ended, and in celebration I hosted end of the year party/get together. We had about 15 people over for the party, and played pictionary. My team managed to come back from being almost and entire board behind for the win. After that most of the guests headed home, missing the desert I had made in the process. (French Silk Pie yummm.)

Those who hung around played some 5 player Halo with linked Xboxes. Of all the players Colin made imporved the most going from 0 kills his first game, to holding first for a short time during a later round. Halo wrapped up around 11:20 and we broke out the French Silk and an Apple Pie.

Finally, I wrapped up the day with the last Midnight Bowling league game of the semester. Our team was playing the team in first for the league win. To pull off the win we had to win both games and the series (total pinfall over two games) to get enough points to make first. Unfortuneatly for us we bowled a decent game while the other team bowled the game of their lives for the win. Since we were guaranteed to come in second at this point our bowling changed to try some creative throws. Bowling left handed, behind the back, between the legs, or kicking the ball didn't work out well for any of my teammates and our scores for the second game were rather poor. In any case we had a lot of fun during the last game of the year.

During the next week I have a paper to write, a programming project to work on, and a final to study for. Time to get back to my CS 838 paper.

I HATE SPAMBOTS

2005-12-13T23:54:00.000-06:00

Well my blog was defaced by its first spambot about 5 minutes ago. Now I need to turn on that annoying word verification function for all posts. Half the time I don't get the stupid thing correct on my first try.

Also while doing some searches online I found a cool applet that lets you play around with Quantum Wells. Basically, it lets you plot the Schrödinger equation (this gives you the probablility of quantum tunneling among other things.)

Super Stringtastic

2005-12-13T23:03:00.000-06:00

Well I just got back a bit ago from a lecture by Dr. Brian Greene author of "The Elegant Universe" and "The Fabric of the Cosmos". He's one of the most well known Super String Theory proponents, and has a very good PBS special you can watch online here. For his talk he mostly covered some of the basics from his Nova special which includes General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics 101. (I prefer his explanation to the one I learned in a course on those topics as there was much less crazy math, Britney might be able to help you.)

Overall, it was an enjoyable talk and he did a great job. One thing I had forgotten was how small these strings are. The strings are around 10^-35 meters in size, this is a billion billion times smaller than an atom. He gave the following analogy to explain just how small this is:

"Expand an atom to the size of the Universe, a string would be about the size of a tree."

That's really small. He also mentioned in passing that his Nova special had a small error where an Atom the size of New York was compared to string the size of a tree. Apparently, he told Nova they were wrong but they didn't fix it. Not many people get to say Nova was wrong and actually be correct.

After the lecture there was a Q/A period. He did a great job answering all the questions right on the spot, while keeping everything at level one could follow based entirely on the lecture he had just given. One person asked the dumbest question I've ever heard, he wanted to know "If Martians were to look at us with a giant telescope, they would see us moving about randomly like in quantum mechanics. Do you agree this is true?".

Dr. Greene's answer was basically "What???". I really want to know what went through Dr. Greene's mind when faced with this genius question. The worst part was this was the second from last question asked, we missed an opportunity to actually learn something useful rather than someone's dumb theory of quantum people movement.

Good Start?

2005-12-13T08:54:00.000-06:00

Well my day is off to a good start, in an effort to meet a project partner this morning I ended up leaving the house without shaving. Normally this wouldn't be that big of a deal except I have a presentation tonight around 5:45pm, with no time between now (9am) and then to stop at home and shave (or even grab a razor). Looking unshaven is in now, right??

Despite the presentation I'm really looking forward to tonight. Instead of our regular Enlight meeting most of us are meeting down in the Union, in an attempt to get into a sold out lecture by Brian Greene Author of "The Elegant Universe". Right now there are no tickets left but they seat people without tickets about 10 minutes before the lecture starts, assuming there are open seats. If the seats are full they actually simulcast the presentation in another room so we should be set. Either way it should be an interesting talk (ok I hope it will but Dr. Greene is very interesting, and was one of the few guest who didn't look silly on the Colbert Report.)

CS GRE and Narnia

2005-12-10T20:19:00.000-06:00

This morning I woke up at 7am to make it to the psychology building by 8:30 for the CS GRE. For those of you who don't know me well 8:30am is very, very early for me. In fact I haven't been up before 8:30 since May, except for today that is. In any case taking a test at 8:30 isn't my idea of a fun wakeup. Personally, I hate standardized tests despite my doing well on them, I think they are biased towards people who like to get up before the crack of dawn. It's not fair to those of us who achieve peak mental acuity around Noon.

Well after taking the over long (170 minute) test, I went home, grabbed some food, and then went to the 3:00pm showing of "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe." I have to say the movie was enjoyable. It wasn't as good as I had hoped it would be, as it was a bit slow in the middle (I almost fell asleep). Narnia was a good adaptation of the books and I don't have any complaints about them leaving stuff out. It's at least as good as the old PBS/Hallmark/BBC (I know it was on PBS) adaptation of the books. Overall, I'd say it is one of the better book to movie adaptations I've seen in a long time. Much better than Howl's Moving Castle (another children's book favorite of mine, don't get me started.)

Fountain pictures

2005-12-08T21:19:00.000-06:00

I've been working with a group to develop a control interface for the Engineering College's fountain for the last few years. Today I took a couple pictures of to show off the ice we've managed to generate on the north end (we are trying to make it into an ice sculpture.)

I also happened to be walking by it and night and snapped a shot since I thought it looked cool. My camera's batteries were basically dead so I only got one picture. Click on both for a closeup.

The north end starting to ice up.

The fountain at night

Picture Update

2005-12-08T00:03:00.000-06:00

As you can see I posted the only picture I have of myself on my computer. It's a couple of of years old but I mostly look the same (minus the facial hair). In any case as it's the only picture I have so it goes up.

A View To Kill (For)

2005-12-07T23:50:00.000-06:00

A couple weeks back Dell had their 2405FPW on sale for 40% off so I picked one up. I've enjoyed computing and playing WoW on this wonderful screen which sports a 1920x1200 resolution. Even so I find I probably spend more computer time each day working on my 17" laptop then I do looking at my new 24" monitor. To give you an idea how big this thing is I've included a picture of this thing on my desk (click for a high res shot).

Good Deals

2005-12-07T00:08:00.000-06:00

Well I have a couple of cool deals I've come across first is a computer from Monarch Computers. This computer is pretty decent for its $850 asking price but that's not the deal. It has a free copy of Halflife 2 and several other programs. Add Windows for $80 and get two free plan tickets from Microsoft! (I'm not kidding they have a free trip if you buy a PC, I think you can go to Hawaii.) If Hawaii is a valid destination like I believe based on the site buying that computer is a terrific deal.
Another cool deal to be found is Acclaim IP. That's right do to the bankruptcy of the gaming company you can buy publishing rights to many of their old games? Want Mortal Kombat I&II? The Bust a Move series? Or the classic Ecco the Dolphin? Then go make a bid on some of the great IP available at the previously mentioned site. (I would buy Mortal Kombat/Ecco except for that $5k initial bid thing.)

Kendo in LaCrosse?

2005-11-08T21:43:00.000-06:00

So its been awhile. I've been extremely busy since school started. I'm spending most of my time with schoolwork, and Kendo which basically limits my free time. I've even given up World of Warcraft as of last week as it was starting to have an adverse affect.

In any case I spent last weekend at a Kendo tournament held just north of LaCrosse, WI. It was a lot of fun, even though I didn't score any points in my matches. I probably should have scored something in my first match against another Mudansha but wasn't able to get a clean hit in. I had one hit which a judge called as a hit but the main judged waved it off.

My second fight was against a 5-dan who is the Sensei at MSU (btw 5-dan is basically the Kendo equivalent to a 5th degree blackbelt). Knowing my chances were slim I tried a go for broke attack as Kiyota Sensei would put it. Unfortunately, this tactic failed as my Zanshin wasn't good enough. Upon turning around Fox Sensei struck a blow to my men (head) for the 1 point win. Next tournament I plan to last longer than 20 seconds against the other teams Sensei.

On Sunday morning it was my time to test for the rank if ikkyu (1-kyu). Ikkyu is the rank before shodan (1-dan) which is basically the first recognized rank in Kendo (the MWKF does have 2-6 kyu as lower ranks but typically these are only held by children). For the test I needed to demonstrate basic strikes (kote, men, do), do two three minute Ji-Geiko's, Kirikaeshi, and Katas 1-3. In the end I did well and passed. Now I need to get to work on my written essay as the last step of achieving my rank.

Summer Over

2005-08-22T14:20:00.000-05:00

Well the summer is basically over. I about 2 days I head back to school and start my graduate student career.

My summer Internship at NVIDIA is over. Finally I won't be spending 50-60 hours a week doing work. While it was interesting and all the hours ended up being killer :(. Anyways, I picked up some video cards for my family and got myself a 7800 GTX. I had to upgrade the rest of my computer to use this so I now have an Athlon 64 3000+ Nforce 4 system in my case.

Well that's it for now. I need to scan in some rebate offers on my computer equipment and get to packing for my trip to school. I'll post some more soon since school is back on.

Comcast Sux

2005-06-11T01:29:00.000-05:00

Well I'm in CA. I'm actually going on my second week but haven't had time to post. So far I don't have any official internet access except from work. Comcast was supposed to be out May 31st to install our digtal cable and cable modem, but of course that didn't happen. The guy showed up over two hours late and didn't get anything done. He basically said sorry can't find a signal someone will call you who can do work and setup a time to come out later.

So I wait. And wait. And wait...

After two days I give up and call Comcast and get an appointment setup with someone on Thursday. By now I've started work so I can't be there for the installer. Luckily my Dad was in town until that Saturday so he stuck around. The guy managed to narrow the problem down to a disconnected cable in an apartment below me. He can't get a good signal for 'net though since its an old cable someone tacked. He said he would call back and setup a time to have people come out and rewire this.

And so I wait... And Wait... And Wait...

Eventually I call Comcast back, its now Monday 1 week after I was supposed to get cable. I manage to get a hold of someone who says the tech and manager is out and that I need to call back tomorrow.

So I call back tomorrow, the call center person finally gets a hold of the tech or supervisor and they schedule an all day appointment with my landlord for Wednesday. So Wed after a long day of work I head on home expecting my internet and cable to be setup. Boy was I wrong. I walk into a house with neither! So I immediately call Comcast (I'm sick of waiting and don't have time at work), I get a hold of someone who apolgizes for the problem (apparently he still sees the work order as incomplete), and promises me someone will be out the following morning to setup the cable.

I check in with my landlord around noon and find no one has shown up. So once again I give Comcast a call. The automated system mentions I had a service appointment scheduled for 8am the previous morning (the one no one showed up for). I finally get a hold of a person who denies I have any appointment setup at all. At this point I'm so fed up with playing games I ask for an appointment the same day or I will just cancel service. My exact words were along the lines of "Why won't you let me get your service? I'm trying to pay you guys money, do you want me to go somewhere else?" This manages to convice them to send someone out and they do.

Luckily I got out of work early to go to Kendo since the cable guy was still working at 6:00pm. Turns out he couldn't get it to work AND that they scheduled me for a premium internet install which costs $99 (I asked for self before, and the previous guy had that). Premium install means the guy runs a CD for you and royally screws up your computer. I refused to pay for the premium install if he does it since I didn't order it. The tech guy starts to unhook the stuff he did get installed since he doesn't have a self install kit and even if he did he can only do what the work order says. While he's unhooking the Digital Box I call the Comcast customer service center where it takes 10 minutes to explain the situation (the person thought I wanted them to extend their three month trial pricing offer). Finally, I get everything explained and the customer service rep waives the installation fee and has the tech finish the install. Well the tech finishes the install only to find the cable signal is weaker than ever the digital cable doesn't work, the modem STILL won't work, and now the basic cable is all fuzzy. The guy leaves me with the stuff and promises that his supervisor and him will take care of it tomorrow. (BTW this guy doesn't work for Comcast, more on that later).

The next day dawns. I'm so close to my final goal of cable TV and 'net. I have the receiver and modem but the signal is just bad. The previous evening I realized the tech took the install CD and the USB cable for the modem so I can't get online even if everything worked. Comcast requires you to go through some special server to actually get authenticated. I call the tech around 9:30am. Now the story has changed. Apparetly Comcast is not "responsible" for the wiring in the apartment and it will cost me or the apartment $170 to do the wiring. He can have his "crew" out to my apartment by the next day. I call my apartment manager and explain the information. Turns out this guy lied to me, and was just trying to make money by charging for a cable install on the side. The manager gets a hold of Comcast and schedules an apointment to have them come out and actually run the cable they were supposed to about a week ago (and didn't). Now I can only hope they show up, and don't leave because the apartment manager goes to the restroom. See the cable people don't know HOW TO CALL THE APARTMENT MANAGER WHEN I'M NOT HOME EVEN THOUGH THAT'S THE INSTRUCTION ON ALL THE WORK ORDERS!

Comcast needs to get their act together and maybe actually HIRE employees instead of "Independant Contractors". Then maybe they might have a consistend scheduling system. I don't really hold it against the installers since Comcast scheduling seems to give everyone some fucked up schedule with conflicting instructions. I'd go with another company but no one else is available since Cable companies are an monopoly.

Done

2005-05-11T20:39:00.000-05:00

Well as of Tuesday I am done with my Undergraduate career. That's right I'm graduating with my BS. Of course I'm not done with school as I have a few years of grad school ahead of me.

I finally ended up choosing to stay here at UW for two reasons. First, its number 1 in the country for my specialty area Computer Architecture. Second, I got a good finaid package.

Well thats it for now I'm going to enjoy my freetime with a little WoW, and then pick up my room.

So Busy

2005-04-24T14:17:00.000-05:00

Well it's the time of year when Engineering Students set up camp at the lab finishing up all their projects before the end of the semester. I spent all of Friday-Early Saturday morning in the computer lab. After a brief rest I then spent most of Saturday in the lab again.

Why?

Because we are having trouble integrating the Pretendo. It turns out the processor control was written in a way that will not synthesize properly on the FPGA. A couple of us with more Verilog experience pointed this out to the processor team and spent the rest of the time advising them on what to fix. We also found some problems in the processor and cache with paths that apparently looped around (it seems the compiler wasn't creating muxes or something). So we worked out some restructured code that will hopefully compile better.

To top everything off our timing sim showed that the cache wasn't making some memory timing contraints. The cache designer went back and will have it fixed by tonight. Hopefully everything will be together by Monday.

Pretendo Update

2005-04-19T12:12:00.000-05:00

As of Monday the MPU (video part) of my groups game console appears to be working! We have transparent sprites and everything! (after some scaling the thing back slightly)

Once our processor guys get done we can play some pong! W00t!

Friday night beatdown

2005-04-08T19:22:00.000-05:00

There is nothing like 2 hours of people hitting on you with sticks to make you feel alive. Or just feel a ton of bruises and blisters. Is there a difference?

You may ask yourself "Why am I letting people hit me with sticks?". One word. Kendo. For those of you who don't know, Kendo is the Japanese Martial Art of Swordfighting. Its the technique the Samurai used while wielding their Katana's (and other swords or even naginatas). In modern Kendo (which I am participating in) we use a bamboo sword called a Shinai to practice attacks. This involves you hitting someone and them hitting you back for a couple hours. You don't go totally unprotected you do have a set of Bogu (armor) to absorb some of the damage but misses (people hitting your non-armored areas) are very common.

Of course that doesn't really answer why. The main reason is it allows one to develop discipline and concentration, as a Kendo practitioner tries to develop mushin. It's also a fun couple hours and gets you some exercise :).

Bowling Results

2005-04-06T01:08:00.000-05:00

Well the results are in for bowling tonight (well I think they are we'll see). We won the first two games with the first one having a margin of over 60 points. Of course we lost the last game by about 10pins which sucks. In any case we should have points for our two wins and for the series. Not bad considering we played the #1 team this week.

Well I should get to bed as class waits for no one.

Emulation!

2005-04-05T09:34:00.000-05:00

I've managed to finish the video/gui part of the emulator the Pretendo project! That's right you can look at beatiful background colors on screen! (I still need to do line doubling :( but that's another problem)

Now I just need to get the cpu emulator incorporated and I'll be done with SOME of my schoolwork!

Been Awhile

2005-04-03T15:51:00.000-05:00

Well its been awhile since I updated this thing. Nothing like being incredible busy with no free time :(.

My classes are hitting the stage where you spend all your free time working on projects. Of course all my classes are this way so it really sucks. In 554 we got the display working on our game console so now you can look at background tiles/images. We also coded up sprite support so we should be able to have moving objects as well! YEAH!

Well working on 554 is about all I've been up to lately so this is one boring update. I'll hopefully have more to talk about later.

Bowling Win!

2005-03-16T23:02:00.000-06:00

We won all three games of bowling this week. Of course the team we bowled against weren't around so we just had to beat our averages. I did very well this time and got a 154 one game. Giving me the highest game for the night!

I also discovered that we get free popcorn on league bowling nights!

Stanford-NVIDIA

2005-03-11T19:33:00.000-06:00

Well I got some good news today. I made it into the Stanford EE MS/PhD program! Part I of the hard part is over. I haven't received any information on Financial aid as of yet so we'll see if I can actually afford to GO to Stanford.

At least here I will have some sort of financial support to allow me to continue school. On top of that I need to decide EE vs. CS if I decide to stay at Wisconsin. Decisions, Decisions.

My other good news is I managed to interview well and will be able to spend the summer in the bay area working on ASICs at NVIDIA! I've been hoping to work for a graphics card manufacturer since I started university and now I have my chance. YEAH!

Bowling

2005-03-11T19:29:00.000-06:00

Well we found out once again that we lost at bowling last week. The problem is we were UP by 100+ pins on all 3 games. Apparently the other team pre-bowled (what the hell is this?) and scored some of the best games of their lives. So once again we lose because of some strange scoring technicality that wasn't in the rules (that we saw).

This last week we did manage to win 2 of the games but we have no idea if we "really" one them as they had a sub and an absent bowler. Once again they may magically make up a 200 pin deficit for the win once all the magic pin counting is done. (We also lost one game in which two of us really sucked I got like 79 and the other guy got 84).

When we Win we lose

2005-02-23T23:35:00.000-06:00

Well, it turns out in bowling even when my team wins we lose. What does he mean you ask? Well it turns out that even though the scores at the end of our games two Tuesdays ago were wins they decided to give the team some extra pins after the game so we would lose. How many pins? More than 30 at least. It appears no matter what we do we cannot win.

We won all of one game last Tuesday (well maybe two). I bowled alright for all three games but the other team once again bowled the games of their lives. Also doesn't help the whole damn team we bowled against wasn't there (well 1 person was) so they PICK UP RANDOM PEOPLE! That's right we lost to a team of people that didn't know eachother. This seems cheap as they must have found a team of decent bowlers for us to go up against. This really isn't fair as the team already had a handicap boost on us. On top of that at least one of their bowler CROSSED THE FOUL LINE EVERY SINGLE TIME HE BOWLED. But do they turn on the foul lines? NOOO. So here we have someone fouling just about every time he bowls and he still gets a good score 'cause they won't turn on the damn detectors. This really isn't fair stupid cheaters. Next thing I know we'll be playing people with "pin hacks" and "aim bots".

Babylon 5

2005-02-19T19:35:00.000-06:00

Well my study goals for today have been shattered. Instead of getting anything productive done, (well some stuff but not much), I spent most of the day watching season 1 of Babylon 5 as a neighbor happens to have the DVD set. This is seriously impacting my ability to get any work done. I need help learning how to study...

Friday Again!

2005-02-18T15:13:00.000-06:00

Well it's Friday which means another week has come and gone. Did I finish any of my goals for this week? You bet I didn't!

Last Tuesday our bowling team did well, we beat the other team in all 3 games giving us the series. Soon we will no longer be 3rd from worst team in the league (we really messed up the time before). Of course we only won because I bowled so crappy the time before, so my average was < 100 (99). That gave me a wonderful handicap of 90 pins and when combined with everyone else's handicap our teams hadicaps they all added up to more than 100 pins in the first frame!

Aren't we lucky? Still, we won one of the games by more than 150 pins so the handicaps didn't give us all the wins, only two of them. If I could have only consistently bowled a 133 instead of getting that 85 and the 120. The double gutterballs following a strike didn't help my score either.

My plans for this weekend are pretty simple. Do homework, work, and play some WoW, in that order. Of course I'll end up playing WoW and not doing the other things. I need to learn to prioritize or something, anyone have any advice?

Internships and the Summer

2005-02-14T22:18:00.000-06:00

Well I'm busy as ever. My mission was to update my blog every other day. So far that's failing.

Well today I heard from NVIDIA about the possibility of a Hardware Design ASIC Internship position. I still need to interview for the position but I'm really, really excited as I finally have a chance to show that my Computer Engineering isn't all software.

In other news in my lab group we have decided to develop a video game console. Since it was my idea I ended up as defacto-team lead (basically no one wanted the job.) I also had to agree to write a game for it as no one wants to do software. Now we need to figure out VGA and how we are going to make a somewhat accelerated graphics setup. We've got the ISA specced out for our CPU which we plan to model after the standard pipe-lined RISC system.

Tomorrow have a long day but at least it doesn't start until 1pm. Algorithms, Kendo, 752 discussion, Enlight, and Bowling all await me on my tuesday evenings. If I'm lucky I'll be back by Midnight.

Bowling and Tests

2005-02-10T10:20:00.000-06:00

I'm not sure if I mentioned this before but I'm currently in a bowling league that meets Tuesday evenings. So far my team isn't doing so well. Last Tuesday we played a team who's handicaps gave them about 40 pins on our team at the start of the game. Know what? They whooped us by about 100 pins twice and in the last game beat us by 3! They didn't really deserve to have such high handicaps considering how well they bowled, of course they may have just bowled the game of their life. Doesn't help I sucked it up and didn't make it over 100 in 3 games. Gah, after one of the HIGHEST games the Tuesday before this sucks for me. At least my handicap will go up!

In other news I have my first midterm today at 1pm. This midterm is in my Algorithms class where so far we have learned NOTHING! That's right a test when we have had 1 of like 6 classes canceled and of those 5 we had class for only half the time for 3 of them. On top of that we don't really do much of anything in class. So I don't think they really have much to test us on. At least the test is open book.

A Wet Rainy Day

2005-02-06T22:44:00.000-06:00

Well I've been keeping busy here in Madison. It was beautiful outside yesterday, it got up to crazy 43 degrees. Since it was so nice I went down to the "Kites on Ice Festival" hosted out on the lake by Memorial Union. On the way all the melting snow turned lakeshore path into a mud hole. To get around this I walked over to the Union entirely on the ice of lake Mendota. Out on the lake it was warm and you had a great view of all the kites. Some of the kites were pretty cool looking but I got there to late for any of the activities (like make a kite). Plus due to the warmth the lake was melting so there was about 4 inches of water on top of the ice. Boy did my feet get cold and wet!

Today it was also warm but I spent the entire day indoors. I went to Kendo club from 4-7pm during the "superbowl". There were all of two students there so we got a semi-private lesson. I mostly worked on my swings, men, kote, do, and even skee, but I also started to learn part of a kata! Now I'm about a week or so past the rest of the class. On Tuesday they will be handing out Bogu (armor) in class and we will soon be hitting each other!

Of course I finished up my day with a bit of WoW and did quick run on Blackfathom Deeps. I managed to get my rod of the sleepwalker, so next time we go "for Gnomeregan!"

To grad school or work?

2005-01-29T10:40:00.000-06:00

It has been awhile since my last post but I've been busy with school. School combined with work seem to be eating up all my time.

Anyways I received a letter yesterday informing me that I've been admitted to the UW-Graduate School. Of course this isn't my first choice (Stanford) but at least I now know graduate school is at least a choice. They haven't told me anything of financial aid and the date for finding that out is April 1st. I can't afford another few years of school so if I don't get a Fellowship, or a TA or RA position work is the way to go. Not only that I got a job offer from VMware that is VERY, VERY, tempting. Well I sort of got one they called and told me about it but I haven't received a piece of paper with the info yet. No need for me to decide yet.

Back at School

2005-01-18T17:52:00.000-06:00

WoW (pun intended). Long time no posts. Thanks to World of Warcraft I haven't made any posts or done much else for about a month. This game is just that good.

Anyways, I'm back in Madison and School has begun! I just got done with my first day of classes. Its sort of strange to have my day centered around a few scattered times in where I sit and listen to people lecture. Of course not all my classes are like pure lecture. I'm taking a PE class, Kendo this semester that is 30 minutes of lecture and 1 1/2 of running around hitting things with sticks. (Ok I'm exaggerating there is a lot more to it than just hitting stuff with sticks.)

World of Warcraft

2005-01-04T09:46:00.000-06:00

My younger brother gave my World of Warcraft Collectors Edition for Christmas, and I have to say this is the BEST game I've ever played. I'm afraid my life (outside of the computer) will soon be over as I want to play this game 24x7 (excluding sleep, and mealtimes :)). Once again Blizzard has somehow managed to release a great game into an overcrowded genre filled with mediocore to crappy games (EQ, DAOC, AC2 here's looking at you).

Instead of a boring level grind I find my self walking around the world and doing the quests, and yes many of these just involve killing things. There is just something different that makes this game fun to play, something that other MMORPG's have missed. I'm not the only one with this opinion as this game sold more copies than any other PC game on its first day. Additionally this game is OUT OF STOCK at just about every retailer of computer games in the Twin Cities area. Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, EB Games, Gamestop, Target and even Walmart don't have this game in stock. Considering you pay $15 a month to play this after 30 days I can't believe it sold out! The collectors edition sold out in about the first week, I only got one because a friend of my brother was working before christmas returns and grabbed it for him.

Well I need to get back to Azeroth so if you happen to be on Perenolde drop a line to the great mage Jthon.

Merry Chrismahanakwanza

2004-12-25T13:35:00.000-06:00

Merry Christmas to you all.

Cold

2004-12-23T11:24:00.000-06:00

It's way, way to cold outside right now. According to Trillian it's -9 outside right now. It's so cold I'm keeping a gallon bucket of icecream frozen by my window! I stuck a Big Mikes Super Sub by my window last night to keep it cool, instead it froze and I got a frosty sub. Took a minute in the microwave to thaw it. All my pop on my window sill froze solid too. It's so dang cold that when I headed out for breakfast I almost got frostbite on a two minute walk.

This is the type of weather that makes you go. WHY IN THE HELL DID ANYONE STOP IN MINNESOTA OR WISCONSIN? Was the east cost to warm? Gave up going all the way to sunny CA? Speaking of CA Trillian tells me its a warm 50 in Mountain View right now. Makes me want to head back out there.

Finals Done!

2004-12-23T11:19:00.000-06:00

Finals are now over. I have finished all those annoying tests and papers! My CS 520 final went terrible, I thought I knew what is was like to fail. Well now I know. If I'm lucky I'll pull off a 40%, I'm really, really, hoping the curve pulls up my grade otherwise I can say goodbye to good GPA and grad school :(.

Theory of Computation aside my other tests went pretty well. Apparently I got an A on my 7:45am final! Yeah!

Two Down One to Go

2004-12-21T15:56:00.000-06:00

Well I finished my two finals for the day. How did they go? Easy as easymac (btw I've never made these crappy things). I put in a whole 20 minutes of studying for my second final, and boy I thought it was easy. Either that or I failed it.

One Down Two to Go

2004-12-21T10:19:00.000-06:00

Got done with my ECE553 final around 9:25 or so. It turned out to be a lot easier than I thought it would. I look at my notesheets like twice, and even then it was just to confirm something I already knew. Of course the T/F section at the begining probably screwed me over especially as I changed an answer to something incorrect. My ECE 551 final is coming up soon at 12:25. Maybe I should study or at LEAST make a notesheet for this one.

Test Time

2004-12-20T23:08:00.000-06:00

I've finally reached that point in finals week when I actually have a test. That's right starting at 7:45 am my tests begin! I know, I know that's way to early to go to class let alone stay awake and think. But do I have a choice? Nope, I just lucked out with such an early class aren't you jealous?

Considering "finals" started Thursday evening you would think I'd be all studied up for the test. Guess what I'm not. I started my studying today and maybe got in a good 5 hours for ALL my classes. So in reality I really haven't studied at all. Ohh well go figure. I hope I get up early enough tomorrow. At least final number 2 isn't until 12 tomorrow so I have time to make a notesheet!

Finals

2004-12-19T23:46:00.000-06:00

Well I'm supposed to be studying for finals. Guess what I can't get anything done because I am easily distracted. It's really really annoying. Can anyone suggest a decent way to keep on task? Because I certainly cannot do that.

Finals Week! AKA Game Time

2004-12-17T22:34:00.000-06:00

Here at Madison, we have entered Finals Week. This is the time where many students get all stressed out about exams and stuff. Me? I play video games instead of work.

In an ironic twist of fate KotOR II: The Sith Lords has come out. Why is this ironic? This time last year KotOR came out and basically ruined my GPA. It is solely responsible for a B I got in AI as I played this game for about 3 straight days instead of studying (Yeah, Yeah a B doesn't "ruin" your GPA but it does mine). Why does God hate me so?

Probably my most hated class is stupid Afro Am Studies? Why do I hate this. It makes me write a papers. Papers are an evil that I have avoided since freshman year and so I am TERRIBLE at writing them. Not to mention the fact I need to try and come up with 10 pages of stuff to write on. This isn't easy for Engineers.

Where's the Snow

2004-12-08T10:12:00.000-06:00

Well it has been awhile since me last post. Nothing like being way to busy to do anything. Most of my grad school apps are now in, all that's left is for some people to submit some letters of recommendation.

In other news it looks like all those Job Interviews were a waste of time. Sure I ended up with offers from all (except MS, Google) but I think I will do the grad school Thang. I even declined Oracle making me an offer. God I feel stupid now but it's not like I really want to develop software apps. I want to be a little more low level, and designing software for missle Wing-Extenders for Lockheed didn't really appeal to me. (Florida is to hot).

Austin?

2004-11-20T02:12:00.000-06:00

Well I'm in austin texas. What is there here? I'm not entirely sure. After the fun of a day of interviews I had the chance to see what part of downtown Austin is like. More specifically what a couple of bars are like :). Did anything exciting happen? Well not totally. I got to know a couple of the current employees of National Instruments better and another UW student. From talking to these people NI sounds like a fun and challenging place to work. The only downside? I've been railroaded into a software engr. position. This has been the case with every dang place I've applied. I don't think any company will overlook my double major and let me do hardware design. It doesn't help I haven't done any design since last semester and would prob mess up part of the interview. Ahh well not everyone can be perfect. Seeing as how I devote little effort to actually accomplishing anything I prob should just count my blessings.

Ohh one other thing. While in my interviews I got a whole two calls from VMWare wondering if I was still available for employment. Ohh to be wanted by so many and yet have basically no offers to show for it. Ahh well I will just have to live with my mediocrity. I know people less technically able then me that have job offers from companies such as Microsoft. It makes me really think about what they are actually looking for in an employee. Maybe I failed because I didn't want tto be a wage slave. (Who knows?)

P.S. Guiness? Not so bad....

Deep in the Heart of Texas

2004-11-18T14:57:00.000-06:00

I'm off to Austin, Texas that is, for an interview with National Instruments. This is my 5th and final out of town interview for the year. I can't do this anymore as it's hard to get stuff done for class when you miss most of them.

When I get back I'll let everyone know how "cool" Austin is.

There and Back Again - An Interviewies Tale

2004-11-13T17:07:00.000-06:00

Well I made it back from sunny Florida on Friday. After 75-80 degree weather coming back to the bitter cold of Wisconsin was quite a shock. Luckily I will only be around for about a day. Tomorrow I take off for San Franciso where I will be visiting with Oracle. I'm actually getting sick of flying all over the place. Hopefully I can get a good seat on the plane like an emergency seat so I can have some extra leg room.

Planes In the Sky

2004-11-09T23:22:00.000-06:00

Well I'm off again on another Interview adventure! This time I am heading to exciting Orlando Florida to speak with Lockheed Martin. What do they have in store for me? Who knows! But whatever it is requires a Top Secret clearance.

Googleplex

2004-11-06T01:57:00.000-06:00

Well I'm out in sunny Mountain View, CA and am now relaxing in my hotel after a long day of interviews at the Googleplex. That's right I scored an on-site with the great Google. Google has got to be the coolest place to work. After touring it I really, really want to work here.

Let's see what they have. There are Segways (those cool 2 wheeled things) anyone (who is trained) can just hop and and drive to another building. The work env is awsome. Everyone has twin 20" LCD monitors in the coolest offices ever. Complete glass. 3 people share class walled office which is pretty huge. Since you work on projects in groups of 3 you basically just share an office with your entire team! It reminds me of the team work areas in a CS lab. Seems pretty cool. Finally there is all the free food. The cafeteria has a huge variety of stuff and all of it's free. Microsoft touts their free soda but it's nothing compared to Google. Google has coolers of every soda imaginable. I mean everything. Coke, pepsi, mt. dew, bawls, even and a ton of other specialty beverages such as bottled root beer. They also have plenty of bottled water (normal and "smart").

In addition to drinks Google has tons of food with every drink cooler. They have chips, fruit, candy, cerial (yes boxes of cerial), and random granola and other bars. This is part of the 100 ft rule. That is you should never be more than 100ft from food. Google holds to this religiously.

All the people I spoke to were very excited about their work. There are some sweet things going on out here. I also had a chance to sign up for google's Orkut network. (This is some sort of secret community thing.)