(Sushi Resteraunts)/(Movie Theaters)

It struck me tonight that San Clemente has a crazy Sushi Restaurant to Movie Theater ratio. There is only one movie theater in town, but at least 6 sushi restaurants! In Carpinteria there is one sushi restaurant and one movie theater, although it is a very small theater so not sure how to count that. I guess you could do sushi restaurants to movie screens, but I like the first metric more. I'm not sure, but I think that in Overland Park the sushi restaurant to movie theater ratio is less than one. I'm not sure what it is in Boston, but there are not many theaters in town so I'm guessing its ratio is high. What's the ratio in your town/general vicinity?

The other sushi restaurant ratio I find interesting in San Clemente is sushi restaurants to thai restaurants. Again, at least six sushi restaurants, but only one thai food restaurant. Carpinteria is again one to one. Again, not that sure about Overland Park or Boston, but I'm thinking that in both there are more thai food restaurants.

I have no idea why I find that so interesting and I'm probably putting most of you to sleep, so if you want something to wake you back up try jalapeno tempura stuffed with crab meat. Good stuff, supposedly invented at the latest San Clemente sushi restaurant I've tried.

Well, I doubt that I win for most occurrences of the words sushi restaurant in a post, but probably do win for most times spell check was used to correct the spelling of the word restaurant in the course of a single post.

Bad joke

So I was driving up to Pasadena the other day and was thinking about how it used to be that everywhere I went in California was within a few miles of the 101, but now that I live on the 5 that's not true anymore. But then I realized that in some sense 101 and 5 are the same thing and for some reason I felt the need to share that with you. Feel free to groan now, although I am glad to see that my over generalization in some sense still holds true.


For those that don't get it I will point to my fellow winners of Time's Person of the Year for an explanation.

HIV

This article is fairly interesting in and of itself (apparently circumcision reduces the chances of a guy getting AIDS from sex by about 50%), but the reason I'm linking to it is it reminds me of one of the worst lessons I ever had in Sunday school.

So one day at Sunday school they gather us in the big room so that we can watch a video. They are going to show us a video because they want to break the stereotype/misconception that Jews don't get AIDS. Now, ironic part #1 - I had never heard that Jews don't get AIDS before, nor have I ever heard it ever since then so its great that they taught it to me so they could then try to convince me it is wrong. Anyway, we are watching the video which is one Jewish guy talking about how he has AIDS. Now it is striking me that you don't really break a stereotype by finding one guy who goes against the rule (and really the fact they only got one guy somewhat reinforces it). But then as the video goes on it turns out that the guy is homosexual. Now I have nothing against homosexuals and I know that plenty of straight people get AIDS, but I did know that there is a stereotype of homosexuals having a greater chance of having AIDS. So well done, they found one guy who breaks a stereotype I had never heard of, but reinforces a well known stereotype. I guess the lesson is that while being Jewish will keep you from getting AIDS, being homosexual is the stronger force and will give you AIDS.

Now I always thought that was just funny that they had botched the lesson so poorly, but according to the above article, apparently there is actually some truth to it... Crazy.

Quicksilver, Millionaire Next Door, and maybe a little about me

Well I've been a bit bad about keeping up with my self imposed book report. I somewhat recently finished Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver. It's the first of three books (about 900 pages each) which are historical fiction about the Baroque-era. This might not sound like my normal choice of books, but Neal Stephenson is awesome so I figured I'd try it out. It is interesting because it concentrates on the science of the time (and in particular the development of calculus and the fight between Newton and Leibniz). But it is definitely no Diamond Age or Snow Crash.

< tangent > I was skimming the wikipedia article about Snow Crash and it mentioned memetics and now that I actually know what a meme is, the whole book makes a lot more sense. < /tangent >

Anyway, Neal Stephenson seems to have a pattern of jumping into a story that is already somewhat crazy, developing it, and then toward the end going to the next level of crazy (that's part of what I like about his writing, is that his vision starts about where many scifi writers build up to through a whole book). Quicksilver had a bit of an interesting end, but not that much of a twist so I'm hoping that as I get into the next two books he will work his magic. If nothing else he does have a way of taking something somewhat mundane and making it interesting. I guess that is enough praising of Neal Stephenson for now.

To take a break between Neal Stephenson books (no matter how much I might like an author, after 900 pages it is time for a change) I read The Millionaire Next Door. Thanks Mom for loaning it to me. Allow me to summarize: if you want to accumulate wealth live below your means. Done. Actually, there was a bit more interesting info in there, but I think if you get that one line you can move on. The one other point I found interesting is that living below or above your means is somewhat self reinforcing. If you move to a nice neighborhood then it is hard to be thrifty with other aspects of your life and if you have a nice dinning room table you probably don't want the rest of your furniture to be junk. Vs if you live in a less expensive neighborhood you would probably feel odd driving a really expensive car. The two things I found disappointing are: one that the book is 10 years old so it is hard to compare yourself to the numbers in the book because they are vastly outdated, and two that their formula for how much wealth you should have accumulated is age divided by ten times your salary. If you are twenty five and two years out of school it is hard to have accumulated 2.5 times your salary... Perhaps their formula needs to be more generalized or have a minimum age associated with it.

Over Thanksgiving I headed home. It was good to see the family and it was nice to get back on a bike after about a decade (although my butt felt otherwise). It was also good to see some of my friends from high school. It is interesting that up to a certain age a lot of things change over the course of a year, but it seems like a few years out of college and you can ask someone you haven't seen for a year what's new and get the answer not much. I'm not criticizing anyone, just an interesting phenomenon. Although I would like to think that I kept myself out of that category by moving and changing jobs within the last six months, but if I keep that up that could be an issue. I guess when you are in school if nothing else you advance a year and get one year closer to some transition point. I see why at family events everyone wants to talk to the youngins (luckily in my family I'm still a youngin - largely due to me and a few other youngins' lack of bringing other youngins into the world).

Over the weekend I went to see Upright Citizens Brigade Theater with Evan. I had my first celebrity sighting, although I'm not sure how much it really counts since I don't know they guy's name. He is the bald fat one. Unfortunately he was not performing - I just saw him talking to some people in the ticket sales area. We attempted to see the 8 pm show, but due to all of LA heading to something in Griffith Park (I think the observatory may have just reopened) we ended up seeing the 10 pm show, which I have a feeling was amateur hour. At one point one of the actors made a comment about knowing everyone in the audience and I have a feeling that other than Evan and me he wasn't kidding. Since there were so few people, both Evan and I were dragged on stage at some point. When Evan went up he was funnier than the girl that had dragged him on. I think I'll give UCB theater one more chance, but before that I want to try out some of the other improv groups in LA.

Installing Firefox

As I sit here using firefox, which I just installed, on a computer I am not supposed to be able to install programs on, I thought I might discuss this with the world (aka the couple of people that read this). I have run into very few computers on which I could not install firefox (I'm not trying to brag, all the credit definitely goes to firefox, and maybe a little to window's flawed concept of security). The one trick I thought I'd bring up, which might fool a few people, is that sometimes it will tell you that it cannot install in Program Files, which is the default destination. So if you get this error message, pick a place you do have permissions to write to, such as My Documents. Not terribly elegant, but usually does the trick and saves you from staring at that increasingly stupid looking blue e.

Penny stock spam

I would start this post with something like I'm not sure if you get those spam emails about penny stocks, but I know you do, so moving on. According to a Spectrum article, the emails actually work. The spammer buys the stock, sends out the emails, stock momentarily spikes, spammer sells. Assuming the spammer does it right she/he can make a decent return.

Now if you are not the spammer, by the time you get the spam it would be hard to buy in time to ride up the spike. However, I imagine you would have time to prepare for the top of the spike. Well, what good does the spike do you? Sell it short. If as soon as you got the email you started looking for the increase in price you could sell the stock short and in a few days when it comes back down from the spike you've probably done about as well as the spammer. Having never sold something short I have no concept of if you could actually find a buyer in time or if people who trade in derivative are too smart for that. And I in no way actually recommend this (if I did I would be doing it, rather than writing about it here), but just thought it was an interesting idea.

Something I do recommend: if you are ever in a situation where you do not have aftershave (such as you avoided bringing liquids on the plane and the hotel brings you a bunch of stuff, but not aftershave), try using mouth wash (which hotels do seem to have). It actually works really well, and assuming you did not cut yourself it is not painful.

Interesting graph

I was reading the IEEE Spectrum and saw this graph:



The top green line is world wide deaths from natural disasters. The middle brown line is world wide deaths from technological disasters. The red bottom line is world wide deaths from terrorism. The x axis is by year from 1982 to 2003 and the y axis goes from 0 to 100,000. I realize the picture is fairly fuzzy but I think it still gets the point across and makes me feel less bad about infringing on their copyright. I would say more about it but I think it makes its points on its own.

Yes, the first picture I posted on my blog is a graph, oh well.

Random Ramblings

It has been a bit since the last post so I'm not going to bother trying to tie this post together with any sort of theme or transitions.

First off - Go Democrats! Now don't screw it up!

A few messages to the media. First to Republican pundits - when your party was voted in you called it a mandate for Republicans to do whatever they want, but now that Democrats are in you are saying it is a call for reaching across the aisle - I say you had your chance, now fuck off and give us a chance to fix your mess. Second I am a little weary of stating that this vote was America's way of saying it is tired of the Iraq war. If the vote would have gone a little differently, let's admit it could have gone the other way and Iraq would still be a horrible tragedy and a large portion of America would still be pissed off about it. So let's say that the Iraq war is going horribly and needs a change of course because it is going horribly and badly needs a change of course, not because the election tended to one side in our two party system.

I guess this is what happens when I post after watching two episodes of the daily show and listen to the bill maher podcast.

As I am sure many have noticed, the governator held true to his promise of coming back. While there are some issues where I very much disagree with him I am somewhat glad to see someone people can get excited about running the place rather than someone who pretty much became a joke.

I voted by mail for the first time and it is awesome - well once you rescale based on the maximum excitement voting can be. It makes so much more sense since instead of standing in a booth trying to remember who to vote for and which proposition is which (and as was recently proven having a significantly higher probability of just picking the first name I see) and worrying about the line behind me, I sat in my living room (or whatever you want to call the non-bedroom in a one bedroom apartment) and used the internet to research each issue. Obviously my choices were not super well informed since I did not already know exactly how to vote, but it was a ton better than if I had just showed up at a polling place. For those who are a bit lost - California allows you to sign up for vote by mail which is basically absentee voting without being an absentee.

Ok, I got that off my chest now maybe something about me. Well the lack of posting is due to my two week trip to San Jose/San Francisco/Nappa Valley. Don't I have internet access there? Yeah, but for some reason I don't post when I'm up there, probably has something to do with having TV in the hotel rooms. I was up in San Jose to work with the company that tests the integrated circuit that I have been working on. It was quite a bit of work and I will censor many of my comments since this blog is on the internet and all. It was interesting to actually use a tester after having designed parts of testers. Although it was not a Teradyne tester we were using (nothing against Teradyne, it was just that the company I was working with already had a lot of experience with another tester). Luckily, my coworker decided to snap us out of eating at the same restaurants and staying at the same hotel that we have been spending tons of time in and arranged for us to stay in San Francisco. That was fun walking around the city and eating in China Town and North Beach (little Italy) and it didn't hurt to eat in the restaurant on the 46th floor of the hotel we were staying in. It also didn't hurt to trade in working all weekend to take a day to head up to Napa Valley to go wine tasting. We hit several well known wineries, although a lot of the wine actually did not strike me. And the last one we stopped at was willing to just keep pouring so we switch over from tasting to drinking. At Cakebread (where what I might spend on a bottle would buy a small glass of wine) they showed us around the wine making factory which was interesting especially since a lot of it actually looked a lot like the test floor where we were testing the chips. Maybe all industrial machinery just looks the same to me. Although I guess the test floor did not have $800 oak barrels (french oak - which is apparently far superior to american oak). But slowly getting around to the point, we were talking about my abilities as a bitter detector (thanks to Eric for naming my "ability") and the guy said I must like pinot noir - which is what I typically name as my favorite grape. His explanation is that it has thinner skin and thus less tannin (which is what makes wine acidic and bitter). This might also have something to do with me not being struck by much of the wine I had in Napa since they are known for different grapes.

Walking around San Francisco was interesting because it was enjoyable to be in a real city (sorry LA, but as much as I like you, you are a spread out mass of people, not a city) but at the same time I think growing up in Kansas did have an impact on me because when I thought about living there I missed my space and cleanliness and ease of driving places. Not saying I wouldn't mind finding myself living up there at some point, but that bit of Kansas impact was definitely there. Oh, and if you are ever looking for a great place for a crazy taxi ride, San Francisco could be the place. It has all the traffic of a big city combined with some very steep hills, definitely the place to pretend you are on a ride rather than in a car being driving by someone you have never met before. Although what was more freaky to me than the cab ride was looking up at a car that at least seemed to be at a 45 degree angle (yes I know it can't have actually been that steep) and knowing that my life depended both on the quality of their breaks and the person not getting distracted and letting up on the pedal for a moment.

Well I get a few days in San Clemente before heading off to KC for thanksgiving (as usual if you know where I live, I would appreciate it if you not rob me). It is interesting how easily I lose track of time when I spend the majority of my time traveling. It is almost as if the time I spend traveling is removed from my mental timeline so if something happened three weeks ago in SoCal I would think it just happened a few days ago. That's my odd way of saying that if I have been ignoring you it is like being offended that the guy near a blackhole hasn't returned your calls. Besides the fact he probably preoccupied by keeping himself from being stretched into spaghetti, to him it hasn't been that long.

I want to clear up some comments I have made about the movie serenity in the past. I often say some fairly negative things about it. But that is only because I do not think it lives up to the firefly tv series. I do actually like the movie and have watch it an absurd number of times (usually as a nice ending to watching the series again). Oh, and while I am on the topic, am I the only person who required multiple viewings of the firefly series before noticing that at the beginning of the first episode (during the battle of serenity) Mal kisses a cross (yes, I get the point of it, I had just never realized that they actually explain why he's so down on religion)? I also just noticed that all of the scenes in the opening are from the first episode?

Something interesting that I learned about myself (well, interesting to me) is that I remember stuff a lot better if I actually care about remembering it. I have often had a lot more trouble remembering day to day stuff than certain engineering/science related stuff and in both categories typically pale in comparison with others I met at MIT and in the general category I'm not sure how hot I line up against the general population. But the other day (see earlier comment about my messed up timeline - it really had to be 2 or 3 weeks ago) I was driving somewhere and reading some directions I had written down. And the third or fourth time I looked at the paper to get the same street name in about a one minute period I decided that was just too absurd (I'm not joking when I read directions I often forget the street name as soon as I'm done reading it). On the fourth or fifth time I said to myself, I'm going to remember it this time! And, I did. I think that all those other times I knew that the name was written down right next to me so I just didn't bother with remembering it. This is probably kind of obvious but it has definitely shifted how I try to remember stuff (as in I bother to care). Well, hopefully none of my ex-girlfriends are reading this or have made it this far into the post and are saying to themselves "damn it, all those times he forgot stuff it was cause he just didn't care". And if you are reading this, I'd say this is still in the hypothesis stage so lets not get too excited about it.

I just realized that I flew home on Thursday instead of Friday and have to go to work tomorrow so I better stop with the rambling. I just realized that this post is too long even for me to read back through so if you made it to this point - sorry about that (both the length and lack of proofreading).

GO VOTE!

<rant>
GO VOTE!

I would say something like I don't mean to be preachy, but I'm going to be preachy so why lie.

I know that unless you are in a few particular states your vote will have no impact on the results. However, showing up and voting is how you let politicians know they have to worry about what you think. Especially if you are young GO VOTE. Young people don't vote and politicians can't waste their time and effort on a group of people that doesn't vote. A friend who worked in D.C. for a summer said the guy she worked for wanted to do stuff for young people, but couldn't because it wouldn't do him any good in the polls.

GO VOTE! - especially if you are young.
</rant>

In other news I just saw the Borat movie - I laughed so hard my jaw hurts.

I've been spending my weeks in San Jose and weekends back in Orange County and LA. A bit tiring, but hey for miles, hotel points, and free meals I'll put up with it. And this week got to meet up with Dad in Palo Alto.

Over the last month or so I've gone to Hollywood and Venice Beach. It struck me that those are two of the big LA tourist attractions and are also the two main places for crazies to hang out in LA. Made me think that if someone came to visit LA they might get the impression that people out here are all a bunch of nuts and that this would lead to stereotypes of the city... oh wait. Well anytime I think that maybe LA needs some PR advice I think of the Hollywood sign. It's a sign that is a tourist attraction because it is famous. Why is it famous? Because it is famous. How amazing is that? The city has bootstrapped the fame of a sign to a point that the fame is self sustaining!

While I'm on the topic on Hollywood and craziness - near the chinese theater there are people dressed up in various movie costumes and you can pay them to take a picture with them. Everyone is a recognizable character, except this one guy who has been there every time I've been there who is some very strange but fairly elaborate devil like character. Anyway in Borat when he goes to hollywood the devil guy is there - it was interesting watching the film in Orange County because I got the sense that the people around me also recognized him. There was also a lot of mumbling between people when Borat went to Orange (for those in the cheap seats, Orange is a city in Orange County).

<rant>
One last:

GO VOTE!
</rant>

Ubuntu II

Hm, guess I wrote the last post thinking about a particular subset of the people who read this. Ubuntu is a linux distribution. It is basically Debian which is a very common linux distribution, but Ubuntu put it together in a way that makes it easy to use. All of the things that I said I did not have to do to install Ubuntu are things that I have had to do to install over versions of linux which is why it was so surprising how easy it is to install Ubuntu.

Oh and while I'm posting last night I was walking around The Montage Garden Area over looking Laguna beach - I'd put it in the running for the whoa! award for Orange County.

Ubuntu

Last night I installed Ubuntu on my brother's old PC (Friday nights don't get more exciting than that).

Well what do I think of Ubuntu - all I have to say is WTF mate!!!

All I had to do was put in the cd which booted up as a full install which figured out the optimal settings for my monitor and recognized my USB mouse and had a desktop icon called install which when you double clicked on it it installed. Only inputs it required were location, time, and user info (and looks like they copied apple or whoever apple copied by using sudo only rather than creating a root account). Then within a Family Guy episode it was done.

But where do I fill in horizontal and vertical monitor refresh rates? Where's the struggle to get USB working? Where's the 3 days of waiting while it bootstraps and recompiles everything based on my favorite optimization level (-os for those wondering)? What about configuring all of the network options by hand? No designing my partition table - how do I know that the swap drive is optimal according to some rule of thumb I picked up somewhere? And then once it was installed it wanted me to install programs using its nice, easily searchable graphical interface rather than running scripts or wearing out the enter key using dselect! What was I supposed to do with the rest of my Friday night?

Well luckily I did hit one obstacle - Ubuntu does not come with sshd (it has the client but not the server - probably not a bad choice for a default install) and it's graphical installer doesn't have it. Of course it turned out the solution was: sudo apt-get install ssh.

I haven't used it for long but I think they may have hit the point where anyone can easily perform the install.

Next week I'll have to switch back to Gentoo so I can feel like I accomplished something and get that extra millisecond of optimization.

Computer Ads

For those who read slashdot - sorry this will be a repeat.

If you are looking to kill some time - how about some classic computer ads.

Just in case you were wondering

If you read the list of nobel prize winners then I'm sure there was one overwhelming question on your mind. The answer is - nope different guy - see the end of this article.

Immediate Supervisor

I had an interesting small company experience this week. On the day of tapeout the vendor we work with for layout made a small circuit change suggestion. It might have helped with a problem which we had already dealt with by eliminating the root cause and really I don't think it would have even helped. But it was the day of tapeout and so I figured I should check with someone to make sure they agreed. I did check with a coworker and she agreed but she is also just a couple years out of school. So normally I would check with the experienced analog engineer, but he was on vacation. Next thought was my boss - also on vacation (the chip had been delayed a few times so it wasn't so strange that they both had vacation scheduled then). Ok how about boss's boss - off on a business trip. And boss's boss's boss - also business trip. Then it struck me - for that one day my immediate supervisor was the CEO of the company! I paused for a bit before bothering him with this, but figured better to go ahead and ask.

Luckily the CEO is an electrical engineer and is very hands on so it was not too odd asking him about this and he knew what I was talking about, but still struck me as funny that I stopped by the office of the head of the company to ask if we should add a couple diodes or not.

Something struck me as I was writing this. If you look at it from the CEO's side - he's running the company, but at the same time still gets to be involved in low level engineering decisions - this may not sound like a good thing to some people reading this - but I think anyone who is an engineer understands what I am saying. To me one of the big detractors of going into management is not getting to do engineering anymore (yes I know you have a big impact by leading the engineers but you don't get to actually do the technical work). But maybe if the company is small enough then you could reach a reasonable level of management and still have enough exposure to the technical work to keep it interesting - not really sure seems I'm coming up with this as I write but just a thought (basically I am thinking out loud, but not out loud...)

No god but God

I read No god but God because I thought it would be interesting to know something about Islam. Now that I've finished the book I'm glad to know what it had to say, but while reading the book I was reminded that I find the history of religions fairly boring. I'm not saying that Reza Aslan made it boring - I think that's just me. I am glad to finally know the difference between Shi'ite and Sunni (the first has a more modern and rational (I'm not making a value statement - that's Aslan's description) interpretation vs Sunnis have a more traditional interpretation of the Quran). I'm sure that I got this impression largely because of how Aslan presents the information, but I was surprised by how reasonable what the Quran says is and that most of the stuff that the West criticizes Islam for is stuff that has been added since and really contradicts the Quran and how Muhammad acted. As usual I will pick out a somewhat minor point that stuck out to me - the CIA sucks (and British Imperialism isn't so great either, but that is pretty common knowledge at this point). The book was talking about several of the groups that the CIA has backed which have turned out to be mistakes. Between this book and watching Syriana (oh and all the current issues) I'm thinking maybe the CIA isn't such a great organization.

Oh and by the way if you read the title of the blog out loud you're half way to being Muslim.

In other news - the chip I have been working on at Cameron Health taped out so that was exciting and while they have already expressed that we need to work hard to get the test plan setup in time things should be less hectic (or at least I should be a bit calmer since I have trouble getting excited about test (for those paying attention that last comment is ironic)).

Complications, How Animals Have Sex, and The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint

The book Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science reminded me why I will never, ever be a surgeon. I've been working on not getting grossed out by stuff, but nothing like a first person description of cutting someone open and putting in a central line to put me back in my place. This is one of those books that having read it I question if I'd be better off not having read it. Not that it wasn't well written and very informative, just I like to think of doctors as infallible superhumans without lives of their own to distract them or a need to practice on real patients. One of the messages that I do not think Atul was necessarily going for but that I took from the book is: don't be obese. There is a whole section on gastric-bypass, but what struck me was how often he would mention the weight of a patient as a complicating factor in surgery (it also sounded like being too skinny and frail is also bad but I have less concerns about that one). There are some much more interesting and important points that he brings up but it's my blog so I'll concentrate on whatever silly little detail I want.

Well, I would guess that as my brother recently pointed out about fart jokes, you either find animal sex intrinsically funny or you don't. If you do then you gotta read How Animals Have Sex. Even if you just flip through it at a bookstore. It's a quick read, and while it could probably go all 129 pages just off pictures of animals having sex and the intrinsic humor, the book goes above and beyond and doesn't entirely rely on the idea of animals doing it to be funny. Plus after you read it you can have a picture book of animals having sex on your desk.

Ok, the book about animals having sex and this next one don't really count as books, but figured I'd write about them anyway. The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint doesn't count because it is about 25 pages long. But it has caused me to try and avoid using powerpoint and write short technical memos using mathcad instead (to all the MITers who say why mathcad instead of matlab - try making a good looking report in matlab - go on - I dare you). To summarize this one: Powerpoint makes your presentations worse than if you just stood up and talked and slide style presentations are why the Challenger blew up. Ok, I exaggerated its message a little (but just a little).

ASIA

What about Asia (other than being a great audio clue on celebrity jeopardy)?

I'm going.

Oh, that's cool. When are you going?

Don't know, but before September 2008 and hopefully well before then.

Where in Asia (I've heard it's a big place)?

Don't know. It would be cool to see some of the nice nature stuff, but really want to see areas that are very different and probably more urban (seems silly to go there for the first time to hang out on a really nice beach - which is what I should be doing now if I hadn't made the mistake of starting laundry).

How long are you going to spend there?

Not sure, although probably something like 2 to 3 weeks. I figure it's silly to fly all the way over for much less, and much more would probably be tough to pull off at work.

What have you done to plan for the trip?

Absolutely nothing.

Who are you going with?

No idea - I'm looking for people to go with. If you are reading this and are interested in going let me know (well except maybe the google bot crawling the page - I'm not sure about traveling with a piece of software and it might have some trouble if we go to China).

So, um, what the hell are you talking about?

I want to go to Asia and thought I'd see what others have to say. This seemed like a good forum for doing that, and a good way of seeing if anyone else is interested. If you are reading this don't think I'm not talking to you, there are only so many people that read this, so imagine you got an email from me with about 10 people in the TO line. I think it is important to put down a time limit so it doesn't slip forever and September 2008 seems very achievable. I would put the date sooner, but I need to build up vacation time, and I don't know which season is best (see the question about research).

Why on Earth would you announce to the world (or at least the hand full of people that read this) that you are going if you have done nothing to prepare for it?

That much more motivation to actually pull it off (not quite sure what that says about me that I care so much about what others think that it is a significant motivator).

Anyway, if you have any thoughts, suggestions, or especially if you have a desire to go, let me know.

San Francisco, The Ancestor's Tale, and whatever other random thoughts strike me while I write about those two

The movie Click could not have come out at a better time for me. Normally for a major event at work (usually a tapeout - sending the chip off to be made) I'm willing to work a lot of extra hours knowing that it is a temporary situation. This time I felt the same way but I put a time limit on 80 hour weeks (it was around the original tapeout date) and now that the tapeout has been delayed multiple times I'm very glad I did (if you don't get the intro about Click - watch it again). Anyway, for the chip I'm working on Cameron works with a company up in San Jose so I've been spending a lot of time up there and will be heading up again this week (as usual, if you read this and know where I live, please don't rob me). Last time I was up there I stayed over the weekend so I got to see a bit more of San Francisco and San Jose. I walked around China Town and Little Italy in San Francisco - very cool area, will definitely try to get there again. San Jose - I thought Pal Alto and some of that area a bit north of San Jose was interesting looking, but I'm yet to be impressed by San Jose itself (except of course for seeing every tech company you have ever heard of). I did go to Japan Town in San Jose - it was a bit small but I went to a restaurant where you sit at the bar and they have little boats going around a moat and they are carrying plates of sushi and you just grab the plates you want off the boats. Oh - so the actually interesting thing I did up there was go out for a $500 dinner (for 3 people) at the Village Pub. It sounds like a little nothing place, but is apparently one of the places VCs go to make deals. One of my co-workers somehow had a $500 gift certificate so we decided to spend it to celebrate finishing the chip (or so we thought).

I just finished The Ancestor's Tale by Richard Dawkins. I wanted to learn more about evolution. I think that you can defend the teaching of evolution without knowing much about it based on trusting the scientific community, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to also know something about it. The book had some good info on evolution (I feel a bit odd telling Dawkins that he had some good info on evolution...). Although a lot of the book is more zoological in nature (not that I really know anything about zoology other than what I figured out from this book). The book starts with humans and goes backwards through time and points out as our ancestor line meets up with that of other animals, plants... The thought is that going forward through time makes it seem like evolution had a direction in mind and at every splitting point you have to decide which direction to follow, vs in this case he makes on arbitrary choice to start with humans. I found the end interesting, he gets more into concepts of evolution and talks about the role of bacteria in plants and animals. I knew that there are a bunch of bacteria in our bodies and that some are good but I had no idea the degree to which we depend on them.

Well nothing else really came to mind while writing this so I guess the absurdly long title was for nothing.

Hypothetical

This entire post is just hypothetical - in no way am I saying that any of this actually occurred.

So say someone (probably a male - the reason for this choice will come up soon) was flying for a business trip and due to traffic on some random freeway, oh let's pick a random number - say 5, he was running late and really only made the flight at all because his coworker who was going with him eventually pointed out they could take the car pool lane (assuming this randomly selected freeway number 5 has a car pool lane). Then once they reached the airport the person chose to carry his bag on rather than checking due to the time constraint. When he went through security they scanned the bag and said something along the lines of "bag check, shaving cream". Then the guard that came over said "did you know you cannot bring your shaving cream?". Then upon opening the bag and going through the toiletry kit the security guard discovered toothpaste and after-shave and threw out all these items (let's say the guy was lucky enough that his powdery deodorant was ok - apparently in this hypothetical world you can make a bomb out of a gel but not a powder or a gel covered by a powder).

So the big hypothetical question is: say after all this happened to this person would it be illegal for him to then go to his blog and tell the internet this story which seems to indicate that baggage scanners pick up metal shaving cream containers but probably not toothpaste or after-shave in plastic containers? I'm not sure why it would be illegal to tell this story, but thought it might be interesting to ask about the legality. This is in no way an attempt to tell people what baggage scanners can and cannot detect - it is just a hypothetical question based on a hypothetical situation.

Married Friends

Do you ever get the feeling that your married friends only talk to/im you in order to find out if you are dating anyone? And what does that say about marriage?

Stuff

Well it's been a bit since the last post so I'll just hit a few random thoughts and events.

2nd to most recently - I just discovered why Irish dancing is all about doing crazy footwork while keeping the upper body perfectly stiff - normally seems very silly but it is actually ingenious - what other form of dancing allows you to get really into it and yet not spill or even shake your drink? I ended up at an Irish pub in Venice and the crowd was both the standard bar hopping crowd you'd expect in Venice as well as a few people who clearly had specifically picked the Irish bar and the band seemed to go back and forth between songs for each crowd. At one point during the Irish songs one guy started dancing and when I looked up from the crazy footwork I saw his beer held perfectly steady (and felt like I should be in a feedback systems class) and the whole form of dance clicked for me. (For those that are wondering - yes I just sat and watched - although at one point I did a little foot tapping from my stool).

Also that night I made an observation - in Boston I found quite a few good restaurants with indian, thai, vietnamese... food, although other than maybe a few in China town, I somewhat question the authenticity. In CA when I go on my own I am typically disappointed by the asian food, but when I go with someone from asia or of asian decent, the food is really good and seems to be more authentic. Of course there are a lot of other factors - such as who I hang out with and living in the city vs far outside and only driving in when I have plans with others. I will leave coming up with hypotheses on the topic as an exercise to the reader (note I said hypotheses and not theories, because ever since the intelligent design craze I try to use the scientific meanings of the words rather than the common english meanings - not that I'm consistent, but at least I did it once).

Most recently - went to Legoland - it was good to see my uncle and his family. Legoland is a cool place - it's actually more of an amusement park than I expected - I think a lot of the people may go not really caring about the lego part. But there are a few cool lego oriented items and of course the park is decorated in lego statues and there is a lego world area where they have different cities reconstructed in lego.

Boston - went to Boston to see friends from school. Very good time - thanks to Mike and Laura for letting me crash at their place - Laura, again, tried to starve me. Thanks to mom and dad for the plane tickets. Saw Body Worlds which was very interesting, and ate at most of the old spots. Would go on but most of the people reading this were there.

Not sure if Evan reads this but thanks for inviting me up to Pasadena.

In general:
I'm enjoying my job. It has a lot of variety (well within analog integrated circuit design) and moves at a good pace. Lately I have been putting in a lot of hours which is part of the reason for a lack of posts, although I set a time limit on the 80 hour weeks so I'm back to just a lot of hours rather than having it take over my life. For a while there I was dreaming about work every night. On the weekends I've been meeting up with people in LA - it's a bit of a drive but fun to get into the city and see the previous comments about food. Work has been taking me up to San Jose - ate at a few good restaurants but haven't really taken the time to explore the city while I've been up there.

I have a lot to say on the subject of the recent travel restrictions, but I think they have hit a level of absurdity it's not even worth pointing it out. But I will make one comment. After people used box cutters to take over planes the TSA outlawed sharp objects on planes. After a guy tried to blow up a plane with his shoe the TSA made people take their shoes off at security. After some people tried to blow up planes with liquids the TSA told people they cannot bring liquids on the plane (again resisting temptation to go into the flaws of that plan). So I cannot wait for someone to attempt (but not succeed) to get explosive powder on a plane by hiding it in their clothes. Actually I think the consequences could really help convince Americans to get in better shape and fight the obesity problem.

I do have a new proposal for baggage handling. I think that the airlines should give you the option to have your bags fedex'ed (or ups'ed or dhl'ed or some other company name as a past tense verb). Especially if you are heading home and you just have clothes and some toiletries in your checked bags wouldn't you rather have them show up a couple days later and know they won't get lost or damaged rather than maybe get them when you show up and have to wait for them at the baggage claim? Well hopefully all the airline execs are reading my blog and will implement this (just in case someone is reading this - I put this idea in the public domain - in case the airline exec is worried about me suing).

Alright I think that should be enough to hold off the "new post" comments for at least a little bit.

Go Carbon Neutral

$15 a month later and I'm almost carbon neutral. Ok, for some reason I didn't count airline travel, but at least offset car travel and heating/ac carbon. We actually discussed this idea in a couple of the econ classes I took. This is one of the recommendations from inconvenient truth.

Daily Show August 9 2006

I think the daily show is always amazing - in fact it is the only TV I get (well, right now, when the office starts up again I'll probably get an iTunes pass for it too - I know it's not the funniest but for some reason I'm addicted).

But anyway, I thought that the August 9th episode was particularly amazing. Well, first of all it was nice to finally see a non-white reporter on the show. But I thought that they made a pretty amazing statement during the segment on the mideast crisis being an opportunity. But I was too lazy to describe it so I waited till I found someone else's description. If you are at all thinking of watching the episode at some-point I would wait to watch it. I realize that reading it, it probably won't be as good and you'll wonder what I was talking about, but oh well.

Kelly Clarkson!

I had a new experience at work yesterday. The company I work for wanted some extra ECG (not sure why sometimes it's called EKG and sometimes ECG - but it's electroCardiogram so I think ECG is the way to go - do any of the pre-meds want to chime in?) data to run through their algorithm so they ask employees to have their ECG taken at work. It's a completely passive measurement and only takes like 15 minutes so no big deal. But I go to the room where they are doing it and they guy asks me to take off my shirt and then without saying anything takes out a disposable razor and stars shaving a couple circles on my chest. Now I knew it was coming but I still felt like he could say something, and I don't have Steve Carell chest hair but enough that I have two very visible spots on my chest. But the main thing is that it still itches. So after all this, the point is if you ever go to get your ECG taken bring shaving cream and after shave in case they're not provided - might save you a few days of scratching your chest. Funny how it's embarrassing to have part of my chest shaven, but it's not that embarrassing to announce it on the internet - strange.

Programming the Universe

Just finished Programming the Universe by Seth Lloyd. If I had to pick one word to describe the book it would be ambitious. But I don't have to limit myself to one word so here's the much longer description. It's a 220 page book that does not assume any knowledge of computation, information theory (even what a bit is), thermodynamics, or quantum mechanics but yet explains the basics of all of these fields enough to lead up to Seth Lloyd's proposal for a theory of everything based on studying the universe as a quantum computer. Quite a feat (the actual material is also very interesting). For me it was cool to finally get the explanation of why entropy is information since I never took 6.095 (or whatever it is called these days).

So when you decide to read a book because you are two degrees of separation from the author, it is not terribly surprising to see people you know mentioned in the book - but I still thought it was cool. It wasn't surprising to see Ike Chuang (one of the professors Susanna worked for at MIT). I was a little surprised to see Gerry Sussman, but he is a rather well known professor at MIT so not a big shock. Frank Wilczek (taught the recitation for 8.022 which was my first hour of class at MIT, an hour which had me thinking that I had gotten in way over my head) on the back cover is not a big shock. But it was a kick to see Aram (an AEPi brother) mentioned in the acknowledgments.

Insanity

I don't think I've expressed this on my blog before, but I'm too lazy to go back and check: I've lived in two places in SoCal and in someways due to having lived so far from work I feel like I lived in three areas. I feel like in most cities I would just say I live in that city or say in the suburbs of that city (such as I grew up in the suburbs of Kansas City). But I don't think it really makes sense to say you live in the suburbs of LA since practically all of "LA" is really the suburbs of LA (SoCal types feel free to speak up and correct me). So I've come up with a new definition of where I've lived which is "not LA" as I seem to live and hang out in areas that are around LA but really are not LA.

Anyway that was a super long way of getting to me saying I feel as though I haven't seen any of the insanity usually associated with LA. Orange County and Thousand Oaks aren't really known for their kabbalah practicing, fortune telling, beach bums wearing spedos riding around on roller blades. So I decided it was time for a taste. Well if I was only going to get a few hours I figured I should head to the source (no not a room full of TVs with a guy wearing white acting very pretentious) - Venice Beach. Heading out there I was a bit suspicious that since it's so known for being crazy and being a tourist destination that it might just be prepackaged superficial craziness and everyone not profiting from seeming crazy is just there watching the performers. Well one of the first things I saw when I got there was a guy putting on a street show and he was acting crazy and was jumping into a pile of broken glass. Seems pretty crazy, but the one other time I had been to Venice Beach I saw someone (maybe the same guy) doing the same thing about 7 years ago. So I was leaning toward prepackaged and then I looked around and realized there was plenty of the real thing. I think that a guy walking around the street (the area where people walk around is actually a decent distance from the ocean) in a spedo is sorta crazy to start but add a fanny pack and the place starts to feel more genuine. Then of course the line of fortune tellers and kabbalah types were a little crazy, but add the costumes and the super crazy came out. Actually, I got a big kick out of the fact that by far the craziest looking people of the bunch were the ones pushing Christianity. On top of the interesting looking people I find Muscle Beach amusing. I do not understand the people watching people work out nor the people working out where they know there will be a crowd gathered watching. Well I guess maybe if I was super built I would feel different about the being watched part. I really wonder if the people watching are really watching the people work out or just looking at the tourist attraction of watching people work out in muscle beach (I know I was doing the second).

I've occasionally been playing basketball with people at work so I was particularly interested in watching the people play basketball in muscle beach - well from a distance, there was literally no one of my skin color within 20 feet of the courts. Um - they're better than me... By a LOT. I know everyone reading this is very surprised.

Probably the craziest thing was a giant ring of people on the beach from which you could hear drum sounds. Even in my attempt to make up for an insanityless year in a couple hours I wasn't quite up for walking over and seeing what they were up to.

So overall verdict - I'd say that yes the crazy people in LA are crazy and not a disney recreation of crazy. I think it would be fun to be near a bit more of that, but I will say I felt a little more at home when I got back to Orange County. My trip back was actually like jumping from hot water to cold. I went from Venice Beach to the Irvine Spectrum Center which is a giant snazy outdoor mall (think mall, no roof, palm trees and water fountains everywhere, and band playing in main center area) where the first store I saw was the Saleen store where they had their car that does 0 to 60 in under 3 seconds and another car they had cut down the center so you could walk between the halves and see what's inside the car. Well I guess really I just went from one version of craziness to another. At the spectrum center I saw talladega nights which was very funny, although I was a bit annoyed by the over the top product placement. Now I realize that a lot of that probably came from being a story about nascar but it still seemed to pull me out of the movie a bit. Although it still had me cracking up.

Brother Movie Book

This past weekend after a tough day of exercising and falling asleep on the beach I headed up to Pasadena to see Eric before he headed off to the, well I'm not sure if it's the east coast or the mid west (for those who think I'm a really bad person - yes I know what city it is, just not sure how to classify it). Well, anyway, his new home for the next year. It was good to see him and it has been a lot of fun living near him. I'll miss him but I'm glad he'll get to live near Jess and do some interesting research. I'm also always very supportive of anyone doing research on a disease I could potentially get later in life. Oh, and thanks Eric for the stack of books and truck full of miscellaneous other stuff! Well, I don't like to post too much on the internet about other people's lives so I'll cut it off there.

I'm not sure where I heard about it, but Steve Carell is in a new move: Little Miss Sunshine. It's only playing in New York and LA for the next week or two, but I realized that I live near LA. So after Eric took off I headed over to hollywood to see it. Very funny! It'd definitely see it whenever it makes it to your city. It was also an interesting experience because I saw it at the Arclight Theater which is where they were holding the barnyard premier while I was there. No, I didn't see any of the festivities, they were going on while I was in the movie, but I listened to the paparazzi talk while I had lunch before the movie.

Finally I added An Inconvenient Truth to the list of books I've read. It was interesting to see how Gore presented the information and I was somewhat surprised by how much of an impact global warming has already had. Obviously, I know it's real, I just didn't know the facts on what the impact has been. While I found it interesting, I'd say if you already care about the environment then not much need to read it, although it might be interesting to flip through the last few pages that have suggestions on what you can do to help. If you don't care about the environment - THEN GO READ IT!

So I'm going to throw out an opinion I've been developing and I know it's not that original and it might be flawed so I'm interested to hear what people think. But here's the thought. Hybrid cars are nice. And for any given person it's better that they buy a fuel efficient car than not and typically hybrids are more efficient (although anyone who drives a hybrid SUV and lives far from work might want to pause before bragging). But here's my opinion as a society as a whole hybrids are nothing special. They for the most part at best double the gas milage. Doubling might sound good but really to save the environment I think we need to be talking about radical change, not some people using half as much gas. Something like 30% of the green house gasses in the US come from cars. And lets face it at best in the near future we're going to replace maybe 1/2 the cars on the road. People will be buying cars being used now for quite a while. Now if you took 15% of the emissions and made it almost go away, that would be huge. Say you got 90% more fuel efficient then you'd have eliminated 13.5% of the emissions in the US. And you could really move on to concentrating on the next highest offenders. But cutting it in half just isn't that interesting. Sure you drop 7.5% but there's still a lot left to be done. So this is getting long, but the idea is people shouldn't be all happy with hybrids, they should be demanding true radical change, not an iterative step. So feel free to tell me the thought is crap but as an engineer when I see a 2x change I shrug my shoulders, when I see a 10x change I take notice.

Cardiovascular Physiology

Just finished Cardiovascular Physiology by David Mohrman and Lois Heller. All I have to say is - holly crap why didn't anyone tell me that biology is really interesting!?!?

Ok, really I have a bit more to say than that. I started reading the book because I figured if I'm working on a defibrillator it would be nice to understand something about the heart. The first part that really drew me in was the electrical coordination of the heart. I was quite surprised to see that the heart uses a lot of the same electrical techniques and tricks as circuits I have worked on (or maybe the other way around). For an example: the heart increases the rate at which an electrical signal travels across it by putting a sharp spike at the front of a rectangular pulse. In electronics this is called pre-emphasis and an output driver that uses pre-emphasis is one of the last things I worked on at Teradyne. It is a common trick in high speed digital systems. In addition, the way the heart generates the pre-emphasis is by adding a sharp pulse to the normal signal and generates the pulse by using what is basically an AND gate with one input inverted and delayed from the other. This is a classic pulse generator which I've studied in 6.374 (Analysis and design of digital integrated circuits) for dual edge registers and is also a very cheap way to double the rate of a clock (although the duty cycle of the result isn't so hot).

There was some stuff about how the muscles actually contract which was interesting for a bit but then they lost me (the book is intended as a review for the USMLE so there were a number of things that went over my head). Then they got into the overall function. This was really interesting because I knew that at times more blood flows to one place than another but the book got into how that actually occurs. The part I found amazing is the complexity of the feedback loops involved in the cardiovascular system. Normally if an engineer sees more than a few feedback loops interacting he/she gets quite concerned, but the body has tons of them.

Then it got into what happens in various cases, such as exercise and when bad stuff happens. I knew that cardio workouts are good for the heart (hence the name...) but I didn't realize that weight lifting is also good for the heart but in a different way. In cardio the main issue the heart faces is pumping huge volumes of blood through the body. So during exercise the heart gets bigger and better at that activity. But when weight lifting, it takes a huge amount of pressure to get blood into the contracted muscle, so the heart has to get stronger and better at creating large pressures. I also didn't realize that stuff other than your heart helps to pump blood. Such as when muscles contract and relax they pump blood (mostly in the veins) and when you breathe the changes in pressure pump blood. This is part of the reason why standing still is uncomfortable - the blood in your veins in your leg builds up and you need to use your leg muscles to help pump the blood back up (the veins have one way valves which keep the blood going in the right direction - if you don't know why I think one way valves are super cool - ask me about 6.270 sometime).

Anyway I should stop rambling. If you wanted to know more than that you could just read the book (or those who didn't avoid biology probably already know). Also I should note that I know almost nothing about biology so anything I said in this post could be completely wrong.

Roomba

Good thing I read how to survive a robot uprising...

Your order for 1 iRobot Roomba Sage with Convenience Pack (4110) on 07/17/2006 has been recently shipped via FEDEX.

I had been thinking about getting one and then it was up on woot.

How to Survive a Robot Uprising

I just finished How to Survive a Robot Uprising. Well of all the books I've read, possible ever, this is the only one that will inevitably save my life one day. Yes, I did find out about this book from Akshai's blog. A PhD candidate at Carnegie Mellon in robotics decided that not all of hollywood can be wrong so one day robots will eventually have an uprising. So he talked to robotics professors and experts about topics such as how to know when your robotic vacuum has decided to turn against you and in that case how best to defeat it. I will say there were some slow moments when he really dug more into the robotics than focusing on being funny but if you can read between the jokes there is some interesting info on the current state of robotics. But slow moments or not if you don't read the book won't you be sorry when your toaster and roomba join forces against you.

In other news - went to the beach today (surprise, surprise) and other than reading How to Survive a Robot Uprising, I watched the surfing competition they were holding by the pier. It was very cool to see some really good surfers - they were doing stuff like walking up and down the board to control it which I hadn't seen before and of course they were able to pull some cool moves. The waves weren't huge so they didn't do anything too crazy, but still fun to watch. At the same time they were running a few other random competitions. One of which involved paddling large canoes out into the ocean and back - not that exciting on its own, but when a good wave hit it would send people flying out of the canoe and then they would scramble to get it flipped back over and get back in (the first time I saw it I assumed the guy would just give up - as that's probably what I would do). Anyway, time to stop poorly describing stuff I saw today and go see pirates since if Hollywood tells me to see a movie enough times I can't exert enough self control to do otherwise.

Books and stuff

First off what I've been reading since I got down to San Clemente. The sudden posting of what I've been reading has nothing to do with a recent entry to the world of blogging by someone else. There's no residual competition there at all... Really... (Actually I have been doing this for a while and let it drop off recently).

Breaking The Spell by Daniel C. Dennett: Very interesting! It looks at the phenomenon of religion scientifically and is making a call to others to do the same. Now this doesn't mean he's looking at how Moses made the river part, but rather why do people believe this and points out that most people actually just believe in believing in it. One of the most interesting parts is the discussion of religion as a meme. For those that don't know (like me before I read the book and looked into it) a meme is an idea that evolves just like animals evolve and also follows the rules of natural selection. This helps in looking at religions for what makes certain survive and some fade away. Some particularly interesting points are a theory of how very early religion began based on the human tendency to give human feelings to objects, and his arguments why religious people should not object to science studying religion. I'll let amazon explain further if you are interested.

The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki: Good stuff for anyone looking to start a company or working at a start up. Otherwise it's fairly specific and probably not of general interest. Thanks Mom and Dad for the book. If you are involved with start ups I'd say check it out.

In the Line of Fire by Jerry Weissman: A how to on answering questions at presentations. Seems like great advice and also has some interesting commentary on politics and the influence of how candidates handle themselves at public speaking events. The one downside I see is it seems like for the advice to work it would require some practice, which as someone who doesn't give many presentations I'm not sure how well I could actually pull off his suggestions. Thanks again Mom and Dad for the book.

Cordelia's Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold: After reading the foundation series I decided that those Hugo people must know what they are talking about (even if they do have the worst website ever for a group based on nerdyness). I saw that Bujold had won multiple Hugo's so I decided to try one of her Hugo winners. I really hate to say this, but here it is - I realized while reading this book that I almost never read books written by women. Not that I'm against reading books by women, just as I look back I realize that I rarely do. This book did not encourage me to reverse the trend. I'm not really going to hold one book against all female authors. The first 200 pages were fairly good even if a bit slow, and being told from a women's perspective really didn't detract from it for me (a large part of one of my favorite series, Dune, is told from a woman's perspective, of course it's written by a man so maybe it doesn't count). But the next 400 pages which had a scifi background, were really about getting married and having a baby which didn't exactly suck me in (the real point isn't just my opinion - she says so in the afterward). I'll try something by a female author again one of these days, but next time I'll make sure the author's main interest isn't writing about starting a family.

Hmmm - don't really want to end on insulting half the human race so time to think of something else to say...

On Monday I went up to San Jose - if anyone in San Jose reads this, don't be insulted I didn't call, I flew in at 8 am and flew out at 8 pm (and flew from San Diego so yes that was a long day). I'm not completely certain, but I think this was the first time I've flown and had the origin and final destination in the same state. Wasn't up to anything too exciting up there, just went up to meet with some people that the company I work for works with. Well, the one interesting thing is that while I was there on Monday I was informed that I needed to get some info together for someone else to present to the CEO (as well as four other executives and my boss) on Tuesday. Then, on Tuesday, as we sat down for the meeting, I was informed that I should go ahead and present the part that I had prepared. I'm not really complaining because it's nice to have exposure to upper management, but there was some anxiety as I decided what to say while looking at most of the company's executive team.

A few random items:

I think that a few of Akshay's most recent posts are fairly interesting, especially the talks.

My Dad introduced me to woot. I'm yet to buy anything but I find it funny and know one of these days I'll actually pull out the credit card. Note: if you do become a woot fan you should move out to CA (well you should move to CA for many reasons) because midnight on the east coast is 9 pm on the west coast so it is easy to catch the items just after they are posted.

I never understood adults who got tired at 10 pm and said it's because they had to get up for work, but it's 10 pm and I'm tired because I have to get up for work.

Oh yeah - 4th of July - went to Laguna Beach with Eric and Evan and others - good time!

Parents and Brother

Last week my parents headed out to San Clemente and Eric headed down for the weekend so for a few days the whole immediate family was together. The travel plans were actually much more complex than that but I'll skip over the details.

It was really good seeing Mom, Dad and Eric. I really appreciate my parent's help getting my place setup. Tomorrow (Thursday) I get the couch and coffee table and I think the apartment will start feeling more like a real place (standing during every meal at the apartment has gotten a bit tiresome - although Cameron's free dinners and oatmeal packets have made that a somewhat rare event).

Over the week:

Ate at several fish restaurants in Dana Harbor - good stuff and nice views and really good calamari (apparently apple spell isn't a seafood fan...).

Spent time at the apartment's hot tub and pool and made use of the grills - always good times.

Got down to San Clemente's beach - also always a good time. Also walked through an outdoor art festival on the way down to the beach - good except the reminder of how expensive art is. On the beach after seeing how far out into the ocean we could get while fighting the waves (which were pretty good size that day) (for me at least the limiting factor was the amount of ocean water I could tolerate invading my body - the human body might be mostly salt water but add a bit extra and it gets all unhappy) and body surfing them back we decided to try boogie boarding. I might give boogie boarding another try at some point, but I think body surfing is the way to go (well, still need to try surfing to see how that goes).

Also found some interesting restaurants in San Clemente and surrounding area. At one point during the week someone was helpful enough to tell me that there's a really good taco place in San Clemente (for those that haven't been to San Clemente it's about 70 miles from the border, I'll leave it to you to guess how many taco places there are).

Did some shopping.

Went golfing - it has been a long time but was fun to get out and try it again. I think that I'm at this interesting skill level where I can not play for a few years and still be about as good as I was the last time I played. I definitely need to add some exercises that resemble swing my back and arms around really fast to the workout routine (well, that or when I play golf not try to make up for a lack of skill by swinging really hard).

Went to dinner at my parents' friend's house. Very nice people and very nice stone deck looking out at the ocean in Laguna.

I'm probably leaving something out but at least got across the idea that it was a full and fun week.

Ken Lay and Defibrillators

Most of you have probably heard that Ken Lay died of a "massive heart attack" (well maybe not the reader(s) in Israel who either finished their thesis 3 days ago or are 3 days late, but other than them...).

This slate article, which Eric pointed out to me, discusses what it means when a heart attack is reported. As the article explains it might be a heart attack or it might be cardiac arrest. If it was really a heart attack then I have nothing more to say about it. However, if it was cardiac arrest, an implantable defibrillator might have saved him. Hmmmm - Cheney has one, and it is possible that one would have saved Lay's life, I need to come up with some better examples if I'm going to feel good about my job...

Ocean View

I just switched cubes. I'm now sharing an office with 4 people, but there are cube partitions. The interesting part is that I have an ocean view! I'll admit it's a somewhat small view of the ocean between some trees, but still a lot better than a view of the next cube.

New Job, New Place, New City

A few things have happened since the last post, hopefully I'll catch most of them but I'll probably miss some.

I had my last day at work which went fairly smoothly. Of course there was some awkwardness, especially at the very end when I got around to telling some of the people in the extended group I worked in, but nothing too bad.

Finding an apartment was an interesting experience. I drove down to San Clemente a couple of times and looked around at what's available. Finding apartments is such an odd experience. Everyone seems to think that first come first serve is this obviously fair system but I think it's really just terrible for everyone (well the buyers, I'm sure it works great for the sellers). Not sure what I would replace it with but the line the apartment will probably still be available next week but someone could come and take it at any moment just says to me that it is a bad system. I sorta see how it would benefit sellers, but if the buyer has any backbone it shouldn't make that much difference. Anyway enough of that rant.

So I decided on two apartment communities I like the most (I know community is a bit silly, but they aren't really apartment buildings since it's a group of buildings and you enter your apartment from the outside). After going back and forth I decided to save some money and go for the cheaper one. I went through the hoops required to get a reservation without being there in person. Next day I called to discuss the reservation I put on 15G and they mentioned they actually had 6J which was in a better spot so I switched to it. Then that night I started having some buyer's remorse. Next day I call again and find out that 6J won't be available when I need it and 15G was just rented by someone else. It took me a moment to get over the fact that while the situation was absurd there was nothing they could/would do. So I canceled the reservation (took a couple repetitions of "it's your fault so you won't keep any of the money I sent you" before they caught on), faxed an application to the other place before they even opened and then called and claimed the one available one bedroom.

Anyway soon after my last day at work my dad flew out to Carp to help me move. This move was the full do it yourself budget truck move, although luckily between my dad, brother, and Jess helping it turned out to not be too bad and I enjoyed spending time will all of them. Thank you Dad, Eric and Jess! Especially thanks to dad for flying out and dealing with sleeping on my floor, having you out here was a huge help and it was fun spending time with you. I'm doing a terrible job of telling this in order but somewhere in there I saw Len and Stanley to say goodbye and it was good seeing both of them.

One funny moving story is that Susanna and I had bought an old fold out couch off craig's list when we moved to carp. I always thought it was quite ugly but was cool with the low price as a starter couch. Moving a fold out couch is not something that I was looking to do so I tried out craigslist but with little luck (I think I made the mistake of posting a picture). So I gave up and called the salvation army (yes I do have some issues with the salvation army, but goodwill wouldn't come out to carp and I really didn't want to move the thing myself). So the salvation army guys came out, took a quick look at the couch and decided that it wasn't in good enough condition for them to take it. I don't think I'm particularly rich but I would like to think I'm beyond the charity won't take my stuff point... Well, my dad offered them $20 and all of a sudden they were willing to take it and throw it away for us. Not quite sure if they were looking for a tip or if they really couldn't use it but that was a bit of a shock (especially since it happened at 8 am and I still had the morning daze going).

So far I really like San Clemente it's still a beach town but bigger than Carpinteria so a bit more going on and more interesting beach. I can't walk to the beach like I could in Carp but it's a short drive. At first I was a little bummed about not being able to walk to the beach and then I mentioned it to my brother and he gave me an are you crazy look and since then I've gotten over it.

I went to my first 3 days of work. I can't imagine that many people have had an exciting first 3 days of work and this didn't break the trend. But it does look like things will pick up very soon. Well it did pick up some on Friday when at 10 am my boss's boss stopped by my cube to tell me that since the senior analog engineer isn't around they want me to interview a technician at 10:30. Luckily I was able to spend the 45 minutes quizzing the guy and avoided him asking me any questions about the company I had worked for for 3 days. Friday was also fun because a group of people from work played flag football during lunch. I think the last time I played a sport during work was golf during an internship in high school. Football was a lot of fun and did a good job of breaking up the day. Another thing I like about the company is they know how to motivate young workers - free food. It's nothing like the stories from Silicon Valley during the '90s but there's some free drinks and dinner at 6:30 and bagels Friday morning. One other thing I find interesting and somewhat amusing is that it sort of reminds me of The Office - not all the terrible, super uncomfortable stuff in the show, but more the background of a smallish group of people occupying one floor of a building with a receptionist at the front door (Cameron actually has more than one floor but most everyone I interact with is on one floor). Also since the company is small enough I'm not tucked back in an engineering area so there's a greater variety of people and people are more social (I'm sure at most companies certain areas are very social but if you create large enough of an engineering only area I think it gets very quiet). I realize this is a bit odd but I also think the people are more attractive (both men and women) than at other companies I've seen. It could just be that the people are younger or that I'm just making something up or being in the OC or the whole not being surrounded by engineers thing again. I'm not trying to say that engineers are ugly, silent people but I do think there are certain trends.

One new thing I'm trying since moving into the new place is not getting cable. Somehow my brother convinced me to try it. It's working fairly well so far (I've spent more time out and I've read a few books since moving in). The only issue I've had is since I need a constant noise source it takes a bit more effort to make sure my radio or something on the computer is playing.

A few other events - met up with Eric and Jess a couple times since moving down here. First time was for a bon fire on Huntington Beach (thanks for the hot dogs and s'mores) and second time they came down here and we hung out on the beach and went up to Laguna for dinner. Both were a very good time.

This weekend I did some more beach time and some reading on my deck. Ah - one interesting aspect of the new apartment is that the deck has a nice view of the hills (well a few power lines mess it up a bit but I ignore those) and part of the view is Camp Pendleton. Not a whole lot to see there other than barracks but if you're on the deck and real quite you can sometimes hear them yelling yes sir and once heard the horns playing.

So overall I'm pretty excited about the new place and new job. If you're ever looking for a beach vacation just let me know and you can have free accommodations with pool and hot tub, 5 miles from the ocean.

The David Driving Challenge

Do you dare take the David Driving Challenge?

Rules:
Pick an 11 month period of time. Drive a stupid number of miles.

How to win:
Drive more than 27,000 miles (approximately 2,000 miles greater than the Earth's circumference) in those 11 months.

Bonus points:
During this time use approximately 1,125 gallons of gasoline (approximately 22 barrels of oil).

Double bonus points:
Do it all because of a girlfriend who becomes an ex during those 11 months.

Prize:
You just made a major contribution to destroying the environment - you don't get a prize! (Well, unless you count driving along the coast in your convertible.)


Round Two:
Live within 5 miles of work for the next several years to average out all the damage you have done.

I QUIT!

Steve posting on his blog again has inspired me to finish my thought.

The hollywood version of quitting is so cool - you barge into your boss's office and yell I QUIT! and say something clever or nasty about shoving something somewhere and then maybe throw something or kick something and go storming off in victory and usually there's some appropriate music playing in the background. I should have put "damn it feels good to be a gangsta" on my iPod - hmm maybe I'll have to save that for the last day of work. (If you don't get it, go watch office space - I mean it - I'll wait
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Ok now that we all want a red stapler - moving on).

My version involved emailing my boss who was out of town and then talking to someone in HR so that at least someone would know that I had given notice. Then telling the people I worked with was a bit awkward and a little sad. I didn't even get to throw a pen or say anything clever and mean. Oh well.

As you read this you might think, gee David doesn't strike me as the kind of person that just decides to quit his job. Maybe you think I'm too responsible for that, or maybe just too greedy. Or maybe I've actually told everyone who reads this what's been going on so you know why I quit. Or maybe you are a bot crawling for a search engine that's just thinking - keywords are: job, quit, David (it's probably funnier if you read that last part in a robotic voice). Well, in any of those cases you're right (well maybe not the responsible part, and to the bot there are probably a few other good keywords on the page).

I think I already mentioned meeting up with Eric (fraternity brother). Well, I interviewed at the company he is working for, Cameron Health and got the job. I'm pretty excited. They are a small bio-tech start up in San Clemente (yes Nixon lived there at one point, and for those of us that didn't know he died in 1994 so no we won't be neighbors). Cameron Health is designing a new type of implantable defibrillator. I would warn you that the link describing implantable defibrillators is gross, but I'm retraining myself to not find that stuff gross, so the last link is NOT gross, definitely, definitely, NOT gross. The downside to this job is that I'll have to move from a small beach town to a bit bigger, bit more interesting beach town. Life's tough. And yet again, I have chosen good weather over my friends. Maybe one day my friends will learn to chose good weather too and we can actually live near each other.

Now you might say to yourself, what the crap does David know about biology? And, didn't David bump up against the edge of what could be considered cheating by coaxing the biology problem set answers out of Jason? Well the answers are nothing, and yes (but the problem sets were only worth 10% and half cheating on 10% is only 5% so it's pretty much negligible). So what is David doing working for a biotech startup? Well, implantable defibrillators sense electrical signals from the heart to decide when to send out a huge electric signal/storm to the heart. (I should have kept that sign about 10,000 volts implying that you shouldn't touch stuff on my desk, from when I was building that laser that I never finished.) So there is actually a lot of analog circuitry going on.

Next question - why change jobs? Well, it was time for a change. Mostly this seems like a particularly good time to try a small company. It should be a bit more exciting and fast pace. Also there is an element of risk, but with no dependents and not being a homeowner, if I show up one day and everything is shutdown then oh well. In addition, not to feel too special, but I think it will be cool that when I go to work each day I'll be working to making something that will save people's lives. Just a bit more meaningful than automatic test equipment.

Big Sur

This past weekend I headed up to Big Sur with Eric and Jess to meet up with my parents. It's quite the area. If you want to lay on sandy beaches and get in the ocean definitely head to SoCal rather than the central coast, but if you're looking for great views of hills ending at the ocean and cool rock formations in the ocean (wow, I'm such a poet I can make one of the coolest landscapes sound about as exciting as a field of grass) then the central coast is the place to be.

We did some hiking around in the woods and along the coast, went into Monterey and Carmel to see the little towns, and had some good eats with some good views.

In addition to seeing the sites and stretching our legs we all discussed our plans as the whole family seems to be in transition at almost the same time (for more on my transition see the next post which will probably have to wait until I leave work, or if I already posted it by time you read this think back to the last post you read).

A few random thoughts

So my first comment is for all the restaurant hosts/hostests in the world. If someone comes in and asks for a table it's one thing to say: for how many? or for one? but to say just one? or just for one? is just mean. If someone is eating alone the person knows it and there's no need to point it out further.

Next thought - I think I figured out the secret to driving in LA freeway traffic:
1. Drive about a mile
2. If traffic is reasonable (or at least not horrible) goto 1
3. If in a rush goto 8
4. Get off the freeway
5. Find the nearest movie theater
6. See whatever is playing at the time
7. Goto 1
8. People on the west coast aren't in a rush - learn to relax or move back to the east coast

I've only waited out rush hour(s) by seeing a movie twice but both times it worked well.

I actually talked about the literature class I took in college in an interview. It was my answer to the question: what was your worst class in college. At some point while I was describing why it was my worst class the interviewer said something like "typical engineer" - although, he is an engineer so I think it was meant in a good way.

Since I brought up interviewing - I'd rather see if I get the job or not before I discuss it further with "the world". If you're interested feel free to ask me directly.

Spring break and such

The people have spoken it's time to post again (well ok one person spoke but considering the number of people that read this that counts as the people).

So a long time ago my brother and Jess came up to Carp for Spring Break. As I headed off to work each morning they headed off to surfing lessons. While that made the morning drive to work pretty difficult I got over my jealously when they cooked dinner and lunches for me and helped stock my house with some of the stuff that you would have thought I'd have to begin with. And then that Friday I called into work and said something came up and that something was driving up to wine country. And at some point we went out for Shabu Shabu - good stuff! Oh and happy birthday to Eric. It was great having them up here!

Oh yeah there was that whole class thing I was up to. Luckily both of the final project groups I was in were brave enough to do just enough work to hit all the requirements and not go over the top like most groups. Which did end up working out well in the end. Now that class is over I'm appreciating free time more and joined a gym. I've also started putting a bit more effort into figuring out where I want to be. I've been spending some of my weekends down in Glendale hanging out with Eric and Evan which is always fun. We headed to china town for lunch and saw little tokyo. Also drove through downtown LA just to see what's there - didn't feel much need to get out of the car...

Yesterday I went to a SoCal alumni event and ran into Varady. It was good to see him again and getting a free dinner from my fraternity big brother didn't hurt either. The alumni event was pretty uninteresting itself but talking to Eric (yes my fraternity big brother's name is the same as my real little brother's name) was very interesting since he recently went from working for a huge company to a little pre-IPO company.

Eric (back to real brother) reintroduced me to podcasts. I had tried them out a while ago and wasn't very impressed but I guess they've added a few since then. I'm still picking out which ones I like so any suggestions would be appreciated. So far I've tried The Naked Scientists (ok), just subscribed to slate, Science Friday from NPR (good stuff) Al Franken Show (good when they actually put some out), The Onion Radio News (funny but very short). I just started listening to Real Time with Bill Mahr you lose a little since you're listening to a TV show but not much and very funny. I tried out the history podcast but I wouldn't recommend it. Has anyone else noticed that when listening to podcasts on an iPod after each one it pops you back to the top level menu? WTF mate! So I've put together a playlist that grabs all the podcasts but that seems awfully silly - has anyone else come up with a better solution (or am I just doing something wrong?).

More Yosemite

Just added 6 more pics from Yosemite to my flickr page.

This is not a one line blog post.

Back from Yosemite

Just got back from Yosemite.

If you want to see some pictures check out my flickr page. If you click on the Yosemite grouping on the left you'll see them in order and you can then select to see it as a slide show. (on a side note flickr is cool).

Yosemite is amazing! Apparently a glacier cut a valley out of some mountains in the Sierras. So there is a valley with a river and several streams running through it and is surrounded by giant walls of granite rock. There are also several giant waterfalls.

On Thursday morning I got up crazy early (even by normal people standards) and drove south to meet up with Al and head north. (I work with Al and he has been an informal mentor.) Al has been going to Yosemite several times a year for over 15 years so he was quite the tour guide (and took care of most of the work). We did some hiking on some of the easier trails (well at least for people in better shape than me and from less flat states) but the snow and ice added some challenge. We did some walking around the valley and looked around the snazzy hotel in the valley where the elevators in the shining were filmed. That day it was snowing and in the hotel lobby lots of people were sitting around inside reading and using their laptops and I had a funny feeling like I was looking into a mirror of what I would normally being doing. But instead I had woken up that morning and gotten out of the tent, had some breakfast and sat outside and watched the snow come down for a few hours. The trip included some good sitting and doing nothing time - watching the snow one day and sitting in front of some big fires a few nights. Al also cooked up some good dinners including some power steaks. I have nothing to compare it with but according to Al we lucked out to have a large portion of the park to ourselves (I think the large snow storm on Friday probably scared off a lot of the campers who were supposed to be our neighbors for the weekend).

Overall I had a good time in an incredible place. I'll definitely have to head back and see what it's like in the summer. If you're not the camping type but want to check it out there are a number of room possibilities of various levels of fanciness.

Yosemite

Looks like I'm headed to Yosemite.  Taking off Thursday morning and coming back on Sunday.  

Yes I moved to CA to get away from the snow and now I'm going to go camp in it, but there's something different about choosing when to deal with snow.  

The plan is some camping, some hiking, some drinking, some cooking over a campfire, possibly some cross country skiing...

I'm skipping class and a meeting with a VP at Teradyne to go so I should at least go get some work done rather than keep blogging.

Meg

Was it just me or did Meg not sound like Mila tonight?

Rocket Man

If you are a Family Guy fan you have to see this!

Thanks to Akshai for pointing this out on his blog.

24

Well for all of you 24 fans who thought of me here's Teradyne's statement on a recent episode:

There was a very familiar company name used in Monday night's FOX TV series 24

It sounded just like Teradyne. CTU Agent Jack Bauer (Keifer Sutherland) was chasing his usual array of bad guys...this time rebels intent on using stolen nerve gas on Russia...when this dialogue occurred:

"Chloe calls Jack with what she uncovered on the chip. A company called Terra-Dyne has acquired raw strontium isotope, which is used to make the Sentox gas. The company is a subsidiary of Omicron. Jack recognizes the name Omicron and asks Chloe to find out whether someone named Christopher Henderson is a senior executive there..."


Notice the different spelling and hyphen, but when it's spoken, it sure sounds like a company we all know and love. Of course, we're not in the "raw strontium isotop" or nerve gas business, but it did create a mini-buzz among Teradyne employees who watch the show. The Boston Herald even did a story about it in today's editions.

Here's the Boston Herald Article.

Fast

Wow, that's fast. Of course the "could have" makes it seem a bit questionable.

Googling myself

It's 2 am so what am I doing - googling myself (well even worse than that - now I'm blogging about googling myself). But I did feel it necessary to point out that apparently I am the father of radio and because of that I have an award named after me. In both cases the reference is a bit buried so you'll want to do a find for my name.

For those that don't know - it's David Sarnoff who is the father of radio - Roscoe the 6.101 instructor used to call me Sarnoff - although it's not much of a compliment since the guy was fairly evil and drove an engineer to suicide because Sarnoff stole so much of his work. (Roscoe started calling me that when I was in the class so it has nothing to do with my harsh grading or bad review sessions).

Update

Finally a post about me rather than just my random rants or attempts at political commentary.

I've been fairly busy lately with the work/class combo. Class is going fairly well. In org behavior I'm yet to get any grades but soon enough I should get an idea of how I'm doing in there. I'm actually kind of concerned about taking a test that does not involve math - it's been a while. Accounting is still going fine - we actually covered one topic which required a bit of thought (figuring out from all of the other info how much cash the company actually received or used). In accouting class I've started alternating between zoning out and trying to do all the math before those people who think you should bring a calculator to an accounting class. Most people in class are starting to show signs of fatigue from the class/work combo. I think I fit in the crowd, but I'd like to claim that's largely because of my nocturnal tendency - especially living alone I tend to lose track of what time it is.

At work I'm getting a bit frustrated with the pace and the proportion of tedious work to interesting work. I won't go into much more detail here since you really never know who's reading a blog. But if anyone wants to partner up and start a company this would be the moment (best if you have a business idea...).

Other than that I've gotten to the beach and hot tub a bit and have spent some time hanging out with Eric.

Well I should get back to homework or go to bed (or find some other way to procrastinate).