Governor Kathleen Blanco of Louisiana has declared today a day of prayer. Wouldn't it have been nice for her to declare a "day of pragmatic thinking." Or "a day during which we perform our thoughtful contingency plan." Or even "a day of selfless behavior." But a day of PRAYER. As if the south needs that. We might as well have a press conference with Joyce Meyer, who seems to have more resources at her disposal.

I had taken beautiful movie of Lobo settling into bed, but alas, SBC Yahoo! does not let me post it.

I've been summoned for jury duty! Something to finally blog about. People, grab your cutlery and tuck in that napkin, because I am going to be adjudicating.

The most coherent arguments I've heard in favor of staying the course in Iraq have been from Bill Kristol. He describes the aftermath of a pullout as follows:

"Since Iraqi troops won't be as capable as American ones, the situation will deteriorate. Then the insurgency could become a full-fledged guerrilla war, inviting a civil war--and we would be faced with a choice between complete and ignominious withdrawal or a recommitment of troops."

Ignominous, "Marked by shame or disgrace"

This scenario should at least be on the minds of the people in Crawford. The first image that leaps to mind is officially endorsed massacres of minority groups in Iraq.
Years and years of sunnis and shiites with RPG launchers skittering about on our television sets. Murders we won't see and won't feel.

I do support a pull-out. What Kristol assumes is that the "ignominious" outcome has not already been reached. His idea of shame is just as valid as Cindy Sheehan's. Our government has acted shamefully, from the top (Bush) to the bottom (Abu Ghraib). And currently, the same idiots who convinced us to go into Iraq (Kristol) are using the same doom-scenario technique to prod us en masse towards escalation. No.

Nobody understood what makes Iraq tick THEN, and I'll be damned if I go along with more pundits telling me they think they understand Iraq NOW. There is no serious analysis going on. I suppose what must be next for Anti-War supporters is to formulate a credible withdrawal plan. Doing the homework of explaining how a horrible civil war might NOT happen, or at least explaining why we are still OK allowing Iraq to go to hell...but wait it has gone to hell.

Erin Collier, the Austin Chronicle's marketing director, was my guest today on Writing on the Air. She brought six or seven different jars/tubs of salsa for me to try, and a bag of chips. We agreed that she'd come on only this week, after I had posted a blurb in the Chron announcing I'd be playing readings from Billy Collins and Denise Levertov. So the show was a weird mix of Erin and I making silly comments about hot sauce and then playing austere, serious poetry. Billy Collins, not too austere, but Levertov's "Life at War" dealing with "burned human flesh in Vietnam" was austere. It seemed to work. Ironically, Erin was one my most lively, funny guests, and she isn't a writer, which means I either need to find better guests or do a different type of show. Maybe the "feed Graham show."

Latest news. I have graduated. My freelancing clients have me documenting the second version of their rich site summary (RSS) reader, quicknews. Which Julie is familiar with, having written an excellent first book on the subject.

Via RSS I learned that Wil Wheaton, ensign crusher from star trek next generation, has made a name for himself as a blogger and technical writer.
He has a book "Just a Geek" which is supposedly a touching tale of what it means to be human. Many stars. Whodathought.

I watched Bill Maher standup for 90 minutes on HBO last night "I'm Swiss" and agreed with practically everything he shouted. For example, he points out that putting the ten commandments in front of a courthouse is dumb because 8 of them aren't actual laws. Don't covet thy neighbor's wife, for instance, is not a law. He criticized Bush for everything, including the stinging observation that he benefitted from the "safe" national guard of the 60s only to make it an extremely dangerous military branch to join in the 00s.

What I'm getting at is that I don't think I have anything to SAY anymore. Wil Wheaton's take on technology is more interesting than mine (having served on the Enterprise) and Bill Maher is 100x more prolific.

The reason summer box office receipts are down? It's the 15 minutes of fucking commercials they make you watch. (my impersation of Bill Maher with my own observation) See, he's better at it.

Bill Maher has also been the only person I ever heard directly make fun of Christianity. He is like a bulldozer charging a barbed wire fence. Richard Wright's book "Black Boy" describes communist speakers carrying on like Bill Maher. The narrator stands in the street in 1930s chicago and some guy with a bullhorn yells out to a crowd, "Where the hell is this Jesus, strike me down now. I'm WAITING." I like this side of America.

Oh, here is a 2.4 MB video of my senior project in action. I do not want to go into detail as this was not a very good project, other than perhaps the fact that we got it to do anything. The clicking sound is me turning the frequency knob on a signal generator. The device uses a coarse scheme for picking out the frequency as I raise it from 0-20000 hz.

Ugh. What a past few days. My night of three beers turned into a morning of acute stomach virus. Probably something I ate. I had no time to spare on the senior project so I worked through it. This morning Ryan and I demoed a successful sound-interactive light tile (see pic). I was honored to be a part of the experience, but getting home, seeing my picture, and still feeling unwell, I feel sort of ragged.

Sitting around here with Lobo, the abiding snooze-hound. Turner Classics is on. When they announce "a day of Shelly Winters" I get thrills dreaming about August 14th when I can sit on my ass and enjoy "a day of anyone who ever sat in front of a camera but who cares, i have earned my degree and am drinking a screwdriver." Actually, I'm drinking now. I came home to find Matt and Andrew Dickens drinking scotch, so I drank beer to fit in, now I'm here in the living room with the dog and my third bottle of beer.

Some weird James Cagney movie, blood on the sun, where american crackerjack journalists duck and weave around japanese imperialists.

A few nights ago I watched Lost in Translation for the first time. The characters still sit with me, after four days. That was Scarlett's role, she was that character. Vain as this may sound, the movie reminded me of my 1997 tour of Japan with the JIMT program, when I was put up in expensive hotels and was dying for human contact.

This rocks. I got an A in telecommunications networks, my last lecture/exam course, and a B in Laplace Transforms (the 6 week course I agonized over taking at the start of the summer). I have no idea what's next, but I'm wrapping up in style.

However, I have only 6 days in which to make my senior project presentable for the ECE open house. It's currently a C3P0 good heavens pile of crap. Trying to get a PIC microcontroller to communicate via USB is interesting. This morning I was able to transmit two integers from the PIC to the console. Hey, I can just stop now, that's a pretty snazzy senior exhibit.

i want a boston terrier. it's the only motivation i have to move out of matt's house.

this kid is brilliant.

notice how he answers both parts of the favorite word question with only one word.

i don't know, i hope he stays in canada.

nothing's easy

i just found out that a graduation requirement enacted in Fall 2004 requires me to take a technical elective in upper level math, astronomy, biology, or chemistry. i am faced with two options, A) take a third course this summer in fourier analysis that meets at 7AM, 5 days a week. or B) wait to take such a course in the fall and postpone graduation by five months.

the first option would result in a hellish 11 weeks, beginning immediately. i have never attempted more than 7 credit hours in a summer; this scheme would load me with 10 and jeopardize the success of my senior lab. the second option would require me to find a part-time job or internship in the fall, which is probably more difficult than just finding a full-time job.

going with the first option would show that I value my time, that i'm eager to graduate and go to work ASAP.

The second option would allow me to take interesting upper division courses in the fall such as the network engineering lab and the computer architecture course taught by yale patt. i'll never get another chance to take courses such as this. i could also choose an upper division math course i want rather than the only one that is available.

the first option seems more ambitious and bold, get the diploma and turn the page. since I'm 33, this seems smart. this is what i think 80 percent of people in my position would do.

the second option seems more cautious but also more optimistic, READ the page before turning it, and trust that you will make yourself into a stronger job candidate with the extra time.

i think i'm going to push ahead with plan A, take 10 credit hours this summer and begin a real job search now. this means i could relocate, get out of matt's hair, and feel like i'm not backing off. i'll check out the fourier class tomorrow morning. if it looks bad i can reconsider.





so

first denial then acceptance

the only issue i have with star wars III is that it was a Frito-Lay retail display at HEB four weeks before it opened as a movie. sith settles like a 100 million dollar layer of nacho cheese on every other serial/saga/shootemup that came before it. we are creating so much stuff for our children to watch that eventually they will never be able to reach bottom. yet, we will hand them a polluted environment, inadequate health care, budget defecits, and an estranged third world.

i don't know about you, but into my 30s my whole existence has begun to feel like a movie. impressive, unattainable things shoot back and forth across the screen but i am compelled, compulsed, to just reach for the next kernel of popcorn. in my case, next piece of odwalla bar.

always in the back of my mind when viewing a summer blockbuster is the sense of seeing a precious resource go up in flames. we witness how wealth, put in the hands of a privileged few, results in packaged messages that can only be heard when sitting silently and obediently in a theater. there is no natural law that requires millions of people to submit to the artistic vision of one man. all men are created equal, and with enough practice we could convert our cineplexes into public assembly halls, and entertain each other with music, lectures, strip tease, perhaps leaving ONE theatre open for film.

then again, my discontent over what is only a free market process is stupid. confining. i will continue going to the movies, enjoying the movies, and rather than allow some doubt to tickle the back of my conscience, i will just say "this is what it is."

I am writing to say that George Lucas deserves canonization, beyond the usual Oscars fanfare for “lifetime achievment.” We should build a large bronze monument in his image. After all, he sustained a vision for 28 years. He created his own standards and put his evolution as a filmmaker out there for all to see. He made no apologies or conciliation to critics.

When I was six years old, sitting between my Mom and Dad in a crowded movie theatre in Queens, the sight of an enormous blue imperial cruiser coming into view, carrying Darth Vader and his ominous respirations, made my palms sweat and instantly began shaping my concepts of right and wrong, darkness and light. Christmas 1977 I got a red T-shirt with the reflective silver adhesive letters, “Star Wars.” I’d talk to grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, about Star Wars. I would play Star Wars (one note at a time) on piano. I also knew that I did not have the full story regarding Star Wars. My father, already an Alec Guiness fan, remarked that he thought Obi Wan was the most interesting character, that the force actually did exist, that the beginning of Star Wars was not really the beginning, etc. (This was a man who took philosophy courses at Columbia and had a rough childhood, who was practically a kid himself in 1977.) As a result I imagined what the Jedis were like; in daydreams I would ponder why and how Darth Vader was once “good.” It amazes me that 28 years later I would find my curiosity on these matters still intact, that George Lucas could plant seeds of wonder in children, allow those seeds to sit for decades, and then complete his story only after the children had become adults. Unlike any filmmaker I can think of, he extended his epic vision over an epic length of time, providing a new mythology that an entire generation could share.

Some critics are currently trashing his work. They whine that the characters seem wooden, or make fun of Hayden Christianson’s performance, blithely ignoring the fact that if George Lucas gave up on making films or decided to just skip doing episode III, it would have thrown millions of people such as me into an abyss. George Lucas ignored the naysayers, determined to finish what he started. As a result he brought us full circle back to our childhoods. He gives a sense of wisdom, a sense of gratitude for having been born when we were and having waited 28 years for an answer.

The scene with Padme’s funeral procession shows a silent, mournful JarJar Binks (an object of many critics' ridicule) and several exotically facepainted, headdress-wearing Naboo characters. Putting JarJar into the movie at any other moment would have drawn guffaws from the audience. Lucas puts him there in a cunning way, as if to say "try laughing now." They walk in a beautifully gloomy evening light, more sophisticated in terms of set design and lighting than anything attempted in episodes IV, V, and VI. Lucas effectively scolds his critics here, showing that his “phantom menace” characters had value, or at least that his attention to costume and atmosphere grew substantially via these characters. Compared to Leia’s hair buns the Naboo facepaint and headdress is exquisite. Perhaps, Lucas suggests, you were all too insensitive to appreciate the new things I tried.

I predict that Lucas’ next film will be less about fighting and more about fantasy. He is going to deliver a true modern incarnation of Fantasia, something that absorbs a new generation in heavenly forms, high resolution color, perhaps a little mathematical precision. Hopefully he’ll also discover the next Harrison Ford (female or male) and recapture the daring feel of the first Star Wars.

studying for a final tomorrow, and for some reason i'm dwelling on the U.S. collective psyche. the poor little girls killed in zion, il. and Fox is making their usual circus out of it. i had a choice between the murders on fox and congressional happenings on CNN. I chose fox. i think the reason is that i am hoping for some sort of calamity. when 911 happened, it had the effect of leveling the social hierarchy. the way the event "pulled the country together" also gave everyone a reprieve from whatever ruts they may have dug themselves into. you could drop whatever you were doing and just watch television, and you were no worse than the next guy. some part of me, which i think many americans share, wants more legitimate calamities to occur (in remote cities of course) such that there is always a convenient escape from having to struggle and compete. did i mention this is finals week.

sitting here in lab, waiting for a program called design vision to finish generating timing and area reports for my synchronous serial port (SSP). the tool takes about 5 minutes to run. so i'm done with part A. the goal of part B is to interface the SSP with a real-world commercial processor interface, called an ARM. doubt i'll have time to finish this.

i have had a pleasant evening at school. the final 345L assignment calls for soldering components to a PCB board. i've been procrastinating on doing it, fearing a molten disaster, but after making a few ugly globs, i got it. you put the wire near the base of the pin, apply the soldering tip, and there is a puff of smoke and a nearly instantaneous transfer of the solder to the pin. it's easy, no superhuman touch is needed.

also, i figured out a bug in my verilog design. have been seeing red bars for a week, and these red bars are gone. i can go home, have a beer, and go to bed at a reasonable hour.

finally, finally, i finished the schematic of my ALU. impatience and panic started setting in today. i had earlier tested the comparator block successfully in isolation, the part that detects greater than, less than, equal, etc. around noon today i attempted to put it into the larger design. i was so fed up with the project that i lost any interest in the details, and for awhile i was speeding along connecting the comparator wires, feeling very smart. then at the last stage where i wanted to see all of the correct patterns coming out, it gave bad results and I became upset. in fact, i went over my disk quota at school causing weird errors just as i most needed to be thinking about the design.

i had gone out drinking in honor of matt's birthday last night. matt went home and then will, andy, and i went to the whiskey bar to meet will's friend who is a world renowned animal psychologist. but that went nowhere and the result today was that i was upset moreso than usual with being behind on projects. a mental rather than physical hangover. really hitting a wall. i came back here just as julie showed up with her friends annie and megna from canada. they seemed to detect my mood and proceeded to lavish my roomate matt with warmth for his having met them (annie and megna, in vancouver) for dinner. i was waiting for some kind of stinging coup de grace from the situation, something that would really make me regret everything about myself, but they just said bye and that was that. i ate an apple, a very tart and firm jonagold, muttered vulgarities for awhile, and then went back to the lab. i probed the interconnections of my design looking for the stupid error, the shorted wire, the misnamed pin. actually, i had forgotten a fundamental step which was to make sure that the arithmetic part of the ALU performed subtraction whenever being told to compare. really not that subtle a problem. but in the agony of being behind and having more tests bearing down i just wanted there to be some easy mistake to fix. i had willed myself into a state of denial where i was "finished" and simply needed to debug to be done. since i was not finished, i wasted hours searching for bugs that weren't there. as my bitchy ex boss from general bandwidth used to say, the absence of something is difficult to detect.

another sleighride of the mind is to celebrate prematurely. to want to be "the person" finishing an assignment rather than actually finishing the assignment. all this might seem incredibly obvious. but i am all too human. whenever i finish something or take a test i have a flood of thoughts. good engineers and scientists, like richard feyneman, for instance, would never pause to congratulate, chastise, or overanalyze themselves. their minds were quick and their routes of thought went straight to the essence of a problem. on to the next thing, the next truly big thing.

i created my first latex document. when matt alden lectured about latex i thought it sounded like the greatest thing since sliced bread. when i was a technical writer my boss told me that a lack of version control (ability to track who changed what file, how, and when) was why i could never gain her feel acceptance or appreciation as a human being. well, i'm exaggerating, but our little ephemeral group of tech writers were never allowed to feel whole because of this.

so here is LaTEx, a document SYSTEM that lets you typeset documents right in unix. with latex you have total version control. you can set up makefiles, check your books into CVS, the works.

well, follow the link and look at the results. it's my first latex document, but it's a fucking pain in the ass to use.

but so are 16 bit funnel shifters for that matter. i spent the whole day building one.

i'm actually posting this because i think the picture in my latex document is funny. you can really just skip to that and i'll be happy.

my 379k lab partner, who was almost brought to tears a few weeks ago, rallied and produced a working wireless communications link. what this means is that bits leave the computer, enter the air, and return via another antenna (only a few feet away) in the exact same arrangement. i held one of the antennas. the flowchart bryan created to accomplish this looks like the map of a small city. once the bits flew and returned none of his former agony mattered. all of the pain and doubt just vanished as he realized that he grasped something truly difficult. differentiating him as an electrical engineer, and giving him knowledge he might be able to apply for decades. such is the drug.

i've created my own map of a small city, but in a different class, VLSI design. my arithmetic logic unit (ALU) adds, subtracts, increments, or decrements two sixteen bit numbers in 1090 nanoseconds. the core of the ALU, called a kogge stone network, contains several layers of lookahead logic. if at one stage you need to carry a one, it wires this information ahead in parallel rather then slowly ripple the information one carry at a time. for example if your 2nd grade teacher gave you a difficult addition problem like 9997 + 8879 where the numbers were all big and generated carries, the kogge stone network would be like an extra set of hands, doing all of the carries nearly simultaneously rather than one at a time. this is something about 200 ECE graduates learn how to build every year. bryan with his flying bits is in the company of more like 4 or 5 people. i'm beginning to see people punch their tickets out. in fairness to myself, bryan is a graduate student. But I have a tremendous amount of work in front of me and a very short time to do it in. i don't think I'm going to grad school, and for the last few weeks I've been just hanging on.

prof. rappoport gave a brilliant lecture today on the subject of correlation filters and gaussian noise. he showed that with calculus and some basic knowledge of probability theory you can quantify how powerful the distortion is on a filtered channel. it gives noise a bandwidth of a half hertz he said, and indeed you could see on the whiteboard that the effect of a filter on the infinite chaos of random thermal noise is like taking a baby slice of cake out.

alex, my 345L lab partner, perfected his stepper motor program today. my contribution to the lab was to wire all of the hardware together. i used something called an L293 quadruple driver which was a professional kind of touch recommmended by the TA with only 20 minutes to go in lab last week. nobody bothered to try it except me. the thing about this course is that you have to fight for the TAs attention, and when you do get it there are always a few other students hovering around, wanting to take him away. in today's episode two such guys wanted to know how they could calculate the rotational rate of their motor. the lab instructions said that these things turned at 18 degrees per step. we ran our device and counted 20 steps. "count the time duration of 20 steps as the period" we told them. they didn't seem satisfied with this, perhaps because it was OUR device. i multiplied 20 * 18 on my calculator and showed them that the result was 360 degrees. for once i was issuing a smackdown.

i woke up thinking about all of the hours I spent as a child doing things which helped prepare me for my midlife transition to electrical engineering. i used to be an expert when it came to delta drawing, i had vast libraries of artwork, from bleeding snowflakes to armadas of spaceships that wiggled in space and "exploded" (red fill).

i could get to 99 on safari. as an aside, reader, explore the miniarcade site if you've ever owned a handheld game. check out puck'n monster.

i had a library of casio synth compositions, lego designs. cannot deny that was not mozart in any of it.

Spring Break Hell

I'm a little freaked out by wireless digital communications right now. Supposed to be preparing for lab 5 and am still trying to do a post-mortem on lab 3. I realized I was in over my head and found a lab partner last week, but it feels like it is too late. He seems brilliant but was almost brought to tears when his LabView model of a QPSK system wouldn't run. I sat like a vegetable trying to deduce what was going wrong within his large flowchart. As it turned out, he (we) did not physically connect the transmitter to the receiver with a cable. The TA who never helps me understand anything (not to be confused with my helpful 345L TA) tried to joke that first rule of debugging is to make sure it's plugged in. We knew he was scoring easy points. The professor in this course looks like one of the Irish thugs in "Mystic River." I need to see him in office hours next week and ask him if I need to drop.

This is pathetic, I can't express in words how hard I have been trying. The thing is I am not connecting. It seems like sitting around the house all day sitting here staring at notes and books is not really "trying." I suppose I could sit in a library. There is no tutor who can teach this stuff. I attend all the lectures. What more can I do?

By Tuesday, I am supposed to prove the complex least-squares solution to Ax-b. I took a course in linear algebra two years ago that required no proofs and treated complex numbers as "beyond the scope." I flattered myself by looking through the online course notes provided by MIT. For the last few days I have been wondering what a "Lemma" is. At MIT they talk in "lemmas." I had to review the derivation of a proj b! I'll never get it at this rate. It's as though I need to go back to school so that I can finish going back to school.

I figured out the concept of interpolation yesterday. The chip we are using in 345L has a special command calld ETBL that fills in the gaps between entries in a lookup table. A lookup table is 256 straight line segments approximating some sort of nonlinear curve. It is probably how robotic hands are able to grasp things without breaking them. A few days ago I came up with a method for debouncing pushbutton switch inputs using another freescale feature called "interrupt capture." Satisfying, you press the button, setting a latch, and then check the status of that latch a few times to make sure that the button has in fact settled on a 1 or 0. We use this everytime we type a character.

Relax and let the sheer hell of the next two months just hit. I saw "Constantine" a few nights ago with Julie, and am thinking that the question will not be "will i go to hell" but "how" and "when."

Readers, I do understand the importance of remaining positive. However, I suppose it is just that, a logical conclusion that "it is important to remain positive." I want the thrill of getting it, that's all. But that's quite a lot.

i dug through boxes to find an electronics part this evening and came across my textbooks from community college. fundamentals of financial accounting. college algebra. seeing them made me feel humble rather than humiliated; i am just an average guy. i used to feel that i was too good for those books. now i realize that the books are a part of me. some people go through life at a faster pace, building brilliant libraries. the nausea of life is that it is always possible to speed up, yet at the same time the amount of things we've done to define ourselves is always increasing. the moment screams "read the best things, go to the best places, be with the best people," but the sad truth is that most of us cannot handle the best. we wait in loops to find or be ready for "the best," and then we die.

now the books i'm reading are a little more challenging at least. studying computers and engineering is addictive because the battles can always be refought. being baffled today only sweetens the pot of being right tomorrow. the problem is today.

at ECE the scarce resource is time. those who make the best use of it succeed and gloat in inverse proportion to those who fail and cower.

enough prose.

my life has become nonstop school. i feel as though i spend almost as much time carrying books around as I do reading them. slice the pie chart up and the largest wedge by far would be staring into the computer screen. not necessarily learning. in the case of my VHDL course, lining up the edges of metal traces and dealing with a crappy CAD interface. a lot of time sitting in lecture. fascinating professors this semester. two of them are on the subject of timing, making sure that read data required starts and ends within read data available. i noticed somthing that binds together many fields of electrical engineering and computer science: parallelism. the computer program runs between samples, or processes between interrups. or on a finer level, multiple steps of computer logic execute between the miniscule edges of the system clock. i wrote in my notes that "it's all the same problem." controlling execution, which entails controlling time. the fields of electromagnetism, optics, seem quaint in comparison to the herd of geeks devoted to the pursuit of speed, moore's law, capturing higher and higher frequencies. 60 jigahurtz! my digital communications professor bellowed, the new frontier, ubiquitous broadband content. speed of course. very tiny time delay. robin tsang, my embedded systems TA remarked that intel chips are now so fast that execution cycles can no longer be traced with rectangular edges so much as humps measured in nanoseconds.

a painful day ends in revelation. a prelab, due this evening, called for a printed circuit board (PCB) schematic and wiring diagram. rectangular blocks, each having between 16 and 56 pins on them, needed to be wired together such that synchronized memory reads could occur. my lab partner alex and i sat in the freezing computer lab at around 1 PM wracked with confusion. his first question to me was why components could not be loaded from the schematic to the layout diagram. We wasted an hour trying to debug netlist errors in a vain effort ("to load the schematics"). alex seized the day and walked down three flights of stairs to the embedded lab. there he saw that people were not designing with specific serial numbered components but with generic dual inline package (DIP) footprints which matched the dimensions of the components. it was only then i realized that there was no need to load schematics to the layout tool. it doesn't care what the serial number is on a component. nonetheless, the assignment called for both schematic AND layout. i discovered that schematic tool was hinky. parts could be cut and pasted between schematics only by copying to the clipboard, closing the file, opening the file you want to paste to, and then pasting. the schematic software couldn't hold two documents open at the same time and let you cut and paste between them. two problems solved. 4 pm. we then proceeded to draw hundreds of wires, connecting write enable pins, wiring logic into nand gates, forking datapaths around latches (multiplexing), etc. alex muttered that what we were creating was fucked up. into lab. it is there that we bask in the warm glow of information. after some more nervous "what do we do now" kind of moments we are paired up with two chinese students for the actual PCB hardware segment of the project. (custom PCB boards are relatively cheap, but at $51 a pop you still don't want a bunch of people running willy nilly with their own designs. better to create large groups.) one of the fellows had a beautiful layout on his monitor with all 45 degree wire turns. meanwhile our layout was a 90 degree maze. we'll get to why this is bad in a minute.

it was getting late and we had a crankyness settling in, but alex had a few questions. why did the TA tell somebody that they could wire their external memory pins anyway they wanted, why could the write enable pin be set to ground rather than carefully wired. robin came over and showed us that an external memory has practically no preferences as to how you hook up its address and data pins. since the program always reads data from where it stores it, the actual hardware location of data is irrelevant. coming and going. it stunned me and then filled me with a sense of zen enlightenment. after the long day, you come to the realization that is you, not the computer, behaving rigidly. "did i give you a hard day? i think not, i could give a fuck where you wire my pins, i'll put your data wherever you tell me and give it back regardless of how i am asked. regarding the write enable pin, it is there for larger PCB schemes containing a bus, wires that are shared between multiple IO components. when one component is no longer using the bus, it sets its outputs to "undefined," effectively greasing the rails of the bus for other users. however, since we were only interfacing one memory, there was no need for a bus, no need to worry about setting the write enable bit correctly. more slack from the computer. it cares less than you do.

finally, i asked why it is so important not to draw PCB wires at 90 degree angles. robin drew a square outward spiral, asking, "what am i drawing" "an inductor" i say. he says right. "what does an inductor do" "disrupts adjacent wires, traps energy." right, "how many turns is this?" i count four square turns; a powerful inductor. he draws two sides of a square, a corner. "how many turns is this?" "1/2 turn" i say, "wrong, one quarter turn." obviously, the corner of a square is a one quarter turn, you need four of them the get back to the beginning. ultimately, the circuit is better if all connections are smoothly sloping, aerodynamic almost.

For weeks, sticky mousetraps have been empty behind our rat-infested oven. With the appliance guy coming over with a new oven I needed to move them out of the way. Holding and inspecting the trap (which had dust bunnies and dog hair clinging to it), I realized it required bait. I stuck a little wedge of parmesan in the middle and placed it on the floor in Lobo’s dogfood closet. The appliance guy arrived within 20 minutes. I cleaned up the floor beneath the old oven and let the guy bring in the new one. I went to wash my hands and saw the rat peeking out at me from around the bathroom door. I called the appliance guy over to see him. We both stared at him and wondered why he was standing his ground.

Appliance guy recommended putting on gloves and I proposed trapping him with a wastepaper basket. Appliance guy went back to his work and I entered the bathroom prepared for war. It was then that I saw that the trap was stuck to the bottom of the rat. Despite this, it was able to scurry past me and run to my bedroom. I finally got the trash bucket on top of it there. Sliding a manila folder underneath I was able to flip it into the bucket.

I took the bucket to the backyard where Lobo (Matt’s dog) was. It is embarrassing to admit, but I showed Lobo the rat in the bucket. Why did I do this? Hard to say. Lobo is like the child in the house, and in some way I felt like I was educating him, letting him see what a rat looked like. Another reason is that I have watched him chase phantoms around the house for weeks. He has been aware that SOMETHING was in the house but was perpetually too slow to see or seize it. I wanted to say “here is your culprit, boy, we have him.”

Naturally, Lobo trotted with me over to the marble-topped game-cleaning table that sits in the middle of the backyard. This was left over from the previous owners, and my plan was to bash the rat with a shovel on that marble slab. I lifted the bucket and the rat immediately flipped off into the grass. Lobo stuck his face in and the rat began making the trademark “eeee eeee” sounds. I had to fight Lobo off of the rat, shouting “no!, get off Lobo, goddamnit!” Lobo, resisting every instinct god ever gave him sat and watched me bash the rat with the shovel.

I breathlessly told appliance guy what had happened. I realized that I had needlessly exposed Lobo to rabies. He doesn’t appear to be bitten. Matt will have to decide what to do. The moral of the story is that in the heat of battle one can make pretty stupid decisions. I was supposed to make sure that Lobo was in the house before bashing the rat. For some primal reason, I wanted Lobo to see that I had a rat and was bashing it.

It’s the fog of war. You focus on the killing, not realizing that you are also being quite reckless.

Tomcat adhesive rodent traps are extremely effective if you put parmesan cheese in them. The rat’s legs were completely submerged in the rubbery goo. I put another trap down in the same place and will gladly repeat the experience without Lobo there. To give you an idea of why a rat in the house is bad, imagine turning on the oven to cook a pizza and have the house fill with the odor of a subway station.

finally getting somewhere with my idea for this year's braden essay contest. i am tempted to write about the interesting things i found on the web this evening, but somebody could stumble across these ideas and steal them. a 1/million chance of that happening, but why risk it.

came across another interesting science writer named philip ball. i would love to read his new book, but i've suddenly developed a backlog of books. i started a book called "designing embedded hardware" by John Catsoulis. it's cool in that he explains all of the tangible features of computer hardware. for example, he devotes a chapter to printed circuit boards (PCBs), such as the ones found inside a PC or Mac. he talks about what each feature MEANS, why there is a green film on one side of a board and a bunch of soldered bumps on the other side. he explains why subcomponents on a PCB must have individual voltage regulators. etc.

matt (my roomate) gave me Tom Wolfe's "I am Charlotte Simmons" for my birthday. the first few pages are pretty good. a drunk frat boy admiring his own beauty in the mirror.

i also acquired a book about digital signal processing that seems to fill in all of the things that went over my head in lectures with Professor Brian Evans this semester. Evans is an enigma. Of all the professors at ECE he has seemed to do the most work on advancing the curriculum. for example, he has posted a game plan for how EE seniors (such as myself) might be educated to be able to do embedded system design before they graduate. however, he seemed to treat fundamental aspects of DSPs as advanced subjects. i.e. i was led to believe that what he was lecturing about was NOT neatly summarized in a book somewhere. yet this book "understanding digital signal processing" has sections i would have killed for when preparing for the first DSP midterm in october. i am brought back to the cynical conclusion that lecturers often explain things inadequately and that most EE subjects are best learned from books. professors merely stand there firehosing you with information that they had the time to sit down and absorb before you could. evans taught a lot of things that definitely were NOT in any textbook, but he also taught a lot of things that were and i did not realize it. in my automatic control course the situation was worse, the professor never referred to the book and spent most of the class time fiddling around with his self-devised sys ID and root-locus plotting programs. complain complain. i don't even know what i'm going on about. it's late!

i had an interesting dream that i needed to retake the 5th grade. i woke within the dream with only 5 minutes to get ready for school. because the elementary school was so close, i could run over there for my shower. i ran there in yesterday's clothes and found the locker room. i had forgotten to bring soap or shampoo. i found a tipped-over bottle of pert plus on a ledge. i scooped up some of it and it made a thick lather on my head. i also found a thinned-down bar of dial soap. i put on yesterday's clothes again and realized i only had one minute until the bell. in the hall was a buffet of desserts, cupcakes, date bars, etc. i took a chocolate cupcake with amber colored gummies on it, needing some sort of sustenance to begin the day. the cupcake fell apart and i tried to shove as much of it into my mouth as possible to avoid making a mess. in the back of my mind I thought that it would be okay to be late on the first day of school, that little kids would be expected to get lost in the hall, therefore the same grace period would apply to me even thought I was an adult. (It always amazes me how logical one can be in a dream while carrying out absurd tasks.) The 5th grade class was mostly adult. I looked around for kids and saw a few of them, many with their fathers. I thought everyone in the class (except me) must have been very stupid to require such remediation. The teacher asked "who knows where World War I started." Nobody answered so I shouted out "Munich" feeling very smug and self-assured. The teacher didn't acknowledge my answer and I assumed that he was intimidated by my brilliance. Julie was sitting behind me, one row over. She admired my self-assured answer. Then the dream was over and I woke up.

My history book was on the shelf next to my bed. I turned to the WWI section and saw that Ferdinand was assasinated in Sarajevo, Bosnia. I was thinking "Munich" because just before the outbreak of WWII, Neville Chamberlain thought he had successfully negotiated with Hitler in that city. The "Munich Analogy" was later applied by U.S. officials to the Soviet Union, justifying the cold war. I.e. Munich proved to them that the Soviets could not be bargained with.

Which leads me to the interesting interview on Fresh Air yesterday with Richard Viguerie, author of "America's Right Turn: How Conservatives Used New and Alternative Media to Take Power." Viguerie is the third disturbing fundamentalist right-winger I've heard on her show. Senator Rick Santorum (PA - anti-abortion crusader) freaked me out in August, and Tim LaHaye, author of the Left Behind novels, freaked me out in March. Viguerie's premise is that secular society is waging war on Christian society. He described the Bush White House as OK but not doing enough to "control the courts" or to reduce the size of government. When Gross asked him why it was necessary to frame the current state of politics as "war" he said that the war had already been started by secular society and that he was simply helping Christian America to defend itself.

Now, ask me if I like fundamentalist Christian America and my answer is no. I am not sure that means I am "at war" with anyone. I have watched Pat Robertson on television, and find him to be well-spoken but repugnant. Anyone who leads a mass prayer vigil asking God to "change" members of Supreme Court seems too biased to trust, and un-American. What is American about praying for the death of Supreme Court justices? But more to the point, Christian broadcast media is manipulative and in poor taste. Its goal is not to inform the masses but to convert them, to control them. Ultimately, its goal is to draw public discourse back towards scripture because that is where certain men exercise the greatest knowledge and authority. I think that this is a problem because many problems in the world are important even though they do not pertain to themes in the Bible. Global warming, the environment, human rights. I appreciate the wisdom of maintaining a secular society. I see self-discipline, tolerance, and creativity in secular society. Secular insight thrills me. Am I at war with Fundamentalist Christians? I don't think so. I just don't think their ideas and methods are helpful.

But this is not enough. Fundamentalist Christians are at war with ME. So if I am to speak out against it, I need to know things like "Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo, not Munich." For that matter, it is helpful to know that WWII began partially in Spain where the right wingers under Franco defeated a newly formed leftist government, with backing from Hitler. America entered WWII as the new deal wound down. In america the role of government had expanded dramatically, to compensate for economic swings, and to assist the needs of people subjected to new forces of industrialization and urbanization. Americans loved FDR, and the fact that government could help.

three days until the end of finals. here is a link to an economics paper i wrote this semester.

currently reading richard wright's autobiography, "black boy." his language in 1944 was, in my opinion, completely modern. the feat he pulls off in this book is in adjusting his narrative voice to complement various growth stages. as a young boy his descriptions and observations are sparse. only by age 17, about 2/3 through the book do you begin to sense that the author is speaking. his perceptions of american culture are still very sharp. it would still seem that we are in a killing sort of system, one that is perhaps not so obviously cruel, but that we still must really use our wits to understand, and feel whole in.

i am finally moved in to matt's place. there are opened boxes and piles of unorganized crap on my bed which is why i am not sleeping right now. since i have much less personal space, the challenge is where to put everything. i can't move one thing without burying another thing. i've been hoisting and shuffling around my many heavy things for four straight days. it is changing my world view. i noticed in the arts section of the austin chronicle an exhibit called "electricity and me" which features fanciful electric devices. the aesthetics of it seemed wrong. our culture already includes heavy, mostly superfluous electric devices, what is the point of creating new, abstracted ones? i want to see art made out of nothing. an art installation that gives one the feeling of having empty hands and a strong back, rather than hands full and a burden to carry. there was actually a piece of art like this at the Tate a few years ago, a large photograph called "planting a ray of light" or something to that effect. the photograph showed a woman digging a hole with her hands, with the caption saying that she was performing an experiment to reveal dark spaces to the sun for the first time. the photo was taken in the late 60s but the woman had a modern stylishness, anyway i'm about to keel over from fatigue.

the depth of my ignorance was revealed this evening as I read about the Spanish-American war. most alarming to me was the realization that i never bothered, in 32 years of life, to study the geography of the caribbean islands. cuba forms a fairly straight line with haiti, the dominican republic, and puerto rico. in my mind, these places previously had no spatial orientation, except perhaps that i knew that cuba was the furthest north of the bunch. then, i realize, our country had an imperialist war with Spain, not much more than 100 years ago. Spain was cracking down on a Cuban insurgency to the extent that it hurt U.S. sugar interests, in that plantations were being smashed and workers put in concentration camps. we sent in the Maine for show, its boiler spontaneously exploded through no fault of Spain's, and due to intensly biased U.S. press coverage, we all decided to kick Spain's ass. we kicked Spain's naval ass--in both Cuba and the Phillipines--in 1898. our navy was efficient, but our ground troops were put through a meat grinder. teddy roosevelt and the rough riders prevailed in cuba, but took 1500 casualties. over 5000 U.S. troops died in the war overall, many because of poor diet and disease. this they called the "splendid little war."

of course, it was the turn of the century, when whites in the democratic-held south lynched nearly 100 african-americans annually. i am not sure that life in the U.S. then was any less violent than Iraq is today. our sensibilities have changed, in such a way that we are not any more peaceful or empathatic, only fixated more on outsiders. as our indifference towards genocide in Sudan suggests, we only care about violence that is a direct challenge to our sense of superiority. seeing the beginning of al-Zarqawi's staged beheading on 60 minutes the other night, i have busied my mind with scenarios of how we might be able to shoot or blow up the guy. however, brutality such as his is everywhere NOW, and it has prevailed HERE and ELSEWHERE for thousands of years. it is my entitled life here in the U.S. that is the exception. lives can end and do end in absurd, brutal ways. i could turn around and begin wondering why and how my life should be so GOOD in relation to it all.

there are a lot of things left to think about.

in the aftermath of a terrorist hit, the only alternative we seem to be able to accept is a military strike. a key reason that bush & co. may have put the military in iraq was to have a perpetual front available just for this occasion. assuming that the next terrorist attack is inevitable, our being in iraq will at least allow us to take quick, impressive action against militants, even if they are the wrong militants. in this light, the iraq postwar strategy seems shrewd. bush & co. didn't go in because they thought iraq could be fixed; they went in because they knew it would stay fucked up, a hotbed for extremism. as long as there are insurgents in iraq we will have someone to punish. we can be blind to actual threats, but we won't appear blind. since terrorism is nothing but PR anyway, there is some sort of twisted logic to this.

this is how i would do it, though.

- force all airline passengers to wear nothing but soft, pajama-like outfits. no carry-ons.

- deploy an international system of tamper-proof cargo containers that cannot be opened between source and destination without a "seal" being broken. i.e. allow nothing to be snuck around by ship. Frame the goal of "cargo omniscience" the way kennedy fromed putting a man on the moon and fund international teams to solve the problem.

- tougher gun control laws at home and a comprehensive strategy for disarmament abroad. work towards total prohibition of assault weapons, everywhere, and be persuasive about why this is important.

I looked for a news story about the Bush daughters' speech last night at the GOP convention, one commenting on their remark along the lines of "we want to stand up and support our dad, besides, what else do we have to do, we just got out of college!" (I wasn't watching it and don't know which one said it.) I thought it was a pretty severe dig on the economy, but it seems that I'm the only person who noticed.

No more judging and Dyer bashing. I DO have reasons to be inspired. Yesterday Dillon McKinsey did an amazing “Writing on the Air” (a 30 minute radio talk show I co-produce on KOOP 91.7 FM) with Austin Mayor Will Wynn and his wife, Anne. Dillon interviewed them on the topic of “Poetry in the Public Square.” He had quotes from the likes of Mario Cuomo, “Campaigning takes poetry, leadership takes prose.” His questions were surprisingly good, stimulating. They opened up, talking as people rather than as figureheads. They genuinely like slam poetry; Anne sees more talent in the likes of Wammo than in Bonnie Raitt. (She called Will on his cell as he sat in a Bonnie Raitt concert to call him over to Ego’s to see a slam.) Will, interestingly enough, has all of the songwriter Guy Clark’s lyrics memorized, and he did a beautiful two minute recital of a set of his lyrics.

If the leaders understand the importance of art, and the people play an active part supporting and creating art, then Austin is redeemed. It becomes a place capable of renaissance, not just economic renewal.

i made my way onto a Wayne Dyer discussion board. what a rush! see comment in the next entry.

i must continue ragging on dr. wayne dyer. his bald head seems to appear on pbs at exactly those times when i least need it. wayne says that you can perfect a life art, where your gradually increasing appreciation of beauty translates into a positive orientation with the universe. the payoff being that people are ATTRACTED to you because you are just so full o' life, so full o' the goodness.

he also says that it is very, very bad to judge people. and he quotes Soren Kierkegaard as saying "when you judge me, you negate me." it occurred to me today that the act of judging another person isn’t so BAD. The only thing bad about it is if you happen to take pride in the judgment. Judging people quickly and correctly is actually what dynamic people do all of the time.

A realtor visited my condo today. She was exactly what I want in a realtor: quick, cute, a DYNAMO. She ran through my place, her mental tape measure whirring. She said that she is a proxy inspector for “a little 78 year-old lady.” I could not have witnessed a more effective surveillance. I’m sure she wasn’t correct, 100% about ME, or my place, but what the fuck? She did not need Dr. Wayne Dyer.

I suppose that there is a philosopher, other than Wayne Dyer, who would appeal to me. I am becoming fixated on the concept of class. What it means to have class. What it means to break through to a life where you approach things lightly, and at the same time are attuned the deeper implications of it all. Attempting to surround yourself with a halo of Emersonian purity just gets in the way of what is important.

saw "the bourne supremacy" tonight. my mind was already made up about what i'd get out of it before the opening credits rolled. i wanted to see matt damon, uber man, operating at such a high level of cognitive ability that it made my own problems seem small. it delivered. for example, checking into one hotel room and then breaking in to the desired hotel room just down the hall is smart. it buys you time and you'll know when the swat team arrives.

for a few moments this afternoon i watched the opening of Dr. Wayne Dyer's four hour PBS pledge drive marathon, "The Power of Intention." he takes the stage in Boston and says "most people think that having intention means getting what you want, no matter who gets in your way... well i'm here to dispel that myth... blah blah blah." if i contined to watch his show i would have probably been told that i needed to focus on the art of forgiveness, or tap into child like wonderment, etc. i won't snap on poor Wayne and write here that he is utterly full of it. but if it's so true that "intention" doesn't have anything to do with navigating human obstacles, then why is it such an adrenaline rush watching bourne outhink and outsmack his opponents. it was, admittedly, incredibly satisfying when the toast popped. people who saw the movie will know what i'm talking about.

there were a few good hours early this morning. i made progress in "modeling random systems." an exponential random variable models wait times. it slopes down towards zero as time approaches infinity; as long as there is some probablity of rain, there is no chance that a drought can last. i thought about the cassini orbiter. there must be some probability of a space rock ripping through the hull, but it survives because the tail of the exponential collision variable remains vast, even as years go by. stephen jay gould, after being diagnosed with cancer, examined the mortality statistics and realized that it was the dimensions of the probability tail that mattered, not the frightening average. he lived for 20 years after being told he only had a few years to live. probability and statistics can suck when you think in terms of "how" before "why." people have a fundamental need to describe things that don't occur in plain sight. instead of leaving for an appointment at an exact time, we recognize a range of time as "the leaving time." this time begins quietly and then crescendoes into a "now or never" moment, and then trails off into an "oh shit we're not going to make it" moment. we usually give the mean when we tell somebody when we're leaving. we already know the bell curve. however, when you crack a textbook there is this disorienting overload of information. the author doesn't think the way you do. as the day goes on, from a peak in the early morning, the ability to concentrate trails off.

http://www.webmath.com/Integrals/int_ts.html

current runs from infinity to origin via the x axis, then veers right and goes out to infinity again via the y axis. find magnetic field intensity H at P(0,0,1).

the biot-savart formula introduces a deceptively easy looking integrand that will eat your lunch. unless you have a cheat sheet in your back pocket, or a computer, you will have to be, how do they say, clever about solving it. follow the above link, and choose three down and one to the right.

electromagnetics is interesting in that you can think you are very much more informed than people 150 years ago, yet you find yourself wanting for their pencil and paper skills. if you can't draw a triangle and make a few substitutions, there's no point attempting to solve for the EM plane wave, i should think. but i don't think 90% of EE majors can do this kind of thing anymore, or else i would have been taught by now.

summer school began today. encouraging developments. this past weekend i went to see my friends Meg & Mark get married in Chicago. they met Julie, me, and five other people for Greek food on Halsted. Julie's friends Alex & Iris drove down, and I was amazed to find that they were interested in the topic of frequency response. although with regards to biofeedback. Alex, with what seems to be a self-led understanding of electricity, is trying to design equipment that measures the body's vital signs. they are invested (although i don't know to what extent) in metaphysics. anyway, alex's intense interest in the subject complemented my intense desire to tell somebody, anybody, about it. so he wants to correspond with me about amplifier circuits. it will give me a chance to focus my writing to an audience other than myself. i think that a key reason that professors need to teach is that basic questions from novices can be extremely good a clarifying exactly what you know and don't know. physics and math concepts can sit in you head in a heap and when it comes time to explain, you may realize that you either know the subject or that your concepts are in disarray. in a similar situation, my neighbor Don, also a metaphysicist, brought up the subject of "The Elegant Universe" and string theory. I tried explaining to him that the uncertainty principle does not have much to do with God. Physicists give the probability that an electron will be contained within a certain volume, and this is only math and geometry, not directly representative a faith in the unknown. don seemed very latched on to the idea that extra dimensions was spiritually exciting. i tried to explain the quantum physical processes that occur in semiconductors, i.e. electrons jumping the bandgap due to excitation, but realized that i maybe needed a better grasp. i think that human beings get excited about what they think they know a lot about. so if you spend a long time studying religion, you get excited about religion and not about science. and the converse is true for scientists. if only the influential people of this world could recognize this and stop IMPOSING their respective philosophies upon the world, we'd be so much better off. dialoge can and should occur between people who do not necessarily agree on everything. for this reason, i realize that there might be something to gain from talking to metaphysicists.

a transfer function H is P/Q, output over input. denominator Q is a characteristic equation, a factored second degree polynomial, in the textbook at least. in signal processing theory H gets a box, and lines are drawn going in and out. many Hs are strung up en masse to model a system. within the H box, a ratio of differential equations.

particularly cool for descibing waves, electromagnetic, sonic, whatever. anything you see or hear.

we're going to the lavender fest today. it's one of julie's favorite scents. scent isn't a wave phenomenon. it's diffusion. i intend to bore nobody with these grasping observations, except you dear reader.

grades came out well, nothing lower than a B.

inbetween semesters one gets to believe that he is actually smarter than he is.

the input resistance of a common-gate MOSFET amplifier is only 1/gm, and what praytell is input resistance. it is the resistance across which Vsig (our old friend) is "felt" by the circuit. i am no longer an enemy of Vsig, at least with regards to simple transistor models.

EE 438 questions center around achieving gain, arranging transistors, resistors, and capacitors so that a small signal (Vsig) can become a large one (Vout). right now i'm no friend to the small signal. let's put it that way. my path is strewn with murdered small signals.

Vsig is the EKG blip, the caller's voice, the link to the landing gear; you can't be careless about Vsig. somebody has to safeguard Vsig from its enemies.

i placed in a writing competition sponsored by the UT college of engineering. (second place)
the essay is here
the lovegren essay won.

rob and tanya had their farewell party at jeff's today. their leaving splits up (at least geographically) the powerpuff girls. old alignments give way to new ones and it's better to be identified with who we are becoming than who we were.

an EE 313 midterm exam question asked for a definition of the continuous time unit impulse function. i provided a definition of that, then i also provided a definition of the discrete time unit impulse function. they aren't mathematically equivalent, the continuous and discrete time functions, although the book uses the exact same lowercase greek delta symbol.

a lab problem in 319 asks me to write a trap that mimics the behavior of an HC12 instruction, EMAXM. the hypothetical reason i need to do this is that i'm writing software for a "cheap chip" that doesn't have EMAXM.

this is my fourth semester here. holes, electrons, acceptors, donors, pnp, npn, drain, source, gate, collector, emitter, base, fermi level, diffusion, drift, saturation, triode, hybrid pi model, t model, assembly language!, (insert 150 motorola HC12 instructions, such as LEAS, BEQ, and STAA here. don't forget STAB.) then there are linear, time-invariant systems. we're at the semester/2 mark.

Oh Joy, Another Morality Alert
(read on KOOP Austin, 91.7 FM)

This holiday season brings with it an orange terror alert and practically meaningless appeals to the public for a quote-unquote “heightened state of vigilance.” It comes at a time when we already feel prodded towards standards of heightened morality that are equally meaningless. It’s not that we wouldn’t benefit from being more alert, or more considerate, but I think it’s time to admit the absurdity of the ways in which we prod ourselves towards these ideals.

Consider how readily we absorb and re-absorb the message of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol:” You are not good enough, so be good. It’s hard to deny that Scrooge was bad, easy to identify with his joy at being granted the time (and resources) to undo his mistakes. We admit to ourselves that we can also be bad and that Christmas is giving us a chance to be good. It’s supposed to be psychologically cleansing.

But if we made frequent attempts not to be bad throughout year, and many of us do, it would seem that this ritual of identifying with Mr. Scrooge is an admission of failure, on some level. We let Dickens prod us, annually, towards an abstract, heightened state of morality that we know we won’t maintain. We might also ignore that in his pre-reformed state, Scrooge possesses what many of us need: Scrooge is assertive, career oriented, in control of his finances, and not co-dependent. Many of us would find it easy to have his radical change of heart, it’s a radical change in our credit card balances that we might actually need, or the radical ability to communicate to others how we feel at any given moment.

I have not read Dickens’ book; it may contain many subtle messages that didn’t carry through to the film adaptations. But in future Christmases, I will question the authority of “A Christmas Carol,” before I question my own integrity. With less room for doubt, maybe I can be a better person, or at least more vigilant.

home for the holidays

it is interesting to watch a lot of cable tv and then rewind the experience to think about how various parts made me feel. space ghost got angry and punched the head of a praying mantis type thing, decapitating it, making me very happy, while the head of dennis miller looked out from a tv monitor. a real head looking out from a cartoon tv. yes i get it.

the jeffersons rerun did not make me especially happy. lamont was off in japan, learning the latest about "advanced computer circuitry." in the early 80s this was how a screenwriter could easily script the idea of "success" without making the audience think too much. lamont, at least, was never stereotyped as a computer geek, but there's something cheap and unsettling whenever computers are used this way.

well. family members are milling around this laptop, which belongs to my mother anyway. so i'd better relinquish control

Some girls are singing christmas carols at the top of their lungs out of a 12th story window (the castillian) overlooking the drag. I guess to celebrate friday. I am waiting below for the 982 bus. It's 4:30 pm. The slanted sun is still bright and the girls are at such an altitude that their voices are distorted. I wave to them. I think they wave back. What the fuck. It's the end of the semester. My bus is white and streamlined, like something out of a science fiction movie. It is almost 2004, and we are alive to see it.

I've been following this story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/02/opinion/02KRUG.html

Krugman's on target, but he doesn't mention the extremely good report that's on the web about Diebold's system. It's written by geeks at Rice and Johns Hopkins. Too technical for the newspaper, which in itself says something about the nature of the problem...

http://avirubin.com/vote/response.html

...which would be that the people who are knowledgeable enough to settle this issue have no political clout. They don't hold office, have a lot of money, or write for the newspaper so they aren't heard.

I passed unit 20 (the final unit) in EE 316 today, and this is one of those days where I surprised myself. Given a set of rectangular waveforms, I was able to determine their source to be a D flip flop connected to a XOR gate. My TA/grader passed me in about 45 seconds, with none of the usual agony. Earlier this morning I demonstrated my design of a binary divider to none other than C.H. Roth, the author of the textbook.

http://www.ece.utexas.edu/faculty/directory/details.php?id=72

I had a few small errors in how I diagrammed the circuit which he spotted instantly, but he cut me some slack.

This is a midterm summary of my academic activity. I should be doing more homework right now, but I love the sense of control that I get from expository writing.

In Logic Design, we're seeing how systems of gates become functional units. For example, why something like a programmable logic array (PLA) is important. It packages a framework within which gates are combined, and standardizes a method of associating them. In order to think about what drives something electronic, such as a clock radio display, one can think “PLA” and see a big piece of the picture. Obviously, no engineer goes to a store and buys a little AND gate. The logical units must come bundled together. I guess I’m saying that it’s satisfying to see and understand how.

In 411 we are covering transients. Inductors and capacitors are like wheels, in that they give a circuit a sort of rolling “momentum.” The Inductor is easier to visualize this way. It’s like a paddle wheel in the current. Even if the current suddenly stops, the paddle wheel keeps spinning, and for a while it will keep the current moving downstream. (The strange difference is that it spins perpendicularly to the direction of the current, not in line with it). A capacitor binds parallel branches of the stream. If several parallel streams have a capacitor among them, they are backed up in the event that their upstream source suddenly stops. The capacitor will attempt to maintain the driving force across all of the branches until it expends itself.

In M340L we’ve learned the basics of matrices. There is a conceptual leap between thinking of math as a way of manipulating individual numbers, and thinking of math as a way of grouping numbers. The class has felt a little bit dull, perhaps because we’re looking at things that simply exist rather than do. For example, a 3X3 matrix spans 3 dimensional space if it can be reduced to a diagonal row of ones, etc. etc.

In data structures, we’ve spent 6 weeks learning what all of the confusing C++ syntax is about. I think it’s ironic that the C++ language immediately exposes newcomers to its most difficult concepts, and that these concepts are intended to make the language easier to use. For example, function overloading is supposed to make it convenient for the audience (other programmers) to use symbols like “+” and “==” in ways like, “does this data == my mailing address.” This relatively modest gain (that benefits these “other programmers” not the human race at large) comes at the expense of a cumbersome syntax and many scary new punctuation marks. I've yet to find comprehensive examples that show how big O, big omega, and big theta can be applied to programs. The examples that I've seen give short incomplete explanations. There is an O'Reilly book written on this subject, Algorithms in C, which waters it down. More professional books give more thorough explanations. I recommend anything by a fellow named Skiena.

proposition 12 passes, narrowly. in fact, all of the propositions pass. the creepy recorded phone call i received from rick perry, urging me to support prop. 12, evidently did its job. the legions of the walking dead were activated. they got into their ford expeditions, programmed to vote yes, yes, yes.

the republicans' secret agenda in limiting non-economic damages in civil suits (i'm told) is to undercut the power base of trial lawyers, and hence the funding base of the democratic party. by imposing this cap, however, large corporations are more liable to act irresponsibly.

it's almost as if texans would vote more reasonably there wasn't a liberal minority urging them to think. it's not just the liberal minority in texas, the world is beginning to think that texas is backwards, hence texas resents the world and passes laws that further isolate it from modernity.

annoyances

an asian guy in a tight grey ribbed top swaggered down the narrow hall at about half the normal walking speed. i was behind him, in no hurry. perhaps he sensed me behind him, as if he were some kung fu master with eyes in the back of his head. the pretty girl from my EE 411 class tried to walk past him on the left, but as she did, she stumbled because she was trying to navigate the narrow space carrying books. he did not alter his gait, say excuse me, or anything. if it was a guy stumbling, fine, be bruce lee about it, but if it's a girl what's the harm of saying sorry. i wanted to snap on him, "this is texas, son, you say 'excuuuse me' to a lady." in a sense, i was paralyzed by his race. i disliked him even before the girl walked up. his walk suggested all that was alien and unattractive about asian youth, a kind of midget bravado. i wasn't afraid of confronting him so much as tapping into some sort of uglyness inside me. i wouldn't have been confronting him because i believed in chivalry so much as i would have been trying to put his personality (and his 'culture') back into its box.

my reader(s) may find this kind of thing tiresome, but i obsess on stuff like this. it concerns me too. i'm supposed to be thinking about

OPERATIONAL AMPLIFIERS

a guy in 411 did the unthinkable: the trick where you flick your cheek with your finger in order to make a watery plopping sound. i haven't seen this trick since the 1980's. the professor was up there talking about induction, the foundation of RF circuit theory (and anything having to do with wireless communication) and amazingly, this guy has reverted to his sophomore year of high school. i really feel like i got back into college just in time. if i had a little more grey in my sideburns, i would look totally ridiculous sitting there. for some reason 411 is a zoo. i had ploppy in front of me, an extremely nonplussed girl who could only pay attention to the professor long enough to mock him, sitting behind me. the whole back of the room was talking. i realized, with horror, that my classmates would probably become ruder and harder to like the higher up i go, not more likeable. they're turning 20, and many of them have never enjoyed the experience of being "cool" in a class. the jocks and thugs that used to hem them in are now elsewhere.

in other words, i'm feeling rather isolated this semester. my lifelines are the JP Java coffee house, carrying a copy of the new york times, and (i will need to take advantage of this) setting lunch dates with adults that i know on campus.

i got into the major sequence this week. meaning i take my first junior-level course this Spring.

fall at UT, pedestrian traffic is high. more soothing to consider as a brueghel painting than as a series of portraits, looking back at you. i feel slightly self-conscious as an older person, and i could not blame these young folk in the least at any resentment over inheriting such a badly used world. the art of walking around involves what tom ridge might call relaxed vigilance (or some crap like that). nobody remembers what they see when they walk, usually. the trick is getting to point b feeling as good or better than at A, and this is an art.

i had a dream that my father was attempting to lecture a class about onscreen text formatting. he was stumped on some questions, and he sat on a sofa to think. he had leather pants and sat in a strange position. actually, he didn't look like my father at all. he was a fat, younger guy with bleached hair, yet he was my father. this stuff always happens in my dreams. i never question it. after my "dad" left i attempted to clarify something that he said, and i drew from experiences that i've had in life (working as a technical writer). in dreams i ignore the obvious incongruities yet i speak to people i see as if i was in the real world. and despite the failure to recognize where i am, i wake up feeling like i learned something.

just five minutes ago i was standing at a papercutter (currently in a library computer lab) and i needed to cut some paper (a xerox of a photograph of myself for a contact info sheet). i went to the desk and asked for scissors. i left the paper i needed to cut on the papercutter. i used the papercutter as a platform while i used the scissors to cut the paper.

i could just summarize this entry by saying "sometimes i can be incredibly oblivious to things." but i'll give myself more credit and say that i'm aware of things, and i'll allow myself to do stupid things so that i can act out things that need to be acted out, not suppressed. i said, loudly, "papercutter" when i saw it. and perhaps people think i'm insane, but i feel sort of awake right now.

i suppose that there were several highlights of this evening:

seeing the gourds. they've taken notes at every good polka, tejano, and country-western show from here to there. interestingly, people didn't crowd up on the stage and it was humane, being able to do little two steppy jigs to the gourds.

last night saw jimmy cliff, the singer of "i can see clearly now the rain has gone" and "the harder they come the harder they fall" etc.

so i've spent a shitload of money.

matt suggested that we check out the club de ville. the highlight there was the men's room. i was peeing in a urinal, and i told a guy that if he couldn't hold it then he had better take a shit on the floor. he thought that was pretty funny, but he reminded me that another guy was trying to take a shit in the stall, so i had better be sensitive. i said, oh oh, of course. and we all had a big laugh. i'm so pessimistic about the opposite sex right now that practically anything resembling fun (such as this) is a success. i think that my problem with women is that they stare at you expecting you to do something, and then they act snooty when you try to talk to them. my attitude has become, well, i guess the wall is pretty interesting, and i'm beginning to believe that the wall actually is interesting. at one point, when i was younger, girls used to at least humor me. i remember meeting girls and feeling as though i was shaking up their scene simply by talking to them. now, i feel like i'm too old and girls are no longer girls, as i knew them. they're glandular, the barrier would be that although they would find me uninteresting, i similarly would find their little "who are we going to vote off the island next" vibe equally boring. the antidote to all of this is sincerity, i think. at clubs at night, all actions are directed towards the goal of intimacy, of finding some little seam to slip into and lose one's self in. the barrier of opinion at a nightclub, in a sense, is worse than what you'd experience at a convent. at least in my case. the charming little ways i used to enter conversations with girls now seem horribly quaint. i just have no idea.

geordie i'm not, but scotty's in full effect. final grade in Engineering Physics II: A.

my neigbor's kitchen faucet exploded this afternoon, submerging most of our duplex. i just got done ripping up half of the carpet and padding. as i do not have enough spare funds to even afford a call to blackmon mooring, i think i'm just going to rip the rest out over the weekend and enjoy the concrete for what it is. i'm going to buy a few chairs at urban outfitters, throw out my broken salvation army chair, and pretend that this counts as interior design. i had better not bring first dates home, but since when have i brought a date home.... oh wait, i have an oriental rug in the closet! yay!

i'm going to call this a wake up call from god, this accident. god is telling me that i need to get in shape, drink more ice water, stop living as if life had wall to wall beige carpeting.

i had a dream last night that i got a 20/hr. week job that paid 30K a year. it was maintaining subway cars for the CTA. anyway, my new boss said that my name would be "watchdog." i wrote this down on the cardboard backing of a used-up sketch pad this morning. now i'm looking at it. as it turned out, i was the watchdog who came home and discovered the torrents, and went out and turned off the main shut off valve. not a very good watchdog, but i guess the waters could still be flowing.

physics exam III kicks my ass. one question asks how long a ray of light would take to travel through an atmosphere whose index of refraction n increases linearly towards the surface. i'm thinking, what kind of fucking question is this. i'm sorry, i forgot my geordie laforge visor. i seem to remember there being many prism-related problems in the homework with CONSTANT FUCKING Ns. not "you're beaming a photon ray into the atmosphere of a hypothetical planet" problems.

yes a lack imagination, i suppose. i'd complain more, but the grades have already been posted and there evidently are plenty of people who successfuly calculated the speed of the ray. austin is in good shape if aliens invade.

in other news, i set up an interview with this guy for august 2. i'm driving to fort worth. he's going to try and arrange "a normal saturday around the house" where i guess we'll drink busch and work on his fence. he says that he and his buddies are digging fence post holes, waiting until the sun is at its hottest. his books are trashy collages. found objects from the trailer park mixed with obscene poetry and unwholesome descriptions of mom. my bill hicks show turned out extremely well, but practially nobody heard it. i'm realizing that i might have to make friends with obscurity. radio is basically a background medium. nobody thinks of it as art. i've done so many shows now (about ten) that the lack of recognition is no longer quite so discouraging.

a guest on bill moyer's show, who wrote a play about the life and work of leonardo davinci, dodged a question along the lines of "what caused davinci to see the world the way he did?" she seemed accustomed to the question, as if hundreds of naive people asked the same thing. she said something like "it's not for us to know. leonardo had a gift and the best we can do is appreciate the things he left us, not attempt to explain the man." i found this interesting, and also discouraging. i like reading biographies because there's a little hope that some of the person's essence may rub off on me. even though it's audacious, presumptuous to even think a thought like "how would DAVINCI approach this problem" it's nonetheless something that's possible to do, and if you think it, nobody will know.

so, I'm reading James Gleick's "Newton" right now, which attempts to explain the psyche of the greatest physicist and mathematican who ever walked the earth. Glieck pays close attention to Newton's journals, the size of his handwriting, the type of paper, where he obtained his blank books, etc. One book Newton called his "Waste Book." While doing physics today, I realized why he may have called it this. When thinking about physics problems there is a tentativeness with the pencil. at least when you're doing homework, there is a hesitation to write things down. the analytic state of mind is not the natural state. it's fragile. hence, anything can disrupt it, including fear of the paper, or of wasting it, or of leaving a record that suggests that you were dumb. in light of this, readers, obtain a waste book, put nothing between you and the idea.

i think that gleick is right and the playwright was wrong. it is our right to look at brilliant people and ask dumb questions like "how did you DO that?" 99 percent of the time we might get a stupid answer, but there's always the chance that we can pick up good habits. there's an art, or at least a method, by which we can make ourselves think.

GOODBYE ERIC ZIEGLER

A friend is leaving town after breaking up with his girlfriend of 10 years. She keeps the house, the dog, most of the exotic things accumulated on their travels. (It was discussed over beers last tuesday, what happens to such stuff post break up. Clearly, you can't start a relationship with somebody new surrounded by exotic oaxacan pottery, photographs, etc. obtained with a previous person.)

So, another friend, Jennifer, called me today asking if I knew exactly when Eric was leaving. I didn't know. It was very important to her that she see him one last time before he left. I said to her "people are precious aren't they." and she said, earnestly, "yes, they arrrre."

i bought something called "maple pecan crisp, peace cereal" at whole foods market (they have no major brand cereals). on the side of the box is a picture and quote from Yogi Bhajan. sales of peace cereal support "peace jam" seminars. i felt slightly unlike myself pouring a bowl this morning. but my angry thoughts throughout the day were curbed by memories of what i ate for breakfast. for example, a dude sat behind me in physics with a cocksure way of speaking out answers to the professor's questions. he was correct only about half the time. when he was right, i could hear him chew his gum in a way that seemed to suggest that he thought he had kicked everyone's ass. i thought, "fuck it, i could get mad at this guy, but i ate a bowl of peace cereal this morning."

anyway, in four weeks we've gone from coulomb's law to inductance. too much too fast, actually. in general, i now realize that three dimensional geometry, for all its perils, is the easiest way to understand the forces that affect charged particles. electric forces point straight. magnetic forces encircle. an electric field flows through the length of a conductor creating concentric magnetic fields. wrapping a wire in a loop can cause it to trap energy in the fields. a novel idea. i had previously thought that only batteries could store energy. with a steady current, energy can be stored simply by putting conductors into geometric arrangements. coiling them (inductor) or creating sandwiches for the electric field to go in (capacitor). buttons have capacitors under them. by writing this, i'm attempting to demonstrate that i'm comfortable with the subject matter. in actuality, i struggle with it, and when i take my eyes away from the book or the professor, i stop thinking about it immediately. when walking down the street, i have to force an equation into my mind, such as the biot savart law, and see how long i can keep it there until i start thinking about something unrelated. part of me hopes that i can actually become a good electrical engineer. i've realized that i need to LIKE it, and so far, there is little correlation to what i evidently like to think about. i've tried not to be hard on myself, it doesn't do any good. however, i like to think about the meaning of life, and myself, like my life is still a fantasy, even though i'm almost 32.

tomorrow is independence day.

i'm studying physics in the periodicals room at the engineering library and who should walk in but bruce sterling. picking up journals such as "machine design" etc. i walk over, confirm that it's him, and then shake his hand, introduce myself, tell him that i liked the "difference engine." "hi" he says, no comment on his book. "doing research?" i ask. "yes, you wonder, 'where does he get all of his ideas.'" he says, looking at the shelves. he seems to want to get away from me and i oblige.

i was in a state of glee for about an hour. i tell the librarian, figuring she'd get a kick out of knowing that a columnist for Wired does research in her library. she says "the twilight zone guy." "no, bruce sT-erling, not rod serling." i say. "i'll have to tell my boss" she says.

oprah gave out free ipods, roombahs, and handbags to her guests today. the women in the audience were shrieking, like they were at a rock concert. i've never seen anything quite like it.

straight A's, including diff eq, thankyouverymuch.

war poem no. 1

perhaps this man is dead
beneath a rubble wrapping paper pile
on christmas day

could he have only gasped
on the televised front,
to sate those who
sat in chairs to watch.

hate, from somplace, for you,
my american friend.
my senses apologize,
and i can spontaneously tolerate.

the sudden, and then again,
the everyday tones remain dictated.

let me blame this dead man
and love you, my unforgiving man,
and accept these crosshairs
through which you've learned to see

i decided to listen to the classical station tonight, KMFA. diane dunnavan does a show on tuesday nights called "classical austin." she had steven mills of the austin lyric opera, promoting his original production "Touch" and playing long excerpts from the score. Glover Gill of Tosca did some or all of the score, beautiful strings and a touch of accordion. this radio show was so good that it actually made me begin to feel human again. the idea that this music was made in austin, and that the ballet will premiere in austin, was unexpectedly encouraging. i have been preoccupied with the images and the repurcussions of the war. in a sense, i have gone to public radio (not KMFA) regularly, needing an unhealthy fix of war news. i am personally neutral on the subject of the war. our president is having an elaborate, bloody, and costly argument with the world. while this isn't inspiring, it is interesting. our siege of baghdad will change the paradigm in the middle east. if our occupying troops win and we establish what we perceive to be "rule of law" in iraq, it could be a stunning counterexample to our relentless failure in the region. it is also possible that our military victory will make us globally hated for decades. either scenario could become apparent within the next few months. but back to my original idea, our eyes and ears turn towards the war and I do not think that we always appreciate the subliminal effect of what we see. in a sense this war is completely dulling to the imagination, the opposite of a good new musical composition. i won't say that it is just or unjust, but it does not inspire me to act, or create, only to ponder the practical consequences. yawn.

Reader(s), try and watch this someday: A Class Divided.

i actually saw dr. patt today, walking down speedway around 5pm. i stopped him and said, "are you dr. patt?" and he said "the last time i checked." i told him that i loved his book "introduction to computing, from bits and gates to c and beyond." he asked who my instructor was how he was doing, how the TAs were doing. i said they were great and then he seemed to be on his way so i thanked him and said goodbye.

chapter four of the book finally sank in today. the instruction cycle consists of several steps: fetch, decode, evaluate address, fetch operands, execute, store result. in the upcoming weeks, they'll have us analyzing examples of assembly language. i also was successful at evaluating a non-exact differential equation today. the lego lab went ok, our robot managed to feel its way along a few strips of black tape.

i'm noticing that a lot of people are eating fried chicken these days. i don't know if it's the poor economy or just a cooincidence.

no more people in space, at least for awhile. based on what we saw today, the the idea that we're fit to commute back and forth to outer space seems absurd. the cost was too high for whatever commercial and scientific tasks they had performed.

in the 1960s, Kennedy could call space a frontier and be intellectually daring. today, the president calls outer space a frontier and he is merely playing it safe, putting positive spin on a disturbing incident. the difference between 2003 and 1969 is that putting people into space no longer proves a moral point. if the justification for manned space missions is "scientific research," then we need to ask why it's acceptable to risk the lives of researchers who work in outer space, and not acceptable to risk the lives of researchers who work on earth.

robots and computers give us many alternatives to astronauts. for example, we're using unmaned drone aircraft to spy and fire upon our enemies. we could push the boundaries of computer science by investing heavily in a drone shuttle.

that's all.

i've spent the last few weeks trying to rope myself up onto bevo's back. (bevo is a longhorn bull, the mascot of the university of texas at austin.) registering, figuring out finances, buying books, coping with the physical shock of waking up at 6:30am.

my first impressions of the school:

mostly positive. on friday 1/3, i went down to campus to buy books and pick up a parking pass. away from the carnival atmosphere of the drag, the campus had a chilly, quiet austerity. the late afternoon sun gave white granite of the UT tower a rosy tint. there was a feeling of walking in the mountains, or of visting the preserved ruins of a greek city. a week later i was walking out of GE 207K, a course that gives engineering majors extra practice with differential equations, east on 24th street. a lot of natural science buildings are on 24th. a beautiful asian woman walked towards me, and for a second i recognized that we were in the same place: happy with the class we just left, relieved at having a smart instructor, a future. i could have fallen at her feet and asked her to marry me. i don't mean to disgust my readers, here, and i will get to the less flattering aspects of undergraduate life at 31 in a second...

i was a full time administrative employee at UT for four years. i worked east of IH-35 for a year, and then transferred to IC2 which is located along Lamar. i rarely needed to go to the center of campus, and when i did there wasn't much reason to celebrate. as a student, pursuing an engineering degree, the place now seems enormous, exciting. a large Asian population attends UT: india, china, korea. many schools are highly ranked. there is the sense of a thriving community, quite apart from Austin's general community. the smartest young adults from places like madras, beijing, seoul, walk around in groups having dialogues that may never be heard or appreciated by people in Austin. the contrast between this community and middle class white austin is sharp enough; it's mind blowing to consider that communities east of the expressway are even more insulated. thankfully, one of my professors, Mario Gonzalez, discussed "the digital divide." but UT, as an elite place, creates divides upon divides. students only stay at UT for a few years, and they have no time to contribute to Austin.

i must brag about the resources at UT. a UT professor, Yale N. Patt, wrote my intro to computing textbook which is amazing. in february i'll attend a meeting of the amateur radio club (ARC) which, unlike typical ham radio clubs, has real antennas and satellites to play with. the ECE building has wireless labs, digital design labs, biomedical equipment labs, etc.

on the downside, engineering students are plain looking, plain acting people. in my large introductory EE sections I'm detecting a lack of healthy enthusiasm. it's 85+ percent male, everyone's dressed the same, hair is cropped short (with a few notable exceptions), and many guys almost seem angry. making friends will be a challenge. engineers try to show that they're emotionally simple but sophisticated in terms of technial expertise. i at least look the part. my hair is short and my clothes are nondescript. i fight notions that i'm somehow more talented and creative than those around me, because they probably aren't true.